5 Year Old DM

My son, just shy of 6, wanted to DM a game of D&D like his dad. Yesterday, he got his wish!

I tried to rally the troops, which was entertaining of itself. Jeremy in particular, asking me "What system will it be?" "What about character sheets?" as if it were going to be anything other than freeform gaming. Maybe he had my boys mixed up? My 12 year old is also hoping to DM a game soon, too, and it will likely have some more structure.

Dean and Denis were free, and of course me, too. We created characters! I was a big fat wizard (Stevie basically gave me this character), Dean was a sentient jack-o-lantern, and Denis was a kung fu dragon-man.

The session involved us stopping rampaging ass-goblins by cleaning them, interacting with bizarre NPCs, lots of "home shopping" where Stevie would tell us that there was something for sale and ask who wanted to buy it (usually for outrageously high or low prices), dealing with a monster that needed to go to court, and stopping a dragon by sending it and the court monster onto a space ship.

It was pretty much what you'd expect from a nearly 6 year old's stream of consciousness. Oh, and a lot of it was dictated by the free to use minis on Roll20, as he would find one he liked, stick it on the map, and that thing was suddenly there.

He's looking forward to DMing again, and I'm glad to have him so excited about playing D&D!

When it stops being a game

This is a bitching and moaning post, but it does have a point to make about gaming in general, I hope, so please bear with me.

Recently, one of the players in the big AD&D game I take part in on RPOL.net wanted to start a new game of cowboys vs zombies using the Star Frontiers rules for the game. Since this is basically what I did with Caverns & Cowboys, I was definitely on board to see what he'd done with the rules.

And I wasn't disappointed there. He doesn't have magic as a player option, but a few of his ideas for skill choices seem potentially better and simpler than what I'd come up with.

So in the game, all the players are in the cavalry. No option to be anything else, that's the premise of the game. Fine. I knew that going in, I signed up for it. And I also realize this is a playtest for the rules mods. So things change every now and then as issues arise or questions are asked that he can't answer. Fine again.

But my first red flag was when before we'd even really gotten the game off the ground, he was trying to entice him into his "real" game of cowboys vs Lost World. That raised my suspicions that this game I'd already signed up for would maybe not be the best game, but I liked my character and decided to soldier on (yes, pun intended).

Now, the situation is we arrive in a town that no one has returned from for a few weeks and no telegraph either. As soon as we ride into town, zombies attack. My character is Native American and another is half Native, and as soon as they appeared, we agreed IC that they were wendigo. The GM went along with that, and has been calling them that ever since. Hooray for player input being accepted into world building!

But as soon as players started acting like players in an RPG, trying to tactically problem solve like good RPG players, he through both the NPC sergeant and GM dictate ruled that all characters except mine and another (who had been asked to investigate a house on the edge of town) were to line up Civil War style and blast away. No riding around to distract or lead off some of the zombies, no taking cover, nothing allowed by what he told us. Second red flag appears.

Luckily for me and the other player, since we were in the house when the firing line was formed, we were free to run across the street to the saloon where civilians were calling for help from the upstairs window. Inside, we found a couple of zombies. My partner attacked while I checked on the safety of the civilians then returned to help him fight.

This morning, when I logged on, the GM had made a big long post where he just arbitrarily moved everything ahead two combat rounds -- although that was far from clear from the post. Everyone on the firing line was arbitrarily moved back on the sergeant's orders, and my partner and I had just unloaded our guns on the two zombies in the saloon to minimal effect -- my partner missed with everything and I only hit once (although when I checked the die roller, actually he'd rolled that I hit with three of my five remaining shots in my six-shooter).

And only now, AFTER he decided to do this, is he asking for us to post our actions two or three moves in advance. Apparently, he'd forgotten how crappily beginning characters fight in Star Frontiers, and how little damage 2d10 or 3d10 bullets do to zombies that have on average around 45 Stamina points. And there are a crap ton of zombies moving in. And he's not letting most of the players do anything other than fire and reload. So, third red flag on the field.

I think it might be telling that since this morning, the only person to post besides myself complaining about this is a new guy who just rolled up a character. I think the other players might also have sensed this is not going to be the cool game we hoped it would be.

I'm usually one for letting novice game masters have some slack, and having run play tests, I realize the rules can and should change to reflect issues that crop up. But the lack of agency he's allowing most of the players makes me think that this isn't a game so much as a novel he wishes he was writing. And that makes me consider quitting the game. Because at that point, it isn't a game anymore.

I'll give it a few more days. See what he says, and what the other players do. But I think this brief interesting idea for a game may have just gone off to Boot Hill.

Role Playing, Metagaming, and Differing Opinions

Interesting video on metagaming. I recommend that you skip the first 45 seconds of cheesy acting and just get to the topic.

First up, Luke gives his definition of role playing. It seems to me that he puts a lot of emphasis on the amateur thespian aspect of role playing. That's fine. Good to know where he's coming from. I tend to disagree. That is one way of role playing. But besides getting into the head of a fictional personage, role playing can also simply be acting out the assigned functional role within the adventuring party (by race/class chosen). He mentions the stereotypes (barbarians smash, rogues stab...shouldn't this be sneak?, wizards cast fireball), but to me his tone seems a bit dismissive of this functional level of role playing.

Anyway, then we get his definition of metagaming. Using any knowledge the player has instead of knowledge that the character has available.

I have no quibbles with this definition. However, it makes metagaming impossible to avoid. Unless the DM and players have sat down and discussed for hours in minute detail every experience the character has had, every story they've ever heard, etc. how can we really know what the character knows aside from the limited information given by the DM when setting scenes?

Yes, there are ways to roll the dice to see what a character knows. But is the player or the DM tracking the results of each of these rolls? Some may. Most don't, in my experience. So it will be inevitable that a player will need to use some knowledge that they possess that their character doesn't from time to time.

Around the 3:19 mark, he starts talking about Perception checks to find a secret door. If the player rolls it, and rolls low, the player knows there could still be a secret door there. Asking another character to check is a form of metagaming, because if you had rolled high and failed, you'd be confident that you don't need another PC to check as well. [Relevant to the yet unfinished discussion on secret or open die rolls.]

At 6:40, he begins his discussion of whether metagaming is good or bad. First he gives the extreme views: any metagaming at all completely ruins the game, or meh, metagame away.

After saying metagaming everything is fine if the DM/group is good with that, it violates the concept of role playing. Here, I'll disagree. From what I've read, Gygax and Arneson didn't really care one way or the other how "in character" the players were in their original Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns. And clever thinking by the player was something to be rewarded. I could be interpreting what I read wrong, but the amateur thespianism that Luke seems to believe is the heart and soul of role playing was not part of the hobby in the beginning. So when he claims that metagaming is not the way the game was intended to be played, I think he's off. A certain level of metagaming is expected.

Now, Luke goes on to say that he does think some metagaming is acceptable (around the 8:45 mark). And funnily enough, I think he's got it backwards here, too. He says that players knowing that encounters are balanced for them is a good thing, because otherwise they'll run in fear of unknowns. My West Marches group has been a lot more cautious since they met a wight that killed one PC and drained another before they took it down. And in my opinion, this has enhanced the game for them. They need to approach encounters carefully, see what they can learn, and flee if necessary. And they're not completely afraid of everything. Recently, groups have charged in to an intellect devourer lair in one session, and stuck around to defeat an aboleth after they learned it wasn't just a trio of nixies in the river. It hasn't made them afraid, it's made them cautious, which is a good thing.

At 9:25 we get his next acceptable form of metagaming, which is letting PCs adventure together when they probably shouldn't. Like the paladin and assassin in the same group. Now, AD&D didn't allow this to happen. By the book, the paladin would refuse to join the group unless the assassin was left behind. Modern games ease up on the restrictions, meaning this form of metagaming is only necessary in these editions. I'll actually agree with Luke on this point, though. I never did like the overly restrictive AD&D alignment interaction rules. If an assassin's talents are useful, and a paladin's talents are useful, why not have them team up? Their interactions about how to approach the adventure will hopefully liven things up rather than be a drag.

Next point -- why not form a large party? Why not hire hirelings and retainers to help increase the party size? And all I think is, that's smart play, and not at all metagaming. The fact that there is strength in numbers is something any character in any sort of world should realize. And in old school play, it's just what's expected.

From around the 10:50 point, he gives his solution to the metagaming problem. First, pick your battles. Solid advice. Even if we disagree about what is good metagaming and what is bad metagaming, knowing when to stop it and when to let it slide is good advice. Because, as I said above, it's nearly impossible to avoid metagaming by the strictest definition because it's impossible for us to know everything that our character knows.

We also agree that we need to remember that this is a game. And while he thinks "having fun" is paramount, I think a big part of the fun of D&D is figuring out a challenge presented in an encounter. And often that involves a clever idea which is a form of metagaming. This could be assessing a tactical situation in combat, or finding a non-standard use of a spell or magic item, or whatever. It's highly likely that the player is considering the situation as a whole in these instances, not through the lens of their character's in-game knowledge and intelligence.


Finally, I like his proposed solution to the metagaming problem. No matter where you fall on the "metagaming is bad" spectrum, having a conversation with the players and letting them try to justify the metagaming is a good idea. And since it's just a game, letting the player have the final decision about whether to metagame or not is probably a good thing, too.

It's not your DM's job to provide you with a story

I've been in a bit of a lull this weekend, not really motivated to work on my research. So I've been wasting a lot of time on YouTube. This video popped up on my recommended list today. I've seen a few videos from this guy before, and while focused on 5E, he's given me a few things to think about with regards to the game.

I have a few issues with this video, though, and so, since this seems to be the way debate happens on the internet, I should actually be making my own YouTube video, sampling bits of this one, and then giving my rebuttal or interpretation, or explaining how my philosophy differs. But I'm just going to write up my thoughts here instead, since my web cam is busted. I guess I could use my phone camera to do it - it's better quality than my web cam anyway. But I'll just write my ideas here anyway.

His "simple dirty tricks" to run a successful RP session are:
0. Have a goal for the session (this is more of a general bit of advice he gives)
1. Introduce a backstory NPC (AKA a new NPC related to a PC's backstory)
2. Introduce a third party (to complicate the RP with a new agenda)
3. Set the PCs up for a fall (a bait and switch/manipulate their emotions gambit)
4. Create a moral dilemma for the PCs (orc babies, anyone?)
5. Introduce a new ally or enemy (how this is different from #1 is...the new NPC is not related to a PC's backstory, how it's different from #2 is...I'm not exactly sure, unless the "third party" in #2 is completely neutral in whatever conflicts are going on)


My first impression is that aside from one of the "dirty tricks" (#3), I wouldn't consider any of these to be dirty tricks. But with the nature of click-bait titles, I'll let that slide. He needed to jazz up the title to get people interested. And in my case, it did work.

So, first of all, his idea to "have a goal for the session" seems to imply that the DM knows and is planning for an RP session. My philosophy of GMing any more is to never have a goal for the session as GM. It's the players' responsibility to come up with goals for the session. If they decide to just hang out in town chatting up NPCs, THAT is apparently the goal they have come up with for the session.

That said, if the players do opt to RP the entire session instead of exploring or hacking & slashing, his five bits of advice of things to throw into the session to liven things up aren't all bad.

#1 seems to imply coming up with a "backstory NPC" off the cuff. While that's certainly possible, I've found through the years that throwing in an already established NPC works better. We've already got an idea of the NPC's character, and the players may familiar with the NPC's attitudes, goals, etc.

I did this intuitively as a kid. My best friend's main Fighter had a 3 Charisma, and tended to piss off otherwise friendly and helpful NPCs. If we were in a long RP session, I could usually find a way to work in one of the "Caric's Enemies Club" to the game and have some fun interactions with an established NPC.

#2 seems to again be premised on the idea that the DM is running the players through some sort of predetermined story. Having multiple factions that the players are free to oppose or try to ally with is great. And if there's a lull in the dungeon delving, it is in fact a good time to introduce new factions to the players. If you're trying to run the players through some kind of specific plot (whether it's predetermined or just heavily guided to try and steer things a certain way), this is actually a good way to derail that story! The players may find the new faction more engaging than the current allies/enemies, and want to totally switch gears. I'm actually all for that. But I don't think that's what the guy in the video intended.

#3 can be a real dick move, if not done right. And the guy making the video does warn you not to overuse this idea. The problem I see with it it, if you don't plan this ahead of time, it won't have the emotional payoff you're hoping for. And if you do plan it ahead of time, and are just waiting around for the players to disengage from the exploration and talk to the NPCs for a session, it will feel contrived when you trot it out. Now, if you're running them through some sort of story, and you know you'll have a break in the narrative, yeah, this would be a good time to use something like this. But if you are just providing a game world for the players to explore, this sort of thing should come up naturally as part of the in-game cause/effect of player actions/reactions. It's not the sort of thing that should be planned and "sprung" on the players just to try to manipulate them emotionally.

#4 shouldn't be something the DM forces on the players. The DM should always be giving them situations where they have choices to make of a moral or ethical nature. But I can't, as DM, force the players to engage in the choice as a dilemma. That depends on the player's mentality and how they envision their character.

In my experience, since RPGs are NOT the real world and the consequences aren't real to the players, they will happily take a situation that might actually be a dilemma in real life and easily choose to do one thing or the other. A writer can decide that Hamlet can't decide whether avenging his father or not betraying his king is the morally correct action. As a DM, all I can do is dangle the situation in front of the players. Whether they decide to ignore their father's ghost, run straight to the throne room and draw steel, or spend days moping around fretting about the decision is out of my hands. It's my job to take their decision and roll with it, and play it out.

And if there is a dilemma, it's usually not every character fretting over the possible courses of action. It's a debate between PCs that have made opposite decisions. And they will happily debate it out in character (and sometimes out of character too) while I just sit there and listen.

#5, as I noted above, isn't really any different than #1 or #2. They're all basically trying to spice up an RP session by throwing in more NPCs to interact with. And that's fine. If the players have decided to hang out in town and do research, pursue personal goals, or just have a laugh, the more and more varied types of NPCs they have to interact with, the better. This point just suggests a different type of NPC to throw at the players compared to the first two "dirty tricks."

So looking at the specific points offered, yes, these are usually good ways to spice up role play encounters. In fact, they would mostly work even if it's just an encounter, not an entire session. The problem I have with the video's premise is that it expects the DM to be providing some sort of coherent narrative for the players to move through. That's not the DM's job. The DM should set the stage. The DM should be reactive to the actions of the PCs more often than they should be actively trying to "move the plot" of the game.

If the DM plans for an RP session, and prepares one of these "dirty tricks" to use, but the players aren't in the mood for an RP session and would rather get on with the adventure, then it's going to be a dull or frustrating session for everyone.

So budding DMs, don't force it. If you find your players in the mood for some heavy RP instead of exploration/combat, remember these "tricks" as things you can do when things seem to slow down and you need to add a bit of spice. Just don't force them upon your players.

Inexperienced players, force it! If you're in the mood for role play, role play away! If you want to explore or get in a fight or whatever, let the DM know that's what you want to do.

The best RP sessions aren't pre-planned or forced. They just happen spontaneously.

The Tyranny of the Player

I've been thinking a bit about my post from yesterday about The Black Hack. Not so much about TBH itself, but about the fact that the game only wants the players to roll dice for success/failure. I get that TBH tries to merge some aspects of indie story games with traditional TTRPG play. This one, though, sorta bothers me.

In my post yesterday, I said:

The fact that the DM doesn't roll for very much is a bit annoying for me, though. I'm not the sort of gamer that thinks, "Man, I wish I was rolling the dice more often!" So maybe I'm not the target audience. But after over three decades of games where the GM rolls to hit and saves for the monsters, this seems a bit meh to me. I mean, it allows for your ability scores to replace a separate AC number, but why not just let the DM roll?

I probably should have worded that better and taken a bit more time to organize my thoughts.

Of course no one's playing RPGs thinking the main draw of play is rolling dice. Granted, I think I've read things from WotC before about wanting to give the players more chances to roll dice. That talk was related to their idea that every character should be a vital and integral part of combat in the game. Which is a whole different topic I've touched on before and I won't go into now. Suffice it to say, if rolling dice is your thing, pure dice games are what you should be playing. Craps. Yatzee. Race track board games.

No, the real reason someone would design a game where the game master rolls as little as possible is because there's a deep distrust of the game master to be a fair arbiter of the rules and even more so a failure of trust to be a fair arbiter of things that fall OUTSIDE the rules.

Again, I'm reminded of the stories of Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor campaign I read in Playing at the World. Coming from table-top war gaming, where a neutral referee would take spoken or written orders and then spend time consulting charts and rolling dice to find the results of the miniature battle taking place, Dave seemed to do most of the die rolling himself. Gary Gygax may have also done a lot more rolling for the players in the original Greyhawk campaign.

In a turn based war game, it's probably not a big problem to pause the game for however long it takes the ref to make all the moves and resolve all the attacks in a round. But in an RPG, it's a big burden to put on one person. Especially when it's not that hard to have the players make their own rolls. Add in several decades of play in which some people experience poor and/or arbitrary game mastering, it's not surprising that there is a push to put more of the onus on the players themselves to roll the dice and determine their own fates.

But it's a move that I reject. Maybe it's because I've mostly played under good game masters in my many years of gaming. I could have been lucky not to have had too many poor DMs. Or maybe it's that I don't have a problem dropping a game if I don't like the DM's style. People stuck with little or no choice of games to join have to put up with it, I guess.

Still, I find it odd that there's this push -- both at big companies like WotC (well, big being relative to the size of the hobby) and from the Indie crowd -- to try to neuter the game master. WotC does it by trying to spell out all the rules in lawyerly fashion so that players can litigate away a bad DM. Indie gamers seem to do it by trying to eliminate or divide the role of the referee to avoid concentration of power.

It's this second goal at play in The Black Hack. It's this idea that "to be fair" means the players must accept their own fates by rolling everything themselves. However, this very idea might lead to a deep distrust of the game master. And what good does that server? If you can't trust them to be fair at rolling the dice (and from personal experience, if I'm going to fudge die rolls, it's going to be in the players' favor), can you trust them to be fair at descriptions of the game world? Can you trust them to be fair with scenario/adventure/encounter design?

Yes, poor DMs may use things like quantum ogres or railroads or too much fudging of dice. And yes, it can suck for a player. But by taking away things like the ability to roll the dice from the referee, it won't help the problem ref to improve. Getting good at anything requires practice. It requires making mistakes. And if the game master is never directly testing the probabilities of the scenarios they run, they won't be getting as good a practice or making as many mistakes as they otherwise would. So their growth as a game master will be stunted. And I think that may be a bigger problem. Instead of a few spoiled sessions while the game master learns the ropes leading to fair to average sessions and eventually good sessions, you'll end up with a lifetime of mediocre sessions.

A strange confluence

Last night, in one of my Ph.D classes, our professor showed us part of this TED Talk while discussing the limits of copyright/IP law with regards to creating English teaching materials or having our students get involved in creating similar content and then releasing it online as a teaching tool. 

And the whole time, I was thinking, "That's so OSR."  It's also very "Indie RPG."  As Gygax famously said, "Why should we do any more of your imagining for you?"

Gaming IS my social life

Interesting post by Zak S. about how RPGs are a social activity and Forge-type games are more or less specifically designed to limit the social aspect in the name of "guaranteed fun."  I do agree with what he's saying, but while reading it, I just kept thinking about how different my situation is from the typical gamer.

I live in Korea.  I'm married (to a Korean), and have a son.  I don't go out drinking on the weekends at the foreign English teacher hangouts.  I'm not playing in any sports leagues or in a band.  After work, I go home and spend time with the family.  On weekends, we go shopping, or take our son out somewhere fun.

And I game.

Obviously, as an expat, the people I game with here in Busan are people I met here in Busan.  I've become friends with them.  When I do go out and have a few drinks or whatever, it's with my gaming buddies.

I realize I may well be an exception to the norm, but seriously, gaming is what keeps me social these days!

And yes, we've had our difficulties keeping everyone happy.  We come from varied backgrounds (gamer-wise and otherwise), and it can be hard to find a nice, even, common ground for our games.  But it does happen.  And we've yet to play one of those indy/Forge type "story now" games to do it, with the single exception of the one-page RPG All Outta Bubblegum, which I don't think actually qualifies as a "Forge/GNS" type game anyway.  I wouldn't peg it as one, at least.

Anyway, nothing really to say, no big amazing revelations or anything like that (wouldn't want to disappoint my fans by turning all serious and insightful, now, would I?).  Just my personal observation about my situation as a gamer, and how it may well be contrary to what's expected.

Exploring Characters via Dungeons

Limpey of Aldeboran has again posted to clarify his thoughts on the quote by Dragonsfoot posert Evreaux in his thread on Megadungeon Mapping over at DF.  "We explore dungeons, not characters."

The fact that you are a character does not mean that you have character.

The way Limpey describes his idea of 'exploring dungeons, not characters' matches my own.  It isn't one or the other.  It's that the exploration of the dungeon, or the bomb-blasted wilderness, or the vast reaches of space leads to character development. 

Exploring a character's distrust of the federal government, or belief in Mormonism, or an inability to choose between the boring but caring guy and the sexy but dangerous guy, DON'T necessarily lead to an exploration of ancient crypts, nuclear wastelands, or strange new worlds.  Don't get me wrong, it can.  But it doesn't necessarily.

A will lead to B, but B may or may not lead to A.

When A leads to B it may not be Nobel Prize/Oscar worthy characterization, but it will develop somewhat.

As Limpey succinctly says,

I explore dungeons, not characters, and through
the course of exploring the dungeon and having the adventures, the character is
formed. The character is not a collection of adjectives, he or she is the
product of events.

 Or, to quote the old proverb, adversity builds character.  That's at least what I mean when I say "I explore dungeons, not characters."

Traps as a Greater Challenge

On the subway today, both to and from a private tutoring session, I was making notes for some traps to put in the Megadungeon.

Of course, I don't need to take notes about pit traps, pendulum blades, lock needles, and the like.  I was brainstorming ideas for more interesting or elaborate traps.

And I started writing quite a few ideas for traps that were intended to create interesting challenges for the players and their PCs, rather than just the typical damage or delay effects of most traps.

And I liked it.

It got me thinking in ways I hadn't before.  What about a trap that will hinder henchmen/hirelings but leave the PCs alone?  Traps that affect logistics, like ruining rations or disintegrating all torches and lanterns.

And some 'traps' that aren't traps per se, but are more fool's bargains that the players might be foolish or desperate enough to attempt, like a magical pool that will give a spell-caster back their daily spell allotment, but permanently lowers one ability score.  Or a magical funnel that if you pour treasure into it, half of the treasure will be teleported to your home (got that XP earned) but the other half will disappear, never to be seen again.

I really like how my ideas were developing.  They're creating interesting choices for players, rather than just knocking off a few more hit points, or forcing a saving throw against some nasty effect.

Of course, there are also a few ideas for easily escapable traps involving an overly elaborate death, Dr. Evil style.  The game wouldn't be as fun without them.

But I'm more jazzed about these traps that are designed to make "story points" rather than just having them be a hindrance or obstacle to be overcome in the standard sense.

______________________________
On a separate note, my class work hasn't been too bad yet, so I've had a bit of free time to work on Flying Swordsmen RPG while I wait on Paul's feedback about my latest version of Presidents of the Apocalypse.  The FSRPG monster section is about half finished now.  PotA will likely be released as a playtest version soon if Paul gives it the thumbs up.

What exactly does it mean to explore a character?

Once I started up a PbP 3.5 game on RPOL (is it .net or .org?  Don't remember.)  Most of the players were friends, but I left it open to others.

One guy, one of the others, wanted to play.  He was enthusiastic.  I said OK.

He wanted to play a Druid.  Fine.  We were starting at 1st level.  He came back to me with a whole huge back story. 

His PC was the son of a High Druid Priest, who was also a merchant in a caravan, and he had wandered all over the world and seen all sorts of sights in his wanderings.  Now he was coming home to take his place as a druid initiate, and loot tombs for gold, as druid initiates are wont to do.

I could see what he was doing.  It was blatant.  He didn't want to get called out if he tried to wild shape into a python, or an emu, or an unladen African swallow, or whatever.  He wanted to be able to say, "sure, I saw one when I was traveling in the caravan."  No way was I, as DM, gonna screw him over on that!  So he thought.

Then he gives me his goals for the character, vaguely disguised as his 'take' on who this guy was.  He was a natural shapeshifter, more than a spellcaster.  He was in tune with nature, and animals and stuff.  And because of this, he naturally wanted to take the 'natural spell' feat, which was one of the few I'd said at the start I didn't like and wasn't going to allow. 

For those of you not well versed in 3E, Druids don't get Wild Shape (ability to change into animal forms) until 5th level. 

And I repeat, this was a PbP game (S......L.......O......W......!), and we were starting at 1st level.

More recently, in my long prepared but short lived Maritime Campaign, Alex, at character creation, wouldn't be satisfied with the starting options I'd given him.  He wanted more.  And more, and more.  He wasn't satisfied with a +2 sword for his 5th level Fighter.  He thought it was lame.  Maybe I should have given him a max. Int, max. Ego intelligent sword with a bevy of awesome powers (detect minerals!), and just had it control his PC at the first opportunity.  But I'm not that much of a dick.  Anyway, then he wasn't satisfied with the small sailing ship they were getting for free.  He wanted a large sailing ship, or a warship, or preferably a large warship. 

Getting that sort of stuff from the beginning, I wondered, what's left to adventure for?

Now, I've had my share of characters who I came up with the concept first, rolled later.  Or even a few where I've been asked for, and provided, a few pages of back story. 

But I don't have many interesting stories about those characters.  Not the way I do about Belrain, the Chaotic Elf with a penchant for fireballs (especially from wands, or his Staff of Power), or Skarp-Hedin, the Dwarf Fighter-Thief who ended up on the wrong end of too many monster beatings but always managed to pull through.

Long story short, I find that exploring characters is more fun, and more memorable, if it happens in the game.  Doing all that work before hand, then having to hog the limelight during the game to get all that exposition across to the players?  Not so much.  Not being satisfied with the starting conditions of the game, because it doesn't match the idea I've got in my head of who I want this PC to become?  Definitely not. 

I find it similar to the way I don't enjoy 'tournament Magic: The Gathering.'  I always found the game the most fun when waiting to see what I'd pull out this round, what my opponent would do, and the randomness of it.  Having a carefully constructed precision deck where I've got a plan of how I can beat anyone in 8 turns or less?  Boring! 

I enjoy the action and response, the way my character interacts with the other players' PCs, with the DM's world, and with the results of the dice.  In other words, not knowing exactly who this character is--maybe I've got a few ideas, but nothing is certain--does it for me.  Besides, the whole point of 'character exploration' is seeing how that character will change and grow. 

If you've already 'grown' that character before play starts, what is there left to explore?

Your mileage may vary. 

Social Interaction Rules and the Dick DM

Trollsmyth wrote a post about something Ryan Dancey said about trying to add Dogs in the Vinyard style social interaction rules to D&D. Someone named Erin replied to Trollsmyth's post with her own post, and Trollsmyth then responded to her criticism. Then Greg of Errant RPG threw in his two cents, and that's what actually prompted me to make this reply to the whole shebang.

My take?  Well, number one I disagree with Mr. Dancey that RPGs are designed to TELL stories.  At least the more traditional ones I like to play aren't.  The Forge/Indy games I've played that were designed with the express purpose of telling a story aren't very fun for me. I think this is because the stories that get told in them aren't usually very good stories.

It's not easy to come up with a good story.  Especially when you're only giving it one shot, like in an RPG session.  My buddy Paul and I have been developing our movie script for over three years now.  It took us over two years just to get the story right.  Now we're working on getting the script right (yes, there's a difference).

RPGs can be used to create stories, but they're really poor at telling a story.  The whole Edwardsian concept of 'story now' seems silly to me.  I've said it before, but I think the best stories that come from RPGs are created AFTER the game, when you recount what happened and leave out all the boring bits, or make connections after the fact that you didn't in the heat of the moment, or add a bit of gilding to the lily of what happened in the game.

Why do you think most recordings of actual game sessions are boring to listen to?  They're great fun to play, but like golf they're really not as fun as a spectator sport.  Now a properly edited video or audio recording of a game session might be interesting, because like that 'war story' told later at the pub, it cuts out all the rulebook look-ups, Monty Python quotes, and the ten minutes of real time spent carefully examining an empty room for traps and secret doors that didn't exist (or just weren't found).  They cut to the chase of the interesting NPC interactions, important combats, and PC interaction that is interesting.

That's how you can create a decent story with an RPG session.  Editing.

Now, as for the need to add social mechanics to an RPG like D&D, I've heard the arguments before many times.  Erin's post is just rehashing all the tired arguments I've heard over and over again on the internet.  Greg makes some good points in his post about his experiences dominating others in a game where diplomacy happens but it's not in the rules.  But I don't think it will typically apply to most RPG sessions.

First off, I usually only play RPGs with friends.  I think the majority of RPG groups are friends (or at least on good terms with each other even if they don't hang out besides at game time).  Con games, pick-up games at the FLGS (if you even have one anymore), tournaments--they're the exception.  Most people play with folks they know.  Because you know these people, you know who's extroverted and who's introverted.  You know who enjoys getting into character and who just enjoys the game aspect of play.  And you, as GM, can form responses to player input based on that knowledge. 

The arguments made by Erin and plenty of other people on RPG message boards and blogs--that shy players get screwed by a lack of social mechanics--maybe holds true in a game with strangers, or a Dick DM.  But with most groups, I'd assume [spare me the "assume makes an ass out of 'u' and me" quotes, please] the DM knows the players and is not a dick.  And the DM who knows the players and isn't a dick is likely to take player interactions and input relative to their knowledge of each player.

As an example, I teach English to Koreans and Japanese.  If I'm having a class, and the good students are speaking a lot, and doing well, I'm happy.  But if the poor students, or the shy students show a little bit of effort, I'm a lot happier.  When a kid who's barely said more than two or three sentences all month finally gets up and reads a paragraph from the book in front of the class, that's much more rewarding to me than if the kid who lived in Australia for 2 years gets up and reads three pages he wrote himself.

In an RPG, if there's a player who is introverted, or just cares more for the 'roll play' than the role play, or whatever, says to me, "I want to sweet talk the Duchess.  I've got a 15 Charisma."  I'll weight that statement according to what I know.  I'd likely make a Reaction Check with a bonus for the Charisma for the player's benefit, or even just decide to allow it.  Just like I'd do if the smooth talking player said, "I want to lift the treasure chest.  I've got a 15 Strength." 

And when it came time to assign rewards (XP or whatever), I would hopefully not give out less XP to the shy player for asking for that social reaction to be done through game mechanics than I would for the smooth talker to do it through role play.

The second point I'd like to make is that D&D and most traditional RPGs are NOT competitive games.  The players are not playing against each other.  They're not competing for a limited pool of XP awards.  They're cooperating to achieve goals both in game and out of game.  This is the flaw with Greg's tale of the war game with diplomacy uncoded by the rules.

Both the shy player and the smooth talker will benefit by sweet talking the Duchess.  It doesn't matter if shy just points out that his character has a high Cha and he'd like his character to do it, or if the smooth talker actually spends time chatting up the Duchess with in-character knowledge.  Either way, the PARTY will benefit from gaining the Duchess as an ally/benefactor. 

So long story short, I don't think adding more intricate social interaction rules to D&D will make it more 'fair,' nor do I think it would make D&D into a 'story telling' game.  It's already a story creating game (better in my opinion), and with a typical group of friends playing together, it will already be 'fair.'

Who is the best villain on TV?

Back in high school, our social studies teacher asked that question to our class.  Then he offered up a few suggestions:

Back then, the season-long story arc was a rarity in TV.  It was mostly episodic TV, with mostly unrelated stories linked only by the fact that they happened to the same characters. 

And villains like the above were typically defeated in comical fashion, rather than dramatic fashion.  If there was drama involved with a villain, typically it was on a one-shot episode (or occasionally a 'to be continued' two-shot).

What's all this got to do with RPGs?  Well, I think it's just another way of saying "if the PCs find a way to defeat your villain early, let them."  There are tons of monsters, and NPCs are a dime a dozen.  If your players end up offing your BBEG, it's not that hard to make up a new one. 

Sure, there are times when letting a villain escape, comic-book or soap opera style, is appropriate.  And a good recurring villain can be fun, if used properly.  But if the PCs decide to actually put the hurt on the Green Goblin, Stephano or Skeletor rather than just capture, humiliate, and then put in an easily escaped prison/sanatorium, let them.

Yeah, let them kill Bargle.  He deserves it.

Want and Need: Complex Characters made Simple

My nearly useless degree is a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Yeah, I'm a certified 'artist of fiction writing.' Not that it does me any good monetarily.

I'm still plugging away at a screenplay with a writing partner, and we've got hopes that it will actually sell. We're fairly confident in it. Anyway, how this relates to gaming is in a simple trick some writers use to get a handle on who a character is and make them complex, even if they're just a minor nobody who's only in one or two scenes.

You hear movie or book critics talk about flat/2-dimensional characters and well-rounded/fleshed out/3-dimensional characters. And it's actually not that hard to create them. Basically, it all boils down to giving them a Want and a Need (some refer to these as a Conscious Desire and Subconscious Desire as well).

A Want is something your character is actively pursuing. It's the goal of the quest, the fortune and glory, the prom queen, a little peace and quiet, whatever it is they think will make them happy.

A Need is what will actually make the character happy/fulfilled.

For example, in the movie Predator, Dutch wants to get him and his men out alive. But he has a Need to prove himself the biggest badass. That's why, when he learns he can hide from the Predator with mud camouflage he doesn't use it to escape, he instead sticks around to kill the alien that wasted his crew.

In Stephen King's Dark Tower books, Roland has a Want to get to the Tower and do whatever he has to do there. But he has a Need to form a new Ka-Tet before he gets there.

Spiderman has a Want to stop the villains, and a Need to protect his family at all costs.

Etc.

Of course, more complex characters can have multiple Wants and Needs, but for a beginning RPG character or an NPC, one of each should be enough. And of course you can mix things around, having a character with 2 Wants but no Need yet or vice versa. And of course Wants and Needs can and should change as the character progresses and gets what they Want/Need, or learns that they don't really Want/Need it anymore.

Of course, these really only work if they come up in play. So for an RPG, they should be thematically appropriate to the game being played. For D&D, a Want to become a world renowned florist, and a Need to come out of the closet to my parents likely won't affect play much at all. Save that for some weird furry LARP or something. But a Want to discover the lost grimoire of Yeffal the Mad and a Need to rescue my homeland from its serpentmen overlords is completely appropriate. And situations will come up in play where the player will need to choose between the two.

And that's what makes a character well rounded.

Interest in the Maritime Campaign

At the Board Game Group last night, we played Wizkids' Pirates again. Actually, except for me, no one who played before showed up, so I had to explain it all again (and play a simple, cut down version) for Pat, Josh, Lucy, Vlada, and another of Lucy's friends whose name I've of course forgotten.

Josh, who's into tabletop minis wargames (he playes 40K) really enjoyed it. He and Pat were lamenting the loss of the Saturday RPG sessions, and I mentioned that Alex had expressed an interest in my Maritime Campaign idea. Josh and Pat also seemed interested.

Josh, though, I should admit, was most interested in the fact that I called it a "campaign." I think we have slightly different ideas about what a campaign entails. For me, it's a series of adventures which may or may not have a connection plot-wise, but involve the same characters in the same world(s). For him, I get the idea from his 3E game, it's a railroad plot for the characters to play out. He's stated a firm dislike of sandbox play in the past.

Anyway, I plan to pitch the game play as sorta like the X-Files. There will be an overriding quest that they'll have, but not every encounter, island, pirate ship, cannibal tribe or lost ruin will involve that quest. They'll encounter a lot of other stuff as they search for clues to the quest, and that other stuff will be just that--stuff.

Of course, this is assuming I have the time to prepare the campaign, and the time to run it. Josh and Pat were again talking about Pat running a 4E game since he's got the rules, and we're all interested in giving it a go to see how it plays. So who knows?

Tarrantino, Brooks, Gilliam

A few years back, when I was in Japan, I was part of the Ebisu Gaming Club. Founding member, in fact. It wasn't as pretentious as it sounds, actually. I came into contact first with "GMSteve" and then "Angryman" on the WotC message boards. They both lived in Tokyo and wanted to game, I was close enough, as was my friend Gene. So the 4 of us would get together once a month on Sundays for 7-8 hour game sessions, mostly of RPGs (and primarily d20 games, as we were into them at the time) but board games or other things too. A few other people would join on occasion, and Gene finally moved back to Canada and a fellow named Tim took his place.

We went through lots of short RPG campaigns. We'd start off with a bang, then fizzle out shortly. d20 Conan ended on the 3rd session when Pete (Angryman) got drunk on mead while DMing and suddenly poison-weaponed Picts were swarming everywhere and TPK. Our Eberron campaign died after one too many too-tough encounters nearly wiped the party of characters we were heavily invested in and didn't want to lose. My d20 Future Aliens/Predator game was meant to be short, and we actually completed it and then moved on to other things. We tried out a "narrative" game Steve was working on, in several incarnations, but it never seemed to go right.

By the end, just before Steve found out he'd have to move back to the States for his company, he was heavily into the Forge's creations but also jonesing to get back to some BX D&D--which finally broke me of the d20 craze and made me realize that BECM was what I really wanted to play.

Anyway, we often discussed just why we had so much fun but couldn't keep at one game/campaign/system long enough to really get into it. One day, Steve offered the following assessment:

Steve's gaming style was Quentin Tarrantino. He liked it cool, edgy, and violent.

Pete's gaming style was Terry Gilliam. He liked it weird and funky.

My gaming style was Mel Brooks. I liked it odd but humorous.

Yes, my Aliens/Predator game was filled with some of the most tense moments in our gaming, but also with the most silly and gut-busting funny ones, too.

I think I've lost that Brooks charm lately. I think I need a bit more "Stupid" in my "Retro."

So anyone else out there got a style similar to a movie director?

Amateur Theatrics vs. Shut Up and Roll the Dice

Last night we had yet another session of Josh's 3E campaign. He's been studying up on the 3E rules, so he was using more of them and less 2E/whatever he felt like in the session. I was having a good time, and I think Pat was as well, but Dave was still grumbling about not really having the right sort of character for the campaign, and Alex stared out fine, but by the end got drunk and belligerent.

So we're still going through these caves, trying to find an exit. It's the third session of that, and Josh had thought we'd spend maybe 1.5-2 sessions at most on it. He's still learning how to DM, and while he's getting much better at it, not everything went smoothly.

First of all, he totally misunderstood the 3E Challenge Rating system. He thought the CR for a monster was the CR for an 'average number appearing' of that monster. So a few encounters he thought would be soft balls were near TPKs. He's pretty liberal with the magical loot, but he's also not shy about taking it away. And he pulls no punches in encounters. He's also got a stubborn determination that if he prepped it, we're gonna go through it, and we're gonna go through his story or die trying.

Dave and Alex both have problems stemming from the way Josh pitched the campaign. They both thought from the description that it would be a RP heavy, combat light campaign. Dave made a Paladin based off of Solomon Kane, with high Dex, light armor and rapier, with no Charisma bonus. So he's suffering from playing his concept in the wrong sort of campaign.

Alex, on the other hand, is playing a Rogue. Last time, he was finally getting to do all sorts of Roguish things--sneaking, disarming traps, etc. But he wasn't having fun because he apparently hates dungeon crawls "because there's no role play." And he kept going on about how he specifically designed a Rogue because "they're the best at role play." And even though we emerged from the dungeon by the end of the session, it was half-way through the 'boss' battle that he got up, said he'd had enough, and was quitting the game.

Well, we managed to kill the way too high for our level monster (a Delver, which is CR9 or 10 or something, and we're only level 4 with no arcane caster and only a Paly3/Cleric1 for divine casting) thanks to the sweet magical loot we got. My melee fighter finally got his hands on a sweet magical bastard sword (+3 to hit, with no magical damage bonus to normal damage, but with automatic 8 lightning damage and a chance to stun opponents for a few rounds), and luckily stunned the Delver for a few rounds, allowing us to pound on it without losing our weapons or armor to its acid attack or whatever it was that could destroy our gear. We got out of the dungeon, and had one of those 'cut scene' moments. We emerge on a high plateau with absolutely no way down, then this airship comes out of no where, zaps us all with a paralyzing ray, and they arrest us and knock us unconscious. So we'll start next session prisoners on their way to the capital where we're supposed to incite revolution or something.

Alex didn't care, because a) for him, RPGs are about the amateur theatrics (and here I thought it was all about the fiddly mechanics for him, since he refuses to play Classic anymore, and wants to play stuff like RIFTS or other heavy systems), and b) Josh is an adversarial DM.

Now, Pat and I seem to be enjoying the adversarial DMing, especially in 3E. No cakewalk 13.5 encounters of appropriate challenge rating then level in this game! We're working for those XP, and getting a lot less than we should (Josh is still using 2E style XP rewards for monsters), but we've got all kinds of crazy magic items that break the 'rules' and cost a lot less than they would by the book.

Josh is interesting. He's bound and determined that if he prepped it, we're gonna play it! He refused to cut his dungeon short even though he kept complaining that we were taking a lot longer than he expected. But he's also bound and determined to try to 'punish' us for any decision which he thinks is illogical or whatever. And he's not afraid to end it all with a TPK, but until all our characters die we're gonna ride the Josh railroad (and to be fair, it does have lots of stops where we can do pretty much whatever we want, but once we reach a certain point, it's 'all aboard!').

Anyway, it looks like Alex will stick around for at least 1 more session (unless he was still pissed off when he sobered up this morning, not sure about that). But he's really pushing for someone to run something else, as long as it's not me and my Classic game.

The really funny thing is, if he were playing in my Classic game, I'd be much more open to just letting him run around town doing RP stuff to his heart's content than Josh has been. Well, maybe I'll suggest one of those Forge type story systems that are fairly light on rules, like The Pool. For me, if I'm gonna play a 'story' centric RP heavy game, I'd rather not do it in a system like RIFTS or WotC D&D where there's more crunch than a bowl of breakfast cereal without the milk.

War Stories

"War talk by men who've been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull"
--Mark Twain

So the blogosphere happens to be talking about railroading and narrative control and all that sort of stuff today, and this is something that had been rolling around inside my head for a while anyway.

I tend to find that when gamers get together and talk about the great games they played in, it tends to sound similar to the war stories my uncles talk about (they fought in the Battle of the Bulge). It's personal, it's quite often more about what when wrong than what went right, and it's often got a bit of comedy and tragedy mixed together.

I rarely hear gamers sit around and discuss the grand tapestry that their GM painted for them, the wonderful roller coaster ride where the characters were just along for the ride, even if they had a ton of fun riding that midnight train to Georgia story the GM had concocted.

So I think the whole Dragonlance/Narrativist thing is way off base for what the majority of gamers want. They don't really care about the grand story of the module or of the GM's devising. Nor do they care about the grand shared tapestry if they're playing a Forge type story-focused game. They really care about those moments that will make a good 'war story' to tell around the comic book rack or over a few beers.

Or maybe I've been hanging around with the wrong people, and I'm way off base?