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try an easy rpg: d4 basic

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

I’m a big fan of easy D&D, which means, for me, two things: “easy for the dm to prep” and “easy to explain to a first-time player”.

For me, the ideal prep for a game involves brainstorming a few characters and gimmicks. My DM notes generally look like this: “whenever the PCs search a house, they have a 1 in 3 chance of finding the black-handled knife. Whoever owns the house is the witch.” and I never get around to looking up the Night Hag stat block.

I’ve also played a lot of D&D with first-time players, and the more rules they need to learn before they start playing, the more ashamed I feel for wasting their time. I think the ideal situation for a new player is to choose between a few pregens of recognizable archetypes, each of which has a couple of cool, simple attacks.

Experienced players should have lots of customization options, but experienced players can look after their damn selves.

I’ve been trying a playtest version of Jason Hurst’s d4 Basic game. It’s sort of a D&D-style RPG/board game which takes the “easiest” elements from each. From the RPG corner, it keeps the idea of the game master who makes judgment calls and referees actions outside the rules. From the Descent-style board game corner, it uses pregen characters and scenarios, clockwise play, and win conditions. The result is a rpg manual that’s about 7 pages long: and actually, when you subtract art, table of contents, and the usual “what is an RPG and “what are dice” sections, it’s probably 3 or 4 pages of rules. There’s more text in the scenarios, treasure cards, and so on, but it’s still probably 1/4 of the length of the Descent rules and a tiny fraction of the length of any D&D edition. You could play it with zero prep, and you could probably have a RPG n00b run the thing.

D4 Basic is in open beta right now.

Posted in game design, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 7 Comments »

new category of magic item: magical map

Monday, April 16th, 2012

At the foot of the little rise there was a map of the world, carte du monde, mappamondo, karte der welt, with the countries marked on it in brilliant colors. I knew that if I wanted to go anywhere, from Angola to Paphlagonia, all I had to do was put my foot on the spot.

This quote from Sign of the Labrys got me thinking about how few magical maps there are in D&D. (Between proofing my Random Dungeon poster and working on my stretch-goal board game rules, I’m in a mappy place right now anyway.)

Maps are very important to the play of OD&D. Graph-paper maps are the primary archaeological product of an old-school D&D game, along with empty Mountain Dew bottles. Furthermore, in-game maps (treasure maps) are a big part of OD&D treasure. Nevertheless, there are virtually no magical maps. There might be one or two in splatbooks, but I don’t think any core Dungeon Master’s Guide has ever featured a magical map. (The 1e DMG, on the other hand, has four different magical periapts.)

Contrast this with computer games. A magical map is one of the ubiquitous items in computer RPGS: so common that it’s part of the user interface. Nearly every game comes with an auto-map. I’m splitting hairs here a little: I know that, within the fiction of the game, most auto-maps represent the cartographic efforts of the main character. Still, if you’ve played old games like The Bard’s Tale where you did your own mapping on graph paper, auto-maps feel pretty darn magical.

Here are some magical maps for D&D. They join a proud tradition of D&D’s brilliant “you now have permission to ignore the rules” magic items. They don’t really give the players new powers: they enable a free-and-easy play style that some prefer. Don’t like encumbrance? Have a Bag of Holding! Don’t like tracking light sources? Everburning torch!

Along with each magic map are notes about what play style it might support.

AUTOMAP PAPER

Automap paper looks like ordinary paper until a drop of ink is applied to it. The ink will crawl of its own accord, drawing a small overhead map view of the PC’s current location. If the PCs are inside a structure, the picture will be scaled so that the entire floor of the building could be drawn on one sheet of paper. If the PCs are outside, it will be scaled so that the entire island or continent can be drawn. Detail level will be appropriate to the scale.

Once the map has been started, it will automatically update itself whenever it’s in a new location. It can’t map while it’s inside a container: it needs to be held in a hand or otherwise out in the open.

Players can draw annotations on the map if they like.

Using automap paper in a game: Start a campaign for a new-school D&D group (3e or 4e) and make them map the dungeons. If they haven’t done so before, every group should map a few dungeons. However, not every campaign is dungeon-crawl focused, and so, once the players have run the gauntlet a few times, let them find a sheaf of, say, 50 sheets of automap paper. From then on, let the players peek at your DM map if they ever get lost. This strategy goes with the general progression of level-based games: start with lots of restrictions, and slowly lift them.

This item also works well in games where the DM draws out the important locations on a battlemat.

Because every magical item should have a leveled version, here are some improved versions of Automap Paper:

Architect’s Map: This superior version of automap paper is blue, and requires white chalk to activate it instead of ink. It draws a whole dungeon level at once, without requiring you to visit each part, and automatically shows hidden and concealed doors, as well as any trap that was built as part of a building’s original construction.

Using the Architect’s Map in a game: Give the PCs a copy of the DM map. It’s up to them to track their journey and to notice your notations for traps and secret doors. While automap paper can be given freely to PCs, an Architect’s Map might be a limited resource: players might find 1d4 sheets at a time. An architect’s map is especially good when you don’t mind letting the players making informed decisions about where to go.

Living Map: This is the Harry Potter version of the automap. It uses moving dots of ink to represent all living things on the map. A cluster of 10 hobgoblins might look like one large dot, and be indistinguishable from five hobgoblins, or from a dragon.

Using the Living Map in a game: Like the Architect’s Map, this should be an expendable resource. It’s handy in an ordinary dungeon: it’s nice to be able to check the map to see if there’s an ambush behind the door. It’s even more useful for heist, stealth, or chase adventures. It’s a nice magic item for groups that like to outthink obstacles instead of killing everyone in their way: in other words, give it to your Shadowrun group when they’re playing D&D for a change. Keep in mind that a single piece of map paper only graphs one floor. If a creature goes upstairs, it’s off the map.

Travel Map: If a character touches a point on this automap, he or she will instantly travel to that location. Keep in mind that the automap only charts visited places, so a character cannot use it to travel somewhere new. Also, a travel map can only teleport a single player: since the map travels with the player, it can’t be used for party travel.

This map’s special properties are only available if its owner is in the mapped area: in other words, a player can’t use a travel map of a dungeon to teleport into the dungeon. He or she may only teleport from one point in the dungeon to another.

This map is especially useful as an outdoor map: travel between cities is usually more time-consuming and difficult than travel between different rooms in a dungeon.

Using a travel map in a game: A single piece of travel map paper, used as a continental map, can expedite the kind of fast-travel used in most computer RPGs. The first time you go somewhere, you have to go there the hard way. Once you’ve been there, you can hand-wave any future travel to or from that location. A single travel map allows a single character to take intra-continental jaunts, allowing for lots of communication and resupply options; more useful fast travel requires enough maps for the whole party. A pack of travel-map paper is a pretty good find for a high-level party which is outgrowing wilderness adventures.

A fun trick: Don’t let the players know that their map is of the “travel map” variety. Watch the players during the game. When someone touches a spot on the map to make a point, tell everyone that that player’s character has disappeared.

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Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, game design, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 15 Comments »

Mass Effect 3 and the plight of the Information Age

Friday, April 13th, 2012
Mass Effect 3

My Shepard was female AND an infiltrator!

MASS EFFECT 3 SPOILERS AHEAD

This article is only kind of about Mass Effect 3:

Why didn’t they like it? My principle theory: The ending was too grim. People felt like they put all this hard work into their character and made all the “right” choices only to end up having to sacrifice Shepard in the end. Essentially, the ending was too sad and there’s a perception that if you can change a bunch of other parts of the story, why shouldn’t you be able to achieve an ideal happy ending?

This got me thinking about how there are certain kinds of computer/video games “choices” that kind of don’t work. Or rather they don’t work for me or, I imagine, most people I know:

  • If a game has a “sad” ending or choice that could be avoided, and I can reload to prevent that sad ending, 90% of the time I will do so. The only time I won’t do so is if neither ending is “correct”; i.e. maybe I have a choice between sacrificing myself or others, for example. Neither choice is obviously correct, so I will go with the one that feels best to me.
  • If a game has a “sad” ending or choice that could be avoided, and I can’t reload BUT I can look up a guide to preventing the sad ending on the internet, I will do so, providing I have warning ahead of time, such as by reading a review or talking to a friend. Or at least I imagine I will; I’ve never really played a game that has those kinds of choices and doesn’t give you the opportunity to reload.

Essentially, when it comes to storytelling in a computer game/video game format, I can’t stand a sad ending or outcome IF I HAVE A CHOICE to change it. Basically, I feel like a failure in those situations. I’m playing a game after all, and I will choose the ending or course of action that feels most like winning to me, reloading or checking the internet if necessary. I use this kind of thought process in most tabletop RPGs too (the exception being some indie rpgs); however, in those cases I do not have the luxury of reloading or checking the internet for the correct course of action.

To return to Mass Effect 3, I think it was okay that the endings were so grim no matter what actions you took. That is the ONLY real way to craft a narrative in a computer/video game if you want the vast majority of players to experience a less than perfect ending.

Why not just offer a perfect happy ending if that’s what everyone wants? Short answer: it’s bad storytelling. Sometimes a story, even one presented through a game that gives you choices to affect the events of the story, works best if it ends on a bittersweet or downright depressing note. For an obvious example, look at the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex; he has already killed his father and married his mother at the beginning of the story, and so there is no way for it to end happily!

I felt like that was the case with Mass Effect 3, which is incredibly dark from the beginning, a desperate struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds; while not Greek tragedy level inevitable, ending the story with the sacrifice of the main character (in all but one of the endings) seems quite appropriate.

So what’s the take-away from all of this? Craft computer games with nuanced endings and consequences! Instead of having an obvious success or failure (you save the peasant’s life or let him die) make the consequences cool and interesting (the peasant dies but he stops the fire from spreading across the village or he lives but many more homes in the village burn down, leaving villagers without homes). If you don’t, then keep in mind that most people will just reload to get the happy ending.

I feel like Mass Effect 3 achieved this with its endings. Even the so called “perfect” ending where Shepard lives has her (I played a female Shepard) destroying all synthetic life in the galaxy! Not exactly a happy ending. Mass Effect 3 also achieved this dynamic with some of the choices you are presented with. For example, since I played with a new character my first time around, I was presented with the choice to to cure the genophage and risk the Krogans being the next big threat when the war dies down or pretend to cure it and curse the Krogans to eventually die off as a species. For me the choice was obvious, but this was a legitimate ethical choice with pros and cons! In contrast, some of the Mass Effect 3 outcomes felt more like rewards or punishments based on your paragon score, which were definitely not as interesting and left me disappointed that I didn’t import my character fully Paragon character from Mass Effect 2 so I could succeed.

Maybe I am not giving people enough credit, and a lot of people play games without reloading often and without checking on the internet for hints when presented with choices that could dramatically alter the flow of the game or result in less than perfect outcomes. In some ways, I kind of wish I played games that way, but I don’t! I’d kind of like to be forced to play a game that way, and in fact, that is one of the things I like about traditional table-top rpgs, that there is someone running the game ensuring that choices have permanent consequences. However, in the world we live in, I think creating computer games that present cool nuanced choices and outcomes without incredibly obvious “right” answers is the way to go.

Posted in game design, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

Random Dungeon kickstarter: Bonus goal #2 and #3

Saturday, March 10th, 2012

Since we’re within a few pledges of Bonus Goal #2, I should announce what it is! Also I’ll announce Bonus Goal #3 ($5000).

Bonus Goal #2: Lots of stickers! I’ve upgraded bonus goal #2 from the previously announced single measly dwarf. If we hit $4000 (which we should today or tomorrow) everyone who pledged at least $22 will get a page of about a dozen stickers interpreting the five heroes from the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Each hero will have a sticker designed by a different artist (or two).

Laura already got back to me with some great interpretations of the elf, and I was so excited that I made a mockup of what the stickers will look like once they’re applied to your stately tiger Trapper Keeper.

Bonus Goal #3: Paul’s DM Notebook!: If we hit $5000, every backer who contributed $22 or more will get a paper and PDF copy of PAUL’S DM NOTEBOOK.

Paul’s DM Notebook will contain all-editions settings, rules, and adventures from my game. It will start with a bonus all-editions playable race, the ratling (a favorite in my campaign) and a city setting: Setine, City of Roses. For every extra $1000 we raise, I’ll add something to the notebook, on top of any other bonus goal rewards we reach.

Here’s what the map of Setine looks like:

Posted in game design, news, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

Playing D&D with Mike Mornard: D&D as a loving pastiche

Friday, March 9th, 2012
This entry is part 8 of 12 in the series D&D with Mike Mornard

During last night’s D&D game, DMed by original Greyhawk player Mike Mornard, we talked about a story I’d recently heard on an old episode of RadioLab, about a composer named Jonathan Cope. Cope wrote a computer program that could analyze the works of a classical composer – their musical intervals, chord progressions, and other patterns – and instantly generate new music in the same style: pastiche Bach, or pastiche Mozart. To my untrained ear, some of the music sounded pretty plausible. One faux-Beethoven piece sounded a lot like an alternate-history version of the Moonlight Sonata. (As Mornard noted when I told him the anecdote, Bach would be especially easy to analyze, since he was consciously playing number games in his music.) Other composers resist the idea of Cope’s computer-generated music, but Cope, I think, was acting on a respectful, loving desire to have more of the music he loved. I think that’s what gaming, fan fiction, and other forms of fandom are all about, at some level: the desire to understand the rules of the world you love, so that, for a little while, you can live there.

During our D&D game, we also talked about something seemingly unrelated: the upcoming John Carter movie. I’ve been a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Martian books since I was a little kid, and I waver between a hesitant optimism and a fear that Hollywood’s Mars won’t live up to twenty-five years of memories. That’s a look into the soul of a pessimistic fan, the kind who just isn’t prepared to be happy.

Mike has a different attitude. “If I can see some Tharks tearing it up, I’ll be happy,” he says. That’s a look into the soul of a happy fan.

The Martian books are very influential on D&D and TSR, Mike reminded me. The original D&D books are rich with Martian references. The wandering monster tables contain references to the following monsters, all natives of Burroughs’ Barsoom: Thark, Thoat, Calot, White Ape, Orluk, Sith, Darseen, Apt, Banth, Red Martian, Black Martian, White Martian, and Yellow Martian.
(more…)

Posted in fluff/inspiration, game design, legacy D&D, other systems, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

playing D&D with Mike Mornard: how did this get in the manual

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
This entry is part 6 of 12 in the series D&D with Mike Mornard

When I last gamed with Mike Mornard, I also him a few miscellaneous questions about OD&D: largely about where various game elements came from. Here are his equally miscellaneous answers:

  • Mike is thanked prominently on the Greyhawk supplement. What were his contributions? Mike and Rob Kuntz were big proponents of variable weapon damage, so that every weapon doesn’t do 1d6 damage. (They weren’t involved, though, in the change in PC hit dice from 1d6). Mike also suggested the acid-spitting giant slug, which is cribbed from a Conan story.
  • When we were splitting our loot, which included a +1 shield and a couple of hundred gold, Mike said, “The process we often used for splitting treasure was this: everyone rolls percentile dice. The highest roller earns first choice of treasure.” This actually reminded me of the Need or Greed loot-rolling system which was reinvented for World of Warcraft.
  • The early books suggest that campaigns might have 50 people in the same world, but they wouldn’t all show up on the same night. Different groups would play on different nights. The cleric at our table was played by Alex of Bad Wrong Fun, who is setting up a similarly ambitious campaign in New York today.
  • Mike had a couple of tactical tips, which reminded me of this fact: OD&D “marching order” suggests that D&D parties march in formation, not the free-wheeling skirmish squads I’m used to from 3e/4e battlemats. OD&D parties march in squares, and it matters what rank you’re in. The second rank of fighters can use spears or other polearms. Handaxes are useful because you can use them in melee, but also throw them if the monsters are threatening a different part of your formation.
  • Also, said Mike, the OD&D thief is not a “rogue”, or lightly-armored damage specialist. As a thief, I was better off staying in the middle of the formation, or lurking in the shadows, and not gallivanting around the battlefield looking for opportunities to backstab. A thief could backstab in a pinch, but it wasn’t his bread and butter.
  • Finally, Mike says he doesn’t know why Gary didn’t record this fact in a book somewhere: when he modified the combat system he got from Dave, he was consciously imitating the battle in the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie. A movie hero never goes down early with a lucky critical, but low-level guys can be dropped with one hit.

    Watch the fight on youtube!

    It strikes me that the designers of 4e recognized this goal and made it explicit with their rules for minions and boss monsters.

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    Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub | 1 Comment »

    rolling for hit points in 4e

    Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

    As you can tell, one of the things I miss in 4e is rolling your attributes. However, I have never missed rolling for hit points.

    Rolling your attributes helps throw some randomness into your character concept, and randomness is usually an aid to creativity.

    Rolling for hit points doesn’t spark creativity. It has the potential to sabotage a character you like, and it’s such an important roll that, for me at least, it encourages cheating as little else in D&D does. It just doesn’t seem fair that my cool paladin leveled up and rolled 1 hit point.

    Here’s a suggestion for those who would like to roll HP in 4e:

    1) Start with your normal 4e HP – or a little less.

    2) Roll a HP die at the beginning of every level. This is a special pool of bonus Wound Points. If you have any Wound Points left from last level, they’re gone – they don’t stack.

    Wound Points can be used instead of HP at any time: typically on an attack where you would go below 0 HP. (But you always have a choice to save your Wound Points, if you don’t mind falling unconscious.)

    Wound points cannot be healed in any way. You only get them when you level.

    This rule lets you “roll hit points” every level. It also solves a common 4e objection that an extended rest cures all injuries. There are some wounds that only time can cure.

    You can also use it to model semi-permanent injuries. If you are ever at 0 Wound Points, you can be considered to have some nagging injury. I’d play this entirely as a flavor thing, but other DMs could hang some random penalty on it if they wanted.

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    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, game design, RPG Hub | 5 Comments »

    playing D&D with Mike Mornard: it’s all about context

    Friday, January 27th, 2012
    This entry is part 4 of 12 in the series D&D with Mike Mornard

    This is Karl Marx, not Mike Mornard. Mike's beard is shorter.

    I played another game of D&D with Gygax and Arneson player Mike Mornard, who, always quotable, said, “Understanding history is all about context. When Karl Marx was writing his first essays, Germany was a feudal state. In some ways, he was closer to the 11th century German peasants than he was to us in 2011.”

    I love D&D, and it’s that love that makes me, a fourth edition player, so delighted to delve into the secrets of OD&D and Dave and Gary’s campaigns. As Mike said, understanding history is all about context. There are so many charming, inexplicable mysteries in D&D, from the baffling stone head in Greyhawk to the puzzle of what the heck hit points represent. I can bring my own context to them, but I think I need to have some understanding of those first games in order to know just what the heck my D&D is about.

    It’s hard to get that context just from reading the original Dungeons and Dragons books. If nine groups learned D&D from the books, they’d end up playing nine different games.

    Mornard told us about an early D&D tournament game – possibly in the first Gen Con in Parkside in 1978? Gary Gygax was DMing nine tournament teams successively through the same module, and whoever got the furthest in the dungeon would win. You’d expect this to take all day, and so Mike was surprised to see Gary, looking shaken, wandering through the hallways at about 2 PM. Mike bought Gary a beer and asked him what had happened – wasn’t he supposed to be DMing right now?

    “It’s over!” replied a stunned Gary Gygax.

    Gary described how the first group had fared. Walking down the first staircase into the dungeon, the first rank of fighters suddenly disappeared through a black wall. There was a quiet whoosh, and a quiet thud. The players conferred, and then they sent the second rank forward, who disappeared too. The rest of the players followed.

    The same thing happened to the next tournament team, and the next. Players filed into the unknown, one after another. And they were all killed. The wall was an illusion, and behind it was a pit. Eight out of the nine groups had thrown themselves like lemmings over a cliff; only one group had thought to tap around with a ten foot pole. That group passed the first obstacle, so they won the tournament.

    Gary and his players couldn’t believe that the tournament players had been so incautious. But, to be fair, none of those tournament groups had played in Gary Gygax’s game. They had learned the rules of D&D, but they had no experience of the milieu in which the book was written. Of those nine groups that had learned D&D from a book, only one played sufficiently like Gary’s group to survive thirty seconds in his dungeon.

    In OD&D, there’s no guarantee that things are fair. One of Gary’s and Rob Kuntz’s favorite stories, says Mornard, was Clark Ashton Smith’s The Seven Geases, in which (spoilers ahead) the hero survives a horrible death at the hands of seven different monsters only to die meaninglessly slipping from a ledge. That was one of the seminal texts of D&D, said Mornard, and one of the stories it was designed to model. “The story that D&D tells,” said Mike, “is the story of the world. Heroes aren’t invincible.”

    That’s a long way from the Fourth Edition ethos. In 4e, it takes a long time to make a character, and so you’re invested in him before he’s downed his first kobold. If your 4e character is killed, you can be sure he’ll get a chance to put up a good fight first.

    Not in 0e. Characters died all the time. That’s why Gary Gygax’s characters got names like Xagyg the wizard and Yrag the fighter, and other players contributed Melf the Elf, or (if I remember Mike’s anecdote correctly) Bellus of Telefono. It was the sixties and seventies. Life was cheap, and heroes died.

    That’s all scary stuff to hear from your DM right before he runs your thief through a dungeon.

    Next blog post: My thief explores one of the classic D&D dungeons.

    Posted in game design, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

    hybrid roll and pointbuy

    Monday, January 23rd, 2012

    4e expects you to have around an 18 in your best attribute, and a decent secondary attribute. This is very predictably achieved with point buy. 4e is big on not having a single bad roll torpedo your character.

    On the other hand, point buy usually leads to your non-class stats being predictably bad. Every single barbarian has a low Intelligence. That means D&D cannot properly render Conan the Barbarian. In a game like Dungeons and Dragons, that’s just about as big a failure as I can imagine.

    4e point buy generally gives you a 20, a 16, and a bunch of 10s. You know what’s boring? A bunch of 10s. For the most part, non-class stats aren’t very important for power and balance, but they are important for roleplaying variety.

    I really like the 4e Gamma World approach, where your main 2 stats are 18 and 16, and you roll 3d6 down the line for your other stats. Sure, they’ll probably all be pretty close to 10 or 11: but the door is open for the occasional pleasant surprise or hilarious disability.

    So here’s my proposal: it introduces a little power creep, but hey, we’re late in the edition here.

    Interestingly, the following two stat arrays have the same point cost:
    a) 18, 14, 10, 10, 10, 8
    b) 17, 16, 10, 10, 10, 8

    So, to let’s do this for starting characters: take either
    a) 18 in your primary class attribute and 14 in your secondary attribute: roll 3d6 straight down the other attributes; or
    b) 17 in your primary class attribute and 16 in your secondary attribute: roll 3d6 for the rest

    Now you might just end up with a strong, tough, dextrous, canny barbarian like Conan; or you might get a Raistlin wizard with a hilariously weak Constitution. You probably won’t. You’ll probably roll a bunch of 10s and 11s. But here’s hoping.

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    Posted in 4e D&D, game design, RPG Hub | 7 Comments »

    changes for clerics in 5e

    Thursday, January 19th, 2012

    Now that we’re sure about 5e, the dark mutterings from Mearls and Cook’s Design and Development columns seem more fraught with meaning.

    Here are some interesting passages from Mike Mearls’s The Problem of Clerics:

    The party needs healing, only the cleric can provide it, therefore someone must play a character they might otherwise prefer to avoid. The simplest, though perhaps most difficult, solution is to make healing no longer mandatory.

    … Such a change would require a substantial examination of almost every facet of the game. Something like 4E’s second wind starts to point in a direction you could go, but you’d also have to look at monster damage, character attacks and spells, and the structure of a typical adventure. …The key to this change lies in making healing optional, so that players can embrace whatever role or class they like best.

    That’s pretty much the same as what Rodney Thompson said later:

    I don’t think ‘requiring someone to be a healer’ is a sacred cow, but having healers in the game is. I wouldn’t want to see D&D do away with healing, but I don’t think there’s anything keeping us from exploring a version of D&D where players can simply play anything they want, ignoring concepts like role and function when putting together their party. To do so, we would need to take a serious look at the way player resources are allocated in D&D, and make some adjustments to the assumptions behind the design of everything from adventures to encounters to monsters.

    From this, it seems to me that the D&D guys already have an idea for making healing optional, and “something like 4E’s second wind starts to point in a direction you could go.”

    Possible solutions that fit this bill:
    a) everyone gets all the second winds they want: if you want to spend your turn healing, you lose a turn (thus, healing has an opportunity cost). Clerics heal other characters, so they don’t provide extra hit points: they manage the opportunity costs.
    b) D&D finally separates wound points and barely-avoiding-calamity points into two separate pools. Maybe clerics are required to heal wound points, but everyone can recharge their own luck points.

    It’s interesting that both Mike’s and Rodney’s quotes talk about reexamining (and changing) fundamental assumptions about D&D. It sounds like the designers have their hands on a New Idea. That doesn’t sound like the Old Editions Simulator that some of the other 5e PR is promising.

    The other possibility is that the designers are just wrong about having a fix for healing, the way the 4e designers were wrong about solving the five-minute workday.

    Posted in 4e D&D, game design, news, RPG Hub | 17 Comments »

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