(A Little) More on the Scales of War finale

Well, I've got a deadline for the day job, so I don't have much time today, but real quickly...

I wrote the last adventure in the Scales of War adventure path, and it came out today here. Some quick thoughts...

1) Kudos to whomever came up with the "Last Breath of Tiamat" title over at WotC. That's much better than my title.

2) Parts of it definitely play better than they read--like the preponderance of solo dragons throughout the adventure. There's an interesting table dynamic when tactics evolve (on both sides of the screen) through a half-dozen fights that are fundamentally similar in a lot of ways.

3) Yeah, there's a big deal world-shaking event at the end. I don't know whether it's worth it or not to keep this blog spoiler-free, but for now I'll say this: To my mind, "greed" is not synonymous with "want" or "desire." Eliminating greed doesn't create a world without want...just a world without evil, destructive, poisonous "acquisition for its own sake" and "reveling in obscene wealth."

Out of Context: How about slash-uncle?
Music: KEXP live feed.

Get these tumbleweeds outta here

Been busy at the new MMO gig lately.

And I was a guest on the Power Source podcast again! (Further proof that I'll talk D&D for arbitrarily long periods of time.)

And I finished the last adventure in the Scales of War adventure path. I think it gets posted sometime this week or next.

And I contributed a bit to a Paizo product that'll be out soonish. How's that for vague?

And I promise to update this more frequently.

Out of Context: Four backpackers, six good knees.
Music: Silversun Pickups, Carnavas

Addendums...or "Addenda," I Suppose

Just quick hits today:

• My guest co-hosting gig on the Power Source podcast is up. Click on the link to download.

• One thing I should have mentioned in yesterday's "Getting Better At D&D" post: The "make a bunch of characters, just so you feel the decision points" exercise is worth doing even if you're the Dungeon Master. If you're the DM, try doing the classes at your table at one of those benchmark levels: 5th or 11th (or 21st if you're in the deep end of the pool). You'll learn a lot of character nuances that have been obscured from your view (and you might catch some player shenanigans, too).

• I think I mentioned this when we were recording the Power Source podcast, but it's worth noting that in a cooperative game like D&D, getting "better" at doesn't directly improve your play experience. I've seen countless tables of noob D&D players--both casually and from behind the two-way mirrors at WotC--and they're extracting just as much enjoyment out of the game as an expert player...even though those junior-high noobs are doing it wrong.

Out of Context: Humbug, shoe kid! Humbug!

Music: The xx, xx

Getting "Better" at D&D: An Occasional Series, Part 1

Making Characters, All the Way Up

One of the things I did at Wizards back in the day was create and then maintain what we called the "Pre-Fab Four:" Mialee the wizard, Jozan the cleric, Tordek the fighter, and Lidda the rogue. Each one lived in its own Excel spreadsheet, with one tab for each level. Whenever we needed a party for a playtest (or just for benchmarking), we'd print out the relevant level. It wasn't the prettiest character sheet, and it wasn't the smartest spreadsheet (though it did do basic calculations for you). It worked, though—we used the Pre-Fab Four year after year.

For 3.0 we actually had all of the "iconics"—Krusk, Vadania, etc.—statted up 1-20. I did first drafts on about half of those and second drafts on nearly of all 'em. Whew!

And along the way we killed a lot of trees. The spreadsheets had a bug we never could squash where the "Number of Copies" field always had an arbitrarily large number…19,000 or so. You had to remember to fix that each time you printed, or the printer would merrily empty itself of paper creating a huge stack of Liddas for you.

Anyway, this was before DDI and before the character builder. So making those PCs one at a time was a handcrafted effort. My mandate was to make straightforward but not suboptimal choices. Tordek, for example, was a sword-and-board (OK, sword and axe) fighter rather than some sort of spiked-chain wunderkind. I wanted any intermediate-level D&D player to be able to sit down and play a Pre-Fab Four character right away.

Make characters from level 1 to level 20 four times in a row—gear and all—and you get good at it, eventually. (Or at least you get more efficient.) But it still took hours…maybe a day for the nonspellcasters and more than that for Mialee and Jozan. Nowadays DDI and a less gear-centric game would make it a lot faster…except that there are 30 levels now.

Handcrafting the Pre-Fab Four made me a lot more aware of what each class was capable of, which items, feats, and spells were key…all sorts of stuff. And I'm pretty sure that a similar effort in 4e would make anyone a better D&D player.

Do It Yourself

So here's one way to get better at D&D: Take your favorite character class and build it one level at a time, gear and all, until you hit 30th level. Trust me: You will become an utter brainiac about your class.

Alternatively, pick a specific level—5th and 11th are solid choices—and make characters at that level for lots of classes. Try making a 5th-level character for the class of every other player at your table. You'll be amazed at how much you learn about your buddies' PCs. You will become Mr. Teamwork at your table.

I'd suggest that rather than going for esoteric builds, you stick with "straightforward and solid choices." Remember, you're doing this to learn, not to "win" at D&D with your extreme power-munchkin-sauce.

Don't stress out too much about the choices you make. That's not the point. The point is to put yourself in assessment mode—to feel the "this power or that power?" question at each level. If you do that, you learn about both the options you chose and the options you didn't choose.

And look at it this way: Your choices will certainly be better than the DDI Character Creator's Auto-Pick function! (Seriously, they should just turn that function off. No guidance is better than horrible, misleading guidance.)

Out of Context: Don't you dare call me toffee-nosed!

Music: Black Crowes, Amorica

Some quick business stuff

I've been busy the last few weeks. Let's see...

• I'm the managing editor of the Internet Review of Science Fiction. Still getting up to speed there, but it's fascinating to take a more academic look at goings-on in the SF world. And as one of my first acts, I talked them into adding SF/Fantasy games to their repertoire. I even had a hand in setting the topic of the first few "Gamenivore" review columns. You'll see the reviewer's thoughts on Eclipse Phase over at IROSF. Hint: It's not as glowing a review as you saw here a few months back.

• I have a new job: Senior Writer at an MMO startup. Can't tell you the name of the company, but not for the usual nondisclosure reasons. Our desired company name (and various variations) is still going through the trademark process. So I work for a company with no name, basically. Love the startup vibe, though, and man are the other nine people who work here sharp.

• I was the guest co-host on the Power Source podcast over the weekend. It should "air" soon. It was fun to sit behind a microphone and just talk D&D for a while. I missed that more than I thought.

Out of Context: Where's that confounded bridge?

Music: Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms

When did we become "The Man?"

Something I noticed when I was flipping through recent D&D adventures...how come our D&D characters are agents of "The Man" nowadays?

I don't have a complete collection of 4e adventures, so I can't claim to be comprehensive. But in nearly every adventure I flipped through, the PCs are either the agents of the authorities or they're acting congruent to those interests.

Where are the rebels? Where are the capers? Where are the heists?

Some of this is a natural consequence of the "Points of Light" proto-campaign. Back when we were designing it, we talked a lot about "dark points of light"--and yes, we were aware of how dumb that term sounds.

A "dark point of light" is a spot where local authority has coalesced, but it's tyrannical/pathological/evil/just-plain-mean authority. And the PCs need to go there and bust that shit up.

I don't see much evidence of PCs getting the chance to stick it to The Man in, what, a year and a half of adventures?!? So adventure writers, let's get on the case! We need to overthrow some dudes who are duly constituted authorities--but evil.

And we need some morally ambivalent stuff. Give me an Ocean's Eleven-style caper adventure where the quest isn't "Help The Man" so much as it's "Get...Paid..."

Set the wayback machine for the mid-'80s, and you'll an adventure landscape replete with plenty of "let's get rich!" adventures. Lots of moral ambivalence--why do you think there's a bank in the Keep on the Borderlands? So we can knock it over! And there's a fair amount of "stick it to the evil overlord" in there, too.

At some point, maybe we got too genteel. I don't know. But I'm tired of getting deputized by the proverbial sheriff to go and clear out a nest of bad guys. I shot the sheriff, all right? Maybe I did it just to rob the bank and burn the whole town down. Maybe the sheriff had it coming. But I'm tired of being the sheriff's monkey-boy, that's for sure.

Out of Context: Brains should be spelled with one "a." Or five.

Music: Jeff Buckley, Grace

Musings on the Nov. 17 D&D update

Last week, my former colleagues at WotC published a big patch to the D&D rules. And this was a big one--not big in the sense that any single change is overwhelming, but the accumulation of mid-range changes is...big.

Big enough that the good folks over at the Character Optimization Board have a lot of revising to do on those terrific class guides.

Big enough that, thanks to a respec from a kindly DM, my githyanki orbizard became a warlock last night. (I'm pouring out the proverbial 40-oz. for my dead bloodclaw and orb of ultimate imposition homies.)

Big enough that even if I were strictly a "civilian" D&D gamer (and not a former D&D game designer and occasional adventure author), I'd definitely pay for D&D Insider and stop buying the actual books. There are enough changes this month, spread out over enough books, that I don't think I could trust what's on the written page anymore. Each discrete change wasn't huge, but they weren't just fixing typos, either. The bulk of the Nov. 17 changes matter. They would noticeably impact play at your table.

If you've got the Character Builder and the Compendium, you're good to go. Especially if you're using something like iplay4e.com. But so much has changed in the dead-tree versions of those books. The updated, electronic version of the game is substantively different now.

I'm glad I don't have to worry about the D&D business model anymore. (And to be clear, I have zero insight into what it looks like nowadays.) It's certainly conceivable that those DDI subscriptions make up for lost physical book sales among those of us who are going the all-electronic route. Given the way game stores are disappearing from the landscape and given the way book chains are getting hammered (will there be a Borders after April?), it's clear that WotC needs new ways to get their stuff out there.

But I do know this: Opting for DDI is definitely saving me money (some of which would have wound up in WotC's pocket), and it's delivering a better experience at the table. I wonder whether the bean-counters in Renton are as happy as I am, though. 'Cause I sure would be buying actual D&D books if DDI didn't exist.

Oh, and on a side note: I'm writing a 30th-level adventure right now. God, I love the deep end of the pool.

Out of Context: Four things greater than all things are/Women and Horses and Power and War.

Music: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue