In 2006, Wizards of the Coast unveiled a revised format for 3.5 stat blocks. James Wyatt explained the logic behind the new form in a Design & Development column in July 2006. Basically, the new stat block was designed around two principles:

1. All the information you need to use the monster should be present in the stat block.

2. The information in the stat block should be organized around the way in which the information is actually used in an encounter.

The new stat block featured five “sections”.

Section 1: The information you need to begin an encounter. (What is the monster? How does it detect the PCs? Will the PCs be able to speak to it? What’s it’s initiative? And so forth.)

Section 2: The information you’ll need to know about on the PCs’ turn. (What’s its AC? Hit points? Saving throws? Resistances and immunities? And so forth.)

Section 3: The information you’ll need to know on the monster’s turn. (What can it do? What attack options does it have? What special actions can it take?)

Section 4: The information you don’t need to know during combat. (Or, at least, generally won’t need to know.)

Section 5: Explanatory text. If an unusual ability is mentioned in the first four sections, it’s given a full explanation at the bottom of the stat block.

CRITICISMS

This new stat block did exactly what it was supposed to do: It made it easier to use the monster, particularly during the high-stress period of combat.

But it wasn’t without criticism. These criticisms generally fell into one of two categories:

1. IT TAKES UP TOO MUCH SPACE!

There is both a legitimate and a non-legitimate side to this critique.

Let’s start with the legitimate critique, because it’s easier: There is no doubt that the new stat block takes up more space in published adventures than the old adventure stat block. The old adventure stat block was literally a stat block. The information was all crammed into one big paragraph.

By separating the information out into separate sections and giving it some air to breathe, the WotC designers made it easier to use, but also made it take up a lot more space.

The non-legitimate critique was that the new stat block also took up more space in the Monster Manual products.

For example, take a look at the magmacore golem from Monster Manual V. This creature is very similar to a flesh golem from the original 3.5 Monster Manual.

The magmacore golem stat block requires 22 lines. The flesh golem stat block requires 27 lines.

This is one of the cases in which the new stat block actually requires less space than the old stat block. In some cases the opposite is true. But the difference is never particularly large or significant.

Now, what is true is that the newer Monster Manual entries include a lot of new information outside of the stat blocks, most notable Knowledge check DCs for monster lore and sample encounters.

But the real reason that a lot of people think that the new stat blocks take up more space is because they take up more space on the page. But this isn’t because of the stat blocks: It’s because WotC increased their font size. The original Monster Manual, for example, has 67 lines to the page. Monster Manual V, on the other hand, only has 55 lines to the page.

2. THEY LEFT OUT INFORMATION!

There’s no mitigation for this complaint. (Most notably, the Hit Die type and full hit point calculation for each creature was removed. ) And, frankly, it leaves me scratching my head. The WotC design team trumpeted the idea of making sure that all the information you need to use the monster is in the monster’s entry… while simultaneously rolling out a revised stat block that removed essential information and forced you to look for it elsewhere.

3. INFORMATION HAS BEEN DUPLICATED!

This is true, but it’s not a meaningful critique.. For example, a creature’s Spot and Listen modifiers are included in both the first section of the stat block (because that determines when and how they detect the PCs) and in the fourth section of the stat block (in the complete list of the creature’s skills).

There are not many examples of this duplication, and wherever it occurs it makes sense: The information belongs in both locations. If this were causing the stat block to bloat in size, it might be problematical. But, as we’ve discussed, this isn’t actually the case.

REVISING THE REVISION

I think the revised stat block was generally a move in the right direction: Breaking the information down into utility-based sections make the new stat blocks considerably easier to use in play.

However, by leaving out essential information, the new stat blocks became more difficult to use in prep (and even more difficult to use if you wanted to make adjustments on-the-fly). And using what was essentially a full-blown Monster Manual stat block for every NPC that appeared in an adventure did, in fact, chew up a lot of space and result in less detailed and elaborate adventures (on a page-for-page comparison).

So I’m revising the revision. Basically I’ve made two major changes:

1. I’ve used tabs to introduce more white space and make the stat blocks even easier to read. For example, instead of:

Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

My version of the stat blocks reads:

Space: 5 ft.                Reach: 5 ft.

2. Information that was removed from the WotC stat block — like the HD type and full hit point calculation — has been restored in my stat block.

Minor differences? Sure. But every little bit of utility helps.

My revised stat block is available as an RTF file, which includes the blank template and two samples (a goblin and a balor):

Revised Stat Block

SHORT STAT BLOCK

To address the concern that the full version of the revised stat block unnecessarily devours space for stat blocks that don’t require that level of detail, I have also designed a short stat block. It looks like this:

NAME (CR #) – [Gender] [Race] – [Class] [Level] – [Alignment] [Size] [Type]
DETECTION – [special], Listen +#, Spot +#; Init +#; Aura …; Languages [list], [special]
DEFENSES –  AC #, touch #, flat-footed #; hp # (HD); Miss #%; DR #; Immune …; Resist …; Weakness …
ACTIONS – Spd # ft.; Melee attack +# (damage); Ranged attack +# (damage); Space # ft.; Reach # ft.; Base Atk +#; Grapple +#; Atk Options …; SA …; Combat Feats …; Combat Gear …
SQ …
STR #, DEX #, CON #, INT #, WIS #, CHA #
FORT +#, REF +#, WILL +#;
FEATS:
SKILLS:
POSSESSIONS:

And here’s an example using a lesser bloodwight, a creature which can be found Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies:

LESSER BLOODWIGHT (CR 2) – Always NE Undead
DETECTION – Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +7, Spot +7; Init +1; Aura bloodsheen 30 ft.; Languages: Infernal
DEFENSES – AC 15, touch 11, flat-footed 14; hp 26 (4d12); DR 5/slashing; Immune undead immunities (death effects, disease, mind-affecting, paralysis, poison, sleep effects, stunning)
ACTIONS – Spd 30 ft.; Melee claw +3 (1d6+2 plus blood welt); Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; Base Atk +2; Grapple +3
STR 14, DEX 12, CON –, INT 11, WIS 13, CHA 16
FORT +1, REF +2, WILL +5
FEATS: Ability Focus (bloodsheen), Combat Reflexes
SKILLS: Hide +8, Listen +7, Move Silently +16, Spot +7

And here’s an elite city guard from Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist:

ELITE CITY GUARDS (CR 4) – Human – Fighter 4 – LN Medium Humanoid
DETECTION – Listen +5, Spot +9; Init +1; Languages: Common
DEFENSES – AC 17, touch 10, flat-footed 17; hp 30 (4d10+8)
ACTIONS – Spd 20 ft. (run 60 ft.); Melee greatsword +8 (2d6+6, 17-20/x2); Ranged heavy crossbow +4 (1d10, 19-20/x2); Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; Base Atk +4; Grapple +7; Combat Feats: Rapid Reload (heavy crossbow); Combat Gear: alchemist’s fire (x2), potion of cure light wounds (x2), smokestick (x2)
STR 16, DEX 11, CON 12, INT 10, WIS 12, CHA 10
FORT +5, REF +3, WILL +1
FEATS: Alertness, Improved Critical (greatsword), Rapid Reload (heavy crossbows), Skill Focus (Spot), Weapon Focus (greatsword), Weapon Specialization (greatsword)
SKILLS: Climb +5, Intimidate +2, Listen +5, Spot +9
POSSESSIONS: masterwork greatsword, half-plate, heavy crossbow (12 quarrels), 3d8+10 gp in loose change

This short stat block, along with the examples, can also be found in RTF format:

Short Stat Block

These stat blocks have also been placed under the OGL for your convenience.

I spent this past week working on Rule Supplement 2: Flight. When I was first looking through this material, I thought that this was going to be a relatively short supplement. Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat had clocked in at 90 pages, but it looked like Flight was going to be a comparatively thin 20-30 pages of material.

But as I began collating and collecting the material I realized that, like Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist, this project was going to be more complex than I had anticipated. Material that works just fine as bullet-pointed lists in a playtest document don’t work that well once they’ve been divorced from the playtest environment.

One of the most important things I look at in the development of RPG material is the utility of that material. “Utility”, in this case, has two meanings:

First, is the material useful?

Second, is the material easy to use?

USEFUL

A rule can be meticulously researched, mathematically perfected, and seamlessly integrated with the the rest of the game system and still be completely useless.

For example, FATAL (a fantasy roleplaying game) has a disturbingly over-detailed system for determining the size of your character’s nipples. This system could be the most incredibly accurate method for randomly determining the size of a character’s nipples and it would still be utterly useless.

As a more marginal example, Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat included a system for handling contest jousting. This system is necessary and useful if you want to include a jousting tournament in your campaign because the default D20 combat system was designed for lethal combat, not contests of arms. As I described in the supplement:

The standard combat system is not designed to handle contest jousting: The scoring system for jousting depends on a variety of conditions (such as staying on your horse) which the system doesn’t cover at all. Therefore, the rules found here use the basic attack roll mechanic as a basis for a system which will allow you to incorporate the thrills of a jousting tournament into your game.

These rules are not designed to handle typical combat jousting — that’s still done best using the normal combat system. These rules are designed to handle a structured jousting duel.

For similar reasons, the default D20 combat system is not well-designed for boxing matches or football games. (It doesn’t do a half-bad job at wrestling, although if you were going to do some sort of wrestling-focused campaign you’d probably want more detail.)

But there came a point in designing the contest jousting rules where I faced a choice: I could add significant complexity to the rule in order to handle situations like the breaking of a lance or hitting the tilt (which are essential elements of historical scoring in jousting tournaments), or I could keep the system for simple.

In the end I included those additional details as optional rules: Useful if you’re going to have a tournament as the center-piece of a particular adventure, but not particularly useful if the contest jousting has a less important or enduring role in your game.

EASY TO USE

In some ways, this is just a specific type of usefulness: The easier a rule is to use, the more likely it is that you’ll actually use the rule, and the more useful those rules become.

A good counter-example are the 3rd Edition rules for grappling: These rules are difficult to use and, as a result, many gaming groups simply don’t use them. There’s a mutual and unspoken agreement in these groups that no one will ever try to grapple anybody else because nobody wants to deal with the consequences.

The ability to easily use a rule, of course, has something to do with how that rule has been designed. But, in my experience, the ease or difficulty of using a rule often has as much to do with how the rule is presented as it does with the actual rule itself.

If you’re looking for a good example of how presentation can make a rule more difficult to use than it actually is, you don’t have to look any farther than the entire combat chapter in the PHB: Whether you’re looking at the order in which the various rules are presented; the way each rule is described; or the layout of the page… pretty much everything about that chapter makes the rules harder to use. (The 3.5 PHB was a slight improvement over the 3.0 PHB, but only slight. It’s still pretty dire.)

Here’s an example from my work on Rule Supplement 2: Flight. This is the Flight Maneuverability table as it appears in the DMG:

And here’s the Flight Maneuverability table as it will appear in Rule Supplement 2: Flight:

The second table has the exact same information as the first table. (With one exception: The fact that only flying characters with perfect maneuverability can gain altitude at full speed is handled by a footnote.) Despite this, we’ve gone from 12 rows of information to only 7 rows of information by removing two areas of inefficiency:

First, we’ve focused the table so that it describes only the differences between the classes of maneuverability. For example, look at the entry for “Down speed” on the original table. It’s not summarizing a difference between flying characters with different maneuverabilities. It’s describing one of the general rules for flying: When you fly down, you move at twice your normal flying speed.

Second, we’ve removed redundant information. Look at the entries for “Minimum forward speed” and “Hover” on the original table. They’re the exact same information. The first line says, “If you don’t have a minimum forward speed, you don’t have to move every round while flying.” The second line says, “If you can hover, you don’t have to move every round while flying.”

These types of inefficiencies not only make the flying rules look more difficult than they really are (by cluttering the table), they actually make them more difficult to use.

DESIGNING EASY TO USE RULES

There are several ways you can make a rule easy to use:

1. DESIGN THE RULE SO THAT IT’S EASY TO REMEMBER.

The minute you have to reach for a rulebook and start flipping through it to figure out what you need to do, you’re burning time that you could be using to actually play the game. If you don’t have to look the rule up, then its much easier to use and much more likely to actually get used.

Making a rule easy to remember means making it simple and straightforward. Properly designing and developing a rule is a constant battle between necessary detail (which adds complexity) and the desire to make the rule easy to memorize (which requires simplicity).

It should also be noted that there are two types of rules: There are rules that you commonly use at the tabletop (like an attack roll) and rules which you commonly only have to worry about during prep (like calculating the effects of encumbrance). Its less important for the latter type of rules to be easily memorized because it’s not a big deal to be flipping through the rulebooks during prep (in fact, it’s almost impossible to avoid). It’s only during the time-crunch of actually playing the game that you want to avoid page-flipping and rule-reading.

(Of course, that being said, you have to be careful. Some of the most painful bogs of complexity in D20 are the result of effects which suddenly force you to make prep-time calculations in the middle of play. Spells like polymorph and enlarge person are obvious problem areas. But take a look at the seemingly innocuous ray of enfeeblement: How many groups, rather than flipping through the PHB looking for the encumbrance tables, simply ignore the fact that the fighter who has been knocked down to a Strength of 2 is probably no longer capable of lifting the full plate he’s wearing?)

2. DESIGN THE RULE SO THAT IT’S EASY TO REFERENCE.

Sometimes you simply can’t design a rule so that it can be easily memorized. Maneuverability for flying characters is like that: You can certainly design flying rules which don’t take those differences into account, but then you end up with dragons flying like hummingbirds. And, for a lot of people, that causes suspension of disbelief problems.

(On the other hand, keep an eye out for the “Quick and Dirty Flying Rules” that will be part of Rule Supplement 2: Flight. These easy-to-remember rules for flight give you some distinction between a dragon and a hummingbird, while still remaining simple enough that you can quickly memorize them and avoid the page-flipping.)

And, actually, no matter how simple you make a rule it will need to be looked up and read at least once while people are learning the rules.

Making a rule easy to reference means a lot of things: It means a comprehensive index and/or detailed table of contents. It means the type of robust cross-referencing sidebars that we pioneered in Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat to make sure that the rules you need are always right at your fingertips. It means making sure that, whenever possible, the description of a rule or monster or spell is not split up across two different pages.

One of the things it means for Rule Supplement 2: Flight is that we include a cheat sheet so that you don’t have to go flipping through the book trying to find the particular chart or diagram that you need.

One of the most important — and most overlooked — elements of making rules easy to reference is how your organize the sequencing of material in your rulebooks. For example, here’s an outline of the first three pages of the chapter on combat in the PHB:

Chapter 8: Combat

The Battle Grid
How Combat Works
Combat Statistics

Attack Roll
Attack Bonus

Strength Modifier
Dexterity Modifier
Size Modifier
Range Penalty

Damage

Minimum Damage
Strength Bonus
Multiplying Damage
Ability Damage

Armor Class

Armor and Shield Bonuses
Dexterity Modifier
Size Modifier
Other Modifiers
Touch Attacks

Hit Points
Speed
Saving Throws

Saving Throw Types
Saving Throw Difficulty Class

The thing that immediately strikes me is that this outline claims that the game mechanics for attack rolls and saving throws are not, in fact, mechanics… they’re statistics.

The other thing that strikes me is that the order in which the various “statistics” is presented is essentially random: It’s not alphabetical for easy reference. But it can’t have been organized for easy comprehension by the first-time reader, either, because the first thing on the list is the attack roll… which is defined before any of its constituent components (like the attack bonus and the opponent’s AC) are discussed.

OK, maybe the idea was that you’d discuss the attack roll first so that its components would have a context. But this idea is almost immediately shot down. Yes, they go from the attack roll to the attack bonus (one of the things that make up the attack roll). But then they segue off to damage (which is the consequence of the attack roll), before going back to Armor Class (the other component of the attack roll). And then it’s like they remember that they weren’t done talking about damage, because now they talk about hit points. (Notice that ability damage was discussed in a sub-heading of the “Damage” section, but hit points — the primary form of damage — is split off into its own, completely disconnected section.) Then they toss in speed and round the whole thing off by talking about another mechanic (instead of a statistic) that is only tangentially related to combat.

One could go on: They’ve got the discussion of the “Battle Grid” on one page and the diagram that accompanies it on the opposite side of the same sheet (so that you’ve got to turn the page to follow along). (And why isn’t the discussion of the battle grid in the “Movement and Positioning” section of the chapter? Although, even if you moved the discussion of the battle grid there, that section still wouldn’t contain all the rules for movement and positioning.)

And this is just three pages we’re talking about here. The entire chapter is a disaster area.

3. DESIGN THE RULES SO THAT THEY’RE EASY TO LEARN.

The quickest way to make sure that nobody uses a rule is to make it so that nobody understands the rule.

Now, in some cases, there can be a trade-off between designing a rulebook so that it both (a) teaches the new player how to play the game and (b) is easy for the veteran player to quickly reference. For example, as we’ve already discussed, organizing sub-sections in alphabetical order can make it easy to find the sub-section you want quickly. On the other hand, this can lead to new players reading about a rule before they understand the full context for that rule.

My personal belief is that this trade-off is rarely as severe or as frequent as some game designers apparently believe it to be. Sometimes its a matter of rethinking how you’re discussing the rules. Sometimes its a matter of re-labeling a particular sub-section.

But when the trade-off does need to happen, I personally believe you’re better off leaning in the direction of the veteran player’s desire for quick and efficient reference. Why? Because a player will only use a rulebook to learn the game once. They’ll need to reference it dozens or hundreds of times.

If you’re concerned that a particular decision made for easy reference will lead the new player to be left completely adrift, I believe the solution is to write a short introduction giving a complete overview of the rules you’re about to detail. In the PHB, for example, a complete overview of character creation is given on page 6. (They try to do the same thing for combat, too. They just do it very poorly.) This introductory or quick start section will be completely ignored by the veteran, but it effectively teaches the new player the game. (Or, at the very least, gives them a context in which to place the rules they’re about to read.)

4. DESIGN THE RULE SO THAT IT’S QUICK TO USE.

I talked about this a little bit in my essay on tumbling: “Whenever you add a die roll to the game you’re slowing it down. Slow it down enough and it’s no longer fun to play.”

On the flip side, it’s important to remember that rules are also responsible for making the game fun to play. Rules are responsible for creating and/or modeling the tactical and strategic situations which make for interesting gameplay.

BETTER RULES NOT FEWER RULES

A common misconception is that “more rules” is synonymous with “more complexity” or “greater difficulty”. While this certainly can be true, it doesn’t need to be true.

For example, one of the major insights I had while working on Rule Supplement 2: Flight is that aerial combat is rarely as fun as it should be. And the primary reason for that is that aerial maneuvering is more difficult than it needs to be. As I write in the book itself:

Handling minimum forward speeds, maximum turn in place angles, and the other details of three-dimensional, aerial movement can be a tedious affair. It can discourage you from using the rules to model complex aerial maneuvers. Instead of twisting and whirling through the air in battles of tooth and fang, your dragons may content themselves with sedately cruising in straight lines simply in the name of “keeping things simple”.

Perhaps the most obvious way you could try to fix this problem would be to remove rules from the game: Make the rules easier to use by removing some of the rules.

But there were a couple of reasons that I didn’t want to do this:

First, one of the core design methodologies for the Rule Supplements is that they should be 100% compatible with the core rulebooks. The Rule Supplements should expand the game but not alter the game. While I do many things in Rule Supplement 2: Flight to make the existing rules easier to use (redesigning the Flight Maneuverability table is one example of that), I didn’t want to fundamentally alter the way that flying works in D20.

Second, I’m not convinced that removing mechanics will actually increase the overall utility of the flying rules. We talked about this a little bit before: Removing some of the detail from the rules might make them easier to use, but it will also remove the useful distinction between a dragon and a hummingbird.

This is where it becomes important to have better rules instead of fewer rules. Rule Supplement 2: Flight will include a set of rules I refer to as “Aerial Aerobatics”.

In many ways, you can actually say that aerial aerobatics aren’t “new rules”: They don’t actually add detail or distinction to the system. Instead, they act as shortcuts that make the existing rules of aerial combat easier to use.

For example, if Lenora — a fighter under the effects of a fly spell — is being chased by a Huge dragon she might want to loop around and get behind the dragon. Since she has good maneuverability and the dragon is 30 feet behind her, you could look at the Flight Maneuverabiltiy table and calculate, step-by-step, that she needs to move at least 55 feet to end up behind the dragon: She can turn 90-degrees after traveling 5 feet. If she’s descending she travels at twice her speed. So she flies forward 5 feet, executes a 90-degree turn, and then flies down 5 feet at twice her speed. She then executes another 90-degree turn, flies backward 40 feet — 30 feet to reach the dragon and another 20 feet to clear the dragon. She then executes another 90-degree turn and flies up 5 feet at half her speed, then executes another 90-degree turn, and ends up 5 feet behind the dragon flying in the same direction she started out.

Or Lenora’s player could simply look at the loop aerobatic maneuver and get the answer immediately: A character with good maneuverability requires 15 feet of movement to perform a loop. Add the distances Lenora travels backwards (40 feet) to get a total movement of 55 feet (of which 50 feet counts towards her minimum forward speed for the round).

A loop is a simple example of what the aerobatic system can do, but the result is clear: The aerobatic rules makes these types of complex aerial maneuvers easier to use. As a result, players at the table are more likely to use complex aerial maneuvers. And, as a result, aerial combat will become more dynamic, exciting, and complex… yet, at the same time, not become more complex or time-consuming to actually play.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Even in an era of graphically-rich books with high production values in the roleplaying industry, I think that the majority of rulebooks and supplements remain fairly sloppy when it comes to organizing material at both the both macro and micro level. (By which I mean (a) the overall sequencing and cross-referencing of material and (b) how information is actually presented on the page.) There are also plenty of rules which are just plain sloppy in how they’ve been written.

I think I was lucky, as a freelancer, to have some of my earliest experience working for Dream Pod 9: They strongly emphasized writing material to the page. They didn’t like to split the information within any given section across multiple pages, believing — quite correctly — that it’s easier to reference and use a rule or a bit of setting information if you don’t have to flip between multiple pages while doing so. This forced me, as a writer, to focus on how I was organizing and sequencing the material I was working on.

Currently I continue to take a lot of inspiration from those high quality Dream Pod 9 supplements. I also look at how high quality textbooks are laid out. And whenever I see an innovative practice in a roleplaying manual, I make a point of adding it to my repertoire and keeping it there.

And I always — always! — think about how the product will actually be used at the gaming table.

I’m happy to announce the release of Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist.

This book is the result of a confluence of events: Several years ago I wrote several submissions for Atlas Games’ En Route II supplement. The Black Mist was originally one of them — and despite the fact that it featured what I thought was the coolest of ideas — it was the only one to be rejected. Shortly after Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies was released, I got into a discussion over at ENWorld with James D. Hargrove. He had some very positive things to say about The Complex of Zombies:

I’m a huge, rediculous, almost sick fan of all things zombie. And I’ve always wished that the flesh-eating geeks had more, better, coverage in fantasy adventure modules. Louis Porter Jr’s Cold Visitor was, until about five minutes ago, the only example of a full-blown zombie fest (albeit one dealing with alien imitations) that I could find for [D20]. The mode (i.e., survial horror) is simply not covered well in Fantasy.

Last year, I had an opportunity to discover why such adventure are so few and far between. I talked to a publisher about writing one but, without some seriously warped interpretations of the RAW, I found that making plague a real, substantial, threat in [D20] is not at all easy. In the end, I couldn’t get the job done, much to my chagrin. I did end up writing something similar for another system but that’s a different story.

Today I found out much to my frustration that I can’t debit my bank account for anything less than $20 and, since I didn’t have $20 in it, that was a problem. So. . . what to do with that lingering $8? Hit up RPGNow, of course! I had planned on picking up some of Justin Alexander’s city modules since he posted to ‘OGL Settings’ thread here — but what really caught my eye was a little thing called “The Complex of Zombies”.

This short adventure is more or less Resident Evil in Fantasy. Which rocks. It rocks hard. And it rocks because it’s not just zombies but zombie-like things. Bad things. Bad things that eat people. Bad things that are just different enough from bog standard zombies to scare the crap out of players when they first encounter them. And all for $2.00. I’ve been looking for a promising hook to start a guilty pleasure hack and slay campaign.

And, by gawd, I think I have!

When he mentioned that he had found “making plague a real, substantial threat” to not be particularly easy it reminded me of the little encounter I had written for Atlas Games all those years ago. I went digging through my files, pulled it out, and realized that it would make a pretty awesome Mini-Adventure. Plus, it was already written! All I had to do was polish it up, re-format it for the Mini-Adventure line, and I’d be good to go!

Well, nothing is ever that simple in reality. Once I started digging into The Black Mist again, I remembered why Atlas Games had rejected it in the first place: In order to make a complex scenario fit within a very limited word count, I had used every trick in my arsenal to present as much material as quickly as possible. In fact, I’d used a few too many tricks. The Black Mist, as I had written it, was an excellent scenario… but it was more like an outline for that scenario than a fully-fledged adventure.

What was missing? All the little things that make the job DMing simple and smooth instead of laborsome and time-consuming.

So I fixed it.

With an expanded word count and 5+ years of design experience, there were lots of things that could be done. A more complete range of stat blocks was included, so that the DM would always have the appropriate stats ready and at their fingertips. The entire adventure was reorganized in a way that made it easy to use and reference the material on-the-fly. Full-color handouts were added. New rules, spells, and necromantic magic items were thrown into the mix. This took a lot more effort than the simple revision I had originally planned, but it was worth it.

The result is an exciting and terrifying journey through the horrors of a magical plague. The Black Mist can be used as an adventure in its own right, but at it’s heart it’s an event that can be used in many different ways: It can be placed center stage. It can be used as a backdrop. It can be used as a history. It can be used as a hook to even grander stories.

Without more ado, I give you…

MINI-ADVENTURE 2: THE BLACK MIST

PLAGUE AND NECROMANCY…

When a city is wracked by a magical plague that cannot be cured, the PCs are trapped inside the walls by the seal of quarantine. Will they hide from the threat of death? Or stand tall against the city’s terror?

But whatever course they choose, nothing is ever as simple as it appears. Death breeds death, and before this mist-born plague has passed the entire city will be placed in a crucible of riot and fire and necromancy…

The Black Mist features…

Full-Color Handouts
Rules for Plague
Diseased Undead
Necromantic Magic Items
New Spells
Advanced Rules for Crowds and Mobs
Advanced Rules for Large Fires

Buy PDF – Print Edition

64 pages – Handouts

The Black Mist, designed for four characters of 3rd to 5th level, can be used as an exciting adventure by itself or as the dramatic backdrop for any city-based campaign!

Another minor update: With the announcement of 4th Edition, I’ve decided to set aside further development work on the advanced Diplomacy rules I was working on. I may, or may not, return to these when I pick up development on Rule Supplement 4: Advanced Skills. If I do, they’ll be posted here.

For the moment, however, I have gathered together the design notes and the final fix for the Diplomacy skill in the Advanced Rules section of the Creations page. As with my the other Advanced Rules, these rules have been placed under the OGL.

Enjoy!

Sorry for the long break between updates. I was going to get some stuff posted last week, but then the news about the 4th Edition of D&D hit and put me into something of a scramble. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times previously, Dream Machine Productions is getting ready to launch its third line of products with Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat. With the eminent release of 4th Edition only eight months away, however, the implementation of this product line becomes murkier: How much commercial interest is there really going to be in rule supplements to a game system that’s going to be defunct in less than a year?

So I’ve spent the last week considering my options, rearranging our productions schedule, and intermittently panicking. The final result of all this is that Dream Machine Productions will release the rule supplements on which meaningful design work has already taken place. This will definitely include:

Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat
Rule Supplement 2: Flight
Rule Supplement 3: Vehicles

It may also include Rule Supplement 4: Advanced Skills and (even more tentatively) Rule Supplement 5: Advanced Training. This will depend on how the first three perform in terms of sales. In any case, the release schedule for all of these supplements will be accelerated, with the last volume being released no later than October or November.

This means that other products will be pushed back in the development and release schedule. But I don’t see that I have much choice: Either this material gets released fast to capitalize on the remaining market for 3rd Edition crunch material or I write off all the work I’ve already done on it.

For those with zero interest in the Rule Supplements, don’t worry: Our release schedule over the next couple of months will still include City Supplements and Adventure Supplements.

After 4th Edition has been released, it’s my current intention to update the existing City Supplements and Adventure Supplements to the new edition. At the very least, this will mean free conversion notes posted to the Dream Machine website. What will happen with the Rule Supplements will be an open question and will depend largely on what 4th Edition looks like.

THOUGHTS ON 4th EDITION

So what are my thoughts on 4th Edition? Thoroughly mixed.

For example, here’s a teaser video that Wizards of the Coast posted to YouTube. The only message I take away from that video is that WotC’s Research & Development is of the opinion that they’ve spent the last 30 years making the game so complex that nobody wants to use the grapple rules any more, and with 4th Edition they’re going to make the rules even MORE complex, but it’ll be okay because everyone will have a laptop to help them run and play the game.

On the other hand, in various press briefings and the like, WotC has said that they plan to make the game “easier to use” and that the Saga Edition of Star Wars is a “major preview” of what they’re planning for 4th Edition.

So which direction are they actually going?

Well, it’s important to understand that WotC has now established a lengthy track record of lying through its teeth when it comes to the release and content of new editions. Back in February of this year, for example, they claimed that they had no plans for a new edition of D&D and that the earliest we could conceivably see it would be 2009. Well, now it turns out that they — even as they were saying that — they’d already been in development for 4th Edition for more than a year. And, before that, there were the false claims that the 3.5 revision of the rules would not be incompatible with the 3.0 rules.

The lie about the nature of the 3.5 revision contributed significantly to the d20 collapse: Third party producers continued their development cycles and local retailers continued stocking their products in good faith that they would not be rendered obsolete with the release of 3.5, only to be sand-bagged when the actual rules came out and did precisely that. I, personally, built a business plan which took into consideration WotC’s February statement regarding the non-imminent release of 4th Edition (and I’m sure many other third-party publishers did the same).

My point with all this is that, frankly, I’m not really going to expect anything in particular until we actually see the books in May of next year. Anything that’s said before then may not, in fact, have any resemblance to what actually happens.

With that being said, I already have two reasons to be skeptical of 4th Edition.

First, there’s Bill Slavicsek. Bill Slavicsek is now the head of RPG R&D at WotC. In my opinion, Slavicsek has never displayed anything but mediocrity in his game designs: He’s responsible for the infamously bad 5th Edition of Paranoia and clumsy non-entity of Alternity. He not only screwed up the original D20 version of Star Wars, but was responsible — as a result — for setting a very unfortunate precedent for how D20 games should be designed. He negated the primary benefit of using the same rule system (familiarity with the rules) by filling his design with a plethora of minor changes which didn’t accomplish much of anything except being different.

Slavicsek, to his credit, does try to pioneer innovative game mechanics. Take Torg, for example. But the result is often clumsy and in need of refinement, and I suspect this is because Slavicsek is not particularly good at figuring out what the actual consequences of a given mechanic are when he designs it. For example, he championed the VP/WP system. The VP/WP system not only increases bookkeeping and rule complexity to achieve a mediocre result, but the result it achieves (increased lethality) is actually exactly the opposite of what Slavicsek and his design team claimed that it achieved (cinematic battles).

So, I don’t have high expectations from any game that Slavicsek is responsible for.

On the other hand, Mike Mearls is the head developer for 4th Edition. Mearls is responsible for a slew of high quality D20 supplements and the generally excellent Iron Heroes.

Unfortunately, since Mearls started working at WotC, there are plenty of indications that he’s swallowed the Kool-Aid. Which leads to the other big strike 4th Edition has against it, in my opinion…

DESIGN ETHOS AT WIZARDS

The current design ethos which seems to be holding sway at WotC is radically out-of-step with my own tastes in game design and gameplay.

Take, for example, an article Mearls wrote on the rust monster as part of the “Design & Development” column at WotC’s website. Here we have a rust monster given an ability which corrodes, warps, and cracks metallic equipment and weapons. 10 minutes later, though, the metallic equipment and weapons are A-OK. They just repair themselves without any explanation.

This design is an example of the “per encounter” and “no long-term consequences, because long-term consequences aren’t fun” schools of thought which the WotC design department seem to be mired in at the moment. But the result is a cartoony game system: My characters no longer live in a world I can believe in. They live in a cartoony reality where actions don’t have long-term consequences and the grid-lines of the holodeck are clearly visible.

Another example from Mearls would be his blog post about skills from late last year, to which I have already written a response. I’m not saying that this skill system is one we’re likely to see in 4th Edition, but I am saying that it shows that Mearls’ design sense has radically altered since he designed Iron Heroes and The Book of Iron Might.

Let’s take a look at a recent quote from David Noonan: “Powers unique to the new monster are often better than spell-like abilities. At first glance, this principle seems counterintuitive. Isn’t it easier and more elegant to give a monster a tried-and-true power from the Player’s Handbook? On the surface, sure. But watch how it works at the table. The DM sees the spell-like entry, grabs a Player’s Handbook, flips through it to find the relevant spell, reads the relevant spell, decides whether to use it, then resumes the action. See where I’m going with this? That’s a far more cumbersome process than reading a specific monster ability that’s already in the stat block. Heck, the physical placement of one more open rulebook is a hassle for a lot of DMs.”

This quote is interesting to me, because it shows the type of wrong-headed logic skew that I see prevalent in a lot of the WotC design decisions of late. Basically the thought process here goes something like this:

STEP 1: A spell-like ability looks easy to use, since it’s a tried-and-true power from the PHB. But, in practice, the DM actually has to open up the PHB to see how the spell works. So instead of having all the information at their fingertips, they have to open up another book. And if the creature has multiple spell-like abilities, you’ve actually got to look at multiple page references in the PHB to figure out what the creature’s range of abilities is.

So far, so good. This is all absolutely true.

STEP 2: It would be easier if we put all the relevant information in the monster’s stat block, so that it’s right at the DM’s fingertips.

Right again. Some people might complain about “wasted space”, but I would love the utility of it. I have a similar reaction whenever I see “undead traits” in the stat block. You mean I have to flip back-and-forth through my copy of the MM to keep on top of this creature? It took me many months of DMing 3rd Edition before my undead stopped losing random abilities from that “undead traits” entry.

STEP 3: So they shouldn’t have spell-like abilities. Every creature should have a completely unique mechanic designed just for it.

… what the hell? How did you go skewing suddenly off to the side like that?

The problem is that Noonan is fallaciously conflating two types of utility:

(1) Spell-like abilities make it easier to use the rules because, as your familiarity with the rules for various spells grow, you will gain greater and greater mastery over a larger and larger swath of the ruleset.

(2) Putting all the information you need to run a creature in the creature’s stat block makes it easier to use the creature because all the information you need is immediately accessible (without needing to look in multiple places, which also ties up books you may need to be using to reference other information).

There’s no need to jettison utility #1 in order to achieve utility #2. The correct solution is to use spell-like abilities and list the information you need regarding the spell-like ability in the creature’s stat block.

(Which is not to say that a creature should never have a unique ability. There is no spell to model a hydra’s many-heads, for example. The point here isn’t to stifle creativity. The point is to avoid reinventing the wheel every time you want to build a car.)

We actually saw a similar logic-skew in Mearls’ treatment of the rust monster:

STEP 1: Rust monsters feature a save-or-die attack (and often you don’t even get a save). The only difference is that it targets equipment instead of characters. Save-or-die effects aren’t fun, because they simplify the tactical complexity of the game down to a crap shoot.

This is absolutely correct.

STEP 2: The rust monster should be able to attack, corrode, and destroy equipment (because that’s its schtick and it’s a memorable one) but it shouldn’t be a save-or-die effect.

Yup.

STEP 3: So we should keep the save-or-die attack, but make the armor miraculously un-rust and de-corrode after 10 minutes.

… and there they go again, skewing off towards the cliff’s edge.

(The correct answer here, by the way, is: “The rust monster will use the existing mechanics for attacking items. Because we want the rust monster’s ability to be frightening and unusual, we will allow it to bypass hardness. The damage will also be inflicted on metallic items used to attack the rust monster. Magic items are affected, but may make a saving throw to avoid the damage.”)

Let’s take another quote form Noonan: “Our underlying reason was pretty simple: We wanted our presentation of monsters to reflect how they’re actually used in D&D gameplay. A typical monster has a lifespan of five rounds. That means it basically does five things, ever, period, the end. (Forgive me if that seems like a totally obvious insight.) Too often, we designers want to give our intelligent, high-level monsters a bunch of spell-like abilities—if not a bunch of actual spellcaster levels. Giving a monster detect thoughts or telekinesis, for example, makes us feel like those monsters are magically in the minds of their minions and are making objects float across the room all the time. But they aren’t! Until the moment they interact with the PCs, they’re in a state of stasis. And five rounds later, they’re done.”

This is yet another logic skew at work. They correctly identified a problem (“when combat and non-combat abilities are mixed together in the stat block, it’s difficult to quickly find the combat abilities on-the-fly”) and simultaneously came up with two solutions:

1. We will have a new stat block that separates the combat information from the non-combat information. This will make it much easier to use the stat block during combat, and if it adds a little extra time outside of combat (when time pressure isn’t so severe) that’s OK. (You can see the logic behind this solution discussed, quite correctly, by James Wyatt in another column.)

2. We will get rid of all the non-combat abilities a monster has, since they’ll never have a chance to use them given their expected lifespan of 5 rounds.

Now, ignoring all the obvious problems in the second design philosophy, why do you even need to implement such a “solution” when you’ve already got solution #1 in place?

(In case the design problems in the second “solution” aren’t obvious, here’s another quote from David Noonan: “Unless the shaedling queen is sitting on a pile of eggs, it doesn’t matter how the shaedlings reproduce. The players will never ask, and the characters will never need to know.” What Noonan is ignoring there is that the reason the PCs might be encountering the shaedling queen in the first place is the pile of eggs.

If D&D were simply a skirmish game, Noonan would be right: You’d set up your miniatures and fight. And the reasons behind the fight would never become important. But D&D isn’t a skirmish game — it’s a roleplaying game. And it’s often the abilities that a creature has outside of combat which create the scenario. And not just the scenario which leads to combat with that particular creature, but scenarios which can lead to many different and interesting combats. Noonan, for example, dismisses the importance of detect thoughts allowing a demon to magically penetrate the minds of its minions. But it’s that very ability which may explain why the demon has all of these minions for the PCs to fight; which explains why the demon is able to blackmail the city councillor that the PCs are trying to help; and which allows the demon to turn the PCs’ closest friend into a traitor.

And, even more broadly, the assumption that detect thoughts will never be used when the PCs are around assumes that the PCs will never do anything with an NPC except try to hack their heads off.

One is forced to wonder how much the design team is playing D&D and how much the design team is playing the D&D Miniatures game.)

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

All of this is not to say that I’m rejecting 4th Edition out of hand. There are certainly lots of interesting things coming out of the WotC design shop at the moment, too. And, like I say, there’s really no way to tell what 4th Edition will actually be like until we actually have it in our hands.

For example, I was really excited to read about racial levels — at every level you would gain not only class abilities, but racial abilties (making your choice of race more flavorful and meaningful). That sounds like a really nifty mechanic. Of course, later in that same essay they explain that they’ve backed a way off on that idea.

One of the things I would love to see fixed in 4th Edition is the amount of prep time for the DM. But it’s fairly clear that this is not going to actually be addressed in a direct fashion. For example, look at what they’re planning for classes: A multitude of decision points. This is great for the player, but it makes it ever more difficult to stat up NPCs quickly and on-the-fly for the DM.

People complained about having to spend skill points, but that’s always been easy to kludge: Pick a number of class skills equal to your class skill points per level + your Intelligence bonus and max out the ranks. I don’t see any way to kludge this type of level-by-level decision tree, however. You’re going to have to actually go through and make those decisions every time you stat up an NPC.

I suspect that everything WotC has to say about “easier to prep” and “easier to use” really means “look at the nifty online tools you have to pay a monthly subscription for”. Is that cynical? Maybe. And there seems to be a good chance these online tools won’t require the same subscription fee as D&D Insider access will. But, even then, this just brings me back around to my original point:

A game so complex I need to bring my laptop along to prep it and run it?

That doesn’t sound appealing to me at all.