One of the biggest problems with combat in the Dungeons and Dragons game was the mental visualization of combat. Characters have an immense amount of hit points, which allows them to take large amounts of damage. In our mind’s eye, we tend to think of the combat as these large blows that are exchanged back and forth. But when attempting to add a sense of reality to the game, we know these visions can’t possibly make sense.
How can a fighter take a battle axe to the face for 22 points of damage and stay fighting, but then suddenly collapses when the bard hits him with a dagger for 2 points of damage. It’s really all about timing, but makes for a difficult time describing the action. Since the launch of 3rd edition, the gaming community has been pretty vocal in expressing the viewpoint of combat being a series of faints and jabs, with a killing blow being a one-time occasion. This line of thought works well until someone scores a critical hit. The idea of a critical hit is that massive amounts of damage have just been inflicted, but describing it as a “glancing blow” takes some of the excitement out of the ever elusive “nat 20″.
Part of this is our long standing thought around “hit points”. It even has the word “hit” in it, which gives us an image of blasting through someone’s defenses and smashing them in the mouth for damage. THe introduction of 4th edition further muddied the waters by introducing the “Bloodied” status, which means you’re at half your maximum hit points. In reality you’re not really “bloodied” though are you? Going on WotC’s description of combat being a series of faints and blows, wouldn’t it be more accurate to simply rename hit points to something like “defense points”. I know it’s a simple change but the power of the mind’s preconceptions on something can have a huge impact in the way people envision it.
Imagine now that these “defense points” describe’s someone’s remaining strength to defend against attacks. Hard blows are even harder to parry. As you joust back and forth your opponents defenses weaken. Each character could have a small number of true hit points, lets say no more than 10 or 15. These points represent those true fatal blows that make contact with the enemy. That way people know when an opponent is truly getting near the end. The back and forth of the combat now has ore context.
The rule system could be very easy to implement as well. You simply subtract 10 or 15 from each player’s total hit points. The new number becomes your “defense points” while the 10 or 15 you subtracted becomes your new hit point value. For the sake of our mind we can rename “Bloodied” to “Exhausted”. I know these seem like minor changes, but when you’re playing a fantasy game, how your mind perceives and interprets things is of the upmost important. How many times have you been in a D&D game when someone lays a really awesome critical hit down, but then is bummed that no additional effects were incurred or that the target didn’t reel back in total agony?
That’s because your players have a specific vision of what a “hit” against “hit points” looks like. Changing the terminology might be an easy fix to making the visualization of combat easier.
I was reading an article on one of my beloved sites in regards to race creation in RPGS. It got me thinking about something in a sort of goofy way. Does D&D promote the concepts and fundamentals of sterotyping?
Lets think about it for a moment. Races get specific bonuses to different stats. A Tiefling receives a +2 bonus to intelligence. Is this the real world equivilant of “Asians are good at math”? For a long time some races received negatives to certain ability scores, indicating that the race was inferior at a subset of tasks. Kind of scary, but the fun doesn’t stop there.
Most source books will detail a racial trait or attitude. It’s basically a stereotype that Dwarves are grumpy, Elves are snobby and Humans are really the only truly balanced group of the bunch. Again in real world examples is this Blacks are aggressive (but athletic), Jews are cheap (but great with money) and the Chinese are rude? (but hardworking)
I say this all in jest. I know the game developers didn’t have anything like this in mind when they developed the game. But as I get older and I begin thinking of having a family of my own, I think about the dorky things that I do which I would want to share with my children. With that in mind this post was born. How old should the kids be before I introduce them to a simulated world where things try to mimic reality but also giveway to game mechanics?
At what age are kids actually able to separate the game from the real world? I doubt D&D will ever make a child a full-fledge racist, but does it lay the ground work for the type of thinking that would lead someone there? I can’t say yes or no with any certainty, but it’s definitely a question I thought I’d never hear myself asking.
The life of a dungeon master is never easy. Players show up and they get to enjoy themselves, hang out, eat food and bask in the entertainment that is produced as the result of blood, sweat and tears from the DM. I try to keep my games as organized as possible, but as our meeting frequency begins to have ever growing gaps, I need to be just a bit more diligent.
With that in mind I’ve been trying to come up with a system in which I can store all of my relevant adventure information and campaign information in a single place. I’m sort of a tools guy and prefer to have a specific tool for a specific task. Alas, my search has come up with no specific tool for managing my adventures, so what are my options?
1. Bento — Bento is to Mac as Access is to Windows, only better. Sounds crazy right? But Bento could provide me with everything I need. A small database to manage NPCs, information tidbits I’ve shared as well as treasure loot note taking. It’s a database, with a very slick form designer tool.
Pros:Contains everything I need in one neat package. Cons:It’s a LOT of work on the front end and is not portable.
2. Word — Everyone’s favorite text editor. Pros:Portable across Windows and Mac. I already own it. Cons:Organizationally it sucks. One long running document. Boo.
3. Excel — Everyone’s favorite Spread Sheet.
Pros: Also portable, I own it and sheets allows me some organization to it. Not to mention I’ll have the power of formulas. Cons: Without a lot of work, it’s going to be extremely unintuitive interface wise. It will also remind me of work, which is not cool during D&D time.
4. OmniOutliner — An outline tool for the Mac.
Pros: The term “outline” really doesn’t do this application justice. It’s got some power to it, flexible, great support for embeded documents. Cons: Not the greatest tool for quick data entry. It can be a wee-bit troublesome to navigate when you’re getting complex with your tasks.
I could also use Google Docs to replace any of the Office suggested solutions. That’s extremely nice because not only is it portable, but it’s accessible anywhere and always backed up thanks to Google’s revision history feature. (And by the fact it sits on the cloud)
What are you guys out there using to organize your games? I need to be able to access storyline elements, monsters, NPC information and to be able to easily take notes about a particular event, encounter or situation. Also I often have to introduce a character spur of the moment. I have a list of names to pick from, but once their selected I need to jot down information about them. It’s just too much for my little paper notebook to handle.
I should probably preface this by saying “In My Humble Opinion” but the reality is this blog is nothing more than a collection of opinions. But I guess I’ve already done the preface thing so I’m just going to hop into it.
I remember when I first started in the MMO space with Everquest, I had high hopes for the game to be a computer version of Dungeons & Dragons the table top game. In a lot of ways I was pleasantly pleased, but in the one area that was more important to me than any other I was disappointed. The role playing aspect.
The thing I like about video games, role playing games, films and books is the feeling of total immersion. Out of all of these mediums of entertainment, table top role playing games seem to have the highest potential for immersion. You can literally do anything, say anything. (Provided a decent game master) You are only limited by your imagination. I loved spending hours being the sneaky rogue trying to con the mayor of the town into my nefarious plan. Or being the paladin pleading with the church to evacuate the town before the dragon shows up. Beyond the skill checks and the combat sequences, role playing is where the game truly began to unfold and become memorable.
With Everquest (and even World of Warcraft) I was a bit naive in my thinking that more people would be like minded. I signed up for the role playing server thinking that gamers would remain in character and it would literally be like another world. Instead my hopes were shattered as people approached me and said “Hey dude, let’s group. More XP and loot”. Now I know there are different levels of role playing, but come on lets give it a chance? And I guess it bothers me even more because these people have CHOSEN the role playing server to play on and then refuse to do it. To me this is the biggest thing holding back MMO’s from being the absolute king dog in the entertainment business. (In reality it’s probably already close but stick with me for the sake of argument)
There is no realistic way to enforce role playing on servers. I’ve tried to think and think of different solutions and so far the only thing I can think of is a complaint system. If enough people were role playing on a server and complaints were followed up on then most gamers who are not interested in role playing will simply move to different servers. It would honestly be too cumbersome for them to communicate with players. Let’s look at a possible exchange.
“help?”
“Sure lad..Do I know you?”
“need help with Sven quest”
“Ah yes, I know Sven. Good lad but he gets in quite a bit of trouble don’t you think?”
“Can u help? too low lvl”
“Aye lad…but I’m waiting for a group of my friends.”
“Group”
“I don’t know that I understand you.”
“invite pls. thx”
This exchange goes on more than most of you care to admit. Now if this type of interaction was common for the person who DOESN’T want to role play then I imagine it won’t be long before they move servers just for the sake of brevity. I should also be more specific. I’m not looking to rate the quality of role players, but I’m looking for people to at least try it and keep the game’s “meta” information out of casual pubic chat channels. Don’t tell me you’re too low level, tell me you’ve never been there or you don’t think you’re skills are adequate. For just about every in game situation there are a million and one ways to communicate the information without using the detailed terms of the game itself.
My friend Nic says it’s kind of elitist and I can see his point. But I’m not looking for it to be this way on all servers, just on the servers flagged as role playing or even come up with a new classification. All I’m saying is that it isn’t unreasonable to allow people who want to experience the game a certain way an easy opportunity to do so.
Everything in my life is pretty much digital. I’ve abandoned the pen and the pad for the iPhone notes program and my laptop. We were playing pen and paper D&D one day and it occurred to me how much was missing from the game, as we moved figures across a boringly brown mat. I drew some horrible circle that was supposed to represent a tree, and another rectangle to represent a lake of fire.
Imagination is good, but it can only take you so far. I decided that maybe we should try out one of those virtual table tops that I keep hearing about. It’s basically a battle mat on the computer. I floated it to the group and they were all in agreement with at least trying it out. So far we’ve had mixed results, but it has showed some promise.
Our first hurdle was to find something that was cross-platform. Not everyone in my group is wise enough to own a Mac, so compatability was key. We also didn’t want the system to enforce a set of rules on us. We really just wanted it to be a battle mat and nothing more. We finally settled on a program called Battlegrounds. The application met our two major requirements and was fairly inexpensive.
This is less of a review on the actual application and more just talking about the pros and cons of a virtual table top. A review of the specific application will come at a later date when we’ve got some more hours on it.
Pros
You can visualize the entire battle scene and put all the little details into it that you want
Prepare your encounters ahead of time, leading to a lot less setup time per encounter
You can have your monsters look JUST like the monsters they’re fighting by looking for some JPEG images
As a DM, you can easily hide and track monsters, keeping them invisible from other players
The players now have an easy method for communicating without the GM seeing or knowing. This works vice versa for the GM as well.
Your players don’t actually have to physically be there if you need to play in a pinch or if you’ve moved away from your gaming group
Cons
It’s another distraction at the table
Technical issues can REALLY disrupt the game. A kitchen table never performs illegal memory operations
Less space at the table. People have some pretty big laptops these days
Is your group computer literate? I’m lucky in that mine is, but if yours isn’t, be very careful
There is an upfront cost associated with it, purchasing the software and making sure everyone has a computer. If not you can get a projector or big monitor for everyone to see and use
I think these basic pros and cons hold true for all virtual tabletop systems. Of course some will perform better than others, but a lot of the things I’ve talked about our specifically people or spacial issues. I must say though I’m excited about the types of encounters I can create now, bringing them fully to life. There is a vibrant community out there who are building maps, building character avatars and helping each other.
This is technically our first time using the tool. Our first attempt was marred with technical issues, but the software’s creator was very helpful and responsive. So we’ll know a little bit more in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for more info.
Another gaming session where one of our players couldn’t make it. So we decided to try the iChat video client. We’ve got an iBook with a iSight camera pointed at the tactical map and then my macbook pro is being used to communicate with our remote gamer Paul.
This is the dice rolling program all us hardcore D&D fans were waiting for on the iPhone. It’s called “Mach Dice” and it’s going for $1.00. You know you love it.
As readers of this blog know, I run a 4th Edition D&D game at my place every other week. Our group is relatively small, so when someone can’t make it, problems can arise. Our friend Matt just had a baby and as a result couldn’t make the game. (He lives a good ways away) So as opposed to playing without our fighter, we decided to get creative.
We moved my computer monitor out to the dining room table and placed it where Matt normally sits. Using Skype we initiated a video chat session with him and used an old firewire iSight camera to be his eyes.
The experiment worked quite well. The only problem we ran into was past the 3 hour mark, the Skype connection seemed to drop every 30 minutes or so. Another problem were dice rolls. If you trust your players than it’s a lot easier. If you don’t then having them move the camera to verify the rolls can get a little old quickly. There are plenty of dice rolling programs that you could use and share if you really wanted to. But there’s something about rolling the actual dice that you’ll miss.
Here’s some video footage we took showing the setup. I think it was pretty cool.
So we spent the first weekend of my new 4th Edition D&D campaign making characters. That was pretty much a given as we navigated through the text books in an attempt to piece together our old world with the new. Flipping through pages looking for that one bit of information takes up a lot more time than we could have imagined. Part of this is our fault for not just having read the core rules cover to cover.
The game plays a lot like an MMORPG. Sorry, I know some people love the game, but that’s just how I feel. Everything combat related is centered around powers and abilities that give the game an almost arcade like feel. The good news is this gives an incredible amount of options during game play for characters to do cool things. Even better, they can start doing these cool things right at first level.
Combat seems to flow quicker, even though we played with a couple of first time gamers. The action breakdown is simple and fairly concrete with a standard and a move action for each player. I know it seems like this is pretty much what 3rd edition did, but the language used to describe these actions in the Players Handbook is a lot more clear and straight forward, allowing new gamers to quickly grasp one of the fundamental aspects of the combat system.
The use of minis is no longer suggested, but now is damn near required. Everything regarding movement and range is now listed in squares as opposed to feet. Each square equals 5 feet so it’s easy to do the math, but every rule, stat block or guideline is written with the understanding that you’ll be playing with minis on a grid map. Most serious gamers are doing this already so it’s not a big deal, just a bit more of an initial investment if you don’t have the appropriate gear already.
Magic users have probably undergone the most tweaking as a result of the new at-will, encounter and daily spell/ability categories. So no longer are you the caster that’s rapidly preparing spells for the day. Nor are you the punk ass who is nothing more than dead weight once your spells are exhausted. With at-will spell categories you always have SOMETHING to do on your turn. This ability is metered slightly by the implement feature, requiring certain powers and abilities to be bound to a particular item or weapon. (Think Gandaulf and his staff) Lose the weapon, lose the at will ability until you get it replaced. Not a bad trade off though. Encounter spells/abilities are like they suggest, once per encounter. And the daily spells are…you guessed it, daily.
So far so good. We’re through one section of the pre-made module “Keep on the Shadowfell”. It’s written almost like an old NES Roleplaying game where you get into a fight, make it to town and talk to random villagers. Rinse repeat. So far it’s fun however and the players seem to be enjoying it.
I’ll keep you posted on new mechanics as we encounter them, but so far 4th edition gets the thumbs up.
Everything in my life is pretty much digital. I’ve abandoned the pen and the pad for the iPhone notes program and my laptop. We were playing pen and paper D&D one day and it occurred to me how much was missing from the game, as we moved figures across a boringly brown mat. I drew some horrible circle that was supposed to represent a tree, and another rectangle to represent a lake of fire.
So we spent the first weekend of my new 4th Edition D&D campaign making characters. That was pretty much a given as we navigated through the text books in an attempt to piece together our old world with the new. Flipping through pages looking for that one bit of information takes up a lot more time than we could have imagined. Part of this is our fault for not just having read the core rules cover to cover.
