Gaming: I’ve been
following the D&D Next playtest with a good deal of interest, and I have to
admit I’m of mixed opinion about the latest D&D Next approach to feats. I
like capturing whole feat trees in one selection, but I feel bad that you can’t
begin to choose feats until you hit 4th level. That’s a long time
before you can enjoy the character customization elements that feats provide. I
don’t feel like the existing D&D audience has been anxious to reduce the
number of decisions they have to make with a 1st level character,
and I worry that players will really miss the ability to add that point of
differentiation right from the start. I understand that it’s daunting for
beginners to have to select something from a list of a hundred somethings when
they first start playing the game, but I can think of a lot of other ways to
skin that cat: Starting packages for beginners, for example.
(I’ve always felt a little bit proprietory toward feats;
they’re one of my biggest contributions to the game. Back in the design of 3rd
Edition, Monte, Skip, and I were looking at 2nd Edition’s nonweapon
proficiencies, and figuring out what they did and didn’t do. I made the
observation that some NWPs were innately more valuable than others, and
realized that what we really had were two different systems that were being
purchased with the same currency. So, I suggested breaking skills into Type-A
skills and Type-B skills, and providing different currencies to purchase them
with. Then I built a sample selection of Type-A skills that really let you do
cool and amazing things. My initial list included ideas like Born a Mongol, which became Mounted Archery, and Sucks to Be You,
which you now know as Spring Attack. Fifteen years and 5,000 feats
later, here we are.)
Politics/Current
Events: Feel free to skip this part if you don't want to get a little serious in your online browsing. I just spent a full hour discussing the whole Syria situation with
my oldest daughter, who’s actually pretty interested in politics and history.
Answering her questions about Syria helped me figure out what I think we ought
to do: I think the least-bad option is to come down hard on Bashar al-Assad.
With an extensive campaign of airstrikes we can neutralize the Syrian air force
and knock out a lot of the Baathists’ advantage in heavy firepower. From there,
we swallow our distaste and do what we can to steer the rebel factions in the
least extremist course we can manage.
I hate the idea of siding with Islamic extremists, but at
this point, Syria is a proxy war between Shi’a Iran and the Sunni Gulf states.
Arranging the defeat of al-Assad would deal a serious setback to Iran’s
expanding influence throughout the Middle East. More to the point, we might find
it vitally important in a year or two that the world (and very specifically
Iran) believes us when we issue an ultimatum and draw a red line. The reason to
strike isn’t that it’s going to make things any better in Syria, because it won’t.
The reason to strike is to deter the next al-Assad from testing our resolve. Crummy, but there it is.
The Finer Things: My
wife and I took in a Mariners game on Friday night. Boy, I love Safeco Field.
It’s crazy expensive to take in a big-league ballgame, but at least Safeco is a
great place to blow $100. The Mariners are a very intriguing young team with a
lot of high-ceiling prospects. It depresses me a little as a Phillies fan; I
realized that there is not a single organization in baseball I wouldn’t do a
complete roster exchange with. By that I mean, if you were the GM of
the Phillies and you had the ability to require another team to completely
exchange its major- and minor-league rosters with you, is there any team that
you wouldn’t rather have? I’m assuming you’re still playing in Citizens Bank
Ballpark and you’ve got the payroll and upcoming TV deal the Phillies can work
with. Can you make a case that every other organization in baseball has better
top-to-bottom talent than the Phillies do now? I think so. The major-league
teams that are worse than the Phils generally have much better minor-league
systems, and much better potential to improve. Might be easier to sort out the
Syria mess than to rebuild the Phillies organization at this point. Good luck with that, Ruben.
Rich; I tend to agree with your assessment of Syria. I believe, too, that our government has concluded that the most likely outcome of this war is Assad's ouster, which means chaos in Syria and a high probability that megadoses of chemical weapons are captured by extremists. The more of those weapons that can be destroyed now, under any excuse, the better.
ReplyDeleteHey, Rich! Since I played in your game at GenCon, I've paid closer attention and realized how much stuff you and Stephen have written that I've read and enjoyed-- especially game books-- but also your fiction. I've been re-reading your Blades of the Moonsea trilogy over the last week and it is great stuff! Thanks for your writing! :)
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks for the kind words! I'm pretty proud of Swordmage-Corsair-Avenger, glad you enjoyed 'em!
ReplyDeleteI'm heartened to know that you and I fall in the same place on Syria, since I'm basically on the other end of the spectrum. It's a strange thing to have people of all political ideologies unite (90%) for OR against a single issue, and even weirder being on the wrong side of it.
ReplyDeleteThe President asked for the support of Congress, which was the right thing to do, and I think his plan has merit, but only in the extremely limited scope he proposed. Basically, the administration sold me with about the only thing that I could stomach supporting, and for the only reason that to me is worth getting involved (protecting the international norm against CW). I suppose I don't blame people for not believing Obama's pleas, with Iraq still bitter in a lot of peoples' mouths.
Oh, and I can't wait to see more Thule :-P