Another guest post by The Great Seamus. Today he talks about playing D&D on the cheap by making use of local craft stores. As an aside, Seamus and Marcelo are both contributing pretty regularly to the blog, so I think it’s time I made them honorary members of the Guild. Their posts will no longer be prefaced by “Guest Post” (though they’ll still be in that category, for easy finding of things). I will, however, be including little intros like this on any posts I don’t write myself.

I sometimes feel that the hardest thing to convey to players these days is perspective. In our digital age, simply telling a player that a colossal black dragon is rearing on its hind legs, acid dripping from its maw, eyes glowing a hateful red . . . players today want to see it. I know many “old-school” gamers decry this, saying that back in their day, all they needed was imagination. I say that this is that natural progression of entertainment and technology. PONG doesn’t cut it anymore, and neither (necessarily) does imagination and dice. And while there is no substitute for a healthy imagination, these days there are a number of tools at a player’s and a DM’s disposal to help make the game come alive.

The two biggest aides one can have are maps and minis. Thinking up a character is great, but it is a little more endearing to put down your perfectly crafted mini on the table, geared for war. The same can be said for monsters – that same black dragon is much more impressive set dead center on the map, towering over your players’ minis like some dark god. Minis range from metal to plastic to paper, and obviously the quality varies accordingly. Some DM’s are perfectly happy have a round disc-shaped token on the field – me, I’ll take my dragon. The maps are another key addition. Most modules come with nice paper maps, featuring excellent artwork on a 2D surface. Some companies even make modular dungeon pieces for you to collect and assemble. Of course, this gets very expensive after a while. Dwarven Forge, for example, makes some of the most beautiful modular gaming terrain you will ever see – and for hundreds to even thousands of dollars, you can have it all. That black dragon I described to you can be bought, too – for around $75, straight from Wizards of the Coast. So how does one do all of this on a budget?

I find that craft stores like Hobby Lobby and Michael’s are the perfect place to do gaming on a budget. Michael’s sells and distributes toy figurines from a company called Safari Ltd, which produces both real and fantasy based animals that are in good scale with our friendly neighborhood D&D game. I myself purchased three dragons of equal size to the Wizards black dragon for a fraction of the cost. Do you need a blue dragon? Grab some paint and brushes, too. The best purchase you can make there are plastic tubes filled with miniature versions of their larger animals – perfect for medium and large sized creatures, and also able to be painted to look however you like.

Moving on to maps and terrain, you can also find a myriad of things to help out your game at these stores, too. Numerous stones, shells, and small plants can be purchased for less than $5 and added to your 2D maps to give perspective on cover, blocking terrain, and even difficult terrain. There are even trees and bushes made by those same toy makers that can be added to your map. Do you need castle walls? Get yourself some building model bricks and stack them however you need them. Another good resource would be looking online or at local garage sales and thrift stores for dollhouse furniture or accessories from the now defunct games Heroscape and Mage Knight. These accessories can be resurrected and help breathe life into your game.

Of course, some things you may need to get from the source. You will probably never find a beholder at Michael’s, and those maps need to come from somewhere. Also, if gamers fail to support the company, the company goes out of business and the game suffers an irrevocable loss. Try to balance your purchases. By all means save some money, but remember not to bite the hand that feeds you, as it were and support Wizards and your FNGS as much as you can.

Other links:
Schleich S
Reaper Minis

Marcelo Dior graces us with his prose again, and it’s a good one this time! Today he talks about speeding up combat; specifically, he discusses whether or not it’s really necessary. He’s really thought this one through and backed it up with his own games, and he includes some really solid advice, too. I agree with pretty much every point he makes in this article; give it a read!

There’s a lot of house rules out there trying to speed up combat, to better integrate players at the table, to make the experience more interesting, agile, funnier, etc. But— do you need them?

The penny dropped for me when I listened to the January 30 episode of The Tome Show, «Expert DM Seminar», recorded at D&D Experience 2011. At that seminar, Chris Perkins and Greg Bilsland bounced ideas off the small audience about their house rules. A lot of nice stuff came out from there, and I  already knew some of those tricks. But, most of it… I found out I don’t need.

It has become an Internet obsession, the need for speeding up combat; texts and tweets about cutting down the time spent on Combat Encounters appear in every D&D blog and from every Twitter user who runs D&D games. It is perfectly justifiable and very important for a lot of DMs and players out there. But is it for everybody? Is it for you?

I’ve found out that, for me, it’s not. I’ve been running a regular D&D game for six people since last Summer, and combat is pretty agile and dynamic. Of course it takes longer than one hour – it’s six people after all – but I hadn’t realized that combat was dynamic enough, and for months I went on cramming all kinds of house rules, trying to cut seconds and minutes from combat.

Wanna know what happened? Combat was, on the contrary, taking longer because of all those house rules. None of them were necessary to my game, but I was so enthralled by the concept/obsession of speeding up combat that’s raging through the Internet that I convinced myself I had the same problem. It’s sorta like those medicine ads: you think you need to take them because you see them on TV every day.

This is going to sound redundant, but Combat Encounters need speeding up if they need speeding up. Each combat at your table takes two hours, but everybody’s having a ball and no one cares? So don’t change a thing. The combat takes less than 45 minutes, but you’re not having fun and your players are feeling that the combat is dragging? Go ahead and crank it up! You shouldn’t set your game by a time-limit determined by some random blog or tweet. If it incidentally fits your game, fine. If it doesn’t, just as well. My own measure is not in minutes, but in rounds: three or less, the combat was too easy; more than six, the combat’s dragging its feet and should end quickly.

I’ve realized the most time-consuming element on my table was me, the DM. My players aren’t doing anything wrong, I am – and I registered that after listening to said podcast. So I decided the only changes to speed up combats at my table would be:

• Initiative and condition markers are to be administrated by the players. There’re six of them and only one of me, and I already have a lot of stuff to take care of.
• I’m making monster defense scores visible when a PC hits its number, or close. I already state “bullseye!” or “you missed by one!” anyway, so I’m turning it into a mechanic: I’ll use the tent-style monster stat card suggested by Sly Flourish, only with the defenses covered by pieces of post-it. When someone hits it (precisely or close) I’ll ask them to lift the post-it off of that defense. It’s a compromise between letting the players know monsters defenses from the get-go or never revealing them. It’s going to give me a little bit me more work the day before, but I think it’ll save a lot of time not having to check and say if the attacks hit or not.

And here are the lessons I learned from almost three years of playing D&D which I’m turning into guide-lines from now on:

• I seldom use Minions. With my present group, 95% of them are dead at the end of the first round anyway – it just make me lose time positioning all those minis on the map. Exception: a very tough monster, like a boss’s Lieutenant, and his platoon of Minions. I love that configuration, usually putting a different mini amongst them; my players always think that guy is some Sergeant (not just a regular Minion with a different skin).
• Do not use more than four distinct monster stats; ideally, only two or three. The number of enemies must come from the quantity of each monster, not variety. More than that number of stats on hand, I get lost and spend an unnecessary amount of time sorting out my monsters, halting the combat when it comes to my turn (and the DM turn comes a lot).
• Do not have more than one monster with a great variety of attacks. I found out that most monsters won’t last enough time to use all their cool powers, so just one complex monster is sufficient. The others should have no more than one attack and – perhaps – a one-use-only power.

Here’s my lesson, dear reader: you should only speed up the combat, or change any characteristic of your game, if it needs to be changed. If there’s a problem with, say, the way feats are handled on your game, change it. If not, leave it alone and be happy.

In spite of everything I wrote here, you should listen to the seminar I mentioned at the beginning. You might find some good, interesting tips worth being tried out.

Guest contributor Marcelo Dior returns to us, giving us his take on a contest of martial skill, the axe-throwing contest.

Let’s say there are two Rangers in the group, equally skilled with the battleaxe, or you’re the Ranger and that thickheaded Dwarf Fighter keeps bragging about he being the best axe thrower of the realm. I present you, dear reader, a Skill Challenge that could be used between two PCs or against one or more NPCs. It’s a competition, the…

Axe Throwing Derby

Setup: a target (usually circular, but it could be a straw doll mounted on a rack) is put 10 yards from each of the competitors, who have 30 seconds to throw their axes. Considering 10 seconds for each Skill Check, the contenders may roll up to three different Skills before actually throwing their axes, otherwise they won’t be awarded any points. Only the battleaxe or the greataxe is permitted.

All the Skill checks have a DC 15, and they might be:

• Acrobatics: The contender concentrates on the weight and balance of his axe while adjusting his stance so the throw comes out more precise. Success: +2 bonus to the throw. Critical failure: -5 penalty to the throw.
• Athletics: Cannot be used on the last (third) throw. The competitor flexes his or her muscles to lend potency to the throw. Success: +2 to the throw. Critical failure: -5 to the throw.
• Bluff: Must be made prior to the throw of another contender. The competitor makes sudden and odd movements, feints, and jokes in an effort to make an adversary lose focus. Success: one contender near the you takes a -1 to his or her action (throw or Skill Check).
• Endurance: Cannot be used on the first throw. You try to catch your breath for the next throw, ignoring the weariness of the previous throw. Success: +1 on a Skill Check made before the next throw.
• Healing: You summon your inner energy and your knowledge of anatomy to warm your muscles correctly and recover from the weariness of the competition. Success: +1 on the Endurance check, above.
• Perception: You gauge the distance to the target, wind speed and direction, and the play of lights and shadows cast over the field to precisely calculate your throw. Success: +2 to the throw. Critical failure: -5 to the throw.

(I decided the roll of 1 on Skill Check should have consequences, something alien to 4e, to make things a little bit more interesting, reflecting in game terms a gross miscalculation on the use of Acrobatics, Athletics, and Perception.)

Competition details:

After all contenders have made their Skill Checks, any and all of the bonuses and penalties they earned are added to a Melee Basic Attack roll against 12 (that’s right, Melee Basic, not Ranged. This is a precision test, not an attack to kill a monster). The one who beats it by the greater margin earns points equal to the number of contenders. The second best net hit earns points equal to the number of contenders -1, and so forth. Failing in beating the DC of 12 earns you no points for that round. In the case of a tie, both competitors earn the same number of points.

After the first throw, the weapons are returned and the targets are repositioned at 25 yards. The same 30 seconds (three Skill Checks) are available and now the DC for the Melee Basic Attack is 15. The points are tallied and we move to the third and final round of the competition, with targets at 50 yards and DC 18. In the case of a draw at this point, the last round is done again with the contenders that have tied, as many times as necessary to untie the score.

Usually, in this kind of contest, magical axes or other items — such as magical bracelets or belts — aren’t allowed, and the organizers (if there is one) will have means of detecting magic over or on the competitors.

Variations:

Obviously, this competition may be about other kinds of weapons. It could be a dispute of archery (with Ranged Basic Attacks instead of Melee), knife-throwing or even the obvious handaxes. An especially peculiar organizer could allow the mix of battle- and greataxes and handaxes amongst the contenders (in which case the check is made with the Ranged Basic Attack for the contender using the handaxe). That would lead to possible and interesting protests by the other competitors or heated discussions at the tavern after the competition about the validity of such an obviously lop-sided contest.

Today we have a guest post from a new contributor, Marcelo Dior. Marcelo comes to us from Brazil; he writes on his own blog, and also speaks on some podcasts.

I’ve been adapting the adventures from the book Well of Worlds (Planescape) for 4e for a couple of months now. Last Sunday, I ran my 4e version of the fourth adventure of that book, Blood Storm. In it, the players are visiting some unimportant Prime Material town, when they are first approached by a Pit Fiend in disguise, then by a Marilith (also in disguise), each hiring them for such an absurd amount of money that some PCs might cry.

I’m cutting the description very short here, because it’s not important right now (someday I’ll publish all my suggestions for adapting Well of Worlds to 4e). The important thing is that they should accept both contracts, not realizing they’ll conflict. The Baatezu (devils) and the Tana’ri (demons) have agreed to meet at a ruined, old church just outside town. The church itself has been consecrated (or desecrated) to the devils and the graveyard, to the demons. They’re both interested in that town and the townsfolks’ souls, but neither side wants the Blood War to spill over to that plane of existence (yet) so they decided to meet and “talk” it over. But, being fiends, each party tries to have and edge at the “talks” come midnight.

By that point in the campaign, the PCs should be somewhat famous around Sigil, being level 9 (out of 20 in AD&D) and all. So the fiends detected or recognized them when they arrived in town, and each side tries to hire the PCs. The adventure is designed in such a way that the two contracts don’t seem to overlap, and eventually the PCs arrive at the old church and graveyard, realizing that they’ve, quite literally, made made a pact with the devil. And the demon.

Preparing the adventure, I realized that the possibility of the players choosing any of the sides on the battle at the climax were infinitesimally small, for half of the party is composed of good or neutrally aligned Divine characters (I’m using the old alignment system — it’s Planescape after all) so I decided to change the way the scene would unfold. Instead of having eight monsters controlled by me (four demons and four devils) that would alternate between attacking the PCs or the other fiendish group (Baatezu and Tana’ri would never join forces against anyone, let alone a bunch of mortal adventurers), I decided that if the scene unfolded as I expected, i.e. the PCs stepping back and deciding to wait and see who’d come out of the fray alive and then finishing them off, I’d give the players the control of the monsters!

Oh, I’m so bright, aren’t I? I had six players in front of me, and six monsters (the Marilith and the Pit Fiend would take their battle to the skies as they’re way too powerful to be let loose over the battlefield). I adjusted all the monsters to be of the same level (8, in this case) and gave the Tana’ri to the players at my left-hand side, and the Baatezu to the players at my right-hand side. Everyone would have so much fun playing the monsters and I’d wash my hands of deciding which side would be left standing to fight the PCs, and how damaged they’d be.

If only.

The players… didn’t enjoyed the experience. First of all, they wanted to play their characters, whose level had just increased at the end of the last adventure, and not some random monsters they’ve never seen before. Second of all, the monsters aren’t designed to be controlled in that fashion, because they usually have only one or two attacks, and way too many hit points. I was careful not only to level all the monsters but also to choose critters that had recharging powers, but that wasn’t enough. By the end of the third round, my players were vocally wishing the fight ended soon, so they could put their own PC minis on the table and start hacking at the remaining fiends.

When the session ended, I asked for feedback (as I usually do, asking what they liked the best and what they didn’t like very much). They loved the scenario (being unknowingly hired by both sides as the tip of the scale) and enjoyed the battlefield very much (I’m careful to always put interactive and dangerous terrain) but the experience playing the bad guys wasn’t so good. But they appreciated the idea, and suggested to me, given the opportunity to do it again, I should choose or make monsters that: 1. were more like PCs, with lots of attack options (Elites, maybe?); and 2. Cut away a lot of the hit points, so the quarrel wouldn’t take more than three rounds (if so much).

That’s the lesson I give you, reader. Sometimes brilliant ideas in theory are pretty stupid ones in practice. But players are always in search for original and innovative ideas their that DM is willing to throw at them.

Have a nice game!

The following is a guest post from friend of the blog, The Great Seamus. After the line you’ll see the entirety of his guest post, followed by another line. After that line, I’m going to insert some of my thoughts on the topic.

I’ll open with a story from a campaign I was DMing in the last few weeks. I had taken the module from the Monster Vault and modified it to include in my campaign world.

My players were adventuring in the mountains. They had come into possession of a relic, The Staff of the Winter King, who had been awakened from his icy slumber and had draped the land in an unnatural and unforgiving winter. He was demanding the return of his staff, of course. The players had the responsibility of locating this staff and bringing it back to the king, and then finding some means to ending this winter. Learning some of the history of this individual, the party had come to the consensus that they would have to defeat him, as he was a terrible warlord who sought to dominate the earth. So the players sailed on the magical dragon ship (nearly dying in the process) and managed to crash it into the area just outside of the king’s fortress. Upon reaching the gate, they were stopped by a guardian (a modified elemental solider, ice of course), who silently demanded that they hand over the staff.

So they did.

Being a dutiful creature, the guardian glided off, returned the scepter to the king, and then brought back a half dozen of his friends to kill the interlopers. Now, this combat was originally designed for the party to either sneak past the creature, or simply fight the one brute and several summoned minion allies. But the situation, played out honestly, resulted in what was nearly a total party kill. Two characters were killed in the first three rounds of combat, and two more ran for their lives. The other two gave their lives so that the runners could survive. One of the survivors ruled her character so traumatized that she was retired, while the other went into hiding for a time. The players simply resigned themselves to rolling new characters for the next session and giving it another crack.

And this is where the problems begin. Sometimes players are a pain. As the DM, I put a lot of work into this campaign – from integrating the module into my world, to simply doing the paperwork that comes naturally to the process, and to have the players simply hit the reset button wouldn’t work for me. So what does a good DM do when his players break the campaign? In my mind, there are three options, all of which revolve around a central core – there need to be consequences. Players cannot simply hit the reset button. It throws out a lot of the hard work the DM has done, and oftentimes adds all new work – new characters to track, generating new treasures off of their wishlists, incorporating their new backgrounds, new stat cards, new minis, and getting them all together for a start. Not to mention that they all need to get on the road and get to the objective all over again. Real world consequences, however, teach players that their characters’ actions matter, even well after their characters have passed on.

I. Your life doesn’t end just because you got whupped
What villain worth his salt simply lets the dead bodies of his enemies go to waste? Raising them from the dead to torture for information is always a fun idea, though the souls of the PCs may not necessarily be willing. The next step is to raise them as undead servants, who regain their faculties (if not their lives) and must now progress as zombies or worse. The rules were made to be modded, of course, and simply adding the undead keyword and a few token resistances can adjust combat to accommodate their new unlives – though in the future it would be very difficult for them to get around in civilized society as, say, zombies.

II. Fudge the story
This is my least favorite option, because it presents less in the way of consequences and more of an inconvenience for the players – come back the next session and say that the players were not killed outright, but taken prisoner. Stripped of their weapons and armor, they were thrown into an icy prison to rot away. From there, the survivors may mount a rescue mission, while the captured PCs have to try and execute a daring escape. That way, the players keep their characters, and have a chance to salvage the adventure.

To modify this, perhaps the PCs were captured alive, though the players didn’t know it. Their characters become generals in the army of the Winter King, and help him to wreak bloody havoc across the land. The new party needs to stop the old party in order to even get a crack at the king and his staff.

III. What does this mean for the rest of the world?
he option I ultimately chose, I allowed for the players to hit the reset button – new campaign in a new part of the world (they wanted a nice, temperate jungle adventure after freezing in the north) so they picked new characters and decided on traveling south, towards the jungles.

Along with thousands of refugees.

The winter king, in his glory, is expanding his empire, and the lands he takes are swaddled in the embrace of that same terrible weather. Ice, snow, and sleet that destroys crops and makes life almost impossible have sent the residents of those now occupied lands to villages and cities in the south. Other nations and races are sealing their borders, and food is getting scarce. Bandits plague the roads driven by hunger and desperation, and many towns and villages simply deny the party entrance. As a DM, this means more wandering monsters, higher DCs to forage for food, and more difficulty performing social skills checks – especially against other races.

The most important thing a DM can be is flexible, but there is a line not to cross. You can’t let the players treat your work like a game of Final Fantasy. There are no save points, and certainly no reset button.

Having an entire campaign go down the tubes because of some choices the players made is pretty frustrating. It means a lot of extra work for you as the DM, and means that the story you were trying to tell may not get finished. And I agree that there should be consequences for the players’ actions. There’s one thing that, having read the above post, I feel is missing from that core conceit.

Actions should have consequences, but consequences should be fun
Fun may not be the best word, but it’s the most concise and perhaps the closest to what I’m trying to say. Here’s my train of thought.

D&D, and other RPGs like it, is a game, and games are designed to be fun, first and foremost, for everyone playing the game. If the players make some bad decisions that cause a TPK (or a near TPK, as the case may be), then that’s probably going to hurt the DM’s fun in the long-run because of the extra work and the wasted effort put into that story. What you have to remember, though, is that–once the initial rush of an epic combat is over–getting clobbered by the monsters isn’t all that much fun for the players, either.

Combat should have consequences. If players don’t feel any tension as a result of their characters’ lives being imperiled, that’s a problem that you have to solve. That said, if your consequences are simply meant to punish players, or to encourage them to take the safe route, then your consequences might need adjustment.

A lot of indie RPGs subscribe to a particular philosophy. The idea is that success is, largely, inherently good. Failure may not be inherently good, but it should be at least as interesting as success, and it should lead to situations that are at least as interesting and fun for the players (even if they aren’t fun for the players’ characters). I think that applying this philosophy to D&D is, in general, a good idea, especially when it comes to game-breaking events like this.

If the players have really bungled things and it looks like the bad guys are going to win, don’t think of it as a negative. Think of it as an opportunity for drama, an opportunity to tell the story in a way you hadn’t thought of before. In the above example, I particularly like the idea of bringing the PCs back as undead creatures in the service of the Winter King. Not only do the PCs get to play for the other side for a bit, but eventually you get to give them the choice of betraying their master and trying to do the right thing, even if it means their destruction as the necrotic energy that animates them is dissipated with the Winter King’s demise.

By The Great Seamus

SPOILERS AHOY

Though this review on the current season on Encounters may seem a little late to the party, I can assure you this was intentional. The previous two seasons of the program suffered from a detached sense of story – seemingly, a heaping of random encounters very loosely tied together at the end for the sake of satisfying a story. Season 2’s Dark Sun outing suffered especially hard when each week was taken individually, rather than viewed as a whole. With this season, I wanted to get a few weeks under my belt before I judged.

At this point, I have read 4/5 of the season, and I have run players through 3/5 of the story.

I can honestly say at this point that the lack of direction and continuity from Dark Sun has improved a great deal. The encounters each feel more linked. Each chapter has a noticeable and clearly defined endgame scenario, and each final fight segues into the next chapter flawlessly, moving the story as a whole to what I assume is going to be a very climatic final fight. I have noticed my players responding more to the story as whole, investing themselves in their characters and also in some of the support characters – Friar Benwick especially. His betrayal at the climax of chapter three genuinely shocked and surprised even my most hardened and jaded players.

That’s not to say this season of Encounters is flawless.

Other dungeon masters and some higher caliber players at our store have hypothesized that, as a direct result of Dark Sun’s amped up difficulty having turned off a large number of players, Wizards of the Coast “dumbed down” this season, using weaker monsters or serving up over-powered “twitter buffs” to make the experience easier for players. Many dungeon masters have resorted to “tweaking” each encounter, modifying enemies, adding reinforcements, or even inserting environmental hazards to balance out the weakly designed combat encounters. Additionally, there is still a distinct lack of roleplaying available from the beginning of the season. This may largely be due to the time limit imposed on the idea of the game – supposedly, it is meant to be a one to two hour game session focused primarily on simple combat to acclimate new players to 4th Edition D&D. It succeeds at that, as I have noticed a significant influx of new players come in and quickly pick up the basics of the game and develop an appreciation for it. These people have spent their hard earned dollars on books, The Red Box, and minis to most likely run their own home games. The rest of us, however, are left wanting something more substantial. DM burnout is high in Encounters to begin with, and very rarely do the DMs come back for the next season. This season will be no exception to that.

To troubleshoot some of these problems, I have been running my own re-tooled version of the materials in a home game. Having a fixed group of people playing their own characters (rather than pre-generated ones,) allows for them to become more invested in the story around each encounter. As a DM, it gives me more creative license to expand on the setting and the characters within it, which keeps the players even more interested in the story. I find that I am less burned out than some of my compatriots are, and actively look forward to running the sessions at home. The Encounters sessions at the store serve as excellent practice for tactics, and also to see the strengths and weaknesses of each encounter ahead of time, rather than simply trying to anticipate them on paper.

As far as troubleshooting in-store games, I have a few suggestions. Following the recommended “add another monster” formula Wizards gives for larger parties is a must, even if you only have five PCs at the table. Even newer players who started with this season of Encounters have figured the game out by now, and they are generally more than ready for what is being thrown at them. Adding one or two more monsters to the mix would even the odds for them. Additionally, modifying the minions in each encounter to make them a little tougher would be a game-changer. Even simply giving a minion some temporary hit points is a huge help in getting players to take them seriously. Finally, environmental hazards or active terrain are a huge plus, especially with minions to exploit them. Simply adding an arbalest or boulder hazard can change the battle plans of an over-powered or over-skilled party and make them focus a lot more on tactics. Also, adding some role-playing spice of your own is easy. Have a villain go into a monologue and taunt the players. Have them attempt to parley, and force the players to use those skills they picked out months ago. Try to encourage players to think outside the box, and use the rules as much as you can to do so. If your rogue wants to somersault over three enemies to try for combat advantage, use whatever rules you can to let him try. And finally, having a reward system in place for excellent roleplaying is tantalizing for players who love the current “achievement” system in video games. Maybe set up a way for players to spend their renown points for in game benefits.

Did I get your attention? That’s the trifecta, right? D&D (devil worship, of course), video games (creating the violent youth of tomorrow), and prostitution. Only ‘prostitution’ isn’t what I meant by ‘solicitation’. No, sadly this is just a post where I talk about a few things that I’ve been playing, reading, and/or thinking about lately. To wit:

D&D Essentials
I’ve read the Red Box and played the character creation adventure that comes with it. I liked it. The adventure does a good job of introducing the mechanics of the game and getting your character started, and it comes with virtually everything you need to play, except for maybe some pregenerated characters, or a method of character creation besides playing through the adventure. There’s a full-on adventure in the box that can be played with first-level characters, and with all the other stuff in there, dropping some pregens in makes it a ready-made DM kit for introducing new players to the game. Here’s what I did to solve that problem.

I’ve also started reading through Heroes of the Fallen Lands, which I’m really liking. I like the mechanics of Essentials; they’re streamlined and simple for the new players, but they’re different and interesting for the existing players. What really excites me about the whole thing is that it’s another indication that WotC is not planning on resting on their laurels. They consistently demonstrate that they’re not afraid to mix things up, that they’re not going to do things a certain way just because it’s the way they’ve been doing them up to this point. This willingness to switch things up mid-game is what’s going to keep D&D growing as a game, and will likely keep it from going stale. A side-effect might be that 4th Edition, because it continues to evolve without obsoleting existing mechanics, will likely have a longer life than 3rd Edition did.

Video Games
There are a few video games I’d like to talk about. First, I’d like to highly recommend a little independent title called Delve Deeper. If you like D&D, board games, or dwarves, you owe it to yourself to try this game out; heck, it’s only $5. You can get it on Steam; I believe you can also get it on Xbox Live (though I can’t confirm that, as I don’t own a 360). The game is a turn-based strategy game with a very board-gamey feel, and tons of references to various elements of geek culture. You take control of a band of five dwarves, and you are competing to mine more riches and plunder more relics than the other teams of five dwarves. You can play competitively on the same computer, with up to four players. It’s great fun.

I’ve also been playing Civilization V, and it’s been dominating my gaming time. I’m not going to talk about it at length; if you really want to read about the game, you can do that almost anywhere else on the Internets, I imagine. Suffice it to say that it’s very good, and I’ll likely boot it up as soon as I’m done with this post.

Solicitations
Finally, I’d like to officially state that I am soliciting guest posts at this time. If you have something to say about games and you want a forum to do it on, send me an email (engard at gmail dot com), or post a comment on this thread. If you have something you want to talk about, let me know, and I’ll let you know if I’m interested. There’s not a lot I won’t say yes to, provided that it’s about games and more-or-less meets the standards of this website.

My husband has kindly agreed to let me do a guest post here on his blog.

First thing you need to know about me. Before meeting Brian in college the only games I played were minesweeper, solitaire and Oregon Trail (the original). I am not a hard core gamer, and when I play games I play them over and over. When I met Brian I used to sit with him in his dorm while he played on his computer. The game he was playing most often Freshman year was StarCraft and I asked him to teach it to me. Soon after I surpassed him in StarCraft and became totally addicted. Since then I have played many other real time strategies and have loved most of them.

It just makes sense that Brian would come home on Tuesday with a copy of StarCraft II just for me! I installed it immediately and proceeded to play whenever I have time. I have to admit I was worried. I thought that Blizzard was going to go the route of World of WarCraft and make the focus on massively multi-player, but I was pleasantly surprised. They were able to keep the old StarCraft feel while still introducing new features. I love that you can now choose which missions to do and in what order. I love the idea of mercenaries and the fact that you can choose your own upgrades and research projects. I love the single player game play in general.

That said, I completed the game this morning and am a bit disappointed to find that the time spent in single player is no where near as long as you’d expect. It took me longer to finish the original StarCraft and I was in college – aka had tons of free time – then. I was re-playing StarCraft before this release, and it took me less time to finish StarCraft II than it did to finish the Terran campaign in StarCraft. So my fears that Blizzard would put the focus on multi-player were not unfounded. Apparently they were hoping that you’d be online playing so much that you wouldn’t realize that you just paid $60 for 3 hours of game play (maybe I’m exaggerating, I didn’t keep track of how long it took me – I will the second time through).

Let’s top all of that with the DRM that Blizzard thought they’d add to the game and I’m wishing there was a money back guarantee. What DRM? Well apparently in order to play offline you must authenticate (don’t ask me to define this) your game on Battle.net. I signed up with Battle.net and registered my game. I signed in and played single player for a hour or so. Then the next day I took the computer with me on the road (with the disk in the drive) and tried to play offline. This was no possible. The game kept telling me to authenticate my copy in order to play offline – but no where does it define ‘authenticate.’ I checked the support forums and the web, everyone says you should only have to sign into the game once while online and then be able to play – but I did this and got no where. I wrote to support and got a form email telling me that I had to authenticate my game every 30 days in order to play offline – once again no explanation of what ‘authenticate’ means. I tried to call support but it was a 45 minute wait and I was not going to waste my minutes on that.

So – final verdict. The game play is pretty darn cool and the improvements well done without losing the real StarCraft feel. The price tag is an insult – and an obvious ploy to get us to play $180 for a full game instead of $60 for all three campaigns in one. The DRM is nothing but trouble and there are plenty of hacks out there I can use to bypass it (legally I might add) but should I have to do that when I paid for the game? Maybe I would have paid $30 for the game and been perfectly happy, but as I said earlier – I’m wishing I had a satisfaction guarantee and could return it.