A Role Playing Games Blog
Archive for October, 2008
Roleplaying music: Elyrion Soundtrack
1
Elyrion is an upcoming german steampunk fantasy roleplaying game. It will be released in the coming days, probably on SPIEL ’08 in Essen. There will also be an official soundtrack composed by Erdenstern. Erdenstern is known for their five “Into the…” albums that contain hours of instrumental music perfectly suited for your roleplaying sessions (Check out my post about them). The music was in fact composed with fantasy roleplaying designed. I will review the soundtrack as soon as it’s out. Until then you can listen to a medley released at the official Erdenstern site.
Heroes’ Guild
6October 20, 2008
The video game “Fable” featured a “Heroes’ Guild” that was a center of learning an training for Heroes for hire. In the game the player’s character entered the guild after his family was killed and is trained in swordmanship, archery and magic. During the game there were many quests and often the player was able to choose if he wanted to take the good or evil route. The guild’s members were not forced to be “good”.
Could such an institution work in a D&D setting for example? I say: “why not?”. In most campaigns the players’ characters are some kind of mercenaries, hired swords, treasure hunters or soldiers of fortune. But every party is usually on its own. So why not introduce some kind of “Heroes’ Guild” or “Adventurers’ Union” to the game that helps adventurers to organize, enforces some regulations and represents the adventuring part of the population at the royal court?
I think the name “Adventurers’ Union” is much better than the slightly cheesy “Heroes’ Guild”. So, let’s go with that. Ok, we have settled on a name let’s make up some more details of our new faction. It makes sense that the union has offices in all the major towns, so that interested hero-wannabes may sign up and join the union. As a member of the union you are allowed to wear the official union badge and take on union-sponsored quests. You also have to pay some percentage of your income to the union. The union will make sure that you get paid when you’ve done your job and will provide places where you can rest, train and socialize with other adventurers.
Some 4E myths
32October 20, 2008
There’s a war going on the internet. In blogs, forums, chats etc. players all over the world are entrenched in their positions and untiringly attacking their enemies. The fight is about what edition of D&D is the best. Especially the 3E advocates are using several arguments to attack the 4th Edition of D&D that obviously come from the lands of myths and fairy tales. And no, I don’t want to tell you that 4E is better than any other version of D&D but I try to bring some rationality into the discussion.
- D&D 4th Edition makes it harder to roleplay your character
That’s a common argument against the new edition and it’s the most silly one. No game can actively hinder you from player your character. Heck, back in the days, we even roleplayed games like Diplomacy. You don’t need a special set of rules for doing roleplaying. - The 4th Edition is just not D&D anymore
That’s a harder nut to crack. If D&D it’s all about the rules for you, then this is probably true, but I always thought D&D was about dungeons, dragons, brave heroes, swords, sorcery, epic adventures and things like that. And you still can run adventures in the 4th Edition that are about all that and even more. The latest edition also brings back the epic destinies, something that harkens back to the earliest editions. - You can’t play 4E without miniatures
If you were able to play D&D 3.0 or 3.5 without the use of minatures you should be able to pull this off in 4th edition too. Some classes (like the Warlord) for example benefit from using some kind of combat map, but you are not forced to use miniatures. I played in several D&D sessions and we never used aminiatures. - [Enter class name here] is missing from the PHB, it’s not D&D anymore
Remember the first D&D? No? Then let me tell you that the first D&D had only three classes: Cleric, fighting man and magic-user. When the above is true, the original D&D is no “real D&D” either since classes like the thief, druid, barbarian, paladin etc. are missing. And there’s another point: the “missing” classes will come back in the coming Players Handbook 2. And the barbarian was already released for playtesting. - D&D plays just like WoW now
So you probably never played 4th Edition or World of Warcraft before, when you think this is true. At first it’s obviously the other way around: WoW and other fantasy MMORPGs were inspired by pen&paper and single-player computer RPGs. And even if there were some similarities in the game mechanics, the gameplay is (or at least should be) vastly different. And if it’s not you have a very unimaginative DM.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to force you to switch to D&D 4E. Just play the game you enjoy playing. If you don’t like 4th Edition, don’t use it. The earlier editions of D&D are great games and especially for D&D 3.5 the third-party support is still strong. But there are a lot of misconceptions about 4E floating around on the internet and I wanted to help clearing some things up. Comments are as always welcome, so please let your voices be heard!
UPDATE: I’ve noticed that someone rated this article 1 star without commenting. If you think I am wrong, it would be great if you could give me some hint what you don’t dislike about the post. Is my logic flawed? Is the writing bad? Please use the comment function of the blog.
UPDATE #2: Wow, I think I really opened a can of worms here. This obviously is still a very hot topic and the discussion in the comments is starting to get heated. What astounds me the most is the hate that some people bring down on D&D 4E, people who actually like it and the people at Wizards. Please don’t forget, it’s just a game!
Technical difficulties
1October 17, 2008
I am currently having some trouble with my internet connection at home. From yesterday evening on, my ADSL and phone line are down. Stargazer’s World will return with some new posts when the technical issues are solved by my telecommunications provider.
Have a nice day!
UPDATE: Everything is working again.
Every GM needs this!
6Every GM should play this when he leaves the game table to go to the bathroom or get some more soft-drinks and snacks from the fridge:
You can get the original mp3 from the Geek Heretic blog.
UPDATE: The ZIP linked in the post is corrupted. But here’s a direct link to the mp3 file that works!
Can Mutants & Masterminds replace d20 Modern?
4October 13, 2008
In an earlier post I’ve written about the dead or undead status of d20 Modern. And so I was looking for an alternative. And at once Mutants & Masterminds comes to mind. But isn’t it a superhero game? Yes, it is, but it’s far more versatile than that.
If you plan to run a modern day campaign with no magic, superpowers, whatever, just reduce the power level to suit your campaign style and disallow all powers that would not fit into your setting. A character like the costumed adventurer archetype would probably fit into any spy campaign, when you replace the silly bat costume with some special ops clothing. A martial artist is the easist to fit into the game and even a gadgeteer may be shoehorned into your campaign world (especially if you play in the near future or the campaign features gadgets like from a James Bond movie).
When you add some magic or psionics to the mix (like in the original Agents of PSI or Urban Arcana settings from the d20 Modern corebook), you can easily bring more M&M archetypes into the mix without even change that much.
The implied setting of M&M is a modern world (as the one we live in) with superheroes being a reality. The rule book also provides you with stats for modern and archaic weapons, armor and even vehicles. So that’s another issue you don’t have to worry about.
So, if you’re looking for a great roleplaying game for your modern campaign, check out Mutants & Masterminds.
Niente mantelli!!!
0October 12, 2008
Danilo Moretti, a fellow RPG blogger from Italy has asked my permission to translate some of my posts into Italian and post them onto his blogs. I accepted his request, of course, and you can now read the italian translation of my “No capes!” post at his blog bash-gdr.com, a blog dedicated to the italian version of the BASH! superheroes RPG.
His other blog, justplaywith.it is a blog discussing pen and paper RPG game design (dissertations, reviews of indie games etc.) and is focussed on an RPG (Fenomena) that he’ll tentatively publish via Inspired Device in 2009.
So, if you speak Italian (or are not afraid of using Google translation), please check his blogs out.
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