Forgotten Realms Issue 15 – Fallen Idols (Part 1 of 4)

This issue begins with Foxilion Cardluck running for his life.  He has the fabled Timepiece of Dragons hoisted over his head and is being pursued through caverns by a highly diverse group of goblinoid creatures.

Luckily for him, the rest of the Realms' Master crew is waiting for him at the mouth of the cave.  The crew makes quick work of Foxy’s pursuers-- at least until reinforcements show up.

Deciding discretion is the greater part of valor, the Realm’s Master crew beats a quick retreat out of the cave and into the daylight.  Knowing the goblin races never venture into daylight the crew figures they are pretty safe.

Then comes the solar eclipse.

Nevertheless, the crew makes it to the Realm’s Master.  Casting off, they figure they will be safe once they make the jump to light speed use the Astrolabe of Nimbral to teleport away. 

Unfortunately, the astrolabe fails to teleport them anywhere.  Even worse, the goblins apparently really want their timepiece back and are boarding the ship.  Captain Omen put Foxilion to work fixing the astrolabe and heads topside.

Arriving on deck, Captain Omen sees that the situation is a bit grim.  Nothing that a little magic can’t solve though, so he decides to summon a water elemental.  This proves to be a mistake though, as his spell causes elemental forces to go completely awry.

The elemental maelstrom is proving dangerous to both friend and foe, so Vartan tries to cast a Control Weather spell to take control of the situation.  This effort merely causes him to collapse to the ground, clutching his head and repeating “Get Back” over and over.

With magic apparently going berserk, Captain Omen suddenly realizes that Foxilion is still trying to activate the artifact in ship’s hold. 

Racing below, Captain Omen arrives just a moment too late.  Having located the loose gemstone, Foxilion pulls the lever and the ship teleports away.

The story picks up two days later when Vartan awakens.  The ship has ended up deep at sea rather than its intended location.  Although only two days have passed, Captain Omen estimates they have lost a month of time.  Magic is unreliable and the sea is eerily becalmed. 

While discussing their next move, the crew is unexpectedly attacked by a flock of one-eyed birds. 

Vartan manages to dispatch them with a miscast, but still dangerous, Spiritual Hammer.  Immediately after the incident, the Realm’s Master begins to move of its own accord.

The ship brings them to Rauthym, an island of shipbuilders.  The crew finds the town deserted, with not even a single ship left in the harbor.  The crew wanders through the ruined village, and eventually comes across a crazed old man with one glowing eye and one black as pitch.

The old man recounts his story to the crew.  How the grandmother of all storms came through destroying their fleet and leaving them stranded.  When it ended, a large stone came down from the heavens, leaving a large crater in the middle of town.

Everyone in town kept their distance, except for a traveling elven bard.  She was drawn to it and found something glowing at the bottom of the crater.  Whatever the object was, it changed her.  Half the town was dead in a moment, with the rest transformed into one-eyed wretches like the old man.

At this point the crew crew decides to investigate the town square, promising the old man they will return for him soon.  As they leave, the old man realizes that they must have come on a ship; A ship he can use to escape! 

As he runs towards the dock he is suddenly disintegrated.

When the crew arrives at the center of town, it looks like something out of a horror movie.  The elven bard is ordering her one-eyed servants to burn the dead in the fire pit that now sits where the crater once was.  She also demands that they bring her holy relics from the Temple of Selune to be melted down.

Agrivar, in full paladin mode, tells the elf that her reign of terror is over.  This does not end well for him, as he narrowly avoids being blasted to atoms by a wave of her hand. 

Vartan is more freaked out by the fact that he recognizes her voice.  As she pours her own essence into him, she tells him to “speak her name.”

The name is Enoreth.  Vartan has just met his god for the second time.

Thoughts

• As always, Jeff Grubb and Rags Morales do great work.
• While I am not a fan of this entire arc, I thought this was a strong start.
• With the “space slug” in the TSR Worlds Annual and the “malfunctioning hyperdrive” here, I am starting to wonder if the references are intentional.
• The image of the becalmed sea is a very striking one.  I also enjoyed that Rags made Selune (with her trailing “tears”) look different from our own moon.
• The empty town and the old man are genuinely creepy.

Sandman as a TV series?

I am a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic series.  Ostensibly the series is about Dream of the Endless, one of seven immortal beings who embody the basic concepts of the universe.  In reality though, the series was more of a meditation on the nature of storytelling itself.  It is definitely a series that grew beyond its initial premise and it showed me how much potential comic books have as a medium.

Since Sandman is both popular and critically acclaimed, it is not surprising that there has been talk of adapting it to another medium.  Several movie screenplays have been written, but so far all attempts to bring it to the silver screen have failed. 

Currently Warner Brothers Television is in talks with Eric Kripke, creator of the Supernatural TV series, to bring the series to the small screen. 

I will admit I have my concerns about this for several reasons.

The special effects budget would be murder

The Dreaming is a strange and wondrous locale.  Its inhabitants are rarely human in appearance.  Objects are often animate and prone to change without warning.  Non-sequiturs are common.

In effect, every appearance of the Dreaming should seem like you are walking through an actual dream. Doing it correctly would require a special effects budget beyond that of a TV show.

The only alternative would be to either tone down or limit the appearances of the Dreaming.  I believe either choice would be detrimental to the show.

Sandman has a huge cast

TV shows traditionally have relatively small reoccurring cast members who are guaranteed a certain number of episodes per season.  Sandman has a huge reoccurring cast, but their appearances are often infrequent.  Even Dream himself has been known to skip out on the majority of a storyline.

Oddly, the only TV show I can think of with a large but infrequently appearing reoccurring cast is The Simpsons.  Of course The Simpsons has the advantage that it maintains a relatively small stable of voice actors who can play a wide range of characters.  A live action TV show would not have that advantage.

What is Sandman anyway?

Sandman is a dark supernatural drama.  Or maybe it is anthology series?  Perhaps it is a family drama with a twist?

One of the wonderful things about the Sandman comic series is that it really was whatever Neil Gaiman wanted it to be when he was writing it that month.  He used it as a launchpad to tell the kind of stories he wanted to tell.  What was amazing is that he managed to do this and still make it into something that formed a coherent whole when he was done.

I think this would be even harder to pull off in a TV series.  I remember reading that Paramount nixed having the sixth season of Deep Space Nine occur off the station for fear that a casual viewer would tune in and become confused. 

I can only imagine what the network would think of a show where one episode might have a serial killer convention while the next featured the dreams of cats.

Final Thoughts

I do wish Eric Kripke the best of luck if he decides to adapt Sandman to television.  I love the comic series and hope he can manage to capture some of that magic to share it with a wider audience.

I just think the road before him is a difficult one.

Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition’s greatest innovation

Last weekend I found myself playing Dungeons & Dragons 3E for the first time in nearly a year.  I was happy to get the opportunity since I consider myself pretty neutral in the edition wars and I was happy to get the chance to flex my D&D 3E muscles again. 

I will admit though that after a year long hiatus I found myself missing one feature of D&D 4E.  You may wonder: Was it the powers?  The clearly defined party roles?  Skill challenges?

Nope, didn’t really miss any of them.  What I found myself missing was that a level no longer equaled a level which no longer equaled a level.

I’ve been playing wizards in D&D since they were called magic-users, so I tend to be pretty blind to how confusing differences in character level, caster level, and spell level could be to the new player.  Knowing that you get your third level spells at fifth level seems as natural to me as breathing.

This time though, I looked at it from another perspective.  The game was starting at third level, so I created a Crusader 2 / Cleric of Wee Jas 1.  Suddenly, I found myself having to determine what level maneuvers my third level character could take. 

This was based off of initiator level, which was calculated from adding half of my other class levels to my maneuver granting class and rounding down.  I would then compare that number to a chart to determine what level maneuvers were available to me.

This really isn’t any more confusing then character level, caster level, and spell level are.  It was just new to me.  It did make me to wonder why determining what level maneuvers I could use couldn’t  be as simple as: “A second level crusader can use second level maneuvers.”

Which is of course how it is done in D&D 4E.

So now I know what I will miss if I ever revert back to D&D 3E (or Pathfinder) full time.  Of all the changes that were made between the editions, its something as tiny as level consistency that I would miss the most.

Have I been too hard on Essentials?

I have talked a bit about the upcoming D&D Essentials on this blog before.  Mostly about how I think it is a stealth edition and how I think the rules updates are coming a bit too fast and furious nowadays.  What I haven’t spoken much about is what I think about the proposed changes that we have seen so far.

I actually think most of the changes that Wizards of the Coast has shown us are positive ones.

Considering my complaining about the Essentials products so far, this may seem a bit odd.  So let me talk a bit about what I like.

Changing up the play experience while keeping it balanced

In my opinion, one of the most valid complaints about D&D 4e was that in striving to maintain game balance the character classes became a bit too interchangeable.  In essence, there was little mechanical difference between playing a fighter or a wizard. 

I think the changes they are making to the way martial classes like the fighter run primarily off of basic attacks (as opposed to powers) are a good thing.  It makes playing different classes feel different while (hopefully) keeping the math balanced.  Not to mention it addresses a complaint I heard from many traditional fighter players when they first played D&D 4e: “Why can’t I just hit him with my sword?”

More options on placement of ability score bonuses

In D&D 4e most of your powers run off of a single key ability score (or possibly two).  From a pure math point of view, you want to boost that ability score as high as possible.  Of course, the easiest way to boost an ability score is to choose a race which gets a +2 bonus to that score.

The problem is that it skewed the importance of racial choice when choosing your class a bit too much for my tastes.  Since most races were built with a fixed +2 to two ability scores, it really meant there were just a handful of viable options built into the rules.

(Not that this stopped me from making a few less than optimal racial choices for roleplaying reasons.  I was just very aware of what I was sacrificing to do so)

The new model is a little more flexible.  By giving each race a +2 to one ability score and a +2 to one of two ability scores, the number of viable builds have opened up substantially.

Magic Item Rarity

I have to admit I was somewhat ambivalent about magic item rarity until I read Mike Mearls article on the subject.  I am now a fan of rarity for one big reason: It eliminates the limitation by milestone on magic item daily powers.

I always thought that this mechanic was a bit on the clunky side.  It was a difficult concept for some of my players to wrap their heads around and it added a layer of bookkeeping which didn’t need to be there. 

Limiting the number of magic items with daily powers in the hands of the players accomplishes the same thing and avoids several headaches for me.  I am always in favor of that.

Final Thoughts

My problem has never been with the content of D&D Essentials, just with the way it was presented to us.  Wizards of the Coast acted as if the fans were crazy for seeing Essentials as another edition (or at least .5 of an edition).  I stand my my earlier posts when I say that the changes are at least as substantial as the ones that occurred between D&D 3.0 and 3.5.

Of course, I thought the changes D&D 3.5 brought to the game were mostly positive as well, even though I saw D&D 3.5 as a pretty blatant money grab.  So maybe my somewhat schizophrenic attitude about D&D Essentials is not that surprising.

Apparently I do my best work in 140 characters or less

As anyone who has reads my blog or listens to the Lords of Tyr podcast knows, I have a tendency to be a bit long-winded at times.  This is partially because I have have a desire to be as complete as possible when I am addressing a subject, and partially because I just like the sound of my own voice.

I now have definitive proof that I should limit myself to 140 characters at a time.

It has just been announced by Wizards of the Coast that I have won the Elminster Must Die Twitter contest.  My winning tweet was:

@WotC_Novels #elminster must die! At 1267 winters old he is personally responsible for bankrupting Social Security in the Realms.

Succinct and to the point.

Now this alone might not be considered proof that I should limit my writing to 140 characters or less.  However, this is not the first Twitter contest I have won.  Last year I entered ChattyDM’s About My PC Twitter contest. 

I won the “Most Evocative PC” category with the following:

Almirith, Lord-in-Exile of the Willow Court. Scion of an Eladrin noble and elven huntswoman. A half-blood on the throne? Never! #aboutmyPC

So maybe I should just give up on long form writing entirely?

Nah, I don’t see that happening.

On a more serious note, there were a lot of great tweets in both of those contests.  I am honored that I was picked.

Plus, I guess this means that unless something completely unforeseen occurs, I should be attending GenCon in 2011.  So maybe I will have a chance to meet up with some of you there!

Rule Updates May Be Getting Out of Hand

Looking back at the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, Unearthed Arcana was a harbinger of how the game would be sold in the future.  While there had been different versions of the game published over the years (e.g., Basic D&D, Advanced D&D, etc.), once the “core” rules were established for a version they remained relatively unchanged.  Most D&D products were aimed at the DM, like adventure modules or the occasional monster book.

Unearthed Arcana, expanded the game with new races, classes and spells.  Unlike the majority of D&D products up to that point, it targeted the players as well as the Dungeon Master.  Since the number of D&D players outnumbers the number of Dungeon Masters, this was a brilliant marketing decision.  Not surprisingly, Unearthed Arcana was a harbinger of things to come.

It was also full of errors.

Back in the early days of D&D, errata was rare and wondrous thing.  As a result, I remember how shocked I was at age 13 when Dragon Magazine presented a full four pages of errata for the recently released Unearthed Arcana supplement! 

(Of course, in those days you were expected to cut the errata out of the magazine and paste it into your book.  I admit that I did so dutifully.)

While many of the errors in Unearthed Arcana were a result of poor editing, there was also a decent amount of rule clarification in the mix.  I think this is part and parcel of expanding and updating an existing rule set.  The more you add to the rules, the more likely it is that one of these additions will react poorly with previously existing rules. 

In this way it is sort of like the potion miscibility table.

Fast-forwarding twenty-five years, it is not surprising that rule updates are increasingly common.  Many people have noted that there have been so many rules updates to the original 4E Player’s Handbook that it is now functionally obsolete.

For fun I decided to use random.org to pick 5 pages out of the Player’s Handbook and see how many had been updated according to the D&D Compendium.  Here are my results:

p. 85 – The power Warriors Urging has been revised twice.

p. 102 – The power Healing Font has been revised.

p. 202 – The feat Action Recovery has been revised.

p. 290 – No revisions

p. 304 – No revisions

That is 3 out of 5 pages chosen randomly out of a 320 page book.  I know this is hardly scientific, but that seems a bit much. Of course, this situation is only going to get worse when all the upcoming slew of updates related to D&D Essentials come out. 

(I can just imagine how much glue I would have to go through if I still was cutting and pasting out of Dragon)

So I guess the entire furor over whether D&D Essentials is a stealth edition or whether Wizards of the Coast is going to stop printing the core rule books is a bit of a tempest in a teapot-- The new edition is already here!

Some thoughts on D&D Essentials

Since the D&D Essentials line was announced, there has been a lot of speculation that it is meant as a ‘stealth’ edition.  In fact, Bill Slavicsek took the time in his most recent Ampersand column to debunk this concept.  He specifically notes that the Essentials products will be “fully compatible with the rest of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.”  and that “The rules of the game are the same as those featured in the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. The presentation is new, rewritten for clarity and friendliness.”

I believe Bill Slavicsek is telling the truth, at least as far as it goes.  I am sure the Dungeons & Dragons Essentials products will be usable with our existing books.  However, I think it is informative to look back to 2003 when we were awaiting the release of the Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 (D&D 3.5e) rules. 

Back then there were a lot of concerns that D&D 3.5e was a ‘stealth’ edition as well.  Just like now, we were given a lot of assurances that D&D 3.5e was merely a minor rules update meant to streamline and enhance the gaming experience.  Wizards of the Coast insisted that the two systems were compatible and our investment in D&D 3.0e books would not go to waste.

Once again, Wizards of the Coast was telling the truth, at least as far as it goes. It was possible to intermix D&D 3.0 and D&D 3.5 books.  In fact, in the campaign we were playing at the time we did exactly that. No one was forced to convert their character to D&D 3.5 if they didn’t want to.  A D&D 3.5 ranger was completely capable of being in a party with a D&D 3.0 druid.  If the effects of two wizards spells didn’t sync up exactly, it could easily be explained as the unpredictability of magic or differences in their schooling.

So why did D&D 3.5e feel like a stealth edition?

The biggest problem was probably that as more books came out they were filled with revised versions of pre-existing materials.  In the core books this was inevitable.  The problems really began with the supplements.

Almost every supplement that came out for D&D 3.5e had revised versions of prestige classes, feats, spells, and monsters.  The D&D 3.0 versions of these were considered obsolete and many Dungeon Masters began to ban material from the older books.  Thus the promise that our investment in the old books wasn’t wasted proved to be untrue and the fears of a ‘stealth edition’ became a reality.

So will D&D Essentials have the same problem?  It really depends on whether Wizards of the Coast chooses to look forward or back when designing upcoming supplements.   It will be really tempting when new supplements come out to tweak old favorites and release an ‘Essential’ version. 

This isn’t because Wizards of the Coast staff are evil or lazy.  Rather it is the nature of being a game designer.  By their very nature, game designers are creative people who are constantly tinkering with the rules in an effort to make them better.  They are the kind of people who will jump at a chance to improve a paragon path, epic destiny, feat, power, or monster that they feel is flawed. 

D&D Essentials will give them this opportunity, but this is one case where they should let opportunity pass them by.  Rather than revisit the past, the Essentials supplements should move the game forward.  We should see new paragon paths, epic destinies, feats, powers, and monsters. Otherwise D&D Essentials will be seen as a ‘stealth’ edition no matter how many times we are told it isn’t.

Besides, there will be plenty of opportunities to revisit the old favorites when D&D 5e comes along.