Campaign Sourcebook I Like - Neverwinter Campaign Setting for D&D 4E

The Neverwinter Campaign Setting (Wizards of the Coast, by Matt Sernett, Ari Marmell, Erik Scott de Bie) is a D&D 4th Edition Forgotten Realms campaign sourcebook designed to handle Heroic Tier (levels 1-10) characters. The northern city of Neverwinter was devastated by a magically-caused volcanic eruption 28 years ago, and the campaign centers around the various factions trying to dominate and rebuild the city, or take advantage of its descent into chaos and ruin.

The sourcebook presents a wide variety of allies and foes, including human and demi-human occupiers, aboleths, demon worshippers, drow, and barbarians.  By picking and choosing which plot lines to emphasize, the campaign could be very political and urban, or focused on ruin-based dungeon crawling, or even wilder expeditions into the wilderness and other planes.  In my opinion, this book contains at least two or three times more material then could be used in a single campaign. However, that is not to say that the campaign is handed to you on a silver platter.  Rather, the sourcebook gives you information on the various factions, including their leaders, goals, typical activities and which monster stats to use.  The game master will need to put a fair amount of work into building the campaign, but a very useful skeleton is provided here.

For me, the idea to steal from this book is the use of character themes to help define the campaign and tie the characters into the various factions of the city. (Character themes are a D&D 4E option that combines a background story with a few mechanical features such as skill bonuses or additional character powers.)  The book provides 13 themes that players can choose from. The “Neverwinter Noble” is a scion of the cities noble families, and his very existence embroils him in the political maneuverings of the city.  The “Devil’s Pawn” is marked by the Lords of Hell, and his adventures in Neverwinter will assuredly be watched by the cult of Asmodeus operating in the city.

With a party of 4-6 characters, each with an appropriate theme, the game master has a great tool to pick and choose which of the many plots offered by the book to focus on.  If no one chooses the “Devil’s Pawn” theme, then the game master can feel free to de-emphasize or completely ignore the cult of Asmodeus operating in the city.  If someone chooses the Dead Rat Deserter, then the game master knows to give greater emphasis to the were-rat thief’s guild setting up operations in the city.  While some plots will always be present, by altering the secondary plots the game master can more easily weave a unique campaign for his players.

In my opinion, the Neverwinter Campaign Setting sourcebook is a very good product if you are looking for a campaign that centers around a single city.  While designed for D&D 4E, the sourcebook contains more fluff than mechanics, and I could easily see running the campaign with any other edition of D&D, or another fantasy system such as Runequest or Savage Worlds.

A book I like - PLAY UNSAFE by Graham Walmsley

PLAY UNSAFE by Graham Walmsley, purchased as a pdf thru Lulu.com:  An 82 page essay on how to apply the lessons of improv theatre to your role playing games.  The book is divided up into five main sections, though the exact separation of ideas is a bit inexact.  To be fair, I like and agree with many of the ideas presented, and therefore review them positively.  Someone who prefers less “story telling” and more “gamism” may be less impressed.

Play discusses an improv style of play achieved through such ideas as “stop working so hard”, “don’t plan ahead”,  “hold ideas lightly” and “be obvious”.  Many of these ideas are aimed more at the GM, but are also interesting for players to think about as well.  Embracing this section would create a more free-flowing, reactive style of GMing for anyone who could pull it off, and I would enjoy playing in this sort of game.

Build centers on the improv idea that you should never negate what another player says, but rather should respond with “Yes, and...” (though as a GM, I think an equally strong answer is “No, but...”).  This section discusses the log-jam that happens when players and GMs keep negating each others ideas (The example used is the classic “castle with a single way in”.  The players must guess the riddle at the gate to get in, and no amount of searching will discover another way in, the walls cannot be climbed, the guards cannot be bluffed, etc).  I think this section and the section before would make excellent reading for any RPG player looking to improve their game (and by improve I mean improve in the narrative, story telling vein of gaming, if such is your thing).

Status is the third section of the book, and in my opinion it does not fit very well.  It gives tips on how to play high status and low status characters, and how to make changes in status into good stories elements, but it does not really seem to fit the “improv” theme of the rest of the book.  However, it does have some interesting ideas on its own.

Tell Stories is the next chapter, and delves into techniques for the Game Master or Story Teller.  It gives advice of how to set up routines in the story and how to reinforce them and break them; how to stage a scene, then “tilt” it to create conflict or tension; and a number of other issues.  My favorite reminder is to “deliver on your promises”.  If you describe a town as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” then the PCs better encounter some scum and villainy when they explore the place.

The last section is Work Together and covers the ideas of playing so that the other players enjoy themselves, losing gracefully, and trusting the other players.  This would be a good section to discuss out loud with a group of players having problems, to see if any of the advice here would help solve those problems.

All told, an interesting book with many specific and general kernels of advice worth heeding, even if I do disagree with some of his suggestions (screw with each other, and let your guard down both sit uneasily with me).  For certain styles of games and gamers, the advice in here is wonderful, useful and somewhat obvious once stated.

I give this book a solid B, and would recommend it to anyone interested in improv style gaming.

Game Mechanics That I Hate

Really, just a filler post.  This was originally written for inclusion in Alarums & Excursions #388 back in December 2007 or January 2008.  However, the opinions are still valid, so I have done some minor updates and will launch it into the blogosphere.

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Currently, the only RPGing I have been able to engage in is D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder.  I am not a D20 hater, nor am I a D20 fanatic... I think it’s a fine system, sometimes a bit too crunchy and tactical, but certainly robust enough to hang a game on.  I prefer D20 derivatives such as True 20 or Mutants and Masterminds to straight D&D.  Games I like but have not played recently include Savage Worlds, Runequest,  Tristat/Big Eyes Small Mouth, Feng Shui, Over The Edge, Unknown Armies, PDQ and Spirit of the Century/FATE.  I seem to be seeking two completely opposite games – one a robust, detail oriented, crunchy system with lots of tactical and character advancement rules, and the other a fast, rules light, detail light system that can be run on the fly with minimal references and red tape.

Some things I hate in a game as far as mechanics go:

1) Having to reference charts to determine the results of rolls (this kills games like TORG, Mayfair’s DC HEROES and ROLE MASTER for me).  I don’t mind an occasional “look up a critical hit” effect, but when you have to look up a chart to determine weapon damage or how far you jumped... that kills the fun for me.

2) Games where the combat sequence forces you to declare actions as a group, then roll dice, then determine what happens (GODLIKE, WILD TALENTS and REIGN all do this, as does WYRD IS BOND and a few other cool games).  To me, this not only slows down the combat round, but when you have four or five highly competent heroes fighting several equally competent villains, plus a dozen or so mooks, by the time everyone declares who can remember what anyone said?

3) In-elegance. <is that even a word?>  Games where sometimes you roll high and sometimes you roll low, and sometimes you roll percentile, and sometimes you don’t.... I’m not saying that everything has to be tied to one die mechanic, but the fewer exceptions the better for me.  This is one of my primary reasons for disliking AD&D in any edition, and I think that the Kenzer's Hackmaster and Aces & Eights games both suffer from the same flaws.

There are probably a few other things that really bother me in a game, but these are the main mechanic flaws that will lead me not to play a game.  How about you?