R.I.P. Rick Loomis

I just saw this, and am very sorry to hear Rick Loomis passed away. Rick will be missed.

Eberron Returns!

I'm excited for this announcement...details here.

Check this alternate cover out:

The thing about Eberron is: it's the best "modern" iteration of a D&D setting that WotC has tackled, and offers enough of the "different" from Forgotten Realms to stand out. With any luck, this portends more cool sourcebooks bringing back other key setting in the future, or alternatively it sells well enough we see some Eberron-focused adventure books in the future.

Either way....this is good! It's the first D&D book to tear me away from my Pathfinder 2nd edition obsession that has gripped me this August.

First Impressions of Remnant: From the Ashes

I'm only a few hours in to the weekend pre-access of this title, so my rating is subject to change, but for those interested, here's some initial impressions of Gunfire Games' and Perfect World's Remnant: From the Ashes, a third-person perspective co-op action RPG game:

1. RftA is 25% Dark Souls, 25% Diablo III, 25% Fallout (thematics mainly) and 25% PvE standard co-op shooter style (like Borderlands 2 or Destiny). It seems (so far) to have captured all the good parts of those games with none (so far) of the bad.

2. It's Perfect World, so I keep waiting for the monetization scheme, but nothing yet.

3. This is kind of addictive so far. I haven't enjoyed a game this much since Resident Evil 2 Remake. What is going on??? I am not used to a $40 title which feels like a solid experience, isn't trying to gouge me with microtransactions (I am wondering if those will come after full release?) and is actually a nice product with tight game play. This is very confusing.

Anyway, when I compare it to other titles, this is what I mean:

RftA has a structural similarity to Dark Souls (tough bosses, dungeons which reset if you rest at a checkpoint, an artifact with limited health restoration that replenishes, and a methodical timing-based combat mechanic). It is missing bad parts, such as corpse running to recover lost stuff, repetitive experiences when areas reset, and janky, pointless accicental deaths due to losing patience with the game's rigorous, almost fetishistic focus on forcing the player to repeat actions until they get it exactly right or figure out what they are doing wrong. RftA does not do this, not like Dark Souls. It is faster paced and so far I've only run into one baffling encounter which left me wondering what the hell the correct tactic was.

It's like Diablo III in that there are intermediary checkpoints where you can clear a boss or location, you can get zerged by hordes of monsters, and you can group with other players for a good co-op experience. You have a similar approach to finding loot, or in RftA's case lots of scrap and iron to develop your loot.

It's like Fallout in that the game feels thematically --almost suspiciously-- like a spiritual relative. The grim remnants of the apocalypse have a Fallout-ish vibe, although the monsters are more alien. The RPG bits you run in to and the music are very evocative of the Fallout vibe at times.

It's "standard PvE" co-op shooter in that you can get together in a team of three to tackle these tasks. It's perfectly fun solo, too....but the co-op will appeal greatly to those who have friends with like interests. Given the low cost of the game ($40) I am tempted to grab copies for the whole family so we can play it, although I don't know if the souls-like elements will frustrate them or not.

The souls-like portion is sufficiently absent serious aggravation to me for two reasons: you don't lose progress, and when you re-enter the area you died it seems to mix up the threat a bit, so you can't reliably predict what you will run in to, but you could also get lucky and find a lesser threat waiting. However, most importantly for it is it isn't as painfully slow paced as Dark Souls and I like this fact a lot. Also, just as important, I've only encountered one mystifying bad guy encounter. I'm at the first major boss right now, and while I haven't defeated it (yet) I can see the path to victory, just need to find the time to do it.

Anyway....Remnant: from the Ashes officially releases on Steam Tuesday, but if this sounds like your cup of tea I suggest you check it out!

Pathfinder 2E Progress Report - Two Games In

Last week was insanely busy so I didn't end up getting to post anything about the ongoing Pathfinder 2nd Edition experiment, but I at last have a few minutes so I figure a follow-up is in order.

We've had two Saturday sessions now, and I am pleased to say that the experience is going well so far. Except for one moment where I spent a fair amount of time trying to establish that the Monk's Wolf Stance trip trait worked as I thought it did (which required looking in the index, the section on a trip action, the wolf stance feat and the weapons section on what it meant for a weapon (e.g. teeth) to have this trait), it was otherwise fairly smooth.

Here, so far, are the top three "things to look up" as we've been playing:

1. Spells (make sure we're doing it right) are the easiest surprisingly....the spell descriptions are very straight forward and sometimes lead to questions but the interpretation has so far proven consistent; the devil is in the wording, but no wording has tripped us up yet.

2. Feats, those devilish things, have sometimes required look up and adjudication. This is mainly for player benefit, and happens less than it should, which any GM knows means one of two things: the players either know their stuff well and are already indexing the stat blocks, or they do not know their stuff at all and are overlooking useful feats.

3. Skills. Yes, skills are where I spend most of my time studying the rules right now, believe it or not. The reason is simple: the skill list, while consolidated, still contains a plethora of specific trained and unique actions tied to different skills. Some of what is going on here is also learning about the subtle nuances of the system.

Have you heard about the idea of reading an RPG for its "implied setting," the concept of the world the system described through its rules? Well, Pathfinder 2E has a lot of that, stuff which you don't necessarily see spelled out in any singe spot but when taken as a whole paint an interesting picture. For two good examples of this, read up on Crafting and Alchemy skills, and look in to the magic items rules with the idea of crafting in mind. You'll quickly realize as GM that you cannot apply your experience from prior editions of D&D or pathfinder 1E to the new system....it has different expectations.

The other one I noticed is in magic detections. Go read up on how the skills affect this, the spells that relate to this, and the feats which modify this information. It's consistent, but the different parts contain a compelling new picture of how this information should be doled out by the GM based on what method and level of expertise is at play....it's very different from prior iterations in my experience.

So far, Pathfinder 2E is full of lots of little "surprises" like this, interesting synergies and rules mechanics which reveal a different approach or way of thinking about the fantasy RPG genre. I like it. It leads to a new way of envisioning the game.

Here's another one: the new XP mechanics are surprisingly straight forward; you earn XP, and when you get 1,000 you spend it to get a new level. That's it for the player's side. For the GM, you have a base range of XP by party composition relative to creature level, and you award it as a flat package to the PCs (so if the encounter is worth 120 XP, each PC gets 120 apiece, you don't divide it out). Simple math. In addition any encounter or progression can be worth a decent reward....usually a better reward than many fighting encounters, in fact.

Though the game isn't overt in this statement, the net result is that you can have meaningful XP-based progression without ever feeling the need to lace encounters with fights just to boost XP. This is "normal think" for non D&D RPGs, but is a fairly innovative take for D&D-likes. Yes, 5E introduced milestones (as did 13th Age) but this is slightly different; XP is a reward system, and useful for that purpose....as any computer gamer knows, having a point system to track success and achievements is a nice addition to player mechanics; you feel like your progress is tied to your actions. So having such an elegantly simplified mechanic in place which still feels D&D while breaking from the tradition of murdering monsters for maximum advancement is very, very welcome.

A final note so far: I've been running without maps and minis, and using "theater of the mind" with the small but important sidebar in the book on how it advises doing this....which basically boils down to "state what you want to do, decide if it makes sense, and do it," sort of no-nonsense approach to TotM combat. It's nothing "new" but I cannot stress enough how useful it is to have it defined this way in the book, for the following reasons: first, if the rules say it's okay to do it this way and not fret as much about exact distances then it helps alleviate the unease of the rules lawyers at the table; second, by codifying the concept, however simple the approach is in the rulebook, it makes it a perfectly viable option and immediately allows for the GM to choose his flavor of the moment without feeling like something is being missed.

I have also noticed that in the combats I have run so far the various mechanics seem to play well with TotM combats. Though written so they can work on a map fine, the language translates equally well so far for most stat blocks to an equivalent effect in TotM encounters.

One thing which is puzzling me: the medicine skill allows for first aid, and goes in to length on using it and waiting an hour (with specific rules on what that means so you can tell it must have been contentious in the playtest). But can the skill be repeatedly used once it is successful? I need to read up on this, but to me it's noticeably effective at wiping out both hit points and wounds. The first aid element of medicine effectively makes most groups fine without a cleric as long as they don't mind not having access to immediate healing....but it also negates the value of gaining wounds over time. Must study more for answers.

A final item of note: lots of rules are actually now "case exceptions" tied to feats. GMs can now, for example, assume that a withdrawing foe is not going to get opportunity attacked....unless he's withdrawing from a fighter, for example. Many feats for different classes ave specific exceptions baked in. Skill feats are particularly interesting in this manner. So the next time a cleric fails a religion check, the GM should be ready in case she comes back with a "Ah, I am a Cleric of the Canon by my feat and so my failure is now a success!" moment. This "exceptions are baked in to the feats" concept is an important one for GMs to remember, and ultimately makes getting very familiar with this book a good idea. Players, meanwhile, do themselves an injustice if they aren't taking notes on what their various special feats let them do.....and you can do quite a lot.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition Here At Last!

I picked up my books this morning but didn't get to dive in until after work. I also snagged a second set of books at a convenient sale price with discount through Barnes & Noble.

So! How is it?

Well, the core rules are 638 pages long. Thankfully knowing how to read a RPG means knowing where to skim and where to dive deep....and I've spent the evening designing characters and exploring the action/combat mechanics. A few observations so far:

Most characters look and feel a lot like 1st edition PCs, but there are twists along the way. Ancestries make the racial component of characters more significant. Because of how ancestries work there are no optional character races in the Bestiary, unfortunately....they need several pages to flesh out the core traits plus ancestry feats. I predict a big, fat Advanced Race Guide 2nd Edition in the near future.

I've made a few characters so far...you can design a level 1 character more quickly (once you do it a couple times) than in PF1.

Multiclassing is using the feat mechanics touched upon in the playtest. They work, and they make multiclassing as a concept a more focused and easy to do thing.

Literally everything in the game is now dominated by the proficiency mechanic. It's not entirely unlike D&D 5E's proficiency system, but with the Pathfinder twist: you have a ranking of 0/2/4/6/8 based on being untrained, trained, expert, master or legendary. This mechanic impacts your weapon skills, armor skills, plain old skills, saving throws and even class mastery. It is the most unifying mechanic I have seen tackled in a 3rd edition variant; it makes Pathfinder 2.0's design distinct and I am very intrigued to see how this mechanic affects play over time.

The equipment section is comprehensive and well organized.

The proliferation of feats in the game is heavily cataloged and codified by when and what sort of feat you can take. The entire book is, at its core, extremely tight in how it organizes the data and this makes PF 2.0 feel much more accessible than its predecessor. Attention to "finding that thing you need" was clearly a priority.

The concept of the Class DC is cool and intuitive. It's basically the DC set by your class and key trait that applies to relevant class abilities. Smart design.

The action point economy and its symbol system is the first thing you are introduced to. It is easy to understand and follow their intent. I am plowing through the mechanics/actions/combat content right now and this feels, again, like taking and codifying prior edition rules into a coherent and consistent whole. This appears to be PF2.0's major theme: organize, categorize, and make it easy to follow.

A downside: so far it is clearly framed as "Adventures in the Age of Lost Omens" which is the next chapter in Golarion I guess. There's a chapter on the setting in the book. My issue is not with this element, but the utter lack of interest in providing discussion or direction to GMs who want to do their own thing....maybe they will reserve this content for the Gamemastery Guide 2nd edition coming out in January, but it's hard to say.....I think they are aiming for stronger brand awareness of their IP, but at the expense of the many gamers who prefer to do their own thing. Not a big issue; 99% of this book is usable just as PF 1.0 was for whatever you want, but even just a nod to the kind of gamer who doesn't follow the published setting material would have been nice. Starfinder has this same problem.

So far this has proven to be a familiar game with a face lift....and that's a good thing. It looks like I should be able to prep for a game on Saturday to test it out, see how PF2 feels now that its out in the wild. I'll have a "first game" analysis up after Saturday!

Pathfinder 2.0 Character Sheets Are In The Wild

The blog post about them at Paizo is here, and you can download the print-friendly version here. There is also a delightfully odd color version available which I think has a nice look to it but is too weirdly busy with the colors to be useful. No form-fillable edition (yet), I'm sure we'll see some soon enough.

One thing I like about these sheets right off the bat is that they are not that different from current Pathfinder 1.0, and it is clear that the majority of the obvious changes in terms of the information are organizational. This is a good sign as I see it....if this leads to a Pathfinder which looks and plays like the one we all enjoyed (assuming you are a Pathfinder 1.0 fan) then learning the new edition will mostly be a matter of adjusting to the cleaner structure of the math and progression, which I do see reflected on this sheet. Things I don't see on this sheet (thankfully) include weird new mechanics or extra layers of complication.

Now, it's still a very busy character sheet compared D&D 5E, so I think it's core fans are not necessarily going to be the "less is more" crowd....but we'll see! Either way I am really looking forward to the big reveal this week.

Classic Doom, Doom II and Doom 3 on Switch

This happened out of the blue:



And honestly, this is really very cool of Bethesda to do. You can now play the full run of the core Doom games through to the current game on Switch, which is honestly a great platform for this style of shooter, especially the originals. It also helps bolster Switch's modest array of FPS style shooters, of which there are a few good ones but not nearly enough.

Switch is rapidly turning in to a premiere system not only for fans of indie games and Nintendo properties, but for fans of  nostalgia and retro gaming (if we interpret nostalgia to mean anything from the 90's to the 00's and think of even Xbox 360/PS3 era titles as worthy of this title) these are great titles to have access to. But...hey, it works; I may be long done with Saint's Row the Third on PC, but the opportunity to play it in portable form at my leisure today on the Switch is great.

The classic Doom titles are priced reasonably (Capcom take note) at $5 apiece for I and II and $10 for 3. I'll continue to state what I long feel is probably an "exception to the norm" opinion that Doom 3 is the best and most underrated of the titles....Doom I and II were great for what they did, but Doom 3 was the game that actually got me seriously in to FPS gaming on PC, and the frenetic style of the 2016 Doom may be welcome to fans of the original, but Doom 3's attention to atmosphere and horror as well as story remains the best in the series for me. Playing it on the Switch is a very cool experience.

Anyway....Switch continues to be the most oddly enjoyable console I've got, mainly due its embrace of these retro ports (and no doubt other games if you're a more traditional Nintendo fan). It still suffers from having a ton of crappy indie titles on its roster (sure, there are good indie titles, too but you have to wade through a lot of garbage to find the gems), but with these tried and true classics on Switch it continues to be a fantastic console experience.

Now: Bethesda, release all the Quake titles on Switch next! Pleeeeaaaase! Doom is fun but Quake is better, and I'd kill for a good port of Quake 4 on Switch.

Samuel L. Jackson as the Ghost in Destiny 2

If you've played enough Destiny 2 you will likely find this hysterical as I did:



I feel like this should be a mod!

Talking about Reviews

ENWorld has a good post about reviews...a plea for more, really. I posted a comment there and then realized I have an open post spot for today's blog and should relay that thought here, too. So:

My general experience with reviews in this hobby (and no doubt others) has been along these lines, however: people usually post reviews of product they like, or were predisposed to like. It is not too often that you see a critical or negative review unless the poster was already predisposed toward disliking the product, or was so amazed at how much he disliked it that he needs to share his experience. Gamers seem to be notorious for judging a product after reading it, but far less often actually discuss the product from an actual play session, or even just attempting to work with the mechanics. On my own blog I tend to string out game discussions on product to several posts, exploring facets of the rules and leading up to an actual play experience. I have found I am rarely disappointed that even the cleanest ruleset reveals some interesting warts once actually engaged with at the table. For this reason, review posting online is good....but the typical results of those reviews do tend to follow Sturgeon's Law in both directions (for both the quality of the products and the quality of said reviews).

I'll point out one thing, though: no one has quite managed to capture the lighting-in-a-bottle with a review process that is Amazon. Hell, I may buy mostly on site X, Y and Z but I always go to Amazon first to read the reviews. Every online site that aspires to provide useful reviews should look to the way Amazon does it as a model to aspire to.

Book Review: The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer

At the time that the movie Annihilation came out I had not yet started the first book in Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, and to be honest I didn't actually pick all three up and finish them over a couple weeks until recently when I had my mass conversion back to basic print over ebook format. Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance (the three acts of the trilogy) were my first reads getting back in to Plain Old Print fiction and a very good choice for this exercise.

The first thing to know about this trilogy is that it is slow, and while it arguably can be labelled science fiction or possibly even fantasy, in truth it's more of a genre bending transitional form of fiction, stirring the pot of surrealism, with a healthy does of the unreliable narrator to help obscure any sense of objectivity to the process. The first book in the trilogy after which the movie was very loosely based is the shortest, and also takes the greatest advantage of the concept of the unreliable narrator through the perspective of the Biologist (played by Natalie Portman in the movie). The second book moves to a third person format, but still tells the tale of a certain perspective (the man self-identified as Control) and with it comes his limits of understanding and perspective. The third book breaks form somewhat by moving between multiple perspectives, all of them equally flawed in their ability to process and understand what is happening around --and to-- them.

The Movie vs. The Book 
It has been said that the movie version of the first book is something better watched without having read the novel. I agree, to an extent, but consider this: when you are familiar with the novel, it both  shines a light on the similarities and the differences between the book and the film, but in a weird way the two compliment each other. By the time you've read the whole trilogy this will make more sense; the universe of the Southern Reach is one in which countless obscure expeditions have been made into a region called "Area X" and part of the process of many of these expeditions has been to remove contextual personalizing traits from the volunteers, as too much personal identity is considered something risky, something that can be exploited. The movie, from a certain point of view, could have been about a very similar expedition to the one actually in the book (the key exception being the role of the Psychologist, who is also the director of the Southern Reach, and the only such director to have attempted to enter Area X). So....if you just take the movie as it's own thing, complimentary but not necessarily intended to be consistent with the book, you will enjoy it on its own merits.

Is This Mythos Inspired?
I've read comparisons of the Southern Reach Trilogy to being Lovecraftian or Mythos inspired. From a certain point of view this interpretation is understandable, as the core conceit of the trilogy is an unknowable, unnameable force or entity (the Anomaly) that may or may not even be "alive" in any sense we comprehend affecting the region (Area X), and the books focus on the experiences of those trying to understand what is happening. Events in the trilogy at times are strongly reminiscent of the concept of the mythos....horrors and nightmares that are purely such because of how capricious and beyond caring or even seeing humanity they are. However by the end of the trilogy it is clear that the only true similarity or point of comparison is how beyond human comprehension it is, but not because we are like bacteria on the surface of an uncaring universe in comparison to the Anomaly as you might imagine we are to the monsters of the mythos, but rather because the point of the mystery in the trilogy is that there are things that humans can never truly comprehend...or be comprehended by. Some of the core conceit in trilogy is, to me, akin to a human being trying to relate to what it means to exist in the universe as a geode; and conversely, what happens if that geode were to wonder what it means to exist as a human. The point of interaction on such a stage would be so unfathomably alien and difficult for either side to grasp that any effort of necessity must create a sense of terror and misunderstanding.

So...it's got some similar DNA to mythos horror and Lovecraft, but the context is distinctly different.

But is this Series Good?
Absolutely, and well worth a read for anyone who is in to: science fiction, mysteries, surrealism, tales from unreliable narrators, strange mysteries and psychological horror mixed with a bit of body horror, with a very slow burn. By book three (Acceptance) I felt like there was maybe a bit too much push to provide some semblance of closure for the characters and reader, enough so that when we finally did get a reveal on the nature of the mysterious Anomaly and Area X that it felt at least a bit to me like a cop out....but, admittedly, one which was well within the limited narrative allowance, when you recall that all the details we know are filtered through the perception of the characters, so the reveal itself is still tainted by a potentially unreliable perspective.

The ride to get to the third novel is a weird, wild ride despite being such a slow burn. The first book (Annihilation) is the tightest and most interesting since it focuses on an expedition in to the wilds of Area X and is the most exotic of the three novels by comparison.

Book two (Authority) tries to read more like an espionage or spy novel to some extent, and while it hints at the depths of chicanery going on behind the scenes with the organization tasked with containing and researching Area X (The eponymous Southern Reach) it is as much a deep dive into the personality of "Control" who is a deeply scarred product of the world his parents forced him in to as the actual operations and people of the Southern Reach. Much of the suspense and horror in the second novel is an exceedingly slow burn as well, riveting to me but it might be too slow for some readers.

By book three (Acceptance) the story winds around to multiple narratives from different time periods, focusing on the Psychologist from the first book, the gentleman we learn is Saul the lightkeeper from before Area X appeared, and the actions of Control, the Psychologist now self-identified as Ghost Bird and the assistant directior of the Southern Reach (Grace). Together their narrative wind down to something approximating an end, at least for each character, even if the ultimate reveal is purely an interpretation by one particular character which also feels (to me, at least) a bit like the author realized that if he didn't offer up some bone then it might not feel like a proper resolution. I won't give any of it away....if you read through books one and two, you owe it to yourself to finish book three and decide for yourself how you feel about the end.

Overall this is a brilliant trilogy, roughly self-contained, demonstrating to me that Jeff Vendermeer is a consistently good author (I have enjoyed every book of his I've read so far). If a deep, careful slow burn of a novel with an obscure, almost surrealistic apocalyptic mystery at its heart sounds like your cup of tea than I suggest you read this as soon as possible.