4E at DDXP - SEE IT NOW
Just because I’m off messing with a new blog and haven’t had much time for D&D this week doesn’t mean you can’t get your DDXP 4E info right from the source.
Get over to Critical Hits and check it out!
Primary Group Cohesion in Dungeons and Dragons
Stupid Ranger has an insightful post today about the way that players should work together in a D&D game. I won’t rehash her points, you can read them over there for yourself. I will add something to the conversation, though.
When I was getting my Master’s degree in History, I had a professor who turned us into the idea of “primary group cohesion.” This is the idea that soldiers on the battlefield have a connection to one another because they share the same ideas and ideals. While I don’t entirely agree with the thesis (I think people on the battlefield connect because they’re all in a world of sh!t more than anything) I do think that players in a D&D game need to have something of a camaraderie.
For the most part, I think I see this cohesion when we’re talking about roleplaying issues. What amazes me, though, is that the players tend to want to shine on their own during combat; no one ever thinks to move into a flanking position for the rogue, or to block a line of charge to the wizard. You would think that the opposite would be true: that these characters who have been adventuring together for years would know one another’s’ tactics, and complement each other.
Food for thought, anyways.
Campaign diary returns tomorrow, for those who have been waiting with baited breath!
Minis Feature - Azhag the Slaughterer
This one was cool.
A few years ago, I bout a mini on eBay. The ad said, simply, “Orc on Dragon, painted.”
It was an orc on a wyvern, painted poorly. Actually, it was the Warhammer character Azhag the Slaughterer, painted very poorly. So, I fixed him:
4E at DDXP - Get the Down-low.
Just a quick entry this morning.
Get your asses over to critical hits NOW and tell the boys what you’d like to have them talk to the WotC designers about this weekend. Bartoneous and The Game have scored press passes for the event, and have promised to be eyes and ears for those of us stuck somewhere else.
Thank you, drive through.
Building a New Dungeons and Dragons Campaign Diary #13 - Organizing
(The above pic has NOTHING to do with Building a new campaign. I just liked it, thought you might like it too.)
Up to this point, I (and hopefully you) have just a ton of materials, some of which are related to one another, and others that aren’t. I decided this weekend that it was worth taking the time to get things a bit organized. So, I bought myself a 2″ 3-ring binder, some binder tabs, and got organized. Here’s what I did; if you’re feeling a bit scattered, you can try it too:
- Print out all of the Lenryn campaign materials that I have only in digital format, being certain to label them so that I know the file name they came from.
- Gather the written materials that I’ve got (really just a couple of notebook paper pages worth of notes, and a poorly-drawn map.
- Create my Campaign binder categories. I recommend these categories, but you can, of course, use your own:
- The 41 Questions
- The World
- Maps
- Geography
- Cities and Towns
- Races and Classes
- Important People
- Encounters and Ideas
- Adventures
- Handouts
- House Rules
- Miscellaneous
- I also added three tabs at the back:
- Freewriting
- Inspirations
- Other development notes
So, there you have it. Someplace to put everything else going forward!
DnD 4E Rogue - join the conversation
For those of you who are scroll- or click-impaired, and may have missed it over the weekend, Wizards released the 4E rogue in all his glory last Friday. We’ve got some interesting takes on it over at Critical Hits, so I encourage you to check those out. No, really. Go now.
For those of you who absolutely refuse, here are the observations I posted on Saturday:
- Healing Surges. This isn’t new info, but I have to admit: If there is one element I’m not sure about from the 4E previews, it is this. I’m just not convinced that it makes sense, from the flavor perspective. We will see how it winds up playing out, however.
- Weapon Proficiencies. I think I am glad to see them back. As a DM, it was sometimes frustrating to watch the versatility that players had with weapon groups. MWAHAHAHA!
- Simplified Skill System. No new info here; we knew that they were going to move this direction, ala Saga Edition. I am glad to see this, in part, because I think it makes the rogue more playable, in the long run.
- Powers. I like the suggested at-will, encounter, and daily powers. This firms up the talk about power durations. I’ve been an advocate for this sort of simplification in spells for a long time, and I think it just makes sense. If you’re not a fan of per-encounter abilities, you’re not going to like 4E. For me, it’s a long time coming.
- Brawny and Trickster Builds. I like the two builds. It’s a cool way to present archetypes to new players, inexperienced players, or players that haven’t played a given class before.
- Shuriken. I’m not sure the weapon belongs in core, even if it is cool, and even if Midnight used them. That’s a long-standing complaint, though.
- Sneak Attack Damage. This seems waaay too nerfed for me. Having said that, I will have to see what a 22nd-level encounter looks like to know for sure if 5d6 is too little.
- Powers Again. I’m a sucker for flavor text, and I love the power descriptions.
All in all, I give the new rogue a B+. That could rise to an A-, once I’ve seen what he’s up against at various levels.
Minis feature - Boskan
This is Boskan. You can read all about him here.
For the Flowers and Unicorns campaign, I painted a mini for everyone’s character, and gave them out as Christmas gifts. Unfortunately, I don’t have pics of all of them; I’m hoping to get them all in the same room again one day.
At any rate, Boskan is a converted Mage Knight figure, with a Reaper pseudodragon familiar companion. Take a look:
He even looks like a jerk 
I’ve mentioned before how hard it is to get detail into a plastic miniature, and why I prefer pewter. This face pic illustrates just how bad plastic molds can be:
Just like me when I played him, I think Boskan needs to show his ass:
Shake your moneymaker, Boskan.
DnD 4E Update - The Rouge is out!
Critical Hits just caught this one. The Fourth Edition Rogue has been released!
I’ll post my initial reaction over there.
Dealing with Problem Players
A while back, I wrote about how, as a DM, I tend to make one of the worst players. I think this is pretty common among DMs. It is a different feeling, being on the other side of the screen.
So, let me tell you about my character. If you’re not interested, skip to the list down there at the end of the post.
A few years back, my wife ran a D&D campaign set in the Forgotten Realms, which we affectionately referred to as the “Flowers and Unicorns Campaign.” Now, I’ve only ever played in a handful of campaigns in my life, but this one was by far my favorite. Yep, I’m partial, but I think that most of the folks who played in that game had a good time.
That campaign was also the scene of the second scariest night I’ve ever had in D&D.
You see, I was playing an elven sorcerer. His name was Boskan, and he was something of a wunderkind. In fact, he and his sister, Yimsha, were thought to be the subjects of a prophecy spelling either the doom or the salvation of Faerun, depending on who you asked. Boskan wasn’t especially powerful, but he had attitude. See, Boskan had been raised by monks specifically to fulfill this prophecy. He knew his destiny (or thought he did) and he was driven to fulfill it, regardless of the cost to anyone around him.
The difficulty for Boskan came in that he had never met Yimsha; the pair had been separated at birth (think Luke and Leia stuff here). Yimsha was much more skeptical about the prophecy, as was the rest of the party.
Long story short (too late, I know) Boskan tended to rub everyone the wrong way. He wouldn’t entertain any efforts to question his destiny, not even from Yimsha, and he was determined that they would fulfill their roles in history.
Now, here is where the metagame comes in. I like to play ideologues when I do play. My characters, more often than not, tend to be driven, and often arrogant. Let’s just say that my characters tend to express the lesser angels of my nature. Deep down inside, there’s a part of me that’s just an asshole. My characters tend to take on that part of my personality perhaps more than any other part.
Anyways, in the process of playing this role, I crossed lines. I became heated, animated, and downright rude in character. This probably would have been fine, except that the person playing Yimsha and I had, in the past, had some personality tussles in real life, and this aggravated those sensitive areas for both of us.
Before the night was over, Yimsha’s player’s husband nearly handed me my teeth, and my wife kicked the two of them out of our house. It was the only time Angie has ever done that, and it was especially unfortunate given that Yimsha’s player and Angie were best friends. In the long run, it was OK; we had the two over the following day, and talked through the situation, and made nice. But it’s still something of a sore spot, all these years later.
So, what’s the point? Well, I think there are reasons that DMs often make the worst players. (These don’t all apply to every DM, I realize, but I can only speak from personal experience):
- First, as DMs, we are used to creating conflict. We run the bad guys, who argue with PCs, fight them, and are all-around pains in the ass to characters. It’s our job to be challenging.
- Second, we are all too often inexperienced as players. Mechanically, Boskan was weak, not for flavor’s sake, but because I didn’t build him right. I built him the way I would have built a single encounter creature, and that didn’t play right.
- Because of this inexperience as players, we often display our lesser angels. Most players figure out, in their first few characters, which of their own personality traits to project, and which ones to not project. We’ve never had to go through this process of trial and error. (My next character, by the way, was much less of an ass.)
- We also tend, as I talked about before, to mimic what we perceive to be player actions. In other words, on some level, I am disruptive as a player because I’ve had disruptive players as a DM. This isn’t a conscious decision, but I think it does happen from time to time.
- When we are playing, we can relax. DMing can be hard work; we feel like playing is something of a day off from the rigors of running the game.
So… how does your experience as a DM translate when you are on the other side of the screen?
Minis feature - Reaper.
This is another Reaper Mini that I painted around five years ago. Reaper makes the best minis on the market. D&D Minis are fine, but you just don’t get the detail with plastic that you get with pewter. Other brands have come close, but none have had the consistent quality, in terms of detailed molds, that Reaper has.
I’ve always liked this one, until today. My wife’s new camera shows all of the mistakes, and I’m not good enough with Photoshop to touch them up yet!
Anyways, enjoy these:
COME TO ME, MY SERVANT!
Looking at this one now, I’m wishing I’d have done more with the eyes. Still, I LOVE the texture on the wings.
You can tell he’s evil ‘cuz his ax has a skull.
Again with the wing textures. Very cool stuff.
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