SR's Laws of D&D

Sorry for the absence friends... there are just some times - and the holidays is one of them - when my brain shuts down. But I'm back, and ready to entertain you into the new year!

Yax recently posted a list of those things which are inevitable. They are so true. And here's my list of additional laws:

1. The DM will unveil a significant plot hook at the end of the night when everyone has had too much sugar to have sufficient attention span to retain said important plot elements.
2. The DM will roll dice for no reason.
3. The wizard will either die early in the epic battle, or he will outlive everyone else and take down the Big Bad with a 1st Level spell.
4. When characters have money to spend, they won't be in a town with a sufficient marketplace to find what they want to buy. When they are in a town with a good marketplace, they won't have money to spend.
5. When you really need to roll well, your dice will betray you.
6. When players choose to cooperate with the DM, players will follow what they assume is the expected path; it will never be the path the DM wanted them to take.
7. The one time the party doesn't have a rogue is the one time they need one.

Behind the Screen: The Participation Gap...

I got into an interesting discussion on DMing with my brother-in-law tonight. He hasn't played D&D in third edition, so we were talking largely on principle and not on mechanics of gameplay. He is not aware of this site, so I was pleased to hear some of my same advice for running a good game come from him!

Fun and the Participation Gap

We both agreed that one of the core principles for having a good game is the simple gauge of whether or not everyone was having fun. We talked in general about this for awhile, and I got to wondering about different ways one might be able to "bust the logjam" if it seems that people in your gaming group aren't participating or aren't having fun.

I have found that most people operate on some sort of an engagement curve. They start out having a lot of fun, and taper off as the night goes on, or vice-versa. Chances are pretty good you will have varying levels of engagement within your group at any given time, however I have found that my own group tends to peter out towards the end of the night. Realizing this, I have tried to keep away from springing any major events or plot points within a certain proximity from the end of our sessions.

Everything is more fun in real life

I believe that the occasional divergence into real world participation can be an excellent thing. A physical puzzle to solve, a real-world game of Three Dragon Ante, or a game-relevant scavenger hunt can get everyone excited, talking, laughing, and engaged without much effort on your part as DM.

The only thing that you must mind when introducing an element like this into your campaign is time spent... often, real world gaming elements tend to eat up time and there is usually a falling off point when the novelty wears off and the group just wants to get back to the normal gaming.

The brother-in-law approved rule of thumb applies: if the group is having fun, you're probably OK to continue for awhile.

Behind the Screen: Giving of a slightly different flavor...

As the holidays came and went I found myself thinking periodically today about a slightly different type of giving within the realm of our roleplaying campaigns: that of roleplaying or experience rewards.

Avert your eyes, children, he could take other forms!

In our campaigns, these roleplaying rewards tend to be ad hoc denominations of experience for a variety of different reasons. I have rewarded my players for advancing the plot significantly more than I anticipated, innovative ideas to solve problems, extra in-character detail... essentially any "outside the box" approach to standard roleplaying fare. Sometimes the reward doesn't even take the form of experience... in some cases I will reward the player with a certain item that they desire, or some plot point they have been longing after.

There are some who will argue that rewards of this type erode the system-designed means of rewarding experience, character class progressions, or any random combination of theoretical arguments that nerds make when pressed into a different way of thinking about a situation. I tend to believe that roleplaying and character development based rewards help further the amount of fun there is to be had both for that player and the group in general, while at the same time making my job as DM easier since I don't have to write, engineer, and tweak a roleplaying scenario all on my own.

Its all a matter of taste

It really is at the discretion of the DM what approach to take regarding this topic, I tend to prefer liberal experience rewards and quicker character development because my players value both of these things as fun. If you have a different group that values the details or the journey of a long protracted campaign, and the delayed payoff of slower leveling, maybe this is not a good approach for your group.

I would love to hear some thoughts as to how you structure rewards for superior roleplaying or character development. What do you do in your campaigns?

Merry Christmas!

Today the StupidRanger Crew is off celebrating the holidays with their friends and family!

Merry Christmas, to those of us that celebrate that particular holiday and Happy Tuesday to everyone else!

Zen and the Art of Giving...

As we enter the holiday season, I want to take a minute to discuss the art of giving within your campaign. Many times as DMs, we have the opportunity to structure battles, fudge rolls, and generally massage things in the favor of our players. Occasionally, I like to take the opportunity to actually give my players something within the scope of the game, be it relevant to the plot or simply something they have always wanted.

Learning the appropriate relevance of gifts

If you plan to give your players something, you should do it with certain guidelines in place. If the item they are being given is relevant to the plot, you should take safeguards to ensure that this item doesn't simply pass immediately to the local merchant.

If you don't safeguard these items in some way, or make them relevant enough that the players don't desire to hock them, then you should plan some sort of a side quest to track the item down again or plan what path that item takes once it is out of the players hands. It can be a great opportunity for deep roleplaying, be it haggling with the merchant to get the item back or tracking it across country in order to divine its resting place.

Desire based gifting

If you intend to give your player that "item of affection" that they have always wanted to get hold of, you must be very careful (both in and out of game) to balance this gift against the rest of the party's possessions. If you don't provide either roleplaying opportunities or some other method of engagement for the rest of the party, this gift can appear like overt favoritism which is never a blessing for an adventuring party.

I have found that if you give the entire party a gift, they are quick to ignore the fact that Ceril the Barbarian got a nicer greataxe compared to what they got, they will likely just be happy with their present. This is generally a good opportunity to address level based inequity between different classes and generally even-up your party so everyone can effectively participate in roleplaying or direct conflict.

Narrative Elements

Much to the chagrin of a few of my more traditionalist co-DMs, I have often assumed the guise of an in-game Santa Claus or Easter Bunny in order to dispense with the merriment. Sometimes this has taken the form of a more "realistic" altruist merchant, but I prefer the little dash of whimsy that more familiar icons of gift giving can bring.

In the end, it is really up to what you want... my regular players have taken to expect a gift-giving entity surrounding the Christmas and Easter holidays, and I enjoy the Narnia-esque dash of fun that this interaction often brings.

Honestly, I have no idea if anyone else actually does this within their campaigns. Our college DM started the trend with an Easter Bunny visit one year, and I liked that encounter so much that it was just something that I continued out of the sheer fun of it.

Have a happy holiday season, everyone!