December has been an exciting month for me. In the World of Darkness I watched as my players roleplayed for almost two hours in character without rolling dice, something that has never happened before in all the years I’ve been GMing.

I also saw those same roleplayers incite a crisis in the campaign. Unlike my previous D&D crises, this crisis didn’t involve campaign killing or starting over. Instead, it showed that the power of the game and the storyline is firmly in the players’ hands.

And I finally got a look at D&D 4th Edition. While I don’t have enough information to actually consider building a 4th Edition world yet, I now know enough to at least give my opinions on what such a world might look like. And like a point of light in a world covered in darkness, the future of that possible world looks bright.

Crisis: MCWoD Style

Our Monte Cook’s World of Darkness campaign is going strong. I have four full-time players and two more have just returned, hopefully full-time. I have another two players considering coming back in January which puts me at my full capacity of eight players.

I believe that my growing group of players is due in part to the recent crisis. And what I learned during previous crises of faith while DMing D&D 3.5.

So, back to the crisis. I believe that in every GM’s world building life comes a time when the players go crazy. They go off in wild directions, derail plotlines, take on the federal government, and get their characters killed. On purpose. Stuff like that.

In the past, I was fairly heavy handed in how I handled the craziness of players. I thought that downplaying and mitigating crazy behavior helped all the other players and facilitated better play.

With MCWoD I decided to do everything differently from my previous D&D campaigns. Minis used rarely. No clear cut goal for the PCs to pursue. And I let the PCs do whatever the hell they want to do.

All of which leads to chaotic world and campaign building. The game I’m running now and the world of darkness I’m living in are not my own. In fact, no one player is controlling this world. It has taken on a life of its own.

From Panic to Pleased to Planning

Now I’ll admit, panic set in at first with my current campaign. I mean, last game session the player of the demon character provoked two other PCs into killing his character. The player called this roleplaying. He was quite pleased with himself and happily created a new character, a mage.

I was still scratching my head, but happy for the player whose character’s death seemed to have pleased him, when the feds showed up in game to take the wife of Doc Howard in. She was suspected of consorting with Awakened killers and summoning demons.

And the PCs had just rescued her from terrorists.

Just like that, the supernaturals (a vampire and werewolf) grabbed her and ran for it. The vampire took about six rounds in his undead hide before getting away. They wanted to protect Mrs. Howard.

The two Awakened laid down their weapons and let the IDA (the feds) try to capture Mrs. Howard. They trusted the system to sort things out. The supernaturals did not.

That’s where the game session ended. In a literal crisis. One demon down and the rest of the group split in two.

I couldn’t be more pleased. The session generated two pages of e-mails on our Yahoo group which is about ten times the normal chatter after a game. Every player is talking about what happened and what happens next.

I now have a plan in place. An offer to the PCs that if accepted will re-unite the Awakened and supernaturals in an uneasy alliance. And send them straight to hell. To Minneapolis.

I’ll let you know how it goes in the next column. Wish me luck. And if you have a similar story to share, please drop a comment here. I’d love to hear how other GMs handled similar situations.

D&D 4th Edition

Anyone who has read my earlier columns knows I’m a D&D fanboy. While I’ve played other systems over the years, I’ve always come back to D&D.

In my last crisis of faith column, I talked about the loss of Dragon and Dungeon and my moving away from D&D. I ran RuneQuest online for a summer and than started MCWoD.

I haven’t mentioned D&D here since because I really had no information on 4th Edition in which to form an opinion. I have looked at D&D 3.5 recently in case I wanted to give it another shot after MCWoD. I just couldn’t figure out a way to make it work. I looked at Star Wars Saga Edition seriously for a while as another option.

And then, Wizards Presents Races and Classes came out.

Races and Classes

Before Wizards put up the preview of Races and Classes on their website, I wasn’t even considering buying the book. My initial impression was that 4th Edition was a money grab. I had no facts to back up this gut feeling and that was part of the problem. No facts meant no interest on my part.

Then I read Bill Slavicsek’s Orcus Design Tenets for 4th Edition:

1. It must be Medieval, Fantasy Roleplaying.
2. Dungeon Master as Storyteller.
3. Cooperative Play Experience.
4. Base Mechanics (Keep the d20…).
5. Three-dimensional Tactics (…continue using miniatures…).
6. Options, Not Restrictions.
7. Improve the Game. (…something cool at every level…).
8. Make the Game Easy to Design For, Develop, and Edit.

Now these ideas I can get behind. I wish that Wizards had published these tenets as the first thing on their website right after the 4th Edition announcement. It certainly described what I’m looking for more concisely than most of the previews I’ve seen so far.

Also, tenets 1, 2, 3, and 8 would really help with storytelling, campaign running, and world building. If Wizards pulls off implementing these tenets, then I might take a paragon level in 4th Edition Fanboy (no more prestige classes so I can’t take a level in one).

Impressions

As I mentioned up front, I don’t have enough information to actually consider trying my hand at world building yet using 4th Edition. However, Races and Classes really gave me a great overview of the points of light concept, the races and their backgrounds, alignment, and some great ideas about the gods.

Overall, my impression now is highly favorable. The default D&D setting is layers of fallen empires built on top of each other over the centuries. Almost all the races except halflings tried their hand at empire building. The most recent fallen empire was human and it gathered many races together in joint settlements before it fell.

Whatever I might name the old empires and however I might draw the continent, this point of lights of concept is solidly what I’m interested in. Exploration, dungeon crawling, diplomatic missions, and more all fit in well with this base background.

Also, the new core races of dragonborn and tiefling have lost legacies of ancient empires in their past. They have a rich history of conflict.

The same goes for the other races. Dwarves were once the slaves of giants. And they don’t live underground completely. They have surface cities with mines and tunnels beneath (dwarves will have low-light vision not darkvision).

The ten or so subraces of elves are now replaced with three separate races. The drow sundered the other two with war. So you have dark elves, magic elves, and wilderness elves.

And humans themselves have a tangled past. While the most ambitious and driven race, they constantly face temptation to misuse power and become corrupt. They can be the most pious race and the most intolerant and cruel. As pointed out in the book, all the races in 3.5 had flaws mentioned in their write ups except for humans. 4th Edition is going to give humans some flaws just like the other races to help facilitate roleplaying and world building.

World Building

D&D 4th Edition assumes three levels of play. Levels 1 through 10 are dungeon crawls, wilderness explorations, city capers, and opponents like hobgoblins and skeletons. Negotiating a treaty between two villages, blazing a trail through a forest, and killing the hobgoblins menacing a mine would fall into this category.

Levels 11 through 20 will introduce many classic and more powerful opponents: beholders, giants, dragons, liches, demons etc. Excursions to the Underdark, plane walking, and more political moving and shaking are all options.

And then the game can go way beyond anything we’ve seen before in D&D 3.5 Epic levels. Levels 21 though 30 can see PCs challenging gods, founding empires, and becoming demigods themselves. Claims for the types of adventures possible at this level sound bold and audacious. If anyone but the current designers at Wizards tried to pull this off I’d think it was impossible.

With the staff Wizards currently employs, maybe they can pull it off. And if they do, any world built using these rules as a base will be simply amazing. And the players will get to play heroes of astounding power and influence. Literally shaping worlds, creating new religions, and changing the face of reality itself. They could become world builders themselves in a way. If they can only survive long enough and finish enough quests to rise to the challenge.

I’ll be honest, I’m interested. The hook is set. Can Wizards reel my in? We’ll see.

Next Month

On the run from the feds. An old enemy is found. A way to strike at the Iconnu. And welcome to Minneapolis. And maybe I’ll talk a little bit about Wizards Present Worlds and Monsters.

Keep your Awakened close and your Supernaturals closer,
Charlie