For those of you that read my previous post about the Pathfinder RPG and are scratching your heads, no my player’s characters did not go up in level SO fast that I’m ready to revisit Pathfinder and discuss game play at mid to high level. What has happened is I’ve gotten some great reaction and feedback to the previous post and would like to address a couple of issues.

First of all let me thank all of you who had kind words for the review. I’m glad you liked it, found it useful or maybe shared some of my experiences. I also received some feedback from close friends and players and some comments in the Puerto Rico Role Players Facebook Group (the discussion is mostly in Spanish but you are more than welcome to drop by) where I provided a link to the post.

Two friends talked with me or wrote with some excellent points and while I invited them to come over and post here in the blog neither were inclined to do it, so asked them if I could address their opinions on this follow up piece.

My group’s resident rules-lawyer and official hobbit accountant, both honorifics he carries with pride, disagreed on various points with my review. He pointed out that even when I say that save or die spells have been eliminated from the game there are various spells, such as Sleep and Color Spray that while not killing you outright, failing a save likely means the end of your character.

This is true, but in most instances not all characters will fail the saving throw and while the spells may incapacitate some players, their allies will have a chance to protect them. Even if all players are unconscious or fall asleep due to a spell the GM is not obliged to kill them outright, there are all sort of options, capturing them for example, that create interesting situations in the game. It was harder with spells where the survival of the player rested solely on the roll of the die. So there is still the potential for deadly spells there but I think they have been greatly reduced.

He also thought that D&D 4^th edition combat can be as complex and tactical as Pathfinder, and even more so. I think there might be some truth to this. While Pathfinder retains some of the complexities of D&D 3^rd edition in terms of math and recalculating bonuses with buffs and effects, D&D 4^th edition with marking, sliding, pulling and all sorts of other things you can do with powers may provide more tactical options during combat. For some people this may be a strength of that system….

But another player when we were talking about Pathfinder, the review and comparisons I might have made with 4^th edition said “I don’t want to know all the details of how, where, when I hit him and how much I shifted him or teleported him, I just want to know if I  hit him and get on with the story”. I was surprised because this particular player is also a big war gaming fan. When I asked him why he felt this way despite liking tactical game so much he said something to the effect that he played RPGs for a different reason that war games.

He summarized his feeling about Pathfinder saying that while there may be many different rules, once you know them the game runs smoothly. He felt that when playing D&D 4^th edition there was one rule with endless different exceptions and variations and it exhausted him. So I guess I can say that it’s a matter of taste and what you want out of your game.

I still stand by my appreciation that the Pathfinder RPG is an excellent option if you want to keep playing in the spirit of previous D20 editions of the world’s most famous fantasy RPG. It was not meant to be a disparaging comment on D&D 4^th edition, which is a great game on its own right. Different strokes for different folks!

Thanks for your opinions and comments!

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As every year, OneBookShelf is celebrating the GM day by having a big sale. The products of participating companies will be 25% off  between March 3rd and March 8th. So what are you waiting for? Head to RPGNow now and get something nice for your GM!

Following is a list of some of the products that caught my eye. Please note, that this list isn’t complete.

• Shambles
  Shambles is an RPG in which you explore life as a Zombie.  One day you just woke up dead.  Now you just want to get on with your life, such as it is.
  You can read my review of Shambles here.

• MARS: The Roleplaying Game of Planetary Romance
  Not Mars as it is – airless, most likely lifeless, with only the faintest hints of what might have once been a damp, if not necessarily lush and living, world billions of years in the past. No, this is Mars as it should be and as it was once imagined to be – an ancient, dying, but not yet dead world, a world where a vast canal network reaches from pole to pole, bringing water and life to vast and fantastic cities.
  Adamant Entertainments book is currently available for just $1! If you are into the planetary romance genre, you should definitely get it!
• Legend of the Five Rings: 3rd Edition Revised
  Return to Rokugan, where honor is a force more powerful than steel.

  For one thousand years, the Empire of Rokugan has stood as a bastion of nobility, honor, and virtue. These lands are ruled by the samurai, powerful heroes who carry the katana and wakizashi as their badge of rank. Eight Great Clans vie with one another for supremacy over these lands, all under the eye of the mighty Emperor. And to the south, the Shadowlands, the eternal enemy of Rokugan, waits for the next opportunity to disrupt all that these foolish mortals have built. It is a land of intrigue, wonder, and adventure.
  I haven’t played Legend of the Five Rings, but I’ve heard good things of both the setting and the system. Perhaps I should use the chance and pick it up.

• SLA Industries 1.1
  Operative, Employee, Contract Killer, Necanthrope, Ebon, Biogenetic, Corporate. These are the lifestyles available to you when you enter SLA Industries’ World of Progress. Society split between truth and deception, conflict and political subversion, style and horror. Television and Insanity. Fighting for your life as an oblivious public watches on, awaiting your last breath between the adverts.
  SLA Industries is one of the games I always wanted to pick up and check out. There’s also a free version available, which is basically the original 1.0 version. The new 1.1 version includes errata and new art.
• A Penny For My Thoughts
  Have you lost your memory? The Orphic Institute for Advanced Studies can help, with its revolutionary MnemosyneTM treatment process. By ordering this useful treatment guide, you can learn how to get your memory-and your life-back. Order today. The Orphic Institute for Advanced Studies: Bringing the Truth out of Darkness™.
  This game by Evil Hat Productions is quite different from most classic RPGs. I haven’t played it yet, but it’s high up on the list of games I want to try out in the future. By the way, has any of my readers already played “A Penny for My Thoughts”?
• Midnight: 2nd Edition
  The classic setting returns!
  FFG reprints and re-envisions the lands under the Shadow in this 2nd Edition of the award-winning world of Midnight. Midnight is an original d20 setting that pits the players against overwhelming forces of evil in a desperate fight for survival and freedom. There is only one god in Midnight, and it is the dark lord Izrador, the Shadow in the North. For centuries his twisted spawn have assaulted the free people of Eredane, and 100 years ago, he won. Now the land is his, the people are enslaved, and magic, weapons, and literacy are outlawed. Only the brave and courageous few dare to resist the Shadow.
  In my opinion Midnight was one of the coolest settings released during the d20 craze. It’s a world where evil has already one. Imagine a Middle Earth where Frodo failed to destroy the One Ring. That’s what Midnight is like. Highly recommended.
• Warriors & Warlocks
  Not all comic books are about costumed heroes fighting crime; many classic comics have featured the fantastical adventures of sword-wielding and spell-casting heroes. Now Warriors & Warlocks takes the Mutants & Masterminds RPG to the realm of fantasy. This beautifully illustrated sourcebook includes information on character design, magic, equipment, villains, monsters, and more. It also includes a Mutants & Masterminds rules companion to Green Ronin’s popular Pirate’s Guide to Freeport, along with an introduction and overview of Freeport as a setting for fantasy adventures. Warriors & Warlocks is your go-to guide for comic book sword & sorcery action.
  I always had a soft spot for Mutants & Masterminds. Even the core book allows you to play almost everything from superheroes campaigns to a more realistic modern day campaign. Even some SF should be possible without any problems. With the W&W supplement creating fantasy campaigns becomes pretty easy. Hmm, perhaps I should get this and get a campaign inspired by Battle Chasers up and running.
• Portrait of a Villain – The Desire
  Get the complete back story to the villain Desiree Turpis, a.k.a. The Desire. This 57-page full color eBook includes everything a DM needs to introduce this new, reoccurring villain into any 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The Desire is the perfect villain to add intrigue and betrayal to your game.
  This is a Heroic Tier supplement that is fully-compatible with 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.
  Although this book was meant for D&D 4th Edition it contains a lot of material you can use in any game. I am still hoping that the guys at Nevermet Press fully flesh out the campaign setting they obviously had in mind while creating the Desire.
• Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion
  Hundreds of items, monsters, and new spells await your dungeon delvers in this Explorer’s-size full-color Companion for Savage Worlds. Arm your dwarven warrior with all-new Edges and a legendary axe so that he can stand against terrible dragons, loathsome demons, and even the most-dreaded giant bees! The Companion series features genre material that’s ready to be added directly to your existing game or help you start a new one. Expand your options and increase your fun: get a Companion today!
  I have to get this. Period! Seriously, Savage Worlds is currently my favorite roleplaying game system and I would love to run a Eberron campaign using Savage Worlds. The Fantasy Companion should make this task much, much easier.

These are hundreds more titles at an reduced price at RPGNow until Monday. So, if you want to spend some money on roleplaying game PDFs, you should use the chance. If you have found other interesting games in the sale, feel free to post the links in the comments below.

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A friend of mine actually got me writing this post after she shared the link to Wizards of the Coast announcement of their update to the D&D game…

Mind you I don’t play D&D 4the edition anymore. But the decision to stop playing D&D was a hard one for me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it was akin to a divorce for me. I was really invested into D&D, it wasn’t only my favorite game, but my favorite pastime, and while it may seem silly to some I agonized about giving up the game. Of course I play Pathfinder now (and I wrote about it before) and the notion that seemed so hard at the time now is a little silly.

Then something like this comes along and causes an instant reaction in me. I’ll try to be dispassionate about it, but it may be hard, so forgive me if this comes of like a rant!

My friend complained, a little tongue in cheek I imagine, that Wizards took a nerf bat to her character sheet. So I had to go and look at the update. My first impression was WOW, 88 pages of updates. Righteous indignation set in and I was ready to cry foul and condemn Wizards for their actions. But then I took a deep breath and read the document. While I don’t play I have a grasp of the rules and understood what they were talking about. The update covers 14 books, which come to about 6 pages per book for 88 pages (I didn’t check how many pages are devoted to each book I just made a quick calculation.)

I am fully aware that D&D 3.5, the game I used to play, had copious amounts of errata over the life of the game, and some may say that quickly addressing broken or difficult rules is a sign of responding to the fan base concerns and a willingness to admit t when a mistake has been made. It certainly becomes a necessity for their current business model. The use of online tools and the immediacy of the Internet age mean that fans expect their concern to be addressed, and addressed now. I don’t doubt the designers are addressing the problems to make what they believe to be a “better” and more “balanced” game.

AD&D had errata. Years after I switched from AD&D 1st edition to 2nd edition I learned that TSR had published errata for Unearthed Arcana in Dragon #103. The Cavalier and Barbarian were clearly “broken”, terribly overpowered when compared with classes from the Player’s Handbook and many of the rules in the book needed clarifications, but I never got the errata. I played with the rules as they were, and had fun. While some were in fact “broken”, that never affected my enjoyment of the game.

Likewise AD&D 2nd edition had errata but even after I discovered it, I don’t think I ever incorporated it into my game. The fun we were having and the stories we were telling were far more important than the minutia of the rules. It wasn’t until D&D 3rd edition came around, and I began to use the internet for news, visiting forums for discussions, that errata became part and parcel of my games. I copied it, printed it out for my players, made sure I was up to date, and in all sincerity it became too much of a hassle.

I understand Wizard’s current business model. The use of online tools, character powers and their structure, making elements from CCG and miniature integral to the game as to create a continuous revenue stream makes sense from a corporate point of view. But it also becomes a trap because things like this become a necessity and they have to make this type of overhauls to the game system. If I’m a player who just picked up the book, don’t spend time online on their site and sit on a table to play I may suddenly be told that the book I purchased no longer contains the “right” rules. If I don’t subscribe to the DDI the value of my book is diminished. 88 pages of rule changes in a year and a half…

We may delude ourselves into thinking RPG design is a science, but it’s not, it’s an art. We may accuse designers of doing a poor job, of not being thorough enough, but they are human and no matter how much they playtest things will slip by. I think what really get’s to me is our expectation that things will be fixed quickly and to my satisfaction. We truly have become a culture of instant gratification.

The game I currently run has errata and I don’t ignore it, but I refuse to be trapped by an unending quest to know about every “broken” rule and combo and worry if my game is balance. I just want to play and have fun.

End of rant!

What’s your take on all of this? Thanks for reading….

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Dan Prentice just informed a about the cool new Tunnels & Troll magazine called “TrollsZine” that he is publishing together with Kevin Bracey. Issue #1 has been released yesterday and the 57-paged PDF is available for free from RPGNow. Here’s the blurb from the product page:

TrollsZine is a new magazine created by and for fans of Tunnels and Trolls. Issue 1 has all new material and includes a short solo adventure, new magic items, The Troll Chefs Cookbook, original fiction, articles on T&T stunts, the dice issue, running T&T solos with other systems and a number of locations for the busy Games Master to use in their campaign. Ken St Andre has contributed a piece and there is art by Jeff Freels, ME Volmar, Chad Thorson, Kevin Bracey, Alex Cook and Mike Hill.

I have leafed through the PDF and the magazine definitely is a work of love. It contains a lot of cool stuff that any T&T player or GM can put to good use and it has a certain old-school charm to it, which is a good thing in my book. If you are a fan of T&T you definitely should check this new magazine out!

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This interview originally appeared on Polyhedral Dreams, my old RPG blog, on January 17th, 2010. Continue Reading

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Chronicles is one of the many game designs I have floating around on my hard disk. And like most of these abandoned projects, it’s totally untested, probably extremely unbalanced and unfinished. But it was great fun to write!

Chronicles is a rules-lite, anime-style fantasy game which uses a pretty easy dice pool system and four classes: the Warrior which is attuned to Earth, the Archer which uses Air magic, the Monk who draws his power from Water and the Sorcerer who is a master of Fire magic.

Today I stumbled upon my manuscript, made some minor layout tweaks and created a PDF you can download here. I don’t intend to anything with it in the foreseeable future, but perhaps there is someone out there who can put it to some good use.

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