As a roleplaying game, 4th Edition sure makes a great boardgame.

… Zing!

But in all seriousness, I’ve been looking forward to getting my grubby paws on a copy of the new Castle Ravenloft game for awhile now. For the better part of two decades now, I’ve been looking for a boardgame that could be played when you were in the mood for a little dungeon-crawling but didn’t have anyone to DM.

(Over the years I’ve dabbled with dungeon-crawling boardgames that require DMs, but I’ve pretty much sworn off them at this point. Descent is a decent game, for example, but I can’t imagine a scenario when I would ever play it: Since it requires a DM, I might as well just grab my copy of Dungeons & Dragons off the shelf. The full-fledged RPG is a richer and more rewarding experience in almost every way, and with the speed of OD&D character creation you can actually get the game set-up and start playing much quicker, too.)

Most recently, Munchkin Quest looked like it might fill that slot for me. It had some pacing issues, but after fixing those problems the game saw a couple months of intense use. But after that, the game started collecitng dust: The competitive aspect meant it still wasn’t quite scratching that dungeon-crawling itch. And it was too long (3-5 hours) given the relative shallowness of its gameplay. Way too many sessions ended with all of us wishing that the game would just end already.

Castle Ravenloft is pretty much at the opposite end of that spectrum: The prepackaged adventure scenarios all feel lightning fast and can easily be completed in 60 minutes or less. I’ve played it more than a dozen times already (having gotten it only a week ago). The real test, of course, will be whether or not the game endures after the first flush of excitement. But for the moment I wanted to talk about some of my first impressions.

RANDOM DUNGEON, BUT SHALLOW EXPLORATION

TACTICS, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW THEM

Although Castle Ravenloft offers a setup superficially similar to 4th Edition, this can actually be quite deceptive. As a result, I’ve seen quite a few reviews complain that Castle Ravenloft doesn’t have any tactical depth.

This is not, strictly speaking, true: Castle Ravenloft does have tactical depth; it’s just a tactical depth that looks absolutely nothing like 4th Edition’s tactics.

The primary tactical crux of Castle Ravenloft lies in the fact that heroes move by spaces but monsters by tile. (For example, a typical hero might move 5 spaces on their turn. A typical monster, on the other hand, will move 1 or 2 tiles.) Thus, the core tactics of the game revolve around managing the placement of monsters and heroes around the tile borders.

These basic tactics are complicated by the necessity to manage the monster’s control sequences; the panoply of variable hero abilities; and the random crises generated by a fair-sized chunk of the game’s encounter cards.

(The game may also suffer in the opinion of some because it’s very easy to brute-force your way through the early, introductory scenarios. It’s thus possible to completely ignore the tactics and strategy of the game and still pull out early victories, leading one to the false conclusion that the game has no strategy. In that respect it’s kind of the inverse of Settlers of Catan — a game which you think has a strategy when you first start playing it and then eventually realize is dominated completely by dumb luck.)

HORRIFIC RULEBOOK

The Castle Ravenloft rulebook is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever read. It’s poorly organized, fails to explain basic terminology, establishes other terminology which it then proceeds to use inconsistently, and then compounds all of these problems with an atrocious (lack of) organization. And given the relative simplicity of the rules, the experience of the designers, and the fact that the game is built on the back of a fairly well-established ruleset… well, it’s completely inexcusable.

It’s also disappointing that WotC failed to leverage their existing stock of high quality fantasy art to spice up the cards. The lack is particularly felt, in my opinion, when it comes to the treasure cards.

MONSTERS & SCENARIOS

The argument could certainly be made that it’s worth buying the game just for the 42 miniatures that come with it. I don’t think I’d disagree: Amazon is selling the game for $50 right now, so the price per mini comes out to about $1.20. Since that includes a Huge Dracolich, I’m pretty happy with it. (And that’s ignoring the general utility of the interlocking dungeon tiles.)

Laying that aside, I do wish the game had a bit more variety when it came to monsters. There are basically ten varieties of “grunt” in the game (zombie, skeleton, blazing skeleton, wraith, ghoul, wolf, kobold, spider, rat swarm, gargoyle) and you’ll see a lot of them all. While the varied scenarios are keeping much of the game fresh for me right now, the monsters have all become rather hum-drum.

Fortunately, this is an aspect of the game which is surprisingly easy to customize. Although game balance probably requires that you keep 10 different types of creature for each adventure, swapping them out for equally challenging monsters isn’t a problem. There’s a ton of fan-created monsters already available, and there are cheap D&D mini singles available all over the place.

Speaking of scenarios, the game comes with 12 (including two solo scenarios) and 2 more have been released through Wizard’s website. The scenarios are varied (often completely changing your strategic approach to the game) and have been easily supporting multiple play-thrus for me. For example, in this scenario:

The heroes start play having been randomly teleported to different corners of the dungeon. You have to reunite with each other and shut down a demonic summoning while the villain of the piece continues to assault the heroes with teleportetic assaults.

(In the image above you can see where we’ve set off an Alarm trap — which summons additional monsters each round — in a section of the dungeon we were subsequently teleported out of. One of the (blue) heroes has been abandoned in a dead end corridor. And both of the heroes are dreading the possibility that the villain is going to teleport them back up to where all those monsters are waiting to devour them.)

But I do wish there were more of them. When I compare the relatively anemic number of scenarios offered by Castle Ravenloft to the dozens of scenarios offered by Betrayal at House on the Hill (another game I received this Christmas which features variable scenarios of roughly equivalent complexity), I do feel this was an opportunity missed by the designers.

FINAL WORD (FOR NOW)

Castle Ravenloft is fun.

I’m enjoying it a lot, and I keep roping in more and more people who all seem to agree.

It’s not perfect, but its only egregious flaw (the atrocious rulebook) is relatively easy to overcome.

Having just reviewed my early thoughts on Munchkin Quest, I realize that initial success may not translate into a permanent or even long-term success. But as I write this I’ve already gotten more than a dozen plays out of the game, and I’ve only touched half the scenarios it shipped with. A couple scenarios have already seen 4+ plays. Even if that’s where the game tops out, I’ll still get 40+ plays out of it. That’s pretty good compared to most of the games I own.

Go to Castle Ravenloft: Rulebook Woes

NASA has recently announced the discovery of a bacteria in Mono Lake by Dr. Felise Wolfe-Simon which uses arsenic instead of phosphorous for its phosphorylation.

This may not sound all that impressive at first glance, but what Wolfe-Simon has discovered is a little critter which uses a substance inherently poisonous to every other form of life on the planet as one of its most elementary building blocks. It’s literally an entirely alternate path by which life could potentially evolve (and even thrive) in environments which would be completely hostile to (most) terrestial life. (I’m radically summarizing here. For a better summary, follow the link.)

As a scientific discovery, this is interesting in its own right. And its potential application in science fiction (from alien lifeforms to the utterly transhumanic) is pretty obvious.

But reading about this discovery also tickled my brain into thinking about the deeper substrates of fantasy. Here’s a quick quote from the link:

Phosphorus plays an important biological role in the form of ATP (Adenosine triphosphate), which is a cell’s “energy currency.” ATP is key to metabolic functions, and works by activating structural proteins & enzymes through donating its phosphorus groups.
On the Periodic Table, arsenic sits directly below phosphorus (meaning, among other things, they have the same number of valence electrons). In humans & other forms of life, arsenic can be deadly, since it disrupts cellular respiration by competing with phosphorus & diminishing ATP formation.

An organism that uses arsenic in its biochemistry is “alien” to what is known, since it must have ATP-like molecules with arsenic swapped in phosphorus’ place and because they must have evolved mechanisms such that arsenic doesn’t kill them. All signs point to this announcement being tied to the work of biochemist Felisa Wolfe-Simon, who theorized in the past that the unusual ecosystem in California’s Mono Lake could have led some life to follow a different “evolutionary pathway.”

What other alien biochemistries could we imagine swapping into that process? Something alchemical? Something magical? Something celestial? Something other-planar? What pulses life through a migo’s cells or Cthulhu’s rubbery skin-substitute? What allows a dragon to process its food so efficiently?

This wouldn’t mean, of course, that dispel magic is going to automatically cause a dragon to cease to exist (any more than putting a plant in the shade will cause it to instantly wither). Such creatures might suffer from prolonged exposure to antimagic fields, but otherwise they’re probably fine. (Although we’d have to call into question fantasy’s prolixity for half-breeds.)

How could such life evolve? Well, it might arise naturally in a world permeated with magical energies. Or it might spawn from an artificial creation (perhaps even accidentally so). “Life will find a way” is hokey as science; but we’re not exactly dealing with science here: So when the animated rugs in the flying castle suddenly start mating with each other, we might not be quite as justified in our shock.

To a certain extent, of course, this has the danger of becoming “precious world-building”. (World-building that really has no meaningful impact on the game or narrative for which the world is ostensibly being designed.) How can we make this stuff actionable?

Stuff like Mitochondrial Eve from the Parasite Eve games suddenly begin to arise quite “naturally” out of injecting magical juju into your life cycle. Half-breeding could introduce a vector for infection and either explain ancient racist prejudices or justify fresh outbreaks of hate crimes and intolerance in your campaign world.

Literally incompatible biologies coming into conflict: The dark fey rising up out of the underdark aren’t just a threat to life and limb; their dark fairy circles are doing whatever the opposite of “terraforming” is. (Magiforming?) Cysts of alien, incompatible life spontaneously blooming in remote regions or incursions of malevolent extra-planar intelligences.

Why can’t we eat the monsters we’re killing? Because they’re fundamentally incompatible and indigestible. (“Don’t eat the demon-flesh, kid. It will fuck you up.”)

Did you know shadows weren’t originally undead in OD&D? They are something strange and other; something so utterly unnatural that our eyes can only perceive them as a living, tumescent absence.

All nature is a war. This kind of stuff just sort of firms up the lines of battle.

I’ve recently been reading my way through I6 Ravenloft and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Although I haven’t finished the latter, I am so far impressed with the way in which it remains faithful to the original module while expanding the material in interesting ways. (It even includes functional notes for stripping out the extra material in order to return the module to something very close to its original form if a shorter adventure is desired.) I am less impressed with the textual bloat which has become endemic in most modern adventure modules. Much of this text seems to be included in the name of being useful (reminding the DM of basic rules like how trip attacks are adjudicated), but it has the practical effect of making it more difficult to rapidly gloss the truly necessary information at the game table.

But I digress.

What really inspired this little post is the Weird Happenings table on page 15 of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It’s a nice little table, the first entry of which reads:

The sound of a voice screaming comes from somewhere in the castle; it sounds exactly like one of the PCs.

As I normally do when reading module text, I immediately visualized how I would handle that at the gaming table. It would go something like this:

1. Randomly determine the PC. (Let’s say a ranger named Afrau.)

2. Hand that player a note reading, “Write two sentences on this note and then hand it back to me.”

3. Take the note back.

4. Say, “You suddenly hear the sound of screaming coming from somewhere in the castle. It sounds exactly like Afrau.” (point at Afrau’s player)

In doing this, I would be practicing something that could be called “metagame special effects”. The idea is that I’m using purely metagame activities in order to influence the players’ perceptions of the game world.

In the case of this Weird Happening, I specifically want to create for the players the uncertainty, fear, or paranoia which would be experienced by their characters if they suddenly heard their companion (standing right next to them) screaming from some distant corner of a haunted, vampire-ridden castle.

1. I’m secretly rolling dice without any apparent reason for doing it. This creates uncertainty and curiosity in the players. Why am I doing that? What am I hiding from them? Is something about to happen? What?

2. By exchanging notes with a player, I’m specifically creating the awareness that there is secret knowledge being exchanged. That knowledge could be anything. In this particular case, it’s a bluff. What I’m creating is the legitimate possibility that the character may have been secretly teleported away and replaced with a double or an illusion.

Something happened. Only one of them seems to know what it was. And that character is now both (a) standing calmly beside them and (b) screaming from another part of the castle.

Without creating a legitimate atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty at the game table (however subtle it may be), the scream can be easily dismissed as “flavor text”. Some players may find it “spooky” or “creepy”. But they probably won’t take its deeper threat seriously.

EXTRANEOUS SPOT CHECKS

Another example of metagame special effects is my use of “extraneous Spot checks”. In my games, I will periodically call for Spot checks regardless of whether or not there’s anything interesting to be spotted. Newcomers to my games tend to get paranoid when their high rolls fails: “There must be something. What did we miss?”

Eventually, of course, all of my players eventually figure out that I’m frequently “crying wolf” with these checks. I don’t care. The more experienced heroes may no longer be quite so skittish or paranoid as they jump at imaginary shadows, but the tool is still useful: First, it obscures the metagame knowledge of “he’s called for a Spot check, must be something interesting”. Second, it can be a useful way to passively refocus attention on the game world when extraneous distractions and chitchat have derailed the players.

(I don’t simply make the Spot checks secretly because: (a) I’d rather avoid the hassle of needing to track the PCs Spot modifiers. (b) I’d rather have the players actively involved in that moment rather than passively waiting for me to roll dice. (c) It eliminates any arguments about, “Whaddya mean we got ambushed? Don’t I get a Spot check? Did you remember that I get a +3 versus spotting cyborgs?” (d) I really like the utility of being able to gently refocus attention through applying a game mechanic instead of saying, “Please focus.”)

FOCUS ON THE “HOW”

In short, it’s not just enough to know the “what” you’re trying to communicate; you also need to give some thought to how you’re communicating it.

For example, here’s another Weird Happening from that Ravenloft table:

A random PC hears the soft giggling of a little girl; no one else can hear it.

How would you handle that at as a GM?

One of my long-standing concerns with the D20 system was the skewed probabilities of opposed group checks. For example, consider the example of a PC making a Move Silently check opposed by an NPC’s Listen check where both characters have the same skill modifier. In this scenario, a single PC attempting to sneak past a single NPC has a 50% chance of succeeding.

Compare this to a situation in which 5 PCs are attempting to sneak past 5 NPCs (with, again, all of the characters involved having the same skill modifiers). This effectively becomes a check in which the 5 PCs are rolling 5d20 and keeping the lowest result, while the NPCs trying to detect them are rolling 5d20 and keeping the highest result.

The average roll of 5d20-keep-lowest is 3. The average of 5d20-keep-highest is 17. That 14 point differential means that it’s virtually impossible for a party of characters to sneak past a group of evenly matched opponents. (And even sneaking past a single watchman is difficult as the average party roll of 3 is opposed by an average roll of 10.)

Of course, the odds are actually worse than this: A successful stealth attempt will also usually require a Hide vs. Spot check, so you need to succeed at not one but two checks at these outrageous odds. And this assumes that the PCs all keep their stealth skills maxed out (which in practice they won’t, particularly since it’s so pointless to do so).

The argument can certainly be made that this is realistic in some sense: A large group should have a tougher time sneaking past a sentry than one guy and more eyes means more people who can spot you. But I would argue that the probability skew is large enough that it creates results which are both unrealistic and undesirable.

In practice, the effects of the skew are obvious: Group stealth attempts quickly drop out of the game. When stealth is called for, it takes the form of a sole scout pushing out ahead of the rest of the group. And when the scout becomes too fragile to survive when the check finally fails, stealth stops being a part of the game altogether.

Since I’d prefer stealth to be a potentially viable tactic, a solution is called for.

QUICKIE SOLUTIONS

DISTANCE / DISTRACTION PENALTIES: A guideline that can really help the stealther is the -1 penalty per 10 feet that is supposed to be applied on Listen and Spot checks. Keep about a hundred feet away from the guy trying to spot you and you can quickly cancel out the probability skew of the dice.

Unfortunately, these modifiers become kind of wonky, particularly when it comes to Spot checks. On the open plains, for example, the “maximum distance at which a Spot check for detecting the nearby presence of others can succeed is 6d6 x 40 feet”. The minimum distance of 240 feet, therefore, is supposed to impose a -24 penalty and the maximum distance of 1,440 feet impose a -144 penalty.

I’ve tried a few different ways of fixing these modifiers, but am currently just using an ad hoc sense of what the range of the check is.

TARGET NUMBERS: Instead of making these opposed checks, set a target number for the PC’s skill check of 10 + the NPC’s skill modifier. (This essentially halves the probabilty skew.)

GROUP CHECKS: Make only one check for each group. But what skill modifier to use? Using the average value is cutesy, but impractical at the game table. Using the lowest value still effectively takes group stealth off the table. Using the highest modifier means that everyone except the rogue ignores the stealth skills entirely and also creates issues with determining surprise.

And how big can a group be? One guy with a decent Hide check shouldn’t be able to sneak an army of ten thousand soldiers under the nose of a watchtower, but where do you draw the line?

Maybe you could limit the number of people covered by a check to equal the skill leader’s skill ranks? Or impose a -2 penalty per person in the group?

COMBINE STEALTH / PERCEPTION SKILLS: I’ve been folding Hide/Move Silently into a Stealth skill and Listen/Spot into a single Perception skill intermittently since 2002, so I wasn’t particularly surprised when both Pathfinder and 4th Edition went in the same direction. It cuts down on dice rolls and eliminates the undesireable “need to succeed twice” feature of stealth checks.

This does create some interesting oddities around trying to resolve invisibility, and while I haven’t found the perfectly elegant solution yet, this slight corner case is (in my experience) preferable to the constantly degrading effects of splitting the skills.

Using some combination of these solutions tends to mitigate the problem, but I’ve generally been unsatisfied with the hodgepodge fashion of it all. So taking my unified Stealth and Perception skills in hand, I’ve been looking for a more elegant solution.

GUMSHOE’S PIGGYBACKING

I found the roots of what I think may prove a usable mechanic in the GUMSHOE system:

When a group of characters act in concert to perform a task together, they designate one to take the lead. That character makes a simple test, spending any number of his own pool points toward the task, as usual. All other characters pay 1 point from their relevant pools in order to gain the benefits of the leader’s action. These points are not added to the leader’s die result. For every character who is unable to pay this piggybacking cost, either because he lacks pool points or does not have the ability at all, the Difficulty Number of the attempt increases by 2.

Obviously the point-spending mechanics which underlie the GUMSHOE system can’t be translated directly into the D20 system, but the basic structure of a lead character making a check onto which others could “piggyback” was inspiring.

D20 PIGGYBACKING

When the whole group needs to perform a single task collectively (like sneaking past a guard or using group-climbing techniques to scale a cliff) they can make a piggybacking skill check.

(1) One character takes the lead on the check. This character makes the skill check using their normal skill modifier, just like any other skill check.

(2) Other characters can “piggyback” on the lead character’s check by succeeding on a skill check. The Piggyback DC of the check is equal to half its normal DC. (So if the leader is making a DC 30 check, the other characters must make a DC 15 check to piggyback on the check result.)

(3) The lead character can reduce the Piggyback DC by 1 for every -2 penalty they accept on their check. (They must make this decision before making the check.)

(4) The decision to piggyback on the check must be made before the leader’s check is made.

OPPOSED PIGGYBACKING CHECKS: The DC of the check is set by the lead character’s check. Just like any other piggybacking check, only characters who succeed on the piggybacking check benefit.

(To simplify the resolution, you can start by rolling only the lead characters’ checks. After you’ve determined which lead character succeeded, you can call for the necessary piggybacking checks. Anyone piggybacking on the failed check, of course, will fail no matter what their piggybacking check would have been.)

I don’t have much interest in 4th Edition (see D&D is Dead, Long Live 4th Edition), but when I heard about the new D&D Starter Set I was hopeful that WotC was finally doing something that’s about 20 years overdue.

I’ve talked here before about the lack of a Gateway Product for D&D (and, by extension, the lack of a gateway product for the entire roleplaying industry). To sum up: From 1974 to 1991, D&D was available in a single boxed set (just like other games) with a relatively inexpensive price point. In 1991, however, the Basic Set became a pay-to-preview product. (The distinction being that pre-1991 you might buy the Expert Set, but you would continue playing with your Basic Set. After 1991, when you bought the Rules Cyclopedia or the AD&D core rulebooks you took your Basic Set, stuck it in the closet, and never looked at it again: You were paying for an ephemeral piece of advertising that was designed to sell you the “real game”.)

Thus, starting in 1991, the real entry point for the game became a hardcover book. And when the Rules Cyclopedia went out of print, the cost of buying the game skyrocketed to $100+. D&D was now a game that (a) didn’t look like other games, (b) was extraordinarily expensive compared to other games, and (c) also required an immense investment in terms of time before you could even start playing (going from less than 100 pages including a solo adventure to 800+ pages spread across three hardbacks).

Basic Sets and Basic Games continued to be produced, but all of them were pay-to-preview products: Instead of descending from the tradition of Gygax/Arneson, Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer, these were created in the same fashion as the AD&D First Quest boxed set: In other words, these are products which tanked when they were first created and have continued to tank for two decades.

STARTER SET SALVATION

So when I heard they were releasing a new red box Starter Set and specifically evoking the 1983 Mentzer set as part of a product line that was specifically designed to provide a stable set of introductory products and a clear pathway for new players into the game I thought, “Hey, maybe they’ve finally figured it out.”

Did they?

Nope. The Starter Set is still a pay-to-preview product. You can’t even get to page 3 of the Dungeon Master’s Book before the game is trying to sell you the full version of the game you apparently should have been buying in the first place. And once you buy those additional books, the Starter Set is specifically designed to be stuck in the closet and never looked at again. Suckers.

This is a product which new players joining experienced groups will be told to skip; which smart consumers will identify as as a pay-to-preview false start; and which less aware consumers will buy, discover is an incomplete pay-to-preview version of the game, and either (a) stop buying D&D products or (b) feel vaguely ripped off when they go to buy the book they should have bought in the first place.

WHAT DO I BUY TO PLAY D&D?

The other stated goal of the D&D Essentials line is to eliminate the market confusion surrounding D&D. Imagine that you heard about a game called “Dungeons & Dragons” and you walked into a store tomorrow looking to buy a copy. In this scenario, there are arguably two problems with the PHB/DMG/MM triumvirate:

(1) They’re too expensive. $105 is an insanely high cost of entry.

(2) It’s entirely unclear that those are the three books, out of the vast number of D&D books available, that you’re supposed to buy.

So does Essentials solve these problems?

Of course not.

COST: Because the Starter Set is a pay-to-preview product, it’s a fake entry point to the game (suffering the exact same problem that the multiple versions of the 3rd Edition Basic Game did). If you’re entering the game through the Essentials line, the products you’re looking for are D&D Rules Compendium, at least one of the Heroes books, the Dungeon Master’s Kit, and the Monster Vault. Total cost of entry? $110. ($130 if you count both Heroes books. $150 if you bought the Starter Set.)

CONFUSION: The supposed ideal was that when someone asked, “What do I buy to play D&D?” The answer could be, “The Essentials.” But that doesn’t actually pan out because there are 9 different Essentials products (not including the dice set). You’re still facing a wall of confusing product and trying to figure out which three esoterically named products you’re supposed to be looking for (and that’s before we add in the extra confusion caused by the Starter Set fake-out).

Or maybe you’re supposed to buy all of them? At a whopping $210? That’s way too expensive, no thanks.

And this, of course, assumes that the consumer has gotten your note about the Essentials being the products they should be looking at. If they haven’t, they’re now faced with all of the Essentials products plus all of the non-Essentials products while trying to (a) realize that there are three different entry points into the exact same game and (b) which products, exactly, belong to which entry point.

COMPATIBILITY: But is D&D Essentials really the “exact same game”? It’s a debateable point. One can certainly say that D&D Essentials is just including (a) the errata and (b) alternate-but-completely compatible class builds.

But if I’m playing a fighter from Heroes of the Fallen Lands and my DM is using the Player’s Handbook, then we have two different versions of the fighter. That’s every bit as confusing as a player using a 3.5 ranger while the DM is using the 3.0 Player’s Handbook. Plus, the 4th Edition errata goes deep. This is a game which completely revised one of its core mechanics within mere weeks of being released, and more recently changed the basic foundation on which monsters are built. And the important point here is that not everyone uses the errata. Someone using a 4th Edition PHB without errata and someone using the new Rules Compendium are playing two versions of the game every bit as different as 3.0 and 3.5.

Now, I’m generally of the school of thought that 3.0 and 3.5 were more inter-compatible than most people gave them credit for. But I’ve certainly seen plenty of hiccups at tables where 3.0 and 3.5 PHBs were being used interchangeably. These sorts of problems will also crop up at tables attempting to use “vanilla 4th” and “Essentials 4th” at the same time.

MY POINT

I’ve talked before about WotC’s habit of saying, “Our goal is to do X. And in order to do X, we’re going to do not-X.”

So when Bill Slavicsek says, “[Essentials] forms the foundation of the the game moving forward and are designed to be the perfect way for new people to get into the game — thanks to the format, the price, and the approach to class builds.” Perhaps I should be unsurprised when we end up with is a format which is confusing to new players at a price point more expensive than any previous entry point for the game.

The Essentials line may or may not be a success for WotC. It certainly seems to be successful in getting some people (including myself) to take a second look at 4th Edition. (Unfortunately, the game I find waiting for me has the same basic problem that it’s still 4th Edition. And 4th Edition is still a game fundamentally designed to take most of the things I enjoy about roleplaying games out of D&D.)

But what I can guarantee you is that it will fail in its wider goal of reaching out to new customers in a new way. The Starter Set remains the same pay-to-preview product that has failed over and over and over again for the past 20 years. And the rest of the Essentials line is more expensive and more confusing to new customers than the existing options.

It’s a triple package of fail.

Which is not, of course, to say that no new players will enter the hobby through the Essentials products. First Quest may have been a failed product compared to OD&D or the ’77 thru ’91 Basic Sets, but people still bought it. And plenty of people have entered D&D through the PHB/DMG/MM triumvirate even if they are expensive and confusing for new players.

But we’re still waiting for WotC to offer a true gateway product for the RPG industry. And I anticipate that both D&D and the RPG industry as a whole will continue to suffer for it.