Played Review: Minecraft Card Game?

A Christmas present to the Apprentice, the Minecraft Card Game? is a good family game.

Minecraft is a potent force in late-elementary these days, akin to marbles and Pokemon of the past. There is, of course, a lot of “stuff” associated with it, some “official,” some “unofficial.” This means there is a real range of quality in Minecraft ephemera, which is a long-winded justification to a bias against this game. The fact that my son insists that one of the formulas to make an axe is incorrect made me leering about playing this game with a kid who’s too “in universe.”* The use of a question mark at the end of the title is inexplicable and deeply troubling to the part of me that reviews grammar with first-year university students every year.

A 2-4 player game, it claims to be good for 8+ and makes no claim on the package about how long it takes to play a game. The game involves “mining” resources and then exchanging those resources for tools, like axes and shovels. The tools give you victory points and a special ability. In play, all the players are racing to break a victory point threshold that ends the game.

We played this as a family game, so Mom, Dad, Apprentice, and Junior Apprentice (who’s four) all played. The game was simple to get, corner rules (tool abilities, special cards) were intuitive and easily sourced from the rulebook in play. The cards are easy to read and well-designed, all keeping with the publisher, Mojang via Mattel’s, aesthetic of low-grade pixel art. No actual knowledge of Minecraft was needed to play.

After a turn everyone was on board and the game ran smoothly. Junior Apprentice lost interested after a few turns and needed more coaching, so the age description of 8+ is probably fair, though I could see younger kids staying the course and enjoying it in the 4+ range. Our game took 35 minutes or so, and was pleasurable. The only really slow part was the need to reshuffle the mining cards into five new piles when the discard pile was full. 

The special abilities were interesting, although they could become potentially abusive if someone in a group is prone to power-gaming or jerk-like play. That said, none totally block a player (you can only lose half a turn) and the ones that have milling effects on the card stacks don’t really benefit the player too much, so I think the game looks balanced. It was quick and fun. It could have replay value, but unlike other games we’ve tried this year (Forbidden Island, Castle Panic, Dominion) this didn’t produce a burning need to replay.

That said, this game is better than I expected it to be and won me over. If you have kids who like Minecraft, this is a nice way to get them at a table and a good, quick game. It's also playable without an adult and so is useful to kids beyond the "family" context of this review.

Two Stars

*like seeing a Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the Rings film with me. I’m too “in universe” and so get grumpy about things some of the audience won’t care about. I’m still pissed about those elves showing up at Helm’s Deep. 

In which I tell you about my setting...

When 5e was announced, I hummed-and-hawed about what kind of a setting to run it in. 

For 4e, I wiped the slate clean and ran a homebrew setting that fulfilled a few personal goals I had at the time. Those goals were to get away from feudal Europe as a default. I swapped feudal Europe for feudal China of the warring states period. It wasn’t a huge leap, but the Chinese cultural default worked great. This was arguably because 4e was essentially a Wuxia version of D&D.

I debated using that same setting, the Six Kingdoms, again for 5e, but encountered two stumbling blocks. The first was the amount of work I would have to either finesse the structure of the setting to fit 5e, or vice versa. Neither of those options really seemed like it did the setting or the game justice.

The other problem was one of the pay group. Two out of my seven players had played in the setting, and it felt like the prior campaign’s success would rear its head disruptively. It seemed better to let thos group build their own setting along with me and create their own narratives of success and failure.

So I wandered back to feudal Europe and doubled down on the medievalism of the setting. One Catholic Church which worships a dual set of deities, one male, one female. There are cults, knights’ orders, kings, merchants and a generalized lack of convenience.

My campaigns tend to wander into a tension between realpolitik and heroic-action adventure, which would be fine. I even know the endgame of the campaign, that is, I know roughly what levels 18-20 should look like. Everything else was loosely sketch, and the players have done a great job of adding to that sketch, providing me with strange holy relics, oaths to retake lost dwarven cities, and the curse of a dying dragon, to round things out.

I wanted the setting to be loaded with potential conflict. If much of D&D is set in a post-collapse setting, where there’s fallen kingdoms to discover, I wanted to have a setting which was in the process of collapsing. Evil is winning on all sides. There isn’t much of a place to call safe. To leave the borders of the main human kingdom is to risk life-and-limb or mind-and-soul.

Here’s the elevator pitch for the setting, The Dying Lands:

It is a dark time for the realm. The king is slain, fallen in battle. The king is but a child. The regent is strong, one of our best men, but the barons of the land have fallen into squabbling and sword-rattling.

The darkness they say began at the edges of the world has encircled us. Kingdom after kingdom has fallen to its forces.

The lands of the elves and gnomes were consumed by the Empire of the Red Moon, their blood drained and their forests and barrows unhallowed. Now undying lords and their skeletal armies stalk our eastern border.

The great Northern fortresses of the dwarves were broken by the hordes of the mountains and now their great forges lie cold while their treasure halls seethe with the twisted hatred of the Orc and Goblin.

The Southern lands of the Zala and the dragonborn have been slowly consumed by the swamps of the Oligarchy. Ancient towers crumble as the scaled worshipers of the Unclean Gods flay themselves and commit blood sacrifices to the sun.

The trees and vales of the halflings have been scorched and burned, turned to the Charnel Wood, where demon lords rule from a great unholy throne. Only a few, scattered fey linger at the edges of what was once a fair and peaceable land, but they are shrunken and terrible things, tainted by the ash which they eat.

This is a dark time indeed. We face the darkness without, but I fear there is a darkness within.

Painted THMiniatures Terrain

I painted up the THMiniature terrain that arrived last month. The process took four paint sessions after priming. I decided to go with "tabletop" quality at the moment...it would take one to two more sessions to really highlight and texture the pieces totally.

I used Krylon Camouflage Brown spray for primer, a Citadel white spray for under-painting, and a mixture of craft paints and Reaper/PP3 colours to paint. I try to avoid using "minature" paint on projects like this, mostly because of the size of area to be painted, but a Reaper "Wood Brown" traid worked well for the, well, wood.

Here are some pics:

Obviously, the apprentice and I used the pieces for a game of Warmachine. It was a 25-point Legion vs. Protectorate game using the "Close Quarters" scenario. The apprentice won the game through Control points in the third turn. I'm finding the speed and ranged attacks of the Legion difficult to counter with the Protectorate, who are a faction I've been trying out. I feel a need to drift back to Khador. Giant Steam-powered Russian Robots!

The pieces painted up easily and with good detail. My original review stands: these are a solid four-star product. Here's a link to the company's website: http://thminiatures.com/. You should check these guys out.

Animal NPCs and Traits

Each animal that you train is essentially an NPC. You should name it, and probably record its stats. A Beastmaster Ranger should be able to take advantage of these rules, adding a trait to their companion and, if the DM allows it, adding an advanced training ability to their companion.

Not every animal players owe or use are necessarily NPC-level. If a horse, dog, cat, familiar, or similar creature is regularly part of the adventure and important on some level to the continuity of the game, then you should name them and make them an NPC animal. An NPC animal tracks its levels, which starts at level 1. 

At first level, an Animal NPC has the Trained trait plus one additional trait. Each session of downtime allows you to train your animal with your Wisdom (Animal Handling) or you can pay a trainer 50 gp per level to train for you.

Every increase in level allows you to choose an Animal Feat for your animal NPC.

TRAITS

Loyal: The creature is immune to fear effects in your presence.

Fearsome: The creature gains advantage on all Intimidation checks.

Mangled and Mangy: The creature is a bit slow, -5 move, but tough, +1d6 Hit Points.

Loveable: The beast gains advantage on all Persuasion checks.

Hardy: Add 2 to the beasts Con.

Fast: Add 10 to the creatures move.

Sturdy: The beast is slow, -10 move, but strong +1 Str, and tough, +1 AC

Trained: The animal can be called, responding to an audible signal. The animal is not hostile around your friends and treats strangers with caution, but is not violent.

Aggressive: The beast has advantage on Initiative checks. You can have the creature roll initiative instead of your character, but it must take the action on the first round.

Attentive: The beast has advantage on surprise and perception checks.

Weird: You may roll on the following table. A weird beast is difficult to train (disadvantage on all training rolls) but it has a special power.

D6	Result
1 Bit of Blink Dog in her	The animal has the Blink Dog’s teleport ability.
2 Displacer beast blood	The animal has the Displacer Beast’s displacement ability.
3 Speaks	The animal can speak 1d3 languages, plus one language your character does not know.
4 Telepath	The animal is telepathic within 60 feet.
5 Undead	The animal is a zombie. It gains the Undead Fortitude ability, but it is also rotting.
6 Berserker	The animal can use the Barbarian’s rage ability once per long rest. It rages as a first level Barbarian.

Blessed: You may roll on the following table. A blessed beast is rare, but has special powers. However, it cannot hide from undead or fiends, who detect its nature.

D6	Result
1 Healing presence	The animal can heal its owner of 2d6 damage during a short or long rest.
2 Singing voice	The animal can speak and sing; it us proficient in the Perform skill.
3 Angelic might	The animal can cast Smite Evil 1/long rest.
4 Tireless	The animal cannot become exhausted.
5 Winged	The animal has wings, and can fly at its base move.
6 Angel eyes	The animal can see lies, as per the Zone of Truth spell.

Cursed: You may roll on the following table. A cursed beast is rare, and has strange, possibly evil powers. The beast cannot hide from angels or Paladins.

D6	Result
1 Haunted by ghosts	A ghost haunts the beast.
2 Fiend in animal form	The animal is a fiend, and cast hellish rebuke once per long rest. Hell hath no fury like a fiend released from a curse.
3 Blood-drinker	The beast is vampiric. It gain the Vampire’s blood drain ability.
4 Cursed Lover	The animal is actually a PCs former or current love, transformed by a foe/evil entity into an animal.
5 Witch blood	The animal curdles milk, rots food, and scares livestock. But it has a hidden nipple. If you drink it’s milk, the owner gains 2d6 temporary hit points until their next long rest.
6 Old Familiar	The animal use to be or is a reincarnation of a wizards familiar. It can speak, knows one cantrip, but constantly compares you to his former, much grander master.

ANIMAL FEATS

You may choose one of these feats every time your animal levels. 

Advanced Training

You can choose an advanced pet ability for your animal.

Experienced

Your animal increases its proficiency bonus, affecting its attacks and skill checks. You can take this feat up to 4 times.

Toughness

You animal gains a hit die and you should roll hit points.

Additional Trait

Your animal NPC gains another trait. Please discuss this trait choice with your DM, as some choice may not work with the current game.

ADVANCED PET ABILITIES

You can train your animal in the following abilities.

Guard: The animal actively protects you. If you are attacked in melee by an opponent, the animal can take an opportunity attack.

Reactive Charge: IF you are charged by a foe, your animal will intercept the foe. It interposes itself between you and the foe as a bonus action.

Harry: The animal will make quick attacks at a foe and then retreat. Each other round in combat, the animal makes an attack on a foe without drawing opportunity attacks.

Protect area: Your animal will watch over an area and alert its owner to strangers, odd noises, and supernatural events.

Fetch: Your animal will fetch an object. This requires verbal instruction.

Read: Your animal can read. (This may not suit all animals...great for familiars though.)

Track: Your animal can track foes using their Wisdom bonus.

Search: Your animal is able to search an area for hidden objects, secret doors, and invisible foes. The search is Wisdom-based.

Silent Commands: You can give your animal commands through hand gestures.

Mounted Attack: Your steed attacks on foes in battle. You gain advantage on mounted attacks. 

Leaping Charge: The animal can leap over terrain or pounce. The animal can move through difficult terrain as normal if attacking and it and its rider gain advantage on the attack.

Quick move: The animal is able to move through any space of a creature larger than them; this does not draw attacks of opportunity. If the animal moves twice in a turn, its movement does not draw opportunity attacks.

Beast of War: Warhorses and the like remain steady in battle. The animal has advantage on fear-based tests and does not flee if injured.

Pathfinder: the animal can move through difficult terrain as though it was normal.

Straight Jump: the animal can leap straight up and over foes, with a successful Strength test. 

Kickstarter: Miniature Terrain by THMiniatures

This week, three days before it was scheduled to arrive, my box of THMiniatures terrain arrived. I kickstarted this project because the terrain looked good, fit the main mini wargame my some and I play (Warmachine/Hordes), but could be multi-purposed. I figured this made it a good idea (affordable terrain is hard to find).

Also, this was a Canadian company and Canadian game companies are rare things, so I admit nationalism was also a root cause of my backing their Kickstarter.

I’m lenient on Kickstarters, especially mini-related Kickstarters, because they are unlikely to deliver on time. As long as the creators are keeping me informed as to the delays, I forgive them the delay. I’m careful about who I kickstart, and I’ve focused on companies like Reaper, Dream Pod 9, or Monte Cook Games because they are companies with a proven track record of making things. I felt like this kickstart was a bit of a risk as the company was new, and so I only made a conservative backing.

I’m glad to say THMinatures proved me wrong: they delivered on-time, even a little early in my opinion. They kept us updated, but not overwhelmingly so, throughout the process. Overall, this was a satisfying kickstart.

Now the actual terrain:

All 11 pieces arrived undamaged in a small box and the order was filled correctly. Each piece is a resin, something like the 3-d printing I’ve seen. The logs are a smooth and regular and perhaps too tubular, which might be a material or a design problem or limit. The stone blocks, wooden planks, and rough ground look nicely textured. I haven’t painted material like this, and I’ll report back on its quality.

The pieces are neither bendable nor fragile. They feel well made, and there aren’t any visible bubbles, like you can sometimes get with resin (GW “finecast” I’m looking at you…I’m glad I missed out on that boondoggle).  They are sized to fit minis well and combine well in appearance. The apprentice had fun arranging possible patterns and I think the terrain presents some fun narrative and tactical opportunities.

Here’s the unpainted terrain with a few WarmaHordes figures:

And here’s a few pieces with Reaper models:

Sorry for the lack of gameboard and lightbox, but you can see the terrain fits the range of miniatures and would enhance a table nicely. 

This was a great kickstart and a good product.  I’d recommend THMiniatures as a company to trust. I’ll reserve giving a final “review” until after I’ve had a chance to try painting the pieces, but I'm optimistic about their future. 

Review: Fantasy AGE by Green Ronin

Fantasy AGE is Green Ronin’s new “generic” version of their Dragon Age licenced game. It is 144 page and relatively slim. As such, it isn’t comparable in size to generic games like GURPS or the Cypher System and is perhaps better compared to Savage Worlds or FATE in terms of quantity of content. Another fair comparison might be Dungeon World.

Overall, Fantasy AGE is a satisfactory game.

We played a session of the game, making characters and playing a short adventure which involved a two combat encounters and a bit of intermittent role-playing with dice supports. One session is not the ideal for a real test of a game (three is better), so take this with a pinch of salt: The play went quickly, suffer little mechanical “bog-down” for a new system, I didn’t spend much if any time laboring over the system, and the players had a couple of cool moments. But I also didn’t think the monsters were challenging the PCs, and I felt one or two characters were too universally good at everything. With a few good roles and min/maxing your race, you’d end up with a decent mage who was the equal of most warriors in combat – the Dwarf Mage was a mean melee combatant.  

The game features readily accessible rules and uses a fun dice mechanic – you roll 3d6, with an off-colour die as your “stunt” dice. When you roll doubles, you get a critical effect. This doesn’t just pertain to combat, as spells, exploration, and interaction all have potential stunts. Players and GMs get to choose their stunts, so the system has some depth. In theory, the bell curve of a 3d6 should make players less vulnerable to a cold night of rolling (a problem with linear dice rolls).

But, beyond the dice and stunt system, Fantasy AGE is perhaps too generic. The races are all the usual suspects (elf, dwarf, orc, halfling, etc) and the classes – Mage, Rogue, and Warrior—are different, but don’t carry much detail. There is a background system, but it doesn’t offer much beyond a descriptive quality. The system doesn’t attempt to reward any characterization, and there isn’t much of a setting offered.

The book looks good, is well presented and offers good advice. However, it offers little in the way of monsters and adversaries, and what there is is pretty bland. The monsters aren’t imaginative nor do they feature interesting abilities. Now, in a game this generic, you’d expect goblins, dragons, giants, etc, but a few interesting takes or curve ball monsters make a game distinct in a simple way.

The magic system has range, and I think it could be used to build interesting organizations, but as it is, the spells are there. They’re generic enough that the passing resonance of games like Ars Magica or Mage in the use of language like arcana and rolling for effect and stunt, just makes you think those games have fun magic systems and this system is without texture and nuance.

The players enjoyed the critical stunt process, but wondered if there were better ways to handle things than a chart. It seemed to at least two of the players that you’d start defaulting to certain stunts and ignoring the majority of the chart. I don’t think the charts slowed play, and once players were familiar with it, the game would be pretty quick.

But the major stumbling block is the game gives you Elves and Dwarves and Mages and Rogues, and well, D&D already does that…Unlike Burning Wheel, which gives you Elves and Dwarves, but ramps up the mythopoetics and mechanics to be unlike D&D, Fantasy AGE is generic in the way earlier D&D was. That means you’ve got a lot of work making a setting and presenting something interesting. I suppose if you’re ideologically opposed to D&D, Fantasy AGE might fit your bill, but I think most games who reject the premise of D&D won’t find much in Fantasy AGE.

That said, the game isn’t flawed. If you’re burnt out on D&D or Pathfinder mechanics but want to keep things going in the same generic vein, then this game might work for you. The starting adventure is a good one (a riff on a common horror movie motif).

If I consider the comparisons mentioned in the opening things shake out like this:

Compared to FATE, Fantasy AGE is not a story-driven game. Mechanically, FATE and F/AGE are heading in different directions, but like FATE, there isn’t much in terms of setting to enjoy. You’ll need to work to make the game start off and while FATE gives you a lot of examples, FATE CORE is harder to run “off-the-book” than F/AGE. But, if you AND your players are into giving FATE the full go, I think it has more mileage. On the other hand, F/AGE doesn’t require the kind of investment on the player’s part that games like FATE (and Burning Wheel) require.

Compared to Savage Worlds, F/AGE is a pretty limited package. Savage Worlds will give you a better “off-the-book” experience and offer you more latitude. There’s a better starting adventure in F/AGE, and there’s more work to be done running SW as fantasy (personally, the “language” of Savage Worlds works against using it for Fantasy and Sci-Fi games).

As an aside, the Cypher System rulebook arrived in the mail just as I was prepping to try F/AGE out. The monster’s provided there are so much more fun and variety that it was really glaring. Now, the Cypher book is more than twice as long as F/AGE, so the comparison isn’t entirely fair, but it was quick striking.

I think Fantasy AGE is a satisfactory game. Green Ronin do reliably good work, and this product holds up in terms of quality and presentation. It’s easy to learn, quick to play, but it only offers a generic experience.

Three stars. 

Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition (a run review)

Dungeons and Dragons is a game with baggage. As the earliest major/popular example of a role-playing game is casts a long the over genre. It is the money-maker (however small the pie actually is), and its influence is fairly ubiquitous thanks to video games. The concepts of cooperative play and continuous character improvement are two of the most important innovations in game history. Arguably the success of collectible card games, non-historical war games, and the current tabletop board game phenomenon all owe a debt to D&D.

All this is meant to say one shouldn’t review D&D lightly. Each edition has been met with the gnashing of teeth and the grinding of axes. My thinking is that you should reserve judgement until you’ve given the new system a descent workout, perhaps a year or so. This is what I did with 4e, and while I eventually soured on it in 2010, it did provide the backbone for a very enjoyable 2 year, 5 month campaign which is among the more memorable I’ve run. This review is essentially a DM’s review. I have not played 5e, but I have run it.

By way of background: I started playing D&D in 1988, after some proto-rpg experiences, and then moved on the AD&D, mostly a mix of whatever 1e and 2e material we had, along with some BEMCI material. I played a lot of Rules Cyclopedia D&D and then played 2e through the late 90s until 3e came along in 2000. I ran a lot (and played a little) 3^rd edition. From 2000 to 2006, it was essentially the only game played weekly. Gaming was a bit sporadic in 2006, but again, 3.5 was the game. Like I mentioned above, I felt it necessary to give 4e an honest try, and ran it from 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2014, I ran a mix of different games, including 3.5 and Pathfinder, until 5e came out in 2014.

My group and I have had two 5e campaigns: the first was a play through of the starter set and its adventure “The Lost Mine of Phandelver” (silly name though). Then we switch to a homebrew setting and we’ve been happily playing along a developing series of stories. So far the players are at 6-7 level, and so I won’t be commenting on high level situations until I get there.

My Review of 5e: Fifth edition is a very good game, four stars.  

That’s really the summation of a year of play.

The best parts

Like 4e, 5e is easy to run. There’s less rulebook review than the first 3 editions, DCs are broadly easier to set. The whole “bounded accuracy” idea, which just creates a game with lower numbers of math is great. The game is robust and fun to play while reducing the prevalence of magic items and returning to an ethic of homebrewed ideas and DM interpretation.

The art is more inclusive, and generally well done. The cover on the Monster Manual is great. I’m glad to see artists other than Wayne Reynolds gracing the covers of a major fantasy game. I’ve enjoyed many of his covers, and I think his work on the Eberron books was genius, but he’s gotten a bit omnipresent and the choice of different artists is to be commended. The humorous doodles in the indexes and appendices are wonderful and a welcome change from the seriousness of 4e.

The classes are interesting, but as I’m not playing them, I can’t comment on them too much. I will say that I’ve liked the way characters have leveled. The PHB follows the same pattern as all the PHBs have. The backgrounds are really well done and fun. Character creation is simple and fast. Levels 1 to 3 are fragile and dynamic. Characters between 4 and 7^th level feel hardened and defined. The spell system is good and flexible enough. The majority of classes are interesting from a story perspective. We’ve had multiple fighters, a rogue, barbarians, wizards, a monk, a paladin, a druid in the party and each one has had good hooks to present a game.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide is very good. For a new DM, it offers strong advice and practical tools. The magical items are gold and loads of fun. The treasure tables are awesome. If anything, this stands out as the best contemporary DMG. The 1e DMG is eccentric and inspirational, and the 3e (not the 3.5) DMG was brilliant. All the other DMGs have been lacklustre and unappealing to me. This book provides ideas for an experienced DM and makes prep light.

The Starter Set is great. It’s cheaper than other “starters” and while it lacks the same production quality and goodies of other games starter kits, the content is solid. The adventure, “Lost Mine of Phandelver” is a great adventure, especially for new DMs. We had fun playing it and I thought it developed very well.

The legendary monsters are fun and a good mechanical solution to the problem of outnumbered big villains. I do miss the “elite” monsters of 4e though. 

What’s bad

The cover of the PHB is another bad cover. We haven’t had a good cover on the PHB since 1e, although the unified codex appearance of 3e/3.5e gives that edition a pass. I don’t know why it’s so hard to commission a painting that is clearly dynamic and shows the player characters doing what they do in the game. Also, I'm rather bored with the "plotting/threatening monster/wizard" on the DMG cover. 

Here's a much better image for a DMG: 

It's dynamic and properly reflects the DM's responsibilities to create fun and challenge. 

In all fairness, Paizo’s Pathfinder books demonstrate a much better approach to art, but in all honesty, the graphic designers of 3e were probably on to something with the unified codex appearance of the books. 

The encounter design system is interesting, but needlessly math-heavy and not really effective. 4e did this better and maybe Pathfinder does, too.  The encounter design is so unwieldy, it seems odd, mostly because my biggest “mechanical” gripe with 5e is that it seems adverse to procedural rules, except in adventure design. Many smaller press games, I’m thinking of Burning Wheel games, or Dungeon World, use procedure very well, and I think the downtime rules are a major missed opportunity for adding a bit of procedural clarity to the player’s side of the game, while the DM is burdened with poor encounter design advice. I'm now building encounters like I did in 2e and 3e. 

The inspiration rules are interesting, and provide a way for player’s to manipulate the game a bit, but they aren’t well integrated to the play style of D&D. Games like Fate and Numenera add these features by making them integral, but with D&D, it seems like I’m having to remember the rules even exist. This is possibly a behavioral flaw on my part – two plus decades of habit is difficult to overcome. But, on the other hand, D&D has an established moment in which PCs are rewarded: the procedural moment at the end of the session when XP is handled. I think I'll be houseruling an inspiration procedure similar to Burning Wheel's end of session Artha recounting.  

The Monster Manual is a real mixed bag. Yes, the quality of production is fine and the monsters well-chosen and diverse, but there’s two big problems:

One, the art lacks a sense of presence. Monsters are presented is good written detail, but the visual images place the creatures against a smoky parchment background and there is little sense of motion or intent to the art. Even more maddening is the lack of scale in most pictures. There are images that look small and others that look huge, but the images convey incorrect impressions of the monsters. It’s too bad the art doesn’t show the monster doing something, or including some element for scale.

Two, the monster design is boring. Compared to the 4e Monster Manual, 5e feels like a step backwards, and not in a good way. Most monsters are simply a melee attack and a multi-attack. There’s not much interesting about the creatures and a DM will have to work to make the majority of encounters interesting. Encounters can become static 2e slugfests if things go badly or the DM and players are having off nights. There’s also a lack of depth in the NPCs presented in the back. Many of them are great, but there needed to be clear analogues to the PC classes – there’s no ninja/monk, no wizard, no barbarian analogue for me to just drop into a session. 

While the Monster Manual is a necessary book and the writing is good, the mechanics are a big let-down. The DMG and PHB are full of creative and sometimes imaginative mechanics, but the MM seems oddly devoid of those elements. Given that it is a book of monsters, that’s kind of unforgivable.

The Tiresome parts

Skills are still floating about, and I’m not sure why…Non-weapon Proficiencies would add a bonus in the same way as skills, and so I’m not sure why we’ve kept skills about, especially as everything is supposedly an ability check. So long as you’re including “skills” players will think of them as “skills” and not “proficiencies” and there’ll be a level of dissonance at the table. Either use skills or ditch ‘em, I say.

I’m not really enamored with the large format used by RPG publishers. In fact, I find the standard 8.5x11 book a lazy and unappealing default. Every game book I own that isn’t that size reminds me of how much I don’t like reading these unwieldy tomes. Also, why aren’t the booklets in the Starter Set perfect bound? The reuse value of the booklets is pretty limited as they get bent and torn easily.

The sorcerer is largely undefined and limited in interest.

The warlock is not bad, but always feels boring. I see how its different magic provides a different play experience, but the whole “deal with otherworldly power” doesn’t really do much other than force the character and DM into a Faust story. Any class should be able to do this (and yes, I know you can multi-class), and spell casters should be able to do so as a matter of story, not a mechanical class requirement. Overall, the warlock is a disappointing class to me, both in narrative and mechanical terms. The mechanic could have been folded into the sorcerer class and the room used to provide another nature-based class, like the 4e Warden, which was a great idea all around, or a psychic/divine class, akin to a mentalist or mystic.

Overall, in play I’d give 4 stars overall to fifth edition. It is a very good, fun, but somewhat expensive RPG.

If pressed, I’d give the following stars to the main products:

Starter Set: 4.5 stars

Player’s Handbook: 4 stars

Dungeon Master’s Guide: 4.5 stars

Monster Manual: 3 stars