Showing posts with label gaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gaming. Show all posts

Sunday, March 24, 2024

R.I.P. Jim Ward


As one gets older, more and more of one’s heroes tend to die.  And even hero-adjacent figures.  And, sometimes, people that you can’t exactly explain why they were important to you, and often you didn’t even realize they were that important to you until after they were gone.  I distinctly remember my father being very upset when Del Shannon died.  Now, you who are reading this very likely have no clue who that is.  I knew who it was, of course: he was the guy that sang that one song.  Not sure if he was a proper one-hit wonder by the strictest definition, but certainly I had never heard but one.  I was a bit taken aback that his death was that impactful to my father: this was not a Beatle, not Elvis, nor even Carl Perkins.  Any of those and I would (and did) understand that my dad probably saw it as a moment that represented the passing of part of his life, part of his culture.  But ... Del Shannon? the “Runaway” guy? really?

But by this point in my life I’ve felt this way many times myself.  I felt this way (and wrote about it) when John Perry Barlow died.  Before he passed away, I’m not sure I could have come up with his name if you’d asked me about him; after he was gone, I understood what an impact he’d had on my life.  And again when Neil Innes died; I remember it felt a bit unreal to think that the guy who wrote (and sang) about brave, brave, brave Sir Robin, who bravely ran away and hid, was just ... done.  It shouldn’t have felt that way, I thought—after all, he was just a guy, a year older than my father, whose songs were already a decade old by the time I heard them ... why should it be surprising that time had moved on and he was now no more? shuffled off his mortal coil? an ex-Python?  And, anyway, he was just the guy who wrote the music for them, and, once again, I probably couldn’t have come up with his name if you’d pressed me ... but it was still significant once he wasn’t around any more.

And now Jim Ward has died.  Who the heck is Jim Ward, you ask?  Another barely noticed influence on me, this time in the D&D world.  Not one of the co-creators of the game: that would be Gary Gygax, who we lost in 2008, and Dave Arneson, who we lost the following year.  But he was one of the first people to meet Gygax and play this new-fangled game that Arneson had conceived of and Gygax had put down (very complicated) rules for.  He played (sometimes) a wizard named Drawmij (read that backwards if you don’t immediately get it), who became a big deal in the D&D world of Greyhawk: he was a member of the Circle of Eight (which included such other luminaries as Bigby, Rary, and Leomund) and bequeathed us enduring legacies, such as the spell Drawmij’s Instant Summons and the magic item Drawmij’s undersea apparatus.  Meanwhile, in the real world, Ward himself became a very early employee of TSR, the company Gygax founded to produce D&D, and co-authored seminal D&D book Deities & Demigods, as well as designing Metamorphosis Alpha, commonly considered to be the first sci-fi TTRPG, and Gamma World, commonly considered to be the first post-apocalyptic TTRPG.  In his later years, he wrote a series of columns for D&D site EN World called “Drawmij’s TSR”; for the most comprehensive view on him, his “who is Jim Ward” post is a great read, though I favor his very amusing takes on corporate mismanagement, such as the story of why I got cardboard chits instead of dice in my first D&D box set.

It’s a weird feeling when someone you didn’t really realize was important dies.  You’re not quite sure how to feel.  It’s mostly sadness, of course, and maybe a little bit of guilt that you didn’t appreciate them more when they were still around. and a little bit of nostalgia over what has been lost, and a little bit of dawning realization of your own mortality.  It’s complicated, although that’s certainly part of what makes us human.  The ability to feel conflicting emotions.  The ability to think to yourself, it’s really a bummer that this person is gone, and at the same time I’m so joyful that they contributed so much.  And, even though it didn’t seem like a lot at the time, and even if it may not seem like that much now, in the grand scheme of all the myriad experiences that make up my life, it was something impactful, something meaningful.  So perhaps mostly gratitude.  That you were touched, in however small a way, by someone who probably felt like they were just doing their job, but really they were making lives better.  And that’s pretty awesome, and worth celebrating.









Sunday, December 3, 2023

We All Need a Little Guidance Sometimes

The D&D community rarely shows concensus about anything.  Give them pretty much any topic and you’re nearly guaranteed to find an equal number of rabid fans both lauding and decrying it.  And yet, there are a few topics that tend to unite D&D gamers, and one of them is that the guidance cantrip is overpowered.

I probably don’t need to tell you, but guidance is a simple little cantrip that grants you or an ally a 1d4 bonus to one ability check within the next minute.  It’s a nifty bonus, for sure, and it’s nearly always going to be useful, but the main thing that the Internet objects to is that, as a cantrip, you can cast it over and over again, without limit.  In general, cantrips are minor spells where it’s okay for someone to cast it over and over.  Sure, a wizard with fire bolt can cause 1d10 of damage every round (or as many times as they can hit their enemy’s AC, at any rate), but then so can any twit with a pike.  A bard with mending can cast it over and over to fix a completely destroyed chain, or clothing which has been ripped to shreds, but since it takes a minute for every casting, it’s often possible that a skilled craftsperson could do the same job in less time.  This guidance though ... the Internet seems pretty convinced that being able to grant this bonus over and over is appalling, if not apocalyptic.

There is quite a lot of discussion out there that supports this claim.  It’s regularly found on lists of the most powerful cantrips: in the middle of the list, mentioned second, listed at #5 out of 10, all the way to #1 of 15 or even #1 of 20.  A Redditor asks “5e Guidance Cantrip is OP?” One EN World poster laments What, +1d4 to every check ever? And the Alexandrian simply says “Guidance is a terrible spell.”

Well, I don’t agree.  I think that what the Internet overlooks (or sometimes deliberately ignores) is that guidance has a number of important limiting factors.  And it further frustrates me that you can quite often see these limits being steamrolled over in popular streaming games, played by professional TTRPG gamers.  And I hate to pick on Critical Role, but it is the OG streaming D&D game, and almost certainly the most popular, and I find it fascinating that Matt Mercer, its very brilliant DM, is sometimes very obviously frustrated by his players’ over-reliance on guidance, and yet he often doesn’t seem to adhere to the simple limitations I outline below.

Now, I’m a firm believer that an article that tells you that a thing isn’t as bad as you think it is isn’t all that likely to be useful: it’s hard to dislodge strong opinions.  So I’d rather you consider this a list of advice, especially if you’re a GM whose players are overly fond of shouting out “Guidance!” at the drop of a wizard’s hat, but even if you’re a player who is starting to feel like you’re breaking the system somehow by casting this useful cantrip at every opportunity.  Remember these limitations, and maybe police yourself so your GM doesn’t have to.


Without further ado then ...

The reasons why guidance isn’t overpowered:

Guidance requires touch

You have to be able to touch the person you want to guide.  How many times have I watched someone on screen call out “Guidance!” when their fellow party member tries to do something, and watched the GM struggle to figure out a reason why it doesn’t apply?  “Um, I’m going to say you can’t use guidance in this case because ... um, you didn’t know they were about to do that, so you didn’t have time to cast it.” So silly.  How about, there are 3 people between you and them, so you just can’t reach them?  How about, you’re holding your spell focus in one hand and your weapon in the other; what are you going to touch them with?  No touch, no guidance ... it’s just that simple.

This is most applicable in combat situations where maneuvering to get to an ally comes with its own risks.  Definitely not applicable if the character is guiding themselves (which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do).

Guidance requires concentration

Absolutely no one seems to remember this.  If the caster is already concentrating on another spell, guidance would instantly end it, and guidance is hardly ever worth that cost.  I’m not saying that you as the GM should use that to engineer a “gotcha” moment: “haha! since you cast guidance, you lose your other spell!!” No, I’m just saying that it’s perfectly reasonable for you to remind your player of the consequences of their actions—perhaps “you know that if you use guidance you’ll drop concentration on your other spell, right? are you sure you want to do that?”

Most applicable in combat, but surprisingly pertinent even out of combat.  “Sure, you can do guidance if you want, but everyone will lose their pass without trace bonus ...”

Also rare, but if the caster throws out guidance in those situations where they’re worried that their party member might need help on an ability check, they’re then concentrating on a spell.  They either can’t cast another concentration spell at that point, or the ally will lose the guidance.

A more commonly encoutered limitation: having to maintain concentration means you can’t cast guidance on multiple allies.  That means that grandiose statements like “a spellcaster with Guidance can make their entire party better at anything they set their mind to” necessarily comes with a pretty big caveat: as long as they only set their minds to things one at a time.

Guidance requires an action

For some reason, it’s very common for people to use guidance on themselves during combat, to give themselves a little juice on whatever cool thing they’re trying to do.  And I have never seen a single GM object to that, despite the fact that it can almost never work.  Trying to use guidance on that Athletics check to escape the monster’s grapple?  Well, too bad: the Athletics check is an action, and the guidance is an action, and you don’t have two actions.  I suppose you could use guidance this turn and apply it to the Athletics check next turn, but do you really want to do that? for a measly 1d4 bonus?  Even when the thing you’re doing is not action, it’s rarely worthwhile to actually use guidance on it.  Let’s say you want to maneuver through the crowded battlefield to get to an enemy, and your GM says you can only do that if you can make a decent Acrobatics check.  Since the Acrobatics is part of your movement, you could use guidance to help out ... but then, when you succeed and get to the enemy, you don’t have an action left to attack or cast another spell.  So you’re probably worse off than if you’d just taken the straight roll.

Guidance requires it to be your turn

This is another thing that I often see GMs letting people get away with in streaming games.  Player A: “Okay, I’m going to spend this round trying to figure out the puzzle.” GM: “Okay, give me an Investigation check.” Player B: “Guidance!” Except: no.  Even if player B is close enough to touch player A (see first bullet), it’s not player B’s turn.  And they can’t cast a spell—not even a dinky cantrip like guidancewhen it’s not their turn, unless the spell is a reaction (which guidance isn’t) and the situation fulfills the requirements of the trigger (e.g. you can’t cast feather fall unless someone is falling).  And there’s isn’t any trigger for guidance, because it isn’t a reaction spell.  So, you know ... no.  You can’t cast guidance on the player doing the Investigation check.  It isn’t your turn.

Guidance requires somatic components

Now, this one doesn’t apply as often, but it definitely is yet another case where I see people getting away with it on streams when the GM really should know better.  The party goes up to talk to a group of suspicious NPCs, and the party’s face starts to spin a tale to keep things from escalating.  Simple enough: the GM calls for a Deception (or Persuasion) check.  Inevitably, someone in the party will yell “Guidance!” Except ... guidance is a spell.  You’re a group of oddly-dressed, dangerous-looking, often only vaguely humanoid people, talking to a bunch of nervous, twitchy folk who are already a bit suspicious of you, and someone in the back starts casting magic?  Yeah, that ain’t gonna go down how you hope.  Again, I’m not recommending you as the GM use this as a “gotcha” moment; just gently remind the guidance-happy caster that there will be consequences if they start breaking out the funky hand gestures and mystic words in the middle of the tense negotiations.

To be fair, this is one I do hear GMs (particularly Matt Mercer) call out on occasion, as well they should.  I just don’t hear it enough.

Guidance requires verbal components

This is a lesser requirement, but the caster does need to be able to speak to cast guidance.  No guiding if you’re gagged, no guiding inside the radius of a silence spell, and I would at least call for another Stealth check if someone tried to cast guidance while they were hiding or otherwise trying to avoid discovery.

Guidance only lasts for a minute

Don’t forget that guidance only lasts for a short time, so any ally you cast it on has to use it or lose it within the next minute.  This doesn’t come up that often, but I have seen players try to cast it on an ally who was about to head off on a scouting mission (to help with their Perception checks), or one about to sneak into an enemy encampment (to help with Stealth).  But that only works if they can achieve the objective in under a minute.  Also consider that if the task takes longer than a minute to complete—say, an Investigation check to search a room, or a Sleight of Hand or Thieves’ Tools check to disarm a trap—the GM is well within their rights to say that the guidance doesn’t last long enough to grant the bonus.

Guidance only benefits ability checks

I mean, it’s pretty clearly laid out in the spell description, and I don’t really notice people trying to use it on attacks or saves, but I do think this is a pretty obvious limitation that should be more thoughtfully considered when people are trying to talk about how “overpowered” guidance is.  Guidance is hardly ever going to turn the tide in combat, and, even outside combat, saving throws are way more imporant than ability checks in terms of influencing game outcomes.

Guidance requires the caster to know about the ability check

This is a subtle one.  But, to take a simple example, I have difficulty imagining any situation where guidance could be used on an Insight check.  How could the caster possibly know that the ally was trying to figure out whether or not someone was lying?  Unless the caster is the one doing the insight-ing, but then you have the problem described under the somatic components bullet: your target is bound to suspicious if you start waving your hands around mystically while you’re talking to them.

At the end of the day, guidance only gives you a d4 bonus

Seriously.  It’s just a d4.  Sure, you can do it for every single ability check because it’s a cantrip—well, every single ability check made by a person you can reach, when it’s your turn and you have an action and you’re not concentrating on anything else and you have at least one hand free and you can talk—but ... so what?  As a GM (or, even worse: as an armchair game designer), why would you get all hot and bothered to an average improvement of 2.5 points on a bunch of ability checks?  Let the characters have this one.  They get so few pleasures in life, and those 2 or 3 points are not going to make your story any less challenging.  Trust me.

And this works in the opposite direction as well.  The Alexandrian, as much as I admire him, is going a bit overboard when he says you’re just making your party worse when you don’t cast it.  It’s just a d4.  Your party will be fine if you forget once or twice, or if your GM points out one of the reasons above and shuts down your last-minute casting.  Use it when appropriate, skip it when inapplicable ... it’s just a fun little bonus, no biggie either way.



And that’s why guidance is not overpowered, and it’s just fine to allow in your games.  Keep your players honest, but let them have fun.  At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about, right?









Sunday, October 22, 2023

Rumble in the Jungle

After a break of a little over a year, we’re finally back to the Family Campaign (which is what I call the D&D campaign that I’ve built around my children’s characters, who happen to be all animal-based).  Why so long?  Well, a big reason was the return of my eldest child and their partner.  You’d think that would make it easier to do a thing called “the Family Campaign,” but not so much, as it turned out.  But another reason was that this was the first really big battle that I’d planned for the campaign.  Now, if you watch actual play games like Dimension 20 or Critical Role, you might recognize that this is very light in terms of combat: D20 typically has a major (as in, episode-long) combat every other episode; CR is usually a bit less often, but not by much.  However, I’m a much more combat-light (and therefore story-heavy) GM.  While I pepper in short combats, done using theater of the mind, I save big set-piece combats utilizing fancy battle maps for special occasions that come along maybe once a level.

So, with the arrival of the party in Maztica (a jungle-dominated continent with cultures influenced by Aztec, Incan, and other Mesoamerican cultures), I figured it was time to pull out all the stops.  You can see the array of enemies I put up (with apologies for my limited Phtoshop skills); there’s a few evil cultists (always fun to battle, with no pesky moral quandaries to worry about) and then a number of creatures taken straight from Legendary Games’ Latin American Monsters, which I purchased specifically for this purpose.  There’s a jaguar in the right foreground, with a werejaguar right behind it, a couple of pumas, and a werecaiman.  That red furry thing with the horns is a timbo; the scary horse-headed woman is a sihuanaba, and the big snake with antlers is a mazacoatl.

And, yes, I built a full map for it.  Here’s some pics we took to mark our place when we had to pause this mega-combat:

As you can see, I had to use a number of proxy figures: my jaguar is here represented by the tiger (and the werejaguar is a weretiger figure), the timbo is the wrong color (but otherwise surprisingly accurate), the werecaiman is really just a lizardfolk, that “wolf” is actually supposed to be a black panther (one of the good guys), etc etc.  But the overall scene—a bar on a beach with a jungle right behind it—is actually pretty accurate for what I had in my mind.  The kids seemed to have a good time with it anyhow.  (Fun fact: the legs you can see in one of the pictures belong to my middle child, who was taking their own pictures of the battle.)

Oh, and you might wonder: what the heck is up with the Bazooka Joe wrapper?  Well, I asked my youngest to find a way to mark that space, and that’s what she came up with.  We had to mark the space because one of the powers of the timbo is called “Gravedigger”: in a single turn, it digs a grave, pushes you into it, and covers you up so you start suffocating.  So that bubble gum wrapper is actually a grave marker, and there’s someone in there buried alive.  So that’s fun.

We’ll pick it up here next week, if we can wait that long.  It’s a tough battle, but I provided a few allies to help them out, and I think they’ll prevail in the end.  I’m anxious to find out how it all comes out!









Sunday, August 13, 2023

Perception, Investigation: a Perpetual Imbroglio

Today I want to talk about the difference between two things that are consistently mixed up in D&D 5e: Perception and Investigation.  This is ostensibly a gaming topic, of interest to people who play (or just watch) TTRPGs such as D&D, but I’m going to make an argument that it’s actually rather fascinating from a linguistic perspective as well.  This is one of those rare topics where I can explore language and give gaming advice all at the same time.

So, first of all, what actually is the problem here?  Simply put, D&D characters have skills—certain things that they’re good at, or not so good at—and, when the character attempts to do something (well, something that isn’t swinging a sword or casting a spell), it’s the GM’s job to decide which skill applies.  Sometimes there can be a bit of back and forth on this: for instance, two of the skills in 5e are Athletics and Acrobatics.  Athletics is based on Strength, and it’s what you use when you want to climb, jump, swim, or grapple.  Acrobatics, on the other hand, is based on Dexterity, and it’s what you use when you want to dodge, tumble, or flip.  You could imagine a scenario where a player says what they want to do and the GM says, “great, give me an Athletics check,” to which the player replies: “ummm, can I use Acrobatics instead?” Obviously, they ask this because they have a higher Dexterity than they do Strength, or they’re proficient in the one but not the other.  You could even imagine a scenario where either skill could be used (say, the user wants to negate damage from falling, and they could either employ their jumping skills or their tumbling skills), and the GM might change their minds.  Sometimes the GM just does this not to be a hardass—after all, we’re playing a game here, not trying to outwit each other or trick each other into rolling poorly—but sometimes the GM can see it either way, or the GM is just persuaded of the player’s point of view.  And that’s fine.

What’s less fine is if the GM doesn’t really know which one is the right answer.  As a GM, one needn’t be perfect, of course, but one should strive to understand the things that come up often.  And, if you watch any streaming D&D games (which is easy to do these days), you may see a scenario like I describe above between Athletics and Acrobatics ... but you will almost certainly see one involving Perception and Investigation.

And here’s the thing: once you have a good grasp on the difference between the two, it’s way less common to find a situation where they really are interchangeable.  I can’t count the number of times where I’ve watched GMs—really really good GMs, even—say, “ah, sure, you can use Perception here,” or even (and I shudder to even type the words) “give me a Perception check or Investigation check: your choice.” Now, I’m more of a yell-at-the-screen sort of critic than a post-snarky-corrections-in-the-comments-section one, so, if I want to publicize my opinion on this issue, this blog is where I do it.

Now, I’m hardly the first person to realize this is a problem.  A cursory Internet search will reveal article after article (after article) telling you how to distinguish between the two.  The problem is, most of them give conflicting advice, so they can’t all possibly be right.  This leads to many (many) instances of people on the Internet asking for help ... for which they receive—you guessed it—conflicting advice.  And the problem is, even if you try to find a common thread from all those, you’re probably going to find the wrong one.

See, the general concensus of the Internet is, since Perception is based on Wisdom while Investigation is based on Intelligence, Investigation should only be used to understand the things that you see (using Perception).  Investigation, this line of reasoning goes, is all about drawing conclusions and deductions based on obersvations.  But there’s a fundamental problem with that: it contradicts the actual rules.  Here’s what the rules say about Investigation:

When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check.

So the deducing is part of the Investigation, sure, but so is the looking.  Fine, then: what do the rules say about Perception?

Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something.

Hmm ... that also seems to involving looking.  No wonder people are confused.

Now, I should first note that neither skill has to involve looking.  You can perceive things with your ears or your nose, and you can investigate things with your hands or your brain.  But those aren’t the cases that confuse us, as it turns out.  If the player says “I listen to see if I can hear anyone following us” and the GM asks for a Perception check, no one is going to try to talk them into Investgation (or at least no one I’ve ever heard of); likewise, if the player says “I want to try to decipher this code” and the GM asks for Investigation, no serious player is going to try to convince them that it should be Perception instead.  It’s only when the visual sense comes into it—and we human beings are primarily visual creatures, so it tends to come into it quite a lot—that people tend to get confused.

As I mentioned, this has been debated a lot.  I wouldn’t want to weigh in if I didn’t feel like I had something new to contribute.  So here’s where I endorse my potentially revolutionary, potentially controversial take on this dilemma: it’s all about the verbs.  And the verb at the heart of this bewildering issue is “look.”

And what’s really fascinating to me is that it reminds me of my high school Spanish.  The way I was taught (and I’m sure it was a gross oversimplification designed to be able to be grasped by teenage brains) is that if you want to say you’re looking at something, you use mirar, but if you want to say you’re looking for something, then it’s buscar.  So when a native Spanish speaker tells you “miré la playa,” you understand that they went to the beach and just enjoyed the view.  But if on the other hand they say “busqué la playa,” then you know that they were trying to find the beach in the first place.  “I looked at the beach” (or “I watched the beach”) vs “I looked for the beach” (or “I searched for the beach”).  This is only hard for us English speakers because we’re so used to having one word for both concepts.  But, when you think about it, it’s actually easier and nicer to have the two different words: avoids any ambiguity.  “What’s the deal with the beach?” “Oh, I’m still looking.” Does that mean you refused to leave the beach because the view is so awesome, or that you can’t figure out how to use the map app on your phone so you never even got there?  No way to tell in English.  But, in Spanish, it wouldn’t even be a question: “todavía miro” and “todavía busco” are two entirely different replies.

I have no way to prove this, but I feel very confident in saying that Spanish-speaking D&D players and GMs have no confusion about Perception and Investigation at all: Perception is mirar, and Investigation is buscar.  Case closed.

But us poor non-speakers of Spanish need some guidance, yes?  Very well then, here’s my advice (to both GMs and players): expunge the word “look” from your vocabulary.  That’s it.  That’s all it takes.  Don’t tell your GM “I want to look and see if I see a clue”; say instead either “I want to try to notice a clue” or “I want to try to search for a clue.” If you can replace “look” with “observe” or “notice,” that’s Perception.  If you can replace it with “search” or “examine,” that’s Investigation.  That’s really all there is to it.

Now, I do want to address another aspect that seems to flummox people: the amount of time taken by the two actions.  One of those links above contains this gem of wisdom:

Often, DMs think that the difference between perception and investigation is simply how long the player wants to take to search. But this is NOT the case.

(Emphasis in the original.)  To which I respond: well, yes ... and no.  What they say is technically true.  The amount of time taken should never be the determining factor in which skill applies.  However, as a practical matter, it really is the case that “noticing” or “observing” typically takes a very small amount of time, while “searching” or “examining” takes much longer.  We could come up with counter-examples, of course: a Perception check to see if you notice anything during your 3-hour turn on watch duty, or an Investigation check to see if you can have a flash of inspiration while examining a puzzle with the walls closing in on you.  But, in general, Perception happens in an instant and Investigation takes time.  Which brings up another thorny issue: doing these things in combat.  See, in D&D a round of combat takes (in theory) 6 seconds.  During those 6 seconds, you can move (up to 30 feet, typically), and take an action, and maybe even take a bonus action (such as hiding if you’re a rogue, or getting in one more punch to the face if you’re a monk), and take a free “object interaction” (such as drawing a weapon or opening an unlocked door).  The main action for the turn thus has to fit in a very small number of seconds, certainly no more than 3.  You are not going to be searching a room in 3 seconds.  Contrariwise, it simply doesn’t take 3 whole seconds to look around and notice something.  I would never charge my player a whole action to take a Perception check in combat, but I would also never let my player get away with an Investigation check in combat, unless perhaps they devoted all their attention to it, and even then it would probably be an astronomically high DC.  Yet making players use their action for Perception is very common in streaming D&D such as Critical Role, and allowing them to do so for Investigation is not unheard of either.  I have to say, these calls don’t make a lot of sense to me.

Of course, several of the links I listed above will tell you that I’m completely wrong about searching for clues being an Investigation check.  Here’s some examples:

... Investigation focuses on interpreting the clues found with Perception checks.

However, the way I think of it is that Perception is to spot something like a clue, and Investigation is to work out what that clue means.

... to draw conclusions from the clues you’ve used perception to gather.

There’s only one problem with this theory: it’s not what the rules say. “When you look around for clues ... you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check” seems pretty clear to me.  I respect the distinction that these authors are trying to draw: a skill based on your Wisdom means you’re using intuition and awareness, while one based on Intelligence means you’re using logic and reasoning.  Unfortunately, trying to get too detailed on things like this is always going to break down.  To return to my first example of conflicting skills, your natural dexterity absolutely impacts your ability to climb, but it’s still an Athletics check; the strength of your muscles is definitely a factor when you’re swinging on a rope like a trapeeze artist, but it’s still an Acrobatics check.  D&D is not a perfect simulation—no TTRPG can be—and sometimes you just gotta go, well, this skill is for this action and this is what ability the book says goes with it ... don’t overthink it.

So, if you play D&D (and especially if you GM it), hopefully this will help you figure out which skill to apply when it seems confusing.  And, even if you don’t, hopefully you’ve had some inspirations as to how the subtleties of language impact every part of our lives: even the most unlikely ones.









Sunday, July 30, 2023

Eldritch Ætherium IV

"Tales Around the Desert Crossroads between Aribeth and Anauroch, over the High Seas, beyond the Druid Grove"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


Well, it’s another volume of music to inspire tabletop roleplaying, and yet again we’ve got another long, silly title cobbled together from the track names—I may have actually reached the limit at this point, and whenever next volume comes along I’ll probably have to reset to a shorter title and start building up again from there.  Many other things are the same too: Midnight Syndicate is back, with two more tracks off the excellent Dungeons & Dragons album, as are Nox Arcana, Colm McGuinness, and Ian Peter Fisher.  Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack for Neverwinter Nights, which exploded into this mix last volume with 3 tracks, now appears with a whopping four (but they’re all very short); Adrian von Ziegler (from volume II) finally returns; and we have two more tracks from both the 13th Age soundtrack (from two different composers: Chris J Nairn and Thery Ehrlich) and Michael Hoenig’s Baldur’s Gate II soundtrack.  Not to mention another track from the World of Warcraft soundtrack, and two more from the Witcher 3, including our amazing opener.

But of course we must have differences too.  For the first time, I don’t feature a track from the Shards of Eberron album that arguably inspired this whole mix.  There’s no Dead Can Dance this time out either, nor any zero-project.  Missing too are Epic Soul Factory and Faith and the Muse, and, perhaps most disappointing of all, no Loreena McKennitt.  Still, changes also mean new artists, and, to make up for McKennitt’s absence, we have a great piece from violinist Lindsey Stirling.  Stirling is one of those musical success stories that are truly inspirational:  She asked her parents for violin lessons and dance lessons, but they told her they could only afford one.  So she stuck with the violin lessons and taught herself to dance.  Then she started developing an act where she danced while playing violin, and everyone told her that no one wanted to see that.  So she took her impressive skills to YouTube and proved everyone wrong by amassing 13 million subscribers and over 3 billion views.  Stirling’s music is remarkable all on its own, but for the full effect you really have to visit her YouTube channel; you could start with the video for the track I use here, “The Arena.” This track has a bit of the McKennitt flair, but it’s also transcendently Stirling.  She has a fondness for fantasy-themed music (such as her Skyrim tribute with Peter Hollens), and I thought “The Arena” fit right in here.

I’ve also found a couple of new soundtracks to mine.  Greg Edmonson’s score to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, for instance, works well here; franchises such as Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted have a lot of traipsing around in jungles and ancient temples, which sort of makes them first cousins to D&D-style adventures.  Then there’s the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which is even closer to your average D&D campaign.  Here I’ve chosen one track from Jesper Kyd’s score for the first installment, and one from Brian Tyler’s for the fourth.  Staying on the videogame kick, we’ve got one track from Yuka Kitamura off the Dark Souls III soundtrack and one from Christopher Larkin’s excellent soundtrack for Hollow Knight, and even more Jeremy Soule, this time from his score for Oblivion, the Elder Scrolls game that immediately preceded Skyrim.

As our journey begins this time out, we’re sitting around a campfire with “Geralt of Rivia” telling “Tales Around the Fire”: after a hushed introduction, they start out quite dramatically, but soon lapse into a comfortable rhythm.  The next morning we begin traveling, exploring fantastical vistas and “Kismet,” which lead us to a “Night on the Desert,” where spooky things lurk in the darkness.  This brings us to a “Crossroads” of conscience, but we forge on into the dark, where mystical things await (“Soft Mystical Fantasy Theme”).  We stalk the magic by doing a bit of “Grave Robbing,” and the danger builds to an “Earth Shaker.” Then we’re immediately plunged into “Battle Aribeth.”

In its aftermath, “The Eyes of the Stone Thief” are upon us, leading to some creepy feelings of being watched.  But we forge on through the jungle, danger lurking at every turn (“Plane-Wrecked”), and then there’s a sudden “Skirmish,” from which we emerge victorious.  Then we must embark on a “Journey Through Anauroch,” which is apparently a romantic, foreign land, but, “In the End,” it is the dramatic bass tones of “Fjölnir” that lead us inevitably to “The Arena.”

After a whirlwind adventure on that field, it’s off to “The High Seas” where we end up “Commanding the Fury” in fierce ship-to-ship combat.  We arrive at our destination just in time for a “City Battle”; fleeing from that encounter, we pass through the sinister and eerie “Stranglethorn Vale” where we have a “Premonition” of danger, so it’s off to “Waterdeep, City of Splendors”—which we find has some similarities to the “City of Jerusalem”—to search for a “Secret Sanctuary.” There we encounter the “Sœurs martiales” (martial sisters) in all their stately grandeur.  That inevitably takes us to the “Final Confrontation” and bestows upon us our “Bloody Blades.” We acquire healing from “The Druid Grove” and reflect on fallen comrades (“Trost” is German for “consolation”).  Our journey is done, but the dramatic airs of the “Reign of the Septims” remind us that further adventures await on the morrow.



Eldritch Ætherium IV
[ Tales Around the Desert Crossroads between Aribeth and Anauroch, over the High Seas, beyond the Druid Grove ]


“Geralt of Rivia” by Marcin Przybyłowicz, off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Tales Around the Fire” by Chris J Nairn, off The 13th Age Suite [RPG Soundtrack]
“Kismet” by bond, off Born
“Night on the Desert” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Crossroads” by Christopher Larkin, off Hollow Knight [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Soft Mystical Fantasy Theme” by Ian Peter Fisher, off Soundtrack Music
“Grave Robbing” by Greg Edmonson, off Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Earth Shaker (Drums)” by audiomachine [Single]
“Battle Aribeth” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“The Eyes of the Stone Thief” by Thery Ehrlich, off The 13th Age Suite [RPG Soundtrack]
“Plane-Wrecked” by Greg Edmonson, off Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Skirmish” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Journey Through Anauroch” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“In the End” by Eklipse, off A Night in Strings
“Fjölnir” by Adrian von Ziegler, off Fable
“The Arena” by Lindsey Stirling, off Brave Enough
“The High Seas” by Brian Tyler, off Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Commanding the Fury” by Mikolai Stroinski, off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“City Battle II” by Michael Hoenig, off Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Stranglethorn Vale” by Jason Hayes, off World of Warcraft Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Premonition” by Yuka Kitamura, off Dark Souls III Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Waterdeep, City of Splendors” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“City of Jerusalem” by Jesper Kyd, off Assassin's Creed [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Secret Sanctuary” by Nox Arcana, off Winter's Majesty
“Sœurs martiales” by Xcyril, off Coeur Martial [Soundtrack]
“Final Confrontation” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Bloody Blades” by Jeremy Soule, off The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [Videogame Soundtrack]
“The Druid Grove” by Michael Hoenig, off Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Trost” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“Reign of the Septims” by Jeremy Soule, off The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [Videogame Soundtrack]
Total:  30 tracks,  78:23



Whew! that’s a lot of tracks.  In fact, this is not only our longest volume title so far, but also our longest in terms of number of tracks (though not in terms of total time—9 of the songs are under 2 minutes, and another 12 are between two and three minutes).  There’s not a whole lot unexpected going on here, but let’s look at what there is.

You may recall French composer Xcyril from his two appearances on Phantasma Chorale I and his single track on Paradoxically Sized World VI.  Those other tracks were from what I believed to be “soundtrack portfolios”—that is a collection of tunes that are likely used to demonstrate the composers skills and hopefully net them a job.  Well, the track here appears to be from an actual movie—if a very short and experimental one (you can watch it yourself and form your own opinion)—called Coeur Martial.  So I guess it worked.  There’s also a track from Audiomachine, an LA-based production company that does music for film and television.  I can’t remember how I stumbled across “Earth Shaker (Drums)” (which is, by the way, different from “Earth Shaker”), but I think I saw that someone on the Internet had cobbled together a playlist for one of the D&D adventures (Tomb of Annihilation, perhaps) and this one I thought was just too perfect.

And that just leaves us with the two string quartets, both of which are attempting to update that very classical sound with a lot of modern production values.  First we have Australia’s bond, who play chamber music infused with a lot of glam, and perform it much like a girl group.  Their first album Born has a lot of great tracks on it, but “Kismet” was the one that I thought really gave that feel of traveling through a fantasy landscape.  Last but not least, Germany’s Eklipse do chamber music covers of pop songs and dress like über-goths.  Their first album, A Night in Strings, has some great covers, including this one, “In the End.” It’s a bit of a challenge to take a Linkin Park song and recontextualize it as a fantasy theme, but Eklipse did most of the work, and I think sandwiching it between Jeremy Soule and Adrian von Ziegler adds a bit as well.


Next time, we’ll take a second look at some indie ladies.



Eldritch Ætherium V










Sunday, June 4, 2023

Puzzle Progress

Well, I finally kicked off my baby girl’s birthday campaign, and I think it started off pretty well.  She (and my eldest’s partner) seemed to enjoy it at any rate.  The other two kids ... well, let’s just say that they more of the “I don’t have patience with anything I can’t kill” school of D&D.  Still, they’re contributing, and I think they may come around.  And, if they don’t ... welll, it isn’t their birthday game.

Longer post next time, most likely.









Sunday, May 7, 2023

Puzzle Plotting

This week I’ve been working on a D&D one-shot (that is, an adventure that should ideally only take a single session to complete) for my youngest child’s birthday.  Which has, technically, come and gone, but we’re running a bit behind on such things, not to mention that I didn’t even realize that I was supposed to be doing it for a while there.  But now I know, and I’m trying to put together something that she’ll like.  Which is a tiny bit tricky, because she’s a bit different from my other children: she likes roleplaying more than combat, and she’d rather solve a puzzle or talk to an NPC than go slay a dragon.  So it takes a bit more finesse to make her happy.

In fact, designing puzzles for D&D is notoriously difficult, for two reasons.  The first is that it’s easy to make the puzzle too easy, and your players just blast through it.  It’s also, weirdly, easy to make it too hard, and then it takes forever.  So it can be basically impossible to predict how long it’ll take, which means you can’t necessarily guarantee that your one-shot will get done in one shot.

The second potential problem is that it’s easy to put your players in a situation where they just get stuck.  If they miss a clue, or they just have a mental block and can’t figure out a clue, all of a sudden your game grinds to a halt and there’s not much to do other than just tell the players what to do, which sort of defeats the point.  So it can be tricky to design something that is challenging without being impossible.

I’ve attacked this problem in a few different ways.  (And I’m going to keep it a bit vague just in case my kids actually do read this blog, which I find particularly unlikely, but better safe than sorry.)  First, I’ve designed a set of interlocking puzzles that can be done in any order, and it’s highly randomized.  So, at the first sign of getting stuck, I’m calling for some dice to be rolled, and everything will change.  Secondly, I’ve built in a bunch of “back doors” (basically, hinting structures) that will get revealed over time, so that the game will get easier as it goes on.  If it needs to.  And, if I’ve made it too easy, it won’t.  But then I can also use the randomization to change everything if the players start getting too close too fast.

Now, overall, this is a bit tricky to do in a natural fashion.  But, happily, D&D is a fantasy setting where anything goes, so I can make it work fairly easily—worse come to worst, I can always wave my hands a claim “a wizard did it.” But I’ve also come up with a theme that should make it make sense, even when it doesn’t make sense.  I can’t be more specific than that just yet; maybe I’ll post again once I’ve revealed things to my players.

I’m actually a bit excited for this.  It’s taking me a fair bit of work—inevitably, it takes more time to design a puzzle game than it does to play one—but I think it’s going to work out pretty well, and I’m pretty sure my kids won’t have too much trouble figuring it all out.  We’ll see how it goes.









Sunday, April 9, 2023

Gothic Gaming

This weekend we’re going to try finish up the many-times-postponed birthday game of D&D that my eldest prepared for my middle child.  And, yes, it’s nearly a month late, but ... well, shit happens.  After getting postponed due to sickness, unpreparedness, and all around general grumpiness, I ended up having to postpone due to fallout from my big work project, which I finally pushed to production on Monday.  So we started on Friday, but we started late, and now we’re finishing today, so, TL;DR: you get no proper post again this week.

But, in order to have something to put up, I thought perhaps I’d tell you about some of characters for this game.  We’re doing a sort of Gothic horror game, though it seems so far like it’s less Ravenloft and more Castle Amber (if you speak D&D, you’ll get what I mean).  My middle child opted for a flesh golem moster hunter barbarian—think Frankenstein’s monster, one of the intelligent but reticent versions, weilding a combination sword-shotgun (I, Frankenstein might work, or any number of videogame characters).  I can’t give you too many more details than that, because I wasn’t responsible for helping build that character.

My youngest, on the other hand, came to play with a creepy-as-fuck concept.  Silvin is a young man with no eyes (he wears bandages over where they should be) who wears dark, baggy, nondescript clothes ... including gloves, which cover the fact that he has eyeballs in his palms.  So he has to take his gloves off if he wants to see, but on the other hand he can move through the world just fine as a blind person.  He can’t speak, but he can communicate telepathically.  He is a bard of the college of whispers, which gives him access to powers like Psychic Blades, Words of Terror, and Mantle of Whispers.  As if that weren’t enough, he’s a feat machine, having taken Telepathic, Telekinetic, Shadow-Touched, and Gift of the Gem Dragon, which latter is just more ways to push people around with your mind.  Aside from Words of Terror, he can cast cause fear, fear, danse macabre, dissonant whispers, phantasmal force, and phantasmal killer, which is a hell of a lot of ways to be a scary dude; when it comes to “look into my eyes” type shit, there’s the aforementioned Mantle of Whispers, plus even more spells: enthrall, confusion, unearthly chorus, Tasha’s hideous laughter, mental prison, crown of stars, and synaptic static.  And I haven’t even listed all the spells he knows ... did I mention we’re 14th level for this one-shot?  It’s crazy.

For myself, I resurrected an old character of mine that I had for a previous one-shot (also Gothic horror, and possible also for a birhday game).  She was only 7th level, but it was easy enough to bring her up to 14th.  She’s a rogue inquisitive and also a warlock of the Raven Queen (pact of the blade).  I built her to be a mystery-solver who can also hold her own in a fight.  She’s a lavender-skinned tiefling; I found this image on the Internet drawn by Bright Bird Art:

So she looks pretty much like that, except that her staff is actually illusory, so she can stab you with it (she summons her pact weapon, a scimitar, so that it’s inside the illusion of the staff), and she has a raven on her shoulder which doesn’t look quite real.  In terms of feats, she is Perceptive and Mobile; in terms of eldritch invocations, she wears her Armor of Shadows, and can summon a Cloak of Flies when she needs to be really scary; in terms of spells, she can also mess with your mind too: via puppet, ego whip, or Raulothim’s psychic lance.  Her expertises are in acrobatics, stealth, investigation, and perception; in battle she likes to cast spiritual weapon in the form of a person-sized raven and then either eldritch blast from afar, or get into the mix using Mobile, her improved pact weapon, and sneak attack.  In social situations, she’s pretty darn good at persuasion and deception, but she’s not afraid to break out that cloak of flies, which can do poison damage if you stand too close, and, if you don’t, there’s always infestation to send those little buggers out up to 30 feet away.

So that’s our primary party (my eldest’s partner is playing a helpful druid, but he’s really closer to an NPC), and we’re exploring a vampire’s castle and seeking out and destroying various loose, undead organs.  We got the stomach and the liver so far, but I’ve a feeling there’s a lot more to go.  Wish us luck!









Sunday, January 22, 2023

Character noodling

It’s been a busy weekend, and I did a long post last week, so I think I’ll leave you with little other than the promise of something more substantial next week.

But, just for fun, my youngest and I have been working on a new D&D character: he’s a young (~13 years old) dinosaur person related to the Jurassic-Park-style dilophosaurus.  We decided his name should be Oxý Sálio (Οξύ Σάλιο).  (You’ll have to use Google Translate to work out what that’s based on, but it’ll be obvious in retrospect.)  We’ve still got more work to do, but it seems like a cool basic concept.  We’ll see what develops.









Sunday, January 15, 2023

OGL Doomscrolling

I’ve never been particularly susceptible to doomscrolling.  I didn’t do it during the height of the pandemic, nor on January 6th, nor even during the run up to (and aftermath of) Trump’s election.  I didn’t do it during the most intense times of the Black Lives Matter protests, nor during the most heinous parts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The closest I ever really got was an obsession with TV news shortly after 9/11, but that was technically before doomscrolling was a thing (although really it was the same impulse).  But, overall, I was starting to think I was immune to the syndrome.

And then Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast (or WotC)—the company that makes D&D—started fucking with my game.

Now, on the one hand I suppose it makes sense that this thing, which is more likely to affect me personally than any of that other stuff (maybe even more so than COVID), was the thing that finally caught me in its web.  But that’s sort of a shallow assessment, and I would at least hope that there’s a better explanation than that.  After some introspection, I think I’ve put my finger on it: none of that other stuff really surprised me.  Anyone who was surprised that Putin would invade a country just hasn’t been paying attention, and anyone who was surprised that cops were killing black people is beyond clueless.  The US government wasn’t prepared to deal with a major health crisis? yeah, some “breaking news” there.  Corporations are using the pandemic to gouge us for more money? well, duh: it’s what they do.  As for Trump, I can’t say which is less surprising: that a politician would be a compulsive liar, or that a rich white guy would be self-absorbed and unscrupulous.

But this ... this actually caught me off guard.  I never thought that this could happen.

And that’s primarily because it already happened once before. See, what Hasbro is doing is trying to screw with the Open Gaming License (OGL), which was invented for the third edition of the game (3e), and tries to do for tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) what open source licenses did for the software industry.  Both 3e and 5e use the OGL, but 4e did not.  What happened?  Well, presumably, some dick executives at Hasbro decided that it sucked that other people were making money off D&D and decided to create a new version that wouldn’t use the OGL (I actually cover this is some detail in my discussion of what Pathfinder is).  And it bombed.  See, 3e made D&D the biggest TTRPG in the market—by a huge factor.  Other TTRPGs were, in those days, like browsers other than Chrome: sure, they exist, but the only people you know who use them are hardcore nerds.  4e killed all that, and other TTRPGs began to equal—or even overtake—D&D.  And it’s obviously an oversimplification to claim that moving away from the OGL was responsible for that ... but it’s hard to ignore it as a factor as well.

Especially when you factor in that 5e brought it back.  Basically, WotC said, “hey, guys, we know we screwed up, but now there’s a new version of the game, and it will use the OGL again ... please come back to us.” And it worked.  Oh, sure: once again it’s too neat and tidy to lay the massive success of D&D in recent years at the feet of re-embracing the OGL.  But, also once again, it’s hard to ignore that factor.  So it seems like the company learned their lesson, and now everything is good ... right?

Except corporate executives come and go, and often institutional memories are amnesiac.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, warns George Santayana, and that’s exactly what’s happened now.  Thus, doomscrolling.


Well, today is my last allotted day to obsessively hit the refresh button to get the latest news on this topic, so perhaps I can declare it not a complete waste of effort by giving you, dear reader, a few links which can hopefully tell the story in a cogent, coherent manner.  I tried to focus on shorter articles and videos to make it quicker to get through, but there’s no getting around that this is a big topic, so don’t dive in unless you’re willing to spend some time on it.  But, for all that, I think it’s a really fascinating topic, with business aspects, legal aspects, issues of creative vs capitalist, and feats of journalism.  If you do have the time, it might just be worth it to take a look at this particular controversy.  And, even if you’re not into TTRPGs, considering the fact that the blockbuster D&D movie is scheduled for March, and a new D&D TV show was just announced, it’s possible that the fallout could impact a lot more folks than that, if only tangentially.

For each link below, I’ve indicated what format the media is in, and what expertise the author is bringing to the table.  I’ve tried to arrange things into an order that makes the story easier to follow (which is decidedly not chronological order of these things being published), and add a brief bit of commentary as to what I think the value of each is.  This list is highly curated, based on my own opinions; I tried to save you from going through a lot of the dreck that I did during my doomscrolling spree, but that inherently means that my bias about what to include and what to omit is on full display, so take with as many grains of salt as you feel appropriate.  Some of these I’ve marked “informative,” if they’re primarily to get raw data; some I’ve marked “entertaining,” if the authors have added a bit of flair to make the new go down more easily; and some I’ve marked “emotional,” if the authors are letting their feelings show as to how much this is impacting their lives and livelihoods.

I’ve explained most of the acronyms above; “3PP” means third-party publisher (i.e. someone who is not WotC or the consumer who is publishing D&D-related material).  The fate of the 3PPs are the main thing that’s in doubt with this move from Hasbro / WotC.  It’s also fair to note (as some of the folks below do) that, when we demonize the “company,” we need to be careful to disinguish the sleazy executives from the rank-and-file employees of WotC (and its subsidiaries, like D&D Beyond), who are really just trying to get along, and many of whom don’t agree with the policies of the “company” at all (and several of whom are, apparently, responsible for many of the leaks that are fueling the fire, precisely because they can’t stand idly by).


What the hell is all this about anyway?

  • Best overall summary: (video) Mark “Sherlock” Hulmes (D&D streamer); emotional.  The first 13 minutes here are the best breakdown of almost every salient event that I’ve heard so far.

  • Best summary of the situation pre-leak: (video) Profesor Dungeon Master (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); informative.  The first 4 minutes here are a very concise window on the situation up to the point where the leak happened (the leak was just a rumour at this point; it became official upon publication of the Gizmodo article—see below).  After that, the Prof goes on to make some fairly cogent commentary and predictions, but a lot of it was invalidated by later events.

Was the original OGL useful?

  • Negative: (text) Cory Doctorow (author); informative.  Some people say the original OGL was useless or even harmful.
  • Positive: (video) Roll of Law (lawyer); informative.  Others counter that this is too simplistic a view.

The business issues driving this

  • Early predictions: Flute’s Loot (D&D streamer); informative.  Really, Flute is just collecting words of wisdom here from Matt Colville (founder of MCDM), but, since he’s done us the kindness of picking out just the good bits, we may as well take advantage.  (And he does add some useful commentary.)
  • Assessment of the factors leading up to this situation: (video) Ryan Dancey (former VP at WotC and co-author of the original OGL); informative.  Nice short clip from a much longer discussion with the Roll for Combat folks (who were one of the third-party publishers involved in the leak) which explains very cogently the business side of things from someone with inside knowledge.

  • What WotC should have done to address “undermonetization”: (video) Tulok the Barbarian (D&D streamer); entertaining.  This is probably about as pro-Hasbro as it gets (spoiler: still not very pro-Hasbro).  While this came out before the ORC license annoucement (below) and way before WotC’s response (even further below), it is still the absolute best (and funniest) assessment of what WotC / Hasbro could have done—still could do, for that matter—to address their concerns that D&D is “undermonetized” without pissing off their customer base.

What’s bad about the (proposed) new license?

  • The original leak: (text) Linda Codega for Gizmodo (journalist); informative.  This is what kicked off the controversy.
  • Why it’s legally bad: (video) The Rules Lawyer (lawyer and D&D streamer); informative.  A good summary of the issues from a legal standpoint.

  • Why fans are outraged: (video) DnD Shorts (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); entertaining.  Anti-Hasbro biased, obviously, but really encapsulates why people are freaking out.

Reactions from the community

  • A typical 3PP reaction: (video) The Dungeon Coach (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); emotional.  I could list literally dozens of videos just like this one, but I think DC is honest and raw and lays it out straight.
  • The #OpenDND movement: (video) The ArchCast (D&D streamer); informative.  A decent summary of the situation post-OpenDND but pre Paizo.
  • The ORC license: (text) Charlie Hall for Polygon (journalist); informative.  Paizo are the makers of Pathfinder, you may recall, and are severely impacted by all this since Pathfinder (or at least the first version of it) is completely dependent on the original OGL.  This article is a nice summary of Paizo’s annoucement of the new Open RPG Creative (or “ORC”) license, and it includes a link to the full announcement if you want to read that.

  • Community reaction to the ORC license: (video) No Nat 1s (D&D streamer); entertaining.  I don’t love this guy in general, but his joy at the Paizo annoucement (just above) is kind of infectious.

The campaign to send WotC a financial message

  • A typical plea on Twitter: (tweet) Ginny Di (D&D stremer); interesting.  Ginny Di is a major influencer in the D&D space.  Note that she’s retweeting something from DnD Shorts (see above), but most people feel it was her signing on that really made this go viral.
  • A typical plea on YouTube: (video) Indestructoboy (third-party publisher); interesting.  Reasoned and rational.

  • The end result: (video) Tenkar’s Tavern (D&D streamer); informative.  Not necessarly the best on this topic, but probably the most compact.

WotC’s response

  • What it is and why it’s bad: (video) DnD Shorts (D&D streamer and third-party publisher); entertaining.  The only person I’m linking to more than once, Will from DnD Shorts is definitely very anti-Hasbro, but he’s just so damned articulate and simultaneously so damned entertaining that I can’t not point you at his videos.  This video contains the entire text of WotC’s response.

  • Why people find it offensive: (video) Dungeons & Discourse (UK legal professional* and wargaming streamer); entertaining.  Originally an anti-corporate voice in the wargaming hobby space,** this creator originally published videos under Discourse Miniatures.  She actually just started this new channel focussing on TTRPGs specifically because of this OGL debacle.  She’s informed, articulate, funny, and I adore her accent.***  (I actually just signed up for her Patreon.)


So that’s it; pretty much the whole story.  There are more details out there, but don’t get sucked in like I did.  It’s not worth it.

And maybe now I’ve learned that even something this massively stupid shouldn’t surprise me.  Hopefully that’s armor against the next crazy-ass thing that might tempt me into wasting my life reading about shit that’s just going to depress me anyway.  One can always hope.



__________

* The UK has a few different professions which are licensed to practice law, and I don’t know exactly which one she is.

** Remember that D&D actually grew out of wargaming, so it’s definitely related.

*** Northern Ireland, perhaps?











Sunday, November 27, 2022

GM Philosophy: A Deeper Dive on Death

[This post contains minor spoilers for Critical Role and another show that I don’t even name explicitly, so you’re probably okay to read it even so.  But, still: you have been warned.  This is a post about characters dying in D&D games, with historical examples for context.  I try to avoid being too obvious, and the vast majority of what I discuss has been beaten to death on the Internet, but I can’t guarantee you won’t see something you can’t unsee.  Caveat emptor.]



I’ve already written once before about character death in D&D.  But recently there was an arc on Critical Role that some described as “breaking the Internet” by killing not one, but three player characters (although, to be fair, two of them didn’t stay dead very long).  This spawned yet another round of arguments about whether character death in D&D should be on the table (pun intended).  I’ve already stated my position: I don’t kill characters.  Whereas a lot of D&D luminaries are firmly in the opposite camp.  Perennial DM B. Dave Walters is quite fond of saying that he’s a monster and he will kill your characters (he even said this about the cast of Stranger Things, for whom he DMed a game after season 4).  As for Critical Role’s superstar DM Matt Mer Mercer, he once said about character death:

For me it’s hard to have high stakes in a game like Dungeons & Dragons if the threat isn’t there.

Not to mention doing a whole video giving advice on how to do it.

And yet, when all was said and done with the latest furor, I started to wonder if we really were on opposite sides.

Because my pledge not to kill your character (when you play D&D with me) is a little more nuanced than just “I don’t kill characters.” Specifically, I promise that I will not
  • permanently
  • kill
  • a character that you created
  • without your permission.

Each one of those qualifications is important.  So, will I temporarily kill your character?  Absolutely.  Will I give them permament consequences other than death?  In a heartbeat.  Will I kill a character you’ve grown fond of that it just so happens was created by me instead of you, such as a family member or mentor or henchman?  You betcha.  Will I obliterate your character if you ask me to, perhaps because you’re ready to move on to a new character and want your old one to go out in a blaze of glory?  Oh, yes: with wild abandon and sheer delight.

So I’m very clear that only permanent, non-consensual death is off the table: everything else is fair game.  And how about those staunch defenders of the right to kill characters?  Well, across 296 episodes of Critical Role—over a thousand hours of gameplay as of this writing1as near as I can tell Mercer has only ever permanently killed a character twice, and in both cases the players are on record as saying they were on board with the death.2  As for Walters, he always says he’s going to kill the characters, but as far as I know he’s only ever permanently done so once, and, considering the death in question took hours to play out on the screen, I can’t help but feel that the player was complicit.

So are we really saying things so differently?

What I’m saying is, if a character dies, I ask the player: What do you want to do?  Do you want to try another character? or figure out how to bring this one back?  And, whatever they choose, I will find a way to make it work.  And I actually know for a fact that Matt Mercer would agree with these words.  How can I possibly know that?  Because they’re almost exactly his words: I was just paraphrasing a Twitter thread that he posted after this most recent episode of killing a character.  Which, I might add, wasn’t, in the end, permanent.  Because the player (Marisha Ray) said she wasn’t ready to let that character go.  So now she’s back.  Which is exactly how I would have done it too.3

I’m actually starting to think we’re all saying the same thing.  It’s just a matter of where we place the emphasis.  Mercer and Walters and oh so many others put the emphasis on the death, and the possibility that it might not be permanent is an afterthought.  Whereas I feel more comfortable placing the emphasis on you as a player feeling safe, and the possibility for temporary death (or permanent maiming) is in the fine print.

Now, you might not agree with my point of view here, but at least you have to grant me that it’s an interesting perspective to consider.  And, granting that, why the difference in how the two positions (which are, possibly, really the same position) are stated?  Well, “stakes” is the magic word that most proponents of character death as a possibility bring up (you see it right in the Mercer quote at the very beginning of this piece).  Your game has to have stakes ... and how can there be stakes without death?  But, as my last foray into this topic shows, or as many other articles on the Internet attest, there are plenty of ways to provide stakes that aren’t irreversible death without consent.

And more importantly, from the perspective that roleplaying is storytelling, I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with unilaterally killing off someone else’s character with no hope of reversal.  I found that Adventure Zone’s non-GM4 Justin McElroy said it best (talking about his brother Griffin, who was the GM at the time):

This is a distinction between playing an RPG with your friends, and playing an RPG as a method of storytelling ...  Griffin ... is not going to unilaterally decide to kill one of our other creations. We are telling this story collaboratively, right?  ...  But, if Griffin ... is gonna take a player off the table, it is going to, like, be a discussion beforehand.

When I heard this, I realized that Justin (ever the practical McElroy) had put into words exactly what I was thinking but couldn’t quite formulate.  The only part I disagree with is that I don’t think this is something that should be different from using D&D for a show like The Adventure Zone or Critical Role.  Even when you’re just playing with your friends, you should treat their characters like their intellectual property, and you don’t really have the right to just decide to kill them off.  Unless you have a damn good idea how to bring them back, if that’s what they want.  At the end of the day, it’s their character, and you have to respect how they want to see that character’s story told.  You can influence it—that’s what the “collaborative” part of collaborative storytelling means, after all—but you can’t just single-handedly decide for them.

So I no longer believe that all those famous GMs and I are on opposite sides of this conundrum.  Rather, I think that we’re just looking at two sides of the same coin: heads, you die, but you can live again later; tails, you live, but only after you die first.  It’s all in how you look at it.



__________

1 Thank you, CritRoleStats.

2 And, honestly, even one of those didn’t stick, in the end.

3 Well, to be fair, I would have never made a player completely leave the table for as long as Matt made Marisha do so.  I would have either brought about the resurrection faster, or come up with some other thing for the player to do at the table in the meantime.  But Marisha seemed okay with the way Matt—who is, you know, her husband—handled it, so I consider that more of a nitpick than a true disagreement in philosophy.

4 At least at the time he said this; he’s since taken up the mantle.