The Art of Plane Shift: Zendikar

OMG, this is a beautiful book. Today, The Art of Plane Shift: Zendikar came, and I am exploring a world that cannot be easily described. It has to be seen. This is more of a world-of book than an art-of book, and it shines in its presentation and style. If you love magic and want to get lost in this place for a while, this is your book.

This book feels honestly like what World of Warcraft wants to be, minus all the pop-culture jokes and silliness of Blizzard's creation. It is serious, epic, dramatic, torn asunder, lost, populated, mysterious, familiar, current and ancient all in one swipe of the brush, instantly capturing my imagination and excitement with each thrilling image and place. It is epic and deep, with meaning and a gravity of place and sense of importance that words cannot describe.

This is also not D&D, not by a long shot. This is much bigger, and more mature than the normal D&D worlds. Heroic NPCs can exist here, with no immature fear that "the player characters will be unimportant" sort of nonsense we get in the D&D world books. This is also hugely epic, with titanic creations the size of cities walking the fractured land. Turn the 3d up to eleven if they ever make a movie about this place, because you are going to need a bigger computer to render this.

Forget computers, you are going to need a bigger mind to take it all in.

Things exist here which D&D cannot easily describe, nor should it try.

I wouldn't want this to be D&D either, it is Magic: The Gathering, unique with its mana types and lands, and it doesn't feel right to fighter-mage-thief this place and kill goblins in a camp while a titan the size of a mountain walks by. Seriously. These are epic heroes who shatter mountains and conquer cities, not your average street-level rogue counting silver pieces. This is Magic, and this is greatness and power personified. D&D is trivial and minor in scope, worrying about ten-foot poles and what's in the next room. This is epic, Lord of the Rings stuff, cinematic and dramatic from level one, saving the world one adventure at a time.

This needs a completely new roleplaying game to even begin to describe, and not D&D, d20, or something we have seen before.

This is a book which will expand your mind, and open your imaginations up to possibilities great and wondrous. It is one of those which inspires and gives you the itch to adventure. It is also one that makes other fantasy worlds look plain by comparison, for good or bad.

If I can describe it in one thought, it is like the movie Avatar, when that movie first came out and blew people away, but for fantasy gaming. It changes the game. It is less so fiction than it is an experience.

Completely blown away by this. Pick it up and explore.

Pathfinder: Ultimate Intrigue

So, Pathfinder: Ultimate Intrigue?

I feel this one is mostly a mess. It shows some of the worst failings of the d20 system in rules design, and attempts to rules-ify and feat-ify basic "I do this and I say that" roleplaying. What should be in-character banter between the player and referee is slogged down by rules, stat-blocks, and game systems.

DM judgement and player creativity are replaced by book reference and rules structure. It feels terrible, especially when compared with the elegance of other systems in these situations like Savage Worlds or FATE.

Why? Because what this book forces you to do is buy feats and sink character points into skills that take away from combat, which many players will not want to do. There is little support for 'well rounded' characters in most d20 systems, as you are making choices between "combat effectiveness" and "non-combat ability" every level, and combat effectiveness usually wins. You must keep up with the Jones' - aka, the monsters and opponents of the world, so choosing "combat" is typically the safer way to go.

So now, what should be "handle it with roleplaying" is now "we can build characters around social combat rules" and I feel something huge is lost here. If a player, without a character with a social build, roleplays wonderfully in a Game of Thrones moment of drama and heartfelt appeal - am I supposed to coldly refer to the rules, state they do not have the feats to make such an appeal, and deny the roleplaying based on a failing of "social combat?"

Please, d20 game designers, stick to combat rules, which the d20 system does well. Keep the rules out of the roleplaying area, and let people play. I feel anytime designers try to make d20 do something other than combat it usually results in a complicated mess of charts and rules that takes the fun out of the game (there are a couple exceptions of d20 designs that do this well, but not D&D as a whole). Especially if you start putting a "social feat tax" on characters who want to be social, and now they suck when standing in a party alongside the established builds and highly-tuned killing machines the game has gotten us used to.

If these options were in the game on the ground floor, I could feel differently, since the default assumption would be "you build balanced characters for combat and social play." But still, creating strict rules for social roleplay feels so backwards and against the spirit of the hobby I sit here and wonder why.

I want to play a diplomat who is just as good with a sword as the fighter is, and I want my diplomat to feel like he or she can contribute equally when in combat or out of it. Making me lose combat effectiveness just because I want my character to be talky takes away from the fun of the game, and it further pushes apart the "roleplay" players from the "combat" players when the game should bring them together.

To the book's credit, it provides some new character archetypes and  build options that are fun, but the whole notion of creating a class around a Batman-like "secret identity" vigilante seems odd. My rogue or mage could have a secret identity too, you know. I could even have my mage or rogue be a vigilante. Seriously. I don't need this level of classification, and I don't need making every job-based noun a character class. The build options are fun though, and the art is pretty.

Why give all these social rules for roleplaying, and then give us hundreds of spells meant to short-circuit it? We have spells to sense lies and motives, make others seem as dishonest, and all sorts of other spells which feel like they are "quick and easy outs" for mages in social situations. Why go through a whole Sherlock Holmes adventure interrogating suspects, putting together clues, and figuring out who has the motive to lie about who killed Mr. Boddy when this complete spellbook of "forensic lie detection" powers can do the same with the wave of a magic wand? The very thing the book tries to do, create a framework for social adventures, feels marginalized by the spells in the back of the book.

Seriously. If we are trying to find out the killer, are we going to go through the detective work, or just have someone cast a spell?

Someone cast the spell and let's get on to the next combat encounter. Yes, the book says "magic is frowned upon in polite company," but really? Bust out the lie-detector, we are trying to save the world here. Divination is already a huge deal-breaker when it comes to D&D and mystery games, and after this book's spells are introduced into the mix, running social and intrigue games feels worse. Yes, there are some tricky counter-counter spells in here meant to counter divination, but I don't want to play a game of divination-counter escalation and spell-counter-spell when doing the Sherlock Holmes thing.

And not in every mystery because it feels forced and artificial. Who done it? Whoever can cast the anti-divination and social magic is a prime suspect.

Other games do this better. If I want to play mystery and social, Pathfinder is not my first choice nor would I want it to be (see Divination magic, above). I expected a "how to run a mystery" or "how to create a social adventure" type material, and it feels like we just got a bunch of misguided rules that will be ignored because:

• People who play the game for tactical challenge will ignore
• People who play the game for roleplaying will feel burdened by
• Referees who are used to rewarding great roleplaying will ignore

And the rules drive these two groups apart instead of bring them together. You force social characters down a path buying social feats and powers (making them weaker when playing with the other side), and you put combat characters on their well-trodden path down of combat effectiveness (and also the path the game is balanced around).

There are times when I feel the old-school games of "roleplay is up to the players and referee" is the best way to go. If you need a stat that affects the chance of success, let it be charisma, and leave it at that. No feats needed. No skills needed. No rules or charts needed. Just your CHR modifier, and of course, the referee's judgement based on what you just said, how the NPC feels, and what is being asked for.

Come up with a DC, add your CHR modifier, and roll.

MMO Games versus Social Games

I tell you, our discussions about game design as super interesting. I ran yesterday's article about "escalating hit points" by DarkgarX the other day, and he predictably had the same reaction, "Escalating hit point systems suck!"

So we talked about it for a while, and we managed to come to an interesting conclusion:

• Some pen-and-paper games are more MMO Roleplaying games
• Some pen-and-paper games are more Social Roleplaying games

Eureka! I thought, and we had this interesting discussion on what makes something more an MMO game than a Social Roleplaying game. I suppose we need some definitions first:

Social RPG: A roleplaying game where social interactions are the primary determining factor in determining success. Combat is a social interaction or the end thereof, and conflict is balanced on one-to-one fights.

MMO RPG (or Party-Based RPG): A roleplaying game where combat is the primary determining factor in determining success. Combat is balanced on many-to-one fights, where a party works together to defeat a foe or group of foes. Combat is a group-based gameplay function and less of a social interaction.

It is an interesting definition, because a lot of things start to make sense. In a game where a PC plays "Dirty Harry", the character's weapon needs to be powerful and a tool of social interaction. Combat needs to be quick and deadly, because how is a single character supposed to make a threat and hold someone off? This is a Social RPG, and weapons and combat in these sorts of games tend to be quick and deadly, and one character can defeat a foe in one blow because that threat needs to exist when violence is used as a tool of interaction between characters and bad guys.

In a MMO RPG, weapons need to be balanced for the party's contributions. Your longsword does 1d8+2, or an average of 7 points of damage. The big boss monster has 60 hit points. Is the boss monster afraid of one sword blow? Probably not. But your 5 person party is doing 7 points each per turn, so that's 35 points of damage potentially in the first volley. That is a threat. The party is the social threat, not one person. Your character is weaker socially with a singular one-on-one threat of violence, but your party is the social group making the interaction with violence here.

In a MMO, that one-on-one social contract many players assume is there with a Dirty Harry "make my day" threat does not exist. That is for the party to say, "make our day." It is a strange way to view things, but it works. Some games cater to the one-on-one interactions, and make violence and combat powerful enough for those one-on-one threats to hold water. These are Social RPGs, where they can be played between two people, a single character feels like they have the power to make threats and changes because a single character matters.

In MMO games, the group matters more than one-on-one interactions. This is why MMOs in general are more popular for groups of people, since it takes a party to get a goal done. You can do one-on-one roleplaying with an MMO RPG, but that social contract of the thief holding a dagger on someone needs to be specially considered with a coup de grace rule because the game is by default setup for a party to be contributing towards a goal, not a single person. One-on-one roleplaying exists in these games, but the social power comes from the "all for one" party and not the individual.

In a MMO RPG, you need escalating hit points. You need to balance things so the party as a contributing whole is the determining factor, instead of the one-on-one fights. The play of a battle matters, and things like boss monsters can exist. Because you don't want every fight at the table to end on turn one, things need to have some play to them and be tough. You can have a 40 hit point giant. You are a part of a team, and that team works together to solve threats and take action.

In a Social RPG, you can get away with using a flat system where weapon damages and hit points do not scale with character power. That 0.38 pistol will always be powerful and a threat. It needs to be because in a more social one-on-one interaction, you need those threats to hold water so you can roleplay them without your mind saying "OMG, that does a d6 damage! He has at least 50 hit points. Not a threat!" You can scale skill and the ability to defend or to-hit, but weapons powers should be high and fights should be deadly because that weapon represents the end-all of a threat made in a social context. That social interaction needs to have weight behind it. Combat needs to be balanced for the one-on-one and deadly.

It is an interesting difference between the style and play of these types of games, and these definitions clean up a lot of how we talk about games. Is this more of a social game? Is this mechanic more party-based and MMO-ish? Is this game's combat system more social-based, or does it assume the party is the driving force?

And a lot of our arguments about which game is better for what have cleared up between us because we can now say "this type of rule is better for social games," or, "this game is better for MMO or party-based play."

Sometimes a disagreement happens is because there is no common definition between the two sides.

Level Systems and Escalating Hit Points

I got into this discussion the other day with DarkgarX, so here goes.

He absolutely hates level systems and escalating hit points. He doesn't like these systems because he feels it makes things that should be dangerous, meaningless. Your sense of threat and scale get thrown out the window. Who cares about a gun pointed at your character's head when it only does 1d8 damage to your 60 hit points?

I know, there is the coup de grace (coo-day-grahs) rule, and this should handle it as a GM ruling. But still, he has a point when arrows and bullets are flying, and characters are laughing off damage.

Yes, heroes are supposed to be heroic.

I feel part of this comes from the "max hit points per level" house-rule, and I am cooling towards using that in my future Pathfinder games. I am leaning towards the PFS average HD + CON hit point rule:

HP (1st Level) = Maximum HD roll + Con Modifier

HP (2nd and Higher Levels) = Average HD roll (1/2 rounded up) + CON Modifier

If it is good enough for organized play, it is good enough for me. So a fighter with a +2 CON bonus has the following hit points at the following levels:

1. 10 (max hp for the d10 HD) + 2 = 12
2. 12 + 5.5 (rounded to 6) + 2 = 20
3. 20 + 6 + 2 = 28
4. 28 + 6 + 2 = 36
5. ...and so on, +8 per level, and so on (sans in the optional +1 hp/level favored class bonus)

With maximum HD per level, the level 3 fighter has 36 hit points (and level 4 is 48), so the average hp/level system knocks a level of toughness off low level characters, and by 10th level the difference is 84 hit points to 120 hit points, or about 30% less for a fighter. Is it enough of a difference to matter?

I feel it is. At 84 hit points, taking a d8+2 damage hit is going to matter, because I could lose 8-10% of my hit points in that one strike. Enough of those, and my hero is going down. At 120 hit points, I have about 40 hit points to give, which is on average five or six more d8+2 hits my fighter has to give.

• At average hp/level, it's 12 average d8+2 rolls before my fighter falls at level 10
• At maximum hp/level it's 17 average d8+2 rolls before my fighter falls at level 10

Too many hit points too quickly breaks the game, and the rate they are accumulated feels like the problem here. Do those free five hits for a level 10 fighter break the game? I feel they do. If you figure 10 fights in an adventure, that is 5 x 10 = 50 free d8+2 hits in combat for that fighter for the whole adventure. What was once a balanced game of resource management becomes making sure those free hits get recharged and reset every fight. That is a huge amount of power given away for free because we like a "max hp per level" house-rule.

With less hit points, damage means more. Healers have to pay attention and use healing spells more often to maintain that safety margin - so healers mean more and healing is more powerful. Defenses that could stop attacks mean more. The monsters are more challenging. Fights are closer. The numbers aren't so out-of-control feeling anymore, or not as bad as they used to seem.

As a player, is max hp/level a good thing? Sure! Everybody wants to be invincible, and everyone wants the best character the rules allow. But max hp/level is not right. Statistically, average hp/level is closer to the balance the game designers intended; and all of a sudden, all of the game's math starts to make more sense. The danger returns. The calculations for CR start to work out a little better. Those "free hits" every fight dry up, and your margin of victory becomes tighter.

I would even say for the average monster, the same is true. Keeping the hit points of monsters down speeds up fights. It makes damage mean more. It doesn't turn the game into a DPS race where maximizing is the key to victory just because you want to reduce a massive pile of hit points to zero in the quickest amount of time possible. D&D 4 had this problem for us, where even low level fights were this massive hit point grind where the party sat there trying to finish off goblins with 30 or 40 hit points with special powers. Even D&D 5 feels a bit hit point happy for us, and I like the older, d8 scale, 1 HD orc sort of 4 or 5 hit point rabble monster. To compare:

• Pathfinder Orc = 6 hp, 1 HD
• D&D 4 Orc = 1 hp (minion) or 66 hp (4 HD, Orcs start at level 4 in D&D 4)
• D&D 5 Orc = 15 hp (2-ish HD, but HD are not really used for monsters in D&D 5)

You have to factor in the damage scaling Wizards has put into play in D&D editions above 4 in those numbers, since to differentiate the game from D&D 3.5/Pathfinder, characters do more damage in the new versions of the game. Still, I like the Pathfinder Orc the best, a longbow could take one out with a solid hit, and it's another minion down (without needing the D&D 4 minion rules).

Do I like tougher Orcs? Yes, on general I do, but not to the point where the balance and scaling of the game world feels out of whack and like a video-game. To compare, 6 hp in a d4 hit die and 2 hit point commoner world is a tough foe, and a 36 hp level four fighter is as tough as six of those Orcs, or 18 common men. Those numbers feel right to me, not DarkgarX though as he is still saying it's too many hits. That d8 longsword is a powerful weapon, and still dangerous to when used against that level 4 fighter, and deadly to the 6 hp Orc.

In D&D 5, it's gonna take at least two or three hits to dispatch that Orc. In D&D 4, it's going to take a good majority of the game session. The opposite is also true. In Pathfinder, the Orc is the most deadly wielding a d8 longsword. In D&D 4, he is the weakest comparatively to the damage of that weapon listed in the book.

Scaling matters. Keeping your numbers down matters. Less means more. The original AD&D numbers and old-school ratios are good and what original D&D is based on, and I feel changing the number and damage scale hurts the game. Pathfinder is the closest to this original "keep it down" scale (minus the multi-attacks at later levels), and it keeps that low hit point and hit die feeling of danger intact. It is easy to want to succumb to "more is more" and give everyone free hit points - but I feel it breaks the game. Even the post D&D 4 scaling does the same thing in my feeling.

Less hit points mean more danger, and more danger is more excitement and a good thing.

It's a Hobby, not an Operating System

One thing that struck me about our recent visit to At Ease Games in San Diego was the sheer incredible wall of Pathfinder books to buy they had down there.

D&D 5 was on a shelf of its own and well-presented at the front of the store as well, but the system does not have that much to buy. The three main books, and a series of hardcover modules. The store does its best to sell the system and gives it a prime spot, but there just isn't that much to look at once you have the three main books. There isn't anything else for it (expansion wise) on the shelf, in fact. It feels kind of depressing because I like the system and wish I could buy into it more.

If you value simplicity, which is an admirable trait, then D&D 5 has a lot going for it and is a desirable system. If you are into collecting and buying as a hobby, then I don't feel there is much competition and Pathfinder is the winner here. I like both systems, but as a hobby, Pathfinder gives me things to look forward to and buy every couple months.

Yes, this is at the cost of complexity, and Pathfinder is a beast if you run it with all the books. I am leaning towards "one plus" like "basic book plus Mythic" or some sort of complexity reduction subset for a game like that. But some hobbies are supposed to be exciting, complex things where you can go all out and get involved with them intimately - like model railroading where you can build a little world to painstaking detail, plant every weed, place every rock, lay down tracks and watch it go.

Simplicity? Damn simplicity, this is a hobby dammit. I can go as simple or as complicated as I want, and find groups that can go along with me. Pathfinder does this for me. The game scales, and it provides rewards to those who want to go complex and deep. Admittedly, it takes a great referee to run a game that takes advantage of that sort of complexity, but the game allows me to try and learn how to do this.

There is an argument for simplicity, in that it allows for more people to play and that it lowers the barrier to entry. D&D 5 does that. But there comes a point where I want more than the first (and only) three books gives me, and I want to buy and not rely on one-off downloaded PDFs made for modules. I want official system support, and a book to cover new options. I want expansions. I want new material. I want to drool over that shelf of books on the wall. To browse. To shop. To want. To save up and buy, looking forward to the day I check out with that new book.

I like both games for different reasons. I don't feel the value of keeping simplicity is worth never printing a D&D 5 version of Unearthed Arcana or some other book that can take us to new places. I suppose this is a reaction to the complete mess that D&D 4 gave us (in both system bloat and power creep), but you know, I would like to see something new maybe once a year, at a slow rate, just to keep things fresh and evolving.

I don't see your favorite rules system as some 'operating system' where you need to keep things simple and the same to the point of stagnation. I see it as a base from which to provide options and collectible lines of books, something to support, and something to buy into should you want to go there.

You can still play Pathfinder and D&D 5 with the basic set of books and have fun. It's just with Pathfinder, at least for me, my hobby of collecting, modding, creating, and building worlds feels supported and catered to by a constant release of collectible books and rules additions. I can build that model railroad world like I build my Skyrim modded world. This is my hobby, and I like feeding it with new ideas. I love simplicity to a point, but I can get that from many games as well. What I love is when a company goes all out and creates a hobby for me to buy into, and Paizo has done an incredible job at creating a world like this.

That Pathfinder shelf full of books and adventures is the result of hundreds of people's love, hard work, and craft towards creating that larger hobby and gaming world, and it is something I support.

And with D&D 5, I have this empty feeling a larger hobby is something I wish I could support.

At Ease Games & Inner Sea Races

When we visited San Diego, we dropped by At Ease Games and checked the place out. This is an amazing store with a great staff and a gaming room that needs to be seen to be believed. Long tables for card gaming with gorgeous artwork. Huge round marble gaming tables and comfortable chairs and an invitation to come down to the store to play. This is a gaming paradise, and it is not to be missed.

The game selection was incredible, and we got lost in shelf after shelf of incredible games and hobbies. They even have war-gaming mixed in with the Magic Cards, card games, Warhammer, Warmachine, Star Wars, and roleplaying games, and some of our old favorites were on the shelves as well. This truly is a special place, and we will be coming back.

They have a magnificent collection of Pathfinder books across one entire wall. I wished D&D 5 had this type of collection, but at this point I am feeling something is slightly wrong with D&D 5 and expansion books. I don't see many books that are purely expansion splat-books, and it feels like this version is heavy on the modules and light on the options. I don't want D&D 4 levels of splat-books and fixes to splat-books, just something beyond the basics.



The Inner Sea Races book is what struck me on this visit, and I had heard it had some not so great reviews. Picking it up, I was struck by the color and detail of the races in this book, the variety, and the background and "placement" of the races in the game world. It really made Golarion come alive, and I wish I had this book when I started playing as it would have given me a lot to work with. I love fantasy races, and I love the conflict and culture they bring to a world.

This book is a must get, and it raises the default Pathfinder setting up a couple of notches above Wizards settings in my opinion. Why? Epic feel. I love the epic feeling this book gives the world, it takes a simple world and elevates it to a World of Warcraft level of races and world shakers. I get this feeling the world is filled with a great variety of incredible and different races, more-so than just the basic Player's Guide gives us, but a real feeling of a deeper "something more" there to the world.

Books like this pull me back into the world and keep me imagining things there.

And stores like this keep me coming back for more as well.

Plane Shift: Zendikar and D&D

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/plane-shift-zendikar-2016-04-27

Plane Shift: Zendikar was made using the fifth edition of the D&D rules. D&D is a flexible rules system designed to model any kind of fantasy world. The D&D magic system doesn't involve five colors of mana or a ramping-up to your most powerful spells, but the goal isn't to mirror the experience of playing Magic in your role-playing game. The point is to experience the worlds of Magic in a new way, through the lens of the D&D rules. All you really need is races for the characters, monsters for them to face, and some ideas to build a campaign.

No! This feels like the Batman versus Superman of roleplaying supplements, and for the last great world without a roleplaying game it feels like a huge missed opportunity. What Wizards did here was put out a 38-page PDF attempting to mix D&D 5 with a plane from Magic: The Gathering. It reads like a brief player's guide to a larger module, and while it whets the appetite for the experience, I feel it falls short on execution.

Gone is MTG's unique magic system. What I would give to have a unique magic system built for this world - based on the spells in the card game. Get my mage out there tapping elemental sources of magic to cause great destruction and topple foes and kingdoms and it is GAME ON. Have me flinging a Greyhawk or Faerun era magic missile and it feels like a complete and seen-it-before fizzle. We could have had an Exalted-level of power game going on here with great and powerful heroes, but instead we get something that feels like a re-skinned mod.

I don't care if you use the D&D 5 system for this, in fact, I would love it - just not the classes, and not the spells, and certainly don't have me reskinning monsters to make due. I want the real deal. I want MTG the RPG, not the Forgotten Realms playing pretend.

The PDF is too short, and it feels like a feeler or something put out to gauge interest. If it is, I hope they take the time to do this right and use the core of the D&D 5 game to build an epic RPG based completely on MTG. Something I could collect a shelf of books for like Pathfinder. Something I would be excited as the next book covering the next era of MTG comes out and we have tons of new monsters, spells, and character options.

It hurts, because to me and my group, it would feel like an easier task to use a completely generic RPG, buy The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Zendikar art book (and maybe a card guide), and build a homebrew game from that. There comes a point where a generic game would do a better job, because with a generic game you are mostly adding content instead of removing it. I don't want a game that requires the D&D Player's Guide, I want a standalone book. I don't want to be saying, "well ignore this and don't pick that" and attempting to make two books with split personalities work together.

One book (or set of stand-alones), based on one rules system, and let me go at it. Why not? I feel this "don't rock the boat" feeling is way too strong in both D&D 5 and Pathfinder where you can't have a product that doesn't require the main book. Yeah, right, sales and everything - but it feels timid to me. Imagine the sales of MTG the RPG, and then let people pull in D&D stuff as an option because it uses the same rules set. I don't want to be forced to buy and understand D&D to play MTG if I love MTG.

Let MTG players have their own D&D 5 compatible books and join the roleplayers at the D&D table. Don't force them to buy something they may not want, or they have to mod to get working.

To me, it feels like a huge missed opportunity, and a dream game line that I guess only exists as a homebrew option.