Been meaning to get this one typed up for a while, just kept getting sidetracked for one reason or another.
I remember quite some time back, there was a lot of concern of lightsaber duels being far too deadly in FFG's Star Wars RPG, particularly with lightsabers in that game being Damage 10, Critical 1, and Breach 1 weapons, ensuring that the target was going to take a lot of damage and suffer a pretty nasty critical injury in the process. There were a number of proposed "solutions" to this problem, with the most frequent one being to simply have lightsabers upgrade the difficulty twice (rolling two Challenge dice as the base for a Lightsaber combat check) to avoid the "first hit = victor" scenario that became a major issue for the WEG D6 Star Wars RPG in regards to the Lightsaber Combat power in the hands of a highly capable Force user.
Personally, I felt the real problem was that lightsabers in EotE and AoR were simply way too good, and should have been toned down to something more reasonable than "near-instant death on a stick." I think the reaction of my GM for the (now on hiatus) Rascal Squad Age of Rebellion campaign in the session immediately after he allowed Valin to assemble a lightsaber of his own, having earned a suitable focusing crystal by completing a series of "trials" during the GM's modified running of the "Echoes of the Past" fan module. He was rather shocked at how quickly Valin, who was not a major contributor to combat encounters compared to the rest of the group, had gone from "kid with a blaster" to "kid capable of wiping out minion groups in a single round" or "kid capable of crippling important adversaries with only marginal degrees of success." After we finally concluded the last portion of Long Arm of the Hutt, the GM confided in me that he was starting to really regret letting Valin have such a powerful weapon afterwards.
Luckily, that session took place just before GenCon 2014 and the release of the Force and Destiny Beta. One of the first things I noticed in the equipment chapter was that the Basic Lightsaber was far less powerful than the EotE/AoR lightsaber, with the damage nearly halved, the critical rating doubled, and a lack of the Vicious quality with the cost only being reduced by several hundred credits. And that the other lightsaber types were of a similar vein; Breach 1 remained to make them dangerous, but these were not the "one-hit kill" weapons that the lightsabers in the prior books had the reputation of being. What was interesting was that if the PC was willing to invest the time and resources (and had a bit of luck on their side), they could modify a basic lightsaber into being the potent weapon, so the option was there, though certainly not easy to achieve (at least not before the Beta Update #4).
Now, shortly after the Force and Destiny Beta came out, I managed to wrangle up the players from the Friday night game I was in and offered to run a one-shot using the adventure at the back of the Beta book. Though I made a number of little tweaks here and there to the adventure, the players had plenty of fun and were eager to play these one-shot characters again (handing out double XP probably helped on that front). One of the things I'd wanted to do was have the party's Nautolan Makashi Duelist (Kennis) get into a one-on-one lightsaber duel, with one pick-up session pretty much being cribbed from the FaD demos that FFG was running in the Dealer Hall at GenCon (a bunch of Force users are on this planet to find a small child, but are confronted by stormtroopers and one or more Imperial Dark Jedi). I added enough other details to make the core idea fit into the loose continuity I'd established thus far (the group are all students of an Order 66 survivor and are working towards setting up a refuge/compound for those sensitive to the Force that is hidden from the Empire), but sadly Kennis' player couldn't make it. Instead, Viado (Human Starfighter Ace who had just recently picked up the Shien Expert spec, a rank of Lightsaber, and nothing else) stepped up to duel the Imperial Dark Jedi that I concocted for that encounter. The fight was pretty tense, with the party eventually ganging up and the IDJ and taking him down and Viado doing surprisingly well (though part of that might have been to lousy dice rolls on my part) though the fight did get a bit silly with the amount of disarms going back and forth.
Now this past Friday, I finally got to have a bona-fide lighsaber duel between Kennis and a Saber Rake NPC. And the fight got pretty nasty, particularly for Kennis who got hit with multiple critical injuries and wound up loosing his non-weapon hand before other PCs stepped in to defeat the Rake. Granted, it took a few rounds of back and forth, with the Saber Rake getting fairly beat-up as well even with his 3 ranks in Parry, 2 ranks of Adversary, and Melee Defense of 2.
To further add to this, Valin (who wound up getting a Mephite Crystal with a couple of modifications already made for his basic lightsaber) got into a couple of saber-fights, having delved into the Ataru Striker specialization. However, the true test of Valin's skills was against an Inquisitor made using the rules in the back of the Adversary chapter of the FaD Beta, and to put it bluntly the only reason Valin didn't snuff it was that the option was there for him to make like Luke in ESB and take a "suicide plunge" out of a high-speed repulsor-train into a lake far below. Now at this point, I'd bought far enough into Ataru Seeker for Valin to have two ranks of Parry and Reflect (but no Improved Parry), and I got my ass handed to me, simply because rolling against a dice pool of 2 Challenge dice, 1 Difficulty die, and 1 Setback die with a pool of 2 Proficiency dice and 1 Ability die put the odds pretty solidly not in my favor to both hit and have Advantage left over, and the fact that while I could impose the same difficulty dice pool on the Inquisitor, his 4 ranks of Lightaber and 4 Brawn meant he had a far better chance of hitting with Advantage left over. In fact, I think the only reason that Valin survived at all was that the GM was having lousy rolls on the critical injury chart, even after spending 7 Advantage with a prior critical injury on what should have been a "kill shot" only to roll 08; this still was bad since it increased the difficulty of Valin's efforts to attack even more. To say it was something of a rude awakening to just how far Valin had to go in becoming a 'saber-wielding badass would be an understatement. I figured that in-character, it would lead to Valin being too focused on "fighting like a Jedi" and forgetting his background as a street rate, and that he'd adjust his tactics appropriately in the future to be more of a combat pragmatist.
Now while getting into a 'saber combat with Valin was fun, the fact remains that even before delving into Ataru Striker he had a lot of XP invested into Force Emergent and the Sense power, giving him a solid defense option in the defensive Control Upgrade with the Duration and Strength Upgrades as well as additional wounds and strain. One of my friends has been gracious enough to let me bring a Force and Destiny PC that's much closer to being a starting PC into her Star Wars game, and while he's not had a chance to get into a fight or even break-out the lightsaber, I'm curious to see how it goes when said opportunities do present themselves.
So the point of all this? In short, I think FFG got the settings
just about right for Force and Destiny PCs to be able to engage in
lightsaber duels, particularly once they've seriously invested in one of
the Lightsaber Form specializations, but not have those duels being the
"first hit wins" scenarios that they'd have been if they'd stuck to the
EotE/AoR lightsaber stats. And while I'm sure that there are some
power-gaming twinks that are lamenting the lose of such "out-of-the-box
uber-weapons," the game is overall better for replacing them with the
basic lightsaber and its cousins from FaD.
Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts
October 28, 2014
May 19, 2014
D&D 5e... So. What?
Fair warning, if you're a dyed-in-the-wool D&D fan that's been frothing at the mouth for the next edition of D&D since they announced the Open Playtest, you should probably just skip this post entirely. In fact, just pretend it didn't exist, and we'll both be happier for it.
So, the news has been dropped that the next version of D&D (which I'm calling 5e for simplicity) will be released this summer, starting with a Beginner Box in July and followed with a new release each subsequent month. Obviously being D&D (aka the 800 pound gorilla in the RPG industry), this is fairly big news for a lot of folks. After all, it's been quite a while since WotC last published a D&D gaming product for retail sale.
Personally, my reaction to this news could be summed up in two words...
So. What?
I'll be honest, the last time I played D&D and actually had fun was in a Dark Sun campaign which was under the 4e ruleset (Human Stone Fist Monk with Wilder theme if you're curious; much boot to the head). I know that opinions on 4e are rather... divided, but while it didn't wow me, neither did 4e leave me entirely cold, though admittedly I never saw it as an actual "role"-playing game really being more of a tactical combat simulator that used physical maps, tokens, and dice instead of being reliant upon a computer. It's not a system I'd be in a hurry to play again, but I don't loathe it either.
But the fact remains that as much as 3rd edition was a base-breaker for the D&D fandom, 4e was even more so, due to the many significant and rather radical changes in how the game worked. 3e was itself different, but still had ties to prior versions of AD&D, just as AD&D 2nd edition had ties to AD&D 1st edition. 4e was such a different animal that it was hard to find a middle ground.
Brian Casey aka Fiddleback made a tweet this morning that really caught my attention, which he expounded upon here at the Mad Adventurer's Society: http://www.madadventurers.com/dd-5e-the-rise-of-meh/
He and I are of a similar wavelength in regards to the upcoming/inevitable 5th edition. In particular, I'd like to call to attention his point about how much the gaming industry as changed since 4e was released.
Ten years ago, we didn't have things like Kickstarter, and the number of viable indie RPG companies was fairly small. RPG publishing was predominately big companies like Wizards of the Coast or Alderac Entertainment Group or White Wolf, companies that had been in business for quite some time. But things have changed. Paizo went from being a magazine publisher to being the folks publishing one of the two largest RPG product lines on the market (where they stand in regards to WotC is a matter of opinion that varies from one person to the next).
One of my favorite companies to support, Evil Hat Productions (i.e. the folks behind FATE and the Dresden Files RPG) probably wouldn't have been able to make it in the RPG industry as it existed at that time, or at least wouldn't have the degree of success they've been having.
But with the advent of Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, it's a much different industry. Indie RPGs are now a heck of a lot more accessible, and you can get a lot of bang for your buck when you make a pledge to support a given funding campaign. I got a pretty good amount of swag from Evil Hat's FATE Kickstarter, as well as Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds 10th Anniversary Kickstarter and the Deadlands Noir Kickstarter (oh how I wish I could have pledged more back then). And there's been a couple of minor projects that I gladly supported simply because they sounded interesting. Some of them came to fruition, some didn't. I guess I've been lucky in that I've only had a single Kickstarter go sour with the money taken and nothing to show for it. The fact still remains that the gaming industry is no longer reliant on those big companies to produce RPGs that we're hoping to like. Now, smaller companies can more easily find those "niche markets" for their ideas that a decade ago probably would have wasted away in obscurity.
There's also the simple fact that for most companies, PDF publishing and Open Gaming Licenses are a huge thing. Putting together a semi-professional looking PDF and submitting to sites like DriveThruRPG isn't that difficult and the publisher gets to skip over a number of other costs, such as printing and shipping. And with just about every gamer having some form of internet access and a portable device these days, getting those PDFs and using them at the table is quite simple. And like Kickstarter campaigns, it's pretty easy for someone with a real niche product to find folks that are willing to buy a PDF of it.
So where does that leave Wizards of the Coast and 5e? More than likely, facing an uphill battle if they want to re-establish the massive customer base they had back when 3e was at it's height. Response to the recent Open Playtest materials has been as mixed as the post-release response to 4e was, with some folks loving it, some folks hating it, and some folks simply wondering why they should care anymore?
Me, I'm in that third camp. I tried out the materials for the Open Playtest under a couple iterations, but I found myself often wondering "why should I even care at this point?" I already had access to all the books for what I honestly feel is the best version of a d20 system out there in the form of Star Wars Saga Edition, which is one of the few d20 games that I'd play or run at this point, with Mutants & Masterminds being the other. And the answer I ultimately came to was "I shouldn't."
I've got two bookcases packed with a variety of RPGs that I very much enjoy playing or at the very least enjoy just occasionally reading through. I've got a number of PDFs for several of those games and several more sitting on my hard drive. But my D&D books? The 3e books are pretty much gone (and I had a lot of those at one point), with only two 3e books surviving my purge of "stuff I no longer need." I've still got 4e books that are semi-accessible, but honestly I don't have that many of them (the core set, each of the various PHBs, the two Essentials player books, and a couple supplements is all) and it's been quite a while since I picked up one of those to just read through it.
So as far as D&D 5e goes, I'm a lost cause for anyone trying to convince me to pick up the new rules. At most, I might pick up a copy of the PHB if I can get a really good price on it, but that's not likely as none of the folks I game with have an interest in any version of D&D these days.
And that's okay, because unlike the RPG industry of old, there are a wealth of options out there for the discerning gamer. So while D&D is likely to remain the "face" of the RPG hobby, particularly to the mainstream media and those on the outside looking in, that doesn't mean that gamers have to overjoyed or even be interested that a new version of D&D is on the horizon. Will D&D probably be the "introductory" RPG for a number of gamers in the years to come? Probably, though Pathfinder is probably catching up given the number of gamers that cut their teeth on 3rd edition D&D.
Personally, I feel there are much stronger options to introducing folks to the gaming hobby that D&D. Green Ronin's Dragon Age and Pinnacle's Savage Worlds are two of them. There's also Fate Accelerated Edition if I need to come up with something on the fly, though I'll admit my comfort level with that system is not the best in terms of being a GM. But that's my opinion, and I'm sure there are plenty of folks that feel there are other systems that would be better for an introduction to the RPG hobby. But that's the beauty if it all, is that there are so many other options. I suspect that had the number of options that exist today been around when I got my introduction (D&D Red Box) was a much smaller guy, my head likely would have been spinning.
Back then (a lot longer ago than I'd like to admit), there really wasn't much choice beyond D&D. At least in the areas I grew up in, you were lucky if the local bookstore carried anything more than a few D&D books and some dice; if you wanted something other than D&D, you were pretty much out of luck.
But *cough* number of years later, I can very easily walk past a table where any version of D&D is being played, pausing perhaps briefly for a second or two to see what's going on, and then move along. During GenCon last year, I very briefly swung by the WotC set-up, took a couple of pics of the big-ass drider statue, and left the area with zero interest in playing a session of D&DNext. I tried the playtest material, wasn't really enthused or frankly impressed by the state of things towards the end, and unless WotC has done some really major revisions, odds are that 5e is going to be many of the things that I simply didn't care for.
For those of you out there are chomping at the bit for the next version of D&D, I hope you enjoy it. But I've got a sinking feeling there's going to be nearly as much divisiveness over the new edition as there was each time a new edition of D&D got released, ranging from the folks that liked the old(er) edition to folks that are disappointed that this new edition failed to live up to their expectations or simply doesn't deliver the D&D experience they want.
And for me, given how non-relevant D&D is to my gaming these days, I again ask "so what?" I've got plenty of other RPGs that I very much enjoy playing, with currently being in two FFG Star Wars campaign (and am eager to get my hands on the Age of Rebellion core rulebook within the next couple weeks and hopefully the Force and Destiny Beta this August) and a Mutants & Masterminds campaign (hard to top the chance to play Spider-Man, quips and all).
Edit: Well, it seems that WotC did one of the last things I'd have expected, that being to offer the "basic" rules as a free PDF download from their website, covering levels 1 thru 20 but keeping things very "bare bones" much like the old Basic D&D box sets did. You'll have your standard four classes (fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard/mage) and races (human, elves, dwarves, halfings) to start with, so it'll be enough to give those curious a chance to see if the new D&D is something they'd want to follow up on or simply pass over.
At the very least, they'll have folks willing to check out the new D&D, which will likely provide a much needed boost towards the goal of making D&D as relevant to gamers as it was back in the 3.X/d20 hey-day. I'm still not sold on the product (again based on the last iteration of the Beta playtest rules), but I'll at least check out the Basic PDF and see if the system is something I'm willing to put money towards.
So, the news has been dropped that the next version of D&D (which I'm calling 5e for simplicity) will be released this summer, starting with a Beginner Box in July and followed with a new release each subsequent month. Obviously being D&D (aka the 800 pound gorilla in the RPG industry), this is fairly big news for a lot of folks. After all, it's been quite a while since WotC last published a D&D gaming product for retail sale.
Personally, my reaction to this news could be summed up in two words...
So. What?
I'll be honest, the last time I played D&D and actually had fun was in a Dark Sun campaign which was under the 4e ruleset (Human Stone Fist Monk with Wilder theme if you're curious; much boot to the head). I know that opinions on 4e are rather... divided, but while it didn't wow me, neither did 4e leave me entirely cold, though admittedly I never saw it as an actual "role"-playing game really being more of a tactical combat simulator that used physical maps, tokens, and dice instead of being reliant upon a computer. It's not a system I'd be in a hurry to play again, but I don't loathe it either.
But the fact remains that as much as 3rd edition was a base-breaker for the D&D fandom, 4e was even more so, due to the many significant and rather radical changes in how the game worked. 3e was itself different, but still had ties to prior versions of AD&D, just as AD&D 2nd edition had ties to AD&D 1st edition. 4e was such a different animal that it was hard to find a middle ground.
Brian Casey aka Fiddleback made a tweet this morning that really caught my attention, which he expounded upon here at the Mad Adventurer's Society: http://www.madadventurers.com/dd-5e-the-rise-of-meh/
He and I are of a similar wavelength in regards to the upcoming/inevitable 5th edition. In particular, I'd like to call to attention his point about how much the gaming industry as changed since 4e was released.
Ten years ago, we didn't have things like Kickstarter, and the number of viable indie RPG companies was fairly small. RPG publishing was predominately big companies like Wizards of the Coast or Alderac Entertainment Group or White Wolf, companies that had been in business for quite some time. But things have changed. Paizo went from being a magazine publisher to being the folks publishing one of the two largest RPG product lines on the market (where they stand in regards to WotC is a matter of opinion that varies from one person to the next).
One of my favorite companies to support, Evil Hat Productions (i.e. the folks behind FATE and the Dresden Files RPG) probably wouldn't have been able to make it in the RPG industry as it existed at that time, or at least wouldn't have the degree of success they've been having.
But with the advent of Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, it's a much different industry. Indie RPGs are now a heck of a lot more accessible, and you can get a lot of bang for your buck when you make a pledge to support a given funding campaign. I got a pretty good amount of swag from Evil Hat's FATE Kickstarter, as well as Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds 10th Anniversary Kickstarter and the Deadlands Noir Kickstarter (oh how I wish I could have pledged more back then). And there's been a couple of minor projects that I gladly supported simply because they sounded interesting. Some of them came to fruition, some didn't. I guess I've been lucky in that I've only had a single Kickstarter go sour with the money taken and nothing to show for it. The fact still remains that the gaming industry is no longer reliant on those big companies to produce RPGs that we're hoping to like. Now, smaller companies can more easily find those "niche markets" for their ideas that a decade ago probably would have wasted away in obscurity.
There's also the simple fact that for most companies, PDF publishing and Open Gaming Licenses are a huge thing. Putting together a semi-professional looking PDF and submitting to sites like DriveThruRPG isn't that difficult and the publisher gets to skip over a number of other costs, such as printing and shipping. And with just about every gamer having some form of internet access and a portable device these days, getting those PDFs and using them at the table is quite simple. And like Kickstarter campaigns, it's pretty easy for someone with a real niche product to find folks that are willing to buy a PDF of it.
So where does that leave Wizards of the Coast and 5e? More than likely, facing an uphill battle if they want to re-establish the massive customer base they had back when 3e was at it's height. Response to the recent Open Playtest materials has been as mixed as the post-release response to 4e was, with some folks loving it, some folks hating it, and some folks simply wondering why they should care anymore?
Me, I'm in that third camp. I tried out the materials for the Open Playtest under a couple iterations, but I found myself often wondering "why should I even care at this point?" I already had access to all the books for what I honestly feel is the best version of a d20 system out there in the form of Star Wars Saga Edition, which is one of the few d20 games that I'd play or run at this point, with Mutants & Masterminds being the other. And the answer I ultimately came to was "I shouldn't."
I've got two bookcases packed with a variety of RPGs that I very much enjoy playing or at the very least enjoy just occasionally reading through. I've got a number of PDFs for several of those games and several more sitting on my hard drive. But my D&D books? The 3e books are pretty much gone (and I had a lot of those at one point), with only two 3e books surviving my purge of "stuff I no longer need." I've still got 4e books that are semi-accessible, but honestly I don't have that many of them (the core set, each of the various PHBs, the two Essentials player books, and a couple supplements is all) and it's been quite a while since I picked up one of those to just read through it.
So as far as D&D 5e goes, I'm a lost cause for anyone trying to convince me to pick up the new rules. At most, I might pick up a copy of the PHB if I can get a really good price on it, but that's not likely as none of the folks I game with have an interest in any version of D&D these days.
And that's okay, because unlike the RPG industry of old, there are a wealth of options out there for the discerning gamer. So while D&D is likely to remain the "face" of the RPG hobby, particularly to the mainstream media and those on the outside looking in, that doesn't mean that gamers have to overjoyed or even be interested that a new version of D&D is on the horizon. Will D&D probably be the "introductory" RPG for a number of gamers in the years to come? Probably, though Pathfinder is probably catching up given the number of gamers that cut their teeth on 3rd edition D&D.
Personally, I feel there are much stronger options to introducing folks to the gaming hobby that D&D. Green Ronin's Dragon Age and Pinnacle's Savage Worlds are two of them. There's also Fate Accelerated Edition if I need to come up with something on the fly, though I'll admit my comfort level with that system is not the best in terms of being a GM. But that's my opinion, and I'm sure there are plenty of folks that feel there are other systems that would be better for an introduction to the RPG hobby. But that's the beauty if it all, is that there are so many other options. I suspect that had the number of options that exist today been around when I got my introduction (D&D Red Box) was a much smaller guy, my head likely would have been spinning.
Back then (a lot longer ago than I'd like to admit), there really wasn't much choice beyond D&D. At least in the areas I grew up in, you were lucky if the local bookstore carried anything more than a few D&D books and some dice; if you wanted something other than D&D, you were pretty much out of luck.
But *cough* number of years later, I can very easily walk past a table where any version of D&D is being played, pausing perhaps briefly for a second or two to see what's going on, and then move along. During GenCon last year, I very briefly swung by the WotC set-up, took a couple of pics of the big-ass drider statue, and left the area with zero interest in playing a session of D&DNext. I tried the playtest material, wasn't really enthused or frankly impressed by the state of things towards the end, and unless WotC has done some really major revisions, odds are that 5e is going to be many of the things that I simply didn't care for.
For those of you out there are chomping at the bit for the next version of D&D, I hope you enjoy it. But I've got a sinking feeling there's going to be nearly as much divisiveness over the new edition as there was each time a new edition of D&D got released, ranging from the folks that liked the old(er) edition to folks that are disappointed that this new edition failed to live up to their expectations or simply doesn't deliver the D&D experience they want.
And for me, given how non-relevant D&D is to my gaming these days, I again ask "so what?" I've got plenty of other RPGs that I very much enjoy playing, with currently being in two FFG Star Wars campaign (and am eager to get my hands on the Age of Rebellion core rulebook within the next couple weeks and hopefully the Force and Destiny Beta this August) and a Mutants & Masterminds campaign (hard to top the chance to play Spider-Man, quips and all).
Edit: Well, it seems that WotC did one of the last things I'd have expected, that being to offer the "basic" rules as a free PDF download from their website, covering levels 1 thru 20 but keeping things very "bare bones" much like the old Basic D&D box sets did. You'll have your standard four classes (fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard/mage) and races (human, elves, dwarves, halfings) to start with, so it'll be enough to give those curious a chance to see if the new D&D is something they'd want to follow up on or simply pass over.
At the very least, they'll have folks willing to check out the new D&D, which will likely provide a much needed boost towards the goal of making D&D as relevant to gamers as it was back in the 3.X/d20 hey-day. I'm still not sold on the product (again based on the last iteration of the Beta playtest rules), but I'll at least check out the Basic PDF and see if the system is something I'm willing to put money towards.
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