No Dumb Questions

Yesterday, a friend asked about designing a "testicular torsion" spell, and despite not being framed as a particularly serious question, I've been thinking about it way more than I should. After all, it's a pretty good example of game design in microcosm.

What do you hope to accomplish? What are you trying to model? What genre are you emulating?

Let's start with what it is, in case you don't want to click the above Wikipedia article: as the name suggests, testicular torsion describes a twist in the spermatic cord, cutting off blood flow to a testicle. This usually causes extreme pain, and if not treated quickly, can result in necrosis of the testicle within hours.

As for a magic spell, that's going to depend a little on how the game designer views magic. Does it actually cause the medical affliction? Does it just cause the associated pain? Is it temporary or permanent? Can it affect only people with testicles, or does it cause an equivalent sensation in everyone?

Genre will also have an impact. In heroic fantasy, like Pathfinder or post-WotC Dungeons & Dragons, it seems right that the spell might just cause the sensation and it will probably only last a short while. In sword-and-sorcery or horror or other "low" magic settings, it might cause the actual affliction and require medical attention to fix.

Frequently, systems with supernatural powers already have an appropriate pain spell, so that's a great starting place. 

In no particular order, here are some thoughts across a couple of game systems: 

• A friend in the same conversation is much more conversant in Pathfinder 2e than I am, and so went with that system. He made it an Incapacitation spell with a Fort save that probably progresses in stages like a disease. Critically succeeding on the Fort save negates it, while any lower degree of success inflicts worsening penalties of Clumsy and/or Enfeebled.
• For D&D 5e-ish games, I'd probably take inspiration from symbol; it lasts a minute requiring a Con save to avoid the incapacitated condition. Save again at the end of each round to negate it.
• If it's a really low level spell, maybe it only lasts a short time or grants disadvantage, similar to (but not the same as) the frightened condition.
• Different editions handle pain differently. AD&D 2e has symbol grant a -2 Dexterity penalty and a -4 attack penalty for 2d10 rounds. D&D 3e has a low-level power word, pain spell that just does damage over time for a handful of rounds.
• It's more fiddly than I tend to like my rules, but I'd probably allow an appropriate medical roll or healing spell to alleviate the pain. We're talking something like a Healing check in AD&D 2e or a Wisdom (Medicine) check in D&D 5e. In games lacking defined proficiencies, it might involve your character's background, or it might be outside the realm of things that player characters can accomplish. Better get to the local hospitalier as soon as possible!
• Outside of the D&D paradigm, I'd be more likely to just drop penalties on someone until the situation is resolved. For example:
• In Unknown Armies, third edition, a testicular torsion spell is probably a minor spell causing immense pain (I might assess a -20% or -30% penalty), minor injury (maybe 1d10 wounds), and perhaps even a stress check (rank-3 or rank-4 in Violence or Helplessness). It might last a few minutes, although I tend more toward the "you need to go to the hospital" end of the paradigm. Maybe it depends on the number of charges?
• My memory of World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness is a little fuzzy around the edges, but a substantial wound penalty (say -3 to -5) feels right. As above, the specifics of the power used determines if there's a duration or if you need medical attention. The victim might take a little bashing damage.
• The spell Wrack in Call of Cthulhu is pretty similar to what one would want from a testicular torsion spell; it might be less intense, and won't have the physical side effects. On the other hand, the duration is probably longer than Wrack, lasting until treated. 
• The further you get outside of traditional systems, the more abstract the effects are going to be.
• I tend to shy away from using hit points/wounds/etc. to model pain, but in a paradigm like Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark, a point of Harm might actually get the point across: it makes you less effective when acting and brings you closer to something really bad happening. Get out of the action and to a healer as soon as possible.
• A storygame that's even less focused on physical reality and more focused on emotional reality might wholly eschew physical consequences for such a spell. Instead, it focuses more on the experience of your friends getting you to the doctor and helping support your recovery. In fact, in contrast to many games that remove the afflicted character from the action, this spell in a storygame might actually thrust the afflicted player into the spotlight.
• For any of the grittier systems, I'd probably also put something in place to model the severity inherent in leaving the situation untreated. Maybe something like, get medical attention within six hours or you might need surgical removal.

In addition to considerations of genre, you probably also have to think about your table. Tables more used to heroic systems probably find "save or suck" spells to be anathema to their play style, while tables more on the survival horror end of things probably consider such things a consequence of combat anyway. In a Pathfinder game, a spell that takes you out of the action for a prolonged period is an impediment to the combat sport. In a Call of Cthulhu game, a spell that takes you out of the action might be the lynchpin of another wild story revolving around horrible things that happen in a cosmic horror game. (I personally like to imagine that one character gets hit with the spell so another character helps them to the hospital; predictably, these two investigators are the only survivors of the scenario, as everyone else tries to carry on and so mysteriously disappears.)

This rumination doesn't solve anything, but in terms of game design, it's an intriguing question. What are you trying to model with a piece of design? What do you hope to accomplish? How do your goals change with the game you're currently playing?

Twenty Questions on the Sorrowfell Plains

Barking Alien's campaign tour is a little more deep in the weeds than I tend to get on world-building, but it's still good to review the state of the campaign setting every once in a while. Almost fifteen years ago, I answered Jeff Rients' twenty questions regarding the Sorrowfell Plains. As often happens, information blooms, changes, and evolves over expanded timeframes, so those questions now have different (and hopefully more precise) answers.

1. What is the deal with my cleric's religion?

It's the standard Renn Faire, D&D-style polytheism nonsense. There's a whole pantheon of gods great and small, but people traditionally choose a patron deity (or two) and worship them like household spirits or patron saints. (Although plenty of folks venerate the whole pantheon, as needed.) Individual temples aren't typically networked into organized religions, but they're also not not networked; a cleric of Ioun can pray at any temple of Ioun without risk of defying tradition. That having been said, if a church has a seat of power, it's probably in Scandshar; a pilgrimage is likely in order if you have the time and money.

2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment?

There's bound to be at least one general store in your average city or town. Villages are a little more dicey, and might only have supplies if a merchant caravan passes through. (Or if Old Harold is willing to part with his grandfather's breastplate.) There are some trading posts in the borderlands, but it's best to stock up before your next expedition.

3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?

Scandshar, the major city in the region, is still your best bet. Grimwald, far to the northwest, mostly comprises what hardliners still sometimes call "monstrous humanoids" and so has many armorsmiths who cater to inhuman body plans.

4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?

A surprisingly difficult question. Historically, the answer is Archmagus Iandak Voiddrake, Supplicant of the Quaint and Curious Spheres, but he has been unseen so long that it is no longer even clear if he's alive. (Of course, he held so many secrets and so many magical contingencies that it seems unlikely that he's actually dead.) Ebenezer Cascata Mararnith Jepson, headmaster of the University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences in Duchy Jepson, is the "safe" answer.

Of course, Baron Adeptus Bezaldooz of the adventuring company known as the Shields of the Sorrowfell might have surpassed the Headmaster and the old Archmagus. And nobody is entirely certain what to make of recently-seen planar travelers like Barnabus Sleet or Pete Loudly.

5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land?

Also a difficult question. The best answer, assuming he's a real person and not just a legend, is probably Swordsaint Rishi, an immortal devotee of the god Kord who is alleged to be such a skilled swordsman that he is capable of fighting Death itself to a draw, preventing it from claiming him. (If the tales are true, he's been alive for millennia.) The gladiator Thalia the Bloody-Handed is perhaps better known, although with the uncertain future of the gladiator matches in Scandshar, who knows what that means? Although she is not as well known as the previously-listed people, the fey noblewoman Lady Graunwen Dwin'altin is also an incredibly formidable warrior.

Of course, Baron Sergeant-at-Arms Peren and Baron Sergeant-at-Arms Torinn, both of the Shields of the Sorrowfell, might be more accurate choices. Some also claim that recently-seen planar traveler Malice A'forethought fits the bill. Still others wonder at the bloody swathe carved by the escaped gladiators of the Scandshar Six, especially Nobody or Southie.

6. Who is the richest person in the land?

Until recently, the answer was probably one of the lords of the crime syndicate known as the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks — most likely Lady Victoria Loveless MacBeth, also known as Lord Key. However, with the collapse of their operations and the death of their leadership, the answer is probably someone with access to government treasuries: Duchess Sophia Taika Jepson, Governor Svetlana Zupan, or similar. It could also be a merchant or a noble whose intrigues lead them to avoid disclosing their true wealth.

Of course, groups like the Shields of the Sorrowfell and Those Who Remember have been pulling treasure out of the depths of the earth, so it's possible the actual answer is one of those nouveau riche adventuring companies.

7. Where can we go to get some magical healing? 

Several villages have a faithful priest or a village witch who can aid you, but if you want The Good Stuff™, a major temple in a city or town is your best bet. Expect to "donate" or pay, of course.

8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?

As above. Some of those are easier to heal than others, so the village witch might be able to help you with a minor poisoning, while you might need a priest of great faith in a major population center to heal some curses. Some of these things are beyond the ken of most established religions, even in major population centers like Scandshar.

There is a recent tale that if you can find the lost city of Argent, Valna of the Shields of the Sorrowfell resides there and can heal any ailment.

9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?

The University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences in Duchy Jepson is the appropriate answer, although critics say that it's just a "wizard mill" designed for rich patrons in Scandshar, so there might be an expectation of service after graduation. Dirthzea'via University in Scandshar and Morgrave University in Sorgforge both have minor magical colleges, but you won't gain much in the way of arcane secrets there.

There are, of course, always rumors of secret societies that may function more like magic guilds. (Maybe skip ahead to Question #17 if you want a more nuanced answer.)

10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?

Any of the three aforementioned universities (Dirthzea'via University, Morgrave University, and the University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences) are good sources, as are most major temples. Of course, specific subjects might require specific sages, which could be very rare indeed. You might have to travel to a remote village or monastery to learn answers to the most obscure questions.

11. Where can I hire mercenaries?

Back before they collapsed, the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks was the preeminent mercenary guild in the region. Of course, the economy is bad enough that plenty of folks are looking for work; major cities are more likely to have people with actual martial training, but you can always outfit a crew with your own money and get them experience that way...

Weirdly, there are a handful of reports regarding a Blackearth Mercenary Guild, found primarily in the northern Sorrowfell Plains and the Hoarfrost Ridge. They're all alchemical automata, leftovers from the Cackledread War, and they're soldiers in search of a war to fight. That might not be a terrible place to look if you're trying to build a warband.

12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?

The roads are dangerous enough that armed travelers aren't considered all that strange, although they might expect to be questioned if a crime is committed in the vicinity with no obvious culprit. There are some foreign lands where arms and magic are more problematic, however.

It is also an unfortunate truth that the law is more likely to hassle certain sorts of demihumans depending on how rare they are; best not to travel alone if you're from the Deepearth or some similarly exotic place.

13. Which way to the nearest tavern?

It's probably close. If a settlement is too small for a tavern, there's probably a public house. If there's no public house, perhaps the one of the locals will give you a meal and a pint of homebrewed beer in exchange for work or a bit of coin.

Of course, if you want a proper tavern, head to your nearest city or town and go wherever the tourists and merchants hang out.

14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?

Gnolls. Despite the time that has passed between now and the Cackledread War, enough people remember the war that gnolls are still among the most feared creatures around. You could make a career as a professional gnoll hunter, no problem.

Also, there's still technically a sizable bounty on the Scandshar Six even though no one has seen them in months.

15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?

Pundits and armchair sages are always running their mouths, saying that the future trouble is coming from the gnollish warbands scattered across the borderlands, as well as the various goblin and orc tribes to the east. Plenty of respected tacticians have made careers saying that the gnoll or orc attack is coming "any day now."

But it's hard to actually see what's happening in the borderlands when you're a philosopher going to aristocratic parties. Here are some spots people should be worried about, but aren't, in order of most threatening to least:

• A couple of traders are sounding the alarm about massing goblin armies to the south. The adventuring company known as Those Who Remember has recovered intelligence referring to a new "Boss" and "Asset" that appear to be driving this rapid militarization, but apart from a few tantalizing glimpses, there is relatively little information on this emerging threat. But rest assured: if not handled soon, it will become a problem for everyone.
• The Blackearth Mercenary Guild isn't well-known and isn't causing trouble, but everyone should probably be a little nervous about a growing group of immortal soldiers with no war to fight. Why are they gathering now, fifty years after the war ended?
• Nainimdul also isn't currently a problem, but this backwater burg features some weird, isolationist elves. If an elf supremacist is going to emerge anywhere, they're going to start in Nainimdul.
• It might not help that faith in a new half-elf deity has started to appear. Religious schisms always make for unstable times.
• Slavery is outlawed in Scandshar, which means that the economy of the Plains and the Sea of Sorrows just reorganized overnight. That is likely to increase tensions among 'Ichi, Nadhi, and the Sorrowfell Plains, which could result in a trade war or even an open naval conflict.
• There are always a bunch of conflicts brewing on the Isle of Anhak to the west. Fortunately, those conflicts don't tend to spread beyond the island, but if you really want to be a professional mercenary right now, board a boat to one of their major port cities. (Just make sure you don't get shipped off to demon-haunted Qelong.)
• There's a rumor that dark elves were organizing warbands of giants in the Hoarfrost Ridge, but the Shields of the Sorrowfell put a stop to it. But they didn't massacre the giants: the Three Corners withstood a siege while the Shields killed the giants' leadership. That means the routed armies are still out there, waiting for some charismatic leader to organize them. That probably won't happen soon, but someone should be thinking about the next couple of human generations...
• Speaking of the dark elves, a lot of Scandshar war hawks want to launch a campaign against the dark elves for their attempted invasion of the surface. The only thing really stopping them is logistics: outfitting armies and building supply lines for an extended foray into the Underworld is a foolish proposition. But if somebody figures that out — or if the right politician can effectively use the drow as scapegoats for enough problems facing Scandshar — then the tacticians are going to start training Scandshar Militia as tunnel-rats.

16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?

All that stuff is in Scandshar. It's not entirely clear how the gladiatorial combat system is going to work now that slavery is outlawed, but that probably just opens the door for gladiators to get a bigger slice of the pie. Lucky for you.

17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?

The official word on the street is that the dread conspiracies are shattered. The Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks was equal parts organized crime syndicate, pyramid scheme, and freaky apocalypse cult, but the group folded and its members scattered when the top brass was all slain over the span of a handful of months. The Broken Chain, a terrorist organization that was also a cult of personality around Morana the Forsaken — yeah, the same "Weeping Morana" from the child's nursery rhyme — likewise collapsed around the same time when a couple of members died and Morana the Forsaken was destroyed. (Uh, I guess she was real, by the way.)

But if you know the secret signs, there are a bunch:

• The Zookeepers/The Children's Crusade/The Sisterhood of the Swan. Not sinister, but they are technically secret societies. Primarily focused on slavery abolition (among other things), it is unclear what will become of them in the coming years. (One expects the Sisterhood of the Swan to keep defending the natural world, while the Children's Crusade will likely become a thieves' guild in the Peacocks' absence. It isn't entirely clear what will become of the Zookeepers, however.)
• The Banite Inquisition. A "secret" cult dedicated to the tyrannical god Bane, positioned at the top of the Scandshar Watch's leadership. (As the air quotes suggest, this isn't common knowledge, but the Banite Inquisition isn't exactly secret, either.) You have to be a guardsman in Scandshar to join.
• The Saraman Voluptuaries. A secret society with ties to organized crime and the literal Hell, they've been trying to position themselves for years to take out the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks, even having infiltrated their organization. Now that the Peacocks have fallen, they're in the best position to take advantage of the chaos.
• The Raktamar. Although not native to the Sorrowfell Plains, their plans are far-reaching enough that you might still brush against them. Organized under the ancient vampire known in legend as the Blood Lotus, this cabal of vampires have co-opted Nadhi's state religion for their own purposes, essentially turning the whole continent into their private game preserve. With ties to undeath, infernalism, and Orcus-worship, they maintain fingers in many pies via their relatively ironclad control over Nadhi's government.
• The Bulwark of the Hypostases. This is the cabal of illusionists and enchanters teased a few years ago, and their aims are vast and cosmic: they're altering memories and manipulating geopolitics in the hopes of a total paradigm shift. In the long-term, they hope to bolster the membranes among the planes, finally allowing humans and demihumans to stand on their own two feet without extraplanar entities interfering in their affairs. It's a lofty goal, and it is unclear as to what would happen in the long-term. Would there still be magic? Would demihumans survive?
• This isn't a bad choice for a Magic-User guild from Question #9, if you plan on becoming an Enchanter or Illusionist. And don't mind having bosses with weird agendas.
• The Sodalicium Remegni. A group of vampire wizards, formerly a secret faction embedded in the University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences but forced to leave for greener pastures. Their current whereabouts are unknown, but since the rumors say they traditionally number thirteen but are down a member, they might be recruiting...
• They have ties to the Raktamar, which should be troubling to absolutely everyone. 
• This might also not be a bad choice if you're looking for a Magic-User guild from Question #9, as long as you're whimsically evil and willing to become a vampire.
• The Disciples of the Barrens. A cult dedicated to the demon lord Oublivae, they seek the downfall of Scandshar as part of their program to dismantle civilization as we understand it. They weren't taken all that seriously until they purged most of the other demon cults in Scandshar over the past year or so.

In addition to the above factions, the noble families of Scandshar and the mercantile families of Sorgforge probably also count as secret societies, given their vast resources and far-ranging schemes.

18. What is there to eat around here?

Culturally, the Sorrowfell Plains are the standard European, Renn Faire-style amusement park you have come to expect, so the food is an anachronistic morass of things that should never share an ecosystem. (Especially since the presence of the Olman suggests that the oldest human cuisine in the area is similar to Aztec or Hispanic food.) Root vegetables, grains, and meat and dairy harvested from livestock form the base of the diet. Beer and clean water are plentiful. Trade with 'Ichi, Anhak, and Nadhi mean that urban centers or trade routes may enjoy exotic dishes, while local customs (such as the corpse cakes of the western Sorrowfell Plains) may prevail in certain spots.

19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?

A few. Some claim the Crux of Eternity, the weapon forged by the gods to slay the Primordials, has recently reappeared in the Sorrowfell Plains; if true, it is a treasure with powers beyond measure. Its antithesis, the Doom of Divinity, is also a frequent target for Primordial cultists and blasphemers. Other legendary treasures include Cage (a luckblade that imprisons the efreeti Padishah Nurhan Solak, allowing the wielder to utilize his wishes); the Giantbane Hammer of Onyxarm (a standard dwarven thrower but with a legendary backstory rendering it as dwarf Excalibur); the Seeker's Staff (a wizard's staff developed by demonologist Gingor the Seeker and possibly containing his soul); and the snailstones (artifacts from the Temple of the Snail that draw dreamers across time and space to ally with the holder).

20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?

Make no mistake: dragons are here, but they haven't been seen in a long time. Go back a few hundred years and the big news in Scandshar was the reign of terror of Benthosruthsa before he either left the area or went to sleep. More recently, there are a few sightings of younger dragons like Vilustuminen the White (which has since been slain) or Daurgoth the Toxic Foetor (last reported in the Feywalk Woods). A few legends of mature dragons spread, but they are likewise spotty (like sightings of silver and topaz dragons in the Hoarfrost Ridge) or describe dragons that have since been slain (like Urytenurarveia the Bogbeast of the Bogbeast Fens). In theory, Urytenurarveia's sister Silhouette is still at large, although she has not been seen in many years.

But if you want to go after big game, here are a few of the tales occasionally told around campfires:

• Hjertavbeybrannen the Smoldering Ember. Said to have disappeared many centuries ago. This raises the uncomfortable possibility that it is sleeping, and may yet awaken. Interested parties look to the recent schisms in the kobold lair of Okarthelvrant in the foothills of the Hoarfrost Ridge with no small amount of trepidation.
• Jalanumerrurr the Bastion of Bahamut. Said to lair in a secret place guarding a treasure known only to the dragon-god Bahamut. Clues in old tomes suggest this secret place might be in the Sorrowfell Plains, and the occasional tall tale is told regarding a gold dragon of enormous size in the borderlands.
• Stórskjaldbaka the Invincible. A dragon turtle of enormous size, worshiped as a god by some tribes and said to be the offspring of the World Turtle described by the sea peoples. If it exists, it is both ancient and powerful, and might not even reside in the world anymore. (Some obscure records suggests it makes its home "among the stars.") Some tales claim the lost city of Orpokoti rests on its back, so it likely carries its hoard with it.

Other monsters with large amounts of treasure might include the legendary vampire known as the Blood Lotus; the lich Lazghul, the Opal of Chaos with Teeth of Jet and the Dress of Silence (presumed destroyed, but a couple of recent anecdotes suggest he is still around); and the undead beholder Lord Sepsis, one of the few remaining lords of the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks.

Advice in Practice: On the Simulacrum Spell

I've talked before about what I think makes for effective games that keep players wanting more (namely listening to the players and establishing real stakes as described in this blog post), but I recently encountered a Reddit thread wherein the original poster was asking about advice for trying to limit the 5e version of the simulacrum spell. The rule for 5e simulacrum is that a given caster can only cast one instance of simulacrum at any given time, but those simulacra could use their one cast of simulacrum on the caster, creating an infinite army of wizards given enough time and powdered rubies. The redditor in question was worried about this "exploit," and was asking for advice.

While a lot of advice in the comments suggests, "go ahead and limit it, you're the GM," I don't find that satisfying, because I tend to think the inflection points of a thing are usually the most interesting part. So in keeping with establishing real stakes, here was my response. A specific example that is potentially broadly applicable; when your players can do something wild and creative that seems like it will upend your carefully crafted world, let them do it! But also, brainstorm the ripple effects this action will have. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and the world keeps moving while the players wait.

(Also, part of the joy of being a powerful wizard in any role-playing game system is doing wild, impossible things. Don't take that from your players!)

I replicate my response below:

As the DM, you are perfectly within your rights to limit aspects of the rules or setting. That's technically the end of the discussion, although I might canvass the entire player group and see what they think.

But personally? I wouldn't limit simulacrum. I'm usually in favor of whatever nonsense my players want to do.

However, there is always a cost.

Each casting of simulacrum costs 1,500gp and takes twelve hours, which means you can functionally only cast it once per day despite your spell slots. (If your characters have folded time or don't need to sleep, then maybe you get two castings if you have the spell slots. Wish obviously changes the calculus of these assumptions, but it does that anyway.)

That means your magic-user's clone army takes weeks to amass. If anything else is happening at the moment, it continues to happen while they're doing this. If the other players don't want to wait, then they get to go have adventures while the wizard sits in their laboratory and makes simulacra all day.

And what about ruby dust? Your player might have plenty of rubies (a single "typical" 5,000gp ruby as described in the treasure portion of the Dungeon Master's Guide yields enough powder for 3 1/3 castings of simulacrum), but will probably have to get more to amass an army over the course of months. That means they have to go delving, or mining, or trading. How many rubies are in a typical settlement, anyway? A typical mine? Is the queen willing to pry every ruby out of her crown to power your simulacra?

All of this to say: the spell is not instantaneous, and it's not without cost. Casting simulacrum takes time and resources, the sort of large-scale project that someone notices and tends to engender strong opinions. What do the NPCs do when they realize a wizard is casting simulacrum over and over again? What do they do when they realize a wizard has 50 rubies on hand? (Worth at least 250,000gp; the GDP of whole city-states.) What do the other player characters do when they realize the wizard is going to spend the next two months blasting through their wealth to build clones?

Are things so quiet in the world that the characters can afford to wait while the wizard performs their Great Work in their ivory tower? Is there no political or religious organization in your setting that would be very interested in these activities? Is the villain merely sitting idly while the players gather a magical army vulnerable to antimagic?

I don't know the parameters of your campaign. But I do know that player decisions don't happen in a vacuum, and in high-level games, they have consequences. Big consequences. What are the consequences of this choice?

Play to find out.

The Leap Yeap

Evansville Press, Indiana, February 5, 1912

The leap yeap is considered native to the plains of the lush world of Varasla, although scholars have documented the creatures on other worlds. A leap yeap appears as a cross between a rabbit and a kangaroo, albeit the end result is as large as a Clydesdale. Although the creatures roam wild across the plains, they have also been domesticated as mounts and pack animals and so may be found in settlements outside their native range. (For example, although they are not native to the mountains, travelers have found them to make good, sure-footed mounts in uneven terrain. Some long-haired varieties have even been bred for colder climates and higher altitudes.)

Although they tend to be skittish rather than aggressive, the occasional leap yeap-related death is not unknown; their hind legs can deliver a powerful kick, and their claws are sharp enough to disembowel victims.

BECMI-style stats:

No. Enc.: 1d6 (5d6)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 180' (60')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 2 (1 bite, 1 kick)
Damage: 1d4/1d4
Save: F2
Morale: 6
Hoard Class: None
XP: 50
Leap yeaps are skittish animals, found both roaming in herds or alone as mounts. They can leap up to 30', and often do if frightened—a riot of stamping feet and screeching.

5e-style stats:

Leap Yeap
Large beast, unaligned
Armor Class 13
Hit Points 22 (3d10+6)
Speed 50 ft.
Str 13 (+1), Dex 17 (+3), Con 15 (+2), Int 2 (-4), Wis 11 (+0), Cha 7 (-2)
Skills Perception +2
Senses passive Perception 12
Languages —
Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)
Standing Leap. The leap yeap’s long jump is up to 30 feet and its high jump is up to 15 feet, with or without a running start.
Actions
Kick. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (2d4+1) slashing damage.
Bonus Actions
Skittish. The leap yeap takes the Disengage, Dodge, or Hide action.

The Obligatory D&D Basketball Post

It was inevitable.

Long-time readers of the ol' hobby blog will no doubt recall previous write-ups of basketball wizards, both for BECMI/OSR-type systems and for D&D 5e.

Fast-forward to four years later: one of my players from Of Kith and Kin is running his first game, and I'm playing a basketball wizard. So of course, he includes a basketball encounter featuring a battle map from Neutral Party and Gab's basketball rules.

We didn't care for Gab's rules.

In this era of ubiquitous internet, I assume it must be a rite of passage to excitedly grab someone's custom ruleset from a blog or other source only to have them fall apart during play. In this case, the rules feature six pages of rules that basically posit a new combat system — way too many rules to quickly internalize in play, especially given a new GM and two new players. (To compare: the entire combat chapter in the 5e Player's Handbook is ten pages long, and that includes edge cases that are unlikely to appear in every combat.)

Beyond being very rules-heavy, the system posits that each character gets three combat actions per round, so the system drags a bit. I suspect it would be good for small teams (the rules suggests 3-on-3 matches), or games where basketball is a constant feature, but not as just an occasional fun aside.

But you probably already see where this is going: I was inspired to create my own ill-advised D&D 5e basketball rules. (My basketball wizard has a home world, after all, and my spelljammer players might go there and shoot some hoops. Also note that there's a little precedent in my games: I have previously included a football/soccer encounter for my Crux of Eternity players, using a sphere of annihilation as the ball.) For your convenience, I have included it below in pdf and html. Although it is still a little long — a full page, front-and-back in my .doc file — many of those rules are just reminding you of rules that already exist in the Player's Handbook and explaining how they apply to basketball. I could probably edit it further, but without further ado...

The Obligatory D&D 5e Basketball Rules (pdf)

These rules extensively reference Chapter 9 of the Player's Handbook, and make extensive use of the "Variant: Skills with Different Abilities" section in Chapter 7 of the Player's Handbook. 

The Abstracted Basketball Game

If you do not want to play through a whole round-by-round basketball game, you can simulate the entire game with group checks. Every player makes Dexterity (Athletics), and the DM assembles those results into a group check for each team. The team with the highest result wins.

If you need to know the precise number of points won in a game, assume a team scores a number of points equal to its Dexterity (Athletics) group check × 5. (Smaller games might use a ×1 or ×2 multiplier.) For example, a team with a group check of 14 scores 70 points. The DM might want to add 1d10 to the winning team's points or subtract 1d10 from the losing team's points to avoid perfectly round numbers each time.

The Round-by-Round Basketball Game

If you and your table want to play a basketball game with significantly more granularity, run it like a combat encounter. Each player rolls initiative and otherwise follows the procedures described in Chapter 9 of the Player's Handbook. A few points of interest are outlined below.

Possession

Initial possession is resolved with a jump ball: select two players on opposing sides to make contested Dexterity (Athletics) checks. The winner's team is the starting offensive team and begins with possession of the ball. It is up to the DM whether possession alternates thereafter, or whether it is always resolved by contested Dexterity (Athletics) checks.

Interacting with the Ball

Any attempt to shoot, pass, receive, or intercept the ball typically requires the Use an Object action. Attempting to shoot a basket requires a DC 15 Dexterity (Athletics) check. This check is at disadvantage if the shot is over 20 ft. away, and shooting a basket from more than 60 ft. away results in a loose ball. (If you're thinking in zones instead of feet, two-point shots are DC 15 and three-point shots are DC 15 at disadvantage.) At the DM's option, a character who can reach the basket with a high jump can make a Strength (Athletics) check at advantage to dunk the ball.

Passing the ball to a teammate is a DC 10 Dexterity (Athletics) check, although the character must be prepared to receive the ball with the Ready action. Passing the ball more than 20 ft. imposes disadvantage on the check, and attempting to pass from more than 60 ft. away results in a loose ball.

Conversely, if a character uses the Ready action to pass the ball on the receiving character's turn, the receiving character can interact with the ball freely during their move or action as described in "Other Activity on Your Turn" in Chapter 9 of the Player's Handbook.

Intercepting the ball requires the Ready action and a contested Dexterity (Athletics) check. The character must be within 5 ft. of the ball's trajectory to attempt to intercept it. If their Dexterity (Athletics) check is higher than the Dexterity (Athletics) check of the creature who was passing or shooting the ball, then they gain control of the ball. A tie results in a loose ball.

Loose Ball

A ball that misses the basket or is otherwise dropped lands in the space it was targeting or in the place where its movement was arrested. Each round at initiative count 20, the ball rolls or bounces 5 ft. in the most logical direction. If a direction is unclear from a given maneuver, the DM can roll 1d8 to determine direction, and the ball continues to move in that direction until stopped by another force.

A character can gain control of a loose ball either by interacting with it during their move or action, or by using the Use an Object action if they have already interacted with an object on their turn (see "Other Activity on Your Turn" and "Actions in Combat" in Chapter 9 of the Player's Handbook).

Other Combat Actions

Other actions described in Chapter 9 of the Player's Handbook might come into play. Examples include:

• Attack: Attacking is almost assuredly a foul in any friendly game, although there are no doubt illegal underground basketball games that allow contact, injury, or even death.
• Cast a Spell: The DM ultimately determines whether magic is allowed in a basketball game, and what constitutes a foul. Of course, in basketball games featuring Slamaturges and other magic-users, magic is generally allowed, with only a few banned spells (usually involving injuring opposing players).
• Help: The Help action can significantly increase a teammate's chances of making a shot, pass, or interception. A shouted word of encouragement, interference with an opposing team member, or being in the right place at the right time are all excellent ways to justify use of the Help action.
• Ready: The Ready action is likely to be the centerpiece of these basketball rules, as characters try to strategically maneuver the ball downcourt. Consider the utility of using the Ready action to pass the ball to a teammate who has just moved within twenty feet of the basket.
• Improvising an Action: The catch-all action from Chapter 9 of the Player's Handbook, this covers any potential edge cases you might encounter. A contested Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check to steal the ball in mid-dribble? A contested Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to move through an enemy's space? A contested Charisma (Deception) check vs. an opponent's Wisdom (Insight) check to feint a pass?

Customization Options

Obviously, these rules are far from comprehensive, and are always subject to a modicum of DM interpretation and adjudication. Some customization options and specific rules interactions you may want to consider include:

• Can characters make Strength (Athletics) checks rather than Dexterity (Athletics) checks to shoot or pass the ball?
• I might be convinced, especially with a good rationale or description as to how Strength applies to a given maneuver. As written, strong characters are better at slam dunks than shots and passes.
• How does the monk's Deflect Missiles feature interact with receiving passes and interceptions?
• I would probably let Deflect Missiles receive passes as a reaction, although as worded, it doesn’t strike me as though it would have any effect on interceptions.
• Do you have any special guidelines for the rogue's Reliable Talent feature?
• I do not. The most obvious defense against a high-level rogue is going to be one or two players constantly guarding them, using the Ready and Help actions to make an interception.
• Can the Interception Fighting Style also apply to basketball interceptions?
• I would probably allow it, although since the Fighting Style automatically assumes deflecting an object rather than catching it, it might always result in a loose ball. The fighter just swats the ball away as a reaction.
• Any weird magical variants?
• Many. My favorite involves using a sphere of annihilation instead of a basketball, although the risk to the players would no doubt preclude such activities in most places. (And you probably wouldn't need most of these rules to adjudicate a basketball with a sphere of annihilation!)
• If basketball is going to be a major feature of the campaign, what about using a custom basketball tool proficiency instead of Dexterity (Athletics) checks?
• Assuming basketball is the centerpiece of a campaign, I would consider it. If the DM does not give their players such a proficiency at the beginning of the campaign, a coach could easily grant the characters basketball proficiency after eight months of dedicated training, as per the Training rules under "Downtime Activities" in Chapter 8 of the Player's Handbook.

What Happens When I Eat the Corpse Cake?

In the Sorrowfell Plains, the locals often call confessors or counselors, "sin-eaters." As with many terms, the origin is obscure to the average pseudo-medieval peasant, but scholars recognize that the villages of the western Sorrowfell Plains still maintain traditional funerary rites*, including leaving an offering upon the decedent's body which is then consumed by the mourners.

While this is often a celebratory practice, hoping that one will gain some of the positive qualities of the deceased, there is another aspect to the ritual. Those families who worry that their loved one's sins will cause them to rise as undead, or who have heard the heretical claims that the dead (called "petitioners") spend their afterlives in the Astral Reaches, will often feed this bread to a priest or other confessor, hoping that such a person will be able to take their loved one's sin and purify it. Other families or villages, cleaving more to the scapegoat model of morality (or lacking a local priest), may instead pay a poor person or a traveler to eat it in the hopes that they will go elsewhere and take the sin with them.

(Astute observers will also note that this trend is repeated across many such times and places. Interested parties are directed to examine sin-eating as practiced in historical Europe over the past few centuries.)

This sounds like the perfect excuse to put a funeral on your "What's happening in this random village?" chart, and have the locals try to sell the funerary bread to the adventurers passing through town in the hopes that they will take the sin with them. Locals are unlikely to offer much for this service: the traditional pay in Wales was six pence, and while I expect pseudo-medieval peasants and their ilk to not offer more than a gold piece for such an act, nobles might be willing to offer outrageous sums to travelers willing to eat the funerary bread.

If your system of choice offers XP-for-gold, it's up to you whether you grant XP for the gold given. I probably would, given that there's risk involved and since the money is likely to be low: a concerned and desperate noble will ensure your room-and-board for the night and might be willing to pay up to 100gp. It is unlikely that they would pay more unless they are certain the decedent's sins are truly grave, but what are the odds of someone doing something that horrible in private? Unless the characters are foreign and so are completely ignorant of the decedent's reputation...

So what's the harm? A free meal and ten gold pieces for your trouble? Why would you say no?

What Happens When I Eat the Corpse Cake?

Each player who partakes rolls 1d20. (The GM may prefer to roll, since a lot of these changes aren't immediately obvious.) Being under the effects of a spell like protection from evil completely prevents the following effects, which is why clerics are often preferred as sin-eaters.

1d20	Effect
1-12	No effect.
13	Roll a save vs. spell (BECMI) or a DC 13 Charisma save (5e). If you fail, your alignment inverts: Lawful becomes Chaotic (or vice versa) and Good becomes Evil (or vice versa). Neutral stays the same.
14	Roll a save vs. spell (BECMI) or a DC 13 Charisma save (5e). If you fail, your alignment changes to Evil, although the Law vs. Chaos axis remains the same. (If you're playing something like BECMI with only Law vs. Chaos, your alignment changes to Chaotic instead.)
15	You now detect as Evil/Chaotic/fiendish/bad for the purposes of spells and effects such as detect evil.
16	If there's a Bad Place™ to go when you die, you're headed there. Resurrection spells and other such effects don't work on you unless your party figures out how to get your soul out of cosmic impound first. (Revivify-style magic still works as long as the soul hasn't departed the body yet.) An appropriate purification ritual or quest can also free you from Hell, but since this corruption has no outward sign, you might not know until it's too late.
17	A small fiend — an imp, a quasit, or even just a regular animal with some weird demonic traits — starts following you around, serving you as a familiar. It hates you and wants to tempt you into evil acts, both to increase the net evil in the world and to condemn your soul when you die.
18	The decedent's sin pools in your head, giving voice to the worst, most self-destructive parts of you. (If this sounds similar to Shadowguiding from Wraith: The Oblivion, you know exactly how to play this.) Your bad side can consult with you telepathically and offer you advantage on any roll (roll two dice and take the better result), although it is under no obligation to do so and you are under no obligation to take the advantage. Once per day, it can attempt to possess you, controlling your actions for one hour: make a save vs. spell or DC 13 Charisma save to resist. The difficulty of the test is modified by the number of times you accepted advantage that day. (So if you accepted help twice, you're at a -2 to resist possession.) Smart evil sides do not volunteer this fact and do not attempt possession often. Your evil side can potentially be exorcised by appropriate spells (such as dispel evil), abilities, quests, and the like. It will attempt to pressure you into performing its own agenda, which may be your worst impulses and secret desires, the original decedent's worst impulses, or a mix of the two.
19	Corruption takes root in the flesh. Roll a save vs. paralyzation or a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or gain a mutation from the GM's favorite mutation table. (I personally recommend The Metamorphica, Realm of Chaos, or Tome of Corruption.)
20	No obvious change, but at midnight, a powerful fiend comes to tempt you. It can offer you anything the GM considers appropriate. It ultimately wants to purchase your soul, but might be willing to settle for less if it thinks it can goad you into corrupting someone or making future purchases later.
21	I don't know what qualifies for a +1 on this chart — maybe you ate all the funerary cakes by yourself, or the decedent was a really wicked dude, or you made a real ass of yourself at the funerary meal and someone surreptitiously cursed you — but if you somehow roll this, you die at dinner. A fiendish creature (again, maybe a fiend on the GM's demonic list of choice, or a weird mutant animal) bursts forth from you like the xenomorph to start terrorizing the countryside. (Or maybe you turn into a Deadite or something. Any option is fine, so long as it births a new monster from your flesh.) To add insult to injury, your soul is probably consigned to whatever bad corner of the afterlife exists in this world, and your flesh is so corrupted you can't be resurrected.

* According to the scholars, these funerary traditions were adapted from Olman rites into their current form. Contrast with the folk of the Feywalk Woods: the Maiavainrua elves are known to use magical rites to keep their dead around as counselors and honored ancestors, so many of the local villages in and around the wood maintain traditions involving prolonged mourning practices and embalming. Drigbolton, found on the northern edge of the Feywalk Woods near the elven town of En'amanisrahd, is cited as one of the most starling examples of these practices, at least to outsiders.

Developer Commentary: The general idea is that the characters get a free bed, a free meal, and some pocket change with a 40% chance of getting what is hopefully a weird and interesting curse. If you want to make D&D cosmology more present or turn this into more of an enticing gamble, expand this table into a 1d24 chart with eight additional entries for Good, no effect for Neutral, and the entries for 13-20 representing Evil. (Or expand the chart to your heart's content. Maybe true Goodness and true Evil are so rare that it's a d100 chart with only eight entries on one end, eight on the other, and eighty-four nonentries in between.) Also, in case it needs to be said, this assumes the generic, Gygax-style vague Christianity endemic to D&D and its imitators. If your setting or fantasy elfgame of choice has different assumptions, this will likely be tonally dissonant with the rest of your setting. (Unless you decide Hell is real, but only to the residents of this one village, which sounds delightful. "Hell is real, but only in Gawkes Mere," is a fun potential plot hook.)

Review: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (and D&D 5e)

I wasn't going to write this review.

Despite recently running a lot of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, I don't have an overwhelming urge to talk about it much here on the ol' hobby blog. I may publish the occasional piece of 5e content here, but the actual rules and the culture around the game has been analyzed to death elsewhere. The scene certainly doesn't need another voice muddying the waters and Wizards of the Coast has no need to benefit from either my praise or scorn, so I keep doing the stuff I like with or without them.

However, two things spurred me to write this review:

1. I love the Spelljammer setting, as the tags Spelljammer and SPELLS WILL BE JAMMED might suggest.
2. Most of The Dreaded Discourse™ surrounding the new Spelljammer release has been of even worse quality than usual.

So, this is perhaps less a review than a rebuttal. If you happen upon this review, consider this a message in a bottle: if someone on social media told you how horrible the new Spelljammer box set was and how you need a bunch of third-party content to make it playable, I'm here to more appropriately calibrate your expectations. (In short: the rules are perfectly acceptable, being neither excellent nor terrible, and you don't need anybody's homebrew to "fix" the new rules.)

However, this review will be a bit long, because it is (in my mind) impossible to discuss an official fifth edition D&D release without talking about WotC's design goals in making D&D 5e. (And you can't talk about those design goals without discussing what came before.) As such, this is a partial review of fifth edition itself. These reviews won't be especially in-depth, but they will hopefully be helpful.

If you're only here for a specific section, refer to the table of contents below.

Table of Contents

I. The History of D&D (and Table-Top RPGs)
II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition
III. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

I. The History of D&D (and Table-Top RPGs)

If you remember your history pretty well, you can safely skip down to section II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Conversely, if you really want to delve into the thick of RPG history, authors like James Maliszewski, Ben Riggs, Jon Peterson, and Shannon Appelcline do great work in this sphere. (Although as with so many things in the hobby, their focus is often on Dungeons & Dragons specifically, leaving some of the less-renowned-but-still-influential aspects of the hobby unexamined.)

But the short version is that D&D starts in 1974 as a game exploring site-based and event-based adventures — pulp heroes wandering into the wilderness, facing danger in dungeons, and gathering the treasures therein (typically to fund their own personal projects).

Within a decade, more narrative structure emerges in game scenarios, exemplified by the investigation- and skill-heavy Call of Cthulhu in 1981 and the Hickman revolution starting with 1982's I3: Pharaoh. Money stops becoming a vital resource and starts becoming a supplement: 1989's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e does away with XP-for-gold (although it remains as an optional rule), instead focusing primarily on fighting monsters, while 1991's Vampire: The Masquerade completely abstracts character wealth as part of the Backgrounds system and assumes it is not a primary goal.

By the end of the 1990s, the transition from site-based or event-based adventures into plot-based ones culminates in the ascendance of the metaplot: an overarching story that runs in the background of published game materials, such that collectors can read the books to put together the puzzle and players can interact with big events in the background of the setting. Many of the big games of the era have a metaplot revealed during the line's development (Cyberpunk, Deadlands, Delta Green, Unknown Armies, and World of Darkness all come to mind), and while D&D as a whole avoids a metaplot, most of its campaign settings have them. (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and Ravenloft certainly all had metaplots.) The metaplot is simultaneously remembered fondly by fans as an interesting serialized story in its own right, while also being reviled as a bloated gimmick to sell books.

When TSR collapses and Wizards of the Coast takes over the game, they put their own stamp on the game by combining the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line with the BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia era-D&D line into simply Dungeons & Dragons. A few of the popular games at the time followed suit, relaunching in the early 2000s with slick new editions and largely abandoning the metaplot structure in favor of increased accessibility. However, this is an era in which a lot of games design more explicit rulesets (relying less on GM rulings), and also replace the metaplot subscription structure with a emphasis on "character builds" — the game line is now a vehicle by which to build an optimized character. While D&D 3e exemplifies this with its so-called ivory tower design, you see it in lines like Exalted and new World of Darkness.

While game lines become more bloated, desktop publishing and forums like The Forge and RPG.net allow for the creation and proliferation of smaller, more focused indie RPGs. While some of these games are short-lived, as befits a smaller and more narrow play experience, a lot of them are read by other game designers and introduce more mechanical concepts into the RPG ideaspace.

After an eight-year development cycle, Wizards of the Coast finally takes what it learned and rebrands D&D again into the wildly-polarizing fourth edition. This continues a lot of the game design trends of third edition, taking them to their logical conclusion by further emphasizing combat as the focus of the game. Combat procedures are explicit, repeatable, and largely in the players' hands. (Instead of GMs making rulings on things the players want to try, most of what a character can do is located on the character sheet.) The game's encounter design also lends itself to largely linear adventure paths of straightforward plots broken only by the game's setpiece battles.

While the game still sold well, the backlash online was fairly intense, taking two interesting forms:

1. The grognard bloggers who stuck with BECMI or AD&D during the third edition era start swapping design notes with the arthaus punk bloggers, forming the OSR largely by accident.
2. WotC ends their contract with Paizo Publishing, the contractor who published Dragon and Dungeon during the third-edition era. Since they now have a lot of experience writing third-edition content, they make their own third-edition retroclone called Pathfinder.

The backlash and increased competition for dungeon-y, dragon-y adventure game design space results in fourth edition D&D having one of the shortest development cycles of any D&D edition. After only four to six years depending on how you count it, WotC takes these disparate pieces of information — the stuff happening in the storygames sphere, the stuff happening in the OSR sphere, and the fan response to Pathfinder — and returns to the drawing board to release "D&D Next" for the game's fortieth anniversary.

II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition

While I read some D&D books and played a single, hazily-recalled game around 2006, fourth edition was my first edition of the game I ran and played beyond one session, starting in 2011. (As noted elsewhere, I mostly ran World of Darkness before coming to D&D.) As such, fifth edition is the first version of the game that I have followed largely as it released, instead of piecing it together in hindsight. I don't know if that makes me especially qualified to write what follows, but now you understand my background on the subject.

Forty years of game design brings us to this. During the mid-2010s, I recall someone calling fifth edition, "everyone's second-favorite edition of D&D," and that sounds about right. I recently described most of the fifth edition releases as "a C+ essay." (As with most things in the universe, I often describe it as, "Not as good as the fans say it is, but better than the haters say it is.")

If you play Super Smash Bros., D&D 5e is Mario, excelling in no particular area but robust in all of them. In the immortal words of George Costanza, 5e is "right in that meaty part of the curve: not showing off, not falling behind."

In short: it's good. (But not great.)

A lot of the things that drive its popularity include its prevalence (as it acts as a sort of lingua franca in the RPG hobby), its thriving play culture, its dominance on livestreaming RPG shows, and the fact that it more-or-less does what it advertises. If you want an adventure game that lets you go on adventures about exploring strange locations, interacting with interesting NPCs, fighting monsters, recovering treasure, and becoming more powerful while doing so, it handles all these things.

If you want a flatter power curve; a less number-heavy experience; something that focuses less on resource management; an experience that more consistently reflects a specific genre rather than "whatever breed of fantasy happens at the table tonight;" something that takes place in a more modern setting; an experience that actively dissuades combat; or a setting with no magic or different magic other than the pseudo-Vancian model, you probably want to look elsewhere.

As noted on this blog, I operate in a lot of indie spaces, and they tend to complain about Dungeons & Dragons at length. (So much so that allegedly anti-D&D places are where I sometimes get significant news about official D&D releases.) But those complaints are often incoherent, and clearly represent some personal issue with the game. In my mind, there are only three legitimate complaints about fifth edition D&D, and they're unlikely to change any time soon:

1. It's corporate art. And like a lot of corporate art, it's designed to be as inoffensive as possible. It's bland and it doesn't really do anything innovative.
2. The rules are complicated. It's very number-heavy and worries about fine details like positioning and resource management. If you have difficulty tracking a lot of variables, if you have a disability that makes it difficult to keep numbers in your head, or if tedious note-taking doesn't sound like your idea of fun, this might not be the game for you.
3. The culture overshadows the game at the table. Strictly speaking, this isn't the fault of the rules, but it does lead to a lot of trouble online. D&D is incredibly widespread, and people are overwhelmingly likely to learn the game from a mentor. As such, everyone thinks they know what the rules are, but almost no one actually reads the books cover-to-cover. (And even if you do, the rules are complicated. Nobody can keep all of the rules in their head at once.)
4. A phantom fourth argument that is partially true is that the game is pretty expensive. That isn't totally true: while there might be marketing pressure and peer pressure to spend money on it, the basic game is technically free. You can download the Basic Rules for free (or use the Basic Rules on D&D Beyond), use an online dice roller, and find enough free content online to run the game for the rest of your life without doing any work. I suspect the thriving community around the game and the free rules are two of the many factors that maintain the game's popularity.

But to understand why WotC has made the design decisions it made, one must understand that this represents forty years of game design and fifteen years of Wizards of the Coast corporate analysis. Fifth edition is a fundamentally reactionary edition, responding to all that came before and combining aspects from the previous eight or so editions of the game into something that tries to please everyone. The overall trend is one of retaining some of the most popular rules and incorporating bits of design from other games while also simplifying concepts from previous editions: multiple spells are condensed into aspects of a single spell, floating modifiers are condensed into advantage/disadvantage, monster stats are simplified from their third edition counterparts and all relevant information is found reliably in the stat block. (Recall that, during the BECMI and AD&D era, valuable statistical information like special abilities and spells were often hidden in the monster descriptions, usually-but-not-always in the same place.)

Also recall that, while a lot of the design of previous editions has proven quite popular, analysis suggests it maybe wasn't sustainable. Ahead of his recent book, Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, Ben Riggs made a handful of posts on Twitter and elsewhere about TSR sales figures, and they paint a bleak picture. The classic AD&D 2e box sets are fondly recalled but apparently didn't sell terribly well. Likewise, we know that third edition was popular and is well-regarded by the fans, but that edition had a punishing release schedule with an enormous game line. We don't know much about WotC sales figures, but it seems reasonable to surmise that they developed fourth edition because sales were flagging.

(I would also be remiss if I ignored the fact that fifth edition is also designed around the Adventurers League organized play program and the community content on DM's Guild, which is part of the complex mélange of factors that drives the game's popularity. The game can only be but so outlandish, otherwise it would interfere with the open table policy of the Adventurers League. Likewise, any content that fans really want to see can easily be made by the community and posted on DM's Guild for pay — which per DM's Guild policy, still monetarily benefits Wizards of the Coast. That's pure passive income for them.)

In short, the unified design and staggered release schedule for fifth edition indicate that Wizards of the Coast has learned from its business mistakes. They're not constantly churning out content every month, they're not establishing expansive metaplots, they're not trying to innovate while also risking failure. (The streaming space also provides a constant stream of free advertising for the game without WotC having to put out anything new. At this point, they don't need to churn out new content every month, and it's easier to catch press for the new release when it's a big one every quarter or so.) It's all very safe, focus-tested, and conservatively-designed. Whatever else someone's opinion of D&D 5e, these trends all suggest that this was a very conscientiously-designed edition of the game. (The feedback from the ongoing open playtest of the game no doubt guides some of its development and contributes to the smooth, inoffensive nature of it.)

III. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

Which brings us to the actual point of this post.

You have a new edition of the game that also tries to be a legacy edition, supported by a continuous open playtest of the rules and a burgeoning fan community. While the original fifth edition release in 2014 focused on the popular Forgotten Realms as the game's implied setting, fans have been clamoring for old content like adventures and campaign settings to be re-released under fifth edition. Wizards of the Coast started releasing legacy content fairly quickly, beginning with an Eberron playtest in 2015 and an official release of an expanded version of I6: Ravenloft (entitled Curse of Strahd) in 2016. Fan requests for additional updates continue across social media, and WotC continues to publish it.

Hearkening back to the Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space box set, Wizards of the Coast releases Spelljammer: Adventures in Space in 2022. As with most of their other products, the production values are decent, the art is lovely, and the organization is as expected. It's a C+ essay — it promises rules for spelljammers, space-themed monsters, and an adventure, and it delivers exactly what it promised.

Interesting tidbits from the new setting include:

• In contrast to the original 2e setting, there is only one kind of spelljammer helm, and it no longer requires your spell power to use it. (This last fact is even a change from the helm of the scavenger published in 2018's Dungeon of the Mad Mage.) Every spelljammer is roughly as maneuverable as any other, and there is no longer an upper limit to the tonnage of a ship.
• Spelljammer helms can still only be used by spellcasters, though. You just don't have to turn spell energy into motive force anymore.
• They don't include all the ships from the old material, but again, it's pretty easy to convert old material to the new system. As it stands, the new set includes a lot of old designs and adds a few new ones.
• Spelljammers are very accessible in this edition. You can probably get one, helm and all, for about 25,000gp or so. (In 2e, spelljammers were expensive, especially the helms. While a spelljammer is a good place to invest one's loot after many expeditions, it's also fun for players to be able to buy one relatively early in the game.)
• The phlogiston from 2e is gone, replaced with the Astral Plane. I actually like this change, as it means that even low-level characters might have the resources to voyage into other worlds: journeys are now unlikely to take more than two months' worth of supplies, as the Astral Plane doesn't require rations or air. Of course, the trade-off is that the Astral Plane is way more dangerous than the phlogiston. (Not counting the inherent risk of setting your whole ship on fire in the phlogiston, of course.)
• Also in keeping with the Astral Plane, there are no space lanes, star systems have a tendency to move like bubbles in a sea, and you automatically orienteer in the direction of something by thinking about it. In short, they've made it easy to get around by leaving those details up to the Game Master — you don't need a map to get from Krynnspace to Realmspace, and the trip is as long or short as the GM decides it is.
• You can never go wrong with more monsters, and the included Boo's Astral Menagerie has plenty:
• A lot of Dark Sun monsters appear in this version, such as braxat, b'rohg, gaj, psurlons, and ssurrans. (The thri-kreen also appear as a playable race in the Astral Adventurer's Guide.) A leaked map even indicates that "Doomspace" in the included adventure Light of Xaryxis was originally going to be called "Athasspace." As it stands, Fyreen in Doomspace certainly sounds like a post-post-apocalyptic Athas. WotC also has a habit of teasing future products in current ones, although such references are just as likely to be fanservice. (But they've previously suggested that they'll do Dark Sun... sooner or later. Maybe.)
• A couple of BECMI-era monsters from Mystara also appear, like the brain collector/neh-thalggu and the feyr.
• In addition to some classic Spelljammer setting monsters, like arcane/mercane, dohwar, space swine, and zodar, there are also a handful of unique monsters in this edition, like space clowns and vampirates.
• The included adventure, Light of Xaryxis, is typical Wizards of the Coast fare: a linear plot crystallized around a couple of good ideas. It's looks fun to play and easy to run, but there isn't much in it that makes me excited to run it.
• Compare and contrast: John Battle's recent offering The Sun King's Palace is a little messier than Light of Xaryxis and looks like it might take a not-insignificant amount of preparation to run without messing up the presentation, but The Sun King's Palace is so much more evocative than Light of Xaryxis that I'm way more excited at the prospect of preparing it and running it.
• However, in the defense of Light of Xaryxis, I thought the hook was clever: it is a deliberate homage to the Flash Gordon serials of the late 1930s as well as the 1980 movie. It even has genre-appropriate cliffhangers between chapters!

Apart from the proliferation of Dark Sun monsters and the clever design to the included adventure, there aren't any surprises here. What you see is what you get.

However, as noted at the start of this review, the impetus for this review is to clarify some of the criticism online. Most of it is misleading and represents a different product from the one I read. We'll go through a few of the recurring criticisms I have seen:

1. "They didn't include [insert my favorite spelljammer monster or ship type here]!" This one's easy: if you're an old fan, you probably still have your books, or you bought pdfs from DM's Guild. Adapting old material is easy; Wizards of the Coast even gives you conversion guidelines. Specifically in the case of monsters, D&D 5e doesn't often publish fifteen variations of a single monster anymore. The guidelines in the Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, and Boo's Astral Menagerie are pretty clear: if you want a weird version of a monster, take an existing one and give it different traits. Boo's Astral Menagerie gives guidelines for this process to make wildspace-dwelling versions of normal creatures.
2. "They didn't include the tables for making solar systems, or the subsystems for determining orbits!" They weren't going to. Remember, a major idea behind 5e is simplification. For determining orbits, they just tell you to calculate the distance between planets mathematically. They assume that you're going to use the included adventure as inspiration for other star systems you make, rather than relying on random tables. If you want the old subsystems, they're still in the 2e books, waiting to be used. (Also, those subsystems were all optional rules anyway.)
3. "They didn't tell you how to determine how far away you have to get from a planet to reach spelljamming speed!" In keeping with the (comparatively) more narrative focus of fifth edtion, they probably figure that's "however long the GM wants it to take." According to the old box set, on average it takes forty minutes to an hour to escape a planet's gravity well, more if it's windy, so I would use that as a guideline. I usually go with an hour; an hour is enough time for a single random encounter check, so that sounds good to me.
• If you want a more official ruling on this, the Astral Adventurer's Guide defines the air envelope of a planet extending out to a distance the same as the planet's diameter. That's... actually about right for Earth, but that distance describes the outer edge of the exosphere, which is too thin and too exposed to space to support actual life. Chapter five of the Dungeon Master's Guide describes terrestrial life typically ending above 20,000 which is also reasonably accurate; Earth's troposphere ends at about 40,000 feet, beyond which the atmospheric density is only one-thousandth of its value at sea level. While the gravitational pull at that altitude is about the same as at sea level, "the place where breathable air ends" is probably good enough for RPG games and occult symbolism. Twenty thousand feet is just under four miles, which most spelljammers can reach in a half-hour to an hour.
4. "The Astral Plane makes travel between systems too easy! Characters can't get lost in the Astral Sea!" I suspect that's part of the point. (But as noted above, the Astral Plane is often scarier than the phlogiston. I don't think there were astral dreadnoughts in the phlogiston...) Once you get to the Astral Plane, the GM decides how long the journey takes and what you encounter along the way, and all of this is in keeping with the procedures for GMing a game these days. If you want to make it more complicated and less certain, then do so.
• I would also remind anyone who thinks that you can't discover something by accident that the star systems move. You can take a five-month-long return journey to Realmspace only to find that another star system has bobbed into your path along the way. Likewise, since you can only travel to places that you know exist, learning that a specific star system exists so you can fly to it sounds like a pretty good adventure hook to me.
5. "They left out the rules for ship combat!" This is actually the critique that spurred me to write this review. Whenever I see this complaint, I re-read the "Ship-to-Ship Combat" section in the Astral Adventurer's Guide to make sure I didn't imagine it, and every time the rules are still there. They give guidelines for ship-to-ship combat, but they assume that you will remember the rules for combat, objects, and vehicles from chapters eight and nine of the Player's Handbook, and chapters five and eight of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
• A much more valid critique is that they ought to have provided a reference reminding you of where to find the relevant rules, or have provided a summary. For example, I had forgotten the rules for object saving throws until I went looking for them. (In D&D 5e, objects automatically fail all Strength and Dexterity saving throws, but succeed on all other saves.) That's why you need to read chapter eight of the Player's Handbook for spelljammer purposes; heaven forbid they would be in the "Object" section of chapter eight of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
• "Why are the rules for ship combat spread across five chapters in three books?" is an exceedingly valid critique. Does your game need hundreds of rules spread across several rulebooks in 2022? (Into the Odd, Mothership, and World of Dungeons all come to mind as short RPGs that could support years of play, not to mention the hundreds of one-page RPGs floating in the digital aethers.)
• "You need to get this fan supplement to make the rules playable!" is not a valid critique in this case (and really just sounds like someone's gimmick to sell more DM's Guild content or to bring you to their blog).
• As always, I would recommend using the procedures as defined in the core books before deciding it doesn't work for your group and adding third-party rules into the mix.
6. "They didn't use the expanded vehicle rules from Ghosts of Saltmarsh or Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus!" Remember, those are optional rules, and the developers have a lot of ground to cover in this book. (And again, the keyword of this edition is simplification. I suspect that they're moving away from optional vehicle rules because they weren't as popular as people on the internet suggested, or they're trying to streamline things for One D&D in 2024.) The basic vehicle and object rules are in the Dungeon Master's Guide, and they're perfectly serviceable.
• If you want to use the more detailed vehicle statistics from Ghosts of Saltmarsh or Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus, nothing is stopping you from doing a conversion, although converting sixteen ships to the more complex Ghosts of Saltmarsh system and running spaceship combat in it with multiple ships sounds like a nightmare.
7. "The adventure sucks!" As noted above, Light of Xaryxis has problems, but they're pretty consistent with the problems of other fifth edition adventures. (Too plot-focused, too linear, stakes are so high as to be totally abstract.) I suspect, however, that most people are reacting to the structure of the adventure, and they completely ignored the part where the authors say that it's a love letter to pulp adventure movie serials of the early 20th century. If you've seen the hokey plots and shocking swerves of a Flash Gordon or Commando Cody serial, you'll understand what the authors were trying to accomplish. (And despite the adventure's flaws, I feel like they succeeded.)

So, if you happened to find this after hearing that the new rules are unplayable, I'm here to tell you that they're perfectly serviceable. They may lack a lot of the flavor that made Spelljammer so beloved in the 2e era, but they're a good starting point. If you're looking for a rehash of the Unhuman Wars; the complicated subsystems for celestial mechanics; the granular ship mechanics; and a setting line comprising over two dozen products spread across box sets, books, Monstrous Compendium binder pages, and magazine articles, you won't find it here. (And Wizards of the Coast didn't take your old books away. Use them!)

However, if you want a stripped-down, back-to-basics version of the setting for fifth edition, you get exactly what you are expecting here and not a jot more. Honestly, if you read what they did with Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, you shouldn't be surprised here: in that book, they reset the metaplot such that you don't have to follow the old books to use the Domains of Dread in fifth edition, but you can absolutely include stuff from the old books if you like. It may not be innovative game design or provocative art, but it makes good business sense: include something interesting enough to draw in new fans while leaving enough gaps and references to legacy materials to avoid alienating old fans.

Edit (September 3, 2022):

After all that talk of Wizards of the Coast attempting to make their new edition as inoffensive as possible, The Dreaded Discourse™ continues apace. In the fifth edition Spelljammer adaptation, the hadozee were given a backstory wherein they were small, lemur-like creatures who were uplifted by a wizard to be used as workers and slaves before the wizard's apprentices helped liberate them.

If you know anything about Western history in the past five hundred years or so, you probably already see the problem. (A relatively comprehensive account of the scandal appears on this TechRaptor post.) For the record, I thought the backstory was a little weird, especially given how much of The Dreaded Discourse™ revolves around the long arm of the transatlantic slave trade, but I casually assume every big company hires a sensitivity reader these days and so promptly forgot about it.

After this fact was discovered and discussed on Twitter, Wizards of the Coast has issued a statement and errata and has already altered the race's description on D&D Beyond, removing the offending sections and slightly altering the hadozee's gliding ability. (However, some users have taken umbrage with the "Hadozee Resilience" trait, suggesting that it also reflects negative stereotypes against real-world ethnicities. As of yet, WotC has not issued a change for that.)

Edit (September 4, 2022):

Current WotC drama validates my boring opinion that mythological fantasy is simply too foundationed on ancient regressive philosophy (things like inherent evildom, platonic purity vs corruption, cruelty manifesting as physicality) to satisfy modern moralities. 1/4

— kirin (@koboldstyle) September 3, 2022

Edit (December 12, 2022):

After grousing about how players can't read, it is with a heavy heart that I must admit that I can't read, either.

In my refutation of point #3, "They didn't tell you how to determine how far away you have to get from a planet to reach spelljamming speed!" I made an error. A recent re-read of the Astral Adventurer's Guide reveals, "A spelljamming ship automatically slows to its flying speed (discussed later in this chapter) when it comes within 1 mile of something weighing 1 ton or more, such as another ship, a kindori (see Boo's Astral Menagerie), an asteroid, or a planet."

For some reason, I (like every other loudmouth on the internet, apparently) thought the "1 mile" rule didn't cover planets for some reason.

So by that math, escape velocity is much easier in 5e than it was in the 2e days; rather than an average of 40 minutes, most ships reach spelljamming altitude in 15-20 minutes. (The fastest ships like damselflies and shrikes reach spelljamming speed after a seven-and-a-half minute ascent.)

Remember, kids: reading is fundamental.