I recently met a fellow at work who was just getting into tabletop D&D and was asking me for some advice. This guy is one of our interns, I think he’s about 18, and he’d played lots of videogame RPGs but apparently never tried the tabletop version before. After some discussion as to whether he should play 3.5e or 4e and talking a lot about the usefulness of various skills, he started telling me about a friend of his that was modifying a lot of the 3.5e rules to make the game “better and more streamlined”.

At this point, a red flag raised in my mind because I’ve seen some really odd things come out of people remaking D&D to their liking. This particular guy’s modifications were a lot like I’d seen some friends do back in college: he felt D&D just wasn’t hardcore enough. So all his rules revolved around things like harsher penalties for spell failure, and lowering the number of hitpoints given per level to make things more realistic.

I don’t know if it’s all gamers or just the ones I grew up with, but it seems to me there’s several stages of life gamers go through. Perhaps not all of these, or in this order, but it’s a trend I’ve seen throughout the groups I’ve played with over the years:

• Introduction
  The player is learning the rules and is overwhelmed at first, but eventually gets the hang of things
• Monty Haul
  The DM of the group decides the lower character levels are boring and decides to make everybody roll up 20th level characters. Also, every PC gets a pick from the unique artifacts in the DMG, and no weapons under +18 are allowed.
• Hardcore
  Eventually growing sick of the over the top everything of the Monty Haul stage, the DM of the group decides gritty realism is what this group needs to reinvigorate it. Rules are changed to hamper the player and monster stats are buffed to make every encounter incredibly challenging to make the PCs feel a real sense of accomplishment when (if) they are victorious. Players leave practically every night with dead PC’s and a new four-letter word to describe the DM.
• Realistic
  Hardcore’s younger, scrawnier brother. Some gamers skip Hardcore completely and go right here, while others still want realism but not so much the soul-crushing frustration. Here you’ll find the sticklers about marching order and endless discussions about who takes what watch when to maximize the amount of spells you get each day (thank you 4e, for ending this nightmare). Here you’ll also find people who think Resurrection spells make it impossible for PCs to really fear anything in the game and diminish from the excitement of a true victory (see, Hardcore isn’t totally gone!).
• Oh Yeah, It’s A Game
  Most people finally get here, maybe only in part, but here nonetheless. The gamer finally realizes it’s not about the rules, the power, the loot, or the realism, and finally clues into the fact that they get together with their friends every week to share exciting adventures and fun.

When I was writing this, I was thinking that a lot of teenage players decide they can do it better and write their own strange rules, but upon further thought I know just as many 40 year olds who do it too. I think it’s a product of how a lot of gamers are — very sharp analytical minds and enough perfectionism to want to fix things we perceive as flawed. Unfortunately, I think we’re a lot better at finding things we want to fix than fixing them in a lot of cases. Although I’d be willing to bet a lot of game designers out there enter Hardcore or Realistic and manage to get it right somehow. (You know, factoring crazy stuff like “playability”, “balance”, and “fun” in there.)

All that said, I can’t honestly say I haven’t had a lot of fun with some seriously broken do-it-yourself rules over the years. And as long as we had fun, who cares? It’s just a game, right?

There’s been a lot going on in the blogosphere recently, so I thought it best to open up this Friday posting with some recognition of severe awesomeness!

First up, our good buddy Phil over at Musings of the Chatty DM had his one year anniversary AND his 400th post all at once! The well-planning so-and-so intended the two to coincide, further cementing his m4d DM-foo! I didn’t want to call you out on your own post, bud, but you’re a few weeks *ahead* of us. And a few posts too, but we’re not as chatty collectively as you are alone!!

Next, it strikes me that I never properly congratulated Yax over at DungeonMastering on his ENnie nomination! We’re all pulling for ya, buddy!

Last, but certainly not least, our good friends over at Gnome Stew reached their 100 post milestone on July 9th, a scant 11 weeks after going live! For those of you bad at math or new to blogging, that’s an astonishing amount of content in a short amount of time. With this milestone, the gnomes receive an extra action point apiece, and a giant caraffe of decaffinated coffee.

This year, all of us at StupidRanger count ourselves lucky to get to meet these guys in person (and others!) and get to do some excellent roleplaying! Some of it may or may not involve whiskey and tomfoolery, so its bound to generate some interesting stuff!

So join me this fine Friday in congratulating our buddies! Head over to their sites and see some of the groovy stuff they’re laying down, you won’t be sorry!!

I finally got some time to become acquainted with the 4e core rules! While taking a flight back home from Colorado, I got the opportunity to plow through the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide and what follows are my mostly formed opinions of the latter book. I’ll leave my opinions of the PHB for another time.

The DMG

Before getting too far into my high level feelings, I must say that the visual appeal of the new core rulebooks is fantastic. The artwork is stunning and the layout of the information is relatively attainable.

As for the actual content of the DMG, honestly I feel like it could have been cobbled together from the collective roleplaying blogosphere. Do not take this wrong: I am not unimpressed, nor could I have done much better… but as I was reading it, I kept having “I saw that on Martin’s site three months ago” or “wow, Yax just mentioned this concept a bit ago” and so on. I guess that reinforces that we’re largely on the right path.

The changes to the game mechanics are interesting. We will be playing our first 4e session this weekend, so I will get some firsthand experience in executing the new combat systems which should be interesting in a group that has historically eschewed miniatures.

I am eager to give the skill check system a try. I think it creates a good situation for storytelling, doesn’t frustrate the players that don’t enjoy puzzles, and gives the DM a discrete “pass/fail” criteria that is easily outlined into an action plan.

One of the more exciting things for me as a DM is the inclusion of the action point system. I think that this is an incredibly good way to handle the “oh crap, I have to rest” process that plagued 3.x editions, and the idea of milestones is an excellent way to reward the group for interim progress toward a goal.

More to come!

I was able to get just into the Treasure section when my plane ride got bumpy enough as to inhibit my ability to remain focused. I’m going to pick up there soon, and I’m sure that will compel a follow-up post along with my first impressions playing with the new rules in practice.

I am happy to say that I’m genuinely excited about the opportunity to get to play the new system. A lot of the aggreviations that we face as Dungeon Masters appear to have been lessened and much good advice is given in the book for how to handle common gaming situations, so the DMG already earns fairly high marks.

Keep an eye out for more soon!

I know many of you are preparing for Gencon, and I also know that some of you are first-time attendees. For all the newbies out there, I’d like to offer some insight into what you might need for your trip.

I had the pleasure of seeing The Dark Knight over the weekend. I’d been looking forward to this one because I’d heard that Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker was completely amazing, and he didn’t disappoint. TDK’s Joker was a standout example of what a real villain ought to be — and you can take some of his complete batshit insanity (no pun intended) and use it with some of your villains. Let’s take a look:

***** POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE DARK KNIGHT, DON’T READ ANY FURTHER!!! *****

Chaotic Evil With A Side Order Of Insanity

If ever you were wondering what the difference between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil is, the Joker’s your poster boy for Chaotic Evil. Whatever he does, it’s to suit whatever plans he has. Granted, not all Chaotic Evil people have desires as sick and twisted as our purple-suited antagonist, but it does show that Chaotic Evil-aligned people don’t so much care about how they accomplish their goals or who has to die.

Just being Chaotic Evil isn’t what makes the Joker so frightening. Think about it for a second. Just because you’re evil doesn’t necessarily make you motivated. I’m sure most of us have known people over the years who really wanted to do some bad things to get their way, but they were too scared to. The Joker’s got that motivation somehow. The scary part is what he’s motivated to do. And most don’t find out what that is until it’s way too late.

Why So Serious?

Though the Joker has been portrayed in a variety of ways over the years, the main thing that separated him from most of the other Bat-villains (especially after the 80’s, when they really started to turn up the homicidal cuckoo) is that he’s not really after anything aside from chaos and mayhem. Yeah, he might rob a bank, but you can bet he’s going to use all of that loot to fund some sort of scheme that will sow the seeds of terror in the streets of Gotham somehow. As Alfred says during the movie, “Some men just want to see the world burn.”

That’s scary stuff. That means that you can’t reason with a person like this. You can’t make them go away by giving them what they want. If you give them what they want, horrible things happen to you and your loved ones and their loved ones and your dog and their dogs and probably their dogs’ friends and everyone’s neighbors. People like this love to see others suffer, and probably the single scariest thing about TDK’s Joker is that he lives to see people corrupted and to make themselves and their loved ones suffer. It’s like he can make a Diplomacy check gone horribly, horribly wrong, and if he succeeds then you’ve crossed the line where you’re not sure if you’re a good person anymore.

This maniac was born to tear places and people down, and he’s frighteningly good at it. Somehow he’s charismatic (or frightening enough) enough to have a bunch of minions following him. He makes unbelievably effective plans to accomplish his insane goals, probably due in part to the fact that he doesn’t need to have an exit strategy most of the time. Nobody’s quite sure if he even cares if he lives or dies so long as the chaos continues to spread. As he put it himself in TDK, “It’s like I’m a dog chasing cars. I don’t even know what I’d do if I caught one.”

Bringing Mr. J to Your Campaign

I’ve just detailed a lot of things that make the Joker a frightening and unique villain. You can use a lot of the things he does in TDK and weave them into your adventures in D&D.

Suppose you have a mad wizard laying waste everywhere he goes. Nobody knows why he’s doing this. Guess what happens if the PC’s try to talk him out of it! (Hint: it ends in “ireball”.) Or worse, their conversation points out to the arcane psycho another abomination that needs to be…. corrected. At the root. In the PC’s hometown.

Or, how about a fallen villain from earlier in your campaign who wants nothing more than to see the heroic party shamed before all who hold them up as a shining example to their people? This villain could set up a trap with a seeming no-win situation in which the PC’s would have to look bad one way or the other. Or he could just plain try to tempt or goad them into doing something morally questionable and let the stone continue to roll down the hill of evil.

I could go on quite a bit more, but you get the idea. The Joker is, in my mind, the epitome of a Proper Villain. Use characters like him as a resource, and your own characters will get a lot more colorful and believable. And if any of your PC’s hunt you down because your villain was just too damn evil to stop, then I apologize in advance for giving you just a little push in the right (wrong?) direction.

Okay, so my son isn’t really about to be eaten by a dracolich. He’s about to be eaten by Sue, the T-Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago, where Efreak and I took him over the weekend.

We also had the pleasure of going to their Mythic Creatures exhibit. There were lots of creatures represented, from sea monsters to griffins to dragons. It was interesting to roam around the exhibit and see how many things from the Monster Manuals I recognized (I had not previously realized the Bunyip was a mythic creature!).

The real attraction for me, though, was the life-sized representations of a few of the monsters. Their dragon was great and their unicorn was really well done too. But far and away my favorite of their exhibits was the Roc. I loved seeing all these things life-sized because it gave me a frame of reference for how large my imagination will make them during roleplaying. We’d fought a roc in the Evensbrook campaign a long time ago, and just to be able to see those giant talons reaching out for me gave me a little taste of what it would have been like for Lumbar.

You’ll see a lot of life-sized monsters at Gen Con too. True Dungeon always has a couple (anybody else almost soil themselves when the beholder showed up last year?). If you get a chance to go to something like this, I highly recommend it. It’s a good way to give your imagination some perspective.

With Dante out of town this week, it was my job to pick up the slack, and I actually fell asleep on the job this week! But I’ve been percolating this idea for awhile. So here’s my random thought for Friday!

There’s been a lot of press lately about use non-plastic alternatives for shopping bags. You can buy cloth bags from just about every store now (at least in our area). My mother-in-law has several of them in her car so they are handy for shopping purposes. I was looking at them the other day and noticed all the corporate logos and whatnot all over them.

And I got to thinking, how much cooler those bags would be if they had roleplaying-related slogans on them. So I’ve come up with the following:

1. My other bag is full of dice
2. I rolled a 20 on my Knowledge (Nature) roll
3. A dragon ate my refridgerator, so I have to buy more food
4. The DM said to bring snacks or else
5. This is my Bag of Holding
6. If you don’t save (plastic), you take full damage

For starters, allow me to apologize for the lack of a new post yesterday. I arrived back at my hotel at 11:55 pm, so I thought it best simply to collect my thoughts and give you something interesting to read today instead of a crappy “sorry, missed a post” post.

Navigation and storybuilding, both tricky tasks…

In my various wanderings around the mountain countryside, I determined that navigation is made much easier by large, looming markers of direction (like, say, the Rocky Mountains). It’s also made considerably easier by the addition of a Garmin nuvi 350, which one of my coworkers brought with her.

The respective bonuses to Intuit Direction have to be at least +2 and +10 respectively.

Even with this assistence, I still found myself lost a few times. This was only a little frustrating, however a few choice encounters have inspired me for a few campaign ideas. I am in the process of fleshing out these ideas into a servicable 4e campaign, which should be fun to both break me into 4e and unleash on my unwilling player characters.

One may glean from this information that I am finally reading my 4e books in depth, and that means that before long you’ll start hearing glowing praise/moderate indifference/seething rage depending on my mood at the time I sit down to write my various reviews.

I haven’t decided how I intend to structure my opinions of 4e, but I am leaning toward an “in theory” and “in practice” set of segments that would outline how I see a new aspect of the system handling, and then how it actually handles once we get into the game itself.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated on what you want to hear me talk about. Here’s your chance, blogosphere… choose your own adventure!

By the time I post this, we’ll be 29 days to Gencon! I’m very excited about this year, it’s going to be a great year full of exciting events. And if you’re still looking for something to do this year, feel free to join us at the following events:

Queen of Geeks Pageant – In some crazy fit of insanity, I decided to compete for the title of “Queen of Geeks.” So, Friday morning from 10am to 1pm, I would appreciate your support during the competition!

Mastering Your GM-Fu – Saturday morning from 8am to 10am, DNAphil, Chatty DM, Vicki Potter and Zachary Houghton will be sharing with us how to master our GM-Fu with Session Prep. I think this is going to be a great event… these are very informative GMs, and I know they will have some great advice to share.

RPG Bloggers Unite! – Saturday afternoon from 1pm to 2pm, the StupidRanger crew will be joining several other bloggers as we share our blogging experience. Come meet us all, it’ll be a blast!

Out of the Box Roleplaying – Sunday morning from 10am to 11am, Dante, Vanir and I will be hosting our own little event. A little D&D with our own crazy brand of insanity. Maybe something useful, we haven’t decided on that yet. Either way, you will be entertained!

Online pre-registration has ended, but you may want to check out the events spreadsheet for other gems. Online pre-reg reopens Aug 13, just before the con opens, so you can will-call your tickets… ‘cuz you sure don’t want to miss these fantatic events!

I’m on the road for my real job again, and before leaving home last night I loaded up a small 512 MB USB thumb drive with a series of D&D related books and some draft campaign ideas that I’ve been working on.

I find travelling and gamebuilding particularly troublesome. You don’t want to waste a bunch of carry-on space with books, nor do you want to check a bunch of baggage with it (since they’re charging per bag now, that gets expensive).

For me, the best solution is to go digital. I keep my campaign notes in Google Docs. I keep a running document on my thumb drive for times when the Internet eludes me, or I’m on a flight. The only part I don’t have licked yet is how to design maps while on the road. I can draw in a physical notebook, but then translating that elsewhere is often troublesome and sometimes I lose notebooks.

I know there are plenty of mapping tools out there, but I’d love to find one with little to no learning curve and the ability to save your progress in some easily trasmitted format for editing on the go. Ideally, it would be a small enough footprint to carry around on a thumb drive or design in a web browser.

Maybe the interactive 4E tools will fill this void when they’re available, only time will tell! Any other recommendations for how to game-build on the go can be added to the comments. If there are any new tools to be tried, I’d love to burn a little of my extra hotel time with trying them out this week!