My RPG New Year’s Top 7 Wish List
My first experience with D&D occurred over my Christmas break when I was in 5th grade. This time of year always brings to mind RPGs and all the fun times I’ve had playing games with friends and family. With the spirit of the new year fresh in my mind, I wanted to look forward. Rather than focusing on resolutions that I will abandon at 12:01am on January 1st, I thought I would send out through the Interwebz my wishes for 2011.
7. I hope more game stores embrace RPGs.
Most game stores support card games and wargaming/skirmish games with dedicated game nights to draw people to the stores. However, many fewer stores make a concerted effort to draw RPG players by offering dedicated nights for D&D and other RPGs. Even though WotC’s D&D Encounters program has gone a long way to get stores to understand that players are interested in RPGs—and are willing to spend money to support the stores and the game on RPG products—many stores still do not understand or want to commit the time to such an undertaking. While there might be some truth to the assertion that RPG pricing models makes it less profitable to sell those products than decks or minis, there is still money to be made. RPGs are as much a social game as those other games, and unless game stores act as a focal point for meeting new players and trying new games, it will be hard for the hobby and the industry to grow.
6. I wish a movie that captured the spirit of D&D would be a big success.
Despite being a geek since I could walk, I was never much of a comic-book fan. However, the recent success of so many comic-based movies has obviously changed the motion picture landscape. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t an “Archie in 3D” movie in the works, with the obligatory “Jughead vs. Jason” sequel to follow. With comic and graphic novels getting so much mainstream love, I wish someone, somewhere could tap into the same vein that makes RPGs so great and turn that into a movie. Obviously the Lord of the Rings trilogy was great filmmaking, and did capture some of the spirit that informs fantasy RPGs. The first part of the two-part The Hobbit motion picture won’t be released for at least another couple of years. Somewhere in the next year I would love to see a D&D-driven movie that wasn’t more of an embarrassment than a draw. How about a Dark Sun movie that captured the feel of that world and game? A Ravenloft movie that wasn’t just another vampire flick? Are there any recent or upcoming movies I am forgetting that would fit the bill?
5. I want the RPG division of WotC to have a great year, both creatively and financially.
Wizards of the Coast is the “big fish in the small pond” of the RPG world, and because of its position it gets a lot of unfair and surprisingly vitriolic criticism—in addition to some that is deserved. Regardless of opinions about the organization and its products, it is hard to deny that as in the leader in the industry, it is in the position to be the guiding force of the industry. Many smaller companies and their employees make their livings in offering their products and services to those customers whom WotC has courted and brought into the RPG seas. Let’s face it: the better WotC does, the better the RPG industry as a whole does. And this doesn’t just confine itself to financial benefits. The whole d20 industry, which has earned a great many people and companies their successes, came directly from the minds and hearts of WotC designers.
4. I wish lots of small-shop RPG companies would have incredible successes.
As with my above point, success in the industry can move benefits upward as well as downward. Anyone following the blogs and thoughts of the movers and shakers at WotC know that they are rabid consumers of all sorts of games, and the good innovations at other companies will find their way into WotC’s products in some form or another. Innovations are often derided because they mean change. However, innovations mean variations and choices. Variations lead to evolution, and if there is any industry that could use some evolution, it is the RPG industry. What kinds of innovations would y’all like to see in the new year?
3. I hope we get a highly functional, yet easy to use, virtual tabletop application.
I still believe that, in the long run, the RPG industry is dying a slow death. Obviously that death will not be immediate, and there may be upward blips. However, when looked at in terms of a financial industry, I don’t see the RPG industry headed anywhere but down—especially when compared to other competing entertainment media. That said, I think the availability of a high-quality, easy-to-use online virtual tabletops may at least slow, if not reverse, that trend. The one main complaint aimed at MMO RPGs is that the intelligence that runs the game is incapable to making decisions like a live person could. A virtual tabletop that has all the bells and whistles and functionality that players are used to, with the added benefit of a live DM running the game, could answer the criticisms of the MMO RPG players, not to mention solve the problem of finding like-minded players for a game. And if it ever took off, there would be the potential for supplementary products to support and enhance online play.
2. Like any RPG freelancer, I always hope for new challenges in the new year.
With a family, a decent career that I enjoy, and too many other interests, I have no illusions about ever becoming a full-time employee or freelancer in the RPG industry. However, there is still that part of me who cannot always look forward to working with creative and brilliant people on new projects. For anyone with that creative impulse—be it designing whole worlds and game systems or throwing together a game for friends—I don’t have to explain how intense and mind-blowing the feeling is when you are in the throes of the creative process. Sports players know that feeling when you are “in the zone,” when you are almost unaware of the effort yet performing at your best. The zone of the creative process is like that, but even more freeing and intoxicating. I wish everyone with the desire to create something—anything, really—can at least a couple times in their life reach that point.
1. I hope everyone who wants to play an RPG can find a game that suits them, and a group that suits them.
If someone went to the gym with a tennis racquet and got into a double tennis game, then spent the entire time complaining that he hated tennis because it was not a game where you took a large curved stick and knocked a puck into a net while on ice, you would think that maybe he was crazy for not playing hockey. However, much of the complaining and criticism I hear surrounding the RPG industry is a terribly similar argument. There are countless different games out there, and even many different ways to play each individual game. If you are having trouble finding the game you like, leave comments on this column, and maybe someone can point you to a good game. If you are having trouble finding a group or GM that fits your gaming style, hopefully a nearby game store or an online gaming site can help.
Best wishes to all in the coming New Year!
Editor-in-Chief’s 2011 Blogolutions
I rarely like to write posts about the blogging here itself at Critical Hits (for one, my Twitter feed proves a much more effective channel). I always like to write posts that I myself would find interesting (if, of course, I hadn’t written it in the first place) and I find posts about blogging or lack thereof pretty uninteresting and self-indulgent. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from celebrating every year with a bit of self-indulgence. This will be another bit that I hope you will forgive, and hope you will find a bit interesting.
As I mentioned in our 5th anniversary post, it’s been a pretty big year for us. Our second big award nomination, launch of our first “spinoff” blog Roll, release of our first regular podcast The DM Guys, sponsoring convention events, and our first custom web app Junkulator have all been pretty big milestones. However, the thing that has had the biggest effect on me and the day to day was taking on more writers and setting up a regular schedule. That had been my vision for the site for several years: an online gamer magazine, featuring the latest news, as well as multiple columns from unique voices. This was the year that it finally happened. You could say that I accomplished my big resolution from 2009.
Now, however, that means I have a group of great editors, writers and readers who are looking to me for what’s next. These are just some of the ideas that have passed by me in the past year that I might try and implement in the next year. All of this, of course, is subject to change, addition, deletion, and spindling. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Open Spaces, Plazas, and Holidays
It’s the end of the year and what most of us would call the “Holiday Season”, while I was considering doing a recap post about the Architect DM series so far I have instead decided to bring up a relevant topic that is quite fitting for this time of year. I’m sure there are several published pieces and posts online about incorporating holidays into your RPG game, but I’d like to discuss them with a specific focus on the location designs you use in your game. I’d also like to focus on one specific holiday trope that you’ve probably considered for your own game – if there’s a holiday/special event, the party is most likely there to experience it.
The best example that comes to my mind is in the 4th Edition D&D material in the Underdark book, the Drow capital city of Erelhei-cinlu is detailed and one of the wards inside of it has a single day of the year where undead are let loos through the whole ward while locals board themselves inside or run for their lives. This is a ridiculous, hilarious, and overall fantastic event written out in the book but in the end I had one big problem with using it. My problem was that the odds of the party being in the city for that event are incredibly low. Sure, if I use the trope then the party just has the bad luck of being there on that one day, but in general I give my party more credit than that and try to avoid using tropes like that more than once per campaign.
I Use the Term ‘Holiday’ Loosely
The best way I can think of to use the above mentioned trope but avoid it feeling too coincidental is to design “holidays” that are more regular. Instead of going with our modern day concept of a once-per-year holiday, why not design your world and cultures with monthly holidays? If we broaden the extent of the term holiday, you can begin to incorporate weekly or even daily traditions that happen and add a unique feel to the cultures that celebrate it. If you begin to use monthly or weekly events, then it is not only more likely the party will get to experience them but also more believable when it does happen. For the primary town in my D&D campaign I set up that the market square in the middle of town is only really in operation for 1 or 2 hours each day, and for the rest of the day the caravans and wagons were boarded up or set out to travel to other towns.
Open Space is a Location Too
With my personal example above, the Market Square of a town is more than just a location but also a constant reminder that the merchants are open for a select few hours a day. If we apply this concept to the Drow “Running of the Undead” from Erelhei-Cinlu, perhaps you can use the design of the city to foreshadow the event without having to resort to the party having the worst luck in the world. When I ran my party through the Drow city, I hinted at the event but the party avoided that ward anyway so I never got to use the following ideas.
Consider how much impact the given event would have, if a swarm of vicious undead are loosed on a city the elements of that city are going to adjust in a fight for survival even if it only happens once a year. Including details such as extra fortification on buildings (especially doors and windows) similar to storm doors and windows seen in hurricane regions can allude to the event without being too overt. Maybe certain streets or alleys have heavy gates that are typically left open but will clearly point to some unspoken need for protection. Hell, you could go as far as having the ground floor of every building being noticeably clawed and chewed on to the point where they’re clearly temporarily occupied or even left vacant all year round. In this way, details of the open spaces in a city can tell a party just as much about a location as the architecture of the buildings themselves.
Feel Free to Steal From Reality
Another great way to use a holiday without actually using the holiday is to borrow from what happens in real life almost year round – decoration and preparation. Think about it, if a party of adventurers showed up in your neighborhood in mid-December, would they be able to tell something special was happening at the end of the month? All of the decoration we put up for the various holidays we celebrate are a great way to covertly imply the holidays or important events of your game world while still maintaining the feel that your party isn’t the center of the universe (even though they really are, shhh! We don’t have to let them know).
A town in the midst of their yearly festival preparations can be a much more interesting setting for your game, and if you’re looking for elements for your players to contribute the specifics of the culture’s rituals and preparations are a great way for them to get involved by suggesting random or even humorous ideas. Though I do have to caution the DMs out there, if you go with this you may find yourself with a group of bird worshiping invaders that use the phrase “Raven Poop” as their common greeting (I swear, it translates into ‘Hello’ in their language). Yes, I say that from experience. Yes, they still use “Raven Poop” as their greeting. No, I will not concede to changing it, my players came up with it and are stuck with it.
Using this idea for annual holidays is easy because we are so accustomed to it, but it can just as easily work for more frequent events. The best part of this strategy is that it naturally works to build tension in your game. Going back to the Market Square concept, imagine that your party of adventurers needs to buy something and they show up at the square only to find all of the merchants are packing up and closing down for the day. They might be able to bribe one of them to re-open, or they might be told to wait until the next day. Either way you’re setting up the party for some classic interaction, and it could even be the kicking off point for an entire plot line in your game if you want it to. The party gets involved in an adventure later that day and the Rogue quickly realizes things would have been easier if they’d gotten to the merchant – “I wish I had some freaking rope!”
Happy Holidays to Everyone!
Was this a shameless way of taking a normal post and giving it a Holiday theme just because it’s December 29th? No, actually, it’s a concept I’ve been thinking about since back in the summer/fall when I ran the above mentioned Drow undercity adventure. Thank you for reading Critical Hits and my Architect DM Series. I hope you have been enjoying both and I’m confident that this series will continue well into the new year!
Click here for the rest of the Architect DM Series.
Vanir’s New Year’s Gaming Resolutions (2011 Edition)
Since the new year is almost upon us, I decided perhaps I should give a look to how I would like the entertainment portion of my life to function over the next year. This past year, aside from a few bright spots, has been kind of a giant bag of crap for me (especially for my gaming life), and I want 2011 to be a lot more fun. Like, 89K amusement units at the very least.
So, without further ado, here are my Gaming Resolutions for 2011.
- Play Alliance
For my entire WoW career, I’ve only played Horde (with a brief 20 minute moment of weakness as a Night Elf when our server was full). It was sort of fun to get caught up in the mock-jingoistic impulse to have a fictional enemy, and all my friends were playing Horde. So, I just sort of I wasn’t even crazy about putting together an Alliance-based deck in WoW TCG. I’ve never seen Ironforge or Stormwind (even to raid it). Considering that 99% of the joy I get out of playing WoW comes from the story and the lore, this seems dumb. There’s lots of new Worgen content to do, and I’ve always wanted to see what Gnomeregan looked like.Besides that, I really don’t like Garrosh Hellscream, and this is my way of rebelling against the new Warchief. - Play More Board Games
Since our regular D&D group has been broken up for awhile, game nights tend to be few and far between. It’s hard to get anybody to play a one-shot D&D adventure, and for some reason I’m finding it difficult to get people here excited about Gamma World. Board games have been filling the void, and I’ve been exposed to a lot of neat stuff I hadn’t seen before. SmallWorld and Ticket to Ride have been some big favorites, and I enjoyed Ascension the one time we played at lunch. I’m going to try and keep an ear out this year for new and cool stuff to try out. - Drafting
I love the WoW TCG so much. But I think we’ve drafted maybe once. When I tweeted this year about buying a box of boosters and hearing one of my followers lament about all the wasted drafting potential, it did strike me that I could have been getting some extra value out of this stuff. This could also let me get more into Magic: The Gathering, since I’m not sure I want to lay out the kind of money it takes to build a constructed deck right away. There’s always so many cards I almost consider a waste because they aren’t so good in a constructed format, and I keep reading about strategies for drafting and it makes my brain drool. There’s not much WoW TCG available in our area outside my circle of friends, but there is organized Magic all over the place. Might be time to check it out.
- Tabletop Roleplaying – FUTURE STYLE!
I find myself lamenting frequently that my gaming group broke up and I miss them and playing D&D so much, and yet I live in an age where doing such things remotely is not only possible but getting easier by the day. With stuff like the D&D Virtual Table, I don’t have much of an excuse. It is time to begin pestering people to play over the intertrons. Prepare yourselves.
- The Next Generation
My son will be 3 this year, and he already knows how to plug one of those TV-game joysticks in and turn it on. He knows what a joystick does and that a button fires your blasters. He is ready to begin his training, and I could not be more stoked. But I have to figure out what’s appropriate for him, both for content and for what he’ll find fun and reasonably challenging at his developmental level. If you’ve guessed that my column is going to have a lot of this subject in it next year, you get a cookie (redeemable at next year’s Roleplaying Therapy for the Severely Disturbed at Gen Con).
- Gaming Responsibly
This might sound a little weird, but I’ve taken a lot of steps this year to try and take a little better care of myself. One thing I find myself doing a lot is putting off bedtime until 2 or 3am because I’m having fun playing something. Then, the next day, I am useless. This is dumb. I can find a way to schedule my life and make time to do the stuff I want to do, even if it’s not as much as I’d like. There’s stuff that’s worth it, and stuff that isn’t, and I don’t need to collect 75 dragon scrotums on my way to level 85 all that badly.
- Have As Much Fun As Possible, And Don’t Be Afraid To Say Something
Over the years, I have played too many bad games to completion and stayed in obviously dysfunctional D&D campaigns for months after I should have left. I intend to stop doing things I don’t like, and to be honest with people when I’m not liking the situation. Life’s too damned short.
There you have it. I hope all of you have a safe and happy new year, and may your initiative rolls for 2011 be high!
Photo credit
Depression & Dungeons & Dragons
If you’ve never been down in the dark, wretched pit of depression, there are simply no words to explain what it’s like. This isn’t a matter of, “I can’t believe we’re out of my favorite cereal,” or, “My car broke down on the interstate,” or even, “I just lost my job and I can’t support my kids.” It’s also isn’t, God help me, a matter of, “Hey, why don’t you just cheer up?” When it comes to depression, real, actual, honest, sky-is-falling-and-life-is-ending depression, it’s a matter of bits of your brain actually missing. It’s a physical, medical, miserable condition, where life around you stays exactly the same way, but you have lost your ability to perceive it correctly.
I’ve struggled with it for my entire conscious life, way back to when I was just a little stupid kid who would fly into rages or slip into near-catatonia. Somebody would say something to me that a week ago would have been hilarious, but now was a trigger for a tidal wave of murderous hate, or something would happen to me that a week ago would have been an inconvenience, but now made me stare longingly at a bed or a bottle or a blade.
Depression is always destructive, exhibiting itself externally, as you drive away friends with erratic flare-ups, or internally, as you punish yourself physically or emotionally, and all the while, there’s this little piece of yourself, a tiny impotent voice of reason crying out for you to stop, please stop, you need to stop. But that voice isn’t in control. Not when you’re down in the pit.
Roleplaying games have always played a weirdly symbiotic/parasitic role in my depression, and to paraphrase Homer Simpson, was often the cause of, and solution to, my time in the darkness. I could find comfort in gaming, both running and playing, as it could flood my system with endorphins, lifting me up into the light, at least for a few days, hours, or minutes. Unfortunately, if I had my depression goggles on, I might see a successful game as a total failure, and plunge down, down, down, even deeper than I had been.
Because I’m a self-obsessed twerp who was convinced the whole world revolved around me, I was a little bit surprised to note the same sort of struggles from other gamers, and was particularly moved by Philippe-Antoine Menard (AKA Chatty DM), as he wrote about his severe depression that started during GenCon 2008.
I started wondering if there was a correlation between intelligence and creativity and gaming and depression, if maybe there were a lot of us sad-eyed tragi-bombs, creating worlds, running characters, rolling dice, and weeping quietly when no one else was looking. I contacted Phil and asked if he’d be available for an e-mail interview, and he graciously agreed. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2010-12-26
- From the Archives:: Why You Should Be Excited for Starcraft 2 http://bit.ly/enKgAa #charchive #
- Now Rolling: Gamma-Tastic by @dixontrimline, a brief recap of A Taste of Gamma World at @labyrinthdc http://bit.ly/i55KAR #
- Donate to the Red Cross, be entered into a chance to win a free custom illustration by famed fantasy artist Ben Wootten http://bit.ly/dRfRg4 #
- RT @ThadeousC: Happy holidays from This is My Game @TheAngryDM & @dreadgazeebo Gamma World Novice Power cards! http://bit.ly/gwKG3N #
- RT @BoardgameNews: Boardgame News moving to BoardGameGeek in January 2011; details – http://bit.ly/eyrgZm #
- RT @gamefiend: Gamma World mini-CB/character sheet: http://bit.ly/g1OqEW pretty sweet! #
- Now Rolling: The Raiders of Shady Grove, A Taste of Gamma World recap http://bit.ly/eYPnSZ #
- RT @mudbunny74: Known issues list for todays #DDI web-CB update can be found here: http://bit.ly/9hL1E6 #
- Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale coming to XBLA, PSN, and PC next year http://aol.it/eBIjJt #
Carrot Design, Part 1: A Freelancer’s Challenge, From Needs to Rewards
I’m currently working on an article for Kobolds Quarterly that requires some deeper thinking about D&D 4e’s designs. As I pace around the house and outside on these crisp Canadian December days, I realize that I needed to do a more thorough analysis than I initially expected to beat an article into shape out of a bunch of unfocused concepts.
While I won’t reveal what the article will be, I think that sharing my thought process to get my brain into a very specific design/development/writing cycle would be of interest to many of you. Writing for a magazine is a rather perilous balancing act where the writer must limits the time and resources assigned to it while delivering a high level of quality and creating significant interest in readers.
So let’s dive in shall we?
The Needs of D&D players
In D&D 4e’s Dungeon Master Guide, player motivations are categorized thusly:
- Acting: Explore a PC’s background and develop it further through role play and social encounter
- Exploring: Seeks new experiences through interaction with the setting and it’s elements
- Instigating: Making things happen and testing the game, includes making apparently bad choices
- Power Gaming: Display power and become more powerful, gain cool new powers and items.
- Slaying: Kick butts and take names, just because it’s cool to be badass, at least among friends
- Storytelling: Be an active participant in events and tales that unfold beyond the level of characters and rules.
- Thinking: Make careful choices and solve problems through analysis and optimal strategies.
- Watching: Casually hang out with the gaming group for the social experience of it.
No player is assumed to be motivated by just one of those broad categories . If I look over my players’ motivations and my own, I can easily tag each with at least 3 motivators. For example, I’m very much about Acting, Instigating and Storytelling with a healthy touch of butt kicking. Such categories are handy references to understand what makes players tick around any RPG table.
As I mentioned in my last post, I believe that a large majority of D&D 4e’s mechanics were designed, regardless of what’s written on the proverbial box, to cater to a subset of these RPG needs/motivations, namely Power Gaming, Slaying, and Thinking. These motivations are addressed mainly through rewards (ex: XPs and levels, Powers and Magic Items, Tactical Combat, etc) that support and act as strong incentive for a play experience that’s focused on these three motivators.
That’s not to say that the other needs can’t be met, but as I mentioned previously, addressing them consistently requires DMs to bring forth particular skills in adventure design and other more social areas, skills that aren’t as clearly supported by the game.
Therein lies an opportunity.
So what’s a writer to do?
Now let’s assume that after reading my last post, I, as a gamer and freelance designer, want to stick around with the D&D franchise. I’m given a few choices. I can keep fuelling the edition wars online by criticizing the absence of sufficient motivators for my needs. Alternatively, I can branch off to one of its close siblings, Pathfinder being the most popular, and seek the motivators I miss from 4e
I could also embrace this opportunity and write a Blog/magazine piece about developing new tools and rewards that will meet those needs. Guess which path I’m currently on?
In that last post, I told players to understand their needs and possibly seek outside of their game if they were not being met consistently. I also mentioned that adequate hacking of a game to address such needs was hard. Doing the same while writing new mechanics for a magazine, especially ones that push the D&D envelope in its less explored areas, is quite a challenge.
The writer of such pieces must walk fine lines between writing clever stuff no one will ever use, publish well-written but mostly unplaytested crap or, hopefully, provide a valid alternative that won’t be pushed away by the game’s other options. All of this, given the very low rates gaming magazines can afford to pay, for an acceptable investment of time and resources from the writer’s part.
That’s why the landscape of freelance RPG Magazine writing is fraught with easily triggered traps. Many of which are exceedingly well summarized by Graham’s Walmsley quote (picked from Ryan Macklin’s excellent blog post):
You can’t just give people +1 for fucking and expect it to work.
As Ryan says, the Walmsley Principle applies to much more than what the expletive usually stands for. If you want your new material to be used by people, it must answer player needs and motivations in such ways that it will not be, at first glance, ignored as being useless, bland or just too plain boring to play with. Nobody needs an extra +2 to damage or a +2 to climb checks, it’s been done to death.
Plus, you’ll be in direct competition with the colossal engine of gaming inertia that is the online Character Builder and its inability to accept user-derived/3rd party content.
So those lines the writer walks on just became finer, you need to write something that will stand out to the casual reader without stepping outside of the game’s balance boundaries. You need to provide an alternative that is clever enough and simple enough mechanically that it can be used manually (or with easily configurable playing aids).
Yes, one could argue that articles make it every month that would fail my list of criteria and are “useless, bland and boring” as I described them. They could argue that articles are there to provide ideas for GMs, that one adopted mechanic/class/item per issue is already great.
They would be right, but I believe that the mold breakers I mentioned last week were among people who very aware of the traps and pitfalls of design and strove to go beyond the adequate to achieve excellence.
And while I may not achieve excellence when I write something, I always strive for it, regardless of the paycheck. I’m willing to bet that’s partly why so many of the RPG designers I respect most are struggling to make a decent living.
Here’s the perp, now where’s my Reward?
So where is that damn fine line Phil? Have you finally stumbled, in these ravings of yours, onto a usable road map?
Actually, I think I have…
In my (fevered) mind, the path to writing great D&D 4e articles, especially those that encourage a play style that differs from the Out of the Box experience, is to understand the game’s fundamental rewards and play that system. From there the writer must either design new elements that include them or design around them by creating new types of rewards that are compatible with the game’s balanced engine and don’t violate the Walmsley Principle.
In part 2, I’ll deconstruct D&D 4e’s reward system, explore their impact on the game and discuss popular, likely variants for each. Thusly I would consider myself properly schooled to write my magazine article!
I’ll probably miss the deadline too… sigh.
In the meantime, Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
The Architect DM: Fantasy Technology & Development
In my last post I talked about how the abandonment of locations and their resettlement can be used to influence the way we design our RPG worlds. The discussion led into the idea of technologies that could be developed and subsequently lost along with a civilization, only to be rediscovered at a later date by different cultures.
I know for a fact that many people have a mental disconnect when it comes to thinking of “technology” and their typical Dungeons & Dragons game world. I often think of technology in an RPG along the same lines as psionics, there seem to be a lot of people who love to use them and a lot of people who avoid using them altogether.
When it comes to technology there is quite a bit of framework that needs to be put forward in order to discuss it adequately.For the purposes of this article I’m going to use the term ‘technology’ in a very general sense. When I say your game includes technology it doesn’t necessarily mean there are dwarves flying around in gyrocopters shooting guns at each other, but that is certainly a distinct level of technology that some games might like to have. We most often hear technology and development described in terms of the Age system, starting with the Three-age System for classifying prehistory (particularly european/mediterranean prehistory) into the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. One of the resources that I like using for this kind of development is the List of archaeological periods over at Wikipedia, which shows you the progression of certain ages across the various continents.
Which Period Does Your Game Take Place In?
The answer to that question is a tough thing to figure out, and a lot of people probably see it as one of the most important questions regarding their game. The answer, in my opinion, is really not that important. Even if you’re attempting to run a game in a historic setting, unless you’ve studied history extensively, you’re not going to be able to get everything right. My observations are that the implied setting of most D&D games is very strongly early-medieval in theme and sticks pretty closely to the kinds of things that were seen throughout the Iron Age. Most people don’t run D&D games using only stone or bronze tools, but you also don’t often see a castle wall lined with cannons. However, when the characters inevitably end up on a (pirate) ship in the pirate ship-themed adventure, you bet your ass there are going to be cannons there!
How to Include Technology in Your Game
The way I see it there are two methods of inclusion for any particular type of technology into your game. The first method is that the technology exists in what I’ll call an Uncommon-to-Common way, meaning that if the PCs wanted to find this technology they could and it would be fairly reasonable for them to be able to reproduce it or purchase it if they so desire. One key distinction that I have to make is that this doesn’t mean your entire game world has access to this technology. One of the aspects of world building that I think is often overlooked by DMs and players is that civilization doesn’t develop at the same rate in every location. The example I used in my last post illustrates this perfectly, the Romans had means of creating and using Concrete (even advanced methods which allowed it to cure while underwater) which were lost when the empire collapsed and were not seen again until hundreds of years later. [Read the rest of this article]
The Leg-Lamp of Vecna
I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me, Christmas just isn’t what it used to be. That is, a full month of anticipation slowly gaining steam into rabid impatience culminating in a berserk frenzy of presents-opening. Sure, I was pretty focused on the materialistic gains. But the holiday just felt special somehow. As I got older, and especially as I became more able to buy my own stuff, the jubilation at getting a bunch of new stuff subsided. Then came the year Mom left out cold french fries and water for Santa instead of milk and cookies. She wasn’t fooling anybody, though. We all knew it was my parents behind the presents on Christmas morning. Also, I was 20. Mom’s really into traditions.
That’s not the point. The point is, it feels like it all changed. I cringe when I hear Christmas music now, a result of having worked at a Radio Shack during the holidays in 1995. I hate seeing the Christmas decorations go up in department stores the day after Halloween. I love my family and my in-laws, but it’s stressful dragging your toddler to celebrate Christmas multiple times every year. I’m annoyed by the repeated festive shotgun blasts of joyous holiday messages on TV that just don’t feel realistic or sincere, and then I feel like a Dire Grinch. And nobody wants that. (Fun holiday fact: a Dire Grinch’s heart has to grow at least five sizes in one day before he starts performing good deeds. Also, he is one size class larger than a standard Grinch and his sled is pulled by a worg with an antler tied to its forehead.)
I’m fully aware of the fact that growing up ruined this just like everything else. It’s easy to enjoy Christmas when you don’t have to do anything except for flip out after you open the thing you totally wanted that you’ve been going on endlessly about since late August. It’s so easy to look at the world with scorn and sarcasm, and let all the stuff that annoys the crap out of you overshadow everything else, and I think that’s where my Christmas went. Crushed under the enormous pressure of a bunch of annoying crap, and turned to coal. And you thought it was naughty children that got that. Add one more bitter yule log to the fire.
I want my damned Christmas back. The one I enjoyed and looked forward to. I may not get that, but what I can do is use this red-and-green-hued mass hysteria to my advantage. There are two times of the year one is most likely to get presents: one’s birthday, and Christmas. Only during the latter are people prone to fits of needing to feel togetherness at all costs. This is when you can strike.
Now all you have to do is ask for games for Christmas, and talk people into playing them with you.
That’s right, my nefarious Christmas scheme is to get people together to play games. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because a couple years ago, I borrowed a Wii just so I could get my whole family together on Christmas to play Wii Bowling. It was the first time we’d played videogames together since I was a kid and we all played Time Pilot and Ladybug on the Colecovision. I’m not even remotely exaggerating when I say it was the very best Christmas I’d had since I was a kid. For those couple hours, it was fun again, and it was special because I knew I wouldn’t have this chance very often. This year, I got a Kinect, and I would like to engage in similar Christmas shenanigans. I’ve tried a couple times since then to pull this off again, but never to the same effect. I suppose this will be the unattainable goal I chase after instead of reliving the innocent joy of a child on Christmas. You gotta have one, right?
On a smaller scale, this is also a great excuse to play with my family. Specifically, the portion of it that lives in my house. My son’s only 2, and the games we play together may not make a particularly large amount of sense, but they’re still a lot of fun. Once he recovers from the initial shock of getting ten thousand Hot Wheels cars for Christmas from the grandparents, I don’t doubt his little imagination is going to invent several new kinds of racing. I cannot freaking wait until he’s old enough that one of us opens an Xbox game and we’re both giddy that we can play it together. And I’m not afraid to bust out some old-school Scrabble or Monopoly to play with relatives who don’t consider themselves Gamers (with a capital G). I’d kill to play games all day over Christmas break with my wife and kid. (And I wouldn’t regret it, even with faced with the electric chair!)
It’s always been odd to me (and a giant pain in my ass) that the Christmas season seems to nuke the crap out of everyone’s availability to play D&D with their friends. Especially since I had my regular group break up about a year ago due to people moving and other real-life obstacles, it hits me directly in the face how much I miss getting together with them too. I don’t care how many puppies save Christmas or how many sitcoms show me the “true” meaning of the season. I don’t care what kind of fake togetherness crap is being served in the fruitcake. I don’t even care if any games actually get played. I just want to have fun with the people I care about. It’s what a good Christmas means to me now.
God bless us, every one (giving us +1 to attack).
And rocks fall on any creepy uncles, killing them instantly. No save.
Photo credit
Hope and Fear
Recently I read the excellent book Hamlet’s Hit Points by Robin D Laws. The book provides game masters with tools to analyze the narrative structure of their games, most importantly, how the different scenes or beats within a game affect the emotions of the players. Most stories provide us with a mixture of emotions, leading us to worry about the protagonists in one scene only to provide us with hope for them in the next. These emotions cement our connection to the characters of the story. However, in 4e D&D, such analysis isn’t limited just to the overall narrative. Within a combat encounter this same cycle of hope and despair occurs, investing us further in the outcome of the battle.
First, let’s analyze a typical 4e combat encounter. To prepare, the DM uses the XP budget appropriate for the PCs’ current level and group size. All of the monsters appear at the beginning of the encounter. Since the DM has no idea how long the monsters will last, he comes out swinging, using their encounter and recharge powers as soon as possible. Between monster death and PCs’ debuffs, the longer he waits, the less like it becomes that the standard monster’s powers will be effective. The antagonists’ early victories translate into down beats, causing concern amongst the players, especially if any of them are bloodied or knocked out early in the contest. [Read the rest of this article]
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