DIY Corner: Make Your Own Random Tables

It's really a rite of passage: you have these options, these choices, and you want to use them all on your hapless players, but you can't decide, and then all at once, it hits you like a Thunder Wave spell, and you think, "I'll just make a random table! It's easy! I've been listing things off my whole life!"

Then you get started. And you write some stuff down, and then you erase a couple of entries, because you want them to be a the top and bottom of the list, and one thing leads to another and the next thing you know, you've got an unruly mess, but it's a table. Your first. And it's glorious. You think to yourself, "Now, at last, I truly am a Jedi Knight Dungeon Master."

It's a rush, and maybe you think, that was so much fun, I'll do another. And another. And another and another and another, and...then one day, you're writing up some notes for your next game and you realize, "this is just another random table." That's okay, too. But I will always have a soft spot for the all-powerful random table. Few things are as useful and also as easy to create. They can really flavor your game in unique ways because it's 100% created by you.

Since I prefer to work away from the computer for all sorts of neck-beard-y reasons, I wanted to utilize this newfangled technology but still keep it lo-fi whenever possible. So I made this up: It's a worksheet for making d20 (or any other integer) tables. One side has the numbers 1 to 20 listed, and the other half of the sheet is made of graph paper. Why graph paper? Because sometimes I like to make little charts, or draw a dungeon room, or do a little statistical math, and I don't want any of that in the margins of my nice list. Sometimes I want to brainstorm before I make that list. That's where the graph paper comes in. It soothes my fevered brow. Let's me organize my scrambled thoughts. Helps me see the problem a little clearer.

When I'm done brainstorming and mucking about, I can write my d20 (or any other integer) list, taking time to put the entries where I like them, and then if I want, I can fold that scratch sheet back and run the table, as is. Clean and simple.

It's not much, but it's free. If you can use it, be my guest.

Most recently, I decided I wanted my group to actively conscript their crew for their ship, but I didn't want to waste a lot of table time on it. So I made a list of 20 candidates, with just a basic string of information and one personality characteristic that I could throw at them when they met the crew member. I had each player roll and tell me the result, and I did a little interaction with each crew member. It worked very well and helped establish for them that these crew members were NPCs and not cannon fodder. They've all got a favorite, too. God help me if a mutiny breaks out.

So, that's the DIY Corner for this we--

"But Mark, what about d30 tables!?"

Well? What about them?

"Those are totally a thing, too, you know!"

Yeah, I know, but the d20 tables are so much cleaner. So very...

"But you put a picture of that old-as-dirt Armory d30 table book up there! What are we supposed to think?"

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: d30 dice are the Spinal Tap of polyhedral dice.

Me: You've got percentile dice, you've got d20s, what do you need the d30 for?

Nigel: Well, it's ten more, innit? You're rolling dice, you get to twenny, there's nowhere else to go, so what do you do?

Me: You reach for the D30.

Nigel:  Exactly. The D30.

Me: But what if you just used percentile dice, or maybe cut your choices back to the top 20 and have a kick-ass d20 list instead?

Nigel:...this is a d30.

*Sigh*

Okay. Fine. Here. It's a d30 Table Worksheet. Orientation is different, but the concept is the same. Don't say I never did anything for you, Nigel.

Railroading and Sandboxing: In Conclusion, Jargon is a Crutch

These vocabulary words are useful in that they summarize complicated concepts, and that leads to greater communication. But we live in a time where everyone skims, and no one is very good at reading for context anymore, and subtlety is gone and nuance is out the window, and…I guess what I’m saying is, “Sandbox” and “Railroad” are positioned in our current lexicon of geek patois as Yin and Yang, a positive and a negative, one to emulate and the other to assiduously avoid at all cost.

I’m here to tell you not to drink that Kool-Aid. As we have grown and matured into not just a hobby but a pastime with numerous social applications, a developing and evolving vocabulary is essential for critical study, creative writing, and even in the classroom. But we are still talking about Dungeons & Dragons, in the end.

In the introduction to the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, Mike Carr asks the rhetorical question, “Is Dungeon Mastering an art or a science?” Again with the binary choice! Why can’t it be both? I posit that it is, in fact, a balancing act (on the teeter totter or whatever metaphor you wish to use). Carr goes on to make a few points, which I will repeat in brief:

If you consider the pure creative aspect of starting from scratch, the "personal touch" of individual flair that goes into prepar­ing and running o unique campaign, or the particular style of moderating o game adventure, then Dungeon Mastering may indeed be thought of as on art. If you consider the aspect of experimentation, the painstaking effort of preparation and attention to detail, and the continuing search for new ideas and approaches, then Dungeon Mastering is perhaps more like a science - not always exacting in a literal sense, but exacting in terms of what is required to do the job well.

Esoteric questions aside, one thing is for certain - Dungeon Mastering is, above all, a labor of love. It is demanding, time-consuming, and certainly not a task to be undertaken lightly…But, as all DM's know, the rewards are great - an endless challenge to the imagination and intellect, on enjoyable pastime to fill many hours with fantastic and often unpredictable happenings, and an opportunity to watch a story unfold and a grand idea to grow and flourish. 

…Dungeon Mastering itself is no easy undertaking, to be sure. But Dungeon Mastering well is doubly difficult. There are few gamemasters around who are so superb in their conduct of play that they could disdain the opportunity to improve themselves in some way…Take heed, and always endeavor to make the game the best it can be - and all that it can be!

My takeaway from that, back then, and now, is to not get locked into one way of thinking. Adam West as Batman had an array of aerosol can oceanic threat repellents in his Bat-Copter. I bet you a million dollars he never had a reason to use the barracuda repellent spray. But I’m sure he’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

Do not fear the railroad. Do not be overwhelmed by the sandbox. They are tools to be creatively used, not fixed states of being that are never altered when set in motion. The biggest realization you can come to as a DM is this: You’re making all of this shit up as you go.

And for the record, I think Dungeon Mastering is emphatically and unequivocally an art.

Railroading and Sandboxing: The Teeter-Totter

Most of my "railroading" is done in a notebook, where I plan out the series of adventures and encounters the group will face, in the order that they face them. This includes downtime sessions. All of this goes out the window if they sudden decide to abandon their course of action, but that’s not likely to happen.

Conversely, most of my "sandboxing" happens in game, at the table, and in the moment. I think that’s the best place for it to happen, because you get the instant feedback of the players to gauge where things are going and if they are playing along. You also get to react to their reactions, making hurried notes if one of them coughs up a good idea. You maybe didn’t plan for their stay at the inn to be eventful, but suddenly, all of the players are fiddling with their phones and you’re about to lose them to the Facebook. That’s when the two guys in the corner who have been talking quietly all night suddenly throw their table aside and draw weapons, and everyone in the bar roars their approval, and the bartender says, “Dammit, not again!” Sometimes you need to insert a little action while the players find their way.

That push and pull, or better yet, that back and forth rocking motion between “here’s the module I have prepped” and “what weird-ass thing do y’all want to do now?” is the essence of great DMing, and that’s the point I’ve been trying to make in my overly-long-winded way. Open play, all of the time, would beat me down and drive me crazy, not to mention creatively exhaust me. Likewise, sticking to the script and excising all of the NPC byplay and not letting the players breathe would also be zero fun.

The real trick is knowing when to switch modes. There are days when you don’t want them lollygagging about, and there are days when everyone is having the most fun gambling in the tavern. If you have the energy and the inclination, give them a “by week” and let them make friends, make enemies, and find clever ways to part them from their gold. If you don’t have the energy for a big thing, you can downplay the encounter by keeping personality off of the table. Instead of infusing the local blacksmith with an Irish brogue and an ailing wife—for that would certainly be player bait—instead say, “The blacksmith only has common weapons for sale, at the prices listed in the player’s handbook. Nothing exotic. If you want a new sword, there’s a rack of them on the south wall.”

90% of the time, they will take the hint. Buy your equipment and get ready to move out. There’s an owlbear to massacre.

I find the best time to free-wheel an NPC or two is after a mission or a dungeon crawl. It’s a nice palate cleanser from getting hit in the face with fireballs and digging through crypts. Combat is intense, especially at levels 1-5. Everyone is acutely aware of hit points and spell slots. Short rests are crucial. So, when that’s over, it’s good to let them sit back and just talk out a problem, or try to get the best deal for all of the loot they swiped.

In gaming, as well as in creative writing, there’s nothing wrong with some boundaries. A little structure makes play (and creating) much better by limiting choices and allowing you to focus in on the best outcome.

Railroading and Sandboxing: The Saga of Krystos the Tailor

 If you will allow me the briefest of interludes, I wanted to talk about a recent development in my current campaign. It's an example of how the sandbox usually works on a very practical level. 

Here is a brief scene from the superb modern-day western, Silverado (1985):

Stella (Linda Hunt): From what I've seen, Paden doesn't care about money.

Cobb (Brian Dennehy): He says he doesn't care about anything, but he does. There's just no telling what it's going to be.

Cobb: Howdy, Mr. Slick.

Slick (Jeff Goldblum): Sheriff.

Cobb: Let me tell you about your friend Paden. Me and him, and Tyree, and a few others, we did a good bit of riding together a few years back. Business, you know, and, uh, business was pretty good.

Cobb: We were moving around a lot, the way you have to in that line of work, and somewhere along the line we picked up this dog. One of the boys took to feeding it, so it followed us everywhere. Anyway, this one time we were leaving a little Missouri town in quite a hurry, a bunch of the locals on our tail, and this dog somehow got tangled up with Tyree's horse and Tyree went flying.

Cobb: Tyree was pretty mad when he jumped up, and, being Tyree, he shot the dog. Didn't kill him, though. But before you know it, Paden is off his horse and he's holding this dog. He'd gone all strange on us. Said we should go on without him. Hell, I thought he was kidding at first. But he wasn't. Tyree was ready to plug 'em both. And all this with the posse coming down on us. Yeah, I thought we were pals after all that riding we done together. (Paden Enters, walks to Cobb) And all of a sudden, he's more worried about some mutt. Well, we did like he asked, and we left him, and he went to jail for a dog.

Cobb: And you want to hear the funny part? Paden didn't even like that damn dog.

Paden (Kevin Kline): It evened out in the end. They locked me up. The dog sprung me.

Seriously, if you have not seen this movie, you simply must.

I shared that with you for two reasons. One, if you haven’t seen Silverado, you absolutely should see it as soon as possible, as it will give you a ton of ideas for RPG games, scenarios, and characters. Trust me on this. It’s the Ur-Western. And two, I wanted to make this point: Players are a lot like Paden.

There’s no telling what they will care about. Could be something big, or something little, but mostly, it’s something so damn random there was no way to plan for it. My most recent brush with this truism happened a few weeks back in the game I’m running.

One of the players had gold that was burning a hole in his pocket and insisted on looking for a local tailor to buy a new cloak. It was a small town they were in (my heavily shifted Saltmarsh, called Graystone Bay), and as I pretended to consult my notes, I decided that there would be a single tailor’s shop, and that he’d be a guy who was ill-suited for the grimy little town he was in.

Okay, so here we go:

Me: You open the door and the bell rings, and you see a middle-aged, portly man, immaculately dressed, come walking towards you, smiling, arms outstretched. “AH, my friend, welcome welcome welcome to my shop. You have such good tastes to even set FOOT in here. I am Krystos and what I don’t got, I cann’a make you, no problem!” He hugs you and kisses both of your cheeks. “Now, what cann’a I do for you?”

I delivered this in an accent that was half-Italian, half-Greek, and all camp. And even as I was in the middle of it, I realized, too late, that I had created a Moment. The players, four young men from the ages of 18 to 21, stared at me with their mouths hanging open and then burst into hysterical laughter.

“Oh my God, now I thinkI also need a new cloak!”

“Yes, I go with him, in case there’s trouble.”
“I’ll tag along, too!”

Well, shit. We spent the next thirty minutes with me in full-blown improv mode, as I explained to them why my cloaks were three times as much as you’d find anywhere else. I gave Krystos magical needles that produced nearly invisible stitches. I fleeced the characters for a lot of gold, figuring they would write it off as a lesson learned. 150 gold for a cloak, even one with the tag, “very fine” in front of it, is a little much.

Nope. Didn’t matter. They’ve been back to Graystone Bay four times now. And every time, they pick up clothes they had ordered and buy new ones to go with them. They’ve begged Krystos to join them, offered him free passage to Farington, if he would only make a dress uniform for the ship’s captain. They’ve volunteered to set him up in another town. These four guys have turned into virtual clothes horses. They’ve spent more money on clothes than they have magic items and potions. They love The Krystos.

Of course, despite that initial encounter derailing the adventure for half an hour the first time, I now have a hell of a story hook. They are about to leave Graystone Bay for the big city, Farington, and they know that’s where Krystos is from. I’ve got plans to drop Krystos on them at an inopportune moment, begging for their help. Knowing my guys, they will drop everything to help the tailor out. The tailor. They are fighting Devil Fish, struggling against the forces of chaos itself, and slowly assembling a game-breaking artifact for an as-yet-undefined purpose. But they will fight to the death to save Krystos and tell the Devil Fish to go pound salt.

What started out as a note on my session sheet: Krystos—Tailor, big fish in small pond, has now become a notable NPC with a great backstory and, incidentally, a secret that will plug back into the larger campaign.

This is what happens in a sandbox campaign. You improv your way into creating brilliant ideas on the fly. Dropping Krystos into their well-laid plans like a grenade may seem like a way to control the players, but it's not. This is not railroading, as far as I’m concerned. It’s acknowledging the win and using it to move your story along. After all, Krystos happened organically, in an unscripted series of developments. It was the players who set their own hooks on him, not the other way around. 

As a DM, it would be a huge misstep not to use it in the game I’m running.  He will become a very real, very agonizing choice for the group at some point. All I have to do is find the right leverage point, and before they know it Krystos will appear before them in some dramatic fashion; he will burst into tears and say, “Oh, my friends! I don’t know what I’ma gonna dooo! You must help me! My life depends on it!”

As Darth Vader would say: “All too easy.”

Railroading and Sandboxing: Know Thyself

Yesterday I talked about the difference between railroading and sandboxing. Or rather, I discussed why I don’t like either extremes, and it has a lot to do with my upbringing, in the 1980s, awash in moral ambiguities and shades of grey. I have never liked being pushed into a definition, for the simple fact that it tends to discount any other possibilities. In the 1980s, I was very careful about being labeled a “nerd,” back when that meant something very different, and I really didn’t like being called a fan of certain things, like Star Trek, for example. There was this ridiculous notion that you could either like Star Wars or Star Trek, but not both. We were all still getting pushed, metaphorically or otherwise, into lockers, back then, and so rather than being pigeon-holed, I did my best to stay out of it.

But I digress, only a little.

There are more DM Help Tools now than ever before, really too many to count, in the form of Reddit groups, Facebook groups, websites, You Tube channels, Official sites and places like DriveThruRPG and DMsGuild that sell thousands of innovations for the harried DM. There are so many, in fact, that it’s hard to know what to use and what to invest in.

One of my favorite things is the seemingly endless myriad of random table generators available to DMs for little to no cash outlay. Granted, this is a feature of D&D anyway, but the idea that anything you want can be randomized is a freeing idea; whether it’s a d20 list, a d30 list, a 5d6 list, or a d% list, anything from the contents of a person’s pockets to a random dungeon can be made with just a few rolls. I love that.

But I don’t love it in the middle of a game. Not for me, anyway. My DM style is more narrative, and I like to sit back before a game and think about what the best twist, the coolest scene, the most interesting destination would be.

That’s when I use random tables. I brainstorm with them, often rolling several times as a process to get a few ideas running around in my head. This is a huge help for me, and it keeps me from doing a lot of rolling and pausing in the middle of a session.  

I also like to write general guidelines for areas such as the forest they are traipsing around in, or the city they just pulled up to.  Even if they never go to the mountains in the west, or visit the upper crust part of town, I have something there in mind and I don’t have to struggle to make it interesting if they suddenly get the urge to go there. In fact, I only fill out those general details until I need to do more.

The one thing I rely on the most is a list of names I have pulled together beforehand. Players love to “go to the blacksmith” and look for cool weapons. You don’t need to create an interesting blacksmith shop (not unless it’s an essential location for your campaign). All you need is the list of equipment with gold costs, and an NPC. This person doesn’t have to be interesting, but they can be. Most of the time, players just want something new for the quest. Asking them what they are looking for saves you a ton of time. When they tell you, “any magic swords?” You can reply, in character, “Magic swords? Where d’you think you are, anyway, Dimnae? I got regular swords for killin’ regular things, all right?”

Boom. Done. Role-playing.

On your DM notes, you write the NPC name you randomly picked, along with the notation, "black smith, gruff demeanor, scornful of magic."

That’s it. You don’t NEED anything else. If they keep going back to that guy, you can have him warm up to the players, maybe show them his high quality scale mail he makes, and use it to part them from their gold. The players will let you know if they like him and want to see more of him. That’s when you make a short encounter using Tolzan, the Blacksmith and his suddenly missing children.

The other thing I have, ready to go, are a few small encounters tailored to the environment. They all involve combat, and a little treasure. Five room dungeons, or one-page dungeons with a simple set-up and execution. These are my “wandering monsters.” I truck them out whenever the players falter, don’t know where to go, or worse, insist on leaving in the middle of the quest to head down a side alley.

Emirkol  the Chaotic was always
good for spicing things up.

That usually means the players are bored, and it’s up to me to liven things accordingly. These simple, generic encounters can be dressed on the fly to either refer to the existing story, or just provide a bloody break in the decision-making. And whenever possible, tie the seemingly random bits together by moving the clue you were going to bestow on them at the end of the session to something they get for defeating all of the thugs who tried to ambush them.

I know that sounds like you’re circumventing player agency, but if you are a narrative DM who likes to craft a story, then you will learn quickly how to use every part of the buffalo, if you know what I mean. Narratively speaking, there’s no difference between the guard with the crucial letter inside the warehouse and the bandit who jumped the party down that side alley they insisted on investigating.

The real trick to not undercutting player agency is to never let them know you’re doing it. When they take off down that alley, shuffle a few papers, make a roll, react to it, shake your head, and say, “Okay, you’ve not gone more than fifty feet down the alley when you hear footsteps behind you…” and now you’re in the little encounter you’ve been sitting on for three sessions.

The players will do what they do: turn and yell at whomever had the bright idea to NOT go to the warehouse, and then we roll for initiative and in this case, the game is your friend because even simple combat takes time. While they fight, you have plenty of time to restructure what you had planned for them, up to and including leaving the game in a cliffhanger, which is one of my favorite things to do that keeps players engaged.

Preparing ahead of time is not railroading. Picking up your dungeon and setting it back down in front of the party is not railroading. Giving your game some structure in the form of pre-written material is not a cheat. Now, if the players want to hop the fence and you tell them they can't...okay, that IS railroading.

Trying to find that balance of spontaneity and craftsmanship is the thing to cultivate. Play to your own strengths, and shore up your own weaknesses.

Railroading and Sandboxing: When Vocabulary Lets Us Down

One of the great advantages to re-engaging with the RPG hobby after three decades out is that we now have a vocabulary for talking about the concepts we employ when we play. Granted, it’s more of a jargon than a real vocabulary, but that’s an academic nit-pick.

We had that language, too, back in the 1980s. An overpowered campaign was called a Monty Haul, for example. If your barbarian had a light saber, you were in a Monty Haul campaign. But we didn’t have the amount, nor the precision of terms that exist now.

A lot of these terms are borrowed and stolen from Video Game studies, which is deeply ironic in that video game culture owes everything to role-playing games. It’s just as well that we share the cool words and terminology.

Unfortunately, that terminology can be as limiting as it is expressive. Maybe not the words themselves, but in describing conditions they inevitably create a dichotomy, an either-or choice that’s a bit of a fallacy.

I’m talking about “Railroading” and “Sandboxing.” Railroading refers to a campaign or an adventure with no room for player deviation; narrative, plot, and structure are rigidly controlled and any attempts by the players do alter that are summarily defeated. The way it’s talked about, it’s two steps below slaughtering newborns in their cribs.

Sandboxing is shorthand for an “open world” where the players have free reign to roam about the game space, doing what they want on their nickel and being the sole architects of their fates. It’s usually spoken with awed reverence, such as when you first lay eyes on the Ark of the Covenant.

Whenever campaigns are discussed (or disgusted) it’s because these two tensions are in play, much to the howls of outrage from game masters who insist on 100% player agency and no room of any kind to impose their will on the players. Or it’s someone complaining that they got forced into a mission or a dungeon where the DM kept having bad things happen to them and there was no way to avoid it.

I’m nearly 50. I am squarely in the GenX demographic. I don’t like absolutes and never have. Blame it on my formative years, popular culture, whatever. I don’t care. But I don’t think a little railroading is a bad thing in a sandbox campaign. And I suspect that most other people don’t, either. I’m talking about the dungeon master, here.

Oh, sure, there’s certainly a percentage of DMs who run everything on the fly, gleefully pulling stuff out of their ass in response to whatever crazy nonsense the players get up to. I knew a guy like that. Played briefly in his game. His players had been with him for years, and they had developed a co-dependent relationship with one another built on the mutual idea that they were going to fuck each other over as often as possible. So all decisions where made like chess moves, three steps ahead, trying to figure out what the GM (let’s call him Gary) was GONNA do if they did X, Y, or Z.

Games progressed at a glacial pace, and took six hours at a time, most of which was spent arguing about what to do next while also trying to slip role-playing notes into the game narrative. It was madness. But hey, it was a sandbox, and moreover, the players really seemed to enjoy it, for all of their kvetching.

I never liked that. For my games, I mean. I always had something planned. What that plan was depended on the game, the players, the system, you name it. Railroading is usually conflated with campaign structure, but follow me here for a second: if the goal of table top role-playing is to create a story that everyone participates in, doesn’t that implicitly require structure of some kind? Plot, Story, and Character are essential elements for telling a story, even in Improv. Right? And while a sand box game, even one like Gary’s above, is open-ended, eventually players will have to engage with the world. They will require a goal. Conflict. Intrigue. Something, anything, move them forward and roll some dice.

To me, having the characters forced into a mission they don’t want, or having them wake up captured with all of their stuff taken isn’t railroading—it’s bad DMing. Either the DM is a novice, not quite clear on the concept, or just doesn’t “get it” for one reason or another.

My current campaign, the World of Thera, is technically an open world. I say technically because even though the players can do what they want, what they really want is something to do. Even when they were starting out, I never asked them “what do you want to do?” without first giving them some choices: “You can investigate the rumors of the haunted tower, go check out the supposedly abandoned keep, or explore the surrounding wilderness. Or stay here at the trading post and get to know folks. Or something else.”

For new players, that’s really too many choices. I had to remind them that they can do it all, but not at the same time. After that, they quickly prioritized what they wanted to do and we were off and running. I think many modern-day players understand the idea of main quests and side quests thanks to video games, so it’s not a hard sell. Generally speaking, players in the game want the story. They like knowing they are getting clues and info and help and plot points. It’s not railroading to keep them on task.

Strictly speaking, I don’t think there’s much difference, DM-wise, between railroading and sandboxing. You still need the prep (though what you prep is very different) and you still have to pay close attention to what the players are doing. I don’t like it when players go off-script. I can deal with it, mind you; I’ve been doing it for years. I just don’t like it. And the other thing is this: I never let my players know when they are in the weeds.

There are ways to do this that allows you to keep your cool and your street cred as a DM. I’ll talk about that more tomorrow.

DIY Corner: My DM Creation Toolbox

One of the things that make me productive as a creative person is that I know myself well enough to know how I work best: surrounded by toys and little distractions. If I'm fomenting a  brainstorm, I tend to fidget, especially if I have a lot of ideas and I need to sort through them. On top of that, I've got juuuuuuust enough A.D.D. tendencies that I need structure to reign in the chaos. That's partially why I'm so attracted to bullet journaling and I've written about it twice now.

Whether I'm sitting at my computer or at a table, trying to come up with brilliant ideas, I like to have certain things at hand. I got tired of having all of my loose items in an unruly pile around my computer, or worse, having to chase down things like dice for randomly and obsessively rolling four d6, over and over, and taking the highest three dice, or rolling two d20 and saying, "advantage," and "disadvantage," over and over again. See, I've got special dice for that. My creation dice, which don't hit the table; they are for when I need to roll random numbers during the creation process. I mean, what's the use of having eleventy-thousand goddamn dice if you can't compartmentalize them, thus giving you the impression that your habit is not, in fact, out of control and you need help...anyway.

I came up with this idea and I really like it. It's not a million dollar innovation, but more of a Life Hack. It works for me, and if you see any use or value to it, it will by necessity be something you have to modify to make work for you.

This is my DM Creation Toolbox. It's tidy, and portable, and it looks pretty cool. I can drop this in a knapsack if I'm on the go, or (most often) it just sits on my writing desk, waiting patiently for me to crack it open.

The design on the front is very earthy-crunchy, but also...if you kinda squint at it...that could also be a deranged monk's interpretation of Dread Cthulhu. There's no way I'm covering that up.


The box is one of the many craft items I bought at one of the big box stores. You can find them with interesting frequency because, apparently, the whole of America needs a camouflaged stash box for their weed. The big box stores are, weirdly, cheaper than online, probably because the boxes are hard to ship. Whatever. You can choose from a ton of designs, or you can pick something you hate and mod it for yourself. There are a ton of videos that show you how to do this. For me, it was more important that I have a finished interior that looked like a book on the outside. So this is what I went with.

Inside, you can see it's crammed full of stuff. This is just about everything I need to get the old creative juices flowing. All that's missing is a notebook or a journal to write stuff down in, or doodle, or make lists, or whatever I need to do.

I find that graph paper helps me organize things the most. Lines are fine if I'm writing something, but often with gaming I need to make lists or charts or doodle a little map or practice map hatching or any number of other things that graph paper makes so much easier for me. I don't like the dots. Can't use them. Too loosey-goosey. I'm a grid man. Okay, enough navel-gazing. Let's break this down; my E.D.D.M.C. (that's Every Day Dungeon Master Carry, for those of you who aren't fully aware of the Gamer-Prepper Sub-Culture out there).

These are Rory's Story Cubes. You can find out all you want to know about them right here. They are very cool; these dice all have pictograms on them and you can buy thematic sets to roll and create random elements to incorporate into a story. They were designed for kids to teach them story-telling skills, but I've never seen kid one play with these things. What I have seen is forty-year old game masters swear by them. I have a set of nine, custom selected for their content, which is Fantasia, Mythic, and Medieval. They are sold in sets of nine and booster packs of three. There are also branded sets that come with this cool little carrying tray.

 To make these work, I'd roll as many or as few as I wanted, and then sort of sift through them to see if anything made sense. It's a lot like rooting through sheep's entrails, but not gross, or as ambiguous. The images are pretty recognizable, but also open to interpretation. For example, you can see the birdcage with the open door. That could be an escape, or it could refer to something that has escaped, or maybe something that was taken. You've got options.

Most of these elements are usable as-is in a fantasy role-playing game. You could do much worse using them for designing an evening's encounter.

 These little gems are an interesting idea that I fell in love with. They are called The GameMaster's Apprentice.  If you like DMing on the fly, then these are your cards, for sure. The deck I have here is nautically-themed, for many reasons I won't go into, but there are actually a number of genre-flavored decks that will suit your needs.

Basically, each card is loaded with a series of choices, random words, things, decisions, conditions, moods--everything you'd need for "out-of-your-ass" gaming.

 

I actually use the cards to jump-start conversations with myself. There are descriptive words, small inklings of plot ideas, character names, and even abstract concepts. Each card is double sided, and there's fifty-plus cards in the deck. I've only used a fraction of the cards, but they are great for getting out of your head and chasing down new ideas.

 You can buy the cards at drivethrucards.com and while they aren't cheap, if this is something you think you'll use, it's a good investment with a lot of replay value. Oh, and here's another tip from Captain RetroGrump. The box to put the cards in costs a dollar extra. You may think, "That's bullshit! I'm already paying twenty bucks for the cards!" Don't be me. Buy the damned plastic box.

You see this box in my hand? Yeah, I had to make that. I didn't have another plastic box to put the cards in, and I have never been a "rubber band them up" kind of guy. So I spent half a day downloading a card box template, and then cutting it out three times because I couldn't get the edges to line up right and also I had to fold it differently to fit the deck, which is slightly larger than a regular deck, and yeah, my tuck box looks cool, but you know what? In time, labor, materials, and effort, it cost me $28.47 to make. Know how much a plastic deck box would have cost me from DriveThruCards? A buck.

 These dice are weird. The white one is a Tarot die (from the set I reviewed, here) and it's the one with the most interesting set of faces on it, representing the major arcana. Their poor design is my delight! The other two dice are made out of boxwood and they are pressed layers of wood. To know what number is showing, you count the pieces of wood. The one on the left is 1 and the one on the right is five.

I like these dice because they are odd, and because they force me to look at what I am rolling and also, they are pleasant to hold.  They have replaced the Fidget Cube I had in the kit, which had a little too much going on for me. What does that say about me when the Fidget Cube is such a distraction for me? Don't answer that.

You always need dice. These are my "creation dice." They are simple. They are easy to read. They are the right dice for this process. Also, a lot of them are black and white. This is no accident.  Sometimes you need to just make a decision and go.

Fun fact: I have two differently-colored d10 dice that I use for rolling percentiles. I don't have a tens d10. I call black high, like in the good old days, and roll percentile dice like that. It's not a big deal, but it really connects me to my dim and distant gamer past in ways I don't quite understand.

 Yeah, those are fake coins for FRPG games. Don't judge me. I sometimes practice sleight-of-hand when I am thinking, and I like working with these coins. They are thematically appropriate, and easy to manipulate.

They also feel good in my hand. I know they aren't real gold, but the pouch of coins is pretty iconic in fantasy gaming, and so when I am putting treasure in a dungeon, more often than not, I'll have the bag out, jingling it like a goofus.

 

This is a mechanical pencil, a Zebra 301, because I love their pens and pencils; so clean and professional-looking.  Next to that is a ball-point pen that looks like a Harry Potter wand. It does not look professional and I don't care. It's my idea box. The pen is for concrete ideas, and the pencil is for doodling, sketching, mapping, etc.

Most of the time, I just use the pen, because I'm a nerd, but I need the pencil for drawing stuff. I just do. I may be adding another pen or two for lettering at some point, because I have room, but right now, the pen and pencil I have cover about 90% of my needs.

And that's it. The whole thing weighs about as much as a hardcover book, which I'd be carrying around, anyway, so whatever. I mostly enjoy how it tidies up my work space, but I have to say, there's something cool about having a hollow book with gold coins and a magic wand inside.

I've seen this idea before as a character kit, for players, but I've never seen anything like this for Dungeon Masters. Have you? Is this something you'd put together for yourself? Drop me a line or show me pictures if you have.

RPGaDay 2019: 26 Idea

I recommend keeping a notebook with you as a DM at all times. You never know when something cool is going to come to you and you will need to write it down. I know you don’t think you do, but trust me, you do.

There’s all kinds of studies about the positive effects of journaling—writing something down by hand—as an aid to increasing your memory and also in making connections, linking ideas, and so forth. Keeping a journal is going to free you up to create.

I would suggest you look at the Bullet Journal as a system. Here’s a great starting place to learn all about it, and of course, there’s this book right here. But before you go buy a twenty five dollar German blank book and expensive colored pens and all of that stuff, stop for a minute and think about if you even want to go that route first.

This may have cost me 50 cents.

What I’m saying is this: start cheap. If you lose interest or come up with a better way to do something, then you’re not out a lot of cash. If you love it and want to do more, then you can easily upgrade. What follows is my cheapo way to set up a journal based on me doing it for a year and a half and finding it to be absolutely essential to my creative process where gaming is concerned. The bullet journal method is great because you can switch it up so that it makes sense for you. And that’s really what we’re doing here; we are making a map of your internal creative process.

Okay, all you need to get started is a notebook and a decent pen that writes reliably.

Your notebook needs to be something with a decent number of pages in it, at least 80. It can be a spiral notebook, a sketchbook, or whatever you like so long is it large enough for you to write comfortably in and ideally, inexpensive. At least for now. If you really like this, there are no limits to the amount of money you can spend on special notebooks, stationary, and other accouterments.  I like graph paper, and there are some inexpensive notebooks made of graph paper from the big box stores that cost all of 99 cents. If you want to split the difference, here is a notebook aimed at DMs doing this exact thing. It's nice because it's got a mix of lined, graph, and hex paper included. Pretty swanky.

You don’t have to have a pen. Just use what you most like to write with, as long as it works for you. You don’t want to have to scribble on a page for five minutes to get your cheap Bic to work every time you need to write something down. I like gel pens because they are reliable, but you do you. I got one of those four ink in one pen pens and I love it. They were my favorite as a kid and I like them even more now. 

Write in the middle, not the corner.

Step 1

Go through the entire book and number the pages. Make them easy to see and in the same place. You will need these numbers to make the system work.

A rookie mistake is to write in the corners, you know, like every book you've seen before in your life. But there is a reason not to do this that has to do with linking your pages together. So resist all of that conditioning and write in the middle of the margin.

Use both pages; you may need them.

Step 2

Open the notebook up to the first two-page spread. This is your index. Write the word “Index” across the top of one of the pages. If this is a notebook for your game and nothing else, you are done. 

In a regular bullet journal, you may want to create divisions for larger topics. It’s hard to know what you will need without doing anything first, so I would leave it alone for now. Just set the two pages aside as your index.

You can break up your index pages
into sections if you need to.

Step 3

For a gaming notebook, you are pretty much done. You might want to create a calendar page so you can mark important dates, like when school starts again, so you can make plans accordingly. But it’s not necessary, unless you are a calendar person. That said, let me add: if you are running multiple games, or your sessions change regularly, or you keep getting caught flat-footed and running by the seat of your pants because you forgot to work something up, then you really should look at the calendar module for bullet journaling. It's quick, easy, and useful. Trust me on this. 

Using the notebook

This is the thing—it doesn’t work unless you use it. So take it with you everywhere you go. If you get in the habit of always taking it with you, it will serve you well.

Whenever you have an idea, open up to the first blank page and start scribbling. If you need to draw a map, draw a map. Or make a to-do list. Whatever you need. If you have another idea later in the day, open to the first clean page and write away.

Now, either at the end of the day or the beginning of the next (or whenever you have a couple of minutes of down time), you will look at what you wrote down, flip back to your index, and note it there. Leave room for other topics and page numbers. I’d go every other line until you know what you will need. So, you’d make a note like this on your index:

City-State Notes, Pgs 4-6

Map of Main Sewer, pg 7

Magic Items, pg 8 (sword of chaos)

As new ideas occur to you, grab a blank page and write everything down. At the end of the day, index it. You will quickly see that your City-State notes are going to be spread out throughout the notebook. So, just go back to your entry and add page numbers, like this:

City-State Notes, Pgs 4-6, 18-20,

Map of Main Sewer, pg 7

Magic Items, pg 8 (sword of chaos) pg 12 (wand of trickery)

The index is what makes the notebook truly useful. You can find what you are looking for at a glance.

There’s an advanced trick you can do with your page numbers that will keep you from flipping back to the index. It’s a little more work, but not much. On the city-state pages, you will drop down to the page number and draw an arrow pointing forward and write down the next page number that deals with the same topic. If you’ve come from a page with the same topic, you’ll write an arrow pointing backwards and the page number you came from to get here. That way, if you’re paging through your notebook and you spy something that interests you, just glance down at the page number and it’ll tell you where the threads of the idea continue.

I know. Mind Blown, right?

With the index in place, you are not limited to just holding ideas and plots. You can use the book to track session notes, too. Open to the first blank page, date the page, and then go to town. Every new NPC, every extra side note, all of the great ideas you had mid-session, put them all down there. Afterwards, go back and index the page as above. You're already using the notebook for planning. Why not keep session notes with your plans? 

That's the point: anything you need for your game can go in the journal. It's all in one place, organized by your specific needs in the way that makes the best sense to you. It's like a road map of your brain. 

When you get to the end of your notebook, grab another one, make a new index, and keep going. If you want to pre-designate areas of your index for things you know you need a lot of room for, you can do that. Otherwise, it’s lather, rinse, and repeat.

Tips and Tricks

One of the things that confounds people new to the journaling process is the idea that they can only write down the good ideas. Well, how do you know if it’s a good idea until you write it down? Trust the process and put it all on the page, even (and maybe especially) the half-baked ideas or the tiny thoughts.

Doing it this way ensures that you capture what you were trying to articulate, and it also frees your mind up to think about something else. I’ve rewritten the same idea with only slight variations down in my journal three or four times. Each time, it cleared the decks for me to expand on the thought or simply move on to the next thing on my mind.

Because I’m that-guy, I’ve got a campaign notebook (separate from my journal) wherein I write down all of the finished ideas and usable content I come up with. Anything good from my notebook gets transferred over to the campaign notebook, which is much nicer and far less chaotic. Eventually my campaign notebook will get re-organized into a pdf document with a searchable index and a hyperlinked table of contents and oooooh, it’ll be so fancy. Until we get there, though, this system works like a charm.

Get in the habit of going back through your notebook every three to four weeks. You’ll be surprised what looking at these pages with fresh eyes will do. In some cases, I’ll see something I wrote down and forgot about and think, “that’s brilliant!” Other times, I’ll look over something I agonized over and realize it doesn’t work. But that might lead me to another, possibly better idea that will work instead. It’s all part of the process.

RPGaDay 2019: 19 Scary

I love horror movies, horror stories, monsters, aliens and all that kind of thing. In Internet Parlance, I’m what is known as a “Monster Kid.” Make of that what you will.

It follows, then, that I would be an early and avid adopter of games like GURPS Horror, CHILL, and my first-love, go-to horror game, Call of Cthulhu.

My games were always well-attended and with good reason: I was a great Call of Cthulhu game master. I wrote many of my own C of C scenarios and they were always a hit. I tried to keep the eldritch vibe but I also wanted “traditional” scares; zombies are a great palette cleanser when you stare too long into the Abyss and the Abyss stares back.

The first scary encounter I ever used was, it turned out, my best one. I re-used it with different groups, and even ‘ported it over into other games. It never failed me. I am now going to release it into the wild for your edification and/or swipe file.

The Set Up

This needs to be under ground, either in a sewer, or a partially flooded dungeon, or both. You need some water for this. You also need some holding cells. The players are looking for someone who has disappeared and their quest has led them to here, where it’s clear that something sinister is going on.

They walk down the hallway, peering into the cells. Iron bar gate, and every cell is sunken. Water from somewhere has gotten into the cells and there is about a foot of brackish water that comes right to the top edge of the gate. It’s easy to spot, as long as someone asks. Anyone rushing in would make a Dex save to avoid tripping down the stone step and crashing into the stinky water on the floor. That would seem to be the gag and should be played that way, i.e. "Okay, now that you know there's water in the cells you can easily avoid falling in and you can even see the step leading down into the cells."

The Hook

In the first cell, there’s a skeleton, in chains, sitting in the water.

In the second cell, there’s another skeleton, half-slipped out of the chains, also in the water.

In the third cell, there’s a man in a brown tweed suit, in chains, and he’s hanging upside down, his head completely underwater, his legs and body struggling furiously, and there’s a mass of bubbles around him. He’s panicked…

It’s usually about now that someone screams “I run in and save him!”

What do you do? Do you pick the lock on the chains? Or do you want to pull his head up so he can breathe?

“That’s it! I pull his head up!”

The Reveal

The character grabs the man by the shoulders and lifts…and he’s got no head. The neck is a gaping wound, and even as you let go of the corpse, you realize what was bringing the body to life as a horde of rats swarm out from the neck, running all down your chest and your arms and your back and, well, make a sanity roll now.

Sometimes they end up with a phobia. They always pick “fear of rats.” The swarm does little to no damage. The rats hit the water and swim out of the room. The corpse is actually a few weeks old. It's not who they are looking for. But whoever took their friend also did this, so this missing person's case just got a lot more urgent. And now  you’ve set the tone for the rest of the evening.

RPGaDay 2019: 16 Dream

I use dreams a lot in my game, especially since now I have a sorcerer, a warlock, and a cleric in my group. It’s the best way to give my players an info-dump’s worth of information without grinding table play to a halt. The way I do it is simple: I make it a handout. Specifically, I write a letter.

Giving players something that’s folded up and printed out so that it looks fancy is like free topping day at the yogurt place. Yeah, it’s maybe not as good as gelato, but everyone changes their tune when the chocolate sprinkles come out, don’t they?

I have some skill at prose writing, so I always take this opportunity to put a little literature on what I want them to know. Mostly this is tied to the player and how he or she would process a block of information. But the nice things about making a dream a letter is that the player can keep it and refer back to it. No missing a clue because they took the wrong notes; the dream is the diary entry that stays with them forever. And my players certainly look back on old dreams to see if they have missed anything.

I also use a different tone with them, mostly in an effort to get and keep that player’s attention. This is fun for them and also fun for me. I write each dream up with a fun font, and use my meager photoshop skills to add artwork if necessary. These letters are delivered at the start of each session, and they read them before we get going, as I am setting up my screen, papers, etc.

Below are a few examples of dreams I have given to the players in my Eldritch Piracy game.

Jaco the Draconic Sorcerer

Talos, Cleric of Poseidon

Earl of Carcosa, Warlock

Each of these dreams or visions is very pointedly specific as to what needs to happen. There should not be a dream interpretation portion of the table play, unless you do something like this:

“That night, you all dream that you are flying, on your backs, whizzing along with the breeze stinging your face. But when you look up, you can’t see the sky, or the moon, or even the clouds. You’re not worried about that; merely curious. The last thing you remember is something shiny and metallic, glinting in the moonlight, and then…”

“You wake up. All of you are on an embankment on the side of one of the mountains, looking down at the keep.”

I did this in a game where the players were trying to run down who was stealing building supplies from the keep. Spoiler: It was a Copper dragon, who was actively opposed to expansion and was playing jokes on the soldiers to make them think the keep was haunted. When the players started to get too close, the dragon clocked them with a sleep spell and flew them up to the top of the embankment.

No one has yet figured out what happened that night. They all come charging down from the mountain, asking questions, looking for footprints, etc.

But my point is, that dream happens at the table because everyone is involved and it’s a group-wide event. For everyone else, their dreams are secret, and usually private. This keeps the plots interesting as well, since it helps them pick a direction to pursue and that will always lead to dramatic conflict where someone will have to make a difficult choice. And that's how you get to those epic moments that (hopefully) the players will remember for the rest of their gaming days. All you have to do...is dream...

RPGaDay 2019: 15 Door

Erol Otus, ladies and gentlemen. 

 DM:                       There’s a door to your left. It’s about eight feet tall, and about five feet—

PLAYERS:             We go left. Through the door.

DM:                        Don’t you want to listen at the door first?

PLAYERS:             We’ll just kill whatever’s in there.

DM:                        Okay, well, the door is locked.
PLAYERS:             I attack it with Thunder Wave. (rolls dice) 19 points of damage!

DM:                        (sigh)

Few dungeon trappings are more iconic than the door. The alpha and the omega, the apex and the nadir and oh Gods and Monsters can we just get on with it?

The closed and locked door no longer captivates like it once did, back when dungeons were an existential labyrinth. Years ago, I had a player who tapped every door with a ten foot pole, you know, “in case it was trapped.” Every door. When I broke his ten foot pole during a melee encounter, he obligingly started shooting every door with an arrow, you know, “in case it was a mimic.”

These kids today, boy, I tell you what…

Video Games have ruined a generation of gamers for listening at doors and picking locks and all of that cool detail-oriented stuff we did when the world was young. Now it’s just kick and punch. My not-so radical solution is to get rid of the doors completely. That is, only put a door in front of them when they hit something you need to surprise them with, or a cool set piece, or something memorable of that nature. Doors they can’t immediately break through, and doors they certainly don’t want to just barge through. Some examples:

The door is an arch filled with opaque mist.

The door is a thick, heavy curtain that muffles sound.

The door is actually a window made from Wizard Glass, crystal clear and difficult (but not impossible) to break.

The door is a different brick pattern that irises open and closed when a command word is uttered.
The door has an illusion spell on it that makes the interior of the room appear very different from what’s really inside.

There is no door, but all of the openings into every room are centered on the wall so that there is space on either side of the door for, um, furniture, or statues, or anything that might cast a shadow across the floor, or NOT, as the case may be.

I realize that a lot of these things sound like traps, and that’s because they certainly can be. I think it’s fair game to take a weakness in the party and exploit it one time for fun—and to learn, too, of course. I don’t propose you kill anyone with a rigged door, but I think a properly rigged door in the right place—say, a treasure room or private library—would benefit from resisting the standard “we kick it open and rush in.”

I miss the ten-foot pole days. Mostly I just miss ten-foot poles. 

Old school Sutherland art. From B1. As Basic as Basic gets. What's that guy carrying? Ten Foot Pole.