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.

(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 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)

There have been hints of Faerieland in D&D from the beginning, of course. Even the original Chainmail miniatures rules that TSR published before D&D have rules for sprites, pixies, and the like. The Forgotten Realms talked about a realm of Faerie back in the day, there were spells like Faerie Fire and monsters like Faerie Dragons and so on. But it was always very much an abstract concept, without a lot of hard and fast rules around it.

With 4E, the Feywild is not only a major part of the game, but multiple races and classes are tied to it. Eladrin warriors, elven rangers, and Fey-Pact warlocks were soon rubbing elbows with other, more mundane adventurers. With so much attention in this direction, a supplement on the subject was inevitable, and I’m happy to give you my thoughts on the latest Player’s Option book, Heroes of the Feywild.

A Word of Warning

This book is not a guide to the Feywild, any more than Heroes of Shadow was a guide to the Shadowfell. This book is full of material about Feywild influenced characters, but you’ll find little enough about the Feywild’s geography or climate within its pages. For that, I would refer you to the Dungeon Master’s Guide, or the Manual of the Planes. This book is strictly material for creating and developing player characters.

So, Where’re You From?

Having said that this book isn’t a guide to the Feywild, I now make a liar out of myself by saying that the first part, Into the Bright, talks a great deal about what the Feywild is like and what some of the best known locations in it are. It’s worth noting, however, that this info is presented as a kind of guide to what a Feywild native might know or think about these locations. This is especially useful when working with the final section of the book, but I’ll explain that later.

I might as well take this moment to say that the book is liberally sprinkled with sidebars entitled “Bard’s Tale”. These section have excellent little faerie tales that relate to material in the book. They can be used for flavoring, as adventure seeds, and so on. I’m sure that the innkeeper/storyteller NPC in my campaign will probably weave a few of these into his narratives before too long.

Off to the Races

Part 2, Races of the Fey, is one of the more anticipated sections, at least from my perspective. This book introduces full descriptions for 3 new player character races: hamadryad, pixie, and satyr. The hamadryad is presented as an all-female race of fey who are part bewitching beauty and part sturdy oak. In each encounter, a hamadryad decides which part of her heritage to draw on, gaining a distracting loveliness, or a powerful resistance to wounds. Pixies bring a lot of new to the table, being a race that can fly, as well as a race that is Tiny in size. And is there Pixie Dust? Why yes, there is. Finally, we have the passionate and hedonistic satyrs, the all-male race to balance the hamadryads. Satyrs have their own sort of enchanting ways and a spirit of adventure to match.

Besides very detailed descriptions of each race, this section also has Utility powers that a player can take instead of those granted by their class. These powers help to grant each race the powerful abilities folklore ascribes to them without over-balancing the game.

Class Distinctions

Chapter 3 of the book revisits 4 D&D classes, giving a unique spin on each one. While some really work with the Feywild’s faerie tale theme, I’m uncertain why they chose this book as the vehicle to introduce them.

On the plus side, we get new love for the Bard class. This comes in the form of the Skald build, which is kind of a warrior-bard, as well as some great new optional rules called Signs of Influence. These abilities give a Bard the flavor of being a well-respected figure whose travels from place to place reflect the only way some communities have of gaining news about the rest of the world. Bards can use their sign of influence to be welcomed into Inns, borrow mounts to travel from place to place, and gain a short-notice audience with the local lord. Also fitting well with the theme is the Witch build for the Wizard class. Witches always have familiars, have spells to beguile their enemies with, and can change dangerous monsters into harmless frogs. Who wouldn’t love that?

Although the material included for the Barbarian and Druid classes is good, I don’t really see how it matches with the faerie tale theme. The Berserker Barbarian is pretty much the classic barbarian, and the Protector Druid is a Druid who summons animals rather than turning into them. I almost feel like the standard shape-changing druid is more faerie tale like, and I can’t think of any faerie tales with bloodthirsty berserkers in them. I would’ve rather seen some new love for the Ranger (maybe something like the classic Snow White’s Huntsman) or the Warden (who shape-changes into various fey things as it is.) It is what it is, though, and the new material is good.

Decisions, Decisions…

Chapter 4 gives a wide range of Character Options, making this a book that any character with a tie to the Feywild can make use of. If your DM is running a very Feywild-involved game, the Themes in the book (a concept that started with the Dark Sun rules…essentially a flavor-component that mixes with your Race and Class to give various abilities) would be extremely useful.

In addition to the Themes, there are Paragon Paths, Epic Destinies, and Feats to customize your character with. There are also new pieces of “mundane” gear…which is never mundane in the Feywild…magic items, and alternate rewards like Faerie Gifts that can be given in place of magic items.

Story Time!

The final chapter is quite unique. It provides random tables to help you develop your character’s Feywild background. By rolling or choosing options, you can begin the game with a very detailed and interesting background influenced and flavored by the Feywild. This is a great idea, and I hope that similar sections will appear in other books. While I personally don’t like randomly coming up with my character backgrounds, I can see just how useful a tool this would be for a new player. A few dice rolls can give some basic ideas that a player could flesh out, or tell a whole story about the character before he joined the party. It’s a really great idea.

In Summary

If you’re enjoying D&D 4E, then this book isn’t necessarily a must have, but it’s got some great material. If you’re playing a bard, a barbarian, a druid, or a wizrd, there’s lots of great new powers in here for you. The feats are also very interesting, especially for elves, eladrin, drow, and wilden, the existing races with ties to the fey. If you’d like to try a very different approach to the game…sort of mixing D&D and Changeling…this could be a great source of inspiration. I will admit that I rather hoped that a Feywild boxed set would come out, similar to how the Shadowfell Boxed Set came out very close to the Heroes of Shadow book. It doesn’t look like there’s such a set on the horizon, but I’m sure we’ll see more Feywild material in D&D Insider and in other sources.

Your Turn

Have you used the Feywild in your campaign? Do you think I’m off-base with my review? Do you just want to say howdy for howdy’s sake? As always, share with the rest of us.

In this series, we’ve talked a lot about investigating the company you want to work with, and reviewing what skills you have to offer. Today? I’m going to talk to you about communication.

When you’re a freelancer, you will need to communicate with people who don’t live in your area. That means you’re going to chat with them online or via e-mail. Unfortunately, e-mail doesn’t always work well to convey emotions. Sure, it’d be easier if we’d take a page from Dork Tower and color-code our text, but the reality is that when you e-mail? All anyone has is your words to go on.

Having good communication is crucial to building a good relationship with someone. But what should that look like?

Dear Game Publisher,

I your bestest fan evah! I play Dungeon Fabulista version 1.0 ALL THE TIME and my character is Lvl 3,000 hipster troll paladin. Get it? Hipster troll? Ironic, ain’t it? LOL.

i’ll be At GenCon this year and want to no how to werk for your company. Soooooo excited to c u in person. i no ur website sez u don’t wanna hire anybody but you’ll hire me!

Love,

Please hire me ‘cuz imma broke buyin’ all ur gamez. LMAO!

Okay, now you may either a) laugh or b) cry at the above, but these e-mails do exist. I’ve seen them. What’s more, I’ve had to tell an aspiring writer who wrote to me in LOLspeak that your e-mails are a representation of your professional work. Why on earth would a game company hire you to submit well-written text for their game if you sound like a cat who wants a cheeseburger?

The other issue with the e-mail is that it sounds like it’s coming from a fan. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be difficult to transition from fan (this is what I think the company should do) to freelancer (I am now getting paid for what the company tells me to do). Games are fun! Yes! But? At the same time? There’s a business behind the games that needs to function, too.

Instead of treating a potential employer like your BFF at your gaming table, I recommend this for an introductory e-mail:

Dear Game Publisher,

I am sending you an e-mail because I’m interested in writing for [Game Line or specific game.] Based on your submission guidelines, I am attaching a few writing samples for you to review.

I have been playing [Game Name] for X years as both a player and a GM. I am an active participant on the forums and have also run [Game Title] at conventions. While I haven’t freelanced for the RPG industry before, I have a background in writing and have been published in [2 or 3 Publication Name(s)].

If I haven’t heard from you in a few weeks, I’ll follow up to see if you’ve had the chance to review my submission.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Regards,

Potential Freelancer
[Website]
[Twitter/Facebook]

In the second e-mail, the potential freelancer is specific about why he’s contacting the game company and what he wants to get out of it. The key thing a game company will look for? The fact the potential freelancer read and followed the submission guidelines. The e-mail is informative without listing every character stat and opens the door to further discussion.

Mind you, not every game company is the same. Some are more casual than others; sometimes you’ll get a gig over a forum post instead of an e-mail. The thing to keep in mind is that having good communication skills is crucial to your image not only as a writer, but as a professional regardless of where you are.

Fair warning: I will try to make my advice generic, but, in general, it will be about D&D (where else would you run an Underdark campaign?) and will conform to 4E concepts. I will try to keep references from specific books to a minimum, but since the 4E D&D Underdark has some very specific concepts to it, I will likely mention them now and then.

Using the Points of Light Model

One problem of using the Underdark is the sheer concerns over safety. If the Underdark is solely a horrible realm crawling with a zillion aberrant creatures that want to eat your face, then why would anyone ever want to go there? Conversely, if it’s a barren ruin of rock and darkness, then how can anyone survive there?

Your Underdark doesn’t have to be uninhabited, or inhabited only with horrors. While most creatures in the Underdark are bad, there should definitely be exceptions. Perhaps a town of dwarves thrives here, mining the mithral that can only be found in the darkest depths, or the most fabulous jewels. Although the svirfneblin haven’t made a significant appearance in 4E yet, there’s no reason they couldn’t appear in your campaign, maybe as a group of gnomes who escaped here from the Feydark, established a stronghold, and never bothered to find the sun. Maybe the drow city of Erkel-snood K’k’kr’k has a firmly established reputation as a place where traders of different races can meet, safely, on market days. Maybe that colony of Myconids can become an ally via the party’s Wilden Druid?

So now that you have some points of light, what lies between? Well, if your Underdark is based on the Underdark from the 4E books, then it can contain virtually anything, as the King’s Highway can extend into the Feywild, the Shadowfell, the Elemental Chaos, and anywhere else you want it to.

This begs the question of course, if you can find anything in the Underdark that can be found on the surface, why bother setting a story there? The answer, essentially, is flavor. During my trip in the Caribbean, we visited a site in Mexico called El Rio Secreto. This is a recently discovered cave system which is partially flooded. Now, I’ve been in caves before, but the unearthly quality of this one could not be denied. There was silence, broken now and then by dripping water. The light gleamed luridly off of the damp stalactites and stalagmites, as well as in the water. When we paused and turned off the lights, there was an unbelievably thick darkness around us.

Now imagine the Underdark versus a simple cave system. Caves that can be almost infinite. Huge mushrooms coruscating with phosphorescence. Huge blind cave fish (we saw the little versions!) splashing in the shallows. The scurrying sounds of furtive creatures in the dark. It’s a setting that conjures feelings of wariness, paranoia, and “we-shouldn’t-be-here”-ness, all of which might just save your character’s life.

It would be worth doing some research, looking at websites or books about caves and reading the wonderful Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Remember that the Underdark isn’t just a cave. The Underdark is a feeling of alien wonder and horror. It can encompass underground seas, vast cathedral-like caverns, and horribly lurid rock formations of disturbing colors.

One other bit of the game’s history that might be useful is the old 1st Edition Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide. Although much of it is now obsolete, it does have some great ideas about caves and serves as a primer to how earlier versions of the game looked at the Underdark. And copies are danged cheap on eBay.

Can Getting There Be Half the Fun?

One specific concern is making a long underground journey interesting. In my campaigns, I use Skill Challenges and narrative to try to make getting from point A to point B something interesting. Narrative can be covered using a lot of what I’ve already talked about, but what about the rest?

As over-used as it can be, an Underdark journey is the perfect time to use a Skill Challenge that costs the party Healing Surges. One of my favorite approaches to Skill Challenges is one that I first heard really well used in the Thursday Knights podcast (which I strongly recommend). The DM sets out multiple goals, tells the players how many rounds the challenge will last, and then sets a maximum amount of Healing Surges they can lose, as well as what the benefits are of completing each “track” of the challenge. The players have to decide which elements they want to pursue, and which ones they’re comfortable ignoring or giving lesser attention to. The players know that they won’t actually fail to get from point A to point B, but they may regret what it costs them to get there. He also lets them narrate the various elements they encounter along the way, making it a much more cooperative storytelling experience than many games I’ve seen, including, I must admit, my own.

If I were going to run a “Traversing the Underdark” skill challenge in this style, I might break it down into the following tracks: Preparing for the Journey, Foraging for the Necessities, Keeping a Low Profile, Scaring Off Potential Foes, and Overcoming Obstacles. Since I want this to be the equivalent of a fight for my 5 players, I’ll make each one a Complexity 1 Skill Challenge requiring 4 successes before 3 failures. I’ll assign each one a benefit – the Preparing one, for example, which would have to go first, might give +1 to all skill checks on one other track. I would allow only 1 round to do the Preparation track, and maybe 3 round to do the others. I would also have the Hard DC be worth 2 successes. This will give people with lots of different skills chances to shine and gain successes for the party overall.

It may be that I’ll want to do an article just on Skill Challenges. I love them, but I know many DMs don’t. I’ll revisit this in a later piece.

Themes in the Dark

The Underdark is a wonderful place to play with themes and make some stories around some very creepy themes, like Paranoia, Alien Peril, Isolation, and Corruption.

Paranoia’s easy to trot out in an Underdark story. In the Underdark, pretty much everything is out to get you. If it doesn’t want to eat you…or your brain…or your face…then it wants to enslave you. You can have false guides leading your players into peril, creatures that seem to be one thing and turn out to be another, shadowy happenings that have no real effect on your players but put them on edge, and so on. What do I mean by shadowy happenings? Well, you can describe things like a furtive scurrying just beyond the PCs’ ability to see. Like, if they’re entering drow territory, they might hear a sudden cry from ahead, and, when they move forward, find a dead human slave with hand-crossbow bolts peppering his back. This will put them on edge and get them guessing at every sound. Slowly, the PCs will come to realize that they can only rely on each other, and then you throw in the monsters that dominate, a few doppelgangers, and such, and you can have them doubting each other as well.

The Underdark is a world that’s fairly alien to most PC races. It’s a great place to debut perils that your PCs will react to with a cry of “What the Hell is that?” I can imagine saving really alien creatures, like aberrations, for the Underdark. Maybe the critters of the Far Realm find it easier to slip in when no one is observing them. If your players have been fighting very normal creatures, imagine the looks of horror on their faces when they run into dolgrims, or dolgaunts, or a beholder, or what have you. It’ll be such a shift from what they’re used to!

Isolation goes hand in hand with Paranoia. Players may be used to long distances between the towns they visit, but if the journey is even further and more dangerous, and the destination itself can be dangerous. You can cut the PCs off from resources, such as food, potable water, material components, and air and light themselves. You can heighten the mood further with eerie music and leaning in, lowering your voice, etc. If you catch your players leaning in, too, or whispering to each other, then you’ve got them where you want them.

And then there’s corruption. In 4E, the Underdark is the realm of Thorog, the Crawling King, who is the god of imprisonment and torture. I have no problem with the idea of patches of perilous terrain that can do harm to the PC’s food and drink. What about a patch of mushroom spores that, if the PCs don’t keep it quiet with a Dungeoneering check, spews spores that get into the food, or even into the air. The Underdark is a great place to pull out Diseases, or using the Disease rules for a Corruption effect. Alternatively, you could use the Despair deck to symbolize a moral corruption that slowly overtakes the party as the days go on in total Darkness. This might be an excellent consequence of failing a Skill Challenge as described above.

In Closing

The Underdark is an alien world, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to tell great stories. It gives DMs a lot of leeway to run strange encounters, eerie themes, and to let their imaginations run wild. It’s another journey, but one with a very different feel, and it’s worth accenting that feel.

Your Turn

What tips can you offer a DM who wants to tell a story set in the Underdark? Are there any favorite resources you’d want them to be aware of? On another level, are there any subjects that you’d want to see me tackle in future articles? I loved having such a strong focus to look at, and I’d invite others to ask me questions.

The last, two months, I talked about how important it is to research the companies you want to work for. I also provided an allegory that (hopefully) highlights how employers view you. As a freelancer, you are essentially operating your own business. Self-employment — even if it’s part-time — is a real job. Freelancing for the hobby games industry just happens to be more creative than doing someone’s taxes or making copies all day.

Before you can ask yourself any questions about who you want to work for, you’ll need to know where to look for assignments and how to prepare yourself for them.

Here are the three best places to look:

• Open Calls on Forums: If you play hobby games, then you may frequent forums like ENWorld.org or RPG.net. Most forums will have a thread called “Open Calls” where publishers post new assignments or requests. In most cases, you’ll send the publisher a private message (or PM) or respond to their thread. These can be time-sensitive. I recommend lurking on these threads for a while to see what type of publisher is posting there. That way, you can check out their website and play their games before you volunteer your services.

• Publisher Websites: Many RPG publishers will have a website and offer Submission Guidelines. These guidelines spell out what they want, what they don’t, and when to ask them for a job. Some publishers, like Steve Jackson Games, have thorough writer and artist guidelines to follow. Others, like Margaret Weis Productions don’t publicly post their guidelines. When a company doesn’t offer submission guidelines, sometimes that means they prefer to hand-pick their freelancers because they want to work with more experienced folks. Other times, it may reflect the fact that they don’t have the personnel to handle the volume of submissions or what is known in fiction as “the slush pile.”

• Conventions: Conventions are the most common place to find freelancing assignments because it gives the publisher an opportunity to connect with you face-to-face. Conventions for the Aspiring Game Professional is an e-book that was written by Jess Hartley, an experienced freelancer. If you’ve never gone to a convention to find work before, I recommend checking out Jess’s e-book.

While conventions are great places to meet publishers, they are also crazy busy for them, too. I don’t go to a convention to socialize anymore; I go to work. That means that most of my meetings were already scheduled before I attend the convention. For me, having a convention itinerary is crucial to understanding the pros and cons of any show I attend.

Many publishers operate their publishing schedule around a bigger show like Origins or GenCon. RPGs take a long time to produce, so often these books are worked on six months (or more) before a show. So, on their end, a publisher will place priority on existing freelancers and people they’ve worked with in the past for meetings. The “new guy” (or girl) is still important, but less so in the grander scheme of things. Why? Because publishers are at conventions to sell their games to customers. Selling a new RPG to a fan trumps meetings. Publishers are at conventions primarily to sell games; freelancers usually go to conventions to find work and play games.

There are many different types of publishers within the hobby games industry, though, and that’s what I’ll go into next time to help you fine tune your job hunt.