The big difference with the Pathfinder/UA experience system is that instead of earning a different amount of XP from a creature depending on your party’s current level, you gain the same XP amount regardless of party level, but higher level monsters give much more XP, and you need more XP to level up. The overall effect is that the XP numbers get much higher (millions of XP to reach level 20), but players still level up at the same rate as normal.

The main benefit here is that DMs can combine monsters in encounters more easily and calculate XP rewards more easily. It’s now possible to calculate the XP total for an encounter in advance even if you don’t know what level the PCs will be. A similar system is employed by fourth edition D&D, although it’s unlikely Pathfinder copied 4E’s rule here: this system originally appeared in 2004′s Unearthed Arcana, four years before 4E.

Another change peculiar to Pathfinder RPG is the choice of three XP rates: slow, medium, and fast. Some groups prefer to level up frequently, while others prefer slower levelling.

Fast is closest to the Unearthed Arcana equivalent and therefore the standard 3.5 progress rate, requiring 1,300 XP or 13 average Pathfinder encounters to reach level 2, and 2,400,000 XP to reach level 20. Medium requires about 50% more XP than Fast, suggesting Pathfinder favours a more gradual levelling rate. Slow requires 50% more XP than Medium, and 2.25 times as much as Fast, with players levelling once every 30 encounters or so.

If you’d like to try Pathfinder RPG, even if only to mine for ideas or house rules for a 3.5 game, the 576 page full-colour PDF is a very reasonable $10 from Paizo.com. The new XP rules appear on pages 30 and 398.

What they want

In Dragon, they’re after more assassin material, especially Class Acts. Assassin isn’t getting much coverage in the main books, so D&D Insider is a good niche for assassin support. They’re also looking for psionics material to complement the battlemind, monk and psion classes from Player’s Handbook 3.

Dungeon wants Campaign Workbook articles, individual elements which are easy to drop into a campaign. Single villains, dungeon rooms and encounters are in demand, especially if they’re particularly cool. Dungeon also wants Chaos Scar adventures, which will probably give you the best wordcount of all the articles Youngs is requesting.

What they don’t want

D&D Insider doesn’t want any new races, classes, or builds. While new character options are useful and interesting, they’re mainly the territory of official books, not D&D Insider articles. Adventures featuring new monsters are also out, since there are already over 3,000 creatures in the D&D Compendium database.

They also don’t want anything that’s just a direct update from a previous edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Anything you write should be new and interesting.

Links: Freelancing 101

Critical Hits has a new article titled Freelancing 101, in which former D&D Insider editor Chris Sims gives first-hand advice on how to write freelance for D&D Insider or an RPG publisher, and what editors want to see.

Interacting with the environment is something I encourage DMs to make use of. One of the big things in 4E designer Mike Mearls’ earlier works Book of Iron Might and Book of Iron Heroes was the use of attacks or skill checks to interact with the environment, such as swinging from a rope or pushing over a boulder. Even Mearls’ contribution to the Age of Worms adventure path, the third edition adventure Three Faces of Evil, features a precariously-balanced statue which can be pushed over to form a bridge.

Clever use of terrain has been extremely popular in video games that support it. You only have to look as far as Worms, considered by some the greatest Amiga game of all time. Your units in this game can use their environment to take cover, bounce grenades from walls, swing from “bat rope” style grappling hooks, drown opponents, dig trenches for safety, even make difficult shots using the wind to advantage. They can really affect the environment and the environment can really affect them, and that’s just the ticket for an engaging and dynamic game experience.

I spotted a similar rule set in 2009′s Dungeon Master’s Guide II, called Terrain Powers (page 62-63). This formalizes what I think DMs have been doing since the early editions of D&D, and that’s rules for attacking with the environment. There’s a rope bridge attack, for example, where you make an Athletics check to shake the bridge and knock people prone or off the bridge. Strictly speaking you don’t need these rules (and you should be able to rule terrain attacks on the fly as your players come up with clever ideas), but the examples given are an excellent benchmark for balance. This is especially important if you want to publish your own adventures including terrain powers.

Now I love the idea, but one thing about this bothers me. The powers scale with encounter level, so a terrain power that requires a moderate DC Athletics check at level 1 will still require a moderate DC Athletics check at level 25. Your problem is that this gets absolutely ridiculous with some terrain powers.

Take Table of Combustibles, a table you flip over with a difficult DC Athletics check to send fire and poison gas everywhere. At level 30, you’re still struggling to flip over the tables you encounter. What tables are these that require a DC 37 Athletics check to flip over? Giant adamantine tables studded with diamond? Is it bolted to the ground with expensive magic? I’d better get to keep the table as treasure.

Or Swinging Rope or Vine, which requires a moderate DC Athletics check and rewards you with some quick movement. A regular dungeon vine at level 1 asks no more than DC20, but the level 30 vines that Orcus keeps around take superhuman ability to grab hold of. Don’t high level black dragons keep any regular vines around? Are they greasing up all the vines in their lair as a defensive measure?

However, I do like Ruined Wall, which you can push over onto people. I imagine that by level 30, applying an Athletics check to any nearby wall will make it fall whether it was ruined or not to begin with.

A ritual as we know is a non-combat spell, characterized by long casting time, a level requirement, a cost to acquire, a cost per use, and usually a skill check, with higher results sometimes granting greater successes. We can apply that to the martial classes, creating what Wyatt calls an Endeavour. Broadly speaking, a ritual or endeavour lets a character perform actions not covered by normal skill use or combat powers. Wyatt recommends giving all characters one Endeavour for free at level 1.

Dragon #379 also introduced something called Martial Practices, very similar to a ritual but you typically pay the component cost in healing surges. Below are some new examples of whatever you want to call rituals for martial classes.

Blacksmithing
This ritual brings third edition’s Craft (weaponsmithing) back into play.
Level: 1
Component Cost: Special
Category: Creation
Market Price: 50gp training, 20gp tools
Time: Special
Key Skill: Endurance. Working hard for long hours at a hot forge requires good stamina.
Duration: Instantaneous

You turn raw materials into weapons, armour or other metal objects. You pay half the item’s purchase price in raw materials and must spend one day working per 25gp in the item’s price. Your skill check determines the item’s quality and production time.

9 or lower: Crude. Item takes 50% longer to produce and suffers a -1 penalty (to attack rolls for weapons, to AC for armour)
10-19: Sturdy.
20-34: Superior. Item is produced in 75% of the time and worth 50% more than usual.
35 or higher: Masterwork. Item is produced in 50% of the time, and is worth double.

An item can be crafted Hastily, in which case it takes only one day but the blacksmith must spend one healing surge for each day he saves. For each surge he doesn’t spend, the skill check suffers a -5 penalty. At the DM’s discretion, certain objects may be especially challenging to craft, and impose a penalty. Players should note that by rules as written, mundane gear isn’t worth anything to sell.

Grisly Trophy
Level: 5
Component Cost: 1 healing surge
Category: Abjuration
Market Price: 80gp
Time: One hour
Key Skill: Intimidate
Duration: One day

By choosing body parts and pieces of armour from fallen enemies, you construct a terrifying scarecrow-like monument to your own prowess. When an enemy sees the grisly trophy for the first time, make an Intimidate check vs Will as an immediate reaction. On success, the enemy is frightened and takes -2 to attack rolls until the end of the encounter. You gain +2 to the check if the trophy is made of the target’s allies, or +5 if the trophy is made of the target’s leader or boss.

You can’t move the grisly trophy or carry it into battle. It can be destroyed if it takes damage; an average trophy has AC 10, Fortitude 10, Reflex 10 and 25 hit points.

Legendary Blacksmithing
Your weapon and armour crafting talents surpass those of most mortal craftsmen.
Level: 15
Component Cost: Special
Category: Creation
Market price: 1,000gp training, 20gp tools
Time: Special
Key Skill: Arcana, Endurance or Religion
Duration: Instantaneous

As Blacksmithing, but the works you create are imbued with expert enhancements. You can imbue an item with the following properties:

Indestructible (any item): Item adds resist 10 to damage (item only, not wielder)
Blood Channel (weapon): Once per day, expend a healing surge to score a critical hit on a roll of 19
Featherlight (armour): Penalty to skill checks in armour is reduced by one
Fearsome (any item): Wearer gains a +1 bonus to Intimidate checks
Fop’s Blade (armour, weapon): Ability score required to wield or wear this reduced by two; owner can take the requisite proficiency feat
Serrated: (weapon): Deal +1 damage on a critical hit

The number of properties you can imbue depend on your skill check result:

14 or less: None, and item cannot be made magical (see below)
15 to 24: None
25-29: One enhancement
30-39: Two enhancements
40 or higher: Three enhancements

In addition, you can use residuum to craft a weapon or armour into a magic item, as per the Enchant Magic Item ritual.

When a character eats the corpse of a monster, what side-effects await him? Will poison or magical effect make the attempt more trouble than it’s worth? Or, might he gain some strange and wonderful power?

Below are effects for several iconic monsters of D&D third edition. You are encouraged to invent your own.

As a general rule, monsters must be eaten promptly when slain to have any effect. Preserved corpses (frozen, pickled, etc) may provide nutrition, but lose their special efficacy when stored. A Medium creature provides enough vital body parts to feed two characters, plus one for every size class above Medium.

Orc or gnoll

According to the human barbarians tribes of the cold north, eating the liver of savage humanoids is a way to gain their courage. However, it’s not without risks.
Risk: Character risks acquiring blood parasites. Treat the parasites as a disease. (Savage bloodflukes: Ingested, DC15, incubation 1d3 days, damage 1d4 Int, 1d4 Wis, +1 inherent bonus to Str. If reduced below 3 Wis, victim must pick melee target at random each round, from all adjacent creatures, including allies, and must make attacks of opportunity against allies who would provoke one. If reduced to 0 Wis, target remains conscious but loses free will and enters a killing frenzy until slain.)
Effect: The next time the target scores a critical hit in earnest combat, he gains a number of temporary hit points equal to the target’s hit dice.

Dragon

Dragon meat is tough to eat and difficult to prepare. Cooking red dragon meat is impossible without magical fire.
Risk: Dragon flesh is toxic. Character makes a Fortitude save equal to the dragon’s breath weapon DC; on failure, the character takes 1d6 damage per four hit dice the dragon has (minimum 1d6). This is a poison effect.
Effect: Gain energy resistance to the dragon’s breath weapon type, equivalent to half the dragon’s hit dice. The effect lasts until the character takes a full rest.

Ghost

Ghosts leave behind a small amount of residual ectoplasm which can be swallowed. It otherwise evaporates after a minute, and cannot be stored as a potion.
Risk: One of the character’s hands comes to life and begins to attack with any weapon it can grasp. The hand has the same AC and defences as the character, and 10% of the character’s hit points. Any damage dealt to the hand is also dealt to the character. The hand ceases on its own after two minutes or twenty combat rounds.
Effect: Any attacks you make are treated as having the ghost touch weapon property. This effect lasts for one hour per hit dice of the ghost whose ectoplasm you consumed.

Skeleton

The bones of an undead bone creature, such as a skeleton, mohrg or lich, can be ground to dust and swallowed in a mixture with holy water.
Risk: Character takes 2d4 damage (Fortitude DC15 negates).
Effect: Character gains the benefit of a protection from evil for one minute per hit die of the undead creature.

Giant

Dwarven legends speak of a hero who gained his strength by eating the hearts of slain hill giants.
Risk: The amount of the heart which much be eaten in one sitting to gain the benefit is immense. Character gains no benefit unless he makes a successful Fortitude save (DC20); on failure, he vomits and takes 1d8 nonlethal damage.
Effect: The character adds +2 damage to his next melee attack, a +2 bonus to all Strength based skills for one day, and treats his Strength score as 2 higher for the purpose of carrying capacity for one day.

Beholder

The blood of this creature is tainted with residue of antimagic. Its effect on human physiology is potent.
Risk: The character’s eyes become bloodshot, clouding his vision. He suffers -2 to all melee and ranged attacks until he next receives magical healing. The antimagic imposes a -1 penalty to the DC of any spells, spell-like abilities and supernatural abilities for the same duration. (Additionally, repeated consumption of beholder blood can cause unpredictable mutations and is considered dangerous.)
Effect: Character gains a spell-like ability called Evil Eye, which he can use once only. As a standard action, the character glares at his target. Target suffers -2 to all attacks and saves for one minute (Will negates DC 10 + half character level + Charisma modifier). The character loses the use of this spell-like ability after he uses it or if he receives healing which cures his bloodshot eye penalty.

Mind flayer, githzerai or githyanki

According to certain lorekeepers among the githyanki, their race first gained power by eating the brains of the mind flayers who once kept the gith as slaves. The githyanki, however, hold this as heresy.
Risk: You project an uncontrolled psychic aura, which lasts for one week. Any creature within 50ft gains a +10 bonus to Spot and Sense Motive checks against you. If the creature has any psionic power points, the bonus increases to +20 and the range to 100ft.
Effect: While you project the uncontrolled aura, you gain a +1 enhancement bonus to overcome spell resistance. At any time while under the effect, you may (once only) add +2 to the DC of a divination or enchantment spell or psionic power, or make a melee or ranged attack which, if successful, also leaves the opponent dazed for one round. Using this ability ends the spell resistance effect, but not the drawback.

Spider or poisonous insect

Eating the venom-producing gland of a giant spider is dangerous, but is guaranteed to work as a potent antivenom.
Risk: You suffer the effect of the creature’s poison. Make a saving throw against the poison as normal, but reduce the DC by 2.
Effect: You gain a +5 alchemical bonus to Fortitude saves versus poison for one day. Any ability score damage you do take from poison is reduced by one point per die.

Elemental creature (fire)

Elemental fire creatures include magmins, thoqqua and efreeti.
Risk: Character takes 10 fire damage.
Effect: Character gains the effect of endure elements for one day.

This is a D&D third edition conversion of Monday’s article: Wizard Needs Food Badly: Eating Monsters (4E).

Below are effects for several iconic monsters in D&D fourth edition. You are encouraged to invent your own. I’ll try and post a third edition conversion of this article on Friday if there’s interest.

As a general rule, monsters must be eaten promptly when slain to have any effect. Preserved corpses (frozen, pickled, etc) may provide nutrition, but lose their special efficacy when stored. A Medium creature provides enough vital body parts to feed two characters, plus one for every size class above Medium.

Orc or gnoll

According to the human barbarians tribes of the cold north, eating the liver of savage humanoids is a way to gain their courage. However, it’s not without risks.
Risk: Character risks acquiring blood parasites. Treat the parasites as a disease. (Savage Bloodflukes, level 8 disease. Attack: +11 vs Fortitude. Endurance: improve DC 25, maintain DC 21, worsen DC 20 or lower. Initial effect: Target suffers -1 to all attacks and gains +1 to damage with melee weapons. Worsens: Target’s powers treat all allies as enemies, and target automatically makes opportunity attacks against allies. Final state: target loses free will, enters a frenzy and fights until slain.)
Effect: The next time the target spends an action point in battle, he may use a healing surge.

Dragon

Dragon meat is tough to eat and difficult to prepare. Cooking red dragon meat is impossible without magical fire.
Risk: Dragon flesh is toxic. Roll an attack with the bonus of the Dragon’s breath weapon vs the character’s Fortitude. On failure, character takes 1d6 poison damage for every four levels the dragon has (minimum 1d6).
Effect: Gain energy resistance to the dragon’s breath weapon type, equivalent to half the dragon’s level. The effect lasts until the character takes a full rest.

Ghost

Ghosts leave behind a small amount of residual ectoplasm which can be swallowed. It otherwise evaporates after a minute, and cannot be stored as a potion.
Risk: One of the character’s ‘s hands comes to life and begins to attack with any weapon it can grasp. The hand has the same AC and defences as the character, and 10% of the character’s hit points. Any damage dealt to the hand is also dealt to the character. The hand ceases on its own after two minutes or twenty combat rounds.
Effect: The next attack you make against an incorporeal creature ignores the target’s incorporeal nature. This benefit wears off if not used within five days.

Skeleton

The bones of an undead bone creature, such as a skeleton, skull lord or dracolich, can be ground to dust and swallowed in a mixture with holy water.
Risk: The character loses a healing surge.
Effect: The character gains resist 5 necrotic until he takes a full rest.

Giant

Dwarven legends speak of a hero who gained his strength by eating the hearts of slain hill giants.
Risk: The amount of the heart which much be eaten in one sitting to gain the benefit is immense. Make an attack against the character versus Fortitude, with the bonus of the giant’s basic melee attack. On a hit, the character vomits, loses a healing surge and gains no benefit. Otherwise, the character gains the benefit.
Effect: The character adds +2 damage to his next melee attack, and a +2 bonus to all Strength based skills until he takes a full rest.

Beholder

The blood of this creature is tainted with residue of antimagic. Its effect on human physiology is potent.
Risk: The character’s eyes become bloodshot, clouding his vision. He suffers -2 to all melee and ranged attacks until the next time he expends a healing surge. Repeated consumption of beholder blood can cause unpredictable mutations and is considered dangerous.
Effect: As long as the character has not expended a healing surge since drinking beholder blood, he can use Evil Eye as an encounter power. (Evil Eye: minor; encounter. Psychic keyword. Ranged 10; Int vs Will; target is dazed until the end of the character’s next turn.) Character cannot use use Evil Eye again without drinking fresh beholder blood.

Mind flayer, githzerai or githyanki

According to certain lorekeepers among the githyanki, their race first gained power by eating the brain of the mind flayers who once kept the gith as slaves. The githyanki, however, hold this as heresy.
Risk: You project an uncontrolled psychic aura, which lasts until the next time you level up. Any creature within 10 squares with an attack with the Psychic keyword gains a +10 bonus to Perception and Intuition regarding you.
Effect: At any time while you project the uncontrolled aura, you may, once only, add +2 attack and damage to one Intelligence-based attack. Alternatively, one creature you successfully hit with any attack is dazed until the end of your next turn. You may only use this once.

Spider or poisonous insect

Eating the venom-producing gland of a giant spider is dangerous, but is guaranteed to work as a potent antivenom.
Risk: You suffer the effect of one of the creature’s attacks with the Poison keyword. Make an attack roll as normal, except versus Fortitude.
Effect: You gain a +2 bonus to saving throws against poison effects until you take a full rest.

Elemental creature (fire)

Elemental fire creatures include hell hounds, efreeti and magma hurlers.
Risk: Character takes 10 fire damage.
Effect: Character gains +5 to Endurance checks against heat effects (such as moving in a desert) until he makes a full rest.

This week sees the second part: Episode 012 – Authoring RPGs.

Read on for some interesting excerpts.

JD: When I was running my D&D game on the internet, one of the biggest problems was always trying to get enough people at the right time. If one of them drops out, are you going to find a guy to replace him? World of Warcraft, they’ve solved this problem. They have these twelve-man, sixteen-man raids. I think one of the reasons for that is, that in Dungeons & Dragons, there is generally only one of each class in a party. In World of Warcraft, you might have several druids, several paladins, and if one person drops out that week, it doesn’t matter. You can find new players really easily, because it’s the internet, effectively everyone is in one spot, at least everyone on one server. You have thousands of players.
Zeus: Yeah, it’s like every night is a huge convention. It’s like Comic-Con every night.
JD: That’s exactly why they got it work. World of Warcraft, you could say, it isn’t emulating a small group of tabletop players, it’s emulating the convention play, the tournament play. It’s very structured, the game master has very little say in the game, he just runs the adventure as it’s written. You get together with people you may not even know, and everyone goes on the same adventure. That actually works really well as a game.

JD: Some games, I think Left 4 Dead, I thought, here’s a game where you have four different people, it seems intentionally designed that you play this with your Steam friends, and you get together and fight different monsters. And I thought, y’know, this is an awful lot like D&D. … They’re doing something like taking the small-scale D&D, where you and four other friends get together go out on small adventures.
Zeus: Yeah, it’s got all the basic elements of a quest.

Zeus: I think that’s one place where Wizards of the Coast really need to try and get this sort of… I’m just going to say “casual”, just getting together with your friends and playing a quick adventure. Especially these days with microtransactions catching on, and people not minding spending like say, “Okay, if I’m going to give Steam $3 if me and my buddies can play like a half-hour Dungeons & Dragons quest.” I think that little short modules with simple rules would catch on. As opposed to trying to take on World of Warcraft, which probably isn’t going to work.

JD: A lot of games seem to be trying to take on Warcraft at their own game, and honestly I don’t think it’s wise. If I was to put out a game today, I would say “I don’t want to make a World of Warcraft clone”, because World of Warcraft will beat you.
Zeus: Yeah, totally.
JD: You’re not going to draw people from World of Warcraft just by being like World of Warcraft, and then not as polished, and then not as well-tested.

JD: Magic items in D&D third edition, they used to have a lot of flavour text, or at least they would have some descriptive text and some very versatile abilities. Magic item descriptions in D&D fourth edition read like you read them off a World of Warcraft screenshot. I half expect, reading the magic items list in a new D&D book, it’s going to say, “The Sword of Kas, Binds When Equipped”.
Zeus: I’m looking through my AD&D first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, and it’s like a third treasure. Censer of controlling air elementals, and girdle of giant’s strength, and you get a good thick paragraph with every one, Ioun stones, incense of obsession.

Zeus: I know that in D&D fourth edition they put the treasure into the Player’s Handbook instead of the DM’s Guide for the first time, which is kind of strange.
JD: I think the reason why they did it was that whenever people put out a D&D edition, it’s like they make the edition for the people who played the previous edition. Whenever I played third edition, once a player started getting a certain amount of money and treasure, they would pick up a treasure like “+1 axe”, and everyone’s got +2 weapons. So they put it in the bag of holding, and obviously if the axe bursts the inside of your bag of holding you lost all your items, so as players you were very specific: “I wrap everything up very carefully with rags, put them into the bag of holding, and we take them back to “the shop”, and we sell them all in “the shop”… the same imaginary magic shop that we just assume is there. And we buy items. So items in third edition were something you bought. They would just take the Dungeon Master’s Guide and look through it, even if the DM didn’t let them.

JD: The Halo shield system, I think that came from the Quake healthbox system, whereby you fight a lot of monsters, then you backtrack to pick up ammo that you couldn’t pick up earlier because you had full ammo, and you’d backtrack to pick up health. In Halo they said “We don’t want to penalize you because you didn’t want to do the boring work of backtracking for health”. So they said, “You can be killed in one battle, but after the battle your health’s back to full,” because the battle is what the game’s about. I think you see that in D&D fourth edition: it’s all about how much power you can bring to one battle, not how much power you can spread over a day.
Zeus: Yeah, I know what you’re saying. It’s something that’s been popping up in console games too. For a while now there have been games, especially from Japan, where you completely heal yourself after battle. There’s a lot of people who hate that – they think it’s hand-holding, they think it’s baby-sitting. On the other hand, there’s people who don’t like the fact that most random battles just chip away at you.
JD: Like I say with Quake, where it’s not a matter of, “Can I fight ten monsters in a row,” it’s, “Can I fight two monsters, oh I’m down to 50% health, can I remember where I left the healthbox?” In Pokemon, I spend a lot of time running back to the Pokemon centre and healing everyone. For lot of people, they want to play the combat, the meat of the game. In a game based on a central conflict, like a Pokemon battle or a first person shooter battle with monsters or whatever, developers want you to spend a lot of time really getting into the game, and less time going back and healing yourself.
Zeus: Yeah.
JD: In Quake I think there’s something good about that. It makes it in part an exploration game. It’s like being in a dungeon, in a D&D game. You’re still exploring this place, and it gives you a sense that, not just that these rooms are just a convenience for the combat, but rather that the rooms are part of a structure that you have to learn to navigate. So you go back, recognise, “Hey, that’s the way I came in,” get the health and come back. It’s like a trick to say, if you’re not very good at the combat, at least you can go back and say, “I’m exploring this place”, you feel very familiar with it, and I think that sense is one thing people like.

JD: I think D&D writers and RPG writers are the sort of people who know how to mix [writing and gameplay]. I think it’d be interesting if they hired D&D adventure writers to make video game stories, plots, and whatever. I’m not just saying that because I am one and I’m looking for work.

JD: Occasionally I go back and play Quake 2. I once played it through examining the level design, to see what ideas I could use in a D&D game. One thing I found was that very often you have the illusion of choice. There are two ways: you can go left or right, or up or down, or take an underwater route or an over-a-bridge route. What really happens is that you always have to go to the same set of points. If you don’t go underwater, you’re going to have to go underwater to get the key card. Some of the levels, what happens is that they give you two options: If you go left you’re going the right way, but if you go right you’ll find a dead end. But, if you go right you’ll find treasure: ammo and health. So if you’re the sort of person who just wants to blast through the game you can do that, but if you like exploring, you’ll also be rewarded for that. They have that in D&D as well.

Zeus: I think Mount & Blade just started out as an attempt to recreate a Braveheart battlefield, and then over the years all the roleplay stuff, the storyline, the quests, all that stuff just kinda naturally evolved out of the game design.
JD: That’s the same way it happened with Dungeons & Dragons.
Zeus: It’s true!
JD: The original Dungeons & Dragons, there were two classes: Fighting Man and Magic User. And if you go back further, there wasn’t even Magic User.

You can subscribe to Level Up Podcast at http://leveluppodcast.wordpress.com/.

Episode 11 – How Dungeons & Dragons Influenced Video Games is up now. Read on for some interesting excerpts.

Zeus: The concepts like hit points and levels and things are just leaking into like every other genre. I think sports games these days, like manager sims, will take it so that you start out with teams at base stats and they just slowly build up.
JD: People really like the idea of levelling up. They like the idea that if you work hard, your guy can get more powerful. Maybe it goes back to school, where if you study really hard you get results or qualifications, and then you can progress onto the next year of school. Maybe that’s why it’s built into people.
Zeus: Yeah, or like work. You do good enough and you get promoted to assistant manager, and then manager, and whatnot.
JD: Or in an army, the more time you spend, your rank goes up, and you get more privileges and more responsibility. So maybe it’s built in to humans, for some reason, maybe it goes back to cavemen. Cavemen respect this other caveman who was more powerful and stronger and whatever, because he’d been grinding boars or whatever.
Zeus: (Laughs) Yeah, like tribal tattoos. There’ll be tribes where if you do good in battle you get to wear this special warrior’s tattoo, if you become a man, or go through a certain trial. So it it sort of built in to people that they want to point at a number, or a tattoo, or like a pin on their lapel, like, “I’m this rank, I’m better than you!”

JD: I think the interesting thing about Dungeons & Dragons or a pen and paper RPG, is that it’s an awful lot easier and cheaper to try out new game styles. An awful lot of [video] games are just taking the last, they’re saying, “We’ll take Half-Life and make our own game like it,” “We’ll take Quake and make our own game like it.” It’s a lot of risk to say, “Lets spend a couple of million dollars trying out a new radically different idea.”

Zeus: The early computer RPGs were trying their best to to be Dungeons & Dragons, it kinda makes sense that after all these years, there’s been a lot of crossover. It makes sense for a pen and paper RPG and a video game RPG to both try and be as much like the other as they can, because it wouldn’t really make sense to divide people between two types of games.

JD: If you have a bad dungeon master, that’s going to be a really boring game. On the other hand, it can be a lot better. It’s possible with a game master that a tabletop game can be more engaging, because you can attempt things that the game doesn’t have rules for, and that’s something you can’t do in a video game MMO.

Zeus: On the episode where we were trying to define a [computer] roleplaying game for listeners, I just came up with, “It’s a roleplaying game if it’s trying to be Dungeons & Dragons in one way or another.” The original dungeon hacks obviously went for the combat, the dungeon, the OD&D, and then later games sort of go for the more core cast of characters, theatre approach, like Planescape: Torment.

JD: Team Fortress is inspired by roleplaying games. There are different classes and characters, and each class is best at its own thing, and you work together as a team. You can have a team of ten people on a side, and person number ten doesn’t feel like he’s just adding 10%. He feels like “I’m the Sniper for my entire team, I’m doing an important job for my team.” It’s the same with an RPG, lets say you’re the wizard: There are some things that only you can do. There are some things that anyone can do but you’re the best at.

JD: A lot of the ideas from D&D really work, for different reasons, and they work in different sorts of games, even first person shooters. The class based system works well because players can feel good even if they’re not the top of their team, they can still feel that they’re important. The level system lets you feel like you’re working toward a goal and achieving things and becoming better, and people like that as well. The hit point system, because people don’t like feeling powerless: “There’s a chance I’ll be hit, and if I’m hit, I’m dead”. There’s a resource management aspect as well.

Zeus: While Final Fantasy and Ultima are like simulated Dungeons & Dragons, Mount & Blade is like a simulated LARP.

You can subscribe to Level Up Podcast at http://leveluppodcast.wordpress.com/.

At Kobold Quarterly, there’s a new interview with Joseph Goodman. Regarding his post in June:

“In order to establish that my opinion on 4E sales was qualified, I listed my credentials. Some readers interpreted that as a sign of arrogance. If I were to rewrite the post I would have been a little less forceful about the credentials, and more clear that I was listing them simply to establish the basis for my opinion.”

Particularly interesting is his perspective on 4E:

“Yes, it’s a fun game, but I personally prefer earlier editions of D&D. I’m not really the target market for 4E. I also recognize that my personal preferences are not the way to run a business. Goodman Games will always publish old-school products because that’s the most fun for me, but it’s 4E that pays the bills. Take the market for 1E and add a couple zeroes to get to the people who still play 3E, then add several more zeroes and you’re up to the 4E market.”

Publisher James Mishler makes an interesting post titled The Doom of RPGs: The Rambling. James is pessimistic about 4E sales figures, and of RPG industry sales figures in general:

Back in the day, Judges Guild sold upward of 10,000 units on even a bad product, and 50,000+ units on a good one; today, unless you are Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, and maybe Green Ronin, Goodman Games, Mongoose Publishing, or Steve Jackson Games, you are lucky to sell 1,000 units on a good product… very lucky. At the beginning of the d20 OGL run, sales of 10,000 units were not impossible; by the end, 1,000 units were the norm.

Paizo’s Erik Mona chimes in with a comment:

Part of the problem, here, is that you’re assuming that anyone can make any kind of money at all selling 1000 units of just about anything. I’m not sure that’s ever been true at any time in the history of the tabletop gaming industry, and it’s certainly not true now.

You’ve got to find a way to develop and audience for your product that is larger than 1000 potential sales. Every product Paizo produces, for example, must endure a rigorous cost/profit analysis before it gets the green light. Everything we do has realistic break-evens in the sub-2000 units category, and only extremely rarely does a product in our lineup not sell significantly more copies than that.

Interesting reads all round. Those links again: Goodman’s post in June, my report of that article, Kobold Quarterly’s new review, and James Mishler’s doomsaying (scroll down for Erik Mona’s reply).

“Bah,” says one of the gamers as he strokes his beard. “Fourth Edition’s nothing but a Wizards of the Coast cash-in. In my group at home, we play nothing but Three-Point-Five Edition.”

“Three-Point-Five?” says another. “My group only plays original Third Edition – Three-Point-Oh! None of your money-grabbing rules revisions!”

The last says nothing, and strokes his long beard as he calculates his THAC0.

Psychology of the Grognard

The name “grognard” comes from the French meaning “grumbler”, historically a soldier in Napoleon’s army. From there, the term entered the vocabulary of historical wargaming enthusiasts in the 1970s to mean a veteran wargamer, and eventually referred to a Dungeons & Dragons player who stayed with a classic version of the game long after the release of one or more new editions.

But what makes the grognard tick? How do we explain the mindset of a gamer who still plays an outdated version of a game – perhaps even AD&D First Edition, or older?

Motivations of a Roleplayer

To understand the grognard we must first understand roleplayers in general. Several theories have been put forward to explain what makes Dungeons & Dragons so appealing. The general consensus is that a variety of psychological factors contribute to an RPG’s popularity, and that different gamers are motivated by different combinations of these factors.

Modify the mix even a little, and you please some players while offending others. The inclusion of miniatures in D&D 3.5 and fourth edition was unpopular with many storytellers and players who enjoyed the greater freedom of using one’s imagination, but a boon for players who enjoyed the tactile sensation of physical minis and the improved precision to tactical combat.

A grognard, then, is a player who, having encountered a new edition of a game, holds a strong commitment to the old edition. It may be rational, or irrational, or a combination of the two. Here are a few reasons for grognards to keep old things over new.

1. New edition contradicts established narrative

Ask any hardcore Star Trek fan: Continuity is law, and contradiction the devil. Many gamers, and many people in general, derive pleasure from feeling that a story is logically consistent, at least within the context of itself. I wrote about this in a 2006 article on the importance of realism in a fantasy setting:

The value of making a world internally consistent and reflecting that in what the players experience is that they can rely on your game world to some extent, which gives them stability, while letting them experience something that Monte Cook likes to talk about a lot, “verisimilitude”. Despite being a complete fantasy, the game world is at least consistent and you can rely on that, you can trust that as a player. … Internal consistency is an important attribute of a game that applies especially to Dungeons & Dragons.

Note that change isn’t the problem here: it’s contradicting the grognard’s established beliefs that makes his head hurt: a blatant, deliberate change with no in-story rationale. It snaps him out of his immersion in the story and shows him that the whole fiction is a lie. It confronts something he knows is true with something that isn’t compatible with that knowledge. The storyteller’s hand is visible and it breaks suspension of disbelief. It just plain feels wrong.

Example: Driders and others, D&D 4E Monster Manual. In third edition, a drow was transformed into a drider as a punishment for failing a rite of passage. In fourth edition, becoming a drider is somehow actually a reward. Forgotten Realms fans are still raging.

Example: The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, a D&D third edition campaign setting book – “does it right”. Its section Gazetteer of the Flanaess begins with a disclaimer that the information contained is often based on rumour or heresay, and may be inaccurate. It is thus reasonably free to contradict old material or to be contradicted by future material, without at any point breaking kayfabe or telling the player his world is inconsistent with itself.

Counter-example: Comic books. Comics frequently use “ret-con” (“retroactive continuity”) in order to provide a stronger basis for storytelling. Dead superheroes come back to life, past events are declared to play out differently, and so forth. Perhaps comic readers have become accustomed to this, or are more willing to accept that stories by different authors are allowed to sacrifice a little continuity in order to clean up earlier authors’ messes and make a better story overall.

2. Knowledge, time and money investment devalued

The grognard has spent thousands of dollars on AD&D First Edition books. He has played every week for twenty years, and knows every rule. He has hundreds of pages of campaign notes and house rules in a binder. How can he give that up now?

A big part of this is what’s called the sunk cost fallacy. People in general are more likely to be emotionally attached to something they’ve spent a lot of time and money on, even if it would be cheaper or better to abandon it for a new option. If they bail now, they’ll feel they’ve wasted all that time, money and effort.

It’s also a matter of pride. D&D players are often the sort to value knowledge and learning, and that means they care about mastery of the rules. Even if the player believes the new rules are better, there’s a cost in time and effort that has to be weighed against the benefits of switching editions. There are probably also fewer resources available, since most of the old sourcebooks aren’t very useful to the new edition.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that players in my old gaming group were more likely to switch to fourth edition if they had played very little third edition. This could simply mean that fourth edition appeals to some people in a way that third didn’t and vice-versa, but it may also suggest that the more heavily invested a player is in a game, the less likely the they are to give all that up.

3. Pessimism

The grognard is rarely impressed by the so-called “new and improved” game. It’s far worse than the version he plays, and what’s more he can prove it. He can do this even if the so-called “facts” disagree with him, or even in the complete absence of facts at all.

Example: When D&D 3.5 superceded D&D 3.0, many players complained and swore they would never update. Now, only a few third edition players still use the earlier 3.0 release.

Example: D&D fourth edition received heavy criticism before any information was revealed. In fact, it received criticism even before it was announced, and some fans have gone so far as to already complain about fifth edition.

Counter-example: Master of Orion III. Pessimists were proven right when the sequel to a very popular videogame turned out to suffer from severe gameplay issues.

4. Nostalgia

“I just read the 4E playtest rules,” said a gamer, “and none of my favourite D&D moments would have happened under these rules. Fourth edition can’t be any good.”

Nostalgia is the counterpart to pessimism. Where pessimism says, “The new is no good”, nostalgia says “The old was magnificent!”

5. New game really is rubbish

The grognard hates the new game almost automatically. But sometimes, just sometimes, he’s right.

It can also happen that the new game is subjectively inferior, but for reasons other than quality. It may be too expensive or inconvenient to switch, or the new game may change the game such that it loses an aspect of its original appeal.

Example: Paranoia fifth edition. Almost none of the original Paranoia RPG production staff were involved in production of the fifth edition, and the release was deemed a terrible failure.