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…

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.

Slouching towards a viable web presence: WOTC’s website redesign

Wizards of the Coast’s website has recently undergone a major revision.  According to the News Archive, the redesign is intended to create “more cohesive, user-friendly website that brings together all of the important information, delivered and stored in an intuitive, easy-to-navigate manner.”

It is a big improvement over the old website design.  I like the fact that they have divided the top navigation bar into useful groups.  Player content and Dungeon Master content are now divided into distinct sections.  They have also created a Tools section, for easy access to all of their D&D Insider digital tools.  Not surprisingly, they link the new Wizards of the Coast Community Site is there as well (which is nice because I thought it was a pain to find in the past).  The navigation bar is rounded out with content that they wish to push like Events, Game Products, and Novels.

Another nice addition is that D&D Insider content is now clearly marked with the D&D Insider logo.  Ironically, I imagine this feature is most useful for non-D&D Insiders, so that they know not even to bother clicking on articles marked with this logo.  Of course, considering how much of the content is marked with the D&D Insider logo nowadays, it might be a little depressing for non-D&D Insiders as well.

All and all I believe the new website design is a success.  It didn’t blow me away, but it contains a number of incremental improvements which greatly enhance the user experience.  Having surfed around the new website myself, it just seems like it presents content to the user in a much more logical manner.

This seems to be typical of how Wizards of the Coast has been handling the digital initiative recently.  They have definitely adopted an “under promise, over deliver philosophy.”  I am not a fan of that mantra, but even I think this is an improvement when compared the “over promise, never deliver” philosophy they used to have with their digital products.

No if only they would adopt a rational attitude towards DRM, they might really have something.

Thoughts about the Assassin

The heroic tier of the assassin made its appearance in Dragon yesterday.  As exclusive content it is only available to D&D Insider subscribers and those who use BitTorrent. 

(As an aside, I wonder if any exclusive content will find its way into a future Dragon Magazine Annual?  It would definitely be a way to boost sales on that kind of book!)

Back to the topic at hand.  The assassin is the first class using the new shadow power source.  An assassin has traded part of his soul to the Raven Queen for power.  The goddess infuses the missing portion of the assassin’s soul with a dark reflection of the assassin’s true self.

The assassin can manifest this reflection as part of their shade form power, which allows them to become insubstantial for short periods.  The assassin also gains a shadow step power which gives them a short range teleport by stepping through the shadow of one creature and into another.  Together, these two abilities mean that the assassin is a highly mobile striker who is able to reach hard to get to targets.

Assassins also have an assassin’s shroud ability which allows them to do more damage.  Placing a shroud on a creature allows the assassin to more clearly see the creatures weak points.  Multiple shrouds can be placed on a single creature, but the assassin can only target one creature this way at any given time.

When the assassin chooses to invoke one or more of these shrouds, he will gain extra damage per shroud expended.  This means that the assassin can do a lot of damage in a single round, but it may take a longer time for the assassin to build up to it than most strikers.  I should note that certain assassin powers will interact with a shrouded target without expending the shroud though.

Speaking of the assassins powers, not surprisingly they are strongly shadow themed.  They focus on stealth, teleportation, and bypassing defenses.  An assassin is probably more mobile than any striker except the monk.  With the ability to sneak past minions and other defenses to deliver a massive amount of damage, assassins have “boss killer” written all over them.

Of all of the strikers, they are probably most similar to avengers since their assassin’s shroud ability will encourage them to focus on a single target.  Assassins do have a sneakiness which avengers lack, even though avengers are probably the sneakiest class of the divine power source.

So what do I think?  Well, a more appropriate name for them might have been “Shadowdancers done right!”  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, as I always felt shadowdancers were and interesting concept which just wasn’t executed well.

Honestly, I just wish the assassin was debut content rather than exclusive.  After all, my opinions on exclusive content are well known.

Skill Powers: A small step towards a classless system?

The concept behind Skill Powers, Dragon’s most recent debut content, is exceedingly simple.  Skill Powers are utility powers which you gain access to by being trained in a certain skill rather than from your class.  In other words, if you are a fighter trained in Athletics who levels up to second level, you can either gain your utility power from your class like Get Over Here, or from your Athletics skill like Bounding Leap.

It makes sense from a design point of view.  Mike Mearls mentions in the article’s commentary that skill powers are an easy way to make certain options available, “without having to repeat ourselves across a number of different classes.”

What I find interesting is that it represents a step away from the class structure which has been at Dungeon & Dragon’s core since the very beginning.  Possibly the biggest step since the introduction of Feats in Dungeons & Dragons 3e.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think there is a plan to ditch the class system in the works at Wizards of the Coast.  That is one sacred cow I don’t believe they are willing to turn into tasty steak yet. 

I do think that this represents a definitive weakening of the class system though.  Keep in mind that character design in Dungeons & Dragons 4e revolves around your choice of powers.  They represent the biggest way to customize your character in the game.  Up until now, power choices have always been primarily governed by your class. 

Skill Powers change this dynamic in a fundamental way. 

If you think about it, there is no real reason that this concept needs to be limited to skills.  Utility powers only open to members of a specific race, seem like a logical next step. It is possible to go even farther afield though.  How about utility powers tied to your character’s region for a Forgotten Realms game?  Maybe even powers tied to your character background from PHB2?

I would be surprised if Wizards of the Coast didn’t explore at least some of these options in upcoming books.  This is not necessarily a bad idea, as long as these additional powers don’t overpower the existing class based ones.

Of course, I have never been one to balk at more options in character design.  Your mileage may vary.

The Son of Gleemax!

As has been reported elsewhere, Wizards of the Coast is upgrading their forums this week.  According to the stop page you get if you try to access the forums they are upgrading to “a system that includes a host of new features like friends lists, groups, an invite system and calendar, blogs and wiki.”

When Gleemax (R.I.P.) first came out, I thought it was an awesome forum for D&D… if it was 2001.  Sadly, it was 2007 and time had already passed the site by. 

Gamers have a lot of choices for where to go for their online content nowadays.  Gleemax found itself up against deeply entrenched community sites like EN World, not to mention the ever-growing blogging community.

So it is little surprise that Gleemax failed in its quest to become a hub for roleplayers of all stripes.  What is impressive is that it failed so spectacularly that they had to knife it in the back and disavow any knowledge of its existence. 

In essence, Gleemax had become their Windows Vista.  Much like Windows Vista, the Gleemax name had become toxic.  They realized that no matter how much they improved the service, it could never overcome the poor public perception of it.  So it had to die.

Still, it would be foolish to think that Wizards of the Coast had abandoned its ambition for becoming the hub of the RPG community.  Notably, Randy Buehler had the following to say about the death of Gleemax back in 2008:

"The mistake that I made, however, was in trying to push us too far too fast. I still think the vision for Gleemax is awesome: creating a place on the web where hobby gamers (or lifestyle gamers or thinking gamers, or whatever you want to call us) can gather to talk about games, play games, and find people to play games with. But I've come to realize that the vision was too ambitious. We've made progress down about ten different paths over the past eighteen months, but we haven't been able to reach the end of any of them yet."

I think this is why the upgrade to the forums has been so low key.  If you look at what they are adding, the feature list is impressive.  Friend Lists, Blogs, Calendars, and Wikis?  It sounds more like a RPG social networking site than a mere forum.  More importantly it seems very close to the vision of Gleemax that Randy Buehler is describing above.

So we are seeing the birth of the “Son of Gleemax”.  It is obvious that Wizards of the Coast has learned their lesson and is trying to under-promise and over-deliver this time around. They are hoping that by creating a feature-rich user community first and worrying about branding and advertizing later, that gamers will begin to flock there naturally.

I wish them the best of luck.  As I have stated before, Wizards of the Coast has historically never done a great job in creating digital products (E-Tools anyone?).  They also horribly mishandled the launch of DDI. 

They are getting better though.  The Character Builder and (beta) Monster Builder are surprisingly usable.  I also have to admit that the feature set of the new “forums” they are creating sound interesting. 

So who knows, perhaps Gleemax will get his final revenge from beyond the grave?  I suppose that is appropriate for an alien brain in a jar.

I am glad to be wrong about the Githyanki

I was sure that the githyanki were going to have a full character write up in Player’s Handbook III.  It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.  Ever since they first appeared on the cover of Fiend Folio back in 1E, they have been a popular monster.  Githyanki also are strongly tied to the psionic power source, which debuts in Player’s Handbook III.  Not to mention that the mock up cover for Players Handbook III seemed to have an obvious githyanki woman on the cover.

Well, after perusing this month’s debut content, it seems that was a githzerai woman.  The githzerai will be one of the new PHB III races, but the githyanki will not be making an appearance in that book.

I suppose I can be forgiven for mistaking one race for another since they look exactly the same!

What I found interesting was their reason for not including the githyanki.  To quote Mike Mearls:

“While sometimes it’s fun to play against stereotypes, we don’t want every villainous race to go the way of the drow.”

This really resonates with me.  I remember when the drow were first introduced in Against the Giants.  They were cool, deadly, and one of the most evil races around.  Finally, there was a worthy opponent for the player characters!

Then the drow were given a player character racial write up in Unearthed Arcana (1E).  Suddenly dark elves went from being the ultimate bad guy to being the ultimate badass player characters.  I know one of the player’s in my D&D 1E game played an infamous rogue dark elf fighter/cleric of Tempus.  I am sure that a lot of games featured at least one drow during that period.

Then came Drizzt Do'Urden.  I want to say that I am not a Drizzt hater.  In fact, I have read and enjoyed most of the novels that feature him.  I don’t blame Drizzt’s for creating a glut dark elf player characters.  After all that trend was well under way by the time The Crystal Shard hit the stands.  Still, his immense popularity exacerbated dark elf overexposure.

The popularity of dark elves as player characters has even jumped to other media.  Dark-skinned and light-haired elves are popular player character choices in video games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

Sometimes I feel that the Zz’dtri joke in Order of the Stick has become a reality.  Drow are no longer an evil race.  Rather “the whole species consist of nothing but Chaotic Good rebels, yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin.”

So I respect the line in the sand Wizards of the Coast is drawing with the githyanki.  No matter how cool they might be, sometimes it is best to keep the villains as villains.

Or maybe they are just holding them in reserve for PHB IV.

Thoughts on Wizards Apology

Are you a person who sees a glass half-empty or a glass half-full? The answer to that may determine how you view the recent kerfuffle over Dragon Magazine's July 13th’s Class Acts: Ranger article.

The article had a number of errors in it that sparked an immediate reaction (pardon the pun) at various forums where D&D is discussed. Wizards of the Coast apparently got enough negative feedback on this article that Andy Collins actually published an apology for the lapse in quality! A new version of the article was posted on July 17th.

So what was wrong with the original article? The main problem was that several encounter attack powers were listed as immediate actions, but had no trigger mechanism. In 4E, immediate interrupts and immediate reactions always have something that triggers their use. Without a trigger, the concept of how an immediate action would work is a bit vague. When the article was corrected, the immediate actions were replaced with standard actions.

Another problem was that there was a utility power, Death Threat, which caused ongoing damage (with the save ends mechanic). Utility powers don’t generally cause damage... after all, that is what attack powers are for! When the article was updated, Death Threat was changed so that it made the target your quarry and granted combat advantage instead of causing damage directly.

If I had to guess, I would bet that the immediate action issue was a simple typo or "cut and paste" problem. The utility power acting like an attack power seems like a design problem. Of course, I could be completely off-base. In any case, both of these issues slipped past the editorial staff.

I know a lot of people are pissed off about this. After all, D&D Insider is a paid subscription service and subscribers (including me) expect a quality product in return. Posting an article that has enough problems in it that they actually have to post a retraction is not encouraging.

On the other hand, I feel Wizards of the Coast handled this situation as well as they could. They reacted to customer feedback quickly, confirming that the article had issues.. They addressed these issues and posted a written apology. More importantly. they promised to review their design, development, and editorial processes to prevent a reoccurrence of the issue.

Of course, that is what I meant at the top of the article where I asked if you are a glass half-empty or a glass half-full kind of person. While I am disappointed that the problems with this article were not caught before it was released, I truly appreciate the speed and seriousness with which it was handled.

Just try not to let it happen again, OK? After all, apologies seem a lot less sincere the second time around.

A new class and new mechanics

Dragon released the psion as its first “official” debut content.  In reality, this seems similiar to the previous playtest content they have released for classes like the barbarian, the artificer, and the monk.  In other words, they are providing one build of the class and a couple of prestige classes to get you start.

In fact, the biggest difference is the layout.  The PDF now no longer contains full descriptions of the powers in the article. Instead each power has a name and a link that takes you to the D&D Compendium for a full description.

This is obviously an attempt to prevent subscribers from sharing the PDFs with other people.  In practice, I found it extremely annoying.  That is all I will say on the subject since I am not here to rant about how copy protection tends to create problems for paying customers while doing little to dissuade pirates.  Well, at least not today.

The psion itself is a controller with the psionic power source.  This is pretty much what most people were expecting.  There were two surprises to me though: one is fluff and the other is mechanical.

The fluff surprise is that they have tied psionics into the far realm.  Well, more accurately it is a reaction to the encroachment of the far realm into the natural world.  Much like the human body will create antibodies to fight off infectious diseases, the rise of psionics is an attempt by the natural realm to fight back against the infection of aberrant creatures.

I am torn on this.  On the one hand, it puts helps explain the enmity psions have against their traditional enemies (e.g. Mind Flayers, Intellect Devourers, etc).  On the other hand, most of these aberrations were traditionally psionic creatures in previous editions of the game.  So putting aberrations at odds with the psionic power source seems a bit odd to me.

The mechanical surprise is even more shocking.  Unlike other classes, psions do not have encounter attack powers.  Instead, they gain new at-will attack powers at the levels where they would normally gain encounter attack powers.  They still gain daily attack powers and utility powers normally.

These leveled at-will attack powers are less powerful than the encounter attack powers gained by other classes.  To compensate, psions have small number of power points.  These power points can be used to augment the at-will attack powers, as listed in the power descriptions.  The powers may have more than one level of augmentation.  If they do, you can only choose one augment per use of the power. 

The psion regains power points whenever they take a short or extended rest.  Since the total number of points is small, basically enough to simulate burning through your encounter powers on a normal character, the additional bookkeeping is not that great or a burden.

I am worried that this new mechanic may be a bit too good.   Having so many at-will powers will add a lot of flexibility the other classes lack.  This is especially true when you add in the ability to augment these at-will attacks as necessary.

I will reserve final judgment on this until after I get a chance to see a psion in play.  I do know that in my characters I tend to favor flexibility over raw power any day though.

As an aside, I couldn’t help but wonder what this system would be like if adapted to the other classes.  I know some of my friends have expressed difficulty with the at-will, encounter, and daily power framework when applied to martial characters.  They cannot see why a fighter should only be able to perform certain kinds of attacks once per encounter or once per day. 

Moving martial powers to this new mechanic might help.  Almost all of their attacks would be usable at-will, but not as powerful as those of the arcane or divine classes.  However, you give them a small number of “Endurance Points” that they could use to augment these powers when they need to.  Its an idea that just might be crazy enough to work.

It is also an idea that would require more reengineering of the rules than I have time to do at the moment.  If anyone else wants to give it a try though, I would love to see it!

If I didn’t know better, I would think this was directed at me

When Wizards of the Coast first announced exclusive content for D&D Insider customers, I had a few choice words on the subject.  This is not a surprise.  After all, if I didn’t have strong opinions on this kind of thing I probably wouldn’t have a blog.

What I didn’t expect a response to my concerns.  Feel free to read the entire editorial, but here is the relevant portion:

Question #2: Will content that appears as a D&D Insider exclusive ever have additional support?

Answer: Yes, and support articles will likewise be exclusive to D&D Insider. You won't see revenant feats or paragon paths, for example, appear down the road in a print product. We already have plans in the works for an article this fall that features new revenant racial feats, and we'll treat the revenant like any other race in the game. As an article warrants, we'll provide revenants with new character options.

Well, I am glad to hear that they are at least trying to address the issue of “walled off content”.  I am still not sure that I am convinced.  Not that I don’t expect them to put out some additional content for the revenant.  The problem is that the amount of additional content needed will increase as the amount of exclusive content increases.

Right now they just have to worry about the revenant.  Soon, it will be the revenant and the assassin.  Eventually, once they have enough exclusive content they could fill up entire issues of Dragon just supporting the exclusive content.

Of course maybe by the time this becomes a problem they will just announce D&D 5E where the revenant is a core race.

(OK, I admit I just put that in to piss off a couple of my revenant hating friends).

In related news, it seems assassins will be tied to the new “shadow” power source.  As new power sources go, I can live with it.  I do wonder if we will be seeing support in Player’s Handbook 3 for other “non-exclusive” classes using the shadow power source. 

(I know the cover mock-up said “Psionic, Divine, and Primal Heroes”, but it is still early enough that I don’t trust that information).

In any case, I am going to continue to watch how this exclusive content is handled with great interest.  I still think it is a bad idea, despite being a D&D Insider customer myself. 

So now all WOTC has to do is prove me wrong.

The Revenant Has Been Reinvented

I was a big fan of revenants when they first appeared in Fiend Folio. The concept of a creature that crawled out of the grave to avenge its own death is a strong one. Single-minded and caring about nothing but its mission, I knew I had to use the revenant in my campaign as soon as I read about them.

The revenant presented in Dragon 376 is not that guy.

That may not be a bad thing. After all, the traditional revenant would make a horrible character race. Revenants are now very tied to the Raven Queen, the result of a dark bargain made with the goddess to return the soul to the mortal world. This bargain may not have been made by the revenant, occasionally deities or other powers make these bargains on behalf of their followers, even when revenant would rather be allowed to rest.

It should be noted that revenants are not returned to the natural world as undead horrors or even in their own bodies. Rather, the bodies constructed by the Raven Queen are tall and gaunt. Their hands and feet are scaled and clawed, somewhat like a raven. Their faces have strange, mask-like quality. While their appearance is unnerving, revenants are rare enough that only the most skilled religious scholars tend recognize them for what they are.

Anything that has a soul can be brought back and placed in the body of a revenant. That means that dragonborn, halflings, and even warforged can find themselves reborn as these strange creatures.  Most of them have no more than a hazy memory of their past lives. They might have been dead for a week or millennia.  Only devas, who undergo their own process of reincarnation, seem unable to come back as revenants.

It should be noted that each revenant does have a reason why it was brought back, although it may not initially know what that reason is. Some revenants desperately seek out their purpose, while others spend their strange half-lives trying to avoid it.

I know that the concept of playing a revenant will simply rub some players and Dungeon Masters the wrong way. This aversion may be the result of trying to imagine the Fiend Folio version in an adventuring party. It may also be because they have an aversion to some of the newer, admittedly weirder, character races available.

I can definitely understand that point of view. After all, I have admitted the issues I have with dragonborn and warforged as character races before. Nevertheless, I know that there are plenty of players see new roleplaying opportunities in them and who love playing these races.

I think I am in that boat with the revenant. I enjoy conflicted characters that are rife with inner turmoil. I enjoy characters that struggle against their baser natures and (possibly) triumph. I think the revenant provides a lot of potential for this type of roleplay.

In fact, I already have an idea for a revenant character.  One who has flashbacks to a life where he is in service to dark powers.  He knows that some evil deity bargained with the Raven Queen to bring him back, but he does not know for what purpose.  He is trying to use this second chance to atone, but fears that no matter what he does that no good can truly come of his actions.

What don’t I like about the new revenant?  Well frankly, there are some things about the new revenant which are a little goofy.  One thing that sticks out to me is their appearance.  While revenants look creepy, I find myself wishing they looked more like they did in life.  Especially because they can spend a feat to gain limited use of the racial power of their former race.  For example, the concept of a former dragonborn revenant using the racial breath power just seems a bit odd.

I am curious to see one in play to see how they work out.  In the end though, I think that the tone that the player adopts for the revenant is much more important than the stats.

How I would redo D&D Insider

Some of the gamers I play with at Lords of Tyr are opposed to the very concept of D&D Insider. For them, paying a monthly fee for D&D content is anathema. This is not as big a deal for me, as long as the price point is kept at a reasonable level. As a former subscriber to Dragon Magazine & Dungeon Magazine, maybe I am a little more used to the idea. Or maybe services like Netflix have won me over. Who knows?

I will be the first to admit that the service has been implemented poorly. It needs more flexible pricing and the acknowledgement that in any given gaming group, not everyone will be willing or able to pay a monthly fee.

It also shouldn’t have launched on vaporware. The fact that one year after the launch of Dungeons & Dragons 4E the only advertized products they have been able to get out the door are the D&D Compendium and the D&D Character Builder is, frankly, shameful. They should have had these products in a usable form, if not a perfect one, prior to charging for it.

At a bare minimum, I would want the following components in place:

1. D&D Character Builder
2. D&D Character Visualizer
3. D&D Game Table
4. D&D Market Place (I will explain this later).

The D&D Compendium, Encounter Builder, and other tools would be nice, but could wait until after launch if necessary.

Membership would be tiered. I am starting with what I call the Xbox live strategy. Xbox live has a Silver and Gold memberships. Hey, it sounds like D&D already! The Silver Membership is free while the Gold Membership has a monthly fee.

Let’s imagine a model where Wizards of the Coast has a three-tiered pricing model. I am going to call them Player Basic, Player Advanced, and Dungeon Master. Player Basic is free, Player Advanced costs $4.99 a month, and Dungeon Master costs $9.99 a month. So what do you get for these levels?

Player Basic (Free)

1. Gain access to the D&D GameTable: At this level you could not host a game but could participate in one.
2. Gain access to the D&D Character Visualizer: At this level you would have access to basic customization of your virtual miniatures.
3. Gain access to a D&D Marketplace: This virtual market place would sell items for Gold Pieces, which could be purchased in bundles similar to Microsoft Points. So what could you buy? First, you could purchase PDF versions of the Rule Books, Dragon Magazine, and Dungeon Magazine. Themed customization packs for your virtual miniatures, like a Wizard Pack I. Print on demand copies of the online magazines. Pretty much anything they could think to sell you.

Player Advanced ($4.99 a month)

1. Everything Player Basic gets.
2. Gain access to the D&D GameTable: Hosting capabilities with access to basic monster miniatures.
3. Full access to the D&D Character Visualizer including theme updates.
4. Dragon Magazine
5. D&D Character Builder
6. D&D Compendium

Dungeon Master ($9.99 a month)

1. Everything Player Basic and Player Advanced Get
2. Dungeon Magazine
3. Gain access to the D&D Game Table. Hosting capabilities with a wider virtual miniature monster set.
4. Encounter creation and other campaign management tools.

I think this model could work. At least it would work better than there current model.

Of course, it was truly up to me I would abandon the concept of keeping these electronic tools in-house entirely. Create some APIs that would allow developers to hook into the data they need to create some truly awesome tools. Then WOTC just has to sit back and watch the rabid fanbase to do their work for them. I believe high quality digital tools would increase interest and acceptance of their product.  In other words, they would reap the rewards with little cost to them.

Bah, I have already travelled far enough into fantasy-land with the post above. No need to go further.

Dragon & Dungeon Magazines on PDF: The worst of both worlds?

I understood it when Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) first announced that Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine would be published in-house as PDF only magazines.  The high-cost of printing media like newspapers, magazines, and comic books, combined with declining readership, have been devastating to companies in the publishing business, Many of these companies have had to file bankruptcy, increase prices dramatically, or (like PC Magazine or WOTC) move a formerly print product to an online only distribution model.

Moving Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine to PDF also made sense as part of the larger digital initiative. To sell subscriptions to Dungeons & Dragons Insider (DDI), they needed content. Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine have strong brand recognition in the industry, so it made sense to position these assets as the primary content generators for DDI.

As always, the problem is in the implementation. WOTC has managed to lose the benefits of printing physical copies of their magazines without fully leveraging the advantages of an online distribution model.

I have always felt the advantages of paper magazines were two-fold. The first is a sense of nostalgia. Many of us have fond memories associated with Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine over the years. A more tangible benefit is that they encourage casual reading and rereading.  Greywulf, a fellow RPG Blogger, recently tweeted following about the loss of physical copies of Dragon and Dungeon:

I have a couple of hundred copies of Dungeon and Dragon mags dating back decades. PDFs just aren't the same. ::sigh::

When was the last time you randomly pulled out a twenty year old PDF and took it to the bathroom with you? No, thought not.

Similiarly, Bob posted the following to the comment section of my blog:

.... Still pissed that I can't get physical copies of Dragon and Dungeon at Waldenbooks.... Kobold doesn't come out enough.

(As an aside, does Waldenbooks even still exist?  I thought it was bought by Borders.)

Regardless, I have to admit that I also miss the tangible product.  However, I probably use the PDFs more because of their immediate accessibility.  If a player of mine wants to use a power out of Dragon 374, I can pull it up instantly on my laptop.

However, the scenario above points to one of the areas where I feel WOTC has dropped the ball in their online distribution model. They lack of ability to perform searches on this content.

Think about it.  Let’s say you wanted to create a kobold lair. Imagine if you could logon to DDI, type in kobold, and pull up all of the Dragon Magazine articles about kobolds.  It would not only assist in the prep work, it would make it much more likely that those articles would be used!

On the other hand, PDFs bring several nice features to the table, like portability and offline access.  The fact that you still have the PDFs even if you are no longer a subscriber to DDI is also nice.  So I am not sure I would want to eliminate PDFs from the picture entirely.

So what would be my perfect world?  Well, I would continue to publish the articles to the website throughout the month, just like they do now.  These articles would be in a searchable database with links directly to them.  At the end of the month, these articles would be gathered up into a single PDF, just as they are now.

So what about the print lovers?  In my perfect world, these articles would be available for print on demand.  Since this is bound to be a bit pricy, maybe they could adopt a build your own model similar to Time Inc’s Mine.  I wouldn’t mind building my own “Best of Dragon” every six months!

Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world.  I wouldn’t bet on any of these features being implemented soon.  Wouldn’t it be nice if at least some of them were though?

Why exclusive content in D&D Insider is a bad idea

June’s Ampersand article talks about upcoming exclusive content and debut content in D&D Insider.  Exclusive content is only available to subscribers to D&D Insider.  It will not appear in any core rulebooks or supplements.  Debut content is slated to appear in an upcoming product, like next years Player’s Handbook 3.  It will appear up to a year in advance of being published.

I am not sure how I feel about the exclusive content.  This may sound weird coming from me, since anyone who listens to the Lords of Tyr podcast knows that I often have said that D&D Insider needs more content to be successful.  After all, more content means more perceived value and more perceived value leads to more subscribers.

There are several flaws with the concept of exclusive content though.  To illustrate my point I will talk about the upcoming exclusive race and class mentioned in Ampersand: the revenant (an exclusive race) and the assassin (an exclusive class).

At first blush, making this content exclusive to D&D Insider seems like a great idea.  After all, the only way you will be able to play a revenant assassin in your game would be to have access to D&D insider.  As a result it should increase the perceived value of the D&D insider.

The problem is that they are building a wall around that content.   PHB 3 will contain no revenant feats.  Martial Power 3 will contain no additional builds or powers for the assassin.  As a result, these races and classes will not grow the way that non-exclusive content will.  This will eventually become noticeable, especially with the 4E “everything is core” philosophy.

I suppose it would be possible for D&D Insider to add feats, powers, and builds for the exclusive races and classes as the new books are released. The problem is that as the exclusive content grows, so do the man hours required to do this.  This will quickly become untenable to maintain.

With this in mind, Bill Slavicsek may still be right and the revenant may be “all the rage” when it debuts.  I just doubt that it can have any staying power while walled off from the rest of game.

On the other hand, I think the debut content is a great idea.  Since it will eventually see publication, it avoids the problem of being walled off.  It is content that they are developing anyway, so it has very little added cost in man hours.  It also makes good marketing sense since it helps develop buzz for the upcoming product through word of mouth.  Not to mention that the long lead time in print publications mean that debut content would normally be sitting around for months with no additional development anyway!

So more debut content and less exclusive content please.  Trust me D&D Insider, with a healthy diet of debut content and avoidance of exclusive content quackery, every thing will be fine.

Pen & Paper Gaming Online

My regular gaming group usually has a few members attending the gaming session remotely.  While we prefer to meet in person, with the distances involved and other obligations, it is often impossible for everyone to make it in person on any given day.

For remote gaming we currently use a hodgepodge of tools:

UStream: This is primarily used to allow remote players to see the battle map.  It also allows us to record the session for later playback.

Skype: This is used for voice communications with remote players.

Gtalk: This is used for private conversations and notes to the DM.

Google Docs: We use a shared spreadsheet to keep track of initiative.

Despite the somewhat ad hoc nature of this set of tools, it works relatively well for allowing the occasional remote player to attend. 

However, we have recently begun talking about running a separate “online only” game.  The theory is that we would run this game more frequently (i.e. probably weekly), but for a more limited timeframe (i.e. 2-3 hours).  Since this game is going to be completely conducted remotely, I believe we will need a more robust toolset.

Currently, I am looking into using RPTools to run this game.  RPTools includes a MapTool for the digital battle map, a TokenTool for the virtual minis, a CharacterTool for keeping track of character info, an InitiativeTool, and DiceTool.  It seems like a nice all-in-one solution for pure online gaming.

I would like to know what other people in the RPG community are using though.  I know some people are big fans of other online game tables like OpenRPG and KloogeWerks.  What do you use in your group?  Any tips on how to make a remote-only game more enjoyable?  Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thoughts on the Greg Leeds interview and piracy.

Greg Leeds, President of Wizards of the Coast, recently granted an interview to EnWorld about the cessation of PDF versions of their products.  If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend you take the time to read it before continuing on.

I am sympathetic to Mr. Leeds concerns about piracy.  After all, a lot of work goes into these books, and Wizards of the Coast has a right to make a profit on their work.  Unfortunately, I believe that Wizards of the Coast is taking the absolute wrong path by removing PDF’s from the market place.

In fact, I would argue that Wizards of the Coast’s PDF strategy was flawed from the beginning, which is why piracy of their books became so rampant.  The history lesson that the recording industry has taught us is that when the people want something and they cannot obtain it for a reasonable price, they will turn to illegal methods to acquire it.

Wizards of the Coast’s PDF products were extremely overpriced, both on an absolute scale and when compared to the rest of the marketplace.  They charged full cover price for their PDF products, which meant that the PDF’s could not even compete with the dead tree versions of their products available on Amazon.com!  Considering that the PDF versions of their product do not incur printing or shipping costs, this seems like highway robbery.

A more reasonable pricing structure is already being used by many of their competitors in the marketplace.  New releases on PDF cost about $10 less than their dead tree versions.   This price is maintained for six months or so, then dropped by about $5.  Eventually the price settles anywhere between $9 to $15 dollars for older material.

This pricing structure helps them recoup costs in the beginning by selling the PDF at a higher price point while the book is new and demand is high.  Dropping the price over time encourages purchases when demand is lower, an incurs very little additional cost to Wizards of the Coast.

Of course it should not be surprising that Wizards of the Coast did not come up with a reasonable price structure, since they seemed to be reluctant to be in the PDF market place in the first place.  Wizards did very little to promote sales of their PDF products.  They did not promote the PDF versions of their product on their website, which would seem a logical venue.  Another tactic would be to provide a one time code with the dead tree version of there books which could be used for a $5 discount on purchase of the PDF versions.  The opportunities to cross-promote the PDF versions of their product seem endless.  The fact that they did none of them shows where their priorities were.

As I said earlier, when people cannot get what they want at a reasonable price through legal channels they will turn to illegal methods like piracy.  The inverse is also true.  While some people will always engage in piracy, many will turn against it when offered a reasonable alternative.  iTunes and the Amazon.com MP3 Store have proven this in the music industry.  Wizards of the Coast could have turned around their legal PDF sales as well.   Price restructuring, ease of access, and working with their partners to improve distribution channels would have been required.  It would have been hard work, but the payoff would be a robust PDF business.

Instead they chose the easy route.  They have declared the business “too hard” and shut down all legal options for their customers.  I fear that this choice will cost them dearly.  Their customers now have no option except to turn to piracy for digital copies of their book… and trust me, they will.

Better does not necessarily mean good: The D&D Compendium

Well, the Lords of Tyr game was last night, and I have finally had an opportunity to use the reworked D&D Compendium under actual game conditions.  I had read some reviews about how much better it is since the recent update, so I figured I would give it another chance.

I was horribly disappointed.  Our party's warlord used Wolf Pack Tactics and wanted to give the free shift to a character who was prone.  So obviously, the question came up whether or not you could shift while prone.  I figured this would be a good  opportunity to use the D&D Compendium to find the answer! 

So I brought up the compendium and typed in "Prone".  I hit clicked search and looked down at the results.  The first answer was "Elephant".

Obviously this was not looking good so far.

Looking up at the categories I realized that the D&D Compendium had defaulted to the "Creatures" category since it had 329 results.  Well, easy enough to fix.  I looked for a "Rules" category, or a "Conditions" category, or something else appropriate. 

Well, apparently there are categories for Races, Classes, Items, Creatures, Epic Destinies, Paragon Paths, Rituals, Feats, Powers, and Skills.  Well, those are nice categories, but none of them were helpful right now. 

No problem.  Obviously I just need to run a search without applying one of the categories.  That should be simple enough, right?  Apparently not.  After looking all over the interface I realized that there was no way to search the database without choosing one of the categories. 

This was frustrating.  It's not like I was making a search for an obscure term or corner case scenario.  Conditions like "Prone", actions like "Shift", or attacks like "Grab" seem like obvious things a DM or player should be able to look up during a game with the D&D Compendium.  In reality, it is impossible to look up any of these.

This wouldn't be so frustrating if I hadn't already seen free resources like The Hypertext d20 SRD implemented so well for 3E D&D.  You would think that with the resources available to them, that Wizards of the Coast could implement a database that worked half as well for their paying customers.

Thoughts on the full DDI Character Builder

The D&D Insider Character Builder has arrived... and it's not bad.  Once I downloaded the full version, I figured a good test of the program would be to enter in Issac Winter, one of my Lord's of Tyr characters.  Issac is a 16th level Divine Oracle, so I figured he would be a decent test of how the Character Builder handles a mid-Paragon level character being entered from scratch.

The answer turned out to be "surprisingly well".  After launching the Character Builder and choosing to create a new character, I immediately clicked over to the Level Up tab.  I entered in 71213 and clicked SET XP.  I then jumped back to the start of the character creation process, half-expecting the whole thing to be mucked up. 

Instead the character creation process proceeded flawlessly.  Choosing abilities was simple and intuitive, even though I had a number of advances to take because of my level.  Choosing my powers was similarly intuitive, although I had to take certain first level powers only to immediately discard them.  Still, the ease of character creation was astounding, especially considering the level of the character.

Another nice touch is that you can unlock the panels of the character sheet.  This allows you to rearrange the data contained on the sheet to fit your tastes.  I can see this being very useful for certain characters or for picky players.

Now, this is not to say that the Character Builder is perfect.  At the moment, it doesn't support containers.  So Issac still shows "heavily encumbered" despite his Heward's Handy Haversack.  Also, support for house rules is limited at this point.  You can add names and information, but nothing that auto-calculates. 

I should note that according to the Character Builder forums, support for containers and for house rules that affect the auto-calculating sheet are coming.  Still, it does highlight a concern of mine.    I am used to working with the open source PCGen, which I still use to maintain my 3.5 Characters.  PCGen was designed with flexibility in mind.  Its open source nature made it relatively easy to hack into the data sets and change anything you wanted.  What PCGen sacrificed for this was ease of use (although it did improve over time).

Nevertheless, I am impressed with the Character Builder.  I have to admit, I have been somewhat skeptical of the value of D&D Insider so far.  The fact that the Character Builder is a useful and usable tool helps restore my trust.  I remain hopeful that the Character Builder, as well as the rest of D&D Insider, will continue to improve over time.

In defense of the D&D Character Builder (sort of)

I actually began this post as a response to Todd's comments about D&D Character Builder (beta) under my Character Background Post.  As I started writing it though, I realized I had more to say on it than I originally thought, and decided to make it a post of it's own.

Todd had the following to say on the Character Builder:

The real challenge in character creation is not addressed by this program as of yet. As a 4e character advances, his powers and feats may be easily switched out, but his attribute array remains static apart from slow growth at specified levels. This means that a character who wishes a feat with a difficult pre-req (weapon mastery comes to mind) must still plan for it at character creation. While much of this kind of "character build" creation has been rendered a non-issue in the 4e rules set, there are still some holdovers which require that sort of plan. It is clearly possible that functionality of that sort could be added easily enough... but until it is, I don't feel that it is a better tool for character creation than a sheet of college ruled paper (or spreadsheet).

I respectively disagree.  I would say I found the D&D Insider Character Builder more useful than a sheet of college ruled paper, especially in the situation described in my earlier post (namely a hastily put together fill in game where the characters needed to be built quickly).  Specifically, I found the following aspects useful:

1. It was very intuitive to use.  The first time I used the Character Builder was that night, but I did not have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to use it.  Granted, this is a wash compared to college ruled paper, but compared to some character generators, it was a godsend.
2. It automatically performed most of the calculations for me.  Granted, you can perform them yourself.  However, considering that time was a factor and I am still learning the 4th Edition Rules, I found it helpful to use the builder.
3. It provided a short synopsis of the rules for each choice I made.  In fact, I did not need to refer to the Player's Handbook (or any other D&D Book) during Character Creation.  This was very handy, especially since it allowed me to compare feats and equipment from different rule books without having to consult each one.
4. It generated a usable character sheet and power cards.  Once again, not something I couldn't do myself, but helpful.

These are very basic requirements for a character builder, but it performed them admirably.  Now there are some concerns I have:

1. How well will it handle house rules?  I have a feeling it will handle simple things, like adding additional feats or powers.  However, I am concerned that more complex house rules may not be as easy to implement.  This is one case where an open source tool like PCGen has an advantage.  It was very easy to hack house rules in if you were knowledgeable enough of how it worked.
2. Another feature I would like to see would be the ability to choose which source books you want to use to create the character with.  This was a feature of PCGen that I loved.  The ability to filter out certain books will become more useful as the number of rule books continues to increase.

Still, considering the product was still in beta, I was impressed by how well it did.  Especially considering how poorly E-Tools, supposedly a finished product, was at performing these same tasks.  

Perhaps more interestingly though, was something I realized when reading Todd's reply.  His main concern didn't seem to be generating his character.  Rather, he seemed concerned with planning out his feat and power choices in advance.  So, his main issue might be that he really isn't looking for a character generator, but for a character planner!

What is the difference?  Well, a character generator is focused on building a character of a specific level and creating a usable character sheet.  A character planner is something that allows you to plan out your character "build".  It would most concerned with making sure that you meet the prerequisites for feats, powers, paragon paths, and epic destinies that you want to take from levels 1-30.  It should also allow you to easily make changes and see how they affect your build.

I have used character planners (like Mids' Hero Designer) for MMORPG's like City of Heroes.  These tools are definitely helpful for MMORPG's, and I can see them being helpful for certain kinds of players of D&D.  Specifically, players who like to plan out their character path from levels 1-30 before they begin play.

I will admit, I am not one of those players.  I prefer to "live in the now" and not plan more than a few levels ahead.  That doesn't mean that I can't see why some players would want to plan their 30 level build out in advance.

Honestly, this might not be a bad product for Wizards of the Coast to explore, either as a stand alone product or as a special "planner" mode in the Character Builder.  So maybe people like Todd, who are clamoring for this type of product, should write in during the open Character Builder beta and tell them!