#1 - The group got through 2 fights in a single night. Now, for some groups, this is nothing to brag about; many groups knock that out no problem. For us, though, with only one player (my lovely wife and party wizard) having 4e experience and 2 players being fresh off the newb boat, getting the seven of us (six players, one DM) through 2 combat encounters in a single session of play can be tough. Some of our veterans are the "weigh every possible option" sort and can sometimes drag down a game as much as indecisive newbies. Tonight, though, things went great and the only reason we stopped when we did is that (a) the "new friends" couple (our party's warlock and cleric) needed to leave early and (b) my wife was working on 4 hours of sleep (she's normally a night owl who would usually be awake right now and irritated with me that I was blogging rather than spending time with her post-game). 

#2 - Most everyone in the group hit level 2. My brother's rogue didn't quite make it, but that's because he started later (after 2 sessions had already passed which, given our earlier pace, means he only missed two fights). Now folks get the opportunity to see how leveling up works in 4e (or in rpgs in general for the newbs) and will get shiny new character sheets before the next session. Yes, it took them a month and a half to get to level 2, not because I'm a harsh DM, but because our time together is really quite limited and there's only so much we can get through at a time. The group does seem to be exceptionally well designed for dungeon crawling, though, but I suppose that makes sense since I helped them design their characters and have designed the (only so far) dungeon.

#3 - They chewed up every encounter I threw at them and spit it back out at me. The group, I feel, now gets that I'm not about to make this whole adventuring thing easy on them and that they're going to take some hits along the way. Instead of whining when they get bloodied or even drop, they're now focusing on how to get back into the game and working with the rest of the group to make it happen. A rag-tag bunch of very different characters might have gone into that dungeon, but a well-oiled killing machine is coming out of it. When they tore through the night's second encounter like* fat kids through cake, it was by reacting in an effective, strategic manner to an evolving series of threats which, quite frankly, was even more awesome to watch than I had thought it would be. The first encounter was supposed to be a "tank & spank" with a twist that would have done some serious damage if it wasn't for the fact that they came up with a tactic that seriously out-played me and left me grasping for opportunities for to make the fight challegning. Simply put, these folks out-thought me and for that, I am immensely grateful.

So folks, I'd like to close with a closer look at that last milestone. Yes, I have six players, which should make many encounters easier, but what I really have are six GREAT players who are ALWAYS THINKING and doing a great job of tackling challenges that I throw at them and now enjoy when an encounter challenges and even taxes them. Every single time, they have risen to the challenge and, quite frankly, made the challenges their collective bitch. I really do enjoy that a series of novice players -- novice but GREAT players -- have taken me to task because, if nothing else, it means that next time, I get to take THEM to task in turn. 

*While I was searching for a simile here, I got distracted by Bill Cavalier again. Sorry, folks, I just love that guy. How did it take me so long to come up with "fat kids through cake?" Seriously!

Another thing I love is philosophy. Not "philosophies" -- touchy-feely ramblings on divinity or theosophy or other drivel -- but real philosophy, the logical examination of the world around us and its consequences. One part of philosophy that I absolutely adore is the Theory of Mind (I think it's funny that a discipline that's so great at coming up with names for subcategories -- epistemology, anyone? -- can't come up with something better than "Theroy of Mind;" "mindology" does sound like crap, though), particular modern monistic systems like emergence theory. Right, that sounded like the same sort of stuff I just called drivel, didn't it? Allow me to explain.

The theory of mind is largely concerned with what a mind is and what it does, how it does what it does and what it doesn't at all do (but might appear to do). Man, I am not making this any clearer, am I? Really, though, what are we talking about when we talk about minds? Thoughts? Ideas? (These last two we call "mental events" to distinguish them from "physical events;" your mind interacts with the mental event of seeing something which is really just an idea that is caused by the physical event of your body being exposed to light just so, but all that is actually up for debate.) Do physical events create mental events and are mental events capable of creating physical events? If every mental phenomenon is merely the result physical processes, isn't every possible reaction a person may have and action they may take just predetermined by biology? I don't want to talk about any of those here, just want to make a point of what we're talking about. 

Emergence theory might be difficult to explain, but that hasn't stopped me so far, and I might as well go where I'm headed anyway. Emergence theory is the theory that the mind -- whether capable of agency or not (whether it's free from predetermination or bound to it) -- emerges from a physical system due to the holisitic correlation of elements. Effectively, the idea is that a biological system, once it becomes sufficiently complex, can cause a mental system to emerge from it, according to certain patterns. While most Emergentists tend to be Materialists (and think that the whole predetermination thing is right), the theory could, with a little tweaking, easily accomodate free will and other fun stuff that we tend to think of as important. 

Oh, and I really, really think that the idea of that "a wizard did it" is highly insulting to everyone who's ever heard it, thought it, read it or wrote it. I need better explanations. I DESERVE better explanations. 

So, what's all this got to do with the Warforged?

I don't DM Eberron right now, not because I don't like it, but because I feel that my own campaign world (a Points of Light-style game drawing upon the published Nentir Vale stuff and vastly expanded upon) is a little easier to hit the ground running in for new players, which I always seem to have a few of (the Couples' Night game has two totally novice players). The explanation of Warforged in the Points of Light implied setting, in my mind, leaves a bit to be desired. Effectively, they seem to boil down to "a wizard did it."

In Eberron, the Warforged were not simply wizard work. House Cannith, the greatest arcane manufacturers in the world, had to build creation forges -- vast engines of artifice -- just to build the first crude warforged which, over generations, were refined into the Warforged we know today. In PoL? Yeah, it just happened. BAM! Warforged. A wizard did it.

In PoL, I want creation forges. I want the creation of the Warforged to have been a herculian undertaking. I want the process of creating a race, a species, from scratch and without any biological basis, to actually be difficult. Really difficult. To make a mind out of nothing should not be a walk in a park that any passing wizard can accomplish. The story deserves better. The minds of the Warforged deserve better. The players and DMs deserve better. 

And so, my game has creation forges, and that's where the Warforged come from. Creation forges -- and the complex magical artifice and technology necessary to create them -- are an essential first step in the genesis of the Warforged. The forges themselves are herculian creations in and of themselves, even before they are applied to the creation of Warforged. The development of the Warforged mind in a creation forge involves harnessing remarkably complex arcane patterns, and the complexity and potency of these patterns ultimately lead conscious living constructs. 

I suppose that by now, there's not much to differentiate these emergentist Warforged from more traditional PoL ones. More or less, the difference seems to be between "a wizard did it" and "some really, really complex magic that took a lot of people a long time to do it." To me, though, this opens the door to some very, very different interpretations of the Warforged and the creation forges themselves -- which draw heavily on my "fantasy needs more sci-fi in it" leanings -- that I use in my campaign. Here's a series of what-ifs for you.

What if creation forges must be built over sites of intense power where the energies of the Elemental Chaos bleed through into the World and make intense works of magic possible?

What if the Weavers -- who had previously had an advanced arcane-technological society -- first tapped into these Elemental energies and built the first creation forges? (This could happen at any time, meaning that the creation forges themselves could be impossibly ancient. Under this interpretation, the Warforged do not necessitate the development of the forge, but rather that they are the consequence of the forges -- one among many possible implementation of creation forge technology.)

What if the Weavers' creation forges create not by merely funnelling arcane energies from the Elemental Chaos, but by creating a complex emergent system? (If you've read Planetary, think "snowflake." If not, stick with me, I'm bound to talk about it sooner or later.)

What if this same sort of emergent system is what attracted Far Realm's denizens to the Weavers' home world in the first place? 

This post has gone on long enough, so I'm going to cut it here. My overall idea of the Warforged is that they are, indeed, the result of ages of technological and arcane advancement and that they are, after a fashion, the heirs of the Weavers. The "emergent system" that the creation forges use, I'm currently calling a Probability Matrix, and I'd like to explain it more in the future, particularly since it relates directly to my overall campaign conceptand what's really going on in my PoL world. Thanks for tuning in.

The party needs to get into a port city for a couple of reasons, but the city has been locked down by an invading force from another city that is not letting anyone in or out. Not being able to wait for a way in, the heroes stopped at a nearby village to find out if there was another way in. After pumping the villagers and two other groups who aren't being let into town for information, the heroes found out about an ancient sewer that leads into the city and how to locate it. After the party located it, the rogue was working out how to release a door mechanism when the warlock decided that it was better to blast the door open (none of the other players here took the warlock seriously until he stepped up and rolled a nat 20, alerting all of the monsters in the next room to their presence). Well, the murkbat swarm attacked first, followed by the dire rats. The fight was -- even for our "how does that rule work again?" fights -- long. The fight was brutal. The tank went down near the end of the fight, which I always enjoy. The players started off using some great tactics, but by the time that the dire rats got to them (the warlock did some great controlling tactics to keep them at bay), fighting in the sewer pipe, while creating the bottleneck that kept the heroes from getting surrounded and created a perfect setup for the wizards blast powers, the heroes ended up with their tactical options severely limited. The rogue couldn't move into flank, for instance. This made the whole fight take a lot longer than it should have, but it was a fun fight for folks who rarely get to flex their in-game muscles (like the wizard).

Stuff I Learned #1: Turn a Futile Effort into an Opportunity

At one point, the group's barbarian asked: "Why don't we just the guards at the gates what they're doing here?" To be honest, my mind was blown. How had the rest of us -- 6 including me, the DM -- not even considered that? Well, I knew that I hadn't planned on the heroes being able to get any details out of them, but why I hadn't I considered what they COULD get out of them? I told the barbarian "Sure, that's great, but it's going to take a while for you to get to the gate since you're in a nearby village, remember?" buying me time to work out exactly what she could figure out. I let her try to address the guards, but it was eventually obvious that she wasn't sure how to do this. Instead, I truncated the scene and explained that her questions were largely stonewalled, that she'd get "canned answers" and that those answers would come from different members of the six-guard team. After spending some time with the guards, the barbarian figured out that these guys are very well disciplined and organized and that whatever their cause might be, they're fanatically devoted to it. All of these were facts that they didn't have before. Rather than allowing the barbarian to waste her time (and the group's), it made more sense to me to give her something for her efforts.

Stuff I Learned #2: Two Swarms Should Equal Two Controllers

Swarms. I've always wanted to effectively use swarms in D&D (and you'll remember that one of my design goals is "Do something I've never done before"). I had a few work correctly in 3e, but none really did the trick for me in 4e before. Then, came last night. The players faced off against two murkbat swarms which were attracted to the sound of Ny, the warlock, blowing in a portcullis. If we all think back to our MM, we know that swarms take half damage from attacks that aren't area (zone, burst or blast) attacks, so it makes sense for the group to use as many area attacks as possible. Here's the problem: only one of the strikers has ANY area attacks, and he was holding back on using his encounter power because the group new a wave of dire rats was on its way. The only player with reliable, re-usable area attacks is the wizard, who's been trying to get into position to use her Thunderwave on more than one or two enemies for session after session with no success. What the group needed in order to deal with two swarms effectively was another controller so that the AOE potential of the group was sufficient to burn down two enemies rather than allowing the strikers to plink away at each swarm for half damage. Maybe I can convince one of the strikers to multiclass into a controller class if this ends up becoming a trend.

Stuff I Learned #3: Auras Don't Tie The Players' Hands Tactically

In the previous session's fight against the bullywug menace, I completely forgot about the bullywugs' aura power. The more I read that aura, the more I worried about using it, too. In the end, I decided that forgetting to use it was perfectly fine since it would have tied the hands of my PCs when trying to make tactical decisions and prevented them from fighting the way they wanted to. So, when the murkbat swarms came out yesterday, I was ready. I was GOING to use their aura powers, damn it! The aura makes anyone in it take a -2 penalty to attack rolls and if a character ends his or her turn in the aura, he or she takes 3 damage. Once the heroes discovered this, they made great use of shifts to move in and out of the aura expertly, and once the wizard got in place to lay down Thunderwave turn after turn, it became a careful game of watching initiative order -- the Thunderwave came at just the right time every turn that it kept people's turns from ending inside the aura. The auras made the fight tougher, but for me, that made it more fun and for the players, it meant that they had to make harder decisions and a fight that could have been "easy mode tank & spank" ended up requiring excellent positioning and timing, which the players pulled off very well under the paladin's guidance.

Right, well, it's about time for me to get moving. Thanks for tuning in. Before I do go, I'd like to send out a huge thanks to you all in the Wizards community for taking note of what I've been doing over here. I hope you enjoy these posts and others to come. 

As far as I can figure, D&D Next is being created because of two events in the marketsphere of fantasy rpgs: (1) the Old School Renaissance (OSR) and (2) the polarizing, poorly-planned introduction of 4e. The OSR is even influencing many design decisions in D&DN, with many developers having said at this point that you should be able to use old game supplements with D&DN with few to no problems. Many people flocked to the OSR (or Pathfinder, but that's another story) when 4e launched because, let's face it, 4e launched too soon and with too little market testing; we as a market weren't yet tired of 3.5e (which had a damn good system). Furthermore, I contend that more 4e players and DMs have gotten into the OSR precisely because of a few features of 4e that are reminiscent of old school gaming (I could talk about this one for a long time, but as I see it, it all boils down to one point: fewer guidelines on when and where to implement things into your campaign and more emphasis on how it's done). So, WotC brought out a new edition of the world's favorite rpg too soon, without consulting its market, in a climate conducive to the OSR movement and including details in the game that remind people (well, me at least) of awesomeness that the OSR is all about. So, obviously, the next version of D&D needs to answer this problem and bring all of those OSR players back into the fold of mainstream D&D by being compatible with the old school material, right?

It's a noble goal, I've gotta say, but I'm not sure it's a useful one. (I'm not going to say that it's not doable, just not useful.)

As I see it, there are a few reasons why D&DN should not keep the future the hostage of the past. 

First, OSR is a niche market. It's a large niche, but it's still a niche. I think it's fair to say that D&D enjoyed its widest play during 3-3.5e and that the 4e launch fracturing (also called the "edition wars") managed to single-handedly create 4e's greatest competitor: Pathfinder. OSR is not a competitor -- it fills a completely different role in the market than 4e or Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a competitor -- it is a differentiated rpg model from 4e that fills the same place in the market. Essentially, making the D&DN model fit the OSR is stating that WotC wants D&DN to recapture a segment of its market that has gone removed itself from the main marketplace and taken up residence in a niche market while not worrying terribly much about the other main competitor in the same market. I really wish I had a good analogy for this, but I'm coming up short. 

(I realise that D&DN, being a direct market competitor for Pathfinder may be addressing Pathfinder similarly to the way it's addressing the OSR. After all, the stated design goal of "compatability with all editions" includes the 3rd edition, too.)

Second, OSR already has a lot of support. Do you remember the first two editions of AD&D and the BECMI boxes? Yeah, they can use all of that. Oh, and thanks to the OSL, they have access to all sorts of D&D-like terms and ideas to produce their own games with, games like Labyrinth Lord. So, someone's already producing for a niche market, so why does WotC need to do it, to? Should WotC tie up valuable resources that could be coming out with progressive products coming up with products that fit in with material that are decades out of date and ideas that time and tide have proven faulty? 

Third and finally, nostalgia can't answer our problems. However much I might miss rolling a d6 to determine if my dwarf can detect a sloping passage, that's a dumb effing rule. Later editions of D&D have given us more elegant and useful solutions (3e's skills, anyone?) that are then refined upon in still later editions (4e's skills and skill challenges, anyone?). The reason to look backward is not for answers to our current dilemmas, but to see how we got here in the first place. The old saying that "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes" might point out that if we ignore the successes of past editions, we're going to make huge mistakes. I say we can't ignore those successes, because they're the foundation of each successive edition. What most folks ignore, I feel, is the journey that got us from point A to point B and what it means for future development. Rather than looking to the past for explicit answers to our problems, shouldn't we be looking for what we can learn from the way the past handled similar problems and how we can implement a real, practical, modern solution that reflects the current nature of our problem? After all, if a previous edition had gotten something right in the first place, why'd it get changed? 

(That last part, I know, is a contentious statement. There are loads of folks who believe that rules that got changed had previously "worked." This is obviously not the case or they wouldn't have been changed; you as a gamer had just never reached the point where those now-disregarded rules had broken down and become unfeasible.)

So, I've got to say, I'm glad that we've got some time before D&DN hits the shelves. It's exciting when a new edition comes out, and I'm hoping that the amount of time and community involvement with this edition will prevent any future "edition wars" (I'm much more worried about another edition war than bringing the OSR guys back into the fold). I'm not very hopeful, however, that the design goal of bringing all players of earlier editions under one umbrella edition is going to be a useful thing; folks are going to play what they want to play regardless of weather WotC wants them to or not. Why waste resources trying to corral everyone under one big tent when WotC could use the same resources to develop a forward-leaning product that satisfies the competitive part of the market?

First off, The Game Master is cheap. So cheap its free. Yep, free book. Well, free eBook. My only problem with the format was that it was eBook rather than, say, .mobi, so I had to download a different (non-Kindle) reader to read this on my Evo (phone). 

Other than that one small detail (oh, and its unimaginitive name), The Game Master is an amazing tool for DMs/GMs of all stripes and experience levels. Primarily focused on getting a campaign off the ground and functioning smoothly in a manner that ends up satisfying for players & DMs alike, every DM will find something new and useful in The Game Master. This book deals with a lot of the more theoretical issues that modern DMs tangle with (NO MOAR RAILROADZ!), all from the point of view that the game, as it is a game, needs to be fun first and foremost. 

So. The book is free. Go download it. If you like it, donate to the site/author. I recommend the "how much was the information I just learned worth to me?" model. Check it all out at: 

tobiah.panshin.net/thegamemaster/