Welcome back to AICN Tabletop! In case you’ve forgotten about me in our hiatus, I am Abstruse, owner of the Gamer’s Tavern Podcast Network and your guide to the world of what’s new and awesome in the world of tabletop gaming. But enough about me, you want to know what’s going on in the world of gaming.
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS core release is officially out and, if you haven’t had a chance to play it yet, you have no excuses! The Basic Dungeons & Dragons rules are available for free, the Starter Set is available for under $20, and the PLAYER’S HANDBOOK, DUNGEON MASTER’S GUIDE, and MONSTER MANUAL are all available for purchase. If you’ve had a chance to play, Wizards of the Coast wants to know what you think so far. The Fifth Edition survey is live and asks a lot of questions about class balance, feats, races, rules, and more so they can fine-tune the game with future releases. If there’s something you particularly loved or hated about the new edition, make the team aware so they can make the game even better.
If you’re wondering what the future of D&D is from here, it looks as though WotC is going for themed releases in their published products. Starting in April, new releases centering on the Temple of Elemental Evil being with several cross-promotions. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE, the MMORPG based on D&D, will get an Elemental Evil expansion and a new DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURE BOARD GAME will be released with new miniatures, tiles, monsters, and more, compatible with their previous releases.
On the RPG front, we will get PRINCES OF THE APOCALYPSE, an adventure path that takes the party from 1st to 15th level. This adventure path will be designed by Sasquatch Game Studio (headed by industry veterans Richard Baker, Stephen Schubert, and David Noonan and mostly known for their system-neutral PRIMEVAL THULE setting) and comes out April 7. A new season of D&D Adventure League also kicks off with several adventures unique to the organized play, the first batch of five adventures available for download March 22 and eligible for play on April 1.
Those who want the new character options but don’t want to play the adventure will also get a 200+ page free download mid-March. This download will contain new races, class options, spells, feats, backgrounds, monsters, magic items, and more. The Gensai have been confirmed as one of those new races in this download This content will be available for free and be usable in D&D Adventure League.
Also available now is the brand new download for the EBERRON campaign setting! Stats for Changlings and Warforged, a new Wizard tradition of Artificer, and rules for Dragonmarks and Action Points are included. All you need to play in Eberron is the campaign setting book from any edition, or any of the online resources available. These are rough draft rules not eligible yet for Adventure League play, but the new feature Unearthed Arcana seems to be where these sort of “playtest” rules will show up for 5th Edition.
Paizo isn’t resting, though. While it seems they’re currently letting the excitement of the new edition of D&D roll through, they’re looking to take this summer by storm with PATHFINDER UNCHAINED, a book of new character options including full rebuilds of the Rogue, Monk, Barbarian, and Summoner classes. This should make fans of those classes happy as those four iconic classes tend to be underused due to underpowered abilities compared to similar classes or, in the case of the Summoner, being incredibly broken.
Pathfinder Society organized play is getting a tweak in an attempt to bring in new players. Pathfinder Society Organized Play will continue as it always has, but they are adding a new track called Pathfinder Society Core Campaign. Both will use the same modules, scenarios, and other resources. However, Core Campaign will limit character options to the PATHFINDER CORE RULEBOOK, Character Traits Web Enhancement, Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play, and anything from the Chronicle Sheet for the specific adventures. You can move characters from Core Campaign into Organized Play if you want something more challenging, but the door is one-way only. Once you go Organized Play, your character cannot go back to Core Campaign.
I think this is the best move for Pathfinder Society, as it can be intimidating as a new player and especially as a new GM trying to stay competitive in a field with dozens of sourcebooks, errata, special magic items, and more. Hopefully, this will reinvigorate Pathfinder Society which, while it is still going strong with tens if not hundreds of thousands of active players but which has a reputation for being cliquey and hard for new players to get involved in. Core Campaign is available now as an option for all Pathfinder Society events.
Registration for Gen Con is open, but if you wanted to get a room in the housing block, you’re SOL. As it was last year, the hotel registration was a complete clusterfuck due to many issues. The convention attempted a new lottery system where anyone attempting to register was randomly assigned a spot in the queue to reserve a room. You wait until your turn, then you’re given access to the housing portal. Minimum nightly stays were enforced, preventing an issue last year where Friday night only would sell out at downtown hotels forcing attendees to move for one night of a full-week stay. This was a fine attempt to mitigate the issues with server crashes and other issues that plagued registration last year.
So what went wrong?
First, the queue system didn’t do its job right off the bat. The system gave you one hotel reservation for every two badges registered under the account. Except everyone and their brother registered under individual accounts rather than registering under a single account. So four people get together to share a room, each hitting the queue. Whoever got the earliest slot to reserve a room made a reservation for all four. Many people used this exploit, getting reservations over people who followed the rules. A good strategy that’s against the spirit of the rules, but follows the letter of the law.
However, a worse exploit reared its head early on. See, many people had to register early. First, those who wanted specific badge types like VIG had to register in advance to ensure their spot. Anyone attending as press or as an industry professional registered early to secure the ability to schedule panels and game demos in official space. So what about people who registered after housing opened? They were supposed to go to the back of the queue, getting into the housing portal after pre-registered attendees.
Supposed to.
For at least an hour and up to two hours, anyone who purchased a badge after housing went live went directly into the housing portal, skipping the queue. Gen Con has made no announcement about what they’re doing about these queue-jumpers other than to admit there was a bug and that they are investigating. At this time (a week later), people who exploited this bug still have their reservations.
Oh, and about those server crashes that weren’t supposed to happen? Yeah, about that. Servers crashed on dozens of people. Others couldn’t access the system because the system said they had no reservations, even if they had four badges on their account. Still others reported that, after picking their room and going to enter their information to check out, the rooms would be booked out from under them as the system didn’t hold a reservation until it was completed. Several people reported this happening multiple times as the downtown hotels began to sell out.
Where was customer service for those unable to make reservations? Your choices were Twitter and Facebook and hope someone responded within an hour. The phone number provided for support would only help those who had an existing reservation or who had a medical condition requiring an ADA-accessible room. Those without a reservation were directed to Gen Con’s customer service...which was closed on Sunday.
The biggest impact to the convention (aside from the dozens upon dozens of cancelled badges due to this mess) is that many industry professionals have stated they won’t be attending this year as it is unfeasible for them to stay outside the downtown area. For some this is due to health issues, for others it’s cost of transportation, and for others it’s due to the large amounts of equipment needed to demo games that make commuting from the outskirts of the city impractical. Many of these people are big names in the industry.
“But surely they would have a separate housing block for industry guests!” you say. And they do. Except that industry guests won’t be announced until later this month if not next month. Meaning that, if you’re an industry professional wanting to host panels and run games, you have to gamble that you’ll be one of the invited guests or go through the same broken system as everyone else.
The convention is under contract to continue in Indianapolis until 2020 even though it has already outgrown the ability of Indianapolis to host it. Many hotels in the area refuse to release more rooms to the housing block as they make far more money charging up to five or in one case eight times their normal rate for rooms booked through standard outlets like their own website or various travel websites. The only official statement has been a boiler-plate press release that was interrupted halfway through with a Kickstarter pitch. If things continue this way, odds are that Gen Con will lose its place as the premier gaming convention as people move on to any of the thousands of other conventions around the country.
Morrus from ENWorld posted an interesting expose that shows how much various RPG companies pay their writers and game designers. It’s not surprising to see Wizards of the Coast and Paizo topping the list, but what might be startling to some of you aspiring game designers out there is how little most other companies pay, with several publishers you may recognize only paying $.01 a word (that means that writing an entire 144 page sourcebook for an RPG, including months of work on research and playtesting, would net the author a measly $360). Russ’s Facebook post got a little heated as some of the publishers, and many of the comments are quoted in the article.
Seeing those numbers can really put into perspective how hard it is to make a living in game design, and even moreso planning for retirement or getting proper medical care. One of the co-authors of CHAINMAIL, the game that started off the entire roleplaying hobby, is in such need right now. the daughter of Jeff Perren has started a Go Fund Me to help the legendary designer with modifications to her home which will allow him to get around independently.
THROUGH THE BREACH, the tabletop RPG set in the same world as skirmish miniature game MALIFAUX, is getting its first expansion. The first in the Penny Dreadful series, IN DEFENSE OF INNOCENCE, is an 84 page adventure book from designers Ross Watson and Brandon Gensemer including plot hooks, NPCs, locations, and more to expand your game. Backers of the THROUGH THE BREACH Kickstarter should have their copies already, and they’ll be hitting stands at your local game store soon.
Pelegrane Press kicked off its 13TH AGE MONTHLY subscription service with two new mini-sourcebooks for 13TH AGE, one from Rob Heinsoo and Ash Law titled DRAGON RIDING with new rules for, of course, dragons and their use as mounths. The other is Rich Longmore’s TEMPLES OF THE FROGFOLK with new monsters and culture information about your favorite humanoid amphibians. The 4000+ word PDFs contain new rules, classes, powers, and more for 13TH AGE and come out monthly for $2.95 each or $24.95 for a yearly subscription to all twelve.
FREEPORT: THE CITY OF ADVENTURE book from Green Ronin started to trickle out to Kickstarter backers and stores. The PDF of the massive 544 page tome is available now at the link above, or you can pre-order directly from Green Ronin to get the hardcopy for $74.95. This Pathfinder campaign setting is one of the most detailed ever to come out for any system in a single book, with full rules for everything you need to start running immediately. I’ve been looking forwards to this for a while, so I’m glad to see it finally hitting shelves.
That’s not all the news that Green Ronin gave us recently. The successful DRAGON AGE RPG will be collected into a single 400+ page core rulebook along with a new starting adventure, more campaign options (in case you don’t want to fight through the Fifth Blight), and some rules tweaks and other updates. If you liked the AGE system but weren’t a fan of DRAGON AGE as a setting, we’re getting FANTASY AGE as a rules-only book in May allowing you to take the fast-paced Adventure Game Engine into whatever setting you choose. Chris Pramas also teased a Gen Con release for the first campaign setting, which is “part of something super-exciting...that I can’t talk about yet.” They also made announcements about MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS, an adventure path for the FREEPORT: THE CITY OF ADVENTURE setting, new books for A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE RPG, and their new party game LOVE 2 HATE, which successfully completed its Kickstarter campaign back in August.
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Since my last column, I’ve gotten a bit more personally familiar with crowdfunding as I ran a successful Kickstarter for the Gamer’s Tavern Podcast Network. It’s a weird thing to go through and takes a lot more work than you’d think. So I now have new respect for the individuals who put themselves out there like that in order to get their products out there.
Shane Hensley and Pinnacle Entertainment Group are offering a one-two punch with a pair of DEADLANDS Kickstarters. The first is for DEADLANDS: A STONE AND A HARD PLACE, a new three-in-one sourcebook containing new rules for the Harrowed, information on the American Southwest, and an epic Plot Point campaign. $20 gets you the PDF, $35 gets you the hardback, and $100 gets you all three Plot Point campaigns in hardback. Expanding on that, THE CACKLER is a graphic novel about the events in the campaign written by Shane Hensley, edited by C. Edward Sellner (of Visionary Comics) and Matthew Cutter (Deadlands brand manager), pencils by Bart Sears, and coloring by Michael Atiyeh. $20 gets you the digital comic and $35 gets you the hardback trade. The DEADLANDS: A STONE AND A HARD PLACE has blown past its funding goal and is into stretch goals, while THE CACKLER is less than $2000 from funding at time of writing, with both Kickstarters ending on March 5.
SPACE CADETS: AWAY MISSION is a new game from Stronghold Games, creators of the original SPACE CADET and the amazing SPACE CADET DICE DUELS. This space opera themed cooperative scenario-based game with a ton of miniatures and fourteen linked scenarios (plus two extras just for Kickstarter backers). $60 gets you the base game with free shipping, and it looks well worth the money based on the production value of their previous products. Stretch goals are unlocking like crazy with additional tiles, miniatures, and scenarios (they’ve doubled the number of scenarios already) until February 20.
R.A. Salvatore, best known as the author of the Drizzt series for Forgotten Realms, is Kickstarting a new expansion to his roleplaying game based on his DEMON WARS novel series. DEMON WARS: ALLHEART expands the game with new classes, expanded rules, and new setting information. For fans of the novels, the all-new novella is available digitally for $5 on its own. You can get the PDF of the game book for $25, the hardcopy signed by the authors for $45, or the complete set of both DEMON WARS game books for $90.This project has until February 19 to reach its $50,000 goal and at the time of writing, was still $30,000 shy of that goal.
One of my favorite twists on both word games and Lovecraft theme, UNSPEAKABLE WORDS, is Kickstarting their new deluxe edition. Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop already covered the game better than I ever could, so I’ll just stick with what this new edition brings. Featuring new artwork by John Kovalic and updated components, the deluxe edition can be played on its own or combined with the classic edition to allow up to 12 players. You can get the deluxe edition for $35 or both the classic and deluxe edition for $50. This project is fully funded with every stretch goal announced so far unlocked, running until February 20.
LARGER THAN LIFE is a cross-platform sourcebook for HERO System, Savage Worlds, and Mutants & Masterminds. This thoroughly researched book brings American folklore and tall tales into the world of roleplaying. Twenty archetypes, twenty-four characters, and 124 total biographies, this is a must-have resource no matter what game you play if you’re looking for something beyond the typical European fantasy. There are multiple reward levels letting you customize exactly what you want. The mix-and-match nature of the rewards has a nice table letting you know what you get between the three editions and the three formats (PDF, print, and Hero Lab Character Management data files). This Kickstarter is 20% funded and runs until February 28.
That’s all for this week. Next column, I’ll have even more gaming news for you along with an interview with Sean Patrick Fannon, creator of SHAINTAR, about the success of his living campaign world as well as a review of the game I played at ChupacabraCon in Austin. If you want to know more about my experiences at ChupacabraCon, check out the Gamer’s Tavern Podcast Network where Ross Watson and I talk about our experiences with artist Lauren Reber, game designer Michael Satran, and convention organizer Sheena Colbath as well as an interview with legendary game artist Jeff Dee about his work on the original DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, recreating the original art from those books, his new game CAVEMASTER, and a lot more. You can also follow me on Twitter @Abstruse for even more up-to-date news, and, you can email your gaming scoops to abstruse@gamerstavern.org.
