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4th Edition Reflections at KublaCon 2009

A few months ago I decided to return to DMing and roleplay, after several years of downtime. As such, I still have to make a choice regarding the system I would like to run my game on. Apparently I missed a lot of excitement since 3.0 with two major game releases in a few years - both the 3.5 which I heard good things about, and the recent 4.0 which I am playing with right now.

So when KublaCon, the biggest yearly RPG Con in the Bay Area came by, I decided that it is worth it enough for me to bear the cost (a day off away from the family during the Memorial day weekend is extremely expensive, believe me).

So here are some tales from first day ever in a game con… And some thoughts that it provoked on the state of D&D.

The convention took place in the Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport, which is a huge hotel, and took over the entire lobby, foyer, ground floor, convention halls, and even half of the 2nd floor hotel rooms (what could be cooler then getting to hotel room #2063 to play Spirit of the Century?). It was busy day and night - I arrived at 8:30 am and left at 3:30 am, and there were still lots of people playing around when I left.

Here is the hotel at 3:30 am:

Drow Scavenger Hunt

The main event I participated at was a 9-hour D&D session - 4th edition multi-party, multi-DM dungeon crawl / scavenger hunt, built for 9th level characters. Basically, 32 players split to 4 teams, and were sent to find holy relics of the Drow underworld cult in 8 different dungeons, and assemble as many artifacts as possible along the way.

The game started with a surprising half an hour of Live Role-Playing against several NPCs sitting around the bar (and the barman) at the actual hotel bar on the second floor, in an effort to collect some leads out of them (such as where the hell is our dungeon is), while avoiding giving them any of our money as much as possible (we had 5GP in actual plastic coins, which we were very protective about). That was quite fun, with a spark of Role-Play.

The game was supposed to be concluded with an epic Player-vs-Player battle amongst the parties (which was the main attraction for many), but that did not happen for technical reasons (or bad planning). Too bad - That should have been a unique experience (and of course our party would have won).

The Dwarven Forge

The other memorable thing in the event was the dungeon itself, which was one of the most awesome props I have ever seen in D&D. This was a 6×6 feet scale model of an evil dungeon, built from the gorgeous modular pieces by the Dwarven Forge. And they had 4 dungeons, each on its own table - all different. With more then one level deep. And another small town on the other table.

One of the DMs told me it took 2 days to carefully build all models following the precise design, and he expected it will probably take the same time to carefully take apart and store each piece in its correct set.

Here are some memorable moments:

Ooops, wrong door…

Nothing a well placed fireball can’t take care of:

The blue party across the table encounters the big nastie (its marked, if you are wandering what’s the funny hat):

Meanwhile, we continue to the next cavern complex. Across the hall, the red party encounters bad things that emerge from the sewer:

… while we meet a small ogre and his fellow wizard kobolds:

The flooded caves are just awesome.

If you want to see more, here is a cheesy promo video that shows more forge lush closeups. Warning - Geeky. Very geeky.

All in all, playing in this awesome dungeons was a blast. You don’t get to see that everyday. I have to get myself a several sets of these pieces, for some special encounter locations… Mmm, lets see - my birthday is in 6 months. I guess I need to start working on this with Orly.

4th Edition Reflections

After 9 hours of non-stop dungeon crawl (95% of it was pure combat), I have a few reflections.

4e excels at tactical combat. This is what the system has been rebuilt for. All your available powers are right in your character sheet, with full description. No more trips for the books for every question. Combined with the fact that every character can both move and attack every round, the final result is extremely streamlined combat, that can sustain the load of hours and hours of hack-and-slash. The clearest illustration of the differences from 3.5 was the next session I had (a midnight 3.5 combat session) in which too much time was spent looking up (and even arguing, if you can believe that) about the rules.

The 4.0 system is much simpler then its predecessor, in regards to your character stats. When compared to the 3.5 character sheet, you have 40% less stats to deal with, which makes a noticeable difference. This is another boost factor for the game.

But I have major issues with 4e.

As I mentioned before, the lack of tactical non-damage spells for wizards is unacceptable. I admit I have only read a few pages into the wizard spells, but I could not see anything like Grease, Hold Person, Illusions, etc. All of those examples could be good tactical ideas in combat - but in 4e qall you can do is damage in various sorts.

The fact that every class has area effects now is supposed to be a good thing - like the rogue that blasts all close-by enemies with his favorite ranged attack - but this becomes a bit absurd at some point, like the ranger that can shoot an exploding arrow just because he reached 9th level (?). This blurs the distinctions between the characters even more. Combined with the fact that everyone can continue fighting forever (no more depletion of at-will spells), and that every character can heal itself at will, most major tensions are removed from the game. Eventually, 4e combats just turn into an endless numbers race between the party and the monsters.

That is not my type of game.

Golden Days

There is a tight coupling between the game system, and the type of adventures that are best suited to run on it. Or in other words, you should choose the RPG system to fit the type of adventures you want to have.

Here is the first paragraph from the latest 1st-level adventure from Goodman Games “Dungeon Crawl Classics - Mists of Madness“, which was awarded as loot in the KublaCon sessions.

“Remember the golden days of role-playing, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Well, those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics feature bloody combat, intriguing dungeons, and no NPCs who aren’t meant to be killed.”

I am not kidding you, this is the actual quote. I had to read that twice to believe, and it filled me with great sadness. It could be a tongue-in-cheek or just a joke after all; However, I would like to pick on it as it illustrates brilliantly the current state of the 4th edition. Its true you can (should?) play D&D without miniatures. Its true that you can (should) introduce role-play and interesting adventures. The problem is that the game is designed for something different now; To me it looks like the latest incarnation of the most successful RPG of all time is redefining itself as nothing more than an elaborate miniature combat board game.

I wonder who the intended audience for the above quote is - it’s definitely not me.  I thought so far that WotC redesigned the game to appeal to today’s teens - but those would have no clue what the golden days of role-playing looked like. Are they actually trying to target the 30-40 year-old veterans? If so, I am afraid they missed the mark by a long shot.

Fond Memories

There is a very interesting thread in EN World about the best all time D&D modules. I spent many hours this week reading through the 5 pages of posts to assemble a snapshot of what a large group of DMs and players considered the “best of” list of adventures.

It seems that the best modules have several common themes: Strong plot with some twists; Strong story and atmosphere; Challenging situations, and unforgettable NPCs. This is what my D&D is. For me, this is the golden age of D&D.

There were bloody combats, yes. But NPCs were not meant to be killed. And if you got to the dragon on the 20th level, you were playing the wrong module - or worse, with the wrong DM.