Highmoon’s Ponderings

On Friday I got my box from Buy.com containing the D&D 4th Edition Core Books Set and I’ve bee reading through the Player’s Handbook over the weekend. Some of my preconceptions have been corrected, but I still reserve judgement for when I’ve read them all.

I have to say I really hate that lackluster (really, the completely unexistent) marketing campaign that went into 4e. I really wanted to like this game, honestly; I like D&D, and I wanted to be excited about the new edition and whatever improvements it brought. But Wizards didn’t sell me on it, and the bits and pieces being released over blog posts, forum posts, news and cryptic articles were just not enough, and in fact damaged the whole game in my mind.

What I’m seeing so far is a very tight game focused on tactical combat (yes, I know there are other parts to it, but at page 101, all I’m seeing are tons of combat powers). It even looks kind of exciting at parts. We’ll see once I get to skills and feats how the general focus fares.

Will this game be D&D for me? At this point, no, I don’t think so, but it can still be a cool game. I actually hope it is, for what I paid for it.

I can tell you that I have already seen a few things that I will definitely change/expand:

• Dragonborn will not be mammals. This was a stupid concesion, in my opinion. In my book and world, dragonborn are warm-blooded, egg laying reptiles. The females will be differentiated by a having a more lithe build than the males, and they will certainly not have breasts.
• Halflings receive a +2 History racial skill bonus. By default they get +2 Acrobatics and +2 Thievery, which matches the (1e-3e) pre-conceived notion of halflings as sneaky bastards, but then the background goes into how halflings are nomads and collect stories and how they are so awesome at being able to know bits of lore and legend about pretty much anything they encounter. So where’s the mechanical reinforcement for that? Shoddy design work. In my book and world, they get the skill bonus to History over Thievery.
• Warlocks will get more pact choices. I like the Fey, Infernal and Star pacts in the book, but I want more out of the box. I’m going to check if there are some fan-designed pacts I can add to my notes, and if not, I’ll design a couple more.

I already have an idea for a character, but I’ll post it once it’s done.

I’m super busy getting ready for my trip to Seattle, so I won’t be doing a long post about this. Short version: the GSL sucks and I don’t see Highmoon Media using it to produce D&D 4e-compatible products in the near future. The license is horribly restricting in what I can and cannot do, reference, or develop, but the dealbrakers are the clauses dealing with OGL conversions (6.1, 6.2), with beyond-termination limitation of my GSL-released products (6.1), and the draconian sections dealing with litigation and damages (10), especially the one where you waive your right to a jury trial for any legal proceeding dealing with the GSL (19).

There’s more stuff that annoys me about it (like the fact that the license seems to put a clamp on anything I develop for 4e/GSL to be used solely for that or not at all), but it will have to wait for me to break that down further.

Honestly, I feel they should just have closed the whole game. I know some folks with use this GSL to release products, but in general, it feels like a forced participation in the idea of Open Gaming, and only in the most bitter of ways.

Wizards of the Coast continues to become a company that I more and more do not want to support with my dollars.

I miss very much the Wizards of the Coast of the Peter Adkinson years, but that’s a different post.

Last week was one of those where I literally only got to sit at my computer for like 10 minutes, period. I had my mom and two nephews visiting here all week, which was great, but severely affected my comp time, in addition to the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which meant two days of no electronics at all. So this all amounts to a crapload of backed-up emails, including a series of them from Amazon.com, telling me that the credit card I had given for my D&D 4e Gift Box pre-order was expired (Doh!) and that if I didn’t give a new one, my order would be cancelled. It was. So not only did I not get the box set on release day as is normal for Amazon.com pre-orders (due to stock issues), the great price I had locked in via the pre-order has also gone away, and while the regular price they offer is still a good one compared to regular retail, it bothers me having to give them that extra money. So I’ll be going with Buy.com, which has it at just two more dollars than I had thought I would pay at Amazon.com. I do have to wait for the restock from Wizards, so for now no 4e for me. Which is just fine, as I’ll be traveling this Friday so my thoughts are all about Seattle, not 4e.

Teh Intrawebs has decided the new d20 logo (see previous post) looks way too retro, too 70’s (I agree). So, if it’s gonna look 70’s, then why not make it REALLY 70’s! I present to you the new d20 logo:

 

Frankly, I feel it’s an improvement.

This is the new d20 System logo on the D&D Miniatures: Dungeons of Dread boxes (thanks for the scan, Mark), which I also assume will be the one used for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

I knew Wizards would retire the current d20 System logo (which for the record, I like better than this new one), but I can’t recall off the top of my head them mentioning a new d20 logo (they might have, but if they did, it was a while back and not something they repeated much after that). What I do remember is that, if things have not changed from their original statements (and frankly, these days anything having to do with the 4e OGL/GSL/Whatever-they-call-it is completely up in the air), this logo will be for exclusive WotC use only.

My hope is that Wizards will have some concrete answers at the GAMA Trade Show in two weeks, but I’m not holding my breath.

I gave in and preordered the D&D 4th Edition Gift Set at Amazon.com; the price was just too good to pass up (with the 5% pre-order discount, it cost me just about what it would cost a retail store to order it from their distributor). I felt a little guilty for a moment, ordering something I could get in my local game store, and at almost the same cost as they would buy it in order to make a profit, but it passed when I realized the money I was saving. In all seriousness, game retailers should be raising such a stink about this to Wizards; I know I would in their position.

I’m still a bit iffy about 4e, to be honest. I don’t know that this iteration of D&D will be D&D for me; what I’ve seen so far points to a hugely tactical game where I have to keep track of a lot of “teh r0xx0r” options (mainly for combat) in a way that reminds me way too much of (yes, I’ll say it again) World of Warcraft-style gaming. There are elements of 4e that I am liking, though: treating the saves as Defenses makes sense, and being able to target Will as one targets AC means that a social combat system is now perfectly viable with very little tweaking (”I attack with my logical argument, Power Attack with my witty banter, and then Cleave the foppish friend with a finely-tuned insult.”). As a publisher, however, I need to be on top of this, if only so I can inspect all the information before deciding how will Highmoon Media support 4e, if at all. We’ll see in June.

My two play-by-email games are chuggin’ along greatly, so I figured I’d do an update on both. Let’s start with the D&D game.

West to the Empire
Since my last update (back in Nov!) much has happened. Our first quest completed and the minotaur lord vanquished, the heroes set out further west, heading in the general direction of the city of Argalis, home to my knight, Argus Fisner, by picking up guard duty with a caravan. We stopped in the city of Thelport for a couple of days and we all took the time to purse personal quests; myself, I set out to have Fiendsplitter, the sword of my mentor, repaired, as well as trying to find out more information about it. Thelport was suffering from some bad flooding problems, and being the nosy low-level character I am, set out to find out what the problem was. Before I knew it, the paladin captain of the guard had sent me out to the ruins of a mad wizard’s tower named Alaustor to seek out the root of the problem. I set out with two companions, the dwarf Veit and the spellcaster Raquelle, though before long, due to family issues,  it was just me as the sole player (Raquelle is an NPC).

I can’t recall the last time I had played a lone wolf game, but in the pbem format, this was incredibly easy (for me at least; Mark was running three separate groups at the moment in this pbem, and I know that his Star Wars pbem party had also split up) and allowed for really fast game play. In fact, where the first adventure took us a couple of months to complete, this one in Thelport took us about a month and a half, and only because the holidays were right in the middle of it. I won’t spoil the ending of the adventure, but suffice to say we solved the mystery of Thelport’s flooding and vanquished the… wizard living in the ruins. Between the loot from that crawl and the reward we received from the city guard, I was able to have my sword repaired and hire a sage to investigate the origins and powers of the blade, and wow, was that worth it.

There are a couple of things I have done in this pbem game that I don’t recall ever having done in a face-to-face game:

1. During the minotaur adventure, we all left the dungeon to rest and allow the cleric a view of the night sky, which she needs to regain her spells.
2. Not only did we leave the dungeon, I went back into town to purchase healing, and then went back to the group.
3. I did that again in Thelport, going back into the city to purchase magical healing. This is the bane of extensive dungeon crawling.
4. Started an adventure, then dropped it, unfinished.

That last one happened after I was done with my adventure and personal quests in Thelport, but the rest of the party was still engaged in their own adventure. Mark threw out a lead, I followed it, but after starting it out and finding out some of the information to be had, I dropped it because of a lack of local connection to the area, therefore to the adventure itself, and because we wanted to leave Thelport already. During that stint we lost two party members, gained a new one, and lost a player who left for personal reasons.

We have now arrived in the city of Argalis, and here my character apparently has taken center stage. Argus Fisner is part of a minor noble family that is in somewhat of a decline, and he has come home to find his family manor in greater disarray than expected, his father dead, and his cousin, Tobias, who runs the family’s affairs, still the same ass he remembered him to be. Not only that but a cleric of Justicia (the goddess Argus follows), she who really was responsible for turning Argus into more than another bored noble and helped him join the Order of the Red Gryphon, has been murdered and her killer is now wanted. Their names? The cleric was Lady Aleena, and her killer the wicked wizard Bargle the Infamous.

Oh yes, they of the Red Box. Can we say “Revenge?”

On the personal side, I look forward to some intense roleplaying with Argus. They way I set this up, Argus and his cousin Tobias are the only male heirs to the family title and holdings, with Argus having obvious priority. Thing is, since Argus joined the Order of the Red Gryphon five years ago, the one who has really been there to help the elder Fisner run the family affairs has been Tobias, who is understandably jealous. With papa Fisner now gone, the issue of the inheritance is forced, and that means Argus will have to choose where his future lies, as a knight helping out in the world, or as head of his family. Good stuff all around.

Who said that a play-by-email game cannot be intense and fulfilling?

Earlier today my Play-By-eMail D&D group finished Halls of the Minotaur, the opening adventure in our Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign, West to the Empire. After 4 days adventuring, and pulling a dungeon crawl first for me: actually getting out of the dungeon to regroup and going back to the village to resupply, today we finally arrived at the chamber of the minotaur lord, Toth-ror. It was frightening and dangerous, but we won the initiative, and we delivered righteous justice upon this scourge of the weak. It was especially poignant for me, since I am playing a character who was the squire of a knight killed by the minotaur, so that allowed me to put in some roleplaying bits that helped me develop this once-pregen stock character into my personal avatar in the game.

Kudos go to Mark Gedak for running an awesome game, a game that understood the medium in which it was developing, and took advantage of those, a game that was as much good ole dungeon crawl as it was a challenging excercise in cooperation and focus. Thanks go to my fellow players also for an excellent time and for the effort put in the game as well as in developing your characters (even if the road you took for development makes me groan from time to time).

We will be putting together adventure journals of this adventure, and I’ll be sure to share it here as well.

Now, more adventure awaits, and I am ready for it.

Ever since I posted that I was going to start playing in a D&D/d20 Play by eMail campaign called West to the Empire I have not said anything else on the subject. It has been mostly due to real life stuff and my attention drifting to other things, but fret not, I have been playing and it has been awesome.

This is my first time playing pre-gen characters–Squire Fisner, in my case–and while, indeed, at first I had absolutely no attachment to the character, little by little that faceless pre-packaged set of stats has become MY character, Squire Argus Fisner, of the noble Fisner family of Argalis, novice in the Order of the Red Griffon, and now heir to the honor and legacy of his falled mentor, Sir Galwaith. I very much look forward to playing Argus a lot more.

Mark, our DM, has been doing a bang up job running this play by email game. The main problem is the lag time between actions, and at one point or another we all have been either waiting or causing the wait; it happens, it’s part and parcel of the format, you deal with it. One thing Mark has been doing that I am incredibly glad for is that, as a DM, he treats this as a narrative, so even though the technical part is a bunch of statement declarations and dice rolls being emailed back and forth, Mark takes the time to, every Action, weave all our disparate orders and rolls and whatnot into a narrative block of description that incorporates all the ambiance of our environment.

So, to summarize, it’s been awesome, and now we are heading back into the dungeon to begin the final act, and track down this minotaur that has been terrorizing the forest and villages nearby, and enslaving a tribe of kobolds to do its bidding.

You can check out the West to the Empire website Mark put together for our mutual benefit.

After a loooong time in the works, after a lot of interruptions and other projects getting in the way, after I got off my lazy butt and put the finishing touches on what I was missing, my wife and I are finally ready to start our Victorian Age Vampire chronicle in about a week or so. We’d start this weekend, but we’ll be out of town on a mini-break, though I plan to use the driving time to talk about the game and her character, as I try to get as much info possible to weave the story around that of her PC.

This will be a New World of Darkness game as far as system, using the Victorian Age Vampire book as thematic source material, but for the most part I am looking forward to creating a semi-new mythology for our game; as I told my wife, you might meet a vampire that calls itself a member of the “Ventrue,” but you simply cannot assume you know what “Ventrue” is or means based on your player knowledge. I’ll go into the reasons more in depth later on. I’ve actually set up a tag for “Victorian Age Vampire” so it’s easy to follow the development and the game play.

Fortune of fortunes, I am now also playing in a D&D play-by-email campaign built around Goodman Games‘ Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) adventures. The campaign, West to the Empire, one of the suggested Adventure Paths in DCC #35 assembled from various of the DCC modules, is being run by the excellent and tidy Mark Gedak (who has done a lot of HMP work both for and with me), and aside from myself, there are two other players, a fella named Kurt and David Jarvis (of Reality Deviant Publications, my collaborator on the DaVinci Labs line for HMP). I am playing a 0-level aristocrat named Squire Fisner, a pregen that came with the first adventure, DCC #35A Halls of the Minotaur (part of DCC #35 Gazetteer of the Known Realms). I’ve already customized this pregen a little by giving him the name Argus and a bit of a backstory which I hope to expand as we play. Though I’ll admit play-by-email is not necessarily the optimal way to play for me, I’m just happy to be in a game, and Mark is organized and detailed enough that I feel good about the whole enterprise and about the opportunity to actually do a bit of roleplay via text. I’ve also created a tag for “D&D PBeM” to track thoughts and play reports from this game.