At Last .... The Cube World

 (Ha, and why it's good none of the players read my blog.)

(Northern Continent Detail by Zak S.)

I had been intending to run Zak Smith's Cube World setting since Zak began to publish the installments back in 2020. Cube World, literally a cube-shaped world with the campaign taking place on the "near face" of the cube, is the overall campaign setting that contains Zak's major published works: Vornheim: The Complete City Kit, Red and Pleasant Land, Maze of the Blue Medusa, and Frostbitten and Mutilated. While I'd ran bits of Zak's books as pieces in my home game, I am 100% sand-box ref so prior works without the rest of the setting were just grist for the mill altered to fit whichever particular setting in play at time. The collection of Cube World installments provide refs like me the opportunity to run Cube World as the whole enchilada.

Since the earliest of our hobby my jam has been the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting by Bob Bledsaw and published by Judges Guild. Back in 1976 Bob, along with his partner Bill Owens, came up with the idea of selling stuff they found helpful in their own game as a subscription service, releasing as installments City State of the Invincible Overlord, Thunderhold, Ready Ref Sheets, Tegel Manor, Modron, Barbarian Altanis, Valon, Thieves of Fort Badabaskor, and so forth through 1981 by when the their catalogue was all available as stand alone products.

Cube World shares many attributes with The Wilderlands: Installments, comprehensive sand box details, maps and details for multiple regions, tips and tables for refs, unique monsters and NPCs, and many individual adventure locations. Coincidentally the playable "near face" of Cube World is 800 miles by 800 miles - a close approximation of the size of regions surrounding the Mediterranean Sea here on Earth and just about the exact dimensions of the combined core Wilderlands setting (Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Wilderlands of the Fantastic Reaches, and Wilderlands of the Magic Realm).

Over the past year the D&D games I run have settled down into two groups: One is an online-only 5e D&D and the other is in-person-only using Advanced Labyrinth Lord retro-clone supplemented by my own Knights of the All Mind and set in The Wilderlands. The Wilderlands presently are very dark compared with previous treks, the darker side hinted by the evil of the Invincible Overlord, his Black Lotus secret police, the understated prejudice and collective violence against half-elves, other mixed peoples, certain religious sects, and outsiders which all reveal on a more thorough reading through the vast amount of Judges Guild published material about The Wilderlands. 

Our campaign began in the Pirates of Hagrost "Wilderness Series" module, with the adventuring party eventually looting the study of a necrophiliac wizard there (you read that correctly, right there in the scenario as written). Our Druid stumbled upon a cursed scroll intended by the necrophilimancer to teleport the scroll's audience and everyone within 30 feet to Witches Court Marshes. I'm preparing for our next session, using Night of the Spirits to get a full-on Celtic vibe but having to retro-clone Castles and Crusades to B/X-style Advanced Labyrinth Lord. I'm cracking open Frostbitten and Mutilated penciling in one of Zak's Trolls and peeling out Witchwood Goblins from the Cube World bestiary and thinking about how creepy it will be for the party all the goblins speak in unison when it hit me. I originally planned this very Wilderlands campaign to get our heroes to Cube World. Great googly moogly.

Ha, now I am in reconnaissance mode, wondering how long I can jerk around the party's chain before they figure out they aren't in Kansas anymore. The new players won't have a clue, Scott our Druid probably will sense things are a little more fantastic than he recalls, but my bro will for certain figure something is up when he tries to book some passage to City State of the Invincible Overlord or the World Emperor and folks don't know what he's talking about. Depends on how many beers though.

Myself I am super looking forward to this. The Wilderlands did grow a bit stale and Judges Guild never produced anything comparable to that of their early days after a hiatus caused by the mid-80s local hobby store crash and now having been ostracized and boycotted due to some bigotry from inheritors to the Juges Guild IP (Bob Bledsaw passed away in 2008). 

None of my players new or old have any familiarity with Cube World and Zak's tips and tables for refs I know from experience will keep the action moving. And with Cube World already statted out in the B/X retro-clone Lamentations of the Flame Princess means next to minimal conversions for me. Cube World provides a welcome fresh start. Much like the 5e game I run, Cube World is an opportunity to take my overarching story in different directions. (All my games are connected into one campaign, because of course they are.)

Hands On 2024 Revision Player's Handbook

 

Okay, I took the next step in my "New Edition" journey purchasing the 2024 5th Edition revisions edition of the Player's Handbook. A subset of our regular gaming group have been running straight 5th Edition since last April so I could familiarize myself with the rules, but just for the sole purpose of running the new 2024 revision version.

The new Player's Handbook is the same size, 8.5 x 11 inches, but has a quarter-inch more depth than the original 5th Ed. PBH and now runs 384 pages rather than 320. As my eyes are failing, but I still prefer not to wear my specs, the font is thicker - sort of a sub-bold - and much easier to read than the really tiny print in the earlier version. Thanks also for Wizards of the Coast making the page numbers and book section information in the footer much darker and easier to read than the prior edition.

I am just beginning to dig into the text (won't be running a game with the new book until next month) and I do find the character class sections easier to digest and especially more comfortable to find the info I need and skip over what I don't.

As to rule changes, the first obvious change is removing "Races," which as time has passed is certainly beyond its expiration date given the tragic way some folks continue to use "race" as the word to compartmentalize and maintain their biases against others.

Here in the 2024 revisions "The peoples of the D&D multiverse hail from different worlds and include many kinds of sapient life forms."

The new Player's Handbook describes ten species for player characters: Aasimar, Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goliath, Halfling, Human, Orc, and Tiefling. Interestingly, while each species provides a variety of mechanical bonuses and abilities, there are no species-related ability score modifications. All the ability score modifications come from a character's background no matter what the species-type.

There is a little conundrum I spied, in that members of different species should not be able to interbreed - literally from the dictionary definition of species is that members of the same species interbreed while members of different species cannot. This means no Half-elves or Half-orcs.

The work around if these half-species are required for your game is to use the stats from the earlier 5th Edition rules, or just merge the 2 species together as you see fit.

And that's about as far as I've gone. More to come (expecially after I actualy use the book in play).