Behind the Screen: Preparing for the sequel...

This week, my good buddy Kanati and I are preparing to return to our original co-DMing experiment. We intentionally took a hiatus in order to collect our thoughts and prepare an exciting second act, which we decided to place four years after the conclusion of the first act.

In order to allow our characters to refresh and rebuild their "away from the group" motivations, we've asked our players to put together a story that outlines what their characters have done since the first act concluded.

Essentially, this is a functional reset of the campaign, albeit at a much higher character level and with a much more rich backstory. These characters have a shared history from the first act, yet depending upon what their individual histories were we could end up with a very different group dynamic as we begin anew. Allowing your players to organically grow their characters throughout your storyline will hopefully provide a much more immersing game for everyone.

I will certainly continue to explore this topic as this new campaign kicks off, hopefully this will work out positively for everyone.

New Features!

We're pleased to present a few new features today! If you direct your attention to the right, you will see the following new and improved elements for your enjoyment:

• Featured Links - We've decided to highlight some of our absolute favorite sites. Keep an eye out for new additions to both this section, and our original Favorite Links.
• Google Search - We have implemented a Google Powered search. It's a great way to poke through the archives.
• Tag List - At the request of our favorite chatty DM, we have implemented a digest of the tags that we have used on our various posts. This should make it easier to find some of our recurring columns or get caught up if you're joining us for the first time.
• Author Tags - You will now find our names in the aforementioned tag list, as we have added our names to each of the articles to allow you to sort by staff member... to help you find that particular article by your favorite columnist!
• Digg - We've added a post level widget to allow you to Digg articles that you really enjoy. We don't condone self-digging, so its up to you, loyal readers!
  

We are constantly striving to make your experience more satisfying so keep the suggestions coming!

New Shirt Friday: Celestial Porpoise!

Porpoises are known to be fierce combatants, even able to defend themselves against sharks larger than themselves. A celestial porpoise is stronger, more intelligent, and has darkvision. Summoning one ensures that you are comfortable with your own sexuality.

A DM I'm Not

When I first started playing D&D back in college, I had the good fortune to have a wonderful DM; he made it all look so very easy. After the first couple of campaigns, I was convinced that I, too, could be a DM. I planned out my first storyline, created my NPCs, and ran my first session.

I won't say it was an entire disaster, but it was definitely a lot more difficult that I was lead to believe. I got bogged down in tables and charts, and I just got so overwhelmed. For me, being the DM was not as much fun as being the player.

After talking to my group and explaining my situation, they allowed me to dissolve the campaign. And since, I have never tried to DM. I learned a very valuable lesson that day: those who can, DM; those who can't, play.

Of the Fourth, there was this to say....

As I have been tagged by Elf, I will share my four. I'd have posted sooner, but I was down sick this week... and since I'm the last so tagged, I figure I better get to meme-ing!

Four jobs I have had in my life (not including my current job):

• Front desk assistance / mail sorter at the dorm
  
• Generic sales position
  
• HR manager for the local Sears
  
• Software instructors for a computer education center
  

Four Films I have watched again and again:

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  
• Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
  
• Dogma
• Lilo & Stitch
  

Four places I have lived:

• Central Illinois
• Central Illinois
• Central Illinois
• Central Illinois
  

Four Programs I love to watch:

• House
• Bones
• Pysch
• Simpsons
  

Four Places I have been on vacation:

• Dresden, Ohio
  
• San Fransisco
• New Orleans
• Lake of the Ozarks
  

Four of my favorite foods:

• Five Cheese Ziti - Olive Garden
• Oriental Chicken Salad - Applebee's
• Edy's Loaded Butterfinger ice cream
• Chicken Quesadilla from a local Mexican restaurant
  

Four favorite drinks:

• Diet Coke
• Sweet Tea
• Steak & Shake milkshakes
• Sake - for special occasions
  

Four places I would rather be right now:

• Olive Garden
• Playing D&D
• Sleeping
• Sitting on the couch watching Simpsons .... oh, wait, that's where I am!
  

Four People I Tag (unless you've already done this... then you don't have to):

• Yax
  
• Phil
• Evil DM
  
• Jonathan Drain

Behind the Screen: Note-Taking, my perspective...

On Treasure Tables there was a very thought provoking post on adventure notes yesterday. This got me to thinking of the many ways that I've kept adventure notes over the years and I thought it best to share these various approaches today.

A Holistic Approach

My barometer for determining what makes a good encounter is usually based around how much fun my players are having. I have been known to rework an encounter mid-stream if it turns out being far too challenging or drop in an extra encounter or two fairly organically into the plot. If I think its going to be fun for the characters, I am happy to "wing it" and make up an encounter on the spot to scratch whatever apparent itch that I can detect.

This usually makes for a note-taking nightmare, that's why I generally tend not to do it. I will outline the basics: what they encountered, any excellent or creative steps that the players took to dispatch the baddies, experience and treasure. Most of my notes fit comfortably onto a 3.5" index card, but I usually just keep a notebook of half-sheets that show the progression of events.

The Lazy Approach

When embracing the glowing beauty that is shooting from the hip, I got out of the habit of note taking. We had a few natural secretaries in our group, one of which is our very own Stupid Ranger. Since I have the good fortune of living with her, there were times I would just ask her for her set of notes on the campaign happenings prior to the session.

In a real pinch, I would sometimes call a five minute break and sneak a peek during the session if I need to quickly craft up a plot point that tied together a few prior events from recent nights.

The Team Approach

There was a time when I fully embraced this hands-off approach to campaign outlining. We used a blog to track the progress of the campaign that wrought Lumbar, Goudy, and Skythorn, where each character would post their in-game thoughts in exchange for an experience bonus.

This provided many Good Things: a running tally of how a character was perceiving the plot, an extremely detail-based set of notes for me to refer to, and an engaging way to keep the characters in the game in exchange for what amounted to an experience pittance.

My players took to this extremely well, and we have adapted this to use some different technologies as the years have gone on. We are currently using a PHP BB bulletin board to track this type of information, and players are free to post their details as they desire to receive their experience.

We've been discussing the art of co-DMing this week, if you have a co-DM use them in this mode. Let them assist in keeping an outline or additional details, we've had some success in having a post-game rap session to jot down a posthumous set of reflections on how the session went and what we need to tweak to make it more engaging.

Notes are what you make of them

In short, you need to make notes your servant. If you thrive on the structure of keeping a detailed set of notes that are yours and yours alone, do that. If you are like me and prefer keeping a loose outline and going off of player perception to drive your stories, do that. If you have some other approach that nobody has thought of before, do that but be sure to leave comment and let us know what it is!

Co-DMing: Heed Your Dungeon Mentor

As Dante recently posted, he and I just finished up Co-DM'ing a 5-week mini-campaign for our group. Though I have played D&D for 20 years, I am admittedly not a particularly experienced DM. And as any experienced DM will tell you, you can take and dispense all the advice in the world -- but it's a whole different thing when you've got 6 players staring you in the face waiting for you to tell them what's next.

A Disastrous Maiden Voyage

A few years ago, I ran a very short-lived campaign that was chock full of story and good roleplaying opportunities. Unfortunately, it was also my first try ever at being DM, and I crashed and burned. I had no idea what I was doing, and my wardrobe contained absolutely no pink shirts. Mostly I stressed out over the mechanics of combat, playing arbiter for rules lawyers, and trying to keep the plot on track. I was convinced after about two sessions that that DM'ing was just Not For Me and we ended the campaign on a really strange note that involved the Stupid Ranger's character getting polymorphed into a gorilla and doing terrible things to the main villain. Terrible. I shudder to think of it even today.

A New Hope

However, Dante and our friend Eric recently co-DM'ed a campaign in which Eric wrote most of the story and Dante ran the adventure. This appealed to me because I really enjoy writing stories, and this way I didn't have to worry about choking in the heat of the action. So he'd run the day to day operations and I'd sit behind the scenes and roleplay most of the major NPC's. Easy, right?

And so, with Dante at the helm of this creaking juggernaut I'd created, we set sail for adventure. And the very first night, I learned a couple very important things about writing the backend in a Co-DMing situation:

• Even if you're not at the wheel, you still have to steer the boat.
  
  And to think I thought I could just sit back, relax, and watch events unfold!
  
  The party immediately started doing things neither Dante nor I were even remotely expecting. And the things they were doing that we were expecting were the ones we were hoping they wouldn't do. Within 15 minutes of play, the players had all smelled various rats and were on high alert for trouble, and it was clearly evident that the big surprise scenario I wanted to end the night with wasn't going to happen. Which brings me to my next point:
  


• Don't Railroad. It's Not Worth It.
  
  If the party wants to do something completely off the map, let them. If you're not prepared for what they want to do, tell them you need to quit and you can pick it up the next gaming session when you are more prepared.
  
  Why? Because if you make it such that the same result happens no matter what they do, you start to dig yourself into a trench of bullshit that even you don't buy. Your story starts to make less and less sense as the game goes on, everything seems more and more forced, and the players feel significantly less like they are in control of the events going on around them and more like they are puppets in some elaborate yet very poorly-thought-out children's program on Public Access Television.
  
  Unfortunately, this was the route I went (and made Dante go down, despite his protests). And sure enough, the very next session brought complaints from the players that things felt weird and forced.
  


• If You Split The Party, Make Sure The Two Of You Can Communicate
  
  We had a wonderful ninja-type character played by our friend Katherine who had a very wonderful ninja-type thought of hiding in the shadows and waiting 'til dark while the party was off doing something else. And I say "something else" because I took her upstairs to play out what she was doing leaving Dante and the others to do their thing. I sincerely wish I'd thought to bring my laptop with me so that we might have communicated with each other. One primary problem was that, upon our return downstairs, they thought they'd been waiting around for all of 15 minutes before their ninja came back -- when in fact, she'd not only waited until dark but had infiltrated the evil Chancellor's castle. And been captured and interrogated. And set free hours later. Though Dante said nothing, his eyes spoke to me in words consisting of four letters.
  
  There were other times, like when the party got captured by Elves, and I took everybody individually upstairs to be interrogated. This whole time, I had envisioned a big stone building with no windows, and that is what I started describing when the players asked me. And it was about then that it came to my attention that Dante had been describing the area like a well-guarded grove of trees. Outside. I received several more four letter eye-words.
  


• Especially If You Are A Newb, Listen To Your Dungeon Mentor
  
  There were a couple of times the first two sessions when I couldn't figure out why Dante was getting frustrated with me. And now, in retrospect, it correlated almost exactly to points where I had decided This Is The Way It Must Go No Matter What. And he would always tell me something like "I dunno man, I'm not sure they'll go for that." And at the time, I was thinking "he just thinks the story should go a different way but this is MY VISION!"
  
  Take it from me, your vision probably needs checked.
  
  In retrospect, it is glaringly obvious to me that this is where he noticed I was about to railroad people and tried very nicely to get me to relent. But as it always goes, you must let the train wreck happen before someone learns anything. And this is the way it went.
  

Fortunately, the campaign didn't completely self-destruct. It took me one more session before I saw the error of my ways and began to atone for my sins. The next session, the party hungered for some battle, so we gave them some in the form of some NPC assassins. That session ended quickly because people weren't feeling well.

We had planned to end the campaign with the next session, as we were nearing our finale. And when I arrived at his house, Dante spoke some terrifying words to me:

"Hey, how about you run the last one since it's your baby?"




.... But that is a story for another time.

Give Me What I Want

Phil posted a questionnaire completed by one of his players. On the questionnaire, there was a very provocative question: What do you look for in a game session to make it a great session? Sure, playing is fun, but what is it that distinguishing the good sessions from the great sessions?

Give Me a Spotlight

In a great session, my character gets to do something completely in-character, something that is truly unique to her personality, something that lets her shine. I want the details I've planned for my character mean something. If I'm playing a bard, I want to use my Perform skill to calm the nervous crowd. If I'm playing a ranger, I want to track (and destroy) my favored enemy. If I'm playing a fighter, I want some awesome battle in which I can display my prowess with the blade. For at least one moment, my character should be important.

Give Me Part of the Story

In a great session, our group should advance the storyline somehow. I want to make forward progress. My character didn't get involved in this group to just hang out... she wants to accomplish something. Maybe we finally find that reclusive wizard that will give us the information we need to defeat the Big Bad. It might not have taken that much in terms of game-time, but it was significant to advancing the plot.

Give Me That Look

Every once in a while, in a truly great session, I want to do something so spectacular or unexpected that I get that special look from the DM that says, "I can't quite believe you just did that." Once upon a time, back in the college days, my monk, Jade, was actually a half-dragon and had the ability to transform from human to dragon shape. In the epic end battle, while being pursued by wyverns, human Jade desperately needed two things: hit points and a means of escape. I told the DM my plan: while running toward the cliff, I would use my Wholeness of Body ability to heal myself, then, throwing myself off the cliff, I would transform into my dragon form and fly off. Chuck blinked, made me roll a few checks, and allowed it. In the end, we all died (one of my only failed campaigns), but I will never, ever forget that moment.

Behind the Screen: The First Co-DM session...

Vanir and I had the good fortune to run a six-week mini campaign recently. Knowing that the first session of a new campaign is the most important, I would like to share our steps for preparing in a co-DM mode.

The Pre-Prep

The division of tasks for this campaign were clear: Vanir would write the plot, I would run the sessions. Since campaign writing is a collaborative thing, over the course of two weeks we spent some time throwing around ideas: a tyrannical dictator, an oppressed and generally clueless human population that was conditioned to think that the community of nearby elves were dangerous and barbaric, and so on.

Vanir had a great hook: the characters would begin in the employ of the dictator and be tasked to deliver a note demanding that the elves sacrifice their land to him or be destroyed. To further bring this point home, our characters were given a weapon of mass destruction to threaten the elves with if they did not comply.

Unfortunately for them, the dictator had bad information and the artifacts did not work the way the PCs were told. One of our characters was elected the party leader, and he alone was told that if the elves didn't comply he would utter the command word ("journeymen") and the artifacts would activate and destroy the elves.

This was a great setup for a fast paced campaign, so we were both very excited.

Knowing Thy Players

A great plot can be unraveled in ways unimagined by your PCs. Knowing this to be the case, we spent a considerable amount of time running "what if" scenarios by each other. This is one of the best opportunities that co-DMing provides you: the ability to run ideas past each other looking for holes and creating contingency plans should your players act randomly.

Since we know our players fairly well (some members of our group have been good friends of ours for years) we knew that there was more than a little chance that our group would do something that we did not expect. We knew one member in particular, my co-DM from another campaign that we are running, would probably be the one to attempt to blow the thing wide open.

The First Session

The player in question acted as we suspected. Immediately upon being given the artifact, our buddy immediately shared his secret duties with the rest of the group, and immediately when the chance arose invoked "journeymen" and found out that the artifact was a dud.

Thankfully, we had planned for this contingency and had some additional encounters planned to help keep the players progressing forward toward some of our other plot points, but with many of the "secrets" out of the bag it became a bit difficult. The normal rails that would've been hidden were a bit exposed, and the players were having some difficulty with their motivation to continue on.

The upside to these developments is that both Vanir and I could keep our cool under circumstances that normally would've led to catastrophe. Planning for sessions in an iterative way became very helpful during this campaign, and the combined efforts of two DMs helped to make it possible.

More to come!

Evensbrook #9

New Evensbrook comic every Monday!

Proper Villainy, pt. 5 -- Let The PC's Win. (Wait, What?!!?)

Over the last couple of weeks of Proper Villainy, we've covered everything from how to create a villain to how to make him the worst he can be. All of these can be used to write a believable villain into your story. However, let us not forget we're playing D&D - and that as a Dungeon Master, you have certain responsibilities to your players that must be considered.

Your villain should not be invincible.

Anybody else ever watch a James Bond movie and cringe when the bad guy captures Bond and reveals his evil plot instead of just busting a cap right in his Secret Agent Dome? Then, naturally, the baddie leaves Bond alone in the deathtrap for a few minutes, which is ample enough time for him to escape and eventually bring the villain down. I know that if I was ever a supervillain, I wouldn't make that sort of mistake.

Well, here's the thing. You're leading a bunch of players through an adventure in which, more than likely, they are the heroes. If they're against an opponent they can't ever win against, that is not fun. I'm not saying let the PC's breeze through every battle. That would be silly, and also boring. But do let them win eventually.

I am reminded of when I was about 7 years old, and my older brother (who is one of the nicest people I know) was a total dick to me when we were playing with my He-Man action figures. The incident went something like this:

Him: Skeletor captures Teela and takes He-Man's power sword!
Me:: But He-Man hits Skeletor in the face and takes it back!
Him: Without the Power Sword, He-Man is powerless and it doesn't hurt at all! Skeletor then tosses the Power Sword into the Great Abyss, forever ridding the world of He-Man!!
Me: MOM!!!!!!!!

There is a little something to remember here when dealing with the PC's. You're omnipotent in their world. You make the rules. They can't beat you. It's like trying to rules lawyer God into making it rain tomorrow. (If any of you can do that, I have some requests.) If you're constantly never letting them win because "that's not how my villain would act", you're missing the point of why everybody is sitting around the table looking at you and rolling dice.

Make Your Villain Mortal Again In 30 Days Or Your Money Back

• Smoke And Mirrors
  
  You can just make him LOOK invincible until the PC's show up. However, you may run the risk of leaving your players feeling let down if they show up and find a 98 pound weakling instead of the Dark Warlord of Blood. Make him difficult -- just not insurmountable.
  


• Give him a weakness.
  
  If you really must make your villain invincible, provide some kryptonite that the PC's have to work for. And when it's time to use it, I personally prefer making that a challenge as well. After all, it'd be boring if the PC's walked in the front door, held aloft the Wand of Fraznozz, and a bolt of lightning struck the evil wizard down immediately before the PC's were awarded experience and bid good night.
  
  One way to do keep this exciting is to make the "kryptonite" difficult to use - like birds steal the artifact and you have to shoot them down to get it back while Big Bad's chopping the party up. Another is to have it be nonlethal - it just allows the party to hit him / not die instantly when he hits them. You still want the end battle to be an exciting climax.
  


• Friends Don't Let Friends Use Deus Ex Machina
  
  If your villain is way badder than the PC's could ever hope to be, don't have the solution to this be an external force, for instance - a equally superbad NPC on the side of Truth and Justice, showing up at the last minute. This takes the PC's completely out of the equation and turns what should have been a climactic battle into nothing more than a cutscene. And though you might be tempted to use said Super Awesome Good NPC to wear the villain down enough for the PC's to handle him, it still takes away from their sense of accomplishment in kicking his evil ass.
  
  Don't let anything bogart the PC's glory. That's why you're all there. Even you.
  

Remember, as DM, it's your job to run the show and thrill the people at your gaming table. It's OK to deviate from the plan a little bit -- and stack the deck slightly in favor of the PC's -- to make the story work out better in the end.

But if anyone finds our you're doing it, you kill them in their sleep.

Until next time....

<evil laughter>