NERD RAGE
It's been a busy week here in design and development. The Player's Handbook has been sent out for typesetting, and it's only a matter of days before the Dungeon Master's Guide is sent out as well. Right now, we're in crunch mode, taking every opportunity to smooth out any kinks in the rules and get the second half of both books written. Just yesterday, for instance, Mike Mearls and I were looking over the fighter, and decided that she lacked 'pizazz' at 1st level, so we gave her a useful per-encounter ability that lets her use a bladed weapon to slice a hole between planes and call forth a horde of demons. I'm sure the warlord will find plenty of handy applications for this ability when she takes the fighter's turn.
One thing that's remained unchanged since the first day of design for 4th Edition though, has been our commitment to including rules to represent NERD RAGE. When James Wyatt, Ron Heinsoo, and I sat down in May of 2005 to begin planning for the new edition, the first thing we did was compose a list of design tenets to help guide us. We settled upon the following:
1. Strip out any and all simulationist and narrativist elements.
2. Replace our current player base with 16 year olds with too much disposable income.
3. Ask ourselves 'is this copyrightable?'
4. include rules to represent NERD RAGE.
The reason for our insistence on including rules to represent NERD RAGE was that we felt that it was too important an aspect of our player's lives to ignore. Who doesn't recall with fond regard the time they carved 'Ed Greenwood sucks' into the wall of the junior high bathroom stall when they first heard about the Time of Troubles, or when they kicked a dog because Nintendo Power didn't publish their letter about why Zelda is cooler than Metroid. As we began to concept how to possibly represent NERD RAGE, it became apparent that the absence of this anchor with which a player could apply their personal experience to their character was one of the primary reasons previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons were so unfun.
While emphasizing the importance of NERD RAGE was easy, writing rules for it proved difficult. After all, how does one concisely represent something who's manifestations vary from sending a tableful of miniatures clattering against the wall with a sweep of their arm because their opponent's Space Marine Chaplain was using a melta gun that put their army two points over the limit, to publishing on one's blog a 20,000 word scathing condemnation of the new Transformers movie because of Optimus Prime's lips? As design went on, the rules for NERD RAGE went through several distinct stages of refinement. At first, during the Orcus phase of design, it was single power. When the Flywheel team got their hands on it, they developed it into an entire talent tree. Finally, the Scramjet team took a long and hard look at it and decided it was best represented by ritual, which I now have the pleasure of presenting to you:
NERD RAGE
Minor Nerd Ritual
Range: Personal and everyone subjected to your person.
Material Components: An internet message board, too much free time.
Somantic Components: Withering Multiparagraph theses on how you've been fired as a customer.
Verbal Components: ALL CAPS, swears.
Duration: Until you buy what you're condeming anyway.
Effect: None.
We were so excited by this incarnation of NERD RAGE, that we resolved to devote a significant portion of design space to it. William O'Connor just turned in a brilliant piece of artwork for the Dungeon Master's Guide, which not only features sumptuous breasts, but also radiates a sense righteous indignation so tangible, it made me reach for an inhaler I didn't even own! Logan Bonner has written up a magic ring with a per-encounter ability offering such a unique twist on the vanilla RAGE, it almost made us regret arbitrarily restricting rings to 10th level characters other than tieflings. Most significantly, we've been in contact recently with Ed Greenwood, who's decided, after only mild physical persuasion, to have Cyric's NERD RAGE figure heavily into the Spellplague.
Join us next week on Design & Development, when we discuss playing anthropomorphic animals. Meanwhile, be sure to check out our newest flash cartoon, On The Set of 4th Edition: The Gnome and The Gimp.
