søndag den 27. september 2015

Sword Coast Legends Early Access Review

I preordered Sword Coast Legends and since it has been delayed to October 20th, I had the opportunity to play the early access instead. I have many thoughts about the early access game, but I'll try to stick with my own expectations vs facts so that you can draw the conclusions yourself.



Expectation
I first started reading about Sword Coast Legends after playing Pillars of Eternity, a spiritual success to the RPG game Baldur's Gate. I enjoyed the character creation, universe, and beginning of Pillars of Eternity, but it was still only a single player game, and worse yet, it was a very difficult game, especially compared to Baldur's Gate. I lost countless battles and got frustrated that I had to keep reloading or had to play the game in a certain way for things to make sense or in a certain order in order for my party to survive the combat encounters. About half way through the game I stopped playing, and that's when I started reading about Sword Coast Legends.

My first impression of Sword Coast Legends was a game similar to Baldur's Gate but with two additional aspects. First of all, you didn't necessarily control the whole party. Other players could join and you could play through the game in the same way that you would play through a tabletop RPG adventure. Secondly, it was possible to play as the DM. You could create your own adventures and campaigns, and you could even be part of the game to add a more personalized feel to the game instead of just letting the AI run things. I immediately created the outline for an adventure before the early access.

One final thing I expected was that the game used 5th edition D&D rules. I expected the same classes, races, features, skills, feats, and spells.



Early Access
Last weekend I got access to the second early access. I logged in, all excited to play the game. First I created a character. You can choose between 5 of the iconic races from D&D 5th edition: Elf, Halfling, Dwarf, Human, Half-Elf, along with their respective subraces. My first character was a dwarf and my second was a human. There are 6 classes to choose from: Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard. My dwarf was created as a dwarven wizard while my human became a human fighter. There's a lot of customization about what your face looks like, hair color and style, even the color of your clothing. You also get to choose your starting weapon and armor. The class features I chose was Arcane for my dwarf and Champion for my human, focusing on Sure Strike with my human fighter. There are two skills (Search and Lock Picking), which are chosen with the same point system as your proficiencies and class features, so I opted to stay away from them.

I created my dwarf for the story mode and my human to run dungeon crawls. I wanted to start with seeing the early access of the story mode, but it was greyed out. I guess the story mode will first be available at launch. I therefore jumped into a solo dungeon run, mainly because I had no friends online and whenever I queued up, nothing happened. You get an array of options to create your randomized dungeon crawl. I decided to create a 2 level sewer dungeon filled with kobolds, and even changed the story so that it stated that the kobolds had set up a beachhead in the sewers under the city, which they were slowly destroying, and that it was my character's job to fight his way past the enemy line and destroy their headquarters before the city fell. I even added a quest where my character had to kill a certain amount of kobolds.

Dungeon crawl has never really been my thing, not even in tabletop RPGs, so as soon as I had completed the quest, I returned to the surface to turn it in. I didn't even clear the first sewer level of kobolds. The game restarted when I returned to the surface, leaving me a bit confused. I then decided to look into the DM aspect of the game and create the first encounter in the adventure I had planned.

In the DM toolbox I noticed that I couldn't change the map. The map of the Sword Coast would have to be the template for my adventure, so I changed the location of the city where the adventure began to be set somewhere in the High Forest. I then picked one of the available scenes, one set in a town. I found out that I could set this scene as the starting scene and that there were two accessible buildings. I started filling one of the buildings up with furniture so that it looked like a tavern. I put in the NPC and set up a quest. This is where I imagined that the game would begin. I had forgotten that the starting point was set to the scene overall, and not to the tavern, mainly because there was no option to set exactly where the players started in the scene. I then went outside and created the first encounter by placing 2 mercenaries that I renamed to brutes and changed their appearance. Not knowing the difficulty of the encounter, I simply guessed that two brutes would be good enough. Then I placed the second NPC outside, the one that would complete the quest after the brutes were dealt with. As soon as I placed the NPC, the brutes attacked him. I had forgotten to pause the game. I made some final adjustments and then I started up the encounter with my human.

My human started out in the street instead of inside the tavern. The brutes immediately attacked my character forcing me to kill them. The difficulty was way too easy compared to what I had planned. I went into the tavern, got the quest, but then I couldn't complete it because I had already killed the brutes. This is where my experience with the early access ended.






Future of the Game 
I have hopes and dreams for the future of this game, but in my experience things never go the way you expect them to. Still, here's my view of the future for the game, both short term and long term.

I expect that when the game is officially released it will contain a story mode. I'm hoping that the story mode will let you create an entire party and that you can add NPCs. If you want, you can then switch out partymembers of NPCs with other player characters and RP your way through the story mode. I expect them to create additional story modes, which you probably have to pay for. As long as the story modes they create have enough content and don't cost too much, I won't mind.

I expect that they will add additional races and classes, and hopefully more skills too. I don't expect the class features to change or that you will be able to customize the world even though that would be a sweet feature. I hope that the game evolves in the same direction as D&D 5th edition, but I expect it will take a life of itself and that in a few years it won't resemble D&D 5e anymore.

I expect the game will mostly be multiplayer dungeon crawls where people zerg through the content, although I hope it will be used more as a platform for internet tabletop roleplaying games, but I doubt it. My hope has always been to use this game to play D&D with friends and family who live on the other side of the world, but I guess I'll have to stick with Roll20 or Fantasy Ground.

I expect that they will release additional items, furniture, scenes, maps, quests, monsters, etc. I hope they will add scripts, because at the moment the AI is more simple than the one in Space Invaders. I expect all of this to cost money, which will be quite annoying, but hopefully it will come in bundles along with the additional story modes. If everything comes in such a package and that it doesn't cost too much, then I won't mind paying for it... if I actually play the game or use it to host my own sessions.

I had high hopes for the game, but after having played the Early Access, my expectations have been lowered, and I no longer expect to use the game in the same way that I had initially planned. My fingers are still crossed that it will be a great game to play.



Next week (week 40 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be writing about creating a campaign and setting with several gamemasters. We are starting a project in November/December after Extra-Life where we'll assemble a group of six D&D 5e players who will take turn being the gamemasters in the same setting/campaign. I'll tell you about my past experience with these types of games, how we set it up this time, and what my hopes and expectations are for this future project. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

lørdag den 19. september 2015

Creating a D&D world (Aresia)

Creating a world for D&D or any other roleplaying game is relatively simple. I created my first world when I was six years old. For decades the world evolved. The most important lesson I learned was that a world is not created by the DM, it is created by the players, their actions, and their choices. In the following article I will explain how I created my latest world known as Aresia.

The Birth of a New World
My previous world became so complex  that it spanned several ages. Players had played in every age, which was marked by major changes in the physical and magical laws. This was my way of explaining why the rules changed but the world remained the same. In other words, I played D&D, AD&D, D&D 3.5, even Pathfinder in the same world. When D&D 4th edition was released, it was no different. The physical and magical laws changed and thus the Fourth Age began.

I met my wife a few years before the release of 4th edition and she played in the 3rd Age of my world. This was her first experience playing Dungeons and Dragons, and she was overwhelmed by the amount of backstory present and felt left out when all the other players recognized things from past sessions. When I started planning the 4th Age of my world, she suggested that I created a new fresh world.


Instead of throwing away everything me and my players had ever created, I decided to create a sister world, a world where people escaped to in order to survive an elemental apocalypse caused by a time mage (most ages were explained by the Order of the Moon, an order consisting of time mages, chronomancers).

The first thing I did in order to create a new world was to find inspiration. You can find inspiration for campaigns, settings, and anything you want by simply taking the things you love the most. In my case I have always been fascinated by space, and by Mars. With Google Earth's Mars feature, I had access to a map of the planet, a map of my new world. All I had to do, was to choose a specific region and start terraforming the planet. Thus the Eridanian Region was born and the planet of Aresia (named after the god of war Ares) was created.

Evolving the World of Aresia
As I mentioned, a world is not created by the DM but by the players. I had a fresh world with people who's past came from the cradle of life, my largest world ever created. With a fresh world, I let my players roam. They went on adventures, played campaigns, built castles and cities, invaded countries and destroyed strongholds. To keep track of everything, I created a website. Through the stats that I logged I can now tell you that I hosted 10 different campaigns that ran 63 sessions over the course of 5 years. Throughout those years, the world evolved into what it has become today. With the release of 5th edition, the world of Aresia continued from the 4th Age into the 5th Age. Throughout the 63 games I hosted I formed a world by using 3 key aspects.

1 - what I created. I was the one who chose Mars as inspiration and the map I created was formed by my terraforming knowledge of a planet. I was the one who created many of the villages and cities along with a number of the adventures. I created the NPCs. I drew inspiration from previous ages, drawing deities, background history, factions, and many other similar things from my original world.

2 - what others created. I used the Points of Light from the 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guide to create the first adventure the players played. Throughout the edition I played Keep on the Shadowfell, Thunderspire Labyrinth, Shadowhaunt, Khyber's Harvest, Scales of War, and Tears of Ioun. All of the things that I used from those premade adventures and campaigns are things that were put into the template that I initially created.

3 - what my players created. With my template, and premade adventures, the only thing left, which was also the most important thing, was the players. Their choices and decisions would form the world. They decided where on Aresia they wanted to play, which factions had to evolve or be destroyed, what NPCs they wanted to follow and which ones they would leave behind. During the premade adventures, they made key decisions. After Keep on the Shadowfell, the players rebuilt the castle. Shadowhaunt was the basis for a cross-planar alliance that would build the Maetia, which eventually led to the changes in the physical and magical laws and thus created the 5th Age. The decisions the players made in the Scales of War has become the background to the Tyranny of Dragons, the greatest war the world has ever experienced.

The Next Age
What is the future of my world? How will it evolve? I have no idea. There are so many factors which is what makes tabletop roleplaying games so extraordinary. So far I've played through the Lost Mines of Phandelver, the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and used Rise of Tiamat to evolve my world. At Extra Life we'll be running the Princes of the Apocalypse, and only time will show how my world evolves.




Next week (week 39 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be writing about Sword Coast Legends, the new D&D 5th edition computer game. I'm spending this weekend playing the second Early Access, and the game itself will be released on September 29th. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

fredag den 11. september 2015

Extra Life 2015

Welcome, adventurer!

You're invited on our quest to raise money to help children in need. Extra Life is all about playing games and raising money to support Children's Miracle Network. With your help, we can slay monsters like cancer and cystic fibrosis. To support our fundraising efforts, we're running a 24 hour livestream D&D session for the big Extra Life game-day this year. Last year we raised $770, which was more than we had expected. This year, we'll try to beat that record and aim for $800.

On game-day we'll be playing a modified version of Princes of the Apocalypse set in my homebrew setting known as Aresia. Stay tuned for more information about characters, players, and updates to the obsidian portal website. I'll link the twitch streams we'll be using at a later date. Note that we'll be streaming from Saturday November 7th 2015 9:00 AM CEST until Sunday November 8th 2015 9:00 AM CEST.

You won't have to watch the whole 24 hours to follow the game. Every 4 hours we'll take a break, do a quick recap, and start up a new mini adventure that will last 4 hours. This way you can easily tune in at 4 hour intervals and still follow the game.

As a preview to the adventure, you can read one of the character's diaries, which will give you an insight into the character's past and personality, along with his thoughts about two of the other players.
 

What is Extra-Life?


Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local (USA) kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On November 7, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids all over the US. We are proud to have various danish gaming shops as our sponsors for this event. See more on our Extra-Life page.

Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf
Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf
Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf

Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf

Extra-Life 2014
It all started in the summer 2014. I was joking around with some of my players about having a D&D marathon, something in the lines of a 24 hour session. This was inspired by our summer game where we spent 3 days together in a house in the woods and played D&D 4th edition. A few days after talkign about running a marathon, Wizards of the Coast advertised that they were going to run a 25 hour livestream of a game for Extra-Life and that others could join their fundraising team and host their own marathon. I immediately jumped on the wagon and started preparing the game.

When I started reading about Extra-Life, I discovered that it was a fundraiser for childrens' hospitals in the US. This hit a soft spot because a few years ago I lost my son to HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome). My brother had also recently married his American girlfriend, and together they had moved to Alaska because they weren't allowed to live in Denmark, a country where we are privileged enough to have free healthcare. Both of these reasons fueled my desire to be part of Extra-Life.

The adventure I prepared was bassed on the newly released Tyranny of Dragons adventures for D&D 5th edition by Wizards of the Coast. I set up the event so that people could pay for a 4 hour spot, or even pay during the event to join as a player. Furthermore, donors could also influence the game in many other ways. Some donations were used to "add more fireballs to the game". Another very successful aspect of our first Extra-Life was our thresholds. The thresholds I set up was major ingame events. At first a key NPC named Akane joined the party. As we reached the various milestones on our way to our fundraising goal, the players encountered more and more powerful and key NPCs until they were finally allowed to actually play a single encounter as high level NPCs called the Angels of Death. In conclusion, our 2014 event was a success. We raised more money than we had expected and it was a fun experience for everyone involved.

 
Preparing for Extra-Life 2015
Our next major project is Extra-Life 2015. Last year we played the Tyranny of Dragons, and this year we'll be playing the Elemental Evil premade adventure called Princes of the Apocalypse, a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure written by Wizards of the Coast. Over the course of the next two months you will be able to follow our preparation for the event, including how we prepare the adventure and gather sponsors. We are already more than halfway through the preparations, so I'll use this blog to recap what we've done so far.

I started by purchasing and reading the Princes of the Apocalypse and decided to run it for Extra-Life 2015 just as I had run the Hoard of the Dragon Queen for Extra-Life 2014. I set up my Extra-Life page as I had done last year and started advertising it. As with the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I wanted to change Princes of the Apocalypse to suit my own homebrew world of Aresia, so I started working on the changes.

I set the events of Extra-Life 2015 ten year after the events of Extra-Life 2014, mainly so that players from last year could return with the same characters they had played with previously. I also decided to split up the adventure into smaller adventures so that it would be easier for both players and viewers to come and go during the event. This inspired me to modify the four elemental dungeons. The drawings in the back of the book were beautiful and fit perfectly to my idea of four elemental towers. I found the dungeon maps and bought them and then I started modifying them.

I have now modified 2 out of 4 elemental towers. Today or tomorrow I'll upload a video on how I populated the second elemental dungeon on Roll20. I'm still missing 2 characters, 2 dungeons, a world map, and to modify some of the text so that I can easily find the necessary information in the premade adventure.


Gathering sponsors
One of the biggest differences between last year and this year is our sponsors. It doesn't hurt to ask, so I called various gaming shops in Denmark to see if they were interested in sponsoring us. 4 out of 4 shops were interested in sponsoring us with giveaways. Due to the interest in our event we started working on material for our current and potential sponsors. We decided to create 3 items and seek a variety of sponsors.

Item 1: First of all we started creating a poster that the shops could put up as advertisement for the event. We are currently also planning on putting this poster up in libraries and around our local community. We're planning to print 25 of these posters.

Item 2: Secondly we started creating a flyer that the shops could have on their counters and that customers could take with them. We are currently also planning on leaving these flyers in libraries and around our local community. We're planning to print 100 of these flyers.

Item 3: Thirdly we've been looking at how to do a giveaway. The largest sponsoring we're seeking are items that we can use as giveaways. The company that I work for was willing to give me resources to print out the posters and flyers, but the various shops we've contacted have all shown an interest in sending us giveaways. We've decided to devide giveaways into three categories.

Items worth 200 DKK or less will be given away to a random viewer after one of our 4 hour interval breaks on game-day.

Items worth 200-1,000 DKK will be given away to a random donor who has donated $20 or more. This requires donors to write down a means for us to get in contact with them when they donate, which they can do secretly to me so that their contact information isn't public. Between 8 and 9 AM sunday morning, we'll go through the donors and announce the winner.

Items worth more than 1,000 DKK will be given away to a random donor IF we reach our $800 goal. This requires donors to write down a means for us to get in contact with them when they donate, which they can do secretly to me so that their contact information isn't public. Between 8 and 9 AM sunday morning, we'll go through the donors and announce the winner.

As a little bonus, we'll show on our livestream which companies are sponsoring our giveaways, which will serve as a bit of free advertisement for them.


At first we sought sponsors at roleplaying shops in Denmark. We have since then expanded to gain sponsor from other companies. The armatur company that I work for have also sponsored us by giving us resources to print the posters and flyers. We're also planning on expanding our search for sponsors to other gaming shops, libraries, and various local associations. Stay tuned for the next 2 months as we prepare for the event.



Next week (week 38 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be introducing my Dungeons and Dragons world called Aresia, which is where we've set our Extra Life event. I'll explain how the world started out and how it has evolved. I'll give you links to how I'm sharing information about my world with players and how I plan to use it for Extra Life. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

lørdag den 5. september 2015

The Beginning

Throughout the years I've always tried to stay up to date with the newest rulesets for tabletop roleplaying games, along with new technology. I'm well aware that I'm falling behind but I've decided to take the next step and set up an account, not only for myself but for our whole group, which will cover all the new social medias such as Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, and even blogs, more specifically this blog.

Who are we?
Our team currently only consists of two people. PinkPulse and myself, Jay. I personally have about 24 years of experience with tabletop roleplaying games, mostly Dungeons and Dragons. Recently I saw a posting for a job position as a professional Game Master. Looking through the requirements it dawned on me that I did not live up to the use of new technologies and I've decided to do something about it. I'm 30 years old with a lot of experience to share, and friends and family who might want to join me in this endeavor by sharing their experiences through GameMastersDK.

This includes my wife PinkPulse. She is already very active on social medias and she has 7 years of roleplaying experience. Her insight into roleplaying games is quite unique, and she has always wanted to add articles and videos that covered a more roleplaying aspect. With her on this team, we'll be able to provide two very different points of views (many years vs few years; male vs female; creative vs organized; etc)

What is this blog going to be about?
We'll be writing articles (to this blog) and uploading videos (to youtube), many of which PinkPulse will probably be catering to. She has a lot of ideas for crafts, helpful articles, reviews, etc. I myself will try to write at least one article per week, something that you will hopefully enjoy and share with friends and family. I'll try to create one vlog per week as well, which will cover what I've been doing throughout the week concerning rolegames.

Furthermore you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where we'll upload updates whenever we start doing something concerning roleplaying. We also have a Twitch account, mainly for our next large project, but it might be used for other things in the future as well.

What's our next large project?
Our next large project is a 24 hour livestream game of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition played over Roll20 for Extra Life. Extra Life is a fundraiser for childrens' hospitals in the US. We have both lost a child and we are privileged in living in a country where we didn't have to think about the financial aspect of fighting for our child's life. Afterwards we could mourn in peace without having to deal with bills. Not everyone has the same privilege, and in the US many have to pay large sums of money to give their dying child a fighting chance. So join us, donate to affect the game, spread the word, watch us play, save children, and follow us on social medias to see how this project slowly develops into the game that will be played in November 7th. For more information check out my Extra Life page. 



Next week (week 37 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be introducing our Extra Life project and go into details about how we've been preparing for the event with sponsors, posters, and flyers. I'll explain how I've been creating maps and adventures, and how we've been planning the event as a whole. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.