In part 1, I discussed common D&D 4e mistakes, taking examples from the excellent D&D podcast featuring the guys from Penny Arcade, Scott from PVP and that wonderboy who used to play in that Sci-Fi show.
Today I want to look at how the two Dungeon Masters, Chris Perkins and James Wyatt, were DMing.
The D&D poscasts covered 2 games played over 3 sessions. Session one covered an initial foray into the Keep on the Shadowfell and was DMed by Chris. Session two was a fast forward in time focused on the final 2 encounters of the Keep, DMed by James. Session three was a level 3 adventure under a ruined tower that was DMed by Chris again.
Let’s discuss generalities and then go into each session.
Wait, they do the same thing I do?
The first thing that struck me when I was listening to the podcasts was how most of what the WotC DMs did, other DMs of similar experience did! In fact, some of the things I thought I did wrong with 4e, especially the part where I became more numbers oriented and less descriptive during fights, were things the WotC guys did too!
So if you want to feel more secure as a DM, listen to the podcasts. Is I’ve said before, you’re not as bad as you think you are.
Oh and both DMs do some awesome voice characterization. This small trick of making funny noises when playing a NPC adds more depth and flavour than any stack of backstory.
Part 1: Chris teaches D&D
The 1st podcast was set before the release of 4e. The 3 players, one of which never played a tabletop roleplaying game, were presented with pre-generated PCs and asked to think up a name for them.
Here Chris showed a textbook example of teaching a roleplaying game. He always explained the minimum required to push the game forward. Whenever a situation came up that warranted new rules, Chris would go ‘and now is a good time to tell you that…’ and explain the necessary options/rules.
Too many GMs, very eager to share the awesomeness of their favorite RPG, drown new players with way too many rules and subsystems. Chris’s approach is really something that teaching GMs should adopt.
When newcomer Mike (Gabe) asked about speaking in character, Chris responds masterfully. While some GMs may jump on such an occasion to explain THE way to rolepay, Chris just outlined the different ways that people played their D&D charcater without indicating that one way was any better than the other.
This then prompted Mike to chose to always refer to his character in the third person (ex: “Jim doesn’t like this”), making Jim Darkmagic one of the most developed and interesting character of the Podcast. In fact all other players end up mimicking him and refer to Jim in the third person.
Classic Roleplaying moment just there.
Another characteristic of Chris’s DMing style was that he would often purposely ignore what a player said so he could keep the game moving. When one of the player was fooling around with a drawing or some unrelated anecdote about past games, he would just push forward and bring everyone back by launching into a description of what came next.
Jim takes the PCs to town…and wipes the floor with them.
What was most striking about the second podcast was how silent James Wyatt was compared to Chris. While Chris would tend to cut short fooling around after some time, James would often let things run their course and wait for a period of relative calm (or prompting by players) before continuing.
I would characterize Jim’s DMing style in this game as ‘neutral’. It felt like he just assumed that players knew everything there was to know about their characters and focused on giving out descriptions, answering player questions and playing monsters.
In that regard, it felt more like a ‘DM as a referee’ than ‘DM as a facilitator” style. Of course I don’t know the story behind the podcasts but something was jarring.
The play mistakes that occurred in this part of the podcast became particularly painful as James didn’t step in to help correct them (as I would tend to do). I recall an example where Jerry (Tycho) would turn undead against zombies, forgetting to push the ones affected and also forgetting about the Immobilization effect. none of that was picked on by James.
That really felt weird to me. I would have expected the DM to at least go ‘hmmm, something seems to be missing here, can you check your power again’.
Another very interesting characteristic of James’ Dming , having seen it too at Gen Con, is how he deals with player failure in combat. When the podcasts’ players got wiped by the adventure’s next to last encounter, James offered the PCs a second chance by having them captured and wake up during some dramatically appropriate event.
That’s a very nice way of always giving players a choice before failing completely.
Oh and James couldn’t, for the life of him, remind players to roll their saving throws. Of course this isin’t an issue once people learn that anything that lasts more than one round calls for a saving throw.
Chris and Rudy the Undead Hound
In the third and last series of Podcasts, Chris blew me away with incredible description. He’s got a great DM voice and he managed to grab the attention (in deficit and otherwise) of all players right from the onset. His description of the inn the PCs were based in and the Tavern keeper was pure storytelling gold.
Of course he was derailed a few times by overactive players who launched into completely insane off topic tirades. You have got to hear Wil Wheaton talk (and sing) about Rudy the Undead Hound, that guy is an Improv genius.
Anyway, in that series of podcasts, Chris started strong with a great introduction of a new PC (Wil’s sadly handicapped Eladrin Avenger) and set the stage for a cool Ruined tower adventure. Sadly, it seems that Chris had no hand in creating the Avenger because he didn’t catch the 2 fundamental mistakes Wil kept doing again and again with his PC (i.e. forget about weapon prof. bonus and rolling only one d20 vs Oath of Enmity target).
In that Chris was similar to James. At that point in the ‘campaign’ he acted out more as a neutral arbiter than an aiding DM. Except for 2 very specific exceptions.
In one encounter, the PCs were stumped by 4 statues spouting huge gouts of flame, blocking the way to 2 enemy crossbowmen. While two PCs manage to pass, the Cleric and Wizard were stranded behind. After the PCs spent several round trying to find ways to disarm it (or just pass their turn), Chris more or less hand waved the whole thing and let the Wizard flip the switch’ on each statues with his Mage Hand without any skill rolls (after he had succeeded with one thievery roll).
The traps had done their job so Chris allowed the PCs to move on. That’s great DMing (and Rule of Fun) just there.
The second thing that Chris did was to shift the adventure’s Boss demeanor toward the PCs when it appeared that they could fail. He offered to spare the PCs lives if they left. Like James, he made sure that PCs had an out abnd that they had the options of leaving the encounter instead of dying.
Not so different from us
Chris Perkins and James Wyatt are both excellent DMs. They were able to run a game with some of very rowdy and vocal net/media personalities. Seen with the “eyes” of a DM with 25+ years of experience, they seemed to do preety much the same things I’ve seen good DMs do everywhere.
Still, like veteran DMs, they couldn’t maintain a perfect situational awareness of the game. They missed a few rules (mostly dealing with PC powers) and forgot a few things here and there. We all do.
Where they did shine was in the little details. Rich description, free form adjudicating of actions, making voices and keeping pace are all little things that all DMs can get better at.
Did you catch things I might have missed?
I was impressed with the way that Chris made his world seem bigger than the adventure they played in the second series. The militia captain, the innkeeper and the dwarf all had some personality and background to them, even if it wasn’t important to the game. The descriptions of the storm mage and tying it into the players’ use of divine powers was really neat. He seems like a great DM. I would only drop him a point or two for some table attentiveness issues, but no DM is perfect.
.-= Nicholas´s last blog ..Nerd Watching: Ejecting Jerks =-.
@Nick: And the voice of his Necromancer! I could have sworn the NPC was straight out of a Blizzard game cutscene!
@ChattyDM: Oh yeah, all the voices were great. I was jealous of their vocal abilities. I usually compensate by not being afraid to make a fool of myself.
.-= Nicholas´s last blog ..Nerd Watching: Ejecting Jerks =-.
@Nick: So true, My thing is to use gestures and faces to mimic actions and expressions. I guess being french has it’s perks 🙂
In terms of “reminding the players”, I would suggest things to very new players once or twice, but some players really don’t like ‘backseat playing’. I take my cues on their response.
.-= Zzarchov´s last blog ..The Monk, The Martial Artist..They are just Warriors =-.
I agree, it’s a question of reading the players correctly. But some of the forgetting led to PC demise. I just don’t know if it was voluntary or not.
That sounds more like just a quirk. I haven’t listened to the podcast (I don’t listen to podcasts), so I can’t be sure. A good question is: Did it significantly affect the direction the game took? Did it reveal something interesting about the character; what the character believes in or is willing to give up or so forth? Yes to either and there was roleplaying and character development.
.-= Tommi´s last blog ..Two months of links =-.
The waking up as prisoners/sacrifices after a tpk was brilliant. It was the big thing I took away from the podcasts. It was a really great example of a DM rolling with the punches.
I am eagerly looking forward to the next set of podcasts as that group of players is absolutely entertaining. Speaking of which, I think you may have forgot the most important DMing skill the WotC guys had – somehow keeping the reigns on some clearly fun-loving players who had more tangents than dice.
.-= The Last Rogue´s last blog ..Paragon Path: Frost-Fire Adept =-.
That’s the thing that really shocked me– noticing how much like my games the podcasts sounded. Particularly all the goofing off.
.-= Asmor´s last blog ..Monster Maker Support Discontinued =-.
@Tommi: Actually Tommi, it was. While I disagree on what I find to be a somewhat narrow definition of Roleplaying (which is still a good one), Mike actually managed to create some form of character development that made his PC so much larger than life. In fact in the last scene of the last podcast, the DM had the NPC react to the legend that Jim Darkmagic was:
“You can’t be him! Jim Darkmagic is seven feet tall!”
Add to the fact that Mike was disgustingly lucky pretty much the whole time so everyone built on the quirk to create the character.
We often read in old school blogs that story often arouse from the PCs instead of plot and backstories. Well that was such an example.
@Dar: The same thing happened to our party at Gen Con when James Wyatt DMed for us. We got pulverized by the next to last Boss, so she captured us and we had to make a skill challenge to convince her to let us kill the big boss for her.
@The Last Rogue: While they did a lot of goofing off, like Asmor said, it was similar to the kind of antics we get at our game table (minus the Rudy the Undead dog bit). But yes, these DMs were more unfazable than I am. In last year’s Drunken D&D game at Gen Con, I broke down laughing hysterically quite often.
@Asmor: I agree with you. It was a total validation of the way we’ve been playing D&D. In fact we since moved on to more Story-focused roleplaying while the padcasts were still pretty much a showcase of what the game could do.
I find your take on the recordings and the lessons you took away from them really interesting because I largely had the opposite reaction: I found the recordings illustrated all the things I don’t like about 4E (i.e., the way the game has the potential to revolve solely around combat and mechanics) and that they leaned much more towards slapstick, tongue-in-cheek, beer & pretzels roleplaying. Not that there’s anything wrong with it (I really enjoy that stuff sometimes), just that it’s not what I would hold up as a good example of D&D’s potential as a roleplaying game. For example, the Jim referring to himself in the 3rd person is neither novel (that joke is old and was so even back in the 90’s when it was used really well in a Seinfeld episode) nor meaningful to me – instead it left me with the impression that the player was mocking the whole experience. Again, that’s just my impression and I realize you can define roleplaying in a lot of different ways.
I have yet to hear any AP post that does 4E justice because you (or maybe it’s just me) need visuals to follow the flow of combat – without the minis it just sounds like a lot of rolling dice and whittling down monsters.
.-= MJ Harnish´s last blog ..Review: Spirit of the Century =-.
@MJ Harnish- I still thought it was funny. I did think Mike approached it mockingly at first, but as the game progresses, you can tell he gets hooked pretty firmly, and if you read Penny Arcade regularly, you would see that the experience really got under his skin and inspired him to not only go out and buy the books, but start running his own game.
I thoroughly enjoyed the podcasts, and I think it’s cool that you picked up on alot of the things I noticed they did wrong. I was gritting my teeth over Wil’s ommission of his Proficiency bonus. That just drove me crazy. I however was laughing hysterically as Jerry who had been openly bragging in previous episodes about his D&D veterancy was unable to roll over 5 and soon became the focal point for jokes challenging his D&D prowess.
I thought Scott was hilarious and I loved his reactions to the tribulations and challenges that befell the party. He may not have meant it, but he definitely played the part of the grumpy Dwarf fighter well! LOL
Phil; Now I have you and mister Harnish disagreeing on the quality of play. What to do? A conundrum, I say.
Anyways; the definition is narrow so as to be of any use in discussions. Vigorous handwaving and repeating “I want more roleplay.” is not very productive. Roleplaying’s an overloaded word, so better be explicit about the meaning.
.-= Tommi´s last blog ..Two months of links =-.
I’ve changed my mind about what is the big deal in the podcasts, for me.
I almost didn’t realize it. It was freeing and validating hearing how they play the game. I hope and strive for more description and prose and rp, but my games are very much about laying back, hanging out and having a good time.
@Mj Harnish: I’l grant that these podcasts were mostly stringed combat encounters. Almost all early games of 4e I’ve witnessed were such (because the combat system is such a huge part if the game). I have seen what 4e can do in my group in in discussing with others who’ve been DMing it for a year now. As you say, I haven’t seen such play in a podcasts yet.
That’s why I focused on what the podcast showcased and focused my analysis on that. Plus they were really funny to listen to.
@Drax: Mike and Scott totally dug their characters to the point that both feature in their comics on occasion. This is good stuff for sure.
@Tommi: Indeed, interesting conundrum, which I think comes from our expectations and personal experiences with that game. I’ll concede that whatever roleplaying there was in there might not be on par with some I’ve seen at my table but for new players I found it all right. It is clear though that out of the 4 players, 2 of them were initially pretty casual/inattentive about it.
@Dar: As my players reminded me last night, we too are mostly laid back, goofing around with some periods of hyper focus.
I’m sorry, I can’t find all the podcasts you’re talking about. I found your one link here but there are a million podcasts there. If I assume you mean the first one by Chris and the first one by James, then there are no other ones by Chris after that — so where’s the “third series”?
There are about 12-15 podcasts called Penny Arcade/PVP. I downloaded them from iTunes. The last series with Chris are dated March-April 2009.
I’m a neutral DM when it comes to 4E at the moment. I don’t like it but I just don’t feel at home running it yet. I haven’t found my groove yet. I’m getting a lot better at it. However, just today the cleric in the party I was running, healed for some huge healing amount. I think I would benefit a lot from actually being a player every once in a while. Anyone want to come to Atlanta and run a game?
i do tell my players that I will tend to be more neutral and it would benefit them greatly if they keep track of things their players is impacting.
I’ve listened to about an hour and fifteen minutes of the podcasts so far. It’s too bad even the best DMs they have still skip people’s turn sometimes. I wanna see a podcast of “The World’s Best DM.” I mean, from reading Dragon magazine you’d get the idea there was a top tier that acts out every person, narrates every swing and has three plot hooks for every adventure.
I’m not sure that perfect DMing exists. I think that good Dming is finding a balance between the analytical skills needed to run the mechanics of the game with minimal errors and the communication skills needed to make the game entertaining and immersive.
Those two skill sets are often not present in the same person and hard work must be spent to achieve that balance.
I actually listened to the second series of podcasts again based on these posts of yours (and will be listening to the first series again starting today) and noticed some of the things you pointed out. Thinking back, I wonder why I didn’t notice them before.
After doing a little digging and finding Chris’ blog over on the WotC site where he talks about the game, he says that he had reasons for not telling Wil and the others when they were making mechanical mistakes. Those reasons being that everybody seemed to be having a good time anyway and that he felt it was more entertaining to see the players flounder their way towards discovery (or wallow in ignorance). It did, admittedly, make for a really entertaining podcast, but I can’t help but wonder if it might have made an equally entertaining podcast if they had followed all the rules.
The blog in question is at http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1168167
.-= WolfSamurai´s last blog ..WolfSamurai: @wanderingscribe Wow. That’s really cool of that guy. =-.
I have been listening on my Zune, and on occasion have actually LoL’d while walking down the street. The really are hilarious.
I learned quite a bit as a new 4e DM. I think I am pretty good at voices, get compliments on that part, but I am very disorganized. Chris actually sounds organized (can you sound organized?). Party fighting some Kruthiks last night and I forgot their aura until about the 5th round..ugh.
@Wolf: Oh so Chris did notice some of the play mistakes but chose to let them slide? Interesting. While I realize that it would have been hopeless to have Scott remember to mark targets, I’m sure Wil would have remembered an extra +3 for his longsword (or even +4 if the sword was magical).
I would be more prone to help players.
Then again, with the Dungeon Crawl Classic tournament coming, I have to adopt a neutral DMing style. better start now 🙂
@Sean: The Undead Hound bit cracks me up whenever I listen to it. Also, don’t beat yourself up about forgetting things. Players don’t notice and usually it just spells a slightly easier challenge for players. With time you won’t forget.
I can kind of see why Chris didn’t help them as much in the second series as he did the first, but I still have to kind of wonder how much it would have changed things if he’d mentioned the proficiency thing to Wil even once. I admit, if I were a player (especially a new one) and a GM didn’t throw me a bone with that, I might have been kind of ticked.
Unless I’m mistaken Chris or Jerry did bring up the proficiency bonus very early on, Wil added it that one time, and then forgot about it again. I believe it was in the first combat.
@Irish: That’s possible, although it appeared to me that when Chris noticed and mentioned Wil’s low attack bonus, Jerry spotted that the Basic attack bonus was missing but they didn’t mention the weapon’s Proficiency bonus.
But I might have missed it.
Was it Binwin (Scott) that said “I wonder where we’ll wake up this time?” when they were facing a second total party kill?
.-= Ragnald Dubrow´s last blog ..Neverwinter Nights Character Lab =-.
Yes… and that is a hallmark of Wyatt’s DMing style in that he always tries hard to give PCs second (and third) chances.
I know I’m late to the conversation, but had to chime in.
When they were putting together characters, Jerry was told to pick a god for Omin Dran to follow. He picked his god and wrote the main commandment on the top of his character sheet “Luck Favors the Bold.”
Twice, during play, while the others were dilly-dallying and trying to metagame the best way to avoid any danger, he declared “Luck Favors the Bold,” and acted boldly. Once it was okay, once it was a disaster.
And on neither occasion did the DM *reward his roleplaying*!
I wanted so much to reach in there and give Omin Dran a +1 on every roll for the Encounter, or a bonus to XP earned for the battle.
@Jas: Agreed, I’d have given bonuses to all the times he blustered and asked for his god to roll high. In fact I would have ignored some of his ones, asking him to reroll them because I “Didn’t see him roll the dice and you might have been cheating for all I know”‘
🙂
WARNING SPOILER AHEAD!!!
In the 3rd series near the end where Will Wheatons character Aeofel gets pushed into the Acid Pit by the Gelatinous Cube. Couldn’t Will have just used the Eladrin racial daily power “Fey Step” ? Or had he already used it in the encounter?
I can’t remember for sure. And I know they all forgot allot of their powers, abilities and bonuses to dice rolls and so forth. But yeeesh, I mean your in a pit of acid, about to die, ask the “team” for ideas. Or spend an Action point and ask the GM for a tip out of character.
Felt bad for the guy.
I have a post planned for the last Podcast… which will mostly focus on that horrendous, horrendous last fight.
But to answer your question, the Fey Step had been used IIRC.
I know it’s the Wizards of the Coast catch line this year for 4E too. But I was thinking the entiure 3rd podcast “NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY” what are you thinking!