Wizards of the Cost scraps plans to revamp the OGL and moves D&D to a Creative Commons licence

It's been a bruising few weeks for Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro, whose plans to monetise the never-more-popular Dungeons & Dragons brand by removing the Open Game Licence 1.0 ran into fierce opposition from fans and fellow businesses alike.

Wizards initially offered a partial compromise, allowing existing OGL products to remain on sale and removing plans for licence charges for successful products using the D&D rules, but confirming they were pressing ahead with eliminating the OGL 1.0 for new products moving forwards. Creators would instead have to sign up to the OGL 2.0, which was still significantly more restrictive than the old 1.0 model that company had employed since 2000, and changes to the rules pertaining to the virtual tabletop (VTT) market would remain in place, effectively forcing online players to use Wizards' own D&D Beyond service with a subscription fee.

However, the creators of the OGL 1.0 voiced doubts that the original OGL could be legally revoked (they'd deliberately included language suggesting not), several companies mulled over legal challenges and multiple other RPG companies announced the creation of a rival open licence, which soon saw a large chunk of the tabletop RPG industry come on board.

Today Wizards of the Coast announced a comprehensive climbdown. They will no longer try to revoke the OGL 1.0, they will no longer try to impose their changes on the burgeoning virtual tabletop (VTT) market (with the 1.0 remaining in place, that's no longer possible) and they are in fact scrapping the entire OGL 2.0 initiative in favour of moving to a Creative Commons licence instead. They are releasing the rules for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition via a Systems Reference Document for use with either licence. Effectively, this is a return to the status quo, with a more comprehensive 5th Edition SRD as a result.

Wizards likely decided on the climbdown after seeing over 40,000 subscribers abandon their D&D Beyond platform in the space of three weeks, as well as a burgeoning campaign to boycott the forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves, which launches on 31 March. The film is the opening salvo of a broad-spectrum D&D assault on the multimedia space, with Hasbro keen to bring the franchise to film and television, as well as reinforcing its presence in video games (the highly-anticipated Baldur's Gate III launches later this year).

Whilst likely to be welcomed by those whose livelihoods were threatened, the climbdown is unlikely to erase the memory of Wizards' behaviour. Other companies have benefitted, most notably Paizo who make the rival Pathfinder fantasy RPG which was previously the dominant tabletop RPG from 2009 to 2015 before D&D supplanted them. Paizo reports selling out of all of its physical stock of its core rulebook in the last fortnight and is rushing reprints to meet renewed demand. Some other RPG creators are also reporting increased sales. Work on the rival open gaming licence is likely to continue.

A Roleplayer's Guide to Roleplaying Games

 A few months back I wrote A Beginner's Guide to Boardgames, which was quite successful. So now I'm going to do the same thing for roleplaying games, because why the hell not? This article will differ because it's less-focused on more recent games and offers more of an overview of the entire field, and also that there is no differentiation between "beginner", "intermediate" and "advanced" games, although I note in each entry how approachable each game is. Generally the main difficulty with RPGs is getting into them in the first place and getting comfortable playing them; once that's achieved it's relatively straightforward to adapt to other games.

So, pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Since the mid-1970s, when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson released the original version of Dungeons and Dragons, RPGs have been a continuous source of enjoyment, bringing together friends and allowing them to bond over murdering dragons in the face. RPGs have diversified over the years, offering rules-heavy, combat-focused games and lightly-codified, narrative games where the emphasis is more on creating a collaborative story than in winning any particular objective or reward.

RPGs, like boardgames, went through a lean period in the late 1990s when video games (including, ironically, some games based on pen-and-paper RPGs) exploded in popularity. They also made a strong comeback in the 2000s thanks to the Internet and, more recently, the arrival of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites as a way of funding more niche and specialised games.

Without further ado, let's take a look at some of the better RPGs for beginners that are around.

Dungeons and Dragons: The Classic
Well, we have to start here, don't we? The original roleplaying game, the longest-surviving and, for most of its lifespan, the most popular. You know the drill here, a group of players create characters from stock fantasy races (humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes being the basic choices) and stock fantasy careers (barbarian, bard, cleric, mage, monk, paladin, rogue, warrior) and engage in surprisingly diverse adventures, ranging from political thrillers to gruelling dungeon crawls to war epics and many more. It's straightforward, it's fun and it can be quite varied in tone and potential (which is more than can be said for some other, more tightly-focused RPGs). D&D remains probably the ultimate RPG because it's so familiar but can turn on a dime in a heartbeat and become something quite unpredictable and weird.

You do have a choice of which rule set to play with, as the five numbered editions to date (not to mention several variant half-editions) do each have their drawbacks and benefits, and I'll be covering that in a separate article. Fortunately, the current edition is one of the more welcoming, hitting a sweet spot of offering a lot of customisability and options whilst also not being extremely confusing and occasionally flat-out broken. The 5th Edition is well-supported by Wizards of the Coast with a lot of online support, but the relative paucity of published material is a bit surprising, and the lack of new world books updating settings like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Planescape to the new edition is disappointing. But compared to the insane bloat of previous editions, the new edition makes D&D a lot more welcoming than it has been for many years.

An alternative choice may be Pathfinder, which is derived from D&D 3rd Edition but eliminates many of its smaller problems (the larger ones remain, however) and backs it up with an immense amount of support and, more recently, an SF spin-off called Starfinder. It isn't as streamlined and elegant as D&D 5th Edition, but it has an utterly titanic amount of content, a friendly and welcoming community and support that is second to none.

Star Wars: The Ultimate Beginner's Game
Well, it's Star Wars, isn't it? You can play a bounty hunters or a Jedi, an Imperial stormtrooper or an ace Rebel pilot, an escaped Wookie slave or a Coruscanti noble. Games can be set at the height of the Clone Wars, the Galactic Civil War, during the ancient Jedi-Sith conflict or, crazily, maybe during a rare period of peace. Hate the movie Rogue One? Form your own crack team of agents and try to steal the Death Star plans your way.

There are three distinct versions of the Star Wars RPG: the original West End Games version, the two ill-advised Wizards of the Coast editions (derived from D&D 3rd and 4th Editions, and neither fit particularly well) and the current game from Fantasy Flight, which consists of three distinct rulebooks (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny). I've never played the Fantasy Flight version and have heard mostly good things about the rules, but the complete experience does require purchasing three very expensive rulebooks and then buying custom dice, a huge no-no for most RPGs. Fantasy Flight do good work and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one, but I'm not particularly moved to try the new version (especially after being burned badly on the WotC editions).

Instead, if you can get hold of a copy (and there's been a recent 30th anniversary reissue, which makes things easier) of the original West End Games version, go with that. You only need six-sided dice and the ruleset remains one of the most elegantly designed. It's streamlined, easily understandable but opens up into greater complexity later on. It's a game which will have you gunning down stormtroopers, flying X-wings and doing the Kessel Run, all in under twelve parsecs (put lots of skill points in Astrogation). Compared to many roleplaying games, which tend towards bloat and steep learning curves, the West End Star Wars is a thing of beauty. It's Star Wars! It's fun!

All versions of the game do suffer the "Jedi problem", namely that players portraying Jedi can end up dominating games and getting over-powered, but a canny Gamemaster can overcome that problem by balancing opponents appropriately. Overall, Star Wars has a tremendously well-developed setting and a lot of variety, and the West End Games version nails it very nicely.

Deadlands: The Weird West
The original "Weird West" roleplaying game and still one of the most satisfying roleplaying experiences around. The game is set in an alternative history of the 19th Century, when, at the point of the American Civil War, a Native American shaman inadvertently released Lovecraftian forces of horror into the world. The dead rise, hideous spirits possess the living and horrific monsters appear to threaten the United States and indeed the entire world. Players can take on the role of local townsfolk trying to defend themselves, secret agents belonging to paranormal investigation organisations (the Pinkerton Detective Agency and the Texas Rangers), escaped slaves seeking revenge against the Confederates or anything inbetween. A robust rule system which treats combat like a poker game remains inventive twenty years on (now streamlined with the new Savage Worlds rules system, derived from Deadlands 1st Edition) and there is scope to treat the game like an outright horror game or a zany steampunk adventure with zeppelins and crazed inventors.

This is basically a game for people who appreciate the Lovecraftian approach to cosmic horror, but hate the nihilism and prefer to belief they can defeat eldritch forces from beyond the dawn of time with gatling guns, gyrocopters and steam cannons.

Call of Cthulhu: Go Mad & Die
On the flipside of that approach is Call of Cthulhu, the official roleplaying game of Lovecraftian horror. In this game you create paranormal investigators and set out to investigate strange goings-on in various parts of the world. The emphasis is on investigation, research, cooperation and collaborative storytelling: victory doesn't come through killing the monsters with shotguns, but through surviving with your limbs and sanity intact.

Call of Cthulhu has been hugely popular for thirty years for offering a very different experience to the power fantasies of games like D&D. The characters in Call of Cthulhu are far more fragile and more likely to end up dead, maimed or insane if they try to fight horrific monsters head-on. Defeating the forces of darkness requires brains, wits, intelligence and knowing when to make a strategic withdrawal. To be fair this game is not for everyone - watching D&D-raised power-gamers trying to hack their way through the game and getting angry when they realise they can't can be an uncomfortable experience - but for those who enjoy the tension and the horror, it's a gripping experience.

World of Darkness: Be a Vampire, Drink Blood, Have Fun
This isn't a roleplaying game, but rather a family of interrelated games which share a common background and setting. The best-known of these is Vampire: The Masquerade, which allows you (spoiler alert) to play vampires, with additional rulebooks allowing you to play werewolves, mages, mummies, wraiths etc. Essentially this is a game which allows to play as the "bad guys", but also explores these cultures to reveal a great deal of nuance and complexity.

If you want to play an urban fantasy RPG, World of Darkness is the go-to choice, although there is some confusion due to the fact that there are two distinct versions of the setting and all of its sub-games. Paradox Interactive recently bought the entire setting and seem to be considering a revamp of the whole line, which would be welcome. But if you want to play a vampire and engage in vampire-based shenanigans in a very well-realised world, this is the ideal choice.

Numenera: Be Weird, Be Wonderful
Numenera is, essentially, Dying Earth: The Roleplaying Game (which actually exists as a small, intriguing game from Pelgrane Press). Set a billion years into the future when nine great ages of human civilisation have come and gone and aliens (from both other planets and other universes) have settled on Earth, the game features one of the most vivid and interesting settings to emerge in recent years. The game has magic, although it's really ultra-advanced science and technology, and offers an intriguing balance between traditional D&D-style roleplaying and something far weirder.

Originally launched through Kickstarter, the game is now expanding with a second edition (but don't call it a second edition) which seeks to give players more of an ability to change the world. It's an interesting, original game which takes Jack Vance's original Dying Earth setting and revamps it with a lot new ideas and atmosphere.

There's a lot more out there, of course. There's the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying title from Green Ronin for those who want to fulfil their Game of Thrones fantasies. There's the newly-released Starfinder SF game from Paizo Publishing or its spiritual predecssor from the old TSR days, Alternity (complete with its StarCraft RPG spin-off). There's a whole family of Warhammer 40,000 RPGs from Fantasy Flight (which are sadly quickly going out of print). There's an intriguing RPG about godlike superheroes in a fantasy realm in Exalted. Deadlands has a post-apocalyptic, far-future sequel game called Hell on Earth. There's a generic universal roleplaying system called, er, GURPS, which can be used to play everything from cyberpunk to adventures on Terry Pratchett's Discworld (and was used by Steven Erikson and Ian Esslemont to create the Malazan world). There's the Shadowrun roleplaying game, a fantastic setting which is still looking for a good rules system (and still not finding it). If you can find a copy, there's the bafflingly-out-of-print MechWarrior RPG if you like big stompy robots. There's the Judge Dredd RPG from Mongoose Publishing for those who want to Be The Law, as well as the classic space opera Traveller game, which has been around for almost as long as D&D, not to mention the madness-inducing Paranoia (trust no one!).

There's a lot of roleplaying goodness out there and a lot to choose from. It's a good time for the field and a good time to get involved.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs. The Cities of Fantasy series is debuting on my Patreon feed and you can read it there one month before being published on the Wertzone.

Get tons of PATHFINDER books for just $18

The Humble Store is running a promotion where you can get a lot of Pathfinder roleplaying books if you pay more than the average donation ($17.05 at present). Given that the books separately are worth $354, this is a bit of a no-brainer even if you already own a couple of the books.

Paying that amount of money gets you:

• The Pathfinder Core Rulebook
• The GameMastery Guide
• The Digital Beginner Box
• Player Character Folio
• GM Screen
• Advanced Class Guide
• Advanced Player's Guide
• Inner Sea World Guide
• Strategy Guide
• Bestiary
• Bestiary 2
• Ultimate Equipment
• Ultimate Magic
• Ultimate Campaign
• Ultimate Combat
• Inner Sea Poster Map Folio
• Adventure Path: In Hell's Bright Shadow
• Adventure Path: Turn of the Torrent
• Adventure Path: Dance of the Damned
• Scenario: Between the Lines
• Scenario: Year of the Sky Key Megapack (23 adventures)

If you pay $25 or more (plus shipping), you also get the physical copy of the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box.

On top of all of that you can also get the Inner Sea Primer and Guild Guide free if you sign up to the Paizo newsletter.

As is normal in Humble Bundle deals, a chunk of what you pay will go to charity as well. The deal is running for the next two weeks.

Steven Erikson hints that a MALAZAN RPG might be on its way

In his regular Q&A over on Tor.com, Steven Erikson has said (Q.21) that there are serious talks underway to adapt the Malazan universe to a pen-and-paper RPG game based on the D20 series (using rules similar to the 3rd Edition of Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder).

"As for the encyclopedia, well, it seems that we might end up going through the back-door on this one, as we’re in serious talks with a RPG 20D group who are keen to adapt the Malazan universe to a game. If this goes ahead, well, it will of necessity involve a release of all the relevant maps and game-notes presently occupying a cardboard box in my garage, and those from Cam as well. Said project demands full disclosure, don’t you think? Although, that said, the eventual release of everything could end up as instalments, expansion packs, etc. Still, it does mark an opening of the flood-gates."

No deal has been signed yet, so nothing is confirmed, but Erikson indicated that he and Ian Esslemont would release all of their background material, including maps, for use with the game. No word was given on which company was interested in publishing the game.

THE GAMERS III needs fan support

In the past I have spoken positively about Dead Gentleman Productions and their excellent fan-made, low-budget Gamers movies. Fans have waiting for a third movie in the series for some five years now. Rather than continue to slowly accrue the budget necessary to make a third film, Dead Gentleman have gone directly to the fans through a Kickstarter campaign.

The Gamers: Hands of Fate picks up several years after the events of Dorkness Rising. The same cast of characters returns, this time determined to master a new game (a collectible card game) and overcome some more personal issues whilst continuing their roleplaying campaign (and attempting to finally destroy their arch-nemesis, the Shadow). Part of the movie will be filmed at GenCon 2012, the largest roleplaying and CCG convention in the world.

The first two Gamers films are probably the best and most accurate representations of roleplaying put to film. They certainly knock the official D&D movies into a cocked hat, and are extremely funny on their own terms (the undead roast chicken and the wall of bard corpses both have to be seen to be believed). Contributing to this project or spreading the word can only be a good thing.

Note: for those unfamiliar with the Kickstarter concept, people pledge to support the project through a monetary sum. However, no money is collected until the project passes its target. If it does not make it, the project fails and no money is collected. With Kickstarter projects it is important to check the previous form of the company proposing the project to assess their integrity. In this case, Dead Gentleman Productions has been in operation for fourteen years, producing numerous fan films and webisodes, and has a large number of fans. They have a detailed plan on the Kickstarter page for how the film will be funded and how investors will be rewarded depending on the amount pledged.

BALDUR'S GATE II comes to Good Old Games

The Good Old Games website - which 'rescues' old PC games, makes them compatible with modern PCs and reissues them at competitive prices - has gotten around to releasing Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, one of the greatest (and largest) computer roleplaying games ever made. The GoG edition also comes with its huge expansion, Throne of Bhaal, included.

"The eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!"

GoG have been reissuing a large number of the old BioWare and Black Isle (now Obsidian) CRPGs and this completes the set. Also available are Icewind Dale (including its two expansions, Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster), Icewind Dale II (including it's 'adventure pack' containing new items), Neverwinter Nights (including its three expansions, Shadows of Undrentide, Hordes of the Underdark and Kingmaker) and the legendary Planescape: Torment, as well as the original Baldur's Gate (and its expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast). There's also Fallout and Fallout 2, for those fans of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas and want to see how the saga began.

The Baldur's Gate games and their expansions form one giant mega-game which will take you well north of 250 hours to complete and much more to see every possible permutation of characters, storylines and endings. If Planescape: Torment is The Book of the New Sun of computer RPGs, Baldur's Gate II is The Lord of the Rings, a vast epic of immense scope. It's the largest CRPG BioWare have ever made and probably ever will, and it was the inspiration for their own, later Dragon's Age series of games.

The best way for modern gamers to experience the series is using the Tutu mod, which allows Baldur's Gate and its expansion to be run in the Baldur's Gate II engine, which has superior graphics resolution and more features. You can also carry your BG1 character over to BG2 and continue the adventure through the entire series, which is highly recommended (even if it will take you a long, long time to do it).

The Worlds of D&D: Overview

Since its inception in the early 1970s, the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game has attracted millions of fans, both of the game itself and the numerous worlds that were created as settings for its adventures. After the demise of the original publishers, TSR, in 1997 and the sale of the game to Wizards of the Coast, most of those worlds were unceremoniously dumped, including the more quirky and original ones, in favour of the somewhat more traditional and popular 'basic' settings which became the bread and butter of the game's 3rd Edition (2000-2007). The new 4th Edition, launched last year, has proven highly controversial with fans but Wizards have won some support for their decision to resurrect some of the old, classic campaign settings for the new game.


The major D&D campaign settings (not counting one-offs produced for Dragon Magazine) were (in roughly chronological order):

• Blackmoor (1975), the home setting of co-creator Dave Arneson's games. A generic medieval campaign but with a Renaissance level of technology brought about by the discovery of a crashed spacecraft.
  
• Greyhawk (an adventure in 1975 and then a full boxed setting in 1978), the home setting of co-creator Gary Gygax's games. A generic medieval fantasy world, noted for its frequent wars.
  
• Mystara, the setting of the D&D Basic game, introduced in 1980. Blackmoor was later retconned into being part of this world. Mystara itself resembles the Earth of some 150 million years ago and is a hollow planet, with a whole other world on its inner surface accessible by tunnels at the poles.
• Ravenloft, a non-traditional setting invoking a sense of gothic horror and dread. Introduced as a single adventure in 1983, but later expanded to an entire world of darkness (cough), undead races, vampire rulers and general unpleasentness.
  
• Dragonlance, introduced in 1984 as D&D's answer to The Lord of the Rings, a world riven by a struggle between good and evil in which the players were heroes out to save the world. Gave rise to the multi-million-selling novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
• Kara-Tur was created in 1985 as the setting for the Oriental Adventures line of products which introduced martial arts and other eastern ideas to the D&D game. The setting was later retconned into the Forgotten Realms world.
• Lankhmar (originally published in 1985) is, perhaps surprisingly, one of only two officially licensed D&D settings. Based on Frit Lieber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, it is set on the world of Newhon and principally the city of Lankhmar.
• Forgotten Realms is the most popular D&D setting. Originally published in 1987, the setting is a high-magic, highly-detailed medieval fantasy world which has become the 'default' D&D setting, despite some changes to the basic D&D rules. The Realms have continuously been in print since 1987, making it most closely-supported setting for the game, and have given rise to the best-selling Dark Elf series of novels by R.A. Salvatore and Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights series of computer games from BioWare and Black Isle/Obsidian.
• Spelljammer, introduced in 1989, is probably the barmiest D&D setting, featuring sailing ships which can cross the interstellar void to other worlds. A mixture of high magic, medieval weaponry and retro-space opera, the setting was not commercially popular but has legions of diehard fans who liked its craziness.
• Dark Sun (1991) is sometimes regarded as the most approachable of D&D's 'non-traditional' settings. It is set on the post-apocalyptic world of Athas, where a vast magical war has transformed the planet into a baking desert world gradually being swallowed by a vast sea of silt. Magic as is known elsewhere in the D&D multiverse does not exist, with 'defilers' instead drawing on the life-force of living creatures to create magical effects. There are also no gods, and psionic powers are preferred over magical ones. Despite strong rumours they were considering it, Wizards of the Coast mildly surprised the fanbase when they recently announced that Dark Sun would be resurrected for the new 4th Edition of the game.
• Al-Qadim (1992) is an Arabian-flavoured D&D setting, featuring genies, scimitars, corsairs, evil viziers and other Arabian Nights-flavoured elements. Set on the continent of Zakhara which was officially located in a remote part of the Forgotten Realms world, Al-Qadim has built up a strong fan following over the years but has been largely ignored since the late 1990s.
• Masque of the Red Death (1994) is another horror setting which uses the rules laid out in Ravenloft, but rather than the Demiplane of Dread the setting is 'Gothic Earth', an alternate-history version of our own world in the 19th Century incorporating magic and non-human creatures.
• Planescape (1994) was not a new setting as such, but a setting developed out of the multi-dimensional cosmology that D&D had been using for over a decade and a half by this point. Featuring numerous factions and ideological concepts, the setting attempted to move vigorously away from the traditional elves 'n' orcs of many of the other settings in favour of something new, a setting that challenged many of the underlying ideas of the whole game and forced players to confront the ethical realities of their decisions. The setting also favoured roleplaying over combat. With a unique art style not shared by any other D&D product, the setting was a massive critical and artistic success but proved to be somewhat on the highbrow side of things for most players, and did not sell as well as could be hoped. It was soon discontinued, but later gave rise to one of the single greatest computer roleplaying games ever made, Planescape: Torment.
• Council of Wyrms (1994) was a very short-lived setting which allowed players to control dragons as player-characters. Despite a strong concept, the limitations of what a dragon can do compared to a human player outside of combat soon presented themselves and there were no expansions, although it was briefly reprinted by Wizards of the Coast in 1999.
  
• Birthright (1995) was another 'traditional' cod-fantasy setting, but had a unique spin to it: the players are painted as the rulers of a powerful kingdom or faction, and between quests have to deal with the day-to-day running of their kingdom and its place in the world, fighting wars and dealing with economic factors. Essentially a D&D campaign crossed over with a board game. The split focus proved challenging and the setting was later abandoned, but interestingly some of its ideas, more cohesively presented, have found their way into the two later Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying games by Guardians of Order and Green Ronin.
• Rokugan (2001) was a second Asian-themed fantasy setting, licensed from the Legends of the Five Rings roleplaying game. It was used in the Oriental Adventures book published for D&D 3rd Edition and several associated adventures, but was not expanded upon, and the licence later reverted to the creators.
• Eberron (2004) is the newest D&D campaign setting, introduced specifically for 3rd Edition and featuring a traditional world with somewhat more advanced technology than is standard, including magical robots ('warforged') and some elements of industrialisation. The setting has proven fairly popular and is the official setting for the Dungeons and Dragons Online computer game.

At this current time, Wizards of the Coast are continuing to support both Forgotten Realms and Eberron through new products for the 4th Edition of D&D. It has been officially announced that Dark Sun will be resurrected for 2010, with a strong chance that Dragonlance will follow in 2011 and Greyhawk for 2012. Planescape and Ravenloft have been absorbed into the base cosmology of the D&D multiverse and will apparently appear as adventures and as asides in the rulebooks, but probably not as fully-blown campaign settings in the future.


Hopes that Mystara, Spelljammer and Birthright will reappear seem somewhat premature so far, but if the new version of Dark Sun is a big success it is possible we will see other settings revisited. The new 4E business model is also more favourable to these old, less commercially popular settings. In the old days, TSR would release a boxed set featuring the setting and then follow it up with lots of expansions, adventures and novels. The new model instead only has three products released for each setting: a general campaign book, a player's guide and a single adventure. Other material is then released online via the D&D Insider website, based on the sales of the physical books.

Future instalments of this series will visit some of these individual worlds and finds out what made them tick, what made them work (or in some cases fail rather badly) and whether we will see them again in the new edition of the game.

New Song of Ice and Fire RPG on its way!

Green Ronin, publishers of many popular roleplaying games such as the True 20 system, are about to release a new RPG based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. A previous RPG, based on the D20 system, was released to great acclaim by Guardians of Order in 2005 but the company went bust shortly thereafter. The new game uses an original rules set developed specially for the setting.

The first release will be the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying core rulebook, due out at the start of March. This will be followed in April by the Narrator's Kit, which includes a gamemaster's screen (depicting the Wall), a 16-page adventure and a map of Westeros. In the summer will follow Peril at King's Landing, a full-scale adventure set during one of King Robert Baratheon's tourneys, and the massive 256-page Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide, a substantial resource for both gamers and also general fans of the series. Because of the delay in publication of these books, Green Ronin have already done substantial work on some follow-up products, including ones that will allow very different types of games to be played. The default model has the players representing their own House in the game of thrones, but these new expansions will also cover campaigns set amongst the Night's Watch amongst others. Green Ronin hope to start releasing these new books as early as the autumn.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition: Player's Handbook

Reviewing is something of a solitary habit, so it's good when an opportunity arises to test something with five friends over an extended period of time. In this case, it was the new, fourth iteration of the Dungeons and Dragons pen-and-paper roleplaying game (actually it's the seventh, but we won't dwell on that). I got into playing D&D back in school with 2nd Edition about fourteen years ago and we got used to changing rules systems every few years: we took on board a lot of changes from the '2.5' rules set (the Player's Option/DM's Option books), gratefully changed over to 3rd Edition and incorporated some, but not all, of the 3.5 edition rules as well. Along the way we have played many other RPGs, running from the World of Darkness games through the splendid Deadlands, the old-school Robotech, Cyberpunk, Star Wars (West End rules, obviously) and a number of the D20 games, including Wheel of Time, Judge Dredd and Babylon 5.

Let there be no mistake, D&D 4th Edition has been the most controversial new edition in the game's history. The flamewars on various Internet sites have been something to behold, with the fans of 4E accused of being simplistic morons who want to turn the game into World of WarCraft and the antis accused of being terrified of change. The change-over from 2nd to 3rd Edition, which was pretty controversial at the time, had absolutely nothing on this. I'm trying to take a balanced view in my approach and sum up what I find to be good and bad with the game.

First off, even the most ardent fans of 3rd Edition had to admit there were substantial flaws with the game. Preperation time for DMs was quite high, characters ascended levels very quickly unless you constantly gave them weak opponents to fight or changed the XP tables, and although the core classes and prestige classes were nicely balanced, some of the prestige classes in the add-on books were broken. In addition, multiclassing, although a vast improvement on the abomination of 2nd Edition, still didn't work as well as it should have done. The changes for 3.5 fixed some of these issues but a lot of the core problems remained.

4th Edition does successfully answer some of these issues. Level advancement is now very slow. After four sessions and killing dozens of enemies between us and achieving several major story and campaign goals, we still hadn't hit 2nd Level. Making a campaign last a decent, long time with 4E isn't an issue, which is good. We didn't get a chance to test multiclassing in the game, but the way it works does seem to be reasonable, giving you some major abilities from another class without totally destroying your levelling rate in your primary class, leaving you underpowered compared to the rest of the party. Preperation time for DMs is also much reduced. In fact, 4E seems to be a lot easier for DMs to prepare campaigns for all-round, thanks to the completely different track that monsters and NPCs work under, and that is a good thing as well. Unfortunately, character generation, which was supposed to be streamlined for this edition, still takes about as long as 3E. Although 3E's confusing morass of skills has been streamlined (a good idea, although some extremely useful skills were lost in the process) and the feats have been toned down, the new class powers have replaced them.

Some sacred cows have been killed along the way, which although admirably bold does lead one to ponder if the resulting game can be called D&D any more. The Vancian magic system is out. Given it was one of the cornerstones of the game, it's a pretty radical change. Some people hated it as being illogical, but the variation on it they brought in for 3E worked pretty well in my opinion, and many iconic spells are now gone. In fact, spells don't exist any more. They're either wizard or cleric powers they can use at will, once per combat or once per day, or they're 'rituals'. It's a very interesting idea that more or less works, but it does feed into the overwhelming 'balance' problem of the game, which I'll come to momentarily. Other big changes including the temporary removal of some core classes and races, but it's okay as they'll be back in another book you can pay more money for, the permanant removal of others (the new system doesn't really allow for sorcerers, for example) and the new way healing is approached. Fed up with the cleric being treated as the party medpack, the creators have changed things so that every character can heal 25% of their hit-points at will, several times a day or once per combat. Clerics and paladins can do a bit more healing than that, but essentially PCs are going to stay on their feet a lot longer than in 3E.

Then there is the 'balance' issue. Balancing is important in a game. No-one wants to have a character who's special skills only come into play once a day and they spend the rest of the time bored whilst everyone else takes care of business. The problem is that D&D was never that sort of game. I've read horror stories of 2E and 3E games where the wizard would simply fire off their one magic missile a day or whatever and take no further part in the game, and the player would end up feeling bored. All I can say is that any DM who ran a game like that should be shot. Keeping your players engaged in the game is vital, and I've lost track of the number of times my 1st Level party was about to be obliterated only for the wizard to save the day with a sleep spell or a fine piece of negotiation aided by a charm spell. Unfortunately, WotC's quest for balance has been too successful with 4th Edition. There is now zero difference between one class and another. A wizard hangs back and pelts the enemy with limitless magic missiles for similar damage that a ranger does with his bow or a warrior does with his sword. Mechanically, everyone is identical, they just approach the problems from different angles. Lots of people really like this, but I find it against the spirit of the game. One character being able to do something the others cannot is the whole point of assembling a party of different adventurers in the first place. That now feels redundant.

4th Edition is a good game. In fact, I look forward to the inevitable martial arts expansion for the game, as it could be the most successful depiction of martial arts in an RPG to date. The rules really lend themselves well to it. However, it's not really in the spirit of how our group plays D&D. We veer towards realism (including realistic use of shields, borrowed from the excellent Game of Thrones RPG, and the correct, damage-reducing application of armour) and 4th Edition veers towards cinematic exuberence. The DM said he enjoyed the fact that the game lent itself well to a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style of flamboyence. That's great, but our group doesn't particularly like to do that (maybe a result of several people in the group with a solid grasp of medieval history and weapons) in D&D. For us, 4th Edition felt like either a solid optional ruleset like the old 2nd Edition Player's Option books, or a completely different game. It is also inherently a high-magic game (even non-magical classes have magical or supernatural abilities) that will clash badly with people running a low-magic setting. Plus you cannot transfer characters from 3E to 4E. If you want to start a new campaign which is very heavy on combat in a high-magic setting and uses miniatures, then 4E is for you. If you don't, than the new system will likely be of no use whatsoever.

It's annoying because there is a lot of good stuff in 4E, but overall it doesn't feel like the next logical step forward in the rules, as the progression was from 1E to 3.5E. There's definitely some interesting ideas in there, but overall nothing that really warrants our group to permanantly switch from 3.5E. Obviously, each D&D group plays the game slightly differently, and 4E will no doubt appeal to other groups more than 3E and beginners will probably find it a lot of fun, but it didn't quite do the job for us. Fortunately, with several of the 3E designers now working on the Pathfinder D20 game, those hankering for new rules and material for 3E can still get it, so no longer is it a choice of "stick with old books for a dead system or get with the new rules," which is all to the good.

Some notes on the book itself: the font is quite large and the borders are huge, leading to a lot of wasted space compared to the busy 3E books or the crisp and efficient 2.5E ones. The art direction feels rather conservative compared to 3E, but the illustrations are good. The layout is horrendous, however, and the index is laughably bad. I was quite shocked at how difficult it was to find information in a hurry, as this is something previous editions of the game going back to the 2.5E revised rulebooks in 1995 had fully delivered. I also had a chance to look at the Monstrous Manual and was really surprised at how bad it was: stat-blocks, a picture and maybe a single paragraph of text and that was it, easily the worst iteration of the book to date (including that loose-leaf foldered 2E thing).

I'm not going to give a score to 4E D&D because it's a very subjective game. The things I outlined as being weaknesses for our group may very well be huge strengths for yours. I can only say that I was disappointed that the game didn't offer more to our group, but it is impossible for one game to appeal to everyone. The Dungeon and Dragons 4th Edition Player's Handbook is available now in the UK and USA from Wizards of the Coast.

The Grand History of the Realms by Brian R. James & Ed Greenwood

The history of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world is long and complex. Since the Realms first appeared in print in 1987, with the novel Darkwalker on Moonshae and the original first edition of the Forgotten Realms boxed setting, over 210 novels and dozens of game products have been published, each adding to the canon and history of the world. This doesn't include the extensive history and backstory built up by creator Ed Greenwood whilst he ran the Realms as his own private creation for the twenty years prior to that. Needless to say, the story and history of the Realms have become somewhat convoluted in the forty years they have existed.

According to the blurb, The Grand History of the Realms is supposed to detail the complete history of the Realms as explained in the novels, computer games and RPG ame products previously published. That claim has to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Lake Michigan. It's a suspiciously slim tome for such a grand endeavour, and indeed the events of many novels, sourcebooks, computer games and adventure modules go completely unmentioned in the book, making its worth somewhat dubious. More irritatingly, the book also fails to mention the sources for its dates and events. What is new material and what is old? What comes from existing game products and what comes from the novels? Combined with the lack of an index, this even further lessens the value of the book. Reading up on the Tuigan Invasion is cool, but if you want to delve further into the events, what novels do you read? What game products do you look up? The book doesn't give you any help on that score.

Of course, what makes this all the more irritating is that the original, free version of the book (assembled by Brian R. James when he was just a fan providing a resource to candlekeep.com) does annotate all of its dates with the source in question. And, seperately, other sourcebooks and Dragon magazine articles have provided dates for all of the novels. Combining these sources into the book and providing a more substantial tome would have been more useful.

Unfortunately, the book's biggest hindrance is that it is simply a timeline, not a narrative history, so if you want to read up on the history of Elminster, for example, you have to trawl through the entire book and pick up his story as you go (this is made all the more difficult as, ridiculously, Elminster's birth date is not mentioned either). A narrative history would put together Elminster's history in one chapter and set it in context among the greater history of the world. This book singularly fails to do that. There is also the issue that where certain dating contorversies have emerged, rather than come to some conclusion about each one, the writers have sometimes put in both conflicting dates. As a result some notable historical figures die in a civil war, only to die again in exactly the same civil war fourteen years later. Right.

The next problem is that the transition of the Dungeons and Dragons game from 3rd to 4th Edition, including the adoption of a completely new system of magic, means that the Realms have also got to change and rather than simply retcon the transition (as they did between 2nd and 3rd Edition) the game designers have decided to nuke the Realms by killing the Goddess of Magic (along with about fifty other deities), disrupting the magic system for the planet, nuking an entire continent for no logical reason and devastating several of the others (including Faerun, the main Realms continent). Oh yeah, and they've also advanced the timeline by 104 years (meaning that about half the characters and NPCs in the Realms that fans are familiar with are suddenly dead of old age). Needless to say, many Realms fans aren't happy about this. You can probably hear the screaming over the Internet from here.

Finally, on the criticism front, the book uses a ton of recycled art, sometimes with wrong or incorrect captions, and some of it is from completely different settings with no relevance to the Realms (the unexplained presence of a warforged - a sort of killer robotic golem - from Eberron being a clear example).

The book does have some saving graces, however. A few loose ends left dangling from 2nd Edition in areas that were not addressed in 3rd (such as the outcome of the Sythillisian War between an empire of ogres and the human merchant kingdom of Amn) are finally resolved, and the timeline advances the current history of the Realms forward by about ten years (before the centry-long leap into 4th Edition), making it slightly easier for Dungeon Masters running games advancing in real time to keep track of what is going on. There's also some fine new pieces of Realmslore, such as the first-ever maps of the Imaskar Empire and the Kingdom of Jhaamdath, and an interesting map depicting the landmasses of Toril when they were just one huge supercontinent. Also, since the book doesn't introduce any new rules, it can be used happily by those who are playing either 3rd or 4th Edition, or even the die-hards still using older systems. That said, although the writers have gone to some lengths not to make it an obvious gaming product (no D&D logo anywhere on the book, encouraging sales to bookshops as well as gaming hobby stores), its worth for non-gamer fans of the Realms, such as perhaps readers of RA Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels or Paul S. Kemp's Erevis Cale books, is virtually nil due to the lack of focus on many of the events in the novels.

The Grand History of the Realms (**½) is therefore a failure, albeit an ambitious one, but some Forgotten Realms fans may appreciate it as a one-stop resource for researching some of the dates in the setting's history. The book is simply nowhere near as exhaustive or detailed as it needed and promised to be. The book is available from Wizards of the Coast in the UK and the USA.