It is Settled (for now): Mothership and Tales of the Valiant

 So I have at last wrapped the D&D 5.5 campaign (we have loose plot threads, so who knows, maybe it will be revisited eventually) and Wednesday night formally begins with a Mothership ongoing campaign. I am plotting for around 5-10 sessions, but maybe we'll get more out of it; who knows! Mothership is a very fun game, but it is easier to do one shots and short campaigns with it than it is to do protracted campaigns....similar to Call of Cthulhu, the group can only sustain so much horror before it transitions from spooky fun to "wow how aren't we dead yet."*

I have had an infrequent Friday group as well, which my son was occasionally running Pathfinder for (and I ran Shadowdark for them before that). The group expanded to six players with last week's return to form, and I began running Tales of the Valiant at long last! It was a good session 0.5, with some char gen followed by a bit of gaming. I am introducing the variant concepts to them as we go (such as lineages and heritages, luck, doom, dread and so forth) bit by bit, in a completely new world setting I devised jut for TotV. I had initially planned to use preprinted modules but after reading through everything I had I decided most of them sucked for purposes of my GM style and what I wanted out of the game, and so I devised my own low level intro campaign module instead. I meticulously followed the encounter design rules outlined in the Gamemaster's Guide and have so far found them more satisfying than 5e/5.5E's traditionally more vibe-based guidelines.

Anyway, this mix seems to work for now! I have plans soon to try out Cairn 2E, Fabula Ultima, Outgunned, The Electric State** and possibly a return to Savage World's Pathfinder edition. We shall see.....but the important thing is, lots of options that require no further engagement with D&D 5.5.  

*Or, alternatively, "We have all lost multiple PCs, does anyone have a living PC who remembers why we landed on this haunted space station in the first place?"

**RPG and the original book only, we will not speak of the Netflix movie. 

As the Werewolf Changes

 During last night's game I was surprised to notice that Jackalweres no longer have a problem with silver in the 2025 Monster Manual. So in checking out the other lycanthropes I discovered that hey, it turns out in D&D 5.5 you can harm werewolves with anything, normally, now. They get a few extra HP and a slight AC boost but lose all the mythological flavor of the thing they used to be.

This got me to thinking about how they looked in other systems, so I thought I'd plunge down that rabbit hole a bit to see:

AD&D 1E/2E: Can only be harmed by silver or +1 weapons. So at this stage in the game, low level PCs who have trouble finding magic weapons really need to carry a silvered weapon with them just in case.... In rereading their entries I assume they transform as an action but maybe it was as part of their movement. I seem to recall running AD&D where they could move, transform and attack all in the same combat round, which makes sense in the longer 1E turn cycles.

D&D 3.5: Gain damage reduction 10/silver but only in hybrid and wolf form, interestingly! Shapeshift is an action. Looking at the old format for D&D 3.5 stat blocks on monsters reminded me of how convoluted and information dense they were; how interesting to see that the 2025 MM swung so far to the opposite direction that the current stat blocks feel anemic and drained of all color and flavor.

Pathfinder 1E: Have resistance 10 to all attacks except silvered weapons! Change shape is a move equivalent action, and they induce lycanthropy on a failed saving roll following a bite.

Pathfinder 2E: They have shapeshift as an action, and are vulnerable 5 to silvered weapons. Lycanthropy is induced on a failed save.

D&D 4E: they have regeneration 5, but silver stops their regeneration. They shapshift as a minor action, and they do extra damage against bloodied opponents. Instead of imparting lycnathropy as a disease they induce moon frenzy, which behaves a bit like the confusion spell (but does not end with the inflicted turning into a lycanthrope, interestingly). Diseases and curses in 4E were notoriously weak and ineffectual.

D&D 5E (2014): resistant to nonmagical or silvered weapons, but shapeshift as a standard action. Still have some flavor text that leans into making werewolves interesting in a traditional way. If bitten, on a failed save you just have lycanthropy now.

D&D 2024 (5.5): They gain 13 hit points and get a better AC, but lose any special resistance to ordinary damage, and silver is not even mentioned. They can shapeshift as a bonus action. Lycanthropy if bitten, but you have to reach zero hit points for it to take effect.

Tales of the Valiant: Werewolves are resistant to non-magical damage (silver is not mentioned here either). They induce lycanthropy as a curse after biting someone who fails a save.  

How about some of the other games out there? Let's see:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: mirrors AD&D 1E; so they can probably shapeshift as part of their turn, and are immune to nonmagical, non silvered attacks. Lycanthropy is automatic in an opponent reduced to 50% of their hit points by the werewolf.

Dragonbane: Werewolves hate silver as it deals full damage (along with fire) and messes with their senses. They take half damage from non-magical weapons. taking even 1 point of damage from the werewolf induces both paralysis (potency 9) and lycanthropy, and can only be cured with powerful magic or wolvesbane. And on its monster attacks a 6 induces a berserker frenzy in which your party probably dies!

Basic Roleplaying/Call of Cthulhu: They have regeneration, are immune to most damage (silvered weapons will do full damage and kill them on a serious wound, though), and taking any damage from a bite induces lycanthropy, which can maybe be avoided on a luck role if the bite also severs the limb that was bitten. Nice! The BRP statblock addresses magic and fire doing full damage as well.

Cypher System: they are level 4 creatures, which normally would mean 12 health but they have 24 health. They can cause lycanthropy if you are sufficiently injured to be reduced on the damage track. They take a long time (1D6 rounds) to shapeshift if caught in the act.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG (GURPS): These things are terrifying with damage resistance 15 against all attacks except silver (which does double damage and ignores the DR), and they regenerate 1 HP per second (GURPS combat rounds are 1 second long, so for D&D purposes that's 6 HPs of regeneration for a D&D round). Interestingly Dungeon Fantasy punts on the lycanthropy as a bite-induced curse with some flavor text about how the local temples try to keep that under control, and the rest of the statblock ignores it. GURPS Werewolves from the 3rd edition sourcebook of course does a lot more that I won't belabor here.

Fantasy AGE: They show up in the Bestiary sourcebook, and can induce the lycanthropy curse on a stunt, with the difficulty being based on how many stunt points are applied. The inflicted makes checks each night until the full moon; if they don't kick it before the full moon they go full lycanthrope. There's a section on lycanthrope vulnerabilities, but silver is mentioned as only one possibility, with the GM encouraged to customize for the campaign.

Mythras: Mythras punts on this one terribly and you need to go dig in the wolf section to get a sense of it. Ostensibly they are emulating older, more archaic notions of shapeshifters rather than more modern takes on lycanthropy, I guess? 

Mork Borg: It's actually a character class, the Cursed Skinwalker (in Feretory). You die, and your body is possessed by an animalistic presence, returning you to life as a cursed skinwalker. a bloody, skinless wolf is only one of your options. Tangentially werewolfish, but it wouldn't be Mork Borg if it was conventional now, would it? 

Okay, it was at this point that I ran out of energy (I was looking at The Fantasy Trip's take, which is to lump werewolves and vampires together as cursed/diseased species when mental fatigue just overwhelmed me). I have to say, if you want a werewolf to be scary, then there are two games that do this exceedingly well: Call of Cthulhu/BRP and Dragonbane (with honorable mention to GURPS/Dungeon Fantasy). The least scary edition of the the werewolf can be found in the current D&D Monster Manual for 2025, which is a real shame; it really lacks any of the color and vibrancy of the mythology it derives from. Curiously, they have done a better job with some other monsters in the book (medusa got a slight improvement imo, for example) so it is a shame to see them drop the ball here just because, apparently, someone might not want to be bothered with finding a silvered weapon? Weird. Very weird. Aside from D&D 2024, the next worst take on werewolves is (imo) Mythras, which puts the least amount of effort into the concept, delegating lycanthropy to a paragraph in the wolf statblock section.

This is making me want to consider Dragonbane for gaming in the very near future now, though. 

Genuinely Tough Fight - So yeah it is possible to take out D&D 2024 PCs

 Brief post, but my D&D 5.5 campaign last week had an actual tough fight. The encounter balance was on the high end for a group of 6 players with a competent NPC ally, against 4 vampire spawn (CR 5) and 12 CR 1 satarre from the Monster Vault for Tales of the Valiant. Half of the party dropped before victory was snatched from defeat. I admit, I used some competent monster tactics, including the vampires putting out the light sources in the chamber on round two, plunging the room in to darkness. Somehow, amazingly, only two of the six party members had any darkvision so that created a harrowing round or two until they secured some light.

The real killer wasn't the vampires, although like many monsters in the 2025 MM they do have a slight boost in that their main attack leads to an automatic secondary benefits (grapple) rather than prompting a saving throw. They do then get a bite attack if a grapple is landed, which alas does require a saving throw....so only one bite was made successfully in the session. My experience with D&D has been that, on average, PCs make their saves unless something weird is going on. 

But the surprise moment in the encounter was the satarre, vicious void-driven gecko/lizardfolk things from the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault (and other books prior). They are only CR 1, but they get two attacks, which land with base damage plus necrotic/void damage. The result was that I had a furious level of success with them....they could overwhelm D&D 2024 PC defenses with so many attacks, and in the space of two rounds three PCs dropped. 

Afterwards, we agreed it was reflective of the fact that while the 2025 MM has monsters that often benefit from simplified effects in their attacks (with a secondary benefit landing automatically, for example), the Tales of the Valiant monsters seem geared to hit a bit harder.

I am not 100% sure if this entirely true (many of the changes I have caught so far in TotV are along the lines of Kobold Press design standards simply being broadly applied to their own variant system), but it does make me want to play Tales of the Valiant in a pure form at the game table even more than usual. I need to convince the group of this. With many more new tomes coming out that contain player-facing archertypes and material this may be an easier sell now. Labyrinth, The Old Margreve, a Player's Guide 2 in Kickstarter and a forthcoming Book of Swords adapted to Tales of the Valiant are all full of useful player stuff, something the core Player's Guide was a bit short on with only two subclasses/archetypes per main class. When you have an old, experienced and jaded group like my own, they need more weird stuff, not less. 

Anyway, if this happens I will report more on it.

Death Bat's 2025 Gaming Plans: Dragonbane, Mothership, Savage Worlds and the Usual Suspects

Here it is! The short and sweet outline of what I plan to do for 2025....at least in theory:

Part I: The things I am certain to be running this year:

Dragonbane

Starting next week we are going to finally start a campaign in Dragonbane. I am really looking forward to this, as until now if you wanted to play BRP Fantasy, the only real options were: find a copy of the out of print (albeit POD) Magic World, customize Runequest, or finnagle Mythras. Actually those are all good options, but Dragonbane has a astyle, character and odd mix of OSR and modernity that resonates well with me. I am looking forward to this.

Savage Worlds

We started Savage Worlds this weekend, using Supers/Horror mashup for a sort of Planetary/Hellboy/Horror Comics inspired campaign. I think this is going to be a fun, long prospect for a campaign as I get to lean in to my secret obsession I never usually write or talk about: the comic genre and all its quirks! I also plan to offer up more SW genres down the road, and am really looking forward to the new Science Fiction Companion when it ships in February.

Mothership

I plan to run more Mothership intermittently throughout 2025, and may warm up to a short or long campaign again at some point. I realize with Mothership it is as much about the player investment in the experience as anything, so how much Mothership I get to run will depend on the group I assemble.

Part II: The things I expect to run or try to run this year, but there are caveats:

D&D 5.75

The new D&D is on hold until the Monster Manual comes out. I have to see how the final tome in the revised books looks so I can assess my feelings on the new revision, and how it all comes together. Right now, using existing monsters with new characters makes the characters feel a but overpowered and I can't tell if that's by design, or because we're missing the appropriately revamped monsters to accompany them.

Tales of the Valiant

I really want to run this, but I need to detox a bit from having run way too much 5E in 2024. If the final book in the D&D 5.75 set doesn't really live up to expectations, I may just insist that any future 5E in 2025 be via Tales of the Valiant.

GURPS

I would love to get a chance to play GURPS again, but it's thunder may be stolen by Savage Worlds in 2025, which is honestly a better fit for my regulars. I may get to run GURPS with my son and some new players, though, if I can find them.

Mork Borg and Vast Grimm (and Maybe Death In Space)

This is all part of the Mork Borg universe. I anticipate running more one shots and short 2-3 session games here at some point, especially if this year is not monopoloized by protracted D&D campaigns. That said, which flavor and variant (and I also just got Ronin, another Mork Borg spin off that is amazing) depend on mood, I guess.

Part III: The Fever Dreams

I can sum the unlikely candidates up like this: Runequest (because I can't quite invest in Glorantha); Mythras (because as soon as I start diving in to relearn it I remember why I stop); Vaesen (I really want to, but the cute approach to the art is at odds with my ability to convey a horror atmosphere); then there's Pathfinder 2E, which I actually fully expect I may be playing in as a player, but do not think I will get around to GMing this year, but who knows! I often say that then prove myself wrong for at least one session. Also Traveller, which I wouldn't mind running, but I need a shift in my group dynamics before I will consider it (e.g. honest die rollers only please). That last one applies to a lot of these games, actually. 

I didn't mention Cypher System because I can't quite pin down what I want to do with it, but that could change in 2025. I also can't quite bring myself to offer it up right now (despite loving the system) because the die rolls are all player facing, and when you may have one or more suspects in your group who like to cheat on their die rolls, it can be very demoralizing. Yes, I likely need to have a chat with the specific person(s) about this. If you wonder why I don't just kick them, keep in mind I am gaming with a group of players who have in some cases been together as gamers and friends for 18 or more years, so these are not just randos, or people I don't know (or want to know), or pickup gamers. So at some point an honest talk is a better approach. Also, we're all really old now, and so one would think age would make us better people, both on how to approach this and (yes) why on earth would anyone at this stage cheat? It is frustrating....but it is not like 20+ years ago when when the cheating was generally unheard of among those I gamed with, as we all took the experience more earnestly. So yeah, I do need to decide what to do about this and how to approach it, and maybe I am doing so in too nuanced a fashion, but age has a way of doing that to you I guess.

Anyway, See you all on the flip side in 2025! Some predictions to come next. 

Death Bat's review of Last Year's Projections

 Well here we are again! Another year, another review on last year's predictions and projections for the outgoing year. How did my plans and predictions stack up?

Predictions:

D&D 2024 Releases but Beyond Isn't Ready - near as I can tell I am spot on about this; that demo with fully 3D figures that looked like a CRPG? I don't think there's any evidence that exists right now, so far as I can tell...

Tales of the Valiant - I predicted it would be successful and might eat some of Pathfinder's market share but not penetrate the core D&D crowd. I think I am wrong on the first count and right on the second count. Instead, it looks like TotV will be its own niche corner, and won't really eat anyone's market share, instead becoming yet another variant with its own core crowd thanks to Kickstarter.

D&D-Spin Off Fatigue - I expected this to happen in 2024, and I think to some degree it has happened, as the "alternative to D&D" market has indeed fragmented into something like a dozen different variants from Daggerheart to Tales of the Valiant, Pathfinder, Shadowdark and all the existing D20 variants out there. It's so bad that I think D&D 2024 is effectively succeeding by being an anchor with the most common ground in the middle of it all. 

Fewer new IP and Gaming Properties - I am not sure this is true. It seems like there are a metric ton of new IPs and games out there, or on the way, but what I am missing is where people are collecting their information. I rely largely on ENWorld for my gaming news, and they are only "so so" at things not related to D&D. 

Goals:

Mothership - I wanted to run more Mothership in 2024. I did run a one shot in January and a two parter at the end of the year in December. I did not run another lengthy campaign, however. I forget offhand when the Mothership Boxed set finally arrived, but I recall it was sometime in May. That waiting for the new edition to release proved to be part of why it didn't take off; it finally came out, and as is often tradition for Kickstarters it took me a while to get back in the mood to deal with it. I also realized that my last really successful online Mothership game was a bit of lightning in a bottle; you sort of need the right kind of group to really pull off Mothership. I don't know that I currently have that sort of group right now. Some of my players, sure! But others.....hmmmm not so much.

Dragonbane - Despite wanting to run this, I have not as yet gotten around to it. 2024 was a year where I found little time to mess with new mechanics, and ended up sticking to the "familiar and easy," which is to say, lots of D&D 5E.

Traveller - I did run a short Traveller campaign early on. I stopped running Traveller for one very specific and disappointing reason, about which I won't dive too deeply here, but let's just say that I wish players would let the dice roll and not fudge crap all the time (read: cheat). I am unsure of how to fix this problem other than to run games of somewhat more complexity, making it harder to easily cheat on die rolls, or to take over some dice rolling (which I really prefer not to do). In general I sort of assume that this happens on occasion from certain people, but it was a bit excessive in the last Traveller game I ran, and was substantiated by others. As a result, I really lost my taste for running the game for my group. And honestly....it's impacted me kind of hard ever since, and I am extremely reluctant to run certain game systems with entirely player-facing die roll mechanics as a result. If certain players (and there are only certain ones here, mind you; others in my group are great and honest!) desire to cheat to insure their "victory" then why not just play a video game, watch a movie or read a book? 

Post More - Pssh 'nuff said! I totally slacked off on posting for most of 2024.

Pace Myself - I think I did okay here. I have gamed less often on Saturday, which is often a trouble night for me, especially now that I live a 25 miles south of the city where the gaming locations we meet are at.

Miscellaneous:

I made some offhand comments, and wanted to mention those:

Rivers of London - Chaosium has not done much new with it, but its still there being promoted. In this day and age a game with maybe one sourcebook in a year or two is becoming increasingly common. I did buy the first novel in the series the game is based on, but haven't read it yet. 

Esper Genesis - They actually came through! The print edition of the Technician's Guide arrived a few months back, so kudos to them for getting this out at last. A pity it arrived in the wake of a new edition of D&D and took so long I suspect it will be harder for Alligator Alley to get the trust of Kickstarter backers.

GURPS - I suggested GURPS could have a new edition but won't. In their defense, they did get a good reprint with nice binding. I think, based on my observation of the market and the interesting directions it has gone, that GURPS is probably best off as a niche game system with a core fanbase that can remain ignored by the broader community.

13th Age 2nd Edition - I suggested it won't come out in 2024 and I was right. Another Kickstarter waaaay behind deadline. I am looking forward to this one when it comes out. Will it come out in 2025? Maybe, but it will arrive to a saturated market. Unless WotC releases the new Monster Manual and it turns out to be garbage for some reason, causing a wave of dissatisfied DMs to look elsewhere.

Pathfinder - I suggested maybe Pathfinder's increased costs will lead to a shrink in market share. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I know I have fellow players who have commented on how Paizo's books are getting too expensive to keep up with now. I think the costs are driven by the unionization of their workstaff, which is a good thing, but also a rough spot to be in a largely non-union, low-profit corner of the business. I suspect 2025 could be a make or break year for Paizo. 

Okay, next I'll make some predictions for 2025 and set some goals!

Tales of the Valiant and what it Needs Next to Get Adopted by My Group

 I really, really want to play Tales of the Valiant. I am annoyed that D&D 2024 is sufficiently interesting that it is hard not to also want to play it (and is the easier sell, of course); so Tales of the Valiant is mostly getting "behind the scenes" love from me as a GM while I wait for that tipping point when I think that it will also be an easy sell to my players. Really, it needs two things from my perspective to become the next ruleset we try out: more subclasses for players, and Roll20 support. We currently have neither!

Right now, the TotV Player's Guide has 2 subclasses per character class. This is in contrast with D&D 5.5 which manages 4 subclasses per class in the PHB, and also has a tome out on dmsguild.com right now which updates the remaining 69 subclasses out there. So D&D 5.5 has a clear advantage here. Kobold Press has been catching up with ancestry options (well, ancestry and lineages in the parlance of TotV), with two PDF resources out adding a plethora of previous species to the mix, but nothing yet for new subclasses. 

The other thing TotV needs to get adoption rates going (for my group, at least) is Roll20 support. I know they are committed to Shard Tabletop, but last I check Roll20 support was promised and it's for better or worse where many people staked out their VTT gaming ecosystems. I also happen to have TotV set up on Alchemy Tabletop, which is a really cool and weird alternative...and I find both Alchemy and Roll20 more intuitive for myself than Shard....Shard has a great player interface, but does not have the sort of resources I would need as a GM to run games; it seems like it is better designed for pre-published modules. I mean, you can probably run homebrew on it well enough, but honestly my old brain can't figure it out; Roll20's more broadly applicable interface has ruined me a bit.

Anyway, the point is.....Tales of the Valiant is really close to adoption in my group, but as seasoned old players they need more variety in choice than the core books currently offer, and most of my players are not in the habit of manually updating existing 5E stuff to match TotV's conversion requirements, so honestly if someone could just take the time to put out a new book of subclasses or even a conversion document that does the work it would be simply awesome. As GM I do not fret this stuff, I have all I need for the game now, and then some! But for my players? Yeah we need more stuff for them.

As GM though: there's Frog Gods' new Tome of Horrors update which is surprisingly good (it brings in a lot of unusual stuff to BFR/TotV not seen in a while), and Legendary Games has popped out some BFR compatible books as well, including Mythos Monsters, Sea Monsters and some modules. There are other books out already, though maybe not at the ideal pace....and a lot of scenarios, which is not (imo) what TotV needs right now half so much as new subclasses and stuff for players.

So! What I guess I am saying is: TotV can stand on its own two feet if it can ramp up content in a manner consistent with its Big Dog competition. It will forever be the niche game played by D&Ders who are no longer infatuated with WotC, but it can totally own that market....if it can give their largely older, veteran base more material to work with. Just my thoughts!

EDIT: One other thing Tales of the Valiant badly needs: A forum!!! If I want to look for useful Pathfinder 2E advice I can go to Paizo. However there is no unifying forum I am aware of for Tales of the Valiant (I believe they have some sort of Discord but....referring to my prior comments about being an old guy....I find Discord a rough place to have a standardized forum, ime). Right now, if you look for places to talk about TotV, good luck! You mostly get lengthy topics on other forms where people try to talk about TotV and then get trashed by people who dislike it for various petty reasons. So yeah....I really think the Kobolds would benefit from setting up some sort of forum for their product, where fans of the product can actually converse and exchange ideas and content. Just saying. 

....And if I am wrong, and there is a good place for this, can someone point me in the right direction?

The Monthly Blog Post!!! - Cypher System, Tales of the Valiant, Steam Deck OLED and Future Plans

 Wow, I have gone almost a month without bothering to post. In my defense I have had an enormous amount of work going on, and with that a lot of business travel, so time has a way of escaping under such circumstances. Still, I managed to have a bit of fun in the travel (which is all in-state, at least, so not horrible; New Mexico is if nothing else a very pretty region to drive through). 

My highlights this month include finally getting my hand on the Steam Deck OLED edition, which is noticeably an improvement over all the other prior handhelds I have gotten my hands on; enough so that I plan to sell my original Steal Deck and the Asus ROG Ally-- but not the Legion Go! That machine may have crappy battery life but all its other components make up for it. The Steam Deck OLED is not a maor leap, but its noticeably improved battery life (I took a trip from Albuquerque to Carlsbad and did not kill the battery the entire way, even playing games such as Crisis 2 on it), its screen improvement (I am a big fan of OLED screens), and its minor tweaks and improvements all led to the best handheld travel experience I have had so far with a PC handheld. 

This month is so crazy I have gotten almost no gaming in, and have so far had to postpone my live games until the end of the month. I managed to get one of the two campaigns to a decent pause point, where the PCs could rest, recuperate, scheme and also the players could decide what they want to do next. I am all for continuing the campaign which paused at level 14 (D&D 5E) and get them all to level 20 with a final glorious story arc, but I am also keen to try something different, such as Cypher System or Dragonbane. We'll see what happens when we resume gaming around Halloween.

On the Saturday group the story paused one session away from the big resolve, kinda annoying, but we'll get to it eventually. After the plot arc finishes (it[s D&D 5E in the fictitious not-Japan region of the Realms of Chirak setting), we'll see if the group wants to continue or we do something different. I am keen to try Tales of the Valiant, possibly on this night, as a focused campaign using only TotV books for a decently purist experience. My worry is that, since TotV is just a new iteration of D&D 5E, that my group will find that too restraining, as I notice some of them seem to go almost exclusively for weird 3PP stuff they find online these days to make characters, and a couple others in the group are really, really into D&D traditional, so TotV might be one step removed from their comfort zone, simply because it is not a WotC product. So I am unsure if this will really happen or not.

Saturdays have been rough for me as it is, as I've gotten older and had less overall time for things, it has made Saturdays harder for gaming. I have been more or less trying to regulate by doing every other week, but it is possible down the road I may consider other options. The thought crossed my mind that Sundays might be better for gaming....but traditionally I use Sunday as my "home maintenance day" so I'd have to switch that to Saturday if I tried gaming on Sunday. There is also the problem that I bought my house a roughly 30 minute drive from the city, where the group normally meets, and I often find myself a lot less interested in driving on the highway back to the city to run a game. Oh well...it will sort itself out eventually.

I may have my priorities backwards, too. I should consider Cypher System, a ruleset which is better for shortform campaigns of 10-20 sessions at the most, on Saturdays, and propose TotV for Wednesdays. I have a lot of really great Cypher books I have yet to use, as most of my original Cypher campaign time was with 1st edition and not the revised edition. I regret to say that, much as with several other games, the revision did not click as well with me as the original did, so I have only run a couple campaigns in the newer edition. I ran into this same problem with Unknown Armies, where I loved 1st edition but found that the subsequent revisions fell flat for me. Sometimes, that initial rough magic of the original game gets lost in the efforts of the designers to rethink/repackage/reimagine the system for later editions. In Cypher's case it's tolerable....I see why they changed character design the way they did to be cleaner and more generic, but in the process they lost the charm and suggestive flavor of the original's approach. This can be worked around, but it has forever left something behind with the original that made it a better overall evocative experience, in favor of a more organized and mechanically consistent experience....so a trade off, I guess. 

Anyway, this post has served mainly to remind myself that I should be blogging more often. More to come!

Tales of the Valiant is here! Let the 2024 Edition Wars Commence

 I finally got my Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide and Monster Vault books, along with the very nice GM screen. Together these two books comprise all the core you need to play the game, so I am intrigued to see all the useful (but non critical) content in the GM's Guide coming out later this year.

The new books are sturdy, standard Kobold Press style, with gorgeous Kobold Press artwork that "feels like D&D" which is the best compliment I can provide to the game. Given that the Kobolds have essentially positioned Tales of the Valiant to be to D&D 6th Edition what Pathfinder 1E was to D&D 4th edition, this is a good place for them to reside.....whether that is by accident or design I cannot say. If D&D 6th edition -and go look at all the release details so far if you don't think the new D&D 2024 isn't a full-out new edition!- does not grab as much attention and go over as well as it could or should, then Tales of the Valiant could provide a more than suitable alternative. 

TotV will most likely remain niche no matter what, as its the kind of thing you sort of know about and get interested in if you're already hip deep into RPGs, while D&D has cornered a different kind of market with a more casual crowd who's overall interest is less obscure and more trendy. But if it turns out that D&D shed too much of its identifiable crust in the remaking, then we could indeed see people start looking around for alternatives (or maybe even just stick with their old books). 

I can see this happening: D&D 6E seems to be caught between two markets right now. The general perception of the new class and rules promotional details coming out strongly suggest a mechanical rework designed to appeal to a more hardcore crowd interested in a bit more mechanical rigor and tactical acumen. Simultaneously we are being told the game is being revamped for "how people really play" and there seems to be a strong push toward friendlier and less violent art, character focused development that leans hard into the "start as a super hero, not super zero" thematics that 5E was already noted for, and a broader sense of inclusion for game tables which eschew the rigors of mechanical combat in favor of pure role playing. These are interesting and very opposite demographics to appeal to simultaneously in a product....and I will be interested in seeing if WotC can pull it off.

There's also an entire segment of modern D&D gamers who have only come in to the hobby with 5th edition, and have never had to experience an edition change. For many, a perceived increase in mechanical rigor (or even just a moderate level of changes for change's sake) could be more than they want to deal with. I could be wrong....who knows!

Even if D&D 6E takes off and also succeeds via D&D Beyond and Roll20 (which, correct me if I am wrong, seems to be substituting for D&D Beyond's original goal of making the online experience more video-game and microtransaction driven), it's okay, because Tales of the Valiant clearly has the "I like physical books" crowd covered, and even better if you do want to go VTT with it, Shard Tabletop is a damned fine product. If TotV can manage to make Shard or something similar provide an easier set of tools to desgn and subsequently print out for live table gaming, they will manage to cater to both live and virtual crowds easily. With D&D Beyond.....I feel like maybe D&D is not as poised here as they had originally intended. But hey, it's not September yet, we shall see how that goes.

Amidst all this are other game systems, but I think they all suffer in odd ways that prevent them from getting to be the next Pathfinder 1E to D&D. Pathfinder 2E, for example, shed so much OGL identity that it is functionally a different sort of game now, one with few to no identifiable "D&Disms" left. At least Tales of the Valiant wasn't afraid to include an owlbear, for example! It retains a lot of stuff that firmly plants it in the realm of "D&Dlikes" which means its comfort level will be more familiar to many players now than PF2E. PF2E, meanwhile, is poised to be a good alternate for people who want a D&D inspired experience but also really want a lot more mechanical rigor and very tight math. There is a crowd for that, and they are already playing their preferred game (PF2E). 

Other potential contenders lurk out there, but each offers a niche experience. Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised is my favorite OSR experience next to OSE. OSE is also cool. Shadowdark is out there, and it seems like people do like it. None of them are poised to become the next Pathfinder 1E, though, because each is catering to a specific playstyle subset of the broader population.

Anyway, the last six months of this year will be a fun roller coaster for D&D and now Tales of the Valiant. I'm developing a new campaign (well, an old one set in a new -or old- era) for TotV and will start posting some details here soon. I think I have buy-in from my group, so I'm excited to get a chance to try it out before the D&D 6E madness hits in three months.

Scrutinizing Systems for 2024 - or "What to Play While Waiting for D&D Totally-Not-6E" - Dragonbane, Traveller, Cypher System, Tales of the Valiant and More

 I guess Wizards of the Coast is A: not selling to Tencent (good), and B: not releasing their books in May, which seems like a good time to do it, but apparently they said they will still be working on them in May so now the holidays seem like a stretch too. This is good news, though! It means we should all be trying other things while cooling our jets on trad D&D experiences so we can be ready for whatever the new thing is going to be.

For me, it sort of boils down to a handful of games which have my attention, and not all of them are "unlike D&D" since Tales of the Valiant is in the mix, but hey, you know what is coming out in May? Tales of the Valiant, that's what! So yeah, going to be playing some of that for sure.

I have in my hands Dragonbane Core Rules and Bestiary, the expanded books that will nicely replace or compliment their initial Boxed Starter Set from last year. The Starter Set was a fine product on its own merits, but there is additional content in the new Core Rules for GMs to make it worth checking out, and the Bestiary is a no-brainer whether you stick to the Starter Set or get the Core Rules, it's full of good stuff that is all new content. Dragonbane manages to sit in a hard to achieve sweet spot for me. I like to call this zone the "point at which a game can work to power one or more of my campaign worlds without requiring me to simply ditch said worlds and revise them to match the game's setting and rules expectations." Secondarily, it also fits the category of "alternative fantasy systems which are unique or interesting enough to explore on their own merits, but close enough to D&D in terms of content and accessibility to be an easy sell to players." 

I could go on and on about Dragonbane like this, but it boils down to some simple facts: the game provides a robust system with enough content that you won't find yourself wishing something was in the game that isn't; it offers a setting but does not demand you use it; it provides enough content that you feel like it could substantively replace D&D for a protracted campaign without you feeling like you wish you had access to all the D&D stuff when running or playing. For me, Dragonbane accomplishes all of this, and in the smallest form factor in terms of content for a "robust fantasy RPG" that one could imagine and still fit it in to a single carry bag. 

A lot of other fantasy games out there fail at these requisites I set. Some of my demands are more specific to my tastes; for example I like the Dragonbane skill system (and I also like the D&D skill mechanics, especially once you get back to 3rd edition), but I dislike game systems that eschew skills entirely without good reason. I can forgive an OSR emulator like Swords & Wizardry Complete for this, as skills weren't a thing in the 0E era of D&D, but it means that the S&W experience will forever be limited to merely emulating that style of play, afterwhich there will be no further modifications to the game system. I was modding skill systems in to Tunnels & Trolls and AD&D back in 1982 after experiencing Runequest, so for my experience in a hobby that was at the time a venerable 8 years old I will forever see skills as OSR and necessary to a proper gaming experience. 

Anyway, aside from Dragonbane, which looks to hit the sweet spot in a unique way few other systems have come close to, we have Traveller, which is getting a renaissance of upgraded rulebook editions as well as more content of a general sort of use beyond running Imperium Campaigns. I have a real keen interest in more Traveller soon, tempered only by the fact that I know Mothership will finally be released soon as well, and Mothership is the very genre-specific Traveller counterpart.

Monte Cook's Cypher System is also about to finally release more books, too. Rust & Redemption is the one I am specifically keen on, their Cypher sourcebook for post-apocalyptic tales. I feel that Cypher System works best when you can have weird settings that cater to improvisation, and I expect their post-apoc genre book will prove to be well worth it. 

I should also mention Pathfinder 2E v2. They have more tomes on the way, including the ever important revision to their Bestiary series, and the Player Core 2 to complete the class range my group is used to dealing with. Although my group understands that the backwards compatibility is 99.5% they still seemed more interested in waiting for the rest of these core books to release so we haven't done anything with Pathfinder 2E yet. I personally am more interested in playing it at the game table; Pathfinder, along with D&D 5E and others, can easily devolve into "Find a battle map, populate with virtual tokens, watch encounter turn in to fight because the players have hammers and see nails all over the map" kind of experiences. I guess what I am trying to say is that VTTs work really well on average when you are focused on a map and minis, and are at times terrible when trying to just enjoy the game for its more exploratory and discovery/role play based elements.

I have other games, too. Vast Grimm still commands my attention and several new books released for it, making the world of Vast Grimm a more comprehensive and interesting place to explore. Mork Borg continues to fascinate me, and I think a live campaign should be in order; I am intrigued to experience t least one deliberate attempt to play the game for multiple sessions to see how it works for long hauls. Finally, I still have a shelf full of Free League Titles I need to explore in actual play, especially and in particular Alien RPG, Blade Runner RPG, Forbidden Lands and both CY_Borg and Pirate Borg. 

Don't even get me started on the brilliant 5E reimagining of D20 Modern in the form of Everyday Heroes! Ever since I snagged it last October I've been obsessing about what to do with it, and the array of weird cinematic properties they have congealed around the game to provide support is impressive. That I would even contemplate a campaign in the universe of Universal Soldier, Rambo or Escape from New York is a testament to how engaging and interesting the EH team has been with these sourcebooks. It does crack me up, though, that each sourcebook seems to start with a "I never even heard of or watched the movie this book is based on until I was hired to write it," followed by a thoughtful and engaging approach to taking a wildly dated action film from thirty years ago and turning it in to a must-play setting. 

As always, the problem is too many cool games and not nearly enough time! 

WotC Layoffs = Good News for Paizo and Kobold Press?

 The stories circulating about the large scale layoffs at Wizards of the Coast have gotten interesting. I initially thought this was just the usual Xmas layoffs WotC has been more or less known to go through thanks to their corporate Hasbro owners for the last couple decades, but in reading some stuff (here, for example, and here) it seems like these layoffs are larger and more profound...messier, and more destructive, if you will...right when WotC's D&D team needs stability the most. 

The net result, of course, is it could mean problems for all the product lineup for D&D's 50th anniversary, or at the very least a lessening of vision. At a time when we are all hoping for a decent new iteration of the rules and new prospects for gaming, it's a troubling sign when whole swathes of the creative drivers are suddenly let loose, with no clear objective to this action other than achieving some bottom line short term savings in sight. I am also surprised they are trying to ditch their movie deal with Entertainment One, as I was vaguely under the impression that they had done well enough to merit future installments of at least the D&D movie line. Can't say for sure on Transformers and other films, though; toy line movies, baring Barbie, have not done well for years now. 

As far as the gaming side goes, this does mean potential good news for the current two largest competitors (as I see it) for D&D's cultural cachet: Kobold Press with Tales of the Valiant, which intends to do for D&D 5E what Pathfinder 1E did for D&D 3.5; and of course Paizo's Pathfinder 2E (v2) which is poising itself to be the alternative to the popular system, filling a role as the friendly but more sophisticated alternative. Either way it is good to know that WotC's implosion attempt on the OGL at the beginning of the year liberated both Kobold Press and Paizo, as well as countless other smaller publishers, to move away from a potentially revocable license and into a more sustainable role as providers of a decent fantasy RPG experience.

I am considering running more Pathfinder 2E, with the new core books now in hand. The revisions are minor, but the rewrite and reorganization is greatly appreciated. The support Pathfinder offers for a more rigorous and tactical game with consequences is something I crave, though I need to work carefully to generate an experience that isn't too punishing to the players. 

Pathfinder though serves as my interim system until Tales of the Valiant takes root. Their lineup of books is proving to be extremely crafty, a well curated D&D-like experience with a 5E compatible ruleset that will let me use whatever I want. If they integrate TotV into the Shard Tabletop experience --and they surely will!--then it will make the system a shoe-in for future online gaming. Check it out if you haven't yet, its a really fine VTT for 5E style play. 

Either way, we shall see how it all goes. Next year will, for better or worse, be yet another year where the top three fantasy offerings are all essentially D&D variants....but luckily we are getting more fun stuff that tries to break or deviate a bit from the D&D mold, such as Dragonbane, Mork Borg and Runecairn. More on all those when I finally find more time to write!

The Conundrum of Buy-In and Very Similar Game Systems

 I have been thinking about how, when and where I will run a future campaign using one of the D&D-like rule sets, and realized that this is probably to some degree a bit futile. One of the problems is a simple matter of buy-in: while I have all the Level Up! Advanced 5E rules at hand, only one of my other players has also invested in it, and it might be a tough sell to the multiple players in my group who buy lots of regular D&D books and have D&D Beyond subscriptions. Would they give it a try? Sure. Will they enjoy it as much as if they were playing straight 5E? Maybe....maybe not. The optimistic view is that if I run it and they enjoy it, they may decide to become invested. The pessimistic side recognizes after decades of gaming what a slog it can be to convince players to try something they were not already aware of. We'll see how it goes. 

I want to try Level Up! A5E soon because it's essentially already what One D&D plans to be: a revision of the current rules with an emphasis on new and interesting features and approaches to the core mechanical conceits of 5E. Once One D&D is out, I predict that the ongoing success or failure of the D&D-variants (such as future Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press, as well as Level Up! A5E and other prospects like Shadowdark RPG down the road) will depend on precisely how they manage to distinguish themselves from the competition. Given that Level Up! A5E is already here, I'd like to get a chance to see how it fares before the tidal wave of future competitors arrives along with One D&D.

There's also the Pathfinder 2E Revised situation looming for later this year. I can't decide if I will buy in to it or not, though knowing me, I probably will. If I'm lucky PF2E will fix all the little gripes I have with PF2E in its current format, and at least make it easier to sell to players. Until then, I don't know what to do or where to go with it....PF2E is a game I like running as a GM, but its a hard sell to a lot of my players for precisely the problem I mentioned earlier: we've all had a chance to play it, and not as many people like it as don't. PF2E is super GM friendly, but it caters to a certain type of player over others, and therefore is not nearly as fun and interesting to play when you're on the other side of the table unless you grokk (and like) the minutiae of the character development systems.

If I did find a gang of pro PF2E players though, I would totally run it again. Just saying! But in the mean time, I am going to make the Level Up! A5E pitch to my players, probably sooner than later. I think the live group would be the best choice, though Roll20 has a decent Level up! character sheet. A Roll20 game I ran with my son went pretty well. We devised some characters based on one of his favorite subjects (Mortal Kombat) and tried out the combat with an off-brand Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and it was quite fun. Still, I'm loving the concept of live play whenever possible, and currently the Roll20 game on Saturday is in a new low level D&D 5E game, so suddenly jumping to Level Up! A5E might feel a bit redundant there.

In fact....that redundant part I mention is the real problem all of the off-brand D&D competitors will face. Time will tell, I guess, as to which (if any) manage to claw their way to a level of competitive status.