Ancient Domains of Mystery...

...sucks ass.

"Oh, look! I'm starving again!"

"Oh, I'm blind and poisoned! Darn the luck!"

"Gosh, the second room in EVERY GODDAMN DUNGEON I've run across has a locked door."

It is addictive though, and I've only been playing a few hours, so maybe it gets better. But for now, it sucks.

A quick thought on "Gamemasterbation"

First, what's "Gamemasterbation"? Well, for starters it's an incredibly clever word I came up with. It's obviously a combination of "Game Master" and "mastrubation". More seriously, it's a term for when a GM/DM comes up with an incredible amount of detail that he revels in and thrusts upon the campaign but which the players are likely not to care much about. Something to be avoided.

This is something that I've been guilty of and I'm sure others have been as well. And as a player I've been on the receiving end (one example, which was less detail and more a terrible DM's belief he was being clever, comes to mind: a 1E game where we spent half the night trying to get caravan wagons through a muddy road due to a rainstorm; nothing more than that, but the DM gleefully asked "When was the last time you fought the weather?!?!"; since the guy was a general ass, I refrained from replying "Uh...never, because it's boring as all hell."). The thought occurred as I was reading a recent blog post where the author was describing the currency system in his campaign and associated plot line he'd developed for it. Now, I'm a fan of detail as much as the next person, but the system this guy had put together was beyond complex. It sounded like thought it was incredibly awesome but his players really didn't care that much. So why, in the end, he was so proud of it makes little sense to me.

Well, I'm not the first to advise keeping from going overboard in your campaign. But it's definitely something worth repeating - obviously (as evidenced above) some people still haven't gotten the message...

D&D Endgame

Some comments based on the blog post here:

8. Most versions of OSD&D include rules for player characters’ strongholds and dominions. OSD&D has an ‘endgame,’ in the sense that high-level characters can establish strongholds and dominions, and thus become noteworthy political forces in the campaign setting. This provides a good place for a campaign to end – and allows past characters to have an impact on the overall history of the campaign setting (perhaps returning in a later campaigns as powerful patrons, or even foes). (Of course, it is not required that characters engage in this ‘endgame’ in OSD&D – they could keep adventuring, if the DM agrees – but it is a definite option. Moreover, other ‘end games’ are possible – e.g., BECM/RC D&D allows for the possibility of character becoming immortals!)

This is an OSR sentiment I do agree with. Pre-3E, it was pretty much a given that when you hit "name" level, you built a castle, or temple, or guild, or whatever was appropriate to your class (at least 1E and earlier; I don't recall if this was still a part of 2E). You didn't have to, but it was a cool aspect to the game that's somewhat lacking in later editions. WotC did have the stronghold builder's book in 3E, and some one (Eden maybe? Not even sure if they're still around) had a d20 book for having a barony/kingdom/whatever. But it was tacked-on at best, and even though 3.x sort of stopped at level 20, with the Epic Level book you could go on indefinitely. Given the volume of 4E material coming out and the experimentation WotC is doing here and there, it'd be nice to see a sourcebook come out that supports this sort of thing.

One thing, though - I'd argue that 4E has an endgame of sorts. The RAW assumes that at level 30, you're done - you've "won D&D" or somesuch. Along with that are the epic destinies which, to me, are sort of your adventurer's retirement plan - once they hit 30, they go off and do their destiny full-time. No more adventuring at that point. But I would think (and I recall reading this somewhere) that at that point your character is a part of the campaign setting - the great Archmage off in a secluded tower who so many seek our for wisdom or magical secrets, or a Demigod of the campaign pantheon, involved in the divine goings-on of the heavens.

The Rationale for Daily and Encounter Martial Powers

Best explained here:

A poster (Ferratus) on EnWorld described an important difference in the narrative between 3e and 4e. 3e tells you what your character can do, while 4e describes what happened. It’s not that a martial character forgets how to do something cool with his weapon after he did it once that day or has to memorize it the next day or whatever. It’s that the narrative comes together at one point, determined by when the PC uses that power, for him to do something special. Only once in a day, maybe, is your opponent perfectly positioned for you to Brute Strike him. You may make a series of brutal overhead swings, but you have to catch your enemy with his guard down, in a position where he can get his arms or weapons up to shield him, where his armor is askew or you can catch him blind so he doesn’t see it coming, to deliver that devestating[sic] damage.

Martial powers are no less arbitrary than the limits on spellcasting, we are just used to those and justify them with wonky but accepted conventions about compartmentalizing the mind and other justifications that simply make up for a strictly game-based limitation on casting power (levels, slots, etc). HPs themselves are quite dissociated. I reference the age old example of the high level fighter letting someone strike him in the head with a broadsword (hmph, 15 points of damage? I have 80 hit points, I laugh). It’s just the nature of the beast, especially D&D.

D&D Quote of the Day

"What's the point behind spending so much time arguing about which game is better? Play what you like."

Update Metapost

Earlier I'd said that this blog would be moving to Drupal, then (when I dropped Drupal in favor of Joomla...who makes up these names, anyway?) I said it was temporarily moving back here. For now, I've decided to make the move back to Blogger permanent. Originally, the plan was to consolidate everything on my website into one CMS (Content Management System), but I've since found that Joomla doesn't quite support blogging as well as Drupal did. Or maybe it does but I haven't found how to get that set up. In any case, I figure that most people who want to comment on blog posts will likely not want to have to deal with creating a Joomla account on my site, especially if they already have a Blogger account.

Everything else from the old site - Mythosa, TableSmith, the miniatures gallery, etc. - will be contained within the new system (and some of those pages are already "in use"). But for the foreseeable future, the blog will remain here.