Behind the Screen: Memento Mori...

Memento Mori is a Latin phrase that means "Remember that you must die." It has been used since ancient times to remind people of their own mortality, and I recently ran across this discussed by the always beautful Cory Doctorow in reference to a pinhole camera made from a human skull featured on BoingBoing earlier in the week.

Mortality is an important part of your campaign.

As a Dungeon Master, I really don't like killing my players that much. It is, however, a required aspect of a good campaign... mortality should be a very dramatic thing. This could spiral off into a discussion about how balanced or unbalanced raising the dead is in D&D, but that's not what I'm after today.

Today, I want to talk about various ways to remind your players that they are mortal.

The trick is simply to kill, poison, or otherwise terrorize them.

You can use disease, curses, or even temporary death (he's only MOSTLY dead!) to reinforce that your Level 3 players are not immortal gods among men. Gravely injure them from time to time. Make them walk around with their arm off looking for someone that can restore the damage. Give them a particularly nasty poisonous creature to deal with. Kill them once in awhile, preferably in a way that they would be somewhat satisfied with (for example, no fighter wants to die by getting hit in the head with a rock after winning a battle.)

The beauty of the D&D rules is that most of these things are not permanent, unless you wish to make some special rules to make them so. Restorations and resurrections are only as common as the characters that have the skills to cast them. If used sparingly while the player characters are too young to resolve these issues themselves, you can get all of the drama from a system designed to make these devastating events temporary.

Why is this important again?

Because, quite simply, drama is what makes good campaigns. If you are dead set against giving your player characters setbacks, you can apply these rules to some NPC that becomes close to the players in some way, but they must be VERY invested roleplayers in order for this to make much of a difference.

If you spare the pain and suffering, your campaign will quickly be like playing a video game cutscene. Even if the building blows up, you know the next level hasn't loaded yet and the game isn't over, so something will happen to make the player characters be ok. If you bail them out every single time, they will start taking ridiculous risks (sometimes subconsciously) because they know you'll bail them out of it.

This takes skill and guts to pull off correctly, so best of luck to you all. Memento mori!

Connecting a Little Better to my Character

Getting lost in a character is one of the most exciting elements of roleplaying. I love to roleplay characters with whom I feel a deep connection. For that brief time when I am in-character, I want to escape reality, and this becomes much easier and more enjoyable when I am my character instead of myself. Here's are three quick, easy ways to connect:

1. A Little Self-Analysis - Review the information related to your class and race. Preview your career options. If you really were your character, you would know who you are and who you want to be. It's merely a matter of knowing yourself.

2. A Little Geography - Take a look at your campaign setting. I'm not recommending that you memorize the capitals or the location of every river in the continent. But, depending on your character, you would probably have a general idea of your surroundings. The broad strokes of the setting can help make it a little more real, and if your world is more real, your character will feel more real.

3. A Little Creative Writing - I love writing backstories for my characters. The creative process involved helps me connect on a very deep level with the character I've developed. A stray memory from childhood, a rite of passage, any little thing that helps make your character unique will help you connect to your character. On of my favorite techniques is to tell the story of how my character came into her profession; not only do you create an insight into how you came to be who you are (Level 1), you have a great reason to keep doing what you're doing (see #1).

Three little step to help me stay connected to my character, but each leaves a lot of room for personalization and adaptation to any character.

Non-Transient Adventuring?

All this talk (and effort) surrounding moving has made me think about the transient nature of adventuring. It seems that in all of our campaigns, our adventuring parties are travellers that must seek out pieces to the puzzle, explore mysterious corners of the world, or otherwise save the world.

The Reasons, they are many...

It turns out that I am fairly lazy when it comes to planning my sessions. On the occasion that I do plan, crack a sourcebook and research a setting, I find it difficult to come up with street level maps, tavern names, a local government, and the like.

This is why I stick close to impromptu world-travelling type campaigns. I only need a few key facts to make those scenarios work, and I don't get stumped by the unplanned questions that come inside of a city setting. Is there a bank? Is the mayor's wife hot? Is there a place I can research Guatemalan insanity peppers? and so on.

Aside from online tools to help flesh out this type of information, what tips do you use to plan a city-based or non-travelling campaign? Is there any thought processes that you go through to drum out some of these obvious questions, and how to do handle it when your players want to go somewhere "off-script" that you haven't accounted for?

In the past I have attempted to keep a general "city campaign ideas" notebook to capture episodes of city-based content that could be dropped in, but I tend to rope myself into a certain topology that tends to prevent me from executing these ideas. Any advice would be appreciated!