Where does he get those wonderful toys?
Last weekend at my regular D&D game, one of my players asked me “where I get this stuff” while unrolling a copy of the Magma Keep battlemap. For the past few years- actually, ever since the first D&D Miniatures set came out- I’ve been collecting minis and maps to use with D&D. For some reason, the square maps appeal to me quite a bit, and Wizards has done a great job of supplementing maps and tiles beyond a simple battle map. I’ve started collecting other pieces that can be used for D&D and incorporating them into my game. They help give me ideas about interesting encounters, and add an extra dimension to the game for me as a DM. (I’m not sure if my players agree and just think I’ve spent too much money…)
Inspired by the Chatty DM’s recent post about his setup, here’s a list of everything I use for D&D, and where I get it from. [Read the rest of this article]
TV's Terminator Review
I was all set to hate this show. I didn’t think it was going to work in any way, shape, or form.
I was surprised. And, most importantly, I was entertained. There was some surprisingly good writing in the show (as well as some really stupid plot holes).
YouTube of the Week: SONIC BOOM! Edition
The worst of the USA Cartoon of Street Fighter. I remember watching this when younger, but I’m pretty sure I never thought it was good.
Mining Tropes for RPG Goodness: Fighting Depression with some Deep Pression!
This is the blog’s 200th post! I’ve written a lot of stuff in the last few months, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. Thank you one and all for giving me the continued gratification of reading these many lines!
Now instead of making this a stats-laden article, I thought I’d write another post from my most popular series so far.
With winter setting itself for the long run in the frigid wastes of Eastern Canada and my reaching the mid-point of the glorious 30′s, I see the specter of my seasonal depression approaching.
While Self-esteem and assurance have reigned supreme these last few months, now self-doubt and brooding moods are reappearing on the horizon.
Historically I used to handle such periods of time by visiting my seldom-used shell more often… and let time do it’s thing.
But now, I have a blog, I can spew all my angst and self-criticism to an established readership…. no?
Wait, don’t leave…. 
Nah! Don’t worry, that would be self-defeating as no-one wants to hear about the blues of a guy who, when it’s all said and done, has got it going for him in more ways than one.
Clinical aside: While I make light of this, depression is a very serious condition that hits gamers as much as anyone else. I went through a pretty serious one recently and needed a lot of help to get over it. If you are living with a perpetual cloud over your head, fight it and get help, be it clinical, spiritual or friendly. The Seasonal blues is, I believe, just a periodic slowing down that can usually be chased away with some pondering on our situation and fighting it off soon after it’s onset.
So why not try to tackle this darker period differently, and more constructively, with a trope-inspired post on the very subject of the blues, seasonal and otherwise.
First let’s start with a character-focused trope:
This character exists solely to bring everybody down, but not in the Deadpan Snarker sense; they are defined entirely by their complete inability to be happy for more than a few seconds at a time, an emotional state that usually arises from their only-occasionally-justified suspicion that they are the Butt Monkey of the entire universe. They are the walking Anthropomorphic Personification of clinical depression.
In RPGs, angst and dark, brooding personalities are the meat and potatoes of Method Actor-driven players. Exploring the darker reaches of the Human (or Vampire, or Drow or …) psyche can be a nice exercise in internally-focused character development and can help move a game forward in new, interesting ways.
But, as people don’t usually enjoy seeing Harry or Anakin being all whinny about how unfair everything is, constant in-character depression usually does not interest the other players all that much.
At worse, it can lead to serious intra-party (and intra player) conflict when the brooding character’s player uses this (consciously or not) to stop others from having fun. So here are a few twists on this character concept to play or DM in new ways.
Go ahead and have the character be depressed and generally hard to motivate…
“Ahhh, what’s the point to kill that Dragon? Those peasants will all die of a horrible disease, or if they are lucky, as Orc fodder in the next war”
However, make him/her get really excited, even to the point of making it a monomaniacal obsession, about One Thing.
Maybe it’s Magical Instruments
“Oh, you mean that’s where the Lute of Flarnigan is?…. Well what are we waiting for? Let’s go SLAY THAT FOUL WYRM!’
The possibilities are many:
- Guns (Think a depressed Jayne)
- Gold, gems or treasure (Makes for a great Manic Depressive Halfling Rogue),
- Hate of a certain person (Severus Snape comes to mind)
- Power over others (a great mix for a Gothic Overlord)
- The misery of others (Marvin!!!)
Player motivations aside: I am aware that some players thrive on creating discomfort and more or less try to sabotage the party’s efforts to succeed in tasks. These players are usually Outliers (From Robin Laws DMG II essay, which I’ll address in my next Laws’ post). You must discuss with them on how to meet their need for self-defeat without making the other characters (more) homicidal (than they already are).
Manic depression is also an interesting challenge, if played in stride with the party’s interests. My own character in Franky’s McWod game oscillates widely between shy social ineptitude to rampant psychopathy whenever his unarmed or has a gun in his hands.
The idea is to switch between Apathy and Overconfident Impulsiveness (Gurps players should spot where I get my inspirations for this one) in such a way that will be entertaining to you and all the others.
I believe you can pull this off by having a well defined trigger that creates a switch from one state to the other.
For example:
- Night and Day (including, possibly your distance to light sources)
- Seasons (the inspiration of this post)
- Exposure to drugs/alchool
- Combat
- Discussions with Strangers.
- A certain sound, or smell or taste (any sense works).
Making the trigger clear to the other players. This can allow them to try to influence your character by acting on the trigger themselves. This gives them some form of control on the effects of your character’s personality on the game and at the same time it gratifies you as a Method Actor because you get the others to act on your inner-conflict and you can start exploring how the PC would react to more or less evident manipulation from the others.
Ironic Aside: I would have never guessed that I would one day write tips for method actors/storytelling players…
Of course, if the other players are being jerks about this and shamelessly exploit this trait so that you stop having fun then you can reveal that other trigger (i.e. too many switches) that unlocks that very dark, very unstable mood.
If you can pull this off by having the DM give you a special power linked to that mood, usable only when you both agree that the time is right, you can pull a Hulk on your whole party and have a most memorable session!
This post is already longer than I wanted it to be, but there is one last aspect of this trope I want to tackle…
When Depression hits your game world at large.
As a DM you can also use depression as a theme or as a plot device in your games.
- An enchantment that makes all citizens filled with apathy and unable to break free from the domination of a Spirit of Death.
- A God of Hope and Joy is slain (or corrupted) in the your world(s) and all followers are stricken with a suicidal depression that makes the economy of a large kingdom crash in less than a fortnight.
- Pushing apathy to it’s limit, you can go Guy Gavriel Kay on your players and have the Campaign’s BBEG completely destroy a kingdom and disperse it’s citizens. Then have him cast an enchantment that makes all sentient beings in the whole world unable to acknowledge the existence of that cursed, vanquished place or it’s citizen.
- Make the PCs citizen of that kingdom and breaking the curse the campaign’s goal (if you like that Plot, read Tigana, it’s a slowbut awesome, very story-telling friendly fantasy Novel).
There you have it, making depression and associated mental disorders actually usable in an entertaining way in your favorite RPG.
Now please excuse me, I have some Brooding to catch up with…..
Thanks for being there! Woot 200th post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Inq. of the Week: Are you Ready to Rock?
Good triumphant! That’s what last week’s poll about your favorite alignment determined, with a surprising 74 people thus far weighing in. Neutral Good was the top flavor of good, since most of you hero types believe that Good should not care about Law or Chaos. Second up was the champion of individuality and freedom, Chaotic Good. Then in a tie for third, Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Evil. Just watch out if us CN folks and LE folks work together… mwahahahaha!
This week, the obsession with Rock Band continues. Partly inspired by this comment from Denise asking about a keyboard/synth for it, but also the news that there will be a $99 attachment that adds an “interactive light and smoke show”, we realized that there’s so much more that could be added to Rock Band. A new instrument might require some heavy duty add-ons, but would still be awesome. The ability to play our own songs would let us unleash our own creativity, and would be a step to silence all the Rock Band-haters. An online Battle of the Bands mode would let us fight against other creatively-named bands in an epic online contest.
And perhaps easiest of all, we need to let our voices heard about what new songs and bands needs to be added via download. Even if you end up choosing another poll option, weigh in and tell us who you’re DYING to see added to the game. Even if you’ve never played the game, you can tell us what songs are crucial to achieving Full Rock Potential.
Finally, if you think it’s perfect, everything could always use More Cowbell!
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DM Chronicles, Session 9: Troubled re-beginnings
This is a continuing series on my current D&D campaign with my buddies.
I had no illusions that this week’s game was going to be stellar.
My 1st goal of the evening was to get with my pals for the 1st the of the new year and celebrate my 35th Birthday (which was yesterday) and my 25 years of DMing. I had ordered a catered Sandwich plate and 2 bottles of French Sparkling wine. Beer was also brought.
My buddies also gave me 2 boxes of the latest D&D Mini collection and I got me a cool Ogre, a second large Fire Elemental and Bruenor Battlehammer!
The goal was attained. The whole booze and food things was fun. Needless to say that I got pretty drunk, pretty fast, my hangover the next morning can attest for it .
I actually was too drunk to DM properly… so I’m telling you in advance that the details of last Friday’s game are a bit murky, and, much like the 1st game of this campaign, we ended spending most of the night fighting an encounter that was just too much for the players.
We were missing a player who called in at the last minute (Stef, Nogard’s player), making us short one front-line fighter.
I usually make missing players fade in the background, it’s easier for us to deal with and the break in story continuity does not bother us all that much usually.
I also decided against adjusting the evening’s planned encounters, which were a bit over the group’s power level.
In theory , they were good but not too hard challenges. Well, theory decided to take a beer and get s#17faced with me.
After the meal, I recapped the end of the last session for Math who had missed the last game. I explained that the group had visited the Styx’ Oarsman, the very intriguing, newly-opened inn in Ptolus’ Necropolis.
I described this Fiend and Celestial-packed tavern. There, the character had met with a strange Gith (Which aren’t in the OGL by the way) called Rule-of-Three that always speaks in trinary stances: “Well met, Greetings, Good day to you renowned Heroes of Ptolus”
When they left the inn, a group of Yugoloth Mercenaries (Neutral Evil Fiends, my campaign’s main bad guys) were waiting to collect the PCs on some sort of contract.
Welcome to Planescape… Yugoloth Mercenaries are a dime a dozen!
The fight started! All Yugoloths (3 Mezzoloths at CR6 each and a Nycaloth at CR10) initiated hostilities by summoning a pal each.
I have a hard time with summonings. I had initially house-ruled that all summonings would now work 100% to bring a single weaker Yugoloth (or multiple weaker ones if done by a powerful fiend) but that the summoned creatures would work exactly like the Summon Monster spell, i.e.:
- Take 1 full round to appear
- Hang around for 1 round per caster level of the summoner
- Be subject to Dispel Magic
- Summoned creatures are unable to cross a protection from evil effect.
Well it didn’t quite make the situation easier… because:
- I made all Mezzoloth summon another Mezzoloth instead of the much weaker Skerelot (CR3)
- The duration of the Summoning was well into the 10 rounds or more… making it no different from 1 hour for a fight that lasted less than a minute.
- There is no cleric in the party, so no Protection effect.
The Nycaloth ended summoning only one Mezzoloth. I now had 7 seven Mezzos creatures and a BBEG. All with Damage Resistance and Spell Resistance… Making this an encounter suited for a 13th level party (mine is 9th).
What is it with me and Outsiders? It’s like I want to kill my players on purpose!
The players attacked while the fiends were busy summoning, and a few hits, including a Cixi-brand critical hit that failed to drop a Mezzoloth, was scored.
The doubled-up party of fiends attacked, including casting one Cloudkill on the whole group. The Nycaloth went invisible and was untraced by Lillie.
The players, faced with repeating constitution damage handled it quite brilliantly considering. Aravar the Arcane Archer casted Swift Fly (a free 1 round flying spell) and grabbed Cixi to get on the Inn’s roof.
When Math asked me if he could carry another character I had a gut feeling he couldn’t but I waived the verification and called it successful per the Rule of Cool. (I just checked, turns out he could…moving at a speed of 20′)
Cruger charged into the fray to leave the cloud, putting him away from his pals. He got hacked to bits and was saved in extremis by some Crusader powers and Lillie’s wands of Healing.
I did another round with the Mezzoloth only to realize that I would slaughter the whole group. So I decided to trash my Summon house-rule and play it as is with the chance of failure, this made 2 Mezzoloth vanish.
Then the Nycaloth appeared, doing a flyby attack on the Aravar on the Inn’s roof and flying away, hit and Run style. Dropping HP by a lot.
Things were getting grimmer and grimmer. All players were either dropped to negatives or very close to… Even invisible Lillee had a taste with the See Invisible at will Yugoloths.
The absence of a second tank or at least a front-line backup cleric in that ranged-attacks heavy group hurts performance a lot.
At one point, Eric called in his Key of Helping the Weak to do a Jump attack and kill one of the baddies threatening his pals. He rolled and missed. I told him that he could trade in the XPs he would get in exchange for a reroll…. he rolled and missed again… then I chose to disregard the roll (“I didn’t see it roll again dude”)… and he managed to roll a miss again…
I tried Eric, I really did…
Or did I… That’s what drunkeness got me. Had I been more in control of my faculties, I’d have traded the XP for an automatic success as a “once in a blue moon” power.
At that point of the evening, a few player comments go through the alcoholic haze. Stuff like ‘Why bother with Armour when we get hit all the time, let’s go back inside the inn, etc’. Bad omens, so I needed to save that game… even if it was a bit late.
I looked at my critters stats. The Mooks were down to their last Hit Points, but the Big Bad was barely through half of its pool. That’s when all players focussed on the big bad in a one-round Hail Mary assault and they brought the BBEG to about 75% of it’s hit point. That’s when I ‘decided’ to misread its 196 hp as 143 and sent it falling to the ground… and the remaining summoned Mezzoloths deemed that they had fulfilled their obligations and left.
At that time, it was well after 9h30 pm and we spent the rest of the evening playing an awkward scene where the elven lord of the city invited the PCs over for a meal to explain his troubles with increasing Drow raids. The flimsiness of the plot came to light a bit (which is to be expected with the fight we just had) and I’ll need to re-work this to make a stronger case.
But at that point no one was much into it (or I actually don’t recall the details all that well). So we adjourned for the night and played some Guitar Hero III that Yan brought for the occasion. So the evening ended on a higher note (pun intended… I suck at both games when I’m that drunk).
I left the game table with mixed feelings, but my wife told me we laughed most of the evening and we seemed to be having fun.
Lessons Learned.
- I really have to check my alcohol intake when I DM. Actually I think I would be due for a ‘dry’ run… where I keep my wits for a more complex and involved game.
- If a player announces he won’t be there at the last minute, do review the encounters (at least the 1st one) in light of the missing function.
- I’m doing away with outsider summoning once and for all.
What Players liked:
- Surviving the fight (heck I even forgot to distribute the loot)
- The catered meal and the booze…
- The swift fly on the roof move was cool!
What players dislike:
- An overwhelming challenge (again)
- Yugoloths… I’m sure I’ve established the Hate factor to an all time high.
What’s next:
- Weave a story behind the Yugoloth attack that will make up for the frustrating encounter with a satisfying conclusion.
- Tackle the Drow part of the adventure.
Assassin's Creed: Video Let-Down
You hear about them, you see commercials and advertisements about them for months, their release dates are marked on calendars across the globe, and the keywords are getting thousands of hits daily on search engines everywhere….
Maybe you’re first in line on release day, maybe you wait it out and hear good things so you head to the store buy the game, open the fresh plastic case, remove the shiny new disc, slide it into the system with the same feeling you get when you slide into… OK, I wont go there, but you get the point. The game starts and you’re all shock and awe at the beautiful opening cinematic. You start a new game, get yourself settled into your seat, and press the proper series of buttons and then…
Then….
……then…..?!
You sit through 20 minutes of tutorial play..? Wait, what? You follow boring or open ended storyline for 20 more minutes…? What… wait a minute, wtf?! [Read the rest of this article]
My tools of the trade, Part 2
Back in October I posted about the tools and props I used in my D&D games.
Well since my game is ready and good to go, I took a few more pictures of how I organize my things to have the smoothest of Crunchy game sessions.
My DMing Corner:
I have a recently renovated room in my basement that I made into my Gaming room. That is until my children are old enough to ask to move their bedrooms downstairs.
It features an older kitchen table and 5 chairs (the usual number of players).
I organized the room so that my place at the head of the table (so patriarchal!) allows me to get to what I need without getting up.
On the pic, you see place at the table, my white board (for rumours and such).
More Importantly, you see my D&D bookcase where I can get to any book witout getting up or having them hog the table space.
Actually, being the control freak that I am, I also organized the bookcase.
On the top shelf are the core books and the monster books. It’s stuff I use most and more likely to pull off.
On the middle shelf are sourcebooks I use regularly and my battlemaps.
On the bottom shelf is reference books (Adv. D&D to 3.0 books, Settings, often used magazines, etc) I use rarely. That’s where I keep my 1st Ed Dungeon Master Guide.
On the table itself, I try to keep the bare minimum because I get lost reall easily during the evening and I hate when I break pacing while I look for what I lost.
Here’s what I keep:
- My Adventure
- The D&D Rules Compendium
- A Notebook,
- My Trusted Combat Pad (best accessory ever!)
- My Encounter boxes (all the figs and loot per encounter), I might keep those on my Computer’s desk at my left also (not shown)
- Dice!
Minis and Tiles
I use D&D minis and Tiles a lot and I know those can be a Nightmare to organize. I use Plano customizable Tack and Bait box that I found in the sports and outdoors section at Walmart.
For the Minis, I store all the medium and small creatures in one box and I sorted Thus:
- Undead
- Animals and Beasts
- Humanoids
- Monstrous Humanoids
- Outsiders and weird stuff.
It makes choosing minis a lot faster and if the players decide to pull a fast one on me, well I can usually respond rapidly. 
For the larger and Huge Critters, I keep them on a shelf in my gaming cabinet, that also houses my gigantic Magic the Gathering Collection.
And you’ve seen the bigger ones on my other bookshelf. I wonder if I’ll ever use those…
Finally, for the D&D tiles I use the same boxes as the minis, only I removed the tops to let the bigger pieces stick out.
I’ll need to buy a second one soon because I still have 3 sets unopened (there are 3 sets in what you see, minus six 8.5”X 11” tiles that I keep in the bookcase.
Hmmm, it seems I have to pad the text to make those pictures appear properly on the blog….
How bout them Patriots and that Clinton Senator huh?
No Seriously, if you have other organization tricks to share feel free to chime in!
Have a nice Weekend all.
"A Band of Orcs" Wants to Encounter You
Everybody’s favorite Orcish-themed death/thrash metal band, A Band of Orcs, is holding a contest to see who can write the most brutal encounter involving a band of orcs for D&D. Check it out because the deadline is soon- January 21st.
Players in my current D&D game will find that this nicely coincides with an encounter that has just occurred in my game, so I’m very tempted to write some of that up and enter it in the contest (though 3 to 6 pages is a lot more work than what I did for RPG Superstar.) While I probably wouldn’t be able to attend the convention that’s part of the grand prize, I sure would love to get their CD and a pile or Orcish swag.
The 4e OGL: Joining forces with my Nemesis
A lot of digital ink has flowed on the subject of the changes to the way the 4e OGL will be handled.
I’ve chimed in on Critical Hits and Omnius’ blog about it. The debate rages on and will for some time and I don’t want to spend any more on this than needed (It’s funny how I keep saying “I don’t want to talk about it” and keep on doing it… I must be insane or something).
One thing is for sure, having a 5000 $ entry fee makes small press’ early access to the “1st wave to market” difficult.
WotC says it’s for quality purposes, I won’t argue the relative merits of that except to say that some of the bigger 3rd party that will cough up the 5k now were probably small press then… and they managed to get qualty stuff out. That irks me.
I’ve worked in the Generic Pharmaceutical industry (as a Product launch manager) and I know firsthand the importance of being the 1st to the market (or at least in the 1st wave) to get a significant market share (market share that will be very small to start with).
Anyway, last night I fired up my Gtalk and rang my Nemesis, Freelance Designer Wolfgang Baur. After the typical Crunch Overlord/Fluff Nemesis exchange of pleasantries and half-concealed threats (I might be taking some narrative liberties here), I asked him his thoughts on the 4e OGL subject.
He confirmed that he was in the same boat as all other small press (Freelance/Indy RPG publication is not a moneymaking career move). I asked him if he was trying to get patrons of his Open Design imprint to chip-in to buy a Licence for Open Design and Kobold Quaterly (Wolfgang’s 2 independent projects).
Turns out that he is and he made an interesting proposition here.
Here’s the gist of it:
- A group of patron pay to support Open Design’s bid for a access to the SRD and the right to publish 4e stuff with the other big dogs.
- The top 20 contributors get to be Freelancers for Open Design and get access to the SRD to create material under a formal business agreement with Wolfgang.
I’ve decided to pitch in my support (There goes my monthly RPG budget) and help a talented professional with crazy great ideas get his break. It won’t make me a freelancer, but I believe I’m better off as a customer and part time blogger…
Aside: And what fun will it be to reign supreme as the Crunch Overlord of 4e if I don’t have my Nemesis to try to foil my fiendish rules loophole and Fluffless adventures?
If you want to stick it to the Man (In that particular case, the Man being a Magician who lives close to the Ocean), I invite you to consider adding your support to those who already chipped in more than 2000$. Any amount counts!
