Mini-Fluff: The DM's Fingerprint
I have started reading David Eddings again (and I just learned from a French reference at the bottom that his wife and co-author died shortly after Robert Jordan… this is sad) and it brought back a meta-literature discussion I have had in the last few years.
I have read a lot of novels, a few hundred if not about a thousand in the last 24 years. A lot of Fantasy (Favorite ones: The first 3 Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan, Closely followed by Edding’s the Belgariad and everything by Pratchet), a lot of Sci-Fi (Best ones: The Night’s Dawn Triology by Hamilton and Hyperion by Simmons) and also a lot of Horror Techno-thrillers, Spy-thrillers… including a few on Oprah’s list.
I have read enough books by the same author to see that they all leave a signature that is common throughout their work (If this is evident to you, please note that I have never taken a post high-school literature class, either French or English, I’m all science and geeky electives):
- Eddings’ narrative is very dialog-driven and features and at least one character, if not all, features an unmistakable sarcastic streak.
- Peter F. Hamilton crams a metric ton of technical details about his worlds’ technologies in what has been known as the Data Dump.
- Mary Higgins Clark always describes what a person wears first and foremost.
- Lawrence Sanders always describes what a person drinks
- Dean Koontz has progressively become more and more focused on Paranoia and Conspiracies
- Stephen King lets you know in advance when a character will die
- Clive Cussler always has a funky often fictional vehicle appearing in his novels and makes a cameo in his own books.
RPG writers also features this, although I have much less experience about those.
- Monte Cook often bases his material on some sort of Lovecraftian Elder Evil. He also shows a lot of love for arcane spellcasters and he designs encounters that can be very tough for non-optimized parties.
- Mike Mearls favors mechanics over flavour and prefers martial classes with access to magic-like abilities.
- My Nemesis, Wolfgang Baur admits to be a fluff-over-crunch type of guy and creates memorable story-lines and NPCs .
Now here’s what I was thinking about. I’m pretty sure that DMs who’ve done this long enough also have a distinctive fingerprint that shows in whatever game they play. But the thing is, listing your own style is not as easy, so I asked Yan about mine.
Here’s what he said: A distinct epic flavour: Characters are often on first name basis with the campaigns’ gods (true).
I also almost invariably align campaign themes along the classic moral-divide (Good vs Evil/Law vs Chaos). I like recurring villains and I love encounters with lots of features and exploitation of the environment by both players and DM-controlled creatures (Combat on narrow overlapping over passes with levitating Fiends abound… woot!).
What about your DM fingerprints? What are the common elements to all your games?
Street Fighter: The Later Years
I don’t even remember now how I came into the site, but somehow I wandered over to the College Humor video section, and found that they’ve started a series of short movies called “Street Fighter: The Later Years.” It’s quite funny and there are even a few twists and turns (and just enough special effects to work.) I spent a while watching all five episodes that have been released, and look forward to more. (Though I still like the Punch-Out idea better.) I recommend watching them- even the characters lament the movie- and I’ve embedded the first episode after the jump. [Read the rest of this article]
Mini-Posts: New Features for busy days
I’m currently sicker than I have been in many years. I have the constitution of an Ox and a cold is usually only a 24-48 hour thing, but I caught one of those once-per-5 years bug that slays me. Now I’m stuck home for the second day and it sucks because I have trouble concentrating long enough to make cool posts.
But it also gave me an idea.
You see like a lot of 30-something North American adults, I could afford to lose a few pounds (20-25 in my case). I am not very active physically and I have a Type A-ish personality which puts me at risk of Cardiovascular diseases. I have young kids and I have absolutely no wish to have a heart attack anytime soon (I’ll turn 35 in January and I work in a cardiology institute).
So I’ve decided to put the same discipline I’ve put behind the Blog for the past 3 months to my ailing health-related habits. The thing is, taking time to exercise and eat better will invariably eat up one of 3 things: Quality family time, gaming time or blog time. The 1st is out of the question. The second is a lot shorter than before because the 3rd ate it all up. So I will have to spend less time on the blog.
So I’ve started going to the Gym on Tuesday and Thursday nights and occasionally on Sunday mornings (for about 2 hours, transport and shower included). I’ve been doing it pretty faithfully for the last 2 weeks and still managed to either post on the blog or edit and post one of PM’s or Yan’s posts.
The thing is, it’s starting to become a strain. Now I know I do not HAVE to post every day, but it’s a good routine for me. It’s a good mental exercise that I find as important as the physical one. Plus, this blogging thing has become a motivation by itself with the comments and rising readership (around 80-100 uniques per day).
So what I propose to do is to have the Tuesday and Thursday night posts be mini-posts! A short (according to my standards) 500 words or less post on either Fluff, Crunch or Trope stuff. They’ll be categorized accordingly. This will make for lighter reading on days where I usually see a drop in readership (I have 2 spikes: Mondays and Thursdays and a significant drop on Wednesdays and Fridays). I can write and review a 500-word article in less than an hour, I write Standard Operating Procedures for a living. 
Just to start things… I’ll post up 2 example posts later today. One on DM Fingerprints (Fluff) and one on a proposed new model for D&D Golem magic immunities (Crunch). I’d appreciate comments and feedback on the format. Is it interesting? Is it okay in length? Is it filler-drivel? Am I being a neurotic wreck? You tell me!
The Blog's Feed
I have been asked this twice and I realized that there’s no intuitive way to know this so here is the Blog’s feed:
http://chattydm.net/?feed=rss2
While on the subject of Feeds, Tangent128 nicely reminds us that
http://chattydm.net/?feed=atom also works.
And finally, I went out and subscribed to FeedBurner so here is another feed.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChattyDm
Now you’ll know whenever my overly Chatty mind is done spewing yet another 1000 words post on whatever it is I’m musing about.
As usual, you people rock!
Adventure Prep: Tomb Re-engineering 101
Okay, I got sick last night, probably with the same bugs my wife and kids have been fighting these last 2 weeks. Hopefully I’ll get better for Friday’s game. If not well I just might have to pull the plug on it no matter how I’d much rather not do this.
This week’s Adventure prep focuses, once again, on adapting the current dungeon crawl (a funeral mound that hides some sort of Lovecraftian horror) in order to make it a more balanced challenge and be more interesting for my players. The last game showed that the players loved the adventure’s fluff but had maybe too much of a hard time with the creatures in it. For those new to the series, we’re still in the 1st third of my own adaptation of Dungeon Magazine’s Spawn of Sehan adventure from #146.
I don’t actually expect the players to finish up this week. So I haven’t touched the deeper encounters. If they manage to get there and the evening is still young, I’ll play them as is.
The 1st order of business is dealing with the Child of Sehan… The players have already survived 2 fights against those, so I don’t plan on nerfing the remaining creature. However, while reading the new D&D Rules Compendium, which I absolutely recommend for anyone playing D&D 3.x and still unsure about 4.0, I found a very interesting twist on playing a monster with a Gaze attack. Remember that any players who succumb to the Child’s gaze attack’s fairly high DC (Will DC 21) become affected by a Calm Emotion effect for 11 rounds.
Here’s the house rule: Instead of having all players who avert their gaze have a flat 50% chance of becoming a target of the passive gaze attack (which slows down the game), nerf the passive gaze. Instead allow the creature to make a Gaze attack against one PC with averted eyes as a swift action . So for a party of 5 players who all avert their eyes, only one gets to play the save instead of 2-3. Does that sounds fair?
Okay, up next was the redesigning of rooms that were either plain stupid (Ohhh a patch of Super Green Slime, so quaint!) or too un-fun (2 more Child of Sehan). In one of the now emptied rooms, I added a bit more Ptolus fluff… Objects and/or NPCs to act as future plot hooks.
I also made good use of Monday’s Trope concept and injected quite a few coincidences… including one that should lead to a very interesting intra-party conflict and another that plays directly into the antics of one of the players that has been spewing a LOT of in-character semi-religious drivel over e-mail these past few days.
Additionally as I was reading up on the critters found in the dungeon’s lower levels, I came upon a room guarded by 3 Specters. Yup, 3 incorporeal, non-critable, level draining (2 negative levels per hit!) undead creatures. Now I’m sure the party can deal with this but I’ve used specters against my players before and they always lead to long drawn out fights where players miss 50% of the time. Not fun. So I dug into my source books and replaced them by an equivalent encounter with creatures they have never seen and that does not have more than 2 of the 3 ‘bad’ features of Specters.
Finally, I added enough Bling to make the adventure worthwhile for everyone, including once again some items that link to other Ptolus adventures and organizations. I’m really having quite a blast here.
That’s about it for this week’s game… and this post is barely 1/2 of my usual stuff. Well, consider this a gift for the impatient. If I’m still homesick tomorrow, I’ll throw in a bonus Planescape adaptation post… I’ve finally settled on the next part of the campaign and you might be quite surprised where I took my inspiration.
Peace out and wash your hands!
PWW: The Closet Half-Orc takes another bite at roleplaying.
Here is PM’s 3rd post where he relates his experiencs as a new Role-Player. This week he talks about our McWod game, and while some of his impressions and comments sting a bit, they are very relevant and acts, at time, as a disturbingly accurate mirror of us, the other players.
This week, my inner Half-Orc has taken his second successful journey out of his closet. He went out a little more confident and came back with fur and fangs, howling gleefully at the moon.
In this new MCWoD game, I have selected to play a Werewolf for a simple reason: nobody will mind if the character is not too subtle. I fully expected to have one of the following exchanges:
“Hey! Why did you get in my line of fire!?”
“I’m a Werewolf..”
“Didn’t you think it might be a trap?”
“Werewolf..”
“You killed the witness!”
“Werewolf!”
“You killed my character!!!!”
“WEREWOLF!!!! Hooooooooooooooowl!”
That last one would have signaled a very fun game (in retrospect, a year later… maybe) (Chatty DM: Somehow I seriously doubt that)
So this time, I was able to select a character I related better with and I think it showed in the way I played. I didn’t pull anything awesomely cool, but I was more active throughout the game. I believe I have overcome one of the first obstacles I identified earlier on. One down, a couple of new ones on the horizon…
Table etiquette
I had read or heard about players who failed to focus their attention on the table or carried on side conversations. I seem to recall how disruptive it could be for the DM and the game in general but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a problem. Why not since 3 of the 5 participants play regularly together? Furthermore, one of the player is the usual DM and I know I have no attention span problem.
To my surprise, I think I caught a glimpse of bad table etiquette, if only in very minor ways. Phil had to split his attention between the game and his kids but we knew about it before the game started. To me, that’s totally excusable (Chatty DM: Does that mean you don’t offer to babysit Friday? Ahhhh schucks!).
At other times, during DM descriptions or small debates over the best course of action, the Internet was browsed and reference books were consulted. As a new player, this was a little disrupting as I was trying to focus on the DM’s description while a rule was discussed the next seat over. In an empathic way, I was a little annoyed for Franky who does not have the same experience in DMing and who’s new to this settings as well.
The fact that the players who were active “out of the game” were the experienced one did not surprise me outrageously. They know the game, they already have their group chemistry and probably have a little spare time since the game’s rhythm is slowed by the new players and DM. For all I know, the whole thing might not have disturbed the DM at all, but I think it remains a very light form of bad table manners. (Chatty DM: Guilty as chargedit’s less easy than I thought to stay put and focused on things I already know about)
Group Dynamics
It’s no surprise to anybody that you can’t just put anyone in a group and rightfully expect your session to go smoothly. Our party consists of a “closet half-orc newbie”, a “back from a 15 years break” intermediate player and two very, very, very extroverted people.
I’m talking about Phil and Yan here, our two veterans. If you’re able to describe Phil as a mild mannered quiet guy without bursting out laughing, you probably have a seat reserved at any poker game in the world (Chatty DM: Hey I can be mild mannered… When I sleep!). Don’t even bother trying to make a similar description for Yan, he won’t shut up long enough for you to begin.
From my point of view, this is a potentially lethal group as the newbies might be trampled by the extroverts. Fortunately for us all, we have a stabilizing ingredient called unselfishness.
In order to prevent the maiming of the newbies, Phil created a character that would more or less force him to take a step back; his agent James Kevin Smith (3 links by the way) is so introverted that he can only speak through a third person, but when weapons are drawn he’s a trash talking Darth Vader.
Yan’s character (William Gunther) does not limit his action in this way, but he uses simple self-restreint and it works just as well. That Agent Smith uses him as his spokesperson makes it a little easier for him I’m sure. I can’t tell if it’s intentional or not but the contrast between Smith’s analytical and scientific personality and William’s one-man-action-army made for some good moments. When Agent Smith whispered his comments, Gunther often had a moment of pause, as if the statement to be delivered was just slightly above his pay-grade. But that may just be a personal perception.
In both cases, our experienced players have taken the necessary steps to make the game available to all of us. But by the end of the evening, I began to see little hints of frustration from both of them. It may only have been fatigue, but Phil became more volubile, and Yan seemed to reconsider his choice of character slightly. I guess it’s not easy being a quiet one man army (Chatty DM: I guess was getting really tired at that point and being Dinosaur Chow has it’s price).
Other Random First Hand Discoveries
- Grapple makes everyone groan… It should be part of the games description (Chatty DM: It is…just not in so many words).
- Something that’s quite clear to the DM is not always so for the players… like the characters jurisdiction during an investigation.
- Critical hits in MCWoD hurt like a bitch (Chatty DM: The dice of damage, not the bonuses, are dealt directly to Constitution, like a poison effect, but without the saves)… I’d show you the scar but it’s all healed-up already. (I love Werewolves.)
So in the end my inner half-orc returned to his closet but left the door opened, ready to venture out again. In the meantime, he’s going to redesign the layout of his character sheet…
YouTube of the Week: Racing Boxes, Tables, and Chairs Edition
A stop-motion, live-action homage to the Mario Kart games. My favorite part is how they make the invincible star effect- you just gotta see it. Also a guest appearance by a 40k army!
Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: What a Coincidence!
It’s been some time since I last posted an article in the Tropes series. What can I say? It’s been a busy 2 weeks! This post will tie in directly with tomorrow’s Adventure Prep post for this week’s game.
There you are, sitting wherever it is you sit when preparing your next adventure. You want to “awesome up” your game so that your players really dig this week’s festival of Monster Slaying, Starship Bootlegging and (but most likely ‘or’) Vampiric Courtly Intrigue.
All your encounters are ready, the loot is prepared and you created scenes for each and every type of players you have. However, something is still missing to take this adventure above and beyond the ‘meh, it was good’ stage. I’m talking about adding the little fluffy somethings that will pull the players right into the story.
Well, why not use one of the most basic trope there is: the Coincidence! Not just the average “Ah, fancy seeing you here old chap!” coincidence. I’m talking about stretching coincidence to it’s breaking point and back…
Contrived Coincidence
Contrived Coincidence describes a highly improbable occurrence in a story which is required by the plot, but which has absolutely no outward justification. The concept of “destiny” is glossed over altogether, and the events in question are simply disguised as mere happenstance. This would be jarring, but most of the time no attention is drawn to the event at all. It’s just a narrative convention designed to skip over lots of irrelevant stuff by putting the important events all together, leaving the audience to forget the improbability of the event.
For example, when two characters are separated in a huge battle involving millions of combatants, they will bump into each other again just in time for one to save the other’s life. This is not highlighted as an example of destiny or fortuity in any way, and in fact the improbability of the two people meeting again at such a convenient moment is ignored altogether.
Do check this trope’s description of the Independence Day movie, it’s just too funny: “The movie was so chock full of utterly ridiculous coincidences, it seems the alien invasion was the most credible aspect of the story.”
Fortunately, had the movie been a RPG adventure, no player would have complained. I mean fighter jets, aliens, hacking alien computers with a Mac virus and cities being destroyed with one Freaking Death Ray?!? Where do I sign up for this game? I want Roland Emmrich as a Dungeon Master!
You see, depending on your players, your adventure can suffer from things like thinness of plot (Go kill Dragon, bring back Doohickey of Doom, return Raistlin’s book to the Libraries of Gehenna) or from complete lack of player interest about your background. You therefore have very limited resources (time, attention spans and available NPCs with names your players will remember) to actually build something that will leave a lasting impression…
So you should cheat a bit by pulling the most outrageous coincidences on your players. If you keep the Rule of Cool in mind the players will go with it full-speed. Here’s a few successful examples I pulled in my various campaigns:
- An Elven fighter and Half-Orc cleric, both faithful followers of the Elven Patron god, were raised in the same household whose Majordomo just happened to be an Avatar of that god.
- A Dracolich who just happened to be an ally to an ancestor of a player charater who just happens to look exactly like his great great great grandfather.
- The members of the party each befriend a NPC in different areas of a city, furthermore, 2 PCs have a shared enemy they have been hunting down all their adult lives. Said NPCs and enemy just happen to be the keepers of the PC’s Prison-World who need the PC’s help to allow the keeper’s escape.
- Shortly after having escaped from the above prison-world, one of the PC’s joins a Noble house in a new city and it just happens that one of the keepers shows up to vouch for her.
Doing this can forge stronger links between PCs and your game world that accelerate the progression of the story much faster than what it usually takes with numerous NPCs and convoluted plots.
Some Examples:
Have the Tavern Keeper’s daughter in the 1st adventure of the campaign turn out to be the Dutchess-in-Exile that must be found to topple Baron Von Schlep’s claim to the Sapphire Throne.
You need a level 12 Troll Barbarian to challenge your 15th level party? No Problem! Make it the same then-CR 5 Troll that fled their fire arrows 2 years ago.
Have the same Demons or Devils show up whenever the Baddie of the Week needs fiendish guardians.
Have all Green dragons your PCs meet be related, from the early Dragon Zombie to the Mighty Half-Fiendish Great Wyrm.
Here’s a little secret, all players are a bit selfish and egocentric. They won’t be particularly surprised or displeased if the Universe turns out to actually revolve around them. And if Mr. Logical challenges you…. pull your secret weapon: Invoke the Prophecy!
Or, as I like to call it, go for the Super Extra Crispy Jack L. Chalker version of the trope:
Have all named NPC’s of your campaign gather up at the same place, at the same time, each of them mentioning how much of a coincidence this is. Then have the Tavernkeeper’s daughter-turned-Duchess reveal that she is in fact a Chaotic Evil Avatar of the Goddess of Chance. She gloats that she is about to complete the last Ceremony to bring about the Dark Prophecy, summoning a horde of strangely familiar Demons…
Of course, during the climatic battle, when things are at their grimmest, one of the PC’s, who is actually the bastard son of the true Goddess of Chance and some Legendary Paladin (who just happens to be the future self of the party’s paladin), reveals his secret Birthmark. Said Birthmark just happens to be the Eldrtich key-symbol that breaks the curse that held the Avatar of Chance under the influence of the campaign’s Elder Evils.
All is resolved and the Avatar ends up replacing the dying God of Chance and falling in love with the party’s Paladin, starting once again the cycle that the Dark Prophecy was actually trying to break… (Arghhh my head hurts…)
What about the Contrived Coincidences you pulled in your game? Tell me about them!
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
You’ve been camped in the tall grass for half the game, waiting patiently.
Suddenly in the distance you see a lone figure kneeling behind a crate exchanging fire with an unknown target. You raise your rifle scope to your eye and zero in on your target. He’s stopped firing and appears to be holding his location. You wait a few more seconds to ensure the stability of your target, take a deep breath in, line up your sight on his head…. slowly you squeeze the trigger… gently… carefully….
…Only to get blown to hell by a enemy bombing run.
That’s Call of Duty for you.
I ran out Saturday (mostly out of boredom) and picked a copy up. I’ve been playing Ghost Recon 2: Advanced Warfighter over the last week, a hand-me-down from a schoolmate, and its gotten my blood pumping for some hard-hitting FPS action. I saw the videos from E3 and the reviews for CoD 4 and thought, “hell, I loved the other ones, why not?” [Read the rest of this article]
I dig my new digs! Thanks everyone!
The move is done and the furniture is in place. A few things will stay wonky for some time but all critical things are in place. The Fortress of Crunch is open for business!
(Try fluffing me out of this dear Mr. Baur! Mwa Ha ha ha!!!)
I’d like to thanks the following people who either helped me a lot working the kinks during the move or to those who cheered me on or inspired my move:
- PM who helped me fix the emailing of comments issue by digging in WordPress’s Trac.
- ve4Grm who gave me the name of a cool hosting service and dug in the Blog’s templates to help me fix the dead links on the Blog’s header.
- Mike (who plays Brook Dindler the Vampire in Franky’s McWoD game) for showing up so early and chiming in the comments while I was wailing in frustration
- Omnius of Aleph Gaming, I should have linked to you earlier man, your blog is one well written piece of RPG goodness!
- Dave: The Game of Critical Hits (check their new series on starting a new RPG campaign) for the kind words of Welcome.
- Seth, one hell of a Troper. He may not love the new Web2.0 look of the blog but he gave me points for Coolness!
- The one and only Yax of Dungeonmastering for the shout-out and continued support
- Shamus Young from Twenty-Sided from whom I shamelessly stole the polyhedral dice Captcha idea.
- Monte Cook and Wolfgang Baur. No we’re not buddies but they have been gracious enough to play along my antics or allow me to tinker with the toys they made.
And you commenters and readers, you guys and gals have given me a sense of community I never expected in such a short time. I hope that we’ll continue to have fun for quite a while.
