Roll20 Live Stream

Read the first part here. 


As I'm writing this article, I'm also watching the open live stream of Roll20 on Twitch.tv. But I'm not the only multi-tasker. Riley (GM) is running a 4e DnD session through Roll20 while he and his players answer the questions of onlookers in the twitch-chat. The ability to drop in images or hexed/tiled maps with such an assortment of malleable features really impresses me. There are health trackers, "auras," movable avatars, and a pen to scrawl on screen; all options to expedite the game pace. But as the Roll20 kickstarter suggests, the features never make the game feel like anything other than the pen and paper game it should be. The controls seem intuitive and quick to learn. Most of the text commands seem to be simple simulated die rolls. Music too is easy to implement and adjust as needed. Even if Roll20 doesn't make any major changes, it looks to be a rather impressive product. 

Roll20

There's no friendship like a bond wrought through the fate of a die fall I suppose. Those who find themselves reading this blog can probably claim the same. Unfortunately real life is often more complicated than table-driven fantasy games. Geographical distancing was once an end-all to the campaign. But now technology has all but nullified the distance concern.

Roll20 is a 'tabletop simulator' with an essential video chat component. It is nearing it's final hours on Kickstarter, but has already far exceeded it's initial pledge goal. It's 'story > mechanics' philosophy led me to believe this would be a very worthwhile project, and the promotional videos only further cemented my supposition. Roll20 aims to provide the tools a DM needs, without sacrificing the TELLING aspect of the game with superfluous technological burdens. Better yet, the goal is to release Roll20 to the public for free.

Video chatting is the key, I think. The 'face to face' component is the most fun way to gauge the other players' reactions to what you say. This is why tabletop games have the potential to feel so much more organic than video games; unscripted people react unpredictably. Tabletop gaming is not so much about what is said, but rather how it is said. DnD is about coinciding a group with different motives onto a singular cooperative path. I'm certainly rather optimistic about the project, but my wait for Beta testing will be a difficult one.

Web Comic: The Clandestinauts

When I play a magic user in any RPG, the character usually turns out to be a conniving and somewhat insane individual even if this was initially never my intent. "Ganglion the Grim" from web-comic The Clandestinauts, perfectly exemplifies this archetype. Perhaps Ganglion is mad from power, or perhaps his madness manifests through his warlock's pact. All I know is that Ganglion's pettiness and dishonesty would be amusing assets to any adventuring party (well, assets when they aren't a danger at least).

But Ganglion's true power lies not in his eldritch knowledge. Ganglion's subtleties, his trickeries, prove to be just as potent as his raw magical potential. Playing a magic user in DnD is all about opportunism. With often a very limited albeit potent magical arsenal, spell casters must know when to step up, and when to step back. The magic user in a furious demon-banishing mien is a stark divergence from the magic user cowering in a dark place while his armored comrades cut down evildoers. In a good session of DnD, both of these aspects will manifest in a given magic user.

DnD has never been about being Gandalf for me, but about the impractical journey of attaining such an impossible state. Ganglion already seems too far gone to madness to ever attain a Gandalf or even Saruman state. But The Clandestinauts is still a work in progress, so one never knows. Ganglion and other magic users tend to be very complex characters. Operating the energies of magic catapults the user from the mundane whether they want to be or not. But with such a status, said characters are often torn between magical aspirations and the profane goals of their adventuring party.

But the warrior needs a magicians spells as much as the magician needs the warriors shield. Thus it is possible to be that conniving and vile warlock in DnD, so long as you provide your party sufficient support. But this is not an easy task, magic users should be careful how they behave in front of their comrades, lest these same comrades allow the magician to end up on tips of spear or sword. Menace is the only cloak a magic user must wear. It is a tool best directed at foes, but it must be directed at friends too. A magic user who offers counsel to a nervous party has succeeded indeed. The magic user must convince his party that he knows best what lies ahead, and that he alone must guide them. Ganglion has certainly not achieved this -- but here's to hoping he does.

Don't Forget Your Rope

No one in my RPG group travels to a dungeon without rope. It is an unwritten rule to travel light and to travel with rope. At a Pax East Q&A, 5e designers decided that "fireball" was the best spell, at least as far as flavor and satisfaction. They both acknowledged, as a damage dealing spell it is fundamentally risky  due to its unpredictability. Whereas "charm" spells -- if successful prove more effective than damage spells because their effect is absolute, not conditional. For example, 15 fireball damage is potentially less useful than a successful "sleep" effect. Both damage and "sleep" provide incapacitation. But a status effect such as sleep doesn't care about HP -- only saves. Thus, as the designers reasoned, fireball is mechanically inferior, albeit a preeminently satisfying spell. The crowd literally applauded the designers' choice of fireball as the best spell.

People always talk about how powerful high level wizards are in certain editions of Dungeons and Dragons. The high level caster certainly has some very powerful spells, but at low levels, before wands, scrolls, and staves, prepared spells are chosen based on survival needs --  not flavor or flashiness. My friends joke about how few spells they are allowed to cast at the 1-3 level range, reveling in the challenge of contributing to the party in any useful way without magic. My friends who play successful low level DnD wizards tend to be particularly creative chaps, who manage to scrounge the rules of every available role-playing benefit. Rope has proven to be the tool most capable of preventing TPK (total party kills).

Rope is mundane. Rope is not even a spell. It is an utterly affordable item. It is accessible by any class. And as a DM, I have found rope to be the most disruptive instrument against my plans. Rope has provided the exits I never expected. Rope has saved the lives of those I'd assumed would be damned. Rope has altered the entire course of adventures. DO NOT forget rope on your adventures. That is all.

-J.B. Geany

Friendly Cult Radio: MUSICFAIL

Last.fm stresses me out more than it should. And while I don't usually use Last.fm for its recommendations, I've found it to be an excellent tool for researching new music. I've considered getting rid of my account plenty of times, but now I'm glad I never did. I accidentally deleted 30 gigabytes of music from my computer the other day (admittedly I labelled my folders pretty poorly). 

I'm in the process now of determining how to retrieve the files. I know a couple computer wizards so I'm fairly confident I'll get back at least some of what I lost. If I can't get all my files back, Last.fm will help me know what essentials are missing. As upset as I am -- it's not all bad. I think it's good to go through a music molting process once in a while.

I had a lot of music, that frankly, didn't interest me anymore. I'm sure we all cling to certain albums on our computers because we think by deleting these old albums we are deleting a portion of ourselves (even if we cringe at certain songs from those very albums). Now that I lost so much music, I can assess which music truly matters to me. I'll only recover the music I want to listen to now, not the music that was once important. 

I'm lucky that the music on my phone survived. A few of these albums have been on steady rotation the past few weeks, and now that the rest of my files are gone I'll probably be hearing a lot more of them. There's been quite a bit of Talk Talk, Tears for Fears, and Darkthrone in my ears. But album of the week goes to Mayhem's, Deathcrush. I was reading Tolkien's LotR when Deathcrush's "Witching Hour" and then "Necrolust" played during (spoiler) the Battle of Hornburg. I wholeheartedly recommend the experience because Deathcrush is an absolute frenzied and murky war march. These sounds are dreadfully thick, black as ash, and as vile as Uruk-hai.

- J.B. Geany

Burning Wheel

Dungeons and Dragons is excellent for labyrinthine treasure-crawls and engaging class-based fantasy battles. But there are serious reasons you should consider Luke Crane's Burning Wheel Gold for your fantasy campaign instead. Both games are fulfilling but approach fantasy radically different. BWG (Burning Wheel Gold) follows a fascinating logic. There are no "classes" or "levels." Characters are woven directly into the world through a "life path" system which solidifies the character's inclusivity in the world as opposed to implying a certain exemplary or disparate status. To improve a skill, the skill must be attempted in-game. Thus players can improve their characters exactly how they see fit by performing the actions they wish to improve. 

Every player character stands somewhere within an integral social structure within an assumed medieval-esque culture. Character's from different walks of life will react to each other and to situations in different and interesting ways that encourage role-play opportunities (think The Canterbury Tales). The game presents a d6 system that can be as simple or as complex as the situation warrants. But fluidity and cinematic logic take precedence over realism. This game is more abstract than many editions of Dungeons and Dragons, which I find refreshing as someone who likes to story tell as though from a novel rather than a board game (I rarely use grids or miniatures and focus the majority of my attention on narrative pace). But there is a significant "crunch-factor" as well for those who prefer detailed combat. Conflict is handled with mechanical intuitiveness whether in ranged combat, brutal melee, or an argument.

The races really shine in this game. Crane indicates in the character creation section ("The Character Burner") that the races are not balanced. Crane suggests that the "races reflect the literature" (or something to that effect. I've paraphrased). I believe he means to imply that more interesting stories might be told the less common ground the player's share. Difference drives development. This is a game about progress and growth, not necessarily power. Emotional magics are race specific and really impressed me the most out of anything in this game. These magics serve to define the races and encourage players to role-play their character's in a way that fully embraces or defies the archetype. The Monster Burner (a separate book) contains my favorite race however, the Great Spiders. 

The Monster Burner is a Burning Wheel supplement which allows gamers to create exactly the kind of fantasy game they want to play. The Monster Burner provides the essential tools to build custom races and monsters in Burning Wheel. This is an excellent idea, because the available PC races in a game often defines the tone of the game more significantly than anything else besides maybe magic. I am currently reading the Monster Burner and the Magic Burner will be next. But even without the supplements, Burning Wheel Gold is a very ambitious and impressive product. 

- J.B. Geany

Dawn of Worlds

Gamers are an enigmatic sort. As such, gamers frequently find it necessary to adapt to peculiar behaviors in order to more readily seek out the like minded. Irregular sleep patterns are a particularly prevalent oddity. At Pax we spent a lot of time awake. But after the convention center closed at 2AM we were left with Dawn of Worlds. 

Dawn of Worlds isn't so much a "game" as it is a highly entertaining RPG tool. There is no GM because every participant fulfills the role of a god, taking turns to shape the world. DoW presents rules that cover a rather impressive breadth of possibility within a relatively condensed space. The PDF is twelve pages long, a length particularly well suited to newcomers or one-shot pickup RPG nights. This is possible due to the game's adherence to both simplicity and open-ended interpretation. I plan to use DoW with my players so that we can communally build a game world together. I've played DoW several times and it gets more entertaining with each attempt.

The game depends on a communal idea forging process. While it is possible to create nearly anything you can imagine, said creation is subject to the whims of every other god at the table. In other words, it's not a good idea to grow too attached to your ideas. Someone else is likely to adapt or utterly warp whatever you have wrought. The game can be played subtly or overtly. Corrupting a rival's faction, raining fire from the sky, or sending a glorious and terrifying avatar to war are all possibilities well within the game's parameters. Playing God has never been so much fun. 

- J.B. Geany

P.S.

* Thank you to Josh who found this phenomenal game tool in the first place. 

P.P.S.

** Thank you to Tycho for offering a bipedal amphibian race for our game at Pax. 

DnD Next

I'm a sucker for DnD. I got into it as a kid with the third edition box set. Before that I had only played Advanced one time, but it was absolutely that first experience that got me hooked even before I fully understood the fundamentals. I had heard my friend talk about his older brother's cleric like the character was real, someone my friend knew personally. The claims of struggle, leadership, and jewel encrusted weaponry fascinated me, a seventh grader infatuated with the Redwall series and who considered UFO spotting a brave and admirable endeavor. 

As I got older I began exploring DnD's roots. Initially I didn't quite recognize the "old school's" appeal. Now I can't seem to get away from it. Unfortunately my knowledge of old school systems is largely second hand hearsay from various blogs. My actual old school credentials aren't technically credentials at all. My connection to the school is a tenuous one, bridged by various retro-clones. But I've sort of fallen in love with two in particular, Crypts & Things and The Adventurer Conquerer King System. 

At Pax I attended a Q&A session with two Wizards of the Coast DnD game designers. They were keen on reiterating two fundamental points. First, DnD "needs to be about the people rolling dice around a table -- not about rule mechanics." Perhaps this is why Wizards touts 5e as a unifier system. They mentioned that everyone seems to like "at will spells," but no one likes cumbersome rules nor inadequate challenges. 

Secondly, the designers suggested that the new system would be "modular." This is something I find appealing, and especially if they mean the core books will provide an adequate section on advice for creating custom DM content. But as of now it is much too soon to make any rash predictions. The designers noted that 5e is roughly between 15 and 20 percent done. They also mentioned that in the last play-test clerics did not have "turn undead." I found this highly odd, but I laud the design team's willingness to push conventions for the sake of experimentation. 

*I have paraphrased the Wizards reps' statements to the best of my memory's ability. 

- J.B. Geany

Pax East

Pax East is an annual gaming convention in Boston Massachusetts hosted by the Penny Arcade team. Penny Arcade is a popular web comic (and so much more) -- which I found myself reading particularly due to Tycho's (the writer's/ the alter ego's) interest in the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game.  And while a significant percentage of Pax is dedicated to video games, I would guess that the most visited destinations were the Chessex booth and the Reaper Miniatures booth.

I went to Pax East this year because of it's tremendous attention to pen and paper/ traditional gaming. Pax conventions might be the only place you can mistakenly bump into a stranger and they will apologize to YOU at no fault of their own. This relaxed politeness astounded me after my first, second, and third slow-motion collision in the meandering crowd. At 23 I'm ashamed to say Pax East was my first convention of any kind. But after this year's, it will most certainly not be my last. Conventions are inherently enjoyable, but they are equally overwhelming. Pax's pulsing throng offered an irrevocable immersion. The atmosphere was a nerd-Elysium. 

I myself have been a nerd (or geek depending on your jargon preference) since my first run in with Tolkien's The Hobbit more than a decade ago. But to be in a place where the pervasive nerd oxygen drifted so palpably was surreal. It's no exaggeration to suggest gaming of any kind can be a fringe topic under many circumstances, but Pax demolished all my reservations. People walked the convention center in beaming awe of the encouraged eccentricity.

I'm the type of person who would like nothing more than to talk about the tribulations of your orc nomad Dungeons and Dragons character. But I fully recognize the risks and social repercussions involved in bringing this up outside of gamer circles. To be in a place where countless strangers are eager to discuss such topics is truly an indescribable experience. My friend, Mike was struck by the "humbleness" of Pax co-host and writer, "Tycho" who could be spotted perusing the "tabletop gaming" section, and who showed genuine interest when Mike spoke to him about Dawn of Worlds, the RPG we were playing. 

At 2 AM Saturday night, another friend, Josh claimed, "These are our people," after one of us lost his backpack. Josh thought we would find it in the lost in found. Mike and I exchanged cynical, doubtful glances. But Josh was right, someone had returned it. When we were driving south from the city at the end of the weekend, I mentioned to Mike, "I wonder what it would have been like to be alive when Dungeons & Dragons was booming, a few decades back." He answered, "It would be like Pax." 

To read about what we did at Pax just click:

Burning Wheel

DnD Next

Dawn of Worlds

- J. B. Geany