Grading the planes: the Great Wheel

February 20th, 2012

My rubric for judging the D&D planes of existence is “If you wandered into it by accident, could you have a good adventure there?” Since the 5e developers say they’re planning to return to the Great Wheel cosmology, let’s see how rich each Great Wheel plane is for adventuring possibilities.

As a 3e player, I never adventured in the planes, so I’ll supplement my memory with the descriptions in the 3.5 Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Ethereal Plane: A “collection of swirling mists and colorful fogs” through which you can see the Material Plane as through a window on the girl’s locker room. It’s primarily used to skip over walls in the dungeon, until the DM rules that every dungeon is in a no-ethereal-travel zone.

The Ethereal Plane is “mostly empty of structures and impediments.” The example location is “Misty Cemetery” and is identical to any misty cemetery. Boy, I can’t figure out why the 4e designers got rid of this. Grade: D

Plane of Shadow: “Landmarks from the Material Plane are recognizable in the Plane of Shadow, but they are twisted, warped things.” Like a Tim Burton movie! There are a lot of possibilities for horror adventures: it can contain the weird and unexplained, and terrifying versions of familiar places and people. here The 4e designers call this plane the Shadowfell, but it’s otherwise identical. Grade: A

The Astral Plane: Unlike the 4e Astral Sea, which is vivid with imagery of silver seas and floating islands, the Astral Plane is “a great, endless sphere of clear silvery sky”. So, a lot like the Plane of Air. Great. Can’t have too many featureless planes.

I guess you can have fun on a featureless plane, but if you do, it’s fun you brought with you.

The DMG’s example site for the Astral Plane is called, I kid you not, “Silver Sky”. So that’s what this plane has going on.

The only thing that saves the Astral Plane from an F is its interesting history featuring the Kabbalah and Madame Blatavsky. Grade: F+

Plane of Air: “The Plane of Air is an empty plane, consisting of sky above and sky below.” I guess you go here if you want to have a lot of encounters with birds. Grade: D

Plane of Earth: “An unwary and unprepared traveler may find himself entombed within this vast solidity of material and have his life crushed into nothingness.” Lots of adventures to be had here! All of the sample encounters are with earth elementals and xorn.

You know, this and the Plane of Air are really pointing up the fact that elements on their own are boring. They’re like eating only one color of m&m, but worse, because when you eat m&m,s you are rarely entombed within their vast solidity and crushed into nothingness. Grade: F

Plane of Fire: This is the elemental plane with the best visuals. However, I can’t see how you can adventure here. Even if you have fire resistance, there’s nothing to do but kill efreet, fire elementals, and salamanders.

The sample location is the City of Brass, which has definite possibilities. The Grand Sultan of All the Efreet rules from the Charcoal Throne! “It is said that within the great palace are wonders beyond belief and treasure beyond counting. But here also is found death for any uninvited guest who seeks to wrest even a single coin or bauble from the treasure rooms of the grand sultan.” Thus warned, shall ye enter? Grade: C

Plane of Water: The Plane of Water is at least traversible, unlike Earth and Fire, but I don’t see what benefit you get out of using it instead of the ocean. The ocean is already vast and deep and unknown, and a lot closer, and most players are still not interested in exploring it.

For maximum fun, I’d have a Plane of Water adventure include a mer-people kingdom beset by a navy of killer intelligent sharks, throw in a Cthulhu or two, and visit the ruined palace of a dead sea god wherein the players might be enslaved by emerald-eyed sirens. Then I’d take that adventure and put it back in the Material Plane ocean. Grade: D+

Quasi elemental planes: These come together at the borders of the elemental planes: like the border between the planes of Water and Earth is the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Mud. Gary Gygax came up with these for an early Dragon Magazine article, and I suspect he put about as much thought into it as I usually put into blog posts. No one has ever adventured in any of them. Grade: F

Negative Energy Plane: You die if you spend too long on the Negative Plane. There are no random encounters because it is “virtually devoid of life”. It seems to exist merely to provide an energy source for negative-energy spells. Grade: F

Positive Energy Plane: This plane “is akin to the Elemental Plane of Air with its wide-open nature.” Ooh, another featureless plane! But this one is different because you die if you spend time there. Like the Negative Energy Plane, it is “virtually devoid of creatures” and only exists to power spells.

The example location is the “Burst Cluster”, where there are occasional explosions. I guess that conveys a sense of place, as in “a place I want to leave.” Grade: F

The Outer Planes: From the Heroic Domains of Ysgard to the Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, the Outer Planes are the realms of the gods and demons, the homes of each alignment. There are 17 of them and they are too boring to tackle individually.

The good-aligned outer planes are generally pastoral and contain nice happy people who have no possible use for adventurers. Grade: D

The neutral-aligned planes are generally boring. The best of them is Limbo, which is mostly a featureless plane but has some areas that are irregular mixes of earth, water, fire, and air. In other words, the best part of Limbo is a lot like the 4e Elemental Chaos, which is among my least favorite 4e planes. My favorite thing about Limbo, though, is that it is an area of “wild magic” where you must make a saving throw or roll on a table for a random hilarious effect. If you must adventure here, this will spice it up. Grade: C

The evil-aligned planes are chock full of demons and devils. You have to have room for this in your cosmology, but the most interesting thing about them, to me, is that they inspired the epic picture “A Paladin In Hell”. Clearly, this paladin just went to hell so that he could kill an endless stream of devils until he was overwhelmed. That’s pretty badass, but that’s the only sort of adventure the evil planes suggest to me: a suicide mission, the object of which is to pile up demon corpses. That and trying to snipe Asmodeus for the XP. Grade: C

Sigil: The ultimate urban adventure location, Sigil connects to all the other planes, but why would you want to go to any of them? They’re all worse than Sigil. Sigil has interesting politics, people to fight, and badass goth NPCs like the Lady of Pain. With its distinct neighborhoods, its commerce, and its superiority to all other travel destinations, it’s a lot like a New Yorker’s idea of New York. Grade: A

Overall Grade of the Great Wheel Planes: D-

Obviously I don’t understand the fun that can be had with the Great Wheel. Someone tell me anecdotes about the great times they had doing planar adventures – besides Sigil, which I agree is awesome.

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strange statues

February 17th, 2012


With Thaniel under one shoulder, he climbed the bloody steps of the massive central tower, remembering when he trod it last, in chains, on his way to fight in the arena, how the gilded balustrades and strange statues had glimmered in Skasloi witchlight. It had been beautiful and terrible.
-Greg Keyes: The Briar King

The phrase that caught me here was “strange statues”. What are some examples of strange statues?

  • a living statue, rooted in place, perhaps with a single purpose (to remind men of the evils of a long-ago emperor) or quirk (chews tobacco and spits).
  • a strange combination of person and animal (for instance, a half-man, half-horse: the left side’s the horse)
  • a combination of person and office furniture
  • a statue of a tall bird-headed man. Occasionally, if you’re alone in the room, it will whisper, “Pss! C’mere!” and when you go over to it, it will pretend not to notice you.
  • a row of 11 busts that each answer your questions. Each talks in a different musical tone, so, by asking them short questions in the proper order, you can play a tune.
  • a statue of the previous emperor: his eyes and mouth are cuckoo clocks.

    I can see how, in the Skasloi witchlight, these statues would be beautiful and terrible indeed!

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    playing D&D with mike mornard: player skill

    February 15th, 2012

    Running from goblins, we barricaded ourselves in a dead-end room. Tavis’s fighter spiked the door closed, and then prepared a surprise for the goblins: holding his torch ready, he poured a flask of oil in front of the door.

    Unfortunately for us, we had already played these tricks on this band of goblins, and they had learned. The next thing we heard was hammering around the perimeter of the door: the goblins were spiking US in. And then we saw more oil trickle into the room from under the doorframe.

    And that’s how we ended up locked and barricaded in a room that was on fire, huddled in the corner and dying of asphyxiation.

    Old-school players talk a lot about player skill. As a new-school player, I’ve never really grasped what they meant. It it tactical skill? A set of procedures for dealing with common dungeon hazards, like tapping floors with ten-foot poles? The ability to read the DM and tell when he was planning something devious? What does it mean to be good at D&D?

    As Mike Mornard DMed us through a brown-book OD&D dungeon crawl, he told us a little about player skill. Apparently, among the original Greyhawk players, Rob Kuntz was good at D&D. He was good enough to adventure solo, not even bringing henchmen, and survive threats that would threaten whole parties of less skilled players. Once Kuntz started going on solo dungeon delves, it became the thing to do, even among other players who didn’t have Kuntz’s player skill.

    Mike told us the story of one of Gary’s lesser players who decided to go adventuring alone. He encountered a room filled with gems. Apparently, he didn’t suspect that Gary was trying anything devious: he ran into the room and started reveling in his treasure. “It’s great!” said Gary (from behind his file cabinet, presumably). “You’re in gems up to your ankles!”

    The player showered himself with gems like Daffy Duck. “I’m independently wealthy!” (As a one-time recipient of a cache of random gems, I can relate to the player’s joy.) “It’s great!” said Gary. “You’re in gems up to your knees!” The player shoveled gems into his pack. “It’s great!” said Gary. “You’re in gems up to your waist!” I’m sure you can see where this story is going. When the player tried to leave, he found out that he was sinking in quicksand covered with three inches of gems.

    So what does a skilled player do when presented with an unfamiliar dungeon situation?

    Earlier in our adventure, before we were trapped in a burning room, we encountered a glowing dagger, floating in the air, blade pointed downwards. I’m new to OD&D. My instinct was that this was similar to all the “trips and tracks” listed in the first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, like altars that might increase your Strength by 1d4 points or make you save vs. poison or die, with no way to determine between them. If it was either a treasure or a “gotcha” trap, I decided that I would take a risk and grab the dagger, fully aware that I might be arbitrarily zapped for my trouble.

    One of the players, wiser than I, probed around the floating dagger with a 10′ pole and met resistance. And then the dagger lurched forward and attacked. As you probably figured out, it was a gelatinous cube.

    We defeated the cube: I think the wizard delivered the killing blow, and we got a +1 dagger for our troubles. I realized that I had played the situation wrong. I know about gelatinous cubes, and I should have expected to find one in an old-school dungeon. The floating dagger was a mystery to which I held the clues, and I assumed that it was a logic-defying crapshoot.

    Lesson two was this: when Mike Mornard is DMing, assume that you’re speaking in character. We entered the dungeon with a lot of hirelings: we had hired a dozen bandits last session, and this session we hired half a dozen heavy footmen. At three people per rank, our expedition filled about twenty feet of 10-foot-wide corridor.

    Our party was so unwieldy that the wizard joked about letting the dangers of the dungeon doing our downsizing for us. The hirelings heard him, and they were not happy. A few bad reaction rolls later, and my bandit followers abandoned us in the dungeon.

    We should have foreseen this, because Mike’s NPCs tended to join into our out-of-character strategy conversations. When we lost a heavy footman, and we were discussing whether it was worth it to get him resurrected, the other heavy footmen weighed in strongly on the “pro” column.

    This isn’t the way I’m used to playing. Our 4e characters must have instantaneous telepathy, because we routinely spend minutes deliberating about each six-second combat round. And we often reach an out-of-character group consensus before we talk in-character to any NPCs.

    Lesson three: sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. I mentioned that we ended up trapped in a burning room, a round or two away from asphyxiation. After we’d failed our attempts to bash through the door, the dwarf’s player decided to charge through the fire and attack the door with his axe. He rolled a critical hit, which, in Mike’s game, means you get to roll two damage dice. The dwarf rolled thirteen points of damage. He burst through the door and scattered the goblins, and soon we were chasing them.

    When the session ended, we put away the snacks and the players headed out towards the subway, discussing what we learned. Don’t taunt the hirelings. Don’t expect to get something for nothing. Keep the offensive: don’t spend a lot of time in deliberation, and don’t wait for the monsters to get organized.

    I’m still not sure what player skill is in OD&D, and I still think it has something to do with battle tactics, trapfinding procedures, and gaming the DM. But I’m also starting to think it has something to do with respecting the gameworld as a world. Monsters learn. Henchmen want riches and safety. PCs can’t communicate telepathically. And if you’re a dwarf fighter, sometimes your best course of action is to hit something with an axe.

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    grading the planes: 4e cosmology

    February 13th, 2012

    Planes of existence are just as good as the adventure opportunities they offer. I’ve always found planar travel pretty boring, but some of the new 4e planes have something to offer. Since the 5e devs are talking about returning to the Great Wheel cosmology, this would be a good time to take a look at the Feywild, Shadowfell, Elemental Chaos, Astral Sea, and Outer Realms.

    Feywild: When you travel in the world of faerie, you should meet truly odd NPCs and encounter fairy-tale magical thinking where everything comes in threes. And you can use this awesome world map! The only problem is that it seems like it requires a superhuman DM to maintain the level of wonder that the Feywild promises. Grade: B+

    shadowfell: If you have an idea for a spooky horror one-shot, might as well put it in a realm in the Shadowfell. That way the PCs can’t just leave if they get too spooked, and you can introduce implausible elements like the Land of Eternal Night and the Country of Graveyards that just don’t fit on your world map. I think the Shadowfell’s main city of Gloomwrought is insufficiently spooky, but that can be ignored. Grade: A

    Elemental Chaos: 4e mixed all the planes together, so in the Elemental Chaos you might adventure on a burning iceberg or climb a lightning volcano. It’s 4x as exciting as the elemental planes of older editions, and it’s STILL too boring to use. It inspires in me ideas for interesting tactical encounters but no adventure hooks to go with them. The bottom of the plane is crawling with demons, so I guess that’s something. Grade: C

    Astral Sea: The realms of the gods are islands floating on a silver sea. In theory, this is a really exciting setting. In fact, I doubt my ability to convey the wonder and awe of the lands of the gods. The gods and their realms are things you should be able to glimpse, and carry that sacred memory to your grave, but in 4e you can move to Hestavar, the Bright City, and become a greengrocer. If describing the realms of the gods sounds too ambitious for you, you can always have nautical adventures fighting Githyanki pirates on the astral seas. This would be better if I didn’t find Githyanki so boring. Grade: C

    Outer Realms: People don’t go to the outer realms: they’re from there. They’re fun as a source of weird otherness and horrific threats. They’re a bit of an exception to my rule: even though there aren’t a lot of obvious great adventuring possibilities on the plane itself, it’s still nice to have it around: the threats from the plane can spark adventures. That’s kind of a cop out, so I’ll give the Outer Realms a B-.

    Overall Grade of 4e Planes: B

    Bonus rating: The natural world. It boasts a huge variety of settings, from tundra to desert to urban pubcrawl to dungeon; there are lots of NPCs; and you can throw in silver seas and lightning volcanoes if you want. Grade: A+.

    And that’s always been my problem with the planes of existence. A world of magic is such a compelling fantasy that it never seems attractive to visit another, less varied world of magic.

    Next time: I’ll grade the planes of the Great Wheel cosmology of earlier editions!

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    intelligent residuum

    February 10th, 2012

    The other planets under Sol’s domination had been visited, or at least probed, and to some extent were being colonized and exploited–but on the whole they had proved disappointing. No life to speak of. No intelligent residuum.
    -Emil Petaja: The Nets of Space (1969)

    To take this phrase out of context, here’s an idea for 4e: INTELLIGENT RESIDUUM. When you melt down an intelligent weapon, you get this stuff. If it’s used to make a new magic item, that item gets the former weapon’s personality.

    In powder form, the residuum still possesses intelligence. It can travel on its own, like a vampire in vapor form, and try to possess people for short periods (either to communicate telepathically or to dominate the possessed creature: it’s a Will attack to possess a creature, and a save ends the possession.) The vapor is immune to melee and ranged attacks, but bursts and blasts automatically kill it.

    The residuum can, over time, exert enough force to pop the cork on an ordinary residuum vial, but any stronger form of containment will trap it.

    What does intelligent residuum want? Well, it depends greatly on personality, but probably to be used in the creation of a powerful item.

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

    February 8th, 2012

    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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    fools rush in (and lose a leg to a bear trap)

    February 6th, 2012

    For me, dungeon traps are an unsolved problem in 4e. I’d like something between a full-fledged 4e skill-challenge trap and the old-school spanking for not tapping every flagstone with a ten-foot pole. I’ve made attempts to solve the problem, but I haven’t been happy with any of them. (My favorite so far is the Mazes and Monsters rule: the Maze Controller cannot spring a trap unless he has announced that it “could be a trap”.)

    The above panels from “Red Nails” in the 1970’s Savage Sword of Conan comic gave me an idea. Conan would TOTALLY have spotted that bear trap if he hadn’t been raging – and running.

    How about this rule: Under normal circumstances, all PCs spot all adjacent traps – no Perception check required.

    PCs only fail to notice traps when they’re running or charging (and maybe also a handful of other distracting conditions: dazed, stunned, or blinded).

    With this rule, traps are most dangerous in combat, and in very specific circumstances like chases: in other words, they add danger to already dangerous scenes, instead of slowing down routine situations. It’s the DM’s job, as the roleplayer of the ancient dungeon architect and the kobold snaremaster, to put traps in places where PCs will be tempted to rush heedlessly.

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    A canticle for leibowitz

    February 3rd, 2012


    And what makes you think the Memorabilia is completely free of pap? Even the gifted and Venerable Boedullus once remarked scornfully that about half of it should be called the Inscrutabilia. Treasured fragments of a dead civilization there were indeed-but how much of it has been reduced to gibberish, embellished with olive leaves and cherubims, by forty generations of us monastic ignoramuses, children of dark centuries, many, entrusted by adults with an incomprehensible message, to be memorized and delivered to other adults.

    The monks in the post-apocalyptic sci fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz are in approximately the same position as scholars in most D&D worlds. They’re inheritors of a fallen civilization they don’t fully understand. Whether your fallen civilization is 20th century Earth or Bael Turath, books from the past age are precious – and, in another way, irrelevant. A single ancient book of pre-cataclysmic magic might do the PCs no good, just as a modern book on electronics wouldn’t do a medieval scholar any good: in this book, too much knowledge is taken for granted.

    A library, on the other hand, is a different thing. When I DM, I tend to put treasures in libraries, because that’s a natural place to find powers from past ages. I tend to be interested in mechanics for performing research, and in powerful wizard spells as treasure (as, indeed, they were in previous editions). I haven’t quite figured out the perfect mechanics yet, but I do want to find a way to make players greedy for ancient spells and secrets. For now, I plan to use my ideas for spells as treasure.

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    rolling for hit points in 4e

    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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    playing D&D with mike mornard: henchmen and hirelings

    January 30th, 2012

    When a spider dropped on my loyal teamster, Pedro, I was on the other side of my mule and too far away to rush to his aid. But, hey, at least the spider hadn’t dropped on me. That seems to be the main reason why people have hirelings and henchmen, and mules for that matter. They provide tasty alternatives for hungry spiders.

    I started this D&D session wealthy. The last time I had played with Mike Mornard, we had found a giant cache of gems, and my thief, Roger de Coverley, had earned enough gold and XP to level up almost to level 3. In this game session, I was joined by all-new level 1 PCs, with 30-180 GP each. Some of them were smart enough to suck up to me. I sprang for new suits of armor for the fighting men played by Andrew and Tavis, each of whom swore fealty to me and wore one of my garters as a favor.

    I also decided that I should get into the spirit of OD&D and get a few NPC hirelings. It ended up costing less than 100 GP to get a level 0 man at arms named Baldric, a teamster named Pedro, and a mule. The mule’s main job was to carry the rest of my wealth (which, at 1/10# per GP, weighed more than 300 pounds).

    I never ordered my man at arms, Baldric, to do much, and he never volunteered to jump into combat. The mule was more useful. I used him several times as a shield, or skulked behind him when I was in danger. Pedro the teamster was in the thick of things. He was the first target of the first spider who attacked us.

    One of the other PCs recognized our dungeon as the sample dungeon from the 1e DMG, which has a few filled-out rooms and a bunch of uncharted areas for the DM to fill in himself. I don’t know if Mike was winging it or if he was using a premade adventure key, but we quickly fought our way through the initial spider attack, survived an ambush by giant camel spiders, avoided the deadly save-or-die yellow mold spores on the grain sacks, and made it into unfamiliar territory. Terrifying unfamiliar territory.

    Tavis at The Mule Abides describes our antics pretty fully, but I’d like to spend some time on my first interaction with henchmen and hirelings.

    First of all, Charm Person is a pretty cool spell, as it unlocks a new sort of pokémon-collecting henchmen acquisition system at level 1. You might not get a castle and followers until level 10 or so, but you can, like Mike’s level 1 magic-user Lessnard in Gygax’s game, pick up a fifth-level fighting man as a bodyguard if he happens to fail his saving throw. In OD&D, Charm Person can be long-lasting or permanent, but Mike emphasized that it didn’t do more than the name implied: it made someone your buddy, not your slave. If you didn’t treat your new friend fairly, they might not be your willing ally forever.
    Read the rest of this entry »

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