Exploring D&D at DDXP
With the D&D Experience (DDXP) and the first public play of the new D&D rapidly fading away in the rear-view mirror, I have reams of topics I want to discuss. And, of course, 99% of them are in one way or another protected by the NDA that all participants signed. The open playtest announced by Wizards of the Coast is on the horizon though, and then informed discussion is going to pick up dramatically. Until then, there are still aspects of D&D that we can still explore with an eye toward the future.
What I learned—listening to the seminars, playing and DMing, and just sitting and talking with all sorts of people—is that for me the best part of gaming (and the best part of life) is the exploration. During one of the seminars, the D&D Next design team talked about the three pillars of the game: combat, roleplaying, and exploration. I had been thinking about the game in similar terms since the new iteration of D&D was announced, but I never broke it down into that precise configuration. When I started thinking about it in those terms, I realized what I had missed most from my D&D play experience since Second Edition: exploration. But it wasn’t really just about a single form of exploration: the one most commonly associated with the phrase “exploration” is when the players delve into a strange dungeon and draw a map as they go. But there are countless forms of exploration in the game, and the sense of wonder that each form of exploration provides can build a multi-layered experience, taking a roleplaying game from good to great. But I will come back to exploration later.
A Little Bit of DDXP
Some parts of the D&D Experience I can talk about. The most important and exciting of those topics is not necessarily the game itself, but the gamers. I know I’ve probably said this before, but I am nothing if not redundant: I love gamers. Sure, some of us are tools—or can exhibit tool-itude when certain events align, like when we are conscious and in front of a keyboard. But for the most part, everyone I played with was in the “non-tool gamer” category. Everyone was excited to talk about the new rules and the feel of the game during the D&D sessions, but everyone also rolled some dice, acted a little goofy, and contributed to a fun story experience for everyone else at the table. When managed properly by the DM, each player’s exploration of the game and his/her own character’s exploration of the game world adds to the story and the fun.
The convention and the exploration started for me before I even arrived at DDXP, as I shared the six-hour ride from my place to Fort Wayne with fellow Critical-Hitter Phil “ChattyDM” Ménard. I had met him only once, at this past GenCon for a total of 90 seconds. Within an hour we were in tears of laughter, sharing thoughts and ideas about game design, life, and the joys of a single store that can offer the best of America: pepper spray, stun guns, and sugar-free fudge. (The difference among the three? Stun guns don’t leave you retching and gagging while it incapacitates you!) Also, from this moment forward the “orc and pie” trope shall be known in my games as the “orc and wedding cake.”
After a fun first game of 4e D&D in the Ashes of Athas campaign with my fellow members of the Ravenous Halfling Horde (“Halflings always tell the truth because their bodies are too small to contain lies”), it was exploring all of the editions of D&D all the time.
A Great Deal of Exploration
Based on my experiences with previous editions, I wanted to look at how exploration has been a part of the game throughout its history. At DDXP I made a point to ask people about their experiences with the versions of D&D that they have played, and how they interacted with the rules in their games. Talking to people who played before the release of Third Edition (and especially those who played AD&D and those various editions that preceded it or ran parallel to it), a common thread ran throughout their experiences. They admitted happily that they really didn’t know or understand the rules when they first started playing, but that didn’t stop them or their groups from having vast amounts of fun. Even those who did strive for a full understanding of the rules confessed to changing or ignoring large parts of the rules sets. These changes were generally done by consensus between the DM and the players, striving to make the game more appropriate to the wishes of all involved.
This, I realized, is really an exploration. It is an exploration of not just the rules, but more importantly an exploration of the relationship between the DM and players, and a mutual pact to address the goals and desires of each party. At times this exploration leads to the premature end of a game or campaign, and the lack of a well-developed and balanced rules set in those early editions contributed to the problem. But paradoxically, the need to “fix” certain rules encouraged communication, which helped the parties in this game of storytelling form a stronger bond.
Other types of exploration are important to the game. Most campaigns I have run over the years began on a mostly blank map of a home-brewed game world. The characters start in a rather small and isolated part of the world, and the best they have is rumors of other nations, second-hand information on what the capital city is like, a fleeting memory of the one time the princess of their kingdom took a tour of their small town, etc. Their adventures see them exploring not just dark groves and dangerous caves, but the world at large. Like a dungeon map, the world map is expanded only as the PCs move upon it. This is exploration of the game world, and it spurs the characters to succeed in their current location, with the hopes of getting a chance to succeed at the next one. I have never enjoyed much, as a player or a DM, knowing everything about the game world from the start of the campaign. I want the map to expand at the same speed as the story. The exploration of the world becomes part of the game.
I’ve always felt the same way about a different form of exploration: the exploration of the rules. Some knowledge of the rules that are coming is obviously unavoidable and sometimes important. However, even during Third and Fourth Edition, I wanted my character to change and grow with the story. I didn’t want to know the exact path my character would take from level 1 through level 20, pre-selecting each feat or skill or power choice. I understand that some people like this, and I do not begrudge them that desire. In essence, that is their own form of exploration, and while it focuses on a different part of the game, it is still a part of the game for them.
A Game with No Limits
In every edition I have ever played, my favorite phrase as a DM is “don’t look at your sheet, but tell me what you want your character to do.” For players who only took part in later editions, that is sometimes a very difficult concept to wrap one’s mind around. The more detailed and codified the rules become, the greater tunnel-vision one might get on the character sheet or on the battlemat. Clinging to the letter of the rules code is totally understandable, especially if one is punished by a DM (or yelled at by other players) for not doing so. I have had to bite my tongue (not easy for me at times) when a new player wanted to do something cool like have his fighter roll a barrel at oncoming foes, only to be told dismissively by the DM or other players, “Just take a regular attack with your javelin. It’s right there on your sheet.” What a moment of potential exploration lost!
Exploring the interaction with the environment, exploring how the rules cover certain situations, and exploring a fun, imaginative solution to a problem should never be dismissed so easily. Even if the solution is ridiculous or wrong-headed, there is the potential for a good DM and willing players to discuss the situation and form an imaginative and relevant consequence. What separates a good RPG from a board game is the ability to do anything, even things not written in the rules (or on character sheets).
Somewhere between the exploration of rules and the exploration of the game world is a middle ground where, for me, the crux of the game lies. When I play, I try to keep my focus (and my mind’s eye) squarely on the exploration of what my character’s life and experiences are like—put most simply, it is an exploration of an adventurer’s life. This is what each edition seems to have moved further away from, until it is almost hand-waved. I understand that some people do not want to deal with the minutiae of tracking every copper piece and every bolt shot from a crossbow. I respect that. But I also want a game where interaction with the environment is important, whether that environment be a monster-filled dungeon or a town full of merchants. I want to avoid using the term “simulationist,” because I do not want rules that attempt to simulate how every single element of the game world works. But I want the game to simulate how my fantasy character lives her life.
Where From Here?
When asked what my favorite D&D editions were, I answered AD&D (First Edition) and Fourth Edition. I like the way the former encouraged the forms of exploration that entertained and challenged me. And I like the way the latter expanded the utility of the classes, so that none were necessarily pigeon-holed as only effective in combat or only effective in certain situations outside of combat. If the new D&D is going to meet the goals of the designers and the wishes of the players, it is going to have to support both the very freeform game where the game takes place in the players’ minds as much as on the gaming table and the character sheets. It is also going to have to appeal to those who wish only to explore feat trees, power cards, and five-foot squares. I think the design team knows this. I believe they are working in the right direction.
The D&D fans who anxiously wait for the open playtest also have to understand that we are in the first step of a very long and complicated process. To make a judgment on D&D at this point is like saying a cake’s frosting is horrible when there is only eggs and flour in a bowl—and those eggs might not even be eggs. What the design team is currently trying to determine is how to make the flour, the base of the cake. We are all going to get our chance to taste the cake batter, and the flavorings, and the icing, and the toppings. We will get there. Keep it in perspective. Keep talking about what you like in a cake, because in the end we are going to be making the various recipes that the designers must work toward.
DDXP 2012: “Charting the Course: An Edition for All Editions” and “New Products” Seminars
This past weekend was DDXP, and since this the new edition of D&D was announced recently, this was both the first chance the public would both find out directly from the mouths of the people making the game what it would be like, as well as try a limited demo of the new game. Like in 2008, questions about the new game were answered, and new ones were created. And just like back then, we were on the scene to report on the goings on to try to bring you a taste of the information available if you couldn’t be there.
Aside from all the games being run (of the new D&D, 4e, and every other edition), there were also four seminars run by Wizards of the Coast staff. I was able to attend two: “Charting the Course: An Edition for All Editions” and “New Product Seminar.” Vanir attended the “Class Design: From Assassins to Wizards” seminar. A fourth was unattended by us (because we were all making our way home.)
The following is a summation of the two seminars I attended with some of our commentary and thoughts. If you’d prefer to read the entire transcript, or watch the video, those are available elsewhere:
- Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions (transcript) (report)
- Class Design: From Assassins to Wizards (transcript)
- New Products Seminar (transcript)
- Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores (transcript)
- All chat streams from WotC
- Video recordings the last three seminars
Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions [Read the rest of this article]
Our D&D Greatest Hits: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition
Last week, Chatty DM told you about his experiences in AD&D (aka “First Edition”) as the edition that he started in. Many of us founding members of Critical Hits got our start in RPGs a bit later in the same game group playing AD&D 2nd edition. Now, that game group has expanded, split, mutated, split again, expanded, and changed a lot since then. However, we all still have some fond memories of those early days.
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. [Read the rest of this article]
Interview: “Atomic Robo The Roleplaying Game”
Maybe you’re a fan of the many award-winning Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, powered by the FATE game engine. Maybe you’re a fan of robots punching Nazis. Maybe you are a fan of both, in which case, there’s going to be a new roleplaying game for you!
Announced two weeks ago, Evil Hat Productions is going to be producing the Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game, based on the hit comic series written by Brian Clevinger and illustrated by Scott Wegener. The game will be designed primarily by Mike Olson, and managed by Evil Hat Co-President Fred Hicks. We sent them a few questions about the announcement and the game.
CRITICAL HITS: How would you explain the world and adventures of Atomic Robo to the uninitiated?
BRIAN CLEVINGER: Take The Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Buckaroo Banzai, and The Rocketeer; cram them into a robot; give that robot some pants; bam, you’ve got Atomic Robo. He was invented by Nicola Tesla in 1923 and our comic book follows Robo’s adventure ever since. He fought a pyramid, the planet Mars, Stephen Hawking (metaphorically), Nazis, a super-intelligent time traveling dinosaur who may be none of those things, and run of the mill mad scientists.
But not at the same time.
CH: What kind of campaign models are you envisioning?
MIKE OLSON: First off, one that gets started quickly. You could say character creation is going to be more action and less science: It’ll be a true pick-up-and-play game without a lot of character creation on the front end. That’s been an important design goal from my earliest conversations with Fred about ARRPG. The actual stories Brian and Scott tell in Atomic Robo are definitely informing how we’re thinking the game will play — not just in the sense of what happens in a story, but how they’re structured. The default campaign expectation will be one that takes place in multiple eras during Robo’s long life, even if Robo himself isn’t present, with each of those eras having its own treatment and distinct feel. But if you want to play a story that involves Jack Tarot in the ‘30s or Sparrow in WWII, you can do that too. Regardless, you’ll have the tools to run the kick-ass Atomic Robo game you want.
FRED HICKS: I’m particularly excited about the multi-era play. Moreso than Spirit of the Century, I think the Atomic Robo RPG will be exactly the right kind of game to handle a play-group with variable attendance. “Oh, only two folks are showing up tonight? Well, let’s jump back to 1971 and play out a smaller piece of this story there. Who wants to play Carl Sagan?”
CH: For those that aren’t familiar with FATE, what makes it a good fit for an Atomic Robo-based game?
CLEVINGER: FATE gives a great deal of freedom to model every weird idea you can imagine. And to do it on the fly. And then to destroy it in a spectacular explosion that may or may not have been accidental. If that’s not every single Atomic Robo story, then I don’t know what is.
OLSON: This may be a tough one for me to answer objectively — FATE’s my go-to system, and I love hacking it for various genres. But what makes it so strong for a character-driven book like Atomic Robo is how easily it lets players define their character through mere words, via aspects. The particular iteration of FATE we’re planning is going to be tailored to what’s important to a Robo story, including a special emphasis on Science (and “Science!”) that gives all that witty techno-banter mechanical heft. Look at that invasion from the Vampire Dimension. Does Robo save the day by punching them? Does Jenkins, by visiting horrific off-screen ultra-violence upon them? Nope. It’s quick-thinking new-hire Bernard. Using Science. FATE’s great at that — that’s what FATE does.
CH: For those that are familiar with FATE, what kind of changes are going to be made to fit it, especially since it has a Spirit of the Century vibe already?
OLSON: Spirit of the Century has been a hugely influential game for me and for a lot of other people, but I think it’s safe to say that FATE technology has come a long way since its publication.
HICKS: YES! Spirit was published in 2006. Six years! The whole landscape of FATE is just different these days.
OLSON: Right. And if the recent proliferation of FATE games has shown us anything, it’s that people love to tinker with it — and because it’s such a malleable system, tinkering’s both fun and easy. So even though we’re very early in the process here, I can say for sure that we’re going to take full advantage of everything the system has to offer.
For one thing, you won’t see any big lists of stunts. Like I said, character creation will be more action, less science. That’s not to say there won’t be stunt-like options for customizing your character, but just as in Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, the emphasis will be on coming up with your own based on some broad guidelines.
Likewise, the concept of Phases is great for Spirit of the Century and its meta-conceit that all of the characters are protagonists in pulp books who are Centurions in the Century Club. The default assumptions of ARRPG are much different, though. Sure, the PCs are likely to be Tesladyne Action Scientists, but their stories could take place anytime over a more than 80-year period. Instead of writing down past events in their characters’ lives, we want people to actually play them out, or discover them through play. The era-hopping thing is definitely part of that.
HICKS: Yep. And part of that whole multi-era thing, really, is that groups that embrace it will probably have people playing different characters in different timeframes — they can’t all be ageless heroes like Robo. So the whole phased character creation thing from Spirit and Dresden won’t really apply here — though there’s nothing stopping folks from importing the idea from other FATE games.
OLSON: One of the big things we have in store, as I alluded to before, is giving Science its due — making sure it matters more than mere “color.” But it’s hard to say much more at this point, simply because the real work has yet to begin — FATE Core is our starting point, and that’s still in development. But we’ll be previewing more throughout the coming months.
CH: Will there be any campaign tools in it that can be borrowed for other games, like City Creation was for Dresden Files?
OLSON: We’re talking about some random idea generators for missions, villains, and science-related catastrophes — I love that sort of thing — that would certainly be applicable for other games. The skill system we have in mind will be both unique to ARRPG and compatible with “mainline” FATE, and will in fact accentuate customization, so I’m sure that will find its way around. Most FATE gamers I know really dig hacking the system, so I’m sure that even stuff we don’t think of as being broadly applicable will get that hacker treatment.
HICKS: Yeah. I have a feeling that the gearheads out there like me are going to find Robo’s ideas highly portable. Really, if anyone looked at Mike’s work on “Strange Fate” for The Kerberos Club and wanted to see an iteration of it that was highly compatible with main-line, core FATE, they’re going to get that here.
CH: With villains like Edison’s Ghost or a brain in a jar with a robot body, will there be other examples of how to make your own villains in the Atomic Robo style?
CLEVINGER: I’m hoping for a whole array of play styles. There’s a century or so of history, so the game is a tremendous opportunity to play around with the parts of Robo’s world we don’t see in the comics. Want to play pulp adventurers from before Robo was created or from back when he was terrible at adventuring? How about a generational campaign with a character per player per era? Want to play as “bad guy” factions like Majestic 12? A team up of Robo’s worst arch-enemies? An alternate history where Robo was taken out mid-century? One where he and Tesladyne never came to be?
So, to finally answer your question, yes. We’ll have some guidelines on how to best cater villains and (their?) antagonistic organizations to best fit your needs!
OLSON: In general, my answer to any question that takes the form of “Will there be guidelines for doing X the Atomic Robo way?” is “Yes.” One of our most important design goals is making sure the mechanics support the kinds of stories we expect people to tell when they play ARRPG. That definitely includes Robo-propriate adversaries, from brain-in-jar science villains to time-travelling Dromaeosaurs and everything in between.
HICKS: Crystals!
Our D&D Greatest Hits: Chatty’s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
The recent annoucement that D&D was going to get a new iteration has garnered a lot of reactions on the web. I decided to refrain from early judgement but, much like when 4e was announced, I take an optimistic approach to it. I happen to respect and even quite like the work of the three main designers working on it so that helps my somewhat positive outlook.
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“. [Read the rest of this article]
New Edition of “Dungeons & Dragons” Announced
This morning, in the New York Times, and followed up by a new Legends & Lore article, it was announced that Wizards of the Coast is working on the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The combination of the WotC staff playing in games of all editions, plus the hiring of Monte Cook, plus the subject of the previous Legends & Lore articles, all added up to a “D&D Greatest Hits” edition, with the goal of bringing D&D players of all stripes together instead of driving further “edition wars.”
At the beginning of December, I was flown out (along with a number of other folks) to Seattle to consult on some upcoming programs. While not the primary purpose of our visit there, we were able to find out about this new game before the official announcement happened. Many of the goals were outlined for us, and we were given a very early demo. While there is a limit to what I’m allowed to talk about- not just for the usual secrecy reasons that they are notorious for but because of how early into the process it all is- I’d like to just put a few bullet points out there about my impressions of the entire presentation. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Winging It
Let me know if this situation sounds familiar to you: You’re the DM/GM for your gaming group and you’ve just wrapped up an adventure, and you have at least a whole week until the next one. You’re committed to planning well in advance and making sure you’ve worked everything out well in advance of the next adventure. You sit down the next day, or even that very night, and start the adventure planning process. Maybe you start with a recap of the last adventure, or by listing the continuing plot seeds from the previous sessions and loose ends. Over the next few days you stay on track but before you know it the next adventure is looming and you feel like despite your best efforts the game is still not as ready as you feel it should be. Stress builds, you think about postponing the game or suggesting you all play board games instead, but you hunker down and keep planning. The day of the game comes and you’re still not “ready”, you should have started even earlier and planned more in advance!
This situation has happened to me plenty of times, and I’m willing to bet it’s happened to many of you as well. I stopped the anecdote there intentionally because that is where it can branch in several different directions. If you’re particularly stressed (most likely by things other than the game you’re running, even if you don’t realize it) then you’ve already postponed the game or suggested something else to do instead. Maybe you sat down to watch some TV in the morning and held out to the very last moment, then just as your friends arrive and everything is being set up for the game you pull the plug and suggest something else. Maybe your players are fantastic (like many of mine have been in the past) and offer you so much encouragement and potential disappointment that you get a second wind (pardon the unintentional 4e pun) and run the game you’d been planning. Or perhaps you decide you’ve planned about as much as you ever manage to plan and go ahead with the adventure, improvising and winging it to the best of your potential.
The Genesis of Adventure
If you’re anything like me than all of the above situations are fairly familiar to you. No matter how much I prepare, plan, or plot there is a decent part of me that feels unprepared for running any given RPG session. I’ve had to cope with and adjust to this fact and in the end it has led to me becoming more comfortable at winging adventures and doing my own share of improvisational DMing. However, as I’ve gotten more experience at this process I’ve noticed some striking similarities to other processes that I’ve learned and read about. Specifically, my advice today relates the process of planning and running an RPG adventure to the process for generating ideas. Even more specifically, in the process of generating ideas one of the most important steps is taking time to relax, distract yourself, and partake in other activities and let your unconscious mind take over the process. [Read the rest of this article]
The Real State of Dungeons & Dragons
There has been some discussion in the D&D Twitter community over the past several days regarding The Escapist’s The State of Dungeons and Dragons: Present article.
Although the Escapist interviewed Mike Mearls for a followup article, I don’t think that either article properly addressed the state of D&D as it exists in December 2011.
So, here is my take on the current State of Dungeons & Dragons.
In a nutshell, D&D started off the year in a state of confusion and concern, but has ended the year fairly strong. WotC is looking towards the future and D&D’s torch holders have done much to improve relations with their customers.
Significant Changes to the Publication Schedule: Quality Over Quantity
2011 started off on a sour note when WotC announced that several titles that had previously been revealed had been cancelled, leaving some fairly large gaps in the schedule over the first six months of the year. However, there was a silver lining: the focus for publication was going to be producing fewer but higher quality products. I believe that the success of DDI had something to do with this change in strategy. Many (if not most) people are now consuming their “crunch” electronically rather than purchasing hardcover books.
In the end, I think this change in publication was a success. All of the products that have been released since that announcement have been of high quality, and the fluff to crunch ratio has improved, even in what used to be nearly 100% crunch products.
Madness at Gardmore Abbey has the potential to become the first “classic” 4e adventure. Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale revealed a style of monster book that almost combines a campaign setting with the monster blocks. The Neverwinter Campaign Setting showed a different way to produce that type of book, focusing on one Tier of adventuring, integrating Themes with the setting and concentrating on a small geographic area. (Though I do hope that they don’t focus on this style to the detriment of other settings- I still want Mystara, Spelljammer and the like). Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium brought back the “magic” to magic items, continuing a trend seen with the Essentials products of dialing back some of the changes in 4e to something more satisfactory to older players. [Read the rest of this article]
Vanir’s New Year’s Gaming Resolutions (2012 Edition)
It’s that special time of year again. You know, the one where you run out of times of the year. This year was a significant improvement for me in a lot of ways. I got laid off from a horrible job, and almost immediately got a really good job. I got a gaming group together. I’ve had a lot of new, awesome experiences this year, and my gaming life is much improved. That being said, here’s what I plan to do this year.
Playing With My Boy!!!!!
My son is old enough to play board games now, and many of his Christmas presents this year are ones his parents get to play with him. I couldn’t be happier. I’m going to enjoy this for as many years as I can, this one included. With any luck, I won’t ever have to stop!!!!
It also doesn’t hurt that this is going to get my wife playing some games too. I’m certainly not going to pass that up. I always loved playing board games as a family when I was a kid. I suspect I will like it now also.
More Small Systems
Phil and Dave have been encouraging me to try out some non-D&D RPG systems for some time now, and this fall I got to do just that at DC Gameday. I tried out Microscope, Fiasco, and a couple variants on the Cortex+ system. 4e and I have had some issues for a while, so it was pretty reinvigorating to see some other approaches to both roleplay and combat.
This year, I have a hitlist of games to try, in no particular order:
- Lady Blackbird
- Pathfinder (I just wanna see if it really does feel like 3.75, because I loved 3.5 so)
- Leverage
- Dresden Files RPG
- Don’t Rest Your Head
- LOTS OF OTHERS
Prep Prep Preppity Prep Prep
I had more than a couple days this year where I asked the group if board games would be OK instead of D&D. Sometimes it was just that I was fried and didn’t feel like anybody was going to have a good time if I ran the game, but there was a lot of procrastination in the guise of “writer’s block” that found me the morning of game night (game morning?) without the vaguest idea of what to run the party through.
I realize it’s probably not a good idea to plan the story out too far in advance (as the players frequently have other ideas), but having some combat encounters prepared might not hurt. Having NPC’s with basic talking points, motivations, and other important info written down for when one of my players manages to catch me off guard is another place I intend to do some work. I’ve also seen some excellent suggestions from our readers on coming up with a battle plan for monsters so as to make better use of their powers, which will hopefully ease my “the players kill everything I throw at them with ease” problem.
Get More Experience Behind The DM Screen
I’ve had the good fortune to run a fairly regular game every other week for almost a year now, but I still frequently feel like a complete novice. Admittedly, I have a group packed to the brim with wildly creative players with an uncanny knack for finding something that causes me to rethink everything on the fly. I love playing with them this much, but I do occasionally feel like I’m DMing in 10x gravity. We’ve all been together long enough that they know how I run the game, and I am starting to get a sense for what form the Destructor will take (even if I can’t stop it). My players endured a lot of my strange experiments and indulgences over the past year. This year, I want to take these experiences and start making adventures that are fun for them to play and fun for me to run.
I’d also like to try my hand at running some convention games this year. I’ve been in karate since I was a teenager, and in my mind this feels like a tournament: nothing shows you where you need work the most like putting yourself in a situation where you need to use your skills against complete strangers. Hopefully, this time, failure doesn’t equal a boot to the head. There’s also that bit where I get to meet and have fun with new people and support the conventions I love to attend each year. Admittedly, I am pretty nervous about running con games. However, I think back to some of the really terrible ones I’ve had over the years, and I’m pretty sure I can’t possibly be that bad. I hope.
Surround Myself With Inspiration
One of the worst feelings as a blogger or a DM is to scan your internal database for ideas and find none. Usually all it takes is just to see a cool idea I can build upon or to talk to someone and I can go from there, but getting that initial spark going is painful sometimes.
Simply put, I’m going to read a ton of books. I’m going to catch up on all the movies and TV shows that I’ve been “meaning to get to”. I’m going to try to get more involved in the RPG bloggers’ community, and throw my hand into creating and building cool things. If it’s anything like writing, there’s a great deal of inertia involved. I’d like to move forward, and always have some ideas in the chamber.
Confidence!
Ultimately, I do have an ulterior motive behind wanting to do most of the above — I want to be able to relax and have fun behind the screen. I want to be able to sell my NPCs and hook my players into my story. I want to run combat and not worry about if I’m screwing something up. I want everybody at the table, including me, to be excited about what’s going on.
I’ve noticed it’s hard to do any of these things when you’re self-conscious about everything you’re doing.I want to settle into this role so this sort of thing can live in the back of my mind instead of the front.
Remember The Point
It is awful easy to get embroiled in trying new games and organizing things and learning other things, completely forgetting why you do any of this. I want, this year, to remember why I play with others — I want to spend time with them. I want to bond with them and share awesome experiences with them. I want to have fun with them. This goes for my son, my wife, my gaming group, my Internets friends from the Bloggerlands — everyone.
This realization was one of the best parts of this year for me.
Hope everybody has a safe and happy new year, and I’ll see you all when the calendar looks different.
Photo Credit
The Island Of Misfit Christmas Article Ideas
It was my intention to write a funny Christmas article this week. It didn’t turn out so well.
The Ed-In-A-Box
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Realms
Not a creature was stirring, not even Ed Helms*
…
The dicebags were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that Ed Greenwood soon would be there.
…
On, Mystra! On, Pelor! On, Oghma! On, Tempus!
On, Telos! On, Orcus! On, Selûne! On,Vecna!
* yes, this was my first clue something was amiss
At some point, the magical Christmas safeties were triggered, and my hands refused to type any more for the good of all mankind. [Read the rest of this article]
