Strictly speaking, not all of these are adventure pitches or even synopses. I went for many that could conceivably be part of the in-character dialogue from someone giving the quest, or even just a snapshot of the adventure. Anyway, read (and judge) for yourself.

The king is dead. Why do we still hear him? It was once a church. Now it’s cold and unhallowed. The sword you seek is inside a dragon. Good luck! I’m not kidding: he ended up inside the troll. Yuck. I’ll pay you double if the kobolds eat him afterward. Uh, where did the city go? Oh, right: Dis. Whoops. I hate orcs. Kill them all. Except the hot one. Steel failed. Fire just angered it. You’ll think of something. Hey, do you like money? Do you also like murder? The graveyard is full of angels and the dead can’t sleep. Deliver him here. Ignore his words. He will only lie. Jewels sparkle like fire. “Bring its head and they’re yours.” Say nothing. This tomb has ears. Hands, too. Also: teeth. It started with a gnome and a bucket of ale. Surrender now. I won’t harm you. Honest! I never lie. We entered the temple. I returned afraid. He returned insane. You’re going to kill Bane? Who’s your next of kin? The bridge collapsed. The castle burned. The prince smiled quietly. What part of “eats people for fun” don’t you understand? I’ll give you ten gold if you pull this lever. He’s angry and he’s made of lightning. You’re immune, right? Doppelgangers abound. You’re safe here, though. Here, eat this, friend! We’re surrounded. Let’s worry about that later. The tarrasque awoke. I dare you to steal that lich’s phylactery. No? Chicken. It’s my sister’s child. My child. Do it now. Please. Once, long ago, someone teleported the tarrasque to the Abyss. Say, where can I find a book about breeding beholders? Bring me my mother’s right hand. She won’t need it. Dead men roam the swamp. Therein lies your fallen god. It’s sharp enough. But can you really kill your master? A ghostly figure. You remember her. She’s here now. Why? The eyeless child brings ruin. The stars will depart. Darkness. Hone your skills. Losing means they starve us. Beatings, too. Mangy. Gnawing teeth. Rats? I guess they look like rats.

I also couldn’t resist this ripoff: “For sale: two bloodstained daggers. Very sharp. Never used. Cheap.”

The common folk of the world look upon the wild lands with dread. Few people are widely traveled—even the most ambitious merchant is careful to stick to better-known roads. The lands between towns or homesteads are wide and empty. It might be safe enough within a day’s ride of a city or an hour’s walk of a village, but go beyond that and you are taking your life into your hands. People are scared of what might be waiting in the old forest or beyond the barren hills at the far end of the valley, because whatever is out there is most likely hungry and hostile. Striking off into untraveled lands is something only heroes and adventurers do. Another implication of this basic conceit of the world is that there is very little in the way of authority to deal with raiders and marauders, outbreaks of demon worship, rampaging monsters, deadly hauntings, or similar local problems. Settlements afflicted by troubles can only hope for a band of heroes to arrive and set things right. If there is a kingdom beyond the town’s walls, it’s still largely covered by unexplored forest and desolate hills where evil folk gather. The king’s soldiers might do a passable job of keeping the lands within a few miles of his castle free of monsters and bandits, but most of the realm’s outlying towns and villages are on their own.

I would consider toning this down just a little bit. The idea that local authorities are basically helpless makes the whole notion of civilization somewhat less plausible. It’s either that or you have to make adventurers more common, which also goes against the flavor of the default setting. Instead, I’d make the roads a little bit safer as long as you have some kind of escort. That way you can still have merchant caravans and trade and whatnot without them constantly getting owned. Stick to the roads and you are safe. Wander off, and you’re inviting trouble.

But I love what this implies with regard to maps. One way or another, they will probably be inaccurate or have a lot of gaps, and in general be a much more important plot device if you so wish.

“Recent” maps will tell you where cities, forts, towns and roads are, but they might very well be wrong due to recent Plot Events or what have you. More to the point, there’ll be huge swaths of the map that are blank. Why? Well, see, going there would involve actually going there. In this case, being there involves being there with the other things that are there, such as horrible monsters who murder people.

Old maps are another story. These maps date back to the days when there were empires and whatnot. Most of the time they won’t be useful for figuring out where the nearest town is. What they will be useful for is looking for interesting places to go, like ancient cities or strongholds, and possibly providing a more accurate picture of the geography of the area. Maybe there are, for instance, some abandoned roads. Or maybe old battlefields are marked on the map. You get the idea.

In between, you have adventurers’ maps. Oh yes. You hear word of legendary heroes whose maps describe all kinds of interesting places and are probably fairly informative in terms of what they cover. These maps can either make you very rich, or lead you to an extremely horrible death because it turns out that the people that wrote this map were way more badass than you are.

The ability to give unreliable information in this way can make the game a lot more interesting to me, from a DM or player perspective. When the text supports that by default, it’s even better. A largely uncivilized world is a world ready for the PCs to make their mark.

So, what’s new?

• Barbarians get “rage points.” They can spend rage points to enter and maintain rage. As well, they can spend rage points to activate certain abilities while in rage. This stuff isn’t that striking, but Pathfinder’s increased number of feats alone is enough to make this already solid class even more appealing.
• Paladins are, for the most part, unchanged, except that they can opt for an ability that allows them to temporarily enchant their weapon with bad-assitude instead of getting a mount. Again, Paladins weren’t really in dire need of a buff, and they’re getting more feats just like everyone else now, too.
• Sorcerers can pick a lineage, and that grants them abilities that they acquire over time. Most of them include a melee touch attack or buff, as well as some resistances or additional ways to move.

I’m sure there’s more stuff, but at this point, I’ve only had a chance to flip through it rather than read it thoroughly.

Giving the Barbarian more active abilities is a great idea. “Rage points” are something I’m not really sold on. Exalted soured me a bit on point-based systems, and it seems like it adds another layer of book-keeping. But then if it were up to me they’d be using a token system similar to Iron Heroes.

The sorcerer abilities (and I care mainly because I’m playing one in a game right now) are pretty cool in terms of flavor, but they fell short of my expectations in terms of interesting stuff. (Yeah, I’m spoiled by 4e.) Many are cooler than others. What’s a real downer for me is the fact that you have to be in melee for a lot of the attacks to be useful, which is a pretty horrible idea for a caster. The d6 might mitigate this, so I suppose I’ll have to see it in play.

Anyway, despite whatever flaws, the DM for my game has proposed that we convert and I am unreservedly in favor of this. The main disadvantage would be that there’s no monk write-up, and we have a monk in our group. Monks aren’t terribly in need of a buff, so it might be enough that he’ll get a d8 and more + new feats. But we’re not going to go with ahead with the conversion unless everyone’s on board, and this is one potential sticking point.

So, what’s new?

• Barbarians get “rage points.” They can spend rage points to enter and maintain rage. As well, they can spend rage points to activate certain abilities while in rage. This stuff isn’t that striking, but Pathfinder’s increased number of feats alone is enough to make this already solid class even more appealing.
• Paladins are, for the most part, unchanged, except that they can opt for an ability that allows them to temporarily enchant their weapon with bad-assitude instead of getting a mount. Again, Paladins weren’t really in dire need of a buff, and they’re getting more feats just like everyone else now, too.
• Sorcerers can pick a lineage, and that grants them abilities that they acquire over time. Most of them include a melee touch attack or buff, as well as some resistances or additional ways to move.

I’m sure there’s more stuff, but at this point, I’ve only had a chance to flip through it rather than read it thoroughly.

Giving the Barbarian more active abilities is a great idea. “Rage points” are something I’m not really sold on. Exalted soured me a bit on point-based systems, and it seems like it adds another layer of book-keeping. But then if it were up to me they’d be using a token system similar to Iron Heroes.

The sorcerer abilities (and I care mainly because I’m playing one in a game right now) are pretty cool in terms of flavor, but they fell short of my expectations in terms of interesting stuff. (Yeah, I’m spoiled by 4e.) Many are cooler than others. What’s a real downer for me is the fact that you have to be in melee for a lot of the attacks to be useful, which is a pretty horrible idea for a caster. The d6 might mitigate this, so I suppose I’ll have to see it in play.

Anyway, despite whatever flaws, the DM for my game has proposed that we convert and I am unreservedly in favor of this. The main disadvantage would be that there’s no monk write-up, and we have a monk in our group. Monks aren’t terribly in need of a buff, so it might be enough that he’ll get a d8 and more + new feats. But we’re not going to go with ahead with the conversion unless everyone’s on board, and this is one potential sticking point.

And now we find rumors suggestions that the races in the second player’s handbook will consist of races that begin with: S, H, G, G, D.

Let us SPECULATE.

My money’s on “S” being Shifter. I picked up the MM III fairly recently, and that seems dead on for a Primal type. As well, half-orc seems like a pretty safe bet for “H.”

Some people are betting Gnomes are one of the “G”s. I’m thinking not. Sure, there’s a Gnome in the daily art preview. But would they really want to invalidate the whole “I’m a monster! Rarr!!” bit?

I thought maybe one of the “G”s would be Githzerai, if it’s true that psionics will also be introduced in PHB II. (Maybe at some point I’ll complain about psionics, though it seems like I won’t have a problem with them in 4e as long as they follow the pattern established so far.)

Likewise, I thought “D” would of course be Drow. I don’t really care for Drow, but I figure they’re gonna show up sooner rather than later.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

The multiple “player’s handbook” idea is one of my concerns about the long-term balance of the game. I figure the first few PHBs will be pretty well balanced. But as the game matures and more material comes out, the number of mechanics, races, powers, and classes that the designers have to pay attention to increases. So of course someone designs something and forgets this class feature here, or that power there, and now you have figure out a house rule that fixes the problem without crippling the combination.

Previously, you could say “we’re only playing core” but now that there’s effectively more to the core, the DM mightn’t have quite as much of a leg to stand on when he has to say “only in books X and Y but not Z.”

With the impending release of 4e and amid all of the articles and blurry photographs, there’s a lot of material out there to drool over. From the fans, there’s the 4e Pre-release Rules Compilation and Monsters and More, among many other things. They were leaked some time ago, but eventually Wizards posted the D&D Experience character sheets as well.

With all of that material, there really is enough to run a game as long as you don’t try to level anyone. So, a few weeks ago, I did.

Let me say one thing right away. (SPOILER) It was a lot of fun! At least, I had a lot of fun. As the DM, I had multiple monsters on the board, each of them doing interesting things. I think I might like DMing just because I get to take more turns than anyone else! Also, people have to listen to me talk. Ha!

I wasn’t the only one having fun, though. Most players told me they really enjoyed it, and that was evident while we were playing.

All told, we had seven players, two of whom were ladies. Since we had one person in excess of the number of pre-generated characters, we had someone double up, so there were two warlocks.

The basis for the plot was fairly simple. This is mainly because I pulled the plot out of my ass: the group was part of a mercenary company. Peasants had been disappearing from outlying farms, so the party was paid to dress up like peasants, fight kobolds, and track them back to their lair. Is it me, or is this actually a decent hook for pick-up D&D? I’ll confess I was a little proud of myself.

The first scene was in the open field. Twenty or so kobold minions showed up. After that, the players followed a couple of the fleeing ones back to their lair. In the lair, they fought some about a half dozen kobold skirmishers and slingers each in a cave with a couple of ledges and lava. We had to stop after that, as it was pretty late.

Tangent: I have this part of me that I refer to as my “inner asshole DM.” He is a pretty sadistic jerk if you give him free rein, which is why he’s good to listen to if you want to run D&D. Part of the point of D&D is putting your players in unrealistic yet incredibly life-threatening situations and watching them fight their way out of it. There’ll be more on this asshole DM guy later, but let’s say for now that my inner asshole DM was very much put out after this game.

I messed up a few players in the second encounter, but the first one was cake. My biggest mistake was, arguably, that my kobolds didn’t use their Shifty ability. Ever. This is what keeps them out of melee, which is what prolongs their miserable, smelly lives. Kobolds should bunch up around you, make an attack, and then shift. If they don’t do that, they are basically extremely crappy and fragile fighters.

There was also lava (instant death in 4e) and none of the kobolds had the ability to push anybody. At least one kobold met his unfortunate end by being pushed in. Actually, lava is a really bad idea as a terrain feature: it turns out there are lots of abilities to push and slide people. In this case, my Game Balance Rule Zero comes into play: PC matter more than monsters. I’d replace the lava pools with a mild acid that does some ongoing damage rather than instant death.

Finally, my artillery didn’t uh “artiller.” My slingers were too far away, and I hesitated to bring them within range of the players. When they actually hit, though, they did respectable damage and nailed at least one or two characters with some status effects. My biggest regret here is that I tried to use fire on the goddamn tiefling wizard before I remembered that he has resist fire 5.

I did get a few people down to Bloodied, so it wasn’t all bad. I believe I messed up the wizard and one of the warlocks a bit, and the fighter at one point used his Second Wind. So I’d say a couple of kobold dragon shields in exchange for skirmishers, more shifting, and some tweaks to the initial layout of the scene probably would’ve been a much tougher fight.

I’m sure you can see where this is going: between now and June, there will be a rematch. This time it’s going to be ugly. Mark my words: there’s a raiding party of hobgoblins in my players’ future, my friends, and those guys are total assholes.

And if all else fails, there’s always the Chuul Juggernaut!

Do you like role-playing games? If you do, there is an outside chance you’ll like this blog. One thing you could do is read it to find out.

I’m a slacker, so there won’t really be any posting schedule as such.

For the time being, I am obsessed with D&D, which should be fodder for posting. I’m pretty excited about 4th Edition, so when that comes out, I’ll likely write about the games I’m running.

My interest goes in cycles, so sooner or later it’ll probably cycle back to White Wolf’s new World of Darkness games. If you pressed a gun to my head, I’d probably say that those are my favorite as they have a tendency to be more story driven. It’s just that these days D&D is really hitting the spot for me.