This is PM’s second post of his Casual Player approach to D&D. Once again, PM’s wry humour entertains us in his tale of confronting his fears about that nasty multi-headed beast that is Role-Playing!
Last week, my inner half-orc took a few steps out of the closet and while it was a bit scary out there, nothing bad happened. Well nothing too bad. I might not have absolute proof of this, but I did find evidence that DMs actually can imbue player dice with bad mojo. However I’m afraid it might be just the early signs of something far more sinister…
Our first game was plagued with awful rolls and I could see that it affected our DM as well (ChattyDM is our DM for those who just tuned in). I guess it’s only normal to want your first offering to go smoothly and give new recruits a memorable experience but it was not to be in that game. The smooth part I mean… The evening was pleasantly memorable.
My first indicator of the evening’s success is my friend Vince’s appreciation of this little event. In order to setup this ND&D evening (N for Newbie), I looked for other newbies and that’s how I drafted Vince into this. He had once played a tabletop RPG as a kid with a neighbor and as far as I can tell, he was not looking to repeat the experience.
It took a little bit of persuasion but overall he wasn’t too hard to convince. When I explained that the guy hosting the game had 20+ years of experience doing it and that it wouldn’t be a bore, he was on board.
I must admit that after selling the idea to him, I was a little concerned when the evening begun. Should he not enjoy himself, he might become completely passive (but he wouldn’t disturb the game).
Well, as a tribute to ChattyDM’s skills, I could tell he was in the game as soon as the first blow was landed and colorfully described. He didn’t know exactly what he was into or how to act, but he was totally in it.
Bonus points to the DM for stealing one of his weapons mid-fight… I’m sure he’ll be more careful next time he’s asked “..so, you’re still only using your long sword two-handed?” He liked it enough to consider joining us for Franky’s MCWoD game that will be beginning soon. (That surprised me big time).
Personally, my experience was pretty much what I expected for a session which was a simple introduction to the basic rules. Towards the end of the evening, the DM tried to give us the reigns over the storytelling and it became scary as hell to me. I could see the plot hooks dangling in front of us, but I couldn’t think of any way of grabbing hold of them.
No, that’s not quite right.. I couldn’t think of any cool way of grabbing hold of the hooks. Through the years, I have heard so many juicy anecdotes surrounding this game that I had set the bar very high for my own performance.
I couldn’t find something really interesting to do, I just freeze up and not do anything. And to make matters worse, when I did think of things to do, I got stage fright and didn’t do anything again. Yay me!
Things I wanted to do, but didn’t:…
During one of the fights, ChattyDM had to dumb down the monsters some to make sure we survived the first 20 minutes of the game. The dices were that bad… even threatening the dice with a ride in the microwave followed by the execution of this threat did not improve our rolls.
In any case, one of the creature’s leader purposefully set himself astride one of our fallen comrade to taunt us. I thought, alright, I’m going to pull our friend to safety right from under that guy’s feet and once he’s not right in the middle of the fight, I can stabilize him. With a bit of luck, the fiend might lose his balance and give us a little more time to dispatch him. Yeah, I didn’t do that.
Later on, during the RP/investigation part of the game, I thought and even voiced an idea to get back at all the attention the others characters were receiving. I wanted to use a ‘groupie’ love letter given to our Fighter and send it to our wizard’s rejected admirer on her behalf. I didn’t stick to my guns however and didn’t actually do any of it (Chatty DM: That would have been freaking hilarious, you should have forged on with the idea!).
Would any of these actually make a difference or alter the story in any way, I don’t think so, but they would have been fun to see play out. I think I can explain this stage fright in two ways. First, I was unsure it would lead to anything… I would think “Is this even going to work? Do the rules allow for such an action”.
That’s a pretty stupid reason considering our DM would probably have allowed it if only because I was a newbie and he wouldn’t hammer me with rules on the first night (Chatty DM: No! I would have allowed it because it was Cool, DMs are also subjected to the Rule of Cool you know?).
I guess it will take me a while before my fear of the rulebook fades.
The second explanation is much simpler… the whole thing would be out of character for me. Let me explain this better. The proposed actions I thought of are not out of character; that’s the sort of things I do daily… I don’t often have the opportunity of dragging friends from under a monster’s feet, but I’m the kind of guy who disassemble his boss’s chair and let him sit in it… Amazing that I’m still employed.
For some strange reason, I can’t have a ‘character’ do something ‘I’ would normally do because I don’t know enough about the game to will myself to do it. My inner Half-Orc might require some more therapy before he can make his place in the world.
Dear Half-Orc, don’t call the therapist yet. Like I did in my own post game article, you are being far too hard on yourself. I believe that you tried to overanalyse the pros and con of various course of actions.
Role Playing is about reacting without overthinking, trying new things in a completely safe environment (surrounded by friends). At worse, you’ll get a chuckle from the DM and “Sure, roll a 20 and it’ll work”. At best, the DM will tell you: Okay, to yank your friend and trip the Baddie, you need to roll X on your dice… But since this is so cool, I’ll kick in a bonus of ‘Y’. Do you still want to do this?”
Don’t quit! It gets better!
And remember, the rules are never there to tell you what you can’t do. They’re only there to tell you how difficult it would be to try.
Also, I don’t know how long you microwaved the dice, but did you make sure to do it with the 20s (or other highest number) facing upwards? Because while they are microwaving, the plastic will flow downwards a bit, and will partially weight the die. This will mean that the die is no longer completely fair, and the number that was on top while microwaving should show up more frequently than the other numbers.
Of course, you would need to microwave it for a good time to make this have any significant effect, and you can still get a run of bad luck, but if you microwaved your d20 for a long time with the 2 facing up, that might explain some.
By the way, I’d suggest getting your own set of dice. Ones that roll how you like. (Some people like harder dice, some like softer. Angular corners, rounded corners. It’s really just what feels more comfortable to roll to you.) The dice you were using were still Phil’s. So go down to the gaming store, and find some that you’re comfortable with.
pm put a pretty much good résumé of my feelings, hesitations and anxiety after that introduction game. Putting as well the RP bar a bit too high and i froze up, unable to think of something cool to do or say. I’m glad to see that Vince enjoyed the game and that he will join us for the debut of Frank as a GM with his game of McWoD. Can’t wait to get together and flex our RP muscles with our own toon from that universe.
I’ll keep a note from your suggestions, ve4grm, about the technique to microwave your unsuccesful dices and be assure that i will bring my own dices for my next game (wich i should have done with the game of our beloved chattyDM ;))
PM – I wouldn’t worry about the dangling plot hooks… I still have trouble trying to decide cool ways to grab those hooks sometimes. In fact, in our last session, we all watched a plot point go dancing across town, but we couldn’t figure out how to get to it without getting ourselves into trouble. Hang in there, some days are easier than others!