Dungeons & Dragons – Page 5

Many years ago, when I was but a lad, my best friend came into possession of the newly published Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks. We were fascinated by the system and the concept, and I wanted my own copies. At Waldenbooks an employee suggested I might want to start with the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, which would be an easier introduction to the game. I bought it, and the rest was history. It's because of that choice that instead of Faerun, Oerth or Krynn my favored game world, the one that I return to time and again, is Mystara.

#Blaugust Day 17: Mystara Monday: The Beginning

Mystara in its earliest form, from the D&D Expert Set

Over the years, I played and ran a lot of games of Dungeons & Dragons set in Mystara (originally just called The Known World) and I built up a large collection of adventure modules and supplements. I had come in at the perfect time, as TSR had recently begun to actively detail the setting through a series of Gazetteers that detailed each of the major nations of Mystara in turn. Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting was incorporated as the distant past of Mystara, prior to a great nuclear apocalypse. The world was revealed as hollow, with ancient extinct civilization preserved within. The great airship Princess Ark crossed the world and even reached the moon (which is populated by samurai cat people). A worldwide calamity stripped Mystara of magic for a full week.

Eventually TSR decided to retire the Dungeons & Dragons rule set and only support Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. For a short period, Mystara continued to be supported and new AD&D supplements were released for it. After only a few however, Mystara was retired as well. It's mentioned every so often in newer editions, most recently in the 5th edition books as one of many campaign worlds that exist, but there hasn't been an official Mystara supplement published since 1995.

Every Monday I plan to bring out an item from my collection and show it off a bit. I'll talk about what it is, where it fits into the setting as a whole, and maybe tell a few stories about games past. Next week I'll be starting with the very first Dungeons & Dragons books I ever owned, the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules.

Blaugust Post #12

Q: You can excise one class from every future game. Which? Why?

A: Warrior. Replace with something more interesting than ‘guy who hits people with sharp objects’.

Thalen wrote the above this morning, and it inspired this post. A while back, the developers of Mass Effect revealed various statistics about how people play their games. (Some spoilers for ME3 at that link.) It turns out that a very large number of people play the game as the basic Soldier, which was somewhat disappointing to me. In a game that has 6 class options with varying unique abilities, the one that “just shoots people” struck me as utterly boring. It remains one of two classes I haven’t played a Mass Effect game as (at least single-player).

Unexpected Brilliance

Mass Effect 3 wasn’t just a single player game; it has one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever played. It wasn’t quite so good at launch, but by the time I actually got into the game a year later, they’d added so much to the multiplayer that it was nearly unrecognizable. You have the same selection of classes from the main game, with a stripped down selection of abilities at the start (and honestly I don’t think I like most of the starting ability sets). What later patches brought was the ability to unlock additional characters with varied power sets. They’re still divided into Soldier, Engineer, etc., but some of them are different races with different strengths and weaknesses, and even the human unlockables tend to be pretty non-standard. The differences are pretty extreme in some cases, with the N7 Shadow infiltrator having a shadowstep and being more about murder with a sword than a sniper rifle (although it can do that too).

This brings me to my earlier point: Some of the soldiers in the multiplayer bring variety and interest to what would otherwise be the most boring class. (They’re still the class about shooting things.) There are two variations on slow, unstoppable powerhouse types in the Geth Juggernaut and the N7 Destroyer. The Juggernaut is large and slow with well above average health and shields, but comes with an immunity to instant kills and the highly damaging Siege Pulse power . The Destroyer is a mobile weapons platform, with the ability to slow its own movement in tradeoff for increased damage and accuracy, while also launching homing missiles at things that come too close. At the other end of the spectrum is the jetpack-equipped Turian Havok, capable of using its stimulant pack ability to run around the battlefield faster than any class that can’t teleport (i.e. the aforementioned Shadow and almost all of the Vanguards).

Lessons to Learn

I feel like certain other games are learning from examples like this. D&D5 comes to mind immediately, with subclass-like options for all of the base classes. Even Fighters get in on the game, with options I’m going to call “Standard”, “Battlemages are fun”, and “I liked 4e’s Warlord”. (On a semi-related note, there are a bunch of ways to make a character that can both hit things and cast spells, which one is primary mostly depends on what class you’re using to start.) I’d kind of like it if other games could use a bit of this, and make the “basics” not always so basic.