I looked at Decipher’s Lord of the Rings RPG, and it just didn’t wow me. It was another race/class system, married to the basic setting. If I were going to go that route, I would most likely just look at D&D and doing some adaptations in terms of setting. Its main advantage was being licensed in conjunction with the movies, so it had great photos, and it released some great looking maps.

As a result, I was a little hesitant to look at The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild, the new RPG from Cubicle 7 & Sophisticated Games. I was intrigued by the slipcover format, and the art looked good, but I held off. After seeing reviews that were declaring things like “easily the best RPG based on Tolkien’s works to date”, I finally decided to spend some of my Christmas cash and grab a copy.

“A Box Without Hinges, Key, or Lid”

The first thing that stands out about the game is the format. The game, which retails for $59.99, comes in a slipcover case. Within, you’ll find an Adventurer’s Book, primarily aimed at players, a Loremaster’s Book, for the gamemaster, 2 maps (also split between players and GMs), and a set of special dice. The books are softcover, featuring excellent art, including art by John Howe, one of the two main artists working on the Peter Jackson movies.

The dice are very well made, and they come in a plastic tray that actually holds the books and maps in the slipcover. They’re specific to the game, with Tolkien symbols on them, but you could opt to just use normal dice. There are the Success Dice, six D6s that have a Tengwar rune on the 6. Getting Tengwar runes during a skill check increases the degree of success on the roll. These D6s also have the numbers 1-3 in outline, with the 4-6 in solid black. This feeds into the mechanics of the game; characters under certain detrimental conditions don’t count the outlined numbers, making it substantially harder to succeed at even the easiest tasks.

The last die that comes with the set is a D12. Imagine! The lonely D12 getting some love. This die is the crucial Fate Die, rolled on pretty much every skill check. The 11 and 12 have been replaced with an Eye of Sauron mark and a Gandalf G rune (the rune found by Frodo, Aragorn, and the others on Weathertop…yes, I’m a Tolkien geek.) If you’re an Adventurer, rolling a Gandalf rune is always good, and rolling the Eye of Sauron can be very, very bad.

“Far O’er the Misty Mountains Cold”

The game is set, intriguingly, in the lands east of the Misty Mountains. For lack of a better way of putting it, the setting is set around the countries visited during The Hobbit, and the campaign starting point is nominally set as 5 years after the events in The Hobbit. With The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey releasing this year, could this be coincidence? I think not.

Races available to play include Elves of Mirkwood, Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, Hobbits of the Shire, and 3 races of Men – Bardings from Laketown, Beornings who follow Beorn’s ways, and the Woodmen of Mirkwood.

The game is ostensibly the first of three One Ring games. Each game will advance the timeline and add both more locations to adventure in and more races to play. According to interviews I’ve read, the second game will add the countries west of the Misty Mountains, and the third game will add Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor into the mix.

“Like a Horrible Game of Blind-Man’s Bluff”

Actually, despite my chosen quote, I think the rule system of The One Ring is simple, fun, and very evocative of the setting.

Rather than choose a class, characters choose background elements that give them different skill levels and traits. From these elements, a character’s statistics and abilities evolve. And yes, they’re tremendously flavorful. It can actually be quite beneficial to have a trait of “Smoking” or points in the Courtesy skill.

Characters also choose their Calling, the reason they adventure in the first place. This can give them benefits, but it also dictates the way they might be influenced by the powers of the Shadow as well. A character motivated as a Slayer may know more of the enemy and be quite good at certain skills, but they may be coaxed by the shadow to seek Vengeance. A character who is a Scholar may have excellent Lore oriented abilities, but they can be drawn towards Shadow by the Lure of Secrets.

Characters making a skill check roll a certain number of Success Dice plus the Fate Die. They are trying to beat a Target Number set by the Loremaster, and, as I mentioned above, certain symbols on the dice give better or worse results than normal. What’s fantastic, however, is that a lot of the traits chosen during character creation can give successes without ever picking up the dice. A character asked to make an Awe roll who possesses the trait Lordly might point this fact out to the Loremaster. The Loremaster may agree that, since the character is dealing with deferential peasants, there’s no need for a roll.

“And he was miserable, alone, lost.”

There are some great rules around negative conditions in the game. As various things happen, players expend Endurance points, and running out has very negative consequences. A character without any Endurance becomes Weary, and they can have difficulty accomplishing even simple tasks.

All characters have a Hope score, and they can spend Hope points to bolster themselves in action. As the power of Shadow slowly grows over a character, however, and they “Lose Hope”, they can become Miserable and in danger of succumbing to the Lure of Shadow. This can have a profound effect, not only on the character’s immediate actions, but on the character’s long range behavior. Think of Denethor and Boromir. Both are noble characters who are driven to do terrible things by the power of the Shadow.

A terrible blow from an enemy’s attack can leave one Wounded. Being Wounded a second time can knock one out of a Combat.

These very flavorful concepts really bring out a lot of the Tolkien-esque feeling. I can imagine a Loremaster telling Sam’s player that he’s Weary, having spent all Stamina to climb the Tower of Cirith Ungol and defeat the various orcs along the way. Or telling Gimli’s player that he’s Wounded, following the splitting of his helm at Helm’s Deep.

“The Party Went Along Very Merrily”

While I don’t want to spoil every rule, I do want to address three places where the game succeeds admirably: Journeys, Fellowships, and the Fellowship Phase.

A Journey in The One Ring is an Encounter all its own. Each Adventurer can take on one or more roles in the party, such as Guide, or Scout, and each is responsible for certain challenges that may come about. A failed attempt at Guiding may get the Fellowship lost, while a failed Scouting might lead to a battle with a troll! Rules for encounters, how different terrains affect the challenge, and more are provided.

Fellowships give every player access to more Hope, or chances to restore it. They also offer a Fellowship Focus. Every in the party may choose someone in the party to be their Focus. If they are aiding or protecting their Focus, they get extra chances to succeed. If their Focus is badly hurt or killed, it can cause them tremendous disadvantages.

A Fellowship Phase is a specific part of the game, representing the Fellowship stopping at a sanctuary of some sort, relaxing, recovering, and perhaps gaining information. This is when they spend experience to increase abilities, or gain specific rewards in the form of cultural blessings and superior equipment.

If one looks at The Fellowship of the Ring, you can break the first part down as follows: Frodo and Company travel through the Old Forest (an Adventuring Phase) and are rescued by Tom Bombadil. They stay for a few days at Bombadil’s home (a Fellowship Phase), and then set out through the Barrow Downs (an Adventuring Phase). They take respite at the Inn of the Prancing Pony in Bree (possibly a Fellowship Phase, although there’s still danger, so perhaps not), adventure to Weathertop, through the Trollshaws, and across the Ford of Bruinen. When they arrive in Rivendell, it’s most assuredly a Fellowship Phase.

“You are only a little fellow in a wide world, after all.”

Overall, I think the game is great. I have yet to actually sit down and play it, and that will go a long way towards cementing my feelings of it. In general, however, I’m impressed. This game, unlike other games based on the same source material, really seems to have a Middle-Earth feel to it.

I look forward to finally playing an RPG set in a world I’ve loved since age 8. This is a world that was directly responsible for me getting into RPGs, and it’s nice to think that I might finally come full circle.

Your Turn

Have you played The One Ring yet? What was it like? Am I right in my assessments of it? Or do you think that maybe I haven’t given earlier RPGs a fair shake? Let us all know.

Thanks be to Thor and whatever other gods are controlling the weather; we made it to Ft. Wayne this year! It’s 12:33 am and since I haven’t gone to bed yet, I’m going to say it’s Thursday. (It’s technically Friday.) I wanted to be sure to get the news out to all the folks who don’t follow me on Twitter, so here’s the excitement of the first full day of DDXP and the introduction of the new edition of D&D.

Seminar:  Charting the Course: An Edition for All Editions

Loads of folks turned out for this! Of course, everyone is excited/interested about the new edition, but part of the good attendance also is because the seminars were nicely nestled in the time slot between game slots, so you didn’t have to choose between seminar or a game. Sweet!

The panel was moderated by Greg Bilsland and featured Monte Cook, Mike Mearls, and Jeremy Crawford of Wizards of the Coast. We were told we could blog everything except if someone took of their shirt. (Nobody did. Darn.)

Goals for the New Edition

The first thing they spoke about was what they were hoping to achieve with the new edition:

Monte wants to distill down what’s best about all the editions of D&D. He also mentioned the importance of the DM/player relationship; it’s a core part of the game that the player and DM should be able to communicate and be creative together. Also, fireballs.

Mike mentioned the importance of offering a wide variety of options for players to explore the world the way they want to explore. The shared language of D&D is also vital; keeping the culture and stories of D&D alive so that everyone can understand the story of the dread gazebo.

Jeremy wants the new game to be a toolbox for creating worlds and stories and hopes to see a rebalancing of the game between story & mechanics.

How It Will Work

Regarding how the game will be designed, Monte said that they are creating an underlying foundation or core game, which is D&D distilled to its essence. The core game can be played by itself, or you can build your own game using the different modules.

If you like a tactical game with lots of maps, miniatures, attacks of opportunity and the like, you can use modules to have that game.

If you want extensive skills and ways to customize your character, you can have that game.

If you want BOTH, you can have that game.

Modules & Balance

Achieving balance in a game that is so modular and flexible is a challenge, but Jeremy said that their vision is that the core game has seeds for each module. Using the modules just builds on that seed.

Monte’s example was of a fighter.

In the core game, a fighter does more damage and takes more damage than any other class. (As a fighter tends to do!)

If you prefer the fighter of 4e, where you have different fighting powers that allow you to move monsters around, push them, etc, there will be a module that will allow you to build that kind of fighter and play him at the same table as the core fighter. And they’d be balanced.

Monte also pointed out that as a DM, you could say up front, “I’m running X kind of game,” where X is tactical or X is political intrigue or X is exploration, and your players will then be able to create characters that will interact well with the world you want to build.

3 Pillars of D&D

Mike mentioned that they see the three pillars of D&D as Roleplay/Interaction, Combat, and Exploration. That covers about 90% of what goes on in D&D, minus the rules lawyering (that last one was pointed out by someone during Q&A at the end). They think a lot about how they can incorporate all the things that people want to do at the table, without making a rule for everything.

Monte recognized that some PCs will be good at exploration and not so good at combat, and vice versa. But it’s important to have a firm role for each class. If you have a player who just wants to kick ass, you can help that person create that PC.

Continuing on the classes discussion, Mike added that you can be a stabby rogue (more combat-heavy) or a sneaky rogue (more exploration heavy). Monte added that bards can still kick ass.

High / Epic Level Play

High level play was the next subject and Monte spoke about how fans of D&D often say that the game breaks at a certain level. That level depends on the edition and whether or not the game actually breaks or just becomes drastically different is up for debate. He said that 4e did a good job of making epic level play a different experience.

After admitting they haven’t done much work yet on high level play, Monte said they want to keep the game manageable at high levels. Maybe swap a bunch of abilities from low levels for a single, high-level ability and make things a little less complex. (As someone who hates having pages and pages and pages of character sheet, I can appreciate this.)

Of course, Monte added, there are things you want to do at high levels. You want to build your own castle, you want to have followers, you want to mix with royalty. These are things they hope to include. Mike added that you can still keep going into dungeons and killing monsters, or maybe gods.

Monsters

On to monsters! A lot about monsters ties in to player advancement. Monte said they’d like to keep the iconic monsters like orcs, goblins, kobolds and the like in the game for a long time. But they don’t want a level 1 orc, level 2 orc, level 3 orc. They want a group of orcs to be really scary at level 1 but still significant at level 8, albeit in larger numbers.

So instead of the fighter’s attack bonus going up, up, up every level, maybe it goes up every few levels and he gets other things at the other levels. So you can go back to that orc and know that this is the same exact orc that nearly slaughtered you at level 1. It gives you a bar to see your character advance.

One of the big pushes for the new edition of D&D is putting out an amazing DungeonMaster’s Guide. Mike had the best quip on this (it may be a paraphrase, live-tweeting is hard!): “We don’t need rules for everything. We need good DM advice.”  The DM plays such a huge role in how the game is shaped and if the system supports the DM with advice, it empowers the DM and makes the game better without adding more rules.

Playtesting & Your Feedback

Jeremy spoke a bit about playtesting, which has been going on for about 9 months. One thing that has come up again and again is how diverse people’s tastes are about D&D. Clearly, D&D players love their game, but everyone has a different idea about what the optimal D&D game is. This is something that’s gone all the way back to 1st edition.

When playtest feedback comes back, two people at the same table might have opposite opinions. Player A wants more combat while Player B wanted more interaction.

Monte said that because of these factors they’ve been focusing on the story of D&D. What is a fighter? What is a wizard? What makes the D&D wizard different from say, Gandalf or a spellcaster in Skyrim? Figuring out whether you get a +2 or +3 is the easy part, he said. Making a D&D ranger that feels like a D&D ranger is harder. Is that class more Aragorn or more Drizzt?

Monte said that the most important feedback you can give if you’re able to playtest the new edition is “Does this feel like D&D to you?” and “Does your class feel like it should?”

What’s Your Game?

The final question before moving into the audience Q&A portion was “What kind of campaign would you play in the new D&D?”

Monte said he’d use minis, but without the super tactical stuff, mostly just to visualize where things are when needed. There’d be lots of social interaction and exploration that relies on the ingenuity of the players, not die rolls. Players should think about where to search in a room, rather than just rolling a die for Search. He likes to reward his players for being smart.

Mike would start with the core game and then introduce modules later, adding them on a session by session basis. For example, if there was a large scale war, there’d be a module to help run that particular gaming session (or series of sessions). Mike doesn’t want a lot of rules, so he’d move modules in and out depending on what was happening for that particular game.

Jeremy agreed that he’d be the same as Mike. He doesn’t want to pick one game and stick with it. One night he’d do no minis, no die rolls, all talking. The next game might be the full on tactical game with the grid, minis, and tons of dice.

Audience Q&A

Q: To what degree will multiclassing be available? Or will that be mainly about skills/feats/etc?

A (Monte): We want both to be an option. So you could be a fighter that is okay at interaction. Or you could make a bigger commitment to multiclass.

A (Mike): The rogue could learn some stuff about Arcane Lore, but he wouldn’t be able to cast spells unless he multiclassed into Wizard.

Q: How does the new edition appeal to the new player who has no attachments to a previous edition?

A (Mike): The core will be simple enough for a newbie to try out because it focuses on the story first and interacting with the DM.

(E’s note: I started with D&D 3.5 and for me, looking at stat blocks and all the numbers intimidated the crap out of me. Coming into D&D with a more streamlined system – even say, Essentials – would have been easier. Of course, that’s me. Everybody is different!)

Q: What steps are being taken to give creativity back to the players?

A (Monte): Players can be empowered to have more answers to the DM’s question: “What are you going to do?” There are limitless answers and everything is very open now. Fewer rules means that the DM is empowered to handle imaginative players, too.

Q (ChattyDM): Will there be random charts and tables to help the DM?

A (Monte): Yes, for the DM who likes the chaotic nature of rolling to see what is living in the Temperate Swamp, you’ll be able to roll to find out. We don’t need tables for everyone, but the DM who wants them will have them.

Q: Say everyone shows up to the DM’s place and they want to kill shit, but the DM had planned a RP-heavy session… is it easy to switch up?

A (Mike): On the fly, it’s pretty easy to slide in a module to change things. Use minis, don’t use minis, big fight, little fight, no fight.

Q: How are you addressing the needs of organized play?

A (Mike): We’ll have an agreed-upon standard so folks know what they’re getting into for each session. There aren’t any specifics yet, though.

Q: Will one player really have fun with the stripped down rules while another one has a more complex character if they’re at the same table?

A (Monte): I ran a game for two 4e guys, two 3e guys, and one who hadn’t played since 1982. The 1e guy didn’t want a complex character sheet; he liked it simple. He wanted to know which orc to hit and then he hit it and had fun. With this system, if that guy eventually wanted a more complex character, we could change it for him and build one.

A (Jeremy): If you have two fighters, for example, one fighter might prefer to just do a lot of damage while the other might want to do less damage but be able to slide monsters around the grid.

Q: At higher levels, won’t the complex characters take way more time to do their turn?

A (Monte): We really want to keep combat moving quickly, so it will prevent that guy from spending 10 minutes on his turn.

Q: Do you think D&D will start to take itself too seriously?

A (Mike): I think D&D needs chaos in it, whether it’s a funny moment, something totally silly, or something very serious.

A (Jeremy): Art in the new edition will have a more grounded approach and PCs that appear real, not like superheroes. We have some halflings that look like they ate a few too many muffins and adventurers that barely survived their last battle. Very diverse art.

Q: How will the 3 pillars compete in this edition?

A (Mike): Balancing each class is important. We want to be sure that everyone at the table feels useful in some way and has something to contribute to the party.

The Playtest

Immediately after the seminar, I went to my mustering station and was assigned a table for the WotC Secret Special adventure, which was a playtest of the new edition core rules. I didn’t know anybody at my table (at least until Mike of SlyFlourish sat down!) but we were all excited to try the new iteration of D&D.

While waiting on our DM to arrive, I was scrolling through my Twitter stream and saw a tweet from Baldman Games that if any table yelled “THE BALDMAN RULES” they’d get Monte Cook as their DM. Since I hadn’t heard any tables yelling, I showed the tweet to my table and we all sounded the chorus. Sure enough, Monte himself came to our table to run our game!

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed my silence for the next few hours. Here’s why:

1. Monte Cook. Srsly, do I need more reasons?
2. I couldn’t publish any crunchy details about the game, including any pics that might show character sheets. (Sorry!)
3. Our game was pretty freakin’ awesome.

Now, you don’t need your very own Monte Cook to make the new D&D great. Of course, having an awesome DM helps, but that’s true for pretty much every game out there.

Here are some of the things that struck me about this game:

There was a LOT of talk at the table. In character at times! I’ve never been at a D&D table where players were more invested in figuring out their next move.

On that topic, your next move isn’t on your character sheet. You don’t go paging through all your stuff thinking, “Well, I could Bluff this guy.” Nope. We were doing what we thought our characters should do, even if that involved our very NOT charismatic half-orc fighter trying to be a charismatic leader of a band of skeptical savage orcs.  Multiple times. In other games, it’s “Okay, who has the highest Charisma? You? Okay, you go talk to those orcs and get them to help us.”

Everything was fun and fast and fluid. I didn’t feel like the game got bogged down at any time during our session, even when we had a few rules questions for Monte. Things just happened and they flowed with the story and the story was awesome because we made it that way.

Thanks again for an awesome game Monte & friends!

…and thank you, intrepid Reader, for making it to the end of this marathon post.

Before you comment, understand this: This is my house and we play by my rules here. If you have negative things to say, they won’t make it past moderation. If you’d like to be a dick, please go do it elsewhere.

Understanding the basic structure of how a conspiracy can work enriches your ability to create a good one for your players.

To start, conspiracies come in different flavors. While we might think of the word conspiracy and picture implausible situations and baseless theories, conspiracies are by definition a coalition of people united in a common cause, most often usurping or overthrowing a political figure.

Remember, Remember, the 5^th of November

The Gunpowder Plot, which I first knew from learning the famous rhyme in childhood, was a conspiracy in 1605 to blow up the House of Lords in England. History abounds with real conspiracies, from plots to kill Caesar to American historical conspiracies to assassinate President Lincoln. Depending on your system, setting and time period, you can incorporate historic conspiracies into game play, even leaving the opportunity for player characters to be behind them.

The concept that a small group of people not having the greater good in mind, planning in secret and executing their plans according to their timetable can be terrifying to consider. In a game, conspiracies are a fantastic tool, particularly if mystery, intrigue or paranoia is part of the chronicle elements.

If you want to customize a conspiracy to your chronicle, you can retro-fit historic conspiracies, or create something more tailor-made to your game. Think that Dunkelzhan’s Last Will and Testament is ripe for internecine strife between various conspiracy groups in Shadowrun? Do the Mournlands in Eberron give you terrible ideas? Running an old school Mage game and want to expand on the Golden Chalice? Then it’s time to roll out a flow chart.

1. Who?

Conspiracies aren’t amorphous and disembodied ideas committing rogue actions out of the ether. They’re made of people. The friendly barista your mage buys coffee from, a doctor who treats your hacker’s daughter in a cheap clinic in the bad part of town, the executive in their office looking down on the city. From street to skyscraper, conspiracies can and often do span entire networks of people, many of whom have no idea they’re a cog in a nefarious machine.

2. What?

Are they a militaristic organization known by their unique gas masks? Pirated FM signal railing against rich magic users? Are they a cabal of students attempting to dismantle the dubious research of a local corporation illegally delving into new biotech? Answering the what question informs the shape your conspiracy takes.

3. When?

How long has the conspiracy existed? When was it founded? Has it always been in operation, or has it fallen out of favor for periods of time? Was it founded after a signifigant event, or did it slowly grow over time? Was there a split or fundamental shift from an organization of order, giving birth to the conspiracy?

4. Where?

Have they always stuck to a single location: a village, bustling college town, Greater Metro area, or does this conspiracy span a continent or even the globe? Where they operate from and where they were founded are important details to nail down.

5. How?

How does the conspiracy in your game accomplish its goal? Does a black market network of spies function like any other illegal group? Does a murderous conspiracy fixated on its ruthless interpretation of The Greater Good operate from behind the façade of a friendly village (hello Hot Fuzz!), or is the local farmer’s market actually a hotbed of corruption that uses its weekly morning to afternoon time slot to hide meetings of conspiracy officials? How it hides and how it accomplishes its goals is some of the must-know details to tell the story cleanly.

6. Why?

If you’ve ever watched a Bond flick, a sci-fi movie or read a mystery novel, the engine of a conspiracy is its goal. One of my favorite fictional conspiracies is the plan Ra’s Al Ghul seeks to bring about, in Batman. He seeks to greatly reduce the human population as his means to attain environmental balance. In real life, I am very anti-decimating the populace, but as an enjoyable conspiracy in fiction? It’s brilliant, because Ra’s Al Ghul satisfies the Who, What, When, Where, How and Why. He is terrifying, because he posses absolute conviction, the fuel of the conspiratorial engine.

(Sorry, Dave.)

I love Dungeon Bastard. His videos are well-written, impeccably done, and downright hilarious. If you don’t subscribe to his channel on YouTube, go do that now.

His newest “Ask The Bastard” is on Edition Wars and he echoes my feelings on the subject:

“Does it have dragons? Does it have dungeons? I want to play it!”

1.    Get the blessing of your table.

If your GM and your fellow players are not okay with tweeting at the table, don’t. Respecting your table is an entire post of its own, but this is your first step on the path to live tweet glory.

2.    Establish some guidelines.

Do people want you to hashtag their names to things they say? Use their twitter handles? No attributing at all? There may be a general consensus or even no consensus at all. I sometimes tag quotes with their sources, but often don’t to simply save on characters. I do try and hashtag the game system (D&D, Mage, etc) the sub-type (Dark Sun, Eberron,  Sorcerer’s Crusade) and sometimes the chronicle title (the Skype M:TA hack I’m in is called Aethertide.) Learn what your table is and isn’t okay with you quoting, and unless someone likes or can take being teased live on the internet, play nice in your tweets. Don’t be a dick.

3.    Know your device.

I’ve live-tweeted from other people’s mobile devices, my own phone, and a laptop. The easiest by far is my phone. It’s very little hassle to tweet off the app and then drop my cell so I can roll dice. Pick the option that is the least distracting for you and your table.

4.    Narrative or quotes.

You can post narratives of what’s going on “…aaaaand now we’re fighting twelve orcs.”

Though, you can also go for quotes. “We’ve found the shitty town where you’re a folk hero.” Quotes go fast and generally get more retweets, but a snappy narrative can get good laughs too. Or prayers for you party; usually simultaneously.

5.    Be polite and notify your audience.

If you play in a game, particularly if you play in more than one, some people will learn what nights to expect live game tweets. Plenty of people won’t. As a public service to both, it’s nice to tweet a pre-game “I’ve got my ______ game tonight! Live tweets start in ______.” People who love them know to tune in. People who don’t will now know to mute you.

6.    Go for the gold.

Unless you have a group that is wittier than a Writer’s Room, only tweet the best of your session. It took me time to get a handle on what would be a crime not to tweet, and what could be let go. I try not to quote myself or talk too much about my own characters, but I will do either if it’s an intense night at the table for me. It gives me a small way to take a deep breath and dive back in without derailing my table too often with my need to go “Damn, you guys, this is a really terrifying scene” or “This is so touching. There is something in my eye.”

7.    Include a visual aid.

Last but not least: people like visuals. Roll a host of amazing rolls? Someone have a catastrophic failure they’d like to share? Tweet a photo. Other enjoyable photographic aides include amusing entries on character sheets, minis in dire peril on a hex map, and the awesome receptacles you and your friends carry your dice in.

Have a favorite court reporter of table-top or LARP on twitter? Share in the comments!

This month’s article was inspired by D&D’s special announcement. Unless you’ve had your head stuck in a dice bag, you might have heard that Wizards of the Coast announced their plans to reinvest their energy into Dungeons & Dragons. (You can read What We Know About 5th Edition on ENWorld for the latest updates.) The news was picked up by several major media outlets including Forbes, The New York Times, and Yahoo! News.

From a gamer’s perspective, this news shook tables and shattered pencils. Some people are excited. Others? Betrayed. Most players either had (or have) an opinion about the news regardless of whether or not they read the articles. Then, the edition wars started. 4th Edition versus 3.5. Why Pathfinder is a better game than Dungeons & Dragons (or vice versa). From an industry perspective? Same thing happened.

The fate of Dungeons & Dragons affects everyone in the hobby on some level. For me, it often serves as a point of reference when I’m explaining my freelancing efforts. Most non-gamers haven’t heard of Pathfinder or Vampire: the Masquerade. They don’t know the difference between 4th Edition and GURPS or Savage Worlds. What they do know, however, is the essence of Dungeons & Dragons from either a “we sit around the table, tell stories, and roll dice” or a fantasy perspective. It’s entirely understandable that opinions are rampant, speculative, and emotional. Unlike other hobby games, millions of people play this game. Millions. The reality of D&D’s marketshare is exciting, depressing, and a punch to the gut for anyone on the industry side of things.

Gamers aren’t the only ones who get upset when something changes. In sports, there are people who know stats, play fantasy football, or bicker over calls from referees. There are rules on different levels (high school, college, pro) and for the most part it’s easy to understand what the game’s about and dig deeper if you need to. Tribalism occurs in football around specific teams. Some are tried-and-true fans and others are fair weather who’ll only support a team when they’re winning. A player screws up? People lose their minds. They yell and scream and get pissed off. The interesting thing, though, is that most fans aren’t on a team. They’re bystanders. So, if someone pisses you off when they’re talking about your beloved Packers, all you have to do is stop watching or have another beer. Right?

Hobby game edition wars exist because tribes form up around systems and settings. No matter how hard you may try, there is no possible way to convince someone who loves their twenty-year old system that it sucks. Companies know and understand that edition wars take place. Some turn a blind eye; others embrace them. However, companies have legitimate reasons why they want to update a game that has nothing to do with intentionally hurting fans. Maybe they want to modernize a setting. Maybe they’re hoping to engage existing players in crowdsourcing, like what White Wolf Publishing did for the twentieth edition of Vampire: the Masquerade. Or maybe? They want to attract new players. Regardless of why they’re doing it, there’s no possible way a company will make every player happy. (Anyone who’s worked in customer service knows this.) Without players, this hobby will stagnant. Without new players? It’ll eventually crumble into dust as we get older. Hobby gaming will become “grandma’s game.” For all these reasons and more, public visibility of games — whether they’re Dungeons & Dragons or Zombie Dice or Monopoly or whatever — is a good thing.

In hobby gaming, we have something special. Something unique. We — freelancers included — are the players. We’re the guys who go out on the field and toss the ball. Why shouldn’t we put our game face on and encourage spectators or ask new players to come off the bench?

As a freelancer, you have to balance your love of a game with the work that you do. I’m not going to preach to you or demand that you watch what you say. We all have to make our own decisions about what we can reveal publicly. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, speculate or participate, the point I’m trying to make here is that becoming a general in an edition war is not necessarily a good thing. That level of animosity literally scares people for several reasons, especially if you’re overly negative or trying to be sarcastic and it isn’t received well. If you don’t see anything wrong with your comments? Awesome! That’s your deal. But I have to ask: when was the last time you invited someone new to sit at your table? What was the last game you picked up that wasn’t your usual fare?

Companies love freelancers who hand assignments in on time and who are willing to promote their efforts. In my experiences, they also like a freelancer who knows when to set aside the fan and be professional when they need to. You’re the master (or mistress) of your own destiny. Own it. All I suggest, is that you abandon the edition wars and keep your eye on the prize: making good, playable games. After all, is that what freelancers are supposed to be all about?

So instead, drawing on my experience with the game and my thoughts about how WotC has handled things with D&D of late, I thought instead I would share my thoughts on what 5th Edition will be like.

It Won’t Be Called 5th Edition

I know this sounds a bit odd, but I suspect that WotC won’t call it D&D 5th Edition. Whether it’ll be called Advanced D&D, or D&D Master Edition, or D&D Ultimate Edition, or what have you, 5th Edition is too much of a phrase with negative connotations for them to use. People were irritated with they called their revision of 3rd Edition 3.5. Then 4E pushed a lot of people away. WotC will want to minimize the potential bad feelings that a 5th Edition name will bring.

There’s precedence for it, of course. When D&D moved from the original 1974 chapbooks to the Advanced D&D/Basic D&D split, the changes in the game were significant, but they didn’t refer to it as a new edition, specifically. They acknowledged the differences with a new title, but they didn’t call it 2nd Edition. Likewise, when the game was re-released in the mid-90s, with the black book covers, it wasn’t touted as 2.5 or 3rd edition. In fact, they didn’t even call it 2nd Edition any morel they just called it Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

If I were WotC, I would follow this model, just bringing out new books and calling it Dungeons and Dragons. They’ve talked about wanting to get past edition wars and splintering groups, and just giving the game back its original name is one way to do that.

It Will Have Some Backwards Compatibility

When 3rd Edition came out, a conversion guide was available. I was playing in a 2nd Edition game at the time, and, by following that guide, we were able to keep playing with relatively little difficulty.

When 4E came out, the game designers basically said, “this game is really different than the last version. You’ll probably be better off either starting a new game, or just doing the best you can in terms of coming up with a race/class combo that will help you approximate your old character.” They cited as the reason for this the fact that the conversion process from 2nd edition to 3rd edition was kind of clunky.

I agree with this, but it really ticked off a lot of people. There could certainly have been some more attention paid to how this was handled. D&D 4E was a hard sell, and I think 5E is going to be even harder, as it feels much too soon for things to be changed. One way they can really assuage the feelings of people is to try and handhold through the process of conversion.

I’m not honestly sure how successfully they can do this. 3rd Edition and 4E are very different games, and people have really taken sides on which is better. As you know if you’ve been reading my columns, I love 4E, and my players love it, too. But I know not everyone does. This may be the greatest challenge WotC faces – how to please those on both sides of the edition war.

WotC Will Really Listen to Their Audience & Play Well with Others

Okay, this is an easy one, as they’ve already pretty much said half of this, but it bears mentioning. One of the criticisms leveled at WotC is that they basically ignored peoples’ feelings about what was important in the game. Obviously, this isn’t true, as their playtesters had tremendous say over what went into the game – playtesters always do, after all. But when people feel like their voice has been ignored and they’ve been marginalized, they turn away. Which, of course, is why Paizo now has so many former WotC customers buying their products.

One of the single biggest mistakes that *I* think WotC made was in letting folks who loved 3rd Edition slip through their fingers. If they had worked more closely with Paizo to make Pathfinder an official D&D product, think of how much stronger D&D would be right now. They could have Paizo putting out D&D Pathfinder for those who wanted to stay with 3rd edition rules (which they essentially are anyway) and they could be putting out 4E for people like me who felt that 3rd Edition had major flaws. It could’ve been a best of both worlds situation.

I feel that, by cutting back on the possibility of other companies putting out 4E products, they made people perceive them as arrogant. “We have D&D, and our D&D is the only official D&D, so you need our products.” Instead, people turned to a game they essentially already owned and enjoyed updates and changes to the system.
It’s really a shame, as Dragon and Dungeon are great magazines, and Paizo was doing a damned good job producing them. I still love what comes out for them now, and I think that DDI is a great investment, but I know many people don’t.

There Will Be a Much Bigger Emphasis on Role-playing…Somehow

I completely disagree with the idea that 4E had less emphasis on role-playing than earlier editions of D&D. The race section of the 4E PHB is about as long and as robust as the sections in earlier Player’s Handbooks, if not more so in some cases. Pull out any Player’s Handbook, from any edition, and they’re all essentially about the rules you need to play the game, with some notes on how you might role-play a particular race.

What is true is that the combat rules are much more strategy oriented, but I love that aspect. My players and I love describing what our monsters and characters are doing in combat to match the mechanics of what’s happening behind the scenes. And it’s no excuse to say that powers have a certain description and that limits you. The Warden in my game describes his character’s “Treacherous Ice” power as writhing undergrowth impeding his foes, and no one bats an eye.

Nevertheless, in an effort to put an end to those complaints, I suspect the next version of D&D will have much more emphasis on role-playing. It’s just a shame that 4E, which gave us ideas that reward RP vs. combat, like skill challenges, quest XPs, magic item like rewards that aren’t magic items (boons, favors, etc.) and more, still gets accused of being anti-RP. I just don’t get it, and I doubt I ever will.

In the End

Ultimately, whatever I predict now, and whatever the next iteration of D&D becomes, it just doesn’t matter.

There are people who will refuse to buy in, because they were alienated by 4E.

There are people who will refuse to buy in, because they love 4E, and they’ll feel betrayed.

And there are people like me, who’ll take a look, probably end up loving it, and wonder how they ever lived without it.

And in the end, if the new D&D comes, and we don’t like it, it doesn’t somehow invalidate the games and versions of D&D that we do choose to play. If I don’t like the direction 5E (or whatever it ends up being called) takes, I have plenty of 4E products to tell stories with. I couldn’t use every monster out there in a single campaign if I tried. There are more races, classes, feats, powers, and ideas than I could use up in 10 campaigns or more.

So if you love D&D 4E as I do, don’t despair. It’s not the end of the world. No WotC Police came to truncheon the players who chose to keep playing 3rd Edition, and none will be showing up for us.

I have hope that, whatever direction D&D takes, going into the future, it will be what Mike Mearls says they want to make it: “a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game…unmistakably D&D, but one that can easily become your D&D, the game you want to run and play.”

Your Turn

How’re you feeling about the news of 5E? Hopeful? Ambivalent? Betrayed? Is there anything you hope they’ll get rid of? Bring back? Preserve? Let us all know.

The Mission

Filamena Young set out to write a game she wanted to see, and created Flatpack: Fix the Future! Mixing a post-apocalyptic setting with creative problem solving, Young’s game was written with young gamers in mind. “It’s my first attempt at a YA game. That is, something with a younger audience in mind, but with room (like a good YA novel) for adults and kids as they get more sophisticated. I have a free demo up on DriveThruRPG; it’s an adventure with basic rules in it. It’s a really uber simple system meant to be ‘hacked.’ In fact, character advancement is based on earning Achievements that tweak the rules for your character.”

The World after The End   

She says Flatpack is a “Hyperoptimistic Postapocalyptic” game. Players make up the basis of a group of young people who are venturing out of the underground tunnels three generations have spent hiding within. Their goal is to collect ‘Flatpacks’ which “are sort of like ‘instant buildings.’” All the materials to build needed structures critical to infrastructure, like a hospital, are inside. The player group collects and brings Flatpacks back to the tunnels, enabling their communities to move from their underground home into a real city once more.  Commenting some on what game play will Young said there are no health levels or physical stats. “Players are encouraged to use their smarts to solve problems.”

The Team Behind the Future

Young commented that while an upcoming Kickstarter campaign for Flatpack will hopefully support a print run, the campaign will go beyond satisfying the goal of publication. “It seems like a Kickstarter does spotlight a release really nicely and gives people a reason to ‘buy in’ to a game. I can also pay my artists and editor faster, which, you know, is awesome.” The development team for Flatpack: Fix the Future! includes artists Juan Santapau, Jeremy Kostiew, and editor Renee Ritchie. Santapau drew WRENCH, the iconic character who shows up throughout the text. Kostiew is the artist behind the 3D buildings that will serve as game pieces, which will be cut out by players and assembled to build maps of various Flatpacks players collect. Flatpack’s editor Renee Ritchie also edited the Machine Age Productions game Amaranthine.

“She’s great at kicking me in the ass and laughing at the jokes in the book. David, being my partner, worked as a sounding board, but the writing and the mechanics are all me. It’s been crazy. “ Flying solo was hard for Young, but she said her confidence was sustainable because of her love of the material and her daughters.”I wrote this because I want it to exist when they’re old enough to play it. And I want more people to write games that aren’t about violence and killing. I want more games that teach values like community and creative problem solving. If I don’t do it, others might, but why wait?”

Her advice to those who want to try their hand at solo game design but feel apprehensive was apt. “The worst that can happen is that it will suck and people will laugh at you. If you start off with ‘well, they may laugh at me’ as your base line, it isn’t so scary.”

You can check out the preview of Flatpacks at DriveThruRPG.com, and follow Machine Age Productions at their website. Have a favorite YA appropriate game? Shoot me an e-mail or leave details in the comments!

The announcement of the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons came out today in the NY Times. It promises to capture the hearts and minds of all D&D players, young and old, no matter which edition they thought was best.

My Challenge For You

In your discussions of “5e” (or whatever it ends up being called), stay positive.

We all love slaying dragons. We all love exploring dungeons. Let’s focus on the positive aspects of what make us LOVE a game rather than talking about the new game in the light of how much you hate (your least favorite edition).

Think Of It This Way

When you meet a new romantic interest, you don’t immediately start in telling them how they can be the exact opposite of this girl/guy you dated that you totally hated.

“OMG, and you’d BETTER not leave your beard clippings in the sink! Howard did that and it is SO DISGUSTING. I can’t stand beard clippings!”

“I could not STAND how my ex-girlfriend used to leave her half-empty coffee cups all over the damn house. Seriously, if you can’t understand how to use a goddamn SINK, we will never fall in love!”

Sounds pretty rude, doesn’t it?

Wizards of the Coast is Listening

If you want to be heard, if you want to be respected, if you want to have your views taken into consideration, wrap them in things positive. Wrap them in the love you have for your game. Wrap them in the respect you have for the men and women who work long hours to try to make a game that makes thousands of people like us happy.

Leave your old, old, old edition war drama in 2011. Let’s make 2012 the year of awesome.

More D&D “5e” News:

• ENWorld
• Critical Hits
• WotC
• Baldman Games (DDXP)

You already know so many things I love that touch on Faerie Tales, from the Changeling RPG to the comic series Fables to Disney movies, because I’ve talked about them in these articles. I challenged myself to find five more ways to enjoy Faerie Tales that I haven’t covered in depth before, and the results of that challenge await you now.

And we’ll begin as all Faerie Tales should…

Once Upon a Time (The Card Game)

If you’ve never had the chance to play this delightful card game, then I recommend you hunt down a copy right away. I actually pulled it out for the first time on Christmas, and my guests had a blast.

The cards in the game come in two flavors. Every player gets a hand of normal cards based on how many people are playing, plus one Happily Ever After card. Normal cards have elements on them that are common in Faerie Tales, such as characters (Prince, Princess, Frog), items (Ring, Wand), conditions (Cursed, This Animal Can Talk, Darkness), places (Cave, Chapel, Castle), and so on. Each Happily Ever After card has a specific ending, such as “And they were blind for the rest of their days because of their wickedness.” Or “And the two were wed at last.”

As the game progresses, people play cards from their hand, telling a story. The object is to tell a Faerie Tale, using all of the cards in your hand and finishing with your Happily Ever After card. The challenge is that all the other players want to, too. If the storyteller mentions an element that you have in your hand of cards (such as when the storyteller mentions that the King and Queen have a son…and you have a card that says Prince), then you can play that card and take control of the story. When the game is finished, hopefully you’ll all have told a great Faerie Tale together.

Needless to say, there are card expansions. One set allows you to add your own cards, and there’s also a “Dark Tales” expansion which adds more horrific elements to your tales.

Grimm RPG

With so many Faerie Tale oriented RPG options out there, I wanted to make sure I put out a really interesting choice. I decided to go with Grimm, a very fun, scary concept.

In Grimm, you play a kid, trapped in the lands of Grimm, a world that was created in part when the Grimm Brothers collected their stories. In a way, those stories captured and hid the Grimm Lands, locking them away from “real life.” The trouble is, something dark and malign rots at the heart of the Grimm Lands, and kids from the real world find themselves dragged into a dangerous place that tries very hard to destroy them. The kids have one very powerful weapon on their side, however: imagination.

I really like the idea of playing archetypal kids, like the Jock, the Princess, the Outcast, and so on. I’m also fascinated by Estrangement, a terrible fate that can befall our heroes. When a child from the real world becomes Estranged, they can no longer return to the real world, so no hope remains for them. In Grimm, there’s no guarantee of a Happily Ever After.

Terry Windling’s Fairy Tale Series

Way back, when I talked about my love of Urban Fantasy, I mentioned this series of books, but I didn’t really discuss it too much. Now that I’m talking about Faerie Tales, I really want to mention it again.

This series features top notch fantasy authors taking classic faerie tales and reworking them in interesting new ways. I haven’t read all of the books in this series, but I’ve started collecting them again, and I want to eventually read them all. I have read Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, which takes the Scottish ballad of a man rescued from the Faerie Queen by his true love and transports it to a college in Minnesota. I’ve also read Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose, which ties Sleeping Beauty to events in the Holocaust, and Jack the Giant-Killer by Charles DeLint, in which a young woman from Ottowa, Jacky Rowan, stumbles into the realm of Faery and becomes a hero by pure luck.

Other great authors in this series include Steven Brust, Kara Dalkey, Patricia C. Wrede, Tanith Lee, and Gregory Frost. I look forward to picking up the rest of the books and enjoying them all.

Into the Woods

As I was pondering other genres to bring up in this article, I laughed out loud at one point as this particular piece jumped to mind. How apropos is it that your Gay Gamer Geek gets to tell you about a piece of musical theatre?

Stephen Sondheim, he of Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, and Pacific Overtures, wrote the music and lyrics of an entire musical about faerie tales. It was one of the first musicals I saw with my Dad at the North Shore Music Theatre, and I’m very fond if it…and not just because of the fairly anatomically correct Big Bad Wolf costume (I *am* a furry, after all.)

This musical combines the familiar tales of Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk with a new story about a Baker & His Wife who desperately want to have a child. By the end of Act 1, we seem to have reached the climax of all of these stories and are set for a Happily Ever After. Act 2, however, explores what happens later: Cinderella and Rapuznel’s Princes begin to stray, the Giant’s Wife has come looking for revenge for Jack killing her husband, the Baker is having second thoughts about being a father, and so on. All of the characters have to figure out what they’ve learned and what ending is right for them, even if it isn’t the Happily Ever After they originally dreamed of.

This musical doesn’t have a single song that you’ll find haunting you for days afterwards (Sondheim’s musicals rarely seem to, with the exception of Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music). But the lessons it has to teach might be something you still think about years later. I know I still do.

Once Upon a Time (the TV Show)

We’re beginning and ending this list with a Once Upon a Time. In this case, it’s the TV Show Once Upon a Time from ABC.

This show focuses on the town of Storybrooke, Maine, which is the focal point of a curse levied by the Evil Queen (from Snow White). The people of the town are all faerie tale characters who have no memory of their old lives and who are constantly denied their Happily Ever Afters. The only person who escaped this fate is Emma, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who was sent to the “real world” when she was an infant and who grew up in the foster system. On her birthday, a boy named Henry shows up at her apartment, claiming to be the baby that she gave up for adoption 10 years earlier. She takes him home to Storybrooke and learns about his belief in the faerie tales in their lost states. Her presence begins stirring up sparks, especially with Regina, the town mayor, Henry’s adopted mother, and the only person in town who remembers the Faerie Tale world…because she’s the Evil Queen herself!

I enjoy this series a lot. It seems intelligent and takes some risks, but it keeps delivering fun storytelling as well. I really want to see where things are going and enjoy trying to figure out who all the characters were when they were Faerie Tales. I do have a few concerns. I’m afraid the show is in danger of being a Gilligan’s Island, where the story can never truly move forward. I know it’s an ABC show, but the little Disney touches (such as Sleeping Beauty’s witch being actually referred to as Maleficent) leave me a bit cold, because they seem to pick and choose when to be Disney-ish. And while I think that Robert Carlyle as Rumpelstiltskin is a fantastic and intriguing character, I don’t need him to be the root of everything nasty. There are so many great faerie tales out there, and I’m afraid it’s only going to concentrate on a tiny handful of very well-known ones and their characters. The synopses for the next few episodes seems to indicate more legends being brought in, including some very Disney-fied ones (Beauty and the Beast…and Beauty is referred to as Bell) and some that Disney hasn’t touched, like Hansel and Gretel. So we’ll see.

Your Turn

Do you have a favorite way of enjoying faerie tales, outside of picking up a book of Grimm? Have I missed out an important piece? Let us all know.