The Core Worlds

Well, I said it was all about superheroes in my last entry, and I couldn’t repeat myself.

The latest from Wizards is minions, a concept that worried me when I came across it. In a nutshell, minions are foes who are a decent threat to the PCs but whom only have a single hit point. Once you hit one, it is dead.

My initial reaction was “Oh no. Ogres that die with one hit. That’s rubbish. So much for Willing Suspension of Disbelief.”

Wizards can’t be that insane though, can they? Well, yes, they can, but not in this instance. While killing Ogres with one hit seems silly, it becomes less so when characters get to very high levels and going up against mature dragons and nasty demonic princes. At low levels, I would assume that the minions would be goblins, and it isn’t unreasonable to expect a low level character to have no trouble dispatching a mere goblin. 

The concept works in other games, Spirit of the Century springs to mind. So I’m cautiously optimistic about this particular change for D&D 4e. 

It might make the fireball spell interesting though.

The more I hear about D&D 4e, the more I think it is going to be even more high powered and grid based then 3.5. The latest bit of news (via RPGpundit) doesn’t break that pattern.

I don’t know if this is an entirely bad thing. From time to time, I rather enjoy tactical skirmish games (and I like grids as they solve all the questions about facing and distance — you get edge cases in 360° tape measure games). 

That said, I’m fairly happy with 3.5 for tactical skirmish, and I’m delighted with Exalted for the high powered style of game, so I’m doubting that I’m going to get much out of 4e.

I’m after something with a bit of grit, plenty of sword work, and a distinct lack of magic items and spells being the answer to every question. This has led me to take a look at alternatives, and RuneQuest is looking increasingly like it might be the answer. 

My first real exposure to D&D was with third edition, which features a wonderful economy… OK, so it doesn’t. It features an insane system where the raw materials to construct anything, anything at all, costs exactly one third of its retail price. This is compounded by the wonder that is the price list.

A ladder consists of a pair of ten foot poles with a number of rungs between them, but this costs less than a pair of ten foot poles. It is feasible that an enterprising merchant, given a large enough supply of nearby adventures, could make a living chopping ladders in half and selling the pieces to passing adventurers while having the rungs left over for firewood!

The Wizards of the Coast website is previewing 4e, and I’ve been keeping half an eye on it. I was pleasently surprised when I read:

Be sure to return Wednesday for a look at the economy!

What is this? Could they be making the economy sane?

No, of course not.

It seems that treasure is going to be made available to Dungeon Masters in preprepared baskets to hand out to monsters and NPCs. I wonder if they will be gift wrapped?

I’ve given in and bought a Wii. I could be sensible and hold off writing about it until I have a bit more to say (and am a bit less tired when I’m trying to write it), but I’ve been neglecting this blog of late so I’ll … stop talking meta.

In brief though:

• It is a lot of fun
• Super Mario Galaxy is well deserving of its Gamespot score of 9.5, and an excellent single player game that challenges the Wii’s reputation as a party game machine
• Mario Kart is seven shades of awesome for multiplayer racing, but the battle mode is a let down when compared to the GameCube version. I’ll write more on this later.
• Mario and Sonic Olympics is quite fun, but mostly revolves around waving the sticks in various ways. It does result in good videos being filmed though.
• The downloadable games are fun, and I’m sure I’ll get a lot more entertainment out of Bomberman ‘93 and Bubble Bobble

So that is a quick summary of first impressions, I’ll probably go into more detail later, but it is approaching 0130 and I need some shut eye.

I’m going to have a go at writing a campaign manager for Mongoose Publishing’s Babylon 5 war game - A Call To Arms. I spent some time this evening going over the rules with Jim and working out what data needed storing. This entity relationship diagram is the result.

Complicated system, isn’t it?