Apathy Blogs

Lost City by Logan Bonner

As a patron for Open Design‘s Lost City I am slightly biased. I wasn’t really involved in pitching ideas however; my patronage was really more of a pre-order. A sign of my faith that Open Design would deliver an excellent adventure for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Logan Bonner does not disappoint.

In a way Lost City brings a taste of classic Dungeons and Dragons to the latest edition. Inspired by such classics as B4: The Lost City and S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Out in the desert, there is a ruined city. Not just any old city, but the wreckage of a once flying city. What treasures await inside? Will the characters befriend the inhabitants still living within, or destroy them? Much of the destiny of the city is left in the character’s hands.

The main inhabitants of city are the Oklu, a race of reptilian humanoids. Servitors to the original builders of the lost city, the Oklu will likely become both allies and obstacles to the characters as they explore. The factions of Oklu are split on how to protect their sacred home. The characters are likely to upset the balance of power. They could unite the Oklu and restore the city to its former glory or just as easily spark a civil war as they plunder it.

My favorite section of the adventure are the hanging gardens. A portion of the city fell upside down. Now plants hang from the floors of the city. Exploring from upside down building to building will be require great athleticism or the aid of magic. Just be careful not to fall when fighting off the insectoid hive that made the area their home.

If you are looking looking for an excellent paragon tier adventure for Dungeons and Dragons, Lost City is a must buy. It could easily be adaptable to Dark Sun or any other setting with a large unexplored desert. Lost City is what adventures are all about.

Apathy Rating: 5/5.

When I was fairly young my older sister’s friend told me about Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t really remember much of what she told me, only that by the end of that summer I wanted to play. I had some experience delving into dungeons as my favorite computer game was Hack, a rogue-like game that later evolved into Nethack. It was a very old school RPG, where magic items were identified through trial and error, or the lucky use of an identify scroll. When you died you got your name on a high score list and started all over again from level 1. Monsters get harder and harder the deeper you go. The dungeon was randomly generated each time, so no two games were a like. Ok, I need to stop talking about how awesome Nethack is so I can move on to the actual point of this article.

My birthday is in the fall and I asked for Dungeons and Dragons for my birthday. I didn’t get it. My mother wasn’t certain about it, so she bought me the Middle-Earth Role-Playing Game (MERP) instead. She’d read The Hobbit, so she figured it couldn’t be too bad. It was based on Role-master, which is not a beginner’s game. It was a great read and had fantastic art though. I don’t think I ever played a real game of it though, although I know I made some characters.

Shortly thereafter I convinced her to let me get actual Dungeons and Dragons. I think I started with the AD&D Player’s Guide (First edition, but we didn’t call it that since the second edition was a long way off). I shortly thereafter had the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set (Red Box), the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide and In Search of Adventure (A collection of adventure modules B1-9). I only had myself and my cousin to play with, but that was enough to keep us going for a couple years. We didn’t have anyone older to play with or teach us the rules. We just read the books and muddled our way through.

So now I have a niece and nephew. They aren’t quite as old as I was when I started, but they are the age many of my friends started gaming. Their father is also a gamer, but he’s concerned about introducing true violence to his children this early. I can’t blame him, D&D is about murdering people and taking their stuff. Still, sometime soon I’d like to get them an introductory RPG product.

Wizards of the Coast has recently released A 4th Edition Starter Kit (in a red box). From what I hear it isn’t really a complete game. It doesn’t have a standard character creation rules book, it has a choose your own adventure thing that walks them through character creation. That’s neat to include, but a little red player’s guide would have been handy. I’m not convinced this is a good stand-alone starting set. It’s designed to get you to buy other books, not to be a complete package for more than 1 level of adventuring.

I am really curious about Green Ronin’s Dragon Age RPG. It looks like a better boxed set, with a complete game that is fairly rules light compared to 4th Edition D&D. If they were about 5 years older I’d be tempted to get it for them, except the dark in “Dark Fantasy” is probably not age appropriate. I would have to read through the book myself before getting it for them.

My love of Doctor Who makes me want to check out Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. It has an advantage in that the Doctor never carries a weapon, and always tries to resolve things peacefully. Monsters may exist, but talking to them is usually an option. How many times has the Doctor tried reasoning with the Daleks? Of course, the price point is such that I can’t just casually get it for them on a whim. Still, it might be a strong possibility for a Christmas gift.

I also keep thinking that Traveller RPG could work with some guidance. Sure, there is the possibility for fighting space pirates. On the other hand, my brother-in-law will likely be running a game for them. You can easily run a more Star Trek The Next Generation style game that focuses more on peaceful exploration of the galaxy. Not quite the out of the box experience, but still quite possible.

So it should be noted that other than Traveller, I don’t own any of the above products myself. I’d certainly like to try them out sometime. Does anyone else have a suggestion for a less violent starting RPG? I really want something that is self-contained in no more than two or three books. It’s kind of too bad Bunnies and Burrows is out of print. Maybe I’ll just get them Squirrel Attack! instead.

As you probably don’t know, I co-wrote Temple of Outsiders, a module for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It wouldn’t be fair for me write a review of my own work, but a few reviews are now available at paizo.com and RPG Now.

Writing and putting together a module is quite an experience. It gave me a great respect for the work that other writers and publishers put into their products. We learned a lot that will make creating our next module much more efficient. I want to thank everyone who helped work on the project. I want to doubly thank any of you who check it out!

So I wanted to wait a little while to really get a feel for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons before writing a review of it. I know that many have mixed feelings about the new version, especially so soon after 3.5 came out. I do find it interesting that do to the Open Gaming License 3.x will live on in other companies through the likes of True 20, Pathfinder RPG, and other 3rd party projects. So if you decide that 4th Edition is not for you fear not, there will be plenty of d20 products for the foreseeable future. I also highly recommend anything by Monte Cook which you can read more about at his page.

Enough about other products though, you’d like to hear about Dungeons and Dragons. First off, the new edition definitely takes the game in a new direction. So how much you like the game will depend a lot on whether or not you like the new direction. While the transition from 2nd to 3rd edition felt like a natural progression from DnD’s roots, 4th edition feels very new. It has been streamlined and balanced so that everyone has roughly equal power during combat. It definitely feels as though most of the non-combat has been stripped from the game. Skills are trimmed down a lot, being more similar to 2nd edition proficiencies than 3rd edition skills. You have two to six skills, which have much broader definitions now, and the bonus is determined by your level and the associated attribute. Just about everything else has a direct bearing on combat.

Every class has the same progression of powers as each other. So I do worry how they will manage to keep expanding new classes and keep them feeling different. On the other hand, they do an excellent job of keeping every player involved during combat. There is also a definite teamwork feel to things. As we played we discovered that our actions interacted with each others turns a lot more than they used to. As an example, I once placed a storm cage around a dragon with my mage. The rogue then used a positioning strike to push one of the nearby minions into the cage instead of the sneak attack he planned on using.  You really get the sense of working together. I’m not sure how well it scales down to few players though, it is designed for groups between four and six. I know this isn’t usually a problem for my current group, but I remember the days when I would play with just one or two others.

From a game master’s perspective the game is certainly easier to manage. Monsters are a lot simpler to put together, even NPCs with class levels. Instead of fleshing out a full character, which is definitely a lot faster at higher levels than it used to be, you just pick one or two powers at close to the level of the npc. It is a great improvement over spending labourous hours building up an npc in 3.5, only to have it be killed in a few rounds of combat. Even if you want to spend time preparing fully fledged characters, the creation process is streamlined and a lot easier.

So as much as I’d like to gripe about how messed up things are in the new version, I have to say I’ve enjoyed playing it. It won’t be for everyone, because it definitely is a different game. But if someone else had published it and given it a different name, I’d have to recommend looking into it. It may not be what you are looking for, but it is definitely a fine game.

In an unrelated note, I have recently acquired a large collection of older games. Expect to see reviews of some old classics, plus updates on the latest versions of these, in the near future.

Apathy Rating: 3/5