Tag: fantasy

The Pain of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a tough thing. The desire to sink into happier memories of the past, especially in the face of difficult times, is strong. My kids tease me about it as I get older because I sometimes sound like an old man grumbling about “the good ol’ days”. And they are right to do so.

Nostalgia, if left unchecked, can be like a “mental opium”: pleasant, addicting, but it separates us from reality.

Once gone, the face of youth vanishes irrevocably. We cannot bring back the past. When suddenly confronted with impermanence, we cannot bring back the past.

The Shushōgi, chapter one, fascicle three

This longing for the past only seems to get worse with age. Some of us even play old video games from 25 years ago. 😌

By itself, this really isn’t bad thing: after all, the more experiences you accumulate, the more you have to look back upon. Also, appreciating old things isn’t bad either (“so old it’s new!”). But if you indulge in nostalgia, you long for the past more and more, at the expense of the present and the future. Further, it tends to gloss over the past in a way that makes it look rosy. I loved playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons as a teen, but when I look at the material now, it’s a messy, unpolished game with some crazy loopholes, and dated stereotypes. It was a great game for its time, but better games exist now.

I personally don’t really miss my high school days very much, but I do enjoy reflecting back upon college sometimes. Sometimes I cringe at my young 20’s self, but that’s OK too. Looking back on the past, we can grow from it.

But I guess what I am saying is that the best years of your life aren’t always in the past. In fact, there’s much you can do here and now: new things to learn, new things to discover, new futures to build. If Star Trek teaches us one thing, is that the future can be bright.

So, while it’s nice for me to go back and play classic Castlevania from time to time, there are also new games out there, and new experiences just waiting over the horizon.

Then again, an even better thing you can do is to take time to appreciate this moment. What you do here and now, what you think and what you feel towards others now is probably the most important. It will not come again, but its effects will continue to ripple into the future. Plant good seeds now, and you’ll have plenty of good fruit in the future…

Done With Dungeons and Dragons

Well, it was finally time.

I’ve been playing 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons since 2016 off and on, first with co-workers, then with friends and family. Later, I branched out into Adventurer’s League, and wrote some modules online for fun.1

But now, I can confidently say that I am thoroughly tired of the game.

My kids and I played weekly during the Pandemic and had some great adventures together, and when the Pandemic finally subsided I was eager to resume Adventurer’s League with the local community.

But then starting in 2024 something happened: the game just wasn’t as fun as it used to be. The 2024 revised rules made things briefly interesting again, but left me with a soulless, corporate aftertaste. But even the fun of revised and updated rules quickly lost its luster. The revised versions feel very polished, and fixed some issues, but also feel homogenized and bland, with no character left.2

Playing D&D started feeling increasingly rote. My kids increasingly lost interest, especially my oldest who had one foot out the door towards college, and I didn’t have the drive to start up another group elsewhere. The final straw was returning to Adventurer’s League after a hiatus of 2-3 years. Adventurer’s League now feels hollowed out and running on fumes after WoTC stopped investing in it in favor of their new organized play setting. My local community is much smaller than before, with most of the old-timers having left, leaving only the die-hard players whom (speaking from experience) are hard to get along with.

Even the local gaming store I used to frequent has become so successful, that it is too crowded, too hard to find parking, and overpriced. Compared to five years ago, it is not fun to go there anymore.

Amazing how much the Pandemic changed everything.

I did briefly look into Pathfinder but quickly got tired of the rules-heavy and math-heavy gameplay. Plus, if you are an occasional player, you are forever chasing after new rules, classes and modules or will simply get left behind. The remaster didn’t help matters, because if you want to keep up you have to buy three new books at $60+ each, just to avoid some legal hassles with naming of spells and rules. In short, I did not find Pathfinder worth further investment.3

In spite of all this nay-saying, my son loves D&D, and reads the 2024 books avidly (I will probably give him the books at some point), and even enjoyed the new Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves (it is a pretty fun movie, tbh). So, I won’t discourage him. I have personally grown sick of D&D and have no desire to play it (or Pathfinder) anytime in the near future. For me, the spark is totally gone.

And yet, I am also realizing that the TTRPG world is a lot more vast than I first thought. I stumbled recently upon an RPG system called The One Ring: a gaming system designed entirely for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. I picked up a couple of the core rule books, including a Dungeons and Dragons-compatible version, and am reading through them now. The community, while not large as Dungeons and Dragons, is large enough that I can find the support I need to questions and people seem to be passionate without being obnoxious. As a lifelong Tolkien fan, the amount of love and attention put into the books is really impressive, and heart-warming. I probably will write a review of the core rules once I finish reading through the book.

There are many other RPG systems as well, by smaller publishers, who are passionate about their craft, and if you look enough, chances are you’ll find a system that’s right for you. My son loves D&D 2024 edition, so I am happy to let him continue reading, exploring, and designing adventures. For someone who enjoys Pathfinder, I hope they continue playing and exploring. I guess the point of all this is that if you are tired of the more corporate gaming systems, try exploring other smaller RPG systems, and see what’s there. You may find a hidden gem you didn’t know about.

For me, I am done with both D&D and Pathfinder systems, and instead enjoy exploring the rules of The One Ring. Whether I can find a local community to play with (the perennial challenge of TTRPG) is another matter entirely….

P.S. Featured photo is my bookshelf of TTRPG books: a mix of D&D 5th edition, 2nd edition (which I fondly remember from my teen years), and some The One Ring books. Most of the newer 5th edition books were sold off already, but I am keeping some older ones that I enjoyed.

1 Writing modules is fun, and I made a bit of money here and there, but nothing even remotely enough to raise a family with. I make enough per month to buy a cup of coffee or two. I gradually stopped as the effort per module exceeded what I felt I got out of it. I still have a few in draft I may finish someday, but in light of this post, I will likely keep them in draft for the foreseeable future. Also, the 50% cut that WoTC takes from my module sales is frankly kind of egregious.

2 The 2024 books have truly fantastic artwork, though.

3 I kept the remastered Player Core book (book 1, since now they’ve printed multiple versions) in case I ever join a group, but I admit it’s pretty unlikely at this point.

Adventurers League for 2024 Ruleset

Adventurer’s League is the community play program for Dungeons and Dragons, and has been around for years, but with the recent publishing of the 2024 updated ruleset, this forces some updates for AL players. In recent months, I have been able to get back into AL after a really long lull,1 and I wanted to share some experiences with the 2024 results.

Per AL regulations, players are expected to field characters using the latest ruleset available, and to rebuild any characters accordingly when required. In the case of 2024 ruleset, that means that all characters built before 2024 ruleset need to be rebuilt to some extent before playing the next session.

In some cases, I’ve found this to be pretty easy, in some cases somewhat challenging. Here’s a couple examples in my case.

note: I wrote this before I learned about the new Legends of Greyhawk community play. While the FAQ states that this is not related to Adventurer’s League, and that “Adventurers League will continue as a community-content program”, this leads me to believe that AL will nonetheless continue to wither and die on the vine for the forseeable future. Given WoTC’s history, I do not fully trust them to support AL going forward as they prioritize the new, shiny program. Still, I am posting this anyway to illustrate how rebuilding my long-term 2014 characters for 2024 rules was sometimes very easy, and sometimes a pain in the neck.

Abjurer Elf Wizard

My original AL character, Qisandoral Arriestanus (DDB link), is a 13th level high-elf wizard (abjuration school) as of writing, was the easiest to rebuild in some ways, and painfully difficult in others. I have written about him here and here. He’s been rebuilt, retired, and revived a number of times.

The 2024 ruleset in the Player’s Handbook fully supports both High Elves and the Wizard class. The eight wizard schools have been changed into four subclasses at 3rd level2 and collapsed into , and for the Abjuration subclass it is covered in the PHB. So, just using the new PHB, I can fully rebuild the wizard without any extra rules or books. Easy.

The challenge of rebuilding a high-level wizard is picking spells for the spellbook. Using standard rules, I can calculate how many spells I should have in my spellbook at level 13, but I also had copied some spells into my spellbook from purchased spell scrolls. Plus, 2024 background choices give you additional spells through feats on top of that. And then there’s spells you get as a high elf innately.

In the end, I had to abandon any spells I had copied from spell scrolls as they are not considered part of the rebuild. As consumables not tied to any adventure rewards, they are treated as a sunk cost when rebuilding.

For everything else, I had to carefully calculate my starting 6 spells at level one, 24 spells for every level after one (2 per level, 12 levels total), plus 3 from elf lineage, and finally spells from my Magic Initiate background feat. This took hours to sort out, and I had to double-check with fellow AL players on Discord, but in the end I was able to rebuild my spellbook. I also leveraged DnD Beyond to validate that the configuration made sense.

Drow Nature Cleric

My other favorite character from earlier AL seaons was a Drow nature domain cleric named Shava Do’Mindrun (DDB link), who worshipped Eilistraee as an alternate to the dread Spider Queen Lloth. Nature clerics are not a particularly popular choice for character builds, but I had surprising fun with it, and it fit Eilistraee’s domains so it was an easy choice at the time.

However, Nature Domain is not a part of the 2024 ruleset, but Eilistree’s other cleric domains, Light and Life, are. So, if I wanted to make a vanilla 2024 character, I would have to rebuild Shava as a Light Domain cleric.

Alternatively, I can still use the Nature Domain, since both 2024 ruleset and AL rules allow it (the 2014 Player’s Handbook is still the newest rules for a Nature Domain cleric). The 2024 Player’s Handbook in particular clarifies that older domains not listed in the handbook are still legal choices, so long as their abilities are granted at 3rd level, not earlier. This is to keep things internally consistent with other new Cleric subclasses.

As of writing, I ultimately decided to reset entirely, and Shava as a light domain cleric at 1st level. Eilistraee’s imagery of the moon dovetails nicely with the Light cleric domain, and it seems that the Nature cleric domain feels a bit more anemic in the 2024 ruleset, while the Light domain is fully supported by comparison. This may change though, as AL allows character rebuilds. Time will tell. As for resetting to first level as an essentially a new character, I did this mainly for personal reasons as I had made some choices with the original character I regretted, and frankly I just wanted to play her over again from the beginning, rather than let her languish in higher tiers were game options are fewer.

High Elf Forge Cleric

Similar to the Nature Cleric above, my High Elf forge domain cleric named Fenmaer Wasanthi (DDB link) was faced with a cleric domain that isn’t fully supported in the 2024 ruleset, but still allowed.

To make a long story short, in this character’s case, I decided to keep the Forge domain and rebuilt him accordingly. The deity in question, Darahl Firecloak, does have the domains of Forge and Light, so I could play another Light domain cleric, but as of writing I felt that the Forge domain was still compelling enough that it was worth keep this build even under 2024 rules.

Simply put, I rebuilt as-is with little or no change.

Wood Elf Samurai

My last character that I regularly play is a Wood Elf samurai fighter named Heian Amakiiro (DDB link), whom I’ve written about here.

1 Pandemic + parenting meant that I played once a year, maybe twice if lucky. I required quite a few characters at the time. Nowadays I play somewhat more often, but still not at pre-pandemic levels. I hope to change that in the coming year once my oldest leaves the nest.

2 To be more consistent with other character classes, presumably. Much of the 2024 updates to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons seems intended to make character creation process more consistent regardless of choice, and to homogenize some aspects.

P.S. Double-post today. Cleaning out the “draft” folder. 😉