More Prattle from Me

In case you’re wondering, my previous blog entry was written the week prior to the arrival of my twins, with some modifications thrown in when I snuck in a minute or three (a very rare occurrence any more).

Now that my babies are here and healthy, sleep is a valuable commodity that the wife and I try to get. We’re not very good at it, but we’re getting better.

Having two newborns is hard work. And it’s not like the work itself is hard, it’s the never-ending schedule that kicks your ass. Next time I hear some new parent whine about how their newborn is killing them I think I’m legally allowed to smack them stupid(er). Until they’ve been double-teamed by two screaming babies at midnight, 3am, and 5am, they have no idea what tired is.

We even have friends and family helping us out a lot, and we’re still constantly exhausted. I can run on four hours of sleep for a day, but not several consecutive days like that. Once I returned to work, well forget it.

But all that aside, I’ve seen nothing new on the 4E front that’s been all that interesting. Though I’ve spent a fraction of the time I used to spend checking things out.

Dale and I are in agreement that the idea of playing 3E feels a bit hollow since the 4E announcement was made. It’s a “what’s the point?” feeling of starting a campaign that you know you’re going to abandon.

I still don’t like the general “feeling” I’m getting from all of the little updates on 4E. Yeah, they’re mostly fluff updates that I can ignore, but it’s the changes overall that aren’t giving me that good old “warm and fuzzy feeling” that I think I should be getting.

Oh and get this load of bull – while the Forgotten Realms is being knocked around with this new edition with a lot of people very ticked off and just as many happy with it, Eberron won’t be touched. Instead of advancing the timeline up to 100 years like FR, Eberron might be only advanced a year. And guess why – because Eberron players complained. So even though a lot of FR people aren’t happy and are just as vocal about it, their complaints were not heard.

You can look at it a lot of different ways, but my view is that the “newer and younger” crowd of players likes Eberron and the grognards like FR and they think that their future money is riding on the Eberron train.

Of course I’m sure it helps quite a lot to have one the lead designers to also be the creator of Eberron. Suffice to say I am not a fan of that Baker fellow.

I’m not the only long-time player (a.k.a. grognard) who is getting less thrilled with 4E as we hear more and more. I talked to a friend the other day who had the privilege of talking to a WotC VP at a convention a few weeks ago for 45 minutes. And he tore into the VP basically telling him that WotC was forgetting its core following with the direction the company is going. The VP reacted as if he had never heard it before. So either I am member of a small group of people who are totally oblivious to everyone else’s wants out of 4E, or WotC is utterly blind to the wants and wishes of everyone who started playing prior to 1990.

Ok, rant over; let me get a little back on track. I don’t want to turn into one of those anti-WotC hate-spewing critics, but at the moment I feel it’s justified.

When we start back up, we won’t be continuing with Brian’s Cormyr campaign. The module itself sucked (no surprise there – way to keep that crap-module trend going WotC) and Brian was just canceling too often. So we just moved our characters to a campaign of Justin’s design.

Justin is running a cityscape campaign with political intrigue and families at war where we were “drafted” to be part of. It’s really not my thing, but that’s just me.

Personally I’m more of a dungeon gamer myself, with cityscape intrigues used as a tool to move the game along to the next module (something my Valley campaign did a lot of) rather than being the module.

Now given my baby situation, I’m betting I won’t be gaming again until first Friday in January. They will be almost 16 weeks old, which is around the time where babies can sleep more than a few hours at a stretch.

The group will resume gaming without me sometime in mid-November, whenever Dale’s Friday schedule opens up again.

So until then my only interaction on the blog will be the occasional 4E update + opinion or more of my “what am I going to do in my next campaign” entries.

Speaking of that, I had actually begun planning two campaigns (Rappan Athuk Reloaded and the Valley), but that was prior to the 4E announcement. Now I’ve got to adapt my plans.

First off, I have to accept that I may not get to run at all. If someone else if running a successful campaign, who am I to come along and kick them out of the DM’s chair? This is just preparation for “just in case”.

Next, my Valley campaign is getting scrapped for the time being. I actually used it for my first foray into running a 3E campaign, so it only seems fitting to repeat that history with an advanced timeline to account for some of the game mechanic changes. Plus I can guarantee I won’t be pulling that new Forgotten Realms deity soap opera stunt that I’ve read about.

So that leaves Rappan Athuk. But, as usual, I’m going to spice it up a bit. I’ve put some thought into this and I kind of want us to leave 3E with a bang.

Number one, I’m making it a gestalt game. Yeah it was overpowered when we did that with Dale’s game last year, but it was a lot of fun.

To prevent the party from overpowering the module too easily, I’m cutting XP down a bit. Until level 3 the party gets 100%, then they get 75% until they reach level 6 where it drops to 50%. I may massage these percentages later in case my math is too far off. Of course I could just increase the power of the challenges to keep things on par. If it helps, you can just think of it as the older style multi-classing where each class gets a share of XP.

PC’s can be whatever alignment they want, but with some caveats. First and foremost, playing an evil PC is not an excuse to become a sociopath. Those PC’s quickly become NPC’s. Evil PC’s will have to face the repercussions of their actions if they act a bit too extreme. Second, alignment restrictions on classes like the paladin could cause an issue, so the DM will have to adjudicate – and that will usually be in favor of the PC that’s been with the group longer, or in the case of a tie I’ll default to the good-aligned-side.

I still want the games to go fast in kind of a way that 4E is promising. So here’s my biggest hit – no wizards, clerics, or druids. Druids as a PC class are nothing but a time sink, and wizards and clerics can cause the similar problems. When you’re playing a gestalt game, double that problem. Remember, I played a druid/wizard, and even in spite of my tons of pre-game planning, sometimes I still held the game up. Spellcasting classes with a limited number of spell options helps prevent the never-ending looking up spells X, Y, Z, and Q to see what they do. With gestalt, you really don’t lose that much anyway.

That being said the following classes are allowed: barbarian, favored soul, fighter, knight, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, scout, and sorcerer. Others may be added upon player request and DM approval. But I can guarantee you that warmage and warlock are out.

Hit points I’m putting a big, and positive change to. Everyone gets to roll 1d4 hit points per level then they add a bonus to that roll. So barbarians get 1d4+8 (range of 9-12 vs. 1-12), fighters get 1d4+6 (7-10 vs. 1-10), rangers get 1d4+4 (5-8 vs. 1-8), rogues get 1d4+2 (3-6 vs. 1-6), and sorcerers don’t change one bit. Basically it keeps hit points high in classes that need them and removes the worries of pathetic hit point rolling by mitigating the randomness to a smaller value.

To keep things simple, there will be no multi-classing or prestige-classing. Pick your two classes and stick with them. In a gestalt game, there’s already enough complication and plenty of power so there’s no need to make your PC even more powerful by exploiting the system and/or making the game that much more complex.

And to remove some nearly pointless but occasionally used (and complicating) options, there will be no animal companions, familiars, or the like. PC’s should take an alternate class option that removes the companion/familiar in favor of another ability, less involved ability. Familiars and animal companions only seem to be used at low levels before they are in too much danger of being killed to easily or are otherwise nearly worthless. Personally I prefer the sorcerer option that allows them to use metamagic feats without having to add time to the casting and all they lose is a familiar. Let’s see, the Quicken Spell feat, or a toad that I can cast touch spells through? Ooh, that’s a tough decision.

Stuff from outside the core books may be allowed with DM permission, but the player will have to ask. The DM might require something in exchange from the PC to get it; such as spell research to pick a spell that exists in the Spell Compendium. In other words, try to stick with the core rules, but you’re not stuck with them. The DM just wants to keep things simple and not open up the game to needless complication. And of course the DM might throw in some things from outside the core rules.

Players can also have multiple PC’s, but can only play one at a time unless we need another PC to fill the void.

Also, if you’re not there, your PC isn’t. That means no XP for you and more XP for those who made it. Your PC will poof out of the game if need be, unless a critical plot requires that PC to be around.

Oh yeah, screw group treasure. I want to know who has the stuff the moment it’s found. That allows for plenty of player backstabbing, sneakiness, and DM-screws-the-party opportunities. Maybe the troll sees the cleric with sack of gold as a more enticing meal than the beefy fighter.

This dungeon has a reputation as a meat-grinder. Some deaths will be sudden and utterly unfair. Keep a backup character ready just in case. Yeah, rolling a 1 on a save vs. 40d6 damage sucks, but that’s how this dungeon can be.

Most of my spell changing will not exist this time around.
Wish and Limited Wish work as written. Haste works as written. The DM will even lift his usual backlash against the Augury line of spells. And Miracle will cost the caster 5000xp unless the doctrines of the granting deity are 100% in line with the intended Miracle. No god of destruction will grant a healing spell without the 5000xp cost.

The city that exists near the dungeon will be well fleshed out with plenty of role-playing opportunities and other fun, so as to prevent the boredom that can be caused by long dungeon crawls, or waiting for others to level their PC’s.

Well I hope that’s enough for now.
Hopefully I’ll be back in a couple weeks.
More hopefully WotC will have done something that makes me see them once again in a good light.