The Good and Bad Aspects of the Next Edition of Dungeon and Dragons

In this post, I will list the good and the bad aspects of the upcoming Dungeon and Dragons system release and how they will affect both the Wizards of the Coast and the gaming community.

The upcoming 4.0 release of the Dungeon and Dragons game will feature several changes to the game mechanics. The information that has been released by the game developers show an effort to reduce the complexity of the rules, by streamlining combat and providing better management for magical items among other improvements.

All of those improvements are good news, showing that the company that produces and sells Dungeon and Dragons, has a strong commitment to better their products. But the Wizards of the Coast will make other changes from a business perspective that will affect the gamers in a negative way. The company will release only a few basic guidelines to the game mechanics under the Open Gaming License, instead of releasing its bulk as it is the case with the 3.5 rules.

With the 3.5 version of the rules, the players can get away with checking the information available online, only the Game Master needs to buy all the core books. Since most of the information for the upcoming version will be not be openly available, the players will no longer get away with checking only online sources. They will now have to purchase the Players Handbook in order to play.

The online sources that provided the gaming community with the information it needed to create, innovate and extent the system will no longer be available. That means that the only ones working on the system will be the Wizards of the Coast or a license paying third party. No add-ons to the campaigns or software tools will be legally developed by the gaming community for this upcoming release.

The software tools and the add-ons were the reason many, in the hobby, use Dungeon and Dragons since not all systems have that kind of support. The gaming community innovated and helped push the lobby much further than it would otherwise.

The Wizards of the Coast will cease reaping the benefits of that innovation in an effort to extend itself from a publishing and game development house into a software development and magazine company. While there is more money into having full control over the system, there is also a lot more expense into expanding your business in so many different directions in such a short period of time.

The upcoming system will be tied very closely to the success or the failure of the Wizards of the Coast into growing their business. The gamers will be the ones paying for that growth by not only purchasing the books but by limiting themselves to fewer options in software and campaign elements, as well as a weaker support from the gaming community.

In Jennden

In this post I will talk about the city of Jennden in the Rothen Campaign. I will detail three important NPC's in the city and I will follow up with the first plot-driven adventure the party had in the campaign. The maps for that adventure will be available at the end of the post.

When the party got to Jennden, they were confronted with an overcrowded city. The overcrowding problem showed itself in the number of bandits, the amount of street urchins, and the overall evil attitude of the population. The refugees that appeared in the city, when their towns were attacked by the armies of the Overking, were the main cause of the over population in the city.

To keep the party from getting themselves in trouble in Jennden, the blacksmith Ranus from Rothen told them the name and location of an inn that would provide all their needs while in the city. That inn owner also happened to be the first person that could help the heroes in the quest for Ranus' sons. The party met Hasil an expert level 5 and family when they came to his inn.

Hasil told the adventurers that Ranus' sons had contracted themselves to work for the head of the thief's guild in Jennden. He had advised them not to work for that man because he was a major source of evil in the city, but the boys just ignored him. Goilir was only looking for someone to make cheap weapons for himself, so he could drive his competition out of business.

According to Hasil, the competition was exactly who the blacksmith Ranus did business with, since he knew better than to have anything to do with Goilir. It is this competition that may have some information on the current location of Ranus' boys.

Hasil sent the party to Kognus who was the only remaining arms dealer in town, other than Goilir. Kognus was not a blacksmith himself, but he had contacts all over the place that supplied him with what he needed. The blacksmith Ranus used to be one of those suppliers, until the problems with the orc band in Rothen.

Kognus was a chaotic neutral expert level 8 who was not shy of both bribing officials and bragging about his conquests with women. Kognus prided himself in his five women harem, one for each day of the week leaving two days for rest.

Under a few conditions, Kognus shared with the party all he knew about Ranus' sons hoping to hurt Goilir's business and save his own. The condition were: they must leave the city immediately after freeing the boys, they must leave no witnesses, they must send the boys to the village of Rothen right away, and finally if captured, they swore not to incriminate him. As a gesture of goodwill, he provided guides in the city for the heroes, as well as sending a few of his men to escort the boys back to the village of Rothen.

After agreeing to those terms, the party went back to the inn, rested, and by nightfall they got ready for the assault at the depot where the boys were being kept as prisoners.

Following tips from Kognus, the party disguised themselves as dock workers, and headed for the depot's back door. They were able to bluff their way in, with the help of a few coins and the right pass-phrases. They were able to free the boys and leave the city of Jennden for Ralsand while sending Ranus' sons to the village of Rothen.

Below are the maps I used for the depot.

Download the Autorealm source file from 4shared.com

The Rothen Campaign

In this post, I will talk a little about the Rothen campaign that was created with the “Ivid the Undying” setting. I will give a few details about two of the main NPC's while leaving the others to be detailed later. I will also detail the initial idea for the campaign and finally a map of the world where the campaign took place.

The campaign started when the party met Mayor Sonia of the Village of Rothen. She was an Adept level 12, with a rich story of adventures before arriving in Rothen. The only adventure detailed was the last one she took part before retiring. In that last quest, her party was sent to a cave to investigate a possible group of monsters that were kidnapping farmers from a local town. The party ended up being confronted with a Colossal Dragon. There was nothing for them to do but run, and only two people out of five survived the encounter, Sonia and Mebur.

After that she retired from adventuring and came to Rothen with Mebur. Mebur is a level 10 fighter and her love interest. He would go to great lengths to protect her.

The party was introduced to these two NPC's right out off the bat in the very first scene of this campaign. They met at the mayor's official house. In that meeting, Sonia explained to them why there were being hired, and how much that job would pay. The Mayor did leave some information out deliberately as the adventurers found out later.

The party was to take a trip up to Ralsand, the city that housed the rulers for the lands in which the story was taking place. The party was going to meet with the Wizard Francenn that also happened to be the mayor of Ralsand.

Sonia told them that they were going to ask the Wizard about a large band of orcs that had shown up threatening the village a few weeks ago. In the official sealed letter they were taking, Sonia was asking Francenn to use his magical device to locate where that band had come from. The party was to bargain with Francenn for that information. That bargaining was already part of the agreed price, since Sonia was sure a nobleman such as Francenn would not take advantage of the party.

Sonia gave the party half of the payment upfront. They were also told to speak with the blacksmith Ranus. Ranus told them about his sons' disappearance in Jennden. Since Jennden was on the way to Ralsand, he offered to pay if the party could look into matters for him. If they were able to rescue his sons and bring them to him, they could keep the horses he was loaning to them.

As part of the description of the village, I had written information about the Inn owner, the priest that worked in the temple dedicated to Perlor, and a shady figure that ran the local pub. All of those people would speak with the PC's after they returned from Tarrentch.

I will later reveal their quests, as I continue to post about the main topics of their adventures.

This is the overland map I used for the campaign.

Choosing the Second Campaign Setting

In this post, I will talk about the campaign setting I used after the Alface Campaign, the reasons behind the choice, and a quick evaluation of the setting.

There is a lot of work to create the world of a campaign setting. The world is defined by the background information on the most diverse subjects. But that information is only useful in the creation of the campaign for the players. The players may not even be aware or care about this information, since they deal with a much smaller potion of the world. The GM on the other hand has to be sure that the actions of the players do not go against the definitions imposed by the world. Or if the actions do go against it, the GM needs to make sure it reverberates across the entire setting.

Creating that background information requires a lot imagination, hard work, and experience. For the Alface Campaign, I thought I had the imagination, but I was lacking in the other two areas. I did not think it would take a lot of work, or that I needed experience in order to create a fantasy campaign setting. That is why, at the end, I was frustrated with the Alface campaign, and wanted to switch to a better defined setting.

When I was searching for a setting to switch to, I had a few requirements for it. First I wanted something I could just plug into the Dungeon and Dragon 3.5 rules without having to do any extra work. Second, I did not want any feats, races, spells, or any other rules that would increase the complexity of the system.

The only campaign setting that did fit in that description was Greyhawk. So I started looking for a Greyhawk Campaign Setting box. I could not find the boxed set at my local game store so I turned to online auctions where I found it for about 60 to 80 dollars. That was just too much money for me to invest in a setting, so I decided to use a module that was available free of charge at the Wizards of the Coast site called “Ivid the Undying.”

Since I had no experience with professional campaign settings I was not sure what to expect. I was impressed with the size of the world presented. Even though that setting only covered one country, that country had many divisions. Those division were: religion, political, degrees of evil, degrees of good, even degrees of insanity. It was a very interesting and rich setting.

But the campaign had also a very strong characteristic, it was very, very dark. It was closer to a horror setting than of a fantasy one. The players themselves had commented on how evil everything seemed to be. Most of the choices presented to the players were between one evil versus the other or one insane ruler against another evil one.

Now I know from experience that running a dark setting is very different than running a fantasy one, but at that time I had no idea, so I did not treat Greyhawk appropriately. That led to a few problems since that setting did not meet the expectations of the players. And for my part, I did not know how to deal with a dark setting. That led to a few problems between the GM and the players, but as time went on, we started to slowly adapt to it.

We played in that setting for about 16 sessions, until one of the players left the group. It was easier to GM in Greyhawk than on the Alface Campaign, and the world presented in the “Ivid the Undying” was fascinating with a lot of adventures for the party to take on.

What I learned with the Alface Campaign

In this post, I will talk a little about my earlier mistakes in the creation of the Alface Campaign and as a GM running my first game. Towards the end, I will give a set of bullet points detailing what I learned from those mistakes.

My very first mistake in the Alface Campaign was the amount of background information I had created for it. Most of that information was not useful in any way during play. That is why in the post “Background Information for the Alface Campaign”, I was able to shrink seven pages of information into about one and a half pages for the posting.

An example of useless information was a list of all major events dating back to 300 years in the continent of Bella. None of that information was useful during play, I didn't even mention it to the players once.

There was also another problem with my Campaign, I had thought of four major plot events and all of them were strung in a linear fashion. During play that meant a lot of railroading to guide the players where I wanted them to go, and during combat it meant a lot of fudged rolls not to kill the players, and end my story.

There were also design flaws in the adventures themselves, like the one in the mage tower where the players finished all the underground levels only to meet with an evil monster that was 17 levels higher than they were. The party had only one thing that mattered to the monster which was how to get out of prison. I made the monster give in to their demands, even though he could have easily forced it out of the party.

Those design mistakes were made purely on the fact, that I did not know how the actual play was going to be like. I had imagined the whole session as an adventure in a book, where a person just narrates what is happening and the party reacts to it within a very narrow window.

That was my experience when playing computer RPG's like Neverwinter Nights, but tabletop RPG's are much more interactive than their computer counterparts, and if you removed that interactiveness from the system you create a very constrained game as I quickly found out when I started GMing.

When we met to play the Alface campaign for the first time, I started the session by giving out as much of the background information of the world as possible in a effort to clue the players into what was happening. Well, I was later told, that the players that were paying attention to it, were doing it out of courtesy. But in the group, there was one player that after a long hour or so lost his patience and blurted out “Please, lets just roll some dice.”

At that point I stopped narrating and we jumped right into the game itself, where I railroaded the party into the mage tower and we started fumbling around with the combat rules.

I kept railroading the group for eight sessions after the first one, until I finally decided to try a published campaign setting instead.

The main points I learned with the Alface campaign were:

• Not to give out too much upfront information to the players, unless they ask you for it.
• Focus my creativity on the world the players can interact with, instead of the history of the place they are in.
• Creating a campaign setting is a major endeavor.
• Do not create long linear story points that would force the GM to railroad the players.
• The players hate railroading.
• Tabletop RPG is much more interactive than a computer RPG.

Background Information on the Alface Campaign

In this post, I will give you the background story for the Alface campaign starting with the location of the lands, their general geography, the major events that led to my campaign, and finally the information of the battle between the forces of darkness and the armies of light.

In the Alface campaign, I didn't give precise definitions of the two continents involved. You won't find in here how far one continent is from the other, or how long would a sea voyage take between the two. I talk in general terms about the kingdoms without naming or numbering them. I made no maps (save those of dungeons) for this campaign.

Their general location in relation to our own geography would be north Africa (Uirk) and the northern portion of South America (Bella).

The continent of Bella was defined in relation to the continent of Uirk. Bella's size was half of that of Uirk, and it's climate was tropical with large rain forests. Uirk's climate was arid, having large continuous deserts. Uirk was much more populous than Bella having about twice as many kingdoms and three times as many people.

Uirk traded heavily with Bella in foodstuffs, many trade routes were open and trade flowed from one continent to the other. This constant trade also meant that large amounts of information were exchanged between the two continents. But that did not mean that Bella and Uirk were closely allied, on the contrary, Bella did not concern itself with Uirk unless there was a direct threat.

10 years ago, reports of a large undead army led by demons started to surface. As the years went by, more and more information was gathered about that army. That information spoke of an army that employed undead, humanoid beasts (orcs, hobogoblins, etc), a large number of mages, and a fair number humans.

The undead were always used as a frontal attack force, followed by the humanoids and humans. Spellcasters were always controlling the undead while general command of the army itself was left to the demons.

This undead army was nicknamed “the forces of evil” by the kingdoms of Uirk. This name came into being after several of the areas saw an increase in evil activities. Vast amounts of people were killed, while a large number of those conquered were forced to join the army. The few that resisted had fates worse than death.

As the kingdoms started to fall, so did trade between the two continents. Merchants had said that the new empire was not going to exchange anything for their goods, they were actually seizing their ships and cargo. When the forces of evil finally conquered the entire continent, trade came to a complete halt.

The few that escaped to Bella shared stories of what had happened in Uirk, from the battle engagements to how the kingdoms were dealt with once conquered.

Those tales talked about the common people working like slaves while the royalty and merchants were servants. They also talked about how undead were now a common sight and how the Demon officers were terrible once encountered.

There were among those that took refuge in Bella, a few that had actually seen the general that led the force of evil. His name was still a mystery, but now everyone knew that he was a Ballor, and a general with many years of experience leading armies in a different plane of existence. All of his officers were demons that served with him before.

Even though that information had painted a very clear picture for the rulers of Bella, still noone thought that was any treat and the kingdoms did not prepare.

Everything had changed about six months ago, when the first ships started to appear bringing with them armies of both human and other humanoid races. Those ships also brought with them mages that commanded armies of undead that came ashore taking the coastal cities of Bella by surprise.

At that point, the kingdoms finally decided to react, and hastily created the army of light to combat the forces of darkness coming from Uirk.

But at that point, there was not enough time to prepare, and the armies of light were merely slowing down the advancement of the forces of darkness.

In desperation, the armies of light called in the most venerable mages, clerics and druids and asked them to provide them with more options, because a strait head on battle was a losing proposition.

After a few weeks of research and debate, these venerable men were able to find something that would combat the advancement of the forces of evil. But the plan involved a possible suicide mission into a long abandoned tower. You can read more about that mission in the post “Mage Tower Maps and Plot Ideas.”

The venerable men also found another source of magical help in a village. You can read more about that adventure in the post “Dragon Cave Maps and Plot Ideas.”

Dragon cave maps and plot ideas

In this post, I will show you more maps of my very first campaign that were made using Autorealm. I will talk a little about my goals with them, and finally I will give a little background story on the campaign itself.

The maps are of a 6 level cave complex. The caves are inhabited by the Yuan-ti along with human slaves and a dragon at the lowest level.

The first level of the dungeons was what I called the slave triage (areas 5 and 6). There were also 3 areas where crops were grown (areas 7, 8 , 9). These areas would have slaves as well as guards.

The second level was used for cultivation of foodstuff's and 2 storage areas towards the back by the stairs that led to level 3.

The third level was where they had cattle for meat and a few more storage areas.

The fourth and fifth level were used for housing the Yuan-ti while the sixth and final level they had a temple for the large dragon.

Level 1

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Level 2

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Level 3

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Level 4
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Level 5

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Level 6
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The story in the campaign was the following: the heroes were asked to travel to a remote area of the kingdom to convince a “cursed village” to join in the fight with the armies of light. There was only one problem, the folks of the cursed village were indeed cursed (hence the name) and aside from being undead (non-evil type) they were bound to the village grounds.

The villagers had told the adventurers they would help, only if they traveled to that specific cave and talk to the dragon, whom they were sure would know how to lift the curse.

The dragon was guarded by a small community of Yuan-ti, that were known for trafficking in slaves, exchanging them for weapons and armor.

The party never made it to the dragon, we stopped playing the Alface campaign at fourth level in that cave and have never returned to it.

Mage tower maps and plot ideas

In this post, I will show some maps that were made using Autorealm. I will explain my goals for each of the maps and towards the end of the post, I will give you the background story for those maps.

I think it's important to note that these maps where the first ones I ever made. You will also note that their overall shape is pretty basic, and some elements are not consistent in all of them (like the stairs for example).

These maps are of a tower that was sealed off due to a summoning spell gone wrong. The only way in was through the portal on room number 1 on the underground 1 map, but you can feel free to start at the first level. This map was used for dungeon and dragons 3.5 rules.

While there are five underground levels, there is only one above ground; you can add more above ground levels if you want to. The only thing to keep in mind is the fact that due to weight considerations, each above ground level should be smaller then the previous ones (that's what I usually do when creating large towers made of stone).

Another important aspect is the fact that the tower has been sealed for 3 centuries, which means that most doors made of wood would have crumbled to dust (the piles in the floors with lots of straight lines) while the ones that are standing are pretty fragile.

In my campaign, there were several battles fought in the lower levels when the tower was first sealed. Those marks should show on the walls along with broken weapons, spent arrows and bolts, and maybe some bones here and there.

Each of the underground levels had a specific theme. The first level was Melee and Archery Training, the second level was Water, Fire, and Arcane Magic Training, the third was Life and Death Magic, the fourth was Scrolls and Potions Lab, and finally the fifth was Summoning.

Underground Level 1: Melee and Archery Training
Download the Autorealm source file from 4shared.com Underground level 2: Water, Fire, and Arcane Magic Training
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Underground Level 3: Life and Death Magic
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Underground Level 4: Scrolls and Potions Lab
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Underground Level 5: Summoning
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Above ground level 1: Ground Level
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Below, you will read the story pertaining to the tower in my campaign.

This tower was used as a school for wizards and sorcerers. They all worked in unison to further their learning. The above ground levels were their places of residence, along with kitchen, meeting halls, and classrooms. The underground levels were guided towards hands on training, each level was designed to be used for a specific form of magic.

The last underground level was used for summoning, since things can go wrong pretty easily with summoning, there had to be some kind of contingency plan if all hell were to break lose.

There was such a plan which consisted of closing each level, and sealing it to prevent the further spread of whatever they had summoned. Pretty simple and efficient, and it probably worked 99% of the time, but that 1% that remained was what caused the tower to seal itself for 300 years.

All the heroes know is that a very bored high level demon inhabits the lowest levels of the tower, forever trapped in that place, forever bored.

The heroes are told how to free the demon (and themselves) from the tower, and offer him that information in exchange for his service.

Why Singular Moments for my Blog name.

I have visited several blog sites, most of them are pretty easy to identify as being part of the roleplaying hobby. The name I have chosen for this blog is very abstract and needs a little explanation. In this post, I will explain what the name describes, and where such an idea came from.

Most of the blogs out there try to quickly inform the visitor about the subject matter being covered in its posts. They use words associated with the hobby such as Dungeon Something or Tavern whatever. Others take their names from monsters, player races, or equipment.

All of those are good names that describe the contents, or the ideas being talked within, but they are not good in describing the author himself. When I first visit such an site, I usually hunt for that information earlier on, only after reading a bit about the person or people behind the posts, is when I start to dig for information.

I wanted to provide the visitor of this site with information first on the author, eliminating the need for such a search. The name of the blog answers the question: What do I want to share with you. The answer is simple, I want to share the singular moments in my life that I have had while playing roleplaying games with friends and family.

This idea came to me as I imagined an old adventurer sitting comfortably at an inn talking to patrons about his many past deeds. He would share with them about the many places he visited, the monsters he fought and the many treasures recovered. He would even show them a map or two of those locations.

I wanted to describe what the adventurer himself was doing. To me, he was describing the unique times in his life, or the singular moments that mattered to him while adventuring.