I've got a good feeling about this...

Last Thursday was May the 4th, "Star Wars Day" and on the 5th (Children's Day in Korea and Japan), we not only went to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (as mentioned in my last post), we played another session of my Star Wars d6 campaign. 

We don't play often. I've been trying to make adventures that are fairly small and contained, because despite knowing more about SW lore than most (all?) of my players, it's a BIG galaxy, and I'm still not 100% comfortable just winging things with the d6 rule set the way I am with D&D. And that's to be expected. I've been playing Classic/AD&D for nearly 40 years. I've only been running this SW d6 game for four years or so, and it's my side campaign. So we get a session once every month or two. 

But this past session was a bit different. 

I started out with another fairly tight, not quite scripted but fairly limited adventure. But then I ran out of time to finish fleshing out every planned encounter, so I went into it with just some notes on locations, NPCs, enemy forces, and a general timeline of events that would happen if the PCs didn't intervene (knowing that they were likely to intervene). 

And I also had my notes from the previous couple of sessions handy, with encounters that I'd planned but they didn't run into, just in case I needed an idea or an interesting NPC or some impromptu stats. The PCs are on a world called the 4th Moon of Bogden, a lawless world of criminals (and maybe where Jango Fett was hired by Darth Tyranus to become a clone host). So having a few criminals and their schemes handy seemed a good idea, even though this adventure took them out of the spaceport and into the nerf herding territories.

I ended up winging the session. Not only that, very early on, as the players were information gathering, one of them got a 1 on the Wild Die. I gave them the information they were after, but had them suddenly accosted by a group of Nikto gangsters demanding to be paid off or dire consequences would result. The party bluffed and wheedled, and used their connection to Bumpomo the Hutt to gain an audience with the gang boss instead of paying off the shake-down artists. 

Well, they still had some information to gather, so while they were searching the meat markets for information on the various nerf herder farms (and the dewback ranchers), I was thinking of what sort of "boss" the Nikto would have. I ended up giving them a Wookiee for a boss, with a big fat Nikto sidekick/translator. When the party ended up at the gang HQ, they mistook the sidekick for the boss at first (He's fat, like a Hutt! Must be the boss!) but then were shown in to see the Wookiee. 

They managed to bargain their way out of paying dues (for now), and may actually try to form an alliance with the Hutts and the Nikto/Wookiee gang. 

Then they went to visit the nerf herders (making a deal to feed their Mandalorian refugee buddies), and while things didn't go as they planned, they ended up discovering that the dewback ranchers now have contracts with the Imperials, so have been expanding and taking over the nerf herders' water source. The party wants to help the nerf herders, but doesn't want to go directly against the Empire. And the Mandalorian allies just fled the Night of 1000 Tears/Great Purge of Mandalore by Moff Gideon, so THEY sure don't want any Imperial entanglements at the moment. 

Things are shaping up for a fun next session. But the thing I was happy about was that in this session, I finally just allowed myself to improvise and go with the flow. And it all worked out for a satisfying session. They didn't get into any fights, but I had stats to use if they had gotten into one. They have various NPCs to interact with, and they have multiple possible goals they could pursue, and I was ready for any of them. 

Next session, I do have a little set piece vignette that I want to throw at them to up the tension/force some action, but after that, I think I'll again just see what they do and react. I've got the stage set. I'm ready to ad lib the rest now. I'm finally feeling comfortable with opening up the game.

Not Mother-May-I: How to use rulings in RPGs

This post is related to several recent posts by Alexis over at Tao of D&D. Like him or not, he's a smart guy and I think he's been posting some quality content recently (not ONLY recently, but I've really liked his stuff of late). 

In old school D&D circles (including but not limited to the OSR), you often hear one of the things that sets old school play apart from new school play is the fact that the old school game doesn't try to anticipate every eventuality, which requires DMs to improvise and make rulings. New school games try to be comprehensive in their coverage, often by providing a universal mechanic for actions. To be fair, though, there are quite a few older games that have universal mechanics. I've been playing WEG d6 Star Wars, definitely an old school game, and it has a universal die pool mechanic. But even then, reading through the 1st edition reprint I bought a while back, there are a LOT of holes in the rules that aren't covered. The referee has leeway to make calls. 

Anyway, that argument about what is old school or new school is beside the point. We're here to talk about rulings in the game, not what makes something old school or new school (today at least). 

Why the emphasis on rulings in old school play? Well, as far as I can figure it, it comes from Matt Finch's Old School Primer. It's the title of the first of his four Zen moments. He may have gotten the phrase from somewhere else, but it's likely the Primer that made it famous. 

In the Primer, the section talks about how description should trump die rolls and common sense should trump dedicated game mechanics. I don't have a problem with that. It's advice I would generally follow, except for the fact that where the rules stipulate die rolls for game purposes, that should trump "common sense." What do I mean by that? Well, there are examples in the Primer of things like having players ask questions, get detailed descriptions, and use those descriptions to disarm traps or find secret doors or things like that. I think that's great. But if we're playing old school D&D, we DO have definite mechanics defined by the rules for these things. If players can, through smart use of description and questions/answers about the state of the game world, discover a secret door or trap or hidden treasure, or can sweet talk the guard to let them talk to the prisoner or get into the Duke's Ball without an invitation, that's fine. But if their description falls short, we have the die roll prescribed by the rules to see if they stumble upon the right answer despite the players' descriptions falling short. 

I don't think that's a controversial position, but I have seen many times people on blogs, on Google+ back when that was a thing, on message boards (which I rarely frequent these past 10 years or so), or other online places talking about "rulings not rules" in a different way. These people seem to think that rulings should trump the rules. There's "the rule of cool" and the various improv theater derived "say yes" rules: "say yes, and", "say yes, but" or "say yes or roll the dice" that all seem to be coming from a desire to improve the game, but in my opinion, may ruin it. 

The rule of cool says that if players want to do something cool and awesome like in a movie or video game, let them. The various say yes rules tell the referee to never deny players anything, unless the dice determine it so. You can't deny them, only give limitations through "and" or "but" statements.

Newer versions of D&D (since 3E) try to cover as many situations as possible, in as much detail as possible. And players of those games have been, in my experience, the ones decrying a game based on rulings not rules as mother-may-I. I think they're not quite accurate in their claims, but they do have a valid point. If there's a rule in the book that covers something, why is there a need for an arbitrary ruling?

Honestly, there have been some times in a game where players have such an interesting (or funny, or ridiculous) plan that I just go ahead and say sure, you can do that (rule of cool). But not every time. Maybe I'm inconsistent. Maybe that is me playing mother-may-I with them. I'm trying to be better. More consistent.

Here are how I think rulings should be used during a game, and how "rulings not rules" should really be interpreted to avoid mother-may-I situations.

First of all, the DM needs to know the rules well enough. They don't need to have everything memorized (although that's the ideal), but they need to know the basics and be familiar with the less often used rules. Once that condition is satisfied, there are four situations that may come up which require a ruling:

1. When a situation arises in game in which clever play by the players would circumvent the need for a roll, then the DM can make a call that that action succeeds without a roll. That's the first kind of ruling, and the thing Finch was talking about in the Primer. 

2. When a situation arises in game and the DM has forgotten the rule, and they know it will take time to look up the actual rule, then they should make a ruling in that instance to keep the game moving. If the rule is something they can easily find in the rules (a spell description for example) then they should NOT make a ruling, they should look up the proper rule. It only takes a short time and shouldn't interrupt the flow of the game. After the game, the DM should look up the rule and get to know it better.

3. When a situation arises in game that is definitely not covered by the game's rules, the DM in this instance must make a ruling. In this case, it is a good idea to record the ruling, and pending consideration by the DM, and possibly consultation with the players, it should then become the new rule for that situation in the future.

4. When there is a dispute among players (including the DM) about the interpretation or implementation of a rule in the game, then the DM needs to make a ruling as to how it will be interpreted in their game. Again, the DM may wish to consult with the players for their opinions, but as with any ruling, the DM gets the final say. Again, this should be recorded and kept for reference in the future. 

In any other situation, the onus is on the DM to know the rules and implement them fairly. Arbitrary judgments that aren't recorded to set precedents for future games are exactly the sort of thing those players were afraid of when they said "rulings not rules" is just mother-may-I.

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!

I should be writing this down!

Recently, my son has begun asking me to play Dungeons and Dragons with him.  He's six now, and remembers a bit of free-form play we did on our morning commute to the kindergarten two years ago.  He suffered from a lack of linguistic ability then (one drawback of raising a multi-lingual child is that development in each language is slower at first compared to a monolingual child).

Anyway, now his English is closer to native speaker level (give him a couple more years), and he's more cognitively developed.  When we free-formed two years ago, he would make interesting choices (fight the dragon, run away from the skeleton, things like that...hey, skeletons are scary!).  It was refreshing to me to see his actions/reactions through fresh eyes, without the baggage of nearly thirty years as an RPG gamer that I have.

Last year, he didn't like the free-form improv, but did enjoy pulling out my old Dragon Strike board game and moving his piece around the board (usually the Wizard), pretending to fight monsters with my wife and I as companions.  He also loved playing Pixel Dungeon (a free Rogue-like) on my smart phone.

Anyway, in the past week or two, he's been asking nearly every morning to play that improv style game again, along with nights and weekends.  A few months back we tried playing some actual D&D by the rules, with dice and maps and everything.  He enjoyed it, and this current round of free-form play started with his new character, the Fighter Stinky-Feet, avenging his previous character, John Jacob Bibbybobby, who died fighting a bone golem (and who had avenged his first character, Wizard the Stinky-Feet). 

His new character has managed to recruit some allies (knight, sorceress, thief, and Sloth) by releasing them from magic mirrors, find the pirate treasure of One Eyed Willy, battle goblins/orcs/hobgoblins (and run away once the alarm was sounded and his group was outnumbered), explore a mummy's pyramid, raid an ogre's castle, put a ghost's spirit to rest in a haunted tower, sailed to the Ghost Kingdom to rescue Bibbybobby's spirit, and more!  He's made it to Level 5 by now! (Level advancement is at the hands of the arbitrary and capricious DM, of course.)

While he's apt to suddenly declare his character to have certain abilities ("I speak Egyptian, so I say to the mummy...") or items, for the most part he's using clever ideas to deal with challenges and traps, although he usually just battles against the monsters.

We use rock-scissors-paper as a resolution mechanic, by the way.

Tonight, he wanted to go to the Dragon Mountain.  I described the mountain with five caves, each the home to one of the standard D&D chromatic dragons.  The green dragon was his first target, but it surprised him, and after breathing poison gas (and losing the rock-scissors-paper), he found himself nearly dead.  He decided to try talking.  The dragon demanded his treasure and magic sword, which he surrendered in exchange for his life. 

Undaunted, he went back to the blue dragon's cave, but gnomes allied with the dragon convinced him not to fight it.  His third attempt was the black dragon's cave, and due to some unlucky "rolls" his knight companion died to acid breath.  He and his other companions escaped.

He handled the setbacks well.  "Dad, if Stinky-Feet dies, I will make a new character."  That's the spirit!  During dinner, he then managed to defeat a Man-Bat (like from Batman comics), and just before his shower a giant (buy building a giant punching machine and getting the giant drunk before the punch).

In addition, I've been making up these dungeons and adventures for him on the fly.  Several of them might make good one-page dungeons, or at least interesting locations in a sandbox game.  As I say in the title of this post, i should write them down!  And by posting this, I'll at least hopefully have enough down here to spark my memory when I finally get around to it.