Reality is the playground of the unimaginative

Monday, 30 August 2010

Fourth Ed - Questions, Questions, Questions...

Say, for sake of an argument, I do decide to go down this 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons route, I still have some concerns and questions I'd like to share with the rest of the blogosphere...

(1) Time: As has been noted elsewhere, for various reasons, my gaming group, The Tuesday Knights, only meets once a month for two-and-a-half to three hours of gaming.

When we played Labyrinth Lord and Castles & Crusades, this was enough time to whip through quite a lot of a dungeons level and several combats.

Is this enough time, though, to do anything meaningful in 4th Edition? Or will it take us several years to finish, for instance, Keep On The Shadowfell?

(2) Online Component: Is it absolutely necessary to subscribe to D&D Insider? What do you lose out on if you don't; is it very difficult, for instance, to design your own adventures without it?

(3) Cards, Counters & Miniatures: While I love the idea of physical, tabletop elements such as these, again, are they totally necessary for the game?

Couldn't it become incredibly expensive to track down all the specific miniatures you need for a certain dungeon (especially if you are, frustratingly, having to buy 'blind' packs with no guarantee of getting the figures you actually need?)

Is every single power/ability/spell etc available in card form for both the players and Dungeon Master to have to hand? This last 'innovation' is one I'm particularly fond of - being a person cursed with a poor memory for statistics etc - I welcome the chance to have a hand of cards telling me everything my character can do and what effects it will have.

(4) Minimum Investment: What is the bare minimum of core books that a Dungeon Master needs to run 4th Edition smoothly, especially if his players have no access to the Internet at the table?

(5) Paragon Paths: I've seen mention of so-called Paragon Paths for characters to follow once they reach a certain level; what makes these different from Third Edition's Prestige Classes? And then what are Epic Destinies?

(6) Lovecraft: A bit of personal geekiness here, but can anyone point me towards a site or a book which talks, knowledgeably, about using Lovecraftian monsters (and all the sanity-busting side effects that brings with it) in 4th Edition games?
Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Print Friendly and PDF
Inscribed by Tim Knight at 8/30/2010 12:00:00 PM
Tags: , , , , ,

15 serfs have something to say about this!:

  1. Right, again I should mention that I stopped playing D&D4 about six to eight months ago, and the thing's been heavily errata-ed since then, so much so that it's almost a different game. Bearing that in mind...

    1) We had weekly three-to-four hour sessions, and they mostly consisted of about half an hour of plot/roleplay, then two to three hours of a single fight. It's a very tactically rich game, but the cost of that is time.

    2) Again, the tactical richness of the mechanics means that you can use the books, but the online tools make things much easier.

    For players, the character builder is near-essential, which is one of the things that turned me off the game. I don't think it's appropriate to necessitate having a computer to generate a character when 3d6 always used to do the job.

    On the other hand, if you have the Insider subscription, it updates regularly with all the official content; we soon discovered that there was no point at all in buying any books, since we could make do with the Insider, and have the PHB at the table for the rules of the game.

    The Insider only has rules, and no fluff, but given that the fluff is awful in D&D4 (compare the two editions of Eberron for example), that's not a huge problem.

    3) I had heard that the miniatures had moved away from random selections; is that not the case?

    You will need some form of token, but they needn't be actual miniatures. We've used counters, card figures, and all sorts.

    As for the power cards, you don't need them as such, but you do need that information somewhere. There's no space on the character sheet for them, and it's more handy to have them on cards than it is to search through the book every time, especially if you're pulling powers from outside the core rules.

    The good thing is that there are plenty of card generators online, so you can easily whip up what you need. The character builder includes one, for example.

    Monster powers are included in the statistic blocks, so you won't have to have cards for them, although it is handy to have the full block ready, as they can be quite complicated, albeit less so than in D&D3.

    4) You'll need a Player's Handbook, since all the rules are in there. You probably don't need the DMG or Monster Manual if you're only going to run pre-packaged adventures, but if you want to do your own thing, you will.

    I don't know what kind of "SRD" there is for D&D4, as I didn't interact with that side of things as a player.

    Of course, the core books are going out of print to make way for the Essentials, so I can't say what the minimum investment would be there. I'd guess that you could get on with the Red Box and an Insider subscription.

    On the other hand, since the core books are going out of print, you could perhaps get a set of them for a cheapish price.

    5) Paragon paths take a character from levels eleven to twenty. Epic destinies take them from twenty-one to thirty. They are the same sort of idea as a prestige class, but they work in a different way. There are no eleventh-level clerics in D&D4 instead, the character must choose a specialisation (a paragon path) and gains access to new abilities. There are no entry requirements, beyond the path being available to that class. Epic destinies are the same thing, only more powerful.

    6) I know there was an issue of Kobold Quarterly that dealt with Lovecraftian elements in D&D4, but I don't know how much detail there was.

    The warlock class gets its powers from "pacts" made with otherworldy beings, and one of these is the "Star Pact"; they don't come out and say it specifically, but it's pretty clear that these warlocks are dealing with Great Old Ones.

    Hope that all helps!
    ReplyDelete
  2. Ha! I just wrote a long reply to this, but Blogger lost it because it was "too long".

    I'll email you...
    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh! It's come back. How odd. I won't email you.
    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, and I'd suggest nto playing through Keep on the Shadowfell at all, as it's universally derided.
    ReplyDelete
  5. /rolls up sleeves to answer.

    1) That's more than enough time. In 4e D&D, an Encounter doesn't mean quite the same thing it means in previous editions. It could represent the residents of three or more dungeon rooms or an entire block of an area all working together (or stumbling over each other) to get at the adventurer scum. Where they previously fought 4 Goblins, they'll likely battle 8 or more with a couple of other critters thrown in for good measure. This means one Encounter could be a whole chunk of combat and/or plot, and three is an entire meal.

    Expect slowdown to start - hey, it's a new system - but pretty soon you'll find your own sweet spot. My own group is happiest when there's a lot of role-playing with just one or (at most) two encounters per session. YMMV, of course.

    2) Short answer: No. Long answer: Yes, but it's terrific enough value for money it's difficult to ignore it.

    you don't need the online stuff at all - everything you really need is in the books. Even without handing over a penny you can use the D&D Character Builder to make 1st - 3rd level guys using content from the PHB, and use the D&D Rules Compendium to lookup 1st-3rd level monsters from Monster Manual I. That's more than enough to keep you busy for a while :)

    However, D&D Insider is $71.40 a year, and that includes the ability to download and use it from (if I remember correctly) up to 5 computers. That's your entire group covered, for just one price. It works out around £12 each for a full years' access for 5 players. Bargain!

    D&D Insider, imho, does little to help a GM design their own adventures. The Monster Builder is nifty but I'm happy using or just level-adjusting existing monsters, and the Encounter Builder is primitive at best. What it does provide though is plenty of inspiration in Dungeon "mag" and easy access to a shedload of monsters, traps, the glossary and more without having to suffer WoTC piss-poor indexing in their books.

    continued...
    ReplyDelete
  6. 3)Totally necessary? No, but you'll need to use them at least until you've got the hang of how the Powers rules work. We use battlemats and counters for about 60% of our battles now, and happily use our heads for the rest.

    At the start though, playing with battlemats or dungeon tiles is definitely the way to go. If you can, grab a copy of the original D&D Starter Kit (should be dirt cheap now the new Red Box is out). That came with enough dungeon tiles to get started and plenty of great monster counters too. No need for expensive minis! :)

    The Red Box, as I understand it, uses pre-made battlemats and fewer counters. Combine that with the Starter Kit and you'll be good for many, many months of play.

    What I do recommend is grabbing some Poker chips. Use them for Action Points and condition statuses - put them under the counters/minis in-play and throw the Action Point chips at your players when they earn them. Definitely speeds up play.

    4) The absolute minimum investment would be to grab the new Red Box and use the free Character Builder Demo to generate characters. I recommend (at least for now) grabbing the core PHB, DMG and MM though.

    There's not as much errata as people make out - change the DC values on page 42 of the DMG and you're as up to date as you need to be, really, and be willing to ask an awful lot of questions. Both the DMG and MM are terrific but the PHB isn't the most user-friendly book ever written. Too much emphasis on Powers and not enough on role-playing presented a damaging view of the game which WoTC is now frantically trying to correct, imho. All the rules are there though, so if you can see past that it's a great resource.

    Beyond that, I recommend grabbing Dungeon Delve. 30 mini-dungeons in a single book is perfect fodder for those sessions when you haven't had time to prepare, want to try out higher-level play or want to learn the combat rules. they are intentionally role-playing light so it's easy enough to add your own rpg goodness over the top of the encounters. We cut our teeth on Coppernight Hold, the first delve in the book.

    5) A Paragon Path is something the players take at 11th level when they reach Paragon Tier. Your PCs are rated at Heroes from 1st-10th, Paragons from 11th-20th and Epic from 21st-30th :)

    Paragon Paths are akin to Prestige Classes in that they give the PCs a little more speciality in return for a whole chunk of role-playing possibility. They can be Class, Race, culture or organization-based (all of the ones in the PHB are Class-based) and give them a few new abilities and Powers. for example, the Rangers's Stormwarden Paragon Path is a guardian of the Feywild who uses paired weapons and fights like a frickin' dervish of nature.

    Epic Destinies represent the PCs steady step toward immortality of one kind or another. They hearken back to Classic D&D's Immortal Paths (yay!). In the PHB, the Epic Destinies are Archmage, Deadly Trickster, Demigod and Eternal Seeker. Of those, only the Archmage has a class-based prerequisite (Wizard, of course).

    As with the Paragon Paths, the role-playing potential far outweighs the minor benefits gained. After all, who doesn't want to play a Demigod?

    6) In 4e D&D, Lovecraftian horrors are best described as coming from the Far Realm, home of all sorts of eldritch horrors and aberrations that ever strive to cross over into our world. There are a number of articles in Dungeon and Dragon magazine all about these horrors - all of which you'll have access to with even just a 1 month subscriber account.

    Phew!

    Any more questions, just ask.

    PS. Blogger's comment system needs to be taken out and shot. Grrr.
    ReplyDelete
  7. Since part of your goal is to use the popularity of D&D to meet a wider range of gamers, it's also worth mentioning that D&D4 isn't the only version of The Game being supported. Pathfinder seems just as popular, and you might have some luck with that. From what I can tell, having never played D&D3, it's an improvement over the older system, while still having enough similarity to retain the older game's audience.
    ReplyDelete
  8. We use the following rules with 4e to help us facilitate narrative combat.

    http://tinyurl.com/2a5ubo4

    All it really takes are some good descriptions and common sense.

    Mike Mearls also has a blog post, which suggests how to play 4ed without minis:

    http://tinyurl.com/yfrusnv
    ReplyDelete
  9. I was brought here by greywulf through Twitter. Hope I can help.

    1) I ran a group that only met once a month, for a few hours at a time, and we were able to get through 1-2 encounters per session.

    Do be aware that much of the fun of D&D 4E is in the encounters. They are much more tactically rich than in any other game I've played.

    2) I don't subscribe to D&D Insider, and I've run half a dozen 4E games and published my own adventures.

    3) I've played perfectly satisfactory D&D 4E games that only used a gridded, erasable blank mat and a few minis. You can use anything to represent monsters, including poker chips.

    I definitely don't use specific minis for every single monster! In fact, I use a lot of generic paper punch-outs for monsters. E.g., I have half a dozen 1" round cut-outs of zombies, and will use those to represent low-level creatures in a given encounter.

    Regarding cards for powers/etc., yes, there are a few options. I believe you can download Character Builder and use it for free for any character from levels 1-3. It prints a character sheet and a set of cards. You can also buy packs of cards containing powers for each class.

    I honestly don't use any fancy gear to represent conditions and such. I just ensure that players remember them.

    4) I'd go with the core three: Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide. You can specifically allow other books if you desire.

    5) From what I understand, Paragon Paths are similar to Prestige Classes, but activate when a character reaches level 11. Epic Destinies are similar to Paragon Paths, but trigger at level 21.

    You can think of Paragon Paths (and, by extension, Epic Destinies) as specific focuses for a character, which result in an extra power due to that focus.

    6) Ah, the Lovecraftian bits in D&D are contained in the "Far Realm." There are bits of this explained in the basic Player's Handbook. As far as I know, there's no specific source book for the Far Realm in 4E, but there are plenty of references to it, online articles, etc.
    ReplyDelete
  10. 1) the first 4e campaign i played in usually managed one encounter for every two hours of gaming, which bogged down even further at paragon levels. the game i'm currently DMing moves much faster, with no encounter lasting longer than an hour. partly due to everyone's greater familiarity, and partly due to changes in DM style.

    beware of monsters which are of higher level than the PCs. they are not necessarily instant TPK material, but totally kill momentum. higher defenses means fewer hits, against higher hit points, and combats turn into long frustrating grindfests. if you want a 4e game to move fast, keep the opponents at the party's level (or less), and use lots of minions. gawds, i cannot tell you how much i've come to love minions. i've run a few encounters with nothing BUT minions, and they're a blast.

    2) not absolutely necessary, no. i mostly just use it for access to the articles. some of the players in my group use the character tools, but i never did.

    3) power cards are probably necessary. actual minis, not as much. in my group, the PCs always get minis. the lead monsters of an encounter might, if i can find something appropriate from my collection quickly enough. otherwise, the monsters are represented by spare dice. "i attack the orc with the red d6 on his shield," etc.
    ReplyDelete
  11. I am running a Tuesday night 4e game right now. Because we want to experience the game system we are committed to playing 4e for now although the general consensus has not been the most positive.

    I agree with everything Kelvin Green said and I want to also reiterate what Drow said about higher level monsters and grind. The thing is, characters are so powerful in this version of the game you will find yourself deceived by the power levels.

    Players will be fighting above their level a lot. My advice for good quick and exciting combats is monsters with low HP and high damage. Let the players get a little scared by the dmg output of the enemies but have them go down fairly easy to keep things moving. This seems to work really well with my large group.

    We play for about 2 to three hours a week and that's enough time for 1 encounter. However, my group is 8 players. (Yes, it's too big.) And I am afraid the size may be hurting us as much as the 4e rules.

    I am going to be running an encounter with werewolves in my next session and I will be house-ruling one of the player characters contracting Lycanthropy if I can manage it. House ruling because in the new 4e rules things like Lycanthropy have been removed and new status ailments (Moon Fever) that can be explained strictly as a mechanical aspect of combat have taken their place.

    This is my problem with 4e. Everything is a game mechanic and anything that doesn't fit into a game system template has been removed. To me, the game has lost a lot of heart. But, I have given myself permission to change things to try to find that heart anew. I think when you are given rules as tight as these it becomes harder to remember that you can break them as a DM.

    So, I'm doing my own thing ... imposing some of my own ideas to create something catered to my group. We'll see how that goes. I have considered writing reports of my 4e games on my blog. Maybe I should do that, it might help to keep me creative.

    Good luck with 4e. I plan to stick it out for the long haul, although if you are asking for an honest opinion, if I had it to do again, I would have started this group on Pathfinder instead and left 4e alone.

    Regards,



    Jeff Moore
    ReplyDelete
  12. Jeff, I suggest you re-read page 28 of the DMG onward. You're playing it EXACTLY how it should be played, and don't let anyone tell you any differently!

    4e actively, positively and totally encourages imaginative play. Unlike Third Edition, this isn't a system where every single number in a monster's statblock is codified and quantified to the point where all the fun is sucked out of the game. It's a system which plays at its best when you make stuff up, invent things on the fly and play it as loose as you want.

    So go have fun. Make stuff up. The DMG says it's ok :D
    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you all for your well-informed comments, plenty of (conflicting) food for thought.

    This clearly isn't a decision that can be made overnight. Obviously Essentials comes out soon, which will go someway towards making my mind up - although I doubt I'll be getting the core three books until, at least, my birthday in November.

    I may have found a new group to try out 4e with already - although I'm waiting to hear if anything comes of that and don't want to jinx it by saying too much.

    * Sorry to those who had problems with Blogger's comment box, it wasn't an issue I was previously aware of (although I see, Kelvin, your initial long reply is actually there at the top of the comments list)
    ReplyDelete
  14. This comment has been removed by the author.
    ReplyDelete
  15. 1) For very short sporadic meetings like this I would suggest either running a delve (a new type of combat-only adventure) from the Dungeon Delve book or finding a local venue that hosts the D&D Encounters public play program and dropping by from time to time. I'm sure they'd love to have you and this way you get a chance at skill challenges, puzzles, npc roleplay, and other aspects of 4e.

    http://tinyurl.com/39h6d9t

    2) DDi offers you additional content in the form of the Dungeon (DM) and Dragon (Player) magazines, the same way they've been offering stuff for several editions, the magazines are just digital now. It also offers an increasing array of digital tools that will make things easier on both the DM and player, but these are not required for play - they just serve to speed up character creation, play, monster creation, etc.

    3) The only thing that I would really suggest you need is some representation of the battlefield, a square grid of some kind, and some objects that fit in the squares of that grid to represent the PCs and monsters. Gamer Paper and some coins are a cheap option, as is graphing paper and colored circles hole punched from paper colored by markers. You just want to make sure your representation isn't making combat encounters more difficult, but rather easier for the players to understand what exactly is going on.

    http://www.gamingpaper.com/

    4) The Red Box, available now at WotC Core retailers ( a special class of store) and everywhere else Sept 7th will contain everything you and your players need to get a home game started.

    http://tinyurl.com/dndredbox

    http://tinyurl.com/redboxunboxing

    5) 4e has 3 tiers of play. Think of them as the old Basic, Advanced, and Expert games. Things get more complicated as you level into new tiers. In Heroic Tier you pick a class and find basic while adventuring and making a name for your hero. In Paragon Tier, you choose a paragon path to represent the fact that your hero has become a paragon of her kind and is known by name throughout the land, sung about by bards, etc. Play starts to involve stepping beyond the veil and visiting other planes. In Epic Tier, your character has realized her epic destiny and has begun actively traveling through the multiverse at will (especially the astral plane), changing it to suit her needs, having run-ins with gods and other massively powerful extraplanar creatures, and so on.

    The Red Box and the rest of the new Essentials line covers heroic tier play for new players & DMs.

    6) The Sept 21st miniatures set, Lords of Madness covers just that (each mini comes with a stat card). For a bunch of abberant stuff in one place, Eberron's Khyber: The Dragon below is basically an Underdark filled with them. The Eberron Campaign Guide will have a lot of info and if you start running far more often the adventure in there and the "Seeker's of the Ashen Crown" adventure deal with that some and work as a good entry point for an ongoing campaign where you could follow by sending them into Khyber Below regularly or permanently.

    Note that I'm mentioning Eberron repeatedly because it specifically deals with lots of low-level aberrants. Otherwise, you'd be looking at scouring through every MM to find ones you can de-level (something that requires expertise) or you'd be running a higher level adventure, something that will slow things down as your players would both have a lot of new stuff to deal with and have a lot of stuff in general, leading to long turns while they find and choose stuff. This is another place where DDi would help, offering both all monsters for you to choose from and character sheets with printable power lists with text and totaled hit & damage numbers for your characters.

    http://tinyurl.com/2wklwrg

    http://tinyurl.com/ddmlordsofmadness

    http://tinyurl.com/dndeberroncg

    http://tinyurl.com/dndashencrown
    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Groovy!