Updated Plans

Not much to this post, I am looking over the Big Plan^TM I have for my Kids' D&D games.

I detailed my plan first here and then updated it here.  Since then I have played some of the adventures listed, just not in the order I had them.

Of the plan I have completed:

• B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
• X1 The Ilse of Dread
• S2 White Plume Mountain

Removed from rotation are (and detailed here):

• C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness.  I am going to be running this under the Doctor Who RPG as "The Ghost Tower of Inverness, Illinois"  (the castle, the Ghost Tower)
• B2 Keep on the Borderlands.  Been done a 1000 times.  I want to run it under Army of Darkness rules.
• I6 Ravenloft. Will run this as Ghosts of Albion: Ravenloft for Ghosts of Albion.

Games I'll run under my Basic Levels plan:

• T1 Village of Hommlet (and come back to it later using the 4th ed version)
• B1 In Search of the Unknown (great dungeon crawl)
• L1 Secret of Bone Hill (been wanting to run this one forever)

Then on to some D&D4 adventures.

Basic Levels: Background and Themes

To continue on with my idea of Basic Levels for D&D4 I want to look at two features of the D&D4 game that came after the PHB was published.  Backgrounds and Themes.

When you are 1st level in D&D4 you get to choose some skills to be trained in.  This gives you a +5 in those skills.  As you move up in level all your skills are your appropriate modifier + 1/2 your level.  So regardless a 30th level character has +15 minimum on every skill and +20 (15+5) on trained skills.

A background is a bit of role-playing that asks what were you before you were an adventurer? Most times it gives you a +2 in two (or sometimes just 1) skills.  So maybe a fighter was once the apprentice of nere'do well Bard and spent his childhood stealing magical items.  He would have a +2 to Arcana and +2 to Thievery

Themes are new from issue #399 of Dragon Magazine (seems odd to call it a magazine anymore) and they are more or less like kits were in AD&D2.  You choose a theme and it gives you some pluses to skills and then at later levels you can choose different powers at different levels.   not exactly a sub-class but more of a flavor.

To do these in the Basic Level model players need to have fairly good ideas of what their character was (or is since we are starting them younger) and where they want to take their character.

At Basic Level 1 they get their Background and maybe training in 1 skill.  If the class has a "default" skill then it will be that one; ie Religion for Clerics, Arcana for Wizards and Thievery for Rogues.  Clerics get their Channel Divinity power (Turn Undead), but no spells yet (just like Basic). Wizards get a spell.

At Basic Level 2 they get training in two more skills (or maybe just one, still looking at the options).  Clerics get a spell as do wizards.  Rogues and Fighters fight get one of their combat styles.

The idea here is to build up that list of trained and background skills and introduce the Themes to the character.  In the end you want all the elements in place for that 1st level character.

While I consider the details here are the past posts that have lead me to this point.

• Character Life-Span development, this was more for modern games, but certainly good for D&D too.
• Immortal Level D&D. My first post on mixing D&D4 with D&D Basic.
• Playing D&D with Kids. Where I first mention my desire to play both D&D4 and Basic D&D.

Plus it gives me a good excuse to use all of these together.

Tell DTRPG About Your Character

One thing that I don't typically do is talk about my characters.  Nothing puts up a wall between the gamer and a non-gamer faster than talking about your character.  I'll talk about my kids playing, I talk about things my players did, but rarely will I talk about a character in public.  I even rarely do it here, outside of the writeups I do, but those are more about stats than personalities.

Fortunately DriveThruRPG is not me.
They want to hear all about your character and are willing to give you prizes for it.

The Tell Us About Your Character contest is going on now and you have two weeks to enter.

I do like characters.  I have extensive histories for characters that have only seen a couple of games.  So I might enter this contest, but I wanted to let you all know about it.  Hell, my for my main withc character I can tell you what she has done every year of her 40 year old life.  But for this contest you need to be able to limit yourself to 400 words.

The prizes are also nice, an Android powered tablet, and gift certificates for 100, 50 and 25 dollars.

Well worth your time I think.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/rpg_character.php?affiliate_id=10748

Respect My Authoritah!

Well according to at least one obscure website I am an authority on the criminology of Elizabeth Bathory.

My Elizabeth Bathory page, designed to be used with an RPG mind you, was linked out by Criminal Justice Degrees.com, on their site of the 15 worse female criminals. http://www.criminaljusticedegrees.com/15-most-heinous-women-criminals

Of course this site is nothing more than a means to get people into a name collection system that many online degrees use.

Now my Bathory page gets about 1,500 hits a month with about 1,000 of those being new visitors, and so far this one has only contributed about 24 this week.  But I still had to laugh.

Basic Levels: D&D4 by way of D&D Basic

Consider this quote from The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Think of the heroes of modern myth, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, even Bilbo Baggins and the kids from the Narnia books (well the first few). They follow this hero's journey more or less the same way.  Even Darth Vader followed the same path, but failed the final tests.  The point here though is not the journey (yet) but the beginnings.  Anikin began as a slave, Luke a farm boy, Harry a baby and then a 10 year old boy with no idea of his potential.  Each were a "chosen one" of their tales, but all had humble beginnings.

Depending on who you ask the raised power structure in D&D 4 is either a feature or it is "broken".  D&D 4 characters start out as very capable.  They have skills, powers and a variety of things they can do right away.  To some this is a great thing, now all characters can do something.  To others it is a sign of power creep.

I don't buy the power creep argument.  In fact if you compare D&D4 to D&D Rule Cyclopedia you see that they have similar power curves.  A 30th level D&D4 Wizard could go toe to toe with a 36th level D&DRC Magic User, and both may be on paths to immortality.  In fact D&D 4 seems more like D&D RC IF you look at it from the point of view of D&D4 characters starting at about 4th to 6th level.

Let's compare a bit.

Here are the basic skills and powers of a 1st level D&D Basic/RC character.
Magic-User Level 1
Weapons: Dagger 1d4 (1 per attack)
Spell: Magic Missile (1 per day)
HP: 1d4 + con mod (4 to 7)

Not a lot.

How about 1st level D&D4 character.
Wizard (Mage) Level 1
Weapon: Dagger (1 per attack)
Spells: At will: Suggestion, Ghost Sound, Light, Arc Lightning, Freezing Burst.
Per Encounter: Charm of Misplaced Wrath, Burning Hands.
Daily: Fountain of Flame, Phantom Chasm
Skills: Arcana, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Insight, Religion
HP: 10 + con score (18 to 28 using the default arrays)

9 spells and four skills that this character knows out of the gate.  And that is not counting any of the new backgrounds (which gives +2 to a skill or two) or other rules to help out the 4e character further.

Just as a quick and dirty comparison, a D&D RC Magic User would need to be 7th level and be able to cast 1 4th level spell to equal the D&D 4e 1st level Wizard (Mage).  Now if you use the cantrip rules I  created (or just ignore cantrips) then the character is more of a 5th level Magic User.

Fighters are not much different really.
In Basic/RC the fighter gets a sword and told which end is pointy and which end to hold on to.
In 4e fighters (Knights) get a sword and 3 different battle stances (think of them as advanced fighting techniques) that make them more than a guy with a sword.  These stances imply martial training.

So the D&D 4 characters are not just "fresh of the moisture farm", they have training, they have skills.  This is something the designers of D&D4 wanted and it was an implicit design philosophy.

But sometimes you want to build up to something special.

People have used this argument as a full on indictment of all of D&D4, but to me that is throwing out too much good stuff, but I also like the feel of the early editions, especially Basic D&D.  SO why not have my cake and eat it too.

Basic Training and Levels

Basic levels are the "training" levels for character.  They will break up the powers of the 1st level 4e characters into smaller chunks to represent training.

For my Hero's Journey game, the characters will start out exactly like they do for every single edition of D&D.  Roll a 4d6, drop the lowest, arrange for 6 stats.  I will use the "archetypes" from Basic and 4e and these will be the only characters allowed.  So fighter, magic-user, thief, cleric.  From here they can move on to other "full" classes.  Fighter (and I might even call it "fighting man") wold lead to knights, paladins, rangers, fighters, marshals, and so on.  Magic-Users lead to Warlocks, Wizards, mages, sorcerers.  You get the idea. Or I could divide them up my how they train for their power, Martial, Divine and Arcane.  I like that idea better.

There would be 3 basic levels.  I would divide the powers and skills up so they are getting something new each basic level.  So new skill, new spell or martial stance.  I would include Backgrounds and any other ways to get skills at Basic 1. I would also include all the racial perks.

This is not without precedent, the old Cavalier had levels that came before 1st level so that you had to work your way up to them.

I'd have to put them up in a table so that by the time you completed Basic 3 and then moved to Level 1 you could gain the last powers needed to make Level 1 seem like a big leap.

Basic Levels as Normal People
Having basic levels also make for a good way to represent normal people. The village blacksmith isn't a 0 level human or even a 1st level Knight, he is something in between.  Maybe he has some training, and he is certainly stronger than his fellows, so he could be a Martial Class, Basic Level 2.  Or something.
This makes for a good way to emulate the NPC classes from the D&D 3.x DMG.

I think this needs more work, but I like what I have so far.

Why Do it?
Other than the reasons mentioned above there is also a pragmatic reason.  To play T1, B1 and B2 as intended.  Maybe that is what I can do.  Not worry about XP, but level up on Basic Level after a completed adventure.  I could also pull out the Black Box D&D I got at the last auction as a good intro set.

The more I think about it, the more I like it.  Then they get to Level 1 and the Adventure arc begins.

ETA: Rob Donoghue had some similar thoughts earlier this month. Please also read his post.
http://rdonoghue.blogspot.com/2011/05/leveling-up-to-1.html

Test

Seeing if this works.

Eta: another test

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

For the record...

I have never actually kumbayahed with anyone.