Relics of GenCon II -- ADandD FIFTH EDITION preview

So, as mentioned in my previous post, the other spectacular bit of loot I got from this year's GenCon was the huge ADandD FIFTH EDITION preview, thanks to friend Luis (thanks Luis!). Called GHOSTS OF DRAGONSPHERE CASTLE, this is actually a 140-page adventure*  (which formed the basis of this year's DandD Open at GenCon), followed by 140-odd pages of rules for the new edition.

I've been in a playtest for 5th edition for quite a while now (actually, a sequence of several playtests over two years covering varying adventures with three different DMs), but not written about it here because of the NDA signed by all playtesters. But since WotC has now published a large fraction of said rules, there doesn't seem to be any harm in weighing in on some of the new rules thus made public: expect more posts from time to time on gaming topics arising out of this iteration of the rules-in-progress.

So, what's in this ruleset? Obviously, the rules needed to play the accompanying adventure. This explains the ability scores and bonuses derived therefrom, combat, equipment, healing, and the like. The two largest sections are spells (24 pages) and monsters (almost 50). Of these, the spells given are those for Clerics and Mages from 1st thr 5th level. Probably not the full spell lists even for those levels, but plenty to run all the adventures you want, and enough to see that this initial list, at least, is heavily dominated by the traditional ADandD spells: most of these appeared in the 1st edition PLAYER'S HANDBOOK (though with rather different effects), and even at the same levels.

The largest section of the playtest rules covers some ninety monsters , including such cult classics as carrion crawlers, the behir, giant frogs, stirges, trapper, lurker above, shrieker, and the one I'm most impressed with, green slime -- this last being a kind of touchstone between those who embrace Old School and those who disdain it. No piercer, rust monster, or roper, but then you can't have everything in a limited set like this one, which presumably features only those monsters encountered in the accompanying adventure.  The monster entries are on the long side, in keeping with the tradition of 2nd and subsequent editions rather than the admirable laconity of the old MONSTER MANUAL, but to their credit they don't devote a full page to each monster (2nd edition's worst mistake).

So, what's not here? Obviously, the biggest omission is character creation -- arguably the most important part of any roleplaying game. The pregenerated characters are (1) human cleric, (2) dwarf fighter, (3) human fighter, (4) elf mage, (5) human mage, and (6) halfling rogue. So just from this you can see that the four most popular character races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling) and four traditional core classes (fighter, cleric, rogue, mage) are in place. Too bad they didn't revert from the abomination that is "rogue" back to the simpler and more straightforward Thief, but at least 2nd edition's faux pas shift from cleric to "priest", undone by 3e, has stayed undone. As for the mage, I'm neutral whether character class (a favorite of mine) is called Magic-User (1st ed), Wizard (2nd, 3rd), or Mage (5th): it's all good. Wish I cd say the absence of gnomes here means they'll be dropped like the fifth wheel they are (one of the things the much-maligned 4th edition got right. sort of.), but it's probably only due to streamlining in the specific context of this adventure.

I'm a bit surprised they're planning to keep THE FORGOTTEN REALMS as the default setting; I'd have thought it'd have run its course. Apparently not: like a comic book company's continuity (DC, Marvel) apparently it can reset and carry on; its fans are that invested in their favorite game world.**


THE THING I LIKE MOST ABOUT THIS PRODUCT: old art. They've reproduced a wonderful mix of art from all different eras of the game, including a lot from the three classic 1st edition rulebooks. This is particularly satisfying to me because in my time at TSR, then WotC, and finally Hasbro I from time to time would put into an art order as pick-up to reproduce one of these old pieces, only to invariably have the art director veto it. She felt that the game had come too far and that the work of Trampier, Diesel, and Sutherland wasn't up to her own high standards. I thought the best of the old art matched anything the then-current lot of black-and-white illustrators were turning out. Some of the new ones were very, very good, but then some of the old art had also been very good, as well as evocative of a classic era.  Having lost those fights, it's good to see that old art making a reappearance here and now.

THE THING I DON'T LIKE: it's not a biggie, but I question the inclusion of snarky post-it notes. Some of them are funny, but they have a tendency to Mystery-Science-Theatre the proceedings.  Call it a personal quirk, but it's my belief that MST treatment shd be reserved for dreck -- and GHOSTS OF DRAGONSPEAR CASTLE is anything but.

Now, if only I cd find time to read the adventure itself.

--John R.
current reading: this and that
current audiobook: THE CANON, continued
today's song: "Surfin' Frog" from A TOWN CALLED PANIC
yesterday's game: MYTHOS (thanks Luis, Anne, Sig, and Steve M. for indulging me)
tonight's game: DandD 5th edition.

 *written by the amazing Chris Perkins, long the mainstay of that department and averter of many a disaster, being not only fast but good.

**I've always preferred homebrew when it came to campaign worlds, despite having worked at one time or another on most of TSR/WotC's ADandD worlds: the Known World (Mystara), the Realms, Eberron, Ravenloft, al-Qadim, SpellJammer, bits of Greyhawk, even a brief Planescape adventure. I think DarkSun and BirthRight might be the only ones I never worked on. Of all these, the ones I like best are the ones that offer a really different play experience from the default ADandD world: Bruce Nesmith's Ravenloft, Jeff Grubb's al-Qadim, and Keith Baker's Eberron. ***

***note that both Ravenloft and al-Qadim were edited by Andria Hayday, TSR's editor extraordinaire.

Relics of GenCon (I)-- CALL OF CTHULHU 7th edition

So, it's been a long time since I made it to GenCon (not since it left Milwaukee in 2002*), but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy hearing from friends returning therefrom about what New Thing had folks there at the con excited. In addition to the good news that Kobold Press won the Ennie for their Worldbuilding Guide (congr. all around), this year there was much ado about Wizards' release of a massive (288-page) preview of their forthcoming DandD FIFTH EDITION (more about this one in its own post). And, more low-key, this GenCon also saw the release of the QuickStart rules for CALL OF CTHULHU 7th edition. And now, thanks to Anne and Sig (hi Anne. hi Sig. Thanks!), I have a copy of my very own.

CALL OF CTHULHU is famous as one of the best game designs ever, ranking right up there with ADandD first edition (the classic against which all other roleplaying games are judged) and PENDRAGON. Indeed, so influential has Sandy Petersen's CALL OF CTHULHU been that it's led to a renaissance in Lovecraft himself, who was a pretty marginal figure back in 1980/81 when Petersen was putting together these rules: now he's ranked as the most influential American horror writer of the twenties and thirties, maybe even of the first half of the twentieth century.

What made C.o.C. so outstanding is that its rules evoke a style of play that mirrors what occurs in a typical Lovecraft story; you're rewarded for acting like a Lovecraftian character and punished when you behave in non-Lovecraftian ways. Characters encountering eldritch horrors who advance to engage in combat, tommyguns blazing, are likely to die horribly and, what is worse, futilely, while those who scream and run when they see a shoggoth are likelier to live long enough to figure out a way of defeating, avoiding, or driving off the thing.

Better yet, C.o.C. is self-limiting. The longer you play a character in ADandD the more powerful that character becomes, until he or she finally drifts off into the realm of legendary hero (or villain) like unto a demigod. By contrast, in C.o.C. the more you know about what's going on, the less able you are to deal with it. Encounters with Cthulhoid monsters, learning about the Mythos, reading old Tomes, gaining the ability to cast useful spells: all erode Sanity, so that characters who are powerful are inevitably also fragile, until they either go mad or are forced into a twitchy retirement to husband those last few SAN points.

For a game that's been around (and continuously in print, and played) for thirty years, C.o.C. has changed remarkably little. It's also famous for backwards compatibility. While they have made some changes to rules over the years (adjusting the skills list a bit, making injuries slightly less lethal), you can still play the first-ever published C.o.C. adventure (and still the best), SHADOWS OF YOG-SOTHOTH, as is, without any but minor adjustments. Whereas 4th edition ADandD is recognizable as a descendent of 1st edition but clearly not the same game, in the sense that the majority of target numbers, spell effects, monster stats, et al have changed; running a 4th edition scenario with 1st edition rules wd produce chaos.

So, why a 7th edition? Basically because every five to ten years Chaosium brings out a new edition so their loyal fans will buy the core rules again; it's a way to keep the company going, and most of the game's diehard fans end up buying the game again to show their support. This time around, though, they're actually changing the rules a good deal. Why? Well, while there have long been third-party scenarios for C.o.C. released by other rpg publishers (a tradition dating back at least to Theatre of the Mind/TOME in the mid-eighties), recently several new Cthulhu games that don't use the Chaosium C.o.C. rulesystem have gotten a lot of attention (e.g., Pelgrane Press's TRAIL OF CTHULHU). And Chaosium's response seems to be to see if they can make their game a lot more like everybody else's and hope that this doesn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs -- not in great profusion, but reliably, and for decades.

So, the changes: C.o.C. character stats are v. obviously derived directly from the six classic DandD ability scores: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma; C.o.C. renames the last of these Appearance and replaces Wisdom with POW (Power: originally 'Willpower' in early editions of the game). To this they add Size and Education. Hit points are not rolled randomly (as in right-minded versions of DandD) but derived from averaging Size and Con. In addition, there are four derived stats important in gameplay: KNOW (=Edu x5), IDEA (=Int x5), LUCK (=Pow x5), and SANity (which starts as Pow x5 but fluctuates throughout the game). Characters also get Skill points to assign to skills like Occult, Library Use, and Spot Hidden, as appropriate to their chosen profession.

In the new rules, they've abandoned the 3d6 ability scores for character stats and replaced them with a percentile system. For the quickstarter, there are no random rolls: you just assign one of the following among the eight stats: 40%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 60%, 60%, 70%, 80%. Mechanically this is the equivalent of having 8, 10, 10, 10, 12, 12, 14, and 16 as your stats, but the new system works through catagories of successes, so once you've assigned each number you also have to divide it twice so you wind up with three numbers: your score, half your score, and one-fifth your score (e.g., POW 80/40/16). That's because you used to roll percentile dice and, if you rolled under your target number, so succeeded. But if you rolled very low, you got a critical success (this mainly applied to combat, where you did extra damage). Now there are four levels of result: failure (you roll over the target number), "a regular success" (you roll under your skill total but above the half-way mark), "a hard success" (you roll under half your skill total but above the one-fifth mark), and "an extreme success" (you roll in the bottom one-fifth; similar to what used to be called an impale). If two characters are directly opposing each other (say, one's trying to push a door open and the other trying to hold it shut), both roll and compare levels of success: a regular success beats failure; a hard success beats a regular success, and an extraordinary success beats a hard success. Whoever has the highest base score wins in the case of a tie. Replacing a straightforward success/failure die roll with a failure/three categories of success roll seems to me a good way to introduce a lot of annoying complications; we'll see how it plays out in actual gameplay.

Both the KNOW roll and the IDEA roll seem to have gone away, replaced by simple 'Edu' and 'Int' rolls (now that those are percentages anyway).  They've also added bonus and penalty dice (copped apparently from the forthcoming edition of ADandD) -- another complication -- and added a rule for 'Pushing', allowing you to retry a roll but at an added risk (e.g., trying to break a locked door down, then 'pushing' to try again but hurting yourself if you fail the second time).  The Sanity rules, one of the most iconic features of the game, still work the same way but now have a different resolution: if a character fails a Sanity check, the Keeper (DM) gets to control his or her next action. If the character goes temporarily insane, the Keeper assigns him or her a phobia or mania OR changes some fact about the character's backstory. An insane character is also prone to hallucinations, which can be fought off with a successful "Reality Check" (clever name, that). The combat rules have been made less lethal and more complicated -- for example, in addition to possibly having a damage bonus (for characters who are large and strong, as in the traditional rules) characters and creatures now have a separate stat called "build" which works like size categories in ADandD 3rd edition grappling rules (alas). Injuries now fall into categories: Minor (flesh wound), Moderate (wound), Severe (that'll leave a scar), Deadly (could kill you), Terminal (will probably kill you), and Splat (very, very dead).

I know it's probably only a feature of the QuickStart's having been hastily put together, but it is mildly amusing that they give four examples of favorite Occupations (Professor, Journalist, Occultist, and Archeologist), and then provide eight sample occupations don't include two of those four (Occultist and Archeologist). The player picks a profession then assigns the following skill levels in those eight skills that go with that profession, plus the ninth score on Credit Rating: 70%, 60% x2, 50% x3, 40% x3. This approach puts more emphasis on Credit Rating, something that in previous editions the Keeper and players could either make much of or ignore outright, depending on their druthers. With the new regular/hard/extreme categories you'll need to generate the half-value and one-fifth value for each skill as well.

The rest of the QuickStarter is devoted to an introductory scenario, and here in a nice nod to tradition they've included an updated version of THE HAUNTING, which I think has appeared in the rulebook for every C.o.C. edition starting w. the v. first. I'm looking forward to running this one soon to see how the new rules work out in practice.

So, on the whole a lot of changes, very little of which looks like a good idea in the abstract. The ruling spirit seems to be change for the sake of change, as if Coke decided brown was an old-fashioned color for a cola and bright green wd be more up-to-date. The categories of success and grapple/build rules look to be problematic, while the new when-you-go-insane rules look promising (I particularly like the 'Reality Check'). Maybe in the full version of these rules they'll even bring back 'Insane insights', a rather fun idea that fell by the wayside after about the third edition. 'Pushing' might be an interesting tool for players and keepers alike, while the bonus dice/penalty dice is just an abomination.

On the whole, more of a departure from the traditional game than any of the previous editions. There's more change in the rules system between the current edition and this one than changes in all the previous editions put together. We'll see how the full edition comes out, but here's hoping they back off on some of these changes before they become official. If no, I suspect a lot of us will pick up VIIth edition, read it, and then continue playing 'classic' CALL OF CTHULHU.

--John R.



*My GenCon attendance was v. much location-based: I never made it to any before they moved to Milwaukee, then attended every GenCon from 1986 through 2002, except for 1992 (which I missed because I was in England, as had been the case with the first Milw. GenCon in 1985), then I've missed all the ones since they moved further east outside familiar territory.