What Am I Reading: Dungeon & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 5th edition

Part Four: WOW…

I started to write a simple review of Dungeon & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 5th edition, but it grew into a series of blogs about the history of the game itself! Refer to my previous blogs for some of the terms if you are confused.

Just like everything else in the world, D&D was suffering from poor sales during the economic depression of the mid-2000s. Gamers were leaving the tabletop games in droves to play online. Neverwinter and World or Warcraft (WOW) were the dominant games in the sword-and-sorcery genres. This fit into the isolationist mode most of us were going into with the invention of smart phones. Instead of rows and rows of kids sitting on the benches in malls, now there are rows and rows of kids sitting in coffee shops texting. Probably texting the kids sitting right next to them. Zombie apocalypse indeed…

Sitting at a table with dice and paper was passé; why imagine attacking an orc compound when you can see it in 3D on your computer screen? Wizards of the Coast realized they were losing their gamers. So in 2007 it was time for a new edition of D&D. A version that would attract those gamers back! They couldn’t beat the electronic games … so what do you do if you can’t beat ‘em?

4th edition gets a lot of bad press – has ever since it came out. Once something is pronounced a bomb – whether it be a movie, a TV show or a game system – it cannot recover even if it really isn’t so bad. Go to your favorite browser and type “4th edition D&D criticism” and look at the topics: link titles include “What Went Wrong” and “It’s Awful” -and these are dated 2008 and 2009 when the game had only been out a year or less! I won’t add to the chorus of contempt except to reflect what I have already blogged before.

                4th edition isn’t a bad system. Some bloggers said if it wasn’t called D&D it would not have lasted. That’s true, but that is the case with MOST non-D&D RPGS.

If done correctly and with players acclimated to the system, 4th edition might even be fun. But it was so vastly different from anything before it … it was hardly D&D at all! It was a table-top version of a video game. WOW on paper. Ironically, WOW had its own tabletop version of itself – with a hardback guide, etc. Its tabletop version of D&D did just about as well as D&D’s tabletop version of WOW.

The basic classes and races are the same – although it took three Player’s Handbooks to get all the classes listed (Barbarians, Monks, etc.). Later Player’s Handbooks added tieflings (a race with a demonic taint), dragonmen, crystaline beings, angelic Devas, etc. It kept the 3rd edition’s Prestige Classes but called them Paragon Paths.

And the role-playing aspect of the game is still there, albeit it is made secondary to combat. From the few modules I read, role-playing is set way back on the list of things to do while playing the game. Way way back.

The biggest changes are in the way 4^th edition handles combat. Remember, we’re talking about a table-top MMORP (massively multi-player online role-playing game).

Play with miniatures is encouraged. Some scenarios/modules seem to require it. For the first time since the D&D Basic Set, back when it was a spin-off of Chainmail, players are encouraged to dig out their miniature figures and terrain, whip out their tape measures and roll play. Miniatures never went away, strictly speaking. Gamers could use miniatures throughout all the editions – but 4th edition made it a necessary part of combat. Without miniatures – using a power that pushed back an opponent one square made no real sense without something on the table to help visualize it. How can we know if the push-back pushed the orc back into the waiting arms of an assassin’s blade? Make a luck roll? Miniatures take the guess work out of it. And takes the imagination out of it, too.

Powers? Oh yes, perhaps the biggest change in 4th edition, and the one that makes it seem more like a table top MMORP than anything else.

Each class and race was given powers. These are abilities one can use in combat. At-will powers could be used every round (portion of combat) – Healing Surge can heal you for 6 points – keeping you alive to swing your mace at least one last time. Per-encounter powers can be used only once during combat – and you cannot use it again until the next mob of bad guys come around the corner – Flurry of Blows might give you two chances to hit in a round. Per-day is just that. Until you sleep and recover, you can only do this power once per day – Knock throws everyone to the ground.

It’s like the cool-down period for abilities in WOW – you have some buttons to click that gives you an arcane blast or sword swipe every few seconds, some you cannot use for ten or more seconds, come only once every few minutes.

Even the terminology and class “assignments” come straight out of a MMORP. Rogues are attack dogs – nicking and cutting opponents. Fighters are referred to as “tanks”. There’s a Warlord class that gives other characters plusses just by standing in the midst of combat – there’s no other real reason for the class. Combat combat combat.

With this, were I to play 4th edition, I would like to have all my powers laid out before me on cards. My at-wills to the left, per-encounters in the middle and per-day on the right. Other stats would also be available. That way I can keep track of what I used and when it will be available again. Just like on my computer screen. I go from playing on my desktop to playing on my desk top.

Stats for abilities became uniform. Before, if you had 14 Strength, it would give you a +1 on “to hit” rolls, damage, opening doors, etc.  A 14 Dexterity gave you +1 on initiative, “to hit” rolls for ranged weapons. Now a 14 in any stat gives you a +1 benefit on anything involving that stat. No more lists – if it involved Strength, you get +1 to your roll. I like that. (remember that I am winging it on the numbers here – don’t tell me “a 13 gives you +1, a 14 is +2. Cool, but regardless, if you get my point, let’s move on…).

With 4th edition, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) went with the nuclear option. It stopped producing anything remotely to do with 3.5. It left that to Piazo. Piazo was the company that published Dragon and Dungeon magazine. WotC cancelled both magazines – no one will care about 3.5 once 4th edition debuts!

“Um,” Piazo said, “would you mind if we continue with the 3.5-style game system? We’ll call it Pathfinder and it will be completely different from your new edition.”

“Of course you can, you little upstart, we’re too big to worry about such small potatoes as you…”

                I usually end these blogs with our little troop of characters trying to swing over a chasm. Just use the same ending as my last blog. Since it has nothing to do with combat combat combat, the roll play of swinging over a chasm is unchanged.

But that brings up one of my biggest criticisms – roll play vs. role play. In previous editions, I am a thief named Visilai; in 4th edition, I am a rogue/assassin hybrid with the invisibility character build!

Pathfinder started beating D&D in sales. Bad. Then the Star Wars Role Playing game started beating D&D in sales.  D&D was third overall. From the only game in town to third place. Something had to be done.

They quickly created a 5th edition.

They called it D&D Next. I call it D&D: The Apology.

TO BE CONCLUDED…

Copyright 2014 Michael Curry

What Am I Reading: Dungeon & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 5th edition

Part Two: Dungeons, Dragons and Caving …

I started to write a simple review of Dungeon & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 5th edition, but it grew into a series of blogs about the history of the game itself! If you are confused about some of the terms and initials – I define them in my previous blog: https://michaelgcurry.com/2014/09/03/a-brief-history-of-dungeons-and-dragons-being-an-eventual-review-of-dd-5e/

I pick up in 1982 …

The game in both its versions – D&D and AD&D caught on among us nerds like the plague! We played and played and bought supplement after supplement and module after module. Modules were scenarios and maps of a complete adventure the DM’s could use for their game sessions. I still love reading modules and imagining characters going through the game. It’s like reading the outline of a book and coming up the details on my own! Much like a ghost writer for most celebrity fiction…

New classes were introduced – the barbarian and the thief-acrobat. There was a Saturday morning cartoon.

                There were also complaints.  Lots of them. “I have an 18 Dex and I can’t roll for squat! Why should the Magic User make HIS Dex roll of 9 when he jumps and I can’t with my 18?”

“That’s the way the dice rolls,” says the DM.

“It’s not fair!” whines the poor roller…

And then there were the Christians…

Since neither D&D nor AD&D mentioned Jesus every third sentence it was deemed Satanic. They said the books taught youngsters how to actually invoke devils and demons – which of course explains their proliferation in the skies of the mid-1980s. D&D replaced Judas Priest as the chief cause of teen suicide. “That’s cruel, Mike.” True; and I apologize. I shouldn’t make light of such a serious subject – but to use D&D or Judas Priest as the straw man is also unfair. Those kids needed help from the adults around them and didn’t get it.

OK, back to the Christian nonsense: read Dark Dungeons – I’ll wait. http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.ASP

So between the whiners with bad dice and the kooks with bad divinity, TSR (the parent company that published D&D and AD&D) came out with a Second Edition in 1987. It came with a new Player’s Handbook, Monster Manuals (several of them) and Dungeon Master’s Guide.

The classes and races were toned down to satisfy the kooks (like you can ever satisfy the kooks) – Magic Users became Mages, Assassins were removed altogether. So were any references to devils and demons. Some changes weren’t so puritanical and made a bit of sense – Rangers became a sub-class of Fighters. Druids became a subclass of Clerics.

2nd edition introduced THAC0 – “to hit Armor Class Zero”. Players and monsters had armor classes – the thicker your hide or armor the better your armor class and the harder it is to take damage. Too much damage and you die. Fighters clad with metal plates ala Ivanhoe and King Arthur had ACs of 1 or less. Magic Users – er – mages in robes has AC 9 and were easier to hit – if you could get around the fighter in plate mail. Dragons had ACs in the negatives. A particular goblin had a THAC0 of 18, say. A player with a fighter with an AC 1 would be hit if the goblin rolled a 17 or higher (18 – 1) – not too good. The fighter had a THAC0 of 14 and this goblin had AC 7, so he could hit on a roll of 7 or better – which has pretty good odds of succeeding. This won’t be much of a fight…

I have yet to mention the dice used in the game – it started with what the rest of the world calls dice – a six-sided cube with dots on it you found in all the board games and in every scene of “Guys and Dolls”. D&D and other role-playing games use a lot more than those. There are 4, 8, 10, 12, 20, and even 30 and 100-sided dice available. You can always tell a gamer by the way they refer to a standard dice with the dots on them. We call them “six siders”. By the time I got into the game – d6s (six-sided dice) was used for rolling stats and some hit points – mostly the d20 was used. If I had a Dex of 15 and had to “beat Dex” (see my previous blogs), I had to roll a 15 or less on a twenty-sided dice.

Anyway, back to THAC0: once you got used to it, and you used your fingers and toes, it wasn’t so bad.

Magic and Clerical abilities were divided into “spheres” – your character concentrated on only a few spheres. You couldn’t cast just anything. Whether this is good or bad is an individual choice. Personally, I think we should be leery of any rule that limits play. On the other hand, it makes for more of a challenge in selecting how best to overcome a game’s obstacles. “Blast the orc with a fireball!” “But I’m an illusionist! All I can do is turn him purple!’ “What the hell good is that spell!?” “You didn’t mind when we hid in front of that purple tapestry!” “Shut up!”

They also added proficiencies. A fighter could no longer just pick up an axe dropped by that ogre and use it to slice necks. He had to be proficient in the weapon. The character learned proficiencies as he got higher and higher in level (note: as a character plays, he gains experience points and goes up in levels – this means he can gain hit points, gain more spells, gets tougher and better at what he does, etc.).

There were also non-weapon proficiencies. Here is where the rot set it, in my opinion.

Remember the scenario from Part One?

“I try to grab the vine and swing over the chasm.”

“Beat your Dex,” says the DM.

“I have the Jump Proficiency, so I can subtract one from my roll. {Roll} Good thing, I just made it!”

“It’s about time, Mr. Poor Roller. Now the Magic User – er – Mage, sorry, you roll your Dex.”

“I only have a Dex of 9…” {Roll} “Made it!” says the Mage.

“You always make it,” says Mr. Poor Roller.

“Whiner,” mumbles the Mage.

The Jumping Proficiency. Jumping. Anybody can jump! My grandmother could jump! Roll your Dexterity – if you roll shitty, you fall, if you roll low, you make it. You don’t need to be proficient in jumping…

And Jumping was only available to the Rogue class. If you were a Rogue, you got a plus to jump if you selected Jumping. The rest of us had to rely on our die roll. Between the four base classes there were about 68 skills to choose from.

68.

It gets worse.

But in the meantime 2nd Edition was an even better success that 1st! Character kits were introduced – there are different types of thieves (an urban pickpocket vs. a Robin-Hood-esque-good-guy) and with the different non-weapon proficiencies you add lots of different flavors to the basic classes. Classes had their own supplements. A mage could be a chronomancer and cast spells based on time. Different worlds and venues developed – Aztec-like rules and scenarios to play along with the Oriental Adventures (a 1st edition supplement); Dark Sun – set in a ecological-disaster-desert world; Ravenloft – a gothic horror setting, Spelljammer took the players into outer space: all were available as 2nd edition play.  The supplements filled the shelves.

It was huge. Huge! So huge the fat and bloated company that was TSR sold the company lock stock and dragon hoard for $25 million to Wizards of the Coast.

And WotC took the game and changed everything…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Copyright 2014 Michael Curry

What Am I Reading: Dungeon & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 5th edition

Part One: Making History!

The Dungeon Master looked up from his notes and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “The tunnel finally ends in a huge cavern – you can’t see very far. But before the entrance to the cavern there is a crack in the ground making a huge hole blocking your way.”

“How far is the gap?” A player says.

“About thirty feet – you can’t jump it.” The player checks his character sheet.

Another player asks, “I look above the gap to the ceiling, what do I see?”

“Several bleached white dangling roots – some are thick as tree trunks, some as thick as a person’s arm, some very thin.”

“Are they within reach?”

“No, you’d have to jump.”

“Can I make a running jump and use the vines to swing to the other side? I promise not to yell like Tarzan.”

“Roll …”

This blog started off as a simple review of the new Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (Fifth Edition), but most of the changes made in this edition required an explanation of what went on before. The review turned into a history of the game itself.

Like the archaeological City of Troy, the information at the top of the site was built upon a lower city with its own information. This was built on the city before that, which was built on the city before that.

To explain the good and bad of Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (Fifth Edition) and to really appreciate or discredit what they had done, I had to dig into the treasure and trash of its past incarnations.

It started with miniature gaming – those fellows (let’s face it, miniature gaming – especially in the 1960s and 70s – was a y-chromosome activity) who would lay out model train terrain on a huge table or piece of plywood in a garage or basement and place small-scale soldiers in Napoleonic or Civil War gear and equipment, take out their tape measures and rulebooks and become omniscient generals of historic battles.

Sometimes the gamers would take medieval troops or earlier-era figures for their miniature battles. Instead of Waterloo or Gettysburg, they would re-enact Bosworth Fields or the Battle of Alesia.

Rulebooks for these types of game were plentiful. One such rulebook published in 1971 was called Chainmail by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perrin. It did well.

The authors wanted to have some fun and added fantasy elements to their medieval miniatures. Instead of Charlemagne and his troops, elven soldiers took the fields. Wizards blasting bolts of fire took the place of ballista. Dragons flew overhead instead of boulders. Rules for such magical beings were informally written out.

But what if the gamers wanted to storm the keep? What if they wanted to go after that dragon in his lair – deep within the bowels of the earth? Mass miniature battles were joined by individual characters exploring caves and castles. More rules were to help move groups of individuals instead of a mass of armies. Sometimes the gamers played the individual characters while the miniature figurines and terrain stayed in their cases.

The individual rules took on new type of game and required a new game system. Gygax and friends called it Dungeons and Dragons (“D&D”). D&D had simple rules that were easy to follow. With some dice, a piece of paper and a pencil, you could imagine playing a Lord-of-the-Rings elf or wizard (called a magic-user) or a Conan-esque or Fahfrd-and-The-Grey-Mouser-like fighter or thief. You could wander castles and its dungeons or deep into the bowels of the earth to root out a dragon’s lair. You could use miniatures, true, but you could do without them as well!

Your character was based on the following attributes – basic physical and mental abilities – strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution and charisma. You rolled three dice and the total was your level of that attribute – 3-18. The higher the roll, the better the attribute. Fighters needed high strength, Magic Users, not so much – they needed a higher intelligence to cast their spells. Thieves? Dexterity.

And to add to the Tolkien flavor you could also become an elf or a dwarf. If you played a human you chose which class you wanted to play – the aforesaid fighter, magic user, thief, cleric (a holy healer/ fighter – think Knights Templar). Elves and dwarves had no classes – you either played an elf or a dwarf.

                In 1977 or so, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) debuted. It was had new rules and changed bits of the original. It wasn’t a different, improved edition to the original. In fact for a time it was its own game. But it expanded the basics: any race (elves, human, dwarves, halfling – non-copyrightable hobbits – half-orcs, gnomes) could be any class they wanted with some limitations. Elves can be fighters and magic users now. Dwarves can’t be magic users or clerics, though. They can be thieves! Anyone can be a thief.  AD&D had its own Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and book upon book of extra rules, stats on monsters and other characters one might meet in their imaginative play. It added monks for the ninja-wannabes, rangers for the Strider-ites, and bards so one can be a wandering minstrel, I …

This is about where I came in. I learned of D&D and AD&D through, of all places, church camp. I learned the basics without actually playing the game. That came in 1981 when our high school science teacher started a Dungeon & Dragons club. There I played the game for the first time – a human wizard named Mylock. The group even made the yearbook!

The game was still basic and had lots of role-play. Theater of the mind, so to speak. But the dice were still important. Let’s go back to the opening paragraphs.

“… your Dex,” says the DM (meaning roll the dice and if it is less than your Dexterity score you can, indeed, swing across on a vine).

{Roll} “Made it!” says the player.

“I throw a rope across to him,” another player says, “and tie it to the Magic User. You’re next.”

The player playing the Wizard rolls. He has a low Dexterity and the odds of him rolling below that number is smaller than the others. “Missed it!”

“You fall into the chasm, but you are tied to a rope and splat against the wall for {roll} 2 hit points (you also roll a certain amount of “hit points” – this is how healthy you are and how much damage you can take before your imaginary character dies. Magic Users don’t have a lot of hit points – fighters do to help them survive all those sword fights).

“I pull him up,” says the first player.

“Make a strength roll,” the Dungeon Master says. (Note: the Dungeon Master – DM – is the person who oversees the players, sets up the scenarios, arbitrates the rules, etc.).

{Roll} “Argh! I have a 17 Strength and rolled an 18!”

“Those are the breaks – the Magic User dangles above the abyss! But no other harm comes to him.”
“Get me outta here!” shouts the Magic User.

“I swing across,” the second player says. He also has a high dexterity and is not too worried about his odds. “Made it. I help pull up the Magic User.”

“With both of you working together, you don’t have to roll Strength, the Magic User is out of the crack and standing beside you.”

The first player says, “I throw the rope across the chasm – let’s get everyone else across before something bad spots us.”

“Too late for that …” mumbles the DM to himself, who rattles his dice and smiles.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Copyright 2014 Michael Curry