Hooray for our new Sanctuary!

Last weekend, Dante & I were thrilled to find a new local game shop! We have been without a real gaming shop since college. I had nearly forgotten the thrill of walking in, the displays of CCGs, miscellaneous sets of dice, miniatures, books.... *sigh* To enjoy that again was heavenly! Plus our new shop, Gamers' Sanctuary, has video games. Who could ask for more?

For all of us gamers, we know the significance of a game shop, how integral it can be to our everyday gamer lifestyle. But most importantly, we know that our local game shop is one of the few places we can find acceptance.

If you haven't been lately, I encourage you to visit your local sanctuary and re-acquaint yourself with the thrill of the shop.

And for those of you in Central Illinois, I encourage you to visit the Gamers' Sanctuary at 1618 Valle Vista in Pekin.

Congratuations are definitely in order!

Vanir and his lovely wife efreak welcomed their son, Samuel Enzo, into the world yesterday afternoon at 4:15 pm. Everyone is doing fine, and we want to congratulate Vanir and efreak on their new bundle of joy!

Behind the Screen: How do you keep an idiot in suspense...

All throughout our co-DM experience, we've been trying to cultivate excitement and leave our player characters wanting more. As our characters have become longer in tooth, it is becoming harder and harder to make those special suspenseful moments pay off in a meaningful way.

Often it comes down to timing...

In our campaigns, we tend to like to build up to big reveals. Unfortunately, most of our attempts to build suspense and create that "oh crap" moment end up taking place at the end of a long session when everyone is thinking about the drive home, or are floating off to dreamland at the table.

In the situations where we see this coming, sometimes we forgo the Big Neat Thing until the following session. This often works, however in times when there is a few weeks between sessions this can get diluted by our players forgetting where we were last session, or the tabletalk that inevitably drifts in after a break like that.

Pacing is an extremely important skill to learn to combat these two boundary cases:

1. Play regularly and know your audience.
   
   Knowing who has to work the following day, or who just got done with a 12 hour shift might help identifying when to launch the major plot point for the night. Playing regularly helps to cut down on the cycle of getting re acclimated to the game and keeps your plot-to-date fresh in the players minds.
   
   
2. Keep long battles to a minimum (or early in the session.)
   
   Lately much of our plot advancement has been slowed down significantly by the extra time required for battles at a high level. If your setting and plot allows, try to get major battles out of the way early in the night to get everyone engaged and leave plenty of time for the storytelling before your player's off switches start to get thrown.
   
   
3. Design a plot puzzle.
   
   Sometimes the key to building appropriate suspense is simply not having a huge plot point to hatch. I have successfully used the "plot puzzle" design, where a series of small non-events get combined in a meaningful way to lead to plot advancement. These small elements can be sprinkled in with normal character development or in between battle encounters.
   
   This also helps character engagement and development, because often the pieces of the plot puzzle don't make sense on their own. As the characters try to put the puzzle together, they may lead you into some scenes that you didn't explicitly have planned. This can be a fun diversion for everyone and give you the opportunity as DM to work on your impromptu skills.

The final (and perhaps best) way to really build suspense is to not make every last piece of your plot obvious. Often, the thrill of the unknown is enough of a driver to really make the players engage.

Speaking of... there has been some suspenseful things going on around StupidRanger Central this week, you'll just have to tune in next time for the reveal!!

The Whirling Blades of a Tempest

Continuing with our recent theme of prestige class discussions, I wanted to highlight a short, simple prestige class, the Tempest. I found this prestige class in Complete Adventurer, and it's one of my favorites because it's a simple, elegant and natural progression for a two-weapon fighter.

Here's What I Like About It

Two-weapon fighting doesn't happen by accident. If you've taken the effort to develop your fighter into a two-weapon fighter, you have put some thought into what weapons you wield. These weapons are your signature, they're part of your character.

The Tempest prestige class doesn't require a specific combination of weapons; you can use whatever two weapons you want. So this prestige class works as well for my elven thinblade/short sword combination as it would for an axe/dagger combination or a double-weapon. I like that I don't have to fit a stereotype to follow this prestige class; it's adaptable to my character.

Here's What I Love About It

The Tempest prestige class finally recognizes that your fighter is intelligent. The class features credit your character with the ability to become a more efficient fighter as you grow into proficiency with your two weapons. You gain AC bonuses, you reduce your two-weapon fighting penalties. And, my personal favorite, you gain the effects of certain feats for your secondary weapons; for example, if you have Weapon Focus for one of your weapons, you gain its abilities for your other weapon.

These class features (there are more, so read up if you're interested) demonstrate that your character is growing as a fighter throughout this process. I love that it's a natural progression of skills we might expect a two-weapon fighter to develop.

The Moral of Today's Story

Whether or not you ever take this prestige class, there is something important I want you to take from this discussion. Your prestige class should be a natural complement to your character, and any sacrifices (pre-req's) should be easily outweighed by the class benefits. Do your research and enjoy!

The Airspeed Velocity Of An Unladen Balrog

OK, maybe not. But apparently, someone out there has thought at length about how to calculate the terminal velocity of the Balrog while he was fighting Gandalf in the motion picture version of The Two Towers. (link via Monkeyfilter)

Man, there are nerds, and there are neerrrrrrrds. I wanna be this dude when I grow up. :)

Behind the Screen: Coordinating Playtesting...

I received some very interesting feedback regarding my recent post on prestige classes, so I'd like to take a further look at playtesting of new campaign elements.

My own background

In the sake of full disclosure, I have to admit that aside from a few Dungeon Master directed forays into extending or modifying existing prestige classes I haven't done a lot of class creation. What I have done, however, is take an lesson from my former DM and create very tailored magic items as thematic elements to augment the storyline of my campaign.

Usually these items have very special features that emulate some of the progession abilities found in the Weapons of Legacy sourcebook (we did not have anything of the sort back then) and involved a very precarious balance between "useful and neat" and "way overpowered" that we often struggle with as Dungeon Masters.

Thinking about the comments that were left on Friday regarding the difficulty of balancing without extensive playtesting and the very real concerns about an individual player unbalancing a party made me start thinking about my own playtesting processes (or lack thereof).

A few things I like

When I would create these weapons or items for my players, I would usually tie them to some sort of uncertain providence, or make their magical auras indistinct. Add in a splash of roleplaying with the person performing the identify (it always takes someone skilled to identify an item of this power), or some archaic notes found in a ledger alongside the item and you've got a pretty good recipe for Room To Fudge Things.

Now before the tirades start, I don't usually fudge things all that much. However, if the situation arises where the character wielding the new item is unbalanced I have an "out" for adjusting things slightly so they are not quite so overwhelming.

This is usually accompanied by an out-of-game discussion with the player and if the fix is going to remain in place. I tend to remunerate the player in some other way to keep them happy, but in general this has been a good way to tweak things on the fly.

Also, I have a general rule to adjust campaign elements slowly, and I tend to lean toward the "nothing permanent" rule. This rule simply dictates that it is best not to introduce new (DM-created) campaign elements that are permanent and can't easily be removed from circulation. For me, it is always comforting to know that you're one disjunction spell away from removing your new item problem if it happens, and people are generally a lot less upset about losing an item than they are a character.

Disjuncting a character is often messy. I wouldn't recommend that.