The Heart of Fire
It's been two weeks since a post, so I figured I'd post something.
Yesterday I finished my editing pass on my upcoming Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition mega-adventure The Heart of Fire. I use the term "mega-adventure" loosely; it's 130 pages, which makes it larger than most adventures... but it's not as big as Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk (222 pages) or Return to the Tomb of Horrors (which is well over 200 pages if you count illustrations, maps and monsters). And I don't know how big Madness at Gardmore Abbey is, but by all accounts it's a big one too.
I mention those for a reason... Unlike my past endeavors, this is not a linear dungeon. There are two different entrances, each with a whole set of rooms, and players can take multiple paths through these areas to reach the final boss. They can hack and slash approach or try a more subtle tactic; it's up to them. In a full session, I don't expect a party to go through every room in the adventure, but it does give them the option to go exploring and investigate several different quests and subplots.
I've posted some teasers on Twitter, such as the map of the Isle of Pyrias (by J.D. Harvill from Cartographer's Guild) and the ground floor of the Temple of Blackfire. There are also some other pics on my DeviantArt page.
This week I am going to find editors for it; as you can imagine, it's kind of hard to find editors willing to plod through a 130 page document for free (NOTE: If you're willing to volunteer, please let me kn0w), but once that is done I will be releasing it digitally through Drive Thru RPG as well as submitting it to the ENnies (hey, might as well, right?).
Once that is done, I am going to attempt something: a Kickstarter for the print release. You see, there isn't a better feeling of accomplishment than to hold a physical copy of your own creation in your hands. So I'd like to try and run a very low budget Kickstarter - probably a couple of grand at most - to cover printing copies and other expenses (commissioning an artist to do the cover, getting my own ISBN number, listing on major sales venues, possible advertising, etc.) and see if t works. And if it goes really well, perhaps it could help fund future products like The Coming Dark.
So if all goes well, The Heart of Fire will be published by the end of this month, and the Kickstarter will follow shortly thereafter. We'll see how things go.
In the meantime, I have started to work on my next project: a significantly smaller adventure for a party of 0th level characters, using the guidelines published in "A Hero's First Steps" by Philippe-Antoine Menard (a.k.a. @ChattyDM on Twitter). If it goes well, I may also port the encounter over to Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics system if those rules become available soon.
Finally, I have one big article/blog post I'm working on, but it's complicated and it... well... needs to be approved by higher authorities. 😉
Disorganized Play
Image courtesy of Wizards of the Coast
Today I went by my "friendly local gaming store" to see if they'd received the materials for the upcoming D&D Encounters and D&D Lair Assault seasons. They didn't, but that's not the reason for this post.
The owner of the store told me that Wizards of the Coast is apparently cracking down on stores. Apparently there's a problem with people sanctioning events and not actually running them, and since the creation of the materials actually costs them money with no direct return they need to somehow control it better. the owner of the store said that they will be required to sanction events and have people actually sign up and play, or else future materials might not come and the store's standing in the grand scheme of things might suffer.
Think about that for a second... If you don't get players, you don't get future materials. If you don't get materials, how are you supposed to get players? It's a textbook example of a catch-22.
I don't know how it is in the rest of the country, but Miami is not a hot bed of gaming aficionados. Sure there are a few D&D games going on at the store on Wednesday and Thursday, but these are small close knit groups that have known each other for quite a long time. A newcomer - like myself, at one point - has a hard time joining these games. In addition, these groups decided they didn't want to play Encounters or Lair Assault for whatever reason... So what does someone do to participate?
I remember a long time ago when I volunteered to DM a game of Lair Assault at the store; I sat there all day and had only two players show up. We couldn't run it with so few people, so the entire day was a wash.
One of the big problems is that, according to Wizards of the Coast anyway, D&D Encounters *must* happen on Wednesdays. There's no way around it; the date is such a requirement that, last I checked, you can't even try to schedule the event on any other day of the week through the Wizards Event Reporter or the WPN website. Wednesday, quite frankly, is a terrible day to do anything... Those of us that don't have 9-5 jobs most likely have school that day and the next. As a parent I would have a hard time letting my son spend four hours or more at a game store in the middle of the week.
And now Wizards is seemingly threatening stores: I don't care how you do it, but get some players playing or else we won't send you the good stuff.
I thought about this a bit, and have a few suggestions:
- Allow the sanctioning of any event: I think this can be done already, but WPN doesn't talk about it much. They continue to push the products they publish, and just don't have a framework for anyone who decides to play their own campaign. If WPN encouraged this sort of play with some sort of reward, players may participate more without being restricted to either the Encounters season or the Lair Assault Of the Month.
- Allow the availability of Encounters and Lair Assault materials to anyone, even at a price if necessary: If I want to start running Lair Assault, I have to prepare for it: register as a WPN Event Coordinator, wait for WotC to call the store and verify information, get approved, sanction the Lair Assault event, wait for the materials, and then run it at the store. That took me upwards of several weeks, which is not practical for a spur of the moment game I may want to run (like if I just showed up at the store). There is no framework for someone who wants to play it whenever, wherever. I would be willing to even buy the Lair Assault set from Wizards themselves (instead of paying $100+ for it on eBay).
- Allow anyone to be an "independent" event coordinator: Right now it's not possible to register as an event coordinator without being associated with a store, so if I am registered in store "A" it's not possible for me to report events in store "B". Let people who want to run your games do so, and give them the support they need without tying them to a store.
- Allow events to be run on any day: I have yet to hear a valid reason as to why Encounters must be on Wednesday. Magic the Gathering has "Friday Night Magic", which is a prime date and probably one of the reasons MtG is so hot. At my FLGS, they get 100+ people on each Friday easily. If I was able to run Encounters on Saturday without WPN calling me a heretic, I would; for now I have to report the Saturday players on Wednesday's entry - which appears as "Delinquent" in the Wizards Event Reporter until I d0 - and that just doesn't feel right.
- Let the store, not the event coordinator, get the materials: Right now Encounters and Lair Assault materials get sent to an individual on behalf of the store. If that person goes in to the store, picks up the materials and disappears, the store no longer has the tools needed to run the session even if someone volunteers. I've lost count as to how many times I've walked in there willing to run a session but not having the tools to do so. If the stores themselves can get the materials, they can hand them off to anyone that walks in the store ready to DM.
- Do not threaten to cut off your customer: Telling a store that you will not send them materials if they don't have the customer base is a really bad idea; they need the materials in order to get the customer base in the first place. If trust is an issue, have the store or the event coordinator pay for the materials until the store has sufficient players to merit getting them for free. Do not tell them you won't give them materials; the more you do that, the less they'll actually be able to do what you want them to.
In the meantime, I'm hoping the next season's materials come soon... But I admit I will probably not run it at the store myself. It's virtally impossible on Wednesday, and on Saturday it's hard to fill seats (especially with the 800lb gorilla that is Magic the Gathering taking up most of the play area).
4th Edition Attack Math
NOTE #1: Steve Winter has already addressed most of this on his blog, Howling Tower... With charts, no less! Since I couldn't get it out of my mind today, I'm writing this anyway. 🙂
NOTE #2: I have not checked *all* the math, and I'm sure many of you out there who do this kind of thing in your sleep will correct me. I'm bracing myself for criticism, so have at it.
Today was the first day of DDXP, where everyone except me some very special people had the opportunity to be exposed to the first round of playtesting Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. Needless to say, because of the all-powerful Non-Disclosure Agreement they all had to sign in blood, there isn't a whole lot of information coming from them.
But the first D&D 5th Edition seminar hosted by Monte and Mike wasn't under such threat of legal violence, and many that were in attendance were able to relay some of the questions we were allowed to ask (it seems like *all* the questions I wanted to ask were classified as "off limits" before the seminar even started) and live tweet the responses.
For now it's all one big gray area and there's a lot of speculation as to how this modular system of play is going to work. I have my questions and I have my doubts, but I'm not one to speculate on a whim and try to guess what they have in mind. And I certainly am not one to impose on to them what I think their game should be like.
But one concept stuck in my mind: during the discussion, they brought up something which I am calling "level-less monsters". Basically, they seemed to hint at having monsters that were not level-specific, and could be a threat at any level. An orc is always an orc, and you better be damn well concerned about said orc regardless of whether you were level 1 or level 10.
I got to thinking about how they would be able to do such a thing... And on the way home I realized it: they kind of already did. It's just wrapped amongst so many rules and technical details that you just don't realize it.
So I created the following tables in Excel to see for myself. These tables detail what a player's ability to attack is relative to a monster of similar level. I also decided to do the math in reverse, calculating what it takes for a monster to hit (on average).
The results are somewhat surprising... or perhaps not.
D&D 4th Edition Attack Analysis (PDF)
The first two tables in the attached PDF define the attack bonuses and defenses when a player attacks a monster, analyzing attacks vs AC and vs non-AC defenses.
The above tables makes the following assumptions:
- Attacks being made against a monster's AC use a weapon with which the wielder is proficient. To maintain consistency, I'm assuming the +3 proficiency of your average longsword.
- The attacker starts with an 18 as their attack attribute (Strength for fighters, Dexterity for rogues, etc...).
- The attacker is human and that the +2 racial bonus will be applied to the attack attribute.
- Every other time they get to manually increase their attributes - at levels 4, 14 and 24 - they manually increase their attack attribute one point. I assume every other time just to keep the attributes even; if a player wants to pile all 6 in to the attribute, they'll gain an additional +1 or +2 by the time they're epic.
- The table does not take in to consideration any increases due to epic destinies. For example, a fighter that becomes an Eternal Defender gets +2 to Strength at level 21. Adjustments of that nature are not factored in because they could be considered optimizations; I'm trying to be as close to average as possible.
- I'm assuming inherent bonuses (Dungeon Master's Guide 2, page 138). Magic item math is hard enough as it is.
- I'm assuming the attacker takes an Essentials-style weapon/implement expertise feat at level 1, which gives them a +1 at level 1, +2 at level 11 and +3 at level 21.
The table for attacking a monster's non-AC defense is similar but the weapon proficiency column is removed and the monster's defense is adjusted (level +13).
For the next two tables, I decided to look at it from the monster's point of view... What does it take for a monster to hit a PC?
The AC table makes the following assumptions:
- The attribute that determines AC will be based on an initial value of 14. This may be considerably higher for some classes, but I'm using the typical value for a fighter. As the player levels, the attribute is increased in the same manner as above.
- Assuming the three types of chainmail armor listed in the PHB, the enhanced ones being chosen as soon as the inherent bonus matches the armor requirement: basic chainmail (+6 to AC), Forgemail (+9 to AC, minimum +4 enhancement required) and Spiritmail (+12 to AC, minimum +6 enhancement required).
For the monster vs. player non-AC tables, I assume:
- Defense attribute is based on 14, as above.
- The player is human, so I factor in the +1 racial bonus to all non-AC defenses.
- The player takes the Essentials feat Improved Defenses at level 1, which gives him a +1 defense bonus per tier.
Even though I'm sure to be missing a lot of possible bonuses (things get really cloudy in epic tier, I imagine), the results were quite enlightening.
- Average die roll required for Player vs Monster's AC defense: 8.7
- Average die roll required for Player vs Monster's non-AC defense: 9.7
- Average die roll required for Monster vs Player's AC defense: 8.1
- Average die roll required for Monster vs Player's non-AC defense: 8.3
In the epic tier things get complicated; by the numbers, players need a higher number to hit and monsters can hit much more easily (especially non-AC defenses). But I assume epic characters have a whole slew of powers, feats and god-knows-what that adjust these values a lot. Things like combat advantage, concealment, cover, etc. probably happen much more often in epic tier, but they are not considered here.
So, looking at the data... Wouldn't this be much more simple when the DM is told "it takes a 9 or higher to hit", regardless of the monster's level? One could argue that this is THAC0 - the math does work out in a similar fashion - but it's here, in D&D 4E, masked behind a barrage of modifiers.
Another potential advantage of using something of this nature is hit points do not need to vary so dramatically and require adjustments to the damage rolls. A longsword always does 1d8 damage and an orc always has 30 hit points; it doesn't matter if it's level 1 or level 20. The "toughness" of a monster isn't compared to a party of equal level since that party is also tough; two heavyweight champions fighting each other are as evenly matched as two amateurs fighting. It's all relative regardless.
Let the record show that I have no idea if a similar method is being considered for D&D 5E, or if the above has any bearing on anything. I just felt the need to do all the math to see things for myself. And, now that I know how things end up, I'm tempted to not even look at the defense scores or attempt to do the attack bonus math myself... whether you're bashing a decrepit skeleton's skull or raining hellfire in the middle of the Elemental Chaos, I'll just look for the "9 or higher" and be done with it. If you're nice, maybe I'll even accept an 8...
The Vortex Bag
While I'm editing the rather large campaign The Heart of Fire, I figure I'd share a few of the elements from it that aren't quite spoilers but give a sense of the things I'm trying to do with this module.
Let's start off simple with a rather dangerous discovery: what if there was a Bag of Holding that is flawed, causing the pocket dimension within the bag to begin imploding?
The Vortex Bag is a seemingly innocuous bag, very similar in appearance to the traditional Bag of Holding, except that once it's open will suck in everything in the area and, once inside, begins to crush it with powerful force. The only way to avoid it is to try to crawl out of it or destroy the bag. And if one starts to bash at the bag while there are people still inside, those victims may not appreciate it much.
Hope you enjoy. Until the release of The Heart of Fire, I may be releasing a few other things. It's just so hard to decide what to reveal without spoiling it... 🙂
Gamma World Remnants: Accelerator Control Robot Guardian
In Where Worlds Collide, the party first needs to gain access to the computer systems that seal off the accellerator control room of what was once CERN. The site's AI, known affectionately as C3 (short for the CERN Computing Centre), has started to charge up the accellerator and intends to unlease a miniature black hole on Gamma Terra. Once the black hole is released, Gamma Terra will collapse in to a singularity and life as we know it will end.
Despite the multiple levels of security that block access to the accelerator core, C3 felt it necessary to add one final line of defense: a massive robot it refers to as "the Guardian". This hulking behemoth was manufactured out of the heavy machinery used to assemble and maintain the LHC itself. It has a wide assortment of weapons - laser batteries, flame thrower, flame retardant systems - and two arms. One of the arms has a enormous steel fist backed by pneumatic pistons, while the other arm ends in a five foot wide buzz saw.
For this encounter I wanted to give the impression that C3 had a lot of time on its hands, so whenever it discovered another new toy it did not hesitate to weld it on to the robot's frame. Therefore, I wanted this robot to be a walking arsenal of destruction, having every weapon and the kitchen sink at its disposal. It actually is the largest single stat block I've ever created for any 4E monster.
I never got around to designing the room itself, but it was going to be a large massive chamber with the usual bells and whistles prominent in most Fourthcore adventures. Since the module was meant for a party of level 5, going up against this level 8 behemoth was going to be quite the challenge.
Anyway, hope you all enjoy this one.
Where Worlds Collide - Accelerator Control Robot Guardian (PDF)
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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