Wizards of the Coast

I’m going to talk about the next edition of D&D below so, a couple of points to begin with...

1. Yes, “D&D Next” is a terrible name. That’s because it’s a project name. The real name will be decided (I assume) by actual marketing people when the project gets closer to becoming products.
2. I will reiterate that Wizards should make clear on the books what edition of the game it is. There’s already enough confusion for non-collectors looking at D&D books and not being able to tell what edition they are.

OK, now on to the thinking aloud...

First, we have what Mike Mearls wrote in “Legends and Lore: D&D Next Goals, Part Two”. I like what he says under the head “The Basic Rules”. This is what I want the the D&D brand to be doing for the hobby. And what’s good for the hobby is good for Wizards. By attracting more than just the people who like a single style, they will build a market they can sell lots of different RPGs to.

Which, I think, is the real answer to the fragmentation problem, which Next has the potential to exacerbate. Instead of trying to get everyone playing the same game, you “narrowcast” with multiple games. Especially since a lot of those customers will buy more than one of those games.

(I know that goes against the conventional wisdom of what TSR’s downfall was, but TSR had many and bigger problems.)

On a side note, I saw the question, “Why do you want more people to play D&D?” What I want is for everyone that would enjoy D&D or the hobby in general to be able to find it. For good or ill, most people’s first contact with the hobby will be D&D. So, if D&D is too heavily focused on a certain style of play, it gives lots of people the impression that it is representative of the hobby when its not. While a basic D&D may not be the game for everyone, it is more likely to send those who don’t like it looking for an RPG that they do like than to send them away thinking there is nothing in the hobby for them.

I don’t like some of the stuff under the head “Current Design Goals” in that Legends and Lore column, though.

Second, we have dndclassics.com. Good quality PDFs of older edition material with no DRM with text that is searchable through RPGNow (and DriveThruRPG). They even have the 1981 Basic booklet that is my favorite but which had never been offered in PDF in the past. I am happy to say that I am a Wizards of the Coast customer again.

(A)D&D hardback spines

Say, you’re in a Half Price Books looking at the role-playing games. You’ll probably see some books that look like these. (Clicking it should show you a bigger version.)

(You may want to reference my D&D ID page and the time line in Wikipedia’s “Editions of Dungeons & Dragons” article while reading this.)

The top two represent first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons published by TSR. (Of course, it wasn’t called “first edition” at the time. That came later when second edition was published.) Later books had the orange spine. Some of the early books where later printed with new covers and the orange spine, but the contents are the same.

The third and fourth represent second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons published by TSR. Again, the fourth one is later books. Some of the earlier books where printed with new covers and spines to match this new trade dress but, again, the contents are the same. Note that the later books lack the handy “2nd Edition” text.

Note that all edition of the game published by TSR are highly compatible.

The fifth spine represents “third edition” Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast. Note, again, that there is nothing that explicitly says “third edition” here, although that’s what it is most commonly called.

The sixth spine represents “3.5” Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast. The “core” books did say “v.3.5” on the cover, but other books didn’t. Honestly, though, I don’t have enough 3.5 era books to tell you much about distinguishing 3.0 from 3.5. Mainly I do it through knowing pretty much all the 3.0 products, so if I don’t recognize it, it is probably 3.5. ^_^ The good news is that 3.0 and 3.5 are very compatible.

The seventh spine represents “fourth edition” Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast.

I believe there was only one hardback ever published for “classic D&D”. i.e. The “non-advanced” D&D published by TSR before and parallel with AD&D. That is the Rules Cyclopedia. Everything else for classic D&D was, I believe, saddle-stitched or boxed sets.

Of course, what you really need is a “pocket guide”, but this is what you get. ^_^

I’d love to do something like this for the perfect bound books as well, but I don’t actually have any of them.

Hey, Wizards of the Coast! If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll understand why I don’t think “D&D next” should just say “Dungeons & Dragons” on the cover. Even if I’m playing “D&D next”, I’m going to occasionally see second-hand books, and I’d like it to be easy to tell unambiguously if a book with “D&D” on the cover is intended for the game I’m playing or not. Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re going for the “make it easy to use anything from any edition”, but as a customer, I still want every book to tell me what edition it was originally intended for. I shouldn’t have to have the knowledge of a collector for this. There is zero reason for this confusion to exist. I know everyone at TSR and Wizards thought it made sense at the time to do what they did, but you were wrong. Please, do not contribute to the confusion. Thank you.

RPGs are war

My first thoughts on the “combat as sport vs. combat as war” topic...

Here’s the difference between a sport and a war:

In a sport, each side agrees to a set of rules. If you don’t follow the rules, it is called a foul, and a penalty is assessed. Or it’s called cheating.

In war, there are no fouls; there is no cheating. When some group gets too set in their ways about “how war should be fought”, some other side comes along as defeats them by ignoring those rules.

(We do try to come up with fouls and cheating in war. e.g. The Geneva conventions. But that doesn’t help you win. You have to win first and then try to enforce those rules. If the side that wins finds it’s in their interest to ignore such rules... In any case, honoring them is about longer-term concerns.)

Most conventional games resemble “combat as sport”. Role-playing games, however...

For me, “combat is war” is easy in a role-playing game, but “combat as sport” is hard. I have to introduce things that interfere with some of the aspects of role-playing games most important to me. Such as “player agency” and “tactical infinity”. (Sorry, I don’t have good links to explain those terms.) Even then, it’s tough to balance on every axis enough to make sure it’s sporting. Sporting combats tend to happen more by chance than design.

(Though, I think superhero games manage to do the “sport” angle a lot.)

The comparisons to literature in the original article seem particularly apt. When you take a character out of a story and give that role to a person to play with the freedom to find creative solutions, they start looking for strategic solutions. It’s the same as the “how it should have ended” videos.

In any case, I definitely prefer “combat as war” in my role-playing games whether as judge or player. The hard part is that—as judge—you may have to have or improvise more stuff when the players find creative ways to short-circuit something you thought would take a while. But I’d rather reward strategic thinking than make things easier on myself.

D&D sacred cows

With a new edition of D&D in the works, I’m thinking about what my sacred cows are. What are the things without which D&D isn’t being what I want it to be?

Reliable but limited magic: I don’t mind magical mishaps being in the game, but it should be the exception rather the the rule. Merlin didn’t get his rep by failing to levitate a Stonehenge megalith 20% of the times he tried and failing spectacularly 5% of the time. But when the Sorcerer’s Apprentice goes messing with stuff he’s not ready for, he might suffer some consequences.

But I don’t want reliable to become unlimited. I’ll take the 3e crossbow sorcerer over the 4e raygun wizard every time.

From what I know about D&D next so far, I don’t expect this to be a problem.

Thief skills: This is an area where my opinion has definitely changed. I used to think of thief skills as general skills, so I wanted a general skill system instead. Now, I see thief skills as special, and I prefer not having a general skill system. (See On thief skills in classic D&D)

And I’ve actually come to like the AD&D secondary skills.

Possibly the one thing that keeps me from declaring Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-playing my “go to” version of D&D is the skill system. (Even though it is pretty “old school” for such.)

3e lost the special rogue skills in favor of its general skill system, which made the rogue less interesting a class to me. It is also an example of the lack of modularity in 3e. The rogue was built on the skill system, and the fighter was built on the feat system, which means you have to think harder before ignoring either subsystem.

It will be interesting to see how D&D next handles this. In any case, there may be a very simple workaround. I think I could be happy just dropping the thief/rogue/specialist class altogether.

Less systemized magic: When stepping up from Expert D&D to Advanced, spells got a bit more systemized. There were more details filled in for you, and there were more spells. For the most part, though, I find the AD&D spells brought a lot of inspiration and less systemization.

2e started systemizing even more. And not the kind of “let’s give every spell a casting time” sort of systemization. More like, “Shouldn’t there be a spell with an effect between these two?” And, “We have fire and water versions, so we should add earth and air versions as well.”

3e continued with both 1e and 2e kinds of systemizations.

I prefer the classic D&D spells. I can work with the 1e spells. Past that, though, and I get less happy. I’m really interested in whether D&D next will address this at all.

(Actually, I really like the Coda system Lord of the Rings spells, but haven’t gotten around to trying to adapt them into D&D.)

Of course, I’ll be perfectly happy to skip D&D next if I’d find it harder to bend to my will than sticking with classic D&D.

Edition wars

If I have ever offended anyone when discussing differences between editions of D&D, I hereby apologize. That was never my intention, though I can have a hard time seeing someone else’s point-of-view.

D&D Next Classes

From EN World: What We Know About “D&D Next”:

The goal at the moment is to include all the classes that were in the first PH style book for each edition.

Surely someone else has already compiled this list, but since I didn’t find it, I compiled it myself.

Note that many classes appeared first in a supplement for a previous edition. I’m not listing the first appearance of each class. I’m listing its first appearance in Men & Magic or a Players Handbook (first PHB for editions with multiple PHBs).

In the non-advanced line, you had race-classes and the Mystic. Race-classes aren’t included because it seems that D&D next isn’t going that direction. The Mystic, rightly or wrongly, I’m counting as Monk.

AD&D2e had the “specialist wizard” & “specialist priest” which I am also omitting from this list.

• Assassin (1e PHB)
• Barbarian (3e PHB)
• Bard (2e PHB; optional 1e PHB)
• Cleric (0e Men & Magic)
• Druid (1e PHB)
• Fighting-man/Fighter (0e Men & Magic)
• Illusionist (1e PHB)
• Magic-user/Mage/Wizard (0e Men & Magic)
• Monk (1e PHB)
• Paladin (1e PHB)
• Ranger (1e PHB)
• Sorcerer (3e PHB)
• Thief/Rogue (1e PHB; the Holmes Basic Set)
• Warlock (4e PHB)
• Warlord (4e PHB)

For a grand total of 15 classes. Though I think there is the possibility of some of them being combined.

Note that a Psion class was also mentioned in the D&D Experience seminars.

Here they are in roughly chronological order...

• Cleric (0e Men & Magic)
• Fighting-man/Fighter (0e Men & Magic)
• Magic-user/Mage/Wizard (0e Men & Magic)
• Thief/Rogue (1e PHB; the Holmes Basic Set)
• Assassin (1e PHB)
• Druid (1e PHB)
• Illusionist (1e PHB)
• Monk (1e PHB)
• Paladin (1e PHB)
• Ranger (1e PHB)
• Bard (2e PHB; optional 1e PHB)
• Barbarian (3e PHB)
• Sorcerer (3e PHB)
• Warlock (4e PHB)
• Warlord (4e PHB)