Magic (MTG) and D&D: Games are Colliding

Wizards of the Coast quietly posted a PDF document over on their Magic: The Gathering site this week that has potential to eradicate barriers between the company's two flagship (fantasy) creative teams.

Here it is:  Planeshift: Zendikar

For the first time ever, we have a Magic guide to using one of Magic's premier settings a D&D milieu.

So what's the big deal?  Magic has been a 30+ year gaming juggernaut, steadily embracing more and more story elements to drive the gameplay.  The Magic card game features a series of powerful, magic-using characters called "Planeswalkers", whose  soap-opera intrigues and conflicts take them from plane to plane in the Magic multiverse.  In this way, every two or three sets of Magic cards shifts the action to an entirely different thematic world.  The Magic creative team works very hard to develop fully realized fantasy settings for each new set of cards - including settlements, civilizations, monsters, threats, culture, and character names.

Let's just look at the past few Magic settings:

• Ravnica:  the world is dominated by a massive metropolis, the city of Ravnica, where 12 competing guilds each seek to control the city - it's full of intrigue and urban noir fantasy
• Theros:  inspired by Greek Myth, the city-states of Theros are beset by a pantheon of jealous gods and titanic monsters
• Tarkir:  Tarkir is a war-torn plane where clans inspired by the cultures of South East Asia fight for dominance - it's seriously cool
• Zendikar:  - Magic's high fantasy "adventure world", where Cthulhoid monsters, the Eldrazi, rise from the ground and terrorize civilization
• Innistrad:  Magic's Gothic horror setting, full of vampires, demons, ghosts, and werewolves

There is a nice online gallery of the major planes in Magic:  MTG: Planes

What really drives Magic's storytelling is the amazing art for all of the cards. Magic's visit to one of these planes is embellished over a couple of card sets, meaning the creative team will commission several hundred pieces (400-700 paintings) of evocative fantasy art to convey  the story and themes of the world.  By contrast, a D&D book might have a few dozen pieces of art at best, and many of them are mini portraits or maps.

With Zendikar, Wizards of the Coast released a coffee table style book called The Art of Zendikar, which acts as both an art book and travel guide to the plane.  With the recent Planeshift: Zendikar, they've complimented the art book by providing guidelines on game stats and using D&D to run RPG games set in Zendikar.  Based on the survey attached to the article, this is also being looked at as a market test, to evaluate potential new products.

The test makes sense; the Magic product line invests in a massive portfolio of art, and leveraging that art and intellectual property for D&D game worlds gives them more opportunities to drive value from the art investment.  It's "low hanging fruit".  They can create more planar-guide coffee table books to sell the art, or shift these Zendikar-style game supplements into formal pay-to-own game supplements.  Plus, it might enhance both brands by getting some Magic players to try D&D, or getting D&D players to pick up a Magic deck.

Meanwhile, it's becoming clear what is the D&D 5E strategy and how it's working.  The core books are evergreen products, and the design team has been true to their word on keeping away from splat books and rules sprawl - no Player's Handbook 4, for instance.  (Thank you).  Instead, the product team seems focused on  releasing two "stories" per year, a large adventure campaign hardcover book, which is then cross-developed in novels, board games, and computer games.  Play the adventure, read the novel, buy the t-shirt, and then download the video game, that kind of stuff.  Something for everyone.  The quality of the stories seem to be improving as it goes along - Out of the Abyss was better than the previous two campaigns, and Curse of Strahd is absolutely full of win.  (I should get around to posting a review of Curse of Strahd, but it will gush with enthusiasm).

Overall, this foray into cross-promoting Magic and D&D is super interesting.  I'm guessing the Magic creative team is thinking like entrepreneurs and looking to harvest value from their creative work, with D&D fans getting a chance to benefit now that the iron curtain is falling.   5E seems to be doing well as a product line. The PHB is back in the Amazon top 100.  I greatly appreciate that the market isn't getting flooded with official splat books like DMG 2 and PHB 3, and this focus on multimedia stories is fairly benign; I can focus on the tabletop specific stuff and let folks enjoy the other media if that's their thing.  There's no downside.

I'll be watching the space closely.  The latest Magic set is Shadows over Innistrad, a visitation back to Magic's awesome Gothic horror setting.  The next set of cards for Innistrad will come out mid-summer, and that would be a good time to see if WOTC is going to publish a Zendikar-style art book and setting guide for D&D Innistrad.  I'd love for them to go back and do some recent worlds like Theros or Tarkir, but it seems more likely to be a forward-facing change.

Magic does nice trailers for each upcoming set, here's the recent trailer for Shadows Over Innistrad:

Shadows Over Innistrad Trailer

Hell Freezes Over in Finland, and other 2016 Things to Watch

Since I've started blogging again, and the calendar turned to 2016, there have been a whole series of announcements on things I didn't expect to see this year.

Jim LOTFP is Going to Gencon
I was really surprised to see the news that LOTFP is going to Gencon.  I ran some LOTFP at Gencon years ago, and there were controversies a few years back where some prudish Gencon organizers didn't want the LOTFP games or modules on display in the dealer hall and whatnot - can't have gore, horror, and boobs on display in Indianapolis!  I never expected to see an announcement that Jim LOTFP is making the long haul from Finland to Indianapolis.  I'd love to make it out there - get a bunch of missing LOTFP stuff in person.  My teenager is looking to play some "edgy" D&D with his friends, and LOTFP's early stuff (Tower of the Stargazer, Grinding Gear, Hammers of the God) strikes a good balance between classic dungeons, weirdness, and horror, so I have him checking out Stargazer (he played through all those, plus Death Frost Doom, back during a game I called "Gothic Greyhawk").

Does that mean the long-awaited Referee Book is getting done this year?  That one's been kicking around a few years now.  That seems like the kind of product and release that would warrant an appearance at gaming's biggest convention.

Delta Green Trail of Cthulhu?
I like the Delta Green world, but haven't played BRP in a long time; any recent horror games have been Trail of Cthulhu.  One of the bits of news coming out of the recent Delta Green kickstarter is that Pelgrane Press is doing a 1960's Delta Green setting book (written by Ken Hite, naturally) called The Fall of Delta Green.  That one is going right to the top of the pre-order list.  Maybe we'll see a full-blown Gumshoe Delta Green book at some point, too.

The Auran Empire for ACKS
The guy(s) over at Adventurer Conqueror King are making some moves; the president of a video game company joined the management team, they just had their Lairs & Encounters kick starter clear $25,000, they're publishing articles via a decent-sized Patreon, and now news that the Auran Empire setting is coming this year.  I've played ACKS intermittently since it came out in 2011, and I thought the Auran Empire was going to be the company's "Castle Greyhawk"; that product that was talked about since the early days but never managed to see print.  2016 could prove me wrong!

The Return of Strahd
It's been all over the blogosphere, the next 5E sourcebook \ adventure is a return to Barovia (The Curse of Strahd).  Love it!  Looks like it's going to include more about the lands of Barovia and an updated delve into Ravenloft in an adventure for levels 1 - 10; I guess they need something for those low level guys to do before they can fight Strahd.  My players had a lot of fun beating that guy a few years ago in Gothic Greyhawk.

5E OGL?
I'm doing school on the weekends so there's no chance I'll be working on any grandiose 5E megadungeon this year.  I eagerly await the efforts of an enterprising 5E designer with old school sensibilities who creates a (good) epic 5E megadungeon - I've got some money right here.  5E doesn't play out the same as the old school clones because of the power levels and wahoo magic stuff, but it's a really fun game and I hope this OGL brings some good things to the market.  Splatbooks and rules bloat need not apply - although I could be persuaded by an updated setting like 3E's Midnight, or a well done Asian-themed setting.  Speaking of which, I need to pick up a copy of Yoon Suin this year and check out Stonehell 2 - those were a few old school products from last year that slipped by while I wasn't blogging.  I may get my first Indie game this year too, something like Dungeon World (after some recent recommendations here).

Now if someone could announce they got a Traveller license for Star Wars or Star Trek, 2016 would be completely bananas.

What are you looking forward to this year in the RPG game-o-sphere?

The Curious State of WOTC D&D

5th Edition is complete.  We have all the core books - a Player's Handbook, DM Guide, and Monster Manual.  An adventure path style campaign was released last fall (Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat) with a second one on the way in April.  And that's about it as far as the official release schedule.  Are those crickets chirping at WOTC headquarters?

If we dig a little deeper, the picture gets even grayer.  There were layoffs with the D&D team in the past few months.  The campaign books are being developed by 3rd parties and printed under the WOTC label.  There is no sign of any online magazines, although a few quality articles are coming out per month on the WOTC D&D site.  Meanwhile, competing game lines like Pathfinder continue to flood the faithful with material.

What the heck is going on here?

This is fascinating for me to observe.  The combination of layoffs, outsourcing, and limited release schedule can be interpreted in multiple ways, but I'm reading into this a new approach towards sustainability.  The latest version of D&D is the most old school friendly of the recent iterations, with the easiest path to conversion of older materials to 5E.  Wizards continues to release their back catalog as PDF's on the D&D Classics site.  Why should they invest in rehashing existing materials like campaign settings or adventures, when they can direct players to 30+ years of materials in PDF for easy conversion.

The layoffs and re-tooling of the team in WOTC also appear to suggest aligning for the long haul.  The brand is still a valuable property for licensing, with continued interest in 3rd party computer games, movie rights, board games, and miniatures.  If you ran a company and decided that the table top RPG "glory days" were in the past, but you wanted to keep an evergreen roleplaying game product in the market and take advantage of your 30+ years of historical products, I bet your strategy would look quite a bit like WOTC's.  You could keep a smaller in-house crew, shift the labor of new adventure development to 3rd parties, and retool the internal team for long term support of the brand and licensing.

Chaosium has been successful keeping Call of Cthulhu alive as a property for 30+ years with a similar model.  They seem to run a skeleton crew, keep most of their back catalog available as PDF, and keep everything widely compatible with newer versions of the rules.  Many of the major new products are work-for-hire or independent contractors.

Anyway, that's how I'm reading into the lack of a market flood of 5E products coming out of Wizards.  Somewhere along the line, they made a conscious effort to get into 5E for the long haul while they try and leverage the D&D name in other venues, like the rumored movie rights.  Unfortunately, the modern crowd seems to equate 'market flood of products' with success, and so there are rumblings on the left that D&D 5E must be unsuccessful.  And WOTC hasn't done a fantastic job marketing the ability to convert older stuff to 5E or going after the old school demographic with 5E's friendliness to older style of play.  One of the recent positions they added was a communications manager, so perhaps we're going to see more fan outreach on the horizon.

I'm pretty happy with the current state of things.  I'd like to see a formal OGL or similar license for 3rd party publishers, although stalwarts like Frog God Games are still finding a way under some of their older agreements.  Maybe in a couple of years I'd like to see a 5E treatment for Oriental Adventures or wuxia friendly 5E, but no rush.

You Had Me At "Bounded Accuracy"

I'm starting to get interested in this new D&D Starter set that Wizards is putting out in July.  The adventure included sounds like a blend of wilderness hex crawl and mini-dungeons; the latest column from the Mearls reveals it has 4 dungeons and 5 adventure locales, enough material for a party to advance from levels 1 through 5.  On the interwebs, folks have mentioned it's inspired by B10 Night's Dark Terror (although I don't have a WOTC direct source to quote).

The new edition appears to swing the pendulum back towards supporting the types of adventures and campaigns I want to run.  The biggest philosophy shift is the idea of "bounded accuracy".  Monster armor class doesn't scale with level, and player character accuracy stays within a narrower band as well.  You no longer have the 4E problem of a marauding troll with an armor class over 30, literally impossible for the levies of peasant archers to damage using the rules as written  4E didn't lend itself to fantasy simulation.

A commitment to bounded accuracy implies the new edition will support world builders, and that makes me happy.  World building is the best part!  So what combat attributes are going to scale with level?  Damage is going up, and hit points are going up.  That means the levy of peasants is going to be able to protect their village against the marauding troll through numbers - but if the troll lays a hand on one of them, it's going to tear them apart.  Flipping it around, you can picture battles where a high level fighter cuts through a large swath of lower level mooks because the fighter's attacks are powerful and damaging, but the mooks are still tagging the fighter and wearing away resources.  It feels like a better implementation of the "minion" concept from 4E.

It'll be interesting to see how damage scaling applies to inanimate objects and structural hit points - is chopping through a wooden door with an axe any different for a beefy peasant compared to a skilled fighter?  From the little I've read, it sounds like those types of activities would be handled as skill checks, and bounded accuracy applies - leveling the field between the strong peasant and the fighter.

I also really like that they're releasing Basic D&D as a free PDF.  Kudos, WOTC.  Between the starter set and the free Basic game, we'll have plenty of opportunity to evaluate new D&D before the hardcovers start shipping.  I'm even fine with a delay in learning about an OGL or other 3rd party creator license - the books aren't going to be out until the fall anyway.

Where are you at with the upcoming new edition - interested, indifferent, or actively hostile?

Rapid React - The New D&D Covers

Big news yesterday - release dates and covers for the newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons are all over the internet.  Plenty of peers in the OSR blogosphere have been posting the news.  I'm a bit conflicted about the news!

The largest issue I'm having is that the covers belie an approach to anime fantasy that sits far outside my desired game experience.  I want a game inspired by fantasy literature, not wuxia inspired fantasy super heroes flying through the air and bashing monsters on the noggin.  The new covers scream out that the monsters are bigger and more ferocious than ever, and the heroes fly!  Is that what D&D has become?

On the other hand, I'm going to reserve judgment on the actual game play - the playtest reviews have been generally positive and folks that follow the words of the Mearls have reported the new edition is meant to support a range of play-styles - including old school sensibilities.  The buy-in for the starter set is fairly inexpensive and there's no reason not to sample the game when it comes out.

Here’s the important part:  the mass market opportunities inherent in a successful boxed set trumps everything.  Consider my neighborhood.  Our street is infested with children.  Last count, there's like 18 kids ages 7-13 in our section of the block alone.  My oldest (a 12 year old) runs a backyard game of Traveller on the picnic table for a group of kids that grew up on HALO style video games.  When last I checked, they were exploring a derelict ship where space spiders and venom zombies battled pirates and the survivors.  However, the parents of these kids aren't going to seek out an obscure game shop and buy a massive tome of Pathfinder or order a Traveller hard cover online.  They are the kind of parents that will buy their kid a $20 D&D boxed set if it's in the games section of Target or Walmart.  If this thing is successful, I could see our entire block playing D&D by summer's end with a half dozen copies of the boxed set in the hands of kids.  Whatever RPG throne Paizo assumed with the death of 4E, it appears to be short lived - no offense meant, Pathfinder fans.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the new WOTC game.  A rising tide raises all ships and helps all RPGs.  I hope the new edition is a smashing success and would like to see the game line do well.  I'll take it a step further and say, despite the awful covers, that I also hope this is a game I'll enjoy playing.  Why not?  It has the potential to be Dungeons & Dragons again, and inspire a new generation of kids that missed out on the heyday of the early 80's.  Heck, while we're tossing gold pieces in the wishing well, I'm even going to hope for an OGL type of agreement to allow folks to make compatible works.

In the meantime, I'll continue to pay attention to bloggers more passionate about WOTC than myself who are reporting on every word of the Mearls and the minions.  It's going to be an interesting couple of months, right?  C'mon, WOTC, we're pulling for you to get it right.  Now if I can just stop judging books by their covers...