Losing Players

It's never easy to lose a player, much less two of them. My group is getting smaller by two members who are moving on to a job opportunity in another state. Tonight is the last game we'll be playing together (for the foreseeable future) before they begin their road trip next week. Their absence will be noted and felt going forward, and we'll all miss their participation and contributions. Both of them have been excellent additions to our game, not to mention friends of the highest caliber.

That said, the group--a 5th edition D&D party--will be losing its barbarian and bard, leaving behind a cleric, paladin, thief, and warlock to contend with all the threats and nasties they'll face in the future. I'm mulling over the idea of keeping the group at four players, or trying to recruit one more. I suppose I'll talk to everyone about it and see where they stand once the dust settles.

I've had plenty of groups explode in my time gaming, but I can definitely feel this one more acutely because we're all friends and we've known each other (and gamed together) for over two years now.

Anyway, that's about it. I've got a game to prep for, so I'd better stop with the whining.

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty-Six - Game I'd Like to See a New/Improved Edition of...

Darker than Dark Sun.

This is a pretty easy topic, and I bet you're probably thinking, "He wants a new edition of Cyberpunk." While that may be true, I'm perfectly happy with 2020 the way it is (was?). If a new edition of my favorite dark future RPG comes out, I'll pick it up. I may even play it. But it's not what's at the forefront of my mind when I think about RPGs that I want to see a new edition for.

That distinction belongs to Midnight, a campaign setting produced by Fantasy Flight Games, and which I was privileged enough to contribute to. You see, after I discovered Dark Sun in the mid-nineties, I didn't think there was another fantasy setting that could draw me in. I was certain of it. Who wants to play your run of the mill dwarves, elves, and halflings, anyway? Athas is all I needed.

Then, some time after D&D 3.0 came out, I discovered Midnight. It was a campaign setting that threw everything for a loop. People would ask me what it was like and I'd generally answer, "Imagine you're playing in Middle Earth, only Sauron (or Morgoth) wins." Dark Sun was a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where the events that shaped the world happened long ago in a time that no one remembered... except for the Dragon-Kings.

In Midnight, the war against the Shadow has been lost within living memory. The formerly free peoples of the world are either enslaved or backed into the corners of their own homelands. Peace is a fleeting dream, and the future a horrible nightmare. To rail against the enemy is to invite your own death, as well as that of your family. It's a dark setting, even darker than Athas.

A map of Eredane, the land of the Midnight campaign setting.

A second edition of Midnight was released that brought everything together under the 3.5 banner. It had a lot of great improvements, a wealth of information, and as much fluff and crunch as anyone would want, maybe even more. After 4E was released, there wasn't much more to be done. In 2009, FFG seemingly put the nail in Midnight's proverbial coffin. I still ran games of Midnight because it was still awesome and I hadn't jumped on the 4E bandwagon. To me, it was like running a game of Red Dawn, except the Russians were orcs and the AKs were vardatches.

Now that 5th edition D&D is out and I've had a chance to read the rules, roll up some characters, and will be running a game of it soon, I feel that it would be a great system for running Midnight. That said, even an original system--perhaps even one akin to Edge of the Empire's rules--would be pretty cool, too. I'm not picky. I just want my Midnight to come back and see support. Maybe they'll even ask me to write for it again.

Well... a man can dream, anyway.

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty - Will Still Play in Twenty Years' Time...

I'm pretty sure the game I'll still be playing in twenty years is going to be some edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Given the propensity for new editions, they'll probably be on 8th or 9th edition by then, too. It's not that D&D is my favorite game, though I have enjoyed playing specific editions for years on end. It's mostly because D&D has been around for forty years, and I'm pretty sure it'll still be around in 2034 (barring acts of God, global thermonuclear war, or zombie apocalypse).

I have a fairly extensive gaming library at my disposal. Assuming I don't leave the hobby (highly unlikely) or get a job overseas and sell the majority of my collection (somewhat more likely, though still day-dreamy pie-in-the-sky), I'll be running at least some of these games as the years pass by. I'm sure I'll be playing Star Wars in one incarnation or another, or Cyberpunk 2020, or (old) World of Darkness.

This also makes me think back to the games I was running twenty years ago. Cyberpunk was probably the big one for me back then. I used to love me some horror gaming with the Chill RPG (and I'm still tempted to dust that one off from time to time, too).

Note that yesterday I got my copy of the 5th edition Player's Handbook, and it's looking pretty slick. It retains much of its third edition charm, so I may very well be on board. I'm going to be trying it out soon enough, and only then will I be completely sure if I'm upgrading. More on that, later.

I Hate Chaotic Neutral

Just sayin'.

It's the alignment of "whatever I want to do," and I suppose it works to a certain extent. But it's one of those alignments that everyone really likes for some reason, and I really think that reason is that it's all about random amorality.

Neutral is a similar boat, but that's somewhat more manageable given that it's all about balance. If you consistently play a neutral character too far to the left or right, then you're not really playing a true neutral character.

The odd thing is, I don't have much to complain about in the games I'm running (well, I suppose I do, but I won't get into it). But going over first level characters, I'm always wary when I see "CN" scribbled in for alignment. Most of the time, Chaotic Neutral is played like Chaotic Evil Lite.

Anyway. I think it's more challenging for players (including myself) to take some kind of moral stand. Even if it's "Evil," it's still something. And while Evil PCs tend to lead to lots of inter-party strife, they can also add an element of fun insofar as character interaction is concerned. They don't need to be mindless killers.

Anyway. I'm done. Oh, and Happy New Year.

Games I Wanna Play, Part 1: D&D

I have a pretty big gaming library. Come to think of it, "pretty big" might be an understatement. Used to be (before I had kids and financial responsibilities) I'd buy any game that caught my fancy. If it looked even mildly interesting, I'd pick it up, read it in the bathroom, and then stick it on my bookshelf. Nowadays I'm not so free with my cash. Impulse buys are a thing of the past. My money goes towards things like rent, utilities, gasoline, and food.

So despite the fact that I've really only kept up with two or three titles since I "grew up," I still possess an embarrassing collection of RPGs, many of which I've never actually played. But this rumination isn't solely about my regrets as to these long-ignored titles, but rather to the games I'd love to run or play, whether I've done so in the past or not. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day, and even if the time available to me was unlimited, I doubt I'd get a stable of players with just as much free time.

Dungeons & Dragons (3.5)
I get this hankering every so often to play or run a good, old-fashioned D&D game. I can't quite bring myself to run AD&D 2nd Edition... or any prior edition, for that matter. I've come to like the options available in 3.5 too much. It may still be class-based nonsense, but it's a lot more flexible than previous editions.

I have a stack of Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures, many of them geared for low- to mid-level characters, that I'd love to dust off for a short-term campaign or two. Sometimes the "kick in the door, kill the orcs, take their stuff" adventure is fun... and they can always lead to meatier, less formulaic adventures later on.

I've also been tempted to pull out some of the old settings I've always loved. Midnight is one of them. It's sort of like "Red Dawn," but instead of having the Russians and Cubans occupying your lands, it's Morgoth and the orcs. And they've been on your soil for a hundred years. A very grim setting, but there are a lot of really awesome options.

My all-time favorite setting for D&D is Dark Sun. Outside of Athas.org, there was never and official 3.5 update for Dark Sun. Well... I take it back. There were some Dungeon and Dragon articles back in the day, and they weren't bad (outside of their take on half-giants, IIRC). And the Athas.org stuff is usable, too. If I ever did it, I'd need to take a long look at the available source material and decided which version(s) to use.

For more traditional fantasy D&D, it'd have to be either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. A long while back, before I moved to VA and started working for EA, I was running the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure, but I'd set it in Forgotten Realms. I've often thought about reviving that game with a new cast of characters. It could be fun.

Even though I contributed to Green Ronin's Thieves' World campaign setting, I've never run a game of TW (outside of a couple of sessions at conventions). Between the core setting book and the other supplements, it is such an awesome product line. It's really too bad it didn't sell better, but I guess TW fans who also play 3.5 are nothing if not a niche audience. If you like TW and you don't have the books, I suggest you check out Green Ronin's online store. Last I looked, the gift set was discounted quite a bit.

That about covers it for D&D. There are some other settings that would be nice to mess around with; the short-lived Dawnforge, for one. When I was just getting into the industry, I'd been contracted to write part of the Dawnforge monster supplement, prior to the product being scrapped due to poor sales of the core books. It's too bad; Dawnforge would've been an interesting product line. Who knows how it would've turned out if WotC had chosen it instead of Eberron?

There are others I could touch on: Green Ronin's Testament (Biblical!), Eternal Rome (Romans!), and Skull & Bones (Pirates!); Mongoose's version of Lone Wolf (which is a bit too rules light as written); and Nyambe (deepest darkest Africa).

So... that's about it for D&D. Next time I'm going to cover some other RPGs I'm hankering to try out, be they pulp, science fiction, horror, or even non-D&D fantasy. See you then!