Want to Read More?

My story “The Truth of Names” drew a lot of attention for its portrayal of the first openly and canonically transgender character in the lore of Magic: The Gathering. I jumped at the chance to write that story because it meant so much to me and my family. My teenage daughter is transgender (and a huge Magic fan), and seeing someone like her represented in the Magic Multiverse meant everything to her. 

Well, she’s going to college this fall. And it turns out college is expensive. So I just thought I’d mention that if you want an easy way to support a transgender teen making the big leap to college, here’s one thing you can do: Buy my books! 

In addition to my work on Magic, I’ve written five Dungeons & Dragons novels. This omnibus collects three of them in an ebook package that you can buy for only $10. 

Will you find a transgender character like Alesha? Well, not exactly. But what happens when the changeling Darraun finds that he needs a way to escape a military camp?

The changeling who had been Darraun was getting comfortable in her new body, new identity, and new name—Private Caura Fannam, an enlisted soldier under the command of Major Rennic Arak. She wore her tawny hair pulled awkwardly into a tail down her back, a fashion popular with many female soldiers. A long shirt of leather studded with heavy steel rivets was standard issue for Aundair’s light infantry. She carried a short spear—not her favorite weapon, but easy enough to use: “Put the sharp end into the enemy,” she’d heard a training sergeant say once. In practice, she knew the hard part was pulling it back out in time to put it in the next enemy, which was why she preferred shorter weapons. But if all went well, she’d have no reason to use her spear as anything but a part of her disguise. 

There’s also a loving, platonic relationship between a human woman and a sexless warforged, a living construct:

“So what do you want to do with your freedom?”
Cart looked down at her, into her warm, brown eyes. He eased his arm free of her hands and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling her close to his side. She put one arm around his waist and laid the other hand on his chest, and her head rested beside her hand. It was confusing to him—he hated the thought of being owned: her dismissive words to the Cannith warforged had cut him like daggers. But the urge to hold her close, keep her beside him, protect her—it was a fiercely possessive urge.
“Freedom is a strange thing,” he said. With her body so close to his, he slowed his step and she matched it, so they found a slower rhythm together. “Nobody owns me, but Gaven and Aunn and you seem to have a hold on me anyway. What I want to do is to be with you.”
“Freedom is the ability to choose your commitments,” Ashara said, “to choose what owns your loyalty.”
“Then perhaps I am yours after all.”
Her smile spread all across her face, touching every one of the tiny muscles beneath the skin—such an intricate construction, he thought, like the work of a divine artisan.
“And I’m yours,” she said. 

So please think about it. For just $10, you can have the satisfaction of contributing to the education of a wonderful transgender teen, and get three novels to read as part of the deal! This omnibus includes a short story, never published anywhere else, featuring the warforged Cart and his beloved Ashara.

Are they any good? Well, you don’t have to take my word for it. Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms, says, “Every James Wyatt novel I read is a delight—may there be many, many more!”

You can buy Draconic Prophecies for Kindle from Amazon here. If you do, I get a little bit extra thanks to their affiliate program. Or you can buy it for Nook here.

Or if you’re feeling very generous, you can make a direct donation to Sierra’s college fund here.

Thank you!

Another Appearance

A scattering of silver coins
  Litters the barren ground,
  Barely gleaming under the sullen sky.
Rope and bough together groan
  As their ghastly burden twists,
  Slowly turning, surveying the fields around.
The hanged man reeks of death.

His friend, betrayed, bewildered, comes
   On wounded feet, on dusty ground,
   Bearing a gift he could never accept.
This one never feared the unclean,
   The touch of death, of leper, of sin,
   So now he clasps his dead friend's feet,
And bathes them with his tears.

More than his betrayal, this suicide
   Is proof of his misunderstanding:
   For if vengeance is due, it is due to him.
"I came to show you," says his friend,
    "As I showed the others.
    But I think you have already seen."
A kiss, and he is gone.

Neuschwanstein

"Neuschwanstein was commissioned by King Ludwig the second, king of Bavaria, and built on the site of an old castle ruin called Hohenschwangau."
"She sounds like she's reading right off Wikipedia," Frank whispered to his wife.
Mabel laughed. "She must do this five hundred times a day," she whispered back.
"Ludwig's goal was to rebuild the ruin in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles, as he wrote in a letter to the famous composer Richard Wagner. Wagner's operas inspired—"
"Höchstes vertrau'n hast du mir schon gedanken," came a loud voice from somewhere out of sight, a strong operatic tenor.
The tour guide stopped, obviously surprised and thrown off her rhythm. "Um, well, speaking of Wagner's operas . . ."
The singer's voice continued, accompanied by the rising hubbub of other tour groups and museum staff.
She laughed now, suddenly engaged and clearly off her script. "What he's singing is an aria from Wagner's opera Lohengrin, which is the story of a mysterious knight who—"
Suddenly the singer came into view. He was tall and thin, his blond hair reaching just past his shoulders. He wore a faded flannel shirt and blue jeans, hardly looking the part of the holy knight. His eyes were fixed on the tour guide as he continued the aria. "O gönne mir, dass mit Entzücken ich deinen Atem sauge ein."
"This is his great declaration of love for Elsa, um, 'Oh grant me that with delight I may, um, breathe in your breath' . . ." She caught the singer's eye and faltered in her translation. He was striding toward her, a trio of security guards following at a cautious distance.
"I don't think this is part of the normal tour," Frank said.
"Sh," Mabel hissed.
The singer extended a hand to the tour guide, still singing: "Dein Lieben muss mir hoch entgelten für das, was ich um dich verliess."
The tour guide took his hand, spellbound, but an older gentleman in the group offered a translation laced with a thick German accent. " 'Your love must be the highest reward for what I left behind, for your sake.' Lohengrin was the son of Parzifal, the knight who found the Gral, the, em—"
"The Holy Grail," someone else finished for him.
The man continued. "He says, 'No destiny in God's whole world could have been nobler than mine.' The eternal life granted by the Grail, he gave up to be with her."
Mabel's hand found Frank's and clasped it tightly. Frank started with surprise, then squeezed hers back.
The singer was standing very close to the tour guide now, holding her hand to his chest and gazing down into her eyes. "Das einz'ge, was mein Opfer lohne, muss ich in deiner Lieb ersehn!"
"I bet he's her boyfriend," Frank whispered in Mabel's ear. "Hell of a proposal."
The tour guide seemed to come to her senses, suddenly aware of her group watching wide-eyed. She tried to pull her hand away but he held it tight, she turned her head but he kept singing.
"So I ask you, steer clear of doubt," the older man said. "Your love is my proud reward."
The tour guide managed to get her hand free and she stumbled back a few steps. He never took his eyes off her face.
"Because I don't come from night and suffering, from splendor and I bliss I come."
He stopped singing, breathing hard from what must have been a vocal exertion. He kept staring at the tour guide, though, as if expecting her to pick up where he'd left off.
"What— I—" She couldn't form words, couldn't seem to think straight, couldn't understand what had just happened.
"Elsa," the singer said, stretching out his hand to her again.
"It's Liese," she said.
"Elsa, take my hand," he said, his accent suddenly very American.
"My name is Liese," she said. "What's yours?"
He turned away suddenly, his face contorted in grief. "Weh uns, was tatest du," he sang softly.
"What are you saying?" she said.
"Elsa was not supposed to ask the knight's name or his origin," the older man explained in a whisper. "She broke her vow and he was forced to return to the Grail."
"Who the hell are you?" the tour guide said again. "What do you think you're doing, interrupting my tour?"
"Elsa," he said, pleading.
"I'm not Elsa! And you're not Goddamn Lohengrin! Stop it!"
He looked stricken. "Woe to us," he whispered.
"Look, can you be normal? If you tell me your name and ask me on a date, I'll go, OK? That was cool, what you did, no one's ever serenaded me like that before. Be normal, OK?"
The security guards were inching closer now, seeing that things were going wrong. The singer just stared at his Elsa, tears welling in his eyes. Frank squeezed his wife's hand tighter.
"Can you get him out of here?" the tour guide called to the security guards.
"Elsa," the singer said. He managed to put an ocean of longing into those two syllables, begging her not to send him away.
"I'm not Elsa!" Her fists were clenched at her sides, her eyes blazing with anger.
The singer spun around, aware of the security guards for the first time, righteous fury twisting his face. "Elsa, my sword!" He stretched out his hand behind him, but the tour guide stepped up and planted both hands on his back, then pushed him away hard. He stumbled right into the closest guard's grip.
"Komm, Lohengrin," the guard said.
The singer looked back at the tour guide, pleading with his eyes, as the guards pulled him away. Mabel huddled closer, and Frank put his arm around her shoulder.
The tour guide took a moment to pull herself together as the guards got the singer out of the room. She straightened her skirt, tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, and then turned to face her tour group again.
"Well," she said, "I am sorry for that interruption. It looks like another group is right on our heels now, so with apologies I'm going to move us along quickly for a moment. If you'll come this way."
The group shuffled after her again, slowly at first, as if just waking from a dream.
"As I was saying, Wagner's operas inspired Ludwig's romantic vision of the Middle Ages, and he built Neuschwanstein as a memorial to that lost age."
Back on script, as if nothing had happened, she chattered away as she walked the group briskly through the palace.
Frank kept his arm wrapped around Mabel's shoulders as they walked, smiling, at the back of the group.

Falling snow

(WriMuse prompt: Write about someone mentally ill losing control of a bodily function during a blizzard.)

Falling Snow
I have to pee.
But I can't. It's snowing outside. The snow is coming down like ash like stars like a cascading waterfall like pee and I have to watch, I have to make sure.
I'm at the window looking out, watching it fall watching it collect and while I've been watching at least three inches have fallen, I can see on the ledge outside my window and that's not even accounting for the bits that fall over the edge and don't collect.
Little fallen flakes, hurtling from the sky to come to rest, briefly, fleetingly, on my window ledge and then—no! You weren't safe, you were close to the edge, and the ground is still thirty feet below my fourth-floor window. Fallen stars spend a brief time on earth trying to fit in with all the other stars, but they're on the edge, and they slip and there's no one to catch them as they fall.
I really have to pee, but I can't. What if the drifts rise to cover the door and there's a fire and no one can get out? How will they get us out? What if an angel comes down in the midst of the snow and the snow is just the dust shaken from its wings as it flies, gleaming in the moonlight, and I'm peeing and so I miss it? What if the angel carries all the fallen snow fallen stars up to heaven but it forgets me because I'm peeing? What if I don't see all the snow fall? Who will note the passing of the flakes that slip over the edge of the ledge? Who will mourn them, if not me, if I'm not there to see them and name them and lift them up to the angels' arms?
I name them like they name hurricanes, Andrew Bessie Clarice Daniel Edward Francesca George Harriet Isolde James Kenneth Lamont Marcia Naomi Opheth why Opheth? Pandora Quentin Ronald Samantha Terrence with two Rs Ursula Veronica Wyatt Xavier Yu just Yu Zoe and start over at Alphonse Bruce Cameron Daniel no I did Daniel already and they're falling too fast, I can't name them all so I clutch my fist to my chest because I don't have a hat and I stand and watch them fall.
Maybe it's not so bad, falling from the ledge. Many fallen stars never reach the ledge, they fall all the way to the courtyard and there's so many down there. Some of them blow across the others like winding snakes, among them but not of them. Maybe it's better to be among the multitude, but who names them? Who notes their passing when they fall or when they melt if spring ever comes?
I name the ones on my ledge. David not Daniel Elizabeth Frederick Grant Harold Imelda Josephine Karen Larry Maeve I like Maeve it's a pretty name the name of one of the nurses who's pretty.
I really have to pee. Nora Omar Phillip with two Ls Qu Qu Qu Querty maybe it's not a name but it is now Rachael with an extra A Sarah Thomas Umar that's a lot like Omar, maybe they're twins, but no, no two snowflakes are alike.
Or are they? The ones here on my ledge, they're the different ones, the ones who cling to the sky, resisting incarnation and desensitization and conformity and they keep us up here on the ledge except the ones that slip away.
I can't go to the bathroom or I'll miss them. And so I let the warm wet pee slide down my legs like falling snow, pooling and puddling by my feet, nameless drops all alike they aren't special like the snow. Like me.

Catching up

Well. It's been nearly two years since the last time I posted anything here. Let's start with catching up a little bit, then I'll talk about my ideas for what to do with this space in the future.

My fifth novel, Oath of Vigilance, came out in August 2011. I'll have to add it to the Amazon links on the left there sometime soon.

I've just finished writing the third draft of my sixth novel, which is my first non-D&D-related novel. I'm writing it for me, because I'm a writer, and I'm taking my time with it because I don't have a deadline. The third draft is the first one I'm letting anyone read, specifically my wife. She will be the first person who can tell me whether it has any merit whatsoever—I'm just not sure, it's so different from anything I've done before.

So she'll read it, I'll revise it probably a zillion more times, and then we'll see. Maybe Wizards won't let me do anything with it—they'd be within their rights. Maybe they will and I'll try to get an agent and fail, and nothing will come of it. Maybe I'll get an agent who won't be able to find a publisher for it. Maybe I'll self-publish it, but honestly I think that's the least likely option. We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

And that's the relevant news, as far as this public forum is concerned. 

So speaking of this public forum, here's what I'm thinking and why I came back to it today for the first time in almost two years. I am a writer. Despite the fact that I've made my living writing for well over a decade, I'm really only starting to own that as my identity. So at this point, I figure you're coming to this site because you're interested in what I write. More and more, that has less to do with D&D books (novels or RPG products) and more to do with other stuff. So maybe that doesn't have the appeal to you that my all-D&D-all-the-time blog had, and I'm sorry. On the other hand, maybe that's more appealing, which is great.

So right now I'm between drafts of my novel, waiting for my wife to read it and give me feedback so I can start on my fourth draft. But I still brought my iPad to Starbucks this morning, and I tried to figure out what to write, so I went to a fun little app (by Rasmus Rasmussen) called WriMuse and got a prompt and wrote a vignette. And it's the next post, which you probably read before this one.

Have fun!

Gen Con 2011

Hey, what's this fancy blog thing just lying around here? What's my login again?

Is this thing on?

Oh, hello. I figured I'd pop in here and post my schedule at Gen Con this year. You know, in case you're there and want to say hi.

Thursday, August 4

4:00–6:00 Seminar: Art of Adventure Design

Friday, August 5

2:00–4:00 Spin a Yarn with Ed Greenwood

4:00–6:00 Seminar: Art of the Dungeon Master

Saturday, August 6

10:00–12:00 Seminar: D&D Product Line Review

2:00–4:00 D&D Live with R&D

4:00–6:00 Discussion with R.A. Salvatore

Hope to see you there!

So I'm a junkie, right?

And I've been clean now for six months, as I explained in my last post. But I'm really starting to jones for the stuff, you know? I keep thinking about it, and it's almost like I can taste it. But I'm good—I stay clean. I'm not going back.

Sure, maybe I visit my dealer's web site once every couple of days. At least it's not every day. And maybe I listen to my dealer's soundtrack while I'm working. So what?

Then today I get an email from my dealer. "Your account has been selected to receive 7 free days of game time. Come back! Come back!"

It's a good thing I'm on a tight deadline right now. But I have a feeling that once that deadline is past, I'm going to spend 7 days reminding myself of all the reasons why I don't like this particular drug...

World of Warcrack

Just for kicks, I went and looked at my billing records for World of Warcraft. I played (or at least paid) from 12/25/04 through July of 2006, or about 19 months straight. Then I took three months off. Started again on 11/25/06, played for about 11 months, then took two months off. Started again on 12/31/07, played for 6 months, then took another two months off. Started again on 9/8/08 (right after my birthday), played for 8 months, and now it's been six months since I played.

Yeah, I'm jonesing. So what?

Mrgrglglglgrl!

In the comments to my last post, Metz asked about seeing some of the stats for the WoW monsters I've been playing with. So, just for kicks, here are a handful of different murlocs, of the sort found around Lake Teronis in Ashenvale.

As D&D monsters go, these are intentionally dirt-simple. They have one or two powers, which often very closely mimic powers possessed by the monsters in WoW. They're designed to play fast and easy. I wish, in retrospect, I'd done something to make them interact better with each other, but hey . . . they're murlocs. :)

Have fun!

Saltspittle Muckdweller Level 7 Artillery
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300
Initiative +7 Senses Perception +5
HP 61; Bloodied 30
AC 19; Fortitude 19; Reflex 20; Will 18
Speed 8, swim 8
m Spear (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 1d8 + 4 damage.
r Spear (at-will; standard) • Weapon
Ranged 10; +14 vs AC; 3d6 + 4 damage and the target is slowed (save ends).
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 16 (+6) Dex 19 (+7) Wis 14 (+5)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 10 (+3)

Saltspittle Oracle Level 7 Artillery (Leader)
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300
Initiative +6 Senses Perception +7
HP 61; Bloodied 30
AC 19; Fortitude 19; Reflex 19; Will 20
Speed 8, swim 8
m Staff (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 1d8 + 4 damage.
r Shock (at-will; standard) • Lightning
Ranged 10; +12 vs Reflex; 3d6 + 4 lightning damage.
R Healing Wave (recharge 6; standard) • Healing
Ranged 5; the target can spend a healing surge.
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 16 (+6) Dex 16 (+6) Wis 18 (+7)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 13 (+4)

Saltspittle Puddlejumper Level 7 Skirmisher
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300
Initiative +9 Senses Perception +5
HP 77; Bloodied 38
AC 21; Fortitude 19; Reflex 20; Will 18
Speed 8, swim 8
m Spear (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+12 vs AC; 2d6 + 4 damage.
Rushing Charge
When charging, the puddlejumper's speed is 10 and it deals +1d6 damage.
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 16 (+6) Dex 19 (+7) Wis 14 (+5)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 10 (+3)

Saltspittle Warrior Level 7 Soldier
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300
Initiative +8 Senses Perception +5
HP 77; Bloodied 38
AC 23; Fortitude 20; Reflex 19; Will 18
Speed 8, swim 8
m Sword (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 2d6 + 4 damage and the target is marked until the end of the warrior's next turn.
M Sunder Armor (recharge 4 5 6; standard)
+14 vs AC; 3d10 + 4 damage and the target takes a -2 penalty to AC (save ends).
M Shield Bash (at-will; opportunity) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 1d8 + 4 damage and the target is dazed until the end of the warrior's next turn.
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 19 (+7) Dex 16 (+6) Wis 14 (+5)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 10 (+3)

I'm still off the WoW habit, but...

I let my World of Warcraft subscription lapse in May. This might be the longest I've gone without playing it since I started, come to think of it, which could explain the cravings.

In addition to the cravings for the actual computer game, which I keep denying because it turns out there's a lot about that experience I just don't enjoy, the cravings have been manifesting recently as desires to play D&D in the world of WoW. I think it's a cool world, and there's a part of me—a rather large part, it turns out—that would love to play a night elf warrior in a tabletop experience where I'm not button-mashing, where my actions make a difference in the world, where there's a DM to adjudicate my doing whatever I want to, and all those other things that make tabletop gaming superior, in my estimation, to computer gaming. In fact, there's a lot of it that feels like the best of both worlds: I can have the tabletop experience I enjoy while also playing the soundtracks to the game and making abundant use of visual aids and quest design from the computer game.

So I've spent some time with the D&D Monster Builder, statting up monsters from the game in D&D terms. I've spent a lot of time on WoW fan sites like thottbot and wowhead and wowwiki, culling information about the world and its inhabitants and "translating" it into D&D content, from quests to monsters to storylines.

When I was at GenCon, I bought a couple of WoW mini singles: a couple of nagas, a voidwalker, and a timberling who made an appearance in my Greenbrier campaign a couple of weeks ago, as a myconid sovereign. They were $1 each, so I felt that was a pretty good investment for monsters that would be Large in the game anyway. Doesn't help much for gnomes and night elves and other Medium critters, but they're pretty cool additions to my minis collection.

So then today I got an idea. Using the 3D models of WoW mobs available on wowhead, I took snapshots of a bunch of monsters, front and back, printed them on cardstock, and turned them into stand-up figures, much like the Cardboard Heroes of old. Look:

That's a bunch of murlocs on the left, some nagas on the right (I decided to make them Large after trying them both Large and Medium), and satyrs in the front.

More:

On the right, a demon and its cultists. Center, an abomination and three forsaken. Left, a worgen. And in the back are two orcs and two tauren.

Still more!

These are the woodsy folk: a couple of furbolgs (I decided to make them Medium after trying them Large) on the left, a bunch of night elves toward the right (with a son of Cenarius and a dryad at far right), Gnarl the ancient in the back, and two draenei and a human (Delgren the Purifier) behind the furbolgs.

I focused on creatures and characters to be found in Ashenvale, since that's where I've been putting most of my attention. It's aesthetically one of the most appealing zones to me, which almost makes up for its almost utter lack of good storylines. And Blackfathom Deeps is one of the only instances I've done, pathetically enough.

So then it occurred to me that the work I did might be useful to other people. Want to print the WoW minis I made? Visit this page and download the PDFs, and print them onto card stock. Want to make your own, visit the same page and download the photoshop files, delete (or hide) the layers showing the WoW monsters, and add your own images.

Caveats: I'm more or less happy with the Larges, but they don't stand up if you make the base too narrow. What I ended up doing was not cutting through the page margin at the top of the page, so I got a wider base on them.

I'm really not happy with the Huges. They take up a row of three squares, rather than a box of nine squares. And it's just possible that all the Huges I did ought to be Large anyway. Thoughts on making effective Huge monsters in this format would be welcome, but it's possible that a flat counter is just better. I suppose one could get all fancy and make an X-shaped figure with four views of the monster... oh, geez, now I'm going to have to try that.

Have fun!

Dragon War interview

Check out my interview on Marty's Book Nook!

Early feedback is awesome:

Just watched Book Nook. You, sir, are a giant goofball. I approve. —@AsmodeusLore

High praise, indeed! Just go watch it. Then read the book!

My GenCon schedule

Thursday

2:00 D&D World of Eberron seminar

Friday

10:00 Signing in Author Alley

12:00 Bringing Your Concept to Life panel (IIGoH)

2:00 Wizards booth

4:00 D&D World of Forgotten Realms seminar

6:00 Top 5 Best Gaming Products panel (IIGoH)

8:00 ENnies Ceremony

Saturday

10:00 I Want to Be a Dungeon Master seminar

12:00 D&D 4th Edition Extravaganza seminar

4:00 Wizards booth

Sunday

1:00 Religion, Fantasy, and Roleplaying talk (IIGoH)

IIGoH is short for Industry Insider Guest of Honor, a role I'm proud to be playing again this year.

Hope to see you in Indy!

A pair of random thoughts

First, in case you missed it on Twitter or Facebook, I did an interview last week with local public radio station KUOW (94.9). It's supposed to air at 12:26 tomorrow afternoon, and a couple of times over the next week, but you can listen to it now on the web.

I got thinking later about one of the things I said in the interview, and I realized that for a number of books that I've worked on, the funny little chapters are my favorites. To wit:

• The one I mentioned in the interview was the chapter in Deities & Demigods that presented Taiia (the god of a monotheistic religion from Aquela), Elishar and Toldoth (the dualistic religion practiced by my last 1st Edition AD&D character), and the dwarven mystery cult of Dennari (from the Roman campaign).
• The chapter of Oriental Adventures where I talked about using dwarves as the Crab clan of Rokugan (and elves as the Crane) and talked just a bit about using Asian cultures other than China and Japan as sources.
• In Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, the chapter with the three fanes you can use to weaken Strahd.

I don't know what it is about those three chapters that I like so much, but somehow they feel like some of my most distinctive contributions to the D&D game. They're quirky and unique. They're me.

The dog food test

I read this, talking about Google's Chrome OS, last night:

In short, will Chrome OS pass the dog food test: is it something Google’s own engineers will want to use?

I’m skeptical about the prospects of any new system or product that isn’t intended for use by the people creating it. Gmail, for example, is the best web mail system because it was designed to be used not just by “typical” users but by expert users, including the engineers at Google who made it. The iPhone is simple enough to appeal to almost anyone, but guess which phone the people who created it use?

Make something intended not for your own use, but for use by dummies, and you’ll usually wind up creating something dumb. The future of computing probably is in the direction of thin clients connecting to network services for storage and software, but my hunch is that Chrome OS is too thin.

It struck me because it dovetailed directly with a conversation I'd had the day before about D&D 4e. Some people think that we designed the game for World of Warcraft players, or for kids, or for stupid people. We didn't. We designed it for us—and by "us," I mean not just the people inside this department who are lucky enough to play more D&D than just about anybody in the world, but also people like us: People who love the game and want the best gaming experience possible. People who had a great time playing 3rd edition but grew increasingly frustrated with its mechanics. People who still enjoy the tabletop experience of sitting down, face to face, with your friends and spending a couple of hours lost in fantasy.

From my perspective, it was incredibly successful. I'm playing more D&D than I ever have in my life—five regular campaigns, plus frequent games with my son (and sometimes my wife). I'm having more fun while playing, too. And I still hunger for more—I want to get the old band back together and return to the glory days of the Imperium Romanum campaign (back in the SPQR!). From what I've seen, a whole lot of people feel the same way.

Some people don't. Well, that has to be OK. No edition of D&D has pleased everybody. Some people still consider 2nd Edition a blight on the purity of the original AD&D, and some think it's been all downhill since "Advanced" first got appended to the name of the game. Fourth Edition can't please everybody, either. So play the edition of the game that makes you happy.

But, for crying out loud, play the game. I have no patience for armchair generals who stir up the so-called edition wars without ever actually playing any edition of D&D. Play the game the way you want it, and lay off the people who don't like the game you're playing. But play. The D&D kitchen table is big enough for all of us.

Night Below conversion, part 1

As you might have seen me mention on Twitter, today I started running the classic (1995) 2nd Edition AD&D superadventure Night Below for a party of three 3rd-level PCs, consisting of my wife's paladin, my bard, and a character my son made, of a class we've been working on designing for fun. So it's a little weird to be adapting it for only 3 PCs, when the original adventure is intended for four to eight ("the higher number is better").

I started this project because gaming with my son, ever since I brought home Dungeon Delve, has consisted of a string of 3-encounter "delves" with very little plot or story, and I'm getting a little tired of that experience. To be clear, gaming with my son is in addition to five regular campaigns that have a lot more plot, story, and character stuff going on, so it's not like I'm starving for it in general. I just wanted this experience that we share as a family to be little richer, and get him more accustomed to a more traditional style of play.

On the other hand, I didn't want to have to do a lot of work to create another campaign of my own. I'm running my Greenbrier campaign (the one I write about for my Dungeoncraft column) on Fridays at lunch, and that's about all that I have time to prep for. Especially if I start writing another novel any time soon. So I really wanted to pull a superadventure off the shelf, do some tweaking as necessary, and play the heck out of it. I thought Night Below was a pretty strong candidate for that. It might still be, if I can get past this one hump.

One of the things I really like about Night Below is the way it interacts with 4th Edition's quest rules. Just in the little bit we played today, I handed my players three Post-It notes with quests on them:

• Major Quest: Deliver Gordrenn's chest of arcane ritual components to Tauster in Thurmaster. Level 3 (450 XP). Tauster arranges to pay the PCs 110 gp (treasure parcel 9 for 3rd-level PCs).
• Major Quest: Find Jelenneth. I haven't actually set a level for this one yet, because the PCs won't complete it until Book 3 of the adventure, when they'll probably be in the paragon tier. Tauster has promised them 150 gp, which by that time will be pocket change.
• Minor Quest: Deliver Tauster's letter to Kuiper. Level 3 (150 XP). Tauster pays them 30 gp for this easy little delivery job, which I'll shave from another parcel.

The adventure as written has a lot of little quest hooks like this, which should eventually lead to a situation where the players have a bunch of things they could pursue, and they get to decide which quest to work on next.

The problem is that the quest to find Jelenneth seems urgent, which makes the players not interested in other matters. Kuiper suggests that they look for Jelenneth along Hog Creek—but the scene in the inn made it seem like she left abruptly. She didn't tell her sweetie that she was leaving and heading back to Thurmaster. Tauster clearly didn't instruct her to gather herbs along Hog Creek. Why would anyone accept Kuiper's suggestion of searching for her there?

I think this is a surmountable problem. I think the next time we play, I'll have Kuiper sit down with the characters and say, "Look. You're probably right that Jelenneth was abducted—especially given what happened to you guys on your way into the area. Let's have a look around Hog Creek, if only because whoever took her might have come that way, especially if they're hiding out in the forest somewhere."

Then they can run into Oleanna, who has an urgent problem of her own to deal with. With enough urgent problems on their quest log (as it were), perhaps it won't seem so terrible that they have no leads on finding Jelenneth. After all, they've got a werebear to help, orcs to deal with, and more of these kidnapping bandits.

The first encounter in the adventure, "Capture Them Alive!" was easy to put together:

Encounter Level 4 (XP 524)

• 4 human rabble (level 2 minion, MM 162)

• 2 human bandits, armed with bows (1d10 damage, instead of 1d4+3 for the dagger) (level 2 skirmisher, MM 162)

• Carlanis, human guard (level 3 soldier, MM 162)

If they had captured a prisoner, I was prepared to give them another minor quest to bring him to justice in Milborne.

My son was getting antsy after all the talk in Milborne, so I threw a "random" encounter at them between Milborne and Thurmaster (despite the adventure's instructions, "The PCs should not have any random hostile encounters during their trip to Thurmaster.") It was another simple encounter:

Level 3 Encounter (XP 450)

• 6 goblin cutters (level 1 minion, MM 136)

• Goblin blackblade (level 1 lurker, MM 136)

• Bugbear warrior (level 5 brute, MM 135)

I've started to sketch out a campaign arc, based on the tables of contents in the three books of the adventure. Here's what it looks like so far:

• Capture Them Alive! PCs are attacked by bandits on their way to Thurmaster. Level 3.

• Milborne and Beyond Learn of disappeared apprentice. Goblin attack on the way to Thurmaster.

• Lured Into Darkness Four mini-adventures:

—Creeping Along Hog Brook: Kuiper and Oleanne help the PCs to fight orcs and capture the werebear. I've built Kuiper and Oleanne as simple supporting characters using some new rules coming out this fall, so I'll plan these encounters as if we had 5 PCs. I think that means the orc encounter is 10 orc drudges (level 4 minion) and one orc berserker (level 4 brute), which is not quite a level 3 encounter for 5 PCs. Oleanne leaves before the werebear fight, which I think will just be a cave bear (level 6 elite brute).

— Mystery of the New Mire: The PCs investigate the New Mire and deal with the Goblins of the Ring. There's a lot of goblins in there, but I want to try to encourage a diplomatic solution. I'm guessing the PCs will hit 4th level around this time.

— Peril on the River: Carry cargo on the river to Thurmaster, fight bandits. Tough encounter. Ranchefus will be a priest of Torog.

— A Kidnapping on the Moors: Search for missing pilgrims on Howler’s Moor. I might use a couple of shadow hounds (level 6 skirmisher) in place of the pack of death dogs in the original adventure, or I might stat up death dogs, depending on how creative I feel at the time.

• Gazetteer of Haranshire Side adventures TBD. My goal here will be to fill out the PCs' quest log, so that after the werebear incident the characters just have a ton of leads to pursue and quests to fulfill.

• Ruins in the Thornwood PCs fight the kidnappers at Broken Spire Keep. I think I'll be aiming to have the PCs at 5th level by this time. (The original adventure wanted them at 3rd by now.)

• Evil Below the Mines PCs fight more kidnappers at Garlstone Mines. We'll be aiming for 6th level here (the original says they should be 4th).

• The Orcs Below the World PCs fight orcs at the gateway to the Underdark. Aim for level 7 for meaty orc encounters.

• Into the Deep Dark Talk to deep gnomes. Another thing I like about this adventure: "Do not play these deep gnomes as jokey figures of fun. They are emphatically not 'tinker gnomes' or the more frivolous kind generally."

• The Gnome Lands The PCs have the opportunity to kill some trolls (level 9 brute), so it'd be good if they're level 8 by now. As written, these caves have 4 to 8 trolls each! 4e encounter design should make this interesting. There are also some troglodytes, which happily occupy a similar level range (6 to 8).

• Perils of the Long Path Three mini-dungeons:

—Grell Nest: Grells are level 7 and 11 in the MM, which lets me build level 8 or 9 encounters using both.

—Monsters at War: This area pits quaggoths against hook horrors (level 13). I know someone at the office has written up quaggoths, so I'll look into what they did and what level they're pegged at. There's a rakshasa in charge of the hook horrors, which might be a level 15 warrior—otherwise I'll have to craft a lower-level rakshasa than the ones in the MM.

—The Smooth Caverns: Ropers (level 14 elite), xorn (level 9 or 16 skirmisher), and crystal oozes (not done in 4e yet). This is getting pretty high-level, and I might need to skip this section.

—Caves of the Slime Lord: Home of the weird, weird monsters, from piercers and lurkers to invisible stalkers and crystal oozes. Some assembly required.

• Scales Before the Rockseers Two cavern areas:

—Caverns of the Reptiles: Home to a behir (in MM2 at levels 8, 14, and 24) and a shadow dragon (in adventure P3 at levels 8, 14, and 20, and in Draconomicon at 24). Looks like these two are evenly matched whatever level the PCs have reached by this time.

—The Halls of the Rockseers: Rather than introduce a new subrace of subterranean elves, I'm going to make the rockseers a distinct fey race that's elf-like without being elves. At least, that's the current plan. I guess I could just make them ordinary elves who happen to live deep underground (which is also my plan for the deep gnomes), but I'd be a little sad to lose their ability to meld into stone. Fun skill challenge material here.

• The Derro at War I haven't decided yet whether to reinvent derro for 4e or just use the duergar from MM2, which include a number of examples at levels 11–14. There's a purple worm, a level 16 solo, which will be tough for 3 PCs.

• The City of the Glass Pool The home of the kuo-toa (level 12 to 16).

• The Deepest Darkness The PCs regroup, consult with various allies, and make ready to descend to the Sunless Sea.

• Exploring the Great Cavern More derro. Fire giants (level 18). A group of demons led by a marilith (level 24 elite)—oh, that's going to need some work, since alu-fiends aren't in the game and succubi are devils now. Renegade illithids (level 14–18) and fomorians (level 16–22).

• Isles in the Sunless Sea More little mini-dungeons, with a human wizard, a bunch of undead, the pyramid of the ixzan, and some miscellaneous beasties. Some monster design required here.

• Great Shaboath City of the aboleth! Aboleths are level 17–18, so that's our target for the end of the campaign.

I have just suddenly run out of steam. More later.

Thuk

GenCon 2002: A bunch of friends sit down to play some D&D. We make up some hasty, 9th-level characters and then play. I don't remember who DMed—maybe Steve Schubert? I only remember some of the players. But I have the character, because for some reason I entered it into the character storage CGI script I wrote for my old website. Inspired by the T-shirt distributed with the announcement of 3rd Edition, I decided to make a half-orc barbarian/sorcerer. Because the shirt said I could.

Thuk II was a chaotic good half-orc barbarian 3/sorcerer 6. Str 16, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 6, Wis 10, Cha 16. He had 54 hp, AC 21, Fort +7, Ref +4, and Will +6. He wielded a +2 greataxe, wore a +2 mithral shirt, +2 ring of protection, +2 amulet of natural armor, and +2 cloak of Charisma. Raging (once per day) gave him Str 20, Con 18, Will +8, AC 19. His skills were Intimidate +9, Listen +6, and Concentration +8, and he had Weapon Focus (greataxe), Power Attack, Blind-Fight, and Combat Casting as feats. His personality I summed up in a quotation: "Thuk smash!"

His spells per day: 6 level 0, 7 level 1, 6 level 2, and 4 level 3. He knew (1st level) true strike, shocking grasp, burning hands, magic missile; (2nd level) blur, bull's strength; and (3rd level) haste.

Thuk I, who died early in the adventure, was a barbarian 2/sorcerer 7. I changed the distribution of levels so that I could get a second attack each round.

That's perhaps the weirdest irony—I wanted Thuk to be a melee guy who ran up and smashed monsters, enhancing his ability to do so with his sorcerer spells. That's why I chose the spells I did. But the system encouraged me to give him more sorcerer levels than barbarian levels, because I got more bang out of those bucks (more spells). Even in his revised form, Thuk was not a particularly strong character. I was fighting upstream to get a high Charisma (my save DCs started at 13), and my Strength was lower than it would have been as a straight barbarian. 

Now, I've been thinking for a long time, and particularly since we were intently working on Player's Handbook 2, that a half-orc barbarian/sorcerer in 4th Edition would be pretty awesome. So the other night, for kicks, I revisited Thuk.

The new Thuk is a good half-orc barbarian 9 with the Arcane Prodigy (sorcerer multiclass) feat. Str 18, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 8, Wis 11, Cha 18. He has 75 hp, AC 23, Fort 22, Ref 20, and Will 20. He wields a +2 berserker greataxe, wears +2 bloodcut hide armor, and a +2 amulet of health. His trained skills are Athletics +13, Intimidate +15, and Perception +9, and he has Weapon Focus (axes), Power Attack, Arcane Prodigy, Novice Power, and Acolyte Power as feats. His personality can still be summed up as "Thuk smash!"

Here's his powers: (at-will) howling strike, pressing strike, (encounter) furious assault, roar of triumph, vault the fallen, flame spiral, curtain of steel, (daily) rage strike, macetail's rage, vengeful storm rage, white tiger rage, (utility) combat sprint, swift escape. His weapon attacks are +12 and deal a base 1d12+6, while his sorcerer attack is +8, with a +4 damage bonus.

When he hits 10th level, he'll take Adept Power and swap out one of his barbarian rages for a sorcerer daily. 

He doesn't have as much overt magic going on, but there's a lot more happening in his barbarian powers than just his basic attacks. His one sorcerer attack (flame spiral) is a close burst, so I don't need to worry about opportunity attacks—I just burninate the guys next to me. No Charisma penalty means my ability scores are better (even without the cloak of Charisma), and the barbarian has some good uses for that high Charisma score as well. 

This is a character I might actually like to play...

My life, post-trilogy

So it's been just over two months since I sent Dragon War off to my editor for the last time. How is my life different, now that I have all this extra time?

The sad answer is that, mostly, I'm sleeping more. I guess that's actually not so sad, probably good for my health and mood. But instead of setting my alarm for 6:10 every morning, I set it for 7:10. For a while I thought I'd soon start getting up early again and do something productive with that time—go into work earlier, exercise, something. That hasn't happened.

Since the early morning was my primary writing time, that's about all that's really different. Except now I read on the bus in the morning, instead of continuing my writing. So I've read a fair amount in those two months:

• Practical Demonkeeping, by Christopher Moore
• The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Glass Books of the Dream-Eaters, by Gordon Dahlquist
• The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter
• The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem, by Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan
• Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

That's been fun.

Then last week, two months to the day after I finished Dragon War, I woke up and started thinking about a new novel idea. I'm not going to talk about it at all, but it's still percolating in my brain. Work is getting really busy, so it might be a while before I have a lot of time to think more about it. But I think I have a good year or so to get the book written.

In other news, apparently you should follow me on Twitter. At least, that's the message I gleaned from this post on wired.com. I come right after Steve Wozniak. How cool is that?

Nonomotopoeia

I've been searching for this word for a long time, and I finally found it. It's the opposite of onomotopoeia—it's a word that sounds nothing at all like what it means. My textbook example is "pulchritude." I think "gibbous" might also go on the list, as tonight's moon is what got me thinking about it again.

Unlike many fancy Latin-bred words that I learned from the writing of the late Gary Gygax, I know pulchritude because of the unusual choice of Gian Carlo Menotti to replace the credo in his mass with a verse from Augustine's Confessions, making it the Missa "O Pulchritudo". It's a lovely piece, performed with pulchritude by the William Ferris Chorale in the only digital recording I'm aware of.

Player's Handbook 2

This is from USA Today's list of the top 150 books this week:

And the Wall Street Journal's nonfiction list:

An open letter to sweetdragon.livejournal.com

Stumbled upon this post regarding a young woman's budding interest in D&D. I'm not going to go through the rigamarole I'd have to in order to post a reply directly, so I'm posting here to vent my spleen, as it were, in regard to the following comment:

I now find myself downloading the 4th Edition Player's Handbook (Yeah. Downloaded. Fuck you; those things are expensive.)

Dear Sweetdragon,

I'm really glad to hear that you've been enjoying playing D&D, and particularly that you're engrossed enough in it to create such an extensive backstory for your character.

But I'm deeply saddened that you don't think that enjoyment is worth your money.

I worked for three years with a team of the best game designers in the world to produce the game you're downloading. I'm more proud of my name on the front cover of the 4th Edition D&D Player's Handbook than I am of any other book I've worked on. Oh, but maybe you haven't seen the front cover?

The book retails for $35. I spent about that much taking my family to dinner and the $3 movie theater on Saturday night. Sometimes I spend it on just dinner. Two full-priced movie tickets plus popcorn and drinks will put you back about that much. It seems to be the going rate for maybe two hours of entertainment. Or I guess you could almost buy two DVDs, and have four hours of movies you can watch whenever you want to.

Or you can buy the D&D Player's Handbook and play D&D with it for the rest of your life. How many hours of enjoyment is that illegal PDF going to give you? You don't think it's worth your money?

OK, times are tough and money's tight for a lot of people. But look. You can buy a legal copy of that PDF from RPGNow for just $25. Or you can get the book from Amazon for only $23, or get the three core books as a gift set for $66.

I hope Talia has many grand adventures and manages to overcome the evil within her and attain the holiness she seeks.

And I hope you do the right thing and stop stealing my work.

Thanks,

James Wyatt