Sunday 27 September 2015

Best published D&D setting?

From http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?766780-Which-do-you-think-is-the-easiest-campaign-setting-to-pick-up-and-start-a-fleshed-out-game-with-as-a-DM&p=19419443#post19419443

Good D&D settings for me tend to be ones that are easily approachable, have lots of easy to use material, and fit the core/standard rules. Of ones that are available (so not Gary Gygax's Yggsburgh) I think Mystara via the Gazetteers (on rpgnow - start with GAZ1 Karameikos), Forgotten Realms (start in the Western Heartlands/Sword Coast) and Golarion (start in Varisia, newbie town Sandpoint is detailed in Rise of the Runelords and briefly in Pathfinder Beginner Box) are all good ones.
If you want something that feels modern, has pretty artwork, a fantastic world book (Inner Sea World Guide) and you want to spend loads of money on slim 64 page volumes, Golarion is great.  :)
For sheer playability I'd tend to put Mystara & its 8-mile hex maps on top, especially for open-world sandboxing with dropped in modular adventures.
Forgotten Realms is great if you don't have a setting Nazi in your group or are happy to insist that yours is a non-canon campaign. The 1e Grey Box is probably the best intro if you're happy to tweak the NPC stats; that goes for Mystara too - both settings suffer a bit from excessive levels on NPCs, something Golarion, Eberron & Greyhawk generally avoid.
I'm currently running campaigns in all three of these settings, plus a fourth in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy using the 3e box set (available on rpgnow). I'd say Wilderlands was my favourite open-world setting, but getting its bottom-up orientation to work right is a bit more challenging than the three above; you need to do a bit of work to tie threads together and create a world-in-motion, in particular you need to develop the NPCs yourself, whereas Mystara Realms & Golarion come with plenty of detailed NPCs. Wilderlands is great though for doing your own thing, a published setting that really feels 'yours' rather than a corporate product.

Wednesday 23 September 2015

Giving 5e a more 1e feel

They did do a good job IMO in making 5e D&D 'driftable' to play like a lot of other editions. The default setting is sort of "2.5e", but I was shocked looking at the 5e forum on EN World to see them treating it like 3e, with lots of talk of 'builds', 'optimisation' et al - nothing like the way I use it. That said, here are some of the things I do to go for a more 1e or Classic (pre-Non Weapon Proficiencies & Skills) type feel:

1. Skills - already vestigial in 5e, I don't really use them, I just add Profiency to whatever ability checks a character should be proficient in by reason of his Class.

2. Multiclassing - this is the bit of 5e that seems most 3e-like. Fortunately it's listed as an optional rule. Disallowed.

3. Saving throws - 5e has this weird thing where most saves never improve, in fact they get harder to make as DCs go up with level. I give every PC Proficiency in all saves, this gives more of a pre-3e feel. I found this doesn't work for monsters though, 5e casters are already much more limited than in other editions and they need to be able to have spells work most of the time or they will seem very weak.

4. Feats - for my Dragonsfoot game I didn't allow them at chargen. I'm a bit torn on this one, but a lot of 5e feats resemble stuff like the Mentzer Classic D&D 'Fighter Smash' attack - stuff that I think is ok at higher level. Again Feats are labelled as Optional and for some groups it may be safer to disallow them if you don't want a whiff of 3e style minmaxing.

5. Death Saves and "heal from zero" - a 4e-ism which is ok-ish in that game, terrible (IMO) in 5e. I don't use them, instead I use negative hit points and when a PC goes deep into negative they'll have trouble getting back up again.

Campaign Length

My 4e D&D campaign is designed to last the 5.5 years (early 2011 to late 2016) it takes to get from level 1 to level 30 at around 4 sessions to level and playing 3 hours fortnightly, currently at
level 25 after 92 sessions and would expect something like 110-115 sessions total.

I've run a bunch of ca 30 session, ca 2-year campaigns in the 2000s. My current Pathfinder
campaign is most like that, next Sunday should be the last session, session 34, having
run January 2014 to end September 2015, 1 3/4 years.

My Classic D&D Karameikos campaign is a weekly sandbox running since start of April 2015, PCs currently around 5th level mostly, not sure when it will end, basically should run indefinitely while I have
players, the way BECM is I could run it to 36th level no problem.

My 5e D&D online Wilderlands sandbox started in March 2015, building on prior campaigns (1e, LL, 4e etc) back to ca
2009, currently weekly. 35 sessions and PCs ca level 7-8 currently. Judging by past experience this will run until there's a TPK; if no TPK I'm happy to run it indefinitely and it looks to have a lot of legs. In the 5e rules PCs cap at 20th
level and get GM-mandated Boons after that, which looks very manageable - I'd probably
say "you can have this Boon or can choose a Feat in lieu", per the sidebar in the 5e DMG.

Is speed of levelling an issue in 5e sandbox? Not really - it seems slow enough in my two sandbox games (5e is super-fast at low level, slows down a lot from 5th/6th, should speed up from 11th. The Pathfinder group have often levelled up in 1-2 sessions though, that felt too fast to me. I guess my
5e group should reach 20th long before the Classic group reach 36th, but in both cases
it's going to take a long time, maybe some time in 2017 for the 5e group. If the 5e player characters avoid TPK, reach max level, and
want to retire, that would be fine - but I want to give them a chance to shape the world
for future campaigns.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?469073-How-fast-do-you-play-D-amp-D/page3#ixzz3mXo1hcGH

Sunday 20 September 2015

If 5e PCs can't buy magic items, what do they do with all their money?

The answer is "whatever they want" - and if they come up with interesting stuff to do it's good to award them XP - one reason individual XP works well in 5e, though group awards are also fine. Castles, ships, armies - armies are actually useful in 5e! - henchmen/retainers... a 15th level 5e Fighter may well want a pet NPC Mage and NPC Priest on his payroll, along with a garrison of men-at-arms for his castle. And the stats from the back of the 5e MM work fine for this.

I think it's ok in 5e to let PCs occasionally use their vast wealth to search out or commission magic items, but the GM can/should make them arbitrarily expensive, just as the GM should decide what price an NPC will offer for those Boots of Flying; make it an in-game event, not book-keeping.

The trick is to get away from the purely character-focused approach of 3e-4e. You no longer need money for your 'build'; money is a means of interacting with and shaping the world around you.

How well does 5e D&D do 'old school'?

From http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=856781#post856781

Answer: pretty good, but it's missing some systems like monster morale checks & morale, or the old D&D approaches to evasion, getting lost & such. My own 5e campaign is a pretty old school sandboxy thing and pretty well all the published material I use is either original old school (Caverns of Thracia, Wilderlands) or OSR (Dyson's Delve, O5R Liberation of the Demon Slayer). I've had an easy time filling in the gaps; eg I already use B/X style Morale rules in all my games anyway.

The 5e PCs IMC aren't fragile/disposable, but then old-D&D PCs really aren't either after 1st level. It's really 3e where high level Fighter types routinely drop like flies. The spell/magic rules in 5e really limit casters, in ways that are different from old school D&D but the effect is similar, warriors & wizards need to work together, no 3e/PF god-casters and their non-caster mook/grog buddies.

Power progression is different from any prior version of D&D; enemy numbers matter hugely, and a squad of soldiers is a bigger threat than a manticore - I really like this but it feels a bit more like non-D&D RPGs than any version of D&D. It definitely gives that "heroic not superheroic" feel - which I guess resembles low level D&D, but 7th level old school D&D PCs can generally wade through hordes of foes more easily than my 5e group can.

Saturday 19 September 2015

Giving 5e D&D a 1e AD&D feel.

They did do a good job IMO in making 5e D&D 'driftable' to play like a lot of other editions. The default setting is sort of "2.5e", but I was shocked looking at the 5e forum on EN World to see them treating it like 3e, with lots of talk of 'builds', 'optimisation' et al - nothing like the way I use it. That said, here are some of the things I do to go for a more 1e or Classic (pre-Non Weapon Proficiencies & Skills) type feel:

1. Skills - already vestigial in 5e, I don't really use them, I just add Profiency to whatever ability checks a character should be proficient in by reason of his Class.

2. Multiclassing - this is the bit of 5e that seems most 3e-like. Fortunately it's listed as an optional rule. Disallowed.

3. Saving throws - 5e has this weird thing where most saves never improve, in fact they get harder to make as DCs go up with level. I give every PC Proficiency in all saves, this gives more of a pre-3e feel. I found this doesn't work for monsters though, 5e casters are already much more limited than in other editions and they need to be able to have spells work most of the time or they will seem very weak.

4. Feats - for my Dragonsfoot game I didn't allow them at chargen. I'm a bit torn on this one, but a lot of 5e feats resemble stuff like the Mentzer Classic D&D 'Fighter Smash' attack - stuff that I think is ok at higher level. Again Feats are labelled as Optional and for some groups it may be safer to disallow them if you don't want a whiff of 3e style minmaxing.

World in Motion - How Much Work?

I don't see much point simulating NPC behaviour that can't possibly come to the notice of the players. If I'm doing events on the other continent I will only care about absolutely massive stuff, and then only if it might affect the PCs. The closer I get to the PCs the more detail I'll go into. But I don't much like the idea of a clockwork world.

Last night in my sandbox, the travel-weary PCs approached the village of Bratanis. There was a long building friction there between the Lady Aeschela and her lieutenant, the Weaponmaster Ruggio. I rolled a d6 to see if Ruggio had finally overthrown Aeschela and made himself Lord, 1-3 'yes'. I rolled a 3, and events proceeded from there. I didn't see any need to make the Schrodinger determination prior to the PCs getting there.

Other things may be on a timetable in-world, eg it's known that as the rainy season ends in M3 (it's early M2 now) an undead army of Neo-Nerath will be coming over the mountains to Hara. That will presumably happen unless the PCs or something else big stops it.

In general, stuff immediately around the PCs I'm looking at daily/weekly on a small scale, further away monthly & on a larger scale (eg Hara & the undead army), further still yearly and larger still (what are the Red Reavers of Grimalon up to) and even decadal (how are the Invincible Overlord and Green Emperor doing). This gives reasonable economy of effort - if my game's not set in the CSIO I may only be thinking about the CSIO every year or so of real-time. Most of it can be updated if/when the PCs go there, and yes a lot of it can be used frozen-time, NPC X is the way they are in the book whenever the PCs first meet X. My Karameikos game is 20 years in (1020 AC from 1000 AC start), major NPCs get aged 20 years (and some die of old age) but some I'll just change their backstory to be 20 years younger.

I used to be the sort of GM who generated vast reams of material for its own sake, and eventually found that this was hurting the actual game at the table. Every detail I pre-determine takes away an opportunity to make it differently - and sometimes different would be better, but I can't know what would be best for the game. I don't have infinite inspiration; if fix too much too soon I am destroying possibilities. My current Ghinarian Hills setting is working brilliantly, but only because I detailed one or two locations at a time, over months, as inspiration came to me - and am still doing so. If I had tried to detail everything up front rather than incrementally it would be a much much weaker setting.

Tuesday 15 September 2015

4e, 5e & Exploration

4e is completely different from other D&Ds, but not totally inflexible.

Encounters per day - in 4e this can be any number up to the healing surge depletion limit. A single moderate difficulty fight is viable if the players don't know it's the only fight. In fact it's ok for the number of fights per day to be random. The main reason to limit # encounters is the massive time sink; 8 moderate-difficulty fights in a day could be 16 hours of play, for me that's probably 4-6 sessions, 2-3 months of fortnightly play! The published WotC adventures are written like that and work very poorly.

Encounter difficulty - in 4e this can be anything from a massive 'Spike' battle that tests PCs to the limit (from which they may need to flee, and possible PC deaths) to a moderate battle maybe EL 1 under Party Level.
But that is still really a fairly limited range, say EL-1 to EL+7 at higher level, with EL+7 about 4 times the difficulty of EL-1.
What 4e can't do well is the really trivial fight, it will take ages, be dull, and not attrite any resources.

The kind of videogame-based "fake megadungeon" approach Angry DM is taking, with mini-bosses at the end of each 'day' sequence, looks like an appropriate approach for 4e. But in 4e there is really no meaningful Exploration element, the game doesn't support that at all, and IME is even best done without a map - just telling the PCs "you trek through the megadungeon, until... (Encounter X)" is what works best in that system. 5e is completely different and IME (GM'd 34 sessions of online Wilderlands 5e sandboxing) the design supports old-school exploratory play. I use mostly OSR material (and Caverns of Thracia) in my 5e game, and it works a charm. I found using Dyson's Delve dungeon maps a complete waste in 4e, but in 5e they work a treat.

Tuesday 1 September 2015

Don't convert

Converting PCs from one rules system to another, eg 4e to 5e - I've done mid-campaign conversions before and they have never worked well, even 3e to C&C. Converting always damages the campaign and it tends to fade away pretty fast. As GM I've learned to stick with the current system to the conclusion of the campaign. If I want to use a new system I've learned to start a new campaign with new PCs.
So my advice to GMs would be to stick with your current system, conclude the campaign at a good stopping point, and then start a new one with new PCs & new rules, which can be set in the same world.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?467764-Converting-characters-recommendations/page2#ixzz3kT54SgXa