World of Warcraft: Brief Insight Into a Cultural Phenomenon

UPDATE: As a tribute to this fan's awesomely deep knowledge, Blizzard will be including him as a permanent character in WoW!

Dungeon Crawl Classics Playtest: Words From Goodman

I sent Joseph Goodman the link to my post reporting on last weekend's Dungeon Crawl Classics playtest. In the post I expressed my feeling that the scenario he ran was a little too hack-n-slashy to properly illustrate what a great game I thought DCC actually was. Joe emailed me an interesting and thoughtful response, which I post here with his permission. [NOTE: I redacted all potential module spoilers from his email.]

Hi Bob,

No problem, that was a lot of fun! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Seems like everybody did, which was good.

Thanks for the game report on your blog.  

Regarding hack & slash: The adventure you played in, Citadel of the Emerald Sorcerer, has 28 encounter areas. You guys covered 5 of them. I ran the same adventure at the Anaheim Mini-Con, where we went for 4 hours and were nowhere near finishing! By [SPOILER REDACTED] the sorcerer (which, in two prior playtests, no one has done before), and then pursuing him directly to his lair, you guys made the adventure a LOT shorter. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, because in the other playtest sessions the group didn't get the satisfaction of finishing (which your group did get). I like adventures with options, and you guys clearly preferred [SPOILER REDACTED] versus the two northern doors from that chamber! But, as you mentioned, it felt a little more linear to you. Before publication, I might make it so [SPOILER REDACTED], to prevent things from playing out this way...I need to think on that.  

The other playtest groups learned something of the sorcerer's secrets: [LOTS OF REALLY COOL SPOILERS REDACTED!]

Personally, I would say there's some precedent for hack-and-slash dungeons in Appendix N. Several stretches of Hiero's Journey, Sign of the Labrys, some of John Carter's escapades on Mars (especially the last book), several Conan stories (Red Nails immediately comes to mind, not to mention Tower of the Elephant... [SPOILER REDACTED]), a few of the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories, etc...  

I plan to run other sessions in the future in San Diego and LA - I'll let you know and perhaps we can play other games as well.  

Thanks, Joseph

Anyway, the stuff I redacted out of the middle of Joe's note all sounded pretty awesome. I guess it was just kind of a fluke that our party missed out on much of the module - this probably left with me an unfair impression of the scenario. As commenters to my last post pointed it it WAS a playtest after all.

The more I think about DCC the more I like it. I'm definitely looking forward to playing again!

The Arduin Hit Point System

There was a recent post at The Tao of D&D about how low-level humans are unrealistically wimpy in D&D. Well, David Hargave proposed a solution for this way back in 1978 in The Arduin Grimoire Vol. 3. In fact, he devised a whole new hit point system with the goal of more realistically balancing hit points across levels, races, and classes. Said Hargrave:

"People now have a chance to run any character or characters on any expedition they choose without regard to difference in levels of experience. They can have their 1st level warrior stand shoulder to should [sic] with a 10th level lord and hold the gate together! Just as in real life young and inexperienced Warriors accompanied older, more experienced fighters. They fought and died together.
   Yet the higher levels have their own rewards, more (but not grossly so) hit points, better fighting ability and the like."

Here's a simplified distillation of Hargrave's system:

STARTING HP:
Base HP by Race:
  Dwarf:     18
  Elf:          20
  Hobbit:    11
  Human:   14

Base HP Modifiers by Class:
  Fighting classes: +5
  Clerics, elves, and dual classes: +3
  (No modifier for magic users)

Base HP Constitution Modifier:
   +1 HP for every point of Constitution
   +1 HP for every point of Constitution over 12 (= the revised CON bonus)

HP ADVANCEMENT:
  Fighters, thieves, and similar classes:     +1 HP every level
  Clerics and dual classes (including elf):  +1 HP every 2 levels
  Magic users and similar classes:             +1 HP every 3 levels

NOTE: Hargrave originally presented more extensive lists of obscure races, classes, and gender differences. I have simplified things here to be more easily compatible with classic D&D.

Is the Nebula Best Short Story Even Really Sci-Fi?

Something that really bugs me, but that I've never ranted about on my blog before, is the basic mundanity that's creeping into a lot of modern fantasy and science fiction these days. In my fairly traditional opinion, quality F/SF should have some fantastic aspect that is absolutely fundamental to the story. For instance, if you can replace the weird setting, futuristic objects, or strange aliens with mundane settings, objects, or characters, and the core theme of the story is preserved, then it's not really F/SF.

This is the reason I'm painfully disappointed by this year's Nebula Best Short Story selection: Spar by Kij Johnson. It's a very short and purposely unpleasant story that describes a woman trapped in a small spaceship with an uncommunicative alien blob that rapes her relentlessly. The descriptions of alien sex are interspersed with the woman's memories of an uncommunicative husband. Okay... so the story is a paper thin allegory for the breakdown of communication in a romantic relationship. And, as far as mainstream literature goes, I guess it's a fine little tale. I feel very strongly, however, that the exact same story could have been told without the alien blob and without the spaceship. In this story the sci-fi setting is just window dressing on a generic human interest story. The woman could just as easily have been stuck on a life raft in the Atlantic getting humped by an albatross.

I'm frankly pissed off that stories like this are being chosen as the finest examples of what our genre has to offer. It's a sad betrayal of the F/SF tradition.

Pathfinder Ties 4e in Sales. Did Hasbro Drop the Ball With D&D?

Any game wearing the name Dungeons and Dragons will always be the undisputed king of RPGs, right? Well, not anymore... These data from ICv2 show the top 5 selling RPGs of the third quarter of 2010:

Top 5 Roleplaying Games – Q3 2010
	Title	Publisher
1 (Tie)	Dungeons & Dragons	Wizards of the Coast
1 (Tie)	Pathfinder	Paizo Publishing
3	Warhammer Fantasy	Fantasy Flight Games
4	Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader	Fantasy Flight Games
5	Dresden Files	Evil Hat

This isn't a topic I follow very closely, but I have to admit I was shocked to see Pathfinder tie D&D 4e for first place in sales. Despite the name recognition, historical fan base, massive corporate backing, product penetration, clever sales gimmicks (like selling packages of miniatures where buyers don't know what they're getting - fucking brilliant), etc. it looks like Hasbro is having a hard time keeping D&D on top. I am honestly totally shocked.

This tie is especially interesting because it is essentially a real-time referendum where gamers are choosing between a previous edition (Pathfinder is a clone of 3.5e) and a current edition. The fact that an independent company publishing a clone of an old ruleset under a different name can directly challenge Hasbro's D&D 4e is astonishing.

This Top 5 list is also interesting for a few other reasons. There's a post at Gareth-Michael Skarka's Designer Monologues blog about the impending death of the tabletop RPG market (this post is where I found the ICv2 link, by the way). Although people frequently discuss this topic, hard data are always rare. Of course, none of the actual sales numbers for the top games are available - except for Dresden Files, that is. It turns out that if you combine the two main Dresden Files rulebooks together LESS THAN 3000 copies of the game were sold. Therefore, a game can make the Top 5 RPG sales list by moving fewer than 3000 units. A tiny market, indeed! On top of everything White Wolf is basically abandoning its tabletop RPGs to get into MMORPGs, and Games Workshop felt that its RPGs were so minimally profitable they spun them off to Fantasy Flight Games, a boardgame company.

The main thrust of Skarka's original post, however, was speculation that Hasbro is kind of treading water with D&D - holding out until 2017 when Atari's rights to the D&D MMORPG expire (Hasbro has a lawsuit against Atari to make this happen sooner), at which point Hasbro will step in and use the D&D IP and name recognition to compete with WoW. The big question is, if and when this happens will Hasbro still maintain a version of D&D as a tabletop game...?

(Click here to read NeoGrognard's a cheery rebuttal to Skarka's post.)

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG: Playtest and Chat with Joe Goodman

Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics don't waste your time with long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren't meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl, with the monsters you know, the traps you fear, and the secret doors you know are there somewhere. - Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics Website

Me on the left and Joseph Goodman DMing. 

Photo by Phil McCrum.

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to sit in on a playtest of Goodman Game’s upcoming RPG Dungeon Crawl Classics. The game was run by Joseph Goodman himself, and was organized by the Dead Gamers’ Society meetup. Before and after the game I had a chance to chat with Joe about the game a little bit. Sooo… here I’ll try to lay out the scoop on DCC.

WHY PUBLISH ANOTHER D&D-LIKE FANTASY RPG?
I asked Joe point blank why he wanted to be the publisher of yet another D&D-ish FRPG, and how he thought it would fit into the current market which is already filled with a confusing plethora of retroclones, quasiclones, semiclones, etc. His idea is that DCC will be aimed at D&D 3e / d20 players who want a more simplified version of the out-of-print systems they enjoy. All of the feats, skills, etc. have been stripped out of DCC to provide a lean and easy FRPG. Joe said Goodman Games would probably not be specifically targeting the retrogamer crowd with DCC. I must say, though, the game felt and looked a lot like AD&D – Joe even said he is commissioning some of the classic TSR illustrators like Easley and Otus to do art for the game. He estimates the game will be formally released in about a year.


THE DEEPER MOTIVATION BEHIND DCC: APPENDIX N...?!?!
According to Joe, his personal motivation behind DCC is to offer an RPG that can, as closely as possible, emulate all of the books presented in the Appendix N of the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. Joe said he is systematically reading every book in Appendix N in order to formulate the game mechanics for DCC. One specific example of this is turning. Joe replaced the traditional cleric’s turn undead ability with a more general turn unholy in order to more closely mirror turning as envisioned Poul Anderson and Lord Dunsany. Another example is the totally revamped magic system where the success and/or side-effects of spellcasting can be unpredictable:


SPELLCASTING MECHANICS
From my playtest experience, it seems like the biggest difference between DCC and other similar RPGs lies in the spellcasting mechanics. Vancian memorization has been done away with and spellcasters have access to any of the spells appropriate to their level. When casting, however, the player must roll a d20 to gauge how successful the spell is. For example, a cleric needs a minimum roll of eleven (including modifiers) for a spell to work at all. The higher the roll, the better the spell works – and, yes, in the rulebook each spell is presented as a page-long table of effects-by-die-roll. The clever mechanic here is that at the beginning of a session the spellcaster starts with a positive roll modifier (e.g. my cleric started with a +4). Each time a spell is cast the modifier is decreased by one, so spells become less and less likely to be effective as more spells are cast. This turned out to be a cool system that was really fun to play. In fact, I might try to steal part of this system for clerics in my own home game!

I didn’t play a wizard, so I’m not totally clear on the specific mechanics for the class, but each spell cast by a wizard has potentially nasty side-effects that must be assessed at each casting. At one point in our game, for instance, a wizard cast a spell, rolled on the side-effect chart, and discovered he had to cut off a pound of his own flesh to sacrifice to a demon. The player decided to carve off one of his buttocks for this purpose. This is weird and grisly stuff… Hardcore self-mutilation. I found it to be kind of shocking, actually. I did notice that the wizard players started getting a little exasperated as the game went on, but I thought it was cool.

VARIOUS MINOR RULES NITTY GRITTY
DCC has ascending armor class as in d20; Six abilities (3d6 down-the-line): Strength, Agility, Stamina, Personaility, Intelligence, and Luck. Luck points can be burned to influence die rolls, but may then result in other negative modifiers as the game progresses. I wasn't clear on how saving throws worked - I just rolled when Joe told me to. A natural 1 or 20 during combat results in a roll on either a fumble or crit table of dramatic effects. The game has the typical FRPG classes (warrior, thief, wizard, cleric), each with its own specialized character sheet.

My cleric character inherited from an earlier session. 

Note the spell tracking box in the lower right.

HOW WAS THE PLAYTEST?
Joe took us through a scenario called something along the lines of Castle of the Emerald Wizard. I think he was surprised how our group "won" the module in less than 2 hours. The adventure pretty much lived up to the DCC blurb at the top of the post. Based on the portion we mapped, it seemed to be a Type B Linear Dungeon, with a series of guardian monster battles leading to a climax at the end where you fight with the boss (The Emerald Wizard), rescue the prisoners, and march away with pockets full of gems. It was a little disappointing that there were no talking NPCs, no cool items or treasures (beyond gems), and no interesting mysteries. The only way the monsters interacted with the players was to fight-to-the-death. I was also surprised that Joe read room descriptions verbatim off of paper printouts - I've never seen an experienced DM do this before. All-in-all this adventure felt like a railroaded chain of combat encounters, which isn't really my preferred gaming style. We won the module fairly quickly by magically bypassing the main path to get to the end. [UPDATE: Red Joe's comments on this HERE]

The session was a lot of fun and I had a great time, but I think running sessions like this kind of undersells DCC. This is clearly a robust and exciting ruleset with its own unique flavor deriving from the interesting spellcasting mechanics. Given that Joe sees DCC as an Appendix N emulator, I don’t completely understand why he chose to run the type of adventure he did. When Joe was name dropping Poul Anderson and Lord Dunsany before the game I was getting pretty excited, but the experience he delivered was more like an 80s Nintendo game or AD&D as run by a 13 year old in 1983 (not that there's anything wrong with this, mind you). And I'm sure Joe would make no apology for this, based on the promotional blurb at the beginning of this post. I think, however, that this approach is what led one of the players to give a kind of back-handed compliment after the game "Well, I think this would be a great system for running quick one shots!" I actually felt DCC was much better than this. The novel magic system in DCC gave the game an unpredictable and sinister feeling that really was evocative of weird mid-century fantasy fiction. I suspect I'll pick up a copy of DCC when it's published, if only for the magic system, although I predict the whole game will be quite good - possibly outstanding.

Well, Joe knows the market much better than I do, so hopefully his strategy of marketing DCC to alienated d20 players as an engine for running combat-chain dungeon adventures works. There's a lot more to DCC than that, though, and it would be nice to see the game enjoyed by Appendix N fans who would appreciate it. No matter how good the game is, however, I predict it might be hard to get more literary-minded FRPG gamers to give the game a whirl with a name like Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Watch Philip K. Dick Going Crazy on YouTube

This morning I was surfing YouTube for interviews with f/sf authors. In so doing I ran across this bizarre 1977 footage of Philip K. Dick giving a speech at a science fiction convention in France. Actually, this is not as much a speech as it is PKD earnestly reading a written statement about how he recently discovered that reality is a computer program. All fans of PKD should be familiar with this authors' famously tenuous hold on reality, but to see this manifested on film is quite moving and also, for me at least, quite sad. This clip is painfully reminiscent of a close high school friend of mine who has been fighting problems with schizophrenia and paranoia for much of his adult life. Interestingly, this friend of mine (wisely) refused to read VALIS out of fear it would make matters worse.

In this video you can hear PKD saying things like "Some of my fictional works were, in a literal sense, true", "We are living in a computer programmed reality", and describing how books like Man in the High Castle and Flow My Tears the Policeman Said were based on true realities he had seen in visions. "I claim to remember a very different present life," he says.