D&D as a Restaurant

Imagine a restaurant, a really nice restaurant. The servers are pleasant and efficient. It has the food and drink you like. The seats are comfortable and they don’t allow smoking (or they allow it, if that’s your preference). It’s close to your house and the prices are good.

Then they put up a sign. From 5-7 they’re going to serve Mexican food, from 7-9 they’ll have Italian, and from 9-11 you can get sushi. It seems a little strange, but you like the place, so you decide to roll with it.

One day, you stop in on your way home from work and ask if there’s any way you can get sushi, as you really want some, but have to be up early the next morning. The server replies, “No. This is the time we serve Mexican.” Frustrated, you decide to go somewhere else…

and suddenly that restaurant doesn’t seem quite so nice.

Much as I hate speaking in metaphors, I think this illustrates the point I’m trying to make. When Monte says,

“Some players like low-level, gritty, “where am I going to get two more silver pieces to afford to eat today” kinds of games.”

he’s making an unnecessary connection between rules and theme. If the game stops feeling gritty and realistic because the mechanics explicitly change the feel, then the player who prefers that style – or who dislikes the open-ended, Vancian style that is presented as the opposite – has no choice but to stop playing and start over. Similarly, the player who likes a freeform, narrative game with grand scope is restricted to high-level play. There’s also the mechanical consideration that the “gritty” players can never have complex characters and “epic” players can never have simple characters.

I also think it’s especially toxic to associate “realistic” with martial and “epic” with magical. If a wizard can teleport us across the universe, I want my fighter to karate-chop a mountain. Creating “epic” powers for a fighter might be harder than for a wizard, but I have faith that the creative people from Wizards can do it. I think they should want to do it.

If Next is going to accomodate both styles – and I think it should – it needs to do so over the entire lifespan. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having two versions of the wizard – one that is for people who are gung-ho about play balance and one for people who have other priorities. It could be as simple as saying, “If you’re in a ‘gritty’ game, you can’t take these spells.” That way, the GM can tune the mechanics to provide the best fit – and the most fun – for the group.

ADDENDUM: I reserve the right to feel frustrated and irritated when Monte tells me “I don’t get it” when I disagree with his assertion that epic play should be fundamentally Vancian. It’s very possible to prefer a different flavor of epic play and it’s perfectly acceptable to advocate for its inclusion. Orthodoxy arguments are, by their very nature, divisive.

I think this gets under my skin because he’s doing exactly what so many people said about 4e, in that the lack of open-ended powers and non-combat mechanics mandated a “correct” style of play that was quintessentially balanced and dry. I feel that he’s saying that the people who care about power and agency balance in high-level play are wrong because high-level play is definitionally unbalanced.

Tales from the Table: Splatter!

What has two thumbs and killed the two defenders in successive rounds? This guy:

One of my players challenged me to come up with an epic-tier solo boss that was truly solo. This was the result. I make no bones about the fact that I ladled on a truckload of anti-effect powers. I was also trying to establish that the epic tier was going to feel a little bit different than the paragon tier. Bad things are going to happen more often. I’m sorry if the following is too “mathy” and technical. A good GM can create story around any monster or NPC, but that’s separate from learning how to balance a complex design.

As with every monster that has a “minigame”, there were a number of design questions. The first was whether or not Berzerk had to be an encounter power with no possibility of recharge. My theory was that Berzerk would be best when it hit eight or nine rage. This would provide a rage dump to prevent Tantrum from getting too large, while still keeping a level of threat. If it starts taking three or four turns a round, however, the encounter could spiral out of control.

During the actual running, Gutbuster read “Free Action, 1/turn; Spend 1 rage: Y’gal’s attacks do +2d10 damage until the start of its next turn.” I had expected that Y’gal would hover at 3-5 rage until one of the larger rage gains triggered, most likely the one for becoming bloodied. It would then activate Berzerk, bringing it back down to 3-5. In this way, Gutbuster would always remain a meaningful question – Is +2d10 damage worth an extra attack? As Slam averages out to 32 damage, Gutbuster is only a net gain if it hits with three or more attacks. Against a high-AC target, more attacks is better, whereas Y’gal can just mulch a softer target.

This created a pleasing mechanical tension where the defender(s) felt good about keeping the monster’s attention. Every time Y’gal turned on one of the other characters, the defenders were quick to punish it. Forced movement became key.

The problem arose when Y’gal missed all its attacks, going to 6 rage. This would have been manageable, except that the Rogue hit it with a critical and was bloodied by Lash Out. Suddenly at 10 rage, there was absolutely no reason to not activate Gutbuster. The Paladin recognized the danger and pulled the monster over into the corner so that it could only attack her. While this worked out great for protecting the rest of the party, it exposed her to 9 boosted attacks. She went from barely hurt to dead in a single turn, preventing the Cleric from being able to respond. The Fighter rushed in and Y’gal repeated the process its next turn, taking him from unhurt +15 temporary hit points to dead, despite jacking his AC to 43. (To be fair, I did crit twice during that series. I needed a 14 to hit him. Had the rolls been more average, he definitely would have survived.)

This revealed the main mechanical fault: once Y’gal reaches “critical mass”, it’s going to pretty much kill a character a turn. To my players’ credit, they dug in when they realized this. The Cleric actually said, “We’re going to sacrifice one of us at a time until it’s dead or we are.” They were able to drop the monster just before it fixed itself a bowl of Rogue Chow. So, yes, the fight is on a clock, but it’s not a fun clock, at least not for my table.

So we need a good reason to bleed off rage so that Tantrum doesn’t get too out of hand. It’s possible that other parties might have more abilities that would make the monster want to use Burning Fury but not trigger Obyrith Unshackled (As an aside, the obyriths in my home campaign are aberrant creatures that can infect elementals, but are not themselves elementals. You might want to change the keywords accordingly for other settings. In a more canon environment, Y’gal would be a Huge Elemental Humanoid.) This version of Gutbuster is intended to meet that need. I don’t know if it changes the “correct” play to something that’s more fun, but it certainly gives the GM a tight tuning knob for the number of attacks and amount of damage.

Enjoy!

“I’m too epic for my pants… come see my la-ance!”

Ah, Monte, I love you. Every time I start to relax and think maybe you’ve figured it out this time around, you say stupid crap like this and the underinformed buzz about Next ramps up again. As a cheap marketing tool, it might work. As a way to have a honest, adult conversation about game design, not so much.

I think that players who appreciate the different levels of play want them to be different. (The people who say that the game breaks down at such-and-such a level are self-defining themselves as people who don’t care for that style of high-level play, which is fine, of course!)

If you bother to look at the comments on your thread – and pretty much every recent conversation on this topic – you would see that people aren’t complaining about the thematic changes of high-level play. Amazingly enough, your player base is smart enough to get that an epic story feels different and it’s insulting to suggest that they don’t. Here are the most common complaints:

• Epic combats take too long because the characters and monsters have accumulated too many powers.
• Epic combats are unbalanced because having the correct power or ability can completely trivialize the encounter, while lacking that specific power or ability can make the encounter unwinnable (or, at least, grindy and unfun).
• It’s not enjoyable when certain classes get to have all the fun.
• It’s not enjoyable when the mechanics shift and a long-standing character loses its viability.

Every single one of those complaints is mechanical, not thematic. You seem bound and determined to define epic play as “the place where broken casters win”, rather than as a grand and expansive style of play. If you really want to “unite the editions”, you have to find a permanent fix for linear fighter, quadratic wizard.

And because this is what came to mind when I read Monte’s pompous post, you get to suffer too:

An Open Plea to WotC

Can we please, please, stop with the notion that “high-level” and “epic” are the exact same thing? Yes, a high-level game is far more likely to be epic, but that need not be the case. In the other direction, it’s very possible for a low-level game to have an epic feel. You have to separate mechanics from theme. It’s critical that all the classes be relatively balanced at all levels. Mechanical imbalance is poison at the table. It breeds resentment and frustration.

Go watch the Lord of the Rings movies. For all that the community mocks Legolas, he actually feels epic. You could also watch the first couple of fights from Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. All campiness aside, those scenes made jedi look completely badass, yet non-jedi remain important to the plot. Just remember: Everyone wants to be Han Solo. Everyone.

As a counter-example, take a look at the second and third Matrix movies. There were many problems with those movies, but at the heart of them is the simple truth that no one besides Neo matters. Everyone else is a mook, a villain or a sidekick. That’s the very epitome of shitty storytelling.

D&D Bechdel Tests

Whew, if you could only see my writing queue for this blog. Witchknight is helping me put the finishing touches on an “exploring 4e” article about Paladins (he has more knowledge of Essentials builds than I do and it’s a way to get him to write the article for the Witchknight, something he has a little experience with).  I’m also working on “Teachable Moments: Skyrim Edition” because I need to feel that I’m getting something out of the hours I’ve put into that game. Finally, I’m working on an article about dynamic campaign generation, as that’s how we built the new game we’re running through MapTools.

Of course, very little about this blog is actually planned. Most of the time, I just write about whatever random gaming-related thoughts inspire me. So it is with the Bechdel Test.

Strip by Alison Bechdel (http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/dtwof)

In order to “pass”, a movie must meet three criteria:

1. It must have at least two women in it;
2. Two or more of those women must engage in a conversation (a more strict version of this rule requires that the women be named characters);
3. That conversation must be about something other than a man or their relationship with that man.

The Bechdel Test doesn’t address sexism. It’s quite possible for a movie to pass and still be incredibly misogynistic. The point is that it’s a simple measure of gender bias and representation. Once you’re aware of the rule, you start to realize how often women are unnecessarily excluded from plots.

I was reminded of the Bechdel Test by a friend this morning and it collided with my musings on sexism in D&DNext. So here are some of my Bechdel Tests for D&D.

The “Jim Hines Art Judgement”

When a piece of D&D art depicts an adventuring party, it passes if:

1. The party contains at least two female characters;
2. At least one of the characters is neither a healer or a spellcaster;
3. All of the female characters are wearing pants and gear appropriate to their role within the party;
4. All of the female characters are in natural, comfortable poses;
5. None of the female characters are in greater danger than their male counterparts.

The “Red Sonja Rule”

A D&D module or plot arc passes the test if:

1. It contains at least 40% female NPCs;
2. None of the female NPCs are defined by their relationship to a male;
3. At least one of the female NPCs is in a position of authority, power or respect;
4. The plot or module does not include sexual assault, arranged marriage, pregnancy or loss of female virginity.

The “Sleeping Beauty Standard”

A D&D module or plot arc that centers around a female villain passes the test if:

1. The villain does not “bewitch” or seduce;
2. The villain does the majority of her own fighting;
3. The villain does not employ “reverse sexism”;
4. The villain has motivations beyond prior abuse or neglect.

What are your Bechdel Tests for D&D?

Tales From the Table: When the Shadows Came

Monday marked our first fight in the epic tier in Nations of Rage. It was amazing! At my table, that means that the fight was challenging without the players feeling that they had lost too much of their cool and they had meaningful choices to make. We had a small flare up at the end of last session/over the week that really came down to remembering the difference between dying and dead. I had been holding back in the wrong way because I was being too sensitive to the unfun of sitting there with an unconscious character and my players had been feeling some “sticker shock” over the recent damage numbers (they’re seeing more epic tier foes). We all needed to relax and return to the idea that it’s okay for characters to lick floor,  but it’s not okay for them to stay there.

This encounter included three Masked Assassins and three Masked Conjurors (27,750 EXP for a party of six).

Masked Assassin

• The imagery associated with this monster was especially pleasing. “Wait, it peeled off its shadow?” … and then it peeled off its face.
• Having them produce minions made for interesting tactical choices for the characters. I normally reserve summoning-style powers for elites/solos or casters, but it worked well here. They spent a fair bit of energy prepping against potential gotchas for when the shadow was killed.
• Unmasking was intended to work as a mild anti-defender mechanic where the tanks get pushed off a target and can’t return. I ended up using it more for a damage boost because of the way the fight unfolded. Giving people the ability to slide themselves in response to a fear effect seemed to work better than pushes or obligating people to move.
• The way that Unmasking is templated (“cannot come within 3 squares…”) is somewhat confusing with regard to what happens if the Masked Assassin moves to within 3 squares of someone under the effect. If it had come up, I probably would have ruled that the character couldn’t move closer to the Assassin, but that they weren’t forced to leave. “Bully zones” can work, but they can have a punishing feel beyond what is intended.
• +28 vs. AC against level 21 characters woke up the players, as they were suddenly hearing 42+ attack rolls more often than they had before. It did expose what was going on with the party’s AC because the fighter has an AC of 40 (41 with Boots of the Fencing Master), while the rest of the party hovers between 33 and 36.

Masked Conjuror

• I could write at length about the strength of the Like a Moth mechanic. Ranged monsters generally need something for when the characters roll up on them but, at the same time, making the escape/avoidance mechanic too powerful can be very frustrating. Like a Moth found the sweet spot because it put the conjuror in a position to use Ignition, but not in a perfectly safe place.
• Unwelcome Gift was not on the original monster. The “increase the ongoing damage and hot potato it to an ally” was included in Ignition. Obviously I knew what the power was supposed to do, but I cleaned it up for other people. I’m not sure that the phrase “The ongoing fire and necrotic damage is always save ends, regardless of how it was applied” is necessary, but I had a nagging feeling that leaving it out opened up the possibility of a negative rules interaction.
• That said, Ignition is an awesome power, as it demonstrates the principle of doing awful things to the characters and having it be okay as long as they have some level of control. The Genasi warlock had resist 15 to both, which was fine until the ongoing damage hit 40. Keep in mind that parties at this level should have access to saving throws, making this power a little less scary than it appears.  The residue of Ignition (2d10+20 for each attack they make) is similarly strong. The Tiefling paladin/warlock took 87 damage for attacking three guys while under this effect, but that was okay because it was the choice that he made.
• The miss effect on Night’s Flame never came up, so I don’t know whether or not it was necessary or flavorful. I suspect that it could be safely deleted.

Enjoy!

Teachable Moments

At the risk of having to turn in my man card, I have a confession to make: I hate the Three Stooges. It’s not just that I don’t grok the humor, they are actively anti-fun for me. It’s the same with America’s Funniest Home Videos. Every time I see a man take a shot to the junk, I cringe and ask myself why I’m not doing anything else. I have learned that I am simply not a dick and fart joke kind of guy. While I may make the occasional snide remark about the sort of people who enjoy that kind of humor, I’m pretty much willing to let those people be. That philosophy extends to my perspective on roleplaying and it’s why I can wear that “Edition War Nonparticipation” badge with pride.

This weekend saw a bit of a kerfuffle over some unfortunate comments Mike Shea made about his experiences running D&DNext at DDX. I say unfortunate because, while I don’t think Shea threw an edition bomb, he did end up throwing a style bomb.

“Two of the groups I had both went into the Caves of Chaos with very typical 4e empowerment.”

“Both groups went out as 4e PCs the first time and old-school PCs the second.”

As you can imagine, the internets went apeshit. It was made all the worse by the fact that those of us outside the friends and family playtest can really only speak to the PR, much of which hasn’t been aimed at pleasing the 4e audience. The thread over at rpg.net was occasionally testy, so much so that Shea felt a need to issue a clarification. While I think the accusation that he’s “edition warring” or “pixel bitching” are way off base, there’s an interesting discussion to be had here. It starts with this quote:

How many great battles have you ran where the players were severely outmatched and had to run?

If Shea had asked me directly, my answer would be none. I’ve written – at length – about my concerns with that style of encounter design and that type of GM/player dynamic. The important takeaway, however, is that those are my ideas about what makes for a good or bad game. My position all along has been that the best games come about when the players and the GM establish the kind of relationship that allows them to change the game to suit them. How often the characters should be “severely outmatched” is one of those things that has to be established over the long haul.

I do think 4e players, myself included, have expectations for the game such as balanced combat, the right skills or powers to defeat any challenge we might face, and a constant progression of magic items. I think the game’s math is built that way.

Shea fumbles here because he does not discuss whether or not this is a reasonable expectation and how this expectation came to be. I think that’s the real conversation we should be having. Yes, this comes down to the timeless argument about the values of simulationism versus gamism (I don’t hold with GNS Theory because I think it tries too hard to place a singular, exclusive label on a person or action rather than examining relative urgency). In simplest terms, simulationism is the idea that roleplaying is generally more fun when it is realistic and logical. A simulationist views the paladin having to spend a week recuperating from foolishly charging the stirges as a natural consequence of his behavior. The paladin should have had a more realistic appreciation for the situation, his abilities and his place in the world. That is, he should have accepted the natural limits of what he can do.

Simulationism tends to fall apart when it crosses the line where having the right tool stops being a benefit and starts being a requirement. In the “dagger to jam the door closed” snafu in mentioned in the thread, Shea does exactly what a good GM is supposed to do; he drills down to what the player wants to accomplish and helps him find a solution that fits the level of simulationism that Shea intends for the game. If Shea had simply said, “you don’t have a dagger” and left it at that, then all the complaints would have been justified. The worst we can say is that – potentially – Shea did a poor job of communicating the style of game he runs. Having run a large number of convention modules, I will say that players have a bad tendency not to hear you when you give them the expectations speech.

The gamist counters that roleplaying is a hobby, not a research project. Roleplaying is generally more fun when the characters are more cinematic. Characters hold a special place in the world and can do things that others cannot. Gamists generally dislike bookkeeping. Gamism tends to fall apart when it crosses the line into an adult version of Cowboys and Indians, also known as “just making shit up.”

If Next is going to thrive, it needs to address the needs of both factions. Do you think there is a middle ground and, if so, what is it?

Fresh Meat: Coin-Operated

We’re going simple today, as game ran a little long last night. What follows is the edited versions based on the feedback I received post-fight. It was intended to be the final fight of the paragon tier and it takes place inside a giant treasure vault. The dragon first appears as a shadow, then forms a body from the coins and trinkets in the room. It telekinetically controls the treasure.

I should give you more fluff and description, but, like I said, I’m tired and if you can’t find inspiration in a gold dragon made from real gold coins…

WARNING: This fight is a beating.

Comments/Suggestions:

• I started with three Platinum Guards. It was suggested that he could start with more or less as a way to tune the fight.
• I used Ocean of Coin on the first turn to grab the warlock and flurry him. I then action pointed into Goldstorm on most of the rest of the party. Goldstorm is a lot of damage (average 32 or 47!) and you can pretty much choose anyone to jam back inside.
• The real dirty trick is to punt people back into Goldstorm, then summon minions to clog the charge lanes.
• Ocean of Coin also makes marking/”tanking” very, very hard. Kalek can just chuck defenders away from him.
• If you’re wondering why he doesn’t have the traditional “solo stun protection” it’s because causing him to drop that Goldstorm is almost a requirement.
• I waited until turn two to pick someone for Drowning in Money and chose wrong. I went after the main healer, thinking that a solid damage burst would put them on tilt. Instead, I should have gone after a damage dealer because the fight is on a clock.

• You can lower the damage from Explosion to 15 and have it automatically hit if you want to save time.
• Try to clip the soft targets with Smash, as that means that you don’t have to use Ocean of Coin to keep them in the AoE.

A Brief History of Vancian Magic

If you’ve been paying attention to the news coming out of the D&D Experience, you’ve probably noticed the term “Vancian” come up, followed by a fair bit of tension. The Wikipedia article isn’t especially helpful, being nothing more than a list of various magic systems. The TV Tropes listing is somewhat better, as is the Arcana Wiki article (more information good, less neutral tone bad), but neither do much to explain the underpinnings of the concept.

My experience is that most modern gamers are largely unaware of it, both as a convention and as a design philosophy, which is kind of unfortunate.

What’s in a Name?

As you almost certainly already know, Vancian magic is named after the magic system found in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels.

“The tomes which held Turjan’s sorcery lay on the long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan’s brain could know but four at a time.

Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violent Cloud. He stared down at the characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.

Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. He robed himself with a short cape, tucked a blade into his belt, fitted the amulet holding Laccodel’s Rune to his wrist. Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandal’s Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.”

-”Turjan of Miir”, Jack Vance

There’s no evidence, however, that Gygax and Arenson based their magic system directly off the books. It seems to have been more of a “We have a square hole… oh, look, a square peg!” situation where Vance’s books coincided with their design theories.

The Strange Influence of Napoleon Bonaparte

I know it seems like roleplaying has been around forever, but chances are good that you’re playing with someone who is older than the hobby (that would include me, by the way). Dungeons and Dragons didn’t spring full-formed from the minds of Gygax and Arenson. It actually has its roots in historical miniatures games, most specifically Column, Line & Square. The most popular era was the Napoleonic period, probably because the uniforms were still outlandish and fun (as compared to the relatively boring uniforms of today’s armies), the generals were interesting (one of Napoleon’s cavalry officers, Murat, liked to eat grass with the horses before a big battle) and there was a wide spread of troop types, technologies, weapons and tactics.

D&D evolved out of these games and it shows. One of D&D’s contemporaries, Chivalry and Sorcery, shows it even more clearly. Basically, those first RPGs were guys saying “We don’t have to just simulate Waterloo. We could simulate Lord of the Rings too!” This is important to remember, because the core “look and feel” of classic roleplaying games derives from this mindset.

• Spells were perceived as ammunition. This makes sense, when you think about it. Both the early RPGs and miniatures systems used the same basic unit of tactical time: the day.
• Classes were treated like units and class identity was strictly maintained. To the military mind, a unit behaves in ways that fulfill a specific need. In this sense, early class development centered as much around role as story and it played into the traditional trade-offs of military units. You can’t have a heavily armored magic-user (swordmages and the like came later and remain contentious) because that’s not what an artillery piece is. It was an intuitive road to play balance because it fed into expected strengths and weaknesses.
• Mechanics and progression were handled with charts and tables. Take a look at old military or technical manuals and compare the formatting and structure with early versions of D&D. This was how information was stored and it had an effect on how the game felt.
• Randomness was used to simulate reality. Many modern miniatures games retain “weather rolls” or similar mechanics intended to introduce randomness as a form of balance. Many roleplaying games include random encounter tables and random loot.

Harry Potter, Meet Gandalf

When people talk about the “golden age” of fantasy fiction, they basically mean Lord of the Rings, Elric of Melnibone, Conan the Barbarian (and to a lesser degree, John Carter of Mars) and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. You could also include H.P. Lovecraft’s work, as it influenced perspectives on magic. These books have a few things in common:

• They were written by men, for men. While all of them were sexist, sometimes overtly so, it’s important to realize they also were written for an audience with some very specific ideas about masculinity that were reflective of the thinking of the time. Intellectualism and learning were not exactly important qualities for the heroes of yore. They all share a “where strength won’t do, cleverness and trickery win the day” esthetic. Sometimes being smart or gaining knowledge was actively punished.
• Magic was either exceptionally rare or on the decline. The notion that magic could be a part of everyday life is actually fairly modern. In my literary experience, it first shows up in The Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony. It’s never been all that popular outside of of books for younger readers like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.
• Magic was usually bad for you and often a tool of the enemy. I’ve never seen a classic fantasy piece where magic was clearly a force for good. Even today, books in which the idea of a magical utopia is discussed always refer to it as something that once existed, but has been lost. In many ways, magic was imagined much like nuclear power (atomic bombs, stolen secrets, radioactive waste, nuclear winter…). Sometimes gaining magical power required personal sacrifices (Hand of Vecna) or weakened/harmed you (Raistlin).
• Practitioners of magic were either very powerful people who were in control or who lived in deliberate obscurity. Given the negative perception of magic, it’s not unreasonable that most of the people who used it were either power hungry or people who hid their dangerous power from the world. If you consider the Force in the Star Wars universe to be a form of magic (which it is), you can see this principle very clearly.
  
• Learning magic was always a difficult process in which the student was likely to make dangerous mistakes and was unreliable until the student gained further mastery. In the few light-hearted presentations, the apprentice was almost always presented as being something of a bumbler and his magic was likely to go perversely awry. Again, the books of Piers Anthony are helpful in seeing this at work.

If you want all of this wrapped up in a neat package, Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote a series of books that started with Lure of the Basilisk (it’s technically called The Lords of Dus Series, but I couldn’t have told you that with a gun to my head). Not only are they excellent reads, but every single one of these tropes is presented there.

The Vancian System

So the early RPG developers built a magic system based on their understanding of fantasy magic tropes and miniatures game balance, but how did it work?

• Spells were split into (spell) levels that a character could gain access to as it went up in (character) levels. Sometimes a class started with spells, sometimes it would not gain them until later. Sometimes the same spell was listed as being different levels for different classes.
• Characters could learn (or gain access to) a large number of spells. Traditionally, arcane casters had to go out and find copies of spells, then pass a check to see if they could actually learn them. Gods granted divine casters access to most, if not all, of the spells of the appropriate level.

Imagine working to find a copy of a spell, then botching the roll. It happened.

• The caster would memorize (or select) a certain number of these spells for the day. Let’s say that a 2nd level AD&D Magic-User (the equivalent of today’s Wizard) knows Burning Hands, Comprehend Languages, Detect Magic and Write (I could have sworn that I remembered that every Magic-User got Write and Read Magic automatically, but I’m too tired to make sure). Looking at the chart below, he can prepare two spells. He decides that he’s expecting a lot of fighting, so he decides to prep two Burning Hands.

AD&D Magic-User Spell Progression

• When a spell was used, it was lost until it was replaced by memorizing. The system did not include methods of recovering expended spells until much later. Most magic items had either a per-day usage restriction or charges that had to be tracked (This was especially true of wands. Scrolls, salves and potions were always single-use items).
• Casters were not given at-will spells. This led to situations where Magic-Users would pick up a crossbow or other simple weapon to use when they were out of spells.
• Casters were not permitted to dynamically swap spells until later editions. This was mostly restricted to healers, who could turn in a combat spell for something that could heal.
• Most of the spell design was “top down”. Vancian magic centers around the idea that spells are very rare and very powerful. The designers started with the most powerful things they could imagine a caster doing and worked down from there to the most routine magical tasks. This is why you have Wish on one end and Read Magic on the other.
• Power balance was attempted through mechanics external to the spells. GMs were encouraged to make certain spells difficult (or impossible) to find. Some spells had rare or expensive components. Requiring spell components was also a way to place external limits on a spell (Fess up, how many of you tracked the number of holly berries your character was carrying?). Some spells cost you experience, caused you to lose attributes (or risk losing them) or aged you.
• Rituals did not exist until later editions. Admittedly, there were non-combat spells that you could memorize and cast during what you hoped was downtime.

This became a series of feats in 3.5

And the Wheels Come Off…

Thus far, I have tried to keep the tone neutral, despite the fact that I’ve always disliked the Vancian system. This section is more of my personal opinion, most of which is going to be negative. As always, if you disagree with me or have a different perspective, please feel free to comment.

• Vancian magic was often hard on the healers. Even after they made it so that you could “trade-in” for a heal, very often a healer’s turn consisted of nothing more than casting Cure X Wounds. 4e’s system of having the majority of healing come from minor actions allowed healers to do something more than just spam.
• The mechanics of Vancian magic forces specific themes and stories. There’s simply no way to do the Harry Potter universe (among others) under a Vancian paradigm. Also, having to find spells for your casters makes non-caster characters go on adventures that benefit others more than them.
• Scarcity is generally a bad way to attempt balance. Keeping track of components is tedious. Also, if something is overpowered or unfun, the fact that the character can only do it every so often doesn’t make it any less so (this problem is present in many systems, not just those that use Vancian magic, but the way spells are designed in Vancian systems often makes it worse).
• Vancian magic is very difficult to balance with characters that don’t use magic. This problem is sometimes referred to as “linear fighter, quadratic wizard“, though I prefer the term “banding”. In 3.5 the “sweet spot” where casters and non-casters were mostly equals was levels 6 – 11. Many campaigns dissolved after that point.

"If by 'war gods' you mean 'flame spewing apocalypse in human form,' then yeah." (Their caption, not mine)

• Vancian systems are also notorious for poor agency. This is a separate concept from balance. Imagine this conversation:

GM: You guys need to get into the keep.

Bard: I’m going to talk the guards into letting us in.

Wizard: … or I could just use Charm Person. Far more reliable and we can have them give us their stuff!

Rogue: They might throw off the enchantment. Best to let me sneak in.

Wizard: … or I could just use Invisibility.

Fighter: I’ll bet they have some kind of magic that prevents that. I know I would. How about I bend the bars on the portcullis that leads into the sewers underneath the keep?

Wizard: … or I could just fly us over with, you know, my Fly spell.

Rest of the party: *sigh* Whatever.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that other systems haven’t had this problem, but Vancian systems tend to have the worst time of it.

 

Whew! I’m spent! What are your thoughts?

Put Away the Handcuffs

I read all of the DDX stuff pretty much as it was happening over the weekend. Some of it I liked (keeping the Warlord), some of it I’m going to reserve my judgement for the open playtest. One thing, however, provoked a visceral response that I feel demands a reply:

Are races going to have positive and negative ability mods or just positive?

Monte: We’re looking at having both positive and negative modifiers for races.

I get that you said “looking at”, but isn’t the point of open playtesting getting feedback? So here’s my feedback: if negative racial traits are included as the default, it will either be the absolute first module I will “turn off” or the first house rule I will make. I’ve talked about how racial attributes interact with character concept*, but this goes even farther than that.

Under the 4e model, trying to play a class/race combination where you lack the attack stat is merely suboptimal. In D&DNext, certain character concepts will be flatly impossible and I think that’s a shame.

Edit: I was aware of the potential class-based stat bonus that Jacob mentions below and I was remiss to not address it. If you get a stat boost from your class, then classes will be balanced around the full class+race combo. In other words, the system math will be predicated on making that “correct” choice. My desire is that there be fewer “incorrect” choices, increasing the number of story options available to players.

Incentives to play a specific combination can help maintain thematic identity (though they are by no means required) and they can lead to power creep/optimization problems. They are, however, generally preferable to disincentives, which are more likely to lead to dissatisfaction and frustration.

* – I am, once again, going to make the case for Gamma World style attribute selection. It’s clean and it opens up a ton of character concepts that would otherwise probably never see play.

Bringing Sexy Back: Female Imagery in D&DNext

This might be mildly NSFW.

Today we’re going to look at how women are depicted graphically in fantasy roleplaying games (as distinct from sexism or misogyny).

Let’s start with some basic assumptions.

• It would be nice to have more women playing D&D. The surveys, which you can still take, suggest that women make up only about 15-20% of the player base (though, to be fair, that’s an average of about one woman per 5-person group). Having so few women changes the flavor of the game.
• Unrealistic and hypersexual female models make many women feel uncomfortable. More on this below.
  
• The way women (of all species within the game) are portrayed has an effect on how people approach the game and how they view the female players. You see this most often in the form of transferred misogyny. When someone starts with the idea that “it’s just a game, so the normal rules don’t apply”, unacceptable behavior starts to creep into the out-of-game experience.

How the world sees women

Okay, guys, do me a favor and follow this link or this link.  What you’re looking at is the general consensus for “plus-sized”. That’s right, the world considers these women fat. Let’s take a look at some of them that stand out:

Would you really consider these women fat?

To me, both of those women look healthy (Well, the one in the middle could do with a little less zombie makeup, but that’s a personal preference). I find this next picture fascinating:

Can you pick out the "plus-sized" model?

This is a women’s magazine. According to the industry, the woman in the middle is a “traditional” model, while the one on the right is a “bustier, more athletic” model who has appeared in the swimsuit editions of Sport’s Illustrated. The woman on the left? She’s so “fat” that she’s barely employable as a model (I’m not kidding). Oh, and that little teaser up in the upper right hand corner – “Size 2, Size 12… Whatever!” You should know that the average American woman is between a size 11 and 14.

Yes, the woman on the right has a little bit of a tummy, but look at this picture of her by herself:

If I had to bend over like this, I would die.

Now go back to the picture of the two models together. Katya Zharkova, the model on the right, is 5’10″ and about 135-145 pounds. Except for being a bit tall, she’s actually average. The other model in the picture essentially has the build and bust of an adolescent.

Women are constantly being told that their bodies are wrong and that they aren’t sexy in the right way, sometimes in very subtle ways.*

How D&D presents women

Now, you might be asking, “Isn’t this a D&D blog? I get that girls are bombarded with images telling them that they need to be impossibly thin, but what does this have to do with roleplaying?” Well, one of the primary aspects of roleplaying is projection onto the character. When people build characters, they generally make them with most of the qualities they like about themselves, then add a couple of qualities they wish they had. If you watch your players closely enough, their characters will tell you a lot about the person they wish that they could be.

Now, when a woman turns to D&D to create her idealized self, what does she see? Sadly, the imagery is actually worse than that found in modeling. For one thing, take a look at Jim Hines trying to assume poses from fantasy covers. Yikes. Whereas there’s a limit to what Photoshop can do, fantasy art knows no such restriction. Google Images can barf up some weird things, but “fantasy women” shows us a fairly clear standard:

• No more than about 130 pounds, often much less.
• Gravity-defying C or D-cup breasts.
• Narrow hips (an oddity given the curves required for that bosom).
• No upper body strength to speak of.
• A perfectly flat, but not muscular, midriff.

Note how,  in the picture below – which is about as good as a fantasy picture is going to get – even the Half-Orc and the Dwarf are not permitted to be stocky (the Half-Orc is done in a very She-Hulk, “I’m just a very tall supermodel” style, though at least she doesn’t have the pipestem arms).

If you want to do some extra research, I suggest Google Image searches for “D&D women” and “D&D fighter”. You should also read this article which examines the poses by gender for 4e and a bunch of MMOs.

Art by Staino from Deviant Art

The thing is, if a female gamer wants to look like that fantasy, she has to change herself. No amount of situps is going to give you cleavage. A male gamer, by contrast, generally only needs to improve himself. That’s a huge distinction. If you ask a woman how she would become that idealized self, it’s likely she doesn’t have a clue. For almost every woman, that dream will never be within reach. Ask a guy the same question and he need only point you to the original Conan the Barbarian. Even if he never musters up the willpower, the road is all laid out for him. It feels possible, if not probable.

Actually, think about Conan for a minute and what his life is like outside of fighting. He gets to drink and eat what he wants (as an aside, he gets to be a giant man-whore, to boot). Do you think the same could be said of the female fantasy character? If you want an excellent example of this, go look through Shelly Mazzanoble’s columns with an eye towards what she says about food and appearance (I’m not going to discuss Mazzanoble’s dreadful effect on women’s perspectives on D&D, that job was masterfully done here. If you want to take a break from reading this and read through that entire blog like I did, I won’t mind.).

At the end of the day, roleplaying is supposed to be a refuge from feeling bad about yourself.

In the book, they chained him to this to grind grain.

To get back to the point, your character is your avatar and how you feel about that avatar has a profound effect on how you approach the game. If I were the art director for D&DNext, these are the guidelines I would establish:

• Yes, boobs are cool, but no more cleavage shots. They’re gratuitous and awful.
• Speaking of breasts, a little variance might be nice. We get that you’re trying to make it easy to visually distinguish that the character is female, but maybe you could use cues other than a big ‘ol rack? (Yes, I’m using the vulgar term there. The way breasts are depicted in fantasy art pisses me off.)
• DO NOT SEND IN A PICTURE OF A WOMAN IN A POSTURE THAT YOU YOURSELF CANNOT COMFORTABLY ASSUME.
• We want pictures of women  doing exciting things. Standing around looking at a glowing spell is not exciting. Also, try to have the women’s level of violence equal that of the men. If the scene is about a bloody fight, there’s nothing wrong with depicting a woman about to gut her enemy.
• Pay attention to the visible BMI. No images of women (as distinct from children) with a BMI of less than 20 will be accepted. Also, preference will be given to depictions that show realistic upper arms and thighs.

• Stop baring midriffs. If a woman is wearing armor, that armor should cover exactly the same things it would on a man.
• In fact, just stop putting women in gear that would be completely ineffective. If any sort of double-sided tape would be required, don’t even bother.
• Put pants on the female figures. Stripper boots do not count.
• Women need to be portrayed in active roles, rather than just standing around.
• It’s okay for a woman to have scars, missing limbs and blemishes. It’s also okay for them to be old and have a BMI > 25.
  

  Can I work your rod of many parts?

• “Sexy healer” and “sexy spellcaster” are sometimes foods. Actually, they’re that plate laden with bacon grease and chicken gravy that no one should ever eat. We can also never do “sexy archer” ever again.
• It’s okay for women to be winning a fight. Really, it is.
• It’s also okay for them to be doing something other than defending, running or screaming.
• When a woman is wielding a sword (and it’s more than okay to depict her doing so), at least pretend to give her the upper-body strength required.
• Save the bikinis for the beach.

What would your art rules be?

* – If you don’t believe me, go back and look at the two pictures of Zharkova. In the first, they have gone to some lengths to make her more butch than the “normal” model. To begin with, the other model’s head is inclined in a submissive posture. The other model is also visibly shorter, when Zharkova (at 5’10) is about average for professional models. Zharkova’s hand is on the other model’s buttocks  and she has a wistful, dreamy look on her face (in a creepy way, they almost suggest that Zharkova is molesting a child). Zharkova is not wearing makeup. This is yet another “this is how big women are” statement, which is to say that they’re probably lesbians.

The second picture is actually worse. Putting aside the uncomfortable heels, when Zharkova has to be sexy on her own, they put her in an extremely submissive and highly uncomfortable posture. It almost screams “I pretend that I don’t care that I’m a fatty, but I’ll do whatever it takes to make you like me!” a.k.a. “You can mount me if you like!” They add bright lipstick so that you know she’s aroused, then they give her more gaudy rings. The overall impression is definitely not one of empowerment.

Oh, and as a “reward” for having stuck with me this far…

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