Biggus Geekus: Fixing D&D
I really wish I could have made this episode live, as I would have had quite a bit to say. Though, I still would have wanted to blog about it in order to make my thoughts easier to find and reference, so I guess if there’s a silver lining here it’s that I ultimately saved some time.
Around the 12 minute mark Bruce Lombardo imparts essentially the same wisdom I always do whenever Randy–or anyone else, really–brings up the subject of making his own game, and that is:
Make the game you want to play.
I would add to this that you should do so, so long as there isn’t already a game that does what you want, or at least close enough that any deviations or issues don’t bother you much and/or aren’t easily resolved. It doesn’t matter if it’s “just another d20 game”, though ideally it will be unique enough to justify its own existence.
A caveat is if your primary motivators are attention and money: in this case don’t bother pinching out yet another vapidware trash game, as there’s already a considerable amount of shallow rehashes that don’t add anything meaningful or even interesting to the existing heap of literary excrement.
They then talk for a bit about the idea of weaving characters into the overarching story. This sounds like something Randy initially desired but is no longer interested, stating that it's "kinda storygamey". It is, which also means that as with every other storygame mechanic it’s bad, because while I can live with certain abstractions like hit points, storygame mechanics are somehow more overt reminders that you’re merely playing a game.
For example, in Dungeon World if you attack an enemy and roll too low, which means a total of 9 or less on a 2d6+modifier roll, then you deal damage but the GM makes something happen, which can be wholly unrelated to anything to do with your attack. Typically it means that the enemy does something to you, which isn’t that bad but if you get a 6 or less then anything is on the table: the enemy can retaliate, reinforcements can show up, something can go awry with the environment, etc.
Similarly, if you’re traveling and roll a 9 or less this can mean that you get lost, but it can also mean that your wagon breaks, your horse explodes, your food spoils, and/or the weather gets worse, none of which have anything to do with avoiding getting lost. Now, I don’t have a problem with any of these events occurring, just not as a result of in the context of a d20 game failing your Survival check.
While not necessarily a storygame mechanic, I should also point out that for all Dungeon World prattles on about “following the fiction”, you can get torn to shreds by a dragon but fully heal up by merely wrapping your character in bandages, which sounds dumber than 5E’s full heal on a rest. I guess sometimes "the fiction" is Looney Tunes logic.
Fortunately, he now says that he's a fan of just bringing a character and seeing what happens, and this is the best way to play for a variety of reasons:
First, it doesn't burden the DM with having to read numerous pages of bad fanfic that he then has to mix together and squeeze something resembling a story out of. When I played in a campaign that was run by two DMs, they wanted us to write up elaborate backstories, which was the first and only time I’ve done so. It was an…interesting idea, but they had to somehow tie everything together, and it was clear that the only reason this or that event happened was because it was in our background and given that we wrote it there had to be some sort of payoff.
It would be like obtaining a holy avenger +5, not because you happened to find one, or learned about the location of one and went on a quest to retrieve it yourself, but because you stated in your background that your father possessed one and intended for you to inherit it all along.
Second, you avoid wasting a bunch of time if the character dies, the player grows tired of playing it, the player can no longer play at all, or the campaign fizzles out.
Going back to the co-DM campaign, one of the players at one point wanted to stop playing his character, and both DMs had to convince him to keep trudging along because they put in all this time and effort weaving his backstory elements into the overarching campaign narrative. They also admitted that from levels 1-3, they were pulling their punches and fudging every roll possible to ensure that no one died (which cleared up several strange occurrences, like how we killed an ogre at 2nd-level that just kept “missing” us).
Of course, the campaign eventually fizzled out–in large part due to, surprising no one, DM burn out–so all of that unnecessary work on both sides of the screen still ended up getting wasted, anyway.
Randy states that his bad guys will still have "plots", but that he won't worry about where the characters fit in. This is also good because you avoid having to structure the events as if it were a story. Even better, it makes the game world feel more realistic and alive, because events happen beyond the characters’ collective bubbles: they can’t count on something not going wrong just because they aren’t present, or even opted to ignore it or get around to it "later".
Ultimately it sounds like Randy is just going to play and run his games normally, which is great to hear. More people should just play the game normally, instead of trying to distort it into something it was never intended to be, not that so-called storygames are any better at doing what they’re allegedly intended for, and frankly, if you want to tell a story, just write a novel.
Around 15 minutes and they bring up an anecdote about how when they were kids they talked about fixing Dungeons & Dragons. Given everything wrong with the game–which varies by edition–it’s a lofty goal to be sure, but still doable.
Someone makes a comment about "fixing" 5E by playing Pathfinder, but given that 3rd Edition came out many years before that I don't see the point purchasing and playing a woke rehash.
Randy says that there is no version of Dungeons & Dragons that does what he wants, which I think should be the primary impetus to create your own game, again, so long as there is no other roleplaying game that already does what you want, or does it well and/or closely enough that it's not that much of a bother.
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
Agreed, which is why I think you should only create your own game if no other games are good or close enough. Dungeons & Dragons clearly wasn’t for us.
Around 19 minutes Randy begins to go through his desired criteria (ie, wanting it to run smoothly), but then quickly deviates into the supposed necessity of strategy in 3rd Edition.
In 3rd Edition not only do you not have to consider strategy, you shouldn't, especially when it comes to heated and chaotic combat where time doesn't really stand still and monsters cannot telepathically relay their plans to each other to execute an unnaturally coordinated attack. This is one of many issues I had with the pretentious, overhyped, and deeply flawed strategy guide that is Monsters Know What They’re Doing, as it treats the game like a turned-based video game where everyone can take all the time in the world to plan and execute the most optimized stratagems possible, even though combat would be too chaotic and unpredictable.
And you don't have to be mechanically sound, either. Barely anyone I played with even had the books, and if we didn't know a rule and didn't want to waste time trying to figure it out, would just bullshit something or change it because many rules in 3E were so badly written--ie, grapple--that you wouldn't ever use it as written, anyway, so it was better to houserule it, or come up with your own rules to resolve that sort of thing.
I find the comment about older editions encouraging homebrew material moreso than new ones…strange, because 3E had a bunch of rules and guidelines on creating your own stuff. It might have been more complex, assuming you bothered adhering rigidly to the rules (we sure didn’t), but people made their own monsters, classes, races, adventures, etc all the time. Heck, back in the day when WotC at least somewhat gave a fuck, on the was a specific part of their official forum specifically for posting homebrew content.
While Randy would opt to play BECMI if he were forced to play one version of D&D forever, even though I mostly grew up on 2E I'd still go with 3rd Edition because it's more intuitive and makes more sense than everything else. Sure, there are still many parts that don't make sense, like pseudo-Vancian magic, but it's also not burdened with other nonsense mechanics like XP for gold and training to level up.
At 27 minutes Ryan David states that he hates hit points. I don't think they are necessary, but also that they are very simple and can make quite a bit of sense, it depends on implementation. That said, we did divise a Wound Level mechanic that held up in playtesting, though this would require a major overhaul of spells and monsters so I’m not sure if we’re going to use it. In any case, we are reducing the about of WP everything has, removing levels and Hit Dice from monsters, and are overhauling the healing mechanic so that it makes more sense.
Full Metal Dragon chimes in, stating that, "ugh, there are like over a hundred OSR games that use B/X and 1E as their foundation". Maybe, but I'm guessing most are vapidware trash games that either don't meaningfully or interestingly transform the game, or are something like Old School Essentials and merely a repackaged, existing game. In any case, who cares? None of them do what I want, and it sounds like none of them are good enough for Joe and Randy.
If Randy wants to take a stab at something that is at least conceptually similar, I say go for it: make the game you want to play. Even if no one else likes it, they can keep playing the game(s) that they were playing beforehand.
I find the criticism about too many actions in 3E strange because most of them you rarely used, if ever. Really the only thing you needed to know was that you could move and attack or cast a spell, or move twice. Sometimes you might use a potion mid-combat, if you had one and the cleric either was out of spells or couldn't get to you, but I can't think of a single time I had to, say, fiddle with a lever during a combat encounter.
On a side note, in Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition we are removing the move+action/move+move action economy. You’ll get to do (mostly) one thing, though you can Charge (move+attack but your Defense is penalized), and if you just move you move up to double your Speed (which can be increased with some Talents and Athletics Skill Perks).
One way to maintain the flexibility of 3rd Edition but cut down on complexity and the "build" mentality is to remove feats and rework them into talents, like we did in Dungeons & Delvers. Each class has its own set of Talents, and while there might be trees you don't have to worry about various criteria such as minimum level and modifiers, such as attack bonus, skills, saves, etc. Plus, most “trees” have at most like 3-4 Talents in total.
This also keeps things simpler: playing a fighter? Just look in the fighter section. No need to reference the fighter section and then some other section for additional or “general” character options. The exceptions were the barbarian and paladin classes, which could pick Talents from the fighter class since we didn’t want to reprint those in multiple places. But it's still better than having every class have to flip to one or more other sections.
On the topic of round-by-round initiative, you can do this quickly by having both sides roll a d20 (ignore Dexterity mods and whatever), highest side goes first in whatever order desired (ie, how the DM typically acts anyway in most editions). Only takes a few seconds each time.
Oooh at 43 minutes we get a sneak peak at what they are cooking up. My thoughts:
Combat: As mentioned before, side-based initiative isn't as realistic but considerably faster. It also makes it easier to re-roll round-by-round if desired.
Sacrifice: I'm biased towards this because in Dungeons & Delvers fighters can take a Bodyguard Talent, which lets you move up to your Speed and intercept and attack. I think this would also work as a Reaction, though restrict it to an adjacent target. Also, instead of attack hitting you, you become the target so an attack roll must be rolled against you. This avoids a character being auto-struck, even if the attack would have missed anyway.
I do like this as a general action, though, but would restructure it like this:
Shield Other (Reaction) When an adjacent creature or object is targeted by an attack, before any dice are rolled the character can interpose himself between the attacker and the intended target. He becomes the new target, with the attack resolved against him as normal. This action provokes Opportunity Attacks, except from the attacking creature.
At the GM's discretion, this Action can also be used on a creature or object that would be subjected to a save (so long as he believes that the character could feasibly protect the intended target). If the effect targets a single creature (such as a line of acid or electrical discharge), the character becomes the new target. If it affects an area (such as from a fireflask or dragon's breath), then the shielded creature's save is Assisted.
In either case, until the end of the character's next turn, he suffers a -1 Impairment Penalty.
(The Impairment Penalty is something we created for Delvers 2E. It’s basically -1 to all d20 rolls. Many conditions impose those, as does fatigue. This was easier than repeating that this or that condition imposes a -1 penalty to your rolls. We just describe the penalty in one place, have everything else reference it, and also clarify that is stacks.)
And then the fighter's Bodyguard Talent would let him move up to his Speed, and possibly even gain some sort of bonus, such as reducing the damage a bit or even ignoring the Impairment Penalty entirely.
Now, before they get to the Magic System part, Randy talks about readied actions. He isn't opposed to them, which is good because you need readied actions for some things to make sense. Otherwise you'd get situations where a character is watching a door, and is prepared to loose an arrow. If readied actions aren't a thing, then a monster could feasibly emerge from the door and book it 60 feet across the room while the character just stands there, unable to act because it's "not his turn".
You also need Opportunity Attacks for similar reasons, such as avoiding absurd situations where a fighter just stands there and lets an orc run directly past him to go clobber the wizard. Though, in Dungeons & Delvers we clarify that you cannot take an Opportunity Attack while already engaged with an opponent, as your attention is focused elsewhere. This avoids similarly absurd situations where a fighter can be fighting someone, but then his opponent just lets him start attacking other nearby creatures.
Magic System: We also use a spell point system for every spellcasting class, though the type of point and how they are spent and replenished can vary. For wizards it’s Willpower, the total of which is modified by INT, though in 2nd Edition we're having it modified by Wisdom since that stat makes more sense. Wisdom also modifies spell saves and such.
The issue with spell point systems as implemented in Dungeons & Dragons isn't really too many points but many of the lower level spells don’t scale well and eventually become useless. In a pseudo-Vancian system you have x slots per level, and while you aren’t required to use the lower end stuff you’re for some reason unable to add them together to cast higher level stuff. However, in a spell point system, while you’ll still have useless spells you won’t be further burdened with useless slots, meaning that you'll have access to more higher level options than otherwise expected.
The solution is to set it up so that spells can scale and be useful at any level, and avoid having spells like burning hands, and then some other spell that is like burning hands but strictly better. Instead, burning hands is you're "fire-cone spell", find a way to have its area of effect and damage increased when desired, and make it the only fire spell that affects a cone. Then have another spell that is a fire spell that affects a sphere (ie, fireball), make it the only spell that does that, and adjust its spell point cost accordingly.
This has the added advantage of also avoiding spell bloat: you don't need burning hands (level 1), burnier hands (level 3), and burniest hands (level 5). Even better, since burning hands can now scale up as high as you want, spell points permitting, you won’t use it for a bit and then figuratively or perhaps literally relegate it to your spellbook dust bin.
Pro-tip for fixing the sorcerer: give it a severely limited and thematic list of spells to choose from. It can still have more spell points, but if the wizard has way more options, gets to accumulate them more quickly, and/or has potential access to stuff like summoning monsters and teleportation (which a sorcerer would not have unless it was thematically appropriate), it's not such an easy choice.
If the default Invisibility spells has a slight outline (which I would change to a Predator-like shimmer), I would include an option to spend more points or something to remove that. You could even take the Dungeons & Delvers approach, where before you can pick up Invisibility you first have to pick the Illusionist Talent (opens access to illusion spells in general), and then the Veil Talent (lets you use Intelligence instead of Dexterity on Stealth checks). So, it's a three Talent investment.
An hour in and the magic concept they are talking about is basically how it works in Dungeons & Delvers, which they should really look at for some suggestions. The only difference is that in our game spell point costs are largely randomized, so your burning hands spell costs 1d4 points each time, and you can also expend hit points to cast spells when you run out of Willpower (both mechanics make wizard magic unpredictable and dangerous).
Something I had thought of but didn't include in 1E due to a lack of space and playtesting were places of power, which would be used to explain why a wizard's tower (ie, a massive staff) might have persistent magical effects: such places would essentially grant the wizard x number of points, which could be invested in various magical effects, such as magically locked doors that open at his command, various traps, alarms, scrying, ambulatory furniture, control nearby weather, illusions, and being able to teleport from one room to another (or from one tower to another).
Joe states that there might be a spell or two that auto-scales in some way. I wouldn't bother, just have the character spend more spell points. Alternatively, you can force the wizard to make some sort of spellcasting check, and exceeding the DC gives him free enhancements (and a failure could require that he spends more spell points). I also wouldn't bother with a piddling little magic missile: give it some oomph, even if it needs more points to scale up.
For limiting spells, in Dungeons & Delvers we restrict total damage dice by your wizard level, which is partially done since it also features multiclassing and we didn't want wizard/fighters being able to throw out more damaging spells in a single casting than a full on wizard (especially since the wizard/fighter could dip into his HP in order to enhance spells). Some spells restrict other factors by level, such as picking individual targets, the levels of intended targets, duration, area of effect, etc.
You can also add in Talents or something like that, that lets you combine other classes to determine your total effective wizard level. For example, the Arcane Trickster rogue Talent lets you combine your wizard and rogue levels to determine your effective wizard level.
Spellcasters should be equal from an overall power perspective, just not equal in spell points, spell options, hit points, capabilities, etc. For example, in Dungeons & Delvers wizards gain access to the most spell options of any class, accumulate spells very quickly, and can also research new spells and utilize magic focuses. Sorcerers have more spell points and hit points, which also lets them cast more spells, but their spell acquisition is slower and retrained to a thematic list (ie, red dragon sorcerers can't teleport and summon monsters).
I wouldn't restrict other spellcasters to minimal effects. Just give players a reason to choose the wizard and you're good.
Something to consider with specific types of wounds is that you'll need to provide at least one option for each damage type, and likely more to avoid every injury from a piercing or bladed weapon being a "sucking chest wound".
As for triggering wounds, I would base it on an attack roll exceeding the target's Defense or Target Number or whatever. The reason to avoid a hit point threshold is that hit point damage means different things depending on the target's nature and total number of HP. For example, dealing 3 damage to a level 1 fighter with 10 HP is a pretty nasty injury, while dealing 3 damage to a level 10 fighter with something like 60 is far less severe.
Additionally, you can give fighters Talents or abilities that make them more likely to inflict injuries, such as by reducing the threshold by 1 or more points. They could also enhance them, such as by making the sucking chest wound instead impose a -4 penalty.
A simpler method could be how we handled venoms in Dungeons & Delvers. Initially we were going to create lists of symptoms with associated penalties, including tables that determined which impacted your character, but in the end settled on a general, somewhat abstracted "Sickened" penalty that collectively represents these symptoms interfering with your character.
You could do something similar, here, with "wounds" imposing a penalty to actions and perhaps Speed. Maybe beating the target's Defense by 5 points is an arrow lodged in the chest, which is -1, but beating it by 10 increases the wound penalty to -2, and so one and so forth. The only thing to consider is how or if you want to represent a target bleeding out.
In our game exceeding the target's Defense gives you a cumulative +1 bonus to damage, so that rewards lucky rolls. For crits I think we're just doing maximum damage, and a nat 20 plus other mods will likely result in bonus damage and avoid the target's DR from armor, unless it has steadfast DR. I hadn't considered setting it up so that you crit if you roll really well, but I also think that could suck for other classes that won't have the same attack bonus as a fighter.
At the least, reducing crits to a max damage roll doesn't make them super swingy, anyway.
At an hour and thirteen Omenowl asks if spell points would affect range, damage, duration, etc. Joe's response is that you'd spend points to affect a single parameter, which is also how it works in Dungeons & Delvers: you suffer the base Drain to cast the spell, and can also select other options such as increased damage, expanded area of effect, extended range, etc. Here's an example from 2nd Edition:
In regards to Randy's concerns about players finding exploits, for the Evard's Black Tentacles example you'd first figure out how much damage it can affect, if any. Maybe it only grabs creatures and restrains them. So you find a similar spell like Hold Person, which effectively paralyzes a creature. Web is also a area-effect good comparison.
Anyway, how I would structure it is something like this:
You cast the spell, maybe for 1d4 spell points, conjuring a tentacle within, say, 30 feet. This tentacle then tries to grab an adjacent creature. For each additional 1d4 spell points you spend, you can conjure another tentacle within 30 feet, which can try to grab another creature. The limit here would be that you cannot conjure and maintain more than one tentacle per wizard level. If a tentacle misses, you can direct it to try again if the creature is still within range. You can direct as many tentacles as desired during your turn.
Now, you could set it up so that during your turn, if a tentacle has a creature grabbed you can command it to squeeze the target, forcing a save to avoid taking damage.
Further ways to enhance the spell would be to let you conjure tentacles within 60 feet, and if you spend even more spell points the tentacles could act on their own, letting you do something else instead of having to command them during your turn. Another enhancement could also increase their length, so they can grab creatures further away, up the squeeze damage, the tentacle's attack bonus to grab something, and/or the DC required to escape.
Again they talk about making some parameters level dependant, and again I say don't bother. In Delvers 2E Duration is now set to something like 1 minute, 10 minutes, an hour, etc, and you can spend more points to increase it.
(Something to consider is giving the wizard access to exceptional focuses, similar to a fighter's masterwork weapons, which lets it get around these limitations or do other things.)
Randy wants spellcasters to get better at casting spells in some way at higher levels without simply expending more spell points. One way to handle this is to give each spell some sort of boost for every, say, five wizard levels. So a 1st-level a fireball might deal 3d6 damage, and you can boost it via spell points, but at 5th-level it's range, area of effect, and damage all gets enhanced in some way, but this does add complexity to most every spell.
In Dungeons & Delvers wizards get a Magic Bonus at 1st-level. While in 1st Edition this just ups the save DC, in 2nd Edition it also determines how many Drain dice you can re-roll with each casting, and different staffs let you do more. Additionally, there are Talents that let you reclaim some expended energy, and use these dice re-rolls for other things, such as damage. Some spells also have Spell Secrets, which modify what a spell does and/or can do.
Combine this all and you have higher level wizards being much better at casting spells than lower level ones, without having any of the parameters automatically scale.
Randy is intrigued by the idea of no spell levels. They aren't necessary at all, just adjust what the spell does and its cost. In Dungeons & Delvers you can get Meteor Swarm at like level 2 or 3, it just doesn't do very much at all. As you level up you can deal more damage with it, and also have the spell points to make it really destructive. But at lower levels it'll still be effective.
Having race and sex-based caps on stats is something we also considered, though where we would have imposed a penalty Joe's method is to instead restrict your options based on what you've rolled. This is an interesting idea though I'm curious what the male caps would be.
The race and class restrictions are stupid because they don't make any sense. If you want to restrict a race from a class, then there needs to be some actual, in-game reason. You can't say that dwarves can't be clerics when there are dwarven gods. You can't say that a dwarf can't be a rogue when there's no physical or cognitive limitation preventing a dwarf from learning to hide and steal.
The difference in race should be the race's inherent abilities, though you don't have to stick to old style Dungeons & Dragons. In Dungeons & Delvers, we changed kobolds to be more like Germanic spirits, with their own unique abilities. Something we worked on in 1st Edition but are doing in 2nd Edition is giving races a "racial class" option, which lets you further develop a character's racial abilities and powers.
For example, a mine kobold can take "mine kobold" levels, granting it the ability to move through stone walls, instantly create tunnels or cause them to collapses, and exhale toxic gases. Dwarves can gain more HP, recover HP more quickly, gain inherent damage reduction, and work metal and stone with their bare hands.
I disagree with Omenowl's comment about races needing their own classes. Adventurer, Conquerer, King was mentioned but when I look at, say, the dwarven vaultguard it just sounds like a fighter with some different flavor. Unless an entire class hinges on some sort of specific racial ability, I don't see the purpose. I would much rather give races abilities or talents that play off of existing classes, such as an elf being able to combine "elf levels" with wizard or something to that effect.
An easy way to avoid a "hodge-podge" of different races is to require players to roll on a table to determine what race or races they can play as, and you can create tables for different regions (or have regions provide modifiers to the default table). In our games this means the party is mostly human, which is fine because humans have very useful and flexible abilities, with the occasional dwarf or elf in the mix. In our current campaign it's the "craziest", with the party consisting of a human, dwarf, and kobold.
Back to class restrictions by race, there again needs to be an in-game reason. Elves can't be clerics? Then if elves have gods I want to know why. Dwarves can't be rogues? Again, what is stopping them from learning those necessary skills? These need to be addressed, otherwise it'll be just as stupid as it was in older editions.
For Randy's example, that perhaps elves are too frivolous to become paladins...except with a player at the helm he could roleplay the elf in such a way that he could become a paladin. Also, if he can't "focus enough" to be a paladin, how can he become a wizard? How can he even focus long enough to finish an adventure? I think these restrictions are best explained from a more physical level as opposed to mental or social, such as dwarves being unable to be spellcasters due to an inherent magical resistance that prevents them from harnessing and channeling mana or whatever.
If you want to give the humans something, give them useful racial traits. In Dungeons & Delvers they get a bonus Skill Points and an extra Talent, which are incredibly flexible and useful, and one reason why, even we weren't using the race tables, players preferred humans anyway. Sure, if you want to be super tough you could pick a dwarf, but their features are more specialized against poisons and stonework and such, not always suited for your character concept, class, whatever. With human you can pick something that will more likely be directly useful.
Randy expresses a desire to have the game be somewhat divided into "tiers", with low-level being more grimy, mid-level heroic, and high-level "domain play". I'm not a fan of this, and never have been, because it comes across as gamey and arbitrary. Why not permit domain play at any level? If the characters can obtain a castle at 1st-level, what's stopping the shift to domain play? Are all lords, including NPCs, high-level characters? And if so, why?
Also, what's stopping you from doing heroic things at low-level? If anything, a lack of hit point security and various means of magical healing and even resurrecrtion would make your character's exploits even more heroic!
Randy mentions that even though spells go up to 9th-level, but you never seem to get to use them. This is also something we easily solved in Dungeons & Delvers: make those normally high level spells and even abilities attainable at lower levels. Again, Meteor Swarm can be picked up at 4th-level, tops. Fireball you can get at 1st-level if you go human (extra Talent). By 7th- or maybe 9th-level, monks can get a teleporting lightning attack, though it uses up a bunch of Ki.
You make these awesome things available sooner, but give them room to grow by spending extra points, and then at least the baseline versions will get used much more often.
On a similar note, everything Randy envisions doing beyond 14th-level, I can envision doing at any level. Also, it makes no sense that you only get followers at 9th-level. This could feasibly happen at any level, depending on your character's exploits. So, I wouldn't arbitrarily try and divide these opportunities and themes by level. Just include rules, guidelines, tables, etc, and let them happen organically.
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