The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I really have to open with the caveat that I've grown up hating Wizards of the Coast. Sure they'll tell you that their card games brought interest into gaming, but all I ever saw brought into our local gaming stores were people who were arguing about whom killed whom in the second round of their magic game. When they bought TSR, I groaned. When Hasbro bought them out, I shuddered. When they dropped the TSR logo from the D&D books, I was outraged. When they tossed out Diablo and Starcraft addons for their games, I took it as evidence that they had well and truly sold out the last vestiges of all that was good in D&D for some quick cash.

Those sellouts have done a damn good job with the third edition thus far. I'd been keeping track of what all was going on with it on Eric Noah's fine web site, so none of the content that I found upon cracking the cover early Thursday morning was a shock to me. In fact, I could probably have written this same review a month ago with all the information that had been leaked out by then. I'll go over the book briefly before moving on to my group's playtesting experiences.

Physically, the book is okay. The binding on the old second edition books was sturdier-looking, we used those things as coasters, writing and rolling surfaces, doorstops, body armor, just about every abuse possible and they took it in stride. The third edition books, however, look like the covers will be prone to tearing off after a year or two of regular use. At least they're pretty inexpensive. As long as you take good care of the books, they should be okay, but active gamers had best be prepared to eventually be buying new copies down the road. The paper is decently sturdy, the layout is also good, though the font is a touch too small for quick, comfortable reading, and the artwork is good.

Ruleswise, third edition is pure gold. All of the idiocy from previous editions; weapon damage and speeds that made no sense, weapon speed in general, different damage to large creatures, worthless familiars, penalty-free dual-wielding for dex monkeys, the whole dual- and multi-classing rules, just about anything that you can point to in second edition and say, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen." is gone now. While I must snicker at some of the more unbelievable so-called double-weapons, such as the gnomish hammer with the foot-long pick that would jab under your ribcage and impale your heart if you ever tried to use it, you need to see the picture to believe it, the system shows a surprising amount of thought. The book is very much a focused work, without nearly as much rambling on about the historical signifigance of paladins and such as was in the second edition book. I'm sure the other dozens and dozens of reviews will be going into a page by page breakdown of the book, so I'll leave my comments at that and let other reviewers go into more depth.

For the playtest, we took the third edition D&D Adventure Boxed Set, used the maps and scenarios, and dumped the watered-down rules. Something of a trial by fire, we valiantly charged forth into the game with nothing but our wits and the handy PHB as reference material. The little adventures included in the boxed set were pretty much as hack 'n slash as you can get, so we got quite a bit of experience with the combat system in a short amount of time. Combat moves quite easily now, with much less confusion of the "Did I hit with a 5?" variety. In a very wise move, WotC has put most everything in third edition in five-foot increments, making gaming with miniatures disgustingly easy. In many ways, combat in third edition is very much like combat in a tabletop wargame. I should point out, however, that the D&D miniatures run counter to this same philosophy. Some of the minis, such as the giants, take up too much space, while others such as dragons take up much too little. A minor thing, but with third edition so admirably layed out for play on a square grid, it's sad to then have to say, "Okay, the mini's taking up two squares, but according to the rules the giant fits in one, so you two are actually standing here, even though you had to put the minis one square further back so he could fit." But back to the play: Everyone hacked and slashed and shot arrows and dodged and all of that good stuff with very few snags on the rules front. The only two big rules snags that we came across involved attacks of opportunity, which were very poorly worded in the book and which I found out today we'd been doing incorrectly, and the laying of traps. My players, being experienced gamers and correctly suspecting the horde of goblins on the other side of a door, set to rigging up an ambush on their side of the door. Unfortunately, rules for rigging up traps is in the DM's guide, so we had to wing it for now. Another thing that I noticed is that skill use is quite difficult for beginning characters. A goodly number of target numbers for skill use are twenty and up, which is less than a fifty-fifty shot for pretty much all first-level characters. Throughout the entire game of several hours, two saving throws and two skill checks were successful, and that's it. While I realize that there's little point in higher levels if the low-level people can already do everything, it was obviously wearing thin on the players to keep failing when trying to use the skills. Critical hits are also not very likely occurances for low-level characters. After rolling the 20 (or less, to a minimum of 11 for truly sick combinations of magical weapons and feats), the player must roll again and roll enough to have hit the opponent again to get the critical damage. While this resulted in one of the two 20s rolled in the evening to not score a crit, I do like how that makes higher level characters more likely to do the extra damage.

Overall we left the evening's play pleased with the new system, much as I hate to admit it. While I'd like to be able to say that third edition is even worse than the munchkin-fest of revised second edition with the skills and powers addon, it is a genuinely good and painfully balanced system. Whether the designers will ruin it all with a third edition equivalent of the player's option stuff remains to be seen, however.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, 3rd Edition
Author: Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook and Skkp Williams Category: game Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Line: D&D Cost: $31.95 cdn Page count: 285 ISBN: 0-7869-1550-1 SKU: TSR11550 Playtest Review by George Jackson on 08/17/00. Genre tags: Fantasy	I really have to open with the caveat that I've grown up hating Wizards of the Coast. Sure they'll tell you that their card games brought interest into gaming, but all I ever saw brought into our local gaming stores were people who were arguing about whom killed whom in the second round of their magic game. When they bought TSR, I groaned. When Hasbro bought them out, I shuddered. When they dropped the TSR logo from the D&D books, I was outraged. When they tossed out Diablo and Starcraft addons for their games, I took it as evidence that they had well and truly sold out the last vestiges of all that was good in D&D for some quick cash. Those sellouts have done a damn good job with the third edition thus far. I'd been keeping track of what all was going on with it on Eric Noah's fine web site, so none of the content that I found upon cracking the cover early Thursday morning was a shock to me. In fact, I could probably have written this same review a month ago with all the information that had been leaked out by then. I'll go over the book briefly before moving on to my group's playtesting experiences. Physically, the book is okay. The binding on the old second edition books was sturdier-looking, we used those things as coasters, writing and rolling surfaces, doorstops, body armor, just about every abuse possible and they took it in stride. The third edition books, however, look like the covers will be prone to tearing off after a year or two of regular use. At least they're pretty inexpensive. As long as you take good care of the books, they should be okay, but active gamers had best be prepared to eventually be buying new copies down the road. The paper is decently sturdy, the layout is also good, though the font is a touch too small for quick, comfortable reading, and the artwork is good. Ruleswise, third edition is pure gold. All of the idiocy from previous editions; weapon damage and speeds that made no sense, weapon speed in general, different damage to large creatures, worthless familiars, penalty-free dual-wielding for dex monkeys, the whole dual- and multi-classing rules, just about anything that you can point to in second edition and say, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen." is gone now. While I must snicker at some of the more unbelievable so-called double-weapons, such as the gnomish hammer with the foot-long pick that would jab under your ribcage and impale your heart if you ever tried to use it, you need to see the picture to believe it, the system shows a surprising amount of thought. The book is very much a focused work, without nearly as much rambling on about the historical signifigance of paladins and such as was in the second edition book. I'm sure the other dozens and dozens of reviews will be going into a page by page breakdown of the book, so I'll leave my comments at that and let other reviewers go into more depth. For the playtest, we took the third edition D&D Adventure Boxed Set, used the maps and scenarios, and dumped the watered-down rules. Something of a trial by fire, we valiantly charged forth into the game with nothing but our wits and the handy PHB as reference material. The little adventures included in the boxed set were pretty much as hack 'n slash as you can get, so we got quite a bit of experience with the combat system in a short amount of time. Combat moves quite easily now, with much less confusion of the "Did I hit with a 5?" variety. In a very wise move, WotC has put most everything in third edition in five-foot increments, making gaming with miniatures disgustingly easy. In many ways, combat in third edition is very much like combat in a tabletop wargame. I should point out, however, that the D&D miniatures run counter to this same philosophy. Some of the minis, such as the giants, take up too much space, while others such as dragons take up much too little. A minor thing, but with third edition so admirably layed out for play on a square grid, it's sad to then have to say, "Okay, the mini's taking up two squares, but according to the rules the giant fits in one, so you two are actually standing here, even though you had to put the minis one square further back so he could fit." But back to the play: Everyone hacked and slashed and shot arrows and dodged and all of that good stuff with very few snags on the rules front. The only two big rules snags that we came across involved attacks of opportunity, which were very poorly worded in the book and which I found out today we'd been doing incorrectly, and the laying of traps. My players, being experienced gamers and correctly suspecting the horde of goblins on the other side of a door, set to rigging up an ambush on their side of the door. Unfortunately, rules for rigging up traps is in the DM's guide, so we had to wing it for now. Another thing that I noticed is that skill use is quite difficult for beginning characters. A goodly number of target numbers for skill use are twenty and up, which is less than a fifty-fifty shot for pretty much all first-level characters. Throughout the entire game of several hours, two saving throws and two skill checks were successful, and that's it. While I realize that there's little point in higher levels if the low-level people can already do everything, it was obviously wearing thin on the players to keep failing when trying to use the skills. Critical hits are also not very likely occurances for low-level characters. After rolling the 20 (or less, to a minimum of 11 for truly sick combinations of magical weapons and feats), the player must roll again and roll enough to have hit the opponent again to get the critical damage. While this resulted in one of the two 20s rolled in the evening to not score a crit, I do like how that makes higher level characters more likely to do the extra damage. Overall we left the evening's play pleased with the new system, much as I hate to admit it. While I'd like to be able to say that third edition is even worse than the munchkin-fest of revised second edition with the skills and powers addon, it is a genuinely good and painfully balanced system. Whether the designers will ruin it all with a third edition equivalent of the player's option stuff remains to be seen, however. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, 3rd Edition