RinCon is coming.

RinCon 10 will be held October 8 through the 10th at the Tucson Convention Center.  Just a few short weeks away.  I had a great time last year.  I wrote about my experiences on this blog. My highlight was playing in Wil Wheaton’s Dungeon Delve of Doom.  Wil put a link on his blog to the write up I did on this blog.   Exciting stuff.

I am plan to run a beginner’s D&D session using the new Red Box on Saturday at 2pm. I want to run a game that is very new player friendly.  Take people through the basics of the game.  I might even try to do a limited character creation session if I can figure it out.

I hope to try out games I’ve never played.  I’d like to try Mutants and Masterminds or the new DC Adventures RPG based on M&M.  I’d like to play some board games.  Castle Ravenloft looks fun.  I’m already signed up for a game of Battlestar Galactica at 10pm (which is late for a father of two like me) since I here good things about that game. I wouldn’t mind trying a miniatures game since I’ve never really played one. Wings of War looks cool.

I’m also planning on volunteering at the con.  I want to give back a little.  Also, I think it will be a great way to meet people.  You get RinCoins for volunteering which can be redeemed for games or used as credits with the vendors there.  I’m always up for some swag.

So, come on down to the Tucson Convention Center 10/8 through 10/10.  The con is bigger this year.  Wil Wheaton will be in attendance again as well some great game designers and writers.  There will loads of games to play.  And if you’ve never played anything before, this is a great place to start.

September 24, 2010 | Level 1 Gamer | 1 Comment »

The New Dungeons and Dragons Red Box

The new Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Starter Set (or Red Box) was released this month.  It is designed as the main entry point into D&D, a sort of on-ramp for beginners and lapsed gamers.  It is also the first release in the new D&D Essentials line which is a new direction for D&D that includes simpler class builds and lower priced books.  While D&D Essentials is not a new edition (although there has been much debate about this), it is a shakeup of the status quo.  The D&D Essentials line probably deserves a post of its own at some point.  The Red Box goes directly for the nostalgia factor by using the same cover as the Basic D&D Red Box that came out in 1983 and brought many people into the hobby.

The new Red Box has a low price point of $20 ($13 on Amazon).  You get a lot for the price.  The box contains a player’s book which includes a solo adventure that contains character creation (more on that later) and a dungeon master’s book with the rules, an adventure, and some monsters.  There is a nice set of thick card stock character and monster tokens, a large double-sided poster map, and a set of dice.  Finally, there are several sheets of somewhat flimsy power cards that describe the PC powers.

First, I’ll talk about what it does well.  The new Red Box does a fantastically good job at what it is designed to do: get new people into the hobby.  This is mainly due to the player’s book included in the box.  It contains a “choose your own adventure” style solo adventure.  The original, old-school red box had something similar.  But in the new Red Box, it’s not just a solo adventure.  It’s character creation, too.  This is brilliantly executed.  Speaking as a relatively new gamer, this tackles two of the biggest hurdles to getting into pen and paper RPGs: 1) Just getting your head around the concept  2) Character creation.  Before I got into gaming, I had a hard time even understanding how RPGs work.  ACs, attack rolls, damage rolls, just the general flow of the game.  All foreign concepts and difficult to understand if you’ve never played.  The solo adventure really helps introduce these concepts.  Character creation is very intimidating to new players.  When you don’t understand the basics of the game, it’s hard to create a character because you are required to make decisions on concepts you don’t understand.  The solo adventure walks you through these concepts and at the end you have created a character and have a basic understanding of the game.   I feel confident I could hand the solo adventure to someone who has never played an RPG before and they would be off and running without any help.  In fact, you could give a group of complete newbies the Red Box and, in an hour or two, they’d be running an adventure.  That’s huge.  I don’t there has been a product on the market that you could say that for since the original Red Box.  It cannot be understated how important it is for the hobby to have a product like this on the market.

The Red Box and the Essentials line in general is a departure from the original 4th Edition class design philosophy.   When 4E first came out all the classes had roughly the same distribution of powers.  All classes had At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers.  The idea was for each class to have the roughly the same level of tactical options and combat complexity.  While I think they accomplished this, it added a extra layer of complexity to all the classes which makes it more difficult for new players.  Essentials shakes up that philosophy.  The new Fighters no longer have at-will or daily powers, both of which were a little problematic anyway.  Rogues don’t have daily powers any more either and have more movement powers.  The result is that the class designs are easier to run and make a little more sense in general.  I think these new class designs might also have the benefit speeding up encounters.  It is important to note that the new Essentials fighter does not take the place of the original 4E fighter (or any of the other classes).  It is in addition to it.  So, you can have an original 4E fighter fighting alongside the new Essentials fighter in the same game with no problems.  It’s all still 4th edition.

That said there are a few things that the Red Box fails on.  The main thing is that while it is a great starter set, it is only a starter set and nothing more.  It is not a full game. It only covers levels 1 and 2.  Character creation only exists in the solo adventure.  Which can be annoying if you want to create multiple characters or if you have multiple people building characters all at once it would be hard if you only have one Red Box.  A quick summary of character creation would have been nice.  There is no equipment list for some reason.  It doesn’t have a lot of fluff describing races or the world.  Powers are only described on the power cards.  So, if you lose a card, you’re out of luck.  The Red Box is only useful if you are brand new to the hobby (or a long lapsed player).  Anyone else would be better served by the other Essentials products coming out.  The Red Box is very much geared to getting you started, then steering you on to other products rather quickly.

I think Wizards of the Coast is heading in the right direction with the Red Box and Essentials.  They should be focusing on new and lapsed players.  The old school folks are well served by the retro-clones and the OSR.  The 3.x edition folks have Pathfinder.  4th edition is a great system for new players with it’s consistent clearly spelled out rules and PC abilities and it’s very easy to DM.  I’m glad to see that WOTC is playing to that strength.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the new Red Box.  It accomplishes what it set out to do.  It is probably the best and most accessible starter set to come out since the original Red Box.  There really should have been a product like this for every edition of D&D.  4th edition should have had something like this from the start.  I like it so much that I plan on running a beginner’s D&D session using the Red Box at Rincon in a few weeks.  I also plan to lean on the solo adventure for character creation whenever I get a game going for my family. It’s a great product and I recommend it if you are looking to get into the hobby.

September 23, 2010 | Level 1 Gamer | 2 Comments »

Pathfinder

I went to the most recent Tucson RPG Guild gathering this weekend. It was much better attended than the last one I went to in June when I ran my first public game. There were over twenty people there with four games going. Thankfully, the venue had fixed their cooling problem, so it wasn’t hot and uncomfortable like the one in June. I also managed to score the latest Dragon Magazine Annual in the prize give away which was a fun bonus. I was hoping to play in a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen game using the Savage Worlds game system. Unfortunately, the guy who planned to run couldn’t make it due issues outside of his control. I ended up jumping into a game of Pathfinder.

Pathfinder is a fantasy RPG put out by Paizo. Paizo took Dungeons & Dragons Edition 3.5, cleaned up some of the rules that bugged people, and created Pathfinder. Basically, people who love 3.5 and don’t like 4th edition can move to Pathfinder for new content. I think adventures written for 3.5 are easily portable to Pathfinder as well. For all intents and purposes it can be considered D&D 3.75. I had fun during the game session. The DM did a great job, the other players were good, and the story was interesting with a nice twist at the end. But, I didn’t care much for Pathfinder itself. The first game of D&D I ever played (and subsequently the first campaign I played in) used D&D 3.5. That was only a little over a year ago. While, obviously, I fell in love with the hobby, I wasn’t particularly crazy about D&D 3.5. Pathfinder really hasn’t change anything about 3.5 that would improve upon my initial impression.

I have several problems with Pathfinder (and 3.5 in general). First of all, it’s a very rules heavy game. Combat rules are complicated without adding any tactical depth. While Pathfinder has apparently cleaned up some problems from 3.5 like grappling and combat maneuver rules, they still seem too complex. Also, the game seems to expect you to have a near encyclopedic knowledge of spells, potions, and items. I played an Alchemist which was a fun class in concept, but I spent a lot of time looking up the effects of potions and mutagens. I wasn’t the only one looking up things for their character either. When you do look up something, you are presented with a wall of text that you have to wade through in order to figure out how it works. I feel like 4th edition (which is rules heavy, too) does a better job of managing the complexity with concise, standardized stat blocks for items, spells, and abilities. Also, a lot of the rules heavy lifting for PCs is taken care of by the character builder. The 4th edition game I recently ran involved mostly people new to 4th edition and I don’t anyone needed to crack a book. With Pathfinder, several people needed to spend time looking things up. It just seems like you need to keep track of a lot more minutiae in Pathfinder and 3.5 and I don’t care for that.

Also, the combat wasn’t any more tactically compelling than combat in my regular Swords & Wizardry game (an Original D&D clone and very rules light game) but ran longer because of the more complex rules. So, Pathfinder combat ends up being the worst of both worlds for me. It can be long and tedious without the tactical complexity of 4th and without the drama, danger, and speed of S&W combat.

Oh, yeah. One thing that really drives me nuts is critical hits. In Pathfinder and 3.5 when you roll a 20, you have to roll again to “confirm” the critical hit. It really dulls the excitement of rolling a 20 for me if I have to roll again to “confirm” it and just seems complex for the sake of complexity. Drives me bonkers.

While I’ve been knocking Pathfinder for the past few paragraphs, like I said, I still had fun playing. With the right group of people and DM, I’d play Pathfinder again but it wouldn’t be my first (or second) choice for game system. I also really enjoyed my PC. Alchemist is a fun class to play and the concept is fun. I may see if I can find an alchemist class for Swords & Wizardry or make one of my own for fun.

I’m glad I made it out to the Meetup and hope to make it out again soon.

August 9, 2010 | Level 1 Gamer | 6 Comments »

My First Public Game

A few weeks ago I ran my first public game at the monthly Tucson RPG Guild Gathering.  It was only my second time as DM. I ran a modified version of the module Rescue at Rivenroar.  This is a free adventure for D&D 4th edition put out by Wizards of the Coast and is the first adventure in the Scales of War adventure path.

The gathering was more sparsely attended than ones I’ve attended previously.  I’m not sure why that is.  It might be due to the success of the weekly 4th edition Living Forgotten Realms nights.  Or it was summer.  Or who knows? But, there were enough people there to have  a full five players in my game and enough players for another game running.  Only one of the players had ever played 4th edition before.  The rest were RPG players with experience in the various other versions of D&D.  This didn’t present too much of a problem since 4th edition is pretty easy to pick up.  A couple of guys from my gaming group came out to play including my DM which was fun.

First of all, I’ll talk about what I think went well.  I think I did a good job of keeping combat moving and flowing.  One of the biggest problems with 4th edition in my (and many others) opinion is that combat can get really bogged down.  I enjoy tactical, crunchy combat.  I detest long, tedious combat.  In my experience 4th edition can easily swing from one to the other especially in the hands of a poor DM and/or indecisive players.  I think I succeeded in keeping the rounds quick and moving along.  I used the initiative tracking method of writing all the PC names on slips of paper and hanging them on the DM screen.  This worked well for me and helped keep things moving.  I also tried to encourage creative thinking and players trying crazy things in combat.  I gave bonuses for stunts and crazy ideas (after the appropriate skill check of course).  I also played somewhat loose with the rules.  For me, fun trumps rules.  And with people new to 4th edition who are getting used to the new style of combat, I wanted to allow for some leeway on things.

Some things didn’t go quite as well.  The session was very combat heavy and there wasn’t a lot of role playing.  Partially this is due to being a public game with pre-generated characters.  But, I think I could have done more to encourage RP and my RP skills aren’t exactly strong.  RP one of things I struggle with at times in RPGs. Also, tThe session was very railroady.  Again, it was a public game with a limited amount of time and I was running a module.  My ability to encourage players to forge their own paths was very limited.  It was also hotter than hell in the room where we played.  Of course, I had no control over that, but it did make things a little uncomfortable.

One thing I was surprised about was how difficult the first two encounters were for the PCs.  I ran the first two encounters as written in the module.  Rescue at Rivenroar starts with an encounter in a bar and then an encounter in the street with a fire wielding ogre.  These encounters are what drew me to the module in the first place because of interesting elements such as fire and they take place in interesting environments.  In the first encounter, the cleric was dropped a couple of times.  This was due to a unlucky placement of the cleric and some really bad rolls by the players and good rolls by me.  Also, everybody was getting still settled in to their character and 4th edition combat in general.  In the second encounter with the ogre a pc was actually killed.  Like, killed killed.  That really surprised me.  He was taken down by a massive hit from the ogre.  To keep things moving, I let that player jump back into the game as the PCs twin brother.

I ran the module pretty much as written (except for taking out the skill challenges which didn’t add anything) until the players got to the dungeon.  The dungeon in the module is massive, rather grindy, and many of the rooms are really uninteresting.  It would take multiple sessions to crawl through this dungeon, so I cherry picked and modified two encounters.  I took one encounter and changed the layout a little.  I used some 3D dungeon tiles from the Harrowing Halls to give the encounter some elevation.  The last encounter was with Sinruth, the modules “Big Bad”.  I completely changed the layout of this encounter.  I lowered Sinruth’s AC a little because the players weren’t at level 2.  I think the module assumes that the players are at level 2 when they get to this encounter.  I also gave Sinruth a new power, an invocation to the god Tiamat that shook the room and created pits.  It made things a little more interesting.  These encounters went much more smoothly and the PCs had less trouble with these.

I had help modifying Sinruth and the module from the folks at RPG.net.  Thanks to all the feedback in this thread.

Overall, I think things went well and I hope the players had fun.

June 30, 2010 | Level 1 Gamer | 1 Comment »

Tales of Swords & Wizardry: Groovy

It has been too long since I’ve written a Tales of Swords & Wizardry about my regular game. Swords & Wizardry is “retro-clone” of the original edition of D&D.  It’s the only long term RPG campaign I’m currently playing in.  We play every other week and have been going strong since October of last year.  Unfortunately I had to miss two sessions recently, but got to play last week.  We have another session tonight due to the holiday.

I have a really great time playing.   Our group has really seemed to hit a groove.  Everyone has gotten more comfortable with role playing.  A good chunk of the last session was pure role playing and was a blast. Even when my character was not active in the scene, it was hilarious to sit back and watch the others.  Our DM did a great job of having our group confront some our past sins which led to some great story and role play moments.  Really a good time.  For a full write up of our past sessions, check out Paul’s (our DM) website, The Warlock’s Home Brew.  He also has created some great S&W gaming aides and even his own adventure modules, so check out his site.

The last post I wrote on this subject involved the death of my PC, the cleric Arvin Ardmore.  Since then, I’ve rolled up a new character, the Druid Gnarly Blunderbrush.  It’s been fun playing a different character and class who has a different role in the party.  Unfortunately, it’s left our group without a cleric, which due to our group’s penchant for getting, has been a little bit of a problem.  In a couple of levels, Gnarly can cast a healing spell, so that will help a little.

The number of players at the table has grown from five when we started to seven players.  I have played several games of 4th Edition D&D and seven players in that system is really too much due to the nature of combat. Combat just grinds to a halt with that many.  With S&W, it’s not really a problem, since it’s such a rules-lite system and combat is quick and furious.  Seven players has certainly added to the chaos, but it in a good way.  I can tell Paul has to work a little harder bring some order to the table and he does it well.  Seven players has resulted in raucous, slightly chaotic game sessions where we still manage to move the story forward significantly and have an absolute blast while playing.

I honestly think part of it is the game system.  We wouldn’t be having the same experience if were playing 4th ed or 3.x ed.  S&W has allowed us to have a very wild and woolly campaign that doesn’t get bogged down in the rules or combat.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I love 4th edition, but it provides a very different experience from S&W and old school D&D.

Can’t wait to dive back into the fray with our bumbling, debaucherous, slightly crazy adventuring group.

debaucherous
May 24, 2010 | Level 1 Gamer | 2 Comments »

Back in Action

My life has been pretty crazy the past couple of months.  Between a graduation, a week-long trip, a wedding,   and a heavy workload, not mention a wife and kids I haven’t had much free time.  I had to miss a couple sessions of my bi-weekly Swords & Wizardry game.  I’ve had no time to write for this blog.

Well, now, my schedule is opening up.  I’m looking forward to getting to game more.  And I’m looking forward to getting back into writing for the blog.  Hopefully, this kicks off what will be a more regular posting schedule for Level 1 Gamer.

Here is some random gaming stuff I have on my radar.  I’ll be writing more about some or all of this very soon:

  • My first public game as a DM will be at the Tucson RPG Guild Gathering in June.  I’m going to run the 4th edition module Rescue at Rivenroar (modified for a single session).
  • I’ve picked up a few sets of Pirates of the Spanish Main, a fun little collectible tabletop game.  The models are fun and I hope to play it soon.
  • I had some money from a recent Ebay auction and picked up some classic D&D books.  I got a 1E Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Moldvay/Cook and Mentzer Basic/Expert box sets, and the old modules Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread.  Expect my impressions soon.
  • I’ll be presenting at the next Gamemasters’ Conference in July.  I’ll be doing a presentation on running a game for new players from the perspective of a new player.
  • Had a blast at my regular S&W game last night.  It was great to be back after a break.  Great role playing and the usual shenanigans.
  • I plan on going to the Tucson LFR Night again next week.  I may even end up running game if necessary.

I’m really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.

May 18, 2010 | Level 1 Gamer | 1 Comment »
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