D&D 5e: Continued Thoughts on High Level Adventuring

What a weird ride! My players have now conquered the first half of their post-15 campaign (i.e. they've completed one of the two modules I updated). (For my initial thoughts, check out the first post in this series.)

There are some very sharp contrasts between running adventures below 15th, and running adventures after 15th. Here are a few of the things I've noticed:

1. Travel is completely different. When PCs have daily or routine access to teleportation items, plane shift, and eventually gate, travel is no longer an issue. (For example, even if you don't have access to a teleport spell, two plane shifts or two gates can serve the same function! Yes, it takes two higher level spell slots, but these PCs have those slots!) This changes how PCs conceive of an adventure--and certainly how the DM needs to. No longer is distance in any way related to the number of encounters or the time it takes to journey; characters looking at going from their mountain stronghold into a nearby city and characters looking to travel from that same stronghold to a city on a different continent are likely to consider exactly the same magical--and instant--forms of travel to get there. Even if the characters don't know where they want to go, they have access to a whole bevy of new spells (and/or items and/or NPC contacts) who do know: legend lore, scrying, commune, contact other plane, divination, find the path--each offers another window into the unknown, and having access to a combination of them solves a lot of riddles and mysteries without ever leaving home! The end result is that even if they didn't know where they needed a to go, one hint or clue can lead them to the right place to begin their investigations in earnest within perhaps an hour of game-world time. Gone are the early adventuring days where a single clue would form the basis of a month's adventure to a distant hermit to find an answer to a long-forgotten problem.
2. Rests are completely different. This is somewhat a corollary to the ideas on travel: because PCs are so incredibly mobile, there are very few times when the right move is not to simply retreat to their magically fortified (and possibly well-staffed) home base whenever they need to rest and recharge. Even if going all the way home is not an option, the PCs may have access to spells or items which are even better than going home. Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion (level 8) presents an opulent version of a home away from home, but even a Leomund's Tiny Hut (level 3) can get the job done, offering PCs time to rest and recharge for either a short or a long rest. In addition to the travel changes removing a lot of the "random encounters" on the road, the rest protection options remove many of the dangers of "taking a rest." Only time remains to consistently work against these high level PCs!
   
3. Fights are extremely swingy. High level monsters hit often and they hit hard. High level PCs
   
   do the same. Similar to the first few levels of adventuring, it becomes really important that the party tanks (or those with high hp) are taking the hits, while the squishier members of the party are free to control the field or deal damage. Spells that cause an opponent to lose an action or which limit the kind of actions they can take become useful (in my opinion) for the first time. Causing a goblin boss in a low level fight to sacrifice an action is no big deal; an action may have done some damage, but realistically he probably has surrounded himself with a horde of lower level goblins who can deal almost as much damage in a round! On the other hand, causing a dragon, an eight-armed sword-fighter, a high level warlord, or a wizard with 9th level spells to lose an action is tremendous. Each one can do a tremendous amount of damage (or exert a lot of control) in a single round, and forcing a delay tilts the action economy into the hands of the PCs rather nicely. PCs at this level are even more resilient than I had first believed they would be; even when fighting a variety of opponents--each of whom, on their own, would be a worthy challenge for the PCs--the wide range of abilities and synergies the party has access to made them incredibly powerful. The big boss fight at the end of the adventure was spectacular, but when the dust settled, the PCs could probably have done another fight of equal caliber and survived. Then again, it's possible that the PCs could have made one poor choice and the whole fight would have become a rout.
   
4. Even experienced players (and DMs) feel uncertainty. A D&D player from any edition knows what to do when they encounter magic missile, cure light wounds, a locked door, or a new +1 longsword. They've seen all of this before in a dozen, even a hundred iterations. But how many times have players had access to wish? When you're dealing with entirely virgin territory, it's natural for all people involved to feel a bit uncertain. This is both the fun and the terror of the high level campaign. All of my players made some amazing choices and did some epic, heroic feats over the course of the adventure. One that sticks in my mind is when our cleric prayed to his god (Moradin) for intercession to resist the heat of the unholy furnace the party was headed into. Because his character is such a high level, the odds were significantly better than they would have been normally, and a good roll meant that Moradin granted the prayer! The fire resistance the party picked up was (in my opinion) the difference between an easy boss fight and a potentially deadly one. Without a wizard, this party managed to magically solve a problem they didn't legitimately have a spell or a magic item for. That is high level adventuring at its finest.

As this party of characters moves into what will likely be their final adventure together, they're all
level 18. Those high level abilities most players only dream about their characters having are a reality--or just one or two short levels away. For me, it's going to be a challenge to challenge them. High level encounters each have to be set pieces; no more random bandits or wandering monsters, no more minor problems or careless issues. For these characters to be involved, the threat to the world has to be real, imminent, and disastrous!

And it is.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on high level adventuring as my players take their characters to the brink and maybe a bit beyond!

D&D 5e: What DMs Can Learn from Adventure Time (Part 1)

Adventure Time is a (young) D&D player's dream: an adolescent inhabits a world of magic, technology, and candy which is at once both sinister and sincere. Adventure Time offers a few things which I think are, if not unique, certainly special. Let's first examine what Adventure Time has in common with D&D (or other RPGs). There are other television shows and books that could entice us, but Adventure Time:

1. Centers around the exploits of a small band of adventurers.
2. Is story-driven, while remaining character-focused.
3. Reveals a world in which magic plays a substantial part, but which is still shockingly similar to the world in which we live.
4. Has rules and laws which govern its physics, which are playfully loose compared to the "real world."

So how does any of this help me as a player or a DM?

Let's look a bit closer at how the show appeals to us.

 1. Centers around the exploits of a small band of adventurers.

 Finn and Jake are (step?) brothers. They didn't meet at at a tavern, and they didn't decide to "hook up" to slay a goblin raiding party. Finn and Jake have an inherent connection that they don't question. As the story moves on, we find out more and more about their family dynamic (Joshua the Warlock?), but the key here is that the characters backgrounds are both set in stone and dynamic. They have a reason to work together, but that doesn't mean it's boring or uninteresting.

Adventurers don't need to be randomly thrown together; the most interesting characters have a connection right from the start.

2. Is story-driven, while remaining character-focused.

This may sound like a "duh" statement in today's character-driven landscape, but it still bears a brief comparison to some of the best 20th century literature from which the fantasy genre grows. Consider The Hobbit as the prime adventure story of the last hundred years: a character is driven from the familiar to the unfamiliar, meets a cast of unlikely but heroic characters, encounters magic, and eventually triumphs over both himself and his surroundings, returning home a changed individual.

Now think about it again: outside of Bilbo, and (on his deathbed) Thorin Oakenshield, do any of the characters truly develop through the story? I don't mean to start a Tolkien deathmatch, but of the fifteen members of Thorin and Company, only one & a half are really characters in the way we'd address them today. The fun in The Hobbit comes from seeing this gaggle of dwarves get into trouble & having Bilbo or Gandalf figure out or luck out & save them.

Adventure Time offers something different. Not only are Finn and Jake incredibly human creatures  who learn, love, and change, but the majority of the creatures and beings they encounter regularly are similarly "real." The random creature/character on the road side can be (alternately) incredibly important or nondescript and unnamed.


Perhaps most clearly, Finn's hidden past drives the story--but how he and others react to that past is what keeps him real, and keeps us invested in the story itself.

The cast of a story needs to react to the story, and the story needs to react to the cast of characters. Don't let one overpower the other.

3. Reveals a world in which magic plays a substantial part, but which is still shockingly similar to the world in which we live.

Jake is a magic, talking, stretching dog. Right from the get go, magic is taken as normal. At the same time, Finn is shockingly ordinary. At the start of the episode "Web Weirdos," Finn and Jake do some "stunts." Jake does some amazing parkour, and Finn is capable of being excited about a level of "climb and jump" which is (intentionally) laughable by comparison. This kind of contrast is necessary for the kind of wonder and awe that D&D worlds should evoke in our players (if not always our characters)!

For every fantastic dreamscape, floating castle, or kingdom of living ice, include a haggling merchant, a hungry pauper, or an angry mother-in-law. The magic must exist with the mundane or it simply becomes the new mundane.

4. Has rules and laws which govern its physics, which are playfully loose compared to the "real world."

Finn and Jake are constantly getting beaten into bloodied pulps, transformed into other creatures, shrunk, enlarged, stranded without supplies, or outright zombified. Yet, by the end of the episode, all is right with the world again (even if Finn does lose an arm in the process). Pain is a reality, but not a crippling one.

Speaking of supplies, where in the world do Finn and Jake do their grocery shopping? Outside of the occasional pie from TT and meat from "Meat Man," they don't seem to have a home garden for veggies or a local supermarket to pick up their foodstuffs (though occasionally one or the other of them will "go out" to get supplies). Do we ever question this?

Unless it's really important where the foodstuffs come from, we're much more interested in the songs Jake sings about bacon pancakes than about where he got the bacon or batter in the first place.

As one of my players recently said, we play D&D to get away from managing our day-to-day affairs. It doesn't matter where the bacon pancakes come from, or how the fighter keeps swinging even though he's been at 1hp for twenty minutes.

That's all for Part 1! Stay tuned for Part 2 where I'll look at some other important lessons from Adventure Time.

D&D 5e: The Game That's Not a Game

Most games--whether tabletop, virtual, or purely social, can be played by pure "rules." That is to say, for example, that when playing poker, solitaire, or even your favorite side-scrolling platformer, your investment in the game can be as shallow as your investment in the rules and you can still beat the game and potentially have a great time doing it. The fun you have while playing the game can come from "overcoming" the game through the structure of the rules. A quick google search of "beating [insert video game here] in record time]" reveals how people have created a whole realm of gaming experience around the speed at which a game's structure can be surmounted in order to win. And, in some settings, that can be fun.

Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop RPGs, however, are a game style in which beating the game in record time or by surmounting the rules is not the usual way to play and enjoy; in fact, the only "record times" Dungeons and Dragons players appear to care about are the longest running games.

Because of this important but often overlooked difference, I thought it might be useful to consider the two ways to look at Dungeons and Dragons and how seeing the game through these two lenses might enhance enjoyment of it and (occasionally) speed us through the "work" of the game and emphasize the areas that are the most fun. In other words, sometimes D&D is a Game. Other times D&D is Not a Game.

The Basics:

If this concept already makes sense to you, skip down to the advice! If not, read the two sections below for a more full explanation of what I mean.

The Basics: D&D is a Game:
This is the obvious way to look at it if you play with min-maxers, rule-wizards, or number-crunchers. When you play the game and always consider that it's a game, you constantly meta-game, you tend to consider your character as a very valuable but ultimately expendable resource, and it becomes much easier to think of your quests/missions as means to an end (leveling up or loot) rather than anything else.

The Basics: D&D is Not a Game:
This is the obvious way to look at it if you play with role-players, what-ifsters, actors, story-tellers, and (often) young children. When you play the game but immediately lose yourself in the pretend, in the narrative, in the story, you tend to think of in-character solutions, you think of your character as a person--requiring food, water, rest, entertainment, and having real emotions, reactions, and aspirations. It becomes much easier to pursue quests/missions related to your characters goals, and choosing new abilities or powers becomes a natural extension of your character's growth as an individual.

The Advice:

Many, many writers and gamers have tackled the relationship between these two, so I just want to focus on some ways these perspectives can be leveraged to help your game time be more fun and worthwhile! I try to take problems that arise from looking through one of the perspectives, and offer a solution grounded in the opposite perspective. Sometimes that's all it takes.

One last disclaimer is to take these first and foremost as tips to enhance your enjoyment of the game, and second as distinct items belonging under the heading I've placed them--this is a very loose framework!



The Advice: D&D is a Game:

• The Ten-Minute Round. When in combat, I often see gaming groups get hung up on "which spell is the optimum choice?" or "should I strike at this enemy, or that enemy?" If this is really a meaningful choice (for example, if you're the last man standing and have to decide with absolute certainty how to survive the encounter and revive your friends) then I understand some deliberation. However, in most cases, I feel like this is players taking advantage of the fact that they have far more than 6 seconds to determine what's going on in a round to the point of it becoming a detriment to the game (if not to their characters). 
• Solution: When you're not sure what to do because the choice isn't a meaningful one, use a cantrip, pick a target, or swing that sword. Does it really matter whether you wiped out the enemies this round or whittled them down over a few rounds? Does it really matter if you attacked the goblin who was threatening the cleric or the goblin who was threatening the rogue? Probably not. If you make a snap decision, chances are it's the right one--and you have everyone else's turns to think of something clever or "better" to do when your turn comes up again.
• The Thumb of God: Sometimes players--or DMs!--get into an adversarial mindset. They start thinking of a campaign as something where success is defined as out-thinking the person(s) on the other side of the screen. This is a common trope in D&D humor:
  
  
  Still, it can cause its share of drama or problems. The minute you start thinking the DM is out to kill you (or that the players are out to "ruin your story" or some such nonsense), you stop creating a communal narrative that allows the characters and the world to shine. I know this line of thinking tempted me when I was running an early session in Rise of Tiamat; my players transformed "Oyaviggaton," into "Olive Garden" and made one of the creatures there ("Marfulb") into "Marlboro."
• Solution: Even if you suspect that the DM is out to kill you, or that your players are in a particularly comedic/dramatic mood when you've set what you believe should be a dramatic/comedic session, just let it ride. Obviously, if it's a long-term issue, talk about it when you're not mid-game, but in the short term, get your head back in the game by not thinking of it as a traditional game. To refer back to my example above, the renaming was just a strategy my players were employing to (A) lighten the dark mood and (B) remember who was who among many complicated names. They were still vested/involved, and since I accepted that, we were able to have a very fun and intense session--despite talk about Olive Garden's night manager and whether or not the Marlboro Man worked there too.

The Advice: D&D is Not a Game:

• Realistic Villains. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: I sometimes see groups thinking that just because they've found the villain or monster they've been looking for, that he/she/it is just going to throw everything at the PCs and (when it becomes clear that the end is near) cry out some last words and die. For some reason, players are shocked when the villain uses invisibility and runs away, or kills the hostage when the players come closer, or in any way has an escape plan ready to go. 
• Solution: Remember that this isn't a video game where the boss blinks red as you get closer to killing him, and stays on screen while you hammer away at him. Villains are "real people." If they're smart enough to orchestrate a devious plan that took several levels and multiple dungeons to sort out, chances are they have an escape hatch or two in case things go south. The sooner players see the villains as "real," the sooner they start looking for those escape hatches, the sooner they take the villains' hostage situations seriously, and the sooner the enjoyment comes as much from the drama of the showdown as from the death/defeat of the villain(s).

•  No Good Feat Goes Unpunished. Thankfully, 5e has done a great job of curbing the min-maxing tendencies of 3e through a herculean achievement of game balance. Still, when a party levels up and hits one of the ability-boost levels, sometimes a player hits upon a feat that really stands out for his/her character. This can leave other players searching feverishly for a power boosting feat that just doesn't exist for their character build. 
• Solution: If you really don't want to just take the ability boost (which, by the way, is almost always as-if-not-more powerful than the feat options), choose a feat which adds flair and character instead. For example, one Rogue in a party I DM for chose the Tavern Brawler feat. The rationale, for her, was that she (as her character) never wanted to be without a weapon, and being able to turn anything improvised into a proficient weapon would mean she'd remain deadly in almost any circumstance. Was it as good for her combat effectiveness as a straight up +2 to Dexterity? Probably not, but it made the character a lot more fun to play/roleplay, and the constant joke in the party is that if you don't treat her right, she'll kill you with a spoon. By thinking of it from the character-side, rather than the min-max side, it resulted in a lot more fun.

D&D 5e: Playing a Character (1st Tier)

Having played in a campaign for the last eight months or so, we're closing in on the end of the 1st Tier of adventuring (levels 1-4). As such, it's time to update my thoughts on making and playing a 5e character as someone who usually DMs.

Backgrounds:
Before, I posited that Backgrounds Matter, and I'm inclined to think that they still do--perhaps even more than before.

In our campaign, my Bard is a (not immediate) relative of the local dwarven ruling family. Our Ranger is a champion of his tribe. Our Cleric has a vendetta against a goblin, and our Monk is searching for some kind of cosmic balance.

My Bard and the Ranger both have definitive, vested interests in how things play out for our locales. When the local dwarven ruler is being overthrown by a popular rebellion, my character had to choose to support his family or join the dissenters (an easy choice for a loyal dwarf, but one that made for some difficult encounters and fun roleplaying). When the local tribes are threatened by a powerful magic-user, the Ranger used the party as both allies in the fight and a tool to try to convince other settlements to help his own. Both of us had a great time adventuring over the last few levels and had concrete reasons to do so.

On the other hand, our Cleric's ties are less solid. While still having some distant tie to the dwarven rulers (the same as any subject of the dominion), his greatest loyalty is theoretically to his deity and cause. I suspect that with most players this would be sufficient, though our Cleric is being played as a somewhat less religious sort, with the search for adventure and gold, combined with a fealty to the dwarven settlement and a citizenship in the human world, driving the character.

It's our Monk (whose player has played a Rogue for the last several campaigns she's been in) who is the least vested. Unlike the other three characters in the party, she hails from a monastery further south along the Sword Coast and set out for Icewind Dale (where the rest are from) in order to "restore balance." This vague directive came directly from her deity Silvanus--very cool!--but she has yet to "hear" anything else from him, and has not yet sussed out how best to "restore balance." In fact, almost everything the party does could, in some way, be construed to further that goal. As such, she's been feeling a bit adrift. (This listlessness is further fueled by her lack of personal attachment to anyone or anything in the region--why exactly should she stay with the party, anyway?).

I recognize the Monk's deity problem because I experience the same issue in the campaign I'm running as DM; there the Wizard is an acolyte of Oghma and started the campaign off with a divine vision...that just kind of petered out. There was very little fanfare even when she did complete her divinely inspired mission, and since then I've been at a loss as to how much Oghma should interfere. I was somewhat able to solve the issue by encouraging the party to hire a group of Oghmans to set up shop in their favorite town by building a Mage Guildhall. While not ideal, at least it gets the player's background back in the mix!

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how our DM will solve this issue for the Monk; she's not likely to encounter fellow monastics in the tundras of Icewind Dale!

Conclusion: 
Backgrounds do matter--more than ever. Integrating a background to the campaign is a joint effort of the DM and the player and it is crucial for the player's enjoyment that he/she put some energy into it and give the DM an idea of what he/she'd enjoy. Similarly, DMs need to periodically offer ways for characters' backgrounds to have bearing on the story being told--preferably in the way of a choice (as when my Bard had to choose between loyalty and popularity, or when the Ranger had to choose between doing what he thought was right, and doing what he was told.) The choices can be foregone conclusions but should at least appear to offer real choice.

"Apprentice" Levels:
The first few levels in 5e are supposed to go by quickly: characters have few resources, few hit points, and a very low experience threshold to reach. In short, it is my opinion that these levels should be surmounted quickly, with perhaps one or two key encounters per level. It's not that I don't think these levels are important, but rather that the party is so quickly out of resources at these levels that it's key to offer opportunities that are carefully tailored to resolve in a single encounter (rather than drag out over several related but draining encounters). Ideally, these encounters provide opportunities for the characters to try out their identities--to develop a personality, to orient toward a goal, to discern a sub-class, etc.

For example, in the campaign I've been running, back in the early parts of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the Paladin had to stand up to an enemy champion who was most assuredly stronger than he was in mortal combat. The decision to do so gave the character direction, nobility, and an in-game goal to revenge himself on the enemy champion (since rather than kill the Paladin, he left him bleeding/dying and "shamed"). As a side note, Hoard does offer a few of these opportunities for early character development, but as an overall module I don't think it gets characters high enough fast enough for the exploits it requires of its characters.

In the campaign I'm a player in--so far--I feel like we've side-stepped a lot of these encounters. As apprentice level adventurers, given a sandbox of choices, we tended to choose the routes to success that were least deadly or most safe. While this did keep all of us alive, I think it also prolonged our initial level progression: rather than facing true danger and thereby earning true experience, we kept circumventing it and avoiding it. As a result, it took (I feel) more sessions to level up to 3 and 4 than it otherwise would have.

Mysteries, "Railroading," and Unveiling the Plot:
The idea of adventure as mystery, as puzzle, or as secret can be pretty compelling. I think some of the best campaigns I've run have revolved around the party trying to put a bunch of disparate clues together to figure out what's really going on.

Having said that, some of the least exciting campaigns I ran were the ones where so much information is hidden, so much is going on behind-the-scenes, or so much is left un-said, that the players have no reason to invest their characters in the adventure, the world, or the quest, and the characters themselves have no clear path to advance the story.

The more sandbox-y an adventure, the more prone it is to this kind of directionlessness. Some players, I know, love this kind of open world adventuring--it's why open-world RPG video games have become so popular--but I think this is deceptive: even in open-world RPGs, there are clearly delineated quests, and the better the game, the more clearly those missions are introduced or spelled out. The player(s) may not have to pursue the quest/mission, but it must be clear what the mission is (even if it's not clear what the mission "does" or who it is for).

One lesson I've learned from being a lowbie in this new campaign is that being left out of the loop sucks. It is important to make the PCs--even at low levels--simultaneously feel knowledgeable and curious. It's a tough balance, but a worthy one.

Conclusion:
When possible, design the first few levels with short, roleplaying-heavy, non-deadly encounters in order to give PCs a quick way to introduce their characters. These should be punctuated by a few nearly unavoidable encounters which allow for player choice within the encounters in order to reveal their characters' goals, personalities, and directions.

Given the constraints of our particular sandbox, I'm quite happy with how our DM handled it, and I look forward to attempting to improve on these lower level experiences the next time I'm in the hotseat of DMing for a low level party.

D&D 5e: A Case for Eberron

There's been a lot of talk on the interweb about what campaign setting (if any) Wizards of the Coast should be looking into publishing next. Or soonest. Or most profitably. Or ever.

You get the idea.

Without going into excruciatingly unique or idiosyncratic detail, I want to offer a brief pitch for one particular setting to be brought up to speed in 5e.

Dungeons and Dragons--and indeed most traditional RPGs--have a particular, familiar, comfortable format. From Tolkien, through Chainmail, and into the "modern" era of gaming: sword-and-sorcery; dwarves, elves, and "hobbits"; mysterious but often predictable magic; Euro-centric medievalism; and heroes who are born to look for power gain, glory, and gold. I'll start by saying that there is nothing wrong with this; I love playing "standard" D&D, whether it takes place in a homebrew setting, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or what-have-you.

However, there is more to D&D than these (awesome) traditions.

When I was first introduced to the Eberron campaign setting, it changed the way I saw D&D. More than that, it changed the way I realized that stories could be told. I'm sure every "true believer" has their own story of why their precious setting should be the next one that Wizards updates to the new edition, but here are just a few reasons I think Eberron should be it. (Disclaimer: I am no expert on the setting. In fact, the very idea that I'm not an expert in it and I'm advocating for it is one of my minor points in its favor!)

I'll start with the obvious/overt:

• Eberron's "new" items (warforged and artificers, to give just a single example) provide fresh material for those who come to D&D and see only what they've already encountered in traditional fantasy literature--up to and including Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatore and countless others.
• The twists on traditional roles (good undead, sentient machines, elves as recovering slaves, etc.) introduce the right mix of familiarity and novelty. 
• Magic-as-technology bridges many play-style gaps and allows Roland and Edward to play right alongside Gandalf, Conan, and Cadderly.
• Steampunk, a movement that seemed like a passing fad in the early 2000s when Eberron came on the scene, persists--even thrives. A return to Eberron touches on all those cosplayers and crafters who think in terms of airships and machines without electronics.
• In terms of game mechanics, 5e's focus on character as mechanic would flourish: ideals, bonds, flaws, and especially backstory are nothing new to players in Eberron. Belonging to a noble house or being a scion of a great nation or being a new-forged mechanical being or, well, not being one of those things means a great deal even if you're only doing a dungeon crawl: dragonmarks, racial abilities, and other game mechanics were already hinging on these now-codified pieces.
• Keith Baker left much of his world undefined. That means there's plenty of room for the loremaster DM who wants to know who lives where, why, for how long, etc. and the fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants zero-prep DM and the homebrew expert who fills in the gaps with his own fanfic that's better than published fantasy.
• Wizards has clearly seen the need for the setting: it commissioned it in the early 2000s and updated it into its fourth edition--an honor only shared by two other settings (and only one from the previous edition).

 Some less standard thoughts:

• Eberron has just had its great cataclysm.
• The Last War is fresh, gritty, and real--but also over. What's left is a world that is ripe for new stories to be told. The "average" setting's earth-shaking events either happened in aeons past or are about to happen. Eberron takes a uniquely different path by offering characters the chance to be a part of something much more difficult than standing at the precipice of a cataclysm: standing up amidst the rubble shortly after.
• There is a relative newness to the "recorded history" of the kingdoms of Eberron. 

• Dragons or aliens or even giants may have once been in charge and held long complicated histories--but they aren't humans (or demihumans). Elves and dwarves aren't the "elder races" anymore (and neither are humans). That means the Last War isn't just a terrible cataclysm, it's the terrible cataclysm as far as 95% of the world the PCs interact with is concerned.
• Everything inhuman is that much more alien.
• Speaking of the 95%, the other 5% becomes rare, strange, and exotic.
• Exploring makes sense. 
• In a new world, with alien creatures and exotic discoveries to be made, exploration is not just a romp through bandit-infested forests or spider-filled caverns. Exploration becomes a way of life; whole sectors of the globe are uncharted--or perhaps even more interestingly, the charts themselves are so out of date as to be dangerously inaccurate. Eberron craves adventurers naturally to solve, search, and explore.
• The playstyle (film noir meets bursts of action meets movie-style scenes meets investigation and problem-solving) encourages fewer "random" encounters and more story-infused encounters. The new Dungeon Master's Guide operates under the assumption that whatever your group's playstyle, you are telling a story. A setting that was designed with storytelling in mind? Perfection.

There are, of course, tremendous arguments for other settings, but my heart still sits with Eberron. In the end, I just hope we do see traditional setting guides and not just "adventure path supplements" with mini-gazetteers. Having a "setting bible" is (for me) an important part of using a setting in an edition (for me). In retrospect, it may be why I didn't continue with Pathfinder after the "Rise of the Runelords": there wasn't (at the time) a Golarion setting guide, and I felt disconnected from the adventure path's purpose (or context).

Here's to all of us getting something we can sink our teeth into for our beloved Dungeons and Dragons.

D&D 5e: The Emotional Tenor

As a D&D player for the last 15 years or so, my experience is primarily with 3e and higher, though those years have been long enough in the hobby for me to have read some other source books and materials and to have been infected with some of the sentimentality and emotion that many who started playing "from the beginning" have.

When I look at 5e, I brim with optimism. I'd like to think about the overall mood (which I'm discussing below), the art style, the rules (from the players' perspective), the structure (rules from the DM's perspective), and the meta game (what direction is Wizards coming from this time?).

So, on to the feel:
If I had to pick an author or director whose work resonates with fifth edition, I would be hard pressed. I have to recognize that some of my feelings on edition-feeling is idiosyncratic, but it also has to do with the official settings of each edition. In other words, each edition has its own version of the "Hokey Pokey"--what each edition is "all about," how each edition tells its story.

Everything in fourth edition felt like a video game. At its best, it felt like Skyrim. At its worst, it felt something more like professional wrestling. I agree with the critics who claim that 4e is combat-centric in that there are far fewer rules/abilities that are used outside of combat. (For the record, I acknowledge the proponents of 4e's role playing as superior because of the lack of rules/abilities limiting that kind of play, but I happen to like structure.) Fourth edition was all about the fight.

Third edition's emotional tenor is closer to the various TV shows of Justice League or an Indiana Jones movie. Having Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron as core settings lent a flavor of high fantasy and exploration to the atmosphere of the games. Granted, it was often an expedition to either slay a particularly weird creature or a mission to discover a particularly cool artifact, but it was still about the journey rather than the fight.

Fifth edition seems to be a return to this exploration gameplay, but with a slight new emphasis. 3e seemed very focused on the grit required for adventuring. Dark and light were extremes that were reflected in alignments, creatures, and environs. Fourth had a dazzling veneer of brightness, but it was the veneer of a professional sports team rushing out to the field. Fifth has taken the brightness of fourth and softened it to a halo, and taken the extremes of dark and light from third and transmuted them into a variety of color rather than black/white.

Third's source books felt like an ancient grimoire that had been updated by H.G. Wells. Fourth's source books felt like a video game instruction manual from the nineties that had been embellished beautifully by comic-book-turned-graphic-novel artists. Fifth's source books--so far--feel like a wise old hobbit's travelogue.

It's not quite as flashy as fourth edition, nor as binary as third edition. It doesn't have the gritty realism that third espoused, and it doesn't have the "everyone's equal" feel of fourth. What it does have is a focus on how the story is going to be told, and how important it is that someone tells it.

It's the difference between a Star Trek movie, and one of the official novels.

It's the difference between Sean Connery's interpretation of James Bond, and the new Daniel Craig version.

It's the difference between all of the standard live-action versions of A Christmas Carol and the Muppet version.

The number one difference, I feel, in fifth edition, is that it feels deep: deep, wide, and unified, like a human personality. Fifth edition is all about the characters.

I look forward to plumbing these depths further.