So the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons is coming down the pike and people have recently been asking me what I think about it.

Well, I’ve written up some of my thoughts in the past. Those thoughts are largely unchanged: The design team at Wizards of the Coast has decided to design a really amazing tactical miniatures game. (Their motivation for doing so probably has more than a little to do with the reports that the D&D Miniatures game is the most profitable part of the D&D brand.) In order to design that game, however, they have apparently decided that:

(1) They are going to fundamentally alter the gameplay of D&D. (The short version: Yes, the game has changed considerably over the years. But playing a basic fighter in 3rd Edition was still basically the same thing as playing a fighter in 2nd Edition or a fighter in 1st Edition or a fighter in BECMI. Playing a wizard in 3rd Edition was still basically the same thing as playing a wizard in previous editions. And so forth.)

(2) It’s not particularly necessary for them to actually make a roleplaying game. (Don’t believe me? Go ahead and read my previous post on this. WotC’s designers are on public record saying the only thing that matters in the game is what happens during combat.)

One of the most pernicious results of this design philosophy, in my opinion, is the prevalence of dissociated mechanics in 4th Edition.

When I talk about “dissociated mechanics”, I’m talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world. These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations.

Now, of course, all game mechanics are — to varying degrees — abstracted and metagamed. For example, the destructive power of a fireball spell is defined by the number of d6’s you roll for damage; and the number of d6’s you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell.

If you asked a character about d6’s of damage or caster levels, they’d have no idea what you’re talking about. But they could tell you what a fireball is and they could tell you that casters of greater skill can create more intense flames during the casting of the spell.

So a fireball spell has a direct association to the game world. What does a dissociated mechanic look like?

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Here’s a sample power taken from one of the pregen characters used in the Keep on the Shadowfell preview adventure:

Trick Strike (Rogue Attack 1)

Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.

Daily – Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee or Ranged weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: +8 vs. AC
Hit: 3d4 + 4 damage, and you can slide the target 1 square
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, each time you hit the target you can slide it 1 square

At first glance, this looks pretty innocuous: The rogue, through martial prowess, can force others to move where he wants them to move. Imagine Robin Hood shooting an arrow and causing someone to jump backwards; or a furious swashbuckling duel with a clever swordsman shifting the ground on which they fight. It’s right there in the fluff text description: Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.

The problem  is that this is a Daily power — which means it can only be used once per day by the rogue.

Huh? Why is Robin Hood losing his skill with the bow after using his skill with the bow? Since when did a swashbuckler have a limited number of feints that they can perform in a day?

There’s a fundamental disconnect between what the mechanics are supposed to be modeling (the rogue’s skill with a blade or a bow) and what the mechanics are actually doing.

If you’re watching a football game, for example, and a player makes an amazing one-handed catch, you don’t think to yourself: “Wow, they won’t be able to do that again until tomorrow!”

And yet that’s exactly the type of thing these mechanics are modeling. Unlike a fireball, I can’t hold any kind of intelligible conversation with the rogue about his trick strike ability:

Me: So what is this thing you’re doing?
Rogue: I’m performing a series of feints and lures, allowing me to maneuver my foe right where I want him.
Me: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
Rogue: … I have no idea.

Continued tomorrow…

By the time I was able to get to the theater last night and see Speed Racer last night I was already aware that the critics’ reviews were terrible and the box office had tanked.

I dunno what the hell is going on here, but Speed Racer is incredible. There was a guy behind me who literally spent the last 10 minutes of the film muttering, “This is awesome. This is just… awesome. It’s awesome…” And I didn’t mind because, frankly, I was thinking the same thing.

The guy next to me got up when the film was over and said, “That was beautiful. That was god damn beautiful.”

And he was right, too.

The film is a visual feast. The plot is clever without being convoluted. The performances are beautifully stylized, yet capture astonishing truthfulness from the characters. The film has that rare ability to be emotionally moving and completely thrilling at the same time. Humor is strewn around liberally like a party favor.

But, ultimately, if I had to choose a single word to describe the film, that word would be: Delightful.

Speed Racer is delightful.

I left the theater with a grin literally plastered across my face. The film made me happy. It filled me with joy.

And I’m not alone: Yeah, the critics ripped it apart. But audiences are loving it. Metacritic and Rottentomatoes are both showing a 45+ point skew between audience opinion and critics opinion. Moviefone is reporting 4 out of 5 stars from moviegoers. Other sites are reporting ratings of B+ or A-. There does seem to be a certain atmosphere of love-it or hate-it going on, but so far those who love it are outnumbering those who hate it.

So if you’ve been turned off by the critics — or if you’re just looking for a film made of joy and awesome — then you owe it to yourself to catch a showing of Speed Racer.

As I write this, I’ve just finished the opening weekend of The Hollow: Three performances down, ten to go.

For those of you unfamiliar with theater, the week before opening is typically known as tech week: This is when the technical elements of the show — the lights, the music, the sound effects, and so forth — are added. Obviously, this can also become an incredibly stressful time.

Fortunately, this was one of the good tech weeks: Everything was well-organized and ran smoothly.

Particularly fortunate, in fact, because I was rapidly falling apart at the seams.

On Tuesday I went to bed with a slight tickle at the back of my throat. When I woke up on Wednesday, this had become a painful sore throat. I immediately began treating it with cough syrup and spent the day in bed, but by the time I went in to rehearsal that night my muscles were aching and any hope that this was just going to be a 24 hour bug were rapidly fading.

By the time rehearsal ended on Wednesday, my voice was beginning to show signs of strain. This was bad news: An actor without his voice is just a mime. And nobody likes mimes.

But when Thursday dawned I was pretty hopeful: I was still sick, but I felt much better than I had the day before and my voice felt fine. Opening night was on Friday, so if I showed as much improvement over I’d be feeling close to 100%.

Thursday evening, however, became catastrophic. When I left home to go to rehearsal I was fine. By the time I got to rehearsal 20 minutes later, my voice was almost completely gone — the only thing I had left was a sickly croak.

Now people were beginning to get worried looks on their faces whenever they heard me say anything. But I was still hopeful: Even if my voice had decided to take a vacation, I was still feeling much better. I had my fingers crossed that this was just the tail end of the illness and that I would wake up on the morrow completely rejuvenated.

… no such luck. When I woke up on Friday, my voice was only slightly improved. I spent the day dousing it with every medicine and home remedy I could think of, but by the time I was called for the show things were still not looking good. I had managed to resuscitate my voice, but it was pretty clear that it could collapse at any time.

And the real problem was the huge span of time in the middle of Act 2 when I don’t leave the stage: I’m the Inspector in an Agatha Christie mystery. I’m the main character. I stay on stage and continue asking questions as other people cycle on and off the stage. All I do is talk. If my voice decides to become frog-like, not only am I screwed — the entire production is screwed.

And, being opening night, the reviewers are of course in the house. So if things go down the drain, not only have I screwed up this performance — I’ve potentially screwed us for the entire run of the show.

No pressure or anything, though!

By mid-afternoon I was hatching emergency plans: There was a drinks table onstage as part of the show. I contacted the stage manager and asked her to make sure there was extra water on the table so that I could improvise crossing to the drinks table and pouring myself a drink if I needed it.

Next up, I packed myself a voice-saving kit: I had cough drops. Bottled water. Cough syrup. Vitamin-C doses. I also pulled out a bottle of brandy and asked my girlfriend to pick me up a bottle of honey.

But I was absolutely terrified: There was simply no guarantee that any of this was going to work.

I arrived at the theater, checked in with Lydia, my wonderful stage manager. Touched base with the other actors who might be thrown or need to make minor adjustments to their own blocking to accommodate my crosses to the drinks table (although I had taken the trouble to identify specific moments when I could do this with minimal disruption). The rest of the cast — bless them — rallied around me with many good wishes (although I could still see the worry behind their eyes).

The thing that made the final difference, I think, is the warm brandy and honey. This is not healthy for your voice in the long-run, but in the short-term it will completely blast open your sinuses; warm your throat; and loosen your vocal cords. I dosed myself with a fresh shot before every entrance, and then — during my long sequence of scenes — I made two pit-stops by the drinks table to pick up a glass of water (and two more stops later in the play).

As plans go, this was not ideal. Opening night is not a good time to be losing your voice and improvising your lines while drunk.

But it worked.

There were a couple of times when I felt my voice right on the verge of breaking, but it never did. The next night I was able to pull it back to a single shot of brandy-and-honey and a single visit to the drinks table. On Sunday I brought the brandy just in case, but was able to skip it and make it through the show with just a single visit to the drinks table.

People who saw the show said they loved it, and those who didn’t know about the catastrophe that was always one strained vocal cord away from sweeping us all away were shocked to hear me croaking in the lobby after the show.

And it was only after it was all done that I realized how desperately terrified I had been.

Fridays – Saturdays at 7:30pm
Sunday Matinees at 2:00pm
Pay What You Can Night – Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 7:30pm
Audio Described Performance – Sunday, May 18th at 2:00pm

Let’s talk a little bit about save-or-die effects.

If you participate in any kind of discussion around game design and D&D, the term is probably familiar to you. If you’re not familiar with it, then here’s the short version: As the name suggests, a save-or-die effect is any spell or ability which requires the target to make a saving throw or die. More generally, the term can also be applied to any spell or ability which requires the target to make a saving throw or be effectively removed from play.

For example, finger of death is a a classic save-or-die spell: Either the target makes their saving throw or they die. A sleep spell is also a save-or-die effect, however, because if the target fails their saving throw they’re knocked unconscious. On the other hand, a fireball spell is not a save-or-die effect: Although the damage from the spell might kill you, your death is not the direct result of a failed saving throw.

A save-or-die effect with practical results.

THE CONTINUUM OF SAVE-OR-DIE EFFECTS

As our examples suggest, there is actually a continuum of save-or-die effects — ranging from the minor to the severe. In generic terms, I think this continuum can be defined this way:

(1) The effect takes the character out of play, but the character itself can take actions (usually additional saving throws) to put themselves back in play. For example, a hold person spell (which we’ll talk about more later) paralyzes the target on a failed save, but allows the target to make a new save each round to recover.

(2) The effect takes the character out of play, but other characters can take trivial actions to put them back into play. For example, a sleep spell works like this — another character can simply take an action to slap the character and wake them up.

(3) The effect takes the character out of play, but other characters can put them back in play if they have the right resources prepared. For example, any paralysis can be removed if you have a remove paralysis spell available.

(4) The effect kills the character.

It should also be noted that, beyond a certain point, the difference between the third and fourth categories becomes largely academic: A paralysis effect requires remove paralysis; a finger of death requires a resurrection. From a mechanical standpoint, at least, the difference is merely one of degree.

THE PROBLEM WITH SAVE-OR-DIE EFFECTS

Save-or-die effects are widely recognized as being one of the weak points in 3rd Edition. The basic problem with them can be summed up in three words: They aren’t fun.

(1) They aren’t fun to suffer.

(2) They aren’t fun to use.

(3) They break down badly at higher levels of play.

Nobody likes to have bad things happen to their characters, but the truth is that — no matter how much we might argue about hit points — D&D combat is fun. It’s stood the test of time for more than three decades now, and people are still enjoying it.

One of the things that’s fun about it is the ablative nature of hit points — the back-and-forth dynamic of dealing damage. You may not want to get caught in a fireball, but part of the excitement of playing the game is suffering that damage. I think everyone who has ever played the game has a story about the time that they managed to save the day while only having a single hit point left to their name. That’s a story that captures the simple, pure fun that Gygax and Arneson captured in the D&D combat mechanics.

But save-or-die mechanics bypass the whole ablative damage system. As a result, when a save-or-die ability hits the table you are instantly stripping away all the tactical complexity of the combat system and reducing the entire thing to a craps game.

So when a save-or-die effect is used against a PC, it’s no fun: On the basis of a single die roll, the player is no longer allowed to participate in the game. Imagine that, at the beginning of Monopoly, you had to roll 2d6 and — if it came up snake eyes — you automatically lost and didn’t get to play that game. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

But it’s equally true that using a save-or-die effect isn’t particularly fun, either. Oh, sure, lots of people have stories about the time they killed an ancient red dragon with a single lucky hit from a finger of death. But while that’s fun once or twice, how much fun is it in the long-term? Imagine that game of Monopoly again, only this time if you roll box cars on the 2d6 you automatically win the game. Still doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

And this leads to the breakdown at higher levels of play, where astronomical hit point totals and incredibly high saving throw bonuses turn combat into a giant game of: “Hey, who’s going to roll a 1 on their saving throw first?”

THE CHEAPENING OF DEATH

I have an aesthetic problem with D&D in general: I dislike the revolving door of death. This is a problem I’ve talked about before, but it’s one that has an impact on save-or-die effects at the gaming table.

Specifically, I don’t like cheapening death. Therefore, I’m unlikely to use save-or-die effects on my PCs. But my players have no such compunction — they’re perfectly free to use those spells and effects against their opponents. As a result, this creates an imbalance of power.

This isn’t strictly a mechanical problem, but it does highlight how a particular aesthetic desire can have a meaningful impact on game balance.

WotC’s SOLUTION

As I mentioned, the problem with save-or-die effects has been well understood for several years now. The designers at Wizards of the Coast have been trying to deal with the issue since at least 2002 (when they released the Epic Level Handbook and discovered that the save-or-die effects were causing a complete meltdown in high level play).

With the release of D&D 3.5 in 2003, this newfound awareness translated into some rather half-hearted attempts at fixing the problem. Lots of save-or-die effects were still left scattered all over the core rulebooks, but some of the most problematic examples were fixed.

The solution they came up with was, basically, to weaken the save-or-die effect and move them down the continuum we talked about earlier. For example, in 3.0 hold person was a save-or-die effect of type #3: If you failed your save, you were paralyzed until either the spell ended or someone used a remove paralysis spell on you.

In 3.5, on the other hand, hold person was turned into a type #1 effect: If you became paralyzed, you could continue making saves every round until you succeeded (and stopped being paralyzed).

In 4th Edition, this remains their solution of choice. For example, in 3rd Edition a sleep spell was a save-or-die effect of type #2. In 4th Edition, if the spell successfully affects its target it only slows them. Only an additional failed save results in them falling asleep, and then they can continue making saving throws every round until they wake up.

Plus, in 4th Edition saving throws are always strict 50/50 affairs — there are no modifiers. So you can quickly calculate that there’s only a 50% chance a victim who has been affected by the spell will fall asleep at all; and only a 0.9% chance that they’d stay asleep for even 1 minute.

You can quickly see how watering down save-or-die effects remove most of their pernicious effects. There’s only one problem, though: This watering down also tends to remove most of their utility and flavor, too.

This is part of a wider trend at WotC in which efforts to make the tactical combat portion of the game as perfectly balanced as possible cause them to offer up every other part of the game on a sacrificial altar.

A DIFFERENT SOLUTION

I think the wider problem with WotC’s solution of choice is that it’s basically like saying, “Man, this soup tastes like crap! I think I’ll try adding some more water to it.” The taste of crap is now a little less intense, but it’s still crap.

The problem with save-or-die mechanics is that they bypass the ablative combat mechanics that work so well. So here’s my thought: Instead of just watering these effects down, let’s change the paradigm entirely and tie them into the ablative damage system.

The simplest solution is to simply have save-or-die effects deal ability score damage. For example, in my house rules all death effects deal 4d6 points of Constitution damage. If the spell has a secondary effect — such as turning the victim into a pile of dust — this effect only happens if the victim is killed by the Constitution damage. Similarly, you could have paralysis effects dealing Dexterity damage.

If I was completely overhauling the system, I would — at the very least — vary the amount of ability score damage depending on the power of the effect in question. For example, death effects might vary from 2d6 to 4d6 points of Con damage depending on whether you were talking about a 6th-level spell or a 9th-level spell.

But you can also get fancier: For example, if I were redesigning hold person I would make the spell deal 1d6 points of Dexterity damage per round until the victim made a successful save. If the victim is reduced to 0 Dex as a result of the spell, they are paralyzed (as the magical energies of the spell bind their limbs completely).

Similarly, a victim of a medusa’s gaze would feel their limbs turning to stone as they medusa repeatedly inflicted them with 2d4 points of Dexterity damage.

Under this paradigm, there would be no need for a “paralysis” condition — paralyzed creatures are simply those which have been reduced to 0 Dex. Similarly, a spell like remove paralysis would just be a quick way of healing Dexterity damage.

A sleep spell would be a mental assault, inflicting 1d4 points of Wisdom damage per round until the victim makes a save or drops into a magical coma. When the sleep spell wore off, this Wisdom damage — like the damage from a ray of enfeeblement — would be restored.

Since ability score damage no longer exists in 4th Edition, this solution won’t work for that game. But if I end up making the switch, I’ll be looking for some similar means to change the paradigm of save-or-die effects — rather than just watering them down.

UPDATE: If you’re thinking about using a system featuring ability score damage, you might want to check out Super Simple Ability Score Damage.

I somehow managed to get through my entire essay on the Three Clue Rule without mentioning the adventure that first made me codify it: The Masks of Nyarlathotep.

Originally published in 1984, The Masks of Nyarlathotep is quite possibly the best-structured RPG campaign ever published. It chronicles the PCs’ attempts to crush the many cults of Nyarlathotep, beginning in 1920s New York and then carrying them through London, Cairo, Kenya, Australia, and Shanghai.

But not necessarily in that order. Or any order at all, for that matter.

What makes the campaign memorable is not just the epic globetrotting, but the fact that the PCs were left entirely in control of their own destiny: Every location had a plethora of clues which could lead the PCs to any of the other locations, giving them free reign to pursue their investigations in any way that they chose.

In 1984, this structure was completely revolutionary. It still remains virtually unduplicated in its scope and flexibility.

I’ve never gotten a chance to actually run The Masks of Nyarlathotep. (Some day!) But the nascent promise of its design made a deep impression on me and continues to fundamentally shape the way I plan my campaigns.