Articles by Danny Rupp
Danny works professionally as an architect and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).
Cure Selfish Wounds
Today’s D&D Next post at the Wizards site by Bruce Cordell is titled Time to Heal and discusses the role of the Cleric class and how it relates to healing through the life span of Dungeons & Dragons. There’s a nice little recap of how healing and the Cleric class have both worked in previous editions, and then there is a poll asking how people prefer the mechanics to be handled. Reading about how healing worked in previous editions brought forward some experiences that I am dying to share with you.
After the announcement of 4th Edition D&D, Dave decided he wanted to run a finale 3rd Edition (3.x in actuality) campaign to send the edition off in style. Gathering a group of players mostly from around where I live, Dave kindly traveled a decent distance to plan and run the game for us. One of the first things that happened amongst the players during character creation is that a friend of ours called playing the cleric. This wasn’t too surprising if you know anything about the cleric class in 3rd edition and how overpowered it can become, but even this early in the process I had a small suspicion that healing would be an issue for this party. As such, and inspired by an excellent character in the Wheel of Time novels I was reading, I decided to give a serious try to playing a Bard character for the first time. This allowed me to play a character type that I wanted to play while still having access to healing spells if the need arose.
Dawn of the Selfish Cleric
Before I get too far into this, let me say that I do not hold any grudges against this player (he is a regular in my current ongoing game) and he was never elusive or deceptive about the type of character he was playing. With that out of the way, I will say that there was quite a bit of tension in this party based on the fact that we were adventuring with a cleric that did not seem to know how to heal. Ever. Having chosen his domains in the direction of war, death, and destruction, this cleric instead become potentially the most powerful and dangerous member of our party through the entire course of the game. [Read the rest of this article]
Dungeons & Dragons of Future Past
I have a lot of other things I want to talk about here on Critical Hits, but with Monday’s announcement of a new style of Dungeons & Dragons in the works it feels wrong to talk about anything else. The 4th edition of D&D brought about the only long campaign I’ve ever managed to run, and I attribute a large part of that to the ways the new edition changed the role of being a Dungeon Master and the tools it provided. Another large part of my ability to run a long game was this, right here, the (online and otherwise) RPG community that I’ve had the benefit of being a part of for many years now that has provided me with limitless resources to aid in my DMing efforts. After D&D Next (as I’ll refer to it for simplicity) was announced the online RPG community went crazy, and I saw a number of people sharing lamentations that 4th Edition was now “old” and “going away.” I’ve finally managed to wrangle my thoughts about D&D Next, and they are overwhelming in their hope that whatever D&D Next is it helps me to continue running 4e D&D.
I say “continue running 4e D&D”, but what I really mean is that I hope D&D Next doesn’t mean the end of support for and the release of new content for 4e games. I’d say with any of the editions of D&D that I’ve played they never lasted more than 3 months without picking up house rules amongst our friends. My primary desire with D&D Next and its modular ideals is that it effectively presents an edition of Dungeons & Dragons that embraces the house rule approach many groups take and says, “Here’s D&D, here are some different ways to play it, and here are some tools to help you make it your own.”
No Edition is Perfect
I believe the primary issue with the “edition wars” and people arguing about D&D is that sooner or later, one or both sides forget that no edition of the game has ever been perfect. There may be some people out there who found Basic D&D, 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, or 4th Edition 100% perfect as they were published, but I would hazard to guess that these people are in the extreme minority. If you look at the market right now, you can see the proof: Pathfinder expanded and modified 3.x and there are tons of old-school D&D hacks and clones that choose different pieces of the game to change and others to keep the same. The problem is that every person and every group is different and they’re going to have different expectations and discoveries as they play D&D. In the end, I hope that D&D Next is representative of all editions of the game because as a game that has no edition of its own it could really be perfect for everyone. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Winging It
Let me know if this situation sounds familiar to you: You’re the DM/GM for your gaming group and you’ve just wrapped up an adventure, and you have at least a whole week until the next one. You’re committed to planning well in advance and making sure you’ve worked everything out well in advance of the next adventure. You sit down the next day, or even that very night, and start the adventure planning process. Maybe you start with a recap of the last adventure, or by listing the continuing plot seeds from the previous sessions and loose ends. Over the next few days you stay on track but before you know it the next adventure is looming and you feel like despite your best efforts the game is still not as ready as you feel it should be. Stress builds, you think about postponing the game or suggesting you all play board games instead, but you hunker down and keep planning. The day of the game comes and you’re still not “ready”, you should have started even earlier and planned more in advance!
This situation has happened to me plenty of times, and I’m willing to bet it’s happened to many of you as well. I stopped the anecdote there intentionally because that is where it can branch in several different directions. If you’re particularly stressed (most likely by things other than the game you’re running, even if you don’t realize it) then you’ve already postponed the game or suggested something else to do instead. Maybe you sat down to watch some TV in the morning and held out to the very last moment, then just as your friends arrive and everything is being set up for the game you pull the plug and suggest something else. Maybe your players are fantastic (like many of mine have been in the past) and offer you so much encouragement and potential disappointment that you get a second wind (pardon the unintentional 4e pun) and run the game you’d been planning. Or perhaps you decide you’ve planned about as much as you ever manage to plan and go ahead with the adventure, improvising and winging it to the best of your potential.
The Genesis of Adventure
If you’re anything like me than all of the above situations are fairly familiar to you. No matter how much I prepare, plan, or plot there is a decent part of me that feels unprepared for running any given RPG session. I’ve had to cope with and adjust to this fact and in the end it has led to me becoming more comfortable at winging adventures and doing my own share of improvisational DMing. However, as I’ve gotten more experience at this process I’ve noticed some striking similarities to other processes that I’ve learned and read about. Specifically, my advice today relates the process of planning and running an RPG adventure to the process for generating ideas. Even more specifically, in the process of generating ideas one of the most important steps is taking time to relax, distract yourself, and partake in other activities and let your unconscious mind take over the process. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Building a DM Library
I believe that most DMs have only run a single campaign world, whether it was one big campaign that has been continued through various ages, or they’ve only managed to run one satisfactory campaign. The tendency for a DM seems to be to conserve the number of campaigns they run by reusing worlds or tying them together so that in the end the number of campaign worlds they run is as close to one as possible.
For instance, though I have run three separate D&D campaigns all have taken place within the same game world and have been tied together despite being run in two different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Our very own Dave the Game ran a handful of campaigns through our years at school that all took place in the same game world, then he moved away to college, created a game world there, and upon his return ran a new game for us that had hints linking it back to the world he used at college. In the same vein, I think our tendency as DMs is to keep things relatively stable within our game worlds unless they are split by something like a change in campaign.
Last week I talked about my experiences in Architecture school and learning how to design with precedents, as well as how to apply this concept to running RPGs and creating campaigns. Now I would like to take that concept one step further and talk about building a personal DM library that you can use to help you run RPGs. The idea of building a personal library is nothing new, artists frequently do this with art books and clippings from magazines and newspapers for use as reference, and architects do it as I discussed in my post about precedents through study and history books that allow us to see how other architects have gone executed their designs. When I started to think about building a personal DM library, the idea was a lot more intimidating than I thought it would be.
Beyond the Spiral-bound Notebook
You might be thinking, “I already have a DM library, right here in my spiral-bound notebook!” That’s great, and I have the exact same thing for my own campaign, but the concept I’m trying to get across is something beyond just the notes about overall plots and the next adventure you plan to run. In essence, I’m talking about a library where you keep all of the ideas that you don’t put into your spiral-bound campaign notes. One of the most common phrases I hear in conversations between other DMs is, “Wow, I’d love to run a game using that idea!” For years we tossed around how fun it would be to run two ongoing campaigns that were linked and in the same game world, but it wasn’t until the launch of 4th Edition and with a lot of effort on our parts that Dave and I finally did it. I can’t even imagine how many other gaming groups have had the same idea but never took it passed the “that would be cool” phase. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Designing with Precedents
It has been a few weeks since my last Architect DM post, but I’ve been brainstorming a handful of different posts and this one came to the forefront as something I want to discuss. My last post introduced some of my general thoughts about worldbuilding for modern and futuristic games, which is a genre that I plan on talking about more in the future. However, this week I’d like to discuss something I learned in architecture school that can be applied to your games and make your life as a DM/GM easier.
Whenever we started a design project or exercise in college we would first spend time studying a selection of existing buildings, often designed by well known architects. After a few days or even a week of studying those buildings, we would then move into designing our own solutions to the challenges put forth by the project. While working through the early design process we would often refer back to the existing buildings we had studied and choose one or two to be our “design precedents”.
What is a Design Precedent and how do I use it?
The concept of using a design precedent in architecture is really just an easy way of teaching students the old saying, “there are no new ideas”. While working through a design challenge, it was very helpful to see how a well known, professional architect had solved similar problems and being inspired by them or replicating them in new ways. What does this mean for you and your RPGs? For starters, it means that for any location or setting you’re using in your game, you are not only completely free to use existing spaces or designs for inspiration but it is actually the best thing you can do for your game. Don’t worry about being completely original or designing the whole world on your own. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Modern and Futuristic Settings
I’ve talked quite a lot about worldbuilding and running roleplaying games in fantasy settings, but I’ve been planning on addressing modern and futuristic RPGs for a long time as well. One of the big hurdles that I have to overcome when thinking and writing about modern/future settings is that they seem inherently more difficult to deal with than their fantasy counterparts. For a modern or even a historic RPG I believe the difficulties come from the game being based in a real world that brings with it a vast amount of expectations from the players. If you’re running a game in these settings and a player at your table knows more about history than you, it can become very intimidating to even try to plan or run the game. Science fiction and futuristic games are a little bit better, but you’re still dealing with a lot of heavy science and realistic elements that can lead to issues where they might not have arisen in your typical elves and magic infused setting.
This topic is fresh in my mind because recently I was discussing with a few people online about how most fantasy RPG settings have levels implied in their character creation and most modern/sci-fi settings do not. Certainly there are some examples to the contrary (Star Wars Saga uses levels and is based on the d20 system, for one) but it does seem like a trend in RPGs that can be analyzed and discussed. It is always good to remember that generalizing and categorizing things like this is an imperfect practice, but I think it is safe to assume certain things about particular settings and so I’m going to discuss some of those things here. While taking part in the RPG levels discussion, I realized that in most modern/sci-fi settings the emphasis is less on the character increasing in power and more on their skills and equipment improving.
The Acquisition of Personal Power
If you have a modern/sci-fi game where the majority of the characters are increasing in personal power, it often falls more into the superhero mold of game. This train of thought led me to think about the typical Dungeons & Dragons game and how it can be seen to trend towards the superhero spectrum of fantasy games, a trend that I feel has been increasing as D&D has progressed through more and more editions. You are certainly perfectly free to run non-supers games of D&D, but rather than these being the norm for fantasy games they are now a sub-category often categorized as “gritty” or “low-fantasy”. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Worldbuilding Diary
For well over a year now I’ve kept an eye on the material that our friend Dennis has been producing over at his blog The Spirits of Eden for his RPG setting, the World of Adel. I’ve talked to him a few times about his worldbuilding and the setting that he’s created, and every time we talk I marvel more and more at what he is creating. Today he has started a series of posts he is calling a Worldbuilding Diary and I was instantly impressed and inspired by it.
If you haven’t seen his blog or read anything about the World of Adel, I highly recommend it if you’re in the mood for a setting unlike any of the published settings I’ve seen. It has a very personal feel to it and has Dennis’ fingerprints all over it, but the various elements he has combined and the amount of raw passion that goes into his efforts really make it stand out for me. I remember talking to him over a year ago and being very interested in his dislike of the proliferation of humanoids in standard D&D and his desire for more alien and insect-like allies and adversaries. The world has evolved since then, and to start this post out I’d like to share some of the aspects of it that interest me the most.
The World of Adel
Dennis may comment on here that I’ve gotten it all wrong or that I’m focusing on the wrong things, but here’s why I think you should care about his setting. Dennis has started categorizing the World of Adel as “Sci-Fantasy” and managed to get beyond my initial cringing at any kind of cliche combining of concepts by comparing it to some of the earliest Science Fiction stories that most people would barely put into the category. This sentence alone would hook me into a non-standard fantasy setting to start with:
Adel has many accoutrements of science-fantasy: there are robots you can accidentally wake up that will kill you, high-tech artifacts lying around, and a few people can find and carry around laser guns, often to the alarm of everyone around them.
For many of us this most likely conjures images of a setting like Eberron or something very steampunk that meshes fantasy ideas with the low-end of the science fiction spectrum. However, Dennis goes on subvert these ideas by explaining that much of the setting is still very rural and set in a world that can literally speak to the inhabitants through active spirits. This quote is the next part of his diary that really hooks me in: [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Character Creation
If someone asked me for a single bit of advice to improve their roleplaying games, whether as a DM or a player, I would tell them to spend as much time as they can reading the great fantasy and sci-fi books that are out there. For the first several years that I was playing RPGs I was not an avid reader and had not even heard of many of the classics, including ones that everyone should have heard of like The Lord of the Rings. At the time I thought many of my friends were insanely creative or stricken by some miraculous form of otherworldly inspiration, but as I’ve read more and more of the books out there I began to realize that most good ideas in our RPGs have been inspired by or even directly ripped from other sources. For example, in one of the first D&D games that I ever DM’d a player showed up with a character named “Muadib” and I remember thinking that it was a very unique and interesting sounding name. A year or two later I started reading Dune and groaned when I realized he’d simply lifted the name straight out of that book.
Let me start by saying that there is absolutely nothing wrong with naming a D&D character after your favorite character in a book or being inspired in any other way by what you’ve read. The reason I groan or roll my eyes when I realize something is from a book is often because I thought it was an original idea and as a result I feel like a chump. I’ll state it again just to be clear, the problem in these situations is with ME, and not with the people who are using books for inspiration. The reaction I have is an expression of feeling less educated and less informed than other people.
Read, Read, Read then Borrow, Borrow, Borrow
From the introduction to this post you might think I’m against borrowing from books in RPGs, but I’m simply telling you how I slowly came to the realization that borrowing can greatly improve your games. Aside from a handful of actual groan worthy concepts, such as showing up to a D&D game with a dual scimitar wielding drow ranger, the people that you game with will most likely appreciate any ideas inspired by other sources. If they’re familiar with the source material then they should be able to enjoy the experience in the same way as you, and if they’re not familiar with the source then they might think it is a very unique and interesting idea. One end result of this process that I never predicted at my own table is that some players, upon finding out certain ideas were inspired by a series of books, have sought out the books and begun reading the series to enjoy the same inspiration that many of the other players and I have had. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Dungeon Interconnectivity
Yesterday I started playing the new game Dark Souls on the PS3 and the level designs in the game are very inspiring when it comes to planning out dungeons. One of the coolest things that Dark Souls and many other video games do with their levels is interconnecting different areas in creative and unexpected ways. This is also an element that I see very rarely in tabletop RPG dungeon design, and that’s a disparity that I’d like to see changed.
Imagine an extreme case of dungeon interconnectivity where you run an entire campaign within one big dungeon. I’m sure it’s been done before at least once, but if done correctly I think this could be a very interesting idea for a game and create some unique moments for RPGs. Whether or not you want to think about the extreme case, I think adding some well placed connections at different points through your dungeon can not only make it feel more realistic but also add a whole new level of interest to the dungeon for you and your players.
Classic Use of Thresholds
Perhaps the most common method of accomplishing this that I’ve seen in published RPG dungeons is through the use of doors, often of the locked variety. The locked or otherwise impassable door is the simplest way of redirecting players but then allowing them to gain access back to a previous location quickly and easily. Instead of hand waving the party’s exit from a dungeon, why not include a barred doorway in one of the first rooms that they then get to the other side of at the very end of the dungeon. When the players open what they think is a door further into the dungeon, perhaps into the big bad’s treasure room or to an even greater threat beyond, and find themselves back at the entrance to the dungeon they might feel a little bit more immersed in the world as it suddenly makes sense that their characters don’t have to backtrack all the way through the dungeon just to get back to town. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Winter is Coming
Recently I’ve been reading the Song of Ice and Fire books and really enjoying them, starting with A Game of Thrones and now I’ve just finished the second book A Clash of Kings. One of the major concepts of the series is that summers and winters can last for years at a time, and the books start during a long period of summer and focus on the Stark family whose motto is the very foreboding words, “winter is coming.” Though there are different seasons, the northern portion of the series’ fantasy world is always in a wintery climate and the narrative of the books returns to this area every now and then as a subtle reminder that winter is in definitely coming.
I found it incredibly appropriate that fellow blogger T.W. Wombat (@twwombat) decided to host a “Winter is Coming” blog theme week only a few days into Autumn. Though I’m not one to be melancholy during winter and in fact often love the season and look forward to it, I am a big fan of thematic blogging across as many people as possible and decided that I should participate in this one! It also synced up quite well with some inspiration I received while reading A Clash of Kings just a week or two ago, and I was not about to let the coincidence go by unacknowledged.
The Secrets of Castle Black
If you’re not familiar with the world of a Song of Ice and Fire, then not only should you go read it but I also have to give you a little bit of preface. In the series the northern part of the continent is always snowy and cold, and a giant wall of ice has been built along the edge of the civilized kingdoms to keep the lands safe from whatever threats may linger further to the north. Just beneath this wall is Castle Black, and it wasn’t until midway through A Clash of Kings when it was finally described how the castle was built to survive the decade long winters that are all the more harsh in the north where it was built.
Castle Black functions much like your typical medieval castle, but what really caught my attention was the little detail that the castle also has a series of underground tunnels constructed so that when the snows fall for months on end the inhabitants can still get from building to building within the walls. This detail added a whole new depth of character to the location as well as further defining the idea of long and harsh winters in the north. This is the kind of thing that can really sell a location in your tabletop RPG and D&D games!
Seasonal Design
I’m sure I’ve stressed it before in my posts here, but it bears repeating: the best way to add lasting character to a location is to think about its surroundings and how they impact the design of the place. The cool fact about Castle Black is nothing special or extraordinary, it exists for the simple fact of functionality during impeding snow storms. There is no special formula or recipe for designing a location with these factors in mind, simply pick some feature or aspect of the environment and brainstorm any ideas that might work to make the place more livable or more functional. [Read the rest of this article]
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I’ve played Champions and M&M (and the DC...
