Island Crashers!

Last month Brent Newhall threw up an impromptu Fantasy RPG design contest. There was only about two weeks to come up with an RPG that fit a list of parameters. He was tired of the same-old same-old in Fantasy RPGs. He wanted something without the standard tropes of Sword and Sorcery so the contest was to make a game without things that you'd expect to see: No swords, no dungeons, no guns, no boring monsters, no women in revealing outfits, no barbarians, no Vancian magic, and no elves/dwarfs/hobbits.

"Island" by Elbardo

Back when I first started the blog I mused about a mash-up between Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea settings. I never did anything with it before, but the more I thought about it the more it fit Brent's requirements. I had to lean it more toward Earthsea than I originally planned, since swords and the scantily clad are a big part of the Barsoom identity, but it would fit naturally.

With my setting decided and ten days left in the contest I cleared a few days to sit down and write. I have a scattered collection of hand-written notes for an RPG system that emphasizes fast, pulpy play that I've mentioned here before. I took that scattered mess, read through it, and then I wrote.

The 3D System is designed to facilitate the fast-paced pulpy play that I love. There is room to be creative as a player. Combat is usually decisive and brutal while having the robust quality needed to for the fight scene in The Phoenix on the Sword. Magic is freeform, making wizards almost as dangerous to partner with as they are to face if they overreach their ability.

"Ruins - Environment Sketch" by Jorge Jacinto

The character generation system is integrated with the system. If there is a weakness, this is it. Anyone who wants to run in their own home brew setting will need to adapt the character generation tables to fit their dream setting or rewrite them entirely. I plan to make at least one fairly generic version of the game that can be used for different settings but the implied setting is going to be baked in regardless. What could be a bug for some I see as a feature. In the process of rolling up a character a player should get a feel for the world that created that character. The character is a natural product of the setting and fits into it.

"Overgrown Temple" by Jorge Jacinto

The Island generator is also not as complete as I would like. I'll finish fleshing it out after the contest, but for now it has a lot of repetition and does not go to the 216 unique encounter entries that I originally conceived when I started it. There was not enough time to fill it out the way I wanted within the contest time but it will allow a GM to create a viable point-crawl on an island in 15-20 minutes.

"Turtle Island" by Khirono

The setting for Island Crashers is an Archipelago that is slowly sinking into the sea. The need for new land to settle sends explorers out into the blue for new island wildernesses to tame. Too bad they aren't the only ones interested.

I basically jumped on the contest to force myself to get the game into a playable form that I could share. I don't know how Brent will be choosing the winner or even when. The draft for Island Crashers is rough, but usable and the island generator should get you a couple of decent islands for your group. There are some subtle hooks to draw your party into intrigues in the Archipelago proper, but there's no reason why you can't start with something like that.

If you do take the time to read through the rules I'd like to hear what you think about it. If you actually give it a try, I'd love to hear how it went and what your thoughts are.

Thanks!

"Fantasy Island" by Peter Lee

#3DSystem

Religious Magic in RPGs

This post was inspired in part by the contest Zak S is running over at his blog: Playing D&D With Pornstars. The Thought Eater Tournament is a series of match-ups of two writers per topic to encourage better, deeper writing about RPG topics. The first one is about religion in fantasy role playing games and is something I've thought about a lot myself. More specifically, I've thought about the source of religious magic in RPGs while designing my own fantasy RPG.

We don't need to have actual gods to have religious magic in a game. D&D and other fantasy games have a long history of making gods characters in the setting. Certainly there was plenty of inspiration for meddling gods from the stories of Greek and Norse myth. Some of the fantasy stories that inspired the original Dungeons and Dragons had extra-dimensional beings locked in a war between the forces of law and chaos that spilled over into the fantasy world. It was often expressed as a kind of dimensional cold war fought through proxies who were champions and spellcasters given extra powers by their extraplanar backers. It also mixed in the crusaders, saints and biblical stories. D&D, especially the older editions, calls back to the legends of the middle ages and invokes the Arthurian tales of chivalry and knighthood.

With such material informing the setting it's no surprise you end up with gods granting spells to clerics and special powers given to paladins. For me it's never quite sat right though.  The idea of gods showing up, messing about with human affairs and having the odd affair of their own to create demigods has a certain quality to it, but it's more like the brat pack era of Hollywood than a group coming together over a common belief. Fantasy religions are less about faith and devotion to the idea than they are hierarchies with a supreme being at the top. They are more like corporations with clearly defined goals based on the godly portfolio coming down from head office.

With freelancers like adventuring player characters it's often a kind of contract. There's give and take with the godlike creature. Some characters who deal with extra-dimensional beings, performing sacrifices, other services and advancing their patron's goals in exchange for powers are called Warlocks/Witches/Cultists and others are called Paladins/Clerics even though at the core they are doing the same thing.

There's no reason why the existence of a god needs to be settled to account for religious magic. In a world where magic exists, reality is already disrupted. It can be bent and even broken with the correct pressure. In such a world a large enough group could form a kind of psychic pressure that could be used to disrupt reality in the form of miracles and other faith-based abilities.

A large enough group of people believing in an idea gives that idea power. The more people that believe, the more power that builds behind the idea. This power might manifest randomly in miracles and other unexplained phenomena. They could be mysterious like burning bushes, epic like earthquakes and thunder, or ridiculous like the visage of the god appearing in common food items like toast. Where it becomes interesting and gameable is when there are individuals who can tap into this power provided by the belief of faithful. People who can shape the will of others into particular effects like healing or even a plague.

These conduits of the faith would be as rare or common as is needed by the setting. They could be found leading a faith, drawing on the power of the faithful to perform miracles and gather more to their religion through these demonstrations of godly "intervention." They could even begin as charlatans who are suddenly surprised by their ability to perform real miracles thanks to the faith of their flock, despite having no belief of their own. The idea that a religious leader could fake it until they make it has all kinds of possibilities. They could also be individuals operating outside of a hierarchy as chosen champions, druids leading their communities, or even hermits serving in remote shrines.

It's the champions of the faith that are the most likely to become adventuring characters and played. Powerful missionaries carrying their message into the wide world or passionate believers living as examples in the dark times. Certainly a player character might want to build their own religion or religious faction of an established church. Depending on the campaign your group is into, the intrigue and challenge of creating a new religious order might provide the best adventure hooks.

When the characters get their power in the form of spells from some deity or demon prince there's not much incentive for them to do much in the way of religious boosting. If the character's power is tied to the faith of those following the same religion there is a good reason to spread the good word.

In game terms it could break down to numbers and distance. The larger the group the more power that would be available to an individual able to tap into it. How much of that power they could access would depend on the talent and experience of a particular character though. There would need to be some critical mass to get the minimum required to perform the most basic of miracles, the cantrip in D&D for example. It could be a number with some kind of meaning or completely arbitrary. Each level of power could require a different number of believers, growing exponentially from a single village to the population of a country or empire.

The distance would come into play as the champion moved away from the centre of religious belief. As they move farther away from the faithful the harder it is to tap into the psychic power provided by the belief of the masses. This could be overcome by setting up missions and chapels as outposts of the faith to form a kind of psychic corridor back to the power base of the faithful.

The idea that the smaller groups of worshippers could connect to the larger faith and carry the signal forward to the conduit of that faith like radio relay towers. If war or change disrupted the reach of the original religious organization the new churches could provide their own faith for the character to draw on. Regardless, there's an incentive for them to convert new followers and set up churches wherever they go. Also giving them something on which to spend any treasure they happen to find. The rest of the party might be keen to chip in since the one character's ability to access the power of faith affects their fortunes as well. The amount of available power would drop by one level for a particular distance so the faith of a theocracy might be felt and used on the far side of a continent or even ocean while a village of believers might only provide useful power out to a day's ride away.

As a factor of belief the faith magic becomes more dependant on religion and the religious instead of the terms of a contract with a god-like creature. This changes the game and creates some new incentives for players of religious characters to play their role as proponents of their religion or religious order. These are the reasons I chose this direction for the system and setting I'm working on for my own game but I don't see why the concept couldn't be used for any other fantasy RPG. It's just a matter of tweaking the setting a little.

In this model of using the common belief of the group as a source of magic rather than a god or group of gods gives the GM quite a bit of latitude in defining the place of gods in the game world. Their existence could be a question that is not answered, which is my favourite but certainly not the best. They could be remote and uncaring like Conan's Crom with the worship of lesser beings passing unnoticed. They might be like Terry Prachett's Small Gods that draw power from the devotion of mortals and are even created by it. They could need the worship to allow them power in the world. Perhaps with enough believers they could even enter it. That makes the Cthulhu cults a little more dangerous if they can frighten or bribe or fool enough people into devoting themselves to the great old one it might show up!

NOTE: This is an updated version of the original blog post. The original had an unnecessary definition of faith that people were stumbling over. I'd rather people engage the premise than debate my use of an overly simplistic definition, so I took it out.

The Replacement D&D - Part the First! or How to 5e Your LotFP

My Tuesday night Google+ Hangout group is awesome. A better collection of gamers you will not find anywhere on the internet. I count myself lucky to be able to call them my friends and to play with these great people on a regular basis.

We got together originally because our GM wanted to introduce a friend in another state from him to RPGs and put the word out for a group willing to be patient with a new player. The gang we have now are that player (now a fantastic tabletop gamer in her own right), the ones that responded plus a couple more fun people we picked up over the last couple of years. We all have busy lives though and sometimes one or two of us can't make it. It's no problem for the group, even a break of a month doesn't disrupt our rhythm with each other. It never seems like that long once we are talking to each other again. I'm busy too so I always find something to fill the three hours when someone has to cancel at the last minute, but it would be nice to have an RPG plan B.

Currently we are playing the new version of D&D but we've played everything from Rifts to Fate thanks to our gamer ADD. I'm enjoying 5th edition D&D and I'm still excited about exploring the possibilities presented by the new rules.

What I need is to prepare something I can run on the fly with whomever shows up when we get a last minute cancellation. I don't need to be super prepared when it comes to the actual adventure part. That can be built as we go or selected from some of the awesome I have on my shelf. My main problem is I'm not a big fan of the assumed setting for the game so I'd want to make changes ahead of time so there's something I can share with my players during character generation instead of reinventing the game while we decide what we are doing. This and one other coming post are that something.

5e D&D in the Early Modern Era or How to 5e LotFP!

I love the adventures coming out of James Raggi's team of mad geniuses over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I have a pile of them on my shelf and cancelled games from our regular campaign seem like the perfect excuse to use them. I think 5e can work well with those adventures but I need to make a handful of changes to keep the weird fantasy/horror vibe that LotFP does so well.

The first thing is encumbrance. LotFP adventures are all about tough choices and one of those choices are what you can afford to carry and what you need to leave behind. The encumbrance system is a streamlined way of making those choices a feature of play. If you are unaware of the beautiful simplicity of these encumbrance rules, you can download the free rules (with no art) here (but you should buy the version with art!) and turn to page 38. In Lamentations anyone can wear any armour but arcane spellcasters are limited by encumbrance so they can't cast if they are carrying a lot of gear and wearing armour. They can do one or the other. I think I'll just stick with the class restrictions as they are for now but I might change it later we find we prefer it the other way. I would add a feat that allows the PC to carry an extra five items before becoming encumbered like the dwarf class in LotFP. Cultures that are nomadic would be used to moving and functioning normally with extra gear. The player would need to justify it with the PC background.

The next thing is the playable races. There are no elves or hobbits running around in earth history. There are plenty of forgotten spaces hiding terrible things that go bump in the night, but no dragonborn walking around. The only player character race available is human. The players can choose the plus one bonus down all stats or take the two plus ones, the extra skill and the feat. I'm easy. Likewise, the 5e convention of roll four drop the lowest for rolling stats is fine as well since combat is so lethal in 5e. High rolls won't save anyone.

The alignment system is the LotFP duality of Law and Chaos. Almost everyone is Neutral since taking on an alignment means the PC is taking a side in the celestial struggle.

Not all the classes will work as they are with the setting. A few teaks here and there will need to be made.

Barbarian:

This one is fine the way it is but it is important to note that there are no barbarians from London or Hapsburg. These characters come from the frontiers and the fringes. An argument could be made for the highland warriors of Scotland as barbarians and I'd allow that because a maniac in a kilt and a claymore is a wonderful thing. Outside of that one exception, barbarians come from outside of civilized Europe. 

Bard:

They can stay pretty much as they are. They would be need to be careful when using magic as anyone seeing magic cast might turn them in as a witch and have them burned at the stake but that's about it.

Cleric:

No clerics. The LotFP cleric is more like the D&D paladin and I want to keep that feeling in the system. That's not to say the party won't run into NPC cultists who function like clerics from time to time though.

Druid:

The druids are going to have problems operating in early modern Europe without getting burned at the stake as witches and heretics. They would essentially be cults that have remained hidden from Christian Inquisitors and Witch-hunters over the centuries since the Romans killed most of them off. A player could make an argument for shamans from different lands having all the same abilities as druids. 

As far as alignment goes, Druids of the Circle of the Land are Lawful because they are preoccupied with the balance and embody the predicable order of nature while the Circle of the Moon Druids are Chaotic as they protect the wilds from civilization and embody the chaos of nature's changes. 

Fighter:

No change. They load black-powder firearms one round faster than other classes. The Eldritch Knight is only available if the PC finds a book of magic he/she can read or a teacher.

Monk:

No changes to the monk class, but they are likely a long way from home. Some of their abilities could get them burned at the stake at higher levels. 

Paladin:

This class is more of a Solomon Kane type than a shining knight in the early modern era.  These are wild zealots operating outside of the church hierarchy who are tolerated based on the need for them. Troublemakers could end up burned at the stake for heresy on a bad day. Like LotFP Clerics, Paladins are Lawful.

Ranger:

These mystical hunters are also far from home. Europeans had a bad habit of collecting people like souvenirs and bringing them back to Europe. Most died of disease they had no immunity for or culture shock. The ones that survived no longer had a real place in the world they came from even if they could return. Some of them become Rangers. Other rangers are frontiers-people from the New World who have learned from the cultures they mixed with. 

Rogue:

No change. Rogues are rogues. The Arcane Trickster is only available if the PC finds a book of magic he/she can read or a teacher. 

Sorcerer:

The Draconic Bloodline Origin is not available, Sorcerers are from the Wild Magic origin exclusively. Magic is dangerous and feared so the Sorcerer PC must be careful not to be consumed by their own magic or end up burned at the stake. With their magic coming from a direct connection to the very stuff of chaos, sorcerers are Chaotic.

Warlock:

Obviously the Warlock is in great danger of being burned at the stake after trading their soul for power. The dark nature of their spells should be played up in descriptions. The Fiendish and Old One Otherworldly Patrons are better fits for the setting than the Archfey. I'd probably not allow any Archfey Otherworldly Patrons unless the player came up with a great background story to fit it into the setting. This class is already so LotFP. No surprise here, dark pacts with otherworldly beings makes a PC Chaotic.

Wizard:

Remove all the damage-causing cantrips from the wizard spell list. Give them access to simple weapons and light armour. All the levelled spells that use up slots are all still available. This brings the wizards more in line with the Magic User class in LotFP. The Wizard has access to so many different spells this shouldn't stop them from being useful. It might keep them from being burned alive a bit longer too. Still, working with magic makes wizards Chaotic.

Firearms: 

Pistols are simple weapons (take the place of a light crossbow), an Arquebus or Musket are both martial weapons (take the place of the heavy crossbow). The damage is still 1d8, 1d8 and 1d10 respectively (or 1d4, 1d6 and 1d6 when clubbing with them). Because of their penetrating power all firearms have advantage when rolling to hit at short range. They take three full rounds to load when using a prepared load from a bandoleer and four rounds from a horn. The first two bandoleers of "twelve apostles" worn do not count as encumbering items, but every extra one does. A horn holds 50 shots and bag of shot holds 100 balls of ammunition. Matchlock weapons misfire on a D20 to hit roll of 1-4, wheel-locks misfire on a roll of 1-2 and flintlocks on a roll of 1. Misfires make the weapon useless for the rest of combat since it takes several minutes to clean it out and reload it properly.

Money:

Get rid of the electrum. The party may find some, but it's so ancient they can't spend it. They'll need to find a collector or middle-man to buy it from them. The silver standard is also in use in LotFP so convert all D&D pricing from gp to sp and/or use the Lamentations equipment list. I may use historical conversions as well. It depends. Otherwise 1 gp = 10 sp = 1000 cp (so 1 sp = 100 cp). 

With those changes I should have no trouble running my collection of Lamentation of the Flame Princess adventures with my group. Next post - Part the Second where I take things in a different direction...

A (sort of) new Class for your LotFP game, or how to get rid of those pesky elves!

I'm not a fan of elves. Not the tolkienesque ones we get in D&D at least. I like my fantasy elves as scary monsters that kidnap people and take them out of the world, only to get bored and return them after everyone they know has died. I like elves as evil bastards that can't make anything for themselves so they wrap themselves in illusions and steal what they can't craft from our world. This version, while completely awesome, is not really practical for player characters.

Elves as PCs in most games tend to be super-humans with all the timeless grace and beauty of old Hollywood.  They aren't really very different from humans, just prettier versions that are immune to ageing and charm. So what's the point? You can choose your character's age and appearance so the advantages of elfdom are few and not terribly interesting.

One of my favourite versions of "the world's most popular fantasy role-playing game" compounds this problem by placing its adventures in the early modern era of the real world. Lamentations of the Flame Princess has seven classes, one of which is the Elf. To play a human-only game would mean giving up nearly half of the payable classes. That means some reworking of what is there. Some of them are easy, the Dwarf class could be turned into a Barbarian just by replacing the Architecture skill with Climb and allowing them to be taller.

The Elf as a class is a lot more involved. It can fight well, cast magic, it has weird immunities and it's not quite in step with the world as it is. The best way to get all of these things and be human is voluntary demonic possession.

I like the idea of a Diabolist. A person who invites demons to share their bodies in exchange for power is pretty much the opposite of the idea of the elf while explaining all of the elfy class abilities. 

The way it would work is the character knows a ritual for summoning creatures from a dimension that borders on ours. Creatures that can't physically manifest but can inhabit willing and unwilling hosts. While they ride the edge inside a host they can interact with the world in some special way that looks a lot like the spells of other classes. It is a dangerous trade-off for power. Also, sharing a body with extra-dimensional beings would have a few side effects.

These side effects would explain most of the class abilities and add some flavour. Some of these side effects are positive. With all the extra voices in their heads, Diabolists notice more than the average person so they get an enhanced Search score. As the Diabolist advances in level the voices multiply and the control of them improves so the Search skill improves as shown for the Elf class. This same hyper-awareness makes them difficult to sneak up on, resulting in a one-in-six chance to be surprised instead of the regular two-in-six chance. Charm and Sleep would also be ineffective against them because it would be impossible to target the host's mind amongst all those others in there. As a possessed creature and the host to extra-dimensional beings bent the destruction of our reality the Diabolist is of Chaotic Alignment, is detectable as such and can be turned by a Cleric.

These demons hate our reality and our world. The reasons are unintelligible to us as their goals are so alien. Exposure to that hate makes the Diabolist aggressive. This aggression makes them fierce combatants and allows them to use all the martial manoeuvres available to Fighters (Press and Defensive Fighting).

Elfs look different, with exaggerated features, strange eye colours and pointy ears. Diabolists tend to look different from the average human as well. If they're lucky, they'll have pointed ears. The presence of demons in a body is going to cause some pressure, especially as they manifest their power. Diabolists are in a constant fight for possession of their own bodies. This internal conflict leads to changes in the Diabolist's appearance. Part of the inspiration for this class was this image I first saw a few years ago. The obvious loss of humanity in exchange for power needs a mechanical expression for LotFP. Tying it into the acquisition of spells and the option to push things a little too far is the cherry on top for the Diabolist Class.

(Update: Thanks to Zach Marx Weber and Wayne Snyder who let me know this awesome image was created by Doug Kovacs for the Dungeon Crawl Classics core rulebook. I'm going to need to check that out! You can find more of Doug Kovacs' art here!) 

For this I need a random chart. I don't have it yet, but I plan to put together a chart of mutations with three progressions for each roll of any single number. After three, repeated results mean two more rolls (which can just keep going if a player is particularly unlucky). An example of the three entries could be horns. The first time the horns would be relatively small and not difficult to hide. The second time they'd be grow to be larger and curl upward and possibly outward. Not impossible to hide, but certainly more difficult. The last result for horns would give the PC large horns like a big ram's that curl around the head and are virtually impossible to hide. Eyes could progress from strange colour, to glowing in darkness to glowing bright enough to show in the daytime. The farther down the line they get the more likely the PC will be burned as a witch. To get a good number and fit the situation I'd go with a D666 table. Using 3D6 with each die as a hundred, ten and single digit. So three ones (111) would be one-hundred-and-eleven. That gives 216 possibilities, which seems like plenty to me. Obviously three different colours would be useful, but a single D6 could just be rolled three times in a pinch. 

The only problem is the spells. Sure they could just sacrifice some little creature every morning for each demonic presence (spell) to prepare a spell in the same way a Magic User memorizes a spell from their book. That falls short of what could be done with the class though. A Diabolist should be a different sort of caster. With their own method of learning spells, their own spell list and custom descriptions to turn up the weird on the class. Diabolists are bad people. They have sold their souls for power in the worst way. Diabolists still need to concentrate to harness the power of the demons inhabiting them though, so all the regular limitations of spellcasting apply. Except that it doesn't require the intricate movements that Magic User spells do, so a Diaboist can cast spells when heavily encumbered and with only one hand free.

A Diabolist starts with three randomly assigned spells/demons and a random mutation. For every level a Diabolist gains the PC can use a ritual to add a new spell/demon. They don't have to use it right away. They can wait until they are higher levels in hopes of attracting a better class of demon and having more high-level spells, since they can only summon a demon with an ability of a spell level that they can cast. When they cast the ritual they need to sacrifice an innocent creature. Any animal will do. It is painful and likely to be loud so the PC will need some privacy for the process that will last the whole night. The player chooses the spell level. Fifty silver pieces per spell level needs to be spent on materials for the ritual as well. At the end of the night the player rolls a save verses magic minus the level of the spell. If they fail they get a random mutation but they also get a randomly rolled spell of the level they chose no matter what the result of the save. If they roll a spell they already have, they get to pick one.

If a player is ruthless they can use a human sacrifice to automatically pick the spell they want or roll for two spells of a given level. The extra anguish provided by a person allows the PC to have more control of the ritual and its results. It also means an automatic roll on the mutations table. The Referee should make sure these kinds of murders are recognizable and cause more than a little uproar in a community when discovered. Players should also keep in mind that the weird guy with the glowing eyes is definitely going to be blamed when people start mysteriously disappearing so there are plenty of good reasons to avoid this option.

Casting spells is the other departure from the regular rules. Diabolists would use the spell progression table for the Elf to get a total for spell levels that can be cast safely in a day. A first-level Diabolist would only have one spell level, but a fourth-level Diabolist would have six (1x2 and 2x2)! Diabolists don't need to prepare their spells, they can't forget with those demons bouncing around in their heads, but coaxing their passengers into doing what they want takes concentration and gets difficult the more often they access any one demon's ability. The first time in a day the PC casts a spell is costs as many levels as it is. Each subsequent time it is cast in a 24-hour period or without at least six hours of sleep its cost goes up by one spell level. 

For example, a fourth level Diabolist (let's call him or her Bob) has six spell levels per day. Bob casts Spider Climb (a level-one spell) and it uses up one of Bob's potential spell levels for the day, with five spell levels remaining. Bob casts it for a second time and it's harder, using two spell levels and only leaving three of Bob's total of six daily spell levels. That means Bob can cast Spider Climb one more time using all remaining spell levels without getting into trouble.

But what happens if the spell levels are just slightly over the daily allowance or the Diabolist wants to push their demons beyond the safe number castings in a day? That's where the 216 entries on the mutation table become important. If the caster has too few levels to cast a spell safely the PC can simply cast unsafely. They will receive a random mutation and must save verses Magic at a negative equal to the difference in levels or take 1D6 plus that difference in damage. Even if they fail the save the spell is cast successfully. For example, if Bob only has two spell levels left and wants to cast a spell worth four spell levels Bob needs to make a save against Magic at -2 or take 1D6+2 points of damage. If the caster has no spell levels left and wants to cast they take a random mutation and save against Magic or take the spell levels in D6s damage and the spell fails. So if Bob tries to cast a spell that costs three spell levels when he has no spell levels left it means risking 3D6 points of damage. A desperate move with no guarantee of success.

That's the basics of how I use the Elf class in my LotFP Early Modern Era Campaign. I'll add the spell list with custom descriptions later this week and maybe whip up the random mutation table too if there's enough interest.

Inevitable 5e D&D Post: Musings on Magic

I was a little late to the party (that might become something of a theme with this blog) in getting my copy of the new Player's Handbook for the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

I picked it up about two weeks ago according to the date stamp on this photo. I've read it a bit at time since then, digesting every detail as well as I can. With so many rules for so many editions rolling around in my head it's difficult to keep it all straight. The new edition is full of old-school goodness with all kinds of things I like, but the biggest changes made that I noticed were to the magic.

The spell slot system and recovery through short and long rests fits in well with the new system for hit points and healing. It's all well set up to limit what you can do in a single encounter so the stakes are high in any given fight, but recover fast so you can get on with exploring the dungeon or whatever it is you are doing. That's all consistent with the pace of the new game and I have no problem with it.

In the early editions magic was useful, but with such short lists there was only so much a spellcaster could do. As the lists expanded, enterprising players found ways to layer the spells that made spellcasters extremely powerful at higher levels. Others found ways to bend the spells to do things they weren't intended for that made imaginative players extremely dangerous at any level.

In the new edition, some decent cantrips allow spellcasters to mount a decent offence in any encounter. The new rules for concentration make it impossible to stack spells like the old days, so a player needs to choose the one spell that is most useful for any given situation.

The durations have been cut down significantly as well. There are few spells that last longer than a minute now and those few rarely last more than an hour. These new limitations make wizards far more vulnerable than they've been in a long time. Even Contingency only lasts ten days in 5e so high level wizards are no longer functionally immortal. The Wish spell has clear limitations on what a player can do with it and the DM is still encouraged to interpret the wording in the most annoying way possible.

These changes bring D&D closer to the sword and sorcery genre that was a big part of the inspiration for the original game. Magic is a great tool in certain situations, but hardly the solution to every problem. You can't even turn a person into stone for any length of time anymore!

Which brings me to the most notable absence in the spell list: Permanency. There are a handful of spells that can be made permanent if they are cast in the same place every day for a month or year, depending on the power of the spell, but there is no way to just make spells permanent now.

This leads me to believe that Player Characters won't be making magic items in this edition. Magic items seem to have gone back to being rare antiquities and the province of NPCS who have paid for the necessary magics with their sanity.

Since healing potions can be made by anyone with the herbalism kit skill or purchased from the local apothecary/temple/whatever for 50gp they will still be a common item. Magical weapons, armour, rings, etc are now explicitly stated as too rare to be bought and sold though. All of these things make magical treasure a really big deal again. Players can't expect to receive magic items as they level and may never get one.

I like this return to the old-school idea that the PCs need to earn everything they get. The low-magic assumption fits the gritty kind of campaign I prefer as well. All of this could change with the Dungeon Master's guide, but for now D&D looks like it's on the right track for me.