The Shelves

 

 

Last week I talked about returning to 4e DnD. It was a decision that just... happened. I may never be able to fully describe it. It just seemed to happen to me, as opposed to me making it. Whatever it was, it was not to be argued with. I've begun planning a Dark Sun campaign in full earnest, happily throwing myself into that setting. But something a little odd happened to me. I am not going to try to understand it or analyze it. But maybe it will prove useful to others. Maybe you'll understand it. Who knows until you're done reading it? 

In the years since I stopped playing 4e I've been looking at various Indy RPGs. And who could blame me? Burning Wheel opened up a whole new world. But there was another impetus in there. I wanted to prove to myself I wasn't yet another DnD drone. That's not a particularly positive tendency, mind. My misanthropic tendencies are well known to me, even if not dealt with as well as they should be. I wonder how many of my own issues would be fixed if I figured that out.

See, the problem was that the more stuff I looked at the more this curious chasm of desire began to open up. Something wasn't right. I didn't know what, but reading these games wasn't making me any happier. At the time I'd a lot of other things to focus on, and I was quite happy with Burning Wheel. It is an odd fact of human nature that you can be otherwise happy but yet yearn for something more. I was very happy with Burning Wheel's character centric gameplay; that engine can help generate more meaning in a night than other systems can in years. And if there's anything I crave it's meaning.

And yet that gnawing continued.

Finally I stopped futzing about. I'd been doing multiple Burning Wheel campaigns for years. I was burned out. I needed to do something else. And I did! I tried out Bleak Spirit, Torchbearer, Trophy Dark and Gold, Tenra Bansho Zero, Sword and Board, and Hearts of Wulin, and others I've forgotten about. And some of these games really stuck with me! Bleak Spirit, Hearts of Wulin,  and the Trophy games are great palate cleansers for me. Each of them helps me blow off steam from my time with Burning Wheel. I'll definitely go back to them from time to time.

But the hunger continued.

And I began to feel desperate.

Like I said previously, the decision to return to 4e wasn't something I made. It seemed made for me. I've been questioning this reality, but have decided to see where it goes. Well the other day I went into a Barnes and Noble. I just needed a place to burn some time and what better place to do that than a bookstore? Now most of the time I'll head to the RPG section. I'll look at the section, and kinda fantasize about getting the whole freaking shelf. Just to have it. I wouldn't even do anything with them. Just have them on my shelf to have them.

So I went to The Shelf.

And felt absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

I picked up a copy of The Mutants and Masterminds GM Guide. I own the Hero's Handbook. I opened the book. And immediately thought "I'll never want to play this." Superheroes at one point was something I had thought about getting into, but as I held the book I knew there was only one thing I really wanted to do: fantasy. That's where I've found my chief meaning in fiction, from the more grounded high concept/slice of life like Clannad to the weird science fantasy of The Solar Cycle and Star Wars. 

In case it wasn't clear already, I demand that I put meaning in what I do. It's not an option. The world is a pretty meaningless place these days, and to be able to give meaning? That's actually an escape for me.  The world only has the meaning we infuse in it. Man named the animals and what name Adam used was the name of that animal. Man is the creature who names, who gives meaning.

And when I looked up from the GM's Guide to that shelf there was no meaning I wished to give to any of it.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I wandered the shelves in shock for about a half hour, trying to find something to tickle my fancy. There was a phantom hunger in my soul. But I couldn't give any additional meaning to the things I found. There was nothing in me to give. 

So I went home. And pulled out Dark Sun. 

Returning to 4e

I suppose this was going to happen sooner or later. Almost a decade later and I'm not just returning to 4e, I'm staying for the foreseeable future. For all of 4e's faults there nothing like it. Whether it be longings for deep tactical play, excellent character building, the skill challenge system, re-evaluating my concept of story games, or just plain ole nostalgia... it's just time to stop wandering. Time to go home.

Let's face it: nothing has ever done 4e's type of tactical play in an RPG. From what I understand Pathfinder 2e does something similar, but the resource management system of 4e's damn-well near universal At-Will, Encounter, and Daily set up hasn't really been attempted since. It's a very specific itch to have.

No, 13th Age doesn't count. I count it as a step backwards.

Like, when I think back to 4e that's the thing I really miss the most: everyone having a similar system of resources. This lets them figure out more intricate plans and really treat combat as a puzzle.

But that's only one half of the tactical picture. 4e's secret sauce, the thing that keeps the above framework interesting, is Page 42, which allows for strong and effective improvisation. You marry these two systems together and the conversation of combat becomes a free wheeling affair, especially if you're willing to let players sacrifice their power slots to make better on the fly effects. There's a lot of freedom in 4e, but that's specially because of the framework it operates in; any other system it wouldn't work quite as well 

Character creation in 4e is a bit tricky. On the one hand you can have people do it together, and get some really cool workshopping, with people coming up with combos and intentionally shoring up each other's weaknesses and increasing strengths. But it has to be purposefully done. For whatever reason I remember folks not doing this sorta thing by default, but when it is done it's deeply enjoyable. And yeah, I miss it. I'll make sure it happens.

The skill challenge system has gold at its heart, even if it has issues. The GM tells you how many successes you need before three failures; you get XP based on how many checks you had to make, not on how many successes you had. This gives you a good basis for getting XP on the nights when combat isn't on everyone's mind.  4e could be a surprisingly open system for how heavily focused it was on combat, even having rules for getting XP for straight up RP. This doesn't make it a good straight up "story" game (more on that nonsense in a minute), but the game has built in alternatives for when you're just not in the mood to pull out the battle map.

The term story game is bullshit. Period. The term is not positive, it doesn't actually have its own identity. It just means "We don't like DnD and that makes us superior". This isn't to say that DnD is a good game necessarily (5e is hot garbage), but liking DnD is certainly not proof of being uncultured or something like that. That's not to say you can't make a term for the various types in the indie scene. I'm sure better classifications can exist. PBTA (Powered by the Apocalypse) is now very much its own thing, as are FitD (Forged in the Dark) and RiT (Rooted in Trophy). Maybe instead of using story game or Indy as some weird form of identity we simply say what we play and have done with it?  I acknowledge not everyone does this. But I know I did, and it robbed me of a lot of fun I could otherwise be having.

I'm not here saying I think 4e is a perfect game. To the contrary, I think there's a lot of room to house rule. Combat takes way too long sometimes, some of the classes need significant help to be effective, and the system doesn't reward role-playing as it could. But, as it turns out, the design team was cognizant of these issues and were working on evolving the system! Dragon Magazine published a lot of Unearthed Arcana articles, addressing many problems of the system. Turns out that the designers had put a lot of thought into improving 4e and I like a lot of their ideas. From rewarding role-play with action points, long term wounds, go a complete backstory system, I can tell that the designers had more than enough to make a new edition that would have been an actual evolution of 4e. So yeah. 4e ain't perfect. But the ideas presented in Dragon Magazine are great and I'm definitely going to try them. But that means dropping the pretensions to grandeur. 4e's story isn't going to be Dostoevsky, more John Wick. But John Wick has a fantastic story in its own right, easily standing on its own.

And yeah, there's more than a little nostalgia at work here! 4e was the first RPG I legitimately loved. That's just not going to go away. Trust me, I tried to kill that and here I am, ten years later, right back to where I started. I've learned a ton along the way, and will always have Burning Wheel, Trophy Gold, and Bleak Spirit, not to mention Crescendo (whenever that gets done). I learned a lot. It'll make my present so much better.

It's been a good journey. Time to come home.

Masks of the Forgotten: Session Zero

Down down down to the land of the dead,

A dangerous path that we must tread,

Never knowing what lay ahead,

In search of things to gain,

Finding a deeper pain,

Will we return or is all lost,

If we survive be it at what cost,

Down down down we go

-Gratorin the Skald, from The Journey to Death

Last year a pitch for a 4e jumped into my brain. And when I say it jumped it practically grabbed my brain and just kept screaming. For weeks. Even months. It was a concept that just begged to be played out. I ignored it, because I was doing other things at the time and wasn't quite over the rude shock that playing Burning Wheel was to my DnD sensibilities. And, honestly, I've been in some weird form of pseudo-mourning for the last few years about that, that the first RPG I've ever loved was not capable of giving me the experience that Burning Wheel did so deftly.

But this concept demanded 4e.

So over a year later I decided to go for it. 4e is many things (perfect ain't one of them), but it seemed to fit with the idea I had in mind. So I went and hacked a few things here and there into the ruleset, trimming the fat and correcting some of the major problems. As time goes on I'll get into how I modified the system, but for the moment all that needs to be known is that ability score generation was changed to allow for greater variety in class/race builds and that I borrowed some stuff from the phenomenal game Miseries and Misfortunes.

Characters were given an 18 in their primary stat, a 16 in their secondary, and rolled 3d6 straight down the line for the rest of the stats, for some truly hilarious rolls. Players get characters who are very proficient at their respective jobs but can have hilariously awesome weaknesses, as well as unexpected strengths. I also asked the group to come up with a Determination, which is the reason why the group is together. If they get into arguments someone can invoke the Determination and quell the argument. Each character was then given the chance to name a Virtue, which was associated with their highest Stat (or if there was a tie they got to pick), which someone else can invoke to make sure the player can get an auto-success, along with three Action Points.

Characters

We generated the three main characters using Heroes of the Feywild, particularly the background generator they have in the back of the book. They will be getting a ranger from PHB1 as a companion character.

Acacia

A Hammadryad Berserker Barbarian with a Guardian of Nature Theme, which was custom built, Unrelenting Virtue. Acacia is built principally upon maneuvering her opponents into a bad spot and hitting multiple opponents at once. Since she's a berserker she drops into rage with a Primal power, which she gets from her theme (which is essentially a multi-class into Warden) and her class, allowing her to spike  damage when it becomes clear that she doesn't need to defend the group anymore.

Acacia had always been concerned about balance. Nature was about cycles and seasons and the hammadryad took that deathly seriously. Raised amongst the lower echelons of the hammadryad community. When she heard about the awful fomorians' eternal war upon Astrazalian, crown jewel of the Feywild, Acacia could feel that the war was an imbalance in the world itself, one she needed to try and end if she could. Over the next few years Acacia did extremely well, serving on the front lines of that war. Having served well Acacia was discharged. In search of new meaning, Acacia found herself in need of something new to do. She went to the twilight city of Mithrendain, hoping to see the Citadel Arcanum, a place known for trying to preserve the balance of the world. She was denied. So Acacia broke in with a group of adventurers, hoping to learn something more about the world itself. She learned nothing. Leaving, she heard about The Prince of Frost and his eternal winter and the halting of his land's natural cycle. She marched to the Land of Frozen Tears and demanded that the balance be restored. 

The Prince of Frost killed one of Acacia's childhood hammadryad friends, Citali, with but a word from his frozen throne. Acacia felt the life drain right out of her

And then told Acacia that if she was so self-righteous about the "balance of things", maybe she should figure out a way to go see her dead friend, in the land of the dead, without getting caught.

Gratorin

A half-battlerager/human Skald Bard, theme Unseelie Agent, who mechanically resembles with a half-elf, except with a bursting sword encounter power instead of grabbing another class's at-will as an encounter. Virtue is Magnetic. Gratorin is a melee buffer, running in and granting tons of temp HP and damage boosts.

Gratorin was the product of a human woman and a fey battlerager. One would think that being a half-elf with swords floating around him in a perpetual ring would make it  difficult to be in commerce.  On the contrary, Gratorin did quite well for himself.  So well, in fact, that he was able to do what he liked. Gratorin went to Astrazalian and joined the Stars and Dolphins Guild, where he picked up a knack for market research. With enough money to his name Gratorin that he wanted to do something for himself. He went to the city of Shinaelestra, where pilgrims from the mortal world journeyed. Gratorin acted as a guide to these pilgrims. After that he went to the Prince of Frost, seeking an audience. He so impressed the Prince that he was formally dubbed as Friend of the Realm. Gratorin was then sent to to Senaliesse to attend to Queen Tiandra. While there Gratorin stopped an assassination attempt, earning the gratitude of Queen Tiandra. Returning to the Prince of Frost Gratorin was sent with a couple of ragamuffins to travel to the land of the dead. The Prince of Frost wanted to make sure the job got done, and he only trusted Gratorin with this task....

Jolene Wick

A minotaur witch, fey nobility theme. Virtue Cleverness. There was a lot of excitement about the witch subclass's ability to turn targets into small helpless animals. So we'll be seeing that a lot! Jolene actually is actually half-pixie (DON'T PICTURE IT) but only really wanted the fey keyword out of it. Well, and huge pink wings. On a minotaur.

Jolene was a minotaur with gigantic pixie wings. Her formorian masters found that funny, so they sent her to the tunnels of Mag Tureah to be a test subject. But it didn't take long for Jolene to realize that nobody was really watching her around the portals that lined Mag Tureah. So she slipped through one, winding up in Astrazalian.. She went to The Coven of the Full Moon and asked to be taught magic.The coven, impressed by Jolene's clear aptitude (and attitude) gladly trained her. Jolene quickly became a star pupil. one night, while staying up late to study, uncovered the truth about herself: she was fey royalty, probably connected to the Prince of Frost! She traveled to his castle and announced her presence as his relative. When the Prince asked how it was possible he was related to a minotaur with pixie wings Jolene winked and told him it was done in the usual way.

The Prince of Frost was not amused.

A few hundred years later and the Prince unthawed Jolene, telling her he had a job for her. Weakened by her time in the ice, Jolene would have loved to have throttled the prince, but could only listen. The Prince wanted Jolene to go to the land of the dead with a few other companions. They could talk about her possible... relationship... with the Prince whenever she got back.

Jolene realized The Prince of Frost was not asking. He was telling.

Further Rules

4e is not a perfect or tidy game, like any starting venture. While it's good as it is there are certain things that can certainly be improved.

Dice Rolling

We're taking from Pathfinder 2e here: anything 10 above the DC is a critical success in addition to a nat 20. Anything 10 below the DC is a critical failure in addition to a nat 1. If a character fails by less than 10 they can elect to try again. Critically failing means that a twist happens in the story that prevents further attempts at the same skill or possibly starts a combat. Critical success allows the player to twist the situation to his benefit.

Escalation Die

This is ripped from 13th Age. For those of you who do not know, the Escalation Die is the biggest d6 you own. You plop it into the center of the table on the second round, at 1. That's the bonus the player characters get to attacks. Of course if you combine that with the crit rules life gets very interesting indeed....

The Terror Track

Solos and elites in this game are simply not strong enough. They usually get outnumbered and cannot handle the action economy. Wizards had attempted to fix the problem by making it harder to stun solos and giving them more turns, but my brother in law Kyle had a far simpler fix, which I've since modified to be nastier. It's the Terror Track. The Terror Track is a bonus to attacks, defenses, and damage rolls. The Terror Track decreases by 1 each round and also whenever the solo or elite is hit with  an attack. Each time a solo or elite with the Terror Track still active critically hits a target they gain one additional action point. Solos start at Terror Track 5 and Elites at Terror Track 2. At bloodied a Solo gains Terror Track 2. 

Solos and elites may burn an action point to end all effects on them as a free action.

The Escalation Die cannot be active while the Terror Track is. Solos and Elites always benefit from the Escalation Die when it is out.

Virtues and Flaws

Like I'd said before, we're borrowing the system from Miseries and Misfortunes. Players get to describe an aspect about their character that is truly impressive. During play another player may nominate a roll you are making because of your character's Virtue. They have to wax long and poetical, with worldbuilding heavily encouraged. Compare your buddy to ye heroes of olde! Doing so gives you three Action Points. This may only be done once a session.

After getting to level 2 the other players will nominate your character for a Flaw. You may invoke your Flaw to automatically fail a d20 roll, describing how you get in the way of yourself. You gain an Actin Point. This may be invoked as many times as you like.

Action Points

You get one action point at the beginning of each session. Action Points do not carry between sessions. You may spend an Action Point to get an extra standard or movement action, add +10 to your d20 roll, or to get a bonus to your damage roll equal to your Healing Surge Value. You may spend as many action points as you like in an encounter.

Phase Initiatve

Regular initative is stupid, particularly in 4e when the turns can be so long.  Break up the round into multiple phases, based upon what type of action everyone is taking. At the beginning of the round everyone must reveal their intended actions for the round. They get a minor, a movement, and a standard as is normal. Everyone rolls for initiative after declaring actions. And then begin to resolve actions in the following order:

Minor

Standard Ranged

Standard Close Burst

Standard Melee

Standard Close Blast

Move

Standard Area Burst

I've played this particular type of initiative before and it's really helped speed up the feel of combat.

Well, that's all the preliminaries. Next time we'll see if Gratorin, Acacia, and Jolene Wick can survive the perilous wastes, back to the warmer areas of the Feywild.

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Heroes of the Feywild: A Lament

I just...

Here we go.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for awhile. I keep meaning to write about it. I would like to say that it was because I'm working on my session posts and Power Rangers posts and whatnot, but the simple fact of the matter is that I've been a bit scared to. I got it for my birthday, looked at it, loved it, and  a second later was heartbroken. And shoved it on a shelf. And tried not to look at it.

Why did I pick it up? And write about it today? I'm honestly not sure. I certainly don't go by that particular bookshelf terribly often. It's in our guest room, so it's not on the bookshelf I go by in our living room. Maybe I picked it up today because 4th is never terribly far from the back of my mind. The DMG2 was the book that led me to want more depth in role-playing, which led me to Burning Wheel, which put me on the path I'm on. So whenever I am playing there is a part of me that is still remembering the fire that book stoked within me. Maybe it's because the Trophy Gold session that we had last night was so freaking amazing and it got me thinking about DnD again. But, for whatever reason, I picked it up today. And thumbed through it. And decided to write something about it.

This book is fantastic.

I've always found 4th's lore to be incredibly interesting. Unlike 3rd, which had a very kitchen sink sorta a feeling, 4th's felt wonderfully specific. It was a lot more mythological, like a modern take on a fairy tale. There was a whimsical, tragic element to 4th's lore that really stuck out at me. The Astral Sea is what remains of heaven, after it was blown apart. The Elemental Chaos didn't have the Abyss in it, until some jerk went and shoved a shard of pure evil in it. Things like that are very simple, but powerful. It doesn't get in the way of gameplay and can be replaced, but I usually liked the lore so much I used it anyway.

Heroes of the Feywild has the best lore of 4e. They really leaned into the whimsically tragic tone of the setting and produced stories that I found so enjoyable that I just read the book straight through. I normally didn't do that for any DnD book outside of 4e. It wasn't really a feature in the rest of 4e, however, more like window dressing. That was a shame and it's one of the chief failings of the system. But Heroes of the Feywild finally leaned all the way into their setting and produced something that was artful, not just functional. Some of the little stories they produced for this book still haunt me. I still think about their little faerie tales and ask if I could have done any better than their protagonists. I still don't have an answer.

The races (hamadryad, pixie, and satyr) are works of frickin' art. They're all interesting, whimsical, and have powers that make me want to try them. The lore on them is wonderful, full of hooks that make my GM brain cackle with glee and excitement. As a player I'd have a great time coming up with stuff in response to the lore in these books. I wanted to play in the feywild after reading these races, something that I hadn't really encountered in the rest of 4e.

The classes are easily the best design in all of 4e. Yeah, I said it. Yeah, I mean it. There's more innovation in this little volume than in the entirety of 4e combined, which is really saying something. From shifting class roles to finding different ways for class powers to attach to the existing mechanics while not doing away with the core power structure of the game (Essentials damned itself in my eyes for that), to granting alternative class features for the already existing structures, I just look at these classes in awe. There's a subtlety to the class design in these books that speaks of a mature knowledge of the 4e system. I mean, tell me Berserker Barbarian, which switches from defender to striker, isn't some of the most innovative class design you've ever seen. Go ahead. I mean, I don't believe you, but go ahead. The depth of tactical decisions for that class is just incredible. And they could have kept going. It could have gotten deeper. The objective quality of these class designs puts everything before or after it to shame.

Yeah, I know that's one hell of a hot take. I'm going to stick with it. May as well own it, right?

RIGHT.

And then there's the Themes and Feats and Magical Items. I don't like this chapter as much, but it's still good! There's a lot of things to like in here, particularly the Themes, which produce more opportunities for storytelling and give you some neat mechanical hooks to hang stuff on. Same thing goes for the magical items, especially the Fey Magical Gifts. I feel like a lot of the foundations for these items came from before, and they just took the art form they had made and got it as close to perfect as they could.

But the thing that really stopped me was their lifepath chapter.

This deserved to be core material. This deserved to be part of a Player's Handbook. Choose or roll an upbringing, and from there navigate the different sites you can go to. Each time you go to a site you roll the key ability score, and see what happens. There are usually three options: doing extremely well, average, and screwed. Regardless of what you roll you get to choose from a few skills and you move onto the next one. Each place has its own personality, its own choices, and its results can produce wildly different characters because of how this system works. You get characters that feel lived in, alive.

I present to you the tale of Xenith the human paladin of Corellon Lathelan. Born to fomorian slaves, Xenith was left to die from exposure by his despairing parents. The world was awful; why did they think they could bring a child up in it? And thus they passed.  Another couple, however, was more hopeful, and when they found the tiny babe they could not just leave him to die. So they raised him as their own, in the claustrophobic darkness, giving him as much kindness as they could, until they died from the brutality of the fomorians. Hearbroken, Xenith escaped through one of the myriad tunnels in the Feydark, eventually getting captured by the fomorians of Mag Tureah, who used him as a magical test subject. Despite his own innate bull-headedness, Xenith one day took advantage of a portal that had been left open before him, and escaped to Astrazalian and became a member of the Sword Guard, ever watchful against the Formorians. While he was there he married a kind eladrin lady, who shone like the stars, and settled down. But he wasn't a very good guard, despite his potential. This was not what he was meant to do. Xenith knew it, but did nothing about it. He waned in mediocrity.

Until one fateful day when, due to his own negligence at guard duty, the fomorians broke into Astrazalian and killed a number of eladrin, including his own wife. 

Heartbroken, Xenith ran. And ran. And ran. He didn't stop until he found himself deep in a mysterious forest, where sorrow seemed to hang in the air, a tangible essence. Deep, deep within this place of sorrow he found the White Well, where the Lady dwelt. It was there that Xenith's sorrow was turned from bane to salve, to the strength that all sorrow ultimately is meant to be. Xenith found rest. But he could not stay. The Lady told Xenith about Shinaelestra, a city in constant war with the fomorians. She would give him a token of her favor, one single strand of her white-gold hair, and send him there to help as he could in their war. Some are meant to guard.

Others, to protect and avenge.

And so Xenith went to Shinaelestra, holding the strand of white-gold to his bosom. He presented it to the king, begging for a chance to help defend his city against the wretched fomorians of Vor Thomil. His wish was granted. And Xenith prospered. Some can sit on their hindquarters and prosper. But some need a sword in their hand, armor on their back, and the screams of their dying foes in their ears, to find meaning in life. Xenith was such a man. He excelled in his work so well that the king gifted him with a special task.

I did that in ten minutes. If that doesn't convince you of the merits of the book I've got nothing else for you.

As I look at this book I can't help but feel a bit of bitterness about it all. I left this edition, right before this book was created. And don't get me wrong, I love Burning Wheel and all the other games I've found since then,  but this was something special. Maybe I'm seeing something that's not there! Maybe I'm looking back at the most controversial edition of Dungeons and Dragons, a game usually so flawed I can barely speak a kind word about it, and am being a contrarian. I am certainly that person who puts his feet down in contested territory and shouts "No further!" and causes a ruckus. That is something I'm very good at doing.

But, even as I write these words, Xenith's story burns within me. How could it not? That's a beautiful story, and all it took was about ten minutes of dice rolls to produce something that I would be proud to have any player bring to my table.

No, there is value here.

And we lost it.

If you're having fun with 5e, good for you. Genuinely, I mean it! That's really the point: to have fun. If that's happening then 5e has accomplished its mission and I'm glad for that. And maybe I don't have much of a leg to stand on, given that I had left 4e before this point. I can certainly cop to and accept that criticism.

But if you want my take? 4e was the best edition of DnD since Basic. Flat. And this book was the beginning of something new and incredible. And we lost it. 4e haters may say good riddance and may it never be remembered and all that. I won't pretend that the game didn't have its flaws. It certainly needed another edition to iron out some of the kinks. But the potential of the system to grow and evolve was shown very clearly in Heroes of the Feywild.

And I, for one, am sad it didn't get to further develop.

Maybe someday someone will revive this game and further its evolution. I know I'm not the person to do it, but I'd be lying if I said that I don't sometimes wish, wistfully, that would be today. So, until that day, I guess I'll sit on the shore and wait for it to come in with whatever tide deigns to provide it. I may wait awhile.

And that's OK. Sometimes waiting is worth it. Even if that thing never comes, the act of waiting can be enough.

Even if that day never comes.

Heroes of the Grid: A Personal History

It's probably not much of a secret that I love Heroes of the Grid. I mean, y'know, all those character musings and whatnot. It's a bit of a left field thing for me, honestly, because confession time!

I am not that big of a Power Rangers fan.

I don't own any action figures (although I'm jealous of anyone who owns a dragon dagger), I'm not currently watching the show and I really have no plans to. I mean, I watch older seasons on Netflix from time to time, as a counter to the usually dark and gritty stuff that I like to consume, but it's certainly an exception to the rule of my bleak and grim tastes. In fact, I sometimes find my brain refusing to shut off and critiquing the show's philosophical underpinnings of using a grid as the basis of all life and whatnot. It strikes me as Cartesian, and thus post-Enlightenment, and thus dumb.

Yes, I did that, sober. Getting me drunk only makes me less restrained.

Yes, my Associate's Degree is focused in Philosophy. I'm that dude who can go on multiple hour rants about the philosophical underpinnings of practically anything, much to the annoyance of all around me. And Power Rangers does not walk out kindly from such rants and ravings, metaphysically speaking. Life is not cartesian-

Sorry. About started again.

So what the hell is going on? Why am I writing so much about this game?

Get in the box.

No, I'm not a Dr. Who fan. But I do think the Tardis is pretty cool.

We're going to take the time-machine, way back to 2007. I was growing more and more disillusioned with 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons. Now, if you're a 3.5 lover that's all well and good, but I think the game is hot garbage.

Yes, really.

No, I am not being all that unfair. 3.5 is objectively flawed

OK, maybe I'm being a little unfair. Doesn't change the fact that I don't like the game.

Now, before you go and start edition-warring in the comments, hear me out: there are objective cracks and flaws in 3.5 that should not be ignored. Linear fighters and quadratic wizards, the mathematical ridiculousness that is prestige classes and multiclassing, the fact that if you're wanting to actually emulate the fantasy genre then you're really in the wrong game, as DnD is its own genre, flat, and Pun-Pun the frickin' kobold. I know people still have fun with the game, and I certainly do as well, but that's not what objectivity is about. I think that word has been abused to all hell and back, into a beat stick for someone to get away with being a jerk.

Yes, I am getting to why I love Heroes of the Grid. But this stuff is important. You need to know it to get why I'm here, now, writing about this game.

Now, objective stuff is independent of one's opinions and whatnot. It's non-personal. I know many people adore 3.5. That's fine. No issue. But its objective flaws were really rubbing me the wrong way at that point, and I found that I could not love the game. And that was a shame! I'd bought a lot of books, especially the later stuff, and found there was stuff in it I still enjoyed a lot.

But man, when 4e was announced I was excited. Every last thing that I had issue with in 3.5 was getting addressed. Broken characters? Gone. Encounter design that actually made sense? (Don't pretend 3.5's does! Don't do it!) Thank God yes! A greater emphasis on party cohesion and making combat more fun? YAAAAAAS!

Notice how objective I'm being.

No, if you can't take the (double-edged) joke I don't suggest continuing to read.

I was so excited, in fact, that I began piecing together 4e from the bits of playtest and preview material that was being released and playing it, months in advance. By the time 4e debuted I had more than a good idea of how the system worked and was hardly surprised by any single piece of it. It was love at first sight. And that continued, for most of 4e's lifespan.

4e, at its best, was a rocking combat game, with tons of interlocking character and monster bits. Players had a suite of powers, class features, and feats, all of which were designed to explicitly work in the overall context of a team. Classes were grouped into roles, which were much looser than most of the naysayers wanted to admit. The monsters in the game were also put into roles, with fewer but much more memorable abilities. The encounter design system was so easy that one could throw together fights in a matter of minutes. Monsters could have their levels tweaked so easily that you didn't even have to write the changes down. And players had pretty easy markers to tell when they were in trouble, both in the short term of a combat encounter and over the long term of a session. If the DM was half-awake the players would find that their resources dwindled quickly, causing the players to have to think on their feet. Or, at least that's how it worked in my games. I was extremely good at pushing that system (and the characters within it) to its brink, without being overwhelming.

I had a good thing going. I knew the system, understood it as a child understands riding a bike, and could do pretty much anything I wanted to with the encounter system. It was the first game that I ever deeply and truly loved. And together, we were an unstoppable force. Hell, I had people coming to watch the sessions, years before streaming was ever a thing, because the campaigns I ran with 4e were that good. And dark. And intense. No really, folks came and sat down and had a running commentary on the game. It got so loud I had to start kicking people out so that way I could focus. It was grand!

Of course Andy had to ruin everything. He has a habit of doing that.

Of course Andy had to point out that 4e is a glorified combat simulator.

Of course Andy had to point out that I was trying to do complex character development with a system that didn't support it in any objective (SEE HOW THAT WORD COMES BACK TO BITE ME??) fashion.

Thank you Andy! 

Now, thanks to Andy, I GM three Burning Wheel campaigns. I would do more, but sleep. Yes, Andy, this is all your fault. As usual.

And it's awesome.

I love Burning Wheel. But it doesn't address a lot of things that I had come to love in 4e: the focus on combat, the teamwork, the interaction between roles, powers, and feats to create a very unique character, and the intricate puzzle that was combat. I've tried to go back to 4e but I always found that its flaws had become unpalatable. And that broke my heart. Over the next few years I found myself looking back, wistfully, at a game that had meant so much to me, but that I could no longer connect to.

I don't deal with loss and death very well. I'm that one dude who will sit by a dead dog that I didn't know and just sob for the poor thing. So not being able to connect back to a game that meant so much to me at one point? You know that's not going to go over well. It's a problem I'm going to keep trying to solve, probably for the rest of my life, because I am that sentimental. At times.

I did not back Heroes of the Grid on Kickstarter because I saw its similarities to 4e. I backed the game because Bargain Quest is the best game I (STILL!!!!!!) don't own. The design is infectiously joyful and hilarious. And so, when I saw that Jonathan Ying's name was plastered on the box, I backed it. Not only could I reconnect with childhood nostalgia but (and more importantly) the game design looked amazing.

And when I finally got to play it was an immediate connection. I just couldn't stop thinking about it, which is a phenomena that I find to be rare and disconcerting. It took me months to figure it out. But I started to notice things about the game, and the harder I pulled on the thread the faster down the rabbit hole I fell. At this point I'd say that if 4e was forced to take a paternity test it would be paying some hefty child support to Heroes of the Grid. The characters are definitely put into roles and have unique abilities that have to be understood by the whole group in order to be used well. The monsters are unique yet not obtuse. The game centers around a moving, interlocking puzzle, that requires all of the player's mental, emotional, and social faculties to overcome. Heroes of the Grid took all the things that were best about 4e, and got rid of the long and plodding combats, skill challenges, and all the rest of the stuff that just plain old didn't work with 4e, improved the good stuff, and used it to become its own game.

Heroes of the Grid is not a direct translation of 4e, but it preserved and passed on the spirit of 4e at its best. The camaraderie, the incredible rush of pulling off a combo with your fellow players, the slow grinding into nothing that 4e was so good at, and the feelings of empowerment and urgency were all translated over. And, after all these years, I found that I could move on, which is something normally accomplished by applying a crowbar to my backside. So this a welcome change! And, as it turns out, I have a lot to say about this new thing that I found, honed from years of experience with a fantastic game that doesn't deserve the bad rap that it got.

And so here we are.

Onward.