5e Player’s Handbook

So let’s talk about the new PHB. First if you are still playing 1e it’s all there for you:

Races:

• Dwarf
• Elf
• Halfing
• Human
• Dragonborn (from 3.5e)
• Gnome
• Half-Elf
• Half-Orc
• Tiefling (from 4e)

Classes:

• Barbarian (Added to 1e from Dragon #63)
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue
• Sorcerer (from 3.5e)
• Warlock (from 3.5e)
• Wizard

So, there’s note much added from 1e expect a few of the most popular Races\Classes. As you go thru the book it talks about what rules are optional. The biggest area is all of Chapter 6 is Optional (Multiclassing and Feats). I’m glad that Feats has been rolled back a bit. It always seemed to me add a layer of complexity.

So I’ll give more impressions as I read more, but thinking back to what people were guessing what 5e was going to be about. A lot of folks thought it would be somewhere between 3.5e and 4e. I think it’s more between 1e and 3.5e. In one sentence (which really isn’t total fair to the game): It’s 1e with the best of 3.5e. I don’t see much of 4e at all, but I’ll bet those combat rules will be optional somewhere down the line…

D&D 5e Starter Set Review (Update)

Just a quick update on playing the Starter Set:

• First the adventure in the set is well done.  Lots of subplots to do and it really does step by step a DM thru the adventure and the rules.
• I would say the game play right now is closer to 3rd edition.  However, it does have a little of a 1st edition feel to it since the rules are boiled down quite a bit.
• I would guess, as more of the rules are added it will feel more like a new 3rd edition, but I’ll bet it will have options to add more of a 4th edition combat feel, if that is what you like.

I know that is a very high level feel, but that’s all we have right now.  We will find out more when the Player’s Handbook is released.

D&D 5e Starter Set Review

So I got a D&D 5e (Next) starter set. What do I think and is it worth it given that you can download the basic rules for 5e for free and the starter set is $20 at your local store.

To start, what do you get with the starter set?

• A starter set rulebook
• A D&D Adventure to run (Lost Mine of Phandelver)
• 5 Characters to play with
• One set of D&D dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20)

Here is a video if you need to see this in more detail:

To start let’s compare the Basic Rules with what is given to you in the Starter Set. The Starter Set rules tell you:

• The basics on how to play D&D
• How to fight
• An overview on Adventuring
• How to cast spells

These are basically the 4 chapters in the book and they give you enough info to get your pre-rolled characters to level 5.

The basic rules for free download give you all that, plus how to create your own characters.  So for the starter set you are stuck with the pre-rolled characters.  The basic rules give you all the details of your character class up to level 20.

As for the Adventure, it’s in 4 parts and per the introduction is enough to get the party from level 1 to 5 by the end of it.  It’s fairly long.

So did I get my $20 worth?  My answer is ‘What’s your goal in buying this?’

I have two kids.  I had a mixed success getting them into 4e, mostly because they and their friends were at a mixed level of maturity.  This is going to work great.  I can toss them a rulebook that will get them easily into the ‘How to play’.  The 5e rules, so far, are much more streamlined than 4e was for combat, but let’s see if that holds as the books come out.  The adventure itself looks to be great for a starting DM (if my oldest wants to try) and is big enough that it is worth the $20 bill on it’s own.

However, if you are an experienced gamer and just want to convert your current campaign at some point.  You should consider passing.  There is not enough here (or out yet).  Pick up the Basic rules and get ready for when the 5e Players Handbook and Monster Manual comes out.

This will be more than enough to get my kids (no friends for now) and wife back into D&D for the summer.

D&D Next (5e)

So I’ll be picking up the D&D Starter kit for 5e (Next) on July 3rd.

This will be a good starting point for my kids who have interest in D&D and this will get them on the ground floor with the next edition. More soon.

Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon

So, I’ve played a few rounds of this game and let me give you some pluses and minuses:

Good

1) Great Atmosphere: With the minis and the tile board it captures the full game very well. It really scratches the D&D itch.
2) Nice Intro to 4e rules: a few rounds of this game and my 12 year old will be ready to go to the full game. Even my 9 year old is getting better with the rules.
3) Game likely plays in under 90 mins

Bad

1) Be ready to interpret the rules a bit: Like Full D&D, the rules can be a little gray on how, for example, how a spell works, how a trap affects the group, etc.
2) Bad Cards: Some of my cards curled as soon as I opened them. They are still playable, but this can point to a problem during the treating process of the cards.

Overall 8.75 out of 10. See the video below for more detailed review.

Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon

Well, something new to try. 🙂

So I tried to intro my kids into D&D with mixed results. My kids were around 8 and 11 when we tried.

• Using Dungeon Mapp with the IPad on the TV worked well.  Using it to keep the hit points was OK at best, because I don’t like to make that public.  Also it could use more graphic options, but for the price it worked great.
• The downside was my kids invited other kids their age to play.  My wife and another adult played as well, but I didn’t feel it really worked out.  Too many kids.
• I tried to scale it back to my wife and my kids.  I think that might work at some point, but I can’t trust my sons (certainly not the younger) to keep track of spells used, etc.  Just too much record keeping at this point.  I think my older son is ready, but I can’t focus on him and my younger to keep things straight.  This is something I can DM around, but I’d like for them to learn.
• I’m going to try and figure something out in the summer, until then I picked up Wrath of Ashardalon.

I think this might solve a number of issues…

• I think this will give me the structure needed to keep things in control.
• The watered down version of D&D 4e will show them the ropes of record keeping a bit more.
• I can play on the kids ‘team’ and have fun that way.

I never thought I’d buy a D&D board game (just play the real thing), but I think this might work out.  I’ll do a review later.

Munchkin is (Mostly) Evil

OK, that might be a bit over the top, but I saw this video on Geek and Sundry and I had to take my shots at Munchkin…

So before I start ripping Munchkin, let me start by praising it. Munchkin is a funny game. It makes fun of Dungeons and Dragons, so if you played that game, you will get a big laugh out of this. It can be a fun game. So now what’s wrong with Munchkin:

1) Someone usually gets screwed: See how much fun Sandeep had that game? Stuck with bad cards and just wasting his time. That happens to someone in most of the games. That might be OK, if the game is quick, but….

2) Maybe people I know are REALLY good at messing with other players, but this game is 1.5 hours at least. This is a classic bash the leader game. If you are the lucky person to try to win when everyone is out of cards to stop you, then great. Otherwise this can turn into a slow grind.

Sadly many of Steve Jackson’s games are like this: Cute and usually Funny, not enough focus on play testing to get over major flaws in the game. It’s a fun game to play from time to time and that’s about it. People I know will move on to a more well rounded game. If you want to read some other reviews check out the forum on BoardGameGeek.

If you like it, good for you! It’s a cash cow for Jackson, but it’s not for me (and quite a few others), that’s for sure.

What I REALLY Expect of D&D Next

I was reading this link about where the next version of D&D is going. Let’s call it 5e. Play testing for 5e starts today.

So some background on what I have played: I started with the Blue Book and then played the hell out of 1e. I stopped at 2e, because I was getting busy and didn’t need to learn new rules. I’m playing some 3.5e and now 4e with my kids. I don’t plan to play test 5e. I have other things to do right now…

But here’s the thing that popped into my head as I’m rolling up new 4e characters with my kids:

I’m sitting here with bunch of 1e, 3e, 3.5e and 4e stuff between me and my friends, What the heck is 5e going to REALLY offer to make me spend $100s of dollars on a new version? What is the killer app as it were?

Is a 5e cleric really going to be that different than a 4e cleric that I want to drop that amount of coin? Odds are I’ll start looking for cheap 4e material and explore that.

Let me put it another way, there is no way I would play 1e over 3.5e or 4e. Personally, I like 4e better than 3.5e. So the versions have been getting better. That said, if I had a ton of 3.5e stuff (and a lot of people did who played that version), I wouldn’t have jumped to 4e. There was nothing there to make you want to switch.

A lot of people look at a bunch of stuff that is BS: How much to rollplay, how much combat there should be, how long should combat be, etc. Bottom line, a lot of that stuff is up to the DM’s and the player’s style of play. It can’t be forced by the rules onto the game.

Look D&D has dug itself into a hole. It has too many versions and that’s the bottom line. Clearly 5e is going to be some sort of fusion of 3.5e and 4e to try to get the core of the D&D players together. I understand why they want to do that, but that doesn’t sound like enough to get me to buy the new books anytime soon.

I’m going to give Wizards of the Coast what I think the killer app is for 5e. Come out publically and say that you will NOT change the rules of 5e for at least 8 years. If you do that and successfully merge the 3.5e and 4e rules, you might be able to get people to switch to 5e. You burned some bridges over the years with changing the rules; you need to make a public commitment to 5e.

I’m not planning on getting 5e out of the gate, but tell me up front that this rule set is going to be around for awhile and that could be enough to get me to buy the book and kick the tires from the start. Otherwise it’s just going to be something close to 4e and I’ll just stick to that.

D&D and Dungeon Mapp Update

So I’ve played a few rounds of D&D…

As far as the 4e rules are concerned, I like them. The play is smooth overall and even as a newbie I know where to look when I have a question. I know a number of folks still play 3.5e, but having played a bit of both I like the simpler rules of 4e. Clearly YMMV and I can see why 3.5e holds appeal.

I also want to talk a bit about Dungeon Mapp (DM) and about the Pluses and Minuses of these iPad apps that take the place of minis in general.

I started the group off with the Forgotten Realm campaign in Loudwater as a starting point. I had a group of 6 first level players fighting 13 goblins. DM was a big timesaver in setting up the maps the players are going to use in advance and tracking initiative and everyone’s hit points. Just for that, it’s worth it. DM had some bugs tracking the goblins initiative, which has been fixed now, and flagging a goblin as dead, flags all the goblins running under the same object as dead (not fixed). So when they died, I just deleted them.

I still have some issues with DM which are not show stoppers: The hide room function has an issue of not hiding the monsters when you reload a map (revealing a hidden room, even one you already revealed, rehides the monsters) and the last update made DM crash anytime I reloaded an old map. Clearly, the old maps didn’t work with the new code, but a warning would be nice about that before I updated the code that I was going to lose the maps. Overall, as some who has written code for more languages then I would care to count, I just don’t get the feel that this code gets tested well enough before it goes out the door.

All that said, it was a huge timesaver and I wouldn’t trade it in for any of the other options out there right now.

Also, I want to give a warning to anyone using any of these apps and the more people you have in the group, the bigger this downside… Really only one or two people can look at the map at once time (unlike using minis), so that keeps players a little more out of the loop. My solution for this is that I got the iPad’s AV connector, so now I can show the map on the 50 inch TV. That’s an extra $40 cost and I’m not sure this will work on an iPad (I have an iPad2 and it works great), but I’ll use the AV for other things as well. Still it’s something to keep in mind.

Overall, the pluses outweighs the minuses, but there is room for improvement and there is no way I’ll start investing in minis. This is looks to be the best option going forward. It’s only going to get better from here.

Some options I’d like to see going forward:

1) More graphic art. Some more has been added and it’s animated art, which is nice. However art is key from giving each new location a different look and feel. It could use more. If memory is an issue then make ‘art packs’ that can be loaded and unloaded as needed.

2) Flag spell effects. If I’m going to put up an anti-magic spell or a wall of flame, I should be able to mark that on the map somehow.

3) Maybe some more movement options. If, for example, there is a building in front of you. Flag those squares so they don’t count towards movement.

I’m sure I’ll come up with a few more as I use it a bit more. Overall, it’s a good start!

App Review: Dungeon Mapp (iPad)

Dungeon Mapp

So I spent the $9 for Dungeon Mapp (DM) and tested it a bit with my kids.

Pros:

• Easy to build Dungeons
• Lowest Cost between the 3 apps

Cons:

• The functionality for tracking hit points and initiative has bugs, but the programmer seems to be willing to fix most of it soon (I Hope)
• Needs more graphics. The current selection is a bit light.

Rooms are easy to build with DM and can be done quickly if needed. That makes me glad I didn’t pony up for Battle Map (BM). BM is working on a new app from the ground up (which I assume is going to cost at least $30). It’s got to knock my socks off at this point.

As for RPG Cartographer, clearly the maps are nicer, but I, in theory, like that I can manage the group with DM. I say ‘in theory’, because DM doesn’t track more than 100 hit points per character\monster and its initiative roller doesn’t really work with monsters. That’s not going to cut it for a lot of groups. This tells me that whoever tests Dungeon Mapp hasn’t done much to test it. Not good.

That said, I’m going to hope that DM fixes those problems quickly, if not then RPG Cartographer could be the better choice. If I can’t have the tracking of the battle built in the app, then I’ll take the better graphics.

As I said, when I see Battle Map 2, then I’ll re-consider it. To be honest, considering that Battle Map (and maybe Dungeon Mapp to a degree) is hitting the wall a bit on what it can do with the hardware, I’m not sure that the iPad will allow Battle Map 2 to give all the functionality it needs to make it worthy of the $30 (and maybe more) price point.

Anyway, I have a lot of players to get up to speed in 4e. Hopefully I’ll have a report in a few weeks.