Jeremy Mac Donald's page

I've seen the format they use for 4E adventures, and while it doesn't exclude rping, it certainly doesn't encourage it. Ultimately that is where the difference comes in between 4E and Pathfinder adventures. 4E presents discrete locations with the mechanics of the NPCs often being put in a different part of adventure, so if the players go off track, it can be a challenge to track the information down. Pathfinder is much more non-linear in their APs from what I have seen, presenting an entire area, putting all related material together as much as possible, so DMs don't have to hunt for it as much, allowing the players to wander around the entire area in whatever order they want with less headache to the DM. Even the stand alone adventures are very easy for a DM to read and move around in when the players don't follow the path the developers expected.

I don't really think the flaw in the presentation is the fact that it can, and sometimes is, split up. Often when its split that can, at least potentially, be a good thing. I mean they split their back ground and plot material off from the combat material and it can make the system easier to use in terms of the non-combat elements simply because you have a lot less to read through to find the relevant information if you don't have to wade through the combat stats and tactics.

That said I do see a flaw with the Delve in the sense that by including monster encounters with set monster starting locations etc. you create a this strong tendency to try and have encounters that really are static - the inhabitants 'activate' when the player show up. This is really not a very dynamic way of handling encounters - there are times when it really works, the BBEG in the throne room probably works well in this set piece style with detailed elements on what the combat should look like but we need to see a lot more exceptions to the rule here.

All that said, as has been mentioned, this is all about layout choices. Its an excellent way of handling an adventure so that the DM can read over the next three encounters and be ready to game with literally 20 minutes prep time...I just wish they would keep the exclusive use of the format to side treks and a few other adventures where DM ease of use is the selling point. Using it in something like an AP or a story heavy adventure is using a square peg on a round hole.

In any case layout is not the rules themselves, the rules themselves are actually quite good at handling large complex encounters with baddies entering and leaving as the 'budget' system for building such encounters makes it reasonably easy to gauge the difficulty of such encounters and hence balance them. When I convert Age of Worms I tend to use a mix of the two styles of layout depending on whether the encounter in question would benefit more from being handled dynamically or if this encounter is really more of a set piece type of thing.

Rogues in the House is up, with the first of the Hyborian age's infamous grey apes, a heroic tier monster named Thak.

Leader of traps...that is actually a pretty neat concept. I don't really see a problem with the stat block considering the role he is likely to play. I considered complaining that he was too basic but if you have two or three traps also in the vicinity that have some capability to reach out and touch the players his simplicity will probably be a boon.

Kain Darkwind wrote:

The DM is not always right, however, the DM sets the rules. By the commonly accepted definition of cheating, which is 'to break the rules', a DM cannot cheat.

If he breaks the rules of the group, he is cheating.

Only in the sense that I am cheating if I go to hang at your house and then, without your permission, eat the pasta your wife was saving for dinner.

The DM is not breaking the rules of the game in this circumstance, instead he is violating the social contract that this group has established.

Hi Matthew, very good posts here and in the other thread.

I spoke to player expectations in some of my other entries.

Through both tone and volume the 4e rules emphasize the tactical aspects of the game.

You can have a non-tactical focus, but my experience is that the players largely come to the table expecting you to conduct extended combat encounters with them.

I don't want to keep on this to much and I do think that the perception of 4E, if not all true is something of a case of 'where there is smoke there is fire'.

Still just went over to the WotC websight where the new articles for the DDI are being shown off. I'm mainly there to check out Rule-Of-Three and Mike Mearls Legend Lore articles but on a a whim I click on their new adventure Force of Nature.

I only skim it over mainly spending my time reading the Adventure Synopsis section. Still it looks pretty good. More germane to elements brought up in this thread is that the adventure is an illistration of what they are actually doing with the game. Conviently for me they have started to provide a little heading at the start of each encounter that says 'Combat Encounter' or 'Roleplaying Encounter' etc.

There are seven encounters in this adventure which is about some Yaun-Ti that release a powerful Fey creature, An Elk the size of a building, with some scheme that it will make a beeline to a ancient magical prison where the evil they really want released is located and batter down its defenses allowing said eldritch evil to escape.

For the players this adventure is about initially redirecting the Elk so that it does not run over small towns on its way to the location of Eldritch Evil - then getting some nearby militia to try and do that while they find out WTF is really going on and finally tricking the Elk back into the Feywild thus spoiling the Yuan-Ti's plan.

Not a bad little adventure premise really. Furthermore I went and counted up what kinds of encounters where on tap. The adventure records that there are 2 Skill Based Encounters, 2 Role Playing Encounters and 3 Combat Encounters. It actually misses probably 3 Roleplaying encounters in this list as well - the one that starts up the adventure (the adventure hook), one in the middle where the players will have to get organized with the local militia so that they can divert the Elk away from towns etc. while the PCs back track on this Elk and figure out where the heck it came from and what the heck its doing and the final one that wraps up the adventure.

My point in all this is that this is an example of a WotC adventure and even their own stuff is, on an encounter for encounter basis, mostly doing non combat encounters in at least some of their material.

In actual play I suspect that this adventure would be about a 50/50 split between spending time killing stuff and doing either skill or role playing, probably about 3 hours of each at a rough guess.

I'm rather surprised at the strong emotions people have invested in whether or not the DM is rolling behind a screen. Last campaign I used a screen, current one I'm not.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods but not something worth getting worked up about. I'd say using one method over the other is really about the mood and style. Dice rolling in the open clearly leaves things more open to player meta-gaming while also emphasizing that their fates are in their own hands...and that of fickle luck.

It'd tend more toward this style in games where exploration and combat represents a high percentage of game time. In tactical play the ability to meta-game is not that big a draw back and can, in fact add to the excitement - especially when the DM is showing off just how bad as todays baddies are (look I hit you on an 8). Games with a lot of combat gain from the feeling of authenticity provided by the dice rolling being in the open.

On the other hand if your game is more about interactions with NPCs and has a lot of mystery or intrigue in it then its likely best to pull the dice behind the screen. Here there is a real need for the DM to be making checks that the players can't see and in fact to disguise when a check is 'authentic' or not to keep them from becoming suspicious of their surrounding or the NPC they are interacting with based on the DMs die rolls.

I suppose I'd argue that whether the DM is rolling in the open or not is just one more tool the the DMs toolbox and its worth considering how it effects the mood at the table since it enhances certain campaign styles and detracts from others.

Basically If your game is about cracking jokes and having a good time with your friends at the table while on a quest then rolling in the open is probably your best bet. If your game is about immersion and taking the drama seriously then your probably best off keeping the rolls behind the screen.

Yes, but I was only 12...but then all the players where about that age...

A really odd game it was too, sort of a cross between dungeons and dragons (which it ostensibly was) and an excuse to talk about sex. Or I guess more accurately it was that Dungeons and Dragons was being used as a smoke screen so that we could talk about sex without having to be totally embarrassed and tongue tied.

Good times...I learned years later that we had been totally busted by one of the girls mothers (we played in her basement) but the mother, after spending some hours secretly listening to us, decided that the whole thing was basically harmless.

GMs can cheat...even with rule zero.

Would you guys call a GM who allows one player to use a rule but bar from another Cheating? I would.

No - I'd just call him/her a bad DM.

As to the main topic - my players pretty much told me that the next campaign I run I will play be a category #3 DM or I will at least damn well try to be.

Thing is there is an opposite to #3 that can drive players pretty much just as crazy. That is the DM and his beloved homebrew. The players can do anything they want and the DM will totally roll with it - in fact the DM will love every minute of it because your meandering off the beaten track just means your spending that much more game time participating in the DMs travelogue of of a campaign world.

Its the sort of scenario where the DM is pleased as punch that you just arbitrary stabbed Princess Oh-So-Pretty because now he gets to show off her Ironband Guard...what makes that particularly exciting is that their captain was her secret lover...oh...oh...and then there is Prince Whats-His-Face, how will he react to this event. Etc. etc.

This is way over the top compared to what I was running in my homebrew but my players did make it explicit that the next campaign was to have a heck of a lot less 'you can do whatever you want but here are 26 of the more obvious choices to choose from (in an handy 8 page handout).

In fact my suspicion is that, these days, most players actually want their DM to be doing a certain amount of railroading - you've only got 5 hours to game and then its back home to the wife and kids...and we just spent the first 45 minutes of that working out the logistics of ordering Chinese Food. Good game time is burning so lets get on with the show and one hopes its a show worth being here for. Paizo's successful AP line is testament to how powerful and successful this idea has become. You really can't run one of those successfully unless the players sign on to the fact that they are embarking on a ride on the railroad.

Hi Jeremy,

Excellent post.

WoTC has been very successful with 4e. They clearly understand the demographic that is going to buy their products.

I've been working hard to move my players away from some of the perceptions that 4e encourages. As a GM, you can promote any style that works for you if you can get players to come to the table.

I can envision an entire campaign using only skill challenges. I'm not sure that it would be easy to round up a group of players to do that -- at least out in northern Virginia where I live.

For the record, sometimes "old school" gaming with an emphasis on meta-gaming player interactions would go seriously awry. So, I completely concur that there is a place in the gaming discussion for the point that "hey, I as a player have no idea, but my character is a 30th level thief with an INT score of 28. Really, he should be able to figure this out." In other words, the 4e skill challenge has a place.

One of my memorably worst experiences ever in the gaming realm involved something called the "wall of chaos." The story is recalled here under Gaming Horror Stories.

The challenge that I have been running into is that the players have some expectations that if you are playing D&D 4e then you should be able to resolve any issue with a quick toss of the dice so that you can get back to the business at hand (that being using your expensive minis to explore a gridded challenge filled with terrain, traps, and monsters).

I'm not really arguing that much against the perceptions of 4E. At least in part WotC has let that be the standing perception and, I suspect, that they do this in large part because they know where their bread is buttered. This is the part of 4E most likely to appeal, especially to the younger gaming crowd they hope to capture.

What I am emphasizing is that, perceptions or not, the actual design under the hood is really damn fine for your non combat needs. The designers clearly thought about this point and crafted a system meant to put non combat encounters on the table in a very balanced manner.

They did not remove the cleric and wizard utility powers because that was easier - its easier to leave them - its easier to fill supplement books with such utility powers. In fact I'm always a little nervous that the pure system I'm reiterating to you has been compromised by some one slipping in some ritual or some utility powers that breaks this elegant little design in some recent supplement and I have just not noticed it yet. There are in fact a handful of somewhat corner case rules that are a problem for it - the ability to use the Arcane Skill as 'magic radar' is a prime example. Personally I won't let the skill be used on anything you can't actually see - but this is a house rule on my part, and its one meant to keep the design space that has been opened up clear and usable by the DM. One can imagine the PCs searching the Kings castles for clues by having the wizard systematically walk the grounds 'pinging' magic sonar looking for a hit...that was a bad design choice that closed more doors then it opened but it is a corner case error, that can be house ruled or designed around.

The plethora of new classes took a very well crafted approach to giving each class a different combination of social, knowledge and physical skills and muddied the waters because there where to many classes to maintain this within their original design. Still, since they did at least try to keep with the program it mainly still works - your just more likely to run across two characters that have the same physical skill emphasized while several physical skills are not strong in your party.

I also want to point out that every time I'm describing some kind of encounter I don't always mean a Skill Challenge - they are good but they are not the be all and end all of each encounter. There can be a tendency to overuse them - making them the focus of every scene that is not a fight. That would be, in my opinion, a mistake. If your in a political intrigue type of adventure and a powerful but secretive Vampire sends one of her thralls to pass on information to you that is not a social Skill Challenge...if the NPC is fundamentally co-operative then you don't have a Skill Challenge - you have a role playing encounter. If you try and craft this into a Skill Challenge it will blow up in your face - it won't work. Some of the worst Skill Challenges I've been in as a player came from adventures written right after 4Es release where the authors started trying to do Skill Challenges for friggen everything. Hence the only co-operative NPC type situation that I can think of off hand that might make a really good Skill Challenge is if the person your talking with is actually all the way to crazy...the kind of crazy that is socially non-functional and the excitement for the players is figuring out what to say and what checks to use to get the information they are actually looking for from the incoherent mess that is this NPCs mind.

Hence when I listed all sorts of encounters above I did not mean that they should all be handled all of the time by Skill Challenges. Some parts of those adventure ideas are just role playing, some are really more deductive reasoning - once the players get the actual clue and add it to their repertoire of other clues no one wants to do a Skill Challenge to see if they solve the mystery. The fun is them making the connections themselves...this is fundamentally a puzzle not a Skill Challenge.

A scene where the players notice a 'person of interest' across the crowded town market could be really cool to start as a Skill Challenge. Players try and sneak toward their prey and maybe they use abilities to sneak up building to approach or they subtlty steal a vendors cart or whatever but the point of this skill challenge is to see where everyone starts on the gridded map...win the challenge and players start 10-15 spaces away (you get to be closer if your character passed more checks) and loose the Skill Challenge and the quarry notices you and bolts for it when your between 20-25 squares away - notice here that the DM decides what success and failure means, there is still a chase scene win or loose. The Skill Challenge was about the fun of trying to get close to a guy in the market. Once he bolts I'd envision the rest of this as a slightly more traditional gridded encounter (you could do another Skill Challenge for this part but two in a row is not your best option in terms of adventure design - normally better to mix it up). So know we have the much loved gridded map (you as the DM have a tricky task here - this is like the longest map ever) and the DM went for inspiration for this chase by watching the James Bond chase scene right near the start of Casino Royale (its a really good chase and would be great for inspiration BTW).

So the first place the map leads to in this chase is a fantasy construction site (they are building a high end tavern maybe). The bad guy leaps a low wall easily (The DM gave him a power that would let him do that) and the players now must get over it but loose as little time as possible - the Avenger has phenomenal acrobatics - its low so he tries to do a handspring over it. The monk straight out tries to leap it. The cleric's not so good at getting over the wall and the heavily armored fighter is pitiful. Maybe the Cleric should slow down and use aid actions to help the fighter over? That is for the players to decide. Note though that none of this is a Skill Challenge - here we need to determine if each individual PC can navigate this obstacle since the ultimate goal is to have one of them get beside this guy with enough actions left to make a grab attack. Hence each of these is really just an individual Skill Check during the course of this encounter.

If our baddie exits the fantasy construction site by bolting into a brothel (where he is known) while shouting to the two bouncers standing outside to stop the guys chasing him we might even get some unusual combat in on this as well...the bouncers are making attacks but the players probably are mostly ignoring them while they keep on after their quarry...soon enough we have a chase within a chase as the bouncers join in trying to grab the PCs even while the PCs are trying to grab their quarry.

The above is pretty much the outline for whats probably much of a pretty fun gaming session and it may all be part of a larger political intrigue adventure. The real point is that here we see a mix of encounter types from something that bears a strong resemblance to traditional gridded combat (with a twist) but there was a Skill Challenge to start this off and skill checks during its course.

Maybe there is more of a role playing scene at the end if the PCs catch him - one intimidate check and the guy is totally willing to spill his guts, now its just about what questions the PCs want to ask.

Good design space has been opened up here for scenes like this and the players can't really easily circumvent the above scene by teleporting near the guy and casting web. Even if they are 14th level they probably have to play the scene out - they have some wicked moves embedded into their characters but its doubtful they have an encounter stopper completely on tap, though for higher level keep in mind they may have range stuns and immobilizes so reviewing their character sheets might be necessary to make sure their quarry has some answers...your the DM, you give the quarry all his powers so picking a couple to deal with the one ranged stun and one range immobilize the players have on tap should be well within the abilities of the DM.

Ultimately if you look at the system closely and try and ignore some of the perceptions around it I think you'll see that in the end a lot of the design decisions taken in 4E actually make non-combat adventures, exciting and intriguing ones, really work well. Its one of the draws I find to the system. It fundamentally comes down to a balanced skill system (well balanced until around Epic - then I'm told it starts to get a bit wonky) that works for most of the levels of the game and remains the corr mechanic for how the players confront diversity out of combat for the whole campaign.

Furthermore if your players are more the combat orientated types don't hesitate to throw the odd combat light adventure at them - their skills come built into their classes. They operate equally well in and out of combat. If this is just a 'change of pace' adventure (or part of an adventure) the fact that they pumped every feat into stuff that makes them fight better won't be a problem. They'll work just fine - so you can (and IMO should) mix it up.

Well, there is certainly not an emphasis in the rules on non-combat activities, and most of the powers simply do not apply to non-combat settings.

I'm running a campaign in 4e. So, I'm not anti-4e.

In 1st Ed, or just AD&D as it was known at the time, there was a lot of non-combat information and abilities that were included in the rules. True, there was more interpreting the rules in general, but there was also more space devoted to non-combat situations.

I'm not upset at the 4e approach. Skill challenges are OK, but it is not really the same as having spells that allowed folks to disguise themselves or rules about fortification construction or lists of titles of nobility that demonstrated that the system was designed with a variety of activities in mind.

Yes, I understand skill challenges. As one of the previous posters said non-combat in 4e basically means saying stuff and the DM setting up a skill challenge. The heart of the game is clearly counting out squares, working your powers, and collecting the rewards.

That is fine. That is what my current group is mostly into.

I've added some back-story and a little bit of "what folks do outside of combat in the world" though to help the players suspend disbelief.

Obviously you absolutely should and its basically expected in 4E that you do. However the model is less about the core rules telling how this works out and more about plugging your, or a bought campaign world into it. The Darksun campaign setting for 4E is an absolutly excellent example of that.

Two more recent game releases, Fire & Ice, and Warhammer Fantasy RPG 3.0, both had extensive non-combat sections in the rules and did a good job with abilities, skills, description, etc. to create a less combat focused experience.

For example, in Fire & Ice, there is a whole section on how the PCs can improve the quality of the barony they belong to. WHFRPG has large numbers of the equivalent of powers that apply to non-combat situations, and combat is divided into ranges from entity to entity. You're PC is never three squares away in WHFRPG.

You can do anything you want in any RPG, but some are better at emphasizing and portraying certain world views and approaches than others. 4e does not lend well to a non-combat focus. You can do it, but it is a stretch.

In...

I think in some ways here your missing the forest for the trees. Your defining the old wizard or cleric utility spells as role-playing. Sure they where but it was often a very limited way of interacting with the world. What has happened here is that many of these utility type spells and their effects on the game have been pulled from the wizard or clerics spell repertoire and moved to the group as a whole as part and parcel of the skill system.

During the last part of Paizo's run with Dungeon there where some excellent low level murder mystery type adventures. There have been a handful of good mystery type adventures in all editions of D&D however a defining characteristic of this has almost always been that they where very low in level. This is required because, once the cleric and wizard, gained some levels the answers to such mysteries became a matter of the wizard or cleric memorizing spells that either answered the questions or, if there was magic blocking the answers, usually then excluding targets or objects from the mystery until a handful of suspicious because they are protected by magic, options remained.

Another example of such use of utility spells was party mobility (things like mass flight or party teleports) or use of such utility spells to control the emotions or behavior of the NPCs.

All of this is by and large either gone or only comes online at very high levels (Oracle - which is a ritual that allows the players to contact a God and ask questions is 21st level for example).

What is important here is the amount of adventure design space that this opens up. You can now design adventures that are higher level mysteries or intrigues or otherwise not combat focused. So an adventure about finding out who killed the Kings favorite mistress, and why (The DM might want to complicate things by throwing in a noisy Queen who must be kept in the dark about the existence of such a mistress) something the whole group engages in and its the subject, potentially for a series of sessions. Historically tackling such an adventure was mainly an exercise in intelligent use of the wizard and clerics utility spells, unfortunately that is not very much fun for the whole group so such adventures where exceedingly rare. By moving the investigation of this outside of something that could be answered with magic and into something that was handled in individual encounters by the whole party using the players reasoning and skills we open up design space for intriguing non combat adventures.

Consider also that the limited nature of the mobility magic on tap for the wizard and cleric means that adventures about going places (maybe they need to do a B&E to recover critical information etc,) become much easier for the DM to design and now must be overcome by the ingenuity of the players and their combined skill suite.

There is now more potential for the journey to be the adventure. If the players want to get to the other side of Mount Doom they need to either climb it, go under it or maybe find a pack of Griffons and convince them to carry them over it - their magic is not powerful enough to get the group to the other side by casting a spell (unless the DM wants that to happen...then there is a convenient air ship tied up nearby).

Alternatively we can get into something more action packed here - like a race across the city to catch the fleeing 'person of interest' (or maybe its a race through a crowded city with a prize purse and other teams). While your players have some mobility powers that will play here they are limited in nature...and maybe more importantly - range (if the thing they need to get over is more then usually around 40' feet they are going to have to actually climb it) - your group as a whole is mostly glued to the ground. This opens up design space for all sorts of interesting obstacles within that chase or any other encounter involving movement or obstacles. Maybe they are fleeing - mass teleport as a ritual takes to long to be a quick exit - the scene must be resolved by the players actually making a break for it and using a combination of their movement powers and their skills to get through the obstacles that stand in the way.

If you think that some key NPCs have some of the answers you seek you now have to ask them, or black mail them or save their lost lover or some such to get them to co-operate. Taking over their mind with magic is not an option on the table. A whole significant part of the adventure for the entire group now can revolve around getting such information from an NPC that for whatever reason is not willing to simply cough it up.

When they are 14th level design a political intrigue adventure - they can't crack it using magic, they'll need to interact with your cast of weird and wacky (and possibly creepy - or funny) NPCs the old fashion way - by talking to them.

My whole point is there are a ton of very interesting non-combat focused adventures that have been completely opened up by the limitations built into the magic system and by the fact that most of how the players interact with these elements have been moved to the skill system or to a pure role playing context.

Look a little closer at the Skill System and you should notice that each class generally comes with training (and is therefore quite good, or at least passable) in a physical type skill, a knowledge type skill and a social type skill. Its not perfect and its a little muddled once we really start bringing in the whole array of classes, but its still more or less true. This means that in any given skill based encounter usually some significant number of players can get in on the action. This works really well when your designing your non-combat adventure because everyone gets to participate. This is a key part of the design that makes all characters both good in and out of combat. Its important to note that 4E does not really have a 'face' class. There is no one character who - by design - is just better then everyone else when the swords remain in their sheathes. Non-combat adventure is not the part of the adventure where the Bard gets to shine...everyone is supposed to be able to shine during some parts of the non-combat adventure. This allows you to spend more time out of combat - you need less of it to appease your players just designed to kill stuff. Since they get their social skills automatically with their class and should be just as good as any other class in such circumstances there is every opportunity for them to have fun.

It says something about the system that it is easier to get your Goddess to raise you from the dead then it is to get her to answer a simple question. A little disconcerting maybe but its good game design. Gods that answer questions closes off good adventure design space...coming back from the dead, not so much.

Great posting!

There have been a lot of implicit assumptions in all the versions.

In the current version, it is assumed that half-demons are running around conducting business in towns while Cthulhu-esqe priests (star pact warlocks) are working cheek-in-jowl with paladins fighting for glory and coin.

Like you, I have an implicit world-view in my campaign. Some things in the core rules do not fit. I try to say yes more than I say no to my players' desires, but things like half-demons (tieflings) running around in large quantities did not make any sense in the context of Zhalindor.

Not that there is anything wrong with that ... if you have a group that is getting together, having fun, kicking in doors with a mixed party in a predominantly tactical setting then that is great.

Playing is definitely preferable to not play.

In service,

Rich
Bold Beginnings: a Zhalindor Campaign.

Sure. There is actually a couple of pages in the DMG that do a reasonable job of explicitly pointing out many of the underlying presumptions of the D&D world. Nonetheless there is in fact a lot more open or undefined elements to 4E than has historically been true. In effect the elements of the campaign world that get defined by the mechanics of creating D&D PCs obviously continue to exist and there are some other implicit elements that automatically become defined with the inclusion of things like Wealth by Level. However where such an element does not need to be defined due to mechanical constraints (such as the relationship between the Aristocratic class and the Peasants for example) there is much less tendency to include these in the core rules. Instead such elements are part and parcel of the campaign books like Darksun or Eberron or are left up to the DM.

Matthew Koelbl wrote:

The upcoming Monster Vault book looks really, really cool.

I use the Monster Vault book for every session.

Righto on the arcane skill being a detect magic.

Some of the fun of DMing in earlier versions was coming up with cool meta-game puzzles.

I used to love to put poems on plots that would give clues about upcoming adventures, do riddle battles with sphinx, etc.

Some of the most fun that I ever had with players was bringing them into a simulated treasure vault of the big, bad, evil guy after the final fight and asking the players to show exactly what they did with all of the items - with mock-ups for the various magical implements. Very fun on both sides of the screen.

Yes, you can still do those things, but players can legitimately claim that the rules say that if you make a sufficiently high (pick your skill) and beat the DC then you should know everything about everything about something.

It takes away the fun of not really knowing about how something works or whether a magic item is helpful or hurtful. Players used to make those kinds of decisions through experience and taking risks.

Different approach in 4e.

In service,

Rich
The Original Dr. Games.

You actually have two distinct encounter design elements here. Sphinx' riddles are in fact puzzles as defined in the DMG and like other puzzles they are not really open to DC checks unless the DM says they are. Figure them out and they are worth XP however. Usually such puzzles represent bonus elements of the adventure simply because having it so that the adventure can't proceed if they can't figure out the puzzle can wreck an adventure. My experience is its best to have such puzzles be not only somewhat isolated but also be open to the players encountering them, leaving them, and coming back when and if they figure it out. Mainly I've found that figuring out such puzzles only appeals to a minority of the group...but those guys just love it. So having it so that those that are interested can wrack their brain for the right answer while the adventure continues is a good idea.

The magic elements hooked into items however is not normally puzzles and are therefore subject to arcane checks. Usually these do involve a standard action so using them in combat means the wizard player normally gives up most of a turn to make the check. The exception is a knowledge check to recognize what a monster that falls under arcane knowledge actually is (and some stuff about it). That is a free check but can only be made once per PC.

Hence designing a 4E encounter in which there are magical elements that can help/hinder the party is usually done by imbedding either Skill Checks or smaller Skill Challenges into the encounter and having the players make cost/benefit calculations on whether it is worth it to spend time identifying what the heck the magic involved is. Its entertaining but requires some skill on the DMs part to balance correctly. Done right it can lead to the PCs splitting up - maybe even sending the wizard with one of the PCs to guard him to the far side of the encounter (or to the top of a pyramid or some such). Often you'll see the players make interesting cost/benefit decisions in this regard - maybe sending not the wizard but a quicker more defensible PC that has the second best Arcane skill in the party to check on these things.

Such encounters also tend to work better with larger parties where the PCs are more capable of splitting the group int smaller 'task forces'. Hence encounter design should take into account your groups size. Elements like this can be more spread out and more complicated the larger your groups size is while they should be more concentrated and simpler if the group is smaller. Also if you want them using their turns to make such checks don't be subtle with the magical effects in the encounter...my experience with players (and as a player) is you don't give up rounds unless whatever is going on is really in your face.

My suspicion in terms of the the idea that this edition spends more time on combat compared to role playing when contrasted to previous editions is that the whole debate is skewed by the fluff...or lack of fluff really in most of the 4E core books. Its really in regards to campaigns and expected norms that the material was cut.

In 1E there was a fair amount of time put into giving us things like tables that would tell you what kind of NPC you would meet in a city or a village or what it was you originally did before you became an adventurer. This presents a specific idea of what the world is and what it is not. Even the 3.x DMGs went a long way in this department telling you about the world in general. 4E, particularly the DMG, removes almost all of that making the system more explicitly a generic fantasy rules set into which you plug in 'your' world. Where it does address these elements it does so often in a compare and contrast model asking the DM to consider his campaign in terms of where it falls in the serious to humorous continuum. Is it dark and depressing or uplifting and heroic in nature. In effect instead of telling us what Dungeons and Dragons cities are like or what the world is like for the peasants instead the whole thing is moved up one level to more a list of ideas or options regarding what elements a fantasy world might include. These parts often read more like the 'design your homebrew campaign world' supplement rather then the The 'World of [campaign worlds name] cyclopedia' which was the element that we traditionally got.

That said it does mean that these parts of the books are much shorter. Present a list of options is much more straightforward then what one got when a designer wrote rhapsodical about the nature of the peasant aristocrat relationship in Dungeons and Dragons.

Personally I value the switch to a 'elements of your campaign world' model compared to one that made specific presumptions about the world. Simply put my home brew is far enough off the beaten path that these presumptions where always useless to me at best and potentially problematic when they did not line up with my world at worst.

I'd certianly like to point out, however, that an in depth view of the culture of elves is not 'role playing focused' material. Its world back ground material. If you strip all of that out of teh previsou editions and simply limit things to 'these are the rules for your character interacting with other people or their environment' 4E fairs pretty well in this regards and is mainly only harmed by the fact that its skill system is fairly all inclusive. Its very much designed to cover almost all randomized elements that become part of role playing while most older editions dealt with this with a series of ad hoc rules meant to cover a variety of different non-combat elements.

Now its impossible to go back and look at this with new eyes again as I did with BECMI 30 years ago but my suspicion is that its actually easier to learn simply because its so compact. Here is the skill system, use it everywhere.

That seems a lot more intuitive then the ad hoc rules we had in 1E and its at least faster to come to a ruling then was usually the case in 3.5 where there was almost always an explicit rule for element X but you'd need to find it in the tome...somewhere.

Not for guys like me it isn't. When you're pulling in $9,000 - $10,000 annually, spending $150 weekly on gas and groceries alone is no joke. And I shudder to think about people in my tax bracket who have families to feed.

EDIT: Ninjaed by Bitter Thorn.

Letting the dollar fall hurts you in terms of the price of oil because you pretty much have to import it. Food increases should only get reflected in food types not produced in the USA. Your dollar falls relative to other currencies around the world - making it more expensive for you to import their goods and making your goods more competitive in foreign markets.

The net result is its less and less profitable to offshore your production and more production returns to the United States. Depending on what kind of a job you have it can help - increased production in the United States means more workers are necessary to do that production so more employees are needed and therefore the demand for employees goes up increasing the competition by company's for employees which raises their value and hence their pay.

Let me quote the rest of the section that you quoted which acknowledges many of your concerns. I would also point out that gold is not the only commodity that could back currency.

In particular:

"By starting with the necessity for a congressional majority to decide on the sizes and weights of gold coins, we must presume in advance that we know the "correct" par value for the dollar....

And here specifically is the problem...you don't know the value - no one knows the value and whatever value is picked it will almost certianly be wrong.

Furthermore the whole thing presumes America is a closed society...that wrong value will be exacerbated by the fact that the rest of the world has commodities like gold too and they just got incentivised to take advantage of your wrong value one way or another (either buying up your gold or dumping gold on you).

The idea that the people will be using gold coins is insane - they are far too valuable for people to be walking around with. All the money currently in actual circulation only amounts to $3000 per person in the US (explicitly this excludes bank accounts etc. I'm talking cash). People don't meander around with tiny coins worth thousands of dollars.

The problems are most clear cut with gold but it does not matter what commodity you pick - all of them have the same problem in the sense that no commodity comes close to the value of all the money in US (or held by foreigners). Fiat money is based on the perceived value of everything in a country (including intangibles like its stability) divided by its money supply while any given commodity only represents a fraction of that value.

Worst yet being on the Gold Standard did not, historically, make economic crisis any less frequent. Your talking about going through a great deal of pain to try and get to a unit of account that has 'real' value but it never really does - its maybe a little more stable then fiat money but potentially comes with a whole host of its own issues.

Thing is I don't even see trying to lock the money down does not really help Adam Smiths invisible hand. Sure Fiat money is volatile but then our perceptions of the value of country change every day for all sorts of reasons and that gets reflected in the fiat money. Gold standards and their ilk where not really about Adam Smiths invisible hand in the first place - they part of an older Mercantilist system that happened to survive long past their due date. As crazy as it is Adam Smiths invisible hand is all about our beliefs and that gets reflected well in fiat money. Trying to hold that in check actually hurts capitalism more then it helps.

Freehold DM wrote:

BT, there was an idea upthread on the fact that you can still purchase a dollar's worth of gold as it were. I'm still not sure what a switch back to gold based economy would mean for us, and I simply was not around when we had a gold based economy. What are the strengths and weaknesses?

Some of the strengths if it's done correctly are its counter inflation effects, limiting the Feds power to manipulate the currency and credit markets, and it means that our currency is actually worth something. I think the full faith and credit of the US government is worth less and less every year.

I'll start posting some links.

Fiat Paper Money by Rep. Ron Paul, MD 11-12-2003

This should help.

The Political and Economic Agenda for a Real Gold Standard by Ron Paul

This is just not a viable option anymore that ship has sailed.

We could advocate a coinage of $50.00 denominations, about one-eleventh of an ounce, or $100.00 denominations, about one-fifth ounce; but that would start the process of rebuilding the gold monetary system at the wrong end. It would require, first, a majority in Congress to vote to establish a new par value for the dollar.

Currently a gold coin the size of a nickel goes for about $400. I have a hard time imagining coins much smaller then a nickel. Even here their use is severely limited - I mean I loose nickels all the time but they are not worth $400 bucks.

Nonetheless this is nit picking...the real problem is setting the value. The proposal makes no real recommendation on setting that value but some vague 'the market will decide'. How will it decide and who will benefit from that decision becomes key here.

Here is the fundamental problem underlying this transition:

All the gold that has ever been mined amounts to roughly 162,000 tons.

In today's prices the US gold holdings represent about 1/20th of all the money in the US. So how the heck is the correct value of a unit of currency to be determined?

Does the government just pretend that its the actual value today? If so the real value is going to rise dramatically and it makes sense for big time investors to immediately trade out their dollars for Gold. Almost overnight the total gold reserves in the US will be in the hands of a handful of the super wealthy and you won't be able to exchange your money for gold anymore. Historically its been huge demands on the gold reserves that have caused governments to go off the Gold Standard in the first place. The only other alternative is to protect the money by raising interest rates but at this differential you'd need an interest rate of something like 50% to defend it...I kind of think home owners might get unhappy when their interest rates rise (to meet the value of holding the dollars) to something in excess of 50%. Its hyper deflation.

Alternatively the government picks some number that is much higher then the market thinks gold is worth. Today gold is worth about $1500 per troy ounce so the government should pick a number between $1500 and $30,000 and mandate that from now on that is what Gold is worth.

What in the world gives us any confidence the government can pick the right number? I mean no economist agrees on this number and they are widely all over the place - we might as well call up the local psychics hotline to make the determination. Next big problem is what about the rest of the world? I mean most of the Gold holdings in the planet are not in the US. Won't they immediately cash in their gold for this hugely artificially increased value of gold in order to snag up massive numbers of US dollars. They then try and cash that money in for US goods and inflation explodes as huge amounts of excess money pour into the market. You'd get massive hyperinflation overnight.

So which would you rather have, hyper deflation or hyper inflation?

The working poor and middle class may disagree. The combination of contracting wages and hours and inflation on necessities like food, fuel, housing, and utilities is just hammering a lot of families who were already living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of retired folks are struggling too as real inflation hurts the buying power of their savings and pensions. The feds policy of deliberate inflation takes a huge toll on real people.

The US is at the very top of the food chain in this regard. Its just not a sustainable situation. Truth is if you keep your dollar artificially strong, and at this point some of that value is artificial, the rest of the world will be pleased as punch because selling to US consumers is what most of them want to do.

However the current situation, where American consumers buy far more from the rest of the world then they sell to the rest of the world and its financed by the rest of the world lending you their profits so that you can keep buying is ultimately completely unsustainable.

An argument that economic fundamentals do not apply to you because your the USA only works for so long...eventually the economic fundamentals in terms of balance of trade will reassert themselves. At the moment pretty much every investor in the world thinks the US treasury is the worlds biggest mattress and that is where they want to stuff their money...people still crave and covet US dollars. This means that you can spend more of them - many you issue to pay for things end up under a smaller mattress in Bolivia or Hungary...its like being able to write cheques knowing that some significant number of people that you give the cheques too won't redeem them but you still get to keep the goods you bought with the cheques.

The result has been that the US really has been able to defy economic reality and for more then half a century to boot. Nonetheless it can't forever continue. If you start winding the dollar down and dealing with some of these fundamental issues now while times are still good (but in the distance there are some clouds on the horizon) you might well get off scott free - you got to have you good times and never really had to pay for the party. If you refuse to deal with the issue now then, eventually, economic reality will reassert itself but it'll probably be set off by some other crisis like a big oil shock or some such and overnight the US dollar will plummet in value by a huge margin with drastic consequences.

Take measures to wind it down, slowly, now and enjoy the side benefits of increased employment in America. Sure not everyone benefits but there are many that do and its likely a wash when comparing those that do benefit with those that do not. You can bet that should the fundamentals instead reassert themselves during some other economic crisis in a dramatic way then very few will benefit and a great many will suffer.

Kruelaid wrote:

Beercifer wrote:

... They'll at least keep projected military power in the face of people who would rather repeat 9/11 or a ryder truck bombing in NYC.

I do like the idea of putting more money to guarding our borders. I also like the idea of our border agents being able to unload clips on those that fire on them. We give them a job to do, might as well earn the paycheck and skip the spouses death benefit, right?

"Lots of cash"?

Gah! No worries, just print more.

A stronger dollar and we wouldn't have to use the monopoly stuff anymore! I shudder to think, otherwise.

Weak dollar is good for your balance of trade. Probably good to let it fall for awhile.

I saw that show too. Fascinating. Males kidnapping females. Forming gangs.

I didn't see this show...but it sounds awesome. What was it called?

InVinoVeritas wrote:

Quote from the 1e DMG, page 92.

Quote:

"These god-like characters boast and strut about with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments. Not only are such 'Monty Haul' campaigns a crashing bore for most participants, they are a headache for their DMs as well, for the rules of the game do not provide anything for such play--no reasonable opponents, no rewards, nothing!"

Thus spake the great prophet Gygax.

An excellent lesson in history, but as with all history lessons, they're equally adept at illustrating how things have changed in the intervening years.

Now we have reasonable opponents for such characters, we have ample rewards (it's ironic, of course, that Gary implies there are no rewards possible once you already are decked out in magic loot, as the remaining rewards are story rewards, the very rewards that critics of this style of play deride its participants for not appreciating), and we have systems flexible enough to support both the "traditional" style of play and the "Monty Haul" style in equally enjoyable measure.

Actually the modern systems have cut back on the amount of magic and treasure you'd get even in a 'Gygax approved' adventure. You notice this significantly if you do conversions of 1E material - you have to cut the treasure being handed out pretty significantly or it blows over the wealth by level limits.

Historically Monty Haul was about the fact that you currently have the Hand and Eye of Vecna but your stingy DM was making finding the Sword of Kaz a real pain in the butt.

While the DDI has the rules the format they are in is practically impossible to utilize to actually learn them. I'd think you'd need the Rules Compendium for at least that. In fact I'd go so far as to say one example of each book makes using the DDI much easier.

Hence the Rule Compendium will give one the basic grasp of the rules. Understand that and you can more easily use the DDI. The DMG was a really good book in and of itself and I recommend it - it'll also help with understanding most of the basic DM only rules for 4E (like how encounters are set up for example). Some players book to explain how characters work - one of the new ones is probably a fine place to start. After you understand how they make characters in this book its easy to take that knowledge and apply it to other characters in the DDI. Finally same deal with monsters, here I would go with Monster Vault as its chock full of good monsters with some of the best monster design in 4E (historically inconsistent monster design has been a big problem in 4E).

Poodle Jack Slaad wrote:

Guess what I was singing yesterday around 6pm?

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!"

And people who actually believed this was going to happen should no be singing

"That's me in the corner/That's me in the spotlight/Losing my religion..."

There is a famous (in social science circles) book on the topic When Prophecy Fails. Social scientists infiltrated a doomsday cult and recorded reactions when the prophesy failed to come true.

One of the major findings was that people who have a lot of their life invested in the prophecy being true will find ways to explain how it is/was true and either something changed to save them or the date was some how wrong etc. What they won't usually do is come to the conclusion that they where involved in a cult and the beliefs of that cult are wrong. Furthermore the more ridicule they get about these beliefs the stronger their adherence to them tends to be.

All that said we have infiltrated few doomsday cults in the name of science - we know a fair bit about this one case but there may be other factors that influence other cases. We really need to infiltrate five or six to get a real feel for how things work.

On the other hand we have an administration that is rabidly for regulation and massive government. They had control of every branch of government for two years. They expanded the size and power of government massively, but our regulatory structure continues to be really awful. It's still corrupt, incompetent, and infective.

Two years is nothing to clean up a mess this size. Nor has regulation been particularly on the agenda in any significant or meaningful way. Beyond that the entire culture, in this regards needs to change.

I'd like to learn more about what you're saying the current US banking regulatory structure is.

Turns out it was four major regulators that compete for service from the banks...and I mean they compete. Below is a link to a picture from an industry event held in 2003.

Picture

In the middle of the picture is a large stack of regulatory materials and each of the guys in the picture are showing off their services, they have brought Garden Sheers to show how, if you choose them, they'll slice and dice their way through the red tape.

Pay special attention to the guy on the far left. That's James Gilleran of the Office of Thrift Supervision. Now he really wants these banks (and insurance company's etc.) business...those arn't Garden Sheers, that is a chainsaw he brought to the event. That is quite the message he is conveying - he'll take a chainsaw to regulations if you go with The Office of Thrift Supervision for your regulator. It seems by all accounts the companies that went with the OTS got what they were paying for...most of the big names we heard about during this financial crisis where regulated by the OTS, Bears Stearn's, AIG, Indy Mac among others.

Thing is, by any sane definition of the word, this is not regulation at all. These people are basically out right saying (and especially the OTS) that if you, Mr. Big Bank, choose them they will do whatever you tell them to do. These people are not really regulators at all - they are industry assets to be deployed to deflect blame and reduce liability when one of their members gets caught or something blows up.

Hence if you say that regulation does not work, my position is 'How do you know? You've never tried it'.

OK that is a little hyperbolic but my point really is that its not necessarily more money that needs to be thrown at the problem - what needs to change is how regulation is done and the entire culture around regulation. I mean this is an event for some of the largest financial institutions in the world and their regulators are pretty much doing tricks for the camera hoping for treats.

The scene itself is part and parcel of a very American phenomena, only in America, one suspects, would regulators be seen taking a chainsaw to the very regulations they are meant to defend and it speaks to the culture of regulation in the US.

Andrew Turner wrote:

After 2012 comes and goes, what's the next Big Date? I realized this morning that I don't remember hearing about any Judgement Days in 2018 or so on.

Smart businessmen don't predict too far out, except to leave themselves an escape clause. If the end of the world was forty years away, who would care enough to give them some extra cash?

Personally my prediction runs along the lines of...

Suns die, its one of their defining features and, eventually, the last star will wink out and die. Sometime after that point every single molecule in existence will reach a uniform temperature of absolute zero and cease to move. The universe might continue to exist in some sense after that point but it will be an inert unchanging thing from then on and, therefore, for all intents and purposes dead.

In many ways it reminds me of the US. We have literally millions of regulations on basically every aspect of our lives. We spend tens of billions of dollars on regulatory agencies (hundreds if you include the war on drugs) every year, but these regulatory structures are abysmal failures that are surround by even more layers of incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy running into more hundreds of billions per yer. In theory we are absurdly over-regulated, but in practice the biggest most corrupt corporations and criminal enterprises are the least likely to be regulated and punished for wrong doing. It all seems disturbingly fascist to me.

It can be like the US in some places, in some places its probably much worse then the US but I think the areas where it is significantly different are usually the ones of most import and also the most interesting.

The Chinese accept regulation, corrupt as it is and ineffective as it is they accept. They have a culture of government bureaucrats going back to basically pre-history. Its ancient in the extreme.

This is not necessarily true of everyone else and Americans are probably the biggest outliers in this regards in the western world. The result has been a constant ad hoc approach to regulation with two competing value sets - one where Americans demand that 'something be done about X' (usually brought on by a scandal in X) and the other a wide spread belief that regulation and red tape are fundamentally bad and a kind of hero worship of the ideal individual who slices and dices through regulation 'to get the job done'. The result is a pretty schizophrenic approach to regulation that can be exceptionally porous and, combined with the other great American past time (lawsuits) often results in regulation that is really not doing what it was meant to do.

Even this though probably pales in comparison to the actual use of a sizable chunk of the regulation regime - where, far from existing to keep big corporations in check it actually exists to serve them. When one of their members screw up attention is diverted from the rest of the industry by pointing out that the regulators 'messed up' but usually the system has been set up so that the regulators where not expected to actually regulate in the first place. Gung ho members of the regulatory board would get replaced or the system was such that the there was no hope of the small number of regulators actually doing anything of significance in the large industry they where part of.

One of the most extreme examples is in the banking industry...there are six possible regulatory bodies - and they are paid for by the banks themselves...more insanly its a competitive process. Each regulatory body tries to convince the bank in question that they are the 'right' regulator for them. The result is the various regulators compete against each other each promising to be 'better' for the bank in question then the other options. The one the bank thinks is offering them the best deal gets to be their regulator...and then we are surprised when the oversight is not up to snuff...

I use Gimp. Its free and extremely powerful. The only real issue is that the learning curve is a friggen cliff. That said once you figure out how to use it you'll find that not only is it powerful enough to do practically anything but the skills you pick up in learning it can be utilized in RL for all sorts of things.

My feeling is that Skill Challenges really are 'hard mode' for DMs. Its difficult to make them work and, even with some experience, I probably come out of any given Skill Challenge thinking 'that could have gone better'. I don't think there is any part of 4E, with the possible exception of adjusting to higher level play, that I need to learn more about then Skill Challenges.

All that said there are really significant reasons I keep using them. I recently went through a Skill Challenge as a player that was not as great as maybe I would have liked and realized that, after everything was said and done it was still worthwhile - even in not being the best, most fun I could be having at the table it still added to the story and it was therefore still worth it. It is in understanding their potency in filling out the story of our fantasy game that makes me stick to using them and continuing to try and improve how they go off every time they come up.

To understand their utility I want to try and draw attention to where they exist in our role playing games - what space they fill. Essentially they exist in the space between DM flavour text and a full on outline of a specific scenario meant to take up a significant amount of game night.

I'll give an example of the not particularly fantastic Skill Challenge I went through as a player. In that session we are in a large fortified city under siege by a huge army of Orcs. The Orcs are lobbing flaming rocks into the city from large siege engines and buildings are exploding and fires are raging while the common folk are screaming and panicking. The attack is imminent but has not yet started.

So what happens here is that you want to spend some time role playing what it is like being in a city under bombardment like this. Its a powerful background scene and it seems a shame to just skip over it in a few lines of DM flavour text - there is a lot of potential for character development here and this is really where Skill Challenges can come in. In our case we end up trying to get in contact with a member of the city council - an ally of ours.

Well when we get on the scene we find that she is trapped in a burning building. We proceed to try and save her from the building in what is a Skill Challenge. Note that by using a Skill Challenge here we have focused the 'camera' on this specific scene in particular and more broadly we have begun to tell a story about what it is like being in the middle of such a dramatic bombardment.

In older editions of the game there really where two ways of handling this scene. Either it is all, or almost all, DM text - maybe with the playing piping up once or twice but more or less the DM describes the dramatic scene and the players say 'and what happened next'? Or the scene was converted into the rules system itself. In other words there was a floor plan for the burning building with descriptions of the rooms and challenges and obstacles along the way. That is a great premise for a nights gaming but to be a worthwhile D&D adventure you need a whole bunch of other props, a much more complex plot - bad guys to fight, sub plots to discover etc. If you just want this to add to the narrative but not be the focus of a whole session that is where a Skill Challenge comes in. It took us about 15 minutes to deal with the burning building scene, much more significant then a DM narrative and it gave us a lot of flavour but it was not the nights gaming - it existed to highlight the bombardment and to build tension for the attack itself (which was really the nights gaming).

Hence, fundamentally, this is usually where a Skill Challenge fits in - a scene that is too good or too important to gloss over with some DM flavour text but is something that is not important enough or large enough to be the focus of tonight game.

In the end I realized that, even though it was not the greatest scene of the night (that was when my cleric dismissed the undead dragon in the final battle for 5 rounds or some such) and I felt that it played out a little stunted it still added to the narrative of the story being told - it amped up the atmosphere and it was totally worth it in that regards.

Yes, TSR went under, but they sold a bundle of boxed sets chronicling a score of vibrant, well developed settings. The reason given for their failure was that they fragmented their customer base. Ravenloft people bought Ravenloft and so on and so forth. But each of these settings had die hard fans that consumed all of the fluff available for their respective worlds.

Now the logic is customers aren't interested in fluff.

Why did this change? I have to believe that at one time customers were interested in fluff. In theory Forgotten Realms died under the weight of its fluff. People still wax reverently over Greyhawk and Dark Sun.
Why is fluff no longer viable?

I feel people switched to this rules! rules! mentality and in the process the game lost something.

The argument was that it was never viable, as a separate market, to begin with - that's why a titan like TSR could die. Purportedly each setting box did great (which is why TSR kept pumping them out) but after that there was never enough demand to pay for the follow on products - worse yet the 'generic' D&D products began to suffer because the customer base wanted specifically Ravenloft or Darksun and Dungeon Level #3 of the Endless Crypt of Penultimate Doom would not sell because it had no place in Dark Sun or Ravenloft.

It does not matter how die hard the fan base** is, what is really needed is lots of customers. Its worth noting that during the 3.x era WotC was willing to license out places like Ravenloft, but with the exception of Dragonlance, few where interested in licensing these worlds, the general feeling among the 3rd party publishers was that they would not make money...not even enough money to satisfy a small d20 publisher.

** there is an exception to this - Matrix Games sells computer games, mostly war games. Usually they are based on newish but not anywhere near bleeding edge technology...and they sell some of these games, Like their massive Pacific War game for $100 dollars a pop (and you download them to boot). The games are unbelievably detailed...for the hard core purist only and in this way they can make money. Their die hard fans are willing to shell out three times what a computer game normally goes for in order to play these games - its boutique computer gaming basically. Hence if Ravenloft fans where so hard core that there where willing to shell out $120 dollars for a book that, if it where some other RPG product would go for $40 then there would be a market. At this point the belief is that trying to sell Ravenloft Hardcovers for $120 a pop would be an utter failure.

Dolphins do as well. Bottle Nosed Dolphins living off Miami have developed a unique fishing method that involves surrounding their prey with a ring of mud they slap up from the surface - the fish leap the mud barrier instead of swimming through it and the dolphins are try and pick them out of the air when they make the leap. They have been observed teaching the trick to their young. No other Dolphins any where else have been observed to do this - even in places where the conditions are right.

Dolphins that hunt along the beaches of Australia face a problem of catching fish that get up near the beach where its too shallow for the Dolphins to follow. Some Dolphins have worked out a way of going after them - what they do is they build up some significant speed and then they water plane through the shallows trying to grab a fish along the way.

Presumably all the dolphins in these pods have some idea what some of their members are doing (from watching them - experiments using mirrors and such on Dolphins have determined that Dolphins have a very good sense of individuality - much better then your dog for example which develops, for them, after about the age of four) but the technique requires skill and daring (screw up and you'll be beached) so most members of the Pods won't do it.

You're welcome to start such a thread, and I would be happy to contribute to it. Although I have some trouble seeing the PRC as some kind of unregulated free market.

In a lot of ways it is. The Government is trying to govern a state that it is really not currently capable of fully doing. Hence much of the time its the wild west out there, sure you'll have to grease a few palms along the way but make sure the right palms are greased and you'll never have to worry about government oversight in a great many areas, unless your caught in some huge scandal like selling baby formula that is not actually milk but dangerous chemicals (which happened) after which the government will come down on you like a ton of bricks and you'll be lucky to get away with just a long prison sentence as opposed to being shot (actually I'll have to look up how many people China shoots - I'm not really sure what they do in terms of capital punishment).

Its a case of government regulation being everywhere but enforcement being nearly non-existent.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Bitter Thorn wrote:

New American editorial: auto bailouts

The weak point in this argument is the Canadian connection. The article wants to paint this as Democratic socialism in action...but if that was the case why was a right leaning Canadian conservative government on board and doing the same thing?

In effect I suspect that, while the nitty gritty details may have been slightly different, there would have been a bail out just the same even if the Republicans had won the presidency.

That's certainly possible. Bush shares the guilt for TARP, and McCain voted for it too, IIRC. So Bush and McCain are definitely not limited government, free market advocates.

My understanding of Canadian politics is quite limited, but it looks like Canadian conservatives are quite comfortable with Democratic socialist policies like socialized medicine and nationalizing industries from my limited perspective.

I'm certianly not arguing that this was some how libertarian, I'm simply pointing out that its not some how specific to the left wing of the Democrat party and would probably be embraced by most of the democratic party and easily falls under the the left wing of the Republican Party.

New American editorial: auto bailouts

The weak point in this argument is the Canadian connection. The article wants to paint this as Democratic socialism in action...but if that was the case why was a right leaning Canadian conservative government on board and doing the same thing?

In effect I suspect that, while the nitty gritty details may have been slightly different, there would have been a bail out just the same even if the Republicans had won the presidency.

Obey the constitution and make gold and silver available as money again. Allow other free market currencies to compete with Federal Reserve Notes so that we can end their monopoly over the money supply.

I've been trying to figure out what this means? Are we talking about a Gold Standard? Or something else?

I mean Gold and Silver are units of value now. I can go and buy some Gold Jewelry or some such and I will have an object that I can trade in later and, chances are, it'll still be really valuable - maybe more valuable or less valuable then when I bought it but valuable.

Huh, right you are. It seems it was mostly Church of England, and for political reasons that it wasw opposed, but my statement was in fact wrong.

Maybe it was that I read that the Catholic Church didn't have a huge problem with it. I'm certain there was a large set of religious people that didn't have a problem with evolution, but rather natural selection.

Need citation.

Currently the Catholic Church has no problem with it. Not exactly sure when they formulated their 'God is the cause of all causes' doctrine but there where issues initially.

That said I'm told that, these days, the only students in the USA that enter University with anything resembling an adequate understanding of Evolution by Natural Selection are the students coming out of the Catholic School system. The Public School system is, apparently, so determined to avoid controversy that they skip those chapters.

Hence one gets the rather ironic situation where a religious tinged education is, at least in this instance, better then the secular alternative at teaching science.

Evolution happened, and when the theory was first revelaed by Darwin the church had no problem with it, they just saw it as part of Gods plan...

This is not an accurate statement. In fact there was wide spread criticism of the theory, mainly motivated on religious grounds, from day one.

I'm certianly not saying that it is impossible to be religious and also believe in Evolution at the same time. However it is not accurate history to imply that there was no back lash - there was and it was very significant.

In fact its of particular interest even in modern times because some of the arguments used against Evolution in the late 1800s are still being used to this day. Often despite the fact that some of these arguments make no sense in the modern context.

For example I relatively recently had a rather surreal argument with a Jehovah's Witness where she kept bringing up the lack of transitional fossils between Humans and Apes...I kept trying to point out to her that, for the purposes of this argument, any problems with the transitional fossil record where irrelevant since we clearly had fossils in the Genus Homo that predated Homo Sapien Hence I did not need a transitional fossil to show that we descended from primates we would clearly recognize as not Homo Sapien - any descendents would do.

Freehold DM wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Sanakht Inaros wrote:

So saying that no one had a chance to read it is disingenious.

Yeah, but that's sort of nitpicking the least important part of White Knife's overall point, which I agree with: for all the talk of "change," Obama's actual actions in office have been, almost item for item, a direct continuation of Bush Jr.'s.

See above, save i agree with you more often.

I often wonder if there is more to the situation than most of us realize. I have noticed in the past that other presidents have continued on with many policies that were laughable when done by their predecessor and confusingly continued by the current administration. The most obvious is back door politics to which we are unaware. I do have to question though if this is always the case. If there is not some other 'need' to which the public is not privy which would cause what to outside eyes would seem diametrically opposed groups to come to similar actions. No conspiracy theory, just wondering what information might being getting lost in the 'shuffle.'

I think back room politics gets the blame much more often then is really warranted. I'm not saying its never that because it probably is sometimes but I suspect that this is actually a minority of the time.

I think some of the time its that there is no obvious answer actually on the table or the promise was so broad that it was not particularly viable. In other words politician X promises to fix problem Y, maybe even takes some small steps to do so but problem Y is big and complex while campaign promises need to be straight forward and simple or the electorate does not get it.

That said I think the number one reason we don't usually see change is that the electorate does not want change - they like the idea of change but not the reality. Sure everyone wants X or Y changed but the electorate as a whole does not agree on what X or Y ought to be. If one can have 'change' that amounts to giving us our cake and eating it too thats fine and that is usually what we really mean by 'change' but its usually pretty hard to find that thing so most politicians go with just a few big changes...and even these often run into massive angst from the public once they start to get under way.

Obama probably would have given you guys British style Healthcare if he fully had his dithers...but the uproar was defining once health care reform was really put on the table and what could be shoved through and still represent some kind of movement toward more universal health care was a much watered down version...that was as far as Obama could push that and it was maybe his single biggest plan for 'change' going in.

Its actually possible for a politician to really decide to do 'change'. Sometimes they are forced (watch the TV of Europe for examples) and Ontario once elected a conservative politician who really did almost every single thing he said he was planning on doing in his 'Common Sense Revolution'. For nearly 8 years there where riot police defending the parliament buildings because of all this 'change', and this despite the fact that he was at least respected for being honest.

Worse yet once that little party was over his political party ended up in the wilderness because the electorate was actually pretty scared of them...they might bring more 'change'. In the end the next party elected reversed most of these changes and is widely voted for (though the voters sigh and complain that this candidate is so boring...but then they vote for him anyway).

It seems to me that if a politician wants to get elected you really need to get out there and promise positive change...but if you want to get re-elected you had better not change much.

In the end I think its the electorate itself that really shares the lions share of the blame here.

To evolution by natural selection to be specific.

ID as proposed by Michal Behe is a parrellel theory of evolutionary (which does include for the record common decent). It has however been discredited to the point where it has basicially ruined Behe's career.

It is also not the same as the ID which is proposed for teaching to children by the Christian right which has been shown in court to be a near copy/paste name replacement job of earlier creationist text books ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court.

I actually quiet respect the catholic church for their "God of the Gaps", it is a very tight piece of mental athletics, that makes their approach almost impossible to refute.

I stand corrected. Your correct in your statement that there seem to be several strands of ID. Seems I read some ID material which seemed to imply that the movement was more uniform then maybe it is/was.

Like you I've no real issue with the Catholic position, or any similar position in religion, because it allows science to get on with it which is really where my bottom line is.

I'd be very interested in Steampunk Fantasy. By which I mean creating and telling stories that don't immediately reference back to our world.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Don't think this was financially feasible. There where approximately 3.5 million slaves in the Confederate States on the eve of the the Civil War and they average about $800 dollars a piece (a lot of money at the time).

Slightly off topic:

The price of a slave was $800 dollares? Realy? Do you have a souce? That seems a little high to me. Though I might be thinking of a different time period. I would be most interesting in this souce. $800 dollars was more than 'a lot of money at the time).

Its a rough estimate - see here

The my break down runs along the lines of...

A male between 20-30 years old went for roughly $1400
A female in this age range (or slightly younger) went for about $1200
Children go for less but not that much less since their value is mostly intact (though you get it later). Call it 70% of the above values.

Prices are reasonably close to the above if the slave is in his (or her) thirties but then starts to drop off. Get up past 50 and the value really plummets.

I don't have an exact demographic age break down of the Confederates slave population on the eve of the Civil War but $800 as an average seems likely to be close and may even be a bit conservative.

P.S.
It says something about the power of our cultural mores that even working this out academically makes me slightly uncomfortable.

I'm not arguing for the Civil War by any means. It could have been easily prevented. Easily. Abolitionists or even the federal government since it was so keen on doing so, could have purchased the slaves their freedom, as was done in other slave holding nations.

Don't think this was financially feasible. There where approximately 3.5 million slaves in the Confederate States on the eve of the the Civil War and they average about $800 dollars a piece (a lot of money at the time).

Places with small slave populations like suger colonies of great empires often did this but if you actually had a large slave population compared to the rest of your population, Like Brazil, then the slaves where freed by a legal act with little or no compensation.

Note that Abolitionists where already doing this on an individual basis but it was never more then a drop in the bucket despite having some very hefty (financially speaking) backers.

No. Unless a state constitution allows that state to be infringed upon by another state, or by a majority of states. And those states' constitutions also allowed for infringement on another state.

I'd think it could be done with an Amendment - get 2/3rds of the States to agree that Hawaii, or some such, is no longer part of the Union and I would think that would be that.

ewan cummins 325 wrote:

stardust wrote:

As opposed as Ron Paul is to the Civil War, I don't think he'd want to be involved in another one... :)

Most sensible Americans were opposed to that war, and yet it came.

We could have avoided it if cooler heads had prevailed, and if Lincoln had not violated the Constitution. Of course, it would have been better to avoid the political crisis of secession in the first place. Peaceful seperation would have been preferable to the devastation and horror of the war, at any rate.

The very act of seceding from the Union was an act of treason and sedition. It was a violation of the Constitution to be done in the first place. The president has a Constitutional duty to hold the states together -- that is innumerate quite clearly.

There is nothing in the Constitution that actually makes the Union inviolate for all time. Nor was this some kind of an over site. The topic was debated and argued over when the Constitution was being framed and New York and Virginia made it absolutely clear that they would not sign on if it was going to be a mandatory thing they could not opt out of. Now the Constitution is pretty clear on the idea that if a legal power is not explicitly given to the Federal Government then that power resides in the States themselves. Since the Constitution is (intentionally) silent on succession the legal right on whether or not to succeed devolves to an individual State. To this day the only legal precedent against a State succeeding is a long and bloody civil war.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Emperor7 wrote:

'Believing' in ID does not equal dismissing evolution.

Actually it does. That is sort of the explicit point. Now you can believe in God and Evolution at the same time - its actually fairly easy and, officially speaking, all Catholics do - God is the cause of all causes being their official line.

Maybe my Catholic upbringing is shading my understanding of mutually exclusive? That might have been a better way to posit my comment. Or, the reconciliation of differences. ??? *scratches head*

There is a difference between what ID contends is the case and what the Pope contends is the case. The Papal position, God is the cause of all causes, contends that whatever science finds there will always be a God that came before that and set it in motion. Hence Evolution by natural selection is perfectly possible - its just that God may well have caused the first life form to spring up...and if Science shows how that is done then, well, no problem. God caused the Big Bang, and if Science figures out what caused the Big Bang...well again not an issue - God caused whatever caused the Big Bang, etc.

On the other hand ID makes a very specific contention and this contention is explicitly counter to Evolution - A Creator created each individual species in a unique act of creation and no species can transit from this divinely created form to another species. In other words species are rigid.

This explicitly stands in juxtaposition to Evolution which holds that species evolve from other species. In other words species are fluid.

'Believing' in ID does not equal dismissing evolution.

Actually it does. That is sort of the explicit point. Now you can believe in God and Evolution at the same time - its actually fairly easy and, officially speaking, all Catholics do - God is the cause of all causes being their official line.

Bitter Thorn wrote:

"More than half of South Africa’s mathematics and science teachers are unqualified..."

I wonder if they have an NEA equivalent?

Blame the gov't that pays them in peanuts, not the union. How do you expect to attract and keep qualified teachers if they're living at the poverty line?

I'd hesitate to start flinging to much blame in any one direction. Its country where something like 70% of the population is in dire poverty, the numbers of illiterate are huge and violence, often along racial lines threatens to break out at nearly any moment. Sometime the answers, even when they seem obvious can't be followed because its political suicide.

Its tough all around in South Africa and the place defies quick fixes or easy solutions.

Jeremy,

Barney Frank, Ron Paul and 55 others advocate for defense cuts

PDF of letter

Debt,Deficits, and Defense A Way Forward[url]

[url=http://i55.tinypic.com/zwb11w.gif]2009 Discretionary budget chart

I'm not sure how representative the last 2 are of Paul's position, but I found them interesting. I'll try to add some more.

EDIT:

$100,000,000,000 a year is a start

Ron Paul says U.S. spends $1 trillion on foreign policy

OK you have convinced me that he is serious about defense cuts. Now to see if he or anyone else can actually implement them - or alternatively admit to the idea that the job of the US military is to carry out a Pax Americana, which is a fine activity for a super power - its the mass self delusion that some how this massive military exists for 'self defense' that really irks me.

I believe the idea is to retain enough projectable military power to launch counterattacks at need, but to drastically reduce the scope and cost of the US military. We can maintain a strong military from this perspective at a fraction of our current unsustainable cost.

I don't see where he implies Canada is going to invade. That seems like kind of a straw man. I don't think it's logical to infer that the idea is to maintain our military at any where near its current level to protect us from Canada and Mexico.

We spend absurd amounts of money to project power around the world. I think the US should be out of the "world police" business.

Does that help clarify?

It clarifies your position but not Ron Paul's. I really don't believe this is a straw man at all. No where in that video, which is meant to put out his platform, do you see anything substantial about cuts to military spending. He bangs on the drum of not being the worlds police man and he certianly goes on about the need to cut spending but at the parts where one would expect to hear about how one can cut military spending we instead hear about maintaining a strong military for 'defense'.

I honestly think he's basically starting from day one by essentially promising the military supporters that he won't touch their precious budgets because a 'strong' military is needed for defense. In fact every time he says this line he is straight out lying - a really, really, weak military will serve you perfectly well for defense. Heck no military at all beyond some unpaid volunteers and a handful of people to maintain arsenals would actually be fine. There is no enemy out there that can actually invade you - it can't be done. We have already discounted Mexico and Canada and every other nation needs to cross an Ocean to pull this off. The two states that are closest to that capability are the UK and France. Russia's Carrier Battle Group is currently based on rational realpolitik and therefore based in the Black Sea to provide air support against enemies in the Caucus. China does not have any Carrier Battle Groups and probably won't really have one that can do significant power projection for 20-30 years. Its something like 15 years if they made it a priority and started building today.

Want some power projection? Two regiments of fighter bombers, 1 marine division and 3 carrier battle groups and your all set. This is a small fraction, very small, of current US military power.

I mean the sheer size of the American military almost dwarfs comprehension...seriously...did you know that if there was a naval war between the USA and every single other nation on earth you would probably win? Not only that but the only real competition comes from western states like Britain and France. I mean the premier naval weapon of the world is the Carrier Battle Group, America has what? 14 Carrier Battle Groups (Been a while since I last counted but I bet this is close)? France has 2-3 depending on if your counting their helicopter Carrier, Britain 2-3 as well, Russia 1-2 if you count their helicopter Carrier. India 1 based on a really old carrier with out dated planes, Brazil is the same as is Italy and Spain and I think that is it - even this overplays the rest of the worlds strength. American Carriers are really big and have lots of really good really modern fighters on them. If you actually counted how many planes the carriers can put into the air I think America outnumbers the rest of the planet by 2 or 3 to 1 and American planes are as good as and sometimes a lot better then the the planes of the rest of the planet.

My point really is that the US military is not just the biggest and the best out there - its ahead by an absolutely huge margin. Current American military doctrine keeps in place an army that is supposed to be able to actually get out their and conquer 2 or even 3 other nations at the same time even in widely different parts of the world (actually pacifying them once conquered is of course a much bigger problem). If your not being policeman to the world there is no need for a force even 15% this size. 10% or even 5% would do fine.

Ron Paul 2012: Don't Go to War So Carelessly

Interesting video, even a bit inspiring but he totally dodges the hard question. In fact he explicitly plays both sides of the isle here.

Over and over the video indicates a policy along the lines of "we need a strong military but we need to keep it home to defend our own borders".

B~#@&+#+.

Your two neighbors have practically zero capability to meaningfully invade you - Literally we could be stopped by a volunteer system where American volunteers agreed to be 'Minute Men' to form up in times of war and take their guns to fight the invader. Neither Mexico or Canada have the military strength to deal with even that - we quite simply don't have the manpower in our military's, even if we formed some unholy 'Conquer America' Alliance. Seriously - if such a fantasy where to happen we'd roll in conquer one or maybe two states at the most and both of our military's would be drained of offensive units as we just tried to garrison all these cities. Quite simply your neighbors are not strong enough to pose a threat to you even if they wanted to (and they don't they want to trade with you - that is where the money is).

Ipso Facto there is no need 'for a strong military' for defense. Its a useless waste of money unless you plan to use it to move to various grid points around the world and use it as a weapon of offense to exert American policy globally.

Its the military industrial complex itself that is likely dragging you into these wars in part to justify itself and a budget that ranks surprisingly well when placed alongside total military spending of every other nation on earth. It may not even be a case of shadowy men saying 'lets conquer her or lets conquer there'. The very fact that you have on hand the toys needed to engage in wild military adventures on other continents is a phenomenal temptation to use them. Eliminate the capability to invade some state on the other side of the world with two weeks notice and you won't be involved in such adventurism.

I'd like to see a US politician get up there and say 'I will save billions and billions of dollars by demobilizing the army and implementing a force capable of realistically repelling an invasion of the United States by Canada.

No other nation poses a threat...really they don't...go count up how many military transports they have to bring their army across the ocean...no one can transport more then a couple of divisions at the very best and imagine what they would need to maintain the supply line over a whole bloody ocean. America with a volunteer system of defense by patriotic citizens and a handful of arsenals full of some percentage of the weapons you already have is unbeatable by any nation in the world. Literally unconquerable...and this has been true since day one.

By the time you guys won your revolution you have been unbeatable - your too big and too far away to conquer. The most miniscule army was able to keep even the power of the mighty British Empire at bay...even when you fell into war with Britain (in 1812) the British did not believe they could conquer America...only maybe get a peace treaty that gave them rights in Florida or the west. Actual conquest by the most powerful empire in the world at that time was already seen as impossible...and there is no empire like that around today. The most capable nations in terms of pulling this off (The UK, France) would not try it in any case - their democracy precludes going to war with their cousins the Americans.

Ron Paul is talking big ideas but he is studiously ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room.

i still can't work out what situation would be lethal an require the player to roll a d6 in order to survive...

still good video!

WotC posted an interview with the creator. The inspiration was apparently conflict resolution. Essentially the video's creator wanted to do something with his character, the DM expressed skepticism that it was legal, creator insists that its within the rules and the DM resolves the issue with 'Roll a D6' (presumably high 50% of the die and the ruling goes in the players favour low and it goes in the DMs favour - I do this myself sometimes as a DM). Creator does so but now he has "Roll a D6" to the tune of "Like a G6" stuck in his head and the rest is, as they say, history.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

The Rule: When stating up monsters the monster's best non AC defense is given an extra +2 while its worst defense is given made even worse with another -2.

Interesting tweak, Jeremy. I'm sure your casters are always asking to describe their targets. ;)

In the game I'm a player in I'm the one always asking for the monster description. As a long time player (and usually the DM) I can often figure out what we are dealing with by the description - its rare that I know the 4E stats of said baddie but I often know what it could do in 1st-3rd so I tend to have some idea what is on the menu, of course, occasionally, they really changed it in 4E (Berbalangs for example) and I'm spectacularly wrong in my advice.

In the game I DM I give the players pictures of the monsters but they are all newbs so what they see does not really translate that much. I try and hint at strengths and weaknesses via descriptions but, so far, them figuring out my hints have been more, ah ha, moments for the players and not a realization that the DM is intentionally giving 'tells'. When they do figure it out they think they are so smart and actually believe that I screwed up by 'giving away' to much information. Little do they know that its intentional on my part - I love newbs.

I write, or rewrite most of my own monsters and I usually stick with the -2/+0/+2 spread for NADs. But the DMs in my group have gotten in the habit of writing monster defenses on index cards and clipping them to the outside of the DM screen for players to see. So a caster using the right power in my game already has an effective +2 to hit without having to figure out which defense is lowest.

This strikes me as basically another way to getting to where I am going - list out 'where the weak point' is and you'll get players that focus on that. I'm personally not such a big fan because this seems to skip over the 'discovery' stage where the players learn about the monster while fighting it which I think is a particularly fun part of combat. It does increase the speed by letting players work out what they need to hit on their own. My system will actually slow things down as table talk and group planning is obviously being subtly encouraged. If there is a real desire to speed combats up the posted defense system is one way to do that, if its not really on the agenda then a system that slows it down a little bit more is fine.

I mostly don't have a problem with combat speed myself - in the game I play in things are complex but the players are veterans who are pretty good about keeping things moving so my turn rolls around reasonably quick.

My newbs think combat is the best...they are very excited when it starts up so I'm not looking for a speed boost here, in fact I edge toward any system that makes it even more fun. Table talk about monster strengths and weak points really adds to their experience, hence the house rule to emphasize that element.

I'm a fan of Jeramy's approach, there. Monster defenses should be distinct when appropriate, and usually it is. Sure, if you are fighting a monk, it might have all good defenses. But a Giant should have great Fort but low Reflex, a wizard great Will but low Fort... etc.

Thanks.

Now I agree that monsters, as they stand, already have distinct defenses, I'm just not finding it distinct enough. I mean there usually is around a 3 point difference between the best and the worst but my experience has been that players really push their bonus to hit as far as it can go and that can result in them not really noticing something as small as a 3 point spread...in my system there is a whopping 7 point spread (on average) between the best and the worst and that really is a big deal. It means finding the weak point is very much a worth while activity, something that is not always the case now where the utility of the power the player has on hand is more likely to be the deciding factor on what to do irrespective of most (but not all) monster defenses. Here I'm tweaking the game subtly but significantly by making it so that, if you can find the weak defense its probably better to use a weaker power that targets that then go with your better power that targets the particularly hard to hit defense.

I'm also hoping that this slightly shakes up a tendency among players to 'rank' their powers from best to worst and then always use them in order. Thus shaking up combat a little bit by making that ranking more situation dependent.