Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-07-31
- Only a few hours left – if you haven't voted for us for Best Blog in the Ennies, please do so now! http://is.gd/Tx0vJy #
- #charchive #
- RT @Hzurr: Woah, "Elemental Hero's Handbook" release in Feb 2012. http://brd.rs/nRYApL New Classes: Sha'ir , shugenja, & elementalist #
- Dave's Gen Con 2011 Schedule – Wednesday 6:00 PM – DD&D Party at the JW Marriott High Velocity Bar &… http://tumblr.com/xcu3p6ro1r #
- RT @WyattSalazar: RELEASE: Expedition Alpha Playtest http://wp.me/po2FO-123 #
- Third Humble Indie Bundle available now, includes such games as Crayon Physics Deluxe http://bit.ly/hvcsBL #
- Today is Gary Gygax's birthday. Please consider donating today to the Gygax Memorial Fund: http://www.gygaxmemorialfund.com/ #
- Cheers, Gary collection of Gygax Q&A to be released at Gen Con: http://bit.ly/qWSNVt Take the Gary Gygax quiz too: http://bit.ly/p2N5M2 #
- RT @AsmadiGames: Kickstarter is up for our next upcoming game, Fealty! http://bit.ly/pjQaHm Fealty is awesome, short, and strategic. #
- RT @RobinDLaws: Hite & Hindmarch team up for bookish Trail of Cthulhu / Fiasco crossover: http://scr.bi/pHEMIL #
- Happy birthday to Know Your Roll columnist @shawnmerwin! http://bit.ly/oiItGF #
- Mistborn Adventure Game pre-order details announced http://is.gd/tYDHTs #
Drinking Dungeons & Dragons 2011 Is Coming
In 2008, I jokingly posted drinking rules to D&D. Chatty DM followed up with some comments on it, and a few discussions later, we had our first game of it planned for Gen Con run by him. We liked it so much we did it again in 2009 with even more people. In 2010, we had so many people and so many ideas we decided to run two tables at once, with Chatty running one table and me the other, going through the same adventure with parallel universe versions of each group. We also incorporated a new, cleaner way to do the drinking rules that we shared with everyone. Eventually all but one person jumped ship into one reality (the one person jumping back into the other reality to be contrary), leaving only one universe left and a big group of happy players.
So of course we’re doing it again. Bigger and better than ever.
For various logistical issues, and frankly because we want to keep this at the point of still being fun, the actual games this year are invitation only and we already have our player’s list. However, just like before, we want to make this a big event where you can hang out with various bloggers the evening before Gen Con.
(Important Note: We are NOT the Drunken Dungeons & Dragons game in the official Gen Con schedule, nor are we affiliated in any way, so we have no information on it.)
The DD&D Party: Everyone is Welcome
If you’re going to be at Gen Con, swing by the High Velocity Sports Bar in the JW Marriott, in the private Skybox room at 6 PM Wednesday, August 3rd. Come grab some food and drinks and meet this year’s DD&D players, maybe even play a few board and card games. (By the way, showing up here is the best way to get a chance to be invited to DD&D next year).
Then after the party, if you’d like to stick around, you can be an audience member for…
DD&D 2011: The Ultimate Dungeon Reality Show
Watch 4 D&D parties from vastly differently worlds compete in the multiverse’s favorite game show, WHO WANTS TO SAVE REALITY? The network only has the budget to save one universe, so each team will compete in a series of challenges on the Plane of Games to see which one gets the highest ratings and thus is worth saving. Monsters will be slain, challenges will be overcome, products will be placed, produceamancers will produceamance, and drinks will be had. Plus new this year- the sober table which comes with its own spin on DD&D.
Myself, Chatty DM, Mike of Sly Flourish and Tracy of SarahDarkmagic will each be running a table in the same adventure. After the game, we’ll make the adventure available to everyone so you can run your own DD&D game.
Previews
With the help of Magic Set Editor, I’ve created a brand new deck of cards to replace last year’s Drinking Power Cards. Each one is a fictional product that the players must either drink or shoot a short commercial in order to activate. Each card has a tagline for the product, as well as a custom piece of art by Jared von Hindman. Here’s a preview of one of the cards:
And here’s the full un-cropped art of one of Jared’s awesome pieces (can you guess the name of the card?)
And of course, we’ll have colorful characters from last year. For instance, Slam Adams (Aspect: “Mine is Always a Good Decision”) is a Dwarven Warpriest of the Earth Domain from the D&D Core World, a Dwarven Druid from Dark Sun, a Dwarven Warpriest of the Death Domain from the Shadowfell, and a Seismic Magnetic from Gamma Terra.
See You At Gen Con
Come by, have a few drinks and something to eat, chat about RPGs, and help us kick off Gen Con 2011 with our biggest DD&D game yet.
The Architect DM: Nations as Character Backgrounds
I am still in the process of brainstorming on the following topics, but this post is an essential part of the process as I express my thoughts so far and more importantly get feedback from others and hear about their experiences.
After running an adventure of D&D last week that included our friend Dixon Trimline, he and I were having a post-adventure geek out because we don’t get the chance to talk in person that often. During this geek out we discussed the history of my D&D campaign, specifically the world that has been built before and during the game, when I caught inspiration for an idea of presenting nations and world building as character background “packages” that can be taken by players.
A concept that has become very prominent for me is the use of nations/regions in world building. The first campaign map that I designed was nondescript with a series of different towns and cities connected by long stretches of road. As I’ve built that game world over the last 10 years, the rest of the map has been divided into various nations and regions that help break up and define the world, and in so doing the nondescript area that I first designed has become more interesting as a contrast due to it not being a formal nation. For your own game these don’t have to be formal nations or well defined regions but the root of the idea is to have some kind of contrast between different locales, whether they’re bordering towns, two separate continents, entire worlds (Hoth vs. Dagobah, for instance), or hell even different solar systems and galaxies.
Stick to the Basics
When you start designing these different regions, start by outlining the basics for each region and look at the overall list to see what will make up your world. If you have to define what the planet Hoth is then the words “Snow Planet” are simple enough but extremely evocative, just like how “Swamp Planet” works for Dagobah. For my recent campaign world I started by tying the prominent nations to the roots of the 4th Edition D&D system with the following defining features: Divine, Arcane, Dwarf, Elf, Eladrin, Human, and Halfling. After making several lists along these lines, and looking at the pre-existing world map I was working with, I decided to make one nation the Arcane/Elf nation and another a more Fey/Eladrin nation. I also asked the players and heard a lot of requests for more technology, so I made a Dwarf/Technology nation as well. From there I’d already started adding secondary descriptions for each nation so I simply continued along that path until I started to get more and more refined ideas for each nation in the game world. [Read the rest of this article]
I Haven’t Washed My DM Pants In Six Months And They Smell Like Umber Hulk
When I got home from DDXP last January, the desire to have a gaming group again had been fanned from a wee spark into a roaring flame. I immediately set about the task of inviting people and getting things set up, and before we knew it, we were playing our first game together. As I’ve mentioned in this column before, I am not really accustomed to being at the helm of a gaming group. In past years, I just showed up at the designated place and time every week and consumed cookies and caffeine until something magical happened and I woke up at home with a tummyache the next morning. I knew that being the Dungeon Master was going to be different, but I really didn’t know how.
Now, just a shade under six months from where we started, I’m taking a step back to see how things are.
Formatting
When the group first started, we decided to play D&D every other week, and play various board and card games on the alternate week. We’d had a lot of people itching to play board games where I worked for some time, and I liked the idea of having more time to plan between sessions while I was still getting my dungeon-legs.
Now, after half a year, I find it interesting that the board game half of our game nights seems to be the star attraction (frequently, even to me!). Several of our players have brought friends or significant-other units, and I find myself with a very happy – and very full – dining room. Everyone still likes D&D, but I do think our campaign suffers from the lack of weekly play. There are other cards stacked against D&D as well. If more than 2 people are gone, we typically will default to board game night — which has resulted in 4-5 missed D&D nights. We also only play for a relatively short period (6-11pm, since it’s a weeknight), and we usually need until about 7:30 or 8pm to unwind, socialize, and get the game going. I don’t see this as a bad thing, except that it cuts into gaming time. All of our players have worked at the same place within the last year or so, several of us have either left or been laid off, and this is the only time we get to see each other and hang out now.
I’m not going to lie. This bothered me for a little bit. I wanted to put gaming first and I wanted everything to run super smooth and to have the Best Gaming Group Ever. Then Katherine, one our our players, utilized a particular talent she has in making people make sense. We need that social time. It’s a large part of why we have this group in the first place. It’s why you can go to a convention and have fun playing with a group of strangers, but you don’t have the same rapport and emotional connection like you do with a regular group. Do we need to make sure somebody sounds the Horn of Gaming to get the ball rolling sometimes? Sure. But do I still feel good at the end of the night even if we didn’t get a whole lot done? You better believe it.
Population Fluctuation
Our group has grown by a few members since we started. I had heard from several Smart People that anything above 6 players for D&D was too much, but we let a few more in anyway (mostly at my behest). The brains were correct: we frequently don’t get anything done — but we also don’t get a lot done when we only have 4-5 people either. As long as we have fun, I don’t really care. As for board game night…. I think we’re about to crest a dozen. We usually split into two games and each gets half the table. Sometimes it’s hard to hear, but it’s awesome.
As I mentioned before, all of us worked together or were (b)romantically involved with someone who worked with us. One unfortunate reality that goes along with this is that today’s business world/the economy/mole people etc. have not been particularly kind to said employer and they’ve been laying people off. People like, for instance, me. I was fortunate enough to land another job quickly and locally, but I worry about my friends who are still there. Especially the ones that I’m worried might have to move away, because then I don’t get to see them and/or kill undead with them anymore. My last group breaking up was not a pleasant experience for me, and it also involved some of my favorite people moving away where I don’t get to see them much anymore. We’re not to that point yet, and with the amount of players we have right now my guess is we could soldier on. But I really, REALLY don’t want to.
My Role In All This Play
I’ve talked a lot about the group itself, but not my role in it. Like I said, I’m not used to this, and I’m still not yet. I think I sort of act as a leader for us even today, but it pretty much consists of providing a place to play, making sure everybody knows where and when to come and working out the occasional (thus far almost negligible) issues the players might have. I’ve had a few DM’s that go on a power trip, so even talking about me being all leader-y makes me a little self-conscious even though I’m pretty sure that’s not me. I decided to take the initiative on things just because I knew somebody had to in order to make gaming happen. I’ve seen a couple groups fail because they never could get together or figure out what to do, and I think it happened in part because nobody stepped up. It certainly doesn’t have to be me, but I’m glad to try to nudge us in a gamerly direction, and to do the occasional organizational stuff. There’s not much, but it’s needed.
Speaking of organizational stuff — it didn’t always go right: I did all the pizza ordering for awhile and tried to have it ready by the time everyone got there, but getting everyone’s orders right frequently didn’t happen and we wound up with either too little or too much pizza. It wasn’t a tremendous deal but it was getting unnecessarily expensive. Lately we’ve been going with a “bring your own food” policy that seems to be working well.
I was kind of hoping to have the pre-game DM jitters gone by this point, but they’re still very much there before every session (and inversely as strong as how much preparation I’ve done, which really ought to be a lesson to me one of these weeks). I do think my confidence has improved somewhat. Some of the more… shall we say, experimental sessions we’ve had did have a few grains of method behind their madness. For instance, one side effect of having done a “zero-prep” session is that I know I can make something happen even if I don’t have anything to go on. Granted, it wasn’t very good, but now I feel much more comfortable if I actually do have things prepared and the terror of someone exploding my carefully-laid railplot is insignificant by comparison.
I had a player recently tell me he wasn’t having much fun during D&D, but he still loved playing boardgames and wanted to know if he could just do that half. I sat and read his text message for a moment, bracing myself for feelings of shame and inadequacy, waiting for the defensive response to bubble up into my brain. I was really surprised when it didn’t happen. I simply told him I was really glad he told me, and I’d SO much rather he told me and just did the stuff he enjoyed rather than sitting and being miserable every other week. I’ve been in a group where we were all too chicken to tell the DM we were unhappy and wanted to quit. It was awful, and it wasted everyone’s time. This was not. There were zero hard feelings and it was one of the better examples of communication among rational adult gamers I’ve ever seen. It did, however, make me want to get feedback from him to see what I could improve (regardless of whether he decides to play again later). If I was going to guess at my own flaws: I’ve stayed on the rails too much a few times, went way too far off the rails a couple times, I seem to be allergic to giving out treasure, and I don’t prepare enough. It might be time to poll my players to see what they think.
Appraisal
The uncertain future aside, I’d say we’re doing well and having fun. I don’t really know where this puts us on Chatty’s stages of RPG group development (any given session is a crapshoot between Storming and Norming), but our split format probably throws a few monkey wrenches into things. I’ve personally thought about lobbying to have board game night go three weeks in a row and only have one board game a night. Then again, I’ve also thought about doing the inverse. I feel like we’re having trouble doing a long campaign, and might do better with one or two session D&D adventures (or maybe even trying some “smaller” games like Leverage or Mouse Guard). I’d also like to try running some adventures I didn’t come up with. I think they might be a little easier for human brains to process, and I might learn how to make mine a bit more comprehensible along the way. Once again, probably time to speak to the group to see where we want to steer this thing. I really don’t think anybody cares, as long as we have fun.
So, basically, almost nothing turned out like I expected. Even so, sending out that batch of invites was one of the best things I’ve done in recent memory. I hope we can keep this going for a good long while.
Photo Credit
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-07-24
- From the Archives:: Give Feedback to your GM… and live! Part 1. http://bit.ly/r0NX0E #charchive #
- Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium to only be released to hobby and game stores and not to big box outlets http://bit.ly/rqCG3X #
- RT @AdamantEnt: Buckaroo Banzai Adventure Game: Coming in Spring 2012 from Adamant. Announcement: http://bit.ly/qjGZzH #
- Blood Bowl: Team Manager card game to be released in Q4 2011 by Fantasy Flight Games, no longer a deck-building game http://bit.ly/qZEyor #
- Only a few days left to vote in the @ENnies – it only take a few seconds to place a "1" for Critical Hits as best blog http://bit.ly/ofwQD9 #
- RT @Alphastream: Wow, cool idea, @Wizards_DnD ! Show off your PCs on your profile page! http://bit.ly/showyourPC #
- RT @SlyFlourish: My #dnd article "Abyssal Plague Demons" was published to #ddi this week: http://bit.ly/nfj2Yq Requires a #ddi sub. #
- RT @JaredvonHindman: #DnD Outsider: Role of Computers Returns! http://bit.ly/pyWGlU Special thanks to Tom Fulp. #
- RT @FFGames: Prepare to raise your house to dominance in Game of Thrones: The Board Game 2nd Ed & win the Iron Throne! http://bit.ly/qkLV04 #
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 3: RPG Blogging, The Revelation
The is next part of my autobiographical series on how I came to terms with the fact that I was I writer and how I then became a freelancer. It also marks my 4th anniversary as a blogger!
See part 1 here and part 2 here.
On July 24 2007, about 8 months after being hired as the Quality Manager for the Montreal Heart Institute Pharmacogenomics Centre, I opened up a Blogger account. I had all these fields to fill before I could get to the cool writing I wanted done. I spent nary a minute and settled on “Musings of the Chatty DM” as the blog’s title.
A choice I never regretted.
My first post was telling in terms of not quite knowing where things would go with the website (and my dubious grasp of written English):
I’ve been thinking for a long time about starting a Blog, I got an account at Live Journal (Unfinished 1st Post) and another one at Microsoft (3 Posts, hate the interface).
Since I have recently gone completely Googlely, I decided I might as well give Blogger a shot.
Anyway, I think I have always been blogging ever since I was given a email account. The only difference is that my readers (read: my D&D player’s mailboxes) were more or less captive of my musings. I think out of respect for them I should move away from that form of expression and do it on a Bona Fide blog. Of course, I can’t expect to have as many readers…. lol.
Sigh…
I’m currently reading Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek and I can’t help seeing a few similarities with his first posts, mine and those I see from talented new bloggers all over. First, we all look a bit like losers, seeking validation by using self-deprecation from the get go. Second, we all seem to struggle learning proper blogging English use. I mean, did I really say “lol” in a blog post? That’s like Wil’s overuse of the word “Lame” in his first few articles.
What’s “proper Blogging English” you ask? I touched it in the past:
While spelling and grammar are not hyper-critical (and can be helped by online tools), writing clear sentences, short paragraphs and ordering your thoughts in a comprehensive way is very important.
My first posts were short (yeah… pffff!) and very very numerous. I wrote about 860 posts in 4 years; each on average 1000 words each. At that time, I was looking for my voice yet still growing very fond of the act of writing just for the pleasure of doing so. What really got me going was getting comments from friends on some posts. From that point forward, I felt a great rush whenever I received a comment-notification email. I still love getting comments and read them all as soon as I can manage.
In August 2007, from the lofty height of my 30 days as a blogger, I cooked up my “Golden Rule of Modern Blogging“:
Write your Blog by assuming your boss, your wife/significant other/mom and your worst enemy will read it.
At that time, I was writing most of my blog post from work (guilty!) and I realized that I needed to start playing it safer. But, as I said in part 2, I was kept nowhere near busy enough to prevent me from knocking professional balls out of the park AND blog once a day at the same time. Of course… I didn’t edit my posts at all back then… so it was easier to just write and send while drinking the morning’s first Diet Coke (I don’t drink coffee).
I attribute 2 elements to my early success as a blogger (beyond my natural, if then unrefined talent as a writer):
The Linking Game (or the Birth of a Community)
First, I stumbled on the trick of linking to other blogs. At one point, I realized that I could write blog posts instead of leaving them comments on other blogs. When I did this, I instantly noticed how fast the blogger would come to check what the linked article said. This often started discussions and inspired blog posts between sites. In the late summer of 2007, I became close to a group of bloggers who had started at around the same time I did, namely the cast at Stupid Ranger (Dante, Stupid Ranger herself and Vanir who eventually joined us) and Zax a Montreal-born, Hawaii-based blogger who created and used to run Dungeonmastering.com. We exchanged links and emails a lot.
I also forged links with the guys that made me want to blog about RPGs: Dave and Danny over at Critical-Hits.com. They gave me advice and started dropping by the blog with witty comments and good feedback.
“Wait what?” aside: I merged with Critical-Hits in January of 2010, that’s why I refer to them as seperate here.
From this group grew a tight-knit community of what I would later call “The Second Generation RPG bloggers” (I then considered Jeff Rients and Berin Kinsmen to be among the 1st gen). We shared readers, links, reviews and news. This contributed to kickstart my readership but more importantly, it forged deep friendships that last to this day. Every time we can afford it, we meet at cons, game and organize events.
In fact, our annual Gen Con Drunken D&D, which now sports 4 DMs and 20 players, started in a hotel room in 2008 with 7 of those blogger friends sitting around a way too small table, having way too much fun.
Tropes!
I found my first (of many) voices as a blogger (and hit proverbial jackpot) when I started tackling tropes as playing aids for making RPG adventures. To this day, my Rule of Cool posts remains one of my favorite, most to-the-point post I have written (warts and all):
To transpose to RPG terms: Your players will put up with almost any illogical or “wobbly” plot devices or encounter you throw at them as long as things get cool enough. Which basically makes me think that my efforts as a DM should not so much be on far-reaching World Building and tight nitpicking-proof plot lines and such.
I should go all out for encounters and role playing that will swamp my players in coolness. Think combat on ice Bridges, negotiating the release of prisoners in a flooding underground prison, hopping from floating island to pieces of flying ruins in order to catch the thieves of the Star jewel of Radnia…
I had a blast writing about tropes. It fed my inspiration and growth as a blogger from the fall of 2007 way into 2009.
The Addiction Sets In
The blog’s success turned the endavour into an obsession. I was addicted to the sheer validation I got from the readers. So much so than my job of the time. The story they shared and the discussions they sparked were astounding. I was amazed that while people were battling trolls on their websites, I was surrounded by sane, polite (if passionate) people who really cared about the hobby. Oh I got a few rowdy guests (less than a handful in 4 years actually), but they were either convinced to behave and became lively, constructive participants (one even became a successful blogger) or were ignored.
Here’s a quick comment-management tip I think I got from Shamus Young (from Twenty-Sided) which I’ll paraphrase here:
A blog is not a public forum, it’s like your porch. People are welcome on it and everyone can discuss more or less freely according to your rules. Yet, when it’s all said and done, it is YOUR porch, and YOUR house. If people misbehave, or say things you don’t tolerate, you are free to ask them to leave. You can even kick them out and clean their messes.
At this point in my blogger experience, I found myself stuck in a pattern where I started to write for the readers. I wanted to generate responses, I wanted my inbox constantly flooded with comments. I was a slave to my blog and it started to show. Edition Wars posts, rants, contest posts, all these were plenty and easy to write… but I took less and less satisfaction from it I hit a few slumps and started looking for new voices on the blog. That’s when I started re-focusing on doing the blog for myself and consider its readership as a side-effect of the enthusiasm I pored into my prose.
Eureka, I’m mad!
While coming back from Gen Con 2008, in the grips of what would later be diagnosed as hypomania, I finally came to terms with what I was. I wrote this on the plane ride home:
I’m a Writer, because I blog and write Standard Operating Procedures for a living.
I’m a Writer, because I write adventures for my friends.
At Gen Con, I met many awesome people from the RPG industry as well as others, like myself, sitting at the edge of it all; many of them are Writers.
I don’t know why they are Writers. I’m a Writer because, given the opportunity to write about the things I love, I would do it 12 hours a day.Hell, I’d rather write than sleep!
Along with spending time with my family and gaming with my friends, writing makes me satisfied and happy. It brings me in the Flow: Time just stops existing while I spew stuff my mind makes up on the spot, my fingers flying on the keyboard at a speed that nearly matches my excited geek diatribes.
I’m a Writer, and I post my stuff on the Internet because I chose to ignore my doubts and stopped listening to my Inner Demons. I knew I had talent and I’ve managed to get a lot better since I started writing online 12 months ago.
I would love to become a published author of RPG material. I’d go absolutely geek-crazy to see my name on a Dungeon/Dragon/Kobolds Quarterly article.
If there was a way to make a decent living out of it, I’d quit my job in 5 minutes and never look back. Thing is, in the RPG industry, gamers won’t pay 400$ for a printed game system. While some would spend such a sum for getting a graphics cards just to play this “One computer Game”, you won’t see this happening in the RPG industry. Writers are paid like crap and amateur writer/fans often give out their work for free.
(I’m sure the same thing occurs in other writing fields.)
That’s not freaking fair but that’s life. I understand why it’s like that and thank God that the people in the industry are so nice. Quite often, just having a quick chat (or better yet a game) with a designer you admire makes up for all the work you poured into that adventure you wrote to run for your friends.
Be that as it may, I do not currently have the courage to leave my current job and jeopardize my family’s security to pursue the dream of writing full time. I do it in my free time and I make plans…Writers deserve better. That’s why I buy copies of new Role Playing Games I like. I want to support the creators like I hope others will support me some day…
Madness had finally struck me head on …
But with it finally came the Truth…
I was a Writer, I always have been and god willing, I always will be.
Scotty’s Brewpub: Gaming, Grog, Grub, and Good Times for Gen Con
For a big convention, there’s usually some place close to the convention center that offers deals to attendees, or maybe hosts a special night. If you take this idea, turbocharge it, engage the hyperdrive and push it until it goes plaid, you have what Scotty’s Brewhouse does for Gen Con. For the rest of the year, Scotty’s is a pub downtown proudly serving quality beer, drinks, and food. During Gen Con, they transform into something well beyond that.
How can an eatery relate to what gamers really enjoy? It’s really not that hard if the manager has been part of the gaming community himself. Dave Hornak was the owner of a game store in the southwest back in the early days of RPG gaming. He almost appeared in Dragon Magazine for his extensive collection of painted minis, but the article didn’t make the final cut for the issue. In 1988 he was a vendor at Gen Con. What better qualifications can you ask for when it comes to creating a great atmosphere for gamers attending the best four days in gaming? Sitting down and talking to him about Scotty’s plans, I could see that the passion is still there, coupled with the desire to make his establishment the undisputed place to be for all the convention’s attendees.
Every aspect of Scotty’s will have some gaming twist during Gen Con. To start with, there is a special Gen Con menu. Even more impressive, the author of the menu was also one of the authors of D&D. Wizards of the Coast is heavily involved in Scotty’s Gen Con plans this year, including the menu. While I spoke with Dave, I feasted on what will be known as the Elder Red Dragon chicken sandwich. I won’t spoil the description, because it’s a riot. This menu is going to be a lot of fun.
Moving beyond the menu, the placemats this year are being designed by Troll Lord Games. Each will be a fully playable dungeon adventure based on the restaurant layout. Yes, your placemat is a small RPG. Troll Lord Games also designed the brunch menu (available every day of Gen Con from 10 am to 1 pm).
The pub itself will have a lot of custom banners this year designed for specific placement in Scotty’s by the game companies themselves. As in previous years, there will be sci-fi/fantasy movies playing constantly on the many TV screens through Gen Con week. I got to take a peek at some of social media and menu art that you’ll see and I have to say it’s been turned up to 11 this year. Really quality stuff custom designed for Scotty’s by the gaming companies working with them. [Read the rest of this article]
Killing Characters
“O death, where is thy sting?…” — 1 Corinthians 15:55a (KJV)
One common complaint about Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, aside from incoherent rants about it being a video card miniatures game that wants to punch grandmothers, is that the characters are so darned hard to kill. What happened to the good old days when the average fighter would have 10 hit points and the average magic-user, bless his fragile heart, would have 3 hit points, and could be felled by a particularly deep splinter?
Across our current battle maps, there are:
- Defenders: Blocks of hyper-magnetized steel who not only lock down the biggest bads, but also are invulnerable to most attacks with their high AC, oceans of temporary hit points, self-healing, and resistances out their heavily armored wahoos.
- Strikers: Highly mobile death-dealers who eviscerate solos in a tornado of blades and blasts, often causing so much damage on a single turn that the player requires a calculator, an abacus, and a team of accountants.
- Controllers: Comparatively delicate, these minion-erasers and battlefield grand masters lay down zones of pain and sadness on the enemies, stripping defenses, amplifying agonies, all while cowering behind their unyielding allies.
- Leaders: Semi-toughs with ouchie weapons and scorching rays whose real strength lies in the bubble of healing and support with which they surround the party, closing wounds, augmenting defenses, and guiding attacks, bettering all party members.
Typically, each of the characters in the party has a single brain running it, choosing an optimized course of action that is unimpeded by complexity or distraction, while the DM juggles settings and environments, traps and hazards, motivations and strategies for dozens of enemies, all while managing the blizzard of chirpy questions from the players: Can I move here? How do runes work? Why don’t I have line of sight? Can I use History to find secret doors? Are you sure I already used my action point? My second wind? My daily power? [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Sandbox Campaigns
The Architect DM series has covered a lot of different aspects or tabletop RPGs ranging from details of a single encounter to the much larger task of planning out an entire game world. I’ve found myself tending to progress through that range from post to post instead of staying to one end or another for more than one or two posts in a row. With this in mind, today’s post comes from some of my more recent thoughts on campaign planning and how to build towards running a mostly sandbox style game.
It’s Tough to Start in the Sandbox
One of the biggest reasons there is so much material written about sandbox games, and why people look so hard for it, is because running a sandbox game is not easy. Many people may offer you advice and provide tricks to help make it easier, but in my opinion attempting to run a sandbox game takes a difficult task (running a tabletop RPG) and makes it much more of a challenge. With this in mind I’ve been brainstorming what kind of advice I would give to people who know the difficulties of running such a game but still want to try it out.
Now that I’ve been running an ongoing campaign for the last three years, I’ve started to realize that my options for running a sandbox game in my game world have expanded. My number one advice for running a sandbox game would be to not worry about it and start running your game as soon as possible. You can plan as much as you want, but the best way to help the players feel more comfortable exploring the sandbox that is your game is to start introducing the players to locations and NPCs. It’s perfectly fine for you to start out with one or more railroading plots/adventures because the more plot seeds you plant and the more familiar the players become with your game world the easier it’s going to be to run an effective sandbox game. [Read the rest of this article]
Save Yourself: Vote For Critical Hits
As many of you are aware, Critical Hits is up for an Ennie this year. Dave has already given you all several good reasons to vote for us, but I’m here today to seal the deal. I put myself at great personal risk to reveal this information, but a win this year would shed a lot of light on the truth all gamers need to know.
Your Dice Are Alive – How Long Will You Be?
You heard it here first: your dice are alive. Don’t believe me? Think about all the times your dice have betrayed you, or that one time you inexplicably rolled 6 20′s in a row. It is the richest of irony that people use dice to simulate the generation of random numbers. They are grown on secret farms deep within blackest Ohio, and their eggs are harvested and stored in what appears to be grain silos but are actually special dice towers designed for polyhedral husbandry. The dice are then sterilized so that they do not continue to breed at gaming tables around the world. The sole exception to this rule is the barrel that gamers typically buy a “scoop” of dice from at conventions, never realizing that those dice were never manufactured. They put 4 dice in that barrel six months previous, sealed the lid, and cracked it open at the convention months later. This is also why you frequently find dice in your bag that you don’t remember buying after you’ve been to a convention.
Even worse, this dark secret kept from you by the evil gaming megaconglomerates hides an even deadlier sub-secret. As you may have guessed, the different breeds of polyhedral dice yield the various numerical denominations. However, the d12 (being the alpha of any given set of dice) has a set of natural defenses not found in any other polyhedral breed – including a deadly neurotoxin secreted through its 8 facet, known as d12xin. This poison is the primary reason very few epic-level monks were ever played in D&D 3e – their players had a penchant for mysterious death the day after a particularly combat-heavy game night.
We here at Critical Hits believe that all gamers have the right to continue breathing, and we’ve made it our personal mission both to prevent the tragedies caused by d12xin and to find a humane (and perhaps one day even synthetic) way to produce dice for tabletop gaming. Our own Chatty Phil is a microbiologist, and it is for this reason that we joined forces with him over a year ago. While he has not yet produced an antidote for d12xin, several useful byproducts have resulted from his research – including a cure for Pathfinder’s.
We can’t do this without your support. A vote for Critical Hits is a vote for life – both for your PC, and you.
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