The Casual Pen-and-Paper Gamer

This is the new battleground. The casual pen-and-paper gamer.

They are by definition exclusively new players too, drawn in from the world of video games, MMOs, cell phone games, Youtube, tablets, and other places. Forget the hardcore - they are already playing and bought-in, the profits and future customers of the roleplaying depend on new players.

Every industry chases 'the new player' and you even see legacy MMOs in decline trying to reinvent themselves to attract a new player base. This is where World of Warcraft is right now, a declining (but mature) hobby struggling to reinvent itself for that large group of casual players out there with little time to invest and who frankly aren't sold on the idea of logging to a faction grind in every day.

World of Warcraft's problem is essentially Zynga's with Farmville and Mafia Wars - how do you make a game interesting to play when it is essentially a game of "who gets bigger numbers?" Granted in each those 'numbers' turn out to be little pieces of gear, new critters for the farm, or a bigger number to bonk other players over the head with - but they are numbers hidden by 3d graphics, achievements, pets, or other virtual representations. Sometimes they are just numbers, like stamina or the endless faction reputation values in WoW.

Numbers are not cool.

Social, right? Our game is a social experience! World of Warcraft was like that for a while, you played because that's where everybody else was, but social is never a reason to play something when no one is playing, it's fire without fuel. Social can amplify a game's popularity, but you can't sell people on social in a barren desert. Unless you are Las Vegas, but that's only been done once.

So the casual player, that incredibly large mass of players out there with nothing else better to do than wait to play your game. Right? You have to answer the question, why should they? D&D 5, Pathfinder Beginner Box, or Five Moons, why play? What makes this as 'pick up and play' as the next Angry Birds? What makes this game so cool I will sit and watch people play it endlessly on Youtube? Look at your game. Is it really that casual? Is it really that fun? What screams at people and engages them? What makes this game so fun that you have to play it, or even watch people play it?

If your answer is "we have better numbers" you are not thinking it right.

There is a question, how many casuals pen-and-paper gamers are out there? While I love Pathfinder or even D&D 5 I know plenty of people that play casual games who's eyes would water just looking at the books and dismiss them as 'not for them'. Of course the hard-core players love these games, and we system wars ourselves to incredible lengths over them - that's just who we are. But those casuals. Who are they? What are they doing now? How do you entice them?

How do you get them to say, "This is cool! I wanna be doing this!"

Or most importantly, "I want to be seen doing this."

Design Room: Eberron

Welcome back to another edition of Design Room, not really a review of a number of gaming books, but more of an in-depth look into the game design aspects around a series of books and the implications on game play. For reviews, I shall steer you to other sources, like Amazon, we are interested primarily here in game design, theory, and impact on referees and players. Today we look at one of the biggies in a retrospective, D&D's Eberron game world.

It is important to note that Eberron is still the setting of games like D&D Online, but it doesn't seem to be getting any D&D Next love as of yet. It had a number of 4E supplements, which we will get into, but the fate and status of the world is very much up in the air right now. It is not a good thing, Wizards has far too many worlds to support for the company's focus, and it leads to none of them being supported all that well. Let's start with the D&D 3E Eberron Campaign Setting as the starting point for our delve into the world of Eberron. Mind you, this is not a complete review, nor can we cover everything, we will be hitting some high-level stuff, and reflecting upon the world and game design implications and consequences of these choices.

3E Origins

Eberron started out as a contest-winner in the D&D3 days of a 'create a new D&D game world' contest Wizards put on in the waning days of D&D3. Why they did this is strange, they already had a number of incredibly well designed game worlds, including Faerun, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and the shelved worlds of Mystara and Birthright. One thing you need to remember was this was the heady days of the beginnings of a number of modern MMOs, and the bug one at the time was World of Warcraft. Perhaps Eberron was the first step to making D&D relevant to that crowd, a fantasy world with steampunk elements with an over-the-top look sounds a lot like...World of Warcraft to me. If true, this makes Eberron the first D&D4 product released, a change in tone from what came before, and also a clear statement of change in the direction of the product.

Eberron is very much one of those worlds that never really had a place. Faerun was the home of the big-money fiction, and Greyhawk was the official setting of D&D3. This seems to harken back to the old TSR's habit of creating too many game worlds to support, and D&D3 always had this multiple-personality complex where the main books were heavily Greyhawk-centric, and the other worlds were' oh yeah, them too' add-ons. Eberron seemed the least-liked child, but it was definitely the most unique and cool. A smart choice would have been to keep all the Greyhawk stuff out of the main three books, and support all worlds equally. You shall see this 'what world do we support?' question come up later, so keep this in mind.

3E Theme: Factions and Kingdoms

The MMO elements are clearly here, a number of strongly rethought races with motivations and a unique flavor, a ton of internal orders and organizations which fight and shift alliances, and a number of pseudo-governments that serve as the backdrop to the larger conflicts. It is important to note that point, the governments of Eberron are backdrops, thematically, they aren't as important to the world as the major players, the Dragonmark Houses being the largest and best defined, followed by all the local factions unique to each kingdom. Again, this is like your typical MMO, and again World of Warcraft. While major nations can fight and even the players can take part, for the most part, the big stories are with the organizations that control the world, and most of these reside between and even above the governments. The kingdoms are 'zones' and the interesting action happens across them.

There is a balance between governments and power groups in the campaign guide which is interesting. The government is given one section, and all the power groups their own following. This is done for every major area of the world. This tells you two things. The first is that unlike other game worlds, the big players are the power groups - they are clearly given more weight than the governments. While a power group may be itself the government, this is not supposed to be a forever thing, different groups can get the upper hand and control the government. It is a fluid and dynamic situation that is clearly different than any previously published D&D game world. The second is that this is a game about these groups and all the plots between them, again, the governments are supposed to take a back seat to the games these groups play.

Again, you can find a mirror in World of Warcraft, with groups like the Cenarion Circle, Order of the Silver Hand, the Guardians of Hyjal, Hellscream's Orcs, and all the other classic WoW factions. Orgrimmar is a kingdom, yes, and it has a government and background all its own - but who controls it on any given day can shift and change depending on what is currently going on between all the background groups that are fighting over it, playing politics, and running plots. Eberron is the same way, and it is important to understand. Friends characters make in one kingdom may or may not be there when they come back, and their political situation may have changed dramatically as well depending on the current stature of things.

Contrast this with other D&D game worlds, where nothing much changes. In Faerun we get the stereotyped belief of, 'Oh I can always go to kingdom X and contact NPC Y for help, they are always good, and enshrined here by the fiction.' In Greyhawk, the same can be said, although it is typically, 'Oh, Kingdom X is lawful good, that is a safe place and they can help.' In Eberron, nothing is guaranteed, and if the players want change, they will need to get out there and do the leg work to support the factions on their side. Note this point, this is clearly the #1 most important thing about Eberron and why it is different than any other world that came before - or after.

World Design In 3E: The Wow Factor

Another clear point of differentiation between Eberron and any other world is the 'WOW' factor. Throughout the original 3E Eberron book, a series of incredible art pieces lays out the world. Cities aren't boring concentric castles surrounded by urban sprawl and squalor; they are grand matte paintings of towers built on top of spires of rock, floating castles, cities built in alien ruins, and a whole imaginative smattering of out-there ideas.

It is perfectly normal in Eberron to have cities built in underwater domes, in the middle of volcanoes, built on the underside of floating mountains in the sky, on crawling robots made out of stone, floating on rivrs of magical ley lines, warping in and out of reality, or anything else you can imagine. Similarly, temples, ruins, fortresses, and any other adventure locale can be just as way out there and cool, and in fact - it is expected. We can go as far as placing monsters and magic items under the cool umbrella as well - these need to be unique, fun, different, and engaging. If it is not cool and unexpected - it is not normal. This is major point #2 about the world, note this.

One of the cardinal rules of Eberron goes like this, "If it is in D&D - it has a place in Eberron." Note that for some things in D&D, like the Drow, they get pushed to the side in this world, they are clearly not as important as they are in either Faerun or Greyhawk. This brings in a lot of material, for good and bad. On the bad side, it is a very chaotic world, with a lot of stuff going on at once, and a lot for the DM to grasp. The 3E Eberron book does a lot to sort this out, and attempts to give everything its own spot so you don't have too much going on at once.

The good part is that this opens up the door for unlimited creativity for the DM. "In D&D" covers a lot of ground, any book Wizards put out, anything from other D&D game worlds, D&D Modern and Future stuff, anything from third-party publishers - anything. You can literally beg, borrow, and steal any idea out there and put it in your game world. This is not only allowed, it is encouraged. Eberron is uniquely situated to be the "game world to end all game worlds" and is written to be that way.

3E: Magic in the World

The magic in Eberron is uniquely designed. Low-level magic is so common it is ubiquitous, everyone has it, and magic is a part of everyone's daily life. A farmer could have a magical self-powered cart to haul hay, magical robots to tend crops, a magical hot-water tap, and all sort of other pseudo-conveniences taken from the modern world, fiction, or any other source the DM can imagine. High-level magic is ultra-rare, even more so than other D&D worlds. You simply don't have a thousand wizards living in the world that can cast the wish spell willy-nilly. You don't have high-level interventionist NPC spell-casters shaping the world with magic. High-level magic has been pushed back, is rare as Hades, and is a special thing again. Resurrections don't happen every day, bucko.

This is another interesting point, and a fun design element. The factions of the world are left duking it out with lower-level spells, casters, and powers. They can't simply scry or cast their way to victory, they have to put boots on the ground to get what they want. This is a good thing, and it keeps the world interesting. See that group of enemy soldiers? They may have a low-level caster or two with them, but they were sent here by that faction that does not get along with you, and they really want to recover that high-level magic artifact before you do. Oh yes, shades of Indiana Jones are back, and they are groups in the world that want those items of power more than you do, and are willing to use force to get them. Cue the music, we need to get in and out fast, Indy.

Having high-level magic reduced also makes high-level PCs more powerful and special, and they are now major players in the world rather than 'one in a million high level NPCs.' This also puts PCs at a distinct disadvantage, once you think about it. All these lesser powered factions will start to notice high-level characters in the world, and the pressure on them will increase. Having a high-level PC allied with an opposing faction may cause another faction to try to eliminate the high-level PC just to keep the balance, so the world gets a 'self correcting' power-balance that is a very interesting place for PCs to operate in.

All of a sudden, it isn't wise to flaunt your power, you never know who might be jealous of you, and there just may be someone else out there who really doesn't like you all that much for who you are. Come to think of it, maybe the reason this world has limit of high-level magics is because it tends to kill of ff and weed out high-level threats ll its own through the groups and politics of the land. An element of danger for high-level PCs just because of who they are? Unthinkable in every other D&D game world. Major point #3 here, note this.

4E: Things Change

Along comes a new edition of D&D, and things change. Picking up the Eberron Campaign Guide, you will notice one thing right off: where did all my cool art go? Gone are all the cool pictures of floating castles, amazing contraptions, and cities perched on the top of rocky spires and alien ruins. There are a couple, but a disturbing trend happens in the book of normal art of castles surrounded bu urban sprawl and squalor.

Where are the cool illustrations of the dragonmarks, especially the large ones? Those took up a huge portion of the book in 3E, and they are now gone. Where is the cool Heavy Metal style Mobius art in the chapter starts? You know, those pieces that gave a tone and flavor to the world, almost like a mature comic book? Gone again. A lot of art was removed here, so much so it changes your perception of the world.

Point #2, the coolness of the world, has been severely reduced.

This hurts, and yes, some of the original art is maintained, but a lot of the important pieces are lost. In the beginning of the Campaign Guide, we get Sharn, a floating city, and a pretty typical castle on a lake. Most of the rest of the art is the typical 4E 'character battle' art, and not really world-specific. Sharn seems like the only cool place here, and the 'open door' to creating fun adventure sites and cities seems to have closed some. This is a great example between the 3E and 4E books of how art can totally change the perception of a game world, and really needs to be recognized and studied.

4E Eberron Factions

Even the iconic sections of the area governments and factions have been muddled, done away for and replaced by random adventure seeds, monster stat blocks, mini-adventures, and plot hooks. Another huge step back, and the individual sections for each kingdom just seem like articles in Dungeon rather than something that lays out tense political conflicts. There doesn't seem to be a coherent world anymore, and even though some of the same factions are mentioned, there is no focus, and each area just seems like a single adventure to burn through.

If you have both books, compare the worldbook sections. Sure, the 4E maps are pretty, but the 3E books seems a lot tighter on focus of the lands, factions, government, places, and interesting sites. We get huge stat-blocks for monsters, and mini-adventures. The factions are either gone, or moved into the adventures. We don't get the feeling that these places are really fought over anymore, or that anything can change, nor are NPCs that important anymore. The 4E 'War on Powerful NPCs' continues here, with a majority of Eberron's big players missing or sidelined. With no powerful NPCs, and a lessening of the important of factions, something is lost.

Could it be, point #1, the focus on factions, is gone?

The 4E Campaign Guide is a huge step back. Room had to be made in the Eberron Player's Guide for all those lists of rote 4E powers, and the referee's book has devolved into a copy-and-paste section of DC History checks that take up way too much space. If all you know about Eberron comes from the 4E Guides, you don't know Eberron. Seek out the original Eberron Campaign Setting book and prepare to be blown away.

The 4E Rules in Eberron

Granted, I like 4E's rules a lot better for Eberron-style action roleplaying, as they are more cinematic; but then again, something major has been lost here. Once thing you notice is that the art in the 3E Eberron book to a point looks like the art in the 4E books, in fact, most all of the 4E books. It is like Wizards decided to transplant the cool from Eberron and place that into every D&D world - yeah, it is all like that now.

I like this tone, but as for putting it in every D&D world? It didn't make much sense in dramatic-novel Faerun, and it surly doesn't fit all too well in old-school Greyhawk. They took Eberron's coolness, turned it into a whitewash, and painted it all over everything they could to make everything seem just as cool. It didn't happen, nor was it correct in many cases. For Nerrath, yes, it worked, and it worked well - but realizing where this cool came from is just as important, and how it can mess things up is another thing.

Faerun is more of a LARP-y, dramatic, almost romance-novel world full of dramatic action. Geryhawk is the original gangster of old-school death-trap dungeons, dour and deadly in its outlook and survivability. Dark Sun is even the way it is, different, Mad-Max, post-apocalyptic, and cool. They each bring a unique 'cool' to themselves, but they are not the over-the-top Eberron 'cool' - nor should they be. They each are special, they each deserve their own tone, and they are not the same as Eberron. To do so is to not respect their special culture and flavor of the worlds. You can't transplant a new 'cool' onto a world without a reboot, nor can you make a world something it is not.

4E Magic in Eberron

Magic too, has been changed to the 1 to 30 D&D4 run, where everyone lives in this MMO-style progression path. Gone is the unique low-level/high-level magic disparity, and the world loses yet another interesting and cool aspect. In the old world, level 6 to 8 characters were the movers and shakers. In the new, it seems like we are back to the lets-get-to-30 grind, and we lose that have and have-not fight in the original world.

Remember, in 4E you start plane-hopping at level 10, and the original world goes away for the Feywild, Elemental Chaos, and all the other theme parks of the 4E cosmos. In Eberron, the focus is solely on the world - it is the center of the universe, and the place to play in all the way up to max level. All of a sudden, Eberron is just for the first 10 levels of play, and we quickly move in a whole new group of worlds into the mix. This water-down syndrome affects all the 4E worlds, including Faerun and Dark Sun - both of which should not have a Shadowfell and Feywild, but they do, since that is what 4E is, and the game loses something without them. For a world to be the central focus, we need to stay in it.

With the loss of magic and clear focus on the world, point #3 seems to be gone too.

What are we left with? Something that is definitely 4E, with some of the action-adventure cool, but none of the original fun stuff that made the 3E world so special and cool. Note that some of these things were tied to the original implementation of the 3E rules (like magic level), others were because 4E tried to adopt the Eberron coolness (Faerun, didn't work), and the others I cant explain (the loss of factions and the focus of the world). Part of this can possibly never transfer correctly, like the magic-level, due to the change in rules.

The loss of focus on the world's unique faction setup is the most puzzling here. It seems like they used the same model for all of the D&D4 campaign books, the DC History checks, the turning every area into a mini-adventure Dungeon magazine article, and general same-ness of the treatment of each worldbook for 4E. It didn't work for Eberron, and a lot was lost. Another thing was a lot of material just didn't convert in all too well, and some of the most interesting parts were ignored, like the dargonmarks - losing the higher-level art for them was huge.

The connection to old-school World of Warcraft is weakened too, while the D&D4 1-30 MMO track is here, the original world inspired by the fantasy-steampunk inspiration seems missing, and all the cool movers and shakers have been replaced by mini-adventures. Remember, the focus of a 4E world is away from ppowerful NPCs, so the 'powerful factions and NPCs control the world' theme of the original Eberron can't happen in 4E - the focus is supposed to be on the adventurers, Points of Light, and the whole 'alone in the world' adventure theme. This is one of the fundamental differences here, 4E's focus is incompatible with 3E Eberron's focus.

Where Art Thou, Eberron?

Part of me thinks they put out too many campaign books for 4E, and maybe they should have just stuck with Eberron as the only and official 4E world. Granted, they needed to keep what was cool and not cut so much art, but then again, it is probably a limitation of book size and format than purposefully limiting content; or they just didn't understand what the 'cool' was here and thought it was just like any other game world, medieval and static.

They would have also had to consider Eberron's magic-balance as well, and wrote 4E around that balance. It is an interesting problem, the design of a generic rules system for all D&Ds seems to have gutted the world of its unique mechanics and flavor, even though Eberron was designed under the generic 3E system. Part of the world depended on those items and rules in 3E worked, and in fact, the "anything in D&D" rule is part of that. Eberron is a redefinition of the 3E world in a new and interesting way, a new way to look at things. If all of a sudden, we lay 4E on top of that, we lose what we were looking at in the first place, and the world just becomes another implementation of the 4E ruleset. We are not looking at anything differently here, this is the same 4E, just with different kingdoms and peoples.

You also potentially have a situation where players coming into Eberron having played 3E understand the world and what is cool, and players introduced to it via 4E are sitting there wondering what the fuss is about. Why is this any cooler than Nerrath or Faerun, it's all 4E action-adventure, right? Well, people that understand the original source material know, but the new players have a different perspective on the world. Combine that with the loss of focus on the world's factions and unique magic setup, and Eberron becomes another 4E world with nothing really special about it other than two new classes, some magic items, and a map.

Eberron is cool, and the 4E version is a nice piece of work - but it is not the same world. From a design perspective, there is a lot to learn here about world design, reboots, rules systems transplants, and a whole bunch of other stuff just waiting to be explored. There are two different design goals here, one for 3E to present a new and exciting world, and another for 4E to transplant the rules and theme of the new game into the existing world. Like Faerun, the transplant is not 100% successful - but for different reasons. Examining why this happened tells you a lot about the subjects we study here on the blog, game design, world design, and what makes something interesting and fun.

The Legacy of the SRD to a Game Designer

The D&D3 Open Gaming License and SRD have been a great boon to the roleplaying world, and cemented the SRD as the de-facto rules set for fantasy roleplaying. Pathfinder and many other D&D3 based games have enjoyed this legacy, and actually in some ways surpassed the original game. The SRD provides rules for most all the pieces of D&D, monsters, magic, classes, and many of the standard fantasy tropes. Granted, most all of these items were cobbled from public-domain legends and sources in the first place, so their presence under a 'semi-open' license is sketchy at best.

The things that are not included under the SRD are character creation and level-up rules, and then most of the mutant creatures TSR and Wizards have invented over the years, like mind flayers, owlbears, and beholders. For the most part, these little omissions have been circumvented by people putting out new games, with renamed creatures almost-like the ones that were omitted, and brand new character creation and leveling rules. In some cases, the replacement rules are actually an improvement, like in Pathfinder.

Where it Fails

Where the SRD falls painfully short is the extension of the license to where people can use the SRD to publish interactive games, MMOs, and other new ways to play the game. Pathfinder's MMO (in development) needs to rewrite an entire new rules system to use for the online version of the game. The SRD limits a game designer who wants to write a game that has an entirely new way of playing it, like via tablets with people around the world online. This one point I think is the greatest failing of the license, and the game you design using the SRD isn't entirely yours.

This makes the OGL/SRD combo different than the Linux license in a very specific way. With Linux, the code can be modified as long as it is licensed for others to use freely and in new ways (I am speaking really generally here, Linux fans). With the OGL/SRD combo, the game can't be used for online games, social networking games, or for any truly new and different way of playing. The OGL/SRD limits you to a book, table, and dice. In a way, it holds back the art and design of new RPGs - ones we have no idea how they will be played.

I Love My Games, But as a Designer...

I love playing my OGL/SRD games, mind you, I love 13th Age, Pathfinder, Labyrinth Lord, and all the other wonderful creations built under the combo. A part of me is sad though, knowing these games will never advance the art of game design beyond the d20 clones, and never be played in new ways. As a game designer, you want to work without limits. A huge part of adopting the SRD is a limit, and I wonder if new games should just take the public-domain parts of the D&D lore, and establish something truly free and new, without restrictions, and break from the SRD's chains.

This has to be one of the most difficult pieces of the hobby for me to deal with as a game designer. The OGL/SRD combo is an incredible resource, but using it could be holding back the art of RPG design. Mind you, some companies could care less about the OGL/SRD combo, like Fantasy Flight Games and others, and are creating new experiences with these games. How open these efforts are is always an issue, and the OGL/SRD is the defacto standard for D&D-like experiences.

For free and open gaming, there needs to be open standards a community can agree upon, public domain legends to pull from, and a license permitting remixes and new ways on playing the game people may have never envisioned. The only real way out is to design your own rules system, as the SRD is a limit in regards to game design and what you can do with your game.

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Update

Over on the Fantasy Flight Games site, we have an update on the new Star Wars game and how it will be split up to cover different aspects of the galactic conflict. The game will be split up into three separate, but compatible games:

• Edge of the Empire
• Age of Rebellion
• Force and Destiny

Edge of the Empire seems to be the "Han and Chewie" game that covers smugglers, rogues, and illicit activities on the fringe. I would love full starship combat rules, and a good assortment of non-Millennium Falcon ships. Bonus points if they include rules for merchant trading, mining, speculation, and other non-combat star trader stuff in the Empire. We need to balance the criminal element with how it is to run cargo in the Empire, how much those cargoes are bought and sold for, and how the Imperial Police work. You can't be a space pirate on combat alone, the whole point is making money and avoiding the Imps, so we need to see the legitimate and enforcement sides fleshed out.

Age of Rebellion seems to be the "Leia and the Droids" game of the rebellion, galactic war, and political intrigue. I hope rules for mass battles, star destroyers, and other large scale warfare are in here. I really hope we balance all that with rules for political intrigue, spies, and assassins. Probably the biggest mistake they could make with this book is to focus mostly on war and cool battles - this has to be balanced with the drama and intrigue of governors, planetary leaders, backstabbing senators, and all sorts of gooey dramatic goodness.

Force and Destiny is the "Luke and Ben" game of being the last surviving Jedi in the galaxy fighting to uphold the old ideals. We have an Order 66 retcon here it seems, with more Jedi surviving than we first thought. This is all well and good, since it gives players a chance to create interesting characters around the Jedi (and hopefully Sith), and continue the conflict into the Act IV-VI age of Star Wars. I do hope Sith are in here to balance the game, and it's not just Jedis vs. non-force Empire.

Overall, I like this division of products, and making each a separate standalone game is interesting. We will get a repetition of rules in each book (unfortunately), but this will allow groups to pick what they want to play with, and exclude the rest. If I want to play my "Oceans 11" smuggler and con man game, this frees me up to say "EoE only for this game", and all of a sudden, all my problems of having players spin up Sith and Rebel commandos are gone. It is a trade off, but a good one that lets groups focus on the aspect of Star Wars they like, and include as much as they would like.

So, it is a fun update in Star Wars land today, and something that makes me look forward to the game a little more. May the force be with you....

System Lock In: Bad for New Players?

Part of what cemented the term 'system lock in' into the pen-and-paper lexicon was D&D3. For those in the know, system-lock-in is a term taken from the world of computer operating systems meaning, "It would be hard to switch to another operating system because all my data and applications are on this operating system." In other words, switching, trying something new, or changing things on the computer would mean a substantial amount of pain involved for the consumer.

In the roleplaying world, system lock in means, "I have so much money invested in this system, and I have spent so much time learning the rules I would never even think about switching to another game system, or even trying one out." To enforce system lock in, pen-and-paper games are typically expensive, complex, and huge. Since all your friends have invested the same in buying books and learning rules, the system lock in is strengthened, and we get a 'network effect' - meaning if all your friends are locked into X, you will play X.

This is all well and good, and companies are free to write games however they want them - I support the free market of ideas. But the question comes up, is system lock in hurting the new player experience? To have system lock in, we need three things: buy-in, size, and complexity. Let's break this down in three short sections.

"Buy-in" is investment, and this typically means the game books are a substantial purchase. For a game like D&D4 this would typically include the player's book, a referee's book, monster book, and maybe one or two others. New players are reluctant to part with that much cash, so asking a new player to invest in that many books is going to be a challenge. Beginner sets are not the answer to this, they are merely an enticement to make the big purchase. System reference documents are not an answer to this either, they are often unwieldy and require hundreds of pages to be printed. Contrast this to a more new-player friendly game, like Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy RPG. These games can be bought for $20 or less, and you get everything you need to play and referee the game. An argument can be made that cost scares away new players.

"Size" is the cost of ownership, and also the amount of space the game takes up on your shelf and in your mind. This is both a physical quality (space the books take up), and also a mental one (how important the game is in your mind). Good art can increase the mental size of a game, and Pathfinder gets this down in spades. Once you have invested, the size of the game controls how often you keep coming back to it and using it. Some people equate size with fun, what is more fun: a 5' long shelf of Pathfinder books, or a quarter-inch thick copy of Labyrinth Lord? Size definitely drives away new players, it is a commitment to store and use the books.

"Complexity" is how much effort it takes to learn the rules. A game that is easily learned is also easily put aside for something new. Granted, I like complex games with a lot of options, but there is something to be said for a game that is easy to learn, but conceptually deep. Forcing new players to learn the rules for flat-footed and attacks of opportunity is cruel, we have had to do it many times, and a player new to roleplaying often gets the wrong idea about the game, "I can't get into this." The skill system in D&D3 and Pathfinder is similarly difficult to use correctly and teach, and all these complex systems intended to create options mostly make the game difficult - without adding real options. If my thief character needs lockpicking X at level Y, why make me go through this complicated skill system to get there?

Again, these are just more random thoughts on the state of the pen-and-paper industry, where things are driving players away, and how things can be made better. It seems the more we go in hobby shops, the more space is devoted towards big-box tabletop games, and less space is devoted to traditional pen-and-paper games. All the innovation in the gaming industry seems to be in the board game area nowadays, and a lot of today's pen-and-paper innovation seems stuck in the past.

It seems like we are long overdue a revolution in pen-and-paper gaming, and we get back to games made to be entertainment. Aping the tactics Microsoft and Apple use to lock in users may lock in some players, but aren't they driving off the majority or new players to just keep a few legacy users?

My feelings are if you make my pen-and-paper game more like a computer, a real computer will beat it any day of the week. New players seem to understand this concept very well, but most roleplaying game companies don't. We have to learn from the successes of companies doing well in the board game market, and innovate like they do. Really, this is the same type of game, and the same type of player. The question needs to be asked, where are all the new players going, and what is keeping them away?

Blowing Out the Polyhedral Dice

A funny observation about D&D4. In order to create a unique number range for their game, which I suspect has to do with breaking D&D3's OGL number ranges, they increased starting hit points and damages to very high numbers. Starting goblins and other first level creatures have 20-40 hit points, which in previous editions only had 1-8 hit points. Weapon and power damages similarly went up to compensate (but not by the same magnitude).

Now all is well and fine with those ranges, but it begs the question: why use polyhedral dice anymore? If your base hit points are so high, there is no real practical difference between a 1d6 weapon and a 1d8 one. With that many hit points, you might as well rate weapons on the number of d6's or d10's they do, and simplify everything to use d20's and one other dice type.

It is a legacy of the original Chainmail game, where every weapon did 1d6, and the adoption of polyhedral dice, which allowed some weapon variation. Later games (AD&D, etc) tried to balance lighter weapons, such as the dagger (by making it faster), to mixed results. We've house-ruled the lowly 1d4 dagger ourselves as well many times to make it more appealing. But overall, the 1d4 dagger remains a potent weapon against monsters that have little more hit points than it can roll, and combined with a double-damage sneak attack, the weapon becomes quite deadly.

Once hit points reach uber-high levels, the difference between weapon dice fades away, and the hefty ability score damage bonus comes into play (especially with D&D3's multiple attacks per round). It's like this in D&D4 as well, as you start looking for fixed damage adders from feats and other bonuses to raise your damage per round against these giant chunks of hit points.

D&D4 had to bring the monsters down a little in toughness in Essentials, but the hit points still remained high enough to make the unique polyhedral dice wane compared to the character card powers. Keeping the original dice ranges is one thing the OGL and other old-school games do right, they preserve the power of the polyhedral dice, and keep the math down to manageable levels.

In old-school D&D, it was common for a dragon to have 60 hit points, by D&D4 that grew to over 600. Beyond the chore of whittling that huge number down, choosing a 1d8 sword felt a lot better against the old-school dragon than the newer one. Think about blowing out your dice ranges when crafting your own game, and preserving the feel the dice give you with their unmodified rolls.

Design Room: Arkham Horror

Wow, what a game. Arkham Horror is a game based on the Lovecraftian Horror mythos, and is sort of like a pen-and-paper RPG boardgame. Players take control of per-generated investigators, get equipment cards, adjust statistics, visit locations, and play through encounter cards while avoiding the horrors that lurk in the night. It is a seriously fun game, and I urge you to check out the reviews on the Amazon link above. Today we will do another Design Room discussion, which is not a traditional review, but more of a discussion behind game design theory using the game as a springboard for discussion.

Pen-and-Paper Boardgame

The game is best described as a traditional pen-and-paper RPG converted into a boardgame. No referee is required, and players take turns running the game's world events and monster movement. The city is divided up into locations where encounter cards can trigger monster spawns, skill checks, NPC encounters, and any number of random events. The events are self-contained and are typically handled within a player's encounter phase. Some players go to town with these cards, and roleplay out the interactions, with someone reading the card, and the player acting 'in character.' We tried that, and it was a hoot.

Something tells me the design of D&D4 followed the 'make it a boardgame' design theory, but they didn't quite make it. Arkham Horror goes all the way, but it does lose a couple pieces of pen-and-paper baggage for simplicity. Gone is character creation, long item and spell lists, character advancement, and tactical combat. Combat is handled in the abstract, with a failed attack roll resulting in damage to the character. The question arises, can you call yourself a roleplaying game without these things?

The roleplaying game Tunnels and Trolls has a similar abstract combat system, so not having a chess-like combat system does not disqualify the game from being considered a RPG. Items and spells are on cards, and I can think of couple RPGs like that (such as the new Gamma World); also, many RPGs did not have character creation (the old Indiana Jones game, or the basic Marvel Super Heroes may qualify here) - so those simplifications do not rule ut the game as an RPG.

The only thing I can see as a RPG disqualification is the tight play structure, and a lack of being able to do anything you want, such as explore outside the town. Then again, some D&D4 modules I've seen share this tight focus, but with an implied 'roleplaying and exploration' mode built into the game (D&D4 Essentials laid this out explicitly). It is easy enough to house-rule exploration, travel, and roleplaying into the game with a referee - and that is an interesting point. The soft areas of a RPG require an interpreter (the referee). This helps us define the question 'what is a referee good for?' and also clarifies the boardgame-RPG difference.

Axis and Allies: Roleplay Generals

Backing away from the roleplaying elements, how does the game play? George and I came up with an analogy of it's like the MB game Axis and Allies, but you roleplay a general on the map. It's a weaker comparison because you don't have free standing armies (maybe the monsters qualify), but it is an apt description to setting up the board and playing a long game across a couple days. Not a lot of pen-and-paper games are capable of this, as a roleplaying situation needs to be handled live, and can quickly grow stale if left on the table overnight, With this game, you pick up where you left off, and the game-in-progress keeps fresh quite well.

Another interesting play thought is that the game is entirely self-contained. Many RPGs try to be all-inclusive, and tell referees to pull in outside material to surprise players and customize the game. Everything in this game resides within the box: the world, the gear, the characters, and the challenges. Played straight, the original Marvel Super Heroes was a little like this, the Marvel Universe could be considered a self-contained entity within the game, and the pieces inside felt like a sandbox with all the parts in play: heroes and villains, equipment and locations.

Could you pull in outside materials, like having Count Dracula show up in the middle of a game? Again, this would require an interpreter, and the requirement of needing a referee comes up again. D&D4 feels a little more self contained than other versions of the D&D game, and one frequent complaint was that referees felt like computers who's job it was to run the monsters and setup the encounters. Note this, if D&D4 was setup a little more like a boardgame, it could play very much like Arkham Horror. Right now, that is not the case, and the iconic 'dungeon master' must be present at all games. The old D&D Miniatures game did not need a DM, but it worked more like a skirmish game - without the adventure elements.

Are Dungeon Masters Obsolete?

The above statement will probably cause a lot of controversy, but it is a question that naturally comes up when you consider games like this - and MMOs. World of Warcraft does not need a dungeon master, and the ease-of-use of MMOs is a huge part of their popularity and accessibility. One of the more interesting parts of the pen-and-paper industry that some of the D&D3 designers brought up were that dungeon masters were the largest attractor of new players - if the game lost DMs, it lost popularity. Is such a heavy reliance on an interpreter and adventure creator actually a hindrance in playability?

Let me put in a paragraph here stating I love referees and dungeon masters, I am one myself, and have been for decades. Nothing beats putting an adventure together and running it with players, a MMO's NPCs will always be flat and static quest givers, a dynamic story cannot be told without a referee, and we bring the game alive in many ways a deck of cards or quest scripting system for an MMO can't. You can never replace a DM with a rules system or computer (though D&D4 has come close, if you stick straight to the battles).

Is there an answer? Probably not, but asking the question if Dungeon Masters are obsolete can focus the role of a DM down like a laser, and help us determine exactly 'what does a referee do?' If there are some systems better suited for the players only to handle, the game should design these to be run without a referee. Could you come up with a combat system that excluded the requirement for a referee, by giving monster's goals and scripts for the players to run? It is possible, and would free up the referee's time to do other things better suited for a live interpreter.

Cutting the referee free may also allow players to setup games on their own in hobby shops and other formal settings. If the goals of a game could be formalized, a group of players could work together to achieve that on their own. All of a sudden, the mechanical: run combats, think for monsters, and handle the environment things are automated - and the referee is free of these obligations (along with the group needing one to do this). Part of what prevents pen-and-paper games from being played is the lack of a referee, and letting everyone play - being a player - is a good thing for some games, especially cooperative and competitive games. The 'everyone is a player' idea is powerful, and opens up the game for a larger audience. This idea doesn't exclude a referee from participating, but rigging a game to play without one does three things:

1. It expands the game's accessibility
2. It allows anyone to join and play a game
3. It frees up the referee to do more creative 'game enhancing' things

Concentrate on the Fun

Let me close this design room session out by saying that one of the best things Arkham Horror does is concentrate on the fun. The game has multiple personalities, more than on big boss, random elements, and a sandbox to play in - a lot can happen, and what happens is often unpredictable. Un-fun elements in previous editions of the game were worked out and eliminated, leaving a very concentrated play experience.

This is game design done right, you publish a new edition of the game to concentrate on what is fun, eliminate the drudgery, and even cut out cruft and junk that makes the game complicated, heavy, and slow. Steve Jobs has a line where he said he was more proud of what Apple said "no" to, and game designers should work in the same mindset. Too many pen-and-paper games go too far, include everything and the kitchen sink, over explain (SBRPG is guilty of this), and just try too hard to cover everything. Games are complicated enough without all this extra explanation and fluff.

It is tough, and finding a game that leaves marketing agendas, edition wars, and designer bias behind is rare. When you find a game made for the players it is a cool thing, and makes you happy to play and become involved. That magic is key, making you happy you became involved, and pulling you into the excitement of the hobby. How many games can do that? Again, we see design pulling together many elements to make a success story, from art, graphic design, playtesting, rules, mathematics, and many other fields to make a solid game. The design serves the play experience, and that experience is king.

 Arkham Horror gets it right in many ways.

Specific Generic Sci-Fi Systems

There was an interesting line in the original Traveller Book 0 that likened the game to a generic game, one that you could play any sci-fi universe with the rules. Similarly, games like GURPS, d20 Modern, Hero system, and others have all presented detailed sci-fi rules that say they are generic, but really have a flavor all their own. All games have a 'feel' to them, especially sci-fi, where you start pulling in the skills and equipment from the base game, or trying to re-interpret the source material in the quirks and original feel of the roleplaying game. Let's take a look at using Star Wars with a couple rules systems, and examine a couple of the choices we would need to make to make things work.

Star Wars as told by Star Frontiers:  Stormtrooper armor is treated as cover, giving a -20% to-hit penalty to attackers. We would have to eliminate energy settings for blasters, and just give them a straight damage, like 2d10 for pistols and 4d10 for rifles. Damage in Star Frontiers is typically light compared to Stamina so characters can take a lot of hits before going down (this may be a problem with Stormtroopers, who typically go down in a hit). Starships would have to be converted to Knight Hawks, which would have problems with the system's physics based movement and hex-grid system. This conversion actually works fairly well, and the original game is close to the 'space adventure' feel of the movies, if not a bit more heroic and simplified.

Star Wars as told by Traveller:  Stormtrooper armor would need to be vectored out against the armors of the game, and the blasters added to the chart. Damages could be along laser pistols and rifles, which would take a character down in one shot. This would work for our Stormtroopers, but not so great for heroes. Starships are even more physics-linked here, and would need special rules apart from the main rules. There is a lot more hard science and "sim" in Traveller, so our Sar Wars conversion would work, but it would lack that Star Wars feel. Well, if Star Wars was written by Issac Asimov, maybe we'd have something.

Star Wars as told by GURPS: This could work, damage in this game is along the heavy side, with hex-based combat with many options from realistic to quick-and-easy. Starships are a bit technical, requiring a pretty robust design system. The problem would be limiting the game to just what's in Star Wars, since GURPS is such an expansive game with time travel, aliens, secret agents, and many other types of sci-fi all in one system. It would sort of feel like Star Wars as created by the SyFy channel, but a bit on the more realistic side.

Every game brings its own feel, and even the various Star Wars roleplaying games over the years had their own feels to them. The original d6 System was fast-and-loose, focusing on the serial adventure feel, while the later d20 games had a more technical character-build feel to them, with a more realistic, gritty take.

Deciding what's important to you is key here. What does Star Wars mean to you? When you design a game, taking into account how the game should feel and play is a personal decision made by the game designer, but also reflected by how others see the source material. Does the designer's views match up to what the market expects? Look and feel is important, it changes with the times, and it is one of those things that needs to 'click' - and have people respond to it positively. In the end it is a merge between mechanics, design, graphic arts, writing style, art, and presentation. A lot comes together to create 'feel', and it is a soft science of feedback merged with math and design.

PDF Sales: Wizard as Valve

Honestly, one of the areas Paizo has Wizards beat is PDF sales, hands down. I love my books, but it is super handy to have them as PDFs and carry them around on a tablet or e-reader. Gaming goes portable, and my rules are always at my fingertips. Why wouldn't Wizards want access to rules, modules, and other D&D material to be easier? Kids should be able to pull up a copy of D&D at recess on their phone, on their laptop in the library, or any other electronic device anywhere.

Ideally, Wizards should be like Valve, game makers in their own right, and also as the premier distribution spot for any edition of D&D and TSR game, ever; and also start pulling in their competitor's games. Wizards should go beyond being a game that makes RPGs, and be a company that owns RPG distribution and the community around them. Paizo is close to being that now, and it hurts seeing an incredible back catalog of TSR gems sitting there and unavailable for people to enjoy. Competition is great, and I'd love to see Wizards mount a serious effort to 'own' the world community of roleplaying beyond just D&D.

On the subject, limited print runs of TSR games are incredible, and I hope Wizards branches out and reprints hardcovers of Boot Hill, Gamma World, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, and other great games. Sell them at a profit, doe a great job, and I will buy. Celebrate our history, support our players, and be a force which gives back to the larger community. Remember the network effect? The more people that play RPGs, the more people will play the new D&D - whichever version that is currently, 4th Ed, 5th Ed, and on and on.

The Post RPG Era

One of the concepts that Steve Jobs came up with is the "Post PC era." What he meant was the era of every household needing a huge desktop tower, monitor, desk, or even a laptop setup was over. People could get by with most all their computing needs with just a smartphone, and possibly a tablet. It's a great marketing concept and design theory, and bad if you sell desktop computers. There is always a need for desktop towers, and Steve likened them to trucks. We will never need to get rid of trucks, but not everyone needs one. Apparently, Steve Jobs never went to a Costco parking lot, but that is beside the point.

Stop, pivot, and let's consider the "Post RPG Era." In this era, most gamers don't need huge bookshelves filled with pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Most of their roleplaying needs are fulfilled by easier-to-use online games, such as World of Warcraft or Everquest 2. For the most part, you build your character, fight the monsters, and get the treasures online, with little need for a group and a ton of books. If you need to roleplay, there are roleplaying MMO servers catering to those needs, or online forums where people from around the world can play in forum games.

Granted, it's a thin analogy, but there is a truth here. Hardcore gamers need their tower computers with SLI video card setups, and hard core RPG fans need their pen-and-paper games with multiclass character builds. For the most part, the market has moved on, and people who never would roleplay with traditional games, are now roleplaying online with millions of others around the world. Many of them only see a tenuous connection to the old pen-and-paper games, and some see none at all.

What is the future then? If we look at Apple's success and interpolate, the pen-and-paper world needs a "Tablet RPG" with a sister "Smartphone RPG". Now I m not talking about an RPG programmed for a smartphone or a tablet, but pen-and-paper game light enough that everyone can understand and operate it without too much hassle. Now there are thousands of pen-and-paper games like that, but none that have hit that magic level of design and utility that most Apple products reach. I am not a mindless Apple fan, but I am a super fan of their engineering and design.

What would a Post RPG Era game look like? Play like? How would it do most of what we need from PnP RPGs, yet be simple enough for anyone to grasp and understand? Like the iPad, why would I need one? It is a challenge to think about, and to elevate the art of RPGs to the next level. As with smartphones, there were thousands of different styles before the iPhone came out, and now you only see one style. This isn't an argument against heterogeneity, this is a search for that next big thing.

More on these thoughts later....