I was reading the back of a Lucky Charms cereal box today (as you do) and I learned some things that were SHOCKING. SHOCKING.

Here’s the cereal box in question.

It gives a breakdown of all 8 of Lucky the leprechaun’s marshmallows, and what magical power they give him. I was expecting some wishy washy baloney – this marshmallow gives Lucky the power of friendship! stuff like that – but in fact, nearly all of them are legit magic abilities. In fact, they map onto D&D spells to an astonishing degree, with only a few questions to be cleared up.

And not only that, the cereal box ended with a sinister revelation that nearly made me do a spit take. In my opinion, this box strongly implies, if not states outright, that Lucky is a horrific villain that steals mortal children. I mean, that’s par for course for leprechauns – why does Rumplestiltskin want that baby in the Grimm’s story? – but pretty surprising content on the back of a cereal box. We’ll talk more about Lucky’s secret later on, when we get to the final marshmallow.

Dark revelations aside, the real importance of the box is this: finally, we can stat up Lucky as a D&D character. Mankind’s age-old quest is finally complete!

Lucky’s Level

According to the cereal box, Lucky uses the MAGIC OF THE CHARMS to make his world a more enchanted place! Charms = marshmallows, I guess. There are eight marshmallows: hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, unicorns, rainbows, and red balloons, each with their own powers.

For the most part, each of Lucky’s powers seem to be arcane spells. Lucky could be a wizard or sorcerer, but you can make a strong case for a warlock – fey pact, obviously. And in fact, I have a guess at his level! Lucky knows 8 spells (or more, if the list on the back of the box isn’t exhaustive). According to the Spells Known column of the Warlock table, that would make him at least a 7th level warlock (with access to 4th level spells).

OK, now let’s get to the crux of the issue: what exactly are Lucky’s powers? Let’s take a closer look at that cereal box.

“Hearts let Lucky bring objects to LIFE.” OK, this is obviously animate object. And, right off the bat we learn something new. That’s a fifth level spell – just out of reach for a 7th level caster. Is Lucky level 9, not level 7? That would mean he had at least 10 known spells, two of which weren’t listed on the box. What powers does Lucky have that General Mills doesn’t want you to know about? *

“Stars give Lucky the power to FLY.” That’s obviously the 3rd level spell fly, no questions there.

“Horseshoes help lucky SPEED things up.” That’s haste, another 3rd level spell.

“Clovers bring Lucky GOOD LUCK.” This was maybe the toughest call. What spell brings good luck? It can’t be Lucky (a feat) Luck (a halfling trait) or Stone of Good Luck (an item). After racking my brains, I realized that the luck provided by Clovers doesn’t refer to a spell at all: they’re the Leprechaun 1/day magical ability Gift of Luck. After all, Lucky is not just a warlock, he’s a leprechaun too!

“Blue Moons make Lucky invisible.” Invisibility, next.

“Unicorns bring COLOR to Lucky’s world.” At first glance, this seems like the kind of vague faux-magic I was expecting from Lucky before I realized he was the real deal. Brings color to Lucky’s world? What kind of nonsense is that? But then I thought, maybe this is a euphemistic reference to a combat spell. After all, General Mills can’t say something like “Bone-white fingers allow Lucky to kill you and raise you as an undead!” Even if Lucky had finger of death they’d have to wrap it up in a bow. With that in mind, I think that unicorns either bestow prismatic spray, prismatic wall, or, most likely, Hypnotic Pattern, which uses a “twisting pattern of colors” to incapacitate foes who are trying to steal your Lucky Charms. That’s another 3rd level spell.

“Rainbows give Lucky the power of TELEPORTATION.” Ok, hold on. Teleport is super high level – a 7th-level spell – and it’s not even on the warlock spell list? So Lucky’s teleportation is probably some more limited spell. Dimension door is a warlock spell, and it’s 4th level, easily within Lucky’s grasp even if he’s only level 7. The box COULD go on to say that it gives Lucky “the power of TELEPORTATION to a space within 500 feet” and go on to describe the force damage Lucky takes if he teleports into a solid object. But maybe some misguided editor cut that part out.

The last spell: “Red balloons give Lucky the power to FLOAT.” I think this is levitation – a little redundant when you have fly, but what are you gonna do. The real story here is not that Lucky has a non-optimal spell choice. The real story is that Lucky

     is

          Pennywise

Or at least extremely closely related to Pennywise. The same species? “We all float down here!” says Lucky, as he clutches his red balloon, and leads kids on a fruitless treasure hunt that leads right to his lair. Where do these kids go? I think we all know the answer. All these child-abducting fey – Lucky, Pennywise, Peter Pan, the Pied Piper – are the same. Dressed in a cartoonishly cheerful guise, they lure victims into their neverland marshmallow sewers, never to return – or, like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and IT‘s Losers Club, to return different.

So maybe I’m on the wrong track here statting up Lucky as a character. I should be making him as a villain – a Legendary stat block. Kill him and free the children in his clutches. Your reward will be a pot o’ gold filled with all the marshmallows you can eat.

* To figure out Lucky’s secret spells, we should probably start by looking at a list of retired Lucky Charms marshmallows. There used to be a crystal ball marshmallow (scrying?) and a pot o’ gold marshmallow (Leomund’s Secret Chest perhaps?) Those are very plausible 9th and 10th spells. Interestingly, there also used to be an hourglass marshmallow, which, according to Wikipedia, let Lucky STOP TIME. That can be no other spell than time stop – a 9th level spell. What gives? Why did Lucky have a spell so much more powerful than the ones he has today? Can a fey warlock patron give a spell – and then take it away? Perhaps what Lucky did with time stop went beyond the pale even for an amoral archfey patron. Once possessing powers rivaling or exceeding those of the mightiest mortal archfey, Lucky is now stripped of most of his powers, haunting the Feywild as a grim reminder of the fate of those whose ambition exceeds their grasp.

I finally got my hands on a 2024 Players Handbook and, right after checking whether they nerfed fireball (nope), I flipped to the back to Appendix B: Creature Stat Blocks to give the monsters a quick look. Which way is monster design going? Will I need to make a new monster manual on a business card?

The 2024 Players Handbook includes a few dozen monsters, mostly low-level beasts. In fact, every monster, except the CR 4 elephant, is between CR 0 and 1. So there’s really insufficient data to make any extrapolations at all outside that very limited scope. But that shouldn’t stop us from jumping to wild conclusions!

low-level monsters

First of all, let me talk about the previous 2014 Monster Manual monsters. Based on my previous arithmetic I’ve described in other posts, monsters are designed so that (given the monster-design parameters described in the 2014 Dungeon Masters Guide: assume all attacks hit, area attacks hit 2 creatures, etc) an average monster’s damage per round is roughly 1/3 its hit points, and damage per round rises about 5 points per point of Challenge Rating.

Given that 2024 5e characters look more powerful than ever, and given that there was already a perception that 2014 monsters were a bit too feeble, we’d expect to see monsters get stronger to keep up. In fact, the developers have indicated that they’d be buffing monsters. Does the new 2024 PH monster data bear this out?

Well, there is one problem with the data that prevents really meaningful analysis. Two, actually. One is that, as mentioned, the new data really only covers up to Challenge Rating 1: monsters suitable for level 1 and 2 characters. At that level, 2014 monsters are NOT too feeble. In fact, level 1 is usually considered the most swingy and dangerous level: it’s really higher-level monsters that need the buff.

The other problem is that the 2024 data mostly consists of beasts (bears, alligators, apes, wolves, etc). In 2014 D&D, low-level beasts are even more overpowered than other low-level monsters. Consider, for example, the 2014 war horse: at CR 1/2 and 19 hit points, it can deal 11 damage with its hoof, and then hit you with another 11 damage as a bonus action if it knocks you prone. A CR 1/4 elk with 13 hit points can charge you for 13 damage. These guys are not even CR 1, and can deal damage equal to their hit points, and can one-shot most level 1 characters or kill them outright on a crit. That’s a far cry from higher-level non-beast monsters, which generally settle down to do damage equal to 1/3 their hit points maximum each round.

So how does the 2024 PH handle low-level monsters, especially beasts?

It leaves AC and hit point totals pretty much alone, fiddling with them here and there but not making big changes. When it comes to damage, it actually reduces low-level beast damage by a few points on average. For instance, the warhorse’s damage is reduced to 14 damage on a charge, and the elk’s to 9. The rough edges have been filed off. Overall, low-level beasts now deal DPR equal to about half their hit points. In my opinion, this is a much-needed nerf, even in a world where every player gets free feats. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us much about life outside level 1.

high-level monsters

For higher-level monsters, the only data points we have are the elephant (CR 4) and the green dragon preview on enworld (CR 22). For monster benchmarking purposes, this data is almost worthless, because a) it’s just 2 data points! and b) dragons, like beasts, are among the most overpowered monsters in the game, regularly clocking in with much higher statistics than their Challenge Rating cohorts. 

Nevertheless, we can glean a bit from comparing these two monsters against their 2014 versions. The elephant, while keeping the same AC (12) and HP (76), now deals more damage. If we assume an elephant gets in one trample in 3 rounds of combat, the 2014 version can deal about 25 damage while the 2024 version does 36. Anything interesting about those numbers? Its DPR used to be almost exactly 1/3 its hit point total, and now it’s been raised to exactly half of its hit point total.

Turning to the 2024 ancient green dragon (CR 22), we see that its AC is the same as the 2014 version and its HP is boosted a tad, from 385 to 402. (That’s about the same hit point total as the CR 26 demon prince Orcus.) The dragon’s damage routine has been completely redesigned, and for a complex monster like this there are a million ways to play it, but for apples-to-apples we’ll just try to maximize straight damage here. The two dragons have the exact same breath weapon, but on a non-breath weapon round the 2014 green dragon can drop 124 damage (a bite, two claws, and three tails), and the 2024 version can deal 162 damage (six Rends). Factoring in the breath weapon once every 3 turns, those DPRs rise to 150 and 186  respectively (again, assuming the breath weapons hit 2 targets who fail their saves).

For what it’s worth, the green dragon’s damage output remains very high, at closer to 1/2 its hit points than 1/3 its hit points.

crystal ball time

So what’s my prediction for 2024 D&D monster power? Will monsters get a boost or not?

With the tiny amount of data we have, it would be irresponsible to speculate. So here’s my speculation: 

Monsters will be designed with approximately the same formulae. However, their damage will get a boost. My prediction is that, on average, a monster’s damage per round will be about 1/2 its hit points, maybe a touch less. 

Of course, this prediction could be totally wrong! With only two high-level monsters to look at, it could be that the elephant and the dragon (a beast and a dragon type – OP types in 2014) are OP in 2024 and we won’t really see a different monster design at all. Time will tell. Can we skip the boring ol’ players handbook and DMG and get right to the monster manual please?

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.

Can 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’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.

Magic 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.

One 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

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

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!

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.