The convention was awesome, I got to see many friends again, made new ones, ran my own adventure, and, of course,  played a few games of D&D Next, the very early prototype of what the next version could be based on.

Like so many other bloggers and freelancers, I’ve signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement so I can’t discuss  specific rules. Rather I will do what I like doing best: tell stories of the games I ran, sharing highlights and special DMing and player moments during that 4 day long event.  Up first, the genesis of new heroes.

Temple of the Weeping Goddess (Spoiler Warning)

As you may know, my 1st freelance credit for D&D 4e was the publication of rules to make level 0 characters, something that some  people working on various editions of D&D wanted to bring back since the publication of AD&D Treasure Hunt adventure module in the late 80s. To supplement these rules, I also wrote a Dungeon magazine adventure featuring a group of orphans escaping a sound  trashing at the hands of drunken adventurers only to be thrust into a dangerous quest to save a lost Aspect of Avandra trapped in the Elemental Chaos.

Yes, I thought it would be cool to send pre-heroic characters to the Elemental Chaos.

Highlights of Session 1:

All players made a party of characters that seemed lifted from The Goonies . My favorite character was the dwarven divinely-touched  fat crybaby.

Fafir: “But I mean well! It’s not exactly my fault the fish market exploded last month!”

That character’s player went to town with characterization. Whining all the time and trying  make up for his many mistakes all the time.

Fafir also had a brother, Bofur, an arcane-touched human played by our very own Vanir. Yes, a human. This table was touched with the spirit of Sir Pratchett.

Fafir: I always look up to my big brother.

Bofur: Hey, no size joke, I’m just precocious!

During the first scene, while running away from the drunken adventurers, the players were discussing how to lose their pursuers. They came up with this gem:

Player: Lets lure them into a brothel!

Dragonborn: Yeah! That’s a GREAT idea.

Fafir: Oh, I don’t know guys, I hear brothels are EVIL.

Chatty: Hey, do your characters know what a brothel is?

Player: Not really… I mean, we all heard about them, this is a port city after all.

Fafir’s player: Yeah, Fafir assumes its some dark place where people drink a lot and dance.

(I love playing tweenaged characters.)

Later, the Dragonborn brute had his crowning moment of awesome. One of the bad guys was hidden underneath a fallen cupola sitting in the corner of a room.  The character climbed up the wall through the caved-in ceiling  and dove, greatclub first into the cupola, making it ring like a church bell, knocking its hapless occupant out.

At that point, I was standing up, acting the scene, hamming up each gestures, sounds and grunts. The dragonborn’s player had a grin so large, I was afraid his head would fall off.

I live for moments like these.

In the sessions’ last scene, where the young adventurers were pleading with the insanely angry and sad goddess, Fafir went to town.

Fafir (with a broken voice full of tears): You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for mistakes you did so long ago. I do mistakes all the time and I feel ashamed, but I always get back up and charge back into life, because I know I’ll get better. Please stop crying my beautiful goddess.

Chatty (stunned): Are your characters serious about loving her or are you just trying to calm her down so she can leave the plane?

Players (all nodding): Oh we’re totally honest here man, we want her to know we care for her.

Chatty: Wow, +6 bonus!

That really was a great game.

But that was just the half of it, I got to see more of Fafir during the weekend. I got served what I think is the greatest example of characterization in my 30 years as a DM.

Up next: My second session of the same adventure, some Fort Wayne stories and traveling tips!

Image Credits: Tyler Jacobson and Kieran Yanner

Like in Phil’s experience, we didn’t necessarily know the real rules (or particularly care). Some of the game play issues that would later come to bug us would be several campaigns down the road before they really became impediments to play. We played with a DM that liked to use 4d6 in order drop lowest, leading to playing fighters with 13th strength and paladins with 4 intelligence.

It was also the system that I would first run campaigns in. First, my utter failure of a campaign that mashed-up the video game Doom and D&D, or my much more successful followup that featured such unique NPCs as Lord Dort Invader, his Twelve Penetrators, and Gigantor the Great Big Robot.

From these memories of our early days, we’ve assembled a few of us who were in those games together to pinpoint what made those days of D&D so great.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2e)

• Age Range When Played: 12-17
• Nostalgia Factor: High
• Rules Mastery: Low

1. Flexibility

The O recalls those times fondly:

My D&D memories from that time have mostly been pushed out from all the cramming I had to do in school, but the ones I do remember are near and dear. My viewpoint comes directly from a novice player’s standpoint. What stood out the most to me in 2nd edition was the flexibility for both players and DMs. It felt as though the game was more open-ended, left more room for the imagination, and allowed greater room for house-ruling.

By far my favorite memories, and also my most saddening, involved my first long-standing character, Gurias the Half-Elf Wizard. Most of the great times involved our gaming group’s head DM, Abe. He was quite volatile and would quickly make rash decisions that could, to quote They Might Be Giants, “lead to excellence or serious injury.”

I recall once making Abe laugh because a couple of players were arguing amongst themselves, and I quickly ended the argument by saying, “Make half-elves, not war!” This campaign also involved my greatest failure both in D&D, and possibly life in general. Gurias was True Neutral and Abe created a magical neutrality test. He presented a white knight and a black knight fighting a complete stalemate, then asked me which I would choose to support. I chose the white wizard. I missed out on a great reward while being mocked into oblivion.

One memory, which I mention because it’s Dave’s favorite, involved Gurias’s demise. Gurias sadly died at mere level 7 and it was my first experience with character death. Remember how I mentioned the nice flexibility of 2nd edition? Well, rolling 1s and 20s with volatile Abe’s house rules were QUITE dangerous. Critical hits would lead to some heroic, amazing, over dramatized feat, while a critical miss lead to serious consequences. Our party was locked in a heated battle against an illithid mage. Gurias was at full health when said mind-flayer threw a fireball at me. I rolled my saving throw and it came up a natural 1. Abe’s response was that Gurias was blown to pieces then disintegrated by the fireball, preventing any chance of resurrection. Keep in mind that Gurias had enough health to withstand the fireball even if the damage dice rolled the maximum! I would eventually bring back Gurias in Dave’s 4th edition game, and the lore about the mind flayer’s fireball made it into that campaign.

Abe ended up giving me some redemption when my replacement character for Gurias, an evil Elven Fighter had a two-handed sword which received bonuses against humans. We were fighting a death knight and I critically missed AGAIN. This time however, he declared that the sword flew into the air, stopped, spun around making beeping sounds (as if a heat-seeking missile) until it locked onto a human character in the party (he randomly rolled which one), and stated that the sword flew at him and sliced off one of his legs. The best part? That party member was a guy named Ben… Abe’s younger brother! What ensued was a complete firefight of sibling warfare and sadness that words cannot describe. I can say that tears were shed and furniture was overturned.

2. Authority

The Main Event has this to say:

I did not know it at the time, but 2E’s byzantine bloated and vastly impenetrable rule set vested great authority in the DM. Adding to this dynamic was the fact our play group tended to have ‘older’ and ‘younger’ players… the older being somewhere in high school and the younger being in middle school. So, my first era of 2E play involved older players running games with a set of rules that was unfriendly to universal comprehension as a n00b. Rules-lawyering happened, but most of the time it was easily squashed with DM fiat. The thing is, it made for damn fun games. Rather than being hung up on the rules we were immersed and in love with the game and the game world. Part of that was my age and part of it was game design that I’d never endorse, but it was a different play experience in that era. The DM was in charge, end of story.

And you know what? With a good DM it can make for a better game and a better story.

3. Worlds of Wonder and Danger

Bartoneus recalls his first steps into D&D:

2nd Edition D&D came into my life at just the right time. I was ready to enter other people’s worlds and play a part in their stories, but I wasn’t yet to the point of wanting to create my own worlds or tell my own stories. For me my memories of 2E will always be tied to my first introduction to the planes and fantastic places like Sigil. I remember vividly the first time I had a character step out of a portal and into Sigil, but for me it wasn’t just entering “Sigil,” it was stepping into this wondrous city where the street arched upwards and kept going into the sky and all of your assumptions about the world were immediately left behind.

Back in 2E I always felt like non-weapon proficiencies were something special for my characters. I remember several instances of being encouraged as a player to sing my way out of certain situations because I had decided my Dwarf Fighter was proficient in singing Dwarven Drinking songs. Then of course there’s the instance of my first character’s death, where he was beaten unconscious after a courtroom scene involving Gigantor turned bad and the rest of the party fled through a portal to safety. When one of the players, I believe The Main Event, was asked by the DM if he wanted to try and save my character lying on the floor, he thought about it and responded, “No.” My character perished under Gigantor’s foot as the portal closed.

4. Whimsy

And finally, I recall some of my favorite characters and moments, driven by what was in the game:

The first D&D book I ever owned was The Complete Psionics Handbook. Without having a PHB, using what I could infer from the rules in the book plus half-remembered rules from convention games I had played in, I created an Elven Psionicist named “Spock.” The gaming group I tried to play him in didn’t let that fly, but I still got to play a Psionicist with all kinds of arm-stretching, weapon grafting, Id Insinuating goodness.

The second book I owned (yes, still without a PHB) was the Tome of Magic, and from there, Wild Mage easily became my favorite class. Memorized spells not coming in handy? No problem: cast Nahal’s Reckless Dweomer, roll on the wild surge table, and hope for the best. Though the results were heavily skewed towards something wacky (and not at all impactful) happening, I always felt like I had a chance to impact the situation… even if it was only a 1 out of 100 chance.

I also played a Halfling Cleric of chaos (once again using spells from the Tome of Magic) who was reincarnated into a skeleton through some chaotic consequences. Later, another curse would force his alignment to Lawful and necessitate worshiping a deity of law (I was NOT happy when that happened). There even came a battle against a powerful mage where my chaotic spells would have come in handy in scrambling his spellcasting, but all I had were law spells… except for the ones I had stored in my Ring of Spell Storing before the change. That last vestige of chaotic magic used at the right time saved the day, and my halfling would eventually revert to his old chaos-worshipping self before heading off on his immortality quest.

This is only a sampling, not even including the food mage, the berserker whose presence was announced by an organ, the bevy of characters based on Squaresoft games, the rogue who saved a gold mine and power-leveled through 4 levels thanks to the gold pieces therein, and much more. You still had the races and classes that had already become classics, alongside new and crazy options. And whether your fireball was turning into butterflies, or you were pulling a string of Christmas lights out of a Robe of Useless items, this is the edition to me that embraced some of the wackier sides of the game, for some memorable times.

Do you have any fond memories of AD&D 2e that you want to share? Please do, but remember to keep it positive.

Next week, we tackle a big era in D&D and the gaming industry: 3rd edition.

I was very intrigued with Mike Mearls vision of creating a “D&D’s Greatest Hits.” It evokes a plethora of images about modular designs and piecemeal “build your own game” elements that inspires the writer and budding game designer in me. This gave me an idea for a series of post here at Critical Hits. Some of the bloggers here have been playing various editions of D&D for the last 4 decades, I thought it would be interesting if we shared our five DMing Greatest Hits for some or all of the versions of D&D we played as dungeon masters.

Let me start with my first foray in RPGs:

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1e)

• Age Range when played : 10-16
• Nostalgia Factor: Very High
• Rules Mastery: Moderate

As I mentioned in my RPG DNA post a while back, I discovered  tabletop RPGs when I was 10. A schoolmate invited me over to show me a made-up  game based on what he had played with his cousin (the original Red Box) over a weekend. We played for hours with hardly any rules more complex than “Roll a d6 to fight, you die on a 1, you kill the monster on a 6, we roleplay the inbetweens“.

When I showed that game to a 13 y.o. friend of mine, he came back a few days later with a borrowed Player’s Handbook he got from a buddy in high school. We played with that for months.

I bought the Dungeon Masters Guide one year later. And more or less taught myself English while reading Gygaxian prose. The rest is history…

So onwards with the Top 5 elements I loved most about running AD&D, admitting I am heavily biased by the nostalgia factor.

1. Inspiration

The AD&D core books ooze with inspiration for games, NPCs, dungeons, traps, tricks and plots.  Charts, titles (brazen trollops anyone?), random tables, weapon names, monster lore and the much misunderstood concepts of Gygaxian Ecologies.  From random dungeon generators to  monster lairs found in the wilderness, I yearn for as many inspirational aids I can get to design exciting settings, campaign arcs, plotlines, and encounters for my players.

2. Exploration

What I remember most of AD&D is that sense of discovery about almost anything as I deciphered Gary’s teachings. I wanted every stone turned, I wanted to draw dungeons that took multiple pads of graph paper (and I did), I wanted to use and create monters that made no frakking sense (Crap elementals FTW), and I laughed when  friends threatened each other by comparing their character sheets.

Joel: Oh yeah? Well just wait till my illusionist levels up and I’ll Phantasmal Killer you with images of your parents DOING IT!

All editions of D&D have this, hence my nostalgia warning. Practically speaking, as a DM I expect to be provided concise tools (tables, charts, generators, short blurb) at my gaming table (in paper or e-format) and more elaborate online resources to help me cater to my players’ sense of exploration.

3. Attitude

You’ve got to hand it to Gary Gygax, he had a very strong opinion of how his game should be played. Now, while I HATE to be told how a game MUST be played, I loved how Gary’s attitude and certitudes transpired in the pages of his books and lent them a sense of credibility that made you feel like you were invited to join a club (or attending a heartfelt lecture).

While I’d like to do away with the most glaring patronizing passages (as I ignore them now), I like engaging, authoritative or conversational tones in my rulesbook. AD&D certainly had the tone right to engage my tweenaged mind.

4. Resilience

I’ve rarely met people that played AD&D 1e with all the rules and subsystems and ENJOYED it for a prolonged periods of time. Yet AD&D’s chaotic goo of crunch could take some severe misinterpretation, heavy handed house-ruling and glaring omissions while remaining very playable. I like that in a game. Keep giving me a system that has a  simple core and allow me to eject almost anything from it without threatening its fundamental integrity as an engine and I’ll be happy.

5. Modules

The early AD&D modules were simple, had low page content and were direct.  Short intro (ex: do this quest or the baron burns you alive), dungeon rooms with minimal description… and an emergent sense of plot that arose organically through play. (I’m referring to  modules like Village of Homlet, Against the Giants, the slave lords and others of that ilk). I want more of that.

What about you? Did you play 1e? What was the elements you liked the most about it.  Please keep it positive, we all know the warts of our games, let’s focus on the awesome.

Up next, Dave and friends tackle that multi-headed beast that was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.

In that time, I’ve further thought about what gets my blood boiling and sends my brain in a creative frenzy. As I seek to find this feeling anew among all the clutter that accumulates in my existence, I realized what makes me tick as a writer. I found it while reading a book.

A while back, I was reading Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek while I was waiting for Dr.C to finish work. I came upon his story about trading his Death Star playset vs a  landspeeder and 10$ back in the 80′s and it just dawned on me:

Will was lousy at trades. Oh wait, that’s not it.

Much like Wil realized that he was a born storyteller, I realized that was also one of the things  I liked doing most: writing stories about what my experiences with RPGs.  If you look over my previous 2 posts (here and here), my series on becoming a freelance writer (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) or all my posts about playing with my children, you can feel the energy being poured into these articles. Yet, as I recall, they required minimal effort to write. I enjoy sharing my experience through a (slightly) fictionalized account of what occurs in my geek life so much that it doesn’t feel like work to me… at all.

Secondly, as I re-read my posts about DMing at the New York Comic Con, I remembered something fundamental about my blogging experience.  My absolute best posts are and have always been those where each paragraph oozes with the bubbling enthusiasm that is a hallmark of my extroverted personality. I seem to recall someone (probably Logan Bonner) at Pax East last year telling me that whenever I raved about a new game, he would usually cut what I said about it in half before considering how true it could be.

That’s me to  T.

So this is what I want to reconnect with. I want most, if not all my blog posts to be like the one I wrote about NYCC, I want to share my insights as a GM, share my good ideas, tell a good story.  But most importantly, I yearn to talk about things that get me excited again, things I feel enthusiastic about. Be it the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign I may start with my friends, the mounting excitement (albeit sans details) of playtesting the next iteration of D&D, my burgeoning experiences as a foodie geek or exploring new gaming horizons with my children and my girlfriend.

In fact, if I recalled what brought me to Critical-Hits 5 years ago, I’d say it was the enthusiasm of Dave, Danny and co. This is what this place means to me, this is what I want the place to remain.

And you dear readers have been a huge part of that. Thank you for reading.

At the time, I had no idea how successful the experience would be. As it turns out, things went quite well indeed. Read on for the “storified”  highlights of this two hour game.

Puzzling it Out

In one room I rolled “puzzle” on my trusty chart. The map showed two pools, one silver coloured and one gold. So I devised the following “simple” puzzle. The players had to take a container made of silver to transfer water from the silver pool to the gold pool OR take a gold container to do the reverse. Doing either popped a secret latch in the wall and uncovered the treasure.

I let the players experiment for about 10 minutes, answering questions, helping them learn about skill checks to obtain hints and figure things out. They eventually caught on but no one had a silver or golden container.

Rogue: Hey wait (throws treasure token from a previous encounter my way), I have this magnificent silver liquor flask. I pour out the content and use it.

Chatty: What was in the flask?

Rogue (smiling evilly) Fine Dwarven spirits…

Dwarf: No!!!!

Obligatory Level 1 Generic Critter Fight

Later in the game, the characters  were hard at work fighting  kobolds.  The PCs were in deep trouble; everyone was bloodied as the Kobold Sligner was spreading chaos and mayhem.

Drow Ranger: I swear to god, if I get hit by another shit pot, I’m going to turn that guy into a pair of boots.

Chatty: That’s a great use of the Nature skill by the way.

At that point, another player asked to join the game, I gave him the cleric, explained that Groo (the Goblin bookie that gave the quest) was worried that his investment wasn’t being properly attended to…

Party: Hey!

… And that the cleric was “insurance”

Party: HEALING PLEASE!

The cleric’s timely arrival saved the day… as were the treasure tokens traded for healing potions.

It’s Dungeons AND Dragons Bro…

The last scene we played was, by far, the best of the whole convention for me. You see, when I was prepping the game, I really wanted to showcase both elements of the game’s name. When I told Wizards of the Coast’s community manager  Michael Robles about my plans, he lent me his Red Dragon mini (sorry Mike, I still have it, I’ll bring it at Gen Con).  When the party entered the room bearing a huge circular rune, I rolled “monster” and decided to go for broke and plopped the Dragon mini on the table.

Chatty: As you enter, you see an elephant-sized Dragon covered in spiked and blood-red scales. It looks quizzically at you, sniffs around and says. “Good, treasure and lunch all at the same time!”

I decided to totally Mouseburn that scene and make it into one of those “one main skill check with many helpers” skill challenges like the one I did here.

Chatty: Okay guys, this is not a scene where you can win a fight. This thing is big and powerful, you’ll have to deal with it by interaction. One of you needs to take the lead in either negotiating or bullying the dragon in not killing you all.

Dwarf Slayer: I’ll do it! I’ll intimidate the dragon!

Chatty: Anyone opposed to that?

Party: Nope, all good.

(As they were saying that, all the players were placing their minis behind the dwarf, it was hilarious to watch).

Chatty: All right, before you start roleplaying your dwarf”s attempt at intimidating, everyone else can chose any of their skills and try to help you out. Everyone gets to describe what they’re doing.  You’ll get a +2 for each helping PC that succeeds and a -1 for each failure. Are you cool with that?

Dwarf: Hell yeah!

The paladin pleaded with the dragon that everyone knew that dwarven meat was foul tasting and out of fashion. (Diplomacy, failed)

Dragon: Ha! If it wasn’t for your armour and the artificially sweetened taste of goodiness, I’d be munching on you right now Paladin, stand aside.

Drow Ranger: I want to sneak behind the dragon, and knock an arrow while standing  right behind its head. I stand ready to whisper some kind of Batman-ly threat in its ear. (Success)

Chatty: This is very cool! If this ever degenerate into a fight, you’ll be first to attack.

And so on. In the end, the dwarf had to roll a in the mid 10s to succeed. The player played his swaggering and blustering dwarf  beautifully, earning himself some generous bonuses. As he picked the d20, everybody was sitting up straight, eager to see the results.

The dice rolled… and rolled….

… And settled on a 3. (Fail!)

The players looked expectantly at me.

I made a pained expression.

Chatty: The dragon scoffs… and in a lightning quick strike, bites the dwarf’s heads off.

(Pause for effect)

Chatty: The dwarf ‘s soon to be lifeless body remains standing up… blood spurting from it’s mangled torso.

Chatty: The dragon, chewing contently, looks expectantly at the rest of you. What do you do?

Everybody else: WE RUN!

I looked at the stunned player who was, up until a few seconds ago, playing a dwarven Slayer.

Player: That… that… was the MOST AWESOME D&D GAME EVER!

I don’t think I need to add much more to that.  Many weeks later, I still share this player’s enthusiasm for that session.

That’s why, to this day, in spite of all the other fun games I’ve discovered these last 2 years, I will always remain a fan of D&D… whatever incarnation or name it takes. I plan to keep teaching it to players, old and young for as long as my inner flame remains. I’m convinced that this is the BEST way to grow our community.

Dear game designers and publishers, keep innovating and bringing out new games and material, because that’s how you keep my inner flame alive.

As for the formula? It works like a charm. Feel free to borrow it and have fun with it. I’d love to hear about the experiences you had with it.

Thanks for reading.

I played 3 such games and they each were incredibly entertaining. I recounted one of them here.

In the last game I played, I wanted to create a dungeon crawling experience with absolute minimal prepping in advance. More importantly however, I wanted to be able to play without floundering for ideas whilst in the middle of running the game. As I pondered my options, I came up with a formula for running a quick 2 hour game. I’m sharing this with you because I think you might find it useful.

I started with the Red Box , including the dungeon battlemap packaged with the game. I then took a fistfull of glass beads (which I dubbed “treasure tokens”) and wrote the following table:

Roll a d10
1-2 Empty Room, Treasure out in open
3-4 Trap
5-6 Puzzle
7-0 Monster

The idea was to have the treasure beads distributed in various rooms of the dungeon and roll on the table whenever the party entered one such room. I’d make up an encounter based on the result using nothing but the list of monsters in the Red Box’s DM’s booklet and the mini-Rule 42 found on the booklet’s last page (the DC for level 1 adventurers and a damage chart for hazards). If I rolled “monster” I’d make a level 1 encounter on the spot based on what made most sense or was cool.

With only a 40% chance to face monsters (combat not being the only outcome even then), I thought this distribution to be ideal for fostering exploration and creating the classic “poke with a stick” experimentation that I fondly remembered of my early D&D games as a tweenager.

Turns out I was right…

Armed with these, I got a group of 4 players and we created the setting for the game by having them answer these questions:

You are adventurers that banded together recently. Tell me what your last adventure was about. More specifically, tell me one good thing that happened to you and one bad thing that requires you to return adventuring in dungeons.

The wizard player (sensing an exploit) said “I found a very powerful staff”

I answered “Ha! Sure, no problem… But since this is a one shot level 1 game, please work in your ‘bad’ stuff how you lost that staff… even if only temporarily.”

The Dwarven Slayer piped in: “I know! I spent all of the party’s loot from our last adventure on ale and whores… I even pawned the wizard’s staff!  I’m so sorry guys, I’ll make it up to you!”

Everybody was laughing their heads off, the game was already a great success.

Chatty: Okay then, well the dwarf knows this Goblin “Bookie” called Groo that specializes in booking high risk, high paying, no-questions-asked forays into vaults, catacombs and other subterranean locales in exchange for a very fair share of the spoils.

Dwarf: Oh yeah, he’s the one who spotted me the money for the staff.

Drow Ranger: You are so not leaving our eyesight, ever again!

Dwarf: Oh come on, I told you I’d waive my part of the treasure until I paid you all off!

(The guy was so funny…)

Chatty: Okay so Groo tells you that the thieve’s guild has had one of its minor vaults run over by monsters from the Underdark and were ready to sign off the valuables stored as a “business loss”. Groo bought back the “content” of the vault at 1 silver piece to the gold crown and wants you to recover as much from it as you can… he promises to let you keep 50% of whatever you recover.

I pulled out the Red Box’s Dungeon map and handed out a pair of glass beads to every player.

Chatty: Okay each of these beads represents a small generic treasure pile whose worth you’ll evaluate once you leave the dungeon. You’ll alternate turns placing these tokens onto the dungeon map, representing in what room treasure can be found. Whenever you enter a room with one of those beads, I’ll play on my little table here to see what you meet, it won’t necessarily be monsters.

The players started placing the beads commenting on some of the features appearing on the map, like braziers, pools and ominous runes on the floor. It reminded me that these were all new players or players who hadn’t played in decades. It dawned on me that I had a very important job here: present one of my favourite games to these players so they could taste how awesome playing D&D is.

Chatty: Okay, before we start, here’s one last thing about the beads. Since they are generic treasure, it’s possible that they could be useful for you in a given situation. So at anytime that you need a particular tool or object, you can “spend” a token and tell me “Oh but I have this doohickey that’s great for disarming traps” or “Oh look, here’s the key to that locked door” or better yet “Hey guys, what does a “healing potion” do?”

They loved it.

In hindsight, they mostly used them as healing potions as things got HARD, but I love this mechanic and will use it for all the “unattributed treasure parcel” I keep struggling with to this day.

The game was a huge success, Up next, I’ll share the  highlights of the game. It turned out to be among my great D&D games and certainly one of my most successful convention games ever.

As awesome as 2011 started (getting published ROCKS), the second half of the year has brought turmoil and uncertainties beyond what my strengthening psyche could manage without help. Brutal changes have rocked my life leading me to move into a new apartment, deal with the always unsatisfactory compromise that is shared custody of my children and deal with the unbridled joy (and distractions) of newly found love.

All this, coupled with keeping up with my client’s projects, has led me to slip out one of my best established habits: blogging. As I let this slide, my “need” to write online receded  and I stopped rationalizing why I didn’t feel the old compulsion to write as I have for so many years.

As I write these lines, I realize that “needing” is fed by the act of doing.

As I floundered in moving boxes,  struggled with deliverable and dove into awesome dates with the one I have been affectionately calling Dr. C, I realized that I more or less sat on the  achievements I worked hard to unlock after implementing the plan I successfully hatched, nearly 3 years ago,  redirecting my life. As a result, I need to take back control of my creative life. I need to start writing again.

Scratch that. When I hear people around me bemoaning their life, my inner coach wakes up. “I should” and “I need” are poisonous inertia-fueled guilt-trips. I need to think and speak action words!

Let’s try this again shall we?

I want to take back control of my creative life. I will start writing again.

Okay Chatty… how are you going to do this then? How about this?

Let’s go back to basics and tackle less ambitious subjects. Let’s start working on blog posts that I can write and edit in less than one hour (hence this post’s name). This column, being public and read by so many people, remains one of the best instant feedback soundboard there is out there. It forces me to pour a little bit more of myself in the text than if I was writing to my “Document” folder.

Plus, you all know how much of an attention whore I am.

Also, let’s ask Dr. C, my coach and muse, to add a ‘writing’ element to the  ”getting  life back on track” game we’ve been playing. In it, I get rewards for doing exercises and eating better.  Thus, I’d also get rewarded to do something that I fundamentally enjoy doing: writing.

I’ve been at it for about 40 minutes so far  and I’m already about to hit the 500 words count.  This is a good sign as I type noticeably faster when I enjoy myself… and I totally am right now.

That’s EXACTLY what I was seeking.

What about you, when you need to be creative and have let the habit slide for too long, how do you get back in the groove?

Looking forward to hear from you. I miss reading comments!

On October 2011, I started my move into my new apartment and was sitting alone and dejected, waiting for people to deliver my new furniture.

(Yes I am recently separated. Everything’s fine now, including the kids.)

I picked up my smartphone and sent a call out on Twitter for some entertainment.

Chatty: Spending day alone in new unfurnished apartment, awaiting for new furniture and services. Keep me company plz?

That’s when my good friend FDL, sent me this completely unexpected response:

FDL: Ok. you see a grue. What do you do?

(I was thinking: “Hey cute joke…. Let’s see how it plays out.”)

Chatty: Wave torch

FDL: As you wave your torch, you set your furniture delivery guys on fire. Game over. Restart? [y/n]

(I fell down my flimsy beach chair onto my hardwood floor laughing. This could become fun.)

Chatty: LOL yes. Talk Grue.

FDL: The grue says she’s your upstairs neighbor and she hopes her noisy Angry Birds parties won’t bother you too much. What next?

Chatty: examine exits

FDL: There is only one exit, a hangar bay door.

Chatty: kick door

FDL: Door says “Ow!” and kicks back. Grue looks at you in disgust.

(Very funny man… At this point it was clear we had a Parsely text game going. The fact that it worked so well on Twitter was awesome. People had started reading it and reacting to it. I was having fun, my woes forgotten.)

Chatty: Apologize door.

(I was still playing it old school with 2 words)

Chatty: Inventory

FDL: This game uses the Diablo II inventory screen, so assume that you can’t find anything useful, ever. Assume your hands are empty.

(Har har har…)

Chatty: Exit room

FDL: The grue locks the door behind you. It is very cold outside. And you forgot to say “wear pants”, didn’t you?

FDL: It’s Friday. You never wear pants on Friday. Lord knows you said so on Twitter often enough.

(Smartypants, stop reading my Tweets.)

Chatty: Scoff about need for pants.

FDL: As you exit the apartment pantsless, you run into your other new neighbors who wanted to welcome you. All of them.

(*Facepalm*)

Chatty: Do dance of pantless pride

FDL: Neighbor’s kid takes a swing at your pantslessness with +5 Vorpal Steeltoed boots. Rolls a natural 20. You’re in ER.

(That was a low blow FDL)

Chatty: (ouch…) summon nurse

(There was a missing, untagged tweet here about a nurse casting Cure Critical Wounds and an Orc lying in the next bed, a Battleaxe embedded in its forehead, smiling at me.)

Chatty: Examine room

FDL: Well, it IS an examination room, so you sorta have to do that, yeah. BTW, the Orc says: “You pretty!”

FDL: BTW, the grue called and said you missed your cable guy. He rescheduled your appointment for March 14th, 2177.

(Sigh, it’s funny because it’s almost true)

Chatty: Ask orc for battleaxe

FDL: Orc smiles (toothlessly), hides battleaxe behind his back and says: “You no say magic worrrrd, pretty one!”

(Sigh… time to test the parsely engine.)

Chatty: Smile sweetly and tell orc “give me the (censored) battleaxe you (censored) or I’ll (censored) your (censored) (censored) please.

FDL: Orc hands you the battleaxe and says: “You not gotta be big meanie, hurt Ogg-Bogg’s feelings!” Nurse frowns at you.

Chatty: Kiss orc on forehead and say “I was speaking Bromantic Orc you dummy” then find pants… Any pants.

FDL: You put on clown pants. The clown you take them from looks pissed, until he sees your battleaxe and your Orc.

Chatty: Search clown pants pocket for clown car keys and go out into parking.

FDL: 12,000 evil clowns pile out of the car and squirt unholy water at you with their lapel flowers. Roll saving throw.

(I gotta hire this guy for my next adventure)

Chatty: I’m wearing a  gown, clown pants, a battleaxe and an amorous orc with a splitting headache; I make the damn save.

FDL: OK. Just in the nick of time, the Orc dives in front of you to take the Unholy water blast. He dies with a smile.

(Nooooooooooooo…… Ogg-Bogg, our bromance was too short.)

FDL: And then the grue swoops by and steals you away from the angry clown mob. You’re back home, safe. You win. 5000 XP!

That was a great little game. It helped me pass the time and I thank FDL for having taken some time and invested significant creative effort in doing this.  So you see, Twitter can be used for parsely games after all (and others too). Provided both parties are willing to play some give and take for entertainment value.

Also, if you haven’t tried them yet, give Jared Sorensen’s Parsely games a try. They are a great way to pass time in between games.

Special thanks to Dr.C., the new special someone in my life, who safeguarded this exchange so I could make a post out of it.  Also thanks to Tangent128 who made the TwitRPG logo back in 2008 when I played my first RPG game on Twitter.

But that’s never stopped me before.

So after asking my Twitter readers for inspiration (thanks Christian), I settled on a question that’s been on my mind for a long time:

Given no limits in ressources, time and talent, what would you design?

Hmm, that’s an easy one; I’d design something along the lines of the “Young Ladies’ Primer” found in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. The Primer was a nano-computer with one main function, to act as an interactive smart-book that taught children through a long interactive storygame.

So when I say I’d like to do something like that, I’m not thinking about an actual book-shaped computer made with nanotech (although it would be cool), rather I’d like to do something that could, eventually, evolve into just that… with a tabletop RPG spin.

Here are the basic pitching points:

• An application for a tablet PC like the iPad or the equivalent
• The app features a richly illustrated (animated?) adventure story aimed at tweenagers, I’m thinking 8-12.
• The story progressively  becomes fully interactive as a CRPG with elements such as dialog choices, character sheets, conflict resolution mechanics and character growth (XPs).
• The game should last between 5 and 10 hours depending on side-quests completed.
• A simple, yet complete set of tabletop RPG rules that allows readers to continue the adventures of the characters of the story
• Stats for all main characters for the story and rules to make new ones.
• A primer to teach parents how to play tabletop roleplaying games with tween-aged children, complete with advice on preparing new stories, inserting educational content (if needed) and letting the creativity of children drive the show.

The tabletop game would most likely be narrative-driven.  So far,  the mechanics that I envision fitting the most with what I need is  is John Harper’s Lady Blackbird as it has just the right amount of rules element (fitting on a demi-page) to make it into really enjoyable roleplaying game for people of all ages.

I don’t know if the technology is there yet or if parents would be interested in this, but as a customer, I’d snag such a product (and pay more than once for different stories) in a minute.

What about you? Do you like the idea? What elements would you like to see in such a app/story/game?

More importantly, if you were asked the same question I was, what would you design?

Long time readers will remember some fondly and I hope that new readers will discover some of the best gems of this little corner I call my blog.

And just so everyone is up to speed, I have two children: Nico, a 9 y.o. boy and Rory an 8 y.o. girl.

The stories I will link to range from 2008 to 2011.

Nico’s Quest: What started it all

Upon my return from Gen Con 2008, riding high on a thousand ideas and projects, I decided to turn my son’s bedside story into an simple, freeform interactive roleplaying game. It worked so well it sparked a mini-campaign:

• Part 1: Nico’s Quest
• Part 2: Bend it Like Nico
• Part 3: Nico’s Party 

If you click only one link in the whole post, at least click the first one, it will be worth your time.

D&D 4e vs a 6 y.o. Attention Span

During the bedside campaign, I tried playing D&D 4e with Nico, using pregens and a very simple improv adventure. After a 30 minutes encounter, Nico’s attention wandered and we never returned to that game, but you can see some of the cool things that can be done with D&D and a 6 year old.

• Nico’s Pick-Up D&D Game 

An Old Classic gets the Nico Treatment

Some time later, Nico and I decided to play the bedtime story game again and we managed to cram a great session in one session. It featured the now classic Super Nico (Laser Knight Esc.) and was about saving a young prince in the clutches of the evil Red Dragon Smaug.

• Nico Outsmarts Smaug The Dragon

What is really ironic is that I just showed him the original post and asked him if the name Smaug rang a bell.

Nico: Yeah, wasn’t that the dragon in The Hobbit?

Chatty: What are the chances?

Nico: Daddy!

Intermission:

During Gen Con 2008, I wrote a long, crazy, disjointed live-blog post which I will spare you.  In this post, one H. Gygax left a comment about remembering the early Gen Cons as she was serving drinks and hot dogs in her basement…

O.o

We exchanged a few messages on Facebook and when she read about the stories I did with Nico she shared a great Gygax family story. She told me that Gary would often gather all the kids in a bedroom and start doing a grand interactive story with all of them. The kids loved it and really got into it. And often, Gary would fall asleep in the bed while the kids kept adding to the story.

I love stuff like that, thanks Heidi.

Unfinished Tale

At one point I had a harder time keeping up with the Laser Knight  stories I did with Nico. They all started to feel like they were the same. One such story did stand out and I recount the first part here:

• The Sword of Dreams

I’m sad I don’t remember that last part of that story because I do recall its conclusion was cool.

Variations on the Same Theme.

As time flew by, we tried other versions of bedtimes stories.

One was about Nico taking on the role of a Mecha pilot

• Bedtime Campaign: Pilot Nico’s Battlebot!

The story was really cool and let Nico deploy new ideas based on technology and whatnot.

But my favorite of the gang was the Indiana Nico series, of which I have only one post:

• Indiana Nico and The Golden King

In that post 7 y.o. Nico shared a fundamental piece about what many people like about RPGs; we call it the Rule of C4 here.

New Breakthrough: The Notebook RPG

The bedtime stories petered off with Nico (I’ll talk about Rory real soon) until I stumbled upon the idea of playing an adventure using a visual support: A notebook.

• Notebook Campaign: How I got my Son into Tabletop RPGs
• Notebook Campaing: Super Nico vs the 3 Hungry Goblins

To this day, more than 2 years after we tried it, Nico still talks about the experience and wants to “upgrade” it with more players, minatures and bigger paper…

…i.e. a full blown tabletop RPG.

 Culmination of an Art: The Lego Campaign

The following two posts describe a battlegame we created with only Rock-Paper-Scissors and what I call “Mouseburning” it . It was when Nico asked me to play with some Legos with him and I suggested we made they whole thing into an adventure game. We had a lot of fun.

• Nico’s Lego RPG: Assault on the Crystal King’s Cave, Part 1
• Nico’s Lego RPG: Assault on the Crystal King’s Cave, Part 2

It’s Not Just a Boy’s Game: Introducing Rory

My daughter Rory has mostly been less interested than Nico in doing those story games, with a few very notable exceptions.

First when she was very young:

• Bedtime Adventure: Enter Cartain!

After that experience, she didn’t want to play alone for 3 years. But when we did, what a result! (This is from earlier this Fall)

• Bedtime Adventures: May-Gee’s Big Test, Part 1
• Bedtime Adventures: May-Gee’s Big Test, Part 2 

The sensitive nature of Rory that you see when she was a preschooler has flourished in a richer, stronger ability to forge a story.

I remain constantly amazed at the skills my children are developing through these games. I do hope they become as useful to their lives as gaming has helped me in mine.

All together Now: Brother and Sister Editions

Nico and Rory played the story games twice, both were notable events, with, shall we say, interesting results…

•  Bedtime Campaign: Brother and Sister in the Car Edition

In which siblings fight for narrative control and unlock the power of synergy when they finally team up.

• Nico and Rory’s Quest: Meeting the Ice Titan

In which both my children were introduced to Sword and Sorcery ( a D&D 0th edition retroclone) and had fun talking to the quest givers.

Leaving The Nest

I always wondered how these games would shape how my children would play with others. Well it turns out it had more influence than I thought…

•  Kids and Games: Getting it Wrong is Doing it Right

In fact, Nico, Rory and thier friend Felix are playing an extremely complex Lego game right now where each player has to trade gems to the other two to be allowed to purchase specific parts to build machines and people.

The complexity of the game baffles my mind.

Oh and all three  now share a Minecraft server  (very originally called Nicocraft) that my friend PM setup for them.

How’s that for having guided them into gamerland?

So what’s your “Teach Kids to Play” story?

While the game had nothing spectacular in terms of the encounters we played or the monsters the players fought (zombie wolves), the concept awoke my dormant creativity and sent into a spiral of ideas and concepts upon which a campaign setting could rest on.

The Fantasy Zombie Apocalypse What-If Game

Ever since that game, my mind’s been afire with the idea of running an actual D&D game during a Zombie Apocalypse. The game has the necessary resources: there are a gazzillion zombie creatures in the D&D Compendium, the Open Grave sourcebook has many ideas about them and, well, zombies are just too cool for school.

(Hello Phil? The 80′s called and they want that tacky buzz phrase back)

But here’s what makes ot so interesting to me, when you mix any generic fantasy world and apply a zombie plague over it, you get the most interesting concepts.

For a modern take on the subject, refer to this 2009 Halloween post of mine.

So why don’t we play my favourite of all creative games, the What-If game?

Minding the Zombie Problem

What if the plague is parasitic in nature and only affects denizens of the material world? That would mean all material-born creatures would be likely to fall to the plague… except possibly a few special individuals destined to fight or maintain it (read: characters and a few villains).

Could that imply that creatures originating from the Far Realms like Mind Flayers and Beholders are  immune?  That would likely mean that the illithids could take over the world… or would they if they can’t control or blast the minds of millions of mindless walking corpses? If you’re going for the classic brain-eating zombie plague, the mind flayers would actually have to deal with starvation as they race across the world to “preserve and ration” their food source from the ravening zombies. Maybe with a few nudges in the right places, the Flayers could be convinced to pack their bags and head back to the Far Realms, or at least go invade another material world.

In the same line, what of the denizens of other planes of existence (regardless of the cosmology of the edition of D&D you play)? With a world overrun by the mindless undead, it stands to reason that it could be the end result of a grand scheme of some god or demon prince of the undead. In fact, an actual global-scale zombie plague could mean that Orcus was finally successful and was spreading chaos and destruction on the material world. In such a version, the world would be run by a few of the Prince of Undeath’s chosen, psychopathic cultists with strange necromantic powers that allow them to sculpt undead flesh into unspoken monstrosities that defy even the grossest entries of your favourite Monster Manual.

Imagine a mimic made of undead flesh. A spider with the jaws of an alligator and 8 human arms. A red dragon with its head replaced by an undead Beholder.

Possibilities: endless.

You could make the cause of the plague a theme of your mini-campaign.  What caused it? A biological virus, a magical plague, a divine curse?  Answering questions like these would open new plot possibilities that you can develop (or not) as the action unfolds.

One of my favourite questions to explore would be “what of the other undead?” How would the catastrophic increase in near-mindless flesh-eaters affect the “Necrosphere” so to speak? I’d be particularly interested in exploring what the ghouls would do. What would thier king, Doresein, do if it noticed that its subjects were starving as the availability of  dead humanoid flesh dwindled to near zero? I’d explore how the King of Ghouls would go about hiring  the PCs through a front, not easy when 99% of humanoid life now shambles around, to solve his food problem.

Oh, what’s this? Two parallel explorations of ideas that lead to the same issue: Food. So what if you mixed the Mind Flayer plot line with that of the Ghouls. In a world where these two empires become forced to clash, which would the PCs side with?

And finally, what of a small shrine of a near forgotten goddess was rediscovered?  What if the sole relics she left behind were a rusted syringe-like contraption and a heavily damaged book of rituals explaining how to create something called, in a lost language, a Vhak-Ssine? (It doesn’t have to be that obvious). And what it these were the only known elements capable of curing the plague and immunizing against it?

Remember that in all those musings, I assume that the cure disease spell does work.  I just assume that much like our modern health systems, a virulent plague would overload the relatively small number of spellcasters that can cure it.

But what of the adventurers? How would we explain their resistance to the plague? Would they be likely to fall to it? And if so, what would Zombie rules for PCs be like in D&D 4e? What would they accomplish in such a bleak world. What would be a typical plot for a 6-10 sessions mini-campaign?

I leave those things for you to mull over and share in the comments.

As you can see from the very few examples above, a setting that’s been explored many times can still yield original and engaging adventure ideas by just asking a few questions and exploring where the answers could lead you.

I may tackle a part 3 in the near future where I discuss what form a zombie apocalypse mini-campaign could take.

Thanks for reading.

As I was getting ready to play the less than stellar adventure found in the Box, the event’s organiser pulled me aside and told me these magical words:

“Forget about the red box adventure, make something up entirely. Just start with a Roleplaying encounter and play it by ear from there.”

I had just given me the keys to the kingdom… and no one was there to watch me steal the crown jewels.

(Ewww, get your mind out of the gutter!)

You see, while the adventure in the Red Box is quite ordinary and the character generation method is one of the worst I’ve seen since Battlelords of the 23rd Century, the Red Box’s DM’s book is a solid piece of introductory gaming. Thus, armed with the monster chapter and the digest rule-42 on the last page (i.e. the DC table for level 1-3 gameplay), I got ready to inflict my very own brew of D&D on unsuspecting players.

I decided to put all my small press experience to bear on those games and approached the game as such:

Chatty: Okay, so you’re all relatively new adventurers who’ve banded together in the recent past. Can you tell me about your last adventure? More specifically, can you tell me one thing that went really good for your group and what that was really bad…

This post is about one of the best answers I got:

The Zombie Apocalypse, Indie Style

Player #1 (Human Paladin) : The GOOD thing we had is that we’ve so far managed to survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

Chatty (trying to imagine what a fantasy zombie apocalypse would be like… and trying to scale it to a 2 hour game): That’s… interesting. Are we talking regional, continental or global apocalypse?

Player #2: Let’s say “continental”

Chatty (Doing double-time building a setting scaffold in his mind): All right, and if that was the “good” thing, what was the bad one?

Player #2 (Dwarven slayer): Well see… I kinda caused the apocalypse… I kinda was supposed to help my necromancer friend and things got… complicated.

(Oh man, I live for moments like that.)

Chatty: You did? Now THAT is interesting. Does your adventuring colleague know about that?

(Player one was grinning like an idiot at that point.)

Player #2 (Sheepishly): No… I kinda grabbed him real fast and dragged him out of my necromancer pal’s dungeon as the plague was spreading.

(Call it what you want, but in my book, this is true roleplaying.)

Chatty: So basically you guys have survived for some time huh? So this game will kinda be like a 28 Days set in the world of D&D right?

Player #1 (Already passed the point of excitement): Oh YES, this is SO cool!

I had the ingredients needed to fill 2 hours of pure, undiluted D&D gaming.

The Clan of the Dead

I decided to set a classic 6/3 skill challenge where the characters (a 3rd player had joined by that time) were trying to reach one of the few remaining reinforced surface outposts before being overtaken by… (I flipped through the Red Box’s monster chapter) Zombie Wolves!

But Chatty you ask, there are no Zombie wolves in the Red Box.

Yes there are… I’ll show you later, but right now we don’t need stats since the PCs might actually make it alive and outrun the wolves.

(That’s a huge time saving secret just there, don’t refer to stats untill you actually need them… and that’s only if you didn’t make them up in the first place.)

So I ran the challenge very loosy goey, asking the players how they tried to outrun the wolves, slow them and find ways to deal with them. I told them that whatever they managed to win or lose the scene, they would make it into the cave… the challenge was: How hurt and how many wolves would be after you by the time you got there…

Sadly, the players lost the challenge so I decided to make the next encounter into a combat one where the characters had to fight off the zombified versions of 2 wolves and a Dire Wolf… After having inflicted each PC the damage equivalent to a bite…

Things were, pardon the pun, dire indeed.

So how did I zombify the wolves? Real simple. I lowered all thier defenses by 2, bumped thier damage by one category and added the “dies on a crit” feature (which, sadly, never came into play). Had this not been a one-shot game, I would have also added the “Zombies get up the round following getting dropped to 0 HP” power.

The players eventually beat the wolves with very savvy use of fire, chokepoints and the mindlessness of the creatures themselves. I was proud of the players and they were having the time of thier lives. Player #1, who was a 20-something New Zelander who used to play way back when, promised me he was going to start playing again.

There’s no sweeter sound a DM likes to hear in such events.

As I recounted the experience to Dave, we agreed that the concept of a Zombie Apocalypse that wiped out most civilizations from both the surface and underworld would make for a very rich fantasy setting for a mini (5-10 sessions) campaign.

Why don’t we explore this in part 2?

This is the second part of a bedtime interactive story that I told my 8 y.o. daughter. See part 1 here.

Chatty: So May-Gee was  worried that she was going to fail her magical gestures exam this afternoon so she practiced really hard. See, gestures need to be precise.

I started making Tai-chi like moves with my hands, making my hands weave and circle around each other. Rory sat up in bed and started doing the same. Soon we both were May-Gee, practicing moves for the exam.

Chatty: May-Gee’s test wasn’t simple, she had to freeze water in a glass globe without making it burst. That made her very nervous.

That’s why she was practicing?

Yes, she was outside the school, trying to do as many as she could before the test.

Okay. Then what?

Well… There was this boy see…

No daddy! Not a boy!

Oh come on Rory, it’s a story about teenagers, there’s always a boy right?

(Laughing) Yeah, you’re right…

What should we name him then?

We started riffing for names and they all sounded wrong, stupid or inappropriate. We laughed a lot. After a few horrible, hilarious failures…

Chatty: Oh I don’t know. How about Luke?

Rory (pondering): Yeah, lets take this one.

All right, so while May-Gee was practicing, Luke came to the field. He said “‘here let me help” but he just started showing off. He made the gesture really well and started freezing one globe after the other.

That’s not nice.

I know. That’s why May-Gee told him “You know I don’t like that when you do this. You’re not helping, this is HARD for me!” Do you want to know what she did after?

What?

Well there’s this one spell that May-Gee is really good at, and she uses it when people tease her too much.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, so she put her hands on her hips, made a little circle on the floor with her left foot and started whistling. Luke, recognizing the spell, started apologizing but it was too late. Luke’s lips  started inflating like balloons!

I started lisping really bad.

I’m sho shoory May-Dzee, I didn’t mean to teashe you…

Daddy stop doing that, May-Gee stops the spell!

Of course she does. Luke’s lips shrunk back really fast, he was relieved. Do you want to know how Luke made it up to May-Gee for being mean?

Yes.

Luke told her “See, I have this music that plays in my head when I make magical gestures. It’s like I dance to it, making the moves easier. You want to try?” “Sure” May-Gee answered, “but I can’t hear what’s in your mind”. Do you wanna know what he did next?

Yeah!

At this point I was in full narrative control of the story, but Rory (and I) were really into it. The story was barreling in my mind like a train, it was just too awesome. 

Luke came real close to May-Gee, putting his head near hers (I did the same with Rory) and he said “I have this trick I discovered in the library, lets try it”. He reached to the side of his head with his fingers and made a pinching movement. As he slowly pulled, May-Gee saw those lines and symbols you see in music class.

Yes I remember, the staff and notes.

Exactly! So as Luke pulled off this stream of music from his head, May-Gee heard a faint song play. Luke then brought his fingers to May-Gee’s head, the music entered her mind and she heard it loud and clear. Then Luke started teaching her how the music guided him to make the correct gestures. After a short while, May-Gee said she was ready to try. So, both Luke and her set many many water globes in a large circle around them, and they both started making the moves, slowly at first, freezing water , each doing their own side.  It was quite a sight to behold, like a slow, graceful dance .

Oh wow…

As they worked together, they didn’t even notice how good they were. They became a team as they froze globes faster and faster.

Then what daddy?

Well, someone was watching them from the school’s top floor!

Who daddy?

It was Baladur. He came down in a storm just as the last 2 globes were frozen.  He said “Excuse me young lady!”

Oh no!

May-Gee started apologizing, explaining that Luke was just helping her practice for the test. But Baladur interrupted her with a dismissive wave. “It’s incredible what you did there! I’ve never seen two magicians, much less such young ones, perform in perfect unison like that… You pass the test young ones, no need to do it again!”

Yay!

Then Baladur said “More importantly, you seem to have rediscovered the power of linked magic… this is stupendous… we need to explore that…”  But that’s for another time, that was the story for tonight.

That’s my favorite story ever dad!

Then Rory did something that stunned me, showing me we were more alike than I ever expected. She took my head, brought it close to hers, made a slight pinching gesture near her left temple, pulled an invisible string and brought it to my right temple… whispering

“Do you hear the song daddy?”

Of course I do love, of course I do.

And we both hummed a song together for a few seconds. 

My love for my kids knows no bounds. I cherish every moment that brings me closer to them, even though many of the things that prevent me to do so come from my own choices and quirks.

I once promised I would not miss my children growing up. I take this promise to heart.

Thanks for reading.

This is something I haven’t done in a long time. I hope you enjoy.

Chatty: Okay Rory (8 y.o daughter), it’s my turn to tuck you in and tell you a story.

Rory: I thought it was mom’s turn. I don’t want a story then.

(Pause) You know that hurts me when you say that. Please go wash your teeth and get in your PJs please.

Okay daddy.

I really was hurt. I know I have a harder time connecting with Rory than I do with my son  Nico.  She’s more artistic than me and has this fiery temperament that will make her a proud, headstong woman too soon for my weak  father’s heart. Thus, I pushed my feelings aside and prepared to insist as the time I spend with her is too short as it is. But Rory blindsided me, as she came out the bathroom, she hugged me and said:

I want a story dad, one you invent.

She doesn’t usually like them so much and has never before asked  for one.  I was more than happy to oblige.

And yeah, I saw what she did there, it’s a great skill to have.

Chatty: Okay, do you want one where I ask you questions or one that I make on the spot?

Hmmm, I’m not sure. I just want a story.

All right  then, lets see… Usually a story starts in a world. There are many kinds of worlds.

Like horror right? With monsters and skeletons…

Rory has a certain macabre streak, she’ll make a great teenaged Wednesday Addams someday. Then again she gets easily scared by her own ideas. See this story from a few years ago.

Chatty: Yes, there’s also fantasy worlds with magicians, dragons and goblins.  There’s adventure ones, where stories happen to people like you and me.

Oh and there’s Back to the Future stories too daddy, right?

Yes! But those are hard to tell because I always get everything mixed up!

(Giggles)

And then there’s stories set in space and the future. So which one do you want?

I want a Fantasy one!

Well a fantasy story always starts with a hero, or maybe in your case a heroine.

A heroine.

Okay, then we should name her don’t you think?

(Rory thinks for a second) Hmmm, how about May-Gee?

Mah-Gee?

No, MAY-Gee, she’s a magician.

Okay and how old is she? Is she a child, a teenager or an adult magician?

She’s between a teenager and an adult.

Oh okay, like 14-18 or something like that right?

Yes something like that.

Note to parents playing RPGs with kids. At a certain age, kids don’t want to play kids anymore, they want to play teenagers and young adult. They want to have an impact in the life around them and playing what they perceived as “free people” is where their motivations sit. So that’s why I was happy to go with it.

Okay so Mah-Gee…

MAY-GEE daddy. May… Like the month of May.

Oh right right, sorry. Okay, so since she’s an older teenager, she should be in a school for girl magicians (French: Magiciennes)

No daddy, she goes to a school for magicians, boys and girls!

Rory has a very strong inclusive streak in her. Something we try very hard to foster. 

Done! She goes to this magicians’ school and… lessee. Oh I know! She’s a bit stressed because she has this big test coming okay?

Okay. I want this story to be a story about a magic school!

Okay, let’s do this! So MAY-Gee (emphasis to mark my effort to get name right) is really worried today because she has this test with professor Baladur today.

Ballet-dur? She takes ballet lessons?

Why not, you could make magic with dance moves, want me to show you?

(Laughing) Don’t be silly daddy…

Of course not. His name is BALA-dur and he teaches (borrowing from Rory’s idea) magical gestures!

Why?

Oh young lady, you should know that magical gestures are capital to making proper magic spells.  Imagine if you wanted to make a fireball to defend against a Troll and you…

…Made fireworks! (Giggling)

Exactly! Now wouldn’t that be terrible?

I like this story daddy.

My heart melted like only a father’s can.

Up next: May-Gee meets “the boy” and discovers the secret of linked magic. 

Oh yeah, This is getting real baby!

This is the last of my autobiographical series that describes my becoming a writer and a freelancer. You can follow the series by clicking: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.

Once the Plan was in place (see part 4), I started looking  where I could send pitches. It was late in 2009; the economic crisis had hit the industry hard. Many struggling third-party publishers had few projects and the pay was too low for me (like 1 cent a word).

Rate aside: The rate per word (or per article) that you get paid is variable. It always starts low. I’ve worked from 3 cents a word (my first adventure) up to 20 cents  for some of my most recent copywriting work. Game and adventure designs based on pitches usually pay between 4 to 6 cents a word. Rates increase when you are invited to join bigger projects with actual budget (like a WotC book or  like the recently announced Marvel Super Heroes RPG).

Just don’t expect to ever become rich on this… that’s why I still have a (part time) day job.

So how did I start landing freelance jobs?

There’s no surefire secret. Were I to distill how I started to systematically land gigs, I’d bring it down to these points:

Networking with people.

I started going to Gen Con in 2008. At that time, I had had contacts with a few game designers through forums, emails and my then one-year old blog. For example, I was a regular on Monte Cook’s forums and had exchanged a few question-answers messages.

With a few, very rare exceptions, writers, designers and freelancers , if approached nicely, are easy to talk to and interact with. In my opinion, the BEST way to approach someone you admire is to go up to them,  introduce yourself, and thank them for a specific product you liked. That will usually make them  happy and more likely to talk to you. If you have a follow-up question that is simple enough, ask it. Engage them; make them talk about their stuff, their projects. By getting creative folks to talk about what they love, you’re establishing a great contact.

There is a chance you’ll notice they keep looking away from you, as if distracted by something. That’s because they have somewhere to be soon (or maybe you just don’t click). If they do, apologize and say you don’t want to be keeping them, and that you hope you get to talk more at a later time. It leaves a good expression and there’s a chance, if you do meet them later, that they’ll greet you as they recognize you.

Blogging also featured greatly in creating relationships with people of the industry. Late in 2007, I made a dumb post about Wolfgang Baur being the Storytelling Fluff Nemesis to my Crunchy Rules Overlord (links are broken, they come from my deleted Blogger blog). You should have seen my surprised face when, the next day, Wolfgang responded to a comment I left on one of his posts. I was delighted as I admired Wolfgang’s craft when it came to world building and setting flavour. I wanted to learn to become more like him and this “Crunch Overlord vs Fluff King” became a fun back and forth game which Wolfgang eventually won when I joined his team of freelancers on Kobold Quarterly.

Thus did I started seeing the potential of blogging, and more importantly, interacting with people from the industry.

Being nice to people always pays off.

Sending Queries

You won’t get invited into freelancing. You have to open the door and jam you foot in it with your skills and professionalism (i.e. write well, edit yourself, deliver on time and write what you were asked to write). Shortly after Gen Con 2009, I sent a query to WotC about making a D&D for kids adventure and I got a positive response to write a full outline. The idea never panned out as WotC later decided to tackle the idea in-house. But this first response gave me the positive boost I needed to keep at it. It told me that my ideas could be sold for money, provided I found myself at the right place and at the right conjecture in time.

How did I land my 1st magazine article? Very simple, I sent a “would you be interested in…” pitch to Wolfgang. He  answered positively and that’s how I got to talk about mixing Skill Challenges in combat encounters back in the 2009 winter edition of Kobold Quarterly. Of course at that time, I had to  learning a lesson that took me almost 2 years to fully grok:

Publishing in a magazine =/= blogging; edit your stuff, then do it again, and again.  Get all the help you can.

Kobold Quarterly has high standards to get a piece published. Getting a query accepted does not mean your article will make it to print. You need to polevault over Wolfgang’s invisible quality line which keeps being raised with each passing issues.  Your article is in competition with all others he gets for inclusion in the next issue. I was very lucky for my first piece to have the help of Ben Mcfarland, a veteran KQ contributor, who helped me morph my very conversationalist tone into a more neutral “magazine” voice.

Thanks Ben, I really owe you one.

Setting the Table for Success

I spent most of 2010 consolidating my non-RPG freelance projects.  I spent countless hours building (and re-building) my training seminars, by far my highest paid part time gig. I also opened my own company in May and taught  myself all the vagaries of billing, setting aside money for taxes, retirement, and other “fun” things like that. In the meantime, I got two more KQ queries accepted, one of which got published: an article on traps that become monsters and vice-versa in the Fall 2010 issue.  The other was rejected.

The rejection was a bit painful, but not as bad as I thought, the piece was too gimicky for the magazine, maybe I should post it here.

I recall that during the fall of 2010, my wife Alex came to me and remarked that I wasn’t getting a lot of freelancing gigs vs the amount of time I had freed from my day job. She was right. At that point my other contracts and seminars were mostly set so I told her I’d initiate the final phase of “The Plan: Get (more) Freelance Contracts”.  I sent about 10  pitches to Wizards of the Coast, none of them panned out.  But I concentrated on getting my business up and running and stopped thinking about Wizards so much.

In all honesty, I was upset and discouraged that I couldn’t get a feet through the proverbial door. But D&D grand guru, James Wyatt, told me to hang in there… saying that he had been rejected a LOT before making it into Dungeon magazine. 

Opening the Floodgates

It’s actually funny how things tumbled from there. First, I started hanging out with cool local Web 2.0 people: social media representatives for local media, tech bloggers, Tweeterati, TV show hosts, freelancers and others of that ilk. At one party, I met the host of a geek TV show and we hit it off talking about video games and RPGs. As it happens, he mentioned me in his weekly podcast;  the week after I got a call from someone that offered me a regular copy-writing gig for a local workshop that manufactures realistic looking foam weapons for LARPs.

I still work for them;  you can see some of my best work here and here.

Things really took off this year. I got a 3rd, very exciting query accepted for Kobold Quarterly which was just published in the Summer 2011  issue, a 4e article about playing character flaws and being rewarded for them. As my interest in small press games grew, especially with the Leverage game by Margaret Weis Production, I was invited by my friend Cam (MWP’s producer and lead designer/writer) to submit a 2000 word hack that allowed to play with Leverage‘s rules in a different genre.

I created a fantasy hack inspired by what I liked most of old school dungeon crawl… except I delivered 8000 words instead of 2000

Cam also sent out a request for letters of interest to join the writing team of MWP’s newest RPG: Dragon Brigade based on Weis’ last novel: Shadow Raiders. After getting my response, he gave all contenders a writing test. I was  asked  to write, in an Alexandre Dumas voice, how to set scenes for a Swashbuckling game. I had a blast writing it. I think he liked it because I ended up writing more than 16 000 words for the game.

Of course, this was just a preview of the jackpot I would hit just a few weeks later. First, at the time I thought my chances if writing for Wizards of the Coast had evaporated, I got an email from the D&D Insider editorial inviting me (along several other bloggers and freelancers) to join their team of writers. This landed me 4 gigs: 2 Dungeon adventures and 2 Dragon magazine articles. If everything goes as planned you should see a combined Dragon/Dungeon set of article appear in the September issues and the next ones in early 2012.

After nearly 30 years of having started playing D&D, getting to officially contribute  to it is such a honor.  I hope I do the game justice.

Yet the biggest thing had yet to happen.

Cam (on IM): So what are your thoughts on Super Heroes gaming?

Phil: I have very fond memories of busting open TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes yellow box and making Wolverine fight Spiderman!

That discussion, initiated at an undisclosed date, eventually led me to be invited on the new Marvel Super Hero RPG design and writing team…

Brain… Blown.

The Journey Barely Begins

It took me nearly 25 years to realize I was a writer. It took me another 4 and a ton of effort, writing about a million words online, to  become a better one.  I  made  friends along the way that ultimately helped me make it in the RPG industry. Yes, I finally made it. And for a lot of this, I have you all to thank for it, through your supportive comments and helpful feedback.

Now I just have to keep on delivering. The road is not easier ahead, just more intense!

I hope you’ll get to derive the same kind of fun from what I will help create as I have with what the giants before me created.

Thanks for reading.

So here’s a hyper condensed version of my Gen Con highlights.

Booze and Bars

Our annual Drunken D&D game (a mix of college drinking game with an actual, tailor-made D&D adventure)  was a huge success. We had a private area in our hotel’s sports bar (the J.W. Marriott’s High Velocity). The pre-party was full of friends and fans. It was hectic and awesome. I was drunk on Gin and Tonic way before I started rolling my 1st die. The game was very fun, the players had huge smiles and we laughed a lot. We ended up jettisoning big chunks of the adventure but that’s on par with the drunken experience.

We have crazy ideas about next year and a few improvement to make everything run smoother (we are improvement freaks).

Announcements:

Ennies: You may have heard about it, but Critical-Hits won the gold Ennies for best blog. We were stunned and happy. We’ve worked so hard on this site. especially Dave who’s devoted his heart and soul to the endeavor for so many years. It’s so great to see those efforts rewarded by our fans and peers. And we were complete classy guys on scene… all rumors about me streaking the Ennies scene are pure fabulations.

The Marvel Super Heros RPG: I can finally say it! I was hired to be part of the original design team for this upcoming Cortex-Plus based RPG planned for Feb 2012. It will be published by Margaret Weis Productions. I have the honour to be paired with such a slew of awesome people its humbling:

Core Design team: Will Hindmarch, Matt Forbeck, Jesse Scobles, Rob Donhoghue, Cam Banks, Amanda Valentine and myself.

Writing and Development of the first book (Basic game):  Cam Banks, Dave the Game and myself.

I can’t wait to tell you more about it!

I Knew Him Before he was a Celebrity…

This line above became a running joke at Gen Con as I got a lot of high fives from friends, fans and people I look up to from the industry.

Where the story gets really cool is that I got to meet some of the industry’s top designers and got to actually interact with them before we recognized who we were. That’s how I ended up chatting for a good 25 minutes with Rob Heinsoo before we both got that look of “oh you’re THAT guy I know from the Internet/games you designed”. Something similar happened when my friend Logan introduced me to Keith Baker (Creator and designer of Eberron and Gloom) and we ended up brainstorming for his steampunk adventure while munching on street pizza. This was as fun as playing a game.

In 2008 I left Gen Con feeling like a Rockstar…  In 2011, I can say, beyond my inner demons and gnawing doubts, that I am close to becoming  one.

Provided I don’t fuck up the Marvel licence…

Phil: Gee insecurity, thanks for the vote of confidence.

Insecurity: Hey dude, that’s why you keep me around, I keep it real!

Phil: Oh go suck on AD&D second edition won’t you.

Insecurity: I’m hurt, you were a nice guy before you became a celebrity…

I also got to celebrate with the nicest people I met on Twitter. You know who you are as I can’t even attempt to namedrop you guys without making a mess of the whole thing.   From the WotC Community crew and fans to the people I gamed, ate, caroused and walked around with, you all made my Gen Con a great experience.

A special mention goes to artist and freelance writer Claudio Posas:

As some may know, my Sunday trip home was canceled due to catastrophic failure of the plane’s brake AFTER an emergency stop on the runways. I therefore spent all of Monday at the airport with my new Brazilian friend, shooting the breeze, playing games and sharing our  philosophies about life, family, women and gaming!

(I went back home on Tuesday morning).

I’ll try to catch up with you next week as, hopefully, my schedule clears up.

Now I’m diving back into Marvel pre-design work.

Thanks for sticking around, more awesome stuff coming up.

Just so you know what I look like during daylight

It’s a blogging tradition to share’s one Convention schedule so stalkers can hunt us down and tear us to pieces for posterity.

Not one to be left apart, here’s mine.

Wednesday

• 6:00 PM – DD&D Party at the JW Marriott High Velocity Bar & Restaurant. Details are here,everyone is invited.
• 8:00 PM – Running DD&D. This year’s theme: ULTIMATE DUNGEON REALITY SHOW
• After midnight: Cleanup, Escort people who need help, crawl to bed.

Thursday

• Hit the Expo hall and reconnect with contacts and friends. Buy stuff.
• Lunch with my buddy Ed Healy, one of the first guys who told me I’d make it.  I see him only once a year at Gen Con, can’t wait.
• PM: Roam, play some games.
• 7:00 PM – Private D&D-related event.
• 10:00 PM – Magic (2012) draft with friends.

Friday

• Breakfast with my buddy DNA Phil from Gnome Stew
• AM: Walk around and maybe try to get invited into a D&D game in the Sagamore ballroom
• 1:00 PM – Attending the Margaret Weis Productions Q&A Seminar “Capers, Capes, and Cannons” (You WANT to be there for big Chatty news)
• PM: Free roaming and gaming
• 6:00 PM – Private event. Dave is going to be all stressed for the Ennies. I’ll have a beer.
• 7:00 PM – The Ennie Awards. We may win, we may not… but we’ve been nominated a few years in a row… that makes me glad.
• After the Ennies: Probably drinking/gaming somewhere , possibly at Scotti’s Pub with the WotC crew.

Saturday

• AM: I’ll spend all morning in the “Games on Demand” area, running my Fantasy Leverage hack: The Dungeon Job and maybe even some Dragon Brigade.
• PM: Wide Open… gimme suggestions. Possibly an official Magic Draft. Or gaming with friends and fans.
• 8:00 PM – Media Meet and Greet. Come and meet me, we’ll have drinks, we’ll talk and I’ll share free advice… (like anyone can stop me)
• Night: GAMING!

Sunday

• AM Last visit to Expo Hall,buying gift for kids and saying goodbye to friends.
• Lunch with friends
• PM: Going back to Montreal

Games I’ll have on me

Short Games: Spot it, Zombie Dice

Longer Games: Fiasco (I can play that game anytime, anywhere)

That's what I look like, by nightfall

The Carpe Phil game

It started as a Twitter joke where I said that I used to think “Carpe Diem” meant “Seize the Butt” (and implied I was a huge creepazoid). Then I turned the joke around and said I should make a Carpe Phil game à la Jane MacGonigal. So why not.

And no, it’s not an invitation to grab my butt, it IS awesome, but it is the property of someone special.

During the con, if I’m not otherwise occupied (ex: like running a game), I invite you to gather your courage and  introduce yourself (or re-introduce yourself, I suck at names). I’ll have a special d20 on me that I’ll roll. On a 1-19, I’ll answer any short question you have about gaming, freelancing and dealing with Bipolar disorder.  If you roll a 20 and I have the time, I’ll sit down with you for a short game of anything that lasts less then an hour.

One try per con-goer per day. 

Either way, I’ll ask for your email and I’ll have a draw after Gen Con. The winner will get  an autographed copy of one of my published works.

How’s that for a game for a gaming convention?

Looking forward to meeting/gaming with you all.

This post is part of a continuing series on how I became a freelancer and game designer. You’ll find part 1, part 2 and part 3.

The Amazing Ride

I came back from Gen Con 2008 surfing the wave of a certain type of madness that was later labeled as “Hypomania”. Excited beyond belief, ready to take on the world as a writer and a designer, I started a ton of projects and wrote all kinds of weird posts, including my all time favorites, micro-posts I dubbed “Yet Another 5000 word epic post about the contents of my laundry basket” Here’s an exemple:

What Gen Con Meant to Me

Feeling: I entered Gen Con 2008 feeling like a Nobody, I left it feeling like a Rockstar

Lesson learned: Edition Wars hate mongers are idiots. Rules are lies, Game systems are guidelines at best. Bask in the awesomeness of your bile and leave us alone while we have fun.

That was it, barely 70 words but oh so filled with emotion.

That part of my life was one of roller coasters and thrills. I started a new blog to talk about my design activities, I started a photo webcomic about talking D&D minis. I created a project called “Kobold Love”  (a D&D adventure where the PCs were kobolds and the quest was to go and kill the good-aligned quest giver that kept sending adventurers into the dungeon, killing all the monsters).

I had great ideas aplenty, my mind aflame, sleep a luxury I decided I could do without. Hell, one of the D&D designer I admired the most told me I could bounce ideas his way once in a while.

Oh how much I burned that bridge… the once in a while became A LOT, and TOO OFTEN.

Yet… as this magical manic phase receded, I found myself juggling way too much with almost no time left.

I started dropping balls; I discovered the concept of Nerd Projectitis (and even wrote about it a few months later)

The roller coaster ride of manic-depression was starting to accelerate into darkness…

Opportunity Knocks at Dusk

As I started struggling with all the plates spinning to “bring Chatty to the next level,” I had my first industry breakthrough, and it was the strangest thing.

During Gen Con 2008, I visited the Goodman Games booth and bought a D&D 4e-compatible adventure.  As I was paying the nice guy at the booth, I noticed that his name tag fit the one on the adventure I was buying.

Phil: Would you mind signing this adventure for me?

Harley Stroh (Looking very surprised): Huh? Of course!

A few weeks later, as I was prepping his adventure to run, I retraced his email and asked him a few questions about the adventure. We started a cordial back and forth, me sharing feedback (and his adventure made it into my play reports).  At one point I pooled my courage and pitched him a special gaming product, I forget which. He answered that they weren’t looking for something like I was proposing. He did however ask me to pitch 2 wacky short adventure ideas  for an anthology they had coming up. I accepted, pitched 2 ideas and one eventually made it into print  2 years later.

The Pit

Toward the end of 2008, I sank into what was to be my second depression of the decade. I abandoned nearly everything but the blog and writing the adventure for Harley, aptly titled “When Madness Seeps Through.” I felt my life crumbling around me as  I found my job overbearingly impossible to manage and I pushed away friends and family. My marriage, already on very shaky grounds after Alex weathered 2 other such depressions in a 10-year time span, nearly shattered.

I was at a loss and called out for help when I hit rock bottom.

With the help of my therapist and my family physician, I was put on sick leave for months, given anti-depressants and was referred to a psychiatric clinic for an evaluation. I had to wait a few weeks before seeing a shrink (the joys of public healthcare). During that time I focused on exercise, writing and taking my meds. I also got tremendous support from my stubborn friends and family, especially my parents. My father called me often and gave me pep talks like only worried dads can. Promising that even if I lost everything, I’d be always welcome in his home for as long as I needed (thanks dad).

Shortly after, I got the psycjiatric evaluation and was diagnosed with Type II Bipolar Disorder (one of the most manageable versions of the mental disorder) and refereed to a gentle, grandfatherly psychiatrist who ushered me through the shock and denial phases, took me off anti-depressants and unto mood stabilizers (Lithium, then Valproic Acid, 2 dirt-cheap industrial acids from the 19th century).

He also told me I was the luckiest bastard alive.

Phil: How so? I have a mental disorder old dude.

Shrink: Oh, but bipolar disorder is the easiest one to treat! You’ll keep all your faculties! You should see how zonked out some of my patients must be in order to function.

Phil: Ahhh. Presented like that… Hey doc, what about my creativity? Will it remain intact?

Shrink (Reaching for a book): Well, in all honesty, you stand a 1/6 chance of losing some and a 1/6 chance of gaining some. Otherwise you’ll remain the same but likely be more disciplined.

Phil: Will I be stabilized for good?

Shrink: On average you stand an 80% chance of never having another manic episode.

Phil: Well I guess I have to accept those odds…

I soon became better, the mood stabilizers cleared the noise in my mind and the regular exercise played the role the anti-depressants used to. I started my recovery.

And along that recovery came my second fully produced project: The One Page Dungeon Contest (and resulting Deluxe Codex with the help of Chgowiz and Stargazer)

Aside: I still have a few paper copies of those, anybody wants to buy them for 20$? I could bring them to Gen Con.

The Plan

My mother also did her part in what became the central piece of my recovery. Sometime in the dark months of winter 2009, she  approached me and told me something like this:

Chatty Mom (She really is, I love her for that): I don’t know what made you become like this, but I suspect it’s linked to your work.  Why don’t you quit your job, tap in your retirement savings and give yourself 6 months to start something you really want to do, like writing games, or a novel.  If it doesn’t work out, return to a normal day job.

Chatty: But, I don’t want to be a burden on Alex and the kids.

Chatty Mom: That’s why I said you should tap in your savings. They are yours after all.

Chatty: I’ll think about it.

When I discussed the plan with Alex, she said she was ready for us to take a financial hit for me to chase my dream, but I could sense the worry that it would be just another pipe dream. Just another version of the often intoned “This next job is THE one for me Alex” that I so often tried to sell her on.

Then I sat with my long time friend Math (the one I’ve been gaming with since 1986) and exposed my mother’s idea….

Math: I think you totally should do something like that but you forget something capital…

Phil: What?

Math: First you need to get better; to take care of yourself so your mind stabilizes.

Phil: Hmmm,you’re right, the last thing I want is to jump into this with the deck stacked against me.

Math: Right, what you need is a Plan.

And thus was the Plan born:

By June 2011:

• Get Better
• Switch to a part time job
• Land and deliver freelance writing assignments.

Depression Management Advice: After going through 3 of them in 10 years, I speak with experience when I tell you that prompt recovery and prevention requires a multi-pronged strategy.  You need friends and goals (which Jane MacGonigal nailed in her SuperBetter game). You also need professional help in the form of both drugs and therapy. Finally, especially if you can’t afford the drugs or therapy, you need exercise… lots and lots of exercise. If you can only do one thing in your day, make it a walk to any grocery store that’s at least a mile from where you live whenever you need to get milk or bread. That’s what I did… 

The Plan in Motion

And so the road to recovery was paved with purpose and, above all, the support of those who believed in me.  This includes all of you who  suffer through those interminable posts that are NOT about gaming. From that tribe of family, close friends and cyber buddies grew a large network of contacts and friendly acquaintances in the industry.  I recovered quickly from then on and returned to work in the summer of 2009, after a pause of about 4 months. I hit Gen Con 2009 and continued to  grow my network.  I came back with my mind whole and the hope that I could make the plan happen.

In October 2009, I placed a phone call to an education center, offering my services as a trainer, as luck would have it, a teacher had just been fired and I was offered her course load along with a series of classes I built. Such classes paid almost as much  per day that an entire week at my then job as a QA manager.  Feeling that was the opportunity I was looking for, in January 2010, I asked at my job to be granted part time status: 3 days a week. I was shocked to see them accept instantly… with the huge caveat that after 6 months, my employment would end.

There it was. Opportunity always comes with risk. And I took it. 6 months later, I opened my own consulting/writing company and stared collecting enough big clients (always part time)  to pay my share of the household budget.

My life had stabilized, I was working part time… and my lifestyle was maintained. I had 2/3 of the Plan implemented, I was ready for the last part: Become a Freelancer.

Up next: The conclusion to the series.

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. 

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.

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?

Wrong.

See, I have others issues that hang around, like a phlegm-filled consumptive cough, blurring the lines of my main pet peeves. First, when I want to plan to play RPGs I wanna PLAY RPGs.  Having to convert such a session to boardgames is always disappointing to me. Second, I’m viscerally not comfortable playing with too few players. My sweet spot lies at 3-4 players. At that point, I find  the pressure of the roleplaying spotlight  is spread over enough heads to make everyone comfortable enough.

It’s the thought of playing with only 2 or, heaven forbids, 1 player that makes me queasy. I can’t really explain why I feel like this, I just do. It’s an atavism, the RPG equivalent of men sharing their feelings. (Remember, my core group is all-male)

However, as I look back, I realize that many of my discomforts are unfounded because I’ve disproved them with my own experience!

Here are a few short case studies:

1 Player: Banewarrens

Back in my D&D 3.5 days, I ran Monte Cook’s Banewarrens module, set in his Ptolus campaign setting.  The PCs were exploring this unsealed vault of the world’s most evil artifacts. At one point, the players left the dungeon for an extended period of time. The adventure called for the villain to scour the dungeon while the PCs were away. At that time, since the adventure was really vague about what the villain could do, I called my friend Math and asked him if he’d like to play the bad guy for one session. Math wasn’t playing that adventure (he was in another gaming group at the time), so he was the perfect candidate.   So he spent about an hour or two setting traps for the PCs, freeing disgustingly strong demons into the city and do other dastardly deeds. He even abandoned his Ogre Mage ally who got squished under a huge slap of Granite.

Ogre Mage minion (gurgling): Help me mistress…

Villainous Vampire Chick:  You can regenerate, I trust you’ll find your way back to the manor eventually, I’ve other errands to run now.

Truly a great session.  One that makes me wonder why I still bristle at the thought of playing with just one player.

In fact, that’s why I pre-ordered a copy of the Guestbook RPG.

2 players: Assault of Pelor’s Vault

Once, during the time we played our longest-standing D&D 3.x campaign, we only had 2 players available for a session: Yan and Franky. I had some free time for adventure design and their characters were both the furthest away from being good-aligned. Thus, I devised a short adventure based on two questions I had on my mind back then. 1) What would a Lawful Good dungeon crawl be like? 2) What if we did the whole session into a round-by-round heist scenario?

And you know what? To this day, this game features among the top 5 I’ve played with my main crew. It was one of those “stars are aligned” games: buying one-use items, tracking potion effect times, sneaking between disgustingly powerful guardians, fighting a paladin whose penance for transgressing his vows was to remain soul jarred  into the body of a steel warrior for a millennia … and the surprise twist when the characters finally grabbed the Codex of the Thousand Suns was  phenomenal and game changing.

Yeah… what the hell is wrong with me? How can I play this game and still think playing with less than 3 players suck?

6+ players: Drunken D&D

For the last 3 years at Gen Con, I’ve been playing this fusion of a classic one-shot D&D game with that of a collegiate drinking  game. Throughout the years, the number around the table(s) has stayed around 6 and we managed it successfully. Of course, copious amounts of booze and the fundamentally silly and funny aspect of the adventures that we designed for it made up for the increased chaos that make up more people at the table. Overall, the formula has remained fresh and renews itself each year. I love it!

So I guess it can be still be enjoyable. I’m starting to see a pattern here.

So Does Size Matter?

When I look over my past games through the lens of experience, I realize that the number of players matters when you play an average game with a non-average number of players.  Published adventures don’t work all that well for me when I have to hack them for less than 3 players or more than 5.  However, when I design with a specific number of players in mind… or when I see an adventuring opportunity that calls for an unusual part (either in size or in composition: ask me one day about my Monstrous Brotherhood convention adventure I use to run for GURPS).

I still have lingering doubts about playing, especially with more than 5 players. But at least now, having written this post and cleared up some of my tangled issues, I have strategies to address them and plan for when next I get a group that sits outside my comfort zone.

And so, I turn the questions to you… does size matter?