My friend Judd Karlman has been talking both on Twitter and his blog about a new Burning Wheel game he’s started set in the city of Waterdeep, in the Forgotten Realms (FR), arguably the most detailed campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. This, of course, has gotten me thinking about FR as well, and has brought a flood of nostalgia washing upon me, causing me to write this post where I can wax poetic about my love for this world.
Let us travel back to the last years of the Rubik’s-Cube-and-leg-warmers era and to the little island of Puerto Rico. In 1986 I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons, or more precisely to Basic D&D. To say that I fell head-over-heels for this game of the imagination would be an understatement. We played the game as much as we could, as much as 8th-graders can manage, as much as was humanly possible at our age. And given we were playing Basic D&D, all our adventures were in the Known World (later to be known as Mystara): we played through B1-9: In Search of Adventure straight through, once, twice, more. The Known World as our world far more than the real world was. But this isn’t a post about the Known World (though I certainly think one will eventually have to be written as well).
A couple years later, we finally got our hands on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) books. Getting RPG books in Puerto Rico during this time was about as difficult and exiting as Indiana Jones finding the lost ark (sans snooty French nemesis), so these were great treasures and the literal keys to even more adventures than before. Problem was, AD&D didn’t come with a built-in setting. There were a couple to choose from: my friend Braulio wandered down the road to Greyhawk, and me, I took the road leading to a brand new land just recently discovered, a placed called the Forgotten Realms.
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I knew this was coming, though I wasn’t sure when. Well, it dropped today.
Todd Crapper of Emerald Press has dedicated their newest product, The Key of the Fey, a D&D 4th Edition adventure, to the memory of my mom.
You can see the dedication on the preview available at the product page, which I have expanded here (click to enlarge):
So what’s the story?
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On Friday I got my box from Buy.com containing the D&D 4th Edition Core Books Set and I’ve bee reading through the Player’s Handbook over the weekend. Some of my preconceptions have been corrected, but I still reserve judgement for when I’ve read them all.
I have to say I really hate that lackluster (really, the completely unexistent) marketing campaign that went into 4e. I really wanted to like this game, honestly; I like D&D, and I wanted to be excited about the new edition and whatever improvements it brought. But Wizards didn’t sell me on it, and the bits and pieces being released over blog posts, forum posts, news and cryptic articles were just not enough, and in fact damaged the whole game in my mind.
What I’m seeing so far is a very tight game focused on tactical combat (yes, I know there are other parts to it, but at page 101, all I’m seeing are tons of combat powers). It even looks kind of exciting at parts. We’ll see once I get to skills and feats how the general focus fares.
Will this game be D&D for me? At this point, no, I don’t think so, but it can still be a cool game. I actually hope it is, for what I paid for it.
I can tell you that I have already seen a few things that I will definitely change/expand:
- Dragonborn will not be mammals. This was a stupid concesion, in my opinion. In my book and world, dragonborn are warm-blooded, egg laying reptiles. The females will be differentiated by a having a more lithe build than the males, and they will certainly not have breasts.
- Halflings receive a +2 History racial skill bonus. By default they get +2 Acrobatics and +2 Thievery, which matches the (1e-3e) pre-conceived notion of halflings as sneaky bastards, but then the background goes into how halflings are nomads and collect stories and how they are so awesome at being able to know bits of lore and legend about pretty much anything they encounter. So where’s the mechanical reinforcement for that? Shoddy design work. In my book and world, they get the skill bonus to History over Thievery.
- Warlocks will get more pact choices. I like the Fey, Infernal and Star pacts in the book, but I want more out of the box. I’m going to check if there are some fan-designed pacts I can add to my notes, and if not, I’ll design a couple more.
I already have an idea for a character, but I’ll post it once it’s done.
I’m super busy getting ready for my trip to Seattle, so I won’t be doing a long post about this. Short version: the GSL sucks and I don’t see Highmoon Media using it to produce D&D 4e-compatible products in the near future. The license is horribly restricting in what I can and cannot do, reference, or develop, but the dealbrakers are the clauses dealing with OGL conversions (6.1, 6.2), with beyond-termination limitation of my GSL-released products (6.1), and the draconian sections dealing with litigation and damages (10), especially the one where you waive your right to a jury trial for any legal proceeding dealing with the GSL (19).
There’s more stuff that annoys me about it (like the fact that the license seems to put a clamp on anything I develop for 4e/GSL to be used solely for that or not at all), but it will have to wait for me to break that down further.
Honestly, I feel they should just have closed the whole game. I know some folks with use this GSL to release products, but in general, it feels like a forced participation in the idea of Open Gaming, and only in the most bitter of ways.
Wizards of the Coast continues to become a company that I more and more do not want to support with my dollars.
I miss very much the Wizards of the Coast of the Peter Adkinson years, but that’s a different post.
Last week was one of those where I literally only got to sit at my computer for like 10 minutes, period. I had my mom and two nephews visiting here all week, which was great, but severely affected my comp time, in addition to the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which meant two days of no electronics at all. So this all amounts to a crapload of backed-up emails, including a series of them from Amazon.com, telling me that the credit card I had given for my D&D 4e Gift Box pre-order was expired (Doh!) and that if I didn’t give a new one, my order would be cancelled. It was. So not only did I not get the box set on release day as is normal for Amazon.com pre-orders (due to stock issues), the great price I had locked in via the pre-order has also gone away, and while the regular price they offer is still a good one compared to regular retail, it bothers me having to give them that extra money. So I’ll be going with Buy.com, which has it at just two more dollars than I had thought I would pay at Amazon.com. I do have to wait for the restock from Wizards, so for now no 4e for me. Which is just fine, as I’ll be traveling this Friday so my thoughts are all about Seattle, not 4e.
Paizo Publishing announced today the release of their new Pathfinder RPG, based on the d20 3.5 SRD. They have just released the Alpha Playtest PSD for free, and intend to release a free PDF/$24.95 print Beta Playtest in August 2008, with a final hardcover product for Gen Con 2009.
Let it be known that this day is the day whence the road of D&D officially split in twain.
With this announcement, Paizo has flicked a giant finger at WotC (“Basing the Pathfinder RPG on 3.5 also allows Paizo more control over our destiny than simply following along with the latest edition and the newest licensing changes.” -Erik Mona) and provided the rallying point for all the 3,5 fans out there who are simply not interested in D&D 4th Edition.
I just downloaded the file and will look through it. I obviously want to know about 3rd party support, but I’m sure it will come up soon enough without me having to ask.
All in all, excellent news, and a fitting continuation to the “interesting” way 2008 has been developing so far.
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