d20 Despot
Obviously the biggest piece of RPG news this year is the founding of the popular blog d20 Despot, which took the internet world by storm with its first post on April 1st (incidentally, that'll mean that I'll have to whip up some fun stuff every April Fools Day). The blog seeks to provide interesting perspectives on various aspects of the RPG experience, and especially to freely provide open game content for GMs and players. Wow, whoever runs the blog must be a really cool and handsome guy!
Anyways, so far this year I have posted 11 homebrewed monsters for your D&D game (specifically, made with Pathfinder rules) from giant starfish and undead whales to magnetic oozes and the mighty Krampus. Earlier this month I posted a complete PFRPG-compatible adventure called Trials of the Mad Mage designed to help introduce new characters to the world of tabletop role-playing. I also posted an account of the time I ran that very adventure for a group of new players. In the same vein, I posted a much longer (11 part) account of a campaign that I ran this summer, taking the players from level 2 to 8.
Oh, also I got a sweet logo courtesy of Kent Hamilton Concepts:
So what can you expect from d20 despot in the coming year? Well, definitely more monsters. Including at least one more whale or sea monster, because I'm into that. More monster templates like the stout skeleton and the bloated zombie. Also expect more homebrewed non-monster things along the lines of the magnetism spells I created. And because I am living very close to the Royal Armouries in Leeds - a constant source of inspiration - I would expect there will be more entries in my ongoing series on fixing the weapons table. I have a couple homebrewed PC classes in the works for next year and a re-working of the Changeling PC race as well.
Also, if everything goes well, you may start to see some of my Monster Monday entries professionally illustrated!
The Dungeon Master Experience
In March of this year, Chris Perkins wrote the last post of his blog, The Dungeon Master Experience. He used this blog to talk about the various aspects of DMing a campaign, using examples and anecdotes from the 4th edition campaigns he was running at the time. I really like Chris Perkins - Wizards of the Coast's "DM to the Stars," perhaps most famous for DMing the Acquisitions Incorporated podcasts and live D&D games at PAX. I haven't gotten around to reading all the posts yet, but I have found it entertaining, insightful, and informative. He has a very different DMing style than I do, so I don't agree with everything he writes, but that's one of the most helpful things about it - looking at how other DMs and gaming groups operate is essential to prevent creative stagnation.
Actually, I only learned about the blog after seeing its final post. That was the last straw that got me thinking, Hey, maybe I should start my own blog. Anyways, I recommend giving it a read.
5th Edition
Fifth Edition (I reeeeally hope they don't keep calling it "D&D Next" upon release) looks to be shaping up well. I don't know if it will rip me completely away from Pathfinder, but it will definitely have a place on my shelf, unlike 4th Ed. There are, of course, some things not to like about it. Predictably, it will have dragon-blooded kobolds and Dragonborn. The Everything-Is-Dragons plague seems to be alive and well in 5th Ed., sadly. But in any case, I am excited for its release next year.
New Pathfinder Releases
I'm afraid I am not all up-to-date on my Pathfinder books for the year, because I'm on a bit of a book-buying hiatus during my year in England. The only thing I can tell you about Bestiary 4 and Mythic Adventures is that I will buy them when I get back to the States.
The Advanced Race Guide is an excellent product. Aside from being filled to the brim with options for customizing all the various races, it also serves as an extremely useful compilation of all the playable PC races, from awesome ones like humans, tengu, and ifrits, to overpowered munchkin races like suli and strix, to special-snowflake Mary Sue races like Dhampir and Kitsune. Wow, does this mean I'm racist?
I've had a chance to take a look at Ultimate Campaign and I liked what I saw for the most part. There are a lot of rules for kingdom building adapted from the Kingmaker adventure path, and plenty of other stuff. I can't really make a firm judgment on the quality of the book until I actually give it a thorough reading.
I don't usually go for the smaller-format Pathfinder releases, like the Player Companions and whatnot, but I did get the Animal Archive and I like it a lot. I can't give it full marks because it was lacking in really interesting animal magic items or feats, but there is plenty there for GMs and players. I really like the Carnivalist rogue archetype that gets a familiar that can do rogue things (Aladdin and Apu, anyone?), though I think it might be a little under-powered. There are also a lot of neat animals, like the otter and the platypus, available as animal companions and familiars (I expect they are also in Bestiary 4).
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
I may have mentioned before how Baldur's Gate was my first introduction to D&D, and how formative of an experience it was for me. Like many children playing this game, however, I never got around to finishing it. So when Baldur's Gate: Enchanced Edition came out on Steam, I eagerly snatched it up and started playing. I was impressed by how much they had expanded the character creation, adding in the half-orc race and several sub-races, plus many new classes and class options based on the 2nd Edition "class kits." I was less impressed with the new characters they added, or rather, the quests that surround them. For some reason, the new characters' main quests all involve in-game cutscenes and completely voice-acted dialogue. The only other quest line in the game that has that is the main quest. This is jarring, and gives the new characters' quests a sense of overblown importance. Plus, the voice acting is terrible. I'm not sure how I feel about rumours that Beamdog will make Baldur's Gate 3 if the other two Enhanced Editions go well. But on the whole, the game remains excellent, with most of the new additions really enhancing the game experience.
As I never finished Baldur's Gate, I never even started Baldur's Gate II. In later years, I was prevented from doing so because I lost one of the 87 CD-Roms that lets you install and play the game. So I was very sad to head that Beamdog was suffering some sort of legal hang-up that prevented them from releasing Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. I was equally happy this November to see that those contractual issues had been solved and that Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is now available on Steam. I cannot wait to play it (but I will wait, because I still haven't finished Baldur's Gate). I am looking forward to the Enhanced Editions of Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment.
Speaking of old computer games that I never finished, yet were formative in my early RPG experience:
Exile III
When my family got our first colour computer (an hp laptop), my mom bought a CD called 250 Best Arcade Games. None of them were actually arcade games, nor were they even complete games. It was one of those CDs that enterprising businessmen make by downloading a bunch of free game demos and burning them to a disc. One of the few games that actually functioned on Windows NT was a little RPG called Exile III: Ruined World. You play as a 6-man adventuring party that you can create yourself (yes!) composed of humans, cat-people called Nephilim, and lizard-people called Slithzerikai. There are no classes, but you chose how to allocate point to character creation, giving the characters access to weapon proficiencies, mage and priest spells, and various skills. You start out in an underground land called Exile, where the surface world Empire sent all its undesirables and dissidents (instead of just killing them?). Your task is to explore the surface world and find out if it is safe for the Exiles to return to the surface, but you find the surface world is under attack from a strange threat: slimes.
I really enjoyed playing this game as a kid. Today, I really appreciate the world that it takes place in. They avoided using the classic D&D races, they have a classless character creation system, and the main threat is not hordes of orcs or zombies, but mindless oozes.
I never played Exile I and II, nor did I try out the Avernum series (remakes of the Exile games with updated graphics that lose some of the 2D sprite charm of the originals), but Exile III holds a very special place in my heart.
Why am I talking about this game in my 2013 retrospective? Well, in July of this year, Spiderweb Software made Exile III and all of the Exile games free to download on their website. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get them to work on Windows XP and later, and they plain won't function at all on a 64-bit operating system. Sigh. I'll have to look around for some sort of emulator or something. Or hope for an Enhanced Edition.
Personal
This year I ran two campaigns. I wrapped up one from the previous year - an Arabian Nights sort of campaign and the very first one that I ever brought to a conclusion. And the second one you may have seen chronicled on this very blog. I also ran the aforementioned playtest of Trials of the Mad Mage. Only once this year did I roll my dice on the other side of the screen: in a one-off adventure at my sister's house, with my brother-in-law as GM. We players succeeded in throwing a wrench in the GM's plans by spotting and shooting the bad guy out of his hiding spot in a tree, then wrestling and hog-tying a dangerous Golden Gouger in a hilariously anticlimactic final battle.
I have been working on a number of small homebrew projects that will hopefully be coming to this blog in the next year. I have also been working on three larger projects. Two of them are campaign settings, one of which I can see becoming very big indeed. The final one is a completely new RPG ruleset. In that one, I am having a lot of fun casting aside the (at times) stifling mechanics of D&D and coming up with something new and exciting. I'm sure I'll have to talk about all of these things at some point in the coming year here at d20 Despot.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-your 2013 d20 despot
No comments:
Post a Comment