Dungeon Delver’s Guide is one of Polygon’s “best TTRPG books of 2023”

December 14th, 2023

You love to hear when people like your work, so I was thrilled to see my Dungeon Delver’s Guide on Polygon’s best-of-the-year list for TTRPG books. I’m particularly proud of DDG because it’s such a personal project: I pitched the idea, assembled the team, and did a heck of a lot of writing for it. In fact, I’ve been developing it and testing it – on this very blog, even – for years.

While we’re talking DDG, let’s mention DDG’s contributors: Brandes Stoddard, Cassandra Macdonald, Mike Myler, Morrigan Robbins, Peter N Martin, Rory Madden, Sarah Madsen, William Fischer, Will Gawned, Anthony Pryor, C. Richard Davies, Jane Hughes, Mike Myler, and Walt Ciechanowski, with additional consulting/editing from Phil Glotfelty and Peter Coffey, and the incomparable William Fischer as lead editor.

If you want to pick up a copy, head over to the enworld store!

We’re in the process of putting most of DDG into Creative Commons, like we have with the rest of the Level Up line. In the coming days I’ll be sharing some pieces from DDG here on my blog as they go up. I’m particularly proud of some of my work in this book and I hope you’ll like it.

Oh, and I should mention – another of Polygon’s Best Books is the excellent Flee, Mortals from MCDM. I’ve got quite a few monsters in that book too! If, during your adventurers, you run into a headless giant that’s intent on replacing its missing head with yours, blame me for that one.

chatGPT vs. D&D game design

October 2nd, 2023

ff04Can ChatGPT generate D&D rules? As D&D freelancer, that question is top of mind these days.

Not “can ChatGPT generate better rules than a good game designer?” I think the answer to that is quite obviously no. But “can ChatGPT generate content good enough that a publisher might think, hmm, paying 0/word is better than paying 5, 10, 15 cents per word?

Let’s see where we stand. I’ve just made a ChatGPT account and I’m going to give it a few prompts to see whether it’s good enough to take my job – or work for me, if I’m inclined to hire it! Fair warning, I’m rooting against ChatGPT, but I will try to be fair here.

Task 1: Translation. I’ll start off with an easy one just to calibrate my expectations. I’ll assign a simple, right-or-wrong task that anyone could do with a little research.

In the 2014 Players Handbook, one of the images has some runic letters on it, and the the letters spell out a supremely disappointing message: in something akin to Elder Futhark the runes spell something like “This is the Photoshop Lorem Ipsum Text.” A huge wasted opportunity for a hidden Easter egg. This could have been a hint about an upcoming product or a little “no x were harmed” joke! Could we use ChatGPT to come up with some more plausible text to jam into this image?

To see if ChatGPT can do this, let’s give it a nice easy question. My prompt:

Transliterate the first sentence of pride and prejudice into elder futhark

Elder Futhark is a runic alphabet with a wikipedia page and lots of information about it on the web, and Pride and Prejudice is a public domain book with a supremely famous first sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This should be an easy one.

chatgpt

ChatGPT’s response:

ᛁᛏ ᛁᛋ ᚫ ᛏᚱᚢᚠᛋᚫᚫ ᚢᚾᛁᚱᛡᛋᛚ᛫ ᚫᚦ ᚫ ᛋᛁᚾᚷᛚᛖ ᛗᚢᛋᛏ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚹᚫᚾᛏ ᚩᚠ ᚫ ᚷᚢᛏ ᚠᛟᚱᚢᚾᛏ, ᛗᚢᛋᛏ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚹᚫᚾᛏ ᛟᚠ ᚫ ᚷᚮᛞ ᚠᚮᚱᚢᚾᛏᛖ, ᛗᚢᛋᛏ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚹᚫᚾᛏ ᚢᚾᛁᚱᛡᛋᛚᛖ.

This translates to

it is a trufsaa unirhsl ath a single must be in want of a gut forunt, must be in want of a g?d f?runte, must be in want unirhsle.

Arrant nonsense! The response is not all Elder Futhark runes, and it’s certainly not all Jane Austen. While it has stretches of being plausible, it gets into a sad loop at the end. Simple transliteration should be an easy task for a computer, so I’m astonished that ChatGPT failed so hard right out of the gate.

Task 2: Monster Creation. I write a lot of D&D monsters, so let’s see how ChatGPT copes with that task.

Prompt: write a D&D stat block for a CR 20 monster suitable for a campaign villain.

Here’s what ChatGPT came up with:

Eldrith the Malevolent
Large Fiend (Demon), Chaotic Evil

Armor Class: 19 (Natural Armor)
Hit Points: 270 (20d12 + 140)
Speed: 40 ft., Fly 60 ft.

STR 24 (+7)
DEX 18 (+4)
CON 24 (+7)
INT 20 (+5)
WIS 20 (+5)
CHA 22 (+6)

Saving Throws: Str +14, Dex +11, Con +14, Int +12, Wis +12, Cha +13
Skills: Arcana +12, Deception +13, Insight +12, Perception +12
Damage Resistances: Cold, Fire, Lightning
Damage Immunities: Poison; Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Weapons
Condition Immunities: Charmed, Frightened, Poisoned
Senses: Truesight 120 ft., Darkvision 120 ft., Passive Perception 22
Languages: Abyssal, Common, Infernal, telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge: 20 (25,000 XP)

Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If Eldrith fails a saving throw, she can choose to succeed instead.

Magic Resistance. Eldrith has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Innate Spellcasting. Eldrith’s spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 21). She can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

At will: detect magic, dispel magic, telekinesis, plane shift
3/day each: feeblemind, imprisonment, teleport

Spellcasting. Eldrith is a 20th-level spellcaster. Her spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 20, +12 to hit with spell attacks). She can cast spells from the sorcerer and warlock spell lists. Eldrith has the following sorcerer and warlock spells prepared:

Cantrips (at will): eldritch blast, mage hand, prestidigitation, minor illusion
1st level (4 slots): eldritch blast, mage armor
2nd level (3 slots): misty step, suggestion
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, dispel magic, fireball
4th level (3 slots): dimension door, greater invisibility
5th level (3 slots): teleport, wall of force
6th level (2 slots): chain lightning, globe of invulnerability
7th level (2 slots): finger of death, plane shift
8th level (1 slot): dominate monster, feeblemind
9th level (1 slot): time stop

Actions

Multiattack. Eldrith can use her Frightful Presence. She then makes three attacks: one with her bite and two with her claws.

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 19 (3d8 + 7) piercing damage plus 14 (4d6) poison damage.

Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (2d6 + 7) slashing damage.

Frightful Presence. Each creature of Eldrith’s choice within 120 feet of her and aware of her must succeed on a DC 21 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature’s saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to Eldrith’s Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.

Legendary Actions

Eldrith can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. Eldrith regains spent legendary actions at the start of her turn.

Attack. Eldrith makes one claw attack.

Spellcasting (Costs 2 Actions). Eldrith casts a spell from her list of prepared spells, using a spell slot as normal.

Teleport. Eldrith magically teleports, along with any equipment she is wearing or carrying, up to 120 feet to an unoccupied space she can see.

Lair Actions

On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), Eldrith takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects; Eldrith can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

Eldrith casts teleport to switch places with another creature within her lair.
Eldrith casts wall of force to create a barrier, dividing the battlefield.

Regional Effects

The region containing Eldrith’s lair is warped by her magic, creating one or more of the following effects:

Eldrith’s presence causes plants to wither and die within 1 mile of her lair.
Creatures within 1 mile of the lair are subject to unsettling dreams and fitful sleep, causing them to suffer from exhaustion.
Non-magical fires within 1 mile of the lair burn with an eerie, green flame.

These effects fade if Eldrith is slain.

Description: Eldrith the Malevolent is a fiendish being of immense power, with command over both sorcery and warlock magic. Her lair is a dark and twisted realm, corrupted by her malevolent presence. Eldrith is a cunning and manipulative adversary, using her vast array of spells and abilities to outsmart and overpower her foes. She is known for her ability to strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest heroes, and her cruel and sadistic nature makes her a formidable foe in any battle.

Roleplaying Notes: Eldrith is a master of deception and manipulation, and she delights in toying with the emotions and minds of those who oppose her. She is relentless in her pursuit of power and is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals. Eldrith is fiercely intelligent and strategic, always thinking several steps ahead of her enemies. She revels in chaos and revels in the suffering of others. Eldrith is a truly malevolent force to be reckoned with, and facing her in battle will be a challenge that only the most skilled and determined adventurers can hope to overcome.

OK, there’s a lot here, both good and bad. On the good side, ChatGPT got the format approximately correct. It realized that a campaign villain should be a legendary monster (on the other hand, since nearly all CR 20+ monsters are legendary, maybe that’s a coincidence based on the way the dataset is weighted?) Hit points and other stats are plausible for CR 20. It seems to have correctly calculated skills and saving throws, which is amazing for a bot that mangled a single line of Pride and Prejudice beyond all recognition. It made a few errors, of course. D12 is the wrong die type for a Large monster, though it got the hit point caculation right otherwise. It has eldritch blast listed as both a cantrip and 1st-level spell; I guess someone named Eldrith really has to lean into eldritch blast. But this is just nitpicking. The real problem with Eldrith is that she’s boring and her mechanics don’t support her story.

Mechanically, Eldrith is a reskin of every 5e dragon ever, which is unfortunate since we’re all sick of stock 5e dragons at this point. Frightful Presence followed by a claw/claw/bite is marginally plausible for a fiend, I guess, but we all know what we’re looking at here, and that’s a dragon without a breath weapon. The spellcasting tucked in the legendary actions is interesting: I don’t mind it, to tell the truth. But I’m not sure it will salvage the boring gameplay of this dragon sans breath weapon. Let’s take a closer look.

What spells will Eldrith cast? Time stop is good but she doesn’t have a lot of buff spells to back it up (mage armor is useless given her natural armor; greater invisibility, wall of force, and globe of invulnerability all use concentration). Dominate monster and suggestion are not great in combat. Plane shift, misty step, dimension door, teleport, her bizarre extra innate teleport, and the teleport legendary action are amazingly redundant (maybe not so amazing considering the results of the Jane Austen task). So what spells will this campaign boss cast? After using feeblemind, chain lightning, and finger of death, Eldreth is maybe best off using her high-level slots to upcast fireball in order to make up for the breath weapon she’s missing. Overall, she’s got a somewhat random assortment of spells, best suited to running away (not a bad skillset for a campaign villain tbh).

How well does Eldreth fare lorewise? Her description is cliche-ridden (cunning and manipulative adversary, cruel and sadistic, master of deception and manipulation, strikes fear, delights in toying with the emotions and minds of those who oppose her, relentless in her pursuit of power, got it, yup, yup.) And the description doesn’t particularly match her mechanics. She has no unique stat block mechanics that let her be cunning and manipulative — or unique stat block mechanics of any other kind. Spell-wise, suggestion and dominate monster are the best matches for her flavor. I’d really like to see more charm, fear, phantasmal force, and modify memory on her spell list. And she desperately needs a signature ability — something, anything, unique, preferably something that matches her manipulative-mastermind lore.

What strikes me about Eldreth is that she is unfinished. She’s a half-baked cake with no icing. ChatGPT did the easy part for us, but left the hardest part – “make it interesting” – undone.

Task 3: Magic Item Enchantment. OK, maybe a 20th level monster was a bit of a stiff challenge. Let’s try something significantly easier: a magic item.

My prompt:

Write a magic item description in the style of the Fifth Edition D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. The magic item should be named “The Rose of Estes” and should provide specific benefits that interact with D&D game rules. Word count: 100-150 words

ChatGPT’s response:

The Rose of Estes

Wondrous Item (Amulet), Legendary (Requires Attunement)

This exquisite amulet holds a crimson rose within a crystalline pendant. Crafted by the enchanter Estes, it embodies the eternal cycle of nature. While attuned, you gain the following:

Blossom’s Vigor: As a reaction when hit, the rose blooms, granting you temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.

Photosynthesis Affinity: When exposed to sunlight, you regain hit points equal to half your level at the start of your turn.

Verdant Resilience: You have advantage on saving throws against poisons, diseases, and effects that cause exhaustion.

Curse: You are compelled to protect plant life. If a plant is harmed within 30 feet, you must make a Wisdom saving throw (DC 15) or take 1d6 psychic damage.

Roleplaying Note: The Rose pulses with the rhythm of nature. Its petals shimmer when danger nears, a testament to Estes’ love for the wild. When worn, it’s as if the amulet breathes in time with the natural world.

Shoot, that’s … not bad. The lore is maybe a bit bland, but I like the curse. It is, however, somewhat OP. Too OP? Temporary hit points AND regeneration every turn is pretty strong. Let’s compare other items. Ring of Regeneration (very rare) grants regeneration of 3 hp per 10 minutes, and the Ioun stone of regeneration (legendary) grants 15 hp per hour. Even the Eye and Hand of Vecna combined — two artifacts — only grant a regeneration factor of 1d10 hp per turn. Meanwhile, the Rose of Estes grants your level HP per turn (probably 15 or more hp considering the item’s rarity), though it’s limited to sunlight situations, which is a significant limitation. I wonder, though, is this a case of the Rose of Estes being OP or of the DMG items being too conservative? When characters are high-level enough to use legendary items, between-battle healing is not exactly hard to come by.

Balance aside, the Rose of Estes description misses on the most important qualification for freelance writing. It’s 160 words — higher than my very clearly-spelled-out word count. Making it… just like every freelance writer turnover ever.

My conclusion: ChatGPT is sometimes astonishing in what it can do. It’s amazing that a bot can intuit and regurgitate game rules! But despite that, it’s just not there yet as a RPG-writing tool. Half the time, it gives you solid but uninspired work. That might be useful in a certain niche, but you can’t trust it because the other half of the time, it spouts nonsense with the appearance of utter confidence. Just as AI art prompts so often produce conventionally attractive folks festooned with extra fingers and other tendrils, ChatGPT’s D&D rules prompts generate a mixture of the banal and the broken.

Right now, ChatGPT is not a finished product but a promise — a promise to democratize art by separating creative workers from their means of production. Inasmuch as I just want to watch the world burn, I’m curious to see where it will go next. As AI improves, we’ll have to figure out a way to live alongside it. After all, you can’t get the genie back in the bottle. All you can do is find a way to survive the genie’s Frightful Presence and claw/claw/bite.

replacing the four classical elements with the five draconic elements

June 22nd, 2023

fireMagic based on the four elements is fairly entrenched in D&D’s monster list and cosmology, in the form of elementals, genies, the planes of existence, and so on. I’ll be honest, though–I never thought it was actually that good a match for D&D.

Elemental magic is fairly shopworn at this point, having appeared everywhere from Avatar: The Last Airbender to Frozen to Pixar’s upcoming Elemental. But based on its age, D&D gets a pass on that. The real problem with D&D’s take on elemental magic is, unlike in shows like Avatar, there is a major coolness disparity between the four elements.

Fire gets an A. Fire elementals have a schtick: they do fire damage, and they set you on fire. The Plane of Fire is the most interesting one, with its ifrits sailing seas of lava and its iconic City of Brass. With swooping red dragons and fireballs, fire is the most photogenic and the most gameable of the elements, partly because fire has its own damage type.

Earth on the other hand… earth elementals are useful if you’re running a siege-based dnd campaign, but you’re not. In 5e their schtick is they do… bludgeoning damage. Dao are the most forgettable genies for me, and as described in official products the Plane of Earth is not thrilling. I’ve mostly seen it come up as a neverending source of gems, which is kind of a meta-use (and for extraplanar gem sources, give me faerie trees laden with gem fruit any day). Visiting the plane is unrewarding: you can’t really travel through a plane filled with dirt and stone. You can make it cool by riddling it with dungeons – in my campaign the Plane of Earth is the mythic underworld – but without the Plane of Earth I’d still have dungeons, so honestly it’s not that much of a value add. The element of earth gets a D.

Water: Water elementals are fairly underwhelming. Like earth elementals they deal bludgeoning damage. On the other hand, marids are among the most gameable of the genies. Their braggadocio is fun. If you play the plane of water like a vast ocean, teeming with marid pirate ships and kraken and so on, it can make for a fun nautical campaign; if on the other hand you make it into an underwater realm, you hit all the problems that make underwater adventures everyone’s second favorite adventure type (out of two): breathing and speaking shenanigans, hard-to-track 3D combat, an over-reliance on athletics checks for swimming, disadvantage on lots of attacks, and either mechanical or logical incompatibility with various cool spells. Underwater adventuring is a spice I find works best sparingly. Still, at least it’s an adventure environment unlike an infinite plane of rock. The element of water gets a B- if the characters can ride giant sea horses, C+ otherwise.

Let’s move on to air. Let’s check out what 5e air elementals do. it looks like they do … drum roll … bludgeoning damage, and sometimes a push. While djinn are the most familiar of the genies, with their three wishes, as 5e monsters they aren’t very memorable (though their whirlwind power is fun). And the plane of air must be the most arid and boring of the material planes. It’s “an open expanse with constant winds of varying strength.” Just lots of empty sky, and elemental birds flying around with not enough perches. Cloud kingdoms are cool, though, and raise the element as a whole from an F to a D.

And to be honest, the analysis above is generous because it doesn’t even touch on spells, where the same pattern appears. If you want to be a fire-based spellcaster, you’re going to have a good time, with lots of cool attack spells. An earthbender has various ways to hide things in dirt, a water elementalist can create and control water, and an aeromancer can use gusts of wind to blow people around. Of these, only fire magic is worth building a character around. I’d much rather play an Elsa-like cold mage or a Thor-like lightning cleric than any of those.

All this is not to say the D&D elemental creatures and planes are badly designed! The designers have done their best with the material, and a good DM can do even more, but the classical planes aren’t doing their share of the lifting.

The big sin of the classical elements is, apart from fire, they’re not easy to design monsters and spells for. And that is a big sin–without varied and fearsome monsters and magic, an element is nothing.

The funny thing, D&D already has traditional, highly photogenic elemental replacements waiting in the wings: the five draconic elements, fire, frost, lightning, poison, and acid. The dragons were designed with cool energy blasts in mind, so we’re starting with a leg up mechanics-wise.

Imagine if we replaced the four classical elemental planes with the five draconic elemental planes.

The realm of flame. Well honestly we can just use the ifrit, the seas of lava, and the City of Brass from the Plane of Fire.

The realm of frost. Now we’re talking! A forest of eternal winter, ruled by an extremely broody winter king or queen who wants to freeze the world; defeated heroes frozen into ice statues; a cosmic home for frost giants; let’s go!

The realm of storms.
A storm-wracked sea. Refugees from the plane of water, like marids, can sail here, piloting their vessels between thunderbolts, living lives writ large on a sea that could snuff them out at any minute. A raging Thor-like being at the center of the storm.

The realm of blight. A post-apocalyptic desert that resembles a cross between Dark Sun and World War I trenches. In this wasteland, twisted yellow trees produce fetid blooms, and a miasma of spores chokes or transforms unwary travelers. Take a jaunt in the blight lands when you want to do some good old-fashioned resource management, since you can only eat or drink what you bring with you.

The realm of corrosion. Ok, this one is kind of a dud… acid is the dumbest damage type. My apologies to black dragons, which I otherwise like. A couple of possibilities: maybe taking a cue from black dragons, it’s a realm of night, where any light burns like acid? Maybe glass-hulled ships sail on an acid sea? Hopefully you can come up with some more inspiring ideas than I can. Eh, four out of five ain’t bad.

As an added bonus of switching to the draconic elements, magic itself becomes more “elemental”. Cryomancers draw power from the realm of frost, and storm clerics from the realm of lightning. Magic items like frost brand and the hammer of thunderbolts can be tied to the planes as well. If you’re so inclined, you can even expand out to the other energy types–the radiant lands are the new realms of the gods, the shadowfell is the necrotic plane, the psychic realm is our new plane of dream, and so on– though tbh I’m fine leaving the elemental planes at the five draconic planes for now.

What’s the cosmic explanation for the draconic planes anyway? Not sure if we need one, but a couple spring to mind. Perhaps each type of dragon emigrated to the material plane from their original inner plane homes. Or perhaps what we call the material plane is just the Venn diagram collision of all five planes and the world is ringed by lava, storms, glaciers, and so on. But my favorite idea is this: the inner planes are what dragons dream of during their long sleeps. While a dragon dreams, its elemental self soars through its home plane. The day the last red dragon dies, the plane of fire will be no more.

New game: Quest For the Crown 20th Anniversary Edition!

March 22nd, 2023

qftcpromoOne afternoon in 2003, as a gag, I made an intentionally bad Flash game, Quest for the Crown. It had an epic intro, long credits, and then hilariously (to me in 2003) short and easy gameplay. You just walked to the crown, which was visible on the opening screen, and picked it up.

There was a problem: there was a bug in the code. When you chose to “play again”, you moved two squares each keypress. The third time you played, you moved three squares, and so on. Soon it became a challenge to get to the crown: you had to bounce off rocks all over the map in order to get to that damn crown. Completely without my intending it, I had made a challenging puzzle game, that a bunch of people liked – those masochistic enough to sit through the three-minute credits after every round.

20 years later: intrigued by RPG in a Box, I decided to see if I could re-implement Quest for the Crown in glorious 3D, using state-of-the-art 16x16x16 voxel graphics. Along the way, I sharpened up the puzzles a bit, since I actually knew I was making a puzzle game this time. Can you beat all 15 levels? (This time you don’t have to listen to the credits between each level, although you’re welcome to do so!)

Instead of a flash game, Quest For the Crown: 20th Anniversary Edition is a native application!
qftc for windows
qftc for mac
qftc for linux

The Hack!

January 27th, 2023

I wrote a new, non-OGL, 30ish page fantasy tabletop RPG:

THE HACK

It’s class-and-level-based roguelike dungeon crawler game, reasonably compatible with other leading brands – and designed to be expanded, extended, and made their own by anyone who wants a free (as in freedom and beer) RPG.

The Hack is inspired by the 1989 open-source gameNethack, and to a lesser extent its predecessors Hack (1984) and Rogue (1980), and is released under CC BY-SA 4.0. It’s got a lot of Nethack DNA. Play as a wizard blowing up ghouls or a rogue backstabbing dragons; identify mysterious potions and learn spells from scrolls. You know, Nethack stuff.

I’ve got the character guide here. If people are interested, I can work up the game-runner-side rules (rules for my beloved procedural dungeons, and a bigger bestiary and magic treasure section)

THE HACK

The issues that need to be fixed with WOTC’s proposed OGL replacements

January 20th, 2023

WOTC offered a proposed draft of their Open Gaming License replacement. They’re supposedly listening to our feedback, so it’s worth talking about what still needs to be fixed to make it usable for third party partners. Read this post and then take the survey.

Short version: a lot needs to be fixed.

They offer basically two options: use a Creative Commons license of a limited set of game mechanics, or else OGL 1.2, which is less permissive and offers more stuff. Let’s examine both options and see if you can use them as a D&D third party creator.

1: The Creative Commons option.

WOTC is proposing putting a chunk of rules material under a Creative Commons license, which means it can’t be revoked. If you chose to use this approach, what could you do?

The CC rules material would be the game’s core mechanics – roll a die and add a modifier – the levelling process, nonmagical equipment, backgrounds, stuff like that. None of D&D’s meat is in this list. No classes, or the class structure needed to create 3pp subclasses. No monsters, so the license doesn’t let you write an adventure and say, with confidence, “this area contains two archmages” or whatever. No magic items, so the license doesnt let you give out a +1 sword. No spells, so you can’t say what spells a mage can cast.

Sure, you might be able to use all the things above through fair use and copyright, and so on. But you could just do that without the license. The license gives you almost nothing you can use to create a 3pp product, except for d&d game rules or mechanisms – and game rules and mechanisms can’t be copyrighted anyway, so they’re giving us stuff we already have! Arguably maybe they’re giving us Inspiration and Alignment, which, quite frankly, I don’t even want. Really CC makes it very difficult to make D&D content. I might be able to use it to make a space game or a superhero game using a d20 system. MCDM or Kobold Press might be able to use it to make a D&D competitor. But as a good-faith would-be WOTC partner, it doesn’t let me do what I need to do.

2. OK, then why can’t I just use the OGL 1.2?

OGL 1.2 (presumably) will have all the monsters, magic items, and so on we’d need. But it has some dealbreakers in it.

Number one with a bullet: it’s not irrevocable. Irrevocability was the poison pill that killed 4th Edition’s GSL license and sent Paizo on to make Pathfinder, and it’s the #1 poison pill in all the proposed 6e replacements to OGL1. If WOTC can revoke the license at any time and leave you with lost investments in an upcoming product, you can’t really run a serious business (or even a hobby business).

Sure, WOTC claims it’s irrevocable! In the accompanying article, it says “OGL 1.2 will provide you a perpetual, irrevocable license” but that’s not what the language of the license says.

As I understand it, an irrevocable license is, simply, a license that can’t be revoked. Now let’s look at the proposed 1.2 license. The language of the license says that it is “irrevocable (meaning that content licensed under this license can never be withdrawn from the license).” They redefine irrevocable here to a lesser meaning. All it means is, if you manage to get the license on your product, they can’t remove the license after the fact. But they’re perfectly capable of revoking the license at any time, preventing it from applying to any FUTURE products. In other words, exactly what they’re trying to do to 1.0 right now. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Besides that, 1.2 has a clause where if they deem your product, or your behavior, are hateful or harmful, they can revoke the license. That’s solely their decision and you waive any recourse. Now I only plan to do squeaky-clean products so I shouldn’t be worried right? Well, if there’s no recourse they could really abuse this. For instance, what does harmful mean? It’s not defined in the contract. Is Paizo harmful because it harms WOTC? It’s fine to have some protections against hate speech, but if so, a third party should do it, not WOTC which may have a vested interest in eliminating certain competition (and has a long, bad history itself with hateful content).

Then finally there’s some anti-competitive language targeted at virtual table-tops, potential D&D Beyond competitors, and stuff, that is not good either, but I can’t speak to with much expertise. Check out what others say on that. I’d say that the license should be able to cover web apps.

Also there was kerfuffle in the previous leaked license about really high royalties. In 1.2, WOTC claims they’ve removed royalties. But the language of the license doesn’t confirm that! For comparison, 1.0 gives you “a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license”. The new one says “This license is perpetual (meaning that it has no set end date), non-exclusive (meaning that we may offer others a license to Our Licensed Content or Our Unlicensed Content under any conditions we choose), and irrevocable (meaning that content licensed under this license can never be withdrawn from the license).” They specifically removed the words “royalty-free”, so technically they could probably claim that they could add royalties at any time without modifying the license. (and even if they couldn’t, who cares – since it’s revocable, they could just end the license at any time, with no notice, and institute a version 1.3).

In other words, OGL 1.2 still has the poison pills that made 1.1 unpalatable. The pills are better hidden, that’s all, and in the accompanying article, WOTC is wrong (or lying) about what the license says.

So here’s your homework:

Give feedback on the proposed 1.2 license, both online and in the survey they eventually put up. Say:

1) In CC, there needs to be, at the least, lists of D&D classes, species, magic items, and spells that third parties can use safely, otherwise good-faith third party D&D creation is nearly impossible
2) The 1.2 license has to be truly irrevocable (remove that parenthetical statement that redefines irrevocable)
3) The 1.2 license should specify that it is royalty-free
4) In 1.2, any hate speech clause should be defined better or administered by an outside group
5) The licenses should be allowed to cover VTTs and web apps, otherwise it’s anticompetitive and monopolistic
and finally
6) the effort to revoke the OGL 1.0 is in bad faith, on shaky legal ground, and also monopolistic. Just don’t do it at all.

Here’s the WOTC survey! Take it right now!

unforced error

January 13th, 2023

I am a D&D fan, as you have probably figured out, so I’m horrified to see WOTC fail so spectacularly in its stewardship of D&D.

In 2000 and 2016, WOTC put out open versions of D&D rules under the Open Gaming license, meaning that there were free, good D&D rulesets available for publishers and players to use. This led to a golden age for D&D and RPGs, both financially and creatively, with WOTC raking in money while smaller creators got to share a kind of roleplaying commons. This year, it looks like WOTC is trying to use legally questionable rules-lawyer tricks to kill the OGL, betraying the companies and creators that trusted them to maintain that commons.

I personally believe that D&D, as a mass creative endeavor, transcends intellectual property in a way that other media properties don’t. Star Wars and Marvel movies – and D&D movies! – are stories told to us, and I’m perfectly happy with them in corporate hands. The game of D&D, on the other hand, is a collection of millions of stories told by players. The Open Gaming License may have had flaws, but it acknowledged the right of D&D players to share their stories and creations.

Whether or not WOTC succeeds in destroying the OGL, they’ve done irreparable harm to themselves as trusted stewards of the game. D&D, however, will be fine.

5e’s bounded accuracy is not bounded enough

October 14th, 2022

5e D&D’s bounded accuracy is supposed to keep attack rolls, DCs, and other numbers in check, allowing monsters to stay relevant longer and decreasing the gap between proficient and non-proficient characters. In a 2012 blog post, WOTC’s Rodney Thompson said this:

Nonspecialized characters can more easily participate in many scenes. While it’s true that increases in accuracy are real and tangible, it also means that characters can achieve a basic level of competence just through how players assign their ability bonuses. Although a character who gains a +6 bonus to checks made to hide might do so with incredible ease, the character with only a naked ability bonus still has a chance to participate. We want to use the system to make it so that specialized characters find tasks increasingly trivial, while other characters can still make attempts without feeling they are wasting their time.

Accuracy, saving throw bonuses, and skill checks are certainly more bounded than previous editions, which generally handed a fighter up to a +20 bonus to attack rolls over 20 levels, plus whatever they got from raised ability scores. Similarly, in previous editions, a character’s best saving throw/defense bonus increases by about 10 or more between levels 1 and 20.

In contrast, 5e’s proficiency bonus only increases by 4 points over 20 levels (or 10 points with expertise) plus a few points from increased ability scores. That seems like a lot less, right? But in my opinion, it’s still not bounded enough, and that’s a major reason that the game falters at high levels.

attack bonuses

In 5e, attack accuracy is not the main problem with increasing proficiency bonus. Every character gets their proficiency bonus added to their attacks. It’s a given. Therefore, a character’s proficiency bonus could really be anything and it can work fine against appropriately-leveled monsters, as long as the monster’s AC is raised to compensate (generally through some arbitrary amount of “natural armor”). When added to attack bonus, proficiency bonus is nothing more than a lever you can use to determine how to treat mismatched opponents. The higher the proficiency bonus scale, the more you’re nerfing low-level monsters. If you want tenth-level characters to be threatened by groups of CR 1/2 goblins, you want the game to use a low proficiency bonus; if you want heroes to cinematically hack their way through dozens of goblins, you want a high bonus. That’s a stylistic choice for your game and it’s not broken either way; it just tells a different story.

Increasing attack bonuses, then, are fine, because they’re across the board. The problem with 5e’s proficiency bonus is that it also increases skills and saving throws. At high levels, these increases make it hard to keep tension in the game.

skills

Skills are generally not as important for character survival as attack rolls, but inasmuch as skills are important, you want them to work. At high level, the gap between a skilled and unskilled character becomes unmanageable. A 17th-level rogue might have a +11 in Stealth without having any particular stealth-based feats, class features, or magic items, and a cleric of the same level might still have a +0 in Stealth. And that’s before Expertise, which brings the rogue to +17! You can’t meaningfully challenge these two characters with the same obstacle.

The issue also causes problems with monster design. Do we want a +17 stealth rogue (with a minumum stealth roll of 27 due to Reliable Talent) to auto-succeed on stealth checks versus nearly every monster? If not, we’re forced to give a high Wisdom plus proficiency (or double proficiency) in Perception to many high-level monsters. Without those hacks, stealth scenes (or rinse-and-repeat rogue sniper tactics) are auto-successes devoid of drama. With boosted Perception scores, sneaking becomes nearly impossible for the group. This is not what we want as DMs. Perhaps more so than nearly any other type of scene, stealth scenes should be tense and suspenseful, with the chance of catastrophic failure in the offing.

How do 5e’s skill increases compare to earlier editions? In 3e, without trying very hard, a level 20 rogue’s Stealth bonus could be 30 points higher than a cleric’s: a 3e rogue’s fumble is far better than a cleric’s crit. In 4e, the a level 30 rogue’s Stealth bonus might be 15 points higher than the cleric’s. Is 5e more bounded than that? For the most part it is, with most skill bonuses topping off around +11 or so. However, a rogue with expertise in Stealth can have a bonus that rivals a 4e rogue’s bonus; with Reliable Talent, they can even approach a 3rd level character’s total. More than anything, Expertise is the problem here, sending skill bonuses out of bounds.

saving throws

Saving throws are similarly harmed by an increasing gap between proficient and nonproficient scores. While you can easily raise monster AC to stay competitive with climbing attack bonuses, you can’t do the same with every saving throw to keep up with PCs’ spell DCs. The Wisdom saving throw is particularly vital. There are so many “I-win” spells with Wisdom saving throws that every high-level monster, in order to be able to stand on its own, needs one or more of the following: a high Wisdom score, a Wisdom saving throw proficiency, spell resistance, or legendary resistance – no matter what the monster’s story is – just to deal with the wizard’s DC 19 polymorph or similar spell. (Such save-or-lose spells are pretty inexpensive for a high-level wizard. A level 17 wizard can toss off a polymorph every turn for 9 turns!)

There are scattered “I-win” spells with non-wisdom saving throws, too, so most high-level monsters are built with tons of save proficiencies, which is kind of a hack. (What do I consider a hack? Any monster stat block feature that is not tied to a story feature. What’s the story behind a purple worm, with 8 Wisdom and no Perception proficiency, having a Wisdom saving throw proficiency? It’s just there to wallpaper over a crack in the math.)

Saving throws are just as unsatisfying when employed by monsters against high-level characters. What’s a fair DC for a devastating monster attack that causes petrification or a similarly significant effect, considering the high-level cleric has a +11 Wisdom save and the rogue has a +0? Any DC that offers the rogue a decent survival chance is nearly an auto-success for the cleric, and a challenge for the cleric is a near-certain failure for the rogue. It really would work better if, as a monster designer or DM, you could set a DC that caused tension for both characters (despite the cleric’s better chance of success).

How does 5e compare to earlier editions in different characters’ gap between saving throw bonuses?

Despite 5e’s bounded accuracy, it’s really no better in this regard than most previous editions. Consider TSR D&D up to 2e. While some classes were better at some saving throws than other, they all improved as they leveled. For instance, in 2nd edition, a 20th level cleric was really good against Death Magic… but the most vulnerable character, the thief, was only 6 points worse. In 3e, this gap went up: a 20th level cleric’s Will save might be 15 to 20 points better than a rogue’s. 4e tightened this up: a cleric’s Will defense might be 10 or so points better than a rogue’s, just as in 5e. In other words, 5e’s bounded accuracy hasn’t tightened up the saving throw , and in fact it’s pretty much on par for most editions.

a high level problem

If you mostly play the game at low and mid-levels (level 10 and below), bounded accuracy problems rarely come up. At level 5, the difference between a rogue and cleric’s Wisdom save, or a wisdom-based skill bonus, might be +0 versus +7. A medium DC of 15 is a non-foregone challenge for both characters.

It’s no coincidence that D&D’s “sweet spot” is up to around level 10. After that, with increasing primary ability bonuses and proficiency bonuses, plus performance-enhancing class features, the gap between the proficiency haves and the have-nots becomes an increasing obstacle to exciting play.

flattening proficiency bonus

What if we kept the game in the sweet spot? Let’s set the proficiency bonus at a good value – say +3 – and never change it. (Am I crazy, or was this the case at some point during the D&D Next playtest?)

Changing proficiency bonus to +3 gives skilled characters a tiny bit of extra power at low level, when they’d normally only have a +2 proficiency bonus. Fine! A +2 bonus is a bit of a small, fiddly bonus anyway for 5e. And a fixed +3 bonus across all levels allows for more focused designs for monsters, traps, and other challenges. A trained, high-level rogue’s Stealth check is reduced to +8 (or +11 if we still let expertise double the proficiency bonus to +6), and a cleric’s spell DC is reduced to 16, which means that even a lowly purple worm can have a small but non-trivial chance to spot the assassin or shrug off the polymorph. In turn, the DC of the purple worm’s Tail Stinger attack can be set so that it threatens both the level 17 fighter (Con DC +8) and the rogue (Con DC +2. No one dumps Constitution, right?)

Of course, monster design would need to be rebalanced around these lower proficiency numbers. High-level monsters could lose about 2 points of natural armor, for instance, and CR 15+ monsters wouldn’t all need four or more save proficiencies. Overall, high-level combat would work better, with fewer design kludges and guaranteed-success or guaranteed-failure rolls.

would this break the game?

Game design is like putting a fitted sheet on a bed. Every time you tug on one corner, another corner is in danger of popping off. If we flatten out proficiency, what are the unintended consequences going to be? Will we break the game?

Well, obviously, at levels 5-8, there will be no consequences (proficiency bonus is already +3). In fact, from levels 1 through 12, there will be minimal consequences (we’re only talking about a +-1 change at most). The change becomes meaningful at around level 13, where we’re dropping proficiency bonus from +5 to +3.

The likely consequence is that groups of low-level monsters become slightly more dangerous to high-level characters. Their attack bonuses and saving throw DCs will be relatively closer to those of their higher-level opponents. Conversely, solo monsters are nerfed, since they don’t get the same boost as hordes of weak monsters.

I think the way to go here is to institute a change D&D badly needs anyway: increase the hit points and damage of high-level monsters. To scale D&D monsters, you have two knobs you can turn: you can increase attack roll/AC, and you can increase damage/hit points. Let’s do more of #2. (This is something I suggested for 4e as well.) In 5e, low-level monsters, like goblins, do too much damage relative to their supposed challenge rating, and high-level monsters deal too little. Instead of increasing linearly, monster damage and hit points can be a tad exponential. High-level characters have so many game-breaking powers that there’s no challenge otherwise. This is a change D&D monsters badly need – let’s just go ahead and make it.

If we boost high-level monster hit points and damage, will there be unanticipated consequences to that change as well? Sure. But given the many problems of high-level play, the risks inherent in making big changes are minimal. High-level play is broken anyway and only works if the DM carefully massages it. My proposed changes won’t fix every problem, but I think they’ll help a lot.

Now is there any chance that proficiency bonus will be flattened in 6e/One D&D, as I advocate for?

No.

6e is clearly tying its wagon to the proficiency-bonus star. Character abilities are becoming more dependent on this number, with nearly every character power being usable a number of times per day equal to the character’s proficiency bonus. The designers clearly envision this number rising as characters gain in level: it’s how nearly every playtest power scales. I’m sure proficiency bonus will remain, as it is now, +2 to +6.

Oh well. Maybe in 7e.

Dungeon Delver’s Guide finale

October 7th, 2022

With the Dungeon Delver’s Guide kickstarter finished at over $200K, I want to talk about the authors’ contributions. I tweeted all this but I want to have it all together on a less hard-to-search platform.

William Fischer designed some of our most devious high-level traps, including the sinister Hourglass Room. He also did the Palace of the Amber Prince dungeon, which was featured in this article: https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeon-delvers-guide-three-page-dungeons.691141/ William is also the book’s lead editor and spot writer. Every passage in the book is the better for having William on duty.

Will Gawned did a bunch of monsters for us, but what I want to highlight is not his excellent monster work but his mycelial heritage, one of the most charming in the book. A small, cautious people, they speak in reedy whispers and sing quiet, beautiful songs. I love these little folks and want to protect them! The mycelial is featured here: https://www.levelup5e.com/news/dungeon-delvers-guide-the-mycelial-and-the-ratling

Cassandra Macdonald has her fingerprints all over the Dungeon Delver’s Guide. She contributed traps, class archetypes, magic items, and monsters, but most of all she designed dungeons. Three of our three-page dungeons–the Rotten Underbelly, the Serpent’s Maw, and the Orden Barrow Mound – are hers. But her grossest–and therefore best–contribution has to be the decomposer druid, an archetype that is all about spreading disease, harvesting energy from corpses, and turning into a swarm of rats or bugs. This archetype will slither, fly, and/or bite its way into your heart.

Rory Madden contributed our fighter archetype, the dungeoneer, and our rogue archetype, the shadow stalker. More than that, as our resident char-op expert, he reviewed all of the player-facing material–classes, spells, equipment, and so on–for balance. Sure, he caught all the game-breaking stuff before it went out in the world to plague Narrators, but he also provided an underrated function that every player should appreciate: he told us when we were being too cautious in our design. Why include a game element unless it’s big and fun? If you play some really wild DDG characters, thank Rory.

Sarah Madsen designed some new-standard dungeon monsters, like the slime mold. One slime mold can become two, and four, and eight when it wants to lay down serious damage to multiple opponents, and merge back to one when it wants to engulf and dissolve its prey. It combines the worst features of a gelatinous cube, black pudding, and mimic into one slimy nightmare. What’s more, it’s smarter than most oozes, and each shares a psychic connection with its siblings.

Peter N Martin is an all-positions player in the DDG–someone I turn to whenever I need some creativity spilled out onto the page. He wrote two high-level dungeons, including one in which the players can get a subterranean submarine! He also contributed a ton of archetypes, traps, magic items, random dungeons, cultures, and monsters. If I had to feature one of his contributions, through, it would have to be the great job he did with the equipment section. So much of the DDG’s amazing equipment – including most of the cultural equipment – came from Peter’s pen. Check out this preview (https://www.levelup5e.com/news/dungeon-delvers-guide-lets-go-shopping) to see his living, squirming abolethic equipment, including the sleepless mask and the parasite launcher.

Mike Myler is a Level Up rock star and I knew I couldn’t do an A5E book without drawing on his design chops and system knowledge. Mike anchored the heritages section, designing the motley, oozefolk, and rockborn heritages, as well doing a bunch of work on cultures and archetypes. If you like customizing your character, you’ll love the motley. Identified by their disparate collection of beastly body parts, motleys have a ton of heritage features to choose from, each with real mechanical weight. Want a prehensile tail? Simian arms? A cheetah’s legs? Claws? Gills? You can (and should) run an all-motley adventuring party in which each character looks, and plays, unlike any other.

Morrigan Robbins is one of the deepest thinkers on DDG – literally. She designed Underland, the creepy, dreamlike cave world deep under the earth. I love how steeped in classic literary fantasy and horror it is and how it differs from other approaches to underground ecosystems. You can read all about Underland here: https://www.levelup5e.com/news/dungeon-delvers-guide-welcome-to-underland

Brandes Stoddard is an excellent and prolific designer I’ve long admired and I jumped at the chance to work with him. He contributed “The Old Number Ten Mine”, a claustrophobic underground adventure that exemplifies the DDG ethos. It’s a survival puzzle set in a collapsing mine. Rather than being a combat meat grinder, the adventure is cleverly designed to allow just as much, or as little, combat as the players desire, and the final challenge isn’t a wicked monster boss but the earth itself.

Lydia Van Hoy had the steep challenge of designing an archetype for a new class, A5E’s Marshal. The Expedition Leader is designed to support and guide a teams of underworld adventurers into the subterranean unknown. As Lydia says, “the best expedition leaders also have experience leading them _out_” (a much rarer skill). The Expedition Leader’s Commanding Presence feature helps allies communicate in code, travel quickly as a team, perform synchronized attack combos, and spot and survive traps (a must-have skill considering the other contents of this book!)

I said I would just mention the designers, but there are a ton of other people who made this book! We used EN writing by Walt Ciechanowski, C. Richard Davies, Mike Myler, and Anthony Pryor. We are deeply grateful for Phil Glotfelty’s tireless consultation on accessibility issues. I also leaned on Peter Coffey, writer and TRPG Talk podcast cohost extraordinaire, as an editor and consultant.

Frank Michienzi, the graphic designer, had to solve a lot of layout challenges to pack this book with all the stuff we wanted to fit on every page. Thanks for consistently coming up with great layout ideas!

The art director Michael McCarthy did a great job zooming in on the look we wanted and marshaling our terrific artists: Erik Davis-Heim who did the amazing cover, Rafael Bejnamin our lead artist, and all the other amazing internal artists: Jacob Blackmon, Dana Braga, Marcel Budde, Mark Bulahao, Mathew Burger, Meshon Cantrill, Jeremy Corff, Ellis Goodson, Scott Harshbarger, Rick Hershey, Jori Hollander, Herman Lau, Yihyoung Li, Rita Marfoldi, Indi Martin, Savage Mojo, Dan Nokes, Alba Palacio, Fabian Parente, Claudio Pozas, Deanna Roberds, Gui Sommer, Julio Rocha, Phil Stone, Egil Thompson, Melissa Tillery, Jen Tracy, Kim Van Deun, Vinicius Werneck, Peter Woods, and Xanditz

We couldn’t make this book without all the work done by Jessica Hancock, the business manager, and Xin Lewis, the publishing administrator–and of course Russ Morrissey the publisher and the mastermind behind A5E!

And finally, my heartfelt thanks to the thousands of kickstarter backers who turned this book into a real, physical thing that will grace gaming tables all over the world. May you delve deep and return to tell the tale!

The gates are open! Kickstart Dungeon Delver’s Guide now!

August 30th, 2022

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It’s happening!

Dungeon Delver’s Guide is now available to Kickstart! If you back it today, you’ll have the PDF in your hands in a month.

I’ve been working and testing Dungeon Delver’s Guide for years and I think it advances the state of the art of D&D dungeons. It lets you prepare a dungeon fast, or even run it on the fly, and still have it feel like you worked on it all week. Plus it’s stuffed with DM/GM goodies like traps, magic items, and monsters, and player goodies like new equipment and stats to play as my beloved ratlings.

Go forth and delve!