4E from One Year In

4e PHB alternate cover image I had sitting around... from the German version, maybe?

Fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons is a little over a year old now, and I’ve been playing or running it for almost exactly a year today.  On the whole, I’m finding it a pretty robust system.  It’s not my favorite system, or even my favorite D&D (that would be Cyclopedia D&D), but it’s become my favorite version of AD&D.  A few of my favorite parts:

Philosophy

I’ve said before that I’ve been playing the same game since I first picked up basic D&D.  That game is a cinematic game about daring heroic exploits with the fates of villages, nations, worlds hanging in the balance.  Not every campaign has had the same elements, to be sure; many were high fantasy, but some were low fantasy, or even bizarre science fantasy.  Some were set in mythic Asian locations, some in the Bronze Age, one memorable one in the prehistoric during an ice age.  There were flirtations with dark fantasy and steampunk.  But the game remained the same.  With few exceptions, the characters were heroes and did heroic things (or died trying).

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One Year of ABD (Plus a little…)

Somehow, I completely missed this, but June 10 was the one-year anniversary of A Butterfly Dreaming.  So rather than the anniversary post I’d had planned, it looks like I’ve got a notice about going on hiatus for a week.  Ha.

In my defense, I had a couple of other things on my mind at the time, like finding transportation so I wouldn’t miss too much work.

Anyway, in belated celebration, I offer a couple of stats:

• A Butterfly Dreaming has 159 published posts to date (not including this one).
• Among these posts, I’ve written 172,102 words.  Or about two novels’ worth.
• That’s an average of about 1,082 words per post.  Apparently I like to talk a lot.
• Four of my five longest posts are reviews:  Dreaming Cities, Martial Power, Arcane Power, and Imperium Chronicles.  The other one is Battlegrounds: Clock Tower.  That’s not counting my 4e Monk project as a post.
• My shortest posts with original content to speak of — excluding status updates, links, and blurbs — are Fox Magic: Arcane Feats and More on Skill Challenges….
• I have no posts exactly 1,082 (or 1,081) words long.  The closest is Myth Direction, at 1,078 words.
• I have 10 partially-completed posts sitting in draft form, the oldest of which dates to Sept. 9, 2008.
• The tags I use most often are:  4e D&D (101), gamemastering (73), and worldbuilding (43).  The categories I use most often are: Philosophy and Rants (29), Original Game Content (27), and Advice (25).  That’s not including sub-categories with their parents, though.  All of my published posts have a category, but some (mostly status updates and holiday wishes) don’t have tags.

Year Two will be continuing presently.  Thanks for reading!

4e Mystic project

Well, not really.  I’ve decided to rename my take on the Monk class “Mystic Monk” in homage to the Cyclopedia’s Mystic class, in order to differentiate it from Wizards’ in-playtest monk class.  I made a few more changes, including one to an epic destiny feature I hadn’t previously noticed was broken (even for a level 30 ability).  I think it’s more or less in its final form now.  The one major thing I might change is the power source:  currently it’s still using Ki, which is deprecated.  Aside from that, I foresee no more than a few small tweaks as further play catches minor problems I’d previously missed.

There are design decisions I would make differently if I’d known when I started the project what I now know about the game.  I think the process has helped me get a better grasp of the way 4e classes work, though.  If I ever get the urge to write up another class, I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned here.  And I’ll know what I’m getting into — 30 levels of powers is no easy task, I can tell you.

I think, in general, it might be a better idea to expand the system by homebrewing new class builds, rather than new classes entirely.  Sometimes, though, the existing classes just don’t come close to what you want, and that was the case for the monk when I began this project.  In the end, I guess it turned out pretty well.  It’s a straightforward class, but it seems to do what I meant it to, and it seems to be roughly balanced against other classes.

Foxbat for President: Sacred Cows and Hamburger

Sacred cows make the best hamburger, or so the saying goes.  When it comes to RPGs, they tend to provide grist for the mill.

There are sacred cows aplenty in rules systems, of course.  That’s one of the reasons why we have edition wars:  change anything, no matter how inconsequential you think it might be, or how much better you think the new version is, and there’s sure to be someone loudly decrying the change and lamenting that the new version just isn’t the same game any more.  No more assassins or cavaliers in 2e?  Sacrilege.  No more THAC0 in 3e?  A travesty.  No more Vancian casting in 4e?  Well, that’s fine, but not for any game whose title includes the words dungeon and dragon.

That’s not the sort I’m thinking about today, though.  I’m interested in the sacred cows within the settings.  The characters, locations, and other elements that are always present, if only lurking somewhere in the background.  The ones that define that setting, that — in a sense — make it what it is.  The ones that are iconic — not Tordek and Mialee, but the real icons.  The ones with names like Bigby, Mordenkainen, Raistlin, Elminster, Vecna.  (There tends to be a good share of wizards among them.  I don’t believe this is a coincidence.)  The guys you know and love.  Or hate.  Sometimes both.

A campaign set in one of these published settings must acknowledge its sacred cows at one point.  Either it kowtows to them, making use of the pre-existing body of lore that surrounds them (however nebulous it might be in some cases — how much do most D&D players really know about Bigby, other than that he’s the guy with the hand spells?), or it slaughters them, creating some explanation for why they’re no longer present or have no impact.  The former option limits the GM somewhat; the latter often infuriates players who have a fondness for that setting.  Witness the reaction of Greyhawk fans to Greyhawk Wars, or the more recent reaction of Forgotten Realms fans to the 4e redesign of that world.

Which brings us to Foxbat.

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Never Split the Party

Words of sage advice.

Of course, there’s always someone, some time, who feels they know better.  Some players are inclined to split up at the drop of a hat.  I offered a little bit of advice for handling that situation in the article I linked, but what more can you do?

Personally, I let my players know, before the game begins, that I have no compunctions about allowing players who split from their parties to die.  Ordinarily, I don’t allow random chance to kill a character outright; I’ll fudge things far enough to give the character in question a chance.  I do, however, allow a character’s own stupidity to kill him outright.  I consider splitting up an act of stupidity most of the time.  It’s dangerous out there!

Perhaps an amusing cautionary tale would help, too.

(Okay, so that was all to share a cute video and ease back into blogging.  Sue me.)