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DCC RPG: The Dwarf

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This is the third installment in my weekly series of looking at each of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG character classes. The first week I looked at the warrior and last week I looked at the thief. Be sure to check those articles out as well! This week I am taking a closer look at the dwarf character class.

The Class

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG returns to the mechanic of the case of the demi-human characters being your class, as well as your race. Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings are both race and class. In the Dwarf’s case he is very much like the warrior class with a few features to make him unique.

The DCC RPG dwarf is quite true to what I would consider a traditional feel for a dwarf in fantasy RPGs. They love the sight of treasure, short, stout, and strong, albeit wild, fighters. They live below the surface and tend to have excellent martial skills or craftsmen.

Dwarves start with a d10 hit dice, putting them a little below a human warrior, but still towards the top of the stack. Dwarves prefer battling with a weapon and shield and have a rather broad list of weapons they are trained in. They are free to wear whatever armor they can afford.

The same three alignments are available to the dwarf as the other character classes. The rulebook covers what type of dwarf might choose which alignment.

Dwarves have similar attack modifier mechanics as the warrior class does. They receive a deed die that they roll with each attack. This roll on the deed die applies to the attack and damage rolls and will vary depending on level which determines the deed die. At first level the dwarf would roll a d3 and add the result to attack and damage. As the dwarf levels, this die increases in the number of sides.

Also like the warrior the Dwarf can attempt a Mighty Deed of Arms. This allows them, like the warriors, to attempt special maneuvers during combat that succeed based on the value of the deed die. I am a big fan of this mechanic which I explain in my earlier warrior post. Be sure to check that post out for why I am a huge fan of the Mighty Deed of Arms.

Image Courtesy: http://interartcenter.net

Next up we have the sword and board feature. Dwarves like to fight with a shield and a weapon. If a dwarf fights with a shield the dwarf gains shield bash as a second attack – even at first level. The attack with the shield uses a lesser die to hit and does a small amount of damage, but I like the flavor. A Mighty Deed of Arms can be used with the shield bash.

Dwarves of course have infravision due to their time spent below the surface. They also have the slow movement speed of 20′.

Due to their time spent underground Dwarves have a list of underground skills allowing them bonuses to several types of skill checks when made underground. Another interesting feature is that they can smell gold and gems and determine which direction they are in depending on the amount of gold or gems near.

Finally, the dwarf can apply luck to one specific kind of weapon as the warrior does. They also start the game knowing the dwarven racial language.

My Impression

I find the Dwarven class in Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG really hit the right feel for dwarves for me. I do not mind that they made the race a character class that predefines its role. Sure, we might not see Dwarven Wizards or Rogues, but those should be fairly rare to begin with. The class as presented in DCC RPG does a good job of representing the typical dwarf.

Much like the warrior, the Mighty Deeds of Arms is a very fun mechanic. It works equally well with the Dwarven class. It also allows a Dwarven character many options.

From Forgotten Realms novels I have always had a fondness for Thibbledorf Pwent, a dwarven beserker. In D&D 3.x games or Pathfinder games I have had a hard time emulating this type of dwarf. I think with the Mighty Deeds at Arms and a judge I trusted that I could build a dwarven beserker with less trouble.

The other mechanic I really like from the Dwarven class is the sword and board feature. I always think of dwarves in close formation, shield in one hand, hammer or axe in the other. The sword and board class feature helps keep the shield useful for more than just an increased AC and allows the Dwarf to use it in battle to cause damage. I like the feel this gives the DCC RPG dwarf.

I have judged for a couple of dwarves in actual play. The characters seemed to do well and with the use of Mighty Deeds at Arms were able to do some excellent things. I recall one battle where the two dwarves formed up a shield wall to help cover a retreat.

The Dwarven character class is yet another class in DCC RPG that hits the right notes for me. The character class feels like what a dwarf should be in fantasy RPGs!

Next Week

So far I have looked at the Warrior class, the Thief and now this week the Dwarf. What would you like to see me look at more closely next? Post here in the comments or on either Google+ or Twitter and let me know which class I should turn to next!

DCC RPG: The Thief

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This is the second post in my weekly series of looking at each of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG character classes. Last week I looked at the Warrior class and some of the unique ideas it brought to the table. This week I am taking a look at the thief character class.

The thief character class in DCC RPG can take the shape of the small, wily thief or the bigger, brute type of thief or anything in between. The thief will need to rely on their cunning though as their hit points are determined by a d6 at each level. Their trained weapon list is much smaller than the warrior I looked at last week as one would expect. Choice of armor will of course affect the skills of the thief as well.

The thief can choose one of the three alignments in DCC RPG. This choice will affect how their skills advance as their levels increase in the game.

Thieves’ Cant makes a welcome return in DCC RPG. The cant is spoken only and not written. I always liked thieves cant for those thieves in older editions that were members of a guild.

The thief class also comes with a more extensive list than the “your occupation determines your skills” methodology. We see 13 skills added to the thief class and include many of what I would call traditional thieving skills.  The list includes skills such as Backstab, Hide in Shadows, Pick Lock, Find Trap, and more.

The modifier progression for these skills are determined by alignment. A table outlines how much the modifier increases at each level for each of the three alignments. For example, a chaotic aligned thief has a Backstab skill that increases faster than either a Lawful or Neutral aligned thief. Whereas a lawful aligned thief has a find and disable trap modifier that increase faster than a chaotic aligned thief.

Finally the thief has a different luck mechanic than a typical character class. When a thief burns a point of luck they get to roll a “luck” die for each point of luck expended. The luck die increases as the thief increase in level, so from a d3 to a d4 to a d5 and so on. A thief can expend more than one point of luck to gain additional dice on a roll.

A thief also has the ability to recover luck. Each night the thief is able to recover a point of luck, not to exceed their starting luck score. This allows the thief character to rely on their luck and wits to make those crucial rolls due to the enhanced recovery of expended luck points.

The thief class in DCC RPG fits right in with my view of what a thief is. Surviving on luck and wits, access to thieves cant and a skill list that truly makes them the most skillful character class in the game while supporting traditional thieving roles, the thief in DCC RPG hits all the right notes for me.

The skill list helps boost the thief and make them a more skillful class than other character classes in the game. This skill list also gives the thief the ability to do the things thieves are known for – pick locks, pick pockets, move stealthily, and more.

The modified luck mechanic for the thief gives them the chance to use luck more frequently to boost an attack roll or make sure they succeed at a particularly important skill check. Due to their recovery of luck points they are able to do this just often enough to reinforce the notion of a lucky thief.

The last DCC RPG session I ran had a thief in it. The character seemed to work out pretty well in the party. I think the biggest adjustment for a player coming from 3.x/Pathfinder to DCC RPG is that the backstab skill does not quite equal sneak attack.

Backstab means you have to attacking with the target unaware. Simply flanking someone does not mean you are going to get the backstab bonus. The thief in the game I ran did work himself into positions where he could gain backstab, but after that initial attack, the opponent was obviously aware of him. I do not think this is a bad thing, but it is different from how sneak attack works in 3.x/Pathfinder.

As with the warrior I looked at last week, I think Dungeon Crawl Classics has again found the essence of the Appendix N thief and done a wonderful job emulating it with this ruleset.

What are your thoughts? Does the DCC RPG thief let you play the style of thief you would want? A brute? A skillful individual?

DCC RPG: The Warrior

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I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the character classes in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Each week I am going to choose one of the DCC RPG character classes and take a closer look at it. This week I am going to start with the Warrior class.

Many people new to an RPG system take a look at the fighter class or equivalent of that class to get a feel for the game. The primary melee class of a game can tell you a bit about combat and comparing fighter’s from one system to another can be a little simpler than comparing some of the magic using classes who may have vastly different systems of magic from one RPG system to another.

In DCC RPG the primary melee class carries the name of warrior. The warrior entry in the rulebook only covers three pages including the tables that cover level advancement over the course of the game.

The warrior gets the highest starting hit die of any class, which should come as no surprise. In addition the warrior has the broadest choice of trained weapons at their disposal.

The warrior class also has a higher chance of scoring a critical hit, starting at 19-20 and then increasing that threat range as they advance higher in level. In addition, when a warrior does score a critical hit they get to roll on a critical table that has effects of greater impact.

Additional perks of the warrior class include getting to add their class level to the initiative roll and getting to apply their Luck modifier to one weapon type that is chosen at first level.

The piece that really makes warriors (and dwarves which we will talk about in another post) is the Mighty Deed of Arms feature of the warrior class. But lets back up a step before we get into Mighty Deeds.

A warrior in DCC RPG does not get a static modifier such as a Base Attack Bonus we would see in D&D or Pathfinder. Instead they get an extra dice called a deed die. When a warrior makes an attack roll they roll their action dice (typically a d20) and a deed die, which starts as a d3 and then increases as the warrior increases in level. This deed die determines the warrior’s bonus to hit instead of a static BAB mechanic. This roll also determines extra damage.

I find the deed die mechanic interesting as it shakes things up a bit for the warrior. One attack may find you only getting an additional +1 to hit and damage, while the very next round the warrior might get a +2 or even +3 to hit and damage. It is a small detail, but one that keeps things a little different from one round of combat to the next.

Now, back to the Mighty Deed of Arms. The Mighty Deed of Arms mechanic is what lets a warrior do cool stuff! There are not complex trip attack, disarming rules, or combat maneuvers in DCC RPG. Instead, the player can be creative for their warrior and come up with the action they want to attempt and then use the Might Deed mechanic to determine success.

To succeed at a Mighty Deed the player only needs to roll a 3 or higher on their Mighty Deed roll. If they meet or beat that target number their action succeeds. Want to disarm someone? Declare it your Mighty Deed action and roll away. Want to jump from the balcony down into the theater seats below? Declare it your Mighty Deed action and roll away!

This one simple mechanic gives no one a reason to declare a melee only class boring. You are only limited by your own creativity. Come up with something out of the ordinary and you have the chance to try it with an easy to remember mechanic to determine success. To make it even better you can use a Mighty Deed of Arms every round if you wish.

This is the mechanic that really stands out to me in regards to the warrior class. No more memorizing complex rules or only having a short chart of options to see what your fighter or warrior can do. Now a player is only limited by their imagination as the rules provide the mechanics to resolve these creative actions.

During a DCC RPG session earlier this week that I ran on Google+ one could see Mighty Deeds in action. I was running for a group of 2nd level characters and they had encountered what was essentially a swarm of rats. The warrior in the group wanted to attack one rat and then use a Might Deed to knock that rat into another rat, either in attempt to knock the second rat off course or outright damage it.

As the judge I only had to say go for it and watch what the deed die came up as. The warrior was rolling really well that night and he managed to take more than one rat this way to great success. I felt the mechanic allowed the player to get creative and rules wise still have an easy way to resolve the action.

Overall I really like the warrior class in DCC RPG. It is not hamstrung by a lot of complex rules and keeps the warrior from being limited by some set of tables declaring what special moves they can make. Instead the player is given creative license to have fun with the class and an easy to use mechanic to back it up. The warrior is finally heroic again!

What do you think of the warrior? Have you liked how it has played? How do you think it compares to primary melee classes from other systems?

Playing RPGs Online

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photo by Kurainisei

Gaming has come a long way from the time when I started. Having grown up in a very rural area it was quite difficult finding a reliable group, much less one where we had a convenient location to play. Persistence paid off though and through many of my school years I had a group to play with despite the logistics.

Even today I still live in a rural area. I have a major city within thirty minutes, which helps, but it does mean hosting the game at my house is a rare opportunity. The difference between my youth and today (besides better modes of transportation) is that the opportunities for gaming online option exists.

Here at The Iron Tavern I have covered Play-by-Post gaming through a series of advice posts for a successful PbP game. This is still a great option for those that have scheduling issues. But as we all know, PbP gaming is slow, bordering on tedious. Luckily today we have even more options for online gaming.

Virtual Table Tops

Virtual Table Tops is certainly one of the game changers. Providing the ability for connected users to view a battle mat, move tokens and in many cases resolve combat via a series of clicks. Built in chat, frameworks for enhanced system support are features of many of them making gaming via the Internet much easier.

I’ve toyed with many of the VTTs out there and have played actual games on both TTopRPG and MapTool. Others such as Fantasy Grounds are nice VTTs as well, but I tend towards the free VTTs when possible as I find it lowers the cost of entry. Among the freely available ones I prefer MapTool for several reasons.

photo by benimoto

MapTool works on both Windows systems and Mac systems, which is a tremendous, plus for it. MapTool can be as easy or as complex as you want it. If you want easy, it can act as just a battle mat to move tokens on. Or you can use a framework for the system of your choice and use vision blocking and fog of war for a complete experience.

I have also used TTopRPG in actual gaming situations. It only runs on Windows but is pretty easy to get up and running. The macro system is simple, but easy to get the hang out. The lack of support for the Mac is the biggest thing that keeps me from investing my time into this VTT.

Voice Communications

There are several ways to handle voice chat over the Internet these days. The more popular options include Skype or Ventrilo. There are pros and cons to each. I like Ventrilo because it seems to consume fewer system resources. Skype seems more familiar to people. I have played with both. Despite my preference for Ventrilo, I have probably played more games over Skype.

Wizards of the Coast has a VTT in beta that has voice chat built in. I have heard good things about it, but I have not used it to comment on the quality of its voice chat. While I prefer a modular approach, there could be some advantage to having the voice chat built in to the VTT itself.

Video Communication

Some people prefer video for when they play. I tend towards just audio, though that is largely due to bandwidth constraints on my end than anything else. Skype has a video chat option, but you have to pay to do video conferencing with it.

Enter Google Plus with its Google Hangouts feature. This enables group video chat for up to ten people I believe if your bandwidth will support it.

Other Battlemat options

Some find the VTT option a little overwhelming or they do not want to deal with troubleshooting connections to the person hosting the server.

One that I hear mentioned frequently is Twiddla. Twiddla is a free online whiteboard that does have some interesting features. I played with adding an image to the whiteboard and adding some tokens and it seemed to work well. The advantage to this approach is that people connect to a shared whiteboard instance and do not need to connect to a server running VTT software at someone’s house. It makes for a lightweight solution.

Another option is to share Google Drawing document, which also allows you to place tokens on an image (i.e. of a map) in the Google Drawing document and allow people to move them as representations of their character.

Bringing it Together

As you can see there are a lot of pieces to gaming online. Using the applications mentioned above you can combine them in several different ways. You can go with a full on VTT and Skype with just voice. You can go with a VTT and Google Hangouts with video chat. Or you can go all Google Hangouts and maybe just share a Google Drawing or use Twiddla to meet your needs. There are a lot of choices out there now to meet your online gaming needs.

One other factor that comes to bear on your decision of what tool to use is your game system of choice. If you tend towards the more complex systems that lend themselves to the use of battlemats then a full on VTT might be the best option for you.

If you use a more rules light game where combat is less reliant on a battlemat, then simply using a Google Hangout with only voice or video might serve your need.

In any case, gamers today have much better opportunities to game today than we did just a couple of years ago. You are no longer limited to gaming with people within driving radius of you, but you have the whole world to find gamers to game with!

New Year, New Games

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photo rights to canonsnapper

The folks over at Gnome Stew are hosting a New Year, New Game blog carnival as part of their 2012 New Year, New Game contest. This post is The Iron Tavern’s participation in their blog carnival.

New year, new game. Sometimes groups get in their groove and neglect checking out new games. I am extremely guilty of this. In fact, of the people in my local weekly gaming group, I am likely the one most guilty of not playing a lot of new games. I tend to get pretty focused on a system and not drift too much from that.

I always have good intentions of course. But with what limited gaming time I have, I try not to spread myself too thin or not want to give up a gaming night to another system that I would be learning from scratch. This results in me sticking with my game of choice at the moment.

Now over the course of 2011 I did get to play some games outside of my normal preference of the fantasy genre. The Kingmaker game I am running went on hiatus for a few months and this presented a great time for others in my group to run a few things. So we saw Supernatural run, Call of Cthulhu and a mini-arc Star Wars campaign. Okay, I admit, I’ve played Star Wars before, but the others were new to me. I had a good time playing the different games and I should make a more conscious effort of trying games outside of my norm more often.

Given the routine I get in, let’s look at some of the things that do get me interested in breaking that rut and trying something new.

The biggest thing? One-shots. Tell me the game is a one-shot and I am much more open to trying a game. The risk with a one-shot is minimal, if I don’t like it I only spent one evening on it and still managed to hang out with friends. If I do like it, then we can go from there and maybe work the game into rotation more frequently.

Next up is the excitement from the person proposing the new game and how good they do selling it. Want me to be interested in trying out a different game? Tell me how it is cool, what makes it unique? Do you seem excited when you tell me about it? The pitch for the new game is a big factor in how warm I am to trying it. Sell me on it.

Finally, I like for the person that will be running the game to know the rules pretty well. A lot of questions come up in one-shots. How does this work? I want to do this, what do I need to roll? What skill do I use? Do I want to roll high or low? Quick answers to these questions keep things moving quickly and keep things from getting bogged down during play.

I have been pretty spoiled by our de facto RPG expert in our group. He is very well versed in all things RPG and is an encyclopedia of rules knowledge of a myriad of systems. When he’s pitching a new game system I am much more apt to say yes.

Now that I have covered what gets me most interested in breaking my routine and trying a new game, let’s look at what I most want to try out in 2012. I have three games on that list. Fiasco, The One Ring, and Dragon Age.

Fiasco interests me because I keep hearing great things about it on various social networks. It is also outside my norm from what I understand, yet it still intrigues me. My RPG expert in my group is familiar with it, now I just need to talk him into running it!

The One Ring is a game I have purchased and also have interest in either running or playing a small mini-campaign in. Followers of The Iron Tavern have seen me talk about the game before, but it looks like it does an excellent job of painting a Tolkien world through game mechanics. The combat system also looks interesting too me and quite different than many of the d20 systems I am used to.

And finally, Dragon Age has recently caught my eye. The artwork on the cover of the upcoming 3rd set is very impressive and I downloaded the Quickstart Guide as a result. It looks very promising and might be a viable option for remote play over Google Hangouts or Skype due to less dependence on a battlemat.

In closing, here’s to breaking out of your normal gaming routine to try something a little different in 2012!

Kingmaker: The Exploration Blues

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My gaming group is three sessions back from our Kingmaker hiatus I mentioned in a previous post. We have had a good start back and will be starting in on part five, War of the River Kings, of the six part Adventure Path next session. We came back from hiatus with part four of the AP, Blood for Blood, though we were already halfway through that module when we came back from the hiatus. The fact that it took three sessions to wrap up what was essentially the bulk of the exploring in that installment is the topic of this post!

We have really enjoyed the Kingmaker campaign so far. The sandbox nature of the adventure path, while trickier to GM, allows plenty of room for a GM and players to make the campaign their own. Kingdom building has been quite entertaining and it has been fun to watch the kingdom grow over the many months.

Exploration Blues

The part that I find most difficult as a GM running the adventure path is the monotony of the exploration. Exploration and the quests associated with the exploration was fun for the first two books of the adventure path. It was pretty easy to come up with varied terrain descriptions and travel. The early quests were enjoyable and provided some of the early interaction with the locals before the characters were more of a driving force.

From book three, The Varnhold Vanishing, on though it has felt like a real slowdown to me as the GM. By this point in the Kingmaker campaign I had a harder time making the descriptions of terrain and travel entertaining enough. I tried of course, but after two books worth of travel and exploration of hexes this task began to feel monotonous.

I have also found it harder to get the quests properly introduced without it feeling like a laundry list of tasks. With the kingdom growing and more interactions from the characters with their neighbors the action within the adventure path by book three was steady enough that quest introductions felt shoehorned in.

And finally, it seems that several of the quests are a much better fit for adventurers hired by the rulers of the kingdom, not the rulers themselves. Giving some of the quests out just seems silly sometimes given who the characters are within the scope of the kingdom.

What to do?

Admittedly given the exploration necessity in Kingmaker to grow the kingdom it can be difficult to handle this. The need for exploration in the campaign means we cannot drop it completely from the adventure path.

I felt exploration worked well in the first two installments of the adventure path. As noted above the adventure path was fresh, it was easier to come up with unique terrain, weather and travel descriptions and the quests helped introduce the characters to the locals.

Moving past the first two installments of the adventure path I think the number of quests given should be dropped significantly. The quests that are left should be ones that the rulers of the kingdom would have real motivation to pursue. Additionally tying some of the quests together with a related thread between them could help make them more interesting.

GM prep can certainly help some with the exploration monotony by having terrain descriptions and such at the ready. This becomes a touch burdensome after time though as I can only think of so many ways to describe a grasslands and such. Several of the hexes with encounters do have some terrain description included which helps to a degree.

In my own group I have even suggested that we could bypass some of the exploration and focus on the meat of the campaign more if they wanted to hire some adventurers to take care of the work for them. They voted this idea down, rather unanimously. So maybe I am doing a better job at running the exploration than I give myself credit for!

Take Away

Kingmaker has been a great campaign so far. The group is enjoying it and I have been fun running it. This post has focused on exploration being one of the parts of the Kingmaker adventure path that I have found more difficult to run.

Despite this complaint the adventure path of a whole is a very fun one. It gives the GM plenty of room to work in as well as the players. It takes a bit more work to run because of the sandbox nature, but the rewards are there.

How are other people’s Kingmaker campaigns going? Have you had more success or ease at running the exploration bits than I have?

Kingmaker Returns From Hiatus

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Several weeks ago I mentioned in my Game Scheduling post that my gaming group had been on a hiatus from the Kingmaker Campaign I am running. I had some come up that were going to keep me from being the most reliably person for an extended period of time, especially to be in the position of running the game. It appears our last game was July 7th.

Here we are, in early November ready to bring the campaign back out of Hiatus. Schedules have calmed down a little bit and I think the group is anxious to get back to a longer term campaign again. In this post I plan to look at two things. One, what helped our group stick together during our Kingmaker hiatus and two, how I plan to bring the campaign back from hiatus four months later.

Why Our Group Made It

The primary reason I think our group survived an extended break from our long running campaign is that we’re all friends. Sure we game together and actually met through gaming for several of us. But over the years we’ve become good friends. Gaming is still our primary bond, but we long ago transcended the gamers that hang out together to gamers that are friends. This is certainly a primary reason why our group handled a break from our main campaign for the period of four months. I also think it is why we avoid a lot of the problems seen in other groups as well, but that is another topic for another post!

The other factor that really helped is our group has several people willing to actually run a game. It seems several groups out there only have one person willing to run a game. If that person is unable to run then the group simply does not play. This is certainly not an issue for our group. We have at least one other person who has no issues running a game. Between the two of us we run the majority of our group’s longer running campaigns. So even when the current GM needs a break or something comes up that limits his time, there is usually at least one GM waiting in the wings ready to step up and run for the group.

Further helping our group is that we have at least another two players who are good for running a one-shot or very short campaign arcs on a fairly limited notice. This also goes far to help keep our group gaming even in uncertain times.

For times that there is short notice or perhaps our substitute GM has something come up there is always board game night. People can still meet up at our host’s house and people can play a few board games instead of the normal RPG that was on the schedule.

All of this goes far to help keep our group together even when we have to put a longer term game on hiatus for a few months. It is also a good time to experiment a bit. During the course of this hiatus we were able to play Star Wars, Supernatural, Call of Cthulhu and I even ran the Pathfinder We Be Goblins as a one-shot when a short gap needed filled.

Bringing the Campaign Back

Four months. No serious talk about the campaign during that time and we are actually bringing it back to the table. How to pull this off successfully?

As GM of this campaign I have turned first to our group’s primary tool, our message board forums. When we first formed our group we created a set of message board forums. We use the forums between sessions for planning of the next game, who is picking up food on the way, are we ordering pizza, etc. We also use it for between session recaps, roleplaying and out of character commentary to help know what we are going to be doing the next session.

My first step has been to read back through some of the threads on the boards to get a solid feel for just where we left off. I reviewed the main message board forums and went through the private forums for each character to refresh my mind with what hooks we had working on a character by character basis.

I also took this return to the campaign to ask for feedback from the group to see what they had thought was working well for the campaign so far, what could use some improvement and so on. I believe this will help bring the campaign to a strong conclusion despite the four month hiatus. I received some valuable feedback from this process and helped get the wheels turning again in my own head. It helps focus the energy for campaign prep if you know what the group thinks is working well and what could use some more work.  (If you are curious they primarily want to see more from the politics side of things and a little more depth to some of the NPCs.)

I have also been re-reading the portion of the AP we are in to get my head back in the AP and know where they have been and which important plot points are coming up. This seems an obvious course of action, but certainly not one to be overlooked.

We were at the tail end of the 4th installment of the Kingmaker Adventure Path. It looks like our first session back will be getting back in the swing of things with some exploration, making sure the political pieces are a little more obvious as to what is happening at this point and hopefully some NPC spice sprinkled in or at the very least brought back to the surface again. The group also has some interest on getting a standing army due to some prior events.

Wrapping Up

I am looking forward to assuming the GMs seat once again and getting things rolling. I am lucky to have a great group to game with – both in being patient while I took the time I needed due to outside factors and to have had a group that can fill that gap where I could not GM. I think with some of the preparation noted above we will have a strong start back to the Kingmaker campaign and have a strong finish. I am looking forward to this Thursday!

How about others out there? Have you had a game go on long term hiatus? Were you able to successfully able to bring it back to life? Any tips or techniques you felt made the return to the campaign put on hold especially successful?

We Need Intro Sets

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Earlier this week Robert Schwalb posted his Mythical New Gamer article over on his blog. In the post he expresses his skepticism about the success of introductory or starter sets actually bringing new people into the hobby. With big-box bookstores struggling and those that do exist putting the sets in the sci-fi/fantasy sections they lose some of their visibility or become products for those that already have an interest in starting pen and paper gaming. He then boils it down to three different customers – those that want to switch game systems, are trying to complete their collection and those that want to get someone else in the hobby and using the intro product as a crutch to do so.

The article is a good read and well worth taking a look at. He has several interesting points – some I agree with and others not so much. I suspect this has a lot to do with how I got my start in gaming.

I was one of those that came pretty cold to the hobby back around 1981. When I was a kid I used to sell greeting cards as a bit of fund raiser once a year and like any of these fund raisers, the more you sold the more points you received to cash in on a reward. That particular year the reward catalog had the Moldvay D&D Basic Set as one of the offerings. As a young kid looking to spend some reward points that purple box cover with a green dragon rising up in some subterranean chamber called my name! I applied my points and waited for it to arrive.

A few weeks later it showed up at the house. I opened it up to find some booklets, weird looking dice and a crayon. HHmmm, did someone forget to pack the game board? And what’s this crayon for? Why aren’t these numbers colored in? Time to start reading! It took some time as a kid to make my way through the books, sort of learning the rules as the best I could. It took me longer than I care to admit to realize the cure light wounds spell was not talking about wounds caused by light.

See, I grew up in a very rural area. There weren’t a lot of people my age nearby, there certainly wasn’t an Internet, and the nearest game store was 45 minutes away. There wasn’t anyone to teach me this game or even someone to give me an overview of what a roleplaying game was. In fact it was probably another two or three years before I finally found someone in school that knew about and played D&D and that was only after we hit middle school where the satellite elementary schools were combined into one, the great mixing of the rural kids in our district.

But I stuck with it. I slowly read the rules and gained enough understanding to play with some resemblance of the game as it was supposed to be. Eventually I taught some of it to my younger brother and other times I played solo games. I fully credit the Moldvay D&D Basic Set as my start into these many years of RPG enjoyment.

This set was something that I as a kid picked up with no previous exposure to RPGs. I did not buy it at a boxed store and an evangelist of the game did not give it to me. But it opened the door for me to the world of RPGs.

I think that is why I like the intro and starter sets and believe they are needed to continue growing the gaming hobby. I was excited to see Paizo putting out the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Because I know there are not always game shops close or mentors available to help teach you the game in those early years.

Good introduction sets include everything I need to play the game in one purchase. This is important to someone new to the game who might not even know there are dice other than a 6-sided die much less that they are needed for the game. Anything that lowers the hurdle to the entry to the game is a good thing and another legitimate avenue to bring new people to the game. Introductory sets fill this need.

Getting the intro sets into potential new gamer’s hands can be a tricky issue given our niche hobby. But the answer isn’t to not make introductory sets, it is to figure out how to get them into new gamer’s hands.

D&D and Rules and Skills. Oh My!

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How did we get here?

How the rules affect the game of D&D and the related Pathfinder, have been a popular topic across various gaming blogs and twitter. Throw a dash of the skill resolution system in with these discussions as well and we have quite the melting pot for discussion!

A good amount of this discussion has been sparked by the weekly Legends and Lore column at the Wizards of the Coast site, first by Mike Mearls and more recently by Monte Cook. These columns have been talking about various areas of the rules and their effect on the game. Skills frequently are used as an example in these discussions – from climb checks to perception checks. 

Rules

The most recent Legends and Lore column talked about how the rules can encourage or discourage good game play. Monte goes as far to say that the rules are actually a form of saying “no” to a DM due to the possible restriction they put on the DM. 

I have seen several people shocked by that, but I agree with Monte Cook. That is not to say that the rules are a bad thing, they are certainly needed to provide some form of base expectations when you gather around the table. The realization that rules also restrict by defining this framework is an important one though.  When you make a rule during game design you need to also consider the fact you are limiting what the DM can do in that particular situation by the very nature of defining it. I believe good game design needs to keep this in mind.

For me once the initial ground work rules have been established for a game – combat, skill resolution, abilities, character generation, saving throws or defenses, etc. the rest of the rules should work in more of a guideline fashion. By writing them in the style of a guideline they simply build upon a core mechanic and serve to aide the DM from there on how to set difficulties and such as opposed to defining specific difficulties. Guidelines are more about being an example instead of a definition.

This is best demonstrated by skill resolution systems.

Skills

The difference between rules and guidelines always seems most evident to me in how a game handles skill resolution. The example in the Legends and Lore article also fell back to using skills and the rules surrounding them in demonstrating the various ways rules can be written and the impact on the game they have. 

I am most familiar with the 3.x/Pathfinder skill systems, but I believe these thoughts can apply equally as well to the 4e system. With that said, I am one of those that actually like the skill resolution system brought forth with the 3.x version of D&D. I think that is in a large part though because I treat them as guidelines, not as set in stone DCs. 

I also have no issue adjusting DCs on the fly in relation to other factors. These factors could be environmental or rewards for creative ideas the players come up with to circumvent some obstacle – whether it be figuring out how to climb some north face of a mountain to talking their way past the castle guards.  If the party comes up with something particular creative I will reward it. And if a snow storm is hitting that north face when the party reaches it, that task just became much tougher!

I think my willingness to take the DCs and modifiers written in the rule books and use them as guidelines in this manner as opposed to written in stone is a large factor as to why I find the skill resolution systems in 3.x/Pathfinder/4e very flexible and adaptable to many different situations.

I believe people that do not hold this same fondness of the skill systems find themselves more restricted by following the DCs exactly as written in the rule books. Or feeling uncomfortable applying modifiers as appropriate for various skill checks. Using the guidelines in the rule books as black and white rules is more restricting than simply using them as the guidelines they should be to aid the DM. 

Bringing It All Back Together

Finding the line where the rules of a game establish the framework for the game without undo restriction on the DM is a difficult line to find. I believe it is an important line for game designers to keep in mind for each rule they write.

If one subscribes to the rules can be restrictive line of thought, then great care must be taken in the wording of rules to be sure they are seen as guidelines and not rigid, unmoving statements. Even with the rules as written today we see various interpretations – from my interpretation of the skill system as guidelines to another’s interpretation of the skill section being much more rigid. Conveying to players of the game that the rules are there as an aid, not a restriction is an important consideration for game designers.