Rhetorical tropes on being a Player Character

The road from Dungeon Master to Player can seem difficult and confining. On Tuesday, I outlined a few reasons why the transition from DM to Player has been exciting for me. I readily accept that the path is more difficult for some, and today I hope I can offer a few thoughts to help those of you that find it hard to step back into adventuring shoes*.

Learning to love your small pond

Phil, The Chatty DM pointed out in his comment that after 25 years of DMing he has lost the ability to be a player. I love Phil, but I disagree with this statement: he has just become very good at being a massively multithreaded player (to steal a Computer Science term). Putting on your adventuring shoes forces you to become a single threaded player, focusing on only one character's development, storylinee, passions, and needs.

Instead of painting in broad strokes, you get to paint in fine details. It's D&D pointalism, people! To me, part of the fun of being a player is obsessing about and exploring the fine details of this character whose actions I get to guide for awhile. Learning to love those details is the path toward enjoyment of being a player again.

Get yourself a big bag of contentment (max load 50 lbs)

Just as in life, we suffer from the ability to always want what we don't have. Another key to becoming a player again is learning to be content with the pacing of the campaign and the treasure/spells/abilities/random miscellanea that you have been dealt. Feeling confined is natural when you're used to calling all of the shots. You, the person (not the character), can make the choice to be pleased with your cozy new niche or you can be frustrated by the perceived restraints as Phil so articulately phrased it.

The choice, as they say, is yours and yours alone! Make the most of it!

Special thanks go to Phil for inspiring this post, and to Mad Brew Labs for accurately guessing The Simpsons episode, "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer", that I was referencing yesterday! Thanks guys!

* Adventuring Shoes are magical shoes that appear tattered and worn and grant a +5 bonus on all Perform checks when telling adventuring stories.

How to move from DM to Player Character...

This past weekend marked our triumphant return to D&D! This time, however, our sessions are being run by the other husband and wife pair in our group which finds me in a role I haven't played for a long time: that of a player. This is how I made the adjustment!

It's not all about you... well, ok, maybe it is.

One of the lures of being a Dungeon Master is the fact that you, for better or worse, get to be the center of attention. Many people don't like playing the role of a PC after they have run the game for awhile, as the extra attention tends to feed into a very critical part of our nerdly personalities that yearn to be "The Cool Kid."

Luckily, this was not my case this time around. My co-DM and I were lamenting that we were very close to the point of burn-out by the time our last campaign ended and he was right. We took a much needed break, nearly a month, before we even considered gaming again.

Now that I'm in "player mode" it dawns on me that while you're not the center of attention as a player character, your actions tend to be a lot more relevant to the dynamics of the rest of the group. As I have reflected here in the past, the players hold a great deal of power over the DM to craft the story and change the course of events. To me, that is some pretty satisfying stuff.

The time is NOW to roleplay!

To steal a quote from one of my favorite Simpsons episodes (bonus points if you can figure out which one): "The mind is always chattering away with a thousand thoughts at once." This is the state of the Dungeon Master. When I played, I was generally more focused on servicing the needs of my players and my plot than I was on actual meaningful roleplaying. There is a lot to track in an average session, and this load is dramatically reduced when you only get to worry about one character.

This is one of the obvious, yet great things about being a player character again... you get to roleplay! Not to say I didn't do this for my NPCs, but I really like having a tangible backstory for my character and the breadth to grow his personality through his actions. I have a sense for where I want my player to progress, what is going on inside his head, and an idea of his motivations.

It could be argued that this is a function of being the DM for so long is that I've gotten good at quickly having a spec sheet on how my NPCs would act, and now I just get to execute this approach on a more grand scale. Regardless of how this cropped up, it is very satisfying to get to join Vanir on all of his crazy exploits.

Don't stress so much, you'll live longer!

The lack of direct attention and the relative simplicity of managing only one character seems to make a large difference in the amount of stress you have to manage as a player. Granted, things will still try to kill you, but you don't have to look up 7 stat blocks for monsters while Vanir is busy crafting some event that will render the last half of your session completely invalid. You get to show up, roll dice, and have fun.

The fun you get to experience as DM is a little more high pressure. As a player, kicking back and enjoying the ride is key! If you acknowledge that your focus can shift internally a bit and now you can get back to serious roleplaying for theh sake of having fun, you'll find the transition from DM to player a very satisfying journey!

Rules Grand Jury: Magic Missile v. Oscar The Grouch

A long time ago, I remember reading a strange letter to the editor in Dragon magazine asking for a rules clarification of a very personal nature -- specifically, whether a woman could regrow her hymen through the use of a ring of regeneration and, more importantly, would a unicorn then once again be so inclined as to put his head in her lap. I do not know why this article stuck with me so, probably because it is the most exposure to sex 13 year old Vanir could get at the time, but regardless it did.

Ever since then, I have always loved considering strange cases such as these. And so it is that I unveil to you, our dear readers, the next revolutionary concept in RPG blogging:

Rules Grand Jury

The concept is simple: a weird (and hopefully amusing) D&D rules question is posted, and its fate is then thrown to the wolves. And by "to the wolves", I mean everybody dogpiles on the comments section to determine what is just via trial by combat.

If you have a burning rules question troubling your sleep, please do not hesitate to email it to us so that justice may be served.

Our first case:

Magic Missile v. Oscar The Grouch

In 3.5e, the Magic Missile spell never misses its target.

Suppose one was hiding in a trash can, and had the lid barely open so one could peek outside. If a 20th level wizard 300ft away (100ft + 10ft/level) were to cast Magic Missile on this person, and the person was ready for the attack, could this person get the lid down in time before the missile struck him?

I've heard several theories as to what would happen in this case. One is that the missile would simply pass right through the trash can because it never misses. I've heard some say the trash can would take the damage. I've heard that this is impossible because the spell's duration is instantaneous. However, the spell description mentions the missile "darts forth from your fingertip", which implies to me that it does not reach its target instantly.

Personally, I'd like to think that the missile would hover over the trashcan and blast the target as soon as he opened the lid. And if there was a tunnel through the world at the bottom of the trashcan and the target were to escape, the missile would spend the rest of its days searching for its target, glowing sadly, crying 1d4+1 tears night after lonely night.

But I digress. Cry "Havoc!", and let slip the dogs of JUSTICE!

Come on in, the water is fine!

I am glad to herald the grand opening of RPGBloggers.com, which (surprisingly enough) features an aggregation of great roleplaying blogs! This was the brainchild of the guys over at CriticalHits and Phil, The Chatty DM and we were honored to be asked to join them on the maiden voyage!

For me, the best part about this endeavor is what it brings to the eyeballs of everyone that visits: great gaming content from many different vantage points. I am a regular visitor to most of the blogs that are contributing over there, so I know you're gettnig good stuff. Where this whole trip is headed, I'm not sure... but I do know that many dice will be rolled, many NPCs will be killed, and maybe, just maybe, we all might learn something from one another.

That is certainly an encouraging thought!

[ Join the SR Crew for Out of the Box Roleplaying at GenCon Indy from 9-11 am, Sunday August 17! ]