Dungeons & Dragons of Future Past
I have a lot of other things I want to talk about here on Critical Hits, but with Monday’s announcement of a new style of Dungeons & Dragons in the works it feels wrong to talk about anything else. The 4th edition of D&D brought about the only long campaign I’ve ever managed to run, and I attribute a large part of that to the ways the new edition changed the role of being a Dungeon Master and the tools it provided. Another large part of my ability to run a long game was this, right here, the (online and otherwise) RPG community that I’ve had the benefit of being a part of for many years now that has provided me with limitless resources to aid in my DMing efforts. After D&D Next (as I’ll refer to it for simplicity) was announced the online RPG community went crazy, and I saw a number of people sharing lamentations that 4th Edition was now “old” and “going away.” I’ve finally managed to wrangle my thoughts about D&D Next, and they are overwhelming in their hope that whatever D&D Next is it helps me to continue running 4e D&D.
I say “continue running 4e D&D”, but what I really mean is that I hope D&D Next doesn’t mean the end of support for and the release of new content for 4e games. I’d say with any of the editions of D&D that I’ve played they never lasted more than 3 months without picking up house rules amongst our friends. My primary desire with D&D Next and its modular ideals is that it effectively presents an edition of Dungeons & Dragons that embraces the house rule approach many groups take and says, “Here’s D&D, here are some different ways to play it, and here are some tools to help you make it your own.”
No Edition is Perfect
I believe the primary issue with the “edition wars” and people arguing about D&D is that sooner or later, one or both sides forget that no edition of the game has ever been perfect. There may be some people out there who found Basic D&D, 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, or 4th Edition 100% perfect as they were published, but I would hazard to guess that these people are in the extreme minority. If you look at the market right now, you can see the proof: Pathfinder expanded and modified 3.x and there are tons of old-school D&D hacks and clones that choose different pieces of the game to change and others to keep the same. The problem is that every person and every group is different and they’re going to have different expectations and discoveries as they play D&D. In the end, I hope that D&D Next is representative of all editions of the game because as a game that has no edition of its own it could really be perfect for everyone. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Winging It
Let me know if this situation sounds familiar to you: You’re the DM/GM for your gaming group and you’ve just wrapped up an adventure, and you have at least a whole week until the next one. You’re committed to planning well in advance and making sure you’ve worked everything out well in advance of the next adventure. You sit down the next day, or even that very night, and start the adventure planning process. Maybe you start with a recap of the last adventure, or by listing the continuing plot seeds from the previous sessions and loose ends. Over the next few days you stay on track but before you know it the next adventure is looming and you feel like despite your best efforts the game is still not as ready as you feel it should be. Stress builds, you think about postponing the game or suggesting you all play board games instead, but you hunker down and keep planning. The day of the game comes and you’re still not “ready”, you should have started even earlier and planned more in advance!
This situation has happened to me plenty of times, and I’m willing to bet it’s happened to many of you as well. I stopped the anecdote there intentionally because that is where it can branch in several different directions. If you’re particularly stressed (most likely by things other than the game you’re running, even if you don’t realize it) then you’ve already postponed the game or suggested something else to do instead. Maybe you sat down to watch some TV in the morning and held out to the very last moment, then just as your friends arrive and everything is being set up for the game you pull the plug and suggest something else. Maybe your players are fantastic (like many of mine have been in the past) and offer you so much encouragement and potential disappointment that you get a second wind (pardon the unintentional 4e pun) and run the game you’d been planning. Or perhaps you decide you’ve planned about as much as you ever manage to plan and go ahead with the adventure, improvising and winging it to the best of your potential.
The Genesis of Adventure
If you’re anything like me than all of the above situations are fairly familiar to you. No matter how much I prepare, plan, or plot there is a decent part of me that feels unprepared for running any given RPG session. I’ve had to cope with and adjust to this fact and in the end it has led to me becoming more comfortable at winging adventures and doing my own share of improvisational DMing. However, as I’ve gotten more experience at this process I’ve noticed some striking similarities to other processes that I’ve learned and read about. Specifically, my advice today relates the process of planning and running an RPG adventure to the process for generating ideas. Even more specifically, in the process of generating ideas one of the most important steps is taking time to relax, distract yourself, and partake in other activities and let your unconscious mind take over the process. [Read the rest of this article]
Why I’m Starting to Love Epic 4e D&D
I started playing and running 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons right when it was released. My current ongoing campaign began back then with a party of 1st level characters and now three years later I’ve run over 50 adventures and the party is up to 24th level characters. The campaign has had its share of rough spots and tough times, but overall I’d say it has been an incredibly fun experience and something that I look forward to every other weekend. Dave was also running a campaign that was on the same track as mine only slightly ahead (and in the same game world), but due to a myriad of reasons a few weeks ago we ran a day long, co-DMed finale that closed his game out in style with unrestrained awesomeness.
Since then I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to close my campaign out and thinking about exactly how much longer I want to run this game. What I’m discovering more and more as I think about it is that running epic level 4th Edition is some of the most fun I’ve ever had running or playing in any D&D game.
Some Disclaimers
As I’ve discussed a few times before, when I started running this campaign I was without a doubt a “newbie DM” and my attempts at writing, planning, and running my campaign definitely showed it. This is a disclaimer because now that I have 50 adventures under my belt and a lot of hours of DMing experience it should be expected that I’ve gotten better and that the games I’m running have improved as a result. In addition, I realize that many of these points may not be specific to 4th Edition D&D, they may also apply to any edition of D&D when it gets into the epic style of game play (or any RPG for that matter), but my experiences of running epic games are only in 4e so that’s what I’ll be focusing on.
Another part of this disclaimer is that player investment builds over time in a campaign and that adds to the overall enjoyment at the table as well. Last but not least there’s the simple fact that the epic tier is meant to be epic, and therefore awesome in its own right as the players become super powerful and go up against greater and greater threats. I believe all of these are fairly understandable reasons for why I am enjoying running epic level D&D so much, but I’d like to explore some of the other reasons and the finer points of the matter.
Everything AND the +5 Vorpal Kitchen Sink
The aspect that I’m probably enjoying the most about running epic level 4e is that I feel like I can throw practically anything I want at the party. Monsters that are 4 or 5 levels higher than the party will most likely be challenging but unless there’s a solo they stand very little chance of it getting anywhere close to killing the whole party. Even before level 24 when most Epic Destinies grant death defying abilities, many of my players have abilities that allow them to skirt the edge of death. My wife has been playing a cleric for the entire game and even despite her lack of focus on healing her Healing Word ability still gives characters an insanely high number of hit points.
I’ll freely admit that in the heroic and paragon tiers of play I was deeply concerned about the level of difficulty I was throwing at my players and how their characters could handle it mechanically. Being almost entirely free of those concerns is extremely satisfying as a DM and I’m sure it is contributing to the ease of my running the latest adventures of my game and the amount of fun I’m having doing it. There is a certain glee that can be found in the DM’s attempts at creating an all-out massacre and the players/characters abilities to disrupt those efforts. I know that some DMs run with the mindset of “unrestrained opposition” to the characters, and I know that there are some players who really don’t like that style of game, but my feeling is that in the epic tier the players don’t mind it as much and it has been incredibly fun for me as the DM. At least for me, I can’t speak for my players that much, my campaign has recently taken on an enhanced feeling of the DM vs. Players style of game but with an incredibly friendly vibe. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Last Minute Planning
Charrette is a word that most likely means nothing to you, unless of course you studied Architecture or Design in school then it is a word that can mean quite a lot and the emotions it brings up vary widely from person to person. Charrette is a word used among architecture students to describe a design crunch/cramming session that derives from the French word for “cart”. The term became popular because schools in Paris would have carts pushed around to collect student’s drawings and it was not uncommon for students to continue working on their drawings for as long as possible by riding in the cart. For better or worse, the term has stuck through to this day and architecture students are still as bad as ever at finishing their projects before rigid deadlines.
One of the unforeseen outcomes of my experience with things like charrettes in school has been the ability to more efficiently plan for the RPG adventures that I run. The word charrette inspires a mix of emotions in most design students because it represents the insanely stressful periods of a project for many people but also because it invokes a bizarre sense of pride in our shared suffering, and it is not surprising that people are proud to emerge from a charrette with a praise-worthy design and presentation having survived the experience. This kind of experience is also well known to Dungeon Masters and Game Masters around the world.
Planning an Adventure or Studying for an Exam?
It’s one thing to experience anxiety and stress when going through design school, after all so much rests on your shoulders and counts on your performance in school, but I was extremely surprised when I found myself experiencing some of the same problems when I found myself approaching the day of an adventure and found myself needing to plan for my game. Today I’m not only going to talk about some of the best advice I received about getting through charrettes and lessons I learned in school, but I’m also going to share some specifics about how I’m applying all of this to the hobby of running for tabletop RPGs. [Read the rest of this article]
Let’s Talk About Superhero Movies
I know a few people who are getting sick of superhero and comic book movies, and with good reason considering this year’s offering of Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, and Captain America to name a few. Back when I was young you could still consider superhero movies to be a new thing, but here in 2011 we have more comic book movies than I could have ever dreamed possible as an adolescent. You’ll notice I use the terms “superhero” and “comic book” interchangeably here, but that is simply for ease of use – rest assured I am well aware of the inherent differences and that there are non-comic book superhero movies and non-superhero comic book movies.
Ever since 1989, when I saw the first Tim Burton Batman movie in theaters at an extremely young age, I have been hooked on superhero movies. Around that same time I became interested in comic books, but it wasn’t until highschool and college that I started actually reading more than single issues of titles like Batman or Uncanny X-Men. Due to this odd mixture of nerducation I have a decently even nostalgia for both the film versions of superheroes and their original, printed inspirations. I know that the Joker didn’t actually kill Bruce Wayne’s parents, but I didn’t know it the first time I saw the movie and still enjoy it even after learning “the truth”. Now when I go to see a movie like Thor or Green Lantern if I’m not already intimately aware of the source material I will take a decent amount of time to educate myself so that I can approach the movie from both perspectives and have a deeper understanding of both what has inspired the movie and also what has changed in order for them to make this material into a movie.
I’m Getting Sick of Origin Stories
When it comes to many superhero movie franchises, you can generally predict that at least 1/4 of the first film is going to be dedicated to the origin story of the main character(s). In some cases, like with the Punisher movie, you can consider the entire film to be origin story. In the case of Punisher, I didn’t mind this so much but I was disappointed that the main actor changed to the second movie which created a disconnect in my mind. The same is true of the Incredible Hulk movies, though I feel Ed Norton did a good job making the change in actor painless, and though the movie effectively retold the origin story briefly at the beginning it wasn’t blatant about it and still treated itself like a good sequel to the first movie. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Creating Histories – Part 2
Last week in my first post tackling the subject of creating histories for an RPG world I discussed relatively “meta” and experimental concepts. This week I’d like to get down to some specifics and hopefully address the concept a bit more directly. The exact question/suggestion that inspired this topic was worded as, “In my homebrew, creating histories in specific territories is a challenge – particularly linking them to the whole world.”
While last week I talked about letting your players help design your game’s/territory’s history and using your previous campaigns to build history, but today I’m going to discuss some ideas about creating histories for a new game world without relying on players to help you out.
Don’t Worry About Creating Less History
For a little bit of guidance, I asked Dave (the Game, my first DM, most likely the biggest influence on me as a DM) what advice he would give on this topic. His answer was, “Don’t build too much in advance, build it during play based on the needs of the story and the characters.” For me this advice is spot on because one of the biggest road blocks a DM can hit when planning a campaign is feeling like they are under-planning and that they are not prepared enough for their own game. There is no rule that says you have to have ‘X’ amount of back story prepared for a game or that you must have fully fleshed out histories for every single city and region that is on your map.
Don’t let getting stumped on creating a history for your game stop you from planning for the ‘present’ that the players are going to experience. If you feel like you’re starting an adventure without enough history of your game world planned, then the odds are you’re doing it right. This advice is the root behind my suggestion in the first post for letting your players help you design the backstory of your game. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Creating Histories – Part 1
World building can be one of the most intimidating tasks for DMs and GMs when it comes to running their own RPG campaign. No matter how much advice you read or receive from your friends, creating a world of your own or modifying someone else’s world can still feel incredibly daunting even for people who are experienced at running their own games.
In my last solicitation for questions and suggestions to discuss in this series on twitter, clampclontoller said this, “In my homebrew, creating histories in specific territories is a challenge – particularly linking them to the whole world.“ Since this is an issue that I’ve struggled with many times myself, it feels like a good topic worth exploring here!
It Gets Easier with Time
The first thing I would like to mention with regards to developing a history for your game world is that it gets easier. There are two sides to this statement, the first is that you will inevitably get better at developing history as you plan and run your game and learn what your regular players react to or ignore out of the history that you created. The second, and for me it was quite mind blowing when I first realized it, is that as you run and play in your game world you and the players are creating the history. The more you play, the more past there is to explore moving forward in the game.
For me this happened entirely by accident. I ran my first two D&D campaigns in college and while they took place in entirely separate areas with different stories and characters, in the back of my mind I had placed both games on the same campaign map but separated by a large sea. As the second game progressed, a handful of similar elements began to creep into the game that the same players never even noticed that tied both games together. Fast forward to six years later when Dave and I began planning our 4th Edition D&D campaigns where we discussed Dave’s dislike for large scale world building and I offered up my college game world for him and I to both run in. Dave took the game world shortly after where I’d left it off and developed it as he saw fit, and I took my game world hundreds of years in the future (after Dave’s as yet unplayed campaign, using a mysterious gap in history to account for it) and ran with it. [Read the rest of this article]
Boardgaming Resurgence
Just over a year ago our group of friends was heavily into the deck building game Dominion. It was relatively new but had been out long enough to have three quick expansions and we really couldn’t get enough of it. Some days we would play game after game for hours on end. As should be expected, we eventually burned out from that pace. After that I found myself not playing tabletop board/card games much for the next several months with the exception of finally playing Race for the Galaxy for the first time and playing Castle Ravenloft many times after its release. Thankfully, over the last two months I have noticed an extreme increase in the amount of board games that my friends and I have been playing and I want to share a few of the stand out games we’ve been enjoying.
My Two Favorites
7 Wonders was a game that I fell in love with the very first time I set eyes on it. First off I’ve taken numerous ancient history classes related to architecture and so the flavor of the game including the Colossus of Rhodes and the Mausoleum of Halikarnassus immediately hooked me. Beyond that I really enjoy the game because it uses a card drafting mechanic but avoids many of the common deck building mechanics that have become incredibly popular since Dominion took off. Don’t take that to mean 7 Wonders is a deck building game, it is actually a game where you draft a collect cards in front of you around the wonder you’re playing as.
Depending on which structure/nation you’ve chosen you have different advancements you can choose from that allow you to excel at some of the specific focuses in the game. For instance, the Colossus of Rhodes can amass more military than other wonders and at a quicker pace, and as it was the first wonder I played the game with it was a tactic I could quickly latch on to and make good use of. If you haven’t tried this game yet and you enjoy tabletop card games (or board games with card-based mechanics) it is without a doubt my top recommendation. Another great advantage is that the game easily handles up to 7 players in one game and the play time is almost always between 30 and 45 minutes. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Traps, Hazards, & Terrain
Once again I solicited on my twitter account (@Bartoneus) asking what aspects of location design in RPGs people have problems with, and I’d like to thank everyone that responded this afternoon. I will be addressing many of the topics you guys asked about in the future, but for today’s post I chose DigitalDraco’s comment: “I always want to include more interesting terrain effects, hazards & the like but they tend to seem added-on.” This topic immediately struck me as one that I’ve struggled with in the past and one that I believe many other people have had issues with as well.
The great thing about traps, hazards, and terrain effects are that they can be direct personifications of the environment that metaphorically (and sometimes quite literally) bring the world around your characters to life. First the best idea is to clarify some definitions that I feel are pretty widely acknowledged. Traps are typically intentionally malicious effects that were orchestrated by a foreign will or entity for a specific purpose. Hazards and terrain are generally considered to be natural but they can just as easily cross over into the realm of traps in the same way that traps can cause hazards and changes in terrain. Focusing on and playing up this potential inter-relationship of traps and hazards/terrain is my first recommendation for creating interesting locations that include these elements.
Connectivity Breeds Realism
What I mean by the above title is that tying elements of your design together can justify all of those elements even when they relate to very little beyond themselves. This is a direct suggestion focusing on the last part of DigitalDraco’s statement, “but they tend to seem added-on“. If you have added one element to a location and it seems added-on, try adding another element that relates directly to the first and you might find that instead of both of them feeling added-on, they start to create a new definition of the location you’re designing. I also recommend treating the main topics of this post as a set of guidelines when adding elements into encounters, if the first thing you’ve added is clearly a trap, the secondary element you add will probably fit better if it is a hazard or a terrain effect. If you’ve added a hazard, the secondary element may work best as a trap or a hazard. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Give Your Cities Some Character
As with nearly every topic I cover in this series, I’ve touched on the idea of adding character to settlements and cities before but now I’d like to put it in the spotlight. Let’s face it, your players will only remember select portions of the adventures you run even on the best of days. The elements that players seem to remember the most are specifically striking elements of a few NPCs, villains, encounters, and social interactions. Generally speaking, they will not remember a location very much unless a specific element of that location ties directly to one of those elements. They may not remember a location featuring a really sweet bridge if you describe it to them, but set a dramatic encounter on that bridge and they’re much more likely to remember the details of that location.
When it comes to settlements, whether it is a village, town, city, or capital, they were founded for very specific reasons and often their nature reflects those reasons inherently. If a city is built on the edge of the ocean, then it is most likely going to have thriving docks, abundant fish markets, and a bustling economy built on trade from abroad. When you present a new city to your players these are the aspects that you want to put the most effort into preparing and presenting to them to help solidify the character of the new location in their minds. As with most of my suggestions for designing based on realistic concepts, in the end thinking about these concepts can also help you develop more ideas for your game while you’re planning everything out.
There’s No Such Place as Default Town
I would be willing to bet that the large majority of places a D&D group visits come off as nothing more than ‘generic fantasy town’ with perhaps one or two interesting elements that feel tacked on and unincorporated into the overall life of the area. No matter where the city you’re designing is located, you can add a handful of interesting elements with relative ease. The key to making this work is presenting these elements to your players up front, and not always leaving them free to discover everything on their own. If a town is located in the middle of rolling grasslands, begin by telling the players that the town is easily twice the size of any other town they’ve visited due to the flat nature of the terrain and the availability of space. From there you can branch into a large variety of interesting elements, and I have found that the more specific and unique you can get the more the location will stand out. With our grassland town, you could emphasize that the only food readily available within the town is that of the grassland lions found in abundance nearby. Your average D&D characters (and players) are not going to expect a town to eat mostly lion meat, and small details like this can really make a location stand out in your game. [Read the rest of this article]
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