Castles & Crusades

One of the things I lurk is blogs of people who are part of the Old School Revival (OSR). I don't play older versions of D&D. I started on 2nd edition AD&D. I have pdf copies of the older stuff and it looks cool and all, but I hate racial classes. They bug me to no end. That's really not my only issue with them, but it's a big one for me. I want to run a session of OD&D at some point.

Because it's cool.

I respect and follow the concept of returning to basics in terms of roleplaying games. New is not always "better" so much as "different." I started on 2nd ed. AD&D but that is a far cry from my favorite version. I honestly would likely enjoy OD&D more. I read through the Moldvay red box rules recently and laughed through the whole thing. It was fantastic to read and likely a ton of fun to play. 

Personally, I like any version of 3e as the "best" version of D&D to date. I like parts of 4e, but as a whole I dislike it as an RPG. Fun game, but not a favored roleplaying game. 

Sorry. 

But even 3e has a ton of things I just hate. I don't like feats. I did at first, but now they bug me terribly. I dislike skill ranks. I dislike the whole challenge rating mechanic in monsters. I prefer set xp for monsters. The rules are grossly over complicated. I think Pathfinder made the classes more interesting and cleaned up a bunch of the class mechanics, but either made the sub-systems more complex or left them alone. (and I really like Pathfinder too btw). 

It's 'constructive' criticism, I still love you. 

Since starting to read blogs and stuff from people who started or follow the OSR I've been exposed to lots of interesting ideas and games. I learned about Savage Worlds. I love Savage Worlds. I don't like everything and it has some really wonky parts (I'm looking at you damage system). It's still a good game though and exceedingly well priced. I also learned about a long list of "retro-clones". 

Retro-clones are essentially versions of SRD (d20) that revises the rules (much like pathfinder did) to make a game much like an older version of D&D. For example, Labyrinth Lord has a real OD&D vibe going on. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a long name for another (weird) one that attempts to emulate B/X (sorta). None of this is new, just new to me. I stumbled upon Castles & Crusades. 

C&C is very familiar to people who play 3e of any kinda. It's just rules like and more of a 2e vibe going on. However, it is more rules-light than normal. It does not rely on feats, does not have racial classes, uses xp per monster, all the little irritating bits of 3e are gone. 

It's not perfect, of course. I don't like much of what they did with monsters. They made them very 2e. I won't get into what that means, but I think they took their goals too far on that part. Most of it is invisible from the player's point of view, but bugs me a little. But, from a game-play and player end of the system. It's really nice. I would like to play it in the future some time. 

5e playtest - How to Play

I read the 31 page "how to play" primer in one sitting within an hour of getting my hands on it. My curiosity was peaked and I was avoiding doing productive things. I want to look at a few things and organize my thoughts on this a bit.

The Basic Rules is just that. Nothing remarkably different from any other version of D20 I've ever seen. Roll a d20, add modifiers, compare to target number. Same-o-same-o. That's not bad.

the only really new thing is the concept of "advantage/disadvantage". At first this seems clunky. However, after some thought it is kinda elegant. It removes the need for a long list of modifiers. It removes a need for combat advantage or attack of opportunity rules. Finally, rolling more than one die is fun.

Ability scores were the exact same they've been since forever. One interesting thing. Saving throws. Gone are "fort/ref/will" (which replaced the more insane AD&D list of saving throw types) and now you have a save for each ability. I like this since it places a real value on every ability score for every character and removes pointless stuff on the character sheet.

The combat section was nice and simple. I was pleased. There are not 4 or 5 types of actions. You can move a certain number of feet and take an action. Simple. You can move any amount you like in your turn at any point around your action. Simple. There are a few specific types of actions, but that's about as complicated as it gets.

I was absolutely dreading the hit point rules. I read some stuff on what they were doing with Hit Dice and it sounded stupid in the articles. However, when put next to all the other rules...it fit well. It made sense. I think the 4e dying rules *might* have been simpler...but I'm not convinced better.

They kept the short/long rest from 4e and that thrills the hell out of me. Best thing in that game. Damn near fixes everything I don't like about hit points.

12 conditions. I can't even begin to tell you how much this makes me happy. Honestly, I can name 2 that are just unnecessary (intoxicated and frightened - seriously, the first is pointless period and easily rolled into others. Frightened should just be a version of stunned). However, compared to the 38 conditions listed in the SRD it's just wonderful. If they actually keep it limited to 12 I will buy it for no other reason.

Equipment is kinda cool. Nothing really new though. They brought back electrum pieces. Pointless as they are, I don't mind them. Flavor and nothing more. I can as easily ignore them as use them.

I love how the AC bonus of armor either benefits from Dex or not depending on how heavy it is. That is so obvious. Why wasn't that in 3.x? Why didn't I think of it? How was this missed? love it.

I like the addition of finesse weapons. Otherwise weapons are not much different than they were in 3e or 4e. More 4e, which is neither good nor bad. Otherwise, gear is more or less the same.

Spells are back to "Vancian" which is the new hot word over on the Wiz-co site. Or so I assume because I never really read stuff on there. I'm neither thrilled or disappointed with spells. I like the rituals option. That's about all I have to say on first pass.

I'll tackle my thoughts on the DM Guide tomorrow when I get a chance to read it.

5e playtest - The characters

To satisfy my curiosity I signed up for and downloaded the play test packet. That was a royal mess today as about half the continent was trying to download it all at the same time. Seriously, Wizards did a great job of not executing that well.

I play on doing a full-bore play test on Sunday. That will really tell me more about the system and I look forward to it.

In the mean time I wanted to go over the packet and kinda put my thoughts into written words. If, for no other reason, so I can look back and see what I wrote when the game come out and when I inevitably find something about it that just irritates me to the point of avoiding the game.

The packet includes: "How to Play", DM guidelines, Bestiary, "Caves of Chaos", and 5 pre-gen characters. For now I am going to talk about the character sheets.

The Pre-gens are a dwarven cleric (of Moradin), a human cleric (of Pelor), a halfing rogue, high elf wizard, and a dwarven fighter. All kinda predictable. That's not bad though, I would prefer somewhat predictable pre-gens. None of the goofy classes and races or weird combinations. Simple and easy concepts (for now).

The Race/Class/Background/Theme set up is initially neat. Reminds me of "kits" from AD&D.

The layout of the characters is kinda neat. First, the whole character fits comfortably on one or two pages. For me, that's a big deal. My Iron Heroes game character have characters sheets in the 4-5 page length. The further I can get from that nonsense, the happier I am.

Ability scores are the corner stone of the character. That is something I like quite a bit.

The game talks about skills and even lists bonuses to skills on the sheets. However, there is no skill list anywhere. For my understanding, the "skills" are just things you do with your ability scores. I like that. It harkens to some simplified skill systems I used for 3.x.

What has me thrilled out of my damn mind is that I don't see the word "feat" anywhere in any document. This thrills me so much I can barely stand it. If this turns out to be a modern, coherent, version of D&D without feats...I will buy it just to own it.

However, the word "features" is all over the character sheet. I am kinda scared that these background and themes and so forth are just a thinly disguised cover for feats. If they are...well I'm okay with it as long as we don't go back to the days of searching through endless feats for anything worth taking.

Addendum: Yeah. There are feats. I found them under the "Themes" description and the level 3 stuff. I think the Theme is a feat delivery system. If it simplifies the game, swell, if not then it's just another D&D with feats. I really wish Wizco would let that aspect of the game go.

So. Many. Dragons.

I did some math and such over the last few days.

Using the basic 15 dragons (metallics, chromatics, and gems), plus the 5 templates that can actually apply to those dragons (celestials, half-celestial, fiendish, half-fiend, and - believe it or not - half-dragon) you can have 3,675 different dragons. This ignores the undead templates that can apply to dragons (ghost, skeleton, zombie).

This includes ones that have the same templates but, because of the order, end with a technically different dragon. For example: There is no difference between a Red-dragon/fiendish/Half-amethyst dragon/celestial/half-celestial and a Red-dragon/fiendish/half-amethyst/Half-celestial/celestial. However, there is a difference between a Amethyst/half-celestial/half-topaz/fiendish and a Amethyst/fiendish/half-topaz/half-celestial. The first is an evil dragon, the second is a good outsider.

What's odd about the whole thing is that the most powerful versions of any dragon variety (except gem dragons) will be of opposite alignment than the base version (and an outsider). So your basic gold dragon will be LG, but the Gold/celestial/half-celestial/half-red/fiendish/half-fiend will be evil and have a CR 12 points higher. Gem dragons, normally neutral will have both a good and evil version of this level of power.

If you go with just the monster manual, and remove the gem dragons (which hurts me, I love gem dragons), you cut the number down to 1,140. The huge difference is the gem dragons neutrality which makes them more versatile as far as what templates can be applied to them (specifically the celestial/fiendish and half-celestial/half-fiend templates).

If you add the skeleton and zombie templates, the number climbs to 11,025 because every single one of the 3,675 can take on either of the two templates. Adding the ghost template is more complicated. It can apply to any of the dragons, but none of the outsiders. That means it can apply to only 1,885 of them. This brings the grant total to 12,910. If you are going to include the gem dragons from MM2, you could also include the spellstitched template which would only apply to the zombies or skeletons, doubling their number and bringing the total to 20,260

So there are actually 1,885 "dragons", another 1,790 heavily draconic outsiders, and 16,585 draconic undead.

Keeping in mind, this doesn't account for the 12 different age categories for each dragon, for that, multiple the whole thing by 12. (243,120, almost a quarter million).

Sandbox: Civilization part 1

Having completed the map, I am ready to move on to other aspects of building the sandbox. The next step is adding civilization to the map.

Now, the good news is, I don't have to worry too much about placing population locales. The map I am drawing from has them already. The map has stars on big cities ("capitals") and smaller dots for smaller settlements. Since I know I want this to be a pretty brutal post-apocylpic world where most sane people stay inside the Sanctums, those stars are the Sanctums.

However, I do want a few extra settlements, so the smaller dots will be (heavily) fortified outposts known as Citadels. The differences between a Sanctum and a Citadel is generally size. In D20 terms, a Sanctum is a metropolis (or planar metropolis if the Dragonking is an epic dragon), A Citadel is something between a large town and a large city. For now, the mapped Citadels are Large City sized. These are generally stable enough to warrant mapping.

Civilization is based upon the Sanctum and the Sanctum is built by the dragons. Each Sanctum is named for the dragon clan that built it. The Chromatic clans dominate Nod and (to a a lesser extent) Aesir. They also moved out into the other realms at varying levels.

Since I have quite a bit of the "Big picture" of the Maelstrom world, it is likely time to start focusing on a smaller area of the map. With 165 islands, choosing one to focus on is difficult.