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Posted by:
wrecan
on Jun 13, 2012 at 12:51:21 PM
Alphastream1 stole a bit of my thunder by choosing to discuss the same issue I was planning to discuss. Fortunately, I think my article builds on the excellent work he did in his excellent article, The Threat of D&D Next Monster Design.  Mike Mearls' most recent Legends & Lore article, Monster Design in D&D Next, discussed the current state of monster design. In doing so, he presented what can only be described as a very rough version of a monster stat block, that resembles something akin to AD&D or 3e. I don't think the designers have put a lot of thought into the stat block presentation. That's probably going to be the job of editors and graphic designers who deal with presentation issues, rather than the developers who concentrate on mechanics. I've previously...
Posted by:
wrecan
on May 16, 2012 at 09:41:13 AM
Recently, I created a poll to ask people what player-based skills the game should reward. This got me thinking about DM skills. Now, I don't think we can ask what DM skills the game should reward, because truly, most people want their DMs to be a master of everything. Rather, I think the more appropriate question is as follows:
What is the minimum competency a DM should possess to be considered a good DM?
I've broken the DM skills into seven "professions" and created a poll for each that asks you to vote for the minimum level of competency you believe a DM should have in that profession.
The polls will last for one month. Please feel free to leave a comment below, join in on the associated discussion thread, or review my analysis of the poll results here.
 ACTOR
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Posted by:
wrecan
on May 11, 2012 at 08:54:04 AM
 A month ago, I created a poll where I asked people to rate how much time adventurers might spend doing somethign productive that was not adventuring. Although this poll only got about a third the responses as my Player Abilities poll, I still think it is worthwhile to analyze the results. Feel free to leave a comment, or contribute to the associated discussion thread. It's important to note that the results were fairly spread out. "Might Dabble in Other Activites" was the most popular, but only received 36% of the votes. Five of the seven categories received 10% or more of the votes. Only "Dabbles as an Adventurer" and "Adventures Reluctantly and Rarely" failed to get 10% of the vote. Another way to look at it is that two-thirds of respondents see adventuring...
Posted by:
wrecan
on May 3, 2012 at 09:17:22 AM
A month ago, I posed a poll to the forums concerning what out-of-game player abilities a game should reward. You can see the results of the poll here and you can j oin the forum discussion about the poll and the results here. This article will discuss my analysis of the results of the poll. Essentially, I broke player skills into seven categories: character optimization, preparation, knowing the DM, knowing the players, puzzle-solving, strategic gaming, lorekeeping, and aggressive roleplay. I then asked people to rank each category's desirability from "Should be punished" to "Should be mandatory". In between those extremes were "discouraged", "no effect", "minimal effect", "some effect", "pronounced effect", and "reward mastery". Not surprisingly, the median of almost...
Posted by:
wrecan
on Apr 26, 2012 at 09:43:10 AM
The recent talk about the cleric and the paladin ( here, here, and here) has often touched upon a separate issue: multiclassing, specifically, multiclassing between spellcasting and weapon-using classes (a concept colloquially called the "gish"). I have previously discussed this issue in my article A New Division of Gish. However, now, I see that there are in fact two types of "gish": the "armed caster" and the "weaponcaster".  THE ARMED CASTERThe armed caster is simply a traditional spellcaster who is also trained with armor and weapons. The armor and weapons are nothing remarkable. They can be enchanted like any non-spellcasting warrior's weapons can be enchanted. The caster's magic does not directly assist in the martial prowess. Rather, this concept ...
Posted by:
wrecan
on Apr 11, 2012 at 09:06:08 AM
 Adventurers are not like soldiers. Some adventure for glory and profit. Some adventure for altruism and to save the world. Some adventure for power. However, when separates them from other people in the world is that adventuring is a trait that in some ways defines who they are and what they do. Very few people in the real world would have qualified as "adventurers" for any significant period of their lives. There were no real "adventurers' clubs" such as seen in Around the World in 80 Days. Even career soldiers spend little time in the field and certainly much less than your typical adventurer. In the real world, mercenary soldiers of fortune, perhaps, would qualify. Possibly, some special operations forces. Historically, perhaps the...
Posted by:
wrecan
on Apr 3, 2012 at 12:09:38 PM
In a few threads, it has been asked what player abilities should be encouraged, discouraged, or rewarded by the next iteration of D&D. This is a crucial question for the designers, as it sets up what players and DMs they hope to attract to the game. I have identified eight different categories of player abilities, and have created the following poll to identify what people would like to see in their games. Note I am not asking what you want to see in the next iteration of D&D. Let's assume that the designers are going to make the game as modular as possible and open it up to as many game styles as they can. What I want to know is what you prefer when you sit down to play D&D. Feel free to leave a comment below, or participate in the related discussion thread...
Posted by:
wrecan
on Mar 23, 2012 at 09:51:41 AM
 On February 2, Evil_Reverend, the screen name for Robert Schwalb, one of the developers for the next iteration of D&D, wrote a blog on the D&D Next Group called " Weapon Damage Types", where it was suggested that the game would bring back the three weapon damage types: bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, such that some creature might be resistant or vulnerable to one or more types of weapons. At the time of this article, more than half of the people who responded to the poll at the end of that article thought this was a good idea. So I have a feeling that weapon type damage will see a return. Last September, I wrote an article called " A New Division of Weapons", in which I describe some of the issues I've had with similar weapon categorizations. Specifically, I gave the...
Posted by:
wrecan
on Jan 20, 2012 at 11:30:43 AM
 In a recent interview with Matt Miller of gameinformer, Mike Mearls made the following intriguing (to me) statement about D&D Next: DMs have ... optional rules to flesh out their campaigns. Those options can range from creating a unique list of races or classes for a setting, to adding in special rules for things like managing a kingdom or waging a war.I very much like what I am hearing about the Dungeon Mastering side of the game. It appears that what was, to me, 4e's greatest strength -- the ease with which DMs can customize their campaigns and generate NPCs and adventures -- will be continued into the next "iteration". Of course, key to the success of the DM side of the Next equation is what modules can be added onto the game. What areas should DMs be able to opt into (and ...
Posted by:
wrecan
on Sep 17, 2009 at 09:40:06 AM
In a recent thread in the 4e General Discussion forum, it was asked what we'd like to see in a hypothetical Fifth Edition, which got me thinking about what I thought most needed tweaking in 4th edition.
Don't get me wrong. I love 4th edition. But I'm a tinkerer at heart, so I can't leave well enough alone. For me, the one element of 4th edition that they could have done a little better is rituals. To me, rituals seemed to be one of those things that was either rushed, or not given sfficient thought.
Specifically, the decision to make ritual casting dependent on the expenditure of gold seems, to me, inappropriate for many rituals. As it stands gold translates to one thing -- combat effectiveness. Players are expected to have certain wealth levels ...
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