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March 10th, 2008

March 10th, 2008
09:29 am [Link]	Webcomics: An Update On The Arockalypse If you want proof positive that our new webcomic, My Name Is Might Have Been, is the dumbest webcomic around, check out today's strip. The secret behind the apocalypse is revealed, and suddenly many little hints we've dropped as to the nature of things becomes clear... ...well, if you're in the know. If not, well, you'll be up on the story, if not the meta-story. (32 shouts of denial | tell me I'm full of it)
Time	Event
11:25 am [Link]	Leaving, All The Hell Planes, Don't Know When They'll Be Back Again D&D 4th Edition is coming out soon, and Wizards has done a very unusual thing: they've published two books on the process of making 4th Edition, well before it's out. This is kind of like a studio releasing DVD commentary tracks and behind-the-scenes extras a year before the movie's slated to be released. Still, I've been reading the Worlds and Monsters preview, wherein the creators discuss their approaches to remaking the monsters and combat system for the new D&D, and it's pretty enlightening. They aren't discussing the mechanics of D&D - that's something for the rulebooks - but rather, "Say, what worked about 3rd Edition, and what can we do better for 4th?" I gotta say, the approach is refreshing. Because as opposed to past editions, which felt helter-skelter, they're really looking at player feedback and trying to create a rules set that encourages the most enjoyable games. For example: In traditional, 3rd edition D&D, a challenging monster is one big monster that's powerful enough to take on the full party. But, as they note, that traditional approach is actually kind of boring - the players gang up, getting several attacks to each monster's hit. Because the monster's getting ganged up on and will go down quickly, he either has to have a) absurdly over-the-top hit points to absorb the damage, or b) overpowered attacks that can take a player out in one blow, or c) both. Plus, as they note, there's little strategy involved in "dogpile on the rabbit." Hit that guy with your biggest gun until he's dead. So they're revamping the whole system to make the default combat several lesser monsters, of differing abilities. As a long-time Champions player, I can tell you that it is more fun when you face the All-Star Squad of Evil Supervillains, and you have to decide who you're going after - do you team up on the hugely-muscled Superad to try to stop him before he levels the building, or do you try to neutralize the glue-spurting Entanglement before he sticks you to a wall? Fighting guys with different abilities makes it much more cinematic, and thus a lot more fun. They recognized this. This is very hopeful. And they also recognized that really, most people don't draw that much of a distinction between an orc, a gnoll, a goblin, a hobgoblin, and a bugbear - they're all low-level monsters who attack you - so they set out to make meaningful distinctions so each style of attack from these guys feels different. Likewise, they've rethought the whole "undead" == "evil" concept, and decided to remove silly monsters that nobody chooses. Basically, they're streamlining the whole process to reduce D&D down to the things that players care about. They want to make it so that every session is a fun session. And they want to make it so that if it's not really relevant in the game, it's gone. And they're doing that by looking at what players really care about. That said, one of the things that gets the axe because nobody really uses it all that well? The planes. That's right. The Nine Hells? The Seven Heavens? Mechanus? All gone. And they make a compelling case; nobody can keep track of the seventeen "traditional" planes, one for each alignment plus, and the elemental planes, and the positive and negative planes, and the outlands, and Sigil. It's just too much. And furthermore, since the planes are almost exclusively the domain of high-level characters who have access to Plane Shift spells, having this gigantic amount of bookkeeping overhead is just silly. There are now only a handful of planes. There's the shadow plane and the magic plane, one a dark reflection of our worst traits, one a limned glowing overlay of our best traits. The lines between these planes are very blurry, meaning that 3rd-level players might be able to slip through to the Shadowfell to kill some dark kobolds without having to be all-powerful. There's the Elemental Chaos, where all of the elements mash together in one big chaotic lump, lava pits and glaciers clashing together. There's the Far Realm, the unformed edge of the universe - a.k.a., "The convenient spawning pit for Cthulhu-style monsters that human minds cannot comprehend." There's the Astral Sea, where there are occasionally large kingdoms like the Nine Hells and the former planes, but really the old planes are reduced to empires. Thing is, I can't debate this change. As a devoted Planescape GM - check the_darkward for a look at how intensely I run my campaigns - even I get confused as to what alignment The Beastlands and Elysium are supposed to be. When a man who's been running a campaign on the planes for six years still has to go to the reference manuals to remember the structure of the Great Wheel, it's the sign of a lot of change. And they're right about a lot of useless planes. I mean, I love the Negative Material Plane as a concept, but you can't go there. You'll just get sucked dry by the endless misery. And when the new D&D's goal is, essentially, "If you can't have fun there, we're not bringing it up," I can't deny that things like the Elemental Plane of Earth are pretty useless. It's like having a videogame where they talk a lot about this grand place that you never get to go - nice for flavor, but you feel kind of gypped in the end. So we're down to a handful of really core bases for adventurers to go to. And that's fine. It's probably more exciting. But it feels like a loss to me. Oh, sure, I'll have Planescape, and I can always create my own settings. (I'm particularly excited about the new demon-city of Flux, the home base for the next leg of our campaign.) But there's something about watching all of these grand settings that I've lived with for so long being related to a footnote in the new world of D&D. The planes were grand and confusing. You didn't get them all. And yeah, there were things that didn't make sense, and monsters you couldn't beat, and Gods who just fucked you over. That was the point to me. This was a world that did not exist for your amusement. You came to it on your own terms, and you could be grand, but the planes? They were there long before you, and they'll be there after you, and if you think you can slay Moradin the God of the Dwarves with a fancy +5 sword and a sneak attack, well, think again, berk. This place is somewhere for you to be, but don't think for a moment that you own it. The new D&D is much more player-focused. I get that. It's good. It's clean, and it's easy to remember, and it's probably a lot more satisfying for those players who just want to go somewhere cool and alien, nipping off to the Feywild to adventure with the glowing elves and then back home. I admire the way they were willing to rip things up by the roots to reduce it to what really matters. But I like baroque. I like loose ends, and things dripping off the edges, and perhaps just a touch too much detail to all be stuffed into one place. I like the idea that there are more planes than even I can remember at times, and that they exist whether I remember them or not. It was like the old maps of the Land of Oz, where there were ninety books after the Wizard of Oz that hardly anyone remembers; people remember the Emerald Palace, of course, and the lands of the Nome King if you've read the books... But what about the Fuddles? The Flatheads? The Whirling Mountains? They were all written about at one point, and dutifully placed on the map, and it's like every time I look at that map I go, "Okay, that's right, they were there! These guys are still there whether I think about them or not!" They are outside my head. The new cosmology can be placed firmly inside my head. It's clean and simple. But it's never going to inspire me, because there are now a scant five rooms, and maybe those rooms have many sub-chambers, but it's not the same. It's been reduced to what matters, like cutting a weedy narrative down to the bare bones... But I've always been a fan of the things that don't matter. Flavor. Beauty. Silliness. Sometimes, there are benefits to things not being easy to remember. And I can agree wholeheartedly with the decision even as I mourn the loss. Farewell, Planes. You'll live on in my campaign and my memory. You'll probably get some supplements, where someone translates Elysium into an antechamber of the 4th Edition Astral Sea. But the planes as a shimmering extension of the condensed belief of everyone who exists on the Prime Material Plane? That's not the same at all. I'll keep you alive with the power of my belief. Which is as it should be. (163 shouts of denial | tell me I'm full of it)