The Architect DM: Traps, Hazards, & Terrain
Once again I solicited on my twitter account (@Bartoneus) asking what aspects of location design in RPGs people have problems with, and I’d like to thank everyone that responded this afternoon. I will be addressing many of the topics you guys asked about in the future, but for today’s post I chose DigitalDraco’s comment: “I always want to include more interesting terrain effects, hazards & the like but they tend to seem added-on.” This topic immediately struck me as one that I’ve struggled with in the past and one that I believe many other people have had issues with as well.
The great thing about traps, hazards, and terrain effects are that they can be direct personifications of the environment that metaphorically (and sometimes quite literally) bring the world around your characters to life. First the best idea is to clarify some definitions that I feel are pretty widely acknowledged. Traps are typically intentionally malicious effects that were orchestrated by a foreign will or entity for a specific purpose. Hazards and terrain are generally considered to be natural but they can just as easily cross over into the realm of traps in the same way that traps can cause hazards and changes in terrain. Focusing on and playing up this potential inter-relationship of traps and hazards/terrain is my first recommendation for creating interesting locations that include these elements.
Connectivity Breeds Realism
What I mean by the above title is that tying elements of your design together can justify all of those elements even when they relate to very little beyond themselves. This is a direct suggestion focusing on the last part of DigitalDraco’s statement, “but they tend to seem added-on“. If you have added one element to a location and it seems added-on, try adding another element that relates directly to the first and you might find that instead of both of them feeling added-on, they start to create a new definition of the location you’re designing. I also recommend treating the main topics of this post as a set of guidelines when adding elements into encounters, if the first thing you’ve added is clearly a trap, the secondary element you add will probably fit better if it is a hazard or a terrain effect. If you’ve added a hazard, the secondary element may work best as a trap or a hazard. [Read the rest of this article]
I Am Fortune’s Fool
There’s a new article up on the D&D website, available to everyone, about alternate uses for Fortune Cards. The article was written by Sarah Darkmagic, Greywulf, Tim Brannan, and oh yeah, me.
This marks the first appearance- as far as I can recall- of paid RPG work by me, though I have more on the way that I’m also very excited about. I’ll admit that I was a little giddy this morning when reading the article and the item and power I had written were formatted in the real templates. It was also the first time I got to read my fellow contributor’s pieces too, which are all outstanding.
When Greg Bilsland approached us about the article, I brainstormed a big list of ideas. Many of them were unworkable or too complex for a short piece, but I focused on the ones that really jumped out, and I’m happy with the final ideas. There was one big idea that I ended up cutting from the piece to fit the word limit, and that was giving them out as roleplaying awards. I’m glad I did, because Tracy takes on that idea directly in a much better way than I was thinking, and I’ve seen other suggestions to that effect previously, so it’s not an idea that needed me giving it very minor rules. However, mine did specifically suggest giving out fortune cards to anyone who brought snacks…
I hope you enjoy all the suggestions. I know many of you aren’t fans of the cards (according to our poll, 40% are sworn never to use them, 30% lean strongly against them, and collectively about 20% plan to use them in some fashion), and I’ll admit that even I’m not planning on using them in my home campaign. However, I do think they have some possibilities for different groups, as demonstrated by the article, and maybe you all have your own great ideas too!
It’s Got Electrolytes
One problem I keep running into with my campaign is that I have tunnel vision. I see the story, I see the characters, I see the players, and I have a tendency not to think about the existence of other things without some effort. One major side effect of this is that we’re 5 sessions in and nobody has received any loot. Well, aside from some weapons I gave them identical to their normally equipped one, except made of pure light and with a +1 bonus. I’d always planned to give the party some sort of specialized magical means of fighting The Evil Dark Things, but this wound up being a last-minute afterthought when one player asked about the lack of loot. I was astounded at how boring a weapon made of light turned out. It’s easy to see I got out of it what I put in.
Problem Solved. Problem Acquired.
I know at least part of the problem stems from me internally labeling the non-RP stuff “boring” or “banal”. I think about all the items from random treasure tables my D&D groups have received over the years, all the grey and white “sell to the vendor” items in WoW, all the time spent looking these things up and figuring out where to store them or selling them off, and it just seems like work for no reason. (The only exception to this I can think of is the one time our DM determined that we found a rare painting on an Ettin we killed, and we collectively determined he’d been storing it in his butt.)
I made a conscious decision at the start of my campaign to handwave a lot of things I’d experienced previously that I thought were too little payoff for too much effort. “Junk” loot was one of these. Encumbrance (at least, measuring items down to the ounce or gp) was another. We have a relatively standard marching order and everyone knows who has what watch when they’re at camp. I also decided not to use XP to determine when the PCs leveled, instead resorting to milestones or “whenever I tell them to”. All these save us a lot of time. They do that particular job very well. Problem is, I’ve come to realize I’m neglecting two very important reward systems for my players: loot and XP. Not everybody craves only to drink roleplay straight from the tap like I do; in fact, I’d say I’m in a pretty small minority in that respect.
Lifting The Unintentional Sanctions
I’m still not entirely convinced I need to change how our group does XP. While computing XP after each battle (or session) gives an immediate sense of reward, it has some drawbacks. One is that doing it during the session is just going to eat up time and pretty much buzzkill the session while we do the accounting. I could have the XP to add to the total for each monster ready beforehand, but then there’s the potential of wasted effort if they don’t kill everything. Do I give those I thought contributed to the battle more a greater share? If the party splits and I have non-participants, do they get left behind? I want the whole party at the same level so they aren’t frustrated and I’m not dealing with forces I understand even less than the regular forces that I barely understand.
The Loot Problem seems a little less hard to define, at least on its surface. One problem I’m running into is that giving them loot that isn’t immediately useful in some way may be useless to them. I know the dread wizard Wal-Mart’s influence is felt throughout the Forgotten Realms, but something tells me there isn’t one in a pocket-prison dimension in the Shadowfell. At the very least, not a 24-hour Supercenter. If I give them money, I don’t know where or how they are going to spend it. I’d rather not load them up on stuff that won’t be useful, although giving them items that could be used together (rope, a series of lead pipes, explosives, strawberry jam, etc) might work out for some puzzles or roleplaying challenges. One thing my previous DMs were very good at that I need to start emulating was to give each player an item or two that had enough flavor that you cared about it. It was simply unique in some way, it had its own backstory, or it tied into a PC’s backstory. I still remember my cleric carrying around an ancestral flail given to him by his tribesmen, and favoring its use even over more powerful weapons. Some of that was my DM, some of that was me giving it personal meaning. That’s what I want to engender with the items I give out. I realize they won’t read each individual caltrop and iron ration a story before tucking them into their backpack every night, but I can do a lot better than this.
Time To Go All Wonka On Their Asses
Whatever I do, I want to make sure that my players get rewarded for their actions, and I want them to feel like the time they invest at my table is well-spent. This and “make combat faster plz kthx” has been the topic of most of the player feedback I’ve received thus far. If I ever want to get our RPG team to the later stages of Orming, I would be wise to attend to these needs. I’ll just add another title to my ever-growing list: “Garlukk: Demigod of Fun”, “Chickenmaster”, “Concierge Of The Bloodthirsty And Materialistic”, and now “Lootmaster Electrolyte XP”.
I’ve got what players crave. Or something.
Photo Credit
Unboxing – The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond Boxed Set
We were extremely fortunate to get an early copy of the upcoming D&D boxed set called The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond to unbox and show you all today. It comes packaged in a thin box the same size as the Red Box starter set and comes with a very sturdy 127 page paperback Campaign Guide, a 31 page Encounter Book, two sheets of cardboard tokens, one poster with a map of gloomwrought on one side and an encounter map on the other, and a Despair deck of 30 cards.
The Books
The first thing that I noticed within the boxed set is the size of the Campaign Guide. Though it is a paperback (the cover is a very nice quality card stock) at 127 pages it is only 30 pages short of the smaller hardcover books that Wizards of the Coast has put out for 4th Edition (Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide & Eberron Player’s Guide for example). Inside of the book you get the first 12 pages dedicated to running and playing D&D in the setting of the realm of the dead, including some ideas for adventures to have there and the new rules for the included Despair Deck. Following that you get 50 pages all about the so called “City of Midnight”, Gloomwrought, including pretty much all that you could want when running a game that involves the city. This part of the book includes the various factions within the city, in depth descriptions of the various quarters and districts that make it up, and picture references to the larger city map that is included in the box set.
Next the book presents us with 30 pages on the areas of the Shadowfell around Gloomwrought, titled “Beyond the Walls”, which includes places such as the Oblivion Bog, Dead Man’s Cross, and the Darkreach Mountains. Perhaps most importantly there is a section detailing the realm of Letherna where the most powerful entity of the Shadowfell, the Raven Queen, dwells and attracts the souls of the dead. I was very happy with every section of the book that I read, the content and writing reminds me of the Plane Above and Plane Below books which are some of my favorites since the release of 4th Edition and will be my go-to books for campaign and adventure planning for years to come. I am extremely pleased with a book of this caliber about the Shadowfell, especially in the light of the Ravenloft setting being shelved, because this book provides me with a lot content along the same lines as what I would expect from Ravenloft (but it just FEELS different when it has the word Ravenloft on the cover). [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-04-24
- From the Archives:: Tales of Draconis, Part 3 http://bit.ly/dWGlsY #charchive #
- RT @SlyFlourish: My first Monster Makeover article, Shademaw(lvl26 black dragon), just got published to the #dnd website! http://j.mp/idTUxw #
Review: Nightfall (Card Game)
Nightfall is a new deck-building card game from Alderac Entertainment Group that is set in a dark world of vampires and werewolves. The game supports between 2 and 5 players and takes roughly 45 minutes to an hour to play. The basic set for the game comes with over 300 cards that include minions you can recruit into your deck, actions that you can play during your turn and other player’s turn, several types of wound cards representing different types of damage taken (bite, burn, and bleed), and draft cards that are used during the game’s set up.
Gameplay
The game of Nightfall includes several interesting mechanics that create a different style of gameplay from other deck-building games I’ve played. During the set up of the game each player drafts cards (choosing one and passing the rest to the next player) to determine two unique cards that will be available only that player will be able to purchase through the course of the game, and the rest of the cards form common piles that every player can purchase from. In this way players are given a chance to set themselves up with specific advantages, define the style of deck they will build, and determine the cards that will be available to every player for the entire game. [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty’s Adventure Scaffold #1 : Words with Fiends
As some of you may know, I’ve spent the last few weeks working preparing my latest batch of seminars and writing freelance assignments. Last March, I sent off a 4e article for Kobold Quarterly (to be published in the Summer issue). I’ve since been working on two big projects for Margaret Weis Productions (publishers of the Leverage RPG among many other licensed RPGs).
One such project is the upcoming Dragon Brigade RPG, a Swashbuckling game in a world of airships, dragons, intrigue, and magic . The other project is a series of hacks destined to get people who already own the Leverage or Smallville RPG books, to play alternate themes or with new options.
Just like when Wil Wheaton works on a TV series and can’t talk about it, there’s a ton of things I’d like to share with you that I can’t right now (one of the infuriating aspects of freelance writing for a blogger). My need to blog is driving me nuts and I feel the strongest urge to blog about what I’ve been doing lately… and I know that very few people want to read about my “Writing effective Standard Operating Procedures” seminar.
So here’s a little something something related to my working in the freelance cave this last month or so.
In one such project, I came up with a few tools to help me playtest the material I wrote. I can’t share the tools outright but I can surely discuss the new form my prep session output has taken, which I dubbed “the adventure scaffold”.
What’s this you ask? Well have a look, it’s better than 500 words of explanation.
Words with Fiends
Quest Summary: One of the heroes’ older brother, a crippled ex-adventurer, obsessed with finding the one responsible for slaughtering his old adventuring party, comes up to the party with a solid lead to the killer who’s apparently working some sort of dark ritual hidden somewhere in a natural cave formation near a mining port city.
The crippled brother wants revenge and asks the party to exact it. However, the villain is not quite what the party expects. He’s a damned soul sent back from the infernal planes with an impossible diabolical mission. But the soul is quite the hustler and found a loophole to achieve its goals…
The Patron: Family/Ally
An older, handicapped brother comes to one of the heroes, convinced he’s finally tracked the man that killed most of his adventuring buddies 10 years ago. He implores his sibling’s help.
The Quest: Red Herring + Stop the Villain’s Plan
Exact vengeance on the villain. The Dark Lord is up to something involving dark elves and people from the city disappearing into the Mines. Find what he’s up to and stop it, making him aware who sent the heroes (a red herring, see The Dungeon’s Secret).
The Dungeon: A natural cave formation
The various mines surrounding the port city are connected to natural sea caves that pepper the rising cliffs forming the city’s natural harbour. The caves go deep, reaching the Underworld, where a dark elven outpost lies, guarding the way to one of their undercities.
The Dungeon’s Secret: I am NOT your Father!
The Hell-bred Dark Lord’s body is that of the sibling’s party killer… but it’s just the shell of a low-grade villain who signed away his soul and lost it while his body was still useful. The Dark Lord, a damned soul, got a reprieve to return from Hell in this body in exchange for turning in souls at an impossible rate… which the Dark Lord has managed to deliver so far.
The Lord has NO idea who was the person whose body he now occupies.
The Main Villain: Dark Lord
A reincarnated damned soul, living in the body of the ex-villain who killed the brother’s adventuring party. A very powerful infernal being, with one wing, horns, claws, Hellfire and all.
Features: Soulburning; Great sword; Soulforged armour; Hellfire blasts; “I’m smarter than everyone”; Greedy; Deadly afraid of getting caught
Agents: Devilish Thugs and Dark Elf Scoundrels (see below)
Minions: Imps and lot’s of them!
The Villain’s Plan: Harvest a Resource + Perform a Dark Ritual
The Dark Lord harvests souls from surrounding humanoids by having them mind-controlled and sign faustian deals with devils… a few hours before they die.
FACTIONS
Faction #1: Goblin Warren, Outlook/Plan: Seeking
Goblins are among those being “stolen” by the Mind Parasites the Dark Lord uses (see below). Goblin elders are aware of the Dark Lord’s presence and suspect he’s behind the disappearances, but are afraid of confronting him.
Goblin Hunters: Spears and Shortbows
Goblin Witch Mother Crone: “I Curse You”
Faction #2: Infernal Lawyers, Outlook/Plan: Trading
A Group of devils are present in the dungeon, happily drafting and signing up very lucrative faustian pacts with appallingly short lived humanoids. They are unaware (and uncaring) of the loophole the Dark Lord is using.
Infernal Lawyers: “What we do is legal”; “Is the Paperwork in order?”
Infernal Assistants: “This Book of Law is Heavy!” “Right away boss”
Faction #3: Psychic Worms, Outlook/Plan: Trading + Allied With Main Villain
A race of physically weak sentient parasitic worm-like creatures (2” in length, mouth like Carrion Crawler, very slow) that feed on brains. They’ve entered a bargain with the Dark Lord. The Lord provides relative safe transport to defenseless “hosts”, the Worms burrow in the hosts’s spines, take control of the bodies and return to the Cave where they sign away their hosts’ souls shortly before consuming their brains.
Dark Lord: It’s the perfect symbiotic deal!
Psychic Worms: Hidden; Psychic Blast; Psychic Explosion (kills the worm); physically weak
Faction #4 : Dark Elves
Outlook/Plan: Seeking
Dark Elven Scoundrel are paid by the Dark Lord to seek out and deliver canisters of mind worms into the vicinity of likely targets. They use the gold and gem to finance a future excursion/invasion on the surface.
Dark Elf Scoundrel: Sneaky; Poisoned Weapons; Infravision; “We Hate elves”
Faction #5: Battered Infernal Auditor
Outlook/Plan: Hiding
An infernal auditor and his retinue of agents were on the trail of the Dark Lord’s scheme, trying to catch him red handed. However, the auditors were bushwhacked by the Hunter Construct (See Wandering Threat below) and barely survived. They are hiding from it, trying to find a way to achieve their objective.
The Auditor: Red Pen of Doom; ” Just one more question”; Badly wounded
Repo Devils: Grabbing Claws; lack of imagination; Badly wounded
Wandering Threat:Crafty Beast
The Discordian Hunter Construct
Sensing a significant infernal disturbance affecting the multiverse’s balance, the Discordian Council has sent a Hunter Construct to seek and destroy it. So far the construct hit the auditors but has managed to miss of the faustian lawyers who are protected by the Dark Lord’s forces.
The Discordian Hunter Construct: relentless; Crushing claws; Single Minded; Inflexible programming
How to play this Adventure
As you can see, the “Scaffold” makes no mention of maps, scenes, encounters, treasures or anything. Yet, I find it easily adapted to any fantasy RPG. By adding stats for the Villain, its Agents and Minions; factions and the “Wandering Threat”, an enterprising GM could improvise scenes solely based on setting an initial scene and then running with it based on player choices. More classical GMs could draw (or borrow) a dungeon map and create areas with the various factions, traps and treasures in the purest Gygaxian form.
However, where the model really shines for me is that they are totally compatible with “Mouseburning” game play. Players miss a skill check? Something goes wrong? Your game of choice wants you to implement a complication? Just look at the Scaffold and pick what could happen… maybe the Hunter Construct shows up? Maybe PCs get caught in a Goblin Trap? The Auditor may send his Repo Devils to try to enlist the PCs…
The possibilities are there, ready to be exploited!
Chatty’s Playtest
For instance here’s how my game went:
Scene 1: Players inquired in town about the mine. They were told that mining stopped in the northern shaft because it was run over by goblins. They were also told that people rose up at night and could not be prevented from walking into the mines short of killing them, they never came back.
Scene 2: Heroes laid watch at the nearest exit of the mine and caught a pair of Dark Elves carrying 4 ivory tubes each. After overpowering them, they found the tubes to contain disgusting, hostile worms with psychic powers, which they dispatched. Nobody came form the city that night…
Scene 3: Using a map found on the dark elves, the heroes navigated the mines, caves and upper underworld to find the dark elf outpost. They ambushed and kidnapped a sentry and learned about the deal with the Dark Lord, the worms nursery and the gold and gems mined by the enslaved goblins.
Scene 4: Heroes found cave where Dark Lord was hidden, discovered he wasn’t who they thought he was, fought him until he surrendered, begging for mercy. Heroes exposed his soul-stealing con and refused to let it pass so they dispatched him.
(Fin)
Many elements of the Scaffold never came into play, but that’s all right, they could fuel a further quest…. or not. We had fun for a few hours and that’s what counts.
Do you find an adventure “crib sheet’ written in this format helpful? Would you want me to share another one soon?
Let me know!
Soon, I’ll reveal how I got that adventure plan made.
26 Years of Gaming Lessons
My wife’s birthday is coming up, which made me think of my birthday, which made me think of my age, and thus, the length of time I’ve been a gamer.
I’ve been a gamer for 26 years, and in that time:
- I’ve lost an arm and a leg in the same fight;
- witnessed the best ever one-shot with a thrown dagger;
- seen the Statue of Liberty fall into the ocean;
- watched my Lamborghini Transformer get blown to bits by a Glitter Boy;
- and made the most awesome character… ever.
I don’t know how many more years I have in my RPG life, but I hope that when I’m done I can look back and appreciate it all. I’m going to take this moment to reflect on a few epiphanies I’ve had over the years…
Experience Matters
My very first experience with RPGs involved a very inexperienced DM. As our characters stood before a door, the DM stated, “You come up to a door. Do you go in?” We said, “Sure,” and were thus maimed because we walked into a pool of acid. Now, I’ve thought about trying acid, but not that way. What I get from this is that experience matters, both for the DM and the players.
The Rule of Cool
Back in the early days of AD&D, our group was fighting some enemies at a house. When the fight started, we knew that in the back of the house was a kennel full of war dogs. At some point, a PC saw an enemy run to the back of the house. Figuring that the enemy was going to let the dogs loose (and since we were losing the fight), he asked the DM if he could throw a dagger at the guy (even though they were on opposite sides of the house). The DM said sure, but because he couldn’t actually see the enemy, he’d need to roll a natural 20.
Of course, the PC threw the dagger over the house and ,you guessed it, the player rolled that 20. After we picked ourselves up off of the floor, the player started figuring damage when the DM said, “No-no-no. You effing killed the guy.”
That, is the Rule of Cool.
There are Ways to Suppress One’s Fear of Flying
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a cool movie. Hey shut up! It had freakin Wayne Gretzky, on steroids! Anyway, if you have a fear of flying, a good way to suppress that fear is to play RPGs!
It was the 7th grade, I had a huge crush on Cara Bujica… and I didn’t really care for flying. However, most of our 7th grade class was flying from Reno, Nevada to Washington D.C. I’d flown before, and while I haven’t retained an irrational fear of flying, I still don’t like it.
So, what better way to get your mind off of your fears than by playing an RPG? There we were, playing TMNT on a 747 jet, 30,000 feet in the air. Fear of flying? Not so much anymore.
Sometimes, Social Contracts ARE Needed
Nuff said.
It’s OK to Run Away
Sometimes, you just shouldn’t stay in the fight. I was playing “The Paralyzer” in Chaosium’s Super World when I (alone) was confronted by two acidicly-blooded aliens. After three short rounds of getting sprayed by acid (there’s that acid again), I lost both an arm and a leg. Lesson learned: I am not always the ultimo bad ass – sometimes it’s ok to run away.
(Editor’s Note: How the HELL did you run away with just one leg? That’s a story I want to read! /Chatty)
Rifts is too Hard to Run Correctly
T’was my first ever experience with Rifts: I made a Head Hunter, because it looked cool and I had a cool concept for him.
In the first round of the first encounter of the first session, my character died, simply because Rifts is Rifts. A couple of years later, I made a much more powerful rifts character who operated a Lamborghini Transformer. It was destroyed in the first round of its first fight by an evil Glitter Boy. My character died in the next round as the Glitter Boy kicked me across the river.
Lesson Learned: I will never play Rifts again, unless it is run by Kevin Siembieda.
I Can Never be as Cool as Wesley Crusher
Star Trek: The Next Generation was a cool show. Sure, the sets were all kinds of cheese, and the fight scenes were full of lame, but that show just drew me in. I’m sure Wil Wheaton is a cool guy, but not as cool as Wesley Crusher.
(Editor’s Note: I beg to differ, he actually reads the site. Hey Wil! /Chatty)
I liked the character of Wesley, and tried to emulate that character in a variety of ways in a variety of RPGs. You know what? My characters were never that cool, and they always fell flat. I could never pull off a Wesley Crusher – type character the way Wil can.
Lesson Learned: Be original with your PC, since you’ll never pull off a copycat as well as the original.
I’d Rather Not Sit Through a Lost Turn
Sure, penalties for your character from time-to-time make a combat encounter dynamic. I can dig it. I do dig it. But if my character gets Stunned one more time and I have to lose my turn, I’m gonna leave the game and turn on the boob tube – because watching Oobi is a hell of a lot more fun than sitting at the table doing nothing.
Kenny Rogers had it Right
I’ve been in bad groups like bad relationships. You know what I mean… You spend time with this group of gamers, hoping that you get to enjoy your hobby as well as their company, but you end the night upset and sometimes demoralized. Whether you simply don’t mesh with the group, or you have a “problem player,” you have to know when to do something about it. My time is valuable, and I want to enjoy my time with a supposed-to-be-fun hobby, so if I don’t fit in with this group, I’m out. If you cause problems in my game, you’re out. I’m done with the unfun.
Lesson Learned: You have to know when to fold’em.
If You’re Going to Make a Character, Make it a Good One
The best gaming I’ve ever done as a player happened when I put the most effort into my character. That’s where I get my enjoyment from, playing the role. I’m talking about when you figure out where your character comes from, what his goals are, his outlook on life, his quirks, the things he’s good at, the things he’s bad at, the line he won’t ever cross under any circumstances, and the thing that he believes in so much that he’ll cross any line to get there.
I’m talking about diving into the role of someone that isn’t you. When I put little effort into my character, I get little in return. That’s how it works for me. I want to enjoy my time at the table. That’s why I play the game. I get to step out of my shoes and into those of another, to go on adventures, missions, and treks across the galaxy. I get to be someone else, instead of that dude who babysits a bunch of inmates in a jail, and then goes home to a bunch of bills.
These are the ten most significant events, or realizations, in my gaming career. I consider them lessons that I’ve learned, though I don’t declare that they apply to everyone. They mean something to me, have shaped the way I game today, and made me appreciate the hobby more than ever.
Thanks for reading.
Tourq Stevens runs the resource website, Stuffer Shack, because he loves the hobby of gaming, has learned so much from it, and hopes to help make it fun for others.
The Creme Filling Of The DM Soul
Today's mimic knows that cinnamon rolls, not treasure chests, are a much better means of attracting unwary adventurers.
There’s a few reasons I like talking about my D&D game in my weekly column. One, it makes coming up with a topic much easier. Two,writing about my DMing troubles helps me identify what those troubles actually are. Last, if I talk about something I’m having trouble with, the community is awesome, and I have a veritable cornucopia of good ideas to choose from for next time. Seriously, you guys rock. I took a lot of notes from the last two weeks, and I think last week’s D&D session went considerably better.
The Unfortunate Bits
This not to say, of course, that there weren’t some bumps in the road. We had a player leave the group due to scheduling conflicts, so his spot went to the next guy on our waiting list. Naturally, the other guy on our waiting list wanted to play too. I initially told him no and was devastated by the ensuing puppy dog eyes. I took 5 ongoing guilt damage, and kept rolling 5′s for my save for the rest of the night. Also, I wanted him to play. So, against the advice of the village elders, I approached the group about adding a seventh member. There were some concerns aired about too much chaos at the table and combat taking too long, but everybody was OK with giving a group of 7 the ol’ provisional college try.
I won’t lie. We need to work on speeding up combat. We have a problem in our group with analysis paralysis. My gut tells me at least part of this stems from unfamiliarity with their powers. We’re only a few sessions in, we have a week between games, and only about half of us have the appropriate sourcebooks – relying only on Character Builder sheets for crunchy stuff. I’ve been prescribed a few fixes for this. Señor The Game recommended that make the new guy run initiative, which I totally forgot to do. ( I’ll get you next time, Gadget. NEXT TIME.) Another was to say who’s turn it is, and to also announce who’s on deck. I’ve also seen a few DMs over the years who impose a time limit on a player’s turn and either skip over them or have them automatically hold their initiative, but that just seems like a good way to irritate already-frustrated players. I never liked it when it happened to me. Coming up with weird crap to do takes time, dammit.
The Climactic Battle That Wasn’t
I tried hard this week to set up situations and hooks instead of railroading my players. I think they’re sufficiently used to me shoving them around that they recognized where the plot was and went without question. Hopefully that’ll change soon. I set up two combat encounters this week: one big bad and what I thought was a throwaway “kill some cultists” encounter as a lead-in. As it turned out, the “throwaway” took up most of the night, and wound up being probably our most exciting combat to date. It was the first time I’d used terrain effects, and the party took some adjusting. That, and I also used a reskinned Brain In A Jar type monster to dominate the PCs. On a few recommendations I’d read over the last week, I decided to throw a healthy amount of minions in with relatively few heavy hitters. I was honestly expecting the usual to happen: the mage comes in and nukes all the minions off the map, then the party gangs up on the bigger guys and we’re done by round 5. Somehow, the tank got separated and surrounded, the other melee fighters were separated (and also surrounded), and the party’s best ranged attacker was dominated and continuously pelting the paladin in the back of the head with arrows due to a statistically unlikely number of failed saves (I think we were approaching 10 by the time it was over.) I had decided from the start that I wasn’t going to fudge dice and try to let this one play out, and I’m pretty sure everyone at the table was wondering which way this battle was going to end. It was exciting. 100% all natural no-preservatives exciting. And no trans fats.
One thing I do regret is continuously attacking the paladin. I found myself trying to juggle between what I thought was a good tactical strategy (focus fire on one until dead, move on to the next) and trying to keep things fun (random/suboptimal target selection). I decided to go the tactical route, and I think I wound up with a frustrated player. I want things to be tense and exciting and to feel real, but not at the expense of people hating the game. The player knows I wasn’t just singling him out for personal reasons or anything like that, but I still felt bad. I never expected to have to think about this stuff before.
The Thing I Love Most
All that thinking about my campaign being somewhat devoid of humor last week made me realize something I had been missing since DMing: coming up with unusual character concepts and roleplaying my face off. Playing one of these characters was always a roll of the dice as a player. About 30% of the time, I’d find a deep vein of awesome and wind up having the time of my life for the whole campaign. The rest of the time, I find out about three sessions in that this schtick only goes so deep, it’s getting in the way of me being effective in combat, and/or it’s annoying the crap out of everyone else at the table. As a DM, however, my NPCs aren’t always right there breathing down everyone’s neck. Their on-stage insanity can be administered in measured doses, and I am no longer limited to ideas that would work for an adventurer. I realized at one point that a lot of these not-fun-to-play PCs all had one fatal flaw: they were NPCs born into the wrong side of the DM screen.
I decided to test this hypothesis using Lionel Pureheart, the first PC I ever had this issue with. He was gifted in the black art of necromancy, but had the kindest heart in the land. So he would offer his services (dubbed “Gentle Necromancy”) to the local townsfolk, such as having skeletons do the landscaping or bringing Grandma back from the dead to visit the family for a day. I had dreams of zany misadventures like these all through the campaign, but my DM at the time wasn’t having any of it. Every time he’d ply his trade, he’d be run out of town by a lynch mob. This was 3.5e, and I had him specialize in the Necromancy school of magic. Turns out that sort of mages aren’t particularly combat-effective. We eventually found some massively overpowered necromancy spell in some third party sourcebook, and Lionel was no longer a liability in combat. But he wasn’t much fun to play.
Since I’d just trapped our current group in what the Shadowfell, I thought it’d be interesting if poor Lionel managed to piss off the Raven Queen due to his, er, creative implementation of the black arts and she imprisoned him in the same realm as the PCs. However, since he’s the only one around who can help other poor souls trapped here, he can finally feel fulfilled. In fact, he’s never been happier. So I had him set up a nice little refugee camp, surrounded by picket fences made from various bones (with little hearts engraved on them) and set up signs around the area with a simple large pink heart and an arrow pointing to his camp. I got a lot of weird looks from my players, and then even more weird looks when I told them he smelled like fresh cinnamon rolls. It was totally worth it.
This, of course, comes with a few warning labels stuck on it. I’m thrilled that I get to have my particular brand of fun at D&D again. I need to be extra careful to make sure this story still belongs to the PCs. I need to make sure I don’t go too far off the deep end and go from entertaining to annoying. I’m not sure where the line is, but I do know that putting in the work planning everything seems a lot less like work when you get to do the thing you love most.
Strange as it sounds, it’s almost as if I feel like I’d just given myself license to play the game a little bit instead of just running it. I don’t know if that’s the “right” way to do run a game, but if you don’t like it then ROCKS FALL, EVERYONE DIES.
I could get used to this.
Photo Credit
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-04-17
- Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple – A Storytelling Game by @DanielSolis influenced by Avatar: The Last Airbender http://is.gd/Ri0RmL #
- From the Archives:: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (No Book 7 Spoilers) http://bit.ly/efi8KZ #charchive #
- RT @WyattSalazar: Get the revised and improved High Score here: http://is.gd/XhcsZv Hope you playtest and enjoy! #
- RT @AAGAD_GAMA: The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Announces 37th Annual Origins Awards Nominees http://fb.me/SC2wLC4U #
- RT @AAGAD_GAMA: For the Facebook-challenged, the 37th Annual Origins Awards nominees can now be viewed here: http://bit.ly/fiqwj5 #
- RT @Morrus: ZEITGEIST Adventure Path Kickstarter Booster Project! by Morrus — Kickstarter http://kck.st/ikBtDc via @kickstarter #
- RT @stannex: Built in memory of a young accident victim, a D&D park in Carbondale, IL, http://tinyurl.com/42onkkl http://tinyurl.com/42hjcdf #
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