Apparently my auto-updater isn’t working properly on the new computer, either. So I’ve had a couple of days worth of updates just sitting on my hard drive without actually updating the website. So if you’ve actually been watching the site, you’re going to see several days worth of updates all pop up at the same time.
And if you haven’t been watching the site, then this note is irrelevant… Move along.
Normal updates will (hopefully) continue tomorrow.
It seems crazy to say this, but I’ve been talking about Keep on the Shadowfell since May. That’s a lot of time to dedicate to a single adventure. But, of course, a lot of this time has also been spent reading, analyzing, playing, and talking about the 4th Edition ruleset.
This essay is going to be about my playtesting of 4th Edition. Understanding these comments may require a little bit of context, however. So let’s start with that.
When 4th Edition was first announced in August 2007, I posted some Thoughts on 4th Edition. These primarily consisted of three points: (1) What WotC says about a new edition and what a new edition actually does are frequently two completely different things. (2) The design ethos being espoused at WotC did not fill me with confidence. (3) I wasn’t going to draw any conclusions until I actually had the rules in my hands.
In May of this year I wrote a series of essays on Dissociated Mechanics. These essays were written before 4th Edition was released, but provided a detailed dissection and analysis of what I still believe to be a serious flaw in the design ethos at WotC.
After the rulebooks were released, I revisited the subject of Skill Challenges. I was over-hasty in my reading of certain rules, but also far too forgiving in others (check the comment thread attached to that post).
If you’ve looked through some of this material, it will be clear that I had some serious reservations about 4th Edition. But I was also determined to approach the new system with an open mind. Ultimately you can talk a game to death, but it lives or dies in the playtest.
My initial intention was to take Keep on the Shadowfell and use the Quick Start Rules to play 4th Edition right out of the box — just as the designers intended it. I had high expectations that, with Mike Mearls and Bruce Cordell writing it, I would be able to just pick up the adventure and run it. Unfortunately, my first impressions of the module left me fairly disenchanted, and the 12-part series of remix essays should give some idea of the amount of work I had to put into the module before I felt comfortable running it.
Eventually, however, I was ready to go. And I have now run two separate playtests of the module: One for a group of experienced D&D players (my regular group) and another for a group of newbies (some of whom had never played an RPG before).
So let’s talk about my first reactions to playing 4th Edition.
COMBAT
Combat is the highlight of the game. It is interesting and dynamic. I was surprised, however, at the lack of a paradigm shift. Although the mechanics have been thoroughly shuffled, combats still largely play out the same way they did in previous editions.
One of the things promised in the preview material and hype, for example, was greater mobility in combat. But mobility has not noticeably increased at my gaming table. Some people claim that full-attacks resulted in 3rd Edition combats where people stood around and beat on each other, but that was never my experience: It was the desire to avoid attacks of opportunity that tended to lock opponents together (although this never stopped people from doing a lot of maneuvering at a small scale). Opportunity attacks are still in the game and, predictably, people are still trying to avoid them. And once you add marks into the mix, combat had a tendency to become less mobile, not more mobile.
The other major change that was promised was the ability to run combats involving large numbers of NPCs. But, personally, I’ve been running combats involving large numbers of NPCs for 20 years now. We did see a greater ability to run such encounters as 1st level characters, but that has more to do with 1st level characters playing more like 3rd level characters from previous editions than anything about the combat system.
PADDED SUMO WRESTLERS: There were also suggestions being made that combat in 4th Edition was going to be considerably faster. Even accounting for the slow-downs associated with acclimating to a new system, this was not our experience. Even basic encounters were chewing up huge chunks of time.
One of the primary reasons for this is that combats now resemble what I saw one person describing online as an “all-out brawl between heavily padded sumo wrestlers”. The number of hit points has been significantly increased and the expected damage output of the PCs has been significantly reduced.
The result was that we were very quickly seeing combats that had outlasted their welcome and degraded into “I hit him”, “I hit him again”, “I hit him again”, “I hit him again”, “… he’s still not dead? I hit him again”.
This problem appears to become exacerbated at higher levels.
MINIONS: My players were not impressed with the “prick ’em and they die” aspect of minions. They liked the target-rich environment, but the fact that they didn’t have to roll for damage made it feel as if they were never actually getting to land their blows.
They were also annoyed by the dissociated nature of the minion mechanics, which I found surprising because: (1) I wasn’t, and dissociated mechanics are probably my biggest problem with 4th Edition. And (2) It came from an unexpected direction. It wasn’t the fact that they only had 1 hp that yanked them out of the game world, it was the “never take damage on a miss” clause. This meant that they were making meaningful tactical decisions about which abilities to use based on whether a given target was a minion or non-minion — they were either bothered by the fact that they were making tactical decisions that didn’t map to their characters’ perceptions; or they were bothered by the fact that their characters had some sort of minion-detector.
Unknown to my players at the time of our 4th Edition playtest, I’d actually been developing a different set of minions rules for Legends & Labyrinths. Based on their reactions to the 4th Edition system, I’m glad that I decided to take a different direction.
FORCED MOVEMENT: The one element of the combat system that did feel as if it was adding a meaningful new dynamic to the game were the forced movement mechanics. The ability to shove people around the field of battle without suffering the rather heavy penalty of an attack of opportunity did give some unique flavor to 4th Edition combat.
We have not found forced movement to be particularly revolutionary, but this is also something that might change at higher levels when forced movement starts being more than 1 square at a time. Hard to say. If nothing else, it certainly encourages me to think that removing the attacks of opportunity from Bull Rush and similar maneuvers in 3rd Edition wouldn’t be a bad idea.
LEARNING THE GAME WITH KOBOLDS: I feel that kobolds were a bad choice to use for the initial villains in 4th Edition’s introductory product. In 4th Edition characters can take a standard action, a move action, and a minor action each round. And, as a move action, characters can shift (move 1 square without provoking opportunity attacks).
Kobolds, however, have a racial ability (Shifty) that allows them to shift 1 square as a minor action.
Any villain will probably have some ability that “breaks” the general rules, but this one was particularly confusing because it made it quite difficult for players to distinguish the general rules for shifting. Both experienced and newbie players were frequently trying to perform shifts as minor actions, only to remember (or be reminded) that the kobolds could only do that because of a racial ability. (And this was despite the fact that I was playing with open stat-blocks to help the players figure out the mechanics.)
PLAYTESTING 4th EDITION
Part 2: Running Combat
Part 3: Characters
Part 4: The Nova Cycle
Part 5: Dissociated Mechanics
Part 6: Skill Challenges
Part 7: Gutting Non-Combat
Part 8: Balance and Prep
Part 9: D&D is Dead, Long Live 4th Edition
Here’s the bad news:
The release of Legends & Labyrinths will be delayed until July 31st. As I mentioned at the end of June, I suffered a rather serious computer crash at the end of last month. Fortunately, all of our data was recovered. Unfortunately, after five days of trying to resurrect the machine, it remained stubbornly dead.
At this point, as July dawned, I was now facing a deadline for Legends & Labyrinths that had moved from “comfortable” to “barely possible”. So I stopped trying to get my main computer rebuilt and focused all my attention on getting another machine set up so that I could access the document files and continue working on the graphics and layout for the book.
… which is when I discovered that the versions of Adobe Acrobat and Quark that I own don’t work on Windows Vista.
Which was, of course, the operating system installed on the new machine I was trying to convert into a platform for production work.
All of which brings me to my current situation: I could probably, if I worked tirelessly between now and next Tuesday, crank out a presentable version of Legends & Labyrinths and have it released on July 15th. (Assuming that I can ever get Acrobat working.) But the question I’m left with is whether it’s better to do it quickly or to do it right.
In the final analysis, I’d rather do it right. Like all of the projects here at Dream Machine Productions, one of my primary motivations for developing and publishing Legends & Labyrinths is that it’s a book that I want to own and to use. (Plus, I figure that, if I want a product like this, there are probably other people out there who want it, too.) And for me, personally, I’d rather wait the extra two weeks and do it right rather than trying to rush the process and end up with a book which isn’t as good as it could be.
GALLEY PROOF PREVIEW: SKILLS & ACTION CHECKS
Okay, so that’s the bad news.
Here’s the good news: We’re releasing the first of our Galley Proof Previews.
A Galley Proof Preview is literally an excerpt from our first galley proof of the manuscript. This means that what you’ll see in a Galley Proof Preview is something like a rough draft: Before seeing publication, our internal production process will take the text through three more complete proof-reading cycles. The Galley Proof Preview also notably lacks the SRS, which won’t be added until later in the process. So what does a Galley Proof Preview contain? A sneak peek at the actual content of the book.
Our first Galley Proof Preview is Legends & Labyrinths: Skills & Action Checks. This preview contains the entirety of Chapter 6: Skills and Chapter 13: Action Checks. This preview gives you a look right into the heart of the streamlining process that renders 3rd Edition down into the lean, mean, fighting machine that is Legends & Labyrinths.
If you’re already familiar with 3rd Edition, you may be struck by all the things that are “missing” from these streamlined rules. But that’s missing the forest for the trees: If the 3rd Edition tries to give you a complete building, Legends & Labyrinths gives you a foundation. If 3rd Edition tries to give you as much support as possible, Legends & Labyrinths lets you run free.
It’s a different way of rolling the dice. Whether it’s what you’re looking for or not is up to you.
3RD EDITION LIVES!TM
Awhile back I mentioned that I’m not very good at publicity. Case in point: Last Wednesday, on July 9th, I appeared live on local television to promote the current season at Shakespeare & Company. The half hour program featured an interview, costumes, and a swordfight. I have absolutely no idea what it looks like, and neither do any of you because I completely neglected to mention it.
But I have a chance to make up for it, because the program is going to be re-broadcast on the Suburban Community Channels in Ramsey County. If you live in the communities of Birchwood, Dellwood, Grant, Lake Elmo, Mahotmedi, Maplewood, North Saint Paul, Oakdale, Vadnais Heights, White Bear Lake, White Bear Township, or Willernie you can tune to Channel 15 at any of the following dates and times and catch the program:
July 16th – 2:30 PM
July 17th – 2:30 PM
July 18th – 4:00 PM
July 21st – 3:00 PM
July 23rd – 3:00 PM
July 25th – 4:00 PM
July 28th – 3:30 PM
July 30th – 4:00 PM
July 31st – 3:00 PM
And, of course, you can come and see me live in Richard II and As You Like It through August 3rd.
As I celebrate this July 4th weekend — one of my favorite holidays; the anniversary of this website’s birth; and the always joyous occasion of opening a play — my thoughts are consistently drawn back to the pending FISA legislation in Congress and the issue of telecom immunity. This is not unnatural, because the pending FISA legislation is a betrayal of the principles of government which were laid down by our founding fathers more than two hundred years ago. Since I consider the July 4th holiday to be a celebration of those principles and the nation those principles established, I actually consider it a celebration of sorts to take these issues under consideration.
FISA
Here’s the basic run-down on FISA: In 1978, following an in-depth investigation of the unconstitutional and illegal actions of the Nixon administration, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Basically, this bill allows the government to perform warrantless wiretapping within the United States for a period of 1 year, as long as the “surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party”. If a United States citizen is involved, then the government must obtain a secret warrant from a top secret court within 72 hours.
And, for all intents and purposes, the top secret FISA court has been rubber stamp since 1978. If you go to FISA and say, “Hey, I want a warrant so that I can do some wiretapping.” Then you’ve got something like a 99.99% chance of getting your warrant.
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
And here’s the basic run-down on the scandal: The Bush administration didn’t want to obey the law. So they had legal opinions prepared which basically said “FISA doesn’t actually require what FISA says it requires because FISA doesn’t state the requirement the way that we think it should be stated”. They then proceeded to “allegedly” break the law. And by “allegedly” I mean “unless you actually believe their Bizarro World logic, then they broke the law”.
Now, let’s stop and think about this for a moment: The Bush administration, by deliberately circumventing FISA, basically said, “There are American citizens we want to spy on, but we don’t even want to get permission from a top secret court that pretty much automatically rubber stamps APPROVAL on any requests to spy on American citizens.”
And if that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, then you aren’t thinking hard enough.
The Bush administration claims that this was all about “protecting America” because the requirements of FISA meant that some horrible tragedy could happen while they were waiting for the constitutionally-mandated paperwork to be filed. There are two problems with that claim:
First, if you believe that bullshit then I refer you back to the FISA provision which allows the adminitration to apply for the warrant up to 72 hours after the wiretapping has already started. In other words, the Bush administration could already do the wiretapping now and ask for permission later… but whatever they were doing was so awful they never wanted to ask for permission.
Second, if you tear up the Constitution then a horrible tragedy has already happened. As Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And our Fourth Amendment rights are, frankly, among the most essential of our liberties.
TELECOM IMMUNITY
Which brings us to telecom immunity: The Bush administration wants to give retroactive immunity to the telecom companies they used to perform the “allegedly” illegal wiretapping. There are so many problems with this:
First, the argument is made that the telecom companies had no choice. But they did. Qwest recognized that the Bush administration’s actions were illegal and refused to comply. Bravo to Qwest. If you want to support liberty with your pocketbook, get your phone service from Qwest.
Second, the argument is made that — without telecom immunity — the telecoms might be less willing to help the government perform their surveillance programs in the future. But here’s the thing: Qwest had no problem continuing to cooperate with legal wiretapping programs even while they refused to cooperate with the illegal wiretapping programs. So what this argument really boils down to is that the telecom companies will be less willing to help the government violate the Constitution and illegally wiretap American citizens. You know what I think about that? Good.
Third, it’s ethically wrong. If you or I were to break the law and then go to Congress and say, “Hey, we broke the law. Could you guys change the law and give us retroactive immunity?” We would be laughed at. It’s clearly unjust. It’s clearly nonsensical. And yet that’s exactly what telecom immunity is.
Which means, in the final analysis, it boils down to two possibilities: One, they didn’t break the law… in which case they don’t need immunity. Two, they did break the law… in which case they shouldn’t have immunity.
Either way, telecom immunity is a bad idea.
THE STAKES
Why do I care so much?
Fundamentally because any violation of our Constitutional rights is a direct and meaningful attack upon America. There is literally nothing more dangerous in this world than your own government turning against you. And when your government begins stripping you of your rights, that’s the definition of your government turning against you.
But, more generally, it’s because this is only the tip of the iceberg. For eight years now we have watched the Bush administration systematically disassemble this country. They have engaged in profiteering. They have run roughshod over the Constitution. They have shown a complete disregard for the rule of law.
And there have been no consequences.
People used to say things to me like “Bush is the worst President ever!”, and I would politely disagree. I have a rather deep knowledge of American history, and I would trot out various examples of incompetency or coruption and say “maybe one of the worst, but he’s got a lot of competition”.
But over the past four years, my opinion has shifted dramatically. We have had incompetent Presidents. And we have had corrupt Presidents.
But what makes George W. Bush really stand out from the pack is his amazing ability to be both at the same time; to fail on all fronts at once: To destroy not only our domestic economy, but to ruin our foreign reputation and our ability to defend ourselves. To not only sap the national treasury with the most heinous of cronyism; but to actively erode our civil liberties and most essential rights. To not only govern incompetently and cause the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands; but to actively assault the Constitution itself and undermine the fundamental principles on which our government operates.
And since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 I have patiently ground my teeth in frustration. I have accepted the logic that impeachment is unlikely to succeed and politically inexpedient for a number of reasons. I have been (relatively) content to let the bastard rot out his term in office so that we can then get down to the work of fixing this nation.
But there is a difference between simply not prosecuting Bush and his administration for their impeachable offenses and actively pursuing the exact same policies as the Bush administration. And, frankly, that’s what telecom immunity is.
And what makes it so utterly assinine is that this is completely unnecessary. The Democrats have won three congressional elections in the past year to fill vacant seats; all of them in deeply red districts; all of them with Democratic candidates openly opposing telecom immunity. The voters have already rejected the bogus logic of the Bush administration. The bill was, in fact, already dead in the water.
So telecom immunity is (1) unethical; (2) encourages violations of the Constitution; and (3) has no political value for Democrats. The term “bad idea” is wholly inadequate.
MY DECISION
Months ago, when the issue of telecom immunity was making its first pass through Congress, I wrote to my senators — Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar — and told them both the same thing: “I will not vote for anyone who votes for telecom immunity.”
Amy Klobuchar wrote me back and told me that she strongly opposed telecom immunity (which, as far as I know, is the same opinion she holds today).
Norm Coleman sent me a form letter regurgitating the Bush administration’s talking points (which means that Al Franken will be getting my vote this November).
But this puts me in something of a quandary because now Barack Obama has decided that he’s going to vote for telecom immunity. He’s supposedly going to fight to strip the immunity clause from the bill, but if that doesn’t happen he is intending to vote for the bill.
So for the past week or so I’ve been struggling with this issue. If he votes for it, will I vote for him?
And, after a good deal of consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that I meant what I said when I wrote to Senator Klobuchar and Senator Coleman: I will not vote for anyone who spits upon the Constitution and supports the illegal activities of the Bush administration.
Which means that I may not be voting for Barack Obama. If, in fact, Senator Obama votes for telecom immunity this week, he will not have my vote in November. In my opinion, a vote so blatantly against the Constitution and the rule of law is a vote which disqualifies one from serving in public office.
Even if you don’t feel as strongly about this issue as I do, I urge you to take action during the next few critical days. Let your elected officials know that this is an important issue. Let them know, whether they’re Republican or Democrat, that you find it intolerable to offer up the rule of law and the Constitution as sacrificial lambs. And if they’re Democrats, question the sanity of kow-towing to yet another “compromise” from the Bush administration in which George W. Bash gets everything he wants and the American people get the shaft.
