Friday, September 6th

The Daily Report

I'm back at my parents' again. Temperatures are expected to be in the high 90s through this weekend, and then after that the 10 day outlook looks beautiful.

The second MU Omnibus (covering books 4 through 6) is up at Amazon. Other formats will have to wait until I'm back at my desktop, but that will probably be early next week.

The living situation for my last month in Omaha is getting more and more unsettled as we enter the last month (note: today marks four weeks until moving day), to the point that I'm growing more and more resigned to the fact that it's going to disrupt my work schedule and plans. Although maybe "resigned" isn't the best word... maybe "acceptance" is the better term. Having accepted that I'm not going to be able to treat September as a normal month save for packing and organizing two days a week, I might be able to get it done sooner and have that much less to worry about.

I don't know, though. The changes in the house are happening while I'm away, so it's possible there will be less disruption than I'm anticipating. And if this is the last of the hot weather, I may be able to do all my work in the attic, which helps minimize the impact of everything that's happening in the rest of the house.

The State of the Me

Slept well. Had a weird dream involving a mash-up of Storage Wars and WisCon. I'm going to be home alone (except the home part, but I've spent enough time here to be comfortable) for a few days after my parents head south later today, and I'm looking forward to the solitude and a chance to recharge.

Plans For Today

Things are a little less than settled here, but not in a way that will affect today's chapter. It *might* go up a little bit later in the day than usual, but as of sometime this afternoon I'm going to have nothing but time on my hands.

Some sidenotes on AWW and game presentation.

So, one of the things I brought with me when I fled here several weeks ago was the 4E PHB, which I've been re-reading to get inspiration not so much for game design but more for game presentation... I have these rules, I have these structures, I have a loose outline for the world, how do I introduce players to it?

And one thing that's appallingly clear is that 4E was not designed with the idea that such an introduction would be necessary.

There's the obligatory Why Timmy, A Roleplaying Game Is Just Like When You Played Cops And Robbers As A Kid But Instead Of Arguing About Whether A Forcefield Dog Beats A Dinosaur You Roll Dice And Do Math chapter, of course, and this introductory chapter contains the sole example of actual play given in the entire book, which barely fills more than a single column on a page. Given that this is before any rules have been introduced, obviously, this is more about covering the idea of gameplay than showing how it works.

The rest of the book? There's no step-by-step example of character creation. The skill checks aren't paired with examples. There's no example of combat.

I'd imagine that at some point they asked their players--either in the sense of customer surveys or in the sense that everybody involved in making this was a player who knows other players--whether or not they ever read the examples in RPG books and were told "Nah, man. Waste of space." If they emphasized D&D in the question, then it was probably even more so... these people have been playing D&D for decades.

And more examples would take up space, in an already densely crowded book... but it's the dense crowdedness that necessitates the examples in the first place. And examples aren't there for the people who already get this stuff.

Even more than that, though... reading the PHB, it's really quite apparent that the designers either gave no thought to what the entry point into the game would be for new players, or else concluded the answer was "People who are already playing, obviously. How else would they get into it?"

The description of Dragonborn... a core player race introduced to get the iconic monster that forms half the name of D&D more closely tied into the game's identity... assumes the reader is already familiar with "chromatic and metallic dragons", which it tells you that Dragonborn don't resemble.

If you're a new player, the pages that briefly detail the existence of Dragonborn, Dwarves, Eladrin, Elves, Half-Elves, Halflings, Humans, and Tieflings may be your first glimpse of the D&D world as anything more than a sitcom punchline or a distant ancestor of a video game. And the Dragonborn are alphabetically first. And then here's this mention of D&D's signature monster and a reference to the unique taxonomy that every existing player knows, the thing that makes them D&D dragons, and it's just a throwaway line letting players know that Dragonborn don't actually look like them.

That's an important piece of information to put out there if you're concerned with making sure that established players don't get the wrong idea from the dragon/born connection... but it does nothing to help brand new players understand how Dragonborn fit into this strange world with its dungeons and its dragons.

(As a side note, given how iconic D&D's dragons and their color schemes are, I really have to wonder at the decision to make Dragonborn dull-scaled and have their elemental breath attacks not be keyed into the color scheme. Especially given that they were explicitly added as a way of emphasizing the & Dragons.)

I remember one of the old boxed "starter kits" that came out in the late 80s or early 90s had not just an example of play but a solo adventure that started out as a choose your own adventure type booklet with a prefab character and then graduated into the player setting up a map and putting tokens on it at the directions of the booklet, introducing them to both the role of player and DM and easing them into how the game is played. My memories aren't clear enough to speak to the execution, but I think that's brilliant.

While it's not something I'm going to focus on before playtesting (writing examples for rules that aren't finalized is bound to lead to tricky editing or a lot of redundant work later on), I think I'm going to make my approach for the published version of the Basic Player's Guide be to try to make it live up to its name. Established gamers will probably be able to jump into the Character Guide with only a few glances at the BPG, but I want it to work as an entry point for people who are new to both this game and the hobby.

AWW: Being Human

Humans are not the Bland Everyfolk of the wilder world, they're the people that managed to become the most numerous and widespread inhabitants of a magical world despite being so aggressively non-magical that the average Human registers as a thaumatological void. That's actually part of their success... no one is better at overcoming magic or fighting wizards and other magical beings without magic of their own than Humans are.

Of course, even in a magical world most dangers don't come from spells, but Humans are tenacious, well-organized, and physiologically and psychologically surprisingly resilient.

* * *
HUMAN (Folk Quality)
Basic Abilities
[A] Human Heritage: You can take Human Folk Details as background details. Negative points of Magic don't count against the maximum amount of negative points you can take during character creation, and negative Magic does not subtract from Spell Checks using other attributes. If you have a negative Magic score, treat it as a positive bonus to any attempt you make to resist or throw off magic with another valid attribute. If your Magic score is not positive, you can roll twice for any such check.

[B] Human Tenacity: Increase your Maximum Fight Points by 2. Count your positive Toughness and Willpower as 50% higher the first time you add each of them to your Maximum Fight Points. Do not round off the result, but ignore any half point left over. It's just there in case you increase your Toughness or Willpower again and get another half point. If you are substituting another attribute for Toughness or Willpower, do not apply this increase to that attribute.

Standard Abilities
Just Flesh Wounds: Once per adventure at the start of a fight scene, halve your Wound Points for the purpose of figuring Maximum Fight Points. Add an additional use of this ability at level 3 and 5. From level 4, when you expend your final use of this of this ability in an adventure, you ignore all Wound Points.

Para Bellum: On the first round of a fight scene, add your level to your Perception and defense against surprise attacks, to your Stealth Check for any surprise attacks, and to the results of any attack you make. Also increase your walking speed and running speed by 1d for the first round.

Stand Together: When you and one ally close to you are attacking the same target during a round, you can both add a +1 bonus to your attack rolls against that target. Alternately, you and one ally close to you can both gain a +1 bonus to all Defense Checks against a single opponent during a round. You must decide how to apply this ability during the tactical phase, and a given character can only benefit from one person's use of this ability per round.

OPTION: Weak Wizardry When you make a Spell Check using an attribute other than Magic, add half your level to the check, but you can't make Spell Checks with Magic.

Advanced Abilities
Level 2 Null Magic: Add half your level to any check to resist Magic. By concentrating (a focused action), you can inflict a penalty to Magic Checks equal to your bonus from this ability either on one specific person within half your level distance, or all people. Only one such penalty can apply to a given person at a time; use the highest one. You can also add your level to the absolute value of your Magic (i.e., treat the number as positive even if it's negative) to counterspell or negate magic.

Level 4 Ego Shield: Subtract one die from the effect points of any mental attack made against you and add +1 to all your resistance defenses. This bonus increases by +1 at levels 5 and 6.

Level 6 Utter Conviction: You only lose one Fight Point for every two points of damage you take. If any damage is already being halved due to Physical Damage Resistance or some form of invulnerability, do not reduce that damage further.
* * *

Everything having to do with magic here is an example of the Lake Wobegon School of Game Design. Instead of saying "Humans make lousy wizards, -2 to Magic", they simply have an inducement to put negative points into Magic.

The "Weak Wizardry" option is somewhat misleadingly named, as few characters get a scaling bonus to Spell Checks that stacks with element bonuses. It's actually potentially quite powerful, especially if you manage to level up both your Human CQ and whatever CQ is letting you make Spell Checks.

It's meant to reflect the fact that Humans, being weak wizards, seek other paths to magic. A Human Illusionist who uses Deception but is limited to illusions or a Human Pyromancer who uses Fury but can't do anything but fire magic or a Human Scholar who uses Mind but can only cast from a grimoire both have an edge through this option. Because it's not limited to a single attribute, you could even make a character who is something like a Human Elementalist/Scholar... they'd be able to cast elemental spells on the fly using Willpower and use Mind for any spell that a full wizard could conceivaly cast, given enough time and their grimoire.

There's no rule that says you can't make a Human with a maxed out starting Magic of 6, and this character doesn't have to pay more attribute points or whatever for playing against type. Human wizards should be incredibly rare and will often be signs of some otherworldly heritage, but that statement is broadly true of all wizards.

The non-magical abilities are all based on the discussion that was going around about how terrifying humanity might seem to sapient species that aren't hyperevolved apex predators who practice endurance hunting. When we compare ourselves to imaginary Klingons and superpowered mutants and ogres and dwarves, we think of ourselves as being fragile beings of clay/sacks of meat, but if we use reality as our benchmark instead of imaginary incarnations of strength and endurance, we're pretty much the Klingons.