Rundarr!

While no one died, this fight gave the party the most draining fight yet. After a full rest, they used almost every daily power they had. A great battle that actually threatened a loss.

Chamber of Eyes

A couple of shots from last nights combat in the Chamber of Eyes. The players had been blowing through the standard encounters, so we discussed some solutions and ended up just tweaking all the enemies levels by two. The enemies are now harder to hit, hit harder, and there’s some real peril. Seems to also suit the Thunderspire’s generous loot tables.

To the left here is where the players ran into a few duergar guards. They were tough as it was, but the fighting lured a hobgolbin warcaster and chief to the fight. Some quick thinking on the part of the warlock and they divided the enemies with a magical shroud of darkness.

Below, the larger battle in the main chamber. The warcaster retreated to this room and made a stand with the archers and wolf.

The only cure is more DDO?

Due to scheduling conflicts, sickness, and travel, I have not been playing much. And none of those reasons were my reasons. I don’t have a reason to not play.

In the stead of weekly RPG sessions, be they Fallout or D&D4e, I have been playing DDO. And I can say that the game is quite fun. I’ll put it this way: If you enjoy shadow puppetry, you don’t care what makes the shadows. You also don’t care if a different set of puppets tells a different shadow story. DDO is just another type of shadow puppetry with different props and stories. You get to dodge traps, level up, and (most importantly) kill things and take their stuff. D&D is simple enough of a setting for this to “just work”.

If only there was a turn based 4e version of it.

Thunderspire HO!

Victory in Thunderspire

After the conclusion of H1, Keep on the Shadowfell, the group moved on to H2, Thunderspire, out of lack of anything better from the DM (me). I’ve been putting the battle-mats to good use and you can see the post encounter map with all enemies killed dead.

I will note that if you are playing these pre-made modules, your group is most likely out-leveling the content. I made some changes to the last fight to try and make it more challenging and I think it succeeded. Despite some bad rolls on my part, and good roles on the party’s part, things seemed to be more challenging. Next encounter will be the telling part.

And, BTW, that’s some crumb cake, courtesy the wizard in the party. It was very good.

Cataclysm

Blizzard announced their new WoW expansion.

Too little, too late.

The End of Keep on the Shadowfell

Last Saturday I finished running Keep on the Shadowfell. I think that most of the reviews and feedback I have heard about the module branded it as too difficult or bland. I don’t think it’s a bad adventure. It’s a very classic dungeon crawl with lots of variation. I can clearly see that this was written to introduce new players to all the different kinds of challenges that D&D 4e has to offer. In that respect, it does a good job.

The players in our game were very shrewd most of the time in focusing fire and clearing the entire dungeon. This meant that they leveled up faster than the adventure was designed for and I had to make many of the fights harder. There were only a few bad times when the enemies got the upper hand. Surprise rounds can be harsh on the party.

So now I turn to the future and I’m not sure what I will run next. We all decided that D&D 4e is the right game for the group, but I’m not sure whether I will home-brew an adventure or just pick up the next pre-made adventure from Wizards of the Coast.

Conflicted

Since the day I first logged into a MUD, I will always want to play multi-player online games. It’s just a genre that I enjoy playing at many levels, and I enjoy the evolution of the genre. The basic concepts of virtual worlds are fascinating, and always will be.

One of the ideas I dwelled on and mulled over in my head was the idea of using a time-tested RPG system for a computer game. I was generally very upset with the Dark Age of Camelot system and felt it was impossible to ever find balance and fairness with that system. I know lots of MMO’s have licensed settings, but why not license an existing RPG’s mechanics? If you wait long enough, your crazy ideas will come true.

Dungeons & Dragons Online has recently decided to change their pricing scheme from a monthly subscription to a hybrid free-to-play structure. The game has been around for three years, but I had never given it much attention. The reviews seemed bad and, at the time, I was not willing to shell out fifteen dollars per month to find out for myself. But with the advent of the free-to-play changes, suddenly the price seemed right. I signed up for their closed beta and I was allowed in a few weeks ago.

And I find myself conflicted.

On one hand, I think DDO is a perfect case of an existing mechanic making the game more enjoyable. On the other hand, I don’t really like the D&D 3e rules. I do think DDO stands as a testament on how well you can translate a tabletop or pencil and paper RPG into an online game. The concepts of how the game feels and plays are a good translation of the D&D tabletop experience. I would love to see a turn-based D&D 4e multi-player online game. Maybe if I wait long enough.

The Bucket

It’s been a while since I posted. Long story for another post.

I came across this post on Adventures in Gaming. And, I have to admit, I think Mishler is right.

There is one core issue that keeps adventure game industry small and micro press role-playing game companies from being able to charge what they need to in order to be able to afford all the bells and whistles much larger companies can afford: the price sensitivity of the gaming consumer.

The RPG industry is slowly dieing. Local gaming stores are difficult to operate without losing money or having another source of income. There’s a solution.

Grow the market.

The market is too small to sustain the companies in the industry. Growing a market is hard work, though. I’m not really sure anyone working in the industry is going to put aside their livelyhood today in order to save their job five years from now. From a consumer and corporate viewpoint, building the market up will cost more money. Money that people will say they can’t afford to spend.

So, in short, if you aren’t willing to spend money just to grow the market, you are essentially saying you are fine letting the RPG industry die a slow and painful death. This means spending more money for consumers by purchasing RPG materials from gaming stores instead of online, direct from distributers. It means companies trimming production costs and spending money on gaming stores and advocacy.

The music industry is currently going through a huge upheaval. A good summary of their new gameplan is given by Michaek Masnick from techdirt.

Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)

I bring this up because it’s a simple concept of how to make money. And, while it’s fun to play RPGs, the only way to keep getting great RPGs and new RPGs is for people to make money publishing and writing RPGs. This formula is very simple and easy to understand, and I can say that in the past several years, the RPG industry has done almost nothing but try to put their biggest connection with fans out of business. The direct sales model has pulled an end-run on the RPG industry’s largest fan building system, which is the local gaming stores. I’m not going to say that going back to that model is the only way to connect with fans, but it’s a good start in lieu of a better idea.

The other half of this equation is the reason to buy. In the context of the music model Masnick is talking about, the music is usually given away for free and you have to find a reason for fans to give you money. Often in the context of value-add that is original, unique, and highly desired by fans. So, why not apply this same concept to an RPG? Give the core mechanics away for free. The meat of the game. Free. Allow it to be downloaded in PDF for free to anyone who wants it. But what could you sell? Maybe a black and white, soft-back version of the rules for $15. And a full color, hardbound for $40. And a limited edition signed by the authors/artists for $130, of which you only have fifty copies. You could sell miniatures if the game needs them. You could sell modules, adventures, tools, etc. Maybe you give modules away for free, but you charge money for printer copies like your core rules. These versions for sale could include color maps, etc. This kind of model offers options for people across a wide swath. People looking for a new game might download the free version, then order a black and white copy for play. Dedicated fans might purchase the hardbound version. And your rabid fans who mail you their panties could purchase the signed copy of the core rules. Options are always great!

If the music industry is any indicator, this model could possibly make money and grow the market at the same time. Worst case scenario, you get a great game out into the public and build your market at the loss of some revenue. Revenue that you are going to lose over time regardless. Any market is like a bucket with a hole in it. You are always losing customers. You have to keep adding water to the bucket!

Miniature Troubles

Sometimes I have a pretty huge chip on my shoulder that I want to share here. I furiously begin writing down my ideas in some form of irrational prose. And then I scrap it because my entire point gets lost. Maddening!

Let me say plainly that all I want are plastic, pre-painted miniatures sold in a way that lets me buy what I want. I don’t want random monsters. I don’t want to paint them myself. I don’t want to use glass beads or cardboard tokens. No clever marketing gimmicks.

Reaper seems to be catching on. But Wizards of the Coast doesn’t seem to get it. They keep trying to somehow sell their miniatures as collectables. If you are going to make a table top role playing adventure game that (by the book) requires miniatures to play, don’t jerk me around!

More Keep on the Shadowfell

Except this time, with a dice tower. It had an amazing impact on game play. Mostly because people had trouble seeing their results, or seeing the map over the giant tower. I’ll have to focus on making it smaller and easier to see the dice roll results.

I think it does a good job of actually removing the dice or the person as the problem. In my mind, that means rolls are more random and I didn’t see any long streaks of bad rolls. But, to others, it means the dice tower must be the problem when a bad roll happens.

I still maintain that it’s nothing more than a gimmick if you are a good dice roller. But we all get lazy, and we all have tables that are not ideal rolling surfaces. And those things, coupled with a D4, for example, are just asking for trouble. In the end, it’s just a die roll and the tower just gives you a better view of your own naval.