Gen Con recap: The name of the game is "D&D"

I did something truly special this Gen Con. Something that I would love to repeat.

I played D&D with my family through the entire Con.  One of the things I wanted to do with my boys was to play the history of D&D with them.  I didn't get into every game I wanted, but I got in enough to make it count.  I also wanted my wife to join in so she could give her unbiased opinion of the games.  I have learned to trust her judgment on many, many things over the years.

Part of the plan was that any XP, gold or magic the boys got in the games they could translate that over to  the special 1st Ed Game we were playing at night.  All the DMs go

We played a D&D4 game on Thursday.  It was a fun game where we all played Dwarfs.  The DM was great and he played well with the kids.  Thursday night I had a game of my own to play (which I'll discuss later).

Friday was our Castles and Crusades game.  I REALLY wanted to play this one after going on and on so much about C&C a while back.  I picked up my new copies of the 5th printing of the Players Handbook and Jason Vey's amazing Amazing Adventures.  The game we played was also a lot of fun.  Again we had a great GM...er Castle Keeper, and in this we all played Assassins.  My youngest loved it.

Friday night we rolled up characters for 1st Ed AD&D!!  They rolled up two each, and these are the children of the Dragonslayers (their current 3.x game).  That took us till midnight since I had to look a lot of things up and we were sitting on the 2nd floor of the JW Marriott and everyone had stop by and comment on what we were doing.

Saturday we played D&D5/Next.  If I would have known we were making characters I would have gone into it with a different mindset.  But it worked out well and character creation was a snap.  Really.  It only took me 30 mins to do my character and help out my wife and two kids.  I playtested the Warlock and I like it so far.  The game itself was fast, I mean really fast. I am going to come back to that in a sec in fact.

Saturday night we played AD&D 1st ed.  I had the boys go on a quick adventure into Castle Quasqueton from B1 In Search of the Unknown.  The boys had some great rolls and they even took out some orcs, zombies and a group of kobolds. The boys made their objective (which happened to be a on sheet of paper I wrote on when I ran this in college around 1988-9 or so), find a missing witch (Marissa) and bring her back.  I hinted there was an evil cult at work (cause that was what I was doing in 88) and the boys ran with it.  Now this cult is "infiltrating" the lands and they now have to put a stop to it.  I might run with that.

Fighting the Kobolds
Quite by accident one of the common elements in the D&D5/Next playtest and my AD&D game on the same day was the party (6 and 5 characters respectively) fought 4 kobolds.  The combat for each ran very, very similar.  In both cases it was fast with hit points flying everywhere and characters on the verge of death. I can say that in at least this respect D&D5 is closer to old-school play than 3 or 4 was.

It dawned on me at one point or another while playing Saturday night.  I was playing AD&D. With my boys. At Gen Con!  I play a lot of D&D with them and I have played a lot of AD&D over the years, but this felt special. This felt like the best thing I could do then and there.

I have no idea what I am going to do with D&D5 when it comes out.  At this very same Gen Con Wizards of the Coast had announced that D&D5 would not be out till 2014.  That is a very good year in my mind.  Still gives us time to play some 4e AND be out in time for the 50th anniversary of D&D.
WotC also announced that previous editions would be made available again via e-book format of some sort.

There were copies of 1st Ed for sale at Gen Con and we all also picked up a full set of D&D "Drow" dice.

For me there is no debate. D&D still reigns king at Gen Con.

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D&D Next next playtest packet

The next playtest packet is out for D&D5 (I still hate calling it "Next").

There is a lot more material including character generation (novel concept you ROLL for your abilities) which already has some of the newer guard complaining.  Though there is the standard array.

First thoughts:
- I like the monster write-ups.  They are simple and easy to read and can summarized in a module easy.
- Character creation is really fast, as it should be.
- Some feats now seem to be maneuvers, which I like.
- Classes focus on the Big 4.
- Backgrounds and skills together. This is an improvement over 4e since you can now play that kid just off the moisture farm.
- I can see Witch as being a Specialty of a Wizard.  This reminds me a lot of the 2nd Ed Kits.
- Races are the other Big 4.

All in all I see the strands of DNA from every edition of D&D here.
I will buy this game, I am not sure if I'll play it much but who knows.

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D&D Next

I now have it in my hands and while I am not 100% sold yet, man it is a lot neater than I thought it would be.

I am much more excited now.

There is an Old School vibe to this game, yet it still has the things from 3x and 4e that I liked.  Did WotC hit a home run here?  No. But it is was a solid Double moving the runner to Third.

I don't even mind it took a long time to get.

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Next Day

The playtest docs for D&D Next/5e come out today.

I am expecting them to be kinda raw to be honest, but who knows.

Are you planning to try it out?

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Gen Con Registration

Well I got into Gen con registration this morning.

I didn't end up getting all the games I wanted, but I did get a lot of good choices.

I wanted to take my kids on a "history tour" of D&D.
So far we are going to be playing 5e/Next, 4e, 3e and Castles & Crusades.  I wanted to get in an AD&D1 game and Basic game.  No luck though.

I still might run them through a Basic game on my own one of the nights.  Of course if I can find a Labyrinth Lord game, I'd love that. C&C is close to 3e and AD&D so this is a good choice.  And I wanted to play that one myself.

I am not sure if I'll have time for a Ghosts pickup game, though I love to try it at least one night.

Hope you all got your games!

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Gen Con Schedule is out

The Gen Con schedule is out now.

I do not have any Ghosts of Albion games running.  I wanted to focus on paying games with my boys.
We are going to try to get into the D&D Next games, try to get some AD&D first ed in, and hopefully some D&D Basic (a clone) would be good too.  I'll run some D&D 3.x too, so we will get the full D&D experience. I think it will be great.

I happy to see there are plenty of Victoriana games, some Buffy/Unisystem games and some others I am interested in.  I'll have to put together a schedule.

I am sorry there won't be any Ghosts of Albion games.  But I am not amiss to doing a pick up game one night.

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W is for What Next?

(Apologies to all coming here for the A to Z challenge, you might not be all that familiar with the back story of today's rant.)

I wanted to talk about World of Darkness today. But instead I am going to rant.  Well not rant so much as complain about gamer privilege. I know in the scope of things this is so minor as to be non-existent. But yet here I am...

W is for What Next?

So unless you were away from the internet like was all day yesterday you probably missed the "Big news" that Monte Cook packed up books and told WotC, "Screw you guys I'm going home."

Ok, not exactly like that.  Lots of times people leave projects on properties they love due to disagreements.
I have left playtests in "protest" before over a direction the author wanted to take that I felt was a bad idea.  I won't name names either, but it was a property I really liked and was honored to be a part of.  The game in my mind still sucked, but plenty others still liked it so maybe I was the one in the wrong (I don't think so).

So Monte Cook has left Wizards and his work on D&D Next; the nom-de-net for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition.

I am a D&D fan. I am a D&D loyalist in fact.  I have every single edition and played them all.  I have nearly every retro clone.  I bought into the D&D 4 hype and bought a ton of books for it. I loved moving the minis on the maps with my kids, I loved the fact that the classes were balanced and I loved that 1st level characters all had something to do.  I disliked how long combats took. I disliked all the meta-gaming that had to go on with feats and surges and actions and markings.  But it was D&D and I still was able to do the sorts of things that worked for me.

Now we are going into the next version, and I have barely played the last version.  My kid's group, The Dragon Slayers, are wrapping up their 3.x game.  We have gone through many of the "Classic" adventures and as much as I love 1st Edition, I really don't want to go back to it.

I know.  I am complaining about having too many games to play. Woe is me...

I guess I'll wait for the playtest like everyone else.  But I have to say that at the moment, D&D 5/D&D Next is not filling me with a lot of excitement.

Meybe I'll just back to D&D Basic and house rule the hell out of it.  Start characters at a higher level (really, wizards should have more spells than 1) and use some of the rules I like from 4e (bloodied) and 3e (multiclass).

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Sex and D&D

Man, you take a little break to collect your thoughts and the next thing you know the bloggers are going crazy again.  We all need to need to switch to decaf!

So the latest dramarama is WotC jokingly or not posting a list of choices to include in the next iteration of D&D.  One of which was gender-based attribute limits.
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120213/2#78477

Don't bother to look for it, it is gone now.

Now, the first thing I suspected was it was just a joke. Something no one wanted to take seriously.
Of course they started getting a lot of notice for it (planned maybe?  Nah...even I am not that cynical), so it was taken down as a choice.

This lead to the next level, blog posting, here three different takes.

• http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2012/02/whats-orc-babys-maximum-strength-score.html
• http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-gender-based-ability.html
• http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-sex-please-we-play-d.html

Now in reality I don't care.  Anyone with any passing familiarity with me or this blog know I love female characters.  I have played more than a few in my day, more than that even.  I think that the few female fighters I have played only 1 ever rolled a 17 for Strength.  But that is not the issue is it.  The issue is should it be there at all.

The people on the side of realism say, "yes, it should!  look at the evidence!" and they point to the real world.
People on the side of gender inclusion, or at the very least, people on the side of "less rules = better play" say there should be no differences".

I am, at least on the opinion side of things, on the side of equality.  Mostly because a.) I really don't need a rule for this, I have plenty ok and b.) I want to encourage more women to play the game, I don't want to give them any reasons why they might not want to.

In practice though, I am falling short.

In AD&D we did use this at first, but we countered it with giving female twice the amount to develop a psionic wild talent (per the old AD&D 1st ed rules) since we logicked out that since psionics are a dominate sex-linked trait on the X chromosome then women had twice the chance to have it than men.  The balance of course didn't pay off since there was always a good chance that female character had some psionic power.

In Ghosts of Albion "Female" is a minority and worth a 1 point Drawback.  Women also have 1 level less of Status and have a 1 Point Obligation to cover the loss of their freedoms.
All of this is of course appropriate to the time in which Ghosts of Albion takes place.   I will also point out that one of the most physically powerful characters is the ghost of Queen Boadicea and the most magically potent character is Tamara Swift; and this is all from the mind of Amber Benson (who even got higher billing on the book cover than i did!).

So yeah.  I might not have a leg to stand on this one.  I do see both sides.
This is not Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché bad or even  Women in Refrigerators bad.
For me.  I 'd rather not see it since I am going to ignore it anyway, and it is one less thing I barrier to the game I'll have to overcome to get people to play.

How about you?  What are your thoughts?

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What do we know about D&D5 so far?

Here are a couple of links.

http://critical-hits.com/2012/02/03/initial-impressions-of-the-new-dd/

and this massive overview from ENWorld.
http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=dnd5e

Again they are looking more for a "style" of play rather than out and out compatibility.
I am expecting it all to built on a 3.x base, in a presentation similar to that of the 4e Essentials line.
The core races and classes, with lots of add-ons to get more classes, monsters and skirmish battles.

I do expect skills and feats in the first sets of core books, but as kinda optional rules (like 2nd ed had for skills).

Otherwise the progress is moving along as I'd expect it too.
I am hoping to see some play-test games at Gen Con.

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Clarification on 5e

Just a reminder.

I don't recall ever seeing anywhere that D&D 5e would be compatible with AD&D only that you could play the same style as you did with AD&D 1.

I can just see a lot of people throwing fits about this.  To my knowledge we are still looking at ascending armor classes (easily converted if you passed 3rd grade math) and 3e style saves or 4e style defenses.

I am sure we will all know more in the next few days, but the things I have been hearing lately are in my mind good (and good for my group of players) but certainly not going to make everyone happy.

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Quintessential D&D for D&D.Next

Remember my idea back from the late Summer, the one I was calling Quintessential D&D where there are five linked adventures that used all the rules of all D&D?

Here are the links to bring you all back up to speed.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/08/quintessential-d-half-baked-ideas.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/08/half-baked-adventure-idea.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/08/so-building-off-of-my-half-baked.html

With me?  Ok good.
It dawns on me that with what I am hearing about D&D5/D&D.Next that this is the perfect segue into the new rules.

So the characters play through the worlds, they collect the Three Great Books of Gax, fight the dragon guardians and reset the universe.  Reset it to what though?  Easy, reset it to 5th edition.

With the new change in the rules I am not 100% sure I am going to finish up my 4e game.  Or if I do, it will be largely altered to fit into the kinda game I want to run (I still want Drama Points in D&D.)

Stepping away from this for a bit it occurs to me that this would also make a great play-test platform for D&D5.

In the mean time here is an interesting retrospective bit on "Could WotC Support ALL D&D".  What a difference seven months can make.

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Year of the Dragon

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon.  And what a year it is turning out to be so far.

"May you live in interesting times." goes the old saying (which may or may not actually be Chinese in origin).

We are certainly living in interesting times now.  Never has there been such unprecedented access to games of any generation.  So of course I have indulged, maybe even over-indulged.

There has been an interesting side effect to this. The editions war have hit home.  In February  we are ging to playing: D&D4, Pathfinder, Basic D&D, and we want to try out some 1st Ed AD&D as well.  This is not even taking into consideration our semi-regular D&D 3.x game. And everyone here has an opinon on what works and what doesn't.

I have talked to some of the new D&D5 playtesters and so far 5e/D&D.Next does not appear to be what most people think it is going to be.  Well, I say "most" people, I guess I really should be saying "loud" people.
I do have renewed hope for the next version of D&D.

I fear no matter what both the 4e and the OSR crowds are not going to like it; each thinking this new game looks too little like their own and too much like the other.

While there are plenty of doom-and-gloomers out there, I want D&D to succeed. I would love to see a new Golden Age in fact.  We have everything we need really, we just need to get the world to see D&D (and by extension all RPGS) as a good low cost alternative to MMORPGS/Computer games that the whole family can enjoy. (see this bit here)

Get the families.
That is where the money and future is.

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Modular D&D? Tell me more Mr. Cook.

Monte Cook has posted a little bit about the latest incarnation of D&D on WotC's site.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120116

It seems, so far, that they are going to take a modular approach to the game system.  As a game designer and former computer programmer I find this a very interesting take and I am looking forward to more.

Extrapolating on this I can see the following set up:
D&D5 Basic - A basic box with all the rules you need to play. Basic classes, races and magic.
D&D5 Expert/Advanced - an addition to these rules that take the game into all sorts of directions. Added races, classes, prestige classes and the like.  Think of all the cool things from D&D Expert and the AD&D 1st ed DMG.
D&D5 Tactics - a miniature focused set of rules for players/DMs that want more definition in their combats.  Sure it makes the combats take longer, but that is the trade off.

Then splats similar to the current Heroes of the Feywild or Heroes of Shadow that expand certain "campaign free" areas of the world.

While reading the "lists of demands" in the 5e boards left feeling nothing but despair for the next edition, the official word from the actual designers is leaving me with more optimism.

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What I Don't Want

I do not want 5e to be like an older edition or a retro-clone.

I own and have played every edition of D&D ever published.  I have (nearly) every retro- and near- clone there is.

5e can support older editions, it can even emulate some of the features of older games, but it should be be it's own game.

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One thing I don't Get

Reading the 5e boards.

How can someone say "I am an Old Timer" and "I started with 2nd Ed" in the same breath?

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Kids Games: Biting off more than I can chew

I just got an email a bit ago saying that the Kid's Games I am running at my kids' elementary school were the most popular choices and I am at capacity.

Now I have to craft an adventure for all these kids.

This also begs the obvious questions.

1. Do I keep doing this 4e thing with 5e on the horizon?
2. If I do, am I obligated to mention 5e?  If it were a game at a con I think I might be.
3. Should I just do all Pathfinder?

Here is the plan as it is right now:
Session 1 (two weeks): Play 4e
Session 2 (two weeks): Play the same adventure in Pathfinder

Its a good plan.  It means more work for me, but that is fine.

I guess once I see the sign up tonight I'll know more.

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So...what would we like to talk about?

Well.  It seems that there is something out there.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109#78014
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2012/01/quelle-surprise.html
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2012/01/here-comes-5th-edition.html
http://spellcard.blogspot.com/2012/01/its-happening.html
http://www.heropress.net/2012/01/cat-is-out-of-bag.html
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2012/01/wizards-remakes-d.html
http://dnd-realm.blogspot.com/2012/01/5th-edition-d-announced.html
http://backtothekeep.blogspot.com/2012/01/everything-new-is-old-again.html
http://greywulf.net/2012/01/resolutions-are-for-breaking-right-5e-broke-me/
http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2012/01/d-5e-announced.html
http://addgrognard.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-tell-them-what-we-reeaaaly.html
http://likebeingreadtofromdictionaries.blogspot.com/2012/01/its-time-to-start-writing-your-4e.html
http://slamdancr.com/wp/2012/01/we-are-the-end-of-days-and-the-rebirth/
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2012/01/open-letter-to-wotc.html
http://www.robertjschwalb.com/2012/01/dungeons-dragons-next/
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2012/01/wotc-big-non-event-d-5e-is-coming.html
http://www.rpgblog2.com/2012/01/is-5e-d-relevant.html
http://swordsandwizardry.blogspot.com/2012/01/5e-initial-thoughts.html
http://moldyvale.blogspot.com/2012/01/you-knew-it-would-come-to-pass.html
http://blog.retroroleplaying.com/2012/01/d-5th-edition-announced.html
http://lawfulindifferent.blogspot.com/2012/01/so-5th-edition-huh.html
http://gothridgemanor.blogspot.com/2012/01/5e-d-in-word-of-tom.html
http://akraticwizardry.blogspot.com/2012/01/dungeons-and-dragons-fifth-edition-is.html
http://lasgunpacker.blogspot.com/2012/01/type-v.html
http://mythopoeicrambling.blogspot.com/2012/01/big-whoopin-surprise-5e.html

Lots of opinions. Lots of guessing.
I signed up for the playtest of course.

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