Dungeons and Dragons Next Epilog

In case anyone is wondering about what happened to my play-test game of Dungeons and Dragons, in short, it ended. Basically, my group got tired of the limited character options and began to feel that they'd exhausted the repertoire of combat available. Of course, a week or so after we called it quits, the second play test packet came out from Wizards of the Coast which addressed some of these issues, but by that time we'd revived our previous 4th edition game that had been on hiatus and no one has expressed much interest in further play testing. Also, my new job so far hasn't left me with a lot of free time for DMing. At this time, I have no plans to run further 5th Edition play-tests.

That said, I do intend to keep this blog going, though I might only be posting once or twice a month. I still have plenty of topics to post about.

My opinion on 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons: I'll be interested to see what the finished product looks like. I might even run some games in it, if it's good enough. However, I'm not sure at this point if 5th Edition will be an improvement over what we already have in Pathfinder, and, if it's not, there really isn't any point in buying the books.

Trying to do Social Encounters in 5th Edition, Attempt #1: Failure

This past weekend I ran the second session of my 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game. Based on the feed back I got from the group, the session left something to be desired. When I was planning it out I wanted to try out some ideas I had for doing social encounters, a much neglected part of role-play games in most rule sets. I also through in a stealth mission and a sport called "Orc Ball." I thought this was going to be one of my better sessions but there were several points that I failed to consider in planning it.

Alternative 5th edition character: The Bow Fighter

Note: This is very out of date with the current version of the D&D Next (5th Edition) rules.

I talked to my group last night and the guy running our current game is going to be unable to run it for a couple weeks either starting the week after next or the week after that. As a result, we will be playing my 5th edition D&D game during the interim. That should lead to some interesting posts but in the meantime there is a problem: I now have six players and there are only five premade characters. Now someone could run a clone character of someone else but we decided to try an idea that came out of last session: the bow fighter.

Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons: Play Testing, Night One

Last Friday night, we finally got around to test playing 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. The following are my impressions of the system. To be clear, these reflect my initial opinions on 5th edition, not necessarily those of my group.

Candid Conversation on 5th Edition and Fighters vs Wizards

The following is a candid conversation between two of my friends on facebook. Figured it was relevant and an interesting read beside.

---Lewis F

Alastair Yee
Gave the playtest material a look over. Truly have mixed feelings. I do like clerics and the wizard. The fact that their spells are pre chosen for the purpose of the playtest is nice. The fighter looks decently tough and damaging, but I feel like its highly lacking. It just looks so sad at 1 page compared to every one elses 2. Rogue was decent but the need for advantage means either you need a defender dwarf or attack every other turn.

Kent Carmine
Well, the info we have on the system is very limited, so there's a lot we don't know. There will probably be more ways for rogues to gain the advantage for sneak attack, for example (and remember that in 3.5e there

Haven't Gotten D&D 5.0 Together Yet

So, unfortunately, I have not been able to get a 5th edition game running. I’ve set up my notes for an interesting take on the Caves of Chaos adventure that is provided with the test playing materials, but neither I nor the group I was going to play with have had the time to run it yet.

This is in a large part because I’m studying for a second round interview for a job (yay!!!). Of course, if I do get the job, I don’t know how much time I’ll have for running games (boo…).

Still, I am hopeful that I will be able to get in my test playing sometime in the next several weeks. By the way, if you would like to join me, let me know. Good chance I might be looking for players and I have no objection to running this thing multiple times, time permitting. If you're looking for players, also let me know, because playing is fun too.

I'll probably have another "How to Be a Good Game Master" post up in the next couple days...

An Interesting Time in the History of Dungeons & Dragons (background info for much of what will follow in the blog)

The Dungeons & Dragons game line is in a make or break moment in its history. I’ll get into why that is more, later, but first I should tell you how we got to this point.