Quick Start Characters

As I was watching TV this evening, I decided I need a little dungeon-crawl fix, so I brought out Neverwinter Nights. And it got me to thinking about how to develop a quick-start character for those times when you need to roll-up a character fast, especially for one-time events.

Don't Overthink It

For those one-time short campaigns, don't overthink your character. These campaigns are usually less about backstories and long-term career goals; they're more about generating a character quickly that will be fun to play. I prefer to stick to classes with which I am already familiar; familiarity with a class can reduce the amount of prep time, during both character creation and game time.

Now, I know some people like to play classes they haven't had the chance to play; they try out something new on the short campaigns to see if it's a class they might enjoy. Personally, every time I've tried this, I ended up frustrated at trying to learn new rules in a short amount of time. So if you're looking for something quick that you will enjoy without a lot of effort, don't overthink it; go with something you know.

Quick-Start Option #1

One of my favorite quick-start character options is a human fighter/cleric. Fighter L1 is a great L1 class to cherry-pick; combined with cleric levels, you will have a the fighting power and healing power to keep everyone alive early in the game. This is an easy option if you're not sure what you'll be facing or if the party is trying to fill the position of healer.

Quick-Start Option #2

Again, if you're not sure what you might be facing in a short campaign (or if you expect there might be dungeon-crawling involved), try a quick-start with L1 as a rogue. Rogues have all those great skill points to give you an early boost. You can put a couple of those skill points to use to give you a passing familiarity with locks and traps; you never know when that kind of skill might come in handy! Then, depending on your preference, you can combine your level of rogue with some spellcasting levels or some fighter-y levels.

These are just a couple of options; of course, you can just pick a class and go, without the multiclassing options. Either way you choose to go, have fun!

Three Fun Game Enhancing Things!

Being a nerd, I am constantly on the lookout for nerdy things to enhance the roleplaying experience. Or any other nerdly pursuit, for that matter.

I submit for your approval - three fun things to enhance your games or further nerd out.

Energy Drinks

Until I gave up caffeine for Lent this year, I preferred the high jolt energy drinks. I found a few that require mention. One, a personal favorite, is Bawls. It is often referenced among the first person shooter genre of nerds, however it made the leap into our gaming session about a year ago to some pretty spectacular results.

And then there's these - mana potions! Somehow I fear that those weird LARP people are going to love these for their ability to blend in to the costumes they constructed from high-quality Wal-Mart fibers.

Fun With Weapons

I tend to enjoy the aesthetic of weaponry. I will save the reveal for another time, but suffice it to say my den is well-armed versus orcs, goblins, and wargs.

Several months ago, someone turned me on to the neat foam weaponry available from ThinkGeek.com. I never did end up purchasing any, but let me tell you do they ever look cool... and my Weapon of Choice would be the sword and it seems like it would be effective at arbitrating rules "discussions".

Music

Now, I have long gotten away from playing music during my campaigns, but it used to be a mainstay during our college years. I am not an extreme fan of this particular genre, but there is a certain heady goodness that comes from the combination of repelling hippies and rocking out with Slayer or Godsmack while adventuring.

Now, some tend to go for period music or classical music while gaming, however I tend to fall in with Vanir and recommend throwing up the horns and going for a metal gaming session every once in awhile.

This was fun, plan on seeing a few more posts like this in the future!

Playing Well With Others

Last week, I shared a short list of characteristics for a good group. Included on that list was Cooperative role play; this time, I want to expand on that idea.

Character Interaction

If you're involved in a story-intensive campaign, character interaction can be vital to the flow of the story and the general roleplaying experience. I can't imagine an intro session where characters didn't talk to each other to learn more about their stories and livelihoods; sharing a round of drinks and discussing what brought you into town is a lot more satisfying (story-wise) than just giving your character's vitals.

Taken a step further, forging a bond between characters can make the story even more memorable as the characters grow together. For example, in the first half of our campaign,Tiri and Nathaniel were old friends from before the inception of the group. When something happened to one character, the other was always ready to jump to his/her defense.

Unified Front

Being able to present a unified front, whether facing allies or enemies, is a very important characteristic of a good group in a story-intensive campaign. For every group, there is usually one leader, who handles most of the NPC interactions so that the group is treated the same (for better or worse) wherever they may go. This, of course, may vary dependent on the situation or environment; even if he is the figurehead most times, the dwarf doesn't usually lead the party into the heart of the elven lands.

I believe that presenting a unified front can be one of the hardest and most essential characteristics to reduce the havoc the DM can create with NPCs. If the group is constantly bickering about who is authorized to speak, or if multiple characters are speaking with different agendas, NPCs can become confused, and the DM can create some conflict based on this confusion.

Cooperative Combat

For either the story-intensive or the hack-n-slash campaigns, a good group can fight together very well. This involves many battle elements, such as spelling up for maximum benefit, coordinating attacks, and character placement during battle. And since every encounter is different, the group has to be flexible enough to adapt. An approach that might be highly successful against hill giants may not yield the same positive results against zombies. In my experience, this is a characteristics that groups gain the longer they adventure together; it takes some time to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the group.

The Responsibility of Hosting

Every game needs to be hosted somewhere, even if it is in the mysterious tubes of the internets. But for those of us who have not yet received your brain jack implant, we usually pick somebody's house. After last week's post on dungeon management styles, I found myself looking for other similar topics and ran across an article by a rather smart man named Robert Donoghue called Utility of Manners.

There's a lot of really good stuff in that article that make me step back and think about things for a moment. For starters:

"the host often has additional authority to allow them to fulfill those responsibilities. This is non-dictatorial. With the exception of kicking people out, any authority granted to the host, such as the ability to establish a schedule, plan events and so on, is ceded to them by guests for any number of reasons. Most often it is because the guests understand that these things must happen, but they are not in a position to do so themselves."

I find this interesting because the DM might find themselves in this position one of two ways: as host of the game and as physical host of the group. I know a very large number of groups depend on the DM to do all the organizing and scheduling as well as planning and running the game.

"Sometimes guests step up and assist with these responsibilities - they clear dishes, clean up, drive people home and so on. Done right, this can greatly decrease the burden on the host, but this does not absolve the host of responsibility.

This is all opinion, so take it as that, but it is also something else: it is and explanation of what I consider the necessity of the GM.

(And as a small additional point, it is also part of the reason I object to the GM as host)"

The man's got a point. If the DM has to physically host the game, it's more for him to have to worry about than just planning the adventure.

Depending on your group (and your chosen host), getting ready for a session might take a little time or a lot. In our group, wherever we play (which could be several locations), the host generally tends to clean up the place before people show up and cleans up once everybody leaves. They get some help at the end of the night but by and large if we host at my house I spend 5-10 minutes cleaning up a mountain of soda cans and sweeping up crumbs. We order a pizza usually, which makes food prep and dish cleanup pretty easy -- but if you're the type of group that sits down to a home-cooked meal beforehand, this could get a lot more time-intensive.

If you're a DM and you feel like you have way too much to do and there's never enough time to get everything done before the session starts, this might be a good thing to look at. Talk to your group, and see if you can take some of the non-DM-specific responsibilities off your shoulders and put them on one of the five or six other pairs of shoulders in your group. Work it into your group's social contract. This will distract them so that you can more easily plan their untimely demises.

Behind the Screen: Three DM Tools I love and why...

Today I felt it necessary to trot out the magical tools of my fevered trade. Working with a co-DM, we rely heavily on online chat as an invisible communication medium between myself (who is running the session) and my co-DM (who is in charge of major plot arcs).

As a result, my wireless network is a constant allowing me to dredge the heady depths of the Internet to augment my campaign running abilities much like bionics augmented American Hero Steve Austin so many years ago.

#1. A good die roller.

I like rolling physical dice as much as the next guy, but unfortunately we play a rather close set with six of us gathered around a few card tables or a dinner table. This makes peeking at errant DM dice readily possible, and so I resort to Wizard's own online Dungeons & Dragons Dice Roller.

It is cheap (as in free), effective, and has a pretty slick interface that doesn't require a lot of clicks or typing to get the job done.

#2. A good NPC generator.

I can't count the number of times that a player in our group (usually Vanir) walks up to a random townsperson and asks what their name is. That's usually where I grunt unhappily and fire up Jamis Buck's NPC Generator 2.

It does a pretty fair job of generating a good stat block, however my only real complaint is that it doesn't generate level appropriate gear so you're stuck fudging some average gear for a given character level. It is great for the aforementioned "around town" character generation on the quick though!

#3. A good town generator.

We have been working in a large campaign that has required a lot of travel across great distances. As a result, I am often asked where the next small town is for the purposes of rest, recovery, or diversion.

For circumstances where I don't need a detailed map, I turn to MythWeaver's online town generator. Its cool because it gives you the options to select a good level of detail for the town, and then generates a population distribution as well. This makes for a bit more detail than your general population count, and guides the mind to some constructive quickie plot threads as the players interact with the scene. It has gotten me out of a pinch on more than one occasion.

The list goes on and on...

These are but a few of my staple online resources. I will continue to divest my hoard on you as time goes on, gentle reader, but for now I'd love to hear what some of your favored DM tools are if you are similarly inclined!