Fellow role-players, I've received my hardcopy of the D20 Fantasy Craft book, and here are some first impressions. Like Pathfinder, it's intended as an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition for gamers who prefer the D&D3.5 Open Game License and related rules sets. SpyCraft 2.0 is one of the best modern/espionage games since TSR's TopSecret: S.I.

The bad: The 400-page tome has a list price of $50, but you can get it for less online. Although it's a D20 book, there are enough subsystems that Fantasy Craft isn't immediately compatible with D&D3.x materials, and there isn't as much support yet for this game as there is for, say, "Pathfinder" (which has now moved up to No. 2 in RPG sales).

Character creation is also a bit more complicated than other D&D variants, with origin specialties, base classes, and expert classes replacing the more conventional class/prestige class or occupation/path options. There are enough minor changes to feats, spells, and items that imbalances might creep in.

The good: Combat is more streamlined than in D&D4e or Pathfinder, and the four-page character sheet includes most of the information players should need, potentially reducing flipping pages during a session.

I like being able to play and run from a single book, as with the D20 Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Ed. and Star Wars: Saga Edition games.

Some class options are more focused on social situations than on combat, which I know won't please everyone but encourage some party specialization and cooperation. Talents, feat trees, heroic paths, and skill-based spells should be familiar to Saga Edition and "M&M"2e players.

Speaking of compatibility, Fantasy Craft has relatively few examples of monsters and magic items, but it does provide guidelines for converting them from other D20 games. There are also good rules on poisons, traps, and worldbuilding that I'll probably end up using.

The bottom line: The Boston-area "F.B.I." face-to-face group is still using D&D4e, and the "Holy Steel" teleconferencing team has moved to Pathfinder, so I don't see us needing Fantasy Craft anytime soon. However, I would consider it (and Warriors & Warlocks for "M&M"2e) for future miniseries or to supplement longer-term D20 fantasy campaigns.

Here are links to some reviews:

http://www.crafty-games.com/node/348
http://www.penandpapergames.com/foru...ad.php?t=12248
http://gamecryer.com/2009/09/25/fantasy-craft/
http://www.robotviking.com/2009/09/1...your-d20-game/
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_review...ducts_id=63884
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=468327

For the Pathfinder fans out there, coming after the well-received Core Book and Bestiary are the Game Master's Guide and Advanced Player's Guide. Happy gaming, -Gene

P.S.: I've posted the following poll on the Yahoo/eGroups site -- vote in the Polls section! Which of these alternatives to "Dungeons & Dragons" Fourth Edition interests you most?

-D&D3.5 or older editions
-D20 FantasyCraft
-D20 fantasy using Star Wars: Saga Edition
-GURPS 4e Lite and Fantasy
-Pathfinder (a.k.a. "D&D3.75")
-Savage Worlds
"True20 Fantasy
-Warriors & Warlocks for D20 Mutants & Masterminds 2e
-Another rules set -- comment on message board
-I prefer D&D4e.

>>Another review of Pathfinder.
>>Might this have the right balance beyond PF and D&D4e? Fantasy Craft.

>The character creation and class diversity seems to be a strong point -- but we've never really struggled with that in 3.5. Likewise, attacks of opportunity -- they suck, but do we really want to completely deny people the ability to move when threatened? Magic as points/skill system seems fine, it just depends on how it's done.
>I do like Spycraft's way of doing critical hits -- the better you are, the bigger the range of rolls you can crit on, but you still have to spend Action Dice (Hero points?) to do so. Color me interested -- are you picking this up when it comes out? -Greg D.C.

>>Greg and fellow role-players, I am curious about alternative D20 approaches to fantasy besides D&D4e and "Pathfinder/D&D3.75," and I have ordered a copy of "Fantasy Craft." As with "Warriors & Warlocks" for "Mutants & Masterminds" 2nd Ed., I'm looking to balance our library and familiarity with D20 with simpler rules sets and a feel that matches how I view my campaign settings.
>>Sure, D&D4e has worked well enough for the "Faith-Based Initiative" face-to-face group, and I've been enjoying running "Pathfinder" for the "Holy Steel" teleconferencing team. I've also just gotten my hardcopy of the "Pathfinder Bestiary," which looks pretty good so far.
>>Have a Happy Halloween [2009], -Gene

>At a glance, FantasyCraft looks promising. I agree, I'm not happy about Pathfinder and I'm not excited by 4e. $50 is quite enough! At least it's not a WFRP price tag ($100, including special dice and gimmicks -- gah!)
>I found and downloaded a pack of sample PCs for FantasyCraft. They're awfully complex. Completed PC sheets are from 3 to 5 pages long. Looking through them makes me appreciate (again) the relative simplicity and internal coherence of Savage Worlds, where a low-level PC (perhaps minus equipment) could be described on a 3x5 card.
> Final thought -- sorry it's coming to me in pieces late this afternoon -- I think a *good* conversion of Star Wars: Saga Edition to fantasy would be ideal. I think there are one or two variants kicking around, but I'm not sure existing interpretations have hit the quality bar yet. -Brian W.

>>Brian, I agree that the "Star Wars: Saga Edition" has many of the things we would have liked to see in D&D4e. How much tweaking would the fan-written conversions require to be workable for us? I suspect it might still be easier than dealing with the plethora of rules in D&D3.x/Pathfinder or D&D4e... -Gene

>Hey Gene! I found this link, http://www.d20pfsrd.com/, while poking around looking for the next publication date of the Pathfinder core rulebook, and I thought you might find it useful. -Hans C.H.

>>Thanks, Hans! I've been pretty happy with my "Pathfinder" books and PDFs so far. -Gene

>>See other files for the latest party rosters and updates for the following games:

>>Fantasy campaigns
-Gene D.'s D&D4e "Vanished Lands: the Faith-Based Initiative"
-Gene D.'s Pathfinder: "Holy Steel" teleconferencing team
-Gene D.'s D20 "Gaslight Grimoire" (steampunk/fantasy)
-Paul J.'s Pathfinder ("D&D3.75"): "Crossroads of Eternity"
-Brian W.'s Savage Worlds: "Fierce Frontier" and other games
-Dave S.C.'s Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition "Attos"
-Lord of the Rings Online multiplayer online game

>>Comic book superheroes
-Gene D.'s D20 Mutants & Masterminds 2e: "Drake's Port" scenarios
-Paul J. and Josh C.'s D20"M&M"2e games
-City of Heroes: "Dimensional Corps Online" supergroup

>>Space opera RPG
-Dexter V.H.'s D20 Star Wars: Saga Edition "Revenge of the Sith"

edemaitre

You know, if I keep starting my columns with confessions and admissions, Morrus is going to start charging me for therapy. Still...

I can't run games the way I used to.

For most of my gaming life, DMing was far and away my priority, and my favorite role to take on. And I started that life early--got the good ol' Red Box as a gift in 1983, and never once looked back.

Of course, to be fair, what I was doing when I was nine years old was "DMing" in much the same way that going into the back yard to piss on a tree is "gardening." At that age, I so completely misunderstood some fundamental aspects of the game that, the first time I tried to run a friend through a module (Keep on the Borderlands, naturally), I handed him the map as a visual prop and just had him encounter every room or area in the order they were written in the book.

Yeah, I had me some learning to do.

But the point is, I started out running. My very first D&D game was me as the DM, and my dad as the one and only player. (Poor guy.) Even as I and my gaming style matured (the latter more than the former), even as I progressed through the editions, even as my ideas of what made for a good game changed, I was the DM most of the time. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that, from 1983 to 2004 or thereabouts, my DMing-to-playing ratio was around 4:1.

(Or, if you'd prefer, rolling a 5 or higher on a d20.)

From late high school/early college on, planning and running my campaigns was one of the highlights of my week. I loved crafting aspects of the world. I meticulously created hints and clues to drop that would help steer the campaign on to future plot points. I cackled internally--sometimes not so internally--when I came up with really devious twists or intricate story ideas. I had specific storylines/plot points that took six months to a year, real time, to resolve. I had campaigns where a relatively minor event that occurred in the first session proved instrumental in the last one.

(I'll sit back now and wait for someone who knows nothing about my DMing style to shout "Railroad!" To which I will roll my eyes. For a DM who knows his players, knows what he's doing, and--most importantly--knows how to be flexible and roll with the unexpected, there's a huge difference between "railroading" and "plotting." But that's a topic for a different column.)

The point--if I haven't already taken too long to make it--is that I DMed all the time, I loved DMing, I looked forward to DMing, and I couldn't see myself not DMing.

Then, round about 2004, my writing career shifted from "mostly World of Darkness with some D20 work" to "Mostly D&D work." And I found not only my urge to DM, but my ability to DM, beginning to wane.

I still love playing D&D--in fact, I'm having serious DTs these days, because I'm not getting to play nearly enough--but the key word there is "playing." Between late 2004 and today, I've run only a single mid-length campaign through from beginning to end. (It was a 3.5 campaign that I think it took about, oh, seven or eight months, and ended with the party about 15th level.) I've started two or three others that, I'm ashamed to say, I dropped. (Some of them were based on some really cool ideas, too.)

You see, DMing had become too much like--gasp!--work. I thought, the first time it happened, that it was just about me being really swamped, that as soon as my workload lightened a bit, I could go back to running like I had. But nope; even when I wasn't drowning under deadlines, the fact remained.

(And I suddenly realize that this is starting to sound like I'm talking about something else. "Don't feel bad, sweetie, this happens to everyone. Don't worry about DMing. We can just cuddle.")

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "Poor me" moment. I love what I do, and I consider myself damned lucky to be able to do it. But it may shock you to learn that the life of an RPG writer isn't all lazing about in our silk bathrobes, with Playmates on each arm, sipping cognac and dining on chocolate-covered caviar. (Ew.) I may love my work, but it's still work. I still have to sit down at the keyboard and produce, daily, for hours. There's still a lot of mental effort that goes into it. I can't just decide "I'm not in the mood" or "I'm not inspired." (Try that second one with your boss next time you don't feel like coming in. Maybe throw the back of your wrist against your forehead, just for that added sense of verisimilitude.) And at the end of the day, I still want to unwind by doing something that's not work, just like anyone else.

I know lots of RPG writers who spend much of their free time DMing, and I honestly don't know how they do it. I can't. Oh, I'll get the urge to run a campaign, I'll get all sorts of ideas that I think are really cool--and then, after running anywhere from one to five sessions, I'll need a break. Because this is exactly what I do, day in and day out, and no matter how much I like it, it's using the exact same creative muscles as the job. I need the chance to do something else.

If any of you reading this are also RPG writers, I'd love to hear how you manage it. How do you put together a game without it feeling like you're doing more of the same? How--for you--is running D&D (or whatever game) different from writing D&D (or whatever game)?

Thing is, it's more than just the fact that prepping to run a game feels just like planning to write a section of a book. Part of it is my work ethic. (Not sure where it came from. I never had a work ethic in school--in fact, most of my D&D playing was happening when I should've been doing homework--and I still have no discipline when it comes to anything else. If I did, I'd be a lot lighter than I am now, for one thing. But work ethic I have, to neurotic levels.) All the time and energy I spend on putting together a game, I feel like I should be spending on material to be published. Like I'm wasting time or good ideas. Sure, intellectually I know that's silly, but the feeling's there, regardless.

And ultimately, it's always harder to enjoy the magic show when you've had a peek behind the curtain. I find it very hard to turn off my "writer brain" when I'm gaming, and there are times I wish I didn't grok the rules quite so completely. Whether DMing or playing, I have to make a concerted effort to go with the flow, not to analyze every little thing--but at least, when I'm a player, there's someone with the authority to tell me "You're lawyering again, shut up!"

(I actually do that with novels, too. I frequently find myself rewriting sentences in my head as I'm reading. Not all the time, by any means, but often enough.)

Yes, I know. Cry me a river, play me the world's smallest violin. As I said above, I love what I do. And if being unable to run a game the way I want to, or the way I used to, is the price for me being able to work in the field, it's a price I'll happily pay. Heck, I'd sacrifice your ability to run a game, too, if I had to. Just so you know.

But it doesn't mean it's not occasionally a disappointment--especially because I still have lots of cool ideas for campaigns that I'd love to run. (And despite what some people want to believe, a good idea for a game, or a campaign, or an adventure for one group does not automatically translate into a good idea for a published supplement.)

I could run published adventures, I suppose. (I might even use the maps properly, this time.) That certainly cuts down on the prep. But the problem is, it also cuts out the part of DMing that I used to love, and that I still miss. It's coming up with the world, the NPCs, the clues, the plot twists--you know, all the "writerly" stuff--that makes (or made) DMing fun for me.

Ah, well. There's always playing. Anyone want to run a game for me? Or two?

Or six?

Mouseferatu

Following are some 3.5e homebrew creatures I've posted for public mockery on my offsite blog. They're generally low level; CRs are (very) approximate:

ALL MY MONSTERS LIVE HERE.

I'll try to keep this list updated, but the above link is always current.

Scowling Owbra (small magical beast, CR 1)

Weeping Owbra (small magical beast, CR 1/6)

Sugarjilly (small fey, CR 1)

Hatchling Zombie (diminutive undead, CR 1/8)

Hellion Gourd (large plant [evil, extraplanar], CR6)
...and its Gourdlings (template)

Most of this stuff is just existing SRD stuff with a few modifications and/or standard templates applied, along with a little fluff. Please forgive any of the inevitable errors in rules that almost certainly infect these.

the_orc_within