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Taken from The Bannerlands blog...

…a ruined cavern in the Feywild; reminiscent of the Troll throne room you just left, yet…different.  Whereas the Shadowfell seemed to be a weaker, thinner imitation of the Vaer, this place seemed larger, wilder, more vibrant.  You found yourself trapped behind huge cliff walls of red stone striated with quartz and white; the massive vault of a night sky filled with multi-colored stars spinning above you, seemingly held aloft on the horns of twin, sickle moons.  One the ruddy orange of late summer, the other the cool white of dead winter.  You could hear the sounds of wolves in the far distance, and smell summer flowers and verdant moss and cinnamon and almost feel on your skin and taste on your tongues the cold of clear, blue water that you knew was nearby but could not see....

Standing on the cliff face, you looked out over a valley of rolling green so deep it seemed dark, broken by the occasional tree wearing autumn colors, and hints of purple, crimson, and orange vines winding their way over moss-covered boughs.  Next to you, a waterfall poured over the rocks and dropped through the foliage below, roiling emerald and feathered with pale foam and more like a living thing, the plumage of a bird.  Across you could see the cracked towers and domes of what you thought might be Moss Kag; pale marble colored with delicate veins of lichen; bruises on fair skin.  And deep through the trees you glimpsed the electric blue glow of ceynotes spotted with lily pads and softened by shadows, mottled tears on the landscape. The sky seemed so blue and sharp you were afraid it could cut, yet too small to contain the great orb of the sun that hung swollen and bleeding ruby light so thick it worked its way beneath your armor.  The colors and the sounds were almost too much, and you found yourself shielding your eyes…covering your ears…holding your breath.

While Althaea simply turned to you, the skin of your Eladrin companion changing color even as you watched, and said:

“I’m home…”

And with that she stepped off the cliff and began a slow drop into the foliage below.  Under the power of her Ring of Feather Fall, you did as well, and watched the ground slowly rise to meet you.  Trees too big to comprehend, shadows too dark to imagine, flowers twisted into shapes too bizarre to study closely; all dripping with ooze and pollen and red-tipped thorns as large as your hand.  You looked up at the cliff edge above you, as birds with rainbow scaled wings blotted the sky… 

Just a quick note, as I'm still writing up The Bannerlands Session Blog over the next couple of days...

We're running a heavily modified module, and there's a Skill Challenge involving blood - the fresher the better (purposefully cryptic for those who are running through it).  One of my players, ever astute, announced that since she was already "bloodied", she would just use her own blood to satisfy the challenge condition.

Now, as written, the challenge requires the PC to suffer some damage to use their own blood, and to expend a standard action to do so (or someone else has to expend it if they're "wounding" the willing player).  This challenge occurs during combat, so resource management (including damage and actions) is relevant.  But, here was a perfect opportunity for a wily and "dialed in" player to satisfy the condition (needing blood) while circumventing the challenge's requirements (damage and actions).  And on first blush, I wanted to applaud the player, let her succeed, and move on...

But I didn't, and here's why...(howls of protest from my players)

"Bloodied", of course, doesn't really mean bloodied (i.e., blood pouring down your armor).  It can mean that, of course, if you want it to (and often, in terms of dramatic effect for combat, I'll signal to players that a monster is "bloodied" by describing arterial spray and gouts of blood; just before I put the bloodied counter next to the miniature) - but all it really means in game terms is the PC/creature is at one/half of their maximum hitpoints.  So, as much as I understood the player's argument, I didn't want to make a ruling on a corner case that I would then have to face for the rest of the campaign.  For example, what if the damage that got the PC "bloodied" was Psychic...or Poison?  I sure didn't want to get into a debate in future fights whether "such and such" effect actually caused bleeding.  Because, if bloodied always translates into "blood", then every fleeing or invisible monster that's "bloodied" is now easier to track, since - as any good player will argue, again and again - if it's bleeding it's leaving a trail behind it...

Plus, and this is simply a game mechanics issue - it didn't strike me as appropriate for the player to circumvent part of the inherent cost of the challenge with the subjective interpretation of a technical (and defined) game term.  I understood the reasoning, and sympathized with the argument (heck, I would have made it myself!).  But I made the ruling I could live with for long-term game management, even if it wasn't as "flavorful" for the short-term story.

And that's the truth I've learned from all my years of DMing.  For all the "role-playing" (which I indulge and love) and for all the story (which I carefully craft and prepare), it's still a game - governed by dice and managed by rules.  And players (who are always looking for an edge) deserve, and really need, a simple, consistent application of those rules. They can then rely on them, and subsequently make good decisions for their characters within the context of them.

My current gaming group (under the rubric of Saturday Night Game Studios) has been involved in a D&D 4th Edition campaign since the new version's release.  Although we took about a 3 month hiatus at the end of last year, we've been running pretty much weekly games with very few interruptions in our "Points of Light" (PoL) campaign setting, The Bannerlands

I've been DMing for over 30 years, and have more home-brew and published campaign settings than I care to count.  However, when 4th Edition came out, I decided to play it "straight out of the box" - no house rules, no changes, no addenda.  Although I didn't need the hand-holding, I simply followed all the advice as written in the PHB and DMG (in terms of XP awards, encounter design, treasure parcels, etc), and also generated a brand new PoL campaign using the Nentir Vale as a starting point.

I'll reserve my opinions on how 4th Edition "plays" for another post, although the fact that we've kept our campaign going strong probably gives you a hint.  Although I've done the bulk of the DMing, I have turned the reins over a couple of times to some of the other players so they could exercise their DMing skills, and I've enjoyed playing in the Bannerlands as much as I have creating it.

Our campaign group is "The Bannerlands" and we have a page here on the Wizard's Community.  We have WIKI information which details the world, and the Blog contains narratives of most of our game sessions.  If you're interested in how one DM, and one group, embraced the PoL aesthetic and made the "Nentir Vale", and Nerath, our own, check it out...

Apropos of my blog post before, some new games I can't wait to get my hands on are Eclipse Phase (Catalyst Games) and Rogue Trader (FFG, and a spiritual descendant of Dark Heresy).  As I discussed before, my fear with these games is that they are simply going to be too dense - they are going to be too difficult or too involved in the long run for the "casual gamer" to want to pick up.  And what's a casual gamer?  The reality is that is most of my gaming group!  And probably, the majority of people in the RPG hobby. 

A "casual gamer" doesn't take the games they play less seriously, it's just that they're not into exploring new games and learning new rules on a regular basis, or as the primary goal of the gaming hobby itself.    In that sense, they play role-playing games, but they're not gamers.  They enjoy playing a game - not continually learning a whole new ruleset for another one.  They're not inclined to argue about the minutia of game rules, complain about changes to canon, or lament excised or changed options they never really took advantage of to begin with  Either due to time constraints or preferences, they're content to play a couple of things that they really like - and play them well.  They like rolling dice, they like laughing over failures, cheering successes, and building a character from the ground up.  And the more quickly you can get to these things, and the easier the methods for doing so are to retain, I think the longer life-span the game has...

I've been role-playing for over 30 years...and I've seen a lot of games in that time.  More than that, I've moved a lot of games in that time - boxes and boxes of game books, boxed sets, etc., as I've traveled throughout the United States and the world.  I love to collect games, read 'em, and play as many of them as I can - and at each place that I've lived, I've always tried to start a game group and expose others to the games that I've come to love, and to ones I've just discovered. 

However, although I've played every genre and every style, the number of games I've actually kept returning to over and over again - at every new place I've lived or new group I've put together - are very few.  Some times its the conceit of the game itself (the genre sells itself over and over again) that gives it such a long shelf life, or the simplicity of the game's mechanics (because one of the things I've learned is that no matter how a cool a game is, in order for it to have "legs" it has to be teachable and relatively easy to "pick up" - because usually one person has the rules initially and everyone else has to read along).  But as much as I enjoy trying out games, not everyone has the fortitude for learning new rulesets or wrapping their head around new concepts.  Thus, when I want to expose my gaming group to a brand new game that I just have to try, I pre-make characters, create rules cheatsheets for everyone, and do as much as the "heavy lifting" as I can...until the game grabs enough of the group's interest for them to equally "invest" in it, or until it doesn't - at which time I stow it away (with all the other games I'm going to have to move again some day!) and we continue with our main campaign(s), which generally is in one of the games listed below...

...the Ones that always seem to find an audience...

• Dungeons and Dragons - Whatever the version, there is always someone willing to play.  Maybe it's the fantasy tropes, maybe it's the name brand recognition....and maybe, in this latest iteration, it's the rules themselves.  They are as elegant and easy to implement as any version I've played.  I love DMing it, and I actually love being a Player as well (when the opportunity presents itself...).  In another post, I might make the argument that what makes D&D such a great game is the leveling concept, which makes people want to keep coming back to the table week after week...
• Mutants and Masterminds - Again, with the resurgence of comic book characters across all media, this isn't a big surprise.  But as good as Champions is, this is simply an easier game to teach, and I've found people who aren't really interested in comic books end up love playing this game.
• Feng Shui - It's an odd concept, and in many ways, difficult to explain.  But it captures over-the-top Hollywood action almost like no other.  The rules are easy, it has guns and kung fu and monsters, and even people who don't understand love a game where their character can carry a Bag of Guns

Of course, your mileage may vary...