Junk Punch
You have been sucker punched. As a gamer, you’ve been categorized and used as a negative stereotype to illustrate points about terrible movies. Video games and gamers get a bum rap in film criticism. Film critics seem to like to use video games and the people who play them as a culturally understood idiom. This practice makes the critics look as bad as what they might be criticizing.
Roger Ebert, with his starkly ignorant opinion of video games as art, might have brought this mistreatment to a head in popular media. This lack of actual cultural awareness has been around for a long time, however, with film critics decrying just about anything that’s based on a video game or seems gamish. The trend degenerates from there, with critics using the term “video game” to condemn crappy adventure movies, as well as the term “gamer” to refer to insipid consumers of such dreck. This sort of condescension is a refuge only of someone who can’t come up with a meaningful metaphor and, therefore, takes the lazy route of uninformed comparison. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Dungeons
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the iconic “Dungeon” concept that many of us think of when we think of it in the context of Dungeons & Dragons. Also because only a month or two ago Dave wrapped up his 4E run through the Temple of Elemental Evil with custom mechanics to add to the “large dungeon crawl” feel of the adventures. Now I find my own campaign on the verge of the epic tier (the characters are currently level 19/20), and I am beginning to brainstorm a series of elemental dungeons that they will have to go through as a form of the Temple of Elemental Evil now fractured and embodied in five separate temples. Yes, I loved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I plan on stealing liberally from it.
My first inclination when thinking about the classic dungeon is to envision a many of the old D&D module dungeon maps, or even some of the newer ones from modules, and for the most part the style of dungeon that is represented enrages me more than it interests me. I feel that many classic D&D dungeons seem to be embodied by hap-hazard and random design that appears as if it was put together by a child. I will be the first to say that there is a time and a place for that style of design, and that it is not always a bad thing, but I’ve seen more than a handful of dungeons designed in that style which leads me to believe that it is a style some people purposefully apply to their “classic dungeons”. I believe designing a standard dungeon in that style is a big mistake.
I began to address this topic a month ago when I discussed Negative Space in Dungeons, but at the time I kept my thoughts focused on the idea of having space the your players can’t occupy to add differentiation into a dungeon. This post is about a higher concept level of design but is grounded in the same ideas.
Design with Purpose and Style
Let’s face it, the D&D dungeon you’re looking at has been designed by someone who set out to design a dungeon for the specific purpose of it being used in a game of D&D. I believe this is why we see the kind of nonsensical dungeon that feels so “classic”, because the design mindset used is that of making it appear as if the dungeon was not designed by a person setting out to design a D&D dungeon. The intent has completely eroded over the years so that now it is painfully obvious when you’re looking at a dungeon that can be described as stereotypically “D&D” in design. [Read the rest of this article]
Why KmartGamer Needs To Send Me to E3: A Love Story
Listen up, KMartGamer. You need to send me to E3. It is your destiny.
You might be wondering how I can make such a bold claim. Clearly, you need a demonstration of my power.
About Me
I was born into a loving Midwestern family in 1975. My parents were soon replaced by a TRS-80 Color Computer II, and I suckled at its digital teat until I reached manhood. In 1980, I suffered a severe allergic reaction to some some medicine, turning me into a tiny, red, and itchy replica of Frankenstein’s monster. To make me feel better, my grandmother bought me an Atari 2600 and a pack of frozen peas to put on my feet. I do not think she knew what she was doing at the time, just as Pandora did not as she freed all the evils of the world. Wait, this is probably not helping my case.
I’ve been obsessed with gaming in various forms as long as I can remember. I played that Atari 2600 long past the years where you could still buy one in a store. I used a nigh-indestructible Wico Bat Handle joystick until it broke – 15 years later. My roots are deep. Pixels flow through my veins. I know about videogames. All of them. OK, I am exaggerating slightly, but my brain is packed with data that only comes in handy at conventions, back-alley nerd fights, and in situations where I am trying to bamboozle someone into sending me to E3.
If I had to pick a genre, I’d have to go RPG. I started reading my brother’s D&D books when I was about 8, and I’ve been playing tabletop games on and off ever since high school. I like a lot of different types of games, but the necessary ingredient in a game to keep me up at night is a good story. I like games best that mix my videogame chocolate with my RPG peanut butter. Consequently, I’ve loved every SSI gold-box game and everything BioWare has ever made – sometimes in ways it’s probably best that I don’t blog about.
Speaking of blogging, I’ve been causing words to appear on the Internets for almost a decade now. At first, it was just blogging so my family and friends could share in all my misadventures. In 2003, I started playing D&D with some friends of mine and we enjoyed it so much that we started a website called Stupid Ranger, a gaming site devoted primarily to helping D&D players enjoy their game more. That’s when things started getting weird. People were reading the stuff we wrote. Then companies would send us stuff to review By the following year, we found ourselves interviewing some of the staff that worked on the current edition of D&D. That was also the year I got to play D&D with Gary Gygax and Tracy Hickman (if only for about 5 minutes before everybody died). Those were heady days, filled with love and combat. Everybody had enough hitpoints, and there was a d20 in every pot.
A little over a year ago, I found myself wanting to reach a larger audience and blog about more varied things, so I asked the proprietor of this here gaming blog Critical Hits if there was any room for someone of my particular talents. There was, and my life since has basically been me living out one teenage gaming fantasy after another. I attended Dungeons & Dragons Experience back in January, and got to hang out with the Wizards of the Coast R&D team for a couple days. I made some friends there and got to play Secret Games and get perspectives on all the things I loved so much that I would never have been able to get otherwise, and then share them with the world at large. Also, I ate quesadillas in front of the WotC guys often enough that they made fun of me. It was awesome. I’ve also been invited to playtest for Wizards of the Coast, which I can’t say anything else about due to a very scary- looking NDA.
In short, 15-year-old me thinks I am totally awesome. Please do not crush his dreams.
Why I Want To Go To E3
I want to see new stuff. I want to be there when new games and products get announced and feel the rush of the crowd’s excitement when it happens. I want to play stuff that isn’t finished yet. I want to meet the people that made the stuff I love so much. There are a lot of seriously awesome things slated to come out this year, and going to E3 would let me drink right from the fountain. The original Shadow Complex was a tasty blend of everything I enjoy in videogames, and I’d love to know more about its upcoming sequel. I want to soar into the heavens with Bioshock 3. I want to scroll some elders. Five times. And I want to see what Bungie is up to now that they’re not doing Halo. (Did somebody say Myth: The Fallen Lords Kart Racing?) I want to know if Nintendo is going to make a console that doesn’t look like crap on my big screen TV. Will it be three Gamecubes stapled together this time? Four? I want to see weird new control mechanisms and watch as the first humans outside of the development lab look like idiots. I want to look like an idiot as well. I want to throw myself into the MCP of video games and bring freedom to the system. I want to take all these experiences and share them with the world.
Also, I want to see if I can get my inner 15-year-old to explode.
How I Found You
My sister-in-law found a link this morning to your article about your E3 contest. She didn’t read it. She just saw the word “gamer” and sent it to me. Sadly, this means I only found out about KmartGamer and CheapAssGamer today, so any attempts at brown-nosing via a deep knowledge of your sites and community I was going to do would look rushed and very unconvincing. I will simply have to woo you with my charm and pure animal magnetism instead.
Why I Want You Specifically To Send Me To E3
Your name has “mart” in it. I remember putting Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link on layaway at our local K-Mart when I was 11. Also, none of the other major department store chains even gave me the chance to go to E3 on their dime. And I asked.
Congratulations! For all these reasons, I’ve chosen you to send me to E3!
It also certainly doesn’t hurt that an officially-sponsored gaming blog for a big department store chain appears to have been written not only by actual humans but (*gasp*) actual gamers. I also very much appreciate that you’re going to let the winners blog about whatever they choose. This makes me confident that a trip to E3 with you would be a win-win situation for you, me, and the readers. (Wait, does that make it a win-win-win? I don’t care.)
So, How ‘Bout It?
I’m a gamer’s gamer, I’m nothing if not entertaining, and I’ve done this before in a slightly different flavor of gaming. You need an RPG specialist. I double specialize in RPGs. (That’s an RPG joke. See? I am brilliant!)
Send me to E3. I’ll do you proud.
Photo Credit
Week 4: I Have Lost Six Dungeon Pounds
This week will be my D&D group’s fourth session. I’m starting to get the lay of the land a little better. I’ve learned that a plot won’t burst into flames if not kept on the rails the entire session. I’ve also learned that tacking it down in a couple of spots sure won’t hurt, and drawing a path in the dirt with a stick where you might like it to go isn’t such a bad thing. I decided to go back to my first article about starting a gaming group and look at the things I was concerned about with a few sessions under my belt.
- Music
I keep planning to try it, but every session I remember to do it as everyone is walking out the door. I think I am going to list out my encounters – combat and otherwise – on a sheet of paper along with a track to play. I haven’t been using a computer for anything (aside from Kmonster on my phone), so keeping Grooveshark open on my tablet with all tracks one press away shouldn’t get in my way much. Who knows if it will be awesome or annoying? Probably never me. I anticipate serially forgetting about this for at least another six or seven months. - Initiative
I’ve been writing out the initiative order on a sheet of paper, trying to guess based on their rolls how much space to leave on the rows above and below. This is clunky, I don’t like it much, but to be honest it’s not really getting in my way too much. I plan to get some index cards this week to try, having the PCs write down their defenses, hit points and bloodied value, and other info on them. Then I’ll make enemy cards and combat order should be much simplified. - Bloodthirst
I haven’t once wanted to kill a PC. Truth be told, I don’t really like combat that much. It’s not really a surprise to me, I used to wish the combats were over so I could roleplay some more when I was a player. I’ve caught myself wanting to halve an enemy’s hit points just to get things over with a couple of times. Some of my players are really into combat, so I’m going to avoid that. - Better DMing Through Technology
Maybe I’m just oldschool. Maybe I’m not using the right tools. But, as I said before, I hardly use any tech at all in the actual running of my game – certainly nothing I have to enter info into. I don’t have to fight notebook paper to record something really fast. I don’t have to open the right window, or enter things in any particular format. I scribble something down, possibly circling it. This surprises me a lot. I was half-expecting to look like something out of freaking Neuromancer while running my game – sitting motionless, speaking to my players only via voice synthesis, and updating a digital battle map. With my brain waves. I feel like a hippie or a luddite or something. - Frequency
We’ve had to swap weeks a couple of times, and last week’s board game “D&D off-week” night found every last person with a scheduling conflict. Overall, though, I think we’re proving somewhat flexible. One of our group has his son’s soccer practice to go to on our D&D nights for the next month, so we’ll be doing some dancing around that. Keeping him in every week during this might not happen, but I think it’s safe to say we’ll be playing. - Expectations
This has probably been the hardest to bear of the lot. You’d think after blogging in one form or another for nearly a decade would give me immunity from worrying that people will think what I come up with is stupid, but it’s more nerve-wracking for me when the people you’ll be attempting to entertain for the evening are mere feet away from you for hours on end. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun. I love it. But it’s making those little insidious self-doubt demons come out to have a picnic in my brain a lot more than I’d like. They make me second-guess the story I’m writing and bring out my Anxiety-Fueled Perfectionist who doesn’t write things other people understand (in a bad way). They make me want to procrastinate. They make me worry I will be the D&D equivalent of Forever Alone. They must die.
It’s a little different than where I expected to be at this point, but I feel like I’m getting better and people are having a decent time. Now I have different concerns and goals to put into bullet points:
- Player Engagement
I have some players new to D&D who are somewhat shy at the table. I want to try to get them out of their shells. I realize there are a lot of different types of people, and that means there are also a lot of different types of players. This also inevitably means some won’t like the things I do, so I can’t just fire up the Master Roleplaying Computer and determine their optimal RP algorithm. Stupid free will. So, my task right now is to watch my players carefully for signs of delight, and to exploit these weaknesses in their psyche to… well, give them more delight. I am never going to pass the Evil DM exam at this rate.I’ve also been considering several reward systems for good roleplaying or teamwork. One idea was to use Fortune Cards as a reward. Another is to give out story awards like I saw used at the Living Forgotten Realms events at DDXP. It’s been my experience that it doesn’t take much to light a little fire in a player’s heart. Or maybe I’m just extra flammable. We’ll have to see if my group is.
- Loot, Or Lack Thereof
One of my players made a point to remind me that they hadn’t gotten any loot yet. I’d forgotten about it entirely, what with my head being firmly up my precious story’s ass. In the interim, I came up with nifty Weapons O’ Light for them to use, the powers of which may scale with the players’ level. I don’t think this is enough. It’s a weird state of affairs when everybody has weapons made of pure light and I’m worried nobody is going to feel special. I need flavor for these items. I want offbeat things that make this story belong to the players. I used to do this with magic items all the time. It’s harder to come up with them, for some reason. - I Prefer Rolling My Own
I’m starting to think I might be a masochist, or an egomaniac, or both. I have heaping mountains of sourcebooks and articles and other pre-made materials to choose from, but I want to come up with something brand new 99 times out of 100. I tend to prejudge pre-made material as a whole as “boring”, and I think this attitude needs to change. I know an awful lot of very bright people with excellent ideas waiting to be appropriated for the good of all playerkind. And it’s not as if I am a neverending fountain of The Best Ideas. If I hadn’t been introduced to the concept of reskinning, I shudder to think how combat might have gone these last few sessions. I think this problem stems from a few times in a previous campaign where our DM decided to drop in a pre-made module and we all couldn’t wait for it to be over. I also need to remember another campaign we were in, made completely from scratch, that was far worse. This is not really helping my anxiety. - 4 x 2 x 7 x 1
The “fast and loose” approach I’ve been taking the last couple of sessions has rained cosmic destruction upon the delicate 5×5 plot diagram I’d made in the infancy of this campaign. I’m having trouble figuring out how to guide them where they “should” go without chasing them around with a horde of cement zombies. I tried to lay clues for them in our last adventure, but they didn’t take the bait. Upon complaining about this, the Internets graced me with the Three Clue Rule and the knowledge that players are neither master detectives nor inside my brain. I’m not going to feel so bad about gentle use of the Clue Bat or letting Leopold, the Dancing Plot Point earn his keep. I’m going to try sprinkling a little more structure into our game, and hopefully it’ll go somewhere. I think the trick is not to care exactly where, as long as you are still tracking it via DM plot-satellite.
I’m certain that, as long as I am a Dungeon Master, I will always have a bunch of bullet points in my head. There’s an old saying we have in karate. I can’t remember it, so it is possible that I will not have all my teeth this time next week. What I do remember is that it describes the search for perfection of one’s character as neverending; as being in a boat atop an ever-rising sea; as playing Pac-Man and never splitting the screen. So too shall I approach the mastery of my dungeon.
In the end, there is only one truth: don’t use dry-erase markers on a battlemat.
Photo Credit
Battletech Introductory Box Set Preview & Review
I have been a die hard fan of Battletech since I first picked up a Technical Readout book and wondered what all of the information about awesome looking giant mechs was really used for. Three years ago when Catalyst Game Labs acquired the Battletech license and put out the Classic Battletech boxed set, I was excited but didn’t get a chance to pick one up before the print run completely sold out. That’s why I flipped out when I saw the new Battletech Introductory Boxed Set in a vendor’s stand at PAX East and quickly picked up a copy.
This new boxed set is being released on March 30th, 2011 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Battletech, and it retails for $49.95. The box includes:
- 24 unpainted, ready-to-play plastic BattleMech minis
- 2 unpainted, premium-quality plastic BattleMech minis
- One 12-page full-color quick-start rulebook will have players into the action in minutes
- 36-page book of pre-generated BattleMech Record Sheets
- One 80-page full-color rulebook
- Inner Sphere at a Glance, a 56-page full-color book of universe
- One 16-page full-color Painting and Tactics Guide
- One two-sided heavy-duty card of compiled tables
- Two 18? x 24? game-board quality maps
- An 8-page color guide to the Battletech Core Rulebooks
- One huge full-color poster of the Battletech Galaxy/Universe
- Two 6-sided dice
Let me tell you right from the start that this is a high quality boxed set. All of the books and printed material are extremely well produced and the two premium quality plastic Battlemech miniatures are the best plastic Battletech minis I’ve ever seen. The 24 regular plastic Battlemech minis are of a much lower quality but they are pretty much equivalent to what came with any of the previous Battletech boxed sets I’ve purchased. All of the rulebooks are full-color and on good quality paper, but more importantly they offer a wide variety of information for beginning players with the quick start rules all the way through experienced veterans with the Inner Sphere At a Glance book and the guide to the core rulebooks. Perhaps the biggest thing to point out is that this time they’ve provided thick card stock quality maps instead of the standard paper maps we’re used to with Battletech products, and though they are a bit fussy with laying flat when they’re brand new the sturdiness and durability are a very welcome change. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-03-27
- The Heart is Dark No More: Authentic Ghosts. – So I talk about a ‘Mythic Africa’ and it is all light and… http://tumblr.com/xcu1ug7jq8 #
- Announced today by @gnomestew: "Masks: 1,000 Characters to Populate Your Worlds", a book of 1000 system-neutral NPCs. http://bit.ly/hG9SX0 #
- RT @SlyFlourish: Looks like the new #dnd Monster Builder is up and online! http://j.mp/hc8BcW #
- RT @KoboldQuarterly: One -week anniversary sale: 50% off ALL pdf gazetteers and adventure books. http://cot.ag/3oaNt #
- RT @Wizards_DnD: Some info on today's Adventure Tools release: http://bit.ly/hnAx3e #ddi #dnd #
- Web-Based Monster Builder: More Evil Than Orcus on Asmodeus' Shoulders – Despite my base nature and… http://tumblr.com/xcu1unc4uq #
- .@Syfy's new slate of programming includes fourth D&D movie in 2012, to follow this year's "Book of Vile Darkness" http://bit.ly/fXcfwM #
- RT @davidnett: It's official: I'm writing a book about RPGs with some of the most influential people in the industry! http://is.gd/DUBR4m #
- Mashing up GUMSHOE and Mouse Guard to bring richer skill checks http://bit.ly/ftpqaX #
- RT @direflail: Got @gamingpaper's 100 page megadungeon in the mail yesterday. Holy crap this is cool. http://youtu.be/x1Nhj2b_5C8 #
Dealing the Wildcards
In past columns I have talked about how DMs are the best friends of both players and adventure designers. The DMs possess the power and the means to help the players have fun, while at the same time making the adventure designers look good. (And believe me, we need all the help we can get!) In subsequent columns I plan to talk about how DMs can adjust pre-made adventures to fit their players’ needs and expectations while still remaining true to the story. However, before I get there, I want to talk about some steps adventure designers can take to make life easier for the DMs. In particular, this column will discuss what I call the “wildcard.” In card games, especially poker, a wildcard is a card that can be used by the player to represent anything. The same versatility offered by a wildcard to a poker hand can make an RPG session awesome.
Wildcards: What and How?
I started thinking about wildcards in RPGs because I dislike using a DM screen. Bear with me, this will get somewhere. Also I prefer to roll in the open where players can see the results. Because I do not want to fudge die rolls and have no screen to hide behind, I needed another way as a DM to tailor the play experience without ruining that experience with obvious fudging. I don’t like to kill characters, but I also let the dice fall where they may. However, I always have the fun of the players in mind. I am willing to take the adventure in any direction, be it story-wise or combat-wise, if I think the players might have a better time.
Since I don’t want to fudge die rolls, and I don’t want the game to be cheapened with obvious stunts like deus ex machina or the like, I had to come up with tools that I could use as the DM to influence the game more subtly. I learned about wildcards in the first D&D adventure I ever ran, way back when I was just a wee lad. (People who know me can insert the short jokes here.) I was too young and inexperienced to be able to put a name to it and recognize it for what it was, but I was using a wildcard nonetheless. That adventure was The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and the wildcard was a wily assassin named Ned Shakeshaft. For those young’uns who don’t remember that adventure, the PCs are investigating a supposedly haunted house, and they find Mr. Shakeshaft tied up in one of the rooms. He knows how to use a sword, so the PCs might welcome him into their group to help with the investigations. Of course Ned is a bad guy, and he turns on the PCs at some point.
Ned is the perfect example of a wildcard that a DM has in his proverbial game-mastering poker hand. If an adventure is too easy and the players are getting bored, Ned can attack the PCs at the worst possible moment for them, making the adventure more challenging for the PCs and exciting for the players. If the PCs are having a rough go of it and the players are getting frustrated, Ned can continue to fight on their side, biding his time. [Read the rest of this article]
Interview with PAX East Champion Dungeon Master, Matt Brenner
Photo by Chris Tulach
In early March of 2011, at the PAX East gaming conference, Wizards of the Coast sponsored the second annual PAX East Dungeon Master’s Challenge. Three weeks earlier, those who signed up received their instructions for the competition. Each of them would be required to bring a unique level 8 adventure with a dragon as the main antagonist along with all of the tools, props, and pre-generated characters needed to run the game. Dave Chalker (who won last year), Tracy Hurley, and I all joined in a group of perhaps fifteen dungeon masters for the competition.
The players of each adventure scored the competition based on the following criteria:
- Presentation
- Story
- Challenges
- Characters
- Fun Factor
In the end Matt Brenner took away the prize and title as Champion Dungeon Master.
When I found out that I hadn’t even been in the top three winning dungeon masters, I was, of course, filled with a seething hatred and burning rage capable of sucking the entire convention center into the great black hole now left in my heart. Knowing, however, that I was in the very good company of Dave and Tracy, however, made it a little easier.
I could have held on to that seething rage but such rage benefits no one. Instead of exploding like a Peter Petrelli atom bomb, I decided to follow Sylar’s route. I would find this dungeon master, slice open his skull, and draw his champion DM powers out for myself.
OK, that’s not exactly true. Instead I would find this champion DM and interview him for all of us to learn from his background and his experience. What I found was a dungeon master who truly went over the top to build his award winning game.
Now let’s sit back and learn what Matt Brenner has to say about his gaming background and what he did to build his champion adventure. [Read the rest of this article]
Danny’s PAX East 2011 Recap
Just over a week ago we returned from Boston and from my first PAX ever, which I’m very happy to say was incredibly fun for both myself and my wife from start to finish. Without a doubt the highlight of PAX East for me is much the same as other conventions like GenCon, and that’s meeting great people and getting to play games with people that I don’t normally have the opportunity to game with. However there are a few big differences that I noticed which really made PAX East stand out from the other conventions that I’ve been to.
First and foremost PAX East is very clearly a convention designed with gamers in mind, and this concept oozes through every aspect of the con that we experienced. The amount of open console and computer gaming is absolutely staggering, if you wanted to go to the con and do nothing but play console games you could do it and have a hell of a time while you’re at it. I’m talking about an entire hallway of rooms set up with hundreds and hundreds of TVs and computers alongside libraries of nearly every game you could wish for, all there simply for your entertainment and enjoyment!
Who Knew that Gamers like Playing Games?
As if the amount of electronic gaming was not enough, a section of the convention center main hall as large as the exhibit hall itself was willed with tables and dedicated to open tabletop gaming of all kinds. When we first arrived on Friday morning this area was mostly underutilized but through the rest of the convention the area was packed to the brim with thousands of gamers playing various card games, board games, and roleplaying games. It should be no surprise that this room became our designated meeting area, as several of us would stake out a table and sit down to gather friends through the next few hours as they inevitably walked by.
One of the best decisions made about this room, that I hope to see replicated at places like GenCon someday soon, is that a handful of local gaming shops had sales booths set up around the open gaming area. If that doesn’t sound good enough to you, the real icing of the set up is that these vendors often stayed open well beyond the exhibit hall closing which I’m sure only benefited them as gamers seemed incredibly eager to buy all kinds of Magic: The Gathering cards and various board games well into their evenings of frivolous gaming. It was at several of these booths that I did the majority of my shopping at PAX East. I finally purchased a copy of Fiasco to play with friends when Dave isn’t around (who likes gaming with him, anyway?), but the item that made me positively giddy as a school girl was the brand new, still unreleased, boxed set of Battletech from Catalyst Game Labs which I was very happy to get my hands on. A full review of that boxed set is coming very soon, oh yes!
The Exhibits, Let Me Show You Them!
Throughout the three days of PAX East I spent a lot of time around the exhibit hall, but as a matter of choice I decided not to spend any of that time waiting in line. Let me assure you that there were plenty of lines available for waiting, and almost as many that I would have been very eager to join, but I couldn’t allow myself to waste much time at the convention waiting to see a video of a game or play a few minutes of a game that I would inevitably see/play in the next few weeks anyway. The consistently biggest line definitely belonged to Star Wars: The Old Republic, which even had a waiting line during the hours the hall was open early exclusively for press.
The nice thing about not waiting in line to play The Old Republic is that there were still several places that you could watch those people who had waited in line playing the game, and several monitors playing awesome trailers and gameplay footage of the game. For the most part everyone that I know who watched the game at this booth is dying to play the game, and probably the best way for me to summarize it is that it looks like the ‘World of Warcraft’ of Star Wars MMOs. [Read the rest of this article]
The Eighth Wheel
It’s funny how things never develop how you expected. When I decided to start running a D&D game after going to DDXP this year, I was reasonably certain things would never get off the ground. I knew a couple people might be interested, but with schedules being what they are (especially with several parents in the mix, myself included), I wasn’t sure the stars would align sufficiently to get the first session of the ground – much less a multi-year-spanning campaign like we used to run back in the day.
As it turns out, I have no problems with finding players for my group. Quite the opposite, actually.
And Then There Were X + 1 (REPEAT)
We started out with five. A friend from work and his wife, who I’d played with for years before. Two more friends from work, and a guy I used to work with. There’s a theme here. We played our first session, it was rad. Everybody was excited. Then, one day, we talked about it at lunch with one of the new guys at work. (Theme, remember?) As I was riding the high off not crashing and burning through the first session, I asked him if he wanted to play with us. The invitation was genuine, but I was honestly surprised he said yes. Usually, people just sort of laugh nervously and politely decline. (Maybe I shouldn’t talk about my characters right out of the gate?) One of my players was with me at lunch, and she was very happy about this new development. I was equally happy. He was cool.
I was a little surprised at the response when I got back and asked the rest of my players if it was cool if we had a new member. Everybody thought the new guy was great, but there were a few reservations about the group getting too big. Worries that there would be too many scheduling conflicts. Concerns that scheduling would become more difficult. My last group was pretty big (8? 9? I forget…), and we all seemed to get by, so this was a little bewildering. The invite was already out, so I decided just to see how it went. It went well.
Two days later, one of my players tells me her brother (who had expressed interest in playing, but had scheduling conflicts), was no longer under said scheduling conflicts and wanted to play. The little monkey running the controls in my brain began pacing around anxiously. The screaming was nigh. So, I did what any noob would, and immediately consulted the Internet. Fortunately, in my case, that meant IMing Dave The Game. (Who, as we all know, is the living embodiment of the Internet.) He gave me the following subtle and nuanced advice:
Hard limit of 6 players. Any more than that and they will hate playing and you will hate running it.
Not understanding Dave’s cryptic message, I then consulted Josh and Eric, two of my former DM’s. I figured, they used to run our giant group. They will know. 6 seemed a good number, they said, if all your players are quiet and organized and well-behaved. I wasn’t exactly sure if my group qualified. Most were reasonably reserved, but we’d only played twice. I couldn’t base it off previous experience because, well, I was one of several forces of chaos in our old group. It was fun chaos, but I cannot count the number of times I had a great idea and saw the “aneurism” expression cross my DM’s face – and these were DM’s with years of experience. Suddenly, I realized the hidden cost of my antics, and I became afraid – that lurking somewhere at my table, someone had a big barrel of antics a-brewin’.
Studio 5d4
I asked the Internet what to do, and he recommended something that seemed a little strange – namely, a waiting list. That seemed kind of elitist, but upon closer inspection it made more sense. The regular players have a guaranteed seat – but if someone can’t make it, the next person on the waiting list gets called to make a guest appearance with a pregenerated PC. It’s a way to let some different people play, and a band-aid for those times when you’re one player down. I’d already decided to run player absence in my campaign as if that character vanished and/or took the day off, so this fit well – at least on paper.
As to whether or not it worked in practice – well, unfortunately I still had to frustrate yet another work friend (there are apparently legions) who wanted to play. He had a night off from his regularly scheduled WoW raiding on account of his guild getting their drink on IRL in another state for St. Patrick’s day, and wanted to make a guest appearance. I told him no, because I had 6, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle another. I still feel bad about it. I probably could have handled it, but I am not very practiced at saying “no” to people in general, much less when it’s regarding something I would love to share with them. I still don’t know if I made the right call, but I suppose at least I made a call.
Upon A Troubled Brow
I’ve been trying to run this group as a democracy. I’ve been in groups where the DM gets to decide everything, and it works sometimes but there’s a lot of potential for things to get weird and unpleasant. I didn’t care for it. Even with this in mind, though, I’ve tried to take point on putting everything together from scheduling to location to getting group communication going and putting the adventures together and answering player questions. It had not occurred to me until now that, even a group run by all its players still requires leadership – and the DM, for better or worse, is likely to have the job.
These clothes do not fit comfortably yet.
It is so damned easy to get caught up in trying to make everyone happy right now, even with a very low level of drama. (Hooray for low self-esteem!) I take my role as DM to be the guy who makes it possible for everybody to have an evening of fun. (I took it down a couple notches from “the guy who makes everyone have fun”. My you’re-going-to-give-yourself-an-ulcer filter doesn’t trigger often, but I’m happy when it does!) I don’t know specifically what I’m worried about. Maybe that everyone will be bored and frustrated and never want to play again. That I’m going to alienate all my friends who aren’t allowed to play and be considered a thunderous turbo-douche for the rest of my natural life. That WotC will send a representative to my house to repossess all my D&D sourcebooks and give me a season pass to a sporting event because I can no longer be a nerd. Yes, that about sums it up.
I have good players, though. One of them, when I expressed such concerns to her, replied simply with “We’re your friends! That won’t happen.”
Oh yeah. So, I guess I’m back to just trying my best to put together something exciting and simply enjoying a night with friends. Doesn’t make a very interesting story, but I’d much rather have expectations I can live with.
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