Das Rollenspiel Zwei

Thoughts upon the RPGs.

• So I order the new edition of RuneQuest, and, wouldn't you know, this is the one (I think the third did the same thing) with nothing to do with Glorantha. Nope, it's all generic Sword-and-Sorcery, virtually devoid of fluff. So now I'm going to have to either order an older edition, too, or else order the current edition's setting books. When it comes out with them. If it ever does.
  
  Rassenfrassen mitt Käse für a Magntratzerl...
• So those of us who don't like 4th Edition D&D, or the thing they're curiously reluctant to call 5th Edition—or who, like me, had to be dragged kicking and screaming into 3rd and refuse to more than dabble in 3.5—are known as "grognards", French for "grumblers", from the nickname for the Old Guard of the Grande Armée. Well and good; they were the elitest of the Chapeau's elite units, and my style of fantasy might look like "Polish Hussar", if you squint a bit.
  
  But I'm curious to know, RE: the people who don't understand our issues with 4e, and who mock us for saying (what is indisputable) that it is a poor MMORPG simulator—are we allowed to call them Marie-Louise?
• While I shall keep writing stories set there, the during-an-Ice-Age D&D setting I'd been working on and talking about herein turns out to be less than ideally suited for my actual games. In part because my players want a more swashbuckling setting, which if you think about it is actually typical of most fantasy out there—as in so many things, it's not going so much off the medieval period as off the period from say 1450-1750. Practically everything in fantasy, high or low, light or dark, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Middle Ages as historians use the term, but with the Renaissance and "Enlightenment". Come to think of it the same is true of every other facet of our culture, look at the armor in a typical portrayal of King Arthur.
  
  Part of it is that one of my players is my brother, and he's a colossal fan of the Slayers anime and books. Which, I mean, no argument there, though he did commit the minor blasphemy of saying it's better than FMA. Nevertheless, Slayers is a setting that has more in common with a pirate movie (or a samurai flick) than with Conan—though Conan did have its anachronistic touches (I think it set the precedent of having, e.g., Pharaonic Egypt and the American frontier side-by-side; then again Hobbits are 19th-century Englishmen who live a few weeks' ride from 12th-century Byzantium, so Tolkien did it too.)
• This is either the coolest thing I've ever read on the internet, or somewhere high in my top 10. It's called "Calibrating your expectations", and it's about the realities D&D (3e) stats represent. It involves things like how hold portal is like a deadbolt, while arcane lock (or wizard lock, for you my fellow briscards) is like a door-bar.
  
  A guy's complaints about the "unrealistic" encumbrance rules are dealt with handily, namely by pointing out that, given average Strength, the load he describes meets the definition of "medium load", which impairs movement precisely as the guy says his movement was impaired. I don't know, I just eat that sort of thing up.
  
  Also? Einstein is apparently just a 5th-level Expert. Those really high levels in things represent people of legendary skill, or superhuman beings like Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. The village blacksmith is just a 1st level character; between his one feat, namely Skill Focus (Craft (blacksmithing), of course) and having an assistant, he can Take 10 and do masterwork items. A 3rd level blacksmith doesn't need an assistant. And a dwarf's +2 to Craft checks RE: smithing means he can do masterwork items, no assistant, at 1st level.
• Why do we—by "we" I here mean aficionados of 3e—bother with saying "arcane spellcaster" (or "arcanist") and "divine spellcaster"? Take a page out of 2e, and call wizards and sorcerers "mages" (this, of course, switches around 2e's use of "mage" and "wizard"—all mages were wizards but not all wizards were mages, the alternative being specialists); druids and clerics, similarly, become "priests".
• I seem to recall somewhere that, in converting 2e characters to 3e, wild mages become sorcerers. Only, read up on wild magic, would you? Their spellcasting is "wild" because they're tapping the thing at a deeper, more uncontrollable level; they're all about the theoretical underpinnings of magic, and a sorcerer's almost Suzuki-violin approach wouldn't even work with their spells. Did you ever notice how many quantum physics references there were, in wild-magic related stuff? The material component of "There/Not There" is a model cat and a small wooden box, just for one example.
• Hey, protip: try to keep Monster/Monstrous Manuals out of the hands of your players. Why? This.

  Me (DM): 'Hello,' the man says. 'I didn't expect to meet anyone else down here in the Underdark. Well, except drow, deep dwarves, and mind flayers, but I didn't want to meet them.' He looks you over, seeming to pay particular attention to your equipment.
  
  Player 1 (bariaur wild-mage): I bet he's a thief.
  
  Player 2 (elf mage/thief): He's a deep dragon. Anyone you meet underground should be assumed to be a shapechanged deep dragon until proven otherwise. Look, here in my copy of the Monstrous Manual.
  
  Me: [Entirely too long of a pause, making it quite clear just how busted I am].

  This is the same person (my other sister) who thinks you can conjure hedgehogs to lay eggs in dragons' brains, and asks, of every single person in Shadowdale, if they are Elminster. But the precise habits of obscure Forgotten Realms monsters? Those, she knows in her sleep.
  
  And I had to allow her character to act on that knowledge, "the character doesn't know everything the player knows" couldn't save me. Her character's father was a moon elf (Forgotten Realms high elves), but her mother was a drow refugee on the surface. She has an RP excuse to know about deep dragons, darn her eyes ("with knitting needles"—her phrase, not mine).
• I think, even with that expectation-calibrating essay, up there, that I'm still gonna use the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana "gestalt classes" system. They just give more options. I might have to revise some things; I don't know if this campaign will have all the demihumans being in PC classes, for instance (with the gestalts being only as common as PC-class members are in a typical campaign world).
  
  Another thing I thought I'd do is give elves a penalty to Wisdom, rather than Constitution. I never liked the CON penalty in the first place—Tolkien's elves never get sick and essentially never tire; elves' Con penalty was either artificial "game balance" or a bizarre misinterpretation of the typical elf traits. I thought I'd have it play out as wood elves being foul-tempered and slightly paranoid (as forest-beings generally are in legend), and the high (or "gray" in standard D&D terms) be easily distracted (and attracted) by things they found beautiful or intriguing.