Game Recap: Princes of the Apocalypse Session 3–The Temple of Sacred Stone

Dramatis Personae

Glidion: High Elf Wizard (Enchanter) who exaggerates stories of his past triumphs. Unwitting pawn of the Zhentarim.

Gracealyn “Darkeyes” Droverson: Tethyarian Human Noble Fighter (Champion) who seeks to restore her lost family fortunes.  Member of the Lords Alliance.

Milo Miller: Lightfoot Halfling Cleric of Pelor (Life Domain). Seeks to spread worship of his god to Faerun.  Watcher of the Harpers.

Salazar Tomoki: Shou Human Monk (Way of the Open Hand).  Hermit who walks Faerun seeking enlightenment like Caine from Kung Fu.

Wrenna: Forest Gnome Rogue (Thief).  Little is known of Wrenna’s past other then that she has been on the wrong side of the law from a young age.

Recap

Having defeated the gargoyles and deciding that their suspicions about the monastery being a haven for evil were correct, the party decided to throw caution to the wind.  Well, not entirely to the wind as Wrenna snuck a peak into the central temple area prior to the group kicking open the doors.  Wrenna reported that there were a priest and two guards inside gathered around an altar at the far end, with four large columns of natural stone dominating the room and a large set of stairs heading down in the center.

The party seized the initiative and attacked.  Glidion lead the attack with a fireball to “soften them up”, followed quickly by the a fleet-footed and stealthy Salazar armed with shurikens.  Wrenna used her bow to great effect while Darkeyes was less effective with her javelin as she tried to close the gap.  Milo used a guiding bolt of magic to both attack and assist his comrades.  Glidion was able to take down the weakened priest and guards using magic to put them to sleep.

Tying the three up, they proceeded to wake the priest and interrogate him.  The priest, a man named Qarbo, was quite talkative if openly contemptuous of his captors.  He told the group that no matter what they did, they could not stop the rise of the Cult of the Black Earth.  When asked if the Cult of Black Earth was behind the attack on the party by monks wearing wingwear, he spat and said those “vulture riding fools from the Cult of Howling Hatred” were weak and would be “the first to fall when the Black Earth ascended”.  When asked what was below, Qarbo told the party to “go down and find out, but do not be surprised if the Black Earth devours you.” Having enough of his attitude, Darkeyes literally picked him up by the ankles and shook him, and was gratified when a pair of keys on a chain around his neck fell to the ground.

Meanwhile the group discovered a bronze lever close to the altar.  Wrenna could not determine its purpose, but Glidion had a hypotheses it might have to do with the stairs.  Deciding to test this, the party placed the three tied up cultists on the edge of the stairs.  Qarbo was asked if he had anything to say before the lever was pulled.  While he looked nervous, he did not give the party any more information.  The lever was pulled, the stairs collapsed, and the three cultists slid into the darkness below.  More mechanical noises were heard in the distance, followed by screams, followed by a clacking, scrabbling noise as the umber hulk below tried to make it up the ramp.  The party decided it was best to explore elsewhere.

Leaving out the small doors to the west, the party entered a hallway with Wrenna in the lead.  Her sensitive gnomish nose detected the smell of baking bread.  Making their way through the empty dining area, the group entered the kitchen where four monks in dun colored robes were preparing food.  Seeing the party they hastily donned gargoyle masks and attacked.  The monks proved no match for the party however, and once they were vanquished the party use the opportunity to restock their provisions.  The deceased monks were also liberated of their robes and masks.

Heading back out the way they came and travelling south, Wrenna listened at a door and heard some people speaking in what she thought was a dialect of dwarvish.  Darkeyes decided to have a little fun, donned a gargoyle mask, put a (poorly fitting) robe over her armor, and charged into the room to attack.  The dwarves, actually duergar, were taken off guard by this unorthodox attack. Only three of the six duergar in the room were awake and the group worked to push their advantage while they could.  Two of the duergar used the strange powers innate to their race to grow to gigantic proportions.  Regardless, the party took the day and defeated the evil dwarves.

Continuing their explorations, the party found another dormitory with four sleeping monks who were slaughtered before they were even fully awake.  The group then discovered the sleeping quarters of the priest and his guards they encountered earlier.  One of the keys they had liberated from the priest opened an iron coffer containing priestly vestments, gold bracelets, and several magical scrolls which were claimed by Glidion.

To be continued…

Why PDFs of Fifth Edition D&D still matter

In some ways Wizards of the Coast has made great strides in supporting electronic gaming.  They have been steadily releasing their impressive back catalog in PDF through the D&D Classics website.  The D&D Basic rules are available as a free download from the Wizards of the Coast website.  They provide officially licensed content for the Fantasy Grounds which gives them a virtual table top, a character creation tool, and even a digital distribution tool for their books.  Despite these strides though, there is currently no way to legally buy the D&D 5e Core Rule Books in a PDF format.  This is frankly unbelievable in the year 2015.

PDFs are important.  While there may be some issues with PDFs, the format has been around since 1993 (22years) at this point.  It is an open format, which means there are a plethora of PDF readers available, and they are available for any OS on the market.  PDF is the standard for RPG books, and indeed most reference style books.

No offense to the Fantasy Grounds guys, but I will be extremely impressed if it is still available in 22 years to read the content Wizards of the Coast has made available through their license.  Also, launching Fantasy Grounds just to read the core rule books is frankly overkill.  While it is a competent virtual table top, it would be crazy to invest the money in Fantasy Grounds if all you want is the books in an electronic format. 

So what is wrong with just reading the physical books that Wizards of the Coast is publishing?  It is not that there is anything wrong with them, but PDFs have advantages that make them more practical for many people.  For starters, they don’t take up as much space.  It is easy to bring your entire library of game books over to someone’s house in digital format, obviously not if they are physical books.  It is amazing how much space these books take up.  When I moved to Arizona, my gaming books filled more than twenty banker boxes, most of which are still stacked up in my garage!  For many people, storing this many books is simply not practical.

PDFs are also easily searchable, which helps both with game prep and when looking up a rule during the game.  Can’t remember how grappling works in D&D 5e?  Just type in “grappling” into the search box and you will have the answer in seconds.  Lets say you are entering your character into Roll20. While you can retype all your spells by hand, cutting and pasting them from a PDF is a real time saver.  Believe it or not, PDFs are a competitive advantage in today’s market place, and are one of the primary reasons why the Lords of Tyr switched to Pathfinder for one of our two regular games.

What about piracy?  Well, not making legal PDFs has not stopped that from happening.  Illegal copies of all the current D&D 5e books are readily available online if you want them.  The only people prevented from getting PDF versions of D&D 5e books right now are those who want to pay for them.

Look, I like the beautiful, high quality physical books Wizards of the Coast produces as much the next guy.  Even if PDF versions of the core rulebooks were available, I am sure I would have bought both the physical and PDF versions of these books, especially if Wizards of the Coast offered a physical and PDF bundle like most RPG companies do nowadays.  PDFs would also make me much more likely to try out books that I am not certain I would want to take up room on my ever more precious shelf space.

So come on Wizards of the Coast…

Game Recap: Princes of the Apocalypse Session 2-Manticore Hunt

Dramatis Personae

Glidion: High Elf Wizard (Enchanter) who exaggerates stories of his past triumphs. Unwitting pawn of the Zhentarim.

Gracealyn “Darkeyes” Droverson: Tethyarian Human Noble Fighter (Champion) who seeks to restore her lost family fortunes.  Member of the Lords Alliance.

Milo Miller: Lightfoot Halfling Cleric of Pelor (Life Domain). Seeks to spread worship of his god to Faerun.  Watcher of the Harpers.

Salazar Tomoki: Shou Human Monk (Way of the Open Hand).  Hermit who walks Faerun seeking enlightenment like Caine from Kung Fu.

Wrenna: Forest Gnome Rogue (Thief).  Little is known of Wrenna’s past other then that she has been on the wrong side of the law from a young age.

Recap

Arriving in Red Larch, the group traveled through the village, taking note of the various shops.  Salazar made a quick trip into Lorren’s Bakery to pick up a mushroom cheese-topped bun for Wrenna.  These smelled so good that the weary travelers soon all stopped at the bakery to indulge in this savory treat.

Continuing to the Allfaiths shrine, the party met the two intendant priests: Imdarr Relvaunder a stout follower of Tempus (god of war) and Lymmura Auldarhk a follower of Sune (goddess of beauty and love).  Imdarr seemed a little put off by Sister Garaele’s decision to become a third intendant at the shrine since traditionally only two priests act as intendants at any given time.  Lymmura however welcomed Sister Garaele with open arms and offered to share her cell with the young acolyte of Tymora for the duration of her stay.

The group then pressed on to Bethendur’s Storage to drop off Gundren Rockseeker’s platinum ingots for eventual pickup by a caravan headed to Secomber.  There they met Aerego Bethendur who was quick to tell them that his storage offered absolute privacy and that anything stored here would not be disturbed unless it started to rot; even then the contents would be disposed of discretely.  When Glidion asked if that happen often Aerego simply said, “Not often”.

At this point the group sought out a tavern and ended up at the Helm at Highsun.  Once again the group heard rumors of missing people, in this case a well armed delegation from Mirabar.  A half-orc named Zomith invited herself to the party’s table and immediately displayed an interest in Glidion.  The noble elf was more intimidated by her advances then aroused, but he did learn that the caravan Zomith had been travelling with had encountered the Mirabaran delegation about fifteen days ago somewhere between Beliard and Westbridge, and that she had brawled with the Mirabaran guards during the encounter.  When she offered to discuss things in more detail with Glidion “in private”, the elf beat a hasty retreat.

Late in the evening the party bought rooms at the Swinging Sword across the street.  The proprietor of the inn, an Illuskan woman in her forties named Kaylessa Irkell, was grateful to see a well-armed party of adventures in town and expressed her hope that they would put an end to the “fell magic” that was sweeping through the Slumber Hills.  When they mentioned the missing Mirabaran delegation, she introduced them to Brother Eardon a half-elf acolyte of Lathandar (god of the dawn).  Brother Eardon had recently came from Beliard by way of Westbridge, and confirmed that the delegation was in Beliard two tendays ago.  The group resolved to travel the Larch Path to Beliard in search of the missing delegation in the morning.

Heading down the Larch Path, the group was distracted from this quest when they realized they were getting close to Feathergale Spire.  Intrigued by the wingwear they found on the monks who attacked them earlier and curious about the Feathergale Society they left the path and travelled into the Slumber Hills.  They arrived at Feathergale Spire in the evening. 

The spire was separated from the road by a cliff with a shear drop of hundreds of feet.  A brass bell hung from a wooden post near the ledge, and when they rang the bell a knight of the Feathergale Society named Savra Belabranta opened a small window near the gate and asked the adventurers what their purpose was at the spire.  Convinced that their intentions were peaceful, she invited them in and brought them up to the pinnacle of the Spire to meet the Feathergale Society’s leader Thurl Merosska.

Thurl greeted the party and asked them their business.  The party described their encounter with the wingwear wearing monks and asked if it was possible if any suits of wingwear had been stolen from them recently.  Thurl declined to answer, but since the party seemed to be men and women of valor he invited them to join in the feast that below.

The party partook in the grand feast and traded stories of valor.  As the feast was winding down, a knight burst into the room stating that a manticore had been sighted over the valley.  Thurl believed this to be an opportunity to slay the beast and offered his ring to the man or woman who brought back its head.  He asked the party if they wished to partake in the hunt, offering them hippogriffs to use.  The party agreed to join the hunt and mounted on three hippogriffs with Wrenna and Milo doubling up with larger party members.  The Feathergale Society knights mounted on giant vultures.

The beast was quickly spotted and the knights and the party took chase.  Glidion caused a great deal of damage by loosing fireballs on the manticore from afar and Darkeyes proved a dead shot with her javelins.  Salazar found himself frustrated by his lack of ability to engage at range, but Wrenna’s shortbow found its mark.  The beast was brought down by Darkeyes’ final javelin, falling to the ground below.  The party followed it down and Darkeyes used her axe to remove the dead beast’s head.

Returning to the Spire, Darkeyes was awarded Thurl’s ring.  After the feast, Thurl confided to the party that he believed the monks of the Sacred Stone Monastery were a source of the evil in the valley. The party choose to spend the night in Feathergale Spire and resolved to check out the monastery in the morning. 

During the night, Salazar was awakened by Savra.  Salazar explained that because of his vows he was not interested in an assignation, but Savra patiently explained that was not why she was there.  She was impressed by the valor of the group and wanted to confide the true purpose of the Feathergale Society: that they are on a secret mission to master elemental air to annihilate the enemies of Waterdeep.  She was telling Salazar this because she was going to approach Thurl about allowing Salazar, and possibly his companions, to join the Feathergale Society.  Salazar, and the rest of the group when he told them the next morning, said they would think about it.

The next morning the group headed off to find the Sacred Stone Monastery.  While travelling through the Slumber Hills, they came upon a number of shallow graves with vultures circling overhead.  After some debate, the party decided to exhume the bodies to see if they could be identified as any of the missing people they had heard about.  They found one dwarf in artisan’s robes and one female human dressed as a member of Mirabar’s army.  They also found one human male dressed in a black cloak with strange stony armor and one human male in white robes with black feathers at the shoulders.  All were dead from arrow wounds or crushing blows.  Convinced that at least two of the bodies were from the Mirabar delegation, they reburied the bodies and Milo performed funerary rites.

Continuing down the path described by Thurl, the party came upon the Sacred Stone Monastery around noon the next day.  An impressive stone edifice, the group decided rather than knock on the front door they would look for a secondary entrance.  Locating one on the southeast portion of the building, Wrenna examined the door and picked the lock.

Wrenna scouted ahead of the main group, who are not well known for their stealth.  At the first interior door she heard the sounds of people sparring, similar to the katas that Salazar would do in the morning.  She decided to leave this door alone for the moment and motioned for the group to move forward. 

The next door was sealed by an arcane lock.  Having no way to bypass the mystical protections, the group moved past this door as well. Wrenna then discovered stairs going down, but the party decided to continue exploring the upper level before braving the depths below. 

Continuing forward they group entered a long narrow open air courtyard paved in red sandstone.  To the north of them was the main temple area with large copper-sheathed doors and as well as another set of doors to the west.  Gargoyle statues guarded each set of doors.  Glidion expressed his concern, noting that “gargoyle statues always seem to come to life”.  Giving the statues as wide a berth as possible the party approached the copper-sheathed doors.

Of course the gargoyles came to life and attacked, although contrary to Glidion’s expectations only two of them became animate.  Showing uncharacteristic bravery, Glidion moved forward an loosed a lighting bolt on the two gargoyles.   Salazar was able to use his newly acquired magical Yari to good effect against the creatures stone-like skin, while Darkeyes’ reliable magic axe Hew caused similar grievous wounds. The gargoyles were quickly dispatched.

The party then prepared to check out the copper-sheathed doors to the temple.

To be continued…

Thoughts on Unearthed Arcana’s new Psionics rules for D&D 5e

I think psionics is the scab that D&D can’t stop picking at.  What began as a set of optional rules from the first edition AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide has been revisited in every edition since with varying degrees of success.  They tend to be either poorly integrated into the core mechanics, the worst offender being second edition’s Complete Psionics Handbook, or presented as simply an non-Vancian alternative magic system.  Neither approach has been very satisfying.  As magic in D&D has become more diverse with the addition of core classes like sorcerers and warlocks, psionics has had to work harder and harder to justify its existence.  Still, I am always interested in new psionics systems when they come out, so I made sure to check out the PDF.

The first thing that stuck out to me at this most recent attempt had nothing to do with the mechanics.  Rather it was tying psionics so closely to the Far Realm.  To some extent this makes sense, after all the monsters that are most likely to be psionic have always been aberrations.  Less successful to me was their attempt to explain why psionics are more common on some campaign worlds than others, which boils down to the “weirder” your campaign world is (Dark Sun, Eberron), the more influence the Far Realm will have and the more common psionics will be.  If anything this simply seemed to highlight how out of place psionics tend to be in a normal D&D fantasy setting.

As for the crunch,  these rules present the Mystic class and two orders: The Order of the Awakened and the Order of the Immortal.  These are roughly analogous to Psions and Psychic Warriors from previous editions.  The core mechanic is that a mystic has a certain number of psi points that can be spent on certain class abilities or to activate disciplines.  Your Psi points completely regenerate after a long rest, which makes book keeping easier but does little to differentiate it the way magic works in D&D 5e.  Disciplines don’t have levels but can often be manifested to greater effect by spending more points.  This used to be a mechanic that set psionic characters apart, but nowadays most spell casters use the similar mechanic of getting more bang out of their spells by casting them with higher level slots.

Of the two orders presented, I think the Order of the Immortal has more to distinguish it from the other base classes.  The class it reminds me most of is actually the magus from Pathfinder.  Both have a full range of weaponry, midrange armor, midrange hit points, and a pool of points they can spend to boost their martial prowess and enhance their weaponry.  Neither is ideal as the main fighter in a party, but both can function as an off-tank with a little extra versatility to make up for some squishiness.

Personally, I didn’t quite find enough to differentiate psionics in these rules to convince me that they are a necessary addition to the game.  It is important to note though that these are presented as an early playtest of the psionics rules, not as a finished product.  One of the things that helped make D&D 5e such a strong version of the game was the extremely open nature of the D&D Next playtest and the willingness of Wizards of the Coast to listen to player feedback.  If they follow the same template with these rules, maybe there is hope for psionics yet!

Game Recap: Princes of the Apocalypse Session 1–The Road to Red Larch

 

Dramatis Personae

Glidion: High Elf Wizard (Enchanter) who exaggerates stories of his past triumphs. Unwitting pawn of the Zhentarim.

Gracealyn “Darkeyes” Droverson: Tethyarian Human Noble Fighter (Champion) who seeks to restore her lost family fortunes.  Member of the Lords Alliance.

Milo Miller: Lightfoot Halfling Cleric of Pelor (Life Domain). Seeks to spread worship of his god to Faerun.  Watcher of the Harpers.

Salazar Tomoki: Shou Human Monk (Way of the Open Hand).  Hermit who walks Faerun seeking enlightenment like Caine from Kung Fu.

Wrenna: Forest Gnome Rogue (Thief).  Little is known of Wrenna’s past other then that she has been on the wrong side of the law from a young age.

Recap

The group was enjoying some well deserved rest after successfully locating the Lost Mine of Phandelver.  Well everyone was resting except for Salazar.  During meditation, he was troubled by reoccurring visions of a large unblinking eye.

The party was approached by their friend and occasional employer Gundren Rockseeker.  Since reopening the Wave Echo Mine, he had one major problem: Phandalin was simply not large enough to provide a suitable market place for the raw platinum ore him and his two (remaining) brothers were extracting.  Gundren asked it the group would be willing to escort a shipment of ore to Bethendur’s Storage in Red Larch, where it will be picked up by a caravan bound for Secomber.  The market for platinum ingots is quite good in more easterly lands and Gundren anticipates he will make a tidy profit.

Before they leave, Milo is approached by Sister Garaele.  She has been having visions of her own, and has decided that they are directing her to become an intendant at the Allfaiths Shrine in Red Larch.  She wishes to travel with the group to Red Larch for mutual protection.  She also implores the group to make a stop along the way at the ruined village of Conyberry in hopes of questioning the reputedly prophetic but twisted groaning spirit Agatha.

Heading west down the Triboar Trail, the group reaches the ruins of Conyberry.  The group follows the northwest trail to a strange hut made from the warped branches of nearby trees.  The party could hear sobbing emanating from the hut and cautiously approached.

The sobbing was coming from a ghostly child, sitting among the ruined remains of a bed inside. Sister Garaele, Milo, and Salazar approached while Wrenna, Glidion, and Darkeyes remained outside the hut.  The sobbing girl was incoherent, babbling “you shouldn’t be here” and “she won’t like it that you are here”.  The party tried to comfort her, but the spirit became angry before screaming “she’s here!” and transforming into the banshee Agatha.

Agatha admonished the party for bothering the child and told them that they would pay for their insolence.  She called forth the child’s “brothers and sisters”, four will-o’-wisps which rose from the swamp. Initially, the party was loathe to engage the spirit, still hoping to calm it down and reason with it.  The creature then let out a horrifying wail which scarred their very souls and left Sister Garaele and Milo hovering on death’s door.

Salazar focused on the banshee, although his blows were somewhat less effective against the incorporeal creature.  The rest of the party engaged the fast moving will-o’-wisps.  Things were looking grim as both healers were down and the undead inflicted grievous injuries on their living foes.  The tide turned when Glidion managed to make his way to the Milo, and forced a potion of healing down the throat of the fallen cleric.  With Milo’s divine magic to revitalize them, the party was quickly able to turn the tide and dispatch the unclean spirits.

After Agatha and the wisps were vanquished, the ghost child reappeared.  The child claimed to have been born with the gift of prophesy and that Agatha had been charged with keeping her safe.  However, the elf eventually grew obsessive and her extreme methods led to the child’s death.  Unhinged, Agatha began finding other “special children” to protect, who’s spirits became the will-o’-wisps when the tragic cycle inevitably repeated.  Because of her evil deeds, when Agatha was killed by the same Elk Tribe barbarians that destroyed Conyberry, she rose as a banshee.  Over the years Agatha’s grip on sanity became even more tenuous and eventually she became convinced she was the same child she had killed all those years ago.

The ghost child, or maybe the innocence left in Agatha, thanked the party for allowing her to “move on”.  She offered to answer any one question posed to her utilizing her second sight.  The party decided to allow Garaele to speak.  The young acolyte asked about her dreams and how she could stop the rise of the unblinking eye.  The spirit somewhat sadly said that the only slim hope was in the hands of her current companions—either they would stop the rise of the eye or no one would.

Uncertain what to make of this, the party searched the hut.  They eventually found the skeletal remains of Agatha and of several small children which they buried.  They also found a small chest which contained a diamond ring and a philter of love.

The party continued down the Triboar trail, eventually reaching Triboar itself.  Sister Garaele and Milo’s Harper contacts allowed them to stay at the Home of the Boars, a lodge slightly outside of Triboar proper.  There they met Darathara Shendrel and her companions ‘the Twelve’.  Darathara takes Milo and Garaele aside to tell them her concerns that people have gone missing.  A half-elf adventurer named Grevor and his companions are over a tenday overdue.  Additionally, two important merchants from Waterdeep, Kharloss and Jarlee, have been missing even longer.

After a well deserved night of rest, the party turned off the Triboar trail and headed south down the Long Road.  While traveling through a ravine, the party was set ambushed by a group of strangely garbed monks.  Their outfits had leathery flaps which stretched between their arms, waist, and legs that allowed them to glide from the top of the ravine to surround the party.  The outfits caused Glidion to derisively refer them as “squirrel monks” due to their resemblance to flying squirrels.

The leader, a cold-eyed woman wielding a strange looking spear that Salazar identified as a yari, demanded that the group throw down their weapons and surrender.  Unfortunately for the monks they had underestimated their opponents. Despite the fact that they were escorting a pair of oxen pulling a cart, these were not paid caravan guards but battle-hardened adventurers.  The battle was brief and violent, and the party ultimately captured one of the monks alive.

The monk was not very forthcoming, but did answer some questions.  When asked about Grevor, Kharloss, and Jarlee he stated he did not know the names but that perhaps “they now serve”.  He called the adventures fools who had no idea what was going on and that they would end up dying or serving the new order.  Eventually he would speak no more and simply said the group should either kill him and be done with it or let him go.  Darkeyes meted out grim justice to the monk with her enchanted axe.

Salazar claimed the yari by right of battle.  It was enchanted and had “Zephyr” engraved on the blade in the Shou language.  Wrenna had ‘liberated’ a scroll case from the leader in battle.  It seemed to contain many of the teachings of this monastic order.  They learned to pattern their movements after the cycling motion of the hurricane, which is how they refer to themselves.  Although he found many of their teachings perverse, Salazar did gain inspiration from some of their techniques.  Glidion gathered the strange leather outfits from the deceased “squirrel monks” and took note of the symbol on them, an inverted triangle with three branching lines above it.

The party continued south down the Long Road, eventually reaching Westbridge, staying at the Harvest Inn.  While there, the group was disturbed to hear of more recent disappearances.  The whole town was abuzz about the Oric and Lathna, siblings who were abducted by raiders from a homestead a short distance outside town.  The proprietor of the Harvest Inn, an affable halfling named Herivin Dardragon, also expressed concern about one of his regulars, a shield dwarf prospector named Wulgreda.  While he could not prove she was missing, she had not stopped by in a very long time.

After leaving Westbridge, the group encountered a group of mounted knights on the road led by a knight named Sir Gerald.  Darkeyes identified them by their heraldry as the Knights of Samular, an order dedicated to Tyr, god of justice.  After establishing their good intentions, the two groups spoke about the rash of missing people.  Glidion told them to watch out for anyone wearing the strange leather suits they found the monks in.  Sir Gerald identified the outfits as wingwear, which he was only familiar with because the Knights of the Feathergale Society used similar outfits.  As far as Sir Gerald knows, the Feathergale group is an honorable one, if somewhat pampered and rich.  Sir Gerald could not identify the symbol on the wingwear, but he had seen it before at the sites of some of the kidnappings.  Sir Gerald also took the opportunity to sketch out three other symbols he had encountered during his investigations.

Sir Gerald and his men bid the party adieu.  He did invite them to come to Summit Hall in the future and recommended they speak to the Feathergale Society about the wingwear.  The party continued down the Long Road, knowing that Red Larch was less then a day away.  

A quick update

I normally try to keep my posts here strictly geek related.  It has been long enough since I posted last though that I thought a quick update was warranted before I (hopefully) begin posting regularly again.

So a lot has been going on in my personal life.  Most significantly, my wife and I have moved halfway across the country from the Windy City to the Valley of the Sun.  We moved because of my work, which has been pretty hectic since I arrived here.  Things have calmed down a bit now though, which is why I am going to try my hand at blogging again.

I am still gaming with the Lords of Tyr using the various amazing digital tools which are available nowadays.  Currently I am running Princes of the Apocalypse (Dungeons & Dragons 5e) and playing through Rise of the Runelords (Pathfinder).  I also recently ran Duty Unto Death (Dragon Age) for my old group when a few of them were in town visiting.

Over the next few weeks I plan to post about virtual table tops, my experience running the Dragon Age RPG, a couple of book and TV show reviews, and possibly a major model building project I am thinking of undertaking.

So if you have been waiting for my triumphant return, here I am!  If you have stumbled across this page by accident (more likely), then I hope you like what you see.

Dropping skills for backgrounds in Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition

I am the kind of guy who writes pages of character backgrounds for my characters.  Some of them probably qualify as short stories.  Sometimes they are written from a first person point of view, other times in the form of a journal, occasionally from a third person omniscient or the point of view of another character in the story.  I feel I need to write these backgrounds in order to properly play my character.  Even in the MMORPG City of Heroes, where I never played with deep role-players, each of my ‘toons’ had surprisingly detailed character backgrounds.

I realize not everyone plays this way.  When I am running games getting character backgrounds from some of my players is like pulling teeth.  Often players will present me with character backgrounds no more complex than “I grew up in a peasant village and when I was old enough I left to find my fortune”.  That is OK, everyone has a different playing style.

Still, I like games that encourage characters to develop their background a bit.  Probably the first game I encountered that did this was Warhammer Fantasy in which your character development was tied to your career path.  Knowing that your character was a rat catcher or a merchant before they began adventuring wasn’t much, but it was something.  Last Unicorn Games short-lived Star Trek: The Next Generation RPG took a similar path, where during character generation you would take a number of ‘tours’ on previous starships to determine your skillset.  Maybe you spent a tour on the USS Hood as a security officer even though you were in command now so you were handy with a phaser.

I think my favorite take on this mechanic so far is in 13th Age.  During character creation you allocate a number of points to backgrounds.  Rather than specific skills you might say you spent time as a cat-burglar, a guild mage, or a merchant.  Maybe you were a poacher (4 points) who was drafted as a soldier (2 points) and then became a animal trainer (2 points) when you got out.  Rather than have a specific list of skills, you roll and add an appropriate ability modifier plus points in your background where you would roll a skill check in D&D.  If the party needed to track someone through the woods and one character had a poacher background while another had a bounty hunter background, both could make the roll using their background points plus their wisdom modifier.  However, if they needed to tie up a captive probably only the bounty hunter background would be applicable.

During the D&D Next playtest, I always thought this system would be easy to implement as a house rule.  D&D Next was already more skill light than D&D 3e or D&D 4e after all.  So I was pleased to hear that at Origins there was talk of an optional module that would use backgrounds instead of skills in a similar manner.  Assuming it is well implemented, I would definitely use that option in any D&D 5e games I run.

Or I guess I could just run a 13th Age instead.  It really is a fun system.

What digital offerings I want from D&D 5e

My gaming group makes extensive use of digital tools when playing.  We have vast PDF libraries that keep us from breaking our backs hauling books back and forth.  We use various character generation tools to assist with character creation and tracking.  We use virtual game tables both for ease of play and to allow members who cannot attend locally to join in the fun remotely.  Digital tools are an essential part of our game.  Trapdoor Technologies, a new licensee for Dungeons & Dragons digital tools, asked on their website what we want out of Codename Morningstar.  Here is my wish list.

Affordable PDFs

This is more in Wizards of the Coast court than Trapdoor Technologies.

Wizards of the Coast has a spotty history when it comes to PDFs.  In third edition PDFs were priced exactly the same as the physical book.  This meant that they often cost more than you could get the physical books for off of Amazon and even most local game stores.  It also meant that at $30 or more a pop that most gamers had to make a choice between buying a physical book or buying the PDF.  Personally, I enjoy reading a physical book but love the convenience of a searchable PDF during game play.  By offering PDFs at a reasonable price Pazio and other publishers have encouraged me to purchase both.

In fourth edition Wizards of the Coast moved away from PDFs and offered up the D&D Compendium as a digital alternative.  The D&D Compendium was great, but it didn’t allow you to see the rules in their original context.  There is a place for a tool like the D&D Compendium, but I does not replace PDF versions of the books.

Of course Wizards of the Coast has made great strides in their PDF offerings with the D&D Classics site.  However, they still tend to be a bit pricey on the newer stuff and don’t tend to release PDFs concurrently with their new releases.  I hope that this will change with the release of fifth edition.

A robust and customizable character generator

I like character generators and I even liked the D&D Character Builder offered through D&D Insider.  It had a major flaw though, as it did not handle house rules very well.  This is why I prefer a character generator like PCGen.  The ability to load my own datasets far outweighed the occasional quirkiness of the program.  Strong support for house rules is a must.

A useful virtual game table

There are a lot of great virtual game table products out there.  Personally, we use MapTools, but Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are great products as well.  A great virtual game table must be customizable, allow easy access to remote players, and provide useful management tools for the DM to run encounters.  All three of the virtual game tables I have listed above do this.

To be honest the opportunity here is almost closed.  Where there is still opportunity is to integrate this in with the vast stores of data Wizards of the Coast can provide.  Making it seamless to drop in monsters with full stats and seamless integration with character sheets would make all the difference.  I know it would convince me to switch.

Campaign management tools

There is probably a lot of room for improvement here.  Realm Works is great for campaign prep, but  Obsidian Portal is probably the leader here.  It bills itself as a campaign wiki site, but it provides a lot of tools for game masters to keep track of the locations and characters while only surfacing to the players what the game master wants them to know. 

Outside of the gaming software world, I have found both Workflowy (an outliner) and Evernote (a robust note taking program) to be invaluable tools for organizing campaigns.  I have also been considering trying Scrivner, which is intended for authors who are organizing a novel, but would probably work just as well for a campaign.

I would look to all of these tools for inspiration.

It is more than just a Windows world

D&D Insider ran on Microsoft Silverlight.  While some of my group members use Windows laptops, some use MacBooks, Ubuntu Linux laptops, iPads, and Android devices.  Silverlight did not work very well for them.

Please make sure that whatever digital solutions are created are multi-platform.  Make sure that these solutions are mobile friendly as well.

Wizards of the Coast’s new model?

Wizards of the Coast is working with a new licensee, Trapdoor Technologies, to deliver digital tools for Dungeons & Dragons 5e.  In May, Wizards of the Coast announced Kobold Press designed two of the adventures to support the Tyranny of Dragons storyline.  DriveThruRPG has been powering Dungeons & Dragons Classics for awhile now.  I think this may represent a subtle shift in how Wizards of the Coast is handling Dungeons & Dragons.

I’ve already talked at length about how I feel Wizards of the Coast should focus on their core competencies and let others develop tools for the game in the context of the OGL. It looks like Wizards of the Coast is doing this, except instead of an open source model they are planning to work with specific licensees to fill the void.

While I would personally prefer an open source model, this makes sense from Wizards of the Coast’s point of view.  They can focus their internal resources on the rules and farm tasks that go outside their core competencies to other groups while still maintaining a tight control over how their intellectual property is used.  Seriously, this is win-win for them.

Hopefully, they will open things up a bit more down the road, as Mike Mearls said they would in 2015.  I still maintain that a robust gaming license is good for the hobby, and that what is good for the hobby is good for Dungeons & Dragons.

Mike Mearls (briefly) addresses the gaming license.

At the end of my last post, where I expressed my concern that D&D 5e might not have a gaming license, I stated that “for all I know Wizards of the Coast will announce a liberal gaming license tomorrow and I will look like an idiot”.  Well, that didn’t exactly happen but I was quite surprised to see Mike Mearls bring up this very concern in his post today.

I wish I could believe he was aware of my tiny little blog, but the reality is it shows how important the concept of a gaming license is to the gaming community as a whole.  Obviously my concerns were shared by many.

Parsing Mearls post we can only be sure of a couple of things.  First is that there will be some kind of “mechanism” that will allow fans to create their own gaming materials.  Second is that whatever this mechanism is that it will not debut until sometime in 2015.

This doesn’t alleviate my concerns, although I am glad to see that it is on Mearls mind.  I did notice that he was careful not to use the word “license” in describing how fans would be able to create their own materials, although I am not reading too much into it at this early stage of the game.

Whatever mechanism Wizards of the Coast provides I doubt we will ever see anything as broad as the OGL again.  Maybe they don’t have to.  In the comments of my last post it was noted by Nicholas Bergquist that the OGL is broad enough to make material that is functionally compatible with D&D 5e even if it can’t technically be billed as such.  Ultimately that genie is out of the bottle already.

Regardless I hope that Wizards of the Coast does this right.  Beyond simple books, it would be nice if they were willing to open things up a bit on the digital side.  The D&D 4e’s GSL was much more restrictive, about how the license applied to digital tools than the OGL was.  This isn’t surprising since Wizards of the Coast launched D&D Insider at the same time. 

Unfortunately, software is not what Wizards of the Coast does best.  Rather then control the tools I think it would be a smarter move to create API’s to allow others to create the tools while controlling access to their intellectual property.  I believe having robust digital tools supporting D&D, even if they didn’t create all of them, would help fifth edition reach its full potential.

D&D Basic is free, so how can I ask for more?

Mike Mearls revealed today that Basic D&D will be a freely downloadable PDF.  This is big news.  I thought it was genius when during the fourth edition Wizards of the Coast made the Keep on the Shadowfell module alongside the standalone character generator (which allowed you to create characters of levels 1-3 without a D&D Insider subscription) free downloads on their website.  It was a great gateway into the new edition for those who wanted to give it a try but weren’t ready to plunk down $35 a piece on the 4e Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual.

Obviously providing Basic D&D as a freely downloadable PDF is an even bigger deal.  According to Mearls’ post, “It runs from levels 1 to 20 and covers the cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, presenting what we view as the essential subclass for each. It also provides the dwarf, elf, halfling, and human as race options.”  Frankly, this is awesome.  It really lowers the barrier to entry for those that are even vaguely curious about the fifth edition.  When the price is free, if you are at all curious there is no real reason not to try it out!

So why am I disappointed about this?

Well, while I appreciate “Free as in Beer”, I really appreciate “Free as in Freedom”.

For those who are unfamiliar “Free as in Beer” versus “Free as in Freedom” (see also “libre” versus “gratis”) is used by the open source software community to explain the difference between “free software” which is built on closed source but given away free of charge and “free software” that has a license that allows others to build on what you created.

Since D&D 5e was first announced I wondered if there was going to be a license that would allow others to build upon it.  When D&D 3e came out, the most revolutionary thing about it were the Open Gaming License (OGL) and D20 license.  I could not believe that Wizards of the Coast had open sourced D&D!  With the D20 license, as long as you didn’t violate the terms anyone could create content compatible with D&D.  Perhaps more importantly, the OGL allowed an even greater variety games to be created from the same basic set of rules.

True, there was a lot of crap in the initial glut of material that was created after D&D 3e was released.  However, amazing games like Mutants and Masterminds and (much later) Pathfinder were a direct result of the freedom the OGL allowed.  There were also a variety of software tools, such as PCGen, which took advantage of this license.  It is amazing how much this license helped the hobby thrive.

Unfortunately, this may not seem like such a good thing from Wizards of the Coast’s point of view.   After all, one of their biggest competitors now is Pathfinder, a game that is really just a refinement of their own D&D 3e rules.  It must be hard to explain to the bean counters why another game company is outselling you with your own rule set.

There is really no reason to expect D&D 5e will have a license like the OGL.  No such license existed for AD&D 1e or 2e.  D&D 4e had a Game System License (GSL), but it was much more restrictive and much less used.  I get the feeling that Wizards of the Coast feels they gave away the crown jewels with the OGL and is determined not to make the same mistake again.

I cannot be sure whether or not the OGL was the best move for Wizards of the Coast.  However, I do feel it was good for the hobby, providing a robust base that people could build on.  As talented as the game designers at Wizards of the Coast are, they can’t fulfill every need.  Ultimately, I feel what is good for the hobby is good for D&D.  It may be hard to prove, but I don’t think it was a coincidence that D&D was at the top of the heap when the OGL reflected their most recent edition.

Of course, for all I know Wizards of the Coast will announce a liberal gaming license tomorrow and I will look like an idiot.  I tend to doubt it though.  I think Wizards of the Coast feels giving away D&D 5e Basic for free (as in beer) will be enough to keep their fans happy.  It is both a shrewd marketing decision and a genuinely nice move for the fans.  I even feel like a bit of a jerk complaining about it,  after all who doesn’t like free beer?

I guess I was just hoping for a bit more freedom.

I discover I have surprisingly strong feelings on griffons versus hippogriffs

The most recent Dragon’s-Eye View from Wizards of the Coast took a look at hippogriffs.  The article focused on how to make hippogriffs visually distinctive from griffons.  It made me think about griffons versus hippogriffs for the first time in a long time.

Being a player from back in the AD&D First Edition days, I tend to think of griffons as cool, but hippogriffs as practical.  Griffons in first edition were both intelligent and deadly.  They could also understand common, which opened up all sorts of coordination between the rider and his mount.  So what was the down side?

Well, griffons eat horses.  They really love to eat horses.  They also love to eat things that sort of look like horses, such as pegasi and hippogriffs. This tended to be a problem unless the entire party was mounted on griffons.  Even then, you had to make sure that your griffon didn’t chow down on the king’s prize stallion when you weren’t paying attention.

Hippogriffs weren’t as cool.  They were the safe choice.  You acquired hippogriffs if you needed a flying mount, but really didn’t want all the hassle that comes with griffon ownership.  Having a hippogriff mount is a bit like owning a nice family sedan instead of a red sports car.

I suppose that is why I always preferred griffons to hippogriffs in D&D.  In real life I would probably buy the family sedan, but my badass adventurer deserves an equally badass mount.

Of course, modern literature has provided us with one badass hippogriff: Buckbeak.

Buckbeak is a badass because he basically acts like a First Edition D&D griffon.  If you look at Buckbeak funny, he will smack you down.  It doesn’t matter if you are a child or a werewolf, you don’t mess with Buckbeak!  He never eats any horses in the Harry Potter books, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

So does any of this have any bearing on designing hippogriffs in D&D Next?  Probably not.  I can understand why game designers wouldn’t want to make griffons and hippogriffs even more indistinguishable.  There is a place for the family sedan, even in the D&D game world.

You just won’t find my character riding one.

Jeff Grubb on D&D 5E and the “Edition Wars”

Since I already posted my initial rambling thoughts on Dungeons & Dragons 5E, I figured it was worth pointing out this interesting post by Jeff Grubb:

A Game Divided Against Itself

Not surprisingly, Jeff brings a lot of historical perspective to the discussion of D&D 5E.  It is easy to think of the “Edition Wars” as something new and forget how often D&D has been its own worst competition in the past.

Is an ultimate edition of D&D possible?

Wizards of the Coast has officially announced Dungeons & Dragons 5E.  This probably isn’t a shocker to people who follow the industry.  The rehiring of veteran game designer Monte Cook, especially considering the tenor of his recent Legends & Lore articles, pointed to a new edition.  Recent rulebooks have also seemed more willing to experiment with the existing D&D 4E rules, reminiscent of late D&D 3E books like the Tome of Battle.

And of course sagging sales of D&D 4E products probably sped things along.  After all, traditionally nothing sells as well as the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual.

What I find interesting is that D&D 5E was announced so early in the process.  Even though it was obvious a new edition was in the works, I expected them to keep mum out of fear that they would torpedo the sales of upcoming 4E products.  After all, why would you buy books that will soon be considered obsolete?

Well, according to Mike Mearls they intend on conducting open playtests and soliciting feedback from the gaming community.  Of course this is a great marketing line, but the fact that they would risk hurting sales of these upcoming books makes me think that they are serious about getting feedback from the gaming community on D&D 5E.

The real question is whether or not this will work.  Wizards of the Coast is hoping for an “ultimate” edition of D&D that will help unite the fractured fanbase.  I’m not sure if this is even possible.  D&D means different things to different people, and when products are designed to please everyone they often end up pleasing no one.

Nevertheless I remain hopeful.  There are a lot of talented game designers behind this new edition at WOTC and if RPG blogs have taught me anything it is that there is a lot of untapped talent in the gaming community.

In any case, this new approach to creating the new edition has piqued my interest.