Read
I received my Kickstarter copy of a|state 2e yesterday. It's a gorgeous book and what I've read of it is fantastic. All in all its a worthy update. It's using the Blades system which I haven't tried yet, despite now owning three games which use it. I have some friends who swear by it, and others who loath it. I'll have to give it a go at some point.
My younger child has requested that I run some D&D for them and their friends, so was thinking of picking up the Radiant Citadel adventure collection. It looks awesome, and I feel like I should promote this more progressive direction for Wizards, it's £45 quid though, which is a lot just now.
Then again, today they suggested Ryuutama might be better, and I think I agree so I might have a read of that tonight.
Play
I'm signed up for a short Delta Green game next month which should be good.
Also when I'm finished running Troika! one of my players is going to take over and run a SF horror scenario she's been writing.
GM
My big 13th Age game is going well. I'm enjoying it anyway! I'm looking forward to wrapping up the Troika! game, no real reason, just ready to move on.
Oh and some D&D news too: https://www.dndbeyond.com/one-dnd
One D&D is a terrible name. But I guess no-one cared when Microsoft called their third Xbox the Xbox One.
Some of the One D&D changes are interesting, others are baffling, most are… fine.
Some thoughts, in no order:
- Only weapons and unarmed strikes can crit now; spells don't, and from how it's written, other attack effects also don't - so bye bye, sneak attack and smite crits? (I suspect this will be changed back)
- Similarly, only PCs can crit, not monsters. This completely invalidates adamantine armour, the Grave Domain Cleric's level 6 ability, and others. It will mean monster output is more predictable, though, with a greater reliance on limited or recharge abilities for the big swings. I'm 50/50 on it, and need to see it in action.
- New race, the Ardlings. They're a shit,
animal-faced aasimar. Next.
- If you want to play a dragonborn, stick with the Fizban version.
- Orcs have graduated to the PHB, so half-orcs are gone, maybe along with half-elves? Rules for playing a half-something are "pick a single race mechanically, but look like whatever you like". Seems like it could be better.
- Unarmed Strike now has the rules for grappling and shoving folded into it, which will make looking that shit up way faster, but also potentially make monks kinda brutal, since they can now knock your ass prone uncontested on a hit and then get advantage on the flurry of blows that follows.
- Inspiration is easier to get, but still not a very interesting mechanic. Humans get it automatically every time they finish a Long Rest. I think the intention is that if it's easier to get, people might actually spend it.
As far as the name goes, I think that's the whole rules/D&D Beyond/VTT initiative, not the name of the edition. Agree it's a dumb name.
The name’s even dumber when the first thing they say about it is “One D&D is three things”. They are clearly terrified that they are going to lose their audience with this, every second line in their videos was a plea that this is still going to be the same D&D, just changed, to be more D&D.
I expect it’s only going to be a slight revision, essentially just more 5e. I’m far more interested to see what 13th Age 2e looks like.
Critical success and failure on skill checks feels majorly dodgy to me.
- New race, the Ardlings. They're a shit, animal-faced aasimar. Next.
Is this an attempt to get around having to implement fifty different types of animal hybrid races? No more Harengon or Tabaxi?
No, I don't think so; ardlings are more if a celestial mirror to tieflings.
Critical success and failure on skill checks feels majorly dodgy to me.
Yeah, same, but this is how a lot of tables (and, perhaps more significantly, streamed games) run it.
I expect it’s only going to be a slight revision, essentially just more 5e.
This appears to be the plan, for sure.
