Droll Initiative

Recently, there’s been a big shakeup within the D&D community about handling of topics like race, to which WotC has mentioned steps to address the concerns presented. One of the things they mentioned was the announcement of a supplement that provides new, optional rules on how to handle starting bonuses, decoupled from race selection. While, on its face, that’s laudable, it does present a couple issues. First, it’s a separate, premium-priced supplement, which means there’s an element of economic gatekeeping – if you want to make use of these rules, you’re going to have to pay for a whole book (assuming they don’t publish this chapter for free online – but then, why include it in a for-sale book?). Second, given the core-plus-one rule in organized play, using this book means players will have to give up options from other books like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, which is a bit of a hard sell.

Personally, I think that this is a drastic patch to core rules, and combined with discourse around problematic depictions of monstrous races like orcs and gnolls, I’m wondering: is it time to think about 6E?

Sure, why not? So, let’s think about it.

Disclosing Biases

First, let me talk about where I’m coming from. While there’s a lot I’ve grown to like about 5E, especially post-Xanthar’s, it’s not my favorite edition. I feel like a lot of the early 5E design was largely a reaction to hostility to 4E (which, while far from perfect, is my favorite edition). It’s understandable, to a point – 4E was a victim of relentless edition warring, a fierce and traditionalist competitor in Pathfinder, and a myriad of unforced errors, so there was incentive to push away from that. I feel, however, that a lot of hostility against that edition has died down, and it’s a good time to reassess what 4E’s strengths can bring to the table with clear eyes, all the while building off of the high points of 5E.

A lot has changed since 5E launched, too. Distant are the days where the goal was to bring back people who hadn’t played in a while, or had drifted to Pathfinder. There’s a ton of growth in the line, brought about by shows like Critical Role. Pathfinder itself has moved on, now in a Second Edition that (irony of all ironies) takes a lot of design language from 4E. I think it’s important to approach this from where we are now, in 2020, with mid-decade reaction in the rearview, and a new audience growing by the day.

So, with all of these viewpoints disclosed, let’s (finally) jump in.

A Solid Foundation

Honestly, the foundation of 5E is pretty solid, and I wouldn’t change much there. The relatively gradual power curve and simpler math is really approachable. Advantage and Disadvantage are really elegant ways to handle a lot of status effects. I generally like how monsters can maintain a degree of challenge, because it feels pretty good to start off hopelessly outmatched by a single creature, only to eventually be able to take multiples on, all the while I as a player know I’m squaring my bundle of stats and mechanics against the same bundle of stats and mechanics but now I’m winning!

I also like Backgrounds a whole lot (as I’ve mentioned before on this very blog!). They make it easy to flesh out a character, even (especially!) if the Background is orthogonal to convention.

So, for the most part, I think it’s a solid foundation, and I think it would be good to keep it easy to convert adventures to a new edition.

But What To Change?

Well... a lot.

Race and ASIs

I’m definitely sympathetic to the idea of a given race as being inherently smarter/stronger/more charismatic than another has a whiff of eugenics to it, and should be reconsidered. The term itself is a little iffy, and I’m fine with following Pathfinder 2E’s approach and using the term “ancestry” instead.

But what to do about Ability Score Increases, then?

I think that at least some of the work should be handled by Class. I like the work Freyja Erlingsdottir is doing on this, making ASIs solely a function of your character’s training to take on the Class they belong to. I also like 13th Age’s (and, if I’m reading the SRD correctly, Pathfinder 2E’s) approach, where you get one increase from who you are, and the other from what profession you chose (but you can’t stack them). If 6E were to use Freyja’s approach, I would also add freeform tags to describe that, yes, a hulking Goliath would probably be better at using their intimidating largeness than, say, a Halfling, but the Halfling would be better at hiding in a crowd. Just give a couple of tags per ancestry, apply Advantage when they apply to an attribute check.

Classes, Subclasses and Multiclassing

I generally like the Class/Subclass division. It’s cool to have a set of broad, signature traits alongside niche refinements that reflect playstyle and presentation within the fiction. I think, however, that the presence of Multiclassing, however optional, makes their setup more problematic than it should be. It’s nigh-impossible to balance every level of every class against every other level of every Class, and Multiclassing makes Class design unwieldy. I understand why, for example, Bards don’t get Bardic Inspiration recharge on a Short Rest until a few levels in, because if it were easy to get, everyone would dip into Bard. Even if my table doesn’t use Multiclass rules (and they haven’t), we still have to use classes built with the assumptions it brings.

I’d be fine with doing away with this 3E-style system. I’ve seen someone suggest that Subclasses only be given to single-Classed characters (in other words, choose a Class and either a Subclass or a second base Class, but you can’t have both). The approach I favor, for balance’s sake, is to have two ways to blend concepts – hybridized Subclasses (like Arcane Trickster, blending Rogue with a little bit of Wizard) and 4E-style Multiclass Feats (as we’re seeing in a recent Unearthed Arcana). My proposed Feat system would be virtually identical to 5E’s – optional and balanced against and substituting for level-up ASIs. If your table doesn’t want to use them, or if you don’t want to use them, they’re not extremely obtrusive. You still get a stat boost that is equivalent in power to one.

Complexity and the Magic System

One of the things that bothers me about 5E is that it leans heavily on its magic system. There are plenty of character concepts for which learning about spell slots is an unavoidable prerequisite. While 5E does improve on Vancian casting considerably, it’s still not a system I like to engage with. But, if the character I have in mind is a floppy-hatted spell-slinger, I don’t have a choice.

Conversely, if I want to be a martial badass, my options are a little too simple. The Fighter and Rogue have some absolutely dull options, and even more engaging Subclasses like the Battlemaster pale in comparison to the complexity of one of their spell-hurling compatriots.

I’d like to see a higher complexity ceiling for martial characters, and a lower floor for spellcasters. While a unified power system a la 4E is probably not going to fly, having more complex subsystems for non-casters would be awesome. And, for simple casters, maybe repurpose the Battlemaster concept for empowered riders of basic spells that recharge per rest.

Splitting out Rituals into their own thing, and having them be something that any character can pick up in theory, is another concept. IMHO it worked really well in 4E. Why not have your Fighter know a dread rite or two?

Monsters and Encounter Design

While the general chassis of monster design is alright, it needs improvement. CR is a trash fire, for starters. While Xanathar’s provided a system to use the values, it’s kind of ridiculous that there’s no meaningful way of using them to balance an encounter without plunking down for a supplement. I can’t help but see it as a clumsy patch job, and other systems (like 13th Age) have done a great job of making encounters easy to build and balance. (Of course, the OSR-heads will say, “you don’t need to balance all encounters!” and I’ll say, “then, you don’t need to follow these rules, eh?”.)

Having creatures use spells seems like another design choice where traditionalism trumped usability. I’m of the mind that creatures don’t need to follow the rules that PCs do, and that having them cast from a shared list that DMs have to look up in another book is needlessly cludgy. Just have a simple ability or two in-line alongside the other abilities, maybe slap a recharge mechanic on them, and you’re done.

(Legendary and Lair Actions can stay though. Those rule.)

Odds and Ends

I’d like to close with a handful of odds and ends that don’t warrant the same in-depth discussion, but I’d like to have from Day One. whenever 6E drops (assuming it does).

• Alignment is a core part of the D&D Brand, but it’s also a bit problematic. I’d like it relegated to an optional sidebar and just lean on the Traits/Ideals/Bonds/Flaws system as the default.
• I’d like more solid rules for how to reward and use Inspiration. Right now, it feels vestigial.
• It would be extremely cool to have tables for random minor effects that plain old +X magic items can have. Who cares if the only thing special about this piece of armor is its +2 AC bonus? It never gets dirty!
• I’d like to have the game’s default tone clearly defined. This far into 5E’s lifecycle, it’s generally played as something unabashedly heroic (from what I’ve seen, read, and played), so why not design clearly towards that style? Then throw in optional rules for nudging the game in other directions.
• It would be cool to have Party Backgrounds. We’ve seen this already in the Eberron book, but it would be cool to have stuff that the party can leverage just by dint of them being Adventurers, or Divine Crusaders, or Assassins.
• Bring back the Warlord. Pretty please. I’m begging you, WotC!

First off, apologies for the silence. I’ve been weathering quarantine with only minimal gaming. Partly because my job has been very busy, and also partly because I’ve not done a lot of gaming, outside a couple of sessions of 5E over Roll20.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how TTRPGs are a blend of shared storytelling and mechanical systems in place to (hopefully) force interesting decisions. I’m of the mind that rules should be, if not bespoke, extremely carefully considered for appropriate fit. Why? Because play gravitates to the rules.

It’s like this: players (at least the players I’ve played with and run for all these years) find interaction with systems useful as springboards for further storytelling. Everyone, players and facilitators alike, can let the systems carry the load for giving the shared story some structure, and possibly some surprise.

Which brings me to this idea, which I believe I first heard discussed on The Iconic Podcast. It’s the idea that there are three narrators in a majority of games: the facilitator, the player, and the randomizer. The facilitator describes the world and adjudicates. The player reacts to the world and drives the story forward. The randomizer, then, tells the story of the capriciousness of fate. Nobody knows for sure how a D&D combat will go until dice are rolled. Nobody can say what the outcome of a PbtA move will be until, once again, the dice are rolled.

I think it’s important to embrace this randomness. One of the things I’ve had to unlearn is just this – the story told at the table is never any one person’s story, and in its way, the dice or cards or whatever make sure of that. The randomness becomes its own story element too – 25+ years on, and I still remember the time when a player one-shotted a dragon with a Vorpal Blade just because of sheer luck.

Spoiler Alert: I say “concision”

Over the past... I don’t know, week or so, I’ve been really diving back into Macchiato Monsters and Whitehack (and Troika! to a lesser extent – it’s super good, so expect a writeup eventually). I don’t know what taxonomy they belong to, but I’m going to call them “neo-OSR” because, while they definitely hew to the agendas and principles of old-school gaming, they don’t care about compatibility quite like, say, Labyrinth Lord does.

This is a good thing!

A big part of what charmed me about these games is their almost ruthless brevity and concision. Macchiato Monsters packs an whole-ass game into under 60 5.5”x9” pages – even a hex map generator tool and a whole bunch of tables to help a GM come up with something on the fly. Whitehack does something similar – full game with a solid bestiary, setting, starting adventures, and paper dice – all in just a small, slim book.

Now, to get to this aggressively lean end-state, the games ended up being a good deal different than stock D&D. You’re not going to find a spells-per-level table anywhere, and stats feel different – closer to percentage dice than old-school D&D’s (or Labyrinth Lord’s) more intricate tables of what, precisely, an 8 CHA means in play.

Again, these are good things!

Because the rules are so spare, they invite dialogue. Instead of pointing definitively at the Cleric’s Turn Undead table, GM and player hash out what, exactly, their faith gives them, and what’s asked of them in return. Games like these are, in my experience, more approachable too. Tables full of numbers and modifiers are often daunting for new players – these games don’t use them.

Coming from a game like 5E (which looks streamlined but hides its significant complexity), these games are a breath of fresh air. While I have a soft spot for more elaborate OSR games – I absolutely love Godbound – they’re still quite heavy. It’s in the slim, mean rules like Whitehack and Macchiato monsters that the line between orthodox OSR and indie, fiction-focused games blurs. It’s a good spot to explore.

Outré Realms is a lean, rules-light, OSRish game. It’s a whopping twelve pages, so when I say lean, I mean it!

What I Like

• It’s classless, which is something I appreciate in an OSRish game. Instead, you’ve got Fighter, Intercessor, Sorcerer, and Thief abilities. Mix and match however you want!
• The system is dead simple: roll xd6, count 5s and 6s. It’s sorta like Shadowrun in that regard, which I dig. It’s also unlike Shadowrun in that it’s actually simple. Also: if anyone has made a Shadowrun hack for this, please let me know. Because I want it.
• Armor is ablative, which is awesome. I prefer armor as damage mitigation over armor as to-hit modifier.
• There’s social combat with actual mechanical heft! I like this a lot.
• Have I mentioned it’s only twelve pages long? Wow.

What I’m Not So Hot About

• The monsters have stats that work similarly to PC stats, but are named differently. I get that the developer was going for a specific vibe, but having to keep the names of two distinct-but-functionally-identical stats in my head is a little convoluted.
• Similarly, the monster writeups themselves feel a little underdeveloped. In particular, I’m having a hard time with the Misanthropic stat. I’m assuming it’s used as counter to the PC Intercessor stat for social combat, and maybe for divine acts, but the rules don’t mention it.
• There’s some errata in the book, but it’s situated at the end, not integrated into the text. I wish it were the latter, although that might cause layout issues.

The Bottom Line

Outré Realms is a neat little package. It’s got that classic old-school feel, despite not being a d20-six-stat game. It’s got a few minor issues, but on the whole, it’s worth checking out.

Also: it’s twelve pages. Just incredible.

Disclaimer: the author comped me a copy.

I recently found out about Emberwind and it looks like it would be extremely right up my alley. * It has a very strong vibe of what I like to call “post-4E” (meaning it has a lot of the mechanical and aesthetic pieces from D&D 4E, but riffed on and made into its own thing). It’s got grid combat, synergistic power combos, and monsters that practically run themselves. But they’re all handled in clever ways. And the default setting is some extremely high fantasy in the mold of Final Fantasy or Guild Wars 2 – which I dig so much. * The rules are extremely modular – you can play with or without a GM, you can build your character the familiar dice-roll way or by choosing modifier packages tied to a list of adjectives, and dice themselves are even optional (you can play with cards instead if that’s your thing). * The monster design is extremely cool. Each creature write-up has its own set of default behaviors, a potential override or two, and a set of basic attacks and other, specialized abilities. Here’s where it gets interesting: each monster write-up also has a “random turn” table, where you roll to see which of these attacks and special abilities fire. A seasoned GM can choose to ignore the routines or supplement the table with even more options, but the default is still plenty interesting and, because you’re leaving the decision-making to chance, can be run without a GM. * Unlike D&D’s very black-and-white combat system, Emberwind has a middle tier of combat success. Armor in Emberwind is damage reduction, so a success roll can succeed or fail as normal, hit and bypass armor, or hit and bypass armor and maximize damage. It’s a bit to wrap one’s head around, but it’s really cool.

I can’t wait to try out the system. I’ve got some concerns, but I will leave them for until I play it. I’ll follow up this post if/when that happens.

I picked up Macchiato Monsters the other day and, while I’m still poring through it, a lot has leapt out at me. So here goes!

• I love the tone of the book. It’s humorous when it needs to be, and always sets expectations about what sort of game it is. It’s unapologetically old-school, where straight-up combat is a bad idea, stats are random, and life is cheap.
• I also love that a lot of the art has monsters drinking coffee.
• You know what, classless OSR may be my jam. I couldn’t stand the dissonance of a game that touted a “Fighting Man” class and yet said that fighting was, as mentioned, a bad idea.
• The game uses the Risk Die for everything and I am down with that. It’s such a clever mechanic. It reminds me of Blades in the Dark’s Clock mechanic in a way, sometimes blended with random-event tables. Yeehaw.
• Combat looks fun. It kinda reminds me of Dungeon World through a more traditional lens. Having to compare HD seems a little fiddly though.
• Hell yeah, Chaos Magic!
• Holy shit, the GM tools are top-notch. Random tables for plot and faction generation? Yes please! A way to mechanize hex map generation? OMG YES.

I’ve got more to digest, but this game looks cool as hell.

I have a confession: I don’t like XP in D&D. Modern XP (mostly based on monster-killing and defined quests) feels like it should be better handled inside of a video game, and has a tendency to emphasize combat. On the other hand, gold-as-XP means I have to worry about encumbrance... so no.

But what about Milestone leveling?

It’s a little better, but it’s still not great. It relies a lot on GM fiat, which in and of itself isn’t bad, but it puts the onus of pacing a level squarely on the GM. The GM also has to actually remember where they are in the lifecycle of the level, and if you’re me, you’re too distracted by running combat or misremembering how saving throws work to remember that. Leveling becomes an uneven mess that relies upon your GM being mentally organized enough to follow through in a timely manner. This too presents a problem – when is the right time to level the party?

Fortunately, I’ve hacked together a way for the GM to disclaim management and tracking of level progress. If you’ve read my blog, you probably know where this is going.

Yep, that’s right... I’m going to rip off Blades in the Dark again.

Countdown to Awesome

Here’s how it works. At the start of the party’s new level, start a clock. Jot that down on a sheet of paper or an index card. Every session, roll an amount of d6 to determine how much progress to reward and take the highest result. * 1-3: 1 tick * 4-5: 2 ticks * 6: 3 ticks * More than one 6 rolled: 5 ticks

When the clock is filled, the party gains a level and the clock is reset.

But how many dice should you roll? What should your clock look like?

Dice

As a rule of thumb, use the guidelines that Blades uses for Fortune Rolls: default to 1d6, and adjust from there. I’m a fan of players playing their characters to the table, not just the GM, so I would reward a die if someone at the table could point to a particularly amazing character scene. I’d also reward a die (or two) for completing a quest, story arc, or other significant milestone. On the other hand, if the party suffered a significant setback of some sort, take a die away. Personally, I would use the 13th Age guidance for what’s considered a Campaign Loss as a guideline, but use your discretion, GM.

Clock Size

This is where you have the most responsibility, GM, and also the most creative latitude. I’ve been playing a lot of D&D 5E, so here’s how I think I would run it:

• Level 1: I wouldn’t use it – just level them up after one session
• Level 2: 4-segment clock
• Level 3-4: 6-segment clock
• Level 5+: 8-segment clock

My thought is that the first couple of levels should be zipped through fairly quickly, so start small (or don’t use at all). Level 3 is a nice breakpoint – most classes will get their subclass, and characters start feeling a bit more durable, but they really don’t get a chance to shine until they’re about 5th level (when spells like Fireball come into play), so shorten the journey somewhat. After level 5, though, they should ease into a normal cadence.

Permutations

• If the die count dips below 1, you have a couple of options. First is to just say “no dice, no advancement”. That’s a tough stance to take, and personally I wouldn’t recommend it. The approach I think works better is to use Blades’ own idiom – treat “rolling 0d6” as rolling 2d6 and taking the lowest, and not allowing Crits. There’s still advancement, just likely much slower than the players want!
• For grittier/slower-paced games, you could step down the advancement rates to 0/1/2/3 (from 1/2/3/5 as above).
• You can always make clocks bigger than 8 ticks.

Yeah, But Why?

This allows chance to decide how quickly a level will go, but it’s still constrained. The most likely outcome will be that 4-5 roll, so a 4-segment clock will need two sessions of play to complete (and a 6-segment clock will need three sessions, and so on). Bonus dice are not flat bonuses like extra XP – just improved odds. When you clearly set expectations for what rewards extra dice, you set incentives for what sort of play you want at your table.

Also, by putting it down on something physical like an index card, it becomes another artifact of play. It’s something that commands attention, just as your maps and minis do. Everyone’s on the same page.

Of all of the Fantasy d20 games out there, I love 13th Age the most. However, I have struggled with the Icon Relationship Roll system. I’ve submitted some ideas about how to change the rules in the past, but looking back, they seem a little too fiddly and, frankly, my thoughts on their place in the gameplay loop have changed dramatically.

So here is a new mechanic that came to me like a bolt from the blue, inspired in part by... Blades in the Dark.

Wait, what?

What Am I Trying To Solve?

RAW, the 13th Age Core Rules have some issues as far as Icon Relationship Rolls go.

• The GM has to track them throughout the session (and the GM already has enough on their plate!).
• They are inconsistent (players only benefit 1/3 of the time per die, so there’s no telling how much benefit a player will have per session).
• Complications (the 5 result) are pre-announced at the start of the session (and risk-averse players may find the thought of a guaranteed complication not worth cashing in).

So here are the design considerations I designed under:

• The players should manage their Roll pools. Players generally enjoy some degree of resource management. At least at my table, anyway.
• There shouldn’t be “dud” rolls. Any time a player picks up dice to roll, there should be an actionable outcome that they can use.
• Complications should have a way to be mitigated through strength of relationship – the more investment the relationship has, I feel that the less the relationship should cause issues. On the other hand, divided loyalties, which thematically invite complications, should have their own reward.

So Here’s How It Works

1. Assign Dice as normal (if you use the “heroic vs. villainous” limits in the book at your table, still honor them). The maximum you can have per Relationship is 3 dice, and if you want to have divided loyalties of any sort, you don’t have to assign them to just one Icon – split them up if you want. (You still tag them as “Positive”, “Negative”, or “Complicated” as descriptive tags for the relationship.) As you level, you’ll gain more Dice, but the maximum remains 3 dice. (I’d probably keep that maximum in place for abilities that grant Relationship Dice.)
2. When it comes time to leverage a Relationship, grab the amount of d6es equivalent to assigned to that Relationship value and roll all of them, taking the highest result.
3. I interpret this result as follows:
   • 1-3: You get the benefit you wanted and the GM works with you (and the rest of the table, if that’s the style of game you like to play) to come up with a fun wrinkle to complicate the benefit. (If I were the GM, I’d avoid making the complication punitive, but still a little chaotic because I like unplanned and messy hitches in the story.) The dice that I rolled are then expended for the rest of the session.
   • 4-5: You get the benefit that you wanted, and the dice that you rolled are then expended for the rest of the session.
   • 6: You get the benefit that you wanted and you get to keep the dice to roll again sometime later.
4. Dice are refreshed at the start of each session.

Example: my character, Ched-Dar the Sharp, has a 2-Positive Relationship with the Dwarf King and a 1-Complicated Relationship with the Prince of Shadows, and I want to leverage that my allegiance to the Dwarven Kingdom would come in handy. So I spout off the benefit I want to have happen, then grab 2 dice and roll them, taking the highest. I get a 2 and a 4... so a 4! There’s no complication, but that’s all I can leverage that Relationship this session. I still have the 1-Complicated Relationship I can try to leverage though.

Why Do This?

You can see that, no matter how many Dice are rolled, some sort of benefit is guaranteed. What rolling does is determine if complications show up and if the Icon Relationship “recharges” or if it’s a once-per-session expenditure. Even at one Die, it’s a 50/50 chance that it’ll be an unalloyed good.

Splitting Relationships is also an interesting tradeoff. By declaring multiple relationships, you guarantee more than one Roll per session, but make them a little more “fragile” (you’re less likely to roll a 6, and more likely to roll a 1-3).

And why do I max this out at 3 Dice per Relationship? It’s a good cap on the percentages. According to AnyDice, you’ll get at least a 4 about 88% of the time, and a 6 about 42% of the time. These are pretty good odds, and any more dice puts the chance of a 6 above 50%, which I think is a bit too much.

Anyway, let me know what you think. I’m excited to try this house rule out at my tables!

For the past... oh, gosh, I don’t know how long, I’ve been running Blades in the Dark for a local group of friends. It’s really pulled me out of my comfort zone in terms of how to run games, and frankly has spoiled me for how rule sets should be structured. It’s really something.

But you probably already knew that. It has become an indie darling, after all. What I love about it the most, though, is how easy – and rewarding! – it is to no-prep it.

I don’t like prep under normal circumstances, but the past couple of weeks have been really stressful at work, and bad scheduling and luck have prevented my weekends from being as relaxing as I needed them to be. So I didn’t prep the last session, outside of remembering what happened on the previous few sessions and thinking “what if a faction was eliminated?”.

It was a success. All I did was come up with a starting situation, and the players did the rest.

My regular gaming group is starting up a D&D 5E campaign, and I’m doing my usual routine of figuring out what the heck I want to play. Let me unpack that, though. There’s the system side of things, and then there’s the narrative side. D&D has always placed a ton of page-count on the former, what with (depending on edition) spells-per-level tables, lists of powers and feats, and damage breakdowns of bastard sword versus longsword. But the latter... well, not as much.

This isn’t to say D&D – even the systems-heavy edtions – don’t support strong character concepts and sweeping narrative arcs. Anecotally, in my time playing 4E, I played some of the most interesting characters I’ve ever played! I’ll always remember Galen, my doomed Fighter who was on the run from a demonic bargain he made to save his life (and the regicide that his patron demanded of him). I’ll remember Xola’at, my psionic Athasian elven noble, desperate to reunite with his kingdom after it got devoured. I’ll remember my friend’s death-cultist Rogue, a holy assassin claiming souls for the Raven Queen. These were all compelling stories, built because we had the skill to build a narrative hook into our characters. The system gave us little to no guidance.

But now... 5E. There’s actually a decent chunk of pagecount devoted to helping players hit the ground running with cool stories, and nowhere is this better expressed than in the Background system. Backgrounds are phenomenal. I liked them even when I wasn’t so keen on 5E overall, and now that I’ve come to like 5E, I think I like them even more.

I probably don’t have to tell you what Backgrounds are, but for the sake of everyone, here’s a quick rundown. In addition to choosing a Class, you also choose a Background. While the Class is mostly focused on what your character does in combat, Backgrounds handle a lot of exploration and interaction. They give your character some minor equipment, a couple of skills, and some sort of narrative ability, like being able to secure lodging from people who admire your legend, or the benefits concommitant with a military rank. It’s all very loosey-goosey and lightweight, but most importantly, it’s independent of your class. So, going back to my friend’s 4E Rogue, he could make a Rogue, take the Assassin subclass once he gets to 3rd level, and select the Acolyte Background. Galen would probably be a Fighter/Warlock, if the DM allowed multiclassing, but in any event he would take the Criminal Background. That’s it, no bending over backwards to make a class fit the mechanics, no choosing a different Class that fit your model of the story better. It’s brilliant.

What’s more, it’s a dead-simple way to differentiate your character from others. A Bard who’s an Entertainer is iconic, but what if the Bard is a Spy? A Charlatan? A Pirate? These aren’t heavy-duty mechanical blocks – as mentioned above, they’re simply a few skills, a little bit of mostly-inconsequential gear, and a non-combat ability – but they frame the character in entirely different ways. And since they’re so lightweight and transparently-designed, it’s a snap to make your own.

I’m late to the party, I know, but Backgrounds are one of the cleverest ways to focus D&D into a game about telling stories through rich characterization. The game has previously relied on a very light-touch approach, but I feel like it benefits significantly from building a system around it.