The Cleric – Viktor Fetsch

The art for Legends & Labyrinths has begun to arrive, so starting today I’ll be regularly featuring pieces here at the Alexandrian. Those who contributed to the funding project will recognize some of these first images (which arrived in time to make the Black Book Beta rulebook), but we’ll be moving into territory fresh for everybody within a couple of days.

This beautiful image by Viktor Fetsch captivated everyone who saw it during pre-production. It immediately screamed “ADVENTURING CLERIC” to everyone who saw it. (Or, as they’re referred to in my current campaign, itinerant clerics.) It easily managed to shove out the piece I’d originally planned to provide the iconic illustration of the cleric.

My poor inbox (which was already wallowing under an inundation of holiday e-mails I have been unable to keep on top of) has been getting hit hard this morning with people asking me what I think of the freshly announced 5th Edition of D&D.

Short answer: I don’t really think anything about it. We know absolutely nothing about it, after all.

Slightly longer answer: According to ENWorld, the news was leaked to them in “early winter last year” and, at that time, the game had been “under development for some time” (to the point where they had a rough rules draft ready for playtesting by the press).

From this, it’s pretty easy to conclude what was already obvious when Slavicsek left the company and they started cancelling products: The Essentials product line was deemed an immediate failure by WotC . (Just as the early release of the Essentials rulebooks in 2010 told you that 4th Edition, as a whole, had failed.)

LOOKING AHEAD

I’ve said in the past that I currently don’t see a winning business strategy for WotC with a 5th Edition. Unsurprisingly, nothing I’ve heard in the last three hours has changed that opinion.

It should be relatively self-evident that the goal of a 5th Edition at this juncture is to re-unify the D&D customer base. (All the talk of “unity” in the announcement, of course, only confirms this.) But for all the talk about a “public playtest” and “asking D&D fans what they want in a new edition”, I’m not really seeing the mechanism by which 5th Edition solves WotC’s problems.

WotC, ultimately, faces an immutable truth: No reboot edition of an RPG has ever succeeded unless there is clear, deep, and widespread dissatisfaction in the existing customer base. And, as far as I can tell, there is no such dissatisfaction in the 4th Edition customer base. The biggest gripes they seem to have (if any) are the mini-revision of Essentials, the lackluster DDI support, and the lack of printed supplements. None of those complaints suggest a deep dissatisfaction with the system itself (quite the opposite, in fact).

Of course, there is widespread dissatisfaction with 4th Edition among players of previous editions. But that doesn’t actually help WotC.

Basically, the current D&D customer base consists of three broad groups:

(1) 3rd Edition players (either using the original rulebooks or having migrated to Pathfinder). These players, almost by definition, have said, “We’re happy with what we’ve got.” Which isn’t to say that many of them, including myself, aren’t open to new experiences. But the only way WotC can appeal to them en masse is to restore classic 1974-2008 D&D gameplay to 5th Edition.

(2) Unfortunately, restoring the classic gameplay of D&D is almost guaranteed to alienate the existing 4th Edition players.

(3) Finally, you’ve got a relatively small contingent of old school players. These guys are inherently even more conservative than the 3rd Edition players and, frankly, it’s impossible to publish anything new that will appeal to them en masse.

Honestly, I think the most likely outcome is that WotC will produce a game which attempts to return to classic D&D gameplay. But in an effort not to lose their existing 4th Edition players, they’ll try to strike a compromise between the two. The result may or may not be a great game, but commercially it will almost certainly fail: 3E players will reject the 4E elements and stick with the best-supported RPG in history. 4E players will reject a return to “wizard win buttons” and other spherical cows (which will presumably be even less true in 5E).

Things get worse when WotC cancels DDI support for 4th Edition (which seems likely) and creates another group of disenchanted customers who feel alienated and betrayed. Without an OGL to fall back on, a large percentage of this group will exit the game industry entirely.

Basically, my prediction here is that WotC will split their existing 4E fanbase (to one degree or another). They will pick up a relatively insignificant portion of the 3E and OSR fanbases. In short, WotC produces a 5E which performs even worse in the marketplace than 4E.

Things that could mitigate this doomsday prediction:

(1) WotC starts mending fences in really meaningful ways. Specifically, they need to look long and hard at some of the really unpopular decisions they’ve made and work to reverse them: Put previous edition PDFs back on sale. Make Dragon and Dungeon available in print again (even if it’s just POD).

(2) Reach out aggressively for new customers. I don’t know exactly what form this takes, but if WotC can find a way to replenish their customer base with new players then the continued schisming of the RPG marketplace won’t be as significant.

(3) Part of that, however, might be revamping the core products and methodology of your product line. Finding a way to truly abandon the proven failure of the supplement treadmill burnout cycle would also help.

(4) Restore the OGL.

There are also, unfortunately, a lot of things WotC could do that would make things worse.

WHAT WOULD I LIKE?

In an ideal world, I would like the version of D&D that became a missed opportunity in 2008. I talked about it a little bit here:

That’s the missed opportunity here: WotC had the chance to polish and improve Classic D&D; to take the next step with the game. Instead, they side-stepped and gave us New D&D instead.

Meanwhile, Paizo couldn’t make those changes with Pathfinder while simultaneously stepping into the void vacated by WotC.

In short, keep the core gameplay of D&D, fix the handful of problematic abilities at low levels, revamp high level play so that it doesn’t fall apart. Grab the utility of page 42 without the railroading advice and implement a cleaner/quicker system for creating monsters and NPCs.

I would also:

• Look to the OSR and reintroduce game structures that have been slowly stripped out of the game for the past 30 years.
• Embrace the D&D core sets strategy I’ve talked about previously featuring a stripped-down system very similar to what Legends & Labyrinths looks like.
• I would re-introduce the AD&D brand name to produce a Player’s Handbook, a Dungeon Master’s Guide, and a Monster Manual. These would be 100% compatible with the D&D product line. (If you’ve got a D&D module, you can run it in AD&D without conversion. If you create a monster with AD&D, you can run it in D&D. If you’ve got a D&D character, you can start using the AD&D character creation rules any time you level up. And so forth.)
• I’d go back to Dancey’s concept of “evergreen” products and try to make it work by focusing my actual supplement line on opening up new game structures. For example, I wouldn’t produce a book of “rules for ships”. Rules for ships are worthless unless you have a game structure that involves being on ships. What needs to be developed is a game structure for “being pirates” that’s as effective as the game structure for “being dungeoncrawlers”. Pull that off successfully and you’ll have created an entirely new market for adventure products.
• I’m hoping that I can buck the burnout pattern of the supplement treadmill by locking adventure content, rule content, and physical goodie content together into the boxed sets. If that doesn’t pan out, I’d just turn the boxed sets into limited editions and cycle them out of print.
• I would probably do everything in my power to avoid publishing splatbooks like Complete Warrior or Arcane Power. These books are not only the metastatic cancer of the supplement treadmill, but they make it actively more difficult for people to embrace non-“core” classes because the non-core classes never receive the same support. I’d rather have people reach for new experiences rather than glutting and then sating themselves on the supplement treadmill for fighters and wizards.
• Bring back the OGL if the legal department will let me get away with it.

If we got my “perfect edition”, would it make 5th Edition a success? Unfortunately, no. I believe it probably would have been a huge success in 2008 (particularly if released under the OGL) when the D&D trademark would have helped transition existing players to it.

But in 2011, at least half of WotC’s former market no longer has any loyalty to WotC or the D&D trademark. There is no easy mechanism for leveraging those players into a new edition, which means that you’re competing not only with their existing investment (of time, money, and experience) but with the most expansive library of support material ever produced for an RPG.

My next PC:

Taciturn the Dwarf.

So old that he claims the word comes from his name.

(I think he might be a little grumpy.)

Tagline: It’s FUDGE. It’s the 1^st edition DMG. It’s a campaign. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. It is worth the money.

This review requires a bit of history to put it into its proper context.

Multiverser became the first game to become an official RPGNet Pariah, a status which actually originated on various Usenet groups. Basically, the game was released, the creator pitched it as the greatest thing since sliced bread (using basically all the same rhetoric you’d expect from a fantasy heartbreaker), and was then sandbagged by the internet.

Hilariously, one of the biggest complaints was that they were charging $50 for the core rulebooks. $50! (This was hilarious partly because this included two books totaling 710 pages, and even in 1999 $50 was hardly an outrageous or unusual price for that. In retrospect it’s even more hilarious, because within a couple years the entire industry was finally forced to accept that they had been undercharging for their products for at least a decade and $50 core rulebooks became relatively commonplace.)

In response to the sandbagging, Mark Young, the creator of the game, asked for reviewers. I volunteered. He sent me a digital copy of the rules. This is what I found…

Note 1: It is important to note right up front that the price of $50 represents not only the core Multiverser rulebook, but also a volume called The First Book of Worlds. This review only deals with the core rules. A future review will deal with The First Book of Worlds.

Note 2: Secondly, I want to explain how this review came about. It sprang from a series of debates regarding the Multiverser system which took place on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.frp.misc. Following the debate several people, including myself, stepped forward to offer reviews of the system in order to prevent some solid facts regarding the system in a debate which had otherwise consisted largely of unfounded supposition versus extravagant claims. Valdron, Inc. provided me with an electronic review copy. Valdron, Inc. did not solicit this review; nor do I feel in anyway indebted to them – but you deserve to know from whence the review came.

The first thing I should say regarding this game is that it was extremely difficult to get a grasp on it in order to review it. With most games that I review its relatively simple to quickly catch onto what the system and setting are attempting to do and then proceed from there. With Multiverser I had an amazing amount of difficult doing this. I think this is because I had some extremely incorrect expectations coming into this game, and then had to completely change my POV before it began to make sense.

Here, then, is my conclusion:

Multiverser is a campaign game wrapped up in an extremely complicated system which is a fascinating mixture of FUDGE and the 1st Edition AD&D DMG. It is completely unlike anything I’ve seen before – and that either means its a game perched on the edge of breakthrough success, or instant obscurity. It’s not for everyone, but it just might be for you.

IT’S A CAMPAIGN, STUPID

The first, and biggest, breakthrough for me was the realization of exactly what this game was attempting to be. The title and various discussions concerning the system had completely mislead me into believing that Multiverser was a generic gaming engine in the spirit of GURPS, Hero, and others. It took me nearly fifty pages before I realized this wasn’t what their goal was at all – rather what was being presented was a very basic, very broad multi-genre campaign in the spirit of Sliders or GURPS Alternate Earths.

What distinguishes this particular campaign is the idea of scriff – possibly the most original and thought-provoking concept I personally found within the covers of the book. The basic idea is that all the PCs are imbued with a substance known as scriff. The concept of scriff makes Multiverser possibly the only RPG on the market where the PCs are expected to kick the bucket on a regular basis – because whenever they do so they reappear in an alternate universe. This mode of play obviously has certain drawbacks (for one thing no long-term development of setting or NPC interaction), but these are common limitations of the dimension-hopping genre.

Another interesting facet of this campaign is that Multiverser positively goes out of its way to encourage the GM to have the players split up – reawakening in separate universes – before finally reuniting together in a single universe after several side-trips. This, of course, makes for much more difficult campaigns to run – but Multiverser states right up front that this game is not for amateur GMs and that this concept, in particular, is much more difficult to run than a standard RPG environment where all the PCs stick together. In many ways I was reminded of the type of campaign described in the Amber Diceless Roleplaying System. There is, of course, no requirement that you play your games in this manner – although I would then suggest figuring out some reason why the players always seem to appear together and go places together. You will also need to define a much tighter plot since it will be necessary to kill off all the PCs in a fairly narrow section of time in order to have them all be in the same place at the same time.

A far more nebulous decision for the campaign comes in the form of having the players play themselves. Although I have known some campaigns based on this premise to work, these success stories are vastly outnumbered by horror stories – particularly of the variety wherein the GM doesn’t seem to think that Joe Average Player is as intelligent as Einstein. The decision to stress this as a campaign necessity, rather than simply an option, is even more puzzling considering that character creation is entirely descriptive – you assign whatever you feel to be appropriate without worrying about points, classes, levels, or other balancing mechanisms. This is so completely easy to ignore, however, that is little more than an irritating artifact.

FUDGE?

Reading my summary of the system probably left many of you with a serious question: “Wait a minute, its a complicated system which is like FUDGE? Is that even possible?”

Well, not quite. But the methodology is more than slightly similar: Provide a basic system which can be extrapolated, changed, and added to as the GM sees fit. Of course with a complicated system its a far more difficult to “fudge” things than in a simple system like FUDGE, but the Multiverser designers more than compensate for this by providing you with a wealth of options as well as a peek into the game theory which went into designing the system.

To give you an idea of the type of material included let me point towards Appendix 3: Basic Dicing Curves. This Appendix deals exhaustively with how the probability curves of dice work. This information is provided because the central resolution mechanic is designed in such a way that the GM is expected to modify the type of dice used to resolve an action, in order to obtain precisely the result they want.

Sound familiar? It should. FUDGE uses an identical methodology. Of course FUDGE’s system is so simple that it’s not necessary to explain probability distribution. I, personally, prefer FUDGE, but it is also easy for me to see how the Multiverser system could hold appeal – it has a precision which the extremely low granularity of FUDGE will never possess. This precision, of course, comes at the cost of complexity – and you should ask yourself which compromise you want to take.

FIRST EDITION AD&D?

Another question which probably sprung to your mind was, “The First Edition DMG? And you think this is favorable review?”

In short: Yes.

One of the things which came out in the discussion on rec.games.frp.misc was that the Multiverser designers considered the DMG1 to be one of the greatest gaming manuals ever produced. This naturally baffled quite a few people, myself included. It was only once I saw Multiverser that I understood why they had said that and why they believe that.

First, you won’t find much artwork in this book. The thing is 515 pages long and all but a dozen or so of those are packed full with words and nothing else. Those of you who have been bemoaning the rise in art-content in books to the detriment of practical gaming content would rejoice to see that the Multiverser creators have embraced this spirit as well. Information is what the gamer needs, the thinking goes, and information is what we’ll give him.

In fact, the only art in the book is a full-page piece at the top of each chapter. If you’ve seen the art in the 1st edition of AD&D you’ll know what to expect – plain ink drawings, with often humorous content (my personal favorites include the robotic hand dropping a set of dice into a three-fingered alien palm, and the two pilots sitting next to their crashed ship of fantastic technology attempting to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together).

Second, as I’ve said before, this book is packed with information. Sure we all laugh at Gygax’s Table of Courtesans, but some of the stuff in the DMG1 was invaluable for those who like having a separate, specific rule to cover everything. The Multiverser designers, again, took this to heart. Again, it’s not a style I personally enjoy – but it is a style I can easily appreciate the appeal of.

Multiverser of course does this without adopting Gygax’s atrocious and opaque prose style.

$50?!?!?!

The biggest concern, by far, concerning the Multiverser system is the price tag – you have to spend $50 to get the basic book.

$50?!?! Forget it, right?

Well, first realize that the basic book isn’t actually $50. Included in that total is the First Book of Worlds, which (as its title suggests) contains several different worlds which your players can travel to. The reason you can only buy these two books together is because the Multiverser team feels very strongly that everything you need to play a game should be found in one book – and although they couldn’t print everything in one book for various reasons, they thought they could at least include it under one price tag.

Personally I think they’re nuts. It’s a good philosophy, but frankly everything you need to play Multiverser IS in the core book and the First Book of Worlds strikes me as completely optional. They should separate the package and, thereby, lower the price to a level where gamers would feel much better about sending money to them in order to try their game system. This become even more true since you can’t get Multiverser in stores to my knowledge, only through mail order.

To be fair in judging the value of the core rulebook though, let’s judge it at a cost of $25 (split it evenly right down the middle between the two books). Is Multiverser worth $25?

The answer is, “Hell yeah!” If nothing else this system is exhaustive in the detail and options it provides – providing ammunition and material for other games you may choose to run. Of particular use, I’ve found, is the aforementioned Appendix 3 – which very nicely summarizes probability theory concerning dice and allows easy calculation of the probability spread in any system you might choose to run.

Compare the densely packed text of these 515 pages to the $30-$35 game books that are coming out now from other companies, and you can clearly see that if nothing else, you’re getting your money’s worth.

(I will be reviewing the First Book of Worlds at a later date when I have had time to more properly study it. Allow me to state again that $50 for this two book package is not at all a bad price when compared with the rest of the industry. For example if you look at Heavy Gear (one of my favorite systems) a comparable purchase there would be the core rulebook and the Life on Terra Nova sourcebook, a combined total of approximately $55.)

A FEW SUGGESTIONS

All that being said, Multiverser does possess a rather sizable flaw and it’s a flaw which is large enough to suggest that a second edition of this game would be well advised. My suggestions if such a thing were to ever come to pass:

1. As mentioned before, drop the “play yourself’ requirement from the rules. At most offer it as a suggested method of play, but also include other suggestions.

2. The book is in need of reorganization. Clearly delineate your various ideas into separate, distinct sections. This need is particularly poignant since the primary strength of the system, in my opinion, is the way in which you can mix-and-match elements.

3. Clarify your system mechanics. They are good mechanics and achieve what they are aiming for, but they also vaguely expressed in some places.

A further suggestion which might be immediately implemented, and has already been implied, is that you begin selling these books separately. There’s no real need to mandatorily sell them together, and I believe you are doing nothing but injuring your sale potentials by marketing the books in this fashion.

SUMMARY

The quick-and-dirty summary of this product?

The content is great, the lay-out and presentation need some work (although there’s nothing wrong with the information-heavy approach, clarification and distinction is particularly needed considering how much material is present). This system is not for those who dislike complicated systems – you will absolutely hate it. Those who do like more complicated systems will, however, find a plethora of ideas to use elsewhere even if they don’t like the system itself.

Style: 2
Substance: 4

Author: E.R. Jones and Mark Young
Company/Publisher: Valdron, Inc.
Cost: $25 ($50 for both books)
Page count: 551
ISBN: n/a
Originally Posted: 1998/09/25

At the time, this review seemed to have the effect of quashing Multiverser’s pariah status. I don’t think it won the game any particular fans, either, but people stopped treating it like a trampoline. (So it served a kind of inverse function to Darren MacLennan and Jason Sartin’s review of F.A.T.A.L., which righteously ensconced that game into a private hall of eternal infamy.)

Looking back, I’m somewhat bemused by my discussion of the 1st Edition DMG. At the time, it really was basically impossible to find anyone online who would profess any particular love for that book. It really is remarkable the degree to which (a) 3E rehabilitated D&D’s online reputation and (b) the OSR has rehabilitated that book in particular. My own opinion of the book has grown a little fonder in light of its assistance in stocking my OD&D hexcrawl, but is largely unchanged: A lot of useful stuff in there, but the idea of trying to actually run a game from that disorganized morass is completely abhorrent to me.

Multiverser still sits on my shelf today. Much like the 1st Edition DMG it is a treasure trove of nifty utility which I value but will never actually play. I can’t actually recommend it in good faith. But what I can recommend whole-heartedly is The First Book of Worlds. That review, however, will have to wait until another day…

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tom Bissell says that “Superman games are legendarily bad” and asks the question:

What comprises interesting gameplay for a character that is essentially immortal?

What Bissell is inadvertently touching on here is the fact that — with the exception of puzzle games and sports simulators — virtually every video game in existence is fundamentally rooted in either D&D, Space Invaders, or both. And what both D&D and Spacer Invaders have in common (and thus virtually every video game ever made has in common) is that they define success as “killing the bad guy” and they define failure as “you die”.

(Technically, it would be more accurate to say Spacewar! instead of Space Invaders, but everybody knows what Space Invaders is and almost no one knows what Spacewar! is. And, of course, there are endless variations on the “kill” and “die” conditions. But I digress…)

So, yes, as long as you intrinsically define gameplay as “either you die or the bad guy dies”, designing a Superman game that doesn’t suck is going to be pretty much impossible. And, unfortunately, Superman doesn’t seem to easily lend himself to blended puzzle or sim gameplay. (For example, the original Prince of Persia: Sands of Time largely eliminated the kill-or-die mechanics, but it did so by introducing puzzle-style gameplay.)

Another option might be making the goals of the game exterior to Superman as a character. (In other words, you can still fail at your goals even if there’s never any real chance that your avatar in the game will die.) What probably won’t work well, however, would be simply pushing the kill-or-die mechanics onto secondary characters. (An entire game of escort quests featuring Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen? Kill me now.)

I’m not going to pretend to have the magical solution. But open question: What alternative forms of gameplay could a Superman game use that would be fun to play?