Black Terror!

No, it's not a racist '70s film (or maybe it is -- I haven't checked IMDb), it's the name of a Golden Age superhero who isn't owned by either DC or Marvel. I first encountered Black Terror in Masks, a phenomenal superhero team-up book from Dynamite Entertainment. I was already a fan of Dynamite mainstays like The Shadow (and Miss Fury, although I'm rather disappointed by their current take on the character), but I found Black Terror to be a hugely entertaining character despite his limited role in the series. Quite simply, the dude is badassery personified. I mean, come on, he's got a skull and crossbones on his chest!

Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered a Kickstarter campaign to create action figures for Black Terror and other superheroes of yesteryear. (Click here to visit the Kickstarter page.) Obscure Golden Age characters? 1980s-style action figures? Yeah, I think I'm going to have to invest in this one...

Conversion

We're just barely into Fifth Edition -- still without the Player's Handbook, Dungeonmaster's Guide, and Monster Manual -- but I'm eager to turn the page on the previous era. Henceforth, I'm a one-edition kinda guy, and that edition is 5e. (Oh, and sorry, Pathfinder. You're really special, but I was just using you to make D&D jealous.)

This means that I've got some conversion work to do. All of my notes for Front Porch multiverse settings assume a 4e system, or at least a system based on 4e (such as the modern Gamma World game). My first order of business will be to update these notes so that any new multiverse campaigns (for example, something set in the Shattered Realm world) will be playable using 5e rules.

The Druid Cycle campaigns present a more difficult problem. Not everyone has a strong opinion about which rules we're using, but I know that some folks like the way their characters work in 4e. I don't want to mess with that. I don't want to pressure people into abandoning a build they enjoy, only to have them find that rebuilding the character in the new edition makes it less fun to play. (Side-note: Are there faint echoes of Obamacare here? "If you like your character build, you can keep your character build!") We probably won't know until the new PHB comes out whether it will even be possible to create a 5e character that closely mimics a given 4e build. It's going to be hard enough to turn a 4e fighter into a 5e fighter, to say nothing of the fact that quite a few races and classes from 4e simply do not exist yet in 5e -- and may never exist, for all we know. We have a couple of guys who converted their 2e and 3e/3.5e clerics into invokers. Now what? Do they convert them back into clerics?

Aside from the character quandary is the matter of expense. A lot of us (including myself) have invested our hard-earned cash in numerous 4e books. I haven't heard directly from any of our usual gang on this subject, but I expect there may be reluctance to sink money into another set of rulebooks so soon after 4e came out. (Indeed, 4e is younger than my six-year-old kid. I first saw the announcement that 4e was in development on the day after he was born.) Basic D&D is free (and I applaud Wizards for that bold decision), so the availability of Basic may mitigate this problem somewhat, but Basic includes only the fighter, cleric, rogue, and wizard classes -- not exactly a vast array of options.

So where do we go from here? How do we handle the conversion of existing Druid Cycle characters? Let me know what you think.

New D&D Website

There's a new official D&D website. Click here to check it out. At first glance, I don't like it...

Assault on Cragmaw Castle

Mock my drawing skills if you like, but the attack on Cragmaw Castle (the climax of the third chapter of The Lost Mine of Phandelver from the Fifth Edition Starter Set) is going to be tons of fun. I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't have an owlbear mini (I had a dire bear and a giant owl), but at least I had the grick...

Blast From the Past: Night Below

We return today to my "Blast From the Past" series, a look at memorable published adventure modules from each edition of D&D. Today I'll cover Second Edition. This is my favorite D&D era, so it was difficult to choose a single adventure as my favorite.

My pick is Night Below (1995), a boxed set containing a massive campaign set largely in the Underdark. Billed as "The Ultimate Dungeon Adventure," it lives up to its claim with a sprawling storyline and harrowing encounters with mind-flayers, kuo-toa, aboleths, and other Lovecraftian monstrosities. Back in 2000, I ran this adventure in the Shattered Realm setting. We used our existing characters, so the heroes were a bit overpowered for the first two-thirds of the adventure. As Kevin and Jason may recall, the third and final chapter was a mad dash through the Underdark -- one encounter flowed directly into the next in a seemingly endless battle. I hope it was as fun for the guys to play as it was for me to DM!

Skellig Michael

One of the filming locations for the new Star Wars movie is the remote island of Skellig Michael. I've never been there, but I read a lot about it during my years as a medievalist. It's a place I've always wanted to go, and it's certainly inspired my imagination when I've devised the little rocky islands that seem to be ubiquitous in the Druid Cycle world. Click here for more, including a nifty video!

Spreadsheet Action

As a kind of "proof concept," I recently transferred my notes about the Shattered Realm campaign setting from a word processor document into a spreadsheet. With a spreadsheet, I can sort and filter the entries so that, for example, I can quickly compare the number of elves and dwarves in the world (we try to ensure racial diversity here at the Front Porch), or list all the members of a specific organization, or whatever. Thus far, the Shattered Realm setting has 101 named characters, 10 organizations, 46 named locations, and 20 items of "culture" (a catch-all term for artifacts, important texts, famous historical events, etc.). I think this setting has surpassed the Torchlight world in terms of the sheer amount of named stuff, but it's still an order of magnitude less (I'm not exaggerating) than the Druid Cycle world. It would be extremely handy to get my Druid Cycle notes into a spreadsheet, but that's rather too large a project to tackle at the moment!

Big PHB Preview

Wowzers. Click here for a big, artwork-intensive preview of the PHB.

Factions

The Lost Mine of Phandelver is shaping up to be one of the better D&D adventures I've seen in recent years. It's a lot more open-ended than most 4e modules, and reminds me somewhat of games like Baldur's Gate in that the various NPCs in town have quests that you can take up in addition to the main storyline. Most of these NPCs offer typical rewards (i.e., gold), but some also offer membership in various organizations. I'm no Forgotten Realms guru by any means, but I recognized the Harpers and the Zhentarim; the Order of the Gauntlet and the Lords' Alliance, however, were new to me. I think it's cool that the adventure provides players with opportunities for their characters to join established Realms organizations -- it's yet another way that Fifth Edition helps integrate characters into the game world. And from what I hear, these various factions play a key role in D&D Adventurers League, the new organized play system.

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set

For my first look back at awesome adventures from each edition of D&D, I'm going with the 1983 "red box" edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (I also have the 1981 edition with Keep on the Borderlands -- another gift from my Aunt Nedra) in lieu of an official First Edition adventure module. I own several First Edition books, but I didn't start playing D&D until around 1985 -- here I'll give another shout-out to Kevin and his brother Brian, who introduced me to the game -- and played Basic exclusively until Second Edition AD&D came out in 1989.

Opening that beautiful red box for the first time is a moment seared into my memory. I had played D&D a few times with Kevin, Brian, and their gaming group, but the red box was my first experience reading the rules and creating characters on my own. No game product I've ever seen -- save perhaps for the much later Pathfinder Beginner Box -- has provided so engaging an introduction to both the mechanical and narrative aspects of roleplaying games. The Basic Set begins with a solo adventure in which your hero meets and befriends a beautiful cleric named Aleena, who soon dies at the hands of the evil wizard Bargle. That was powerful stuff for a little kid. The solo adventure is followed by a full-party dungeon crawl in the ruins of castle Mistamere, wherein the heroes are tasked with tracking down and capturing Bargle. I played through that one as a solo adventure and also ran it for Scott and other lads in the early days of the Front Porch (as part of the Fantasy Quest campaign -- our first foray into D&D after a steady diet of superhero RPG action in Earth Commanders). Flipping through that bright red adventure booklet today, I get the distinct urge to resume my decades-old hunt for that elusive wizard...

Butt-Kicking...for Goodness!

The rumors were true. Read all about it here.

Build-a-Background

It's no secret that I love the background feature of Fifth Edition, and a world with as much history and diversity as the Druid Cycle setting is just crying out for a variety of custom backgrounds. As any longtime player would know, a character from, say, the Cauldron in Troya Nova is going to have a very different background from a Cymry knight of Teyrnas.

Anyone want to take a stab at building a Druid Cycle background? It doesn't necessarily need to be for one of your existing characters. Just download the Basic D&D PDF from the Wizards site and check out the five backgrounds to get a feel for how they work. A Druid Cycle background could be specific to a geographical region or culture (as in the examples above), or it could be based on an organization (e.g., the Druid Council, the Machinery, the Ekhis Movement, etc.)...or anything else that would logically link a character to some facet of this game world. To build a background, select proficiency in two skills, proficiency in two types of tools (or languages), a background feature, etc. Anyone who submits a background gets a special prize!*

Disclaimer: "Special prize" may be fictional in nature.

RIP Hawkman

My beloved Hawkman died a heroic (and no doubt temporary) death in Justice League United #3. Today, his funeral was held on the planet Thanagar.

Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

IDW is launching a new D&D comic book series and a much-beloved miniature giant space hamster may be involved. Even better news? The author is Jim Zub, writer of the acclaimed Pathfinder comics. Click here for the teaser!

Temple, Tower, and Tomb

Ever play this adventure?

Temple, Tower, and Tomb (1994) is one of my favorite modules from the Golden Age of D&D. (I'm defining "Golden Age" as the Second Edition era -- your own personal Golden Age may vary!) This brutal, trap-laden dungeon crawl can be played as three standalone adventures or as a single mini-campaign in which the heroes must recover three long-lost artifacts. I ran this adventure as a one-shot during a backyard campout with Front Porch stalwarts Scott and Jason. It took us nearly all night to finish it, but finish it we did!

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to do a series of posts in which I look back on the first four editions of D&D and select my favorite published adventure from each edition. However, you won't see classics like Tomb of Horrors or Temple of Elemental Evil on this list. The adventures I'm going to select aren't necessarily the most famous or iconic; they're the adventures I love because they're somehow personally significant for me and my friends. They're also the adventures I'm dying to run again someday -- this time using Fifth Edition rules.

Starter Set

My family and I spent a very pleasant day at Yosemite National Park yesterday. Amy noted that the ruggedly beautiful terrain was like something out of a D&D adventure, and I agree. Here's a photograph I took from high up on Lembert Dome.

When we got home, a package was waiting on our doorstep...it was the Starter Set that Matt sent me! (Click here for EN World's thorough review of the set.) I flipped through the included adventure (The Lost Mine of Phandelver) last night and it looks like a lot of fun. When we get started, I'll ask Matthew to think back to our trip as I describe the Neverwinter Wood and the Sword Mountains and such. Yosemite certainly inspires the imagination. Check out this majestic view of Half Dome, as seen from Olmsted Point.

Characters

The best thing about Fifth Edition is its emphasis on the narrative aspects of character creation. In 4e, characters often felt like nothing more than a massive jumble of stats and powers. The game rules did not prevent seasoned RPG veterans from creating three-dimensional characters, of course, but the system itself did not provide much help on that front, especially for newer players. Fifth Edition, in contrast, does a great job of encouraging people to think of characters as fully-fleshed-out individuals who occupy a specific and meaningful place in the world. With personality traits, flaws, bonds, and the like, the new system puts all of that narrative detail right there on the character sheet alongside traditional game stats. I love it.

We'll use the pre-generated characters for The Lost Mine of Phandelver, primarily so that Matthew can learn the game rules. It won't be long before he's coming up with heroes of his own. He creates lots of characters to populate his Lego stories, and he's certainly familiar with many aspects of the characterization of DC and Marvel superheroes (origins, motivations, etc.), but he has yet to engage in any sort of sophisticated character building. I can't wait to see what he comes up with!

Blast From the Past

My parents are visiting from New York this week, and they brought a suitcase full of old D&D books from my childhood. It's a treasure trove of wonderful memories.

This is the First Edition Player's Handbook from 1978. I wasn't playing D&D at the age of two, of course, but years later my Aunt Nedra -- yes, that's her real name and not the name of a D&D character -- gave it to me as a gift when she learned that I was interested in RPGs. I'll never forget cracking it open for the first time and learning about exotic new character classes like the assassin and monk. I had only played Basic D&D up to that point, so this book really opened my eyes to the possibilities of Advanced D&D.

Stay tuned for more blasts from the past!

I'm Inspired by Inspiration

I love the new inspiration rule in 5e. If you roleplay your character in accordance with your background (personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw), the DM can award you with inspiration -- which you can cash in for advantage on a single die roll. As a second option, you can give up your inspiration and award it to a fellow player.

I heartily approve of any game mechanic that encourages roleplaying. The sheer simplicity of this mechanic also appeals to me. I think it should work just as well in pencil-and-paper game sessions (sadly, a rarity for Front Porch players these days) as in online adventures.

The Dex Fighter

It took me a while, but I managed to dig up a post from over two years ago in which I pointed out the problems with heavy armor in 4e and in the early iterations of the D&D Next playtest materials. (I'm too lazy to figure out how to link directly to that post, so if you care to read the whole thing, the date was May 26, 2012.) Basically, I was pointing out that the fighter in heavy armor was at a disadvantage when compared to high-Dexterity characters wearing light armor. The implication, then, was that power gamers in 5e would build Dexterity-based fighters, dumping Strength -- the classic stat that we've always associated with the fighter class.

Based on my initial observations, that problem appears to have been addressed in 5e. All other things being equal, the fighter (or cleric, paladin, etc.) wearing plate armor and carrying a shield is going to have the highest armor class -- higher than the rogue, and higher than the Dexterity-based fighter. At lower levels, though, it's easy to build a Dexterity fighter who can match the Strength fighter's AC. I started out making a human Strength fighter but then decided to go with a high elf Dexterity fighter instead. Both begin with an AC of 18 and fight with a 1D8 melee weapon, but the high elf has lots of nifty race features. Add in the folk hero background and I've got a pretty cool character with solid combat stats and a lot of flavor.

Phan-delving

Big thanks to Matt, who's sending me a copy of the Starter Set! I look forward to delving into The Lost Mine of Phandelver, the adventure included in the box. I'm going to rope Amy into running through it with me, and Matthew is capable of joining us as well. Not sure what we'll do with Nathaniel. He's too young to grasp the concept of RPGs, so perhaps I'll tell him to pretend that he's a dog and let him move a wolf mini around the map so that he feels like he's participating!

Got It!

I have downloaded and devoured the initial Basic D&D rules. They're contained in a no-frills, low-art PDF that hardly looks like the culmination of more than two years of development. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen an official D&D product that looked so...pedestrian.

None of that matters. This is Fifth Edition, and it's my edition. In my own small (very, very small) way, I helped make this game. I hope all the playtesters out there (175,000!) feel that same sense of pride. We invested a lot of time and energy in reviewing the many iterations of the rules and providing detailed feedback; even at this early stage, I have no doubt that our investment has paid off. 5e feels like D&D in a way that 4e never did.

What's even more important to me, though, is the knowledge that this is the edition my sons will grow up with. I'm looking forward to years of family game nights around the kitchen table. Matthew isn't even seven yet and already he's clamoring to be the DM. After seeing what he can do with Legos, I have no doubt he'll come up with amazing new worlds for us to explore.

So that was my obligatory moment of sentimentality. With that out of the way, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves, roll up some characters, and start playing!

It's Here! It's Here! It's Here!

Get your free Fifth Edition D&D Basic set...click here!

5e Roll-Out

Today is the first day of the six-month roll-out of Fifth Edition D&D. We can expect the initial version of the free Basic D&D rules to be posted online today (and updated periodically throughout the year), and the Starter Set will be available for purchase in certain game stores. The Starter Set arrives everywhere else on July 15. I pre-ordered my copy on Amazon ages ago, but I have no idea when I'll be seeing it. If anyone out there gets a copy before I do, please let me know what you think and I'll share your comments right here on the blog so that the rest of the gang can get a sneak peek at the new edition.

Proofin' It

I wonder how much frantic proofreading is going on at Wizards. I'd love to take a peek into their offices right about now!

We've been told that the Basic D&D PDF will be available for download from the Wizards site (here, if you don't have it bookmarked already) on July 3, but I haven't seen anything about a specific time. Often the new daily content on the site appears at or shortly after 12 AM Eastern -- which means I can see it at 9 PM Pacific. You can bet I'll be checking regularly after 9 this evening, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't show up until later in the day tomorrow. In any case, I'll post as soon as it's up!

Tomorrow!

Fifth Edition...tomorrow. To quote the immortal Sir Roberts: "Bring it on!"

On Second Thought

You know what? Watching other people play D&D is not all that much fun. I made it about ten minutes into the video below before I bailed. Still, my excitement for the Starter Set remains undeterred!

Lost Mine of Phandelver

See the clip (well, at more than an hour and forty minutes, it's hardly a "clip"!) below to watch players experience the adventure from the Starter Set.

Waiting...

This week I'm playing a few scenarios of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game while awaiting the release of Basic D&D.

Check out this unusual scenario layout. Valeros and Seoni had to work their way around the circle of stone heads, disarming or destroying each of them, before they could face the dragon in the center.