Category Archives: Commentary

Gygax Magazine Unboxing

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Gygax MagazineToday’s post was going to be a review of the new Gygax Magazine. I thought along the way they had announced the magazine would be available digitally on Saturday the 26th as well. Looking back over some older interviews, I appear to have misunderstood. It looks like the PDF release will be in about two weeks on February 7th. That is a little disappointing in this day and age. It seems they want the print version to be people’s first experience with the magazine instead of a digital copy.

So instead of a full review of the magazine it will be some of The Iron Tavern’s thoughts on the new magazine based on the unboxing videos from Saturday. First, the look of the magazine will make anyone that read Dragon magazine from the 1980’s do a double-take. The cover, the fonts, and even the table of contents all look remarkably similar to the old Dragon of past years.

I consider the look and feel a good thing. When I think of Dragon magazine my mind always recalls images from the 80’s. The new Gygax Magazine certainly hits some of those same chords.

At this point I can only judge the book by its cover. The content of the magazine will be what reveals whether they also strike the same feel the Dragon magazine of the past had. I hope they do. Kobold Quarterly had been filling the gap for a print periodical and now it looks like Gygax Magazine might be positioned to step into that void rather quickly.

The Table of Contents has been floating around in the Internet for several weeks now. I will not list it in its entirety, but rather highlight a couple of articles I am looking forward to.

Leomund’s Secure Shelter by Lenard Lakofka promises to do some math and reveal which is better, a +1 to hit or a +1 to damage. Even from the unboxing video one could see there were some tables that went along with that. While not a power gamer, I do find the math behind the game interesting and always like reading about it when someone else does the math for me!

Gaming with a virtual tabletop by Nevin Jones lands in an area of interest for me. I play a good amount over a VTT. I always like to see what other people are doing in the virtual space. Perhaps I will pick up some new tricks or maybe it will cover things I already know. But I am always curious to hear how people are using tech in their games.

DMing for your toddler by Cory Doctorow will be interesting to me as well. As readers of The Iron Tavern know, I’ve been playing RPGs with my kids for a couple of years now. I like to see if other people’s experiences match up with mine or not.

There are several other articles that look interesting, but based on a scan of the Table of Contents those three are at the top of my list.

I took the risk and signed up for a subscription to the magazine. Given that US residents get free shipping if they sign up for a subscription and I will want to see at least a couple of issues before I make my final call on the magazine, it seemed like the way to go. I am already looking forward to my first issue arriving in my mailbox.

Once I receive my first issue and read it, you can be sure I will post a more in-depth review on the new Gygax Magazine here at The Iron Tavern.

New Year, New Game 2013

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New Games 2013

Photo by StarsApart – Flickr

This post was written for the second annual New Year, New Game blog carnival hosted by Gnome Stew as part of the 2013 New Year, New Game challenge.

Looking Back

The Iron Tavern participated last year in the New Year, New Game blog carnival. Last year I talked about some of the things that made it hard for me to get out of my groove and try out new games. I also listed the three games I wanted to try at the table in the year 2012. They were:

Fiasco
The One Ring
Dragon Age

How did I do? Well, I did not get the chance to play any of the games on the list I made last year. The year was not a loss however! I did play two new RPG games in 2012 and added several others to my collection.

New Games for 2012

What games did I play? First up was Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. This one is obvious to regular readers of The Iron Tavern as I have made many posts about it. I bought the book because I wanted it for the artwork. Then I started reading the book and I wanted to play it. I ended up in a brief game on Google+ Hangouts and was hooked. From there I started running a few one-shots on Google+ Hangouts and finally broke down and started running a weekly DCC RPG game on Google+ Hangouts and Roll20.

A little later in the year one of my DCC RPG players mentioned a game available for free download called Dungeonslayers. I ended up playing in a Christmas themed Dungeonslayers game that he ran. The game was a good time, something about the opposed roll mechanic that made each round of combat something a little more than rolling a 20-sider and seeing if you hit and then rolling damage. That game has evolved into a regular weekly game as we moved into 2013.

Added to my collection in the year 2012 were numerous Castles and Crusades books and Barebones Fantasy. Only the lack of time prevents me from playing either one of those. I would actually like to see one of those systems replace my default Pathfinder game, but I need to try them out to see which seems a better fit for my go-to game.

New Games for 2013

Despite not playing any of the games I mentioned wanting to play in my post last year on this topic, I am going to risk listing the games I want to play in the upcoming year. I have already mentioned two of the games from the list of three. First:

Castles and Crusades. This game has been around for quite some time. I’ve started collecting most of the hard covers, I am just waiting for an opportunity to play it. I am attracted to it because it is a lighter than my current go-to game of Pathfinder, but so close to the D&D feel that it seems a really good fit. Add in I can easily convert 3.x/Pathfinder adventures down to it and 1e and 2e stuff up to it, I’d have modules to select and choose from for a very long time.

Barebones FantasyBarebones Fantasy. This game has been getting excellent reviews over at RPG Now and across several of my social media circles. A rules-light game with simple mechanics and an interesting “skills” system as class. I’ve done a read through of this book and really want to give it a spin this year. Just waiting for a time that a G+ game opens up at a time that I can participate.

Fiasco. This game was on my 2012 list as well, but I am keeping it around for 2013. This one doesn’t seem to be catching the same talk on social media it was last year, or maybe I have gravitated to different circles. In either case, I would like to try it out to see what it is all about.

New Games, New Year

New games, New Year was a good thing for me. It got me thinking about breaking out of my normal groove. And though I did not play the games I had listed in 2012, I did get out there and play some new games. Not only were these new games a great time, but I met a lot of great people playing them. I

I have made new online friends and met several of them in-person at Gen Con. I’ve drifted to new social circles that are full of people doing cool things. So even though I did not actually play a single game on my list from 2012, I did get out there and play some new games, met some new people both virtually and at cons. I call that a success.

So, get out there and play some new games! Break out of your rut of playing whatever your game of choice is now and try something a little different. It has been a blast for me and I have met a lot of great people by expanding my gaming circles a bit!

D&D 2nd Edition Reprints

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PHBb 2nd ReprintAs seen on Tenkar’s Tavern this morning (seriously if you want up to date news on items in the OSR niche of the RPG world, you need to add Tenkar’s Tavern to your feed), the 2nd edition D&D reprints have popped up at Wizard’s site. The Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monstrous Manual are all there, going for $49.95 per book. Looks like the currently advertised release date is 5/21/2013.

Reprints

So far we’ve seen the 1st edition D&D reprints, the 3.5 D&D edition reprints and now the 2nd D&D edition reprints surface. It certainly seems Wizards is going through their back catalog and re-releasing older editions to the market. They likely have little choice but to do this. It is a relatively easy way for them to get some revenue while they are in this lull between editions. By announcing D&D Next so early for the sake of the playtest, they certainly have made a large dent in their 4e sales.

Reprints and Me

I’ve picked up the 1st edition reprints. I was most attracted by those when they were first announced, but then decided I did not want to pay that much. Not that the price was bad, it was more my frugal side than disagreement with their pricing. Amazon tempted me with their prices, but I resisted. Then at Gen Con I found a booth that was selling them for slightly less than one could get them at Amazon. I could not resist and picked all three of the 1e reprints up.

I wasn’t tempted at all by the 3.5 reprints. I have my 3.5 books still and Pathfinder fills any need for this era of gaming for me. I have picked them up at the local Barnes and Noble, but still did not feel the need to purchase them.

MM 2nd ReprintThe 2nd edition reprints falls into the same area as the 3.5 ones did with me. I still have my 2e books and do not really feel the need to replace them with the reprints. I am sure that many have their roots in 2e though and will feel compelled to pick them up.

There are two products if re-released in this manner I would purchase. The Rules Cyclopedia and a re-release of the Moldvay boxed set. Moldvay is what I cut my teeth on and I have somehow never picked up a Rules Cyclopedia. The local Half Price Books had one marked up to $50, but it was in horrible shape.

The Reprint Decision for Wizards

I understand why Wizards has chosen to release reprints. They need something to generate revenue while folks wait for D&D Next to come out. Given the amount of 4e books I see at the local Half Price Books, I suspect a lot of folks have been unloading their 4e books. I also suspect it is hard to sell a 4e book at the moment with the new version on the horizon. Selling reprints gives Wizards an easy way to generate some short term revenue while the playtest continues.

I do have to wonder if they further fracturing their market though with all of the previous editions coming back out to the market. I would suspect they are bound to lose sales to these older editions. Of course, maybe they folks they are selling these to would never have made the move to D&D Next, so they are just subsidizing D&D Next development with the dollars of gamers who likely would not have made the move to the new edition to begin with.

I do not have a horse in this race, so for me the reprints work out just great. I managed to get my 1e reprints for a great price and I have hope they will at least release a Rules Cyclopedia. With talks of some of the older module series coming back in print, I can use those with whichever system I am playing at the time. So it is a win situation for me. We’ll see if it is a win situation for Wizards of the Coast when D&D Next is released in 2014.

New Beginnings… Or Campaign Reboot

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RPG Blog CarnivalThis month’s RPG Blog Carnival to open the year 2013 is aptly themed “New Beginnings” hosted by Kobold Enterprise. Suggested topics to get folks thinking are,

  • Retcons/New Ages in home brewed or commercial settings.
  • Epiphanies about projects and their new directions.
  • New starts for characters, or even whole campaigns.
  • Insights on the hobby, or aspects of it.

It only seems fitting for me to post on new starts for campaigns with recent changes in my local group’s game.

How we got here

Regular readers of The Iron Tavern know I have been running a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG campaign for several months now online. Meanwhile I’ve been playing in a regular Pathfinder campaign in my local face-to-face group. My local group rotates dungeon masters with most of the duties falling to me or another individual in the group. To be fair, the other person runs much more than I do, but I’ve done my share of running.

I started a Kingmaker campaign in 2010 for the local group. From there we moved to Council of Thieves and then on to Serpent’s Skull – all played under the Pathfinder ruleset. The Serpent’s Skull campaign came to a close in December of 2012.

Adventure Paths

In actuality the Serpent’s Skull campaign sort of fizzled out. I think I group was burning out on Pathfinder to some degree. If not on Pathfinder, we were at least burning out on adventure path style campaigns. By that I mean in adventure paths your course as characters is laid out pretty clearly before you. There are side-treks the characters can take and other areas to explore and many GMs will encourage this. But in order to continue with an AP the GM has to get you back on track along the way at some point. So while there might be diversions along the way, ultimately you have to get back on track. Almost like traveling from waypoint to waypoint.

Over the course of time I think this nature of adventure paths wears on the GM. While nice to pick up the six adventure path installments and know you have nearly a years worth of gaming material at your fingertips, it takes some work from the GM to keep things on course. As a player there can be a sense of what you do doesn’t matter as at some point your characters have to be at a certain place for the next book to be applicable.

Now don’t get me wrong. The Pathfinder APs are great. I think they are well written and layout exciting stories and adventures to play. The NPCs are frequently interesting and some of the monsters within have unusual tweaks to make them stand out. The APs always include interesting material that is tangentially related to the campaign and can be used elsewhere too.

However, after playing several and running one Adventure Path, I think it comes down to feeling like you are playing someone else’s story. Someone else’s adventure. I think having played three of these in a row started to lead our group to a bit of burnout.

New Beginnings

This brings us to our group’s new beginnings. Several in my local group have heard me talk about Dungeon Crawl Classics and how much fun I was having with my online group. The other DM in the group found a copy of the Limited Edition DCC RPG book at the local Half-Price books (I hate him for that). He started reading and thought it might be a good change of pace for our group.

Add in that he is a tax accountant with a schedule that goes crazy from January through April and that my wife is amidst a bone marrow transplant procedure for the next several weeks and a lighter rule system starts to look even more attractive. DCC RPG is rules-light with a lot of the “work” being looking up critical hits, spell results, and such on tables for wild and crazy results. That “work” does not take a  lot of prep reducing the load on the GM.

The GM for our DCC RPG game is also planning for it to be more episodic in nature as well. I think that will lead to a less pre-determined path and our characters can once again take the story where we want it and not where a campaign arc planned out for multiple levels necessarily wants to take it. It also allows for some player misses with less impact on the story overall.

Our group’s new beginning for 2013 is the start of a new campaign with a new ruleset. I know I have felt re-energized by this change of systems and I think several others in our group are looking forward to the upcoming campaign. Time will tell how the change plays out for us!

EN World Says RPG Market Shrinking

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EN World posted the State of EN World address today. One portion of the article posted addressed the state of the RPG Industry today. The key portion from the article:

“And what of the RPG industry in general? [ … ] The industry as a whole is shrinking – I say this not because I know it, but because I’ve heard it: first from Ryan Dancey at the end of 2011, who predicted it (“The effects on the TRPG market are now quite visible. At GenCon 2011, the number of companies that were paying full time salaries for TRPG game designer/developers was reduced to a short list”); followed by Mongoose’s Matt Sprange at the end of 2012 who confirmed it (“The current RPG market is miserable. There really is no other word for it…. If the top tier games are selling at these levels, then something is seriously wonky in the market.”)

So with the dominant game apparently changing, and the market itself drastically shrinking, it looks like the environment is a very different one to just a short few years ago. I’m no expert; nor do I have any special insight or data (though if there was the usual mass-layoff at WotC this Christmas, I missed it – maybe that’s a good sign?) but this seems to be what folks in the industry are saying. Let’s hope it’s not as drastic as it sounds!”

I’m sorry, really? First, while I thought the Ryan Dancey series at EN World this year was an interesting perspective into the RPG industry, it was only one viewpoint. Seeing as some of Ryan Dancey’s points in his original articles were that MMOs were breaking the TTRPG social circles and VTTs were failing, I obviously have to take his points with the grain of salt.

The social media circles I am in are filled with people talking about RPG gaming of all sorts! My twitter feeds are full of gaming related tweets, #rpgchat typical trends on twitter, my G+ circles move too fast to keep up and at least one RPG community on G+ is 3400+ strong and growing. While I know MMO numbers are strong and millions play, I would hardly say MMOs have broken the social networks of Tabletop Gamers. The social scene seems stronger today than it has been for a long time!

Even within Ryan’s articles he acknowledges the evolutionary path is digital for RPGs. Now this I agree with. But a shifting market does not necessarily mean a market that is drastically shrinking.

Next up the EN World article cites Matt Sprange of Mongoose games as another indicator of a shrinking market. Yes, Matt says RPG sales have been, but one must keep reading his post:

“On the other hand, RPG sales among PDFs, spearheaded by DrivethruRPG.com, are fairly booming.”

Matt was talking about print releases of product, he admits PDF sales are booming. This hardly confirms the RPG market is shrinking. It confirms the RPG market is evolving!

I can understand WotC’s sales might be hurting a bit. They are finding themselves in the awkward position of being between editions during an extended playtest of the next version. They also are not offering PDFs of their products even though this appear to be the direction other players in the industry are heading.

Paizo certainly appears to have moved into the heavyweight position for the moment. They churn out steady product and allow people to purchase their product in PDF form.

One only needs to look at Kickstarter to see RPG products are moving in other ways. Dungeon World had 2400+ backers, Fate Core is currently 5,100+ backers, Reaper’s Minis was at 17,000+ backers, and many more examples of RPG related products selling well there.

I think it is a little premature to say the RPG market is shrinking unless one is just not keeping up with how the market is evolving. Basing this on print sales, or even on how D&D and Pathfinder related products are doing is not an accurate barometer anymore. There are many more venues to support RPG products from the small guys and for systems that might not be “mainstream”. If you are a company still producing D&D compatible product it might seem the market is shrinking, but it might be you are missing out on some of the other markets.

The RPG market is likely more fractured than it used to be when WotC was the predominant creator, but I am not quite buying the market has shrunk.

State of the Tavern – 2012

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2012_LogoIt is time for the annual look back at the year 2012 at The Iron Tavern as the New Year fast approaches. The end of 2012 finds The Iron Tavern a little over a year in from opening its doors in August 2011. We have covered a variety of topics this year from product reviews, commentary on current gaming issues and releases, interviews, and more. The Iron Tavern also welcomed a handful of guest bloggers to help broaden the spectrum of gaming products covered.

The Iron Tavern changed hosting providers towards the end of this year. This change was to position The Iron Tavern a little better for future growth and a couple of other plans rumbling in the back room. Overall I have been quite pleased with the decision to change hosting providers and it was worth effort to do so.

Before we look at the year ahead for The Iron Tavern let’s look at some of the top 5 and top 10 lists of posts, referring sites, and search terms folks came to The Iron Tavern for.

Popular Posts

These are the five most popular posts during 2012 at The Iron Tavern. It looks like my post on The One Ring that was actually made in 2011 is still quite popular! The Dungeonslayers review was done by a guest blogger Kelly Davis and rounded out the top five list!

Referring Sites

I removed search engine results from the list which accounted for a landslide of referrals in the list this year. Google+ has a strong lead in referring sites as well. I find the G+ gaming community very personable and much more engaged than the other social media networks. Not only does The Iron Tavern get a large number of referrals from G+, there is also a reasonable amount of discussion on blog posts over on G+.

The Paizo and Goodman Games are result of a lot of Pathfinder product commentary and reviews done here. I also post a fair amount of Dungeon Crawl Classics fan generated content here as well.

The Facebook referrals are often from other company’s or gaming entities who link to The Iron Tavern to highlight a post I did concerning their product. Twitter, unsurprisingly, is towards the bottom of my top five list. Though I maintain an active presence on Twitter I find the click-through rate from there quite low. It feels much more like shouting into the wind compared to the other social media networks.

  • Google+
  • Paizo
  • Goodman Games
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Top Search Terms

The top search terms for the year again favor The One Ring RPG from Cubicle 7. Dungeon Crawl Classics pushes its way to the top of the list as well. I have a large amount of DCC RPG content at The Iron Tavern. Pathfinder products fill out the rest of the list with my Midgard Campaign setting review rounding out the list, as well as my look at the Roll20 VTT.

  • the one ring rpg
  • dungeon crawl classics rpg
  • the one ring map
  • pathfinder beginner box
  • rise runelord pdf review
  • pathfinder iconics
  • dcc rpg
  • midgard campaign setting
  • rise of the runelords
  • roll20

The Look Ahead to 2013

In many ways I feel like The Iron Tavern is still finding its niche, much as I was last year. Finding the balance between getting two to three blog posts up on the site and working on some side-projects, writing queries, and general content creation for the gaming industry continues to be a delicate balance.

Moving forward I hope to continue the trend of getting three posts up per week. Regular followers have noticed I tend to have new posts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the week with occasional surprise posts on other days as time permits. I hope to continue that trend in the upcoming year.

The Iron Tavern will continue to focus on the fantasy genre of RPGs. I expect Pathfinder and Dungeon Crawl Classics to continue to be major topics. It looks like Dungeonslayers will get a few more posts and quite likely Barebones Fantasy as well. My interests seem to be drifting back to an OSR feel with less complex systems catching my eye. I am sure there will be the occasional D&D post as we watch D&D Next evolve as well (more if I can find a guest blogger interested in regular posts on D&D). Rolemaster will continue to make an experience as guest blogger UbiquitousRat continues his look at the playtest.

As mentioned earlier, The Iron Tavern did experiment with guest bloggers this year. The results were successful and I liked the different take and broader look of systems that brought to the blog. With that in mind, I would like to pickup another regular guest blogger or two to write regular articles. Interested in guest blogging? Here are the topics I am especially interested in:

Dungeons and Dragons: I tried to keep up with the playtest, but simply have not had time. I would welcome a blogger who can post an article every other week or so with information on how the playtest is going and other D&D events that are noteworthy.

Pathfinder: More frequent posts on Pathfinder products and Pathfinder games would be great. If you are an aspiring blogger looking for an established platform to talk about Pathfinder, contact me.

OSR systems: There are so many great rule-light, old school systems I would be happy to host guest posts on any number of these. Either a look at products, actual play, or commentary on the genre would be considered for The Iron Tavern.

Overall, I consider 2012 a successful year for The Iron Tavern and look forward to bringing even more content to readers this year! Here is to a great 2013!

My Trip to the FLGS

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guard_tower_logoI admit it. It has been years since I last set foot in an actual local gaming store. In fact, I probably have not had a gaming store to call my gaming store since the late 1980’s. That store was the Drowsy Dragon which was located on the east side of Columbus, Ohio. I guess you might be able to count Young’s Newsstand in Bowling Green, Ohio – but it was more newsstand than a full on gaming store.

About five years ago I made a tour of the local gaming shops in Columbus. I visited Ravenstone, The Guard Tower, and The Soldiery at the time. I was not super impressed on those trips and relented to just shopping online with little guilt. That is how I have been buying my gaming products since. I might pick up something at a con like Origins or Gen Con, but even those purchases were usually limited to dice or something of that nature.

Of the stores visited in my last tour around Columbus, The Guard Tower had the best selection at the time. But the place was cramped, it seemed to have a slight odor to it, and the customer service at the time just did not seem all that. I felt ignored, though to be honest I cannot quite put my finger on why I felt that at the time. But that is the feeling I left with.

Since that time I can be quoted on various message boards in threads dealing with FLGS’ that I wasn’t that impressed with the local selection. I just was not that impressed with the local offerings. Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to justify my online buying habit.

Fast forward to today. Shortly after the advent of G+ communities I started one for RPG gamers in Ohio. Early on I asked for opinions on local gaming stores to Columbus. I received a lot of good responses and it was looking like The Guard Tower was towards the top of folks’ lists.

Add in that my son has an interest in RPGs and has never been to a real local gaming store and it was the perfect storm to get me back into a local gaming store. Today was the day. Based on the query to the Ohio RPG gamer community, The Guard Tower was first choice.

My son was looking for a hardcopy of the Pathfinder Bestiary 2. He has been saving for a bit and I was torn between him buying it at full price at the LGS or me getting it for him off of Amazon at a 34% discount. My wife, being the smart thinker she is, suggested me splitting the cost difference with him as a way to teach him that buying locally might cost a little more but explain why that was (i.e. store rent, heat costs, lighting costs, etc.). After explaining that to him off we we went.

guard_tower_shelvesWe showed up early Sunday afternoon and the store was hopping! People were playing in the back room, folks were conversing at a terrain table to side of the cash register, and more folks were coming in as we browsed. It certainly seemed to be a thriving LGS.

The selection was good and the organization was pretty good as well. The RPG stuff was up front, there was a varied selection of D&D and Pathfinder product. Castles and Crusades, Dragon Age, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Dresden Files, and more were all represented to some degree. Board games, miniatures games and such were towards the back of the store and there appeared to be a good selection of those as well. All of the top ranked board games appeared to be there.

Things that had changed since my last visit some five years ago are that the gaming tables were in a back room. Last time I was there they crowded the front showroom making browsing tough and the store feel more cramped. The layout on this trip was much, much better. There was a terrain table to the right of the cash register and that is where the folks just chatting and passing the time were located. This was just fine as it was far enough away from the checkout area to not make it difficult to actually purchase items. The store cat was there, but the odor of a cat seemed gone.

Unfortunately they did not have Bestiary 2 that my son wanted, but he settled for Bestiary 3. They did have the second printing of the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook that included the index. I had been wanting that version and had been afraid to order that online as I wanted the indexed version. And my daughter, not wanting to be left out, found a pre-painted unicorn mini to satisfy her trip to the store.

I was hoping they would have a small used section to find some old treasures. I suspect Half-Price Books is a better place for these purchases now. I can’t blame them for not wanting to consume retail space on what are likely hit or miss products. And I have heard The Soldiery is better for this type of product, so I will have to check them out next.

All-in-all a successful trip to the gaming store. My son had a great time and is already interested in going back. I finally feel like I have a place to pre-order things from in the case of things like the D&D reprints or other items. And when my Reapers Minis arrive, I now have a place to stock up on extra paint at if I need it. I think I have an FLGS again.

Lesson to be learned? Don’t write off your local gaming store completely. They can change. If it has been a couple of years since you have visited the gaming store in your area, give them another shot and stop back by. Maybe they have made some improvements since you have been gone and you too can have a FLGS to call your own again.

Feat Overload

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Jigsaw PuzzleOver the weekend Keith Davies posted on G+ that between the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, Advanced Player’s Guide, Ultimate Magic, and Ultimate Combat there were 704 feats. Think about that for a moment. 704 feats.

How Many Feats?

I did a quick check over at d20pfsrd.com and a quick check showed 650+ feats. I did not bother to see where our discrepancy was, even if the number had only been 500+ feats the number is a stunning amount of choices.

As Keith notes in his post, a character can only take so many feats over the course of the character’s career. Let’s take a 20th level human cleric. They can only make use of 1.7% of the available feats over the life of their character. You lose access to a feat if you do not play a human. If you play a 20th human fighter you can only make use of 3.4% of the available feats. Nevermind the fact that a lot of campaigns do not even reach 20th level.

I suspect those numbers go down quite a bit depending on the character. There are many feats that are assumed “basic” feats for a lot of character classes. If you want to play an archer type there are several assumed feats that come from the core rulebook an archer needs to have. This reduces the number of new feats the character can choose from other sources. The same applies for caster’s when you factor in metamagic feats and such they will want to pick up.

While we may have a plethora of feats to choose from, a list that seems to grow with every new product release, it does not change the fact the character cannot choose more feats. A typical character cannot gain access to 98.3% of the currently available feats. It does not matter whether a character is trying to add some roleplaying creativity or trying to make a stronger character – the majority of feats are going to be unavailable to a character due to limited slots.

More Options is Better, Right?

Many people will see this number of feats and say more options is always better. I do agree with the premise that more options for a character to choose from during the course of combat, roleplaying encounters or anything else can be a good thing.

However, I think as we see so many feats and mechanical options added to the game we actually limit a person’s options. By defining such specific areas of the game with feats dictating what you can or can’t do without it we have actually narrowed the scope of what a character can do. The GM loses his flexibility to let a player try creative things with his character as there is a greater chance a feat is required to accomplish that task.
Beyond this narrowing definition of what can and can’t be done by adding feats, there is the matter of option paralyzation. A person building a character today has 650+ feats to choose from. This is an overwhelming amount of options to choose from. Where do you see your character in 5 levels, 10 levels, or 15 levels? Making sure you follow the right feat chains early on is important to not hindering yourself later.

Creative Options, Not Mechanical Options

I want to see the option for creativity from players. I do not want to see a multitude of mechanical options that actually define specific areas of the game so much that it in turn limits player creativity.

We need to move the rules up a level and away from this near microscopic zoom on player’s actions. Abilities should be broader to cover more general areas of expertise. Mechanics should be broader and less defined to give more space to play in creatively. Let the player’s say they want to try some dazzling action and let the judge adjudicate how that will happen.

A good example of this blending of broad mechanic with creative play with open spaces in the rules is the Mighty Deed of Arms mechanic from Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. A warrior-type gets a “deed die” to roll along with their normal attack. The die scales upwards as the character levels. A character can declare a “special” action and if a result of 3 or higher comes up on the deed die the character can pull the action off to some degree.

This is a simple mechanic, gives a player some idea of how success will be determined, but does not restrict the player with needing narrowly focused feats to pull things off. Instead the judge and player use the dice roll to help determine the success. This mechanic probably replaces 100+ fighter type feats with one simple to use mechanic. Creativity is restored to the player to solve problems or do cool things during combat.

Find the System For You

I was a big 3.x D&D fan. The system really worked well for me and I feel it provided the framework I needed to run a fun game. Then the option books started coming, and coming, and coming. The system began to bog down for me. There were too many feats, too many builds, too many prestige classes. I started to feel constrained.

Then Pathfinder came along. I loved just having the core rulebook. My energy was back, it was like 3.x was before the ever churning supply of option books. But then Pathfinder started following the same path. More option books, more feats, more spells, more, more, more… It seems the time has come that Pathfinder has started to make me feel constrained again. It has become more about knowing the expanding ruleset than creating fun adventures and characters.

I am not here to change Pathfinder. There are a multitude of systems out there that do fit my changing style of play. I do not need to wage a campaign to change Pathfinder or any other system. I simply need to identify what type of mechanics frustrate me and look at any number of systems that seem a better fit for me. There are many such systems.

When the Dice Turn Against You

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The Scenario

In my last session of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG I ran, what I thought was going to be a fun encounter almost turned into a TPK. With that said, it was still a fun encounter, just much more deadly than I had thought it would be.

I am running the group through Sepulcher of the Mountain God from Purple Duck Games. It is a fun little module and I worked it into the Sunken City campaign by staging a little “favor” the two wizards owed their patron. The patron did not really give them much of a choice about it.

We started last night’s session off with the group plunging deeper into a set of caverns. One character got caught up in a nasty trap, but the group recovered and continued on. While investigating a precipice they were ambushed by several creatures. The creatures had surprise and then won initiative. That right there should have been a sign that things were about to head south quickly.

In addition to the creatures winning init and effectively getting two attacks in a row, my dice rolls were on fire. I don’t think I ever rolled much below a 17 and when I did it was a 14 or so against a low AC wizard. Before the party ever really had a chance to act, three of the characters were bleeding out on the ground. None of the enemy combatants were down.

When the PCs did get their chance to act, they couldn’t roll above a 5 or 6 it seemed. Certainly not high enough to actually hit one of the creatures. The next round was another round of my rolls being high and theirs being low, though not quite as bad, they still couldn’t take any of the creatures out.

The group started getting desperate and several heroic attempts were made through lots of Luck being spent and wizards spellburning their lives away. I was nearly ready to have the creatures do something unusual flee into a pit, as if they were just passing “through” the party, but my players are hardcore and wanted the dice to fall where they may.

So we did. The wizard managed to get a nice Invoke Patron off which helped get another combatant on the field and draw some of the attacks. Then he enlarged it the next round which also helped. The others took advantage of the newfound cover and the party did turn the tide.

In Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG there is a “recover the body” rule that allows a body to be “rolled over” up to an hour after they fell. The character makes a luck check and if successful it turns out they were only knocked out. They awake with one hit point and lose a point from a physical ability score determined at random.

Each of the three characters made their Luck check, so in the end it worked out okay. The party was pretty beat up and did end up spending a good amount of time resting to recover some health, spellburn damage, and spells.

The Thoughts

I am not a judge or GM that is necessarily afraid of killing characters. I am probably softer than I was in my initial comeback to gaming, but I certainly like for their to be risk for characters and for them to feel like they earned something. As it turns out my players for this particular campaign are pretty content to let the dice fall where they may – even if it means a TPK at the hands of an encounter that really was not intended to be a pinnacle encounter of the adventure.

During the game I think this is what made me hesitant as it looked like this encounter was going to be a TPK. It wasn’t that the characters had made bad decisions that led to this. It was that bad luck moment where their dice went cold and mine went hot.

The combination of those two things can be a deadly turn of events for characters and campaigns. It was that combination that made me feel a little guilty for how things looked to be headed. Who wants to see their characters die at the hands of a few 2HD chumps?

As it turns out, the remaining characters were able to regroup and pull things back out of the fire. They saw my hesitation as judge, but acknowledged to let the dice fall as they may.  I did that. The creatures kept up with their attack and by the end the heroes were once again victorious. And I think by the end they felt like they had really earned that victory.

From here on out I know with this particular group that they want no holds barred. I think that is great and I am happy to run that game for them. I am not sure all groups would have been okay with how things were headed and might have wanted some GM fiat to bail them out. Not my DCC RPG group, which is probably why we are playing DCC RPG.

What would you have done?

So what would you have done? Killing a party is well and good, but when that bad luck combo of the player’s dice going cold while the judge’s dice go hot? Does that make you think of altering the creatures’ actions a bit or would you have stuck with it?

How about as a player in that situation? Would you have preferred the judge intervene a little bit or would you have wanted to roll with it like the group I run for on my Tuesday night game?

Ohio Gamers G+ Community

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Quick post on this Thursday night that actually has limited audience appeal. Google+ released their Communities feature tonight. Likely if you are a G+ user you have been inundated with invites for various RPG groups. The RPG community is very strong on G+.

I have created a community for Ohio RPG Gamers on Google+ Communities. If you are an Ohio gamer or have friends in Ohio, give them a heads up. The group has categories for major regions in Ohio. Feel free to use this group to discuss RPGs, plan meetups in your area, plan meetups at local cons, or even plan some online games made up of Ohio folks!

The Ohio RPG Gamer community group is here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101745044949056769846