Does Size Really Matter?
About 5 years ago, a colleague at the genetics lab where I used to work burst into my office and said:
Quick Phil! How many people does it take to call something ‘an orgy?’
While this is a fascinating question, that’s not the main point of this post*. Rather, I found that raunchy anecdote to be the perfect intro for what’s been on my mind lately. You see, I’ve been pondering just how much of an impact the number of people sitting at my RPG table have on the overall playing experience. I ask that question as some of the last games I played felt handicapped by having too many players around the table. As I always do when I’m not entirely satisfied with my play experience, I start an introspective post to analyse the emotions that tinges my memory of that session.
Interestingly enough, such blogging often helps me understand side-issues that, on the whole, leads to far more interesting insights.
Here’s the crux of my problem: I find that when I run mechanically intensive games like D&D and Pathfinder, the overall playing experience gets significantly reduced when there’s 5 players or more. Yet… as I grow older, I have a harder and harder time getting my gaming friends all together to play.
It would seem that issue 2 resolves issue 1 right? All I need to do is adopt an episodic approach to gaming (the adventure starts and ends at each session) and whomever shows up plays (like a revolving cast of actors). Alternatively, we can just bust out one of our near endless number of incredibly well designed board games and have a great evening of fun. Right!
Right?
Carrot Design, Part 1: A Freelancer’s Challenge, From Needs to Rewards
I’m currently working on an article for Kobolds Quarterly that requires some deeper thinking about D&D 4e’s designs. As I pace around the house and outside on these crisp Canadian December days, I realize that I needed to do a more thorough analysis than I initially expected to beat an article into shape out of a bunch of unfocused concepts.
While I won’t reveal what the article will be, I think that sharing my thought process to get my brain into a very specific design/development/writing cycle would be of interest to many of you. Writing for a magazine is a rather perilous balancing act where the writer must limits the time and resources assigned to it while delivering a high level of quality and creating significant interest in readers.
So let’s dive in shall we?
The Needs of D&D players
In D&D 4e’s Dungeon Master Guide, player motivations are categorized thusly:
- Acting: Explore a PC’s background and develop it further through role play and social encounter
- Exploring: Seeks new experiences through interaction with the setting and it’s elements
- Instigating: Making things happen and testing the game, includes making apparently bad choices
- Power Gaming: Display power and become more powerful, gain cool new powers and items.
- Slaying: Kick butts and take names, just because it’s cool to be badass, at least among friends
- Storytelling: Be an active participant in events and tales that unfold beyond the level of characters and rules.
- Thinking: Make careful choices and solve problems through analysis and optimal strategies.
- Watching: Casually hang out with the gaming group for the social experience of it.
No player is assumed to be motivated by just one of those broad categories . If I look over my players’ motivations and my own, I can easily tag each with at least 3 motivators. For example, I’m very much about Acting, Instigating and Storytelling with a healthy touch of butt kicking. Such categories are handy references to understand what makes players tick around any RPG table.
As I mentioned in my last post, I believe that a large majority of D&D 4e’s mechanics were designed, regardless of what’s written on the proverbial box, to cater to a subset of these RPG needs/motivations, namely Power Gaming, Slaying, and Thinking. These motivations are addressed mainly through rewards (ex: XPs and levels, Powers and Magic Items, Tactical Combat, etc) that support and act as strong incentive for a play experience that’s focused on these three motivators.
That’s not to say that the other needs can’t be met, but as I mentioned previously, addressing them consistently requires DMs to bring forth particular skills in adventure design and other more social areas, skills that aren’t as clearly supported by the game.
Therein lies an opportunity.
So what’s a writer to do?
Now let’s assume that after reading my last post, I, as a gamer and freelance designer, want to stick around with the D&D franchise. I’m given a few choices. I can keep fuelling the edition wars online by criticizing the absence of sufficient motivators for my needs. Alternatively, I can branch off to one of its close siblings, Pathfinder being the most popular, and seek the motivators I miss from 4e
I could also embrace this opportunity and write a Blog/magazine piece about developing new tools and rewards that will meet those needs. Guess which path I’m currently on?
In that last post, I told players to understand their needs and possibly seek outside of their game if they were not being met consistently. I also mentioned that adequate hacking of a game to address such needs was hard. Doing the same while writing new mechanics for a magazine, especially ones that push the D&D envelope in its less explored areas, is quite a challenge.
The writer of such pieces must walk fine lines between writing clever stuff no one will ever use, publish well-written but mostly unplaytested crap or, hopefully, provide a valid alternative that won’t be pushed away by the game’s other options. All of this, given the very low rates gaming magazines can afford to pay, for an acceptable investment of time and resources from the writer’s part.
That’s why the landscape of freelance RPG Magazine writing is fraught with easily triggered traps. Many of which are exceedingly well summarized by Graham’s Walmsley quote (picked from Ryan Macklin’s excellent blog post):
You can’t just give people +1 for fucking and expect it to work.
As Ryan says, the Walmsley Principle applies to much more than what the expletive usually stands for. If you want your new material to be used by people, it must answer player needs and motivations in such ways that it will not be, at first glance, ignored as being useless, bland or just too plain boring to play with. Nobody needs an extra +2 to damage or a +2 to climb checks, it’s been done to death.
Plus, you’ll be in direct competition with the colossal engine of gaming inertia that is the online Character Builder and its inability to accept user-derived/3rd party content.
So those lines the writer walks on just became finer, you need to write something that will stand out to the casual reader without stepping outside of the game’s balance boundaries. You need to provide an alternative that is clever enough and simple enough mechanically that it can be used manually (or with easily configurable playing aids).
Yes, one could argue that articles make it every month that would fail my list of criteria and are “useless, bland and boring” as I described them. They could argue that articles are there to provide ideas for GMs, that one adopted mechanic/class/item per issue is already great.
They would be right, but I believe that the mold breakers I mentioned last week were among people who very aware of the traps and pitfalls of design and strove to go beyond the adequate to achieve excellence.
And while I may not achieve excellence when I write something, I always strive for it, regardless of the paycheck. I’m willing to bet that’s partly why so many of the RPG designers I respect most are struggling to make a decent living.
Here’s the perp, now where’s my Reward?
So where is that damn fine line Phil? Have you finally stumbled, in these ravings of yours, onto a usable road map?
Actually, I think I have…
In my (fevered) mind, the path to writing great D&D 4e articles, especially those that encourage a play style that differs from the Out of the Box experience, is to understand the game’s fundamental rewards and play that system. From there the writer must either design new elements that include them or design around them by creating new types of rewards that are compatible with the game’s balanced engine and don’t violate the Walmsley Principle.
In part 2, I’ll deconstruct D&D 4e’s reward system, explore their impact on the game and discuss popular, likely variants for each. Thusly I would consider myself properly schooled to write my magazine article!
I’ll probably miss the deadline too… sigh.
In the meantime, Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
Beyond Labels: How Each RPG Serves and Rewards Specific Needs
The Uselessness of Labels
A few weeks ago, game designer and online buddy Robert Bohl messaged me on Gtalk asking me to translate what a French GM was saying about a mash-up of his game of teenage rebellion, Misspent Youth, and the setting of White Wolf’s Changeling. The GM’s experiment wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped but instead of analyzing how the experiment could be turned in a success, he threw some tired labels around (i.e. Ron Edward’s Narrativist, Gamist, and Simulationist) to explain why Rob’s game couldn’t mesh with his setting of choice.
I don’t like labels much. I know they make things easier to categorize. We like to categorize things in tidy boxes and geeks have the brainpower and handy obsessiveness to create lots of them. The thing is, when labels become obstacles in exploring a given game’s potential for fun, we’ve left the realm of theory and entered the world of geek-snobbery and pointless quibbling.
Now I’m as guilty as many, playing with labels that I happen to find convenient. For instance, I’ve covered Robin Laws’ player type and motivations extensively and team management concepts applied to RPG groups. I try not to let the use of such labels occlude or block frank analysis of a given game’s relative merits vis à vis my preferences, that of my gaming crew or those of my readers. [Read the rest of this article]
Ghoulish Mailbag: Handling PC Death
For the last 3 years, I’ve had the habit to write Halloween themed posts:
- 2009: in the wake of the H1N1 scare, I tackled a Zombie Apocalypse micro-setting for a Modern RPG.
- 2008: in the grip of rising depression symptoms, I concocted a creepy post about the Nightmare fuel trope.
- 2007: I started the tradition (so to speak) with a Trope post about mixing it up in your campaign by putting costumes on common mechanics to make new, strange monsters/treasures.
This year again, I’m sitting at my kitchen breakfast counter while the kids (now 8 and 7) are out terrorizing the surroundings for some sugar-cane based spoils of war. Once again, I’m the guardian of the dungeon, sitting over a chestful of delicious Coffee Crisps candy bars, bags of Trans-fat free 95 calories chips and fiendish sour gummy-zombies packets.
In the mean time, what better topic on All Hallow’s Eve than tackling a recent letter by a reader inquiring about dealing with the ever throny issue of character death.
Dear Grim Reaper…
My name is Tom. I’ve been reading your blog quite a bit over the last few days, and I’ve found it to be a really useful source of information and inspiration. You also seem like an approachable sort of guy, so I thought I’d, well, approach you with a question.
I’ve been running my first campaign for a few sessions now, and in this particular campaign, there’s no resurrection when a PC dies– something we all agreed to going in, as it seems to add a meaningful sense of risk.
This has made the few combat encounters– the focus of the campaign has really been more about exploration, puzzle-solving, and character interaction– pretty intense, with some characters coming close but narrowly escaping their demise. Which has also made it very exciting and a lot of fun for me and my players.
So far, none of the characters have actually died, and I’ve given the characters a magical item that can help save another character from their fate.
What I’m worried about is when, eventually and inevitably, someone’s character does die. It’s not that I’m worried about how they’ll handle it– they’re all a pretty mature bunch, so I don’t expect any tantrums. It’s, what if a PC dies half-way through an adventure, with two or three hours of dungeon or character negotiations or puzzles left?
I don’t want anyone to just sit there being bored while all the others are having a ball, nor do I want to abruptly halt the adventure. I’d like to keep the deceased character’s player entertained and engaged in some way. Do you have any suggestions?
Of Death, Drama and the value of one’s Free Time
Among the recurring themes of RPG forum and blog posts, setting the lethality level and handling the death of PCs is way up there. I’m willing to bet there was at least one article about that in the first few issues of Dragon magazine.
Now the range of answers to Tom’s inquiries are about as large as there are pundits and writers pondering this, here’s mine.
It all comes down to how much the free time of your players is worth to them and how much you value it when they sit at your table. Dear GMs, in the unlikely chance that you still haven’t learned that fundamental lesson, in this day and age of MMORPGs and Skype remote playing, players don’t have to be unilaterally grateful to have a spot at your table, it goes both ways. I wrote a post about that way back when that’s still very relevant today.
So while loosing one’s PC in the middle encounter of a long night of playing is a likely outcome of any RPG, having it occur in a game where making a new PC takes a long chunk of time (and possibly the DM’s attention if electronic tools aren’t available) can put a serious damper on everyone’s fun.
Of Death and other Inconveniences.
So Tom, my first suggestion is to ask your players what they expect in the likelihood that character death does occur mid-encounter, with plenty of time remaining to play out other encounters? Maybe they’ll tell you that they’d rather stop the game until their fallen comrade builds a new character, opting to play a quick card game like Dominion or Three-Dragon Ante.
Assuming Tom plays D&D 4e, I also suggest that he has the D&D character builder (or equivalent software tool if you play Pathfinder, Savage World or any other OGL-based RPG) installed on a nearby computer and hooked to a printer. Thus, that gives his down-on-her-luck player the best tools to come back as fast as possible.
I would also question the finality of death in your game. If you play 4e or Pathfinder, a game where character creation is a complex process, requiring the player to make a lot of choices and invest significant energies, you may want to rethink your initial decision. There are other ways to create that sense of risk that you are trying to simulate by making Death final.
For instance, I’d consider making the success or failure of certain ‘turning points” of your story hinge on key PCs not dying at all during the adventure. Maybe the cleric bears a divine mark (needed to complete a ritual in a dungeon) that will dissipate if she dies, regardless if the Shaman raises her after the fight. Maybe the Paladin needs a flawless reputation to gain the trust of the local lord and can’t afford to be slain by dishonorable Wererats (leading to a great RPing moment, should the fallen and raised LG paladin lie to achieve the party’s goal).
Follow the Other Light…
Alternatively, If death is so final in your game, you should explore or create story reasons for that. Is it possible that the realm of the Dead (e.g. 4e’s Shadowfell), where souls can be plucked for resurrection, is closed for some specific reason? Is it possible that the soul of a deceased character remains on the material plane but slowly dissolves over the next few minutes (like Terry Pratchett’s recently deceased characters)?
What if, during those next few minutes, a slain heroic soul could still help its comrades? What if it could play in some sort of combat-based skill challenge, with a ghost figurine on the board, that can interact with the challenge at hand? In fact, what if the Arcane, Religion and Nature-based PCs could perceive the ghostly PC and share action in a new etherial challenge?
For example, what if the deceased PC could yank the souls out of monsters by grabbing them or cutting them loose with an appropriate skill check or Weapon attack? Maybe if the Ghost PC fails 3 times… it dissipates. Thus, even though the PC’s dead, there’s still a stakes at play. The living PCs sensing the ghost could support it with minor action rolls of the appropriate skill.
The Road More Traveled
Otherwise, if that’s too far fetched for you, turn the table and give the control of the monsters to the players who just lost a PC, involve them in your story. Listen to their suggestions and try to work them in your campaign.
Or just give him the keys to your car to go and get the pizza, or allow him to leave the table to go play with the PS3 or flirt with your significant other… 
What about you guys, how do you handle death. Anyone has used clever tricks to make the experience less of a drag while still making it a significant stake in the game? Is it an issue in your game or did you address it up front? Let us know!
When the Bad Guys Win: Chatty’s Gamma World One Shot
D-d-dance p-p-puny Humanoids!
One of the two pieces of Swag I got from being a volunteer DM at the New York Comic Con was a set of Wizards of the Coast’s new Gamma World adventure game. After reading through the (very familiar) rules, I decided that I wanted to try it out with my buddies as a one shot, among the growing list of different role playing games we’ve been trying out these last 2 months.
This post is a recap of our experience with the game rather than an actual play report. Since I used the PAX prime adventure written by Logan Bonner, you can follow the story in more details in Dave’s excellent DC Game Day game report.
Character Generation
Char Gen is a much simplified version of 4e’s process. People randomly determine 2 origins (each a class/race hybrid) and mush them together to create their PC concept. That part can be either the most boring or awesome part of the game. If you just accept that you have an Hyperconscious Android and move on to select your skills then you skipped on the awesome.
Case in point, my ever brilliant storyologist Franky rolled Telekinetic and “Swarm of Rats.” When I saw he was struggling with the concept, I shared the game’s core assumption: “You are expected to re-skin anything to suit your needs.”
Franky: So can the swarm be made of spiders?
Chatty: Absolutely!
Franky: And can I hold my body in humanoid form through my telekinesis and webs so I can blend in?
Chatty: Awesome, no one will notice!
Franky later chose weapons from the list of generic choices. He picked a bowling bowl embedded in his PC’s body, swinging it, web-flail style. He also chose to shoot actual web spurts (like Spiderman). His concept was rich and very vivid. Along with Yan’s Seismic Radioactive (a depleted Uranium shooter called Boulder Dash), Franky’s character stood out among the concepts I remember most.
From experience, I know that character creation can be a huge pain with only one rulebook and 4-6 players. So in order to bypass that, I used Alphastream’s very useful Gamma World add-ons that feature PDFs with description of each origins and various Gamma World cheat sheets.
Heck I cut these all up and had players pick two for their origin, so we had no overlaps, perfect for a demo game.
Seriously, even if you hate Wiz Book, hop on just to get the tools (and thank Alpha on the way), it will help you maintain momentum in your Char Gen session.
The Wonders of a Game’s Exploration Phase
Char Gen was fun for most of us (See below), I distributed weird/antique tech cards around (again from Alphastream) and we started playing the first scene where our soon to be heroes were lounging in the ruins of the Seattle Convention Centre and got attacked by a technophobic hippie hunter that turns nearby docile robots into robo-killas.
(Aside: I must give huge props to Logan Bonner who managed to not only write a good, 3 scenes adventure that showcases what Gamma World does, but also by adding several funny and clever remarks that made reading it all the more interesting… if you aren’t already doing it, go support his 4e Open Design Project!)
As players got into their powers and the slight rules changes of the game (no more Healing Surges, Minor Action+ 1/2 HP for Second Wind, etc) we experienced what I call “the exploratory phase” of a new game. We had lots of fun and the fight went rapidly.
When we reached the second scene, with the Warbot named “Dancebot 1986″ blocking the way to the Space Needle, some players reading this here site recognized the adventure. Yet, as much as I was looking forward to this part of the adventure, all players completely aced the challenge and danced, dodged, snuck and flipped around, over and under this fully armed Droid of Groove. So while it was cool from a success point, it felt a bit anti-climactic.
Stumbling Down the Hill
In the last encounter, the players squared off against another of those bow and arrow back-to-basics tree-huggers, a laser-gaze flying monkey-lion and some porcupine-dervish-bushes-from-Hell. The combat was longish, players started dropping left and right, Mutant powers some useless, some too powerful cycled through the hands of the players. Those bushes were LETHAL…
Yan: Math! Gimme that Plasma Gun of yours.
Math: But it leaks radioactivity man, I can’t survive shooting it.
Yan: I’m made of radioactivity, I can soak it in!
Chatty: Ohhhh dear…
Yan: Booya! Dead Lion-Monkey-thing and I got a nice greenish tan from it!
In the end, one character died, 1 or 2 others were dying and the Sentient chunk of Space Earth villain that had crashed in the Space Needle was able to make all technology permanently inoperable over what used to be the Greater Seattle area while the PCs tried to save their friends from dying.
Math: My iPod…
Mike: My turkey carver…
While we enjoyed ourselves, the evening ended in a some kind of a bummer. I believe that people tend to remember the last emotional imprint of an experience and apply it to the whole thing itself. Thus, our game of Gamma World felt more meh than awesome.
You really have no idea what it feels like to know EVERYTHING do you.... ahhhh don't bother.
Dr. Chatty and the Hypercounscious Paranoid Android
In classic Chatty DM fashion, I decided to explore the why of this and how this can be circumvented in the future (or in your very own groups).
Character Dying Mechanics
One of the killjoys of the evening was that some players spent a lot of time not knowing if their dying character would feed radioactive worms or not. While Gamma World, especially at level 1, is faster than D&D 4e, dying PCs still have to wait 10 to 15 minutes each round, just to roll a d20 to make sure they don’t die.
Since the PC might recover, or a friend might come over and help you out, the player and GMs don’t necessarily realize that the player should spend this time making a new PC.
Since I don’t believe that Gamma World was created to be a serious, deep story RPG, I’d suggest re-instating the oldest of Old school rules of them all: your PC dies at 0 HP… period. Then, just allow new adventurers to join as soon as the new PC is ready. Thus, players always do stuff at the table.
Alternatively, my buddy Dave suggests having the player work on a new PC while he rolls death saves and when the new PC is ready, make a call with the GM about the fate of the fallen one.
Reintroducing the Randomness Element
This may come as no surprise, but some of my players were completely turned off by the randomizing aspect of the game. While the selection of character origins was fine, Math started grumbling when he had to roll his tertiary stats.
Chatty: You know what Math, I just realized that since 1986, you AlWAYS hated rolling for stats, that why you jumped on Unearthed Arcana’s alternative methods.
Math: You’re damn right!
Chatty: And if memory serves well, you loved to roll 13s because they mysteriously turned into 18s over the next few sessions right?
Math: Is that the door? Pizza’s here!
Also, players motivated by tactical choices, planning and playing specialist roles can be turned off by the randomness. There were several moments where Yan grumbled that his Mutations and Omega tech were useless (and lets not talk about the antique crap) and I can see on the character sheets that some people were NOT inspired by their PC hybrids.
Math: Okay so I’m a Giant that’s real intelligent… woop de doo!
Chatty: But man, you could be this huge Brain in a Jar, floating around and bashing people with mechanical tendrils.
Math: Have you forgotten to take your meds again Phil?
This makes me think that Gamma World is especially well-suited for casual butt kickers, making it a GREAT one-shot/short campaign adventure game.
If you want to play this game and you have Yans and Maths in your group, consider letting players choose their origins (or at least one) and, if you don’t play with the “Players make their own deck of cards”, look at the PC and have the PCs pick their first piece of Omega tech from a selection of useful cards you picked for them.
Underneath It All, It’s Still 4e
That’s more of a personal thought here. As many know, I feel like I need a break from D&D in its various incarnations and I was reminded of that as I was running the 3rd encounter. I felt the weight of the numbers, the mind-numbingly slow (to my distorted perception) rules-exception based process. As the wonders of exploration wore off, I started seeing the Matrix again, the wire-frames of monster stats and combat mechanics underneath the otherwise awesome fluff…
The main reason why I’m currently tired of the WotC engine is because I can’t stop seeing the Matrix, and ironically enough, I no longer find this to be my main motivation for RPGs.
That’s why I need to stop DMing it and start playing it!
Dave, Enrique, Logan, Chris, Tracy and all you reader/bloggers/DMs/designers, I wanna play in your games when next we meet, I’m done DMing it for the time being but I loved playing it at Gen Con, and maybe I’ll stop seeing the wires and start seeing the rubber suits covering them again.
And that’s how Chatty sees it.
Chatty’s Mailbag: Good Troll Hunting
Last week, I got an interesting email from M. asking advice about dealing with “That Guy” in his RPG group. Contrary to the ones we discussed in that panel in Toronto, everything seems to indicate that M.’s guy is NOT one to get the generic “you have to be the flexible one to fit him in your game” answer. Quite the contrary.
Here goes:
I need some advice because I’m at my wits end.
Scene 1: The bandits who had attempted to extract a toll from the party for using the road now lie dead at their feet. The party naturally begins to search their bodies for anything of value to them. The gnome bard (brand new player, very first session with us) locates two rubies. He botches a thievery check to slip them into his pocket unnoticed.
The Half-Orc rogue (problem player) decides he’s going to march over to the gnome, lift him by his throat and intimidate him for trying to pocket the rubies. Tension begins.
See here, being the kind of DM I am, I would immediately stop the game right there and have a “players to players to DM” discussion about everyone’s personal thoughts on treasure sharing and willingness to explore thievery, intimidation and bullying as character development themes. I’m doing a little bit of BSing here because I’m 95% sure that “problem player’s” problem is that he’s an incorrigible jerk… but I’d give the bullying player a chance to realize what he’s doing and I’d give the players a chance to take say something and not let their DM do this alone.
Scene 2: The party are doing fairly well making their way through a goblin hideout in the mountains. They then locate a closet filled with items confiscated from the goblin’s prisoners. The bard finds a magic shortsword. He splits the rest of the loot, but decides to keep the shortsword for himself (which is fine, I intended it for him). The problem player begins to whine and complain that the shortsword is much better suited for him and even declares that the bard needs to watch himself because the sword will go missing.
Later after the goblin king is down, the rogue loots him before anyone can get two words in edgewise. And as soon as they locate the treasure hold that the key goes to, he cuts everyone off again and declares that he’s grabbing as much loot as he can. I try to fight this off by him discovering a holy symbol +1 to is clearly meant for their cleric. He informs me that it’s okay that the bard keeps the sword, he’ll sell the holy symbol and use the gold he found for a better weapon anyway.
All right, there’s no question your problem player is a acting like a jerk as such but you have another big problem I’ll go into later. For your more obvious issue, you’d need to deal with with it in a direct way. Talk to every other player between games and get their opinions on the matter, they’ll likely echo your feelings. After that, meet your problem player one on one and share, in a straightforward, assertive way, what you and the others don’t like about the way he plays.
No ‘Mr. Nice Guy roundabout, no vague but “obvious” hints. Go for the kill: “We don’t like it when you… When you said/did that thing, we all felt XYZ and so on.
I touched this subject in two previous articles that might be of interest to people with similar issues:
The Stages of a RPG Team’s Development: Norming: At the end I discuss dealing with selfish players, which acting like a jerks is a very common manifestation.
Friday Chat: Dealing with Aggressive/Jerk Players: A similar mailbag article where I share my very strong position on such players.
However M., your second case indicates something important I missed when I first answered your email. Your group has a treasure sharing problem that should be addressed real quick. All this talk of slipping gems unnoticed and “deciding”‘ that a piece of equipment is now the possession of X mearly by grabbing it first is a disaster waiting to happen.
In fact, I think that your socially disruptive player has honed in on that weakness. Troublemakers often have a knack at putting their fingers on what doesn’t quite work in a game and breaking it open for better disruption. Most of the hat-assery you relate in your letter seem to support that theory.
When the PCs who get magic items are determined by who rushes the bodies first, that’s a recipe for trouble. Modern “vanquish and loot” RPGs are about team play and that can’t stop as soon as the last breathing orc expires or runs away. This should be addressed, either informally or within a more formal agreement known as the social contract (as I discussed in the first document linked above).
But I haven’t let M. finish, go ahead friend…
I’ve had about all I can take of this player. Every character he has ever played has always behaved in a way the shows that he has to be bigger and better than everyone else. And when I confront him about it, he just argues it’s what his character would do and that I asked them to roleplay and that’s what he’s doing. I’m fairly sure there should be a jackass clause in there somewhere.
Yes, there should… but it won’t spontaneously appear in your group sans discussions.
In addition, he whines and complains if something doesn’t work out the way he thinks it should. He complained when the farmers that they were helping defend their farm wouldn’t fight more tactically to help him get into flanking to he can use sneak attack. Another character of his, paladin uses his divine challenge on a blue dragon, then he complains when the dragon is smart enough to focus his attacks on him. It just goes on and on and on.
Yup, selfish as hell… no doubt. Also, like Robin said in Toronto, some players’ core motivations in a RPG is to disrupt the groups social dynamics, all the time. Like those who always play ninjas or elven bards, some players always create bullying asocial brutes and blame the PC for their own acts…
…AKA Trolls.
Hey McBrain! You made the character, hello!
These are the hobby’s rotten apples, throw them away… If they’re a good friend of yours, now’s the time to have a good heart to heart about your shared social activities.
I’m at a lost as to what to do about this player. I feel like I put a lot of effort and time into planning these games and after each I go home wondering why the hell I even bother.
All tough talk aside dude, I really feel your pain. Here are my final suggestions:
- End the campaign, blame DM burnout if you don’t want to confront your problem player
- Start a new one, minus Captain Jerk
- Have players do a group character creation session
- Discuss common group values (both as players and as PCs), including how to deal with treasures
- Start having fun again
Anyone else had/have similar issues? How did you deal with it? Anything you’d like to share with M.?
Image taken from http://ancienthomeofdragon.homestead.com/
Kids and Games: Getting it Wrong is Doing it Right
Shortly before Gen Con, my 8 year old son Nico had a buddy come over for the afternoon. I was busy working from home so when Nico asked me if they could play Talisman, I got the box out from my gaming cabinet and told them “Sure, but I can’t set it up nor play with you”.
Nico: That’s okay dad, we’ll figure it out.
An hour later, I came upstairs and had a look at the ongoing game. While they had grasped the core concepts (Nico, the buddy and I had played previously), they were making a lot of stuff up, inventing what some cards did and fudging how combat worked.
They were having lots of fun.
As I looked at them, I was flooded with powerful memories and a striking realization. One of the reasons why I love D&D so much is because I learned most of it by making stuff up while trying to learn it. I got most of it wrong, but I didn’t know then and I still had more fun than any other games I’d played so far!
I cherish these memories dearly. Back when I had a partial grasp of English, Gary’s AD&D Player’s Handbook was like a stack of encrypted secrets I got to decipher with a broken decoder ring. For instance, I thought that a two-handed sword was a 2 bladed-sword, so I made a three-handed one made of three 6′-long blades! You could even shoot the middle one, like that Sword & Sorcery movie I had seen on my uncle’s Betamax machine. So badass…
While watching my son play Talisman his own way, it dawned on me that as a gamer parent, I had a dual responsibility. I had to guide my children into this awesome hobby, if they were so inclined, introducing them to different games, teaching them about their rules and the social etiquette that come with them (wait for your turn, don’t cheat, be a good sport, etc).
But perhaps more importantly, I must also give my children the appropriate space and liberties to let them take full ownership of that hobby and infuse it with their own personalities, unbound ideas and, yes, technical flaws.
I must learn to silence my inner Brainy Smurf and allow my son to get things wrong about the games he plays, so he can discover his own paths and create memories similar to mine.
I must strive to be a model to emulate, not a tyrant that smothers.
That’s why, when I’ll get around to showing the new D&D Red Box to Nico and his friends, I will step away and let them play with it as they see fit. Maybe, if they really dig it, they’ll start creating new powers, character classes and monsters with absolutely no regards to balance or playability.
They’ll get rules wrong, ignore many, misread others and that may very well be completely fantastic. There’ll be plenty of time later to correct that, if they ever do. House ruling is an important skill too.
Go ahead and show your kids how to be gamers. Just don’t forget to set them free so they can take ownership of their gaming experience. Getting a game right should never get in the way to having fun with it.
I say lets go and help build a child’s future nostalgia today.
The Final Stage of a RPG Group: Dissolution
I thought I was done with this series when I wrote the last part about RPG group Stagnation, but recent event in my gaming group lead me to a painful decision and I thought that tackling it as an addendum to the series would be a good idea.
When I discussed a RPG group’s decline, I quoted from Kyle Aaron’s Cheetoism philosophy website where he tackled the decline of a gaming group. His solution was to get the ball rolling again by sending the group back into the storming stage through one (or several) of the following solutions:
- Change game system
- Change GM
- Change players
Aaron says that a group storming anew should either get over its stagnation issues and return into the 5 stage cycle or eventually collapse upon itself.
Mine fell somewhere in between… and I chose to put it down.
My RPG DNA, Last Chapter
When my group showed signs of stagnation way back in the Spring of 2008, we introduced a few changes, mainly switching to D&D 4e and adding a new player (up to 6, to make sure we’d always be at least 4 at every game). It worked well for a time, we went through the various “stages” and even hit the performing stage for a short while with the City Within campaign, this in spite of me going through a severe depression in the winter of 2009.
Not bad at all.
However, as we progressed through the game, hitting Paragon level (level 10+) numerous fun-dampening issues started creeping up. While none were critical, as a group we were unable to address individually nor resolve them, leading to more game sessions where the fun levels of old were harder to come by.
Some of the issues :
- The group’s 3rd wave of babies creating scheduling issues and game interruptions
- Length and complexity (in terms of choices) of higher level 4e combat
- High number of players making the above more pronounced
- Shorter periods of gaming on Friday nights with no possibility of playing on weekends
- Some players’ preference for playing previous editions of D&D
- Slight personality frictions between players seen in increased razing and occasional flareups
The further we went, I felt the various threads that were these minor irritants evolve into open irritation and frustration throughout the participants. This became more evident to me when we resumed our campaign after the self-imposed 2 month hiatus while I was working on preparing seminars.
To be sure, I started asking some of the players and my intuitions were confirmed, the group was fraying. Hell, when I half-jokingly asked one of them if I should nuke the current group before it imploded, he told me he was seriously considering quitting it! He informed me that he found the inefficiencies of our game sessions, coupled with the increased tensions made for too stressful an environment for him to spend his free time on.
Ouch.
Moving in with Very Sharp Shears!
This surprising declaration not only echoed my thoughts but made me realize that I had something more important on my hands than mere “group fatigue” or “DM Burnout”. I surmised that the “issues” themselves were likely symptoms of something deeper and I eventually came up with the conclusion that as a gaming group, the motivations that had brought us together every two weeks for the last decade weren’t the tightly wound bundles they once were.
While no individual gamer shares the same motivations, a functional group has a core that shares a significant subset of those and play games (or gaming styles) that cater to these motivations and preferences. In our case, it appeared to me that our interests, priorities and motivations had drifted over time without us ever truly addressing (or realizing) it .
Some players became more casual, staying around to hang out, without fully buying in the game system we played. Some longed for the olden days of slaying monsters, 3.5 style leveling up and getting randomized magical loot . Others, myself included, were more invested in the current system and wanted to squeeze the most out of it in the small amount of time we allowed ourselves. Yet another subset preferred not to be bothered with the added pressure of self-imposed efficiency and were openly vocal about it. Finally, some players longed for simpler a social structure like those of our earlier groups.
All these motivations were valid… they just weren’t as compatible as those we shared in earlier times. I discussed with the players, in groups and individually and my impressions were confirmed, we didn’t want the same things and I didn’t see how we’d pull things back together. If we all liked to hang out together in a more casual way, we could all save energy and play board games, hang around a swimming pool or play online games.
Finally, I acknowledged that RPGs will likely remain my preferred form of tabletop entertainment. Thus, I was going to keep playing them as the GM, a role that I still prefer to being a player. I therefore allowed myself to take all necessary steps to find my groove again and, by default, foster a groovy RPG group, including applying the potentially painful power to choose (and exclude) players.
I settled on dissolving the gaming group as it was and take a summer-long break from D&D, preemptively ending my Gears of Ruin campaign.
Now what?
I informed all my players, explaining my reasoning. More importantly, I informed that they would not be all called back when I started my next gaming group/campaign. I’m painfully aware that there will be a social cost attached to this decision and I take full responsibility for it. I remain convinced that I did the right thing to shut the group down before it frayed into further friction among friends down the line.
When we get the next (smaller, more focused) group together, we’ll agree on common reasons to play and we’ll build our sessions on these common values. We’ll chose a game that fits our combined needs (likely D&D 4e again, at a lower level) and rebuild our social contract accordingly. For example, we’ll probably agree to play less often when we’re missing players and call back our friends for bigger, board game, beer & pizza nights.
Have you ever actively put an end to a gaming group, or at least dissolved it for some time to restart later, possibly with some of its original members? How did it go?
The Chatty Pilgrim
It would be way too easy to blame this on D&D 4e not being the RPG for us/me. It’s clear that if I DM any version/variation of this game, 4e will remain my main choice for the time being. However, the people I’ve met over the last year and the games’ I’ve played have reminded me again just how large and diverse the field really is.
I’d like the following year to be some sort of game pilgrimage for me. While I’ll likely have a new regular gaming group (with familiar and new faces), I’ll also likely do periodic “geek nights” exploring what the hobby can offer beyond the big ones (D&D/d20, WoD, Savage Worlds, Gurps/Hero,etc). While I feel a current pull toward Burning Wheel, I plan to push beyond that and see what there is out there.
Rest assured that you will read all about it here.
P.S. : This means I will not post my last Gears of Ruin session, I’m sorry. But stay tuned for my Mouse Guard character generation and first adventure session we played last weekend.
Full-Spectrum Thoughts: The Traitors Among Us
I don’t often do editorials. I initially thought of presenting what I wanted to say in some kind of manifesto but the last thing this hobby needs is another crusade, or a so called leader that ends up doing more damage than good.
So editorial it is… for now.
A few weeks ago, I posted this on Twitter:
Old/New/OSR… I’m sick of this. Full-Spectrum Gaming for me please. Sword & Wizardry, D&D4e AND Burning Wheel. You DM it, I’ll play it.
To say that I’m sick and tired of online geek debates about one true way-ism is an understatement. Not the arguing and debate mind you, this is necessary and healthy for all creative fields. I mean that while my good friend Graham occasionally gets on my nerves with his long-winded defences of D&D 4e, I find that he does it with respect and arguments born out of what I perceive as good faith, enthusiasm and, usually, the data to support his claims.
You know, what the Greeks used to call the logos, the rational discourse.
What I can’t stand anymore is the rampant geek rants, easy inflammatory blog posts, short-sighted comment baits and, above all, the hate-filled insults spewed by those hidden behind the comfort of Internet anonymity on RPG blogs and forums. Hell, it’s not surprising that the 2 online trash RPG talkers I know the most, RPG Pundit and that guy that keeps telling us that our dungeon sucks, are still anonymous. It’s much easier to hate behind the safe wall of anonymity than show your face and take your lumps as much as you dish them out. Hell it’s classic trash radio behaviour where we’re told “Hey! I’m just telling it how it is as the man of the street” and get insulted when we try to challenge it.
(What kills me is that both are pretty decent writers with opinions about RPGs I’d otherwise would love to know about)
Furthermore, the drama that we as a niche of a niche can generate over things as asinine as the word “porn-star”, ‘roleplaying” or “democracy” is absolutely insane. Especially when mobs mentality sets in and you can see in various discussion threads how people turn into sharks or worse, scavengers.
I understand that as geek, we are very passionate about the things we love. That’s a core definition of what defines us as a tribe. So much so that we can get very emotional about the weirdest stuff and devote energies to them that others devote to national sports or even patriotism. Yet many seems to find it so much easier to let the inner beast go during debates and unleash whatever poison has welled up inside to destroy all chances of harmonious, if lively discourse.
I mean, Wil Wheaton has written that he had to flee convention floors in tears back in the early 90′s because he was jeered, booed and insulted off stage. What the hell? Seriously? The more I read his blog and books the more incredulous I get. Is this an American thing or are Trekkies that hardcore?
The thing that slays me here is that as geeks, we were far likelier as a demographic to have been among the nerds that the jocks and misfits at school preyed upon. I know that many of us were insulted, laughed at, ostracized and made fun of by “more popular kids” (how I hate this expression) or by the bullies that climbed our schools Darwinian pyramids by shoves and stolen Walkmans. Many of us know what being bullied was like and it left scars that some still mend decades later.
I have been blessed by genetics, luck and strong-minded parents to become one of those rare charismatic, cocky, socially skilled nerds. Thus, I have been spared a lot of that above anguish (being 5’11” and weighing 180 lbs at 13 helped too). Yet I tried to stand up to my share of bullies at school, on my behalf or those of friends. I got into more school fights (or was ready for them) than I care to remember. I’ve actually had to use my judo training in junior high a few times and I’ve gotten my face punched and kicked so I could show the bullies that they had nothing on me. They left me alone if I didn’t flinch after the first hit (dodging to spare the nose was important, he he he).
It was important to me back then to make a stand for those that couldn’t or wouldn’t. It still is, today.
I can’t understand why geeks feel the urge to hurt each other. Is it just to try to register above the increasingly high noise-to-content ratio of the net, lost in a sea of vacuous spiteful arguments and flavours of the month? Is it because they’re bored and this is more fun than playing the games themselves? I just don’t get it.
Above all, I decry with all my heart the trolls and jerks that hide behind anonymous accounts, or behind so called community leaders just so they can take pot shots at those that take the time to publish an opinion, a thought or a concept on gaming forums and blogs that may go somewhere that is slightly uncomfortable, conceptually different or heaven forbid, flawed.
I find it tragically ironic that from the group that often was a victim to those bigger, stronger and/or meaner bullies back in school, some decided to secede from our tribe and join the opposition. Instead of physical and verbal bullies, they became digital trolls and ogres. Dishing it out from their forum tree-forts and blog dungeons.
These are the traitors among us. These I have no respect for.
We as tabletop gamer geeks should use our energies to create, not destroy. I’ve been doing my part, building communities, creating lasting friendships, getting stuff done and motivating people to fight their inner demons and start scary projects. You should do so too. In your own way.
If you take a any pleasure in telling people how wrong they are or how they should be doing it, why don’t you just shut the hell up and propose a new path instead of denouncing it.
When darkness surrounds us, some choose to decry it. Others choose to light a torch.
There is so much less competition in that second group. I’d like there to be more as there are many kinds of light and mine isn’t better than anyone’s.
Peace. Now let’s play something different! I hear Dread is cool…
The Soft Landing: Pax East Highlights
I’m baaaack! Did you see that new banner? Isn’t it awesome? My friend Eric Maziade redesigned it using the best elements of past banners, making it fit with the color scheme of the blog’s new home. Thanks man!
Here’s a quick recap, Pros/Cons style.
Pros
Thursday Night Paradise
Our arrival at Boston was made of incredible. We discovered an awesome Burger Pub, where I promptly managed to spill a beer on myself… twice. And yet, at the same time, I managed to strangely endear myself to the very cute waitress (“Hey, I like drunk you”).
The meet-up and play event we organized in the Sheraton lobby (there was this big ass glass table big enough for 4 board games) was one of the highlights of the con. A bunch of strangers instantly connecting and having fun is what makes gaming so damn cool.
Pandemic, Battlestar Galactica, Bang, Fluxx and other many others were played.
As the evening wore on and my friends retired for bed at 11ish (a mistake they swore never to repeat), I was pointed out to by a kind reader that Wil Wheaton was having dinner with a small group at the bar near our gaming area. Transgressing a few rules of social etiquette, I approached him gently, crouched so we’d be eye to eye (I hate having people look up when we first meet ) and introduced myself.
Some very friendly banter occurred for the next few minutes about my blog (we both like each other’s writing, yay!), D&D and D&D geeks. He even introduced his wife and a couple of his friends. I was trying very hard to keep it together while at the same time totally relating to the guy (we’re the same age). He was a complete class act and even laughed at my dumb Phil jokes (my friends know what that means).
Wil, I apologize for crashing your dinner and thanks for being such a good sport about it. Next time I’ll air high-five you from a safe distance. Ohhh and that keynote… dude, made of awesome. I can assure you that the relative calm of the audience in the middle was not because of any drag, it was pure trance-like attention. You told us our own stories in ways most, if not all of us couldn’t have expressed so eloquently. Thanks man.
D&D with the Boys
On Friday night, I got to DM my Challenge adventure to my friends Dave: The Game and E (you know from here and here) and the Wizards of the Coast D&D crowd. Chief among them were Chris (The guy in charge of organized play), Trevor (Community Manager), Greg (Editor and Designer) and Logan (freelance designer and writer). We had an awesome roleplaying intro with many improv moments and played out the first 2 encounters, a trapped door/skill challenge and a combat. I got great feedback from it that I used in the DM challenge the next day.
The DM Challenge
With a table-full of 6 players featuring 4 Chatty DM readers, we had a LOT of fun. The adventure was complex and the second encounter (the temple’s entry guardians) was BRUTAL. We had so many funny roleplaying/exploration/combat elements in this adventure that I plan to write a short series of game reports featuring what I recall from both groups playing through it.
But here’s a quick bullet point rundown:
Game 1
- PCs intimidate insane Gnome Bling-Wizard to perform CSI analysis of corrupted water sample in his laboratory.
- Ardant PC passing as a Doomdreamer cause elementalist scholar to fawn like a fanboi, giving quest away sans skill roll.
- Shardmind Psion blows Arcane Lock/Glyph of Warding skill challenge and gets sucked in a room full of Icy Spray Wraiths (and a Ghostskull)… and survives.
Game 2
- Shardmind broadcasting telepathic ‘request info about elementalists’ announcements causes panic in college plaza.
- Shardmind, when asked to identify himself, telepathically data dumps his entire life since birth in one long string.
- Mort the Ghostskull/Brain in a Jar trying to use loop holes in his ‘eternal undead guardian curse’ to have PCs free him.
- PCs fumbling the religion check needed to free Mort from the clutches of the Elder Elemental Eye while he’s slowly dissolving in a pool of acid… then dropping ritual book in said acid pool…
- As it dissolves, Mort’s undead brain tries to take over Shardmind only to realize: “Where the F..K is the brain?” before being absorbed back into the shard’s thought matrix.
- Spurt the Silvered Bulette… with crazy skill challenge.
Chatty DM (Going on and on about how cool and dangerous the bulette is): Hmm, am I overdoing it?
Players: Yes Chatty, we know how badass your Bulette is.
Chatty DM: Come on guys! This monster is SO badass that it eats Space and Time and craps black holes!
Good times.
Oh and incidentally, our very own Dave won the challenge. Congrats friend, I shall have my revenge and I will NOT advertise my presence so publicly next time. I bow down to your skill in grace and humility… even if you used cheap parlour tricks like plunking an awesome Dwarven Forge set for the final encounter.
I love you man.
Burning Luke and his Wheel of Awesome
On Saturday, while running around like a headless hen trying to fight windmills, I bumped into Luke Crane (creator of the Burning Wheel Roleplaying game) which I like to consider is a good gamer friend. I couldn’t chat with him much but asked him if he’d run a demo for my friends at an unspecified time to which he graciously acquiesced.
We managed to catch up on Sunday and played a 60 minute session of Burning Wheel’s “‘The Sword” where 4 shady characters with the moral fiber of recycled toilet paper fight over the ownership of an enchanted sword found at the bottom of a dungeon. It was phenomenally fun and Luke remains one of the few paragons of GMing I’ve met, representing the next level of standards and skills I aim for (another blog post or two just there).
(Yeah, I’m a D&D 4e blogger/freelance designer AND a Crane/BW fan AND an Old School gamer… Call it Full-Spectrum gaming, the best of all worlds if you ask me, you should try it).
Microsoft Surface D&D 4e Demo
Just too cool for words. Way more intuitive than the You Tube demo makes it out to be (I was manipulating the thing like Tom Cruise in Minority Report within minutes), fun and fast.
Unstable a bit… but then again, it is Microsoft-based.
The Tauntaun Sleeping Bag
My dearest E brought me a most amazing Tauntaun sleeping bag to give to my kids. While it was somewhat of a pain to carry around, it got me a TON of thumbs up and ‘man this is so cool’ comments. Gamer geeks are the best. Thanks sis, they love it!
Cons
The Participants to Events Ratio
At 30 000 participants per day and only a few score events everyday, it became very hard to participate in planned events at the con. On Saturday, I felt that all I did was wait, walk, wait some more and eat. Fortunately, things always livened up at night. Getting people organized to do things on a specific schedule is like trying to draw water with a pasta sieve. So much so that my inner leader/investigator was brought close to the breaking point a few times when shit didn’t happen fast enough around me.
That could have cost me dearly if my close entourage didn’t know me so well. Thanks guys.
The DM Challenge
(Fair warning, I switched brain-sides when I wrote that part)
This is a tad bit more touchy because I do NOT want to raise a stink. An organizational snafu happened with the DM Challenge when they announced, a few weeks ago, that people could register to play with a specific DM. Given my status as the ChattyDM and the advertising I did on the blog and on Twitter, I landed 4 readers who asked to play with me (out of a total of 6). The Wizards people realized (as I did) that this was a huge conflict of interest.
I had hoped that something was planned to deal with that but that wasn’t the case. Upon realization of the situation, the event organizer had to make a snap decision and he offered me 2 choices: I could take the players and forfeit any claim to the challenge or the players could be sent to other tables and I’d be able to run the challenge as intended.
I was really torn (and disappointed, in a day that had had its shares of frustrations). First because I had worked very hard at creating this adventure and I was looking forward to the actual competition. Second, especially because my frustration was mostly based on having spent a large part the day not being able to do what I planned to, I knew how disappointed those 4 guys would be if they didn’t get to play with me.
I finally went for playing with the players, following deeper instincts than my emotional state. Wil said that gaming creates lasting friendships and this very game may lead to just that, based on the awesome legendary stories we shared together…
I mean, come on, a data dumping shardmind? A Silvered Bulette that poops black holes? A brain that melts in a pool of acid because of a roll of 1 on an untrained religion check? That’s freaking priceless!
In the end, I was rewarded with an awesome game, great feedback and a lot of unexpected swag. Dave was a prince among men by sharing part of the prize packet with me (Hammerfast FTW) and the event organizer gave me a copy of the new Three-Dragon Ante and some more goodies!
And it makes me sound all badass when I tell people that I got disqualified from a D&D DMing contest.
So, what of next year? Well, Tycho says that it will be better and sleeker and more awesome. I’ve learned what Pax is and next year I shall be there, with friends, old and new, sitting in the queue room, playing Jungle Speed.
I shall learn to be the willow to the gales of awesomeness blowing out of that place. I have one year starting now.
Loading ...
