AMA (Thurs April 30): Wolfgang Baur (Kobold Press, TSR, DUNGEON Magazine, D&D 5E Tyranny of Dragons, Advanced Races Compendium)

[Monkey King]

Good morning Wolfgang. Do you have any upcoming projects planned for 5th Edition? I would love to see a Southlands bestiary conversion for 5e just as an example.

Yes, I do have several 5th Edition projects cooking, and the only one I can really talk about is the conversion of the Southlands Bestiary into 5E terms. That was a stretch goal of the Southlands project, and the resulting text contains 100 new monsters with 5th Edition stats. All the monsters of the Southlands, including variant mummies, demons, devils, and the dire spinosaurus are included.

The status for this stretch goal has been one of cautious optimism since the start. I've been holding out hope that an OGL would allow me to publish that as a standalone monster book, but so far there's been no sign of that 5th Edition OGL. So for now, a converted document is what we have. It's 100% playable, though not professionally edited, laid out, etc. If there's no OGL by the time the Southlands Bestiary for Pathfinder ships, I'll share the document with backers then. Some of the creatures may be posted on KoboldPress.com this summer.

The other 5th Edition projects I hope to announce this summer. One of them is tiny, and one is sort of ginormously mega-sized.

 

[Astrosicebear]

From your insider dealings and experience with WOTC on 5th edition, can you speak about any status on OGL or GSL? Which in your opinion looks more likely? And what insights or opinions could you offer as to the OGL situation (are you worried, frustrated, hopeful, reserved)
?

 

[Monkey King]

1. You probably get this one a lot, but how would you recommend one start cracking into the game/monster/adventure design industry?

2. How do you handle building/balancing/playtesting encounters? Do you have general guidelines you follow? Do you just have a bunch of pre-gen characters that you throw into a party and run combat a few rounds to see if it feels right? Or do you run the encounter multiple times with different party builds?

3. Has there ever been a time where you built an encounter, and in testing it, found it surprisingly more difficult than you initially anticipated? Either due to a particular mechanic being much more powerful in play than on paper, or an environmental effect crippling the party more than you expected?

Thanks for your question, VandaExpress! I trimmed them back a bit as you suggested, but lemme see if I can shed some light.

1) I do get this question a lot, to the point where I wrote a whole book on the topic (Kobold Guide to Game Design). I also run a Freelancing 101 panel at conventions often, and talked about this on the Gaming Careers podcast last month, because there's not a lot of obvious ways to break in. Here's the short version, but I'll refer you to the Kobold Guide for more on this.

A) The entry level roads into RPG design are different now than they were back when, but the rungs I can point you to are 1) blogging well on design-intensive topics 2) self-publishing material for an open rules system or your own RPG system 3) winning a game design contest such as the recent Monarch of the Monsters contest for 5th Edition or Paizo's RPG Superstar and 4) pitch a project to a company with an open admissions policy (For Kobold Press, see the writer's guidelines)
B) The field is tiny and pays poorly. Rather more people are astronauts than are full-time RPG designesr with a staff job and health benefits. Go in with eyes open.
C) As with all creative projects, finding your audience is a major step. Just like novelists need to connect with a readership, you need to find the players and GMs who dig your style. If you do it yourself, you get that personal connection to your audience, but it's more work to get there. If you sign up with an established publisher, you get a shortcut to an existing audience, but you give up the rights to your work (almost all freelance tabletop game design work is done as work for hire).

2) Oddly, there's a whole section on Playtesting in the "Guide to Game Design" as well. There's no super-formula here, other than to hand the manuscript to someone else and let them run it cold. Running your own playtests is better than not playtesting, but you tend to gloss over your own omissions. Finding good playtesters you can rely on for honest, useful feedback is extremely helpful, but it can take months or years. Not all playtesters are worth your time and effort. Cherish the ones who play it as written, deliver reports on time, and who provide clear data.

3) This happens to me often, especially when I'm starting out with a new system. I tend to prefer more-lethal games over less-lethal ones, and I like horror and a certain level of panic in players when they run into key encounters. So, I think that my designs sometimes skew deadly. And I say this knowing full well that some designers skew toward "easy win" encounters, and need to crank up the difficulty. Neither of these is preferable, because what you're designing toward is excitement and a sense of urgency.

Designing for perfect balance (and not for thrills or joy or discovery or terror) is a bit of a fool's errand. You should provide encounters that excite people. Nothing is less exciting than a series of perfectly managable encounters without twists or surprises. This tendency toward "ooh, let's push the party to the limits" is an attitude that I embrace when I'm writing, and that I deplore when I'm editing or developing an adventure.

It's important to find out where the failure points are, and then make sure you're calibrated correctly. Sometimes, "calibrated correctly" means "there should be a TPK if the party is dumb enough to try this unprepared."

Ok, sometimes I ramble a bit too. Thanks for your questions!

 

[Monkey King]

I loved DMing Tyranny of Dragons
And here is a question considering pre-written adventures in general:
As a game designer you design adventures which are intended to be played by other people. Do you have any advise on how to make running a pre-written adventure/campaign more "easy", i.e. with less prep-work?

Thanks Plancktum--I love Tyranny of Dragons, too.

I wish there was a simple answer to the "make it easy to run" question, but the reality is that design is a set of tradeoffs. For Tyranny, all the stats are provided in a free PDF file to make it easy to access the monster stats, even without owning a Monster Manual. The Streets of Zobeck adventure collection has a set of complete 1 square/1 inch battle maps that backers got. Each of those was a commitment of time and money to make a better play experience.

Eventually, if you commit enough time and money to making a better adventure, you have to charge more. And then people complain that it is too expensive ("Why is this a hardcover? I want a softcover!" etc), or that it is too complex, or that there's too much reading. Suddenly, it's 400 pages in small type, and it intimidates people.

Go the other direction, like, say G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief by Gygax, and all you get is 8 pages, hardly any stats, hardly any maps, not a lot of support for the DM to run it without bringing some of his or her own mojo to the table to make it shine. That level of improvisation and energy is not for everyone; it's a high-wire act, but boy does that hone your DMing skills. (FWIW, I'd recommend Unframed: the Art of Improvisation as a guide to improving those chops.)

Different groups want different things. Beginners tend to want as much support as possible, all the stats, contingencies for everything, answers in the text for corner cases, map support, tokens, guidelines. Long-time players tend to want bullet lists, bare bones text that allows them to improvise in response to the players at the table, a bit more wiggle room, less wall of text.

So... It's impossible. One person's helpful guide and useful crutch tables is another person's wasted space and nanny-like handholding. One person's skimpy encounter description lacking detail is another DM's favorite opportunity to strut his stuff with hill giant lore.

You can also stuff an adventure with more detail and more maps and tables to make it easier. You're not always making it better, though, and over time, your audience needs less of that. My own take for Kobold Press adventures has always been that I trust the GM and the players to grab the coolest or most playable parts of the adventure *for their playstyle*--my goal is to provide tools for multiple types of gamers that are easy to access, but it's a matter of constraints and tradeoffs.

Man, I could go on about this topic, but I have to go AFK for a couple hours. Back with more responses tonight, thank you!

 

[meomwt]

Thanks Plancktum--I love Tyranny of Dragons, too.

I wish there was a simple answer to the "make it easy to run" question, but the reality is that design is a set of tradeoffs. For Tyranny, all the stats are provided in a free PDF file to make it easy to access the monster stats, even without owning a Monster Manual. The Streets of Zobeck adventure collection has a set of complete 1 square/1 inch battle maps that backers got. Each of those was a commitment of time and money to make a better play experience.

Eventually, if you commit enough time and money to making a better adventure, you have to charge more. And then people complain that it is too expensive ("Why is this a hardcover? I want a softcover!" etc), or that it is too complex, or that there's too much reading. Suddenly, it's 400 pages in small type, and it intimidates people.

Go the other direction, like, say G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief by Gygax, and all you get is 8 pages, hardly any stats, hardly any maps, not a lot of support for the DM to run it without bringing some of his or her own mojo to the table to make it shine. That level of improvisation and energy is not for everyone; it's a high-wire act, but boy does that hone your DMing skills.

Now there's an interesting comparison: Tyranny of Dragons vs Steading of the Hill Giant Chief...

Whilst the oldest modules produced lack a little something, they encourage intelligent play from both DM and the PC group. And yes, the DM had to bring a lot to the table: for G1, it's reactions to the players' raids, setting new traps or barricades, and so forth.

Same with T1-4 (Temple of Elemental Evil) which I am converting to 5th Ed, hopefully keeping two sessions ahead of them as we go. I have a notebook in my jacket pocket, scribbling story hooks or plot devices in at otherwise idle moments, to bring the existing adventure as written more to life and make it memorable.

And here's the question: do you think that DM's today need more "hand-holding" than they did twenty years ago? There seems to be a need to have every eventuality mapped out in advance, keeping the players on track, rather than running with it and seeing where everyone ends up. Is that where you see the adventure designer heading, or is there still room for a more "Gygaxian" approach to adventure design?

 

[Monkey King]

1) Besides Midgard, what is your favorite ever campaign setting?
2) Don't you think my friend Steve Helt is just a bit kooky?

Hey Milke, thanks for your question!

1) I love a lot of settings, and yes, Midgard most of all, but if I have to choose it's a knife fight between Al-Qadim and Planescape.

I'm going with Al-Qadim today, and I might go with Planescape tomorrow.

2) Maybe a tiny bit, in the way that game designers are slightly kooky. (It's in the job description.) But he's also an Iron GM, so I'm not gonna bring it up or anything.

 

[MerricB]

G'day, Wolfgang!

I've just finished running Hoard + Rise of Tiamat and I'm now running Hoard for another group, so thank you very much for writing them!

I'm curious as to how you find the use of milestones in adventures - especially as Rise assumes their use. Do you find they change the way you design adventures? Any preferences for milestones or traditional XP?

Cheers!

 

[Xantherion]

I am currently running a 5e campaign, converting one of your products. I am running Courts of the Shadow Fey. The party is about to enter the shadow plane and enter the actual courts. Any suggestions or advice on running or converting some of the elements.

Thanks.

Xantherion

 

[Monkey King]

Since Forgotten Realms was mentioned what city in the realms are you most fond of? Also what region are you most likely to run an adventure in? Any chance you have a brief example of something realms you enjoyed experiencing at the table?

The weird thing about me and the Realms is that I've written relatively few adventures for the setting, but the ones I have done are all among my favorites. The place lends itself to heroic action, it oozes adventure, it's the land of a million hooks. That's a wonderful playground for any DM or designer.

My favorite city is Waterdeep, because it's big and sprawling and has the most lore and a fine criminal underworld. I'm not a Realms loremaster by any stretch, mind you, but how can you not love Skullport?

For running a new adventure, I'm sort of thinking Calimshan, the Shining Sea, the Lake of Steam and the Border Kingdoms. Deserts and the Shaar Desolation, the Jungles of Chult. I've been in a tropical, high-adventure sort of mood because of the Southlands work, and I could easily run something Southland-ish or Al-Qadimish in the southern corner of the Realms.

Something I enjoyed at the table? Well, Steve Winter ran a wonderful campaign of the Barrowmaze megadungeon (converted for 5th Edition) last year. The necromancers and undead and traps of that were extremely enjoyable, a pure romp of the old school. The moment at the table that was trouble for us was the halfling barbarian who kept falling for the vampire's charm every time we visited. It became a running gag: we would visit the wrong section of the Barrowmaze, and presto, the barbarian is charmed, we lose and have to retreat.

It was nice to see a bunch of old-school industry vets being outsmarted by the monsters once or twice (and yep, my character was outsmarted there too!). We'd go lick our wounds and say "We'll get him next time--and you need to make one of those saves!"

 

[Monkey King]

Hi Wolfgang,

Which were your favorite Al-Qadim products?

Hey Jason, thanks for asking about AQ! If I'm not counting my own AQ releases (Secrets of the Lamp with the City of Brass map by DCS leads by a nose over Assassin Mountain and the MC Al Qadim), then there's a limited number of others to choose from.

I think I'm going to go with the Complete Sha'ir's Handbook, because wow, if the sha'ir had not been invented, I think we would not have the sorcerer. It seems like a milestone in D&D history that's largely forgotten. Plus hey, the need to sometimes quibble with your familiar to GO GET THE DAMN SPELL still amuses me, as a player and GM.

Runner-up goes to Golden Voyages, because Sinbad.

Dammit, where's my fez, I gotta play some AQ again, or something in that vein. Sandships, temple ruins half-buried under dunes, and the juddering motion of something BIG moving below the surface.... (Oh, wait, maybe I want Dune the RPG