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D&D Encounters - Session 1

2010-03-18T22:10:00.001-05:00

Atora
Originally uploaded by stupidranger

Last night, I participated in D&D Encounters at Total Escape Games in Broomfield. Those of you who know me know that I'm actually pretty shy, and I don't usually game with people I don't already know. But I decided to give it a try; a half hour with strangers can't be too taxing, right?

Spoiler-Free (Mostly) Brief Overview

It was a lot of fun! Our DM was awesome and handled everything with grace and ease. We had one player who was completely new to 4E out of the six of us. Four players used pre-gen characters, two of us had rolled up original characters. We ended up with a warlock, a ranger, two monks, a psion and my hybrid invoker/avenger.

Given our party composition, combat went pretty well. We really could have used a leader to help with healing, but no one died. Only one monk fell in battle, but I managed to revive him (earning me a bit of renown). I couldn't manage to do much damage, so reviving the melee monk was probably the most effective thing I did throughout the combat!

By the end of the night, I had accumulated 12 renown points and my first renown reward. Hooray!

Trying out the Hybrid Invoker/Avenger

I decided to try out the hybrid class with an invoker / avenger. I wanted to combine the striker role with the controller role; take out the big bad, then wipe out the minions. Sounded great, and I think once I've got a few more levels, but at first level, eh, not so great. I couldn't get close to melee to invoke my oath of enmity and melee attacks. And not wanting to use my daily so early in the "day," I used my at-will invoker attack. Might have been more successful if I had managed to roll better than a two. Ugh, what a nightmare!

Regardless of how my dice betrayed me, it was a fun night, and I can't wait for next week!

Moved to Wordpress!

2009-06-01T03:37:00.001-05:00

If you come across this post, you have likely arrived after we have left this place for Wordpress. You can find us, as always, at StupidRanger.com!

Thanks!
--Dante

Regarding spam comments...

2009-05-31T03:18:00.007-05:00

I have been aware that we have had ongoing issues with a large amount of spam comments.

First off, allow me to apologize to those of you that have endured this issue for quite some time. I did not realize until recently that a number of our older posts have accumulated 30-50 spam comments. I realize that this is very annoying to those of you that have elected to receive email replies to certain posts.

I have turned on comment moderation for all posts over one week old in an effort to curtail the junk. In addition, I have gone through a few months of posts and removed many of the offending comments. I apologize if this inconveniences anyone.

Blogger has a known issue (currently still being worked on) that prevents me from deleting certain posts that contain Chinese language characters. This limits the amount of cleanup that I can efficiently perform, as does the inability to delete a large amount of comments in one go.

I will redouble my efforts to monitor the site and keep the disruption to a minimum. Later this year, we will be migrating the site over to Wordpress where we will have full control over my comment and spam monitoring system. At this time I would suspect the situation to dramatically improve.

Thank you for your patience, and thank you all for reading and taking the time to comment. If any of you have Blogger related blogs and have tried to combat this, I would welcome any advice.

-- Dante

Monster Manual 2!

2009-05-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

I was lucky enough to receive a spankin' new review copy of the Monster Manual 2! I've not had the chance to actually exercise any of the new baddies in my campaign, but after reading through the book I am very excited to do just that.

The Good Stuff

There's a lot to like in the MM2. Some very iconic critters show back up: Rust Monsters, Genasi, Barghests, and the like... all exciting to see again. There is a large 14-page section on Metallic Dragons of varying difficulty levels (something for nearly every party level) and some truly excellent artwork. There's a whole host of new additions as well, I hope to review these new monsters as I get the chance to unleash them on my unwitting players.

Speaking of excellent artwork, they've got the Dimensional Marauder which I believe made a cameo appearance in the new Star Trek movie. I'm pretty sure they reused that artwork from before, but its still pretty striking. The Marauder makes use of a new snatch-and-grab style mechanic that can teleport the player and the Marauder itself around the map, giving close combat a bit more pizazz.

Located confusingly AFTER the glossary there is a single page that has racial traits for Monster Races intended to be NPCs, or if you're really brave, Player Characters. The options provided are Bullywug, Duergar, and Kenku. My mind immediately went to what havoc Vanir could wreck as a bullywug player character, but its probably wise to not give him any ideas.

The Bad Stuff

It seems that the nerf bat has struck, sadly. Petrification seems to still exist in its normal form, however many of the death effects appear to be AWOL. This was most noticable to me when reading the section on beholders... to me a beholder isn't a beholder if it can't kill you with a Ray of Death. Can the abilities of these new beholders still kill your players? Absolutely. They just do so in a more roundabout fashion.

It seems they are taking the opportunity to elaborate on sections previously created in the original Monster Manual... seeing some omissions from the Monster Manual make their return is encouraging, but part of me was wanting for a bit more originality.

Conclusion

The Monster Manual 2 appears to be a pretty solid addition on its surface, but the proof will be in the pudding as I drop some of these monsters in place in the campaign.

For a truly excellent in-depth look at the Monster Manual, head on over to the Critical Hits review. They even take an in-depth look at the contents of the Monster Manual 2 in two excellent articles. They're worth a read!

Behind the Screen: Questions about legendary item creation...

2009-05-19T10:02:00.004-05:00

I had a good time writing last week's post on tailormade items, thanks for all of the great comments! As I was thinking about this topic further and reading through all of the insights provided on that thread, I started thinking about an underlying question.

Burning questions

At one point in the discussion, I asked whether or not it was important to have a rules set for generating weapons, armor, and items of that magnitude. Is the "outside the box" thinking that is required to create an item so suited to a player part of the creative fun that is being a DM?

So I'll turn this question over to you, gentle reader: if a set of rules existed for creating tailormade, high-power (or growing in power) magical items would you use them? Or would you still eschew these rules in favor of doing it by yourselves?

My thoughts

Honestly, it would have to be a VERY flexible rules set for me to consider using it. Often, I will see elements that I would want to have in my magical item but one little aspect of it isn't quite right... the descriptor isn't quite fitting, the drawbacks too severe (or not severe enough), the legend or lore that comes along with the item just doesn't fit with the setting or the intended character, and so on.

For me, magic item creation over a random treasure roll has to be an act of creative fun for me as a Dungeon Master. How about you?

Behind the Screen: The Legendary Chuck Item...

2009-05-14T09:35:00.001-05:00

I had a Dungeon Master in college that would handcraft a special (usually awesomely powerful) magic item for each member of the adventuring party and sprinkle them throughout the campaign. Some we found, some we didn't (and found out about it later), but they all shared some common charactaristics.

These items would be exceedingly powerful. Some had a drawbacks, but in general they would be described as legendary, unique, or spectacular. We even took to calling them "Chuck Items" in the honor of our DM himself.

Usually these items were crafted outside the normal rules system for creating magic items. They would sometimes have complex combinations of effects or very specific rituals that had to be done to activate abilities. They often had significant lore surrounding them that would unveil itself as the campaign unfolded.

An example was a bow that SR's character came across named Harvester. It had numerous colored gems inlaid in it that could be activated to do different types of elemental damage. Each time you used the colored gems, the bow was drained and it had to be recharged by killing undead. If you activated all of the gems at once, it would do an immense amount of damage. Unbeknownst to her, Chuck later told me that each time she did this there was a chance that the bow would be destroyed but it did not happen during the course of our campaign.

(If anyone is interested in the D&D 3.0 stats for this item, I am told that SR retains a copy she might be willing to share!)

Learning from the Master

I have employed this same pattern in my campaigns. The process of creating an "outside the box" awesome item tailored to your players is alluring, but I have often found that if you don't temper it with a drawback or some sort of control mechanism it can heavily unbalance your game.

Since we're quickly approaching the end of the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the beginning of my original campaign content, I am thinking more about how/if I am going to execute this process for my new campaign.

A few words of encouragement: making a tailored magical item that suits a player character is a GREAT way to heavily involve them, especially if you give the item a rich background or legend to go along with it.

The player feels special and gets that moment of sheer excitement every time their awesome toy does what it is supposed to do. To me this is essential to a satisfying D&D experience, especially for new players.

A question to those that have come before

For those of you Dungeon Masters out there: have you tried something like this yourselves? Players, have you ever received a tailor-made item? If so, did it improve your gaming experience?

Finally, if you're reading this: thanks Chuck. They just don't make D&D moments like that anymore!!

Behind the Screen: Nearing the end!

2009-05-13T10:00:00.000-05:00

First off, thanks to everyone that answered the Question of the Day that turned into the Question of the Week. I've been dealing with a heavily increased workload in real life since that posting has gone up, so we're going to exercise some of the great recommendations and get a solo campaign started up for her very soon.

The end of the module as we know it!

We're getting dangerously close to the end of Keep on the Shadowfell, and now's the time for me to start infusing some of my own details into the module to prepare my group for life outside the Keep. I've got about 10 sessions worth of material storyboarded, which is a new tool in my DM repertoire.

Essentially I've been writing out the campaign sessions in a bulleted list outlining the setting, the key players, and expected paths that the group could progress along. If the group goes "off script" I will just make some new bullets for the following session and adjust as needed.

I'm taking several notes of inspiration for this idea from the encounter structure from Keep on the Shadowfell. I really enjoy the two-page encounter style, and I'm also taking some inspiration from Phil the Chatty DM's one-page dungeon contest. Succinct representation of roleplaying ideas is a really important skill for busy dungeon masters like me!

Question of the Day: How to make a satisfying single-player campaign?

2009-05-05T08:02:00.003-05:00

Recently, StupidRanger and I have found ourselves with a bit more free time on the weekends. Last weekend she asked me whether or not I could whip up a campaign for just the two of us.

This idea lodged itself sideways in my brain... it strikes me that it could be done but I was having trouble how to logistically scope encounters for a single player. With the intent of trying this out, I've put together a few questions that might lead me to some solutions:

What plots are best suited to a single player character?
How do you scope single player battle encounters in a fulfilling way?
In this type of game, is it better to provide NPCs or downscale encounters?
For those of you that have done this before, what was the most successful aspect of the game? What was the least?

Thanks for any help you can provide! Hopefully SR and I will be underway before long!

Arcane Power: State of the Bard Address

2009-05-01T05:00:00.004-05:00

We were fortunate enough to receive a copy of the new Arcane Power sourcebook for review recently. I was particularly excited to get my hands on this, as I had recently rolled up a bard and wanted some new abilities to play with.

The new Prescient Bard build in the book sets the flavor for many of the new bardic abilities. These turn your bard into something of a short-term prophet, able to see the future and to mess with it a little to his advantage. There are a lot of really cool powers to choose from, but on occasion I feel they didn't try hard enough to engage the player's imagination and just relied on the combat mechanics. (This is one of my primary complaints with 4e in general, not just this book.) Take for instance the Horrifying Truth power, whose description reads "Your cruel pronouncement becomes truer with every strike." It deals damage, dazes the target, and stuns the target if it doesn't save. With that kind of description, I'm expecting a gypsy to hop out of my lute and rub the target's nose and say "THINNER!". Or maybe the ghost of a creepy Japanese girl to appear and proclaim the target not a pitcher, but a belly-itcher, causing him 4d8+CHA self-esteem damage.

They've added several bardic paragon paths in Arcane Power as well:

Cunning Prevaricator - basically your bard is fantastic at lying and exaggerating. Somehow this translates into making him and all his allies invisible at strategically opportune times. (As an aside, "Lying Lights" sounds to me like the name of something I would have watched on Cinemax as a teenager when my parents had gone to bed.) Later powers let him misdirect the opponent's attacks back upon himself or other enemies, presumably so the bard can ask him "why do ya keep hitting yourself?"

Euphonic Bow - The concept for this one is, in my opinion, one of the coolest things in the book. You're a bard, except your bow plays notes as you attack. The path description says something about the sound your arrows make as they hit their targets providing percussion for the song of battle, and all I can think of is Freddie Mercury singing, "out of the doorway, the bullets rip -- to the sound of the beat!" It's sort of like multiclassing your bard with an arcane archer, but without quite the range of abilities. Still neat.

Grave Caller - Apparently they have bardic assassins. Who knew? This one seemed a little out of place to me, since I guess I always imagined assassins as being quiet and not singing. Then again, I've watched enough anime in my day to know that a really talented assassin can use anything they want as a weapon, immense size and noise be damned. Either way, if you're looking to cause grief (possibly in the form of death) to one unlucky creature at a time, the deathmark ability and its associated powers are a good way to get there.

Half-Elf Emissary - Ever have one of those people in your group that tried to max their Diplomacy skill and use it as often as possible? Well, now that person's empathy and oratory ability are deadly weapons. (For, ahem, "aggressive negotiations", I would assume.) This path gets automatic points against it for only being available to half-elves. Because everyone knows dwarves and half-orcs can never, ever be charismatic and likeable. This path's powers are based largely on him being such a galactically amazing social butterfly that the number of people he can see, friends and enemies alike, make his abilities stronger. I kind of want to bludgeon myself into unconsciousness when I think about this one too hard.

Karmic Shaper - Sort of the "evolved" form of the Prescient Bard build, this path is all about squaring up karmic debts. Well, sort of. You "interpret" karma, so that means if your enemy does something bad to you, your powers make him pay for it. If one of your allies screws up, you interpret all the good times you've had together and replace his attack roll with one of your own. It's kind of like D&D My Name Is Earl, but backwards and with swords and a touch of godlike power to change fate.

Life Singer - You're a bard who comes from this place where some bad stuff happened and evil spirits cursed you with bad weather. Now, in order to combat the evil spirit (which I thusly dub "El Niño"), you become a tree-hugging pacifist hippie. Your power is that of smugness, and atop your ivory tower of morality, you grant bonuses to all your allies only if they do not attack anything. This will almost certainly set a new standard for the paragon everyone regrets picking almost immediately due to everyone hating them forever. This paragon path may ruin long-standing friendships. I worry for the future of gaming now that this is out.

A few odd complaints aside, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book if you've got a bard. The only thing I'm really disappointed in is the lack of the 3.5 book Complete Arcane's Seeker of the Song prestige class. I had my fingers crossed, and was denied.

Next time, I'll review the Sorcerer class. Spicy!

D&D Test Drive

2009-04-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

WotC has created a set of test drive tools for 4E, giving everyone an opportunity to try the new edition for free. The Test Drive site includes Quick Start Rules, the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the Character Builder.

The Test Drive Basics

If you're new to 4E or to D&D in general, this set of tools was designed for you. The Quick Start guide is designed to give you the rules you need to play the module, including some pre-gen characters. Though since the Character Builder is included and will let you create characters level 1 to 3, you don't have to use the pre-gens.

As a player currently in the middle of the Keep, and I can say that the module is pretty entertaining. Who doesn't love a dungeon that starts with goblins?

The Character Builder is pretty easy to use. It may take a while to install, but in the end, for those who want to quickly put together a character, it walks you through all the steps. It includes character options from the PHB, PHB2, Monster Manual, DMG, Forgotten Realms guides, as well as several other sources. Based on your choices, it will fill out your character sheet and provide you with power cards to print for your character.

The Quick Start Rules documents contains 15 pages of rules and guidelines, followed by 12 pages of pre-generated characters. The Quick Start rules provide a lot of good basics, including descriptions of what happens in combat.

Even if you have been playing 4E for awhile, I like the Quick Start guide as a small reference guide. It's got a lot of pages from the PHB that come in handy, like the conditions and combat actions.

Behind the Screen: The Joys of New Experiences!

2009-04-28T09:25:00.003-05:00

At long last I emerge from my programming cave to post again! Special thanks go out to Stupid Ranger for pulling some of my weight the past few weeks while I work through a particularly thorny set of work responsibilities!

Learning by Doing

As those of you that follow us regularly may remember, we are experiencing 4th edition via the excellent Keep on the Shadowfell module. This experience has been heightened by the addition of the PHB2, which we reviewed thoroughly last month. During this process, this module has provided a buffet of 4e goodness.

It is interesting to behold the group dynamics that take place when different aspects of the adventure present themselves. Two weeks ago, our group found a secret door that led them into an adjacent room with an illusory wall. The rogue in our group got his moment to shine as he found the secret door, checked it for traps and led the group through into that portion of the module. The player of said rogue had a giant grin on his face the whole time.

In that same section, Stupid Ranger's character used Tenser's Floating Disk to bypass some terror runes that were carelessly strewn throughout that portion of the dungeon. I've not read all the errata surrounding the disk, but I decided to allow them to step over it to avoid the trap since it was an interesting use of that ritual. She was very pleased about this.

The group ran into their first encounter with a time-resetting trap that spewed skeletons, which was mildly annoying but they quickly dispatched their foes and pressed on into the dungeon without their coveted five minute rest to solve that encounter handily.

Finally, I got my moment of learning and enjoyment out of a negotiation style challenge with what could have potentially been a game-ending encounter with a fallen knight. I found this challenge mechanism incredibly fun to play and very engaging for the players as well, so I count this as a success.

Shared enjoyment for all!

So what's the point of listing these various encounters? Mostly, I want to illustrate the variety of good stuff to be had in Keep on the Shadowfell thus far and I also want to point out the "shining moments" of our last few sessions so you might incorporate some of the same aspects into your games.

Because I haven't played in groups with very many rogues, I was slightly surprised by the visceral joy to be had by the player of our rogue when he found that secret door. Stupid Ranger got her classic "I really showed you, DM!" smile going when she dreamt up riding that disk a short distance to avoid the terror runes. Even I got a moment of happiness to try a different style of encounter in that negotiation (and I think our group enjoyed it as well!)

So get out there and try some new things throughout the course of your normal campaign. If you're stuck in the same "find enemies/kill enemies/loot treasure" cycle it pays to break it once in awhile with a new experience.

Review of 4E Power Cards

2009-04-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

For my birthday last month, Vanir and his wonderful wife, efreak, gave me a set of 4E Power Cards for my Wizard. I had been using a some handmade cards for both my wizard and my bard, but writing out the power descriptions on note cards every level was a bit tedious.

The Cards

The set comes with 100 cards, including all the powers in the PHB plus a handful of blank cards to customize. They are color-coordinated to match the book: Daily powers have a gray border, At-Wills are green, Encounters are red. Utilities powers have a blue border with a checkbox indicating if it is a Daily, Encounter or At-Will power.

The flavor text is across the top, the keywords are just blow that, then all the details. The class is listed on the very bottom of the card and on the back, so if you are running multiple characters, you can easily tell which powers belong to which characters. The cards are easy to read and include all the details you need without having to flip through the book. They are coated, so they have a pretty durable feeling to them.

My One Regret

The coating on the cards prevents pencil marks. To really make these versatile, it helps to have your attack and damage stats already included on the power card so you don't have to figure them out every time.

To combat this deficiency, I grabbed my tape. By adding a couple of strips of tape to the bottom of the card, I could add my stats in pencil. I also added notes on bonuses that contributed to my numbers. I made sure to leave a tab on each strip so I could remove the tape later if necessary. This is what my Flaming Sphere power card looks like:

You can see a close-up of my tape additions here.

Thanks to Martin from Gnome Stew, I have also confirmed that the power cards will fit in Magic-sized sleeves. This can give an extra level of protection to your power cards, and you could use tape strips on the protector instead of the card itself.

Overall

I have found that I cannot stay sane during combat without my hand-made cards. These new power cards are really nice and a great time-saver. At about $10 per class, they are a reasonably-priced addition to your gaming bag for your PHB classes.

New Player's Handbook Heroes Minis

2009-04-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

Martial Heroes 1
Originally uploaded by stupidranger

Dante & I received some of the new Player's Handbook Heroes minis this week. There are six total packs, and we got four to enjoy: Martial (1), Arcane (1), Divine & Primal.

What I Like

Each pack has three minis, and one is a female; it's great to have some feminine representation in the new minis. And they are mostly dressed sensibly, which is a bonus.
The Arcane set has a bard. It's been really hard tracking down a bard mini.
Each mini has a unique power card, giving you a great opportunity to jazz up your character.

What I Don't Like

The minis are obviously mass-produced; not all of the painting is clean and neat.
While I appreciate they are trying for some variety, some of the race/class combinations don't really seem to fit: Dragonborn Rogue wasn't high on my list of character options... I like my rogues a little more unnoticeable.
I realize there aren't a lot of Divine or Primal options, but seems to me like they could have put in a third class instead of have two Clerics or two Barbarians. They could have had an Avenger for the Divine pack and a Shaman or a Warden for the Primal pack, which would have eliminated the duplicates.

Overall

The Arcane set is currently high on my list since it has the Female Eladrin Wizard. Now I can use that for Eaerenel instead of the Male Human Wizard mini I've been using. And even though the Bard is a male, I'm probably going to use that Half-Elf mini, which will be significantly better than the Dwarf Fighter I've been using. I'm very happy to have minis that mostly represent my characters.

Adding Some Color to the Tavern

2009-04-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

It's a classic staple of D&D adventuring. The Tavern. Whether it's just a stopping place for the night or a stepping stone in your quest to save (or destroy) the world, it's one of the first places you look for once you get back to town. The second, of course, being the merchant, 'cuz saving the world doesn't always pay well unless you sell your fallen opponents' stuff.

The tavern is a great place for the roleplayers to interact with the other people in the environment; there's always someone at the tavern willing to chat with a group of adventurers. Sometimes, he's very obviously giving you information to begin/continue your quest. But sometimes, he's just local color.

For those of you looking to interject a little bit of color to your taverns, whether they are home-brew breweries or established drinking establishments, Alric over at The RPG Athenaeum posted a great list of 100 subjects that might be overheard in a tavern. This is a great list, and it's a handy DM resource to keep the tavern environment light and entertaining, especially for your roleplayers.

If you're looking for a new tavern-based ways to begin your adventure, Nicholas over at DungeonMastering.com shared a few ideas. After all, the tavern is the best place to start a campaign. There are some good ideas here that give you an alternative to the general "you're sitting at the bar... introduce yourselves" kind of tavern-based start.

If you're looking for more ideas, there are a couple of fun articles published in the Open Game Table that have some fun ideas to add flair to your tavern.

Google & Campaign Communication

2009-04-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Our current gaming group has been meeting about every other week. To maintain communication with our group members, we're using a handful of Google products.

Scheduling with a Google Calendar -- We have a calendar for our group on which we mark the next scheduled session. It's working fairly well for us.

Email Communication with a Google Group -- We created a Google Group and included everyone's email, so with one quick address, everyone is included in the email communications.

Campaign Notes with a Google Site -- Thanks to a post from a fellow blogger a few months back, I discovered how easy and how useful Google Sites can be when keeping track of campaign information. We have a page with the group calendar, as well as a page set up with a list of PCs and NPCs (perfect for keeping track of that one guy whose name you can't remember). One of the best features of our site is our Files & Journals page, where we keep in-character journals (many are linked Google Docs), our session notes file that everyone can update, and a party fund file where we keep track of the loot we've accumulated.

With a smallish group (five of us total), it isn't usually too hard to keep everyone informed, but these tools have certainly made it easy.

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire

2009-04-13T08:00:00.003-05:00

Dante & I watched the premier of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire last Thursday. I had high hopes for this show based on the commercials and the preview from ComedyCentral.com. And my expectations were more than met.

ONLY VERY MINOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

The opening is classic: we are introduced to the group in... a tavern! Kröd needs to get the keys to the dungeon to rescue his mentor, General Arcadius. And the adventure begins. The good guys strive to overthrown the bad guys. The bad guys randomly kill people that get in their way. And periodically, Kröd's sword is enveloped in flames.

There were moments while watching this that reminded me so vividly of fond memories of old campaigns. The crazy plots to break someone out of prison. The random NPCs who help out along the way. The occasional (usually accidental) shooting of a party member with a light crossbow. The overwhelming revelation that your party will have to save the world as foretold by the prophecy.

But if I could make one change... I would change the character of Aneka a little bit. In my opinion, she's a little too much. I feel that she's a bit too in touch with her sensual side. I think it's great to have an female character who isn't a damsel in distress, but her habit of having relations every man she encounters is a little too much. I'm sure there are some out there who will disagree with me, but if you take a look back at what I said, you'll see I started with "in my opinion." :)

So far, it's a very entertaining adventure, and I will be watching again next week. Because the best part of an adventure is continuing it next week.

The Great PDF Screw-up...

2009-04-10T09:17:00.000-05:00

This week WotC announced that it has decided to suspend sales of their PDF offerings. It has taken me a few days to formulate my thoughts on this matter, so here we go. Honestly, it's this post from Critical Hits that finally got me off my duff to write this down.

Before I diverge from common opinion...

I agree with the common consensus. Shutting down PDF sales from external sources isn't a cool thing to do with almost no notice. What you're seeing likely indicates the beginning of WotC providing official PDFs via their site, which I suppose is their perogative.

I'll get the obvious stuff out of the way: a DRM protected solution is not the right path. Taking away choice from the consumer is bad. Leaving the consumer without an option to legally purchase something that they know is available doesn't really lead to additional sales in my mind.

And here's where I get angry letters from the public.

All that stuff aside, I don't care. I was scarcely aware that legal copies of the WotC books even existed, and to be quite frank I'm not about to pay anyone for the pleasure of a digital copy of a book that I already own. I've never looked for them to buy because I haven't ever wanted them.

I MUCH prefer to use actual physical books in my campaigns. If I only need one or two things from a book I tend to "wing it" anyway and make up what I need along the way. The only downside is having to haul the books around, but these days I can make it by with just the core rulebooks in tow.

Now I appreciate why others love having the digital copies. I might even use them if they were provided in some fashion for free with purchase of my physical rulebooks. I might be willing to pay a small amount if I got some other benefit from paying... like with a DDI subscription as Dave suggests.

I also agree with him on this point: free is definitely better and would repair this PR catastrophe. This also makes it pretty official: A LOT has gone wrong with the 4e rollout.

I await your flamethrowers!

Goodbye, Dave Arneson.

2009-04-09T02:10:00.003-05:00

Our hobby had two kings and now they are both at rest: sadly, word reaches us tonight that Professor Dave Arneson has passed away.

Dave Arneson was the quiet force behind this hobby that we love so much and we are sad to hear of his passing. What amazed me about Dave was how approachable he was, in recent years sitting dutifully at his booth selling the newest incarnation of Blackmoor. As I mentioned yesterday, it was one of the highlights of my nerd-life to meet him each of the last two years at GenCon. He was always talkative and friendly, willing to trade a story or two about his many gaming experiences.

You will be sorely missed, Professor Arneson. I hope that all of the love and respect that was poured out onto the Internet eased your pain in your final hours. Our hobby will not be the same without you!

Thank you to Dave's family for providing information on these developments over the past few days, our thoughts and prayers remain with you during this difficult time.

Funeral plans are being arranged, and letters and cards can still be sent to:
Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105

Score one for positive energy! Dave Arneson is still with us!

2009-04-08T00:04:00.005-05:00

Thanks once again to the RPGnet forums and RPG Blog II, we receive some positive news regarding Dave Arneson's health:

From the Arneson family:
As of this writing, Dave is still with us. We have moved him into a facility where we can focus on keeping him comfortable. We have been and will continue to watch the forums and blogs and are passing along everyone's thoughts and prayers. Right now our focus is on getting Dave into the best possible position to maintain his comfort and his dignity. We will update the community as we can. We want to thank everyone for your thoughts and prayers and ask that you continue to send Dave your support in whatever form that means to you.

An address has been established to receive messages to Dave.

Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105

I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Arneson two years ago at GenCon quite by accident. I had wandered into Crazy Igor's booth to ask about the providence of my OD&D books and Mrs. Igor pointed Dave out to me. He was kind enough to sign my books and chat with SR and I about this very website. It was an honor to meet a gaming legend like him.

He, along with Gary Gygax, created this playground for us all to play in and I highly recommend taking a few minutes to let Dave know how his contributions have positively affected your life.

Dave, glad you're still with us and thanks for everything! You've given us a hobby that has brought us many friends over the years and there's no way to thank you enough for that!

New FLGS

2009-04-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

A new FLGS opened close by our house a few weeks ago, and I'm very happy to have found another store to browse.

Total Escape Games has a great selection of games. They have board games for family game nights, as well as the rudiments of our hobby, and they have a good selection of RPG books, dice, dice bags and other miscellanea. Plus there are tables in the back for games, and a small private room.

Steven Higgins, the owner, has done a great job of making it a bright, friendly environment. I was instantly comfortable the moment I walked in the store the first time... none of that awkward "girl out of place in a game store" feeling.

So for those of you in the Broomfield area, if you haven't been already, I recommend checking out Total Escape Games.

Urgent News - Dave Arneson hospitalized

2009-04-05T22:16:00.004-05:00

According to this forum and RPG Blog II, Professor Dave Arneson's cancer has unexpectedly worsened this week and he is now hospitalized.

David's cancer has unexpectedly worsened just this week, to the point that he is in the hospital. He is heavily sedated and not doing well. He is not expected to live for more than a couple days, if that long.

Dave's family is asking for peace and quiet in this difficult time and that no attempts for further contact be made, nor any gifts sent at this time. As you can see the prognosis is not good, however our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Arneson and his loved ones.

If ever there was a time to fire off some good thoughts, it is now!

Difficulty as an Artform is Dead

2009-04-01T00:01:00.003-05:00

You know the problem with the kids these days? They don't know what difficult is! Back when I was a kid playing videogames, and some of you were probably teenagers playing videogames, probably some of you were even 20-somethings playing videogames (what the hell was wrong with you back then?), good god is this sentence long enough for you yet? Anyway, back when I was a kid playing videogames, we had games that were insanely difficult yet somehow still incredibly fun. Some of the best examples are games like Ghosts'n'Goblins, Battletoads, Contra, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninja Gaiden, Metroid, and of course one of my all-time favorites...Mega Man!

Back in July of 2008 I was practically floored by the announcement that Capcom was putting out a new Mega Man game, most importantly that they were calling it Mega Man 9 and it was going to use the same graphics as the original NES games. I was really excited by the prospect of a new retro-Mega Man game that would perfectly recreate the feelings I had when I was younger but with totally new content. The game was released in September 2008 as a download for the Wii, X-Box 360, and the PS3 and has since gotten numerous excellent reviews and been nominated for several awards including 'Best WiiWare Game' and 'Best Platforming Game'. I think all of that is complete, and utter, bull shit.

Admittedly I did not play Mega Man 9 for very long, the first level alone was enough to make me want to kill babies. I read some reviews that praised its retro look and claimed it was every bit as difficult as the original games, these are damned lies. The game may be "as difficult" as the old games, but it's not the right kind of difficulty. I'm sure some of you are thinking it, and believe me I cringed at the very hint of it, that I have simply gotten rusty and that this game was punishing me like a pimply freshman in gym class. Nay, I say to you, that is not the case.

My wife, angelic messenger that she is, has purchased for me a great number of gaming fineries in our time together. Possibly the best of which was the port of Mega Man X (the first one for the Super Nintendo) for the PSP, titled Maverick Hunter X, which is almost an exact recreation of the SNES game. Let me tell you, I may have been able to play the guitar or the recorder in middle school at some point but those skills might as well be gone to some cave in north korea, however when I found myself at the helm of the blue bomber on the PSP, the muscle-memory had only been sharpened with age like the razor sharp edge of an sharp executioner's sharp axe. Possibly even as much so as a picture of said witty executioner printed from a Sharp printer, covered in vicious razor blades!

Suffice to say, my skills had not dulled, so something had to be wrong with the game. What I ended up pondering was the difference between a game that's artfully difficult and a game that is simply painfully difficult. An excellent example of artful difficulty is the classic disappearing block timing puzzles that appeared predominately in the first two Mega Man games. When you entered the room you were initially shocked by seemingly random blocks appearing and disappearing in mid-air with some super sweet sound effects accompanying them, but after a few moments you began to notice the pattern of jumping that the blocks were spelling out to you. As you progressed, you no doubt fell a couple of times, but you knew the secret to the puzzle and with a little bit of time and determination you could get passed it relatively easily.

In contrast, an example of painful difficulty is when something is just plain hard and there is no real secret to figuring it out. You can spend five minutes trying it or three hours and it's still just as hard. Mega Man 9 is pretty much infected with this kind of difficulty, right from the very beginning you can see a certain lack of polish that the other games had is missing from this one. I even played the game a couple of times, spread out over a few months each time, to see if my opinion changed and it hasn't so far. I'll probably go back and try to play it again, this time trying really hard to not suck and die a thousand times over.

I actually feel that many of the classic NES games I listed above dance precariously close to the edge between these two types of difficulty. Contra, BattleToads, TMNT, and Ghosts'n'Goblins in particular are all exceedingly hard and can pretty quickly become less fun than they are painful. Ninja Gaiden, Metroid, and Mega Man all top my list as well balanced games that provide challenge while still remaining quite fun. Then again, I could just be a pansy...

Excerpts from Insanity: Day Two...

2009-03-25T22:46:00.002-05:00

Tonight was the finale of our all-bard D&D session. We were graced by many hilarious events, which included a drop-in by Dave The Game from Critical Hits. Skype is a wonderful thing, and I really appreciated Dave stopping in!

Below you will find a continuation of my tweet-stream from yesterday. WARNING: OFFENSIVE CONTENT BELOW.

Golden Harvest Music Festival: The Saga Continues

OK, we have started D&D Round 2 of our game. They wake up, eat "bacon and funnel cake" and are now fighting a flaming hippy. Yes, really.

The other hippies have now lit on fire. Our two bards have vowed to never play this festival again.

The burning hippies now smell like burning hair and feet.

Still fighting burning hippies, which have now been reduced to burning skeletons.

The hippy knapsacks hold three small bags of acrid looking weed, 120 gp, some cloaks, and a picture of someone who looks like @DaveTheGame.

@geeksdreamgirl is beating @stupidranger in the "Most Enemies Killed" contest. They're arguing about this now, just like Goliaths should.

This is the only time in history where calling your wife a Goliath isn't going to result in multiple spiral fractures of your skeleton.

"That's a pretty lame talent. My talent is kicking ass." --@geeksdreamgirl

The original talent was @stupidranger 's belching.

We are now taking a campaign break in order to have Spring Funfetti Cake. Mmm... cake. The girls are calling it "+5 cakefetti of funness"

@geeksdreamgirl is graphically explaining to me a penis cake pan that a friend of hers had. Seasonal penis cakes, at that.

Now they're trying to find @DaveTheGame in this crowd. Why must they latch on to this useless bit of flavor? Now I have to roleplay Dave.

I have cast @DaveTheGame as the hippy's drug dealer, and the girls just said "we should tell him his weed is giving people flaming boners."

Also, in case anyone is curious: @DaveTheGame is apparently the hunkiest man in the RPG Blogosphere.

Now we're discussing the other men in the RPG Blogosphere. Apparently its good to be Yax.

"We got tingly britches looking @DaveTheGame " -@geeksdreamgirl

@DaveTheGame just joined us via Skype

Referring to the food vendor: "Were you all over his bacon?" @stupidranger: "No, I was just in it for the funnel."

"Is this bacon funnel cake vegetarian?" -@DaveTheGame

Now they are discussing the new information provided by @DaveTheGame. I think they're going to try to Diplomacy some other NPC into bed.

They've decided to name their group "The Horny Bitches".

They want you all to know that their bards play horns. And they are bitches.

@stupidranger : "We're going to share a teabag."

Oh good, now they're re-enacting the iocaine powder scene of Princess Bride over their cups of tea.

Cassini is almost dead, so hopefully we'll return to our scheduled session soon.

They've sweet-talked their way on stage with their nemesis's big show tonight. Little do they know its going to be crazy. Mwhahaha.

"I love my horn, but I don't spoon it at night." That one was a joint effort between both @stupidranger and @geeksdreamgirl.

They're grilling Jekk's wife, who tells them a sordid tale about some elders that commissioned him for the show and didn't show up to watch.

Now they're finally connecting some of the plot dots, I love it when a plan comes together!

Now they're proposing offering him a lesbian threesome in order to lure Jekk into a position where they can steal his magic lute.

My mistake, it would be a foursome because they aim to include Jekk's wife. Fantastic.

Oh good, now they're coming up with a more reasonable plan. That's good.

Jekk just unleashed a void full of demons, to cleanse and punish the chaotic crowd as he was instructed to do.

Now @geeksdreamgirl is aiming to destroy the magical lute that is holding the rift open.

One of the roadies is throwing in to help them fight the Big Bads

They're having a discussion about Bobo the Invisible One-Eyed Bear and how @geekdreamgirl 's character should love him during the battle.

Woooo! @stupidranger just critted him in his face!

They have won the day and destroyed the evil bard/galeb duhr in disguise!

And they destroyed the lute, sucking all of the bad demons back to the plane from whence they came!

*cue victory music and roll credits*

Excerpts from Insanity...

2009-03-24T23:32:00.005-05:00

We began our short "for fun" campaign tonight, and e from Geek's Dream Girl and Stupid Ranger did not disappoint. Since we don't have a Twitter appliance installed yet, I would like to share some of the excerpts from our first night of adventure.

The Background

We have Toccata and Fugue, twin Goliath sisters. They are bards, play trumpets, and have multiclassed themselves as silly as possible at 5th level. They are ultra-competitive, which only adds to the relative insanity.

The campaign takes place at a remote Woodstock-like music festival, where a major act is headlining and the throngs of people that have shown up are drunk and in a party mood.

The following excerpts are from my Twitter, in chronological order for readability's sake.

The Tweets

WARNING: Some content may be inappropriate. You have been warned.

"OK, we've got two Goliath Bards that were orphans raised by dwarves. One can summon a spirit bear with one eye named Bobo. What next?"

"We're both big, so we need big... implements." -e

"And I keep my holy symbol of Moradin between my tits." -e

"The dwarves, they may not have the length but they certainly have the girth." -e

"Dwarven girls can handle the girth, but just can't stand the length" -e

"Do I hear screams of excitement, or ...... excitement? -stupidranger

And now we're discussing breast augmentation creams and now they would work in D&D.

"Barf is more potent than beer because it has stomach acid." -e

Now I'm being asked the average penis length for a half-elf. Anyone know?

Now we're fighting some ghouls. They're mocking the ghoul's bandana.

Thank God, this session is over for the night. Time to replenish material and rest my weary psyche.

A Cautionary Tale? Hardly!

As you can see, we had some fun. Despite all of the roleplay time, the two of them made it a fair way through my prepared content so I feel like it was a rousing success! As you can see, not much effort was made to constrain their desire to roleplay and be as crazy, and we still managed to progress the plot.

I think it was a pretty good attempt at a campaign in the style I discussed yesterday, I highly recommend you give this type of not-too-serious campaigning a try!

The Steaming Power of Irreverence...

2009-03-23T22:16:00.003-05:00

This week, StupidRanger Central West is hosting the one, the only e. from Geek's Dream Girl! She's here to work with Stupid Ranger on their upcoming book project, but in their "off hours" we are going to play a week-long irreverent campaign featuring bards. Two of them. Goliaths, in fact.

How to play in an irreverent campaign

Judging from the loud laughing and excited talking from the other room, this campaign is going to be a treat. I've already been interrupted once to be asked if they can have a ornery goat as a pet, and they're talking about playing their characters as mentally disturbed.

It looks like this campaign is going to be none-too-serious!

Here's some tips for DMing a campaign of this calibre:

Create exceeding amounts of local color.

Characters, the city or venue they are in, even ridiculous buildings or rituals can provide a good backdrop when players want to have fun.
Let them be a little unbalanced.

I decided to let the two of them select a few magic items that they would like to have, and level up to 5th level. Reasons are twofold: people focus on roleplaying more when they're not fretting over having a 3rd level songblade, and I hate lower level campaigning! Fighting wolves or goblins can only go on for so long, this lets me throw some things that are fun for me at them. Hey, even the DM is entitled to have a little fun too!
Keep it fun, stupid!

The whole point of an irreverent campaign is to have a good time. Throw ridiculous events or circumstances at the players, present them with a rich opportunity for roleplay and some combat.

The general rule of thumb is:
If everyone is laughing and having a good time, you're doing it right!

I'm off to research if they make chastity belts large enough for Goliaths now! More on these strange events tomorrow!

Open Game Table Review

2009-03-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Monday marks the release of the Open Game Table Anthology. As an assistant editor on this project, I have had the great opportunity to read this collection, and there's a lot of good in here!

Jonathan from The Core Mechanic organized this project. Here's a brief description of the book that he posted earlier this week:

Open Game Table aims to bridge the gap between the RPG blogging community and the broader table-top gaming fan base by showcasing the best talent in the RPG blogosphere. Within its pages are 47 blog posts from 32 top-quality RPG blogs, plus a Foreword written by RPG luminary Wolfgang Baur. Packed with juicy content and over 60 illustrations, this book is Pure Gold.

He's absolutely right; this book is Pure Gold. It doesn't matter if you're a player or a GM, there's plenty in here to enjoy.

For the GMs

There's great stuff in here for you GMs out there. From techniques to maximize your prep time to ideas for encounters or NPCs, there's a little bit of everything. There are several great articles on managing your game play and timing. There are a couple of articles with some great ideas on jazzing up your tavern scenes. There are some great ideas on developing your campaign setting. And a whole chapter we call the RPG Toolbox, with great ideas and products to improve your gameplay.

For the Players

I found a lot to love as a player in this book. There are a couple of really good articles on improving your game experience. There are also some great articles on character development, including some new class options for the 4E players out there. Plus, there are several articles written for both players and GMs, with advice for both sides of the screen.

As an anthology, I feel that this is a good mix of various elements. It's a must-have for anyone who loves RPGs... you won't regret adding it to your bookshelf!

The Open Game Table will be available for sale on Monday at Amazon, Indie Press Revolution and the Lulu Marketplace. You can also check out The Core Mechanic for more information.

Review: Blue Dragon Plus (Nintendo DS)

2009-03-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

We here at Stupid Ranger were recently fortunate enough to recieve a review copy of a brand spankin' new DS game! And then I got busy at work and my kid got sick and then two weeks later I realize oh noes I have not done my review yet! Vanir sorry. Please excuse me while I rectify this situation.

Blue Dragon Plus is the direct sequel to Blue Dragon, a game that came out here in the States in late 2007 on the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, I'd never played Blue Dragon before, and it would have been a big help. Blue Dragon Plus plops you down right in the middle of things from the very start. You get a vague paragraph as each character appears about what they did in the previous game, but it's all to the effect of "helped out to defeat Nene". I felt like I was supposed to know more than I did to get what was happening, and that if I had played the original I would be perfectly comfortable.

The game's visuals didn't appeal to me much at first. Not that they looked terrible, far from it. The style in which the characters were drawn seemed somewhat kiddy, which put me off at first. (Which is weird for me, considering how many cartoons I watch.) I got the same impression at first from some of the characters, most notably Marumaro. I think maybe I was expecting something else.

The screenshots I'd seen made this look like a turn-based strategy game like Final Fantasy Tactics. It was a bit jarring at first when I discovered everything worked like that, but in realtime. I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to keep track of my characters and make them move sensibly.

Admittedly, it took some willpower to get me through those first few minutes. And here's my advice about Blue Dragon Plus: don't give up on it too easily!

A few battles later, I'd discovered the buttons that select all your characters and figured out how to work the camera. There's also a very helpful map on your top screen if you can't find one of your guys. The game isn't so much big on overt tutorials (the ones it does give are a little confusing), but what it is good at is putting you in situations where you learn the skills you need as you go. For instance, I got tossed into a really fun battle where four robots with different strengths and weaknesses attack all at once, and that helped me learn the individual capabilities of my party members.

I was very pleased to see that there are things to do on the battlefield besides beat people up. There are things on the battlefield to interact with that get used either in combat or as puzzles. For instance, I had to move one of my characters to a lever that controlled the flow of steam from a pipe, and then use my other characters to goad a bad guy into the steam to disable him. I really enjoyed that, it sets this game apart in my mind from your standard FIGHT MAGIC HEAL dynamic used in so many RPGs over the years.

The story also started getting better as I got through the game a little. I personally have trouble giving a crap about a story unless I get invested in the characters. Let's just say until my robot friend is turned back from the dark side and we're playing awesome robo-baseball back at the castle, I won't be putting this game down anytime soon.

VISUALS: 7/10
As I said before, the characters seem a little kiddy at first but you get used to them fast. Most everything is 2d sprites on top of 3d backgrounds, which works really well on the DS. I've hated this before on larger screens because it looks weird, but smaller it seems to blend well. Nothing blew my socks off but it's a good looking game. (And if you're into cutscenes, this game will NOT disappoint you.)

MUSIC: 8/10
It's Nobuo Uematsu. Of course the music is good. Prepare for it to be stuck firmly in your head.

GAMEPLAY: 8/10
High learning curve at first, almost frustrating enough to make me quit. Glad I didn't! Non-combat objectives make me very happy.

STORY: 7/10
Admittedly, I'm not all the way through the game yet. But it's keeping my interest, and the aforementioned non-combat objectives during battle help drive the story home for me.

OVERALL: 7/10
Yeah, I know the scores don't average. It's my review, I can do it however I want!
Basically what we have here is a good RPG that I'm a bit worried people are going to overlook. I wouldn't wait in line out in front of Gamestop all night to pick this one up, but would I like to have this with me at the airport for 2d4 hours in between crappy airline snacks and flight delays? You bet.

Here's a little widget with some Blue Dragon Plus stuff on it if you'd like to learn more about the game. Of special interest is the "Characters" button, which would have saved me from all sorts of confusion at the beginning.

PHB2 Release Day is upon us!!

2009-03-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

Today is the big day! In addition to being my birthday (woot!), it is the auspicious release day for the Player's Handbook 2! Today, I'm going to outline my favorite parts.

Favorite Race: Goliath

As I mentioned Saturday, I really like the Goliath. Not a popular pick, I know... but their strong, competitive, daring nature really paints a picture of an authentic natural addition to the D&D racial fold. These guys (and gals) exude the confidence that only those bred for a fighting lifestyle possess. There's a lot to like about this class, their Stone's Endurance (basically, stoneskin) racial ability is great.

I am very impressed with the color and detail provided within the pages of the Races section of the PHB2. The authors did an excellent job of painting a very clear portrait of each class, as well as selecting compelling racial abilities that make for some exciting character choices.

Favorite Racial Paragon Path: Scion of Arkhosia

As part of the process of reviewing the PHB2, I rolled up a Dragonborn Sorcerer named Ash (original name, I know). I hadn't really explored the Dragonborn race prior to this, however my interest was buoyed by the Scion of Arkhosia racial paragon path.

The neat thing about this paragon path is it lets you improve the areas of your Dragonborn heritage that were fixed when you entered the larger world. Over time, your dragon breath becomes a powerful area of effect attack, and later gains the ability to cling to your enemies and consume them. The coolest path feature is Dragon Wings. That's right... you gain the ability to fly equal to your speed as a movement action. Thankfully, the wings are only strong enough for one movement worth of flight... I can tell you from experience that extended flight is disruptive.

Favorite Class: Bard!

I'm not just saying this because it made Stupid Ranger the happiest girl on the block, I truly like the changes they've made to the bard. They're funcitonal, powerful, and truly fill the Leader role that they deserve.

The addition of songblades and other bardic instruments really add some interest. As I was reading through the Bard chapter, all I could think about was reincarnations of Bat Loaf running around singing Slayer's Song to inspire his allies to greater rock while he layed down significant amounts of pwnage.

So go get it already!

I was excited about this book before I got the opportunity to preview it, and if I hadn't been afforded this rare opportunity I would be at Border's tomorrow buying one. If you're still sitting on the fence, check out the additional coverage at our RPGBlogger pals: Atomic Array, Game Cryer, Gnome Stew, Critical Hits, Campaign Mastery, Uncle Bear, Critical Ankle Bites, Kobold Quarterly, The Core Mechanic, Flames Rising, and Musings of the Chatty DM.

We also had the opportunity to participate in a fun PHB2 Roundtable over at Critical Hits, so be sure to check that out!

Proper Villany Profiles: Watchmen Edition

2009-03-17T00:05:00.001-05:00

Last year at Gen Con, I decided to buy a copy of Watchmen by Alan Moore. Despite being an avid reader of comics since childhood, this one had slipped past my radar but all my comic book nerd friends were all ranting that the movie was going to come out and ruin it so I'd better read the real version first.

I read it, and was blown away.

I AM ABOUT TO SPOIL EVERYTHING. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE COMIC OR SEEN THE MOVIE.

NO, SERIOUSLY. DO NOT READ FURTHER. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

OK, I trust all of you reading now know the entire plot. Now I can discuss why this story makes me titter (evilly) with excitement like a schoolgirl.

Back in the early 90's when I was in high school, I had an issue of Dragon magazine that featured a little article for DM's on how to play monsters with very high INT scores. The main gist of the article was that you can't really play an ancient demon with an intellect that dwarfs any mere mortal's. You have this limitation called the brain of a mere mortal that keeps you from doing so. It is very troublesome, but these are the limitations imposed upon us until someone develops cheat codes for humans. The way the article suggested to play such characters was kind of a new concept for me: in short, cheat. Roleplay the NPC as if he had access to knowledge he ought not to. It might be as simple as knowing parts of the PCs' plan to stop him (and setting traps accordingly), or something as specific as knowing the fighter's magic shield has a weakness against ice attacks.

While I can appreciate this method in terms of game mechanics, it did strike me that the players might think you're being... well, let's just say the more evil of you DMs out there are probably rubbing their hands together evilly thinking of the possibilities. However, this method feels a bit like being the guy who has a hammer, and to whom everything looks like a nail. It's clumsy, the players are going to call you on it, and your only excuse is going to be "er um he is very smart and figured it out". I bear no responsibility for injuries you receive from blunt PHB2 trauma. (However, we here at Stupid Ranger can assure you that these injuries will be very exciting and no doubt an invaluable companion to your existing PHB wounds.)

Why I Believe Alan Moore To Be A Mind Flayer

I found a much more elegant solution to this problem when I read Watchmen. If you will recall, Ozymandias is referred to as the smartest man on Earth. (I will now also refer to him as my favorite villain.) If you'll recall what you learned in Evil 101, "hero" and "villain" are all relative. Surely he's a bad guy because he mass murders millions of people. Right? Except he's not doing it for money, or power, or glory. He's doing it to distract the nations of the world from nuking each other into the stone age by faking a devastating alien invasion, saving humanity as a whole! My god, the man is basically a masterclass in Proper Villainy. I almost wept.

My favorite part, though -- and this is where the whole "smartest man on Earth" bit comes back into play -- is HOW he accomplishes his goals. Let's review:

Step 1: Neutralize those who can expose or stop you.
The Comedian figured out what he was doing, so he got thrown out a window. Dr. Manhattan, being all superpowerful (and smart, too), needed a bit more special care. Like a decade-long plan to make him feel inhuman and isolated (enough to go hide on Mars) by giving people close to him cancer. He's smart and patient -- a deadly combination!

Step 2: Clone the brain of a psychic and put it in a giant squid. Wait, what?

Step 3: Teleport the squid into the middle of NYC, causing it to blow up and send out devastating psychic shockwaves, simulating a catastrophic attack by aliens.

NGGGHHHHHAAAA WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE HOW DO YOU MAKE THAT LEAP?

I'll tell you how. You're the smartest guy on Earth, that's how.

Here's the box. And here's outside the box, where Ozymandias is thinking. Farther than that. Keep going. I'll tell you when to stop, just keep going. Five light-years away, and that's how far out of the box this is.

Why is this awesome? Because he's so smart that nobody could have seen this coming. Our poor little normal brains wouldn't have gone there. Sure, we can try to wrap our heads around it once it's there, but I'd be willing to bet 89% of the people who have read Watchmen paused, furrowed their brow, and had to reread that part just to make sure they weren't going mad. (10% of the people skimmed over that part and scratched their heads on the next page when the squid was lying there in the ruins of NYC. The other 1% are supergeniuses like Ozymandias and need to be closely observed by the government.)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I think Alan Moore is a mind flayer.

How To Be Super-Smart

How, one might ask, is this useful for DM's trying to roleplay superintelligent NPC's? Did I not just mention how we had measly human intelligence and cannot comprehend such plots? Well, you have a secret weapon even Ozymandias did not: you're omnipotent in your little world. You get to make the rules. The supersmart Big Bad in your campaign can make plans that accomplish his goals but seemingly make no sense. You've also got another ace up your sleeve if you're running a fantasy setting -- you've got magic. Magic, especially at ridiculously high levels, is not obligated to make sense. Especially high level magic that the DM handwaves the details. But here's the point. The plot doesn't have to make perfect sense to you or to your players so long as it makes sense to your villain.

I know what you're thinking. Didn't you just talk earlier about having to explain yourself to the players, and having them think you're evil for doing this? Well, yeah. But this lets you roleplay him being smarter instead of the players simply wanting to know how he found something out. I won't lie -- this can be a uniquely frustrating experience for players. Few things make me want to kill a DM more than when "because I said so" is the reason. That's why you use this thing sparingly and only for a purpose.

I see this as great for two purposes -- the first being you've got players who routinely unravel your plots well before it's time. This isn't revenge, it's just to keep things exciting. (Okay, it is revenge too.) The second is when you want to pull an Ozymandias, and by the time you reveal your evil plan to the PC's, it's 35 minutes too late. Use it as a plot device. It may seem a little hamhanded, and can be if misused, but if you plan to use it beforehand and weave it into your storyline, it can be a story-building tool instead of a bulldozer to push your players where you want them.

And The Movie???....

I saw the Watchmen movie last week and thought it was absolutely fantastic and (with one notable exception) very faithful to the book. I give it a 9 out of 10, and that 1 is just because I love the squid so much. The new evil plan that makes more sense is boring by comparison. But what wouldn't be?

Until next time...... <evil laughter of squids>

Striking a Musical Chord

2009-03-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

I took the exclusion of the bard in the PHB as a personal insult, and I've been waiting (somewhat impatiently) for the Players Handbook 2 in order to bring out my lute again. And while it was a hardship to wait so long, I think the new bard was worth it.

The Combat Stuff

I have loved the bard since my first character back in 3.0. But one of the difficulties of the 3.0 bard (and 3.5 to a certain extend) was trying to stay alive in combat; bards weren't always ideal for melee and not always effective as ranged. And while I had many great moments with my various bards, my group members will tell you what they remember: the bard sitting in a corner playing her lute for the Inspire Courage bonuses, because giving others +2 was the best she could do.

The new 4E bard seems to have a lot more opportunities in combat. Many of their first level spells deal additional weapon damage. So they are not quite as weak in the combat department. But bards as also Leaders; they inspire and heal their comrades, and that concept is very obvious as you read their powers.

There are two "virtue" paths for the bard: Cunning and Valorous. The Cunning bards prefer to use their wits and personality to overcome obstacles; they tend to use ranged attacks, overseeing the battle as opposed to joining it. The Valorous bards remember the stories of heroes who fought bravely in combat, and those bards relive the old tales by entering into the fray. I'm currently playing a Valorous, which gives healing benefits to your or an ally.

One of the changes here I really enjoy is just the change in the bard's activities in combat. I always thought it was kind of silly to pull out a valuable instrument in the middle of combat. Who really wants to take the risk of it breaking?

So, Why Do You Need an Instrument?

Without the Inspire Courage during battle, why does the 4E bard need an instrument? Besides the obvious "You can't be a bard without some sort of music," the instrument comes into play for specific performances. The Song of Rest is a great opportunity to tune your lute for a great, quick performance. This Bard Class feature helps the group's healing efforts during a short rest.

Rituals also give you opportunties to play a song. Bard rituals usually involve a material cost and a focus cost, which is generally an instrument of a specified value. So you play a song to cast a ritual. One of the cool tricks of rituals for bards is that once a day, you can ignore the material cost of a bard ritual (increases to two per day at 11th and three at 21st). One of my favorite first-level bard rituals is "Create Campsite," which causes a campsite to be created, then broken down 8 hours later. Combined with the "ignore materials" option, once per day, a first level bard and just play into being a campsite; how wonderful at the end of a long, grueling day.

I love the new bard, and while my bard, Rynna, is only first level, I'm excited about her potential. If you've ever been a fan of the bard, you should check out the new PHB2.

You can also read Uncle Bear's review of the bard, as well as other class reviews from any of these other sites participating in the Player's Handbook 2 online release event:

Atomic Array, Game Cryer, Gnome Stew, Critical Hits, Campaign Mastery, Critical Ankle Bites, Kobold Quarterly, The Core Mechanic, Flames Rising, and Musings of the Chatty DM.

Be sure to check them out, and stay tuned here for continuing coverage through the official release on Tuesday!

PHB2, Races New and Old!

2009-03-15T06:00:00.002-05:00

I was rather surprised when I began paging through the Character Races chapter of the Player's Handbook 2. I had heard rumors of the return of the Gnome and Half-Orc (all true!), however I was happy to see a few new (or at least revised) dimensions to the core character races. Today we'll take a look at the new kids on the block (the new races, not these guys).

The Deva - So That's Where I put my Celestial...

For those who want to play refined, polite, moral characters who have apparently lived thousands of past lives in near immortality prior to cramming themselves into a fleshy jumpsuits to adventure, the Deva is your race of choice. The best part about having all of this hazy, latent experience is that it gives you a racial ability to add a d6 to certain rolls that "you don't like." Now that's pretty neat stuff right there.

The Deva appears to be a haughty, good aligned corollary to the tiefling. The part of me that loves to develop balanced battles between good and evil is very relieved to have the Deva at my disposal.

The Goliath - Like a rock!

The Goliath is an 8 foot tall behemoth built for breakin' stuff, and I really enjoy the honest attempt at not copping out and calling them a half-giant. They are skilled athletes which grants them some extra goodness when jumping or climbing. They also have very interesting stony protrusions on their skin that grants them Stone's Endurance, allowing them to resist 5 points of damage with the added benefit of increasing their resistance as the Goliath's skills improve.

The Goliath race is competitive, daring, and lovers of all things nature. That is good, since they are spec'ed around the size and stature of a small mountain. I can't wait to build a Goliath barbarian, it sounds like a great fit!

The Shifter - Nothing like Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf, I swear.

OK, they really are. They're shapeshifters, which take on the countenance of a wolf-like or cat-like form due to touches of lycanthropy in their family tree. The Longtooth variety of Shifter gains some extra damage and regeneration when bloodied (sweeet!), while the Razorclaw variety gains speed increases and bonuses to reflexes and defense.

The character listing paints a very vivid picture of the traits and histories that are common in these different types of Shifters, and that gives them a bit more specific detail than some of the other races presented in the PHB2. The concept of having a lycanthrope in your character's bloodline provides some excellent pushing-off points for roleplaying and character development; in fact, it would be neat to have a whole campaign focused around a pack of Shifters exploring their bloodline. That might be an idea for a later time...

And the rest!

As mentioned briefly before, the half-orc and gnomes have returned to canon once more. Gnomes have a racial ability to blink away when taking damage, which is really great... however they have been characterized with large black eyes that made them look a bit odd. They also have a few additional racial abilities that cement their penchant for stealth and trickiness, but they feel very much like the gnomes we all know and love. I'm sure all the guys over at Gnome Stew are happy to have 'em back! Sadly, the PHB2 does not inform whether or not gnomes taste like chicken.

The PHB2 re-introduces the half-orcs and grants them the notable ability to do an extra 1[W] damage, or an extra d8 if it's just fisticuffs. Most of the additional description relating to the half-orcs (like the gnome) feels very much like their previous 3.5 incarnations. I actually like that they didn't mess with them very much; it brings a little familiarity to the fold of new characters.

The Paragon Paths

The PHB2 provides some pretty excellent racial paragon paths, which can be taken in place of a class-based paragon path. I'm not going to spoil all the surprises, but suffice it to say that these paragon paths stand up quite well to the class based options.

The racial paths represent the highest example of a race's defining characteristics... they're the best of the best that their race has to offer. Speaking of the best a race has to offer, the Twilight Guardian's portait on page 29 is pretty excellent. Just sayin'.

The racial additions in the PHB2 really round out the very obvious omissions from the standard Player's Handbook. The racial paragon paths provide different directions to take your characters. The evocative descriptions of each race paint a clear picture of how these races interact with each other and the world around them, which made ideas for new characters jump immediately to mind.

More PHB2 goodness!

The following sites are participating in the Player's Handbook 2 online release event:

Atomic Array, Game Cryer, Gnome Stew, Critical Hits, Campaign Mastery, Uncle Bear, Critical Ankle Bites, Kobold Quarterly, The Core Mechanic, Flames Rising, and Musings of the Chatty DM.

Be sure to check them out, or stay tuned here for continuing coverage through the official release on Tuesday!

Customizing Your Character with the PHB2

2009-03-14T08:00:00.002-05:00

I believe that a character truly lives when she has a history. And there are some options in the new PHB2 that give you some ideas if you're stuck trying to develop your character's backstory.

Background Options

Chapter Three begins with some option to help you develop a background for your character, including associated skills you might want to consider training (pending DM approval, of course). There are some basic options, including geography and socio-economic status, to get you started and inspire you to something more.

There are also background examples specifically related to your character's race. Races from the PHB, Forgotten Realms Players Guide and the PHB2 have two or three background scenarios listed. But these are not just gimme scenarios; they present questions to help you take that scenario and customize it for your character... perfect for getting you started on your backstory.

Variant Ritual Book

This is one of my favorite inspirations. Not every character who needs a ritual book wants to lug around a "book" for her rituals. Sometimes, a variation of the "book" is what works best for your character. There are some ideas listed under the Variant Ritual Book heading, but you can easily apply your own creative twist. Your cleric might prefer prayer beads. Your bard might carry a music score book. Changing the nature of your "book" is a prefect way to make your character a little more unique.

Dante & I will be posting additional PHB2 articles through the release on Tuesday, so check back for more. Of course, if you missed them, read more from Atomic Array, Game Cryer, Gnome Stew, Critical Hits, Campaign Mastery, Uncle Bear, Critical Ankle Bites, Kobold Quarterly, The Core Mechanic, Flames Rising, Musings of the Chatty DM, or right here with Dante.

The Sorcerer: Destruction Personified

2009-03-13T07:00:00.004-05:00

The Stupid Ranger Crew was afforded a rare opportunity to preview the newly released Player's Handbook 2. We were asked to explore everything there is to know about the Sorcerer class, so I did what any good impartial reviewer would do: I rolled up an NPC!

Setting the Stage

One aspect of the Player's Handbook 2 that I enjoy is the very clear, visceral descriptions that the authors provide for each of the different class specializations. The Sorcerer class, as an example, is divided into two main focuses: Dragon magic and Wild magic.

The Dragon path provided a few class powers that provide a bit of extra damage to your arcane spells, some minor protective increases to your armor class, and a small amount of damage resistance to a particular type of damage (I picked fire!) The Wild Magic path provides some chaotic aspects to attacks, critical hits, and a chaotic damage resistance that changes with every extended rest.

Pretty much anything with "Dragon" in the title excites me in strange and uncomfortable ways, so I had to go with Dragon magic, and quickly I realized that the Dragonborn class is a natural fit if I'm going down that path. Don't get me wrong... the lure of being a Wild magic user was very strong but in the end you just simply have to go with the stereotype as far as it will go.

A short hour of exciting dice rolling and character sheet mangling later, I had myself Ash the Dragonborn Sorcerer, ready to whip up on the evils of Shadowfell Keep.

A Fighter in Mage Robes

One very striking feature of the Sorcerer class is that you no longer only have 4 hit points at first level. Thanks to the new 4e rules, my Sorcerer began his life with a stout 26 hit points, which is more than enough to allow him to exercise his sorcerer-ly ways and not worry about getting felled by a wayward crossbow bolt.

As our session progressed, the power of the Dragon path became quite apparent. It seems that many of the At-Will and Encounter abilities plan allowed ol' Ash to do a respectable amount of damage. Many of the abilities I selected for him ended up being Close Blast or Burst, so he was taking on small groups of baddies largely unaided. It's not that the rest of the party wasn't helping, they were just rolling poorly!

A few of the Sorcerer at-will spells could be used as ranged basic attacks, so they offered a good fall back option that still aided the party in a meaningful way. No more lobbing Rays of Frost with next to no damage, folks!

Hooked on a feeling...

Call me a sucker for flavor text if you will, but I really enjoy the structure and aesthetic of the Dragon magic path. There are several spells available along this path that offer breath-like attacks, and, as expected, much of the damage is elemental in nature, so you get a real notion of a barely contained channeling of large amounts of power. The truly great part is the damage allocated to this excellent aesthetic makes sense, and my sorcerer felt like a meaningful member of our group society.

The spells provided by the PHB2 seem to hit hard with the satisfying "FWOOMP!" noise that only massive amounts of elemental damage can achieve. Even the few encounters that we got through during our gaming session were enough to make me realize that the new sorcerer is certainly not yesterday's alabaster-skinned nerd in robes who had to stay so far away from battle as to be rendered forgettable.

In fact, the Fourth Edition Sorcerer is a force to be reckoned with, and in the words of Ash the Sorcerer: "Just make sure you're not in front of me when things get started."

Keep an eye out over the weekend, we're posting more juicy PHB2 details up to the official release on Tuesday! Also, you will be able to find further coverage on this release on the RPGBloggers Network!

Want to learn more about Player's Handbook 2? Read on...

Atomic Array: Episode 018: Player's Handbook 2
Game Cryer: Player's Handbook 2 Review
Gnome Stew: A Veteran GM's Take on GMing and the PHB2
Critical Hits: The Avenger
Campaign Mastery: The Barbarian
Uncle Bear: The Bard
Critical Ankle Bites: The Druid
Kobold Quarterly: Review: Player's Handbook 2
The Core Mechanic: The Invoker
Flames Rising: The Shaman
Stupid Ranger: The Sorcerer
Musings of the Chatty DM: The Warden

Drop by Wizards of the Coast today!

Open Game Table

2009-03-11T10:04:00.003-05:00

I had the honor to be an assistant editor for the Open Game Table Anthology, and I'm very excited to say that the book will be available for sale March 23rd. Check out more information at The Core Mechanic.

Split Personality: The Early Days

2009-03-10T08:00:00.002-05:00

In honor of the newly received preview copy of the PHB2, I could not resist the urge to try out one of the new classes. No, I'm not pre-emptively reviewing one of the classes; today's tale is one of split personalities.

Two Personalities

Dante allowed any of us in the group to roll up a new PHB2-class character to be introduced into our Keep of the Shadowfell game. My first character is an Eladrin Wizard; she's been fun so far, but I was really interested in trying out one of the new classes. So Saturday night, I'm sitting at the table with one new character and one old character, trying to divorce myself from Eaerenel, my wizard, so I could enjoy Rynna, my new character. Then Dante gives us the good news: we can run one or both of the characters.

One Player

So there I was, with two great characters and permission to enjoy them both. And that's when things got interesting. How do you manage two characters engaged in the same battle?

One of the easiest ways to keep my characters separate was something I determined during my second character creation. My wizard is mostly ranged; Rynna is mostly melee. This helps keep battle strategies for each character separate.

The second step was to move my wizard personality into the background. I decided to make Rynna my primary personality, and I made it very clear to the rest of the group that my in-character actions would be from Rynna unless I stated otherwise. This helped avoid a lot of confusion and didn't leave me trying to maintain two prominent personalities.

The third step, which really helped me maintain what sanity I have, was having notecards prepared with each character's powers with descriptions and bonuses already calculated. The cards had different colored borders, so they were easy to keep separate. Overall, these cards really helped me keep each character's abilities separate, and I didn't have to flip between books and pages checking on things.

Sanity Maintained

All in all, my first split-personality session went really well. I'm looking forward to more adventures with my two characters. I suspect it will be more difficult as they gain levels and additional powers, but I think these initial steps will help keep things from getting too crazy.

Sir Gawain and the Iron Man, Part 2

2009-03-06T08:00:00.000-06:00

In Part 1, I described the classic "arming of the hero" scene in the story of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and in the Iron Man movie, and I described how this scene could be applied to your own roleplaying as an indication of character development. I hadn't intended to make a Part 2, but our friend, Todd, posted a couple of interesting follow-up questions:

Todd Bradley said...
How does this "Arming the Hero" scene fit in with the classic "Training Montage" of action movies? And where does sit in Joseph Campbell's monomyth ("the hero's journey")?

Sir Gawain and the... Training Montage?

The classic Training Montage is ever so familiar to movie-goers. In this filmed sequence, we witness the hero in physical preparation for the upcoming battle. I think that there are a couple of ways to adapt the arming scene to the montage sequence.

First, for the unarmed, the training montage is pretty much the arming scene. Because there aren't weapons or armor (in most cases), the training is the hero's preparation. You could develop a training montage for your unarmed character as his arming scene; roleplay this by describing what exercises he completes to emphasize what aspects of his training are most important. You can then describe character development through the introduction of new training exercises.

However, if you still want to implement a classic arming sequence for your unarmed character, or if you want to implement a training montage for your armed character, you can easily include both because they have such a complementary nature. Describe your character's training regimen, with or without weapons. Let's face it, those fighters and archers didn't just wake up one morning proficient with their chosen weapon; a training montage can be a great roleplaying technique to describe your character's dedication to perfecting her combat abilities. Follow-up the training montage with an arming scene: describe what is important for your character to have with her when she enters combat. Maybe your unarmed character has a charm or a magical ring he carries with him; describing that in specific detail as he prepares for battle would be part of his arming scene. For your armed character, describe how she prepares her weapon: testing the edge of her blade, or ensuring her bowstring is in good condition. Character development, such as learning new techniques or acquiring new equipment, can be described in future training exercises and/or arming scenes.

Iron Man-omyth

Joseph Campell, in his introduction for The Hero with a Thousand Faces, summarizes the "hero's journey" monomyth as:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. [From the Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces#Summary]

There are several elements throughout that description that we can recognize has part of our roleplaying stories. Many campaigns begin with the characters being faced with that call to "venture forth." This is a prime place for a simple arming scene: what does the character feel is important as he prepares to leave on his journey?

I've always felt that the real power of the arming scene comes from multiple iterations used to describe character development. That simple opening arming scene is more significant if, later in the adventure, there is a second arming scene to show how the character has grown. For that purpose, I would recommend placing the next arming scene between encounters with "fabulous forces." The hero (your character) seldom sees only on encounter in his journey; after one or more encounters, he will gain knowledge leading to personal growth. When you feel that your character has experienced significant growth, you can craft a second arming scene (possibly with a training montage) to illustrate this growth.

The Arming and the Monomyth Example

Suppose we have a fighter. She has received good basic training (insert montage here) from the town guard, and her natural ability with a longsword has caught the attention of the elite weapon-masters in the next town over. She has been summoned to attend their trials. Our innocent fighter has been presented with the call to venture forth.

Here, we can craft the first arming scene: she dresses with care the morning of her departure. She checks her blade; it's not new, being a cast-off from the guard, but it is a sound sword and holds a decent edge. Before she leaves, her mother presents her with a soft blue ribbon. Our fighter absentmindedly ties back her hair with the new ribbon, not so much out of vanity but as a reminder of her family. We have described our fighter's personality here: not much attention to her clothes, when compared to her weapon; her weapons are more important than her appearance. The last detail with the ribbon shows that she is close to her family.

Our fighter ventures out into the great wide world on her way to the trials. She encounters an outlaw, who engages her in combat. She receives a few minor injuries, before being disarmed by her opponent. She manages to regain her weapon, but she receives a nasty cut to her forearm in the process. In the end, she is victorious against the outlaw, though she is wounded from the encounter. Here is our first trial: combat outside the careful training activities. Our fighter has reached a very significant realization that she needs much more training.

She continue on her journey, arriving in good time for the trials. She succeeds and is invited to join the elites, who present her with a new, better blade. She has been victorious in her early trials, and she has received a reward.

In her next arming scene, we can focus on describing her new sword: the metallic ring as she pulls it from its scabbard, the way the light reflects off it as she inspects it in the sun. We might mention less of her appearance and the blue ribbon; right now, those parts of her personality aren't quite as important to her, because she is more concerned with not only the new blade but the new training that comes with it. For those looking to add a training montage, there is ample opportunity to describe the exercises she practices as she learns the weight and balance of her new blade, and her desire to improve her skills after her near-miss with the outlaw.

As I said last time, the arming scene provides some great roleplaying opportunities, especially to highlight character development. You can also include the training montage, either in place of or in conjunction with the arming scene. And both elements work well in Campbell's "hero's journey" monomyth; consider your character's path to determine where he is in the "journey," then plan the appropriate scenes or sequences to showcase your character's development.

Guess what I've got!

2009-03-05T00:15:00.001-06:00

As I speak, word is starting to hit the RPGBlogosphere about a small number of preview copies of the Players Handbook 2. I am pleased that one of these copies rests securely on my coffee table as I type this.

Starting March 13th, the Stupid Ranger crew will take part in a week-long event to cover the release of this great new gaming supplement. We are going to take some liberties with our campaign so we can playtest several aspects of the PHB2 prior to the release event and pass our learnin' on to you!

I know I am not alone when I say that I am thrilled to be a small part of this release. I can tell you that I'm very excited about what I have read so far!

I know most of you are going to want to buy a copy of this for yourselves, but if you've got a few burning questions we'll do what we can to answer them as part of our special release event. Stay tuned for more information starting next week!

In Memory of Gary Gygax

2009-03-04T11:54:00.004-06:00

Part of me feels a bit inadequate when faced with honoring Gary Gygax today. How do you find the right words to honor his memory and express your gratitude for all he gave us? I gave up on crafting the perfect, eloquent narrative, because every attempt came out wrong. So here are some of my Gygaxian memories.

My first gaming group was just three of us and the DM. Dante, of course, was there, along with two friends who lived on the same floor of our dorm. Chuck & Boyle. In this campaign, I created one of my favorite characters ever, Lillian. Then I was included in the "big" game, with about seven other players and Chuck as our fearless DM. Those were grand days of learning and exploring the realm of RPGs. And I began to really appreciate the larger community beyond our group, that there were people out there who enjoyed the creativity involved in good roleplaying and the escapism inherent in the experience. That's really when I began to appreciate those who created and shaped the RPG experience, especially Gary Gygax. Here was one of the guys who understood our need for the game experience and provided to us a framework.

I was thrilled to meet him at Gencon a few years ago. It's not every day you get to walk up to one of your heroes and shake his hand. He was kind and funny, and we had a great few minutes talking to him.

I remember sitting in my cubicle a year ago, devestated at the news of his passing. I had always been a bit of a social outcast in the office; there was only one other person in the office had any exposure to RPGs. He understood my grief, and it was enough to not feel alone that day.

At Gencon last year, Dante & I participated in the Grand Gygaxian Dice Collection, both of us donating our first set of dice. We both thought it was fitting to give back the first set, in memory of all the beginnings. I remember buying that set of dice (purple & white swirls) from the only game shop in our college town. Lillian had some great moments and some great failures defined by those dice, and I could think of no better offering.

My life is better for roleplaying, and for that, I thank you, Mr. Gygax.

Sir Gawain and the Iron Man

2009-03-02T08:00:00.001-06:00

The "arming of the hero" scene is a classic literary element that allows us as readers (or viewers) to experience those moments when the hero is preparing for battle. It allows us a brief look into the hero's mind and a glimpse of the hero's character independent of his actions.

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

I was first introduced to the "arming of the hero" scene in college as I was studying "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." We see a change in Gawain throughout the story; this is highlighted with the differences between the two arming scenes. In the first, as Gawain sets out on his quest, the arming scene focuses on his shield, a symbol of his faith and belief in the Code of Chivalry. In the second, when he is facing certain death, the arming scene changes focus to the green girdle; with it, Gawain hopes to avoid death, and in doing so, he has turned away from his Code. We see Gawain's focus change from faith to fear as he trying to reconcile his mortality.

Iron Man

A couple of weeks ago, Dante & I were watching Iron Man. We saw the movie a couple of times in the theatre, but at home, I had that light bulb moment as I watched Tony Stark's two arming scenes.

The first, when Tony is escaping from the cave, the cumbersome nature of the suit means Tony must rely on a computer activation sequence as well as Yinsen's assistance; this arming scene ends with Tony witnessing Yinsen's sacrifice as Tony waits for the suit to reach its full power. The second, Tony has automated the entire arming scene, replacing Yinsen and the computer loading bar with JARVIS. The first arming of Iron Man preceeded a selfless sacrifice and a dramatic escape; the second begins without a feeling of humanity as Iron Man strives to free an entire village from tyrants.

Arming Your Hero

The arming of the hero is a classic element, and for the storytellers out there, it can be an interesting element to add to your hero. Your first arming scene will likely occur in the early days of the campaign; at some point -- during your initial character description or in one of your early encounters -- you will likely describe your weaponry, your armor, your spells, your holy symbol... something specific that helps define your character. But characters change, whether through organic personal growth or story-driven character development. If your character has undergone a signficant change, you can help showcase this change through a second arming scene.

For instance, my current character, Eaerenel, is an Eladrin Wizard who loves to use fire spells. I have described several of her early attacks with firey details. In the event that something causes her to re-define the nature of her attacks (ie. seeing an entire village and its population destroyed by another wizard's massive fire attacks), Eaerenel might begin to study icy attacks; I could introduce this change by describing specific icy details of her attacks... where once there was fire, there would be ice instead.

As a storytelling element, you can easily craft arming scenes to help detail your character's development. It's one more creative trick to enhance your roleplaying experience.

10 Monsters I Never Want to See

2009-02-27T08:00:00.000-06:00

Several of the DMs out there have posted their top 10 favorite D&D monsters (check out RPGBloggers to read them all). Here's my list, but slightly twisted. As a player, here are my top 10 I-Never-Want-to-See Monsters:

1. Doppelgangers - Imagine meeting up with your good friend, whom you haven't seen for a long time. Then, all of a sudden and with no provocation, your friend tries to kill you. Yeah, see, that's why no one likes to meet a doppelganger.

2. Owlbears - Not the cute, cuddly creatures their name implies, these vicious killers are annoying. Mostly, because after the battle, you have to hunt down their nest in order to find any treasure they may have.

3. The Tarrasque - Legendary creatures of all kinds are going to guarantee a moment of panic, but the Tarrasque, well, let's just say if you've never adventured with Batloaf, you can't truly understand the panic I feel meeting this monster.

4. Beholders - I think most players feel the same about this one. Beholders are just no fun, and it can be summed up with two simple words: eye rays. Can you think of a more terrifying combination of words in all D&D-dom?

5. Drow - I really, really hate to encounter any Drow. Ever. My very first character was an elf, who had the misfortune to encounter Drow. Let's just say the resulting drama has left me with a crippling fear of dark places and a burning hatred for dark elves. Also, they worship Lolth. Ew.

6. Giant Spiders - Webs and Poisons and Lolth (again), oh my.

7. Liches - Creepy guys to begin with, and usually bent not only on ruling the world but also on destroying all adventurers, liches just don't spell "party," no matter where you find them. They could be wearing silly hats and singing karaoke, and they still wouldn't want to have cake and ice cream with them. Plus, who really needs a phylactery anyway?

8. Banshees - Anything with a "save vs death" is right out; banshees are just my representative of all things death-ly.

9. Hill Giants - Synonymous with "flying boulders," hill giants encounters are generally painful. And unless you have a lot of ranged attacks in your group, you're going to be taking a lot of damage before you ever get close enough to inflict some of your own. Ouch!

10. The Vorpal Rabbit - Perhaps the most terrifying of all woodland creatures, the vorpal bunny, who can take your head right off your shoulders before you can blink, is a blood-thirsty tyrant. Like its estranged cousin, the Tarrasque, there is, fortunately, only one. We had the un-pleasure of meeting it along the road once upon a time, and our good friend, Swun, didn't survive the encounter well. So don't let those floppy ears and innocent eyes fool you... that rabbit is dynamite!

The Intricities of Group Dynamics, or "Wow, there's more girls in here."

2009-02-26T08:00:00.001-06:00

As previously mentioned, we have a new D&D group here in colorful Colorado. We have been into our current adventure for two sessions now, and an exceedingly rare circumstance has occurred within our gaming group: the girls outnumber the guys!

A Fortunate Circumstance, to be sure!

I have been Dungeon Mastering for many years now and never had more than two girls in our group at a given time, so this experience is a little new for me.

I have some hard data at my disposal that proves there are many more female gamers in our midst than we originally thought. Stupid Ranger and e from Geek's Dream Girl are currently writing a book on the topic, so I've gotten the chance to read excerpts from real female gamers telling their tales of geeky adventure. There seems to be a lot of correlation between groups of male players and groups of female players as far as group dynamics go.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

I have noted a few interesting points about our specific group of players. Please keep in mind, this is not sweeping generalities based down gender lines, just what I can see from my seat behind the screen.

The lone male player in our group is the more tactical fighter type (well, rogue to be exact) that revels in the crunch of battle and vanquishing the foes. The ladies in the group (including the lovely Stupid Ranger) seem to focus much more on the flavor aspects of their abilities... what the flourish of blades looks like, how precisely the flaming sphere immolates its targets, and so on.

I have also seen similar divisions when the roleplaying aspects of our campaign take priority. Our guy distills things down into facts and specifics, the ladies seem to enjoy engaging me in in-character dialogue, or enjoy interacting with one another in-character.

This is one of my favorite aspects of our campaign thus far, because we have both sides of the coin represented in our group dynamics. You mix in Stupid Ranger's natural propensity to overdocument the details of the sessions and nobody ever forgets what the current goal for the party is!

There's even plenty of room for a proto-Vanir!

Normally, our irreverent "off-the-wall" quotient was filled skillfully by our good buddy Vanir. This was one of the aspects of our gaming group that I was very afraid would be lacking... however imagine my surprise when one of the ladies in the group wondered aloud about the sexuality of her tiefling warlord, and decided there and then that she would be a lesbian tiefling warlord with very small boobs and very large horns.

To make matters even better, members of our group immediately chimed in with "oh yeah, that's a great idea and that'll work with our backstory" and off they went into figuring out the wheres and what-for's of how their characters knew each other in the past. (Possibly in a biblical sense, but I'm sure that will come out in future sessions!)

For the record: I am unsure if anyone can ever fill the giant roleplaying shoes left by Vanir at our gaming table. I'm just saying options seem to be presenting themselves from unlikely sources!

A quick moral

I'm going to go on record and call for Dungeon Masters everywhere not to discount or devalue the presence of female gamers at your gaming table. I have heard some very poor tales in the past of women being undervalued or downright denied access to roleplaying games.

In fact, our very own college group had a "no girlfriends" policy until Stupid Ranger showed up.

This myopic thinking and exclusion can only damage your game and the larger roleplaying society, not to mention your ability to meet women and procreate. That's all I've got for now!

Gaze Upon The Glory That Is My Pimp Hands

2009-02-24T10:13:00.003-06:00

Playing WoW last night, I happened to notice my friend Brian's shaman had some cool fist weapons on. When I inspected his character, I recieved a completely awesome surprise.

I regret only that I am too high level to use these now. However, this does not mean that I won't go back to Outlands just to get them. Time to save vs. vanity!

Behind the Screen: The New Batch

2009-02-23T00:39:00.003-06:00

The last time I spoke to you all, it was on the eve of the beginning of our new foray into the new version of D&D. This meant new beginnings of almost everything: we were going to start a new campaign with a new group of people, utilizing a dungeon module for the first time.

What is going well

Honestly, just about everything with 4e. The module we're using, Keep on the Shadowfell, is just about everything I could need for this first foray. The encounters are designed to be very episodic in nature and our characters seem to follow the prescribed "hints" to get them going into the further areas of the module without much coaxing.

This easy acquisition time by the group has allowed me some time to design my own hooks for further in the campaign right into the pre-existing setting. I can tell this is going to make the rest of my campaign organically grow out of the module which should be a very good experience for my players.

In addition, the non-player characters that the module provides offer just enough description and tone in the provided snippets of dialogue that it was very easy to "get into their skin" and make them very real, three-dimensional characters.

I wonder if it'd be bad form to hug Bruce Cordell or Mike Mearls should I run into them at GenCon this year...

What isn't going well

It seems to be a lot of "real-world" interference. Our group originally consisted of myself, Stupid Ranger, a coworker of mine and his wife. We got characters rolled during our first session and got underway, everything was going swimmingly. We realized quickly that the module was a little... difficult on the encounter front with only three player characters, so we were very happy when my coworker's wife had an interested friend willing to join us.

The only downside was that a fair portion of the second session was helping her roll her character and get acclaimated to D&D again, since she hadn't played 4e yet either. Add into the mix a small herd of three young children, and distractions mounted pretty quickly for our second session despite best efforts to placate the children with movies and video games.

What's next!

All of these hurdles are either past us or manageable, so I have to say that things are going well at this point! We're looking forward to our next session in two weeks, and I need to extend a big THANK YOU to those of you that recommended that I read the module through and get comfortable with it. That has really helped my comfort level as we've moved into this new experience. Our readers are the greatest!

The Morality Of Adventuring

2009-02-19T15:25:00.004-06:00

The more I play WoW, the more I wonder what kind of character I'm actually playing. You start out playing the game fresh-faced and ready to fight the Scourge, but what you wind up doing is clearing some scorpids out that are threatening travellers. Boring, but innocuous enough. Then, as the game progresses a bit, you'll get some quests where some quilboars are bothering people in the Crossroads, and you need to go thin their numbers. Now we're talking about killing sentient humanoid creatures. Dirty work, for sure, but it's saving the lives of the citizens of the Horde, right? Well, as they say, "War is Hell". You do what you have to.

Just Following Orders

I don't know whether it's just me, or if I'm noticing it more now, but it feels like the further I get in the game, the more morally questionable the things I have to do for quest become. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, I seem to remember there being a big controversy brewing about a quest involving torture about the time I bought the WotLK expansion. But I do find myself getting the occasional quest where my gut reaction is "you know, I really want the XP, but I'm not crazy about what's going on here".

There's a quest where you have to steal Wolvar pups and give them to the Kalu'ak walrus people. The walrus dudes want you to do this because they want to raise these pups to be peaceful. I found myself wishing there was a quest for the Wolvar tribe so I could go steal their pups back and maybe kill all the walrus guys in the process (skinning them, of course, and making them into quivers).

This issue is, of course, much more complicated than it initially seems. Yes, the walrus dudes think it'd be great to raise all the wolvar pups in the way they think is right and if they do it enough then everybody gets along, right? Except they're stealing babies (ok, well, technically I guess it's me). A quest that goes with that one also has me murder their parents (because they stole stuff from the walruses). And all that murderin' and stealin' aside, they're still trying to erase the entire Wolvar culture. Sure, I can understand them wanting to get rid of it seeing as they get "chewed on" by "powerful Wolvar jaws" occasionally, but the point is, do they really get to make that call? Well, as history shows us now and then, whoever is stronger frequently does make that call. But is it moral?

Consequences

I am not, of course, worried that America's youth is going to turn to torture and genocide. At least, not because of WoW. (American Idol, maybe.) My interest in the topic is purely for roleplaying purposes (on both sides of the table). As a player, I've got to figure out what to do with myself when presented with that situation. In a game like WoW, the consequences (good or bad) frequently take the form of Reputation. I must say I'm happy they sometimes make your actions affect one faction positively and another negatively. While it makes it hard to do everything in the game (at least on one character), I think it makes a vaguely realistic stab as to how your actions affect the opinions of those you interact with.

In D&D, of course, how your character is perceived is up to the capricious whim of real people. I see the most effect from this between players. Especially if there's a Dudley Do-Right in the group, a character stealing a bunch of kids (even with the best of intentions) may find himself at swordpoint if another player disagrees. DM's can set morally questionable situations up in advance to stir up some roleplaying -- but be aware of the above effect of doing so on your players. You want to make things fun, try not to make the powderkeg too large.

Look Both Ways Before You Justify

The largest question in my mind about all this is, "how would my character deal with all this?". People do some crazy things under duress, and under the influence of powerful leadership. There's enough cognitive dissonance floating around in an entire world torn apart by war to rationalize goddamn near anything. So while I, as a pasty white Perl coder with a doughy middle and big screen TV, think these things are questionably moral -- my shaman might feel differently. Before you draw a line in the sand with your character about something, take a few seconds to consider how they might see it. And keep an eye on the paladin when you tell the party what you've decided in case you need to duck.

An Announcement for our Friends in the UK

2009-02-18T12:44:00.003-06:00

For those of you out there joining us from the UK, I have a short announcement for you. Our friends over at 6d6 Fireball are having a little get-together. The UK Bloggers & Readers Meet-Up will be held Feb 28. Enjoy! :)

Short account of my Genghiscon visit

2009-02-16T08:00:00.001-06:00

Friday afternoon, I went to Genghiscon XXX. It was a good experience, and I plan to go back next year.

My con experience has, admittedly, been very limited... to Gencon. But from our previous house back in Illinois, Gencon was at least a 4 hour drive; from Colorado, we'll be flying. Genghiscon was a 30 minute drive (45 going home because of rush-hour traffic on the Interstate). There's a lot of charm to a convention that doesn't require advance travel preparation.

I arrived at the hotel (which was just off the Interstate -- really easy to find) around 2:00 on Friday afternoon. The biggest problem I had was that there wasn't much signage to direct me to registration. I eventually found a very nice guy in a con security shirt, and he told me where to go. I waited in line at registration for about a half an hour. I only wanted a Visitor's badge so I could visit the Dealer's Room/sales floor, but all the registration windows handled both badge and event registration, so they were very busy, especially has they had just re-opened registration at 2:00.

This was the only down-side to my trip... the waiting in line at registration. I realize that a) they had just opened the windows, so there was a backlog of people waiting to register for events, and b) the volunteers were getting used to a new registration system. The general morale of those in line was positive, and all-in-all, it wasn't too bad. I got to hear a great story about Leonard Nimoy and his clam-shell cell phone being mistaken for Spock and a communicator.

After getting my little badge, I had to wait just a little bit for the sales floor opened at 3:00. The friendly security guy, David, showed me around. There were dedicated rooms for Warhammer, Catan, Puffing Billy, board games, minis painting, as well as RPG and RPGA events.

After my brief tour, I entered the sales floor. It was a lot of fun; there's nothing quite like roaming around a sales floor, even if you don't buy anything. Not that I left empty-handed, because I, of course, have no will power. I did only make two purchases... none of them from Chessex, and I count my ability to resist that urge to buy dice among my greatest achievements. I'm sure that's used up my "not buying dice" ability for this year, though, so I hold no expectations of similar achievements in August.

My first purchase was from Gifts & Blessings, who had many great dragon- & fairy-related items for sale. They were all very friendly gamers. One of the girls there, Mindy, recognized my A is for Atlas woot shirt, and we chatted for several minutes. My second purchase was from a small jewelry booth that had some really lovely hand-made items.

All in all, it was a good time. Next year, Dante & I plan to preregister so we can get in some of the game sessions.

How A Game About Flowers Almost Made Me Soil Myself

2009-02-13T13:22:00.005-06:00

I'd been waiting for some time for Flower to be released, and yesterday I finally got to download it. I will admit that my masculine side looked funny at me when it found out and possibly wrote nasty friends-only posts about me on its livejournal for doing so, but the rest of me was looking at the screenshots and going holy crap this game is gorgeous. It is, too. Every blade of grass is rendered individually, and since this game is about you being the wind, they all move accordingly when you blow on them.

For the first couple levels, I was happy as a clam -- a clam set free riding a warm breeze in the spring! I'd seen this sort of gameplay before. It wasn't rocket science. You activate things by running over them, they activate, and something happens (usually involving some sort of land-rejuvenation like dead grass turning green). It's not a real complex puzzle game at all. But you don't play Flower because you want challenging gameplay. You play Flower because you want to go WHEEEEEE I CAN FLY WHEEE GRASS ON A SUNNY DAY WHEEEEEEEE. I'm recall thinking that the first couple levels of this game are the cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and that I would play this game every time I get stressed out. It was like being four years old again, and running through a field full of rolling hills and dandelions. It felt great.

After that, things changed.

The nighttime level started off much as the daytime ones, except the grass that the wind touched glowed, and would power these little lightposts everywhere. It was quiet, and pretty, and tranquil. Kind of like a dream, which was not a big surprise since I'd heard the developer referred to each level as a "dream". What the bastards forgot to tell us is that they also included nightmares.

After clearing part of the level and lighting something up, all of a sudden the soothing music darkens noticeably and the camera pans over to a dark place on the horizon. Something cracks and pops, and small dark red lights hang menacingly from powerlines I can't see. Oh, and darkness started creeping over the ground, seemingly led by some malevolent force. And that's where I have to go next. No problem, I think, I'd find some flowers and light that shit right up. But as I go deeper into the darkness, there's no flowers. Matter of fact, I can barely see where I'm going aside from those red lights. And it's getting narrower. And those lights look like they're watching me. And I'm going so fast, I can't stop, everything's in the way. Is it reaching for me? I'm going to trip and something's going to get me! My pulse quickens and my breath is gone. I almost want to cry a little.

Then, as quickly as it started, it's over. I'd cleared the level somehow. The previous levels had some goal, like revitalizing a tree or activating a bunch of windmills, and you got a nice little set of cutscenes at the end where you could just watch and relax. This dumped me out to the stage selection menu, sitting on the couch trying to catch my breath, wondering what the hell had just happened.

Then it hit me. This was completely intentional, and brilliant. The reason I was so scared is they managed to activate my inner 4 year old, and keep me in that mindset for awhile, and then throw in exactly what scares the crap out of him. And when I'd have a nightmare as a kid, it almost always was me doing something fun, and then something changes subtly, and then I'm running for my life from something, and I don't know what it is but it's scary, and things are going way too fast for me to process and I'd want to cry and then suddenly I'm awake and everything is OK again but I don't know how I got here or if any of this is real and I'm still scared out of my mind. (I briefly considered phoning my parents to see if they'd let me sleep in their bed that night, but I think Efreak might have objected.)

Imagine if you could harness that kind of fear in your campaign. While I struggle to think of ways to do it as effectively in D&D as it's done in Flower, the idea of something dark, malevolent, and most importantly nameless seems like a very good place to start. If you plop an enemy down and the players sort of know its stats and you announce all its abilities (with stats) as they happen, it breaks the spell. Now, granted, you can't really get around that in D&D -- when they take damage, you have to tell the players what happened to them in a way that they can record on their character sheet. But that doesn't mean you have to say "the wight uses its Drain Level ability on the farmer". You could, instead, talk about the NPC farmer suddenly being grabbed by a clawed hand from the shadows, his face suddenly growing gaunter and paler. Make sure to mention his attempts to cry for aid instead producing a dry rattle. You don't have to tell the PC's everything all the time!

.......OK, I admit it. I wrote that last part about D&D because I wanted to distract everyone from the fact that a game about flowers scared the hell out of me. It's not the first time flowers have scared me so. There was also that time when I was 3 that my older brother told me there was a new kind of killer bee that looked just like floating dandelion seeds......

Surviving the Crazy Times: Exploring Gaming in Denver

2009-02-12T08:00:00.004-06:00

This past weekend was a great weekend for Dante & I, as we finally got back into playing a game that doesn't involve computers and actually involved roleplaying.

Friday night saw us huddled around someone else's dinner table, rolling up new characters and getting our feet wet in a new campaign. Dante & I have had very minimal exposure to 4E, and our two new gamers (one of Dante's co-workers and his wife) had not played the new edition but both had lots of RPG experience. It took awhile to get through the character creation, and our combat took awhile as everyone got used to their new characters and their abilities. But we didn't let the delays hamper our good time. It was so much fun; there is nothing quite like sitting around, rolling some dice and discussing how best to get rid of those pesky kobolds.

On Saturday, still floating on our gaming high from Friday night, Dante & I made the 45 minute trip to Englewood to visit a gaming shop. I had heard good things about Bonnie Brae Hobby Shop through the Gamer Girls surveys, and needing a FLGS, I decided I would at least decide if it was worth the long-ish drive.

It's a great store. We came in the back door (there being no open parking spots out front, we opted for the spacious parking lot in the back) and were immediately welcomed by the sounds of a couple of guys playing a CCG (not sure which one, but that doesn't matter). I told Dante that at that moment, it felt like coming home.

They had a lot of new stuff and a lot of good, used stuff. I was very excited just to see one entire wall of bookshelves full of games, including many, many classics. In addition to all the other RPG-related items, they had hobby supplies (model kits, etc). It was a wonderful experience, and while I might not make the trip every week, it will definitely be on my list of places to revisit.

This weekend (Thurs through Sun) is GenghisCon XXX here in Denver. Given that it's also Valentine's Day this weekend, we're not planning on spending the weekend at the convention, but I'm going to drive down on Friday and see what's what.

If any of our readers out there have a FLGS on the northern/northwestern side of Denver, we are still looking for someplace closer that doesn't involve fighting our way through the traffic (ie. people) at the FlatIron mall.

World Of.... Savings...Craft?

2009-02-11T09:00:00.000-06:00

Due in part to the fact that someone has cast Greater Recession on the economy, and also because debt is my wife's favored enemy, my lovely wife Efreak and I are attempting to watch our finances. Accordingly, she concocted for us a budget, and we discussed ways we can pay off the remainder of our debts. After some furious financial critical strikes, I am pleased to say that the only things we have left to pay off are our house, and half of my student loan. I've been paying on the damned thing for 9 years, let nobody tell you state schools are cheap!!!! (Of course, changing one's major twice will do that to you....)

One thing I was rather surprised about was how I was unintentionally saving money. If you'd looked at how I was spending money a year ago, you would see me mostly blowing money on 1> going to the movies, 2> videogames, and 3> electronics. It was not unusual for me to crack $100-150 a month on entertainment. Last month's numbers revealed something surprising: I'd only spent $15 total - solely on my WoW subscription.

I'd had friends tell me before I started playing that this might happen, but I didn't believe it. But it just goes to show: if you're grinding, you're not spending money!

Now I just have to make sure I remember to leave the house now and then.....

Just Another Brick In The Wall?

2009-02-10T08:00:00.001-06:00

I happened upon John Miskimen's post at The Call Of The Dungeon this morning. In it, he lodges a complaint against setting your characters inside an epic story larger than themselves.

The idea of some epic story running in the background tends to diminish the PCs in a game somewhat. To me, player characters are competing with non player characters for the spotlight in settings like this. Even in a Hyborean Age setting, players will measure their character's deeds and worth against that well known Cimmerian. Playing a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away means living up to all of the iconic characters of that saga. And who can stand next to the deeds of a simple hobbit and his gardener in Middle-Earth?

I can see where he's coming from to a certain extent. You don't want to diminish the PCs' importance in the story. But I feel this points to something of a cultural need to up the ante and make things more exciting by means of putting things in a larger scale -- an entertainment arms race, if you will. Under this mindset, you could have an exciting adventure where the characters save the girl, defeat the bad guy, and narrowly avoid death countless times -- but since nobody saved the world from total destruction, it's now somehow boring.

I would submit that large, epic backdrops for your campaign give you a lot more options as to what your PCs do. The story of Star Wars isn't just about the dozen or so epic battles we see. For every one of those we see, there were a thousand more in the war that we didn't, and they didn't have anything to do with the Big Story. (That's why I love the Clone Wars cartoon. Mace Windu vs the robots FTW.) There are giant, untapped mines of action and intrigue everywhere if you pause to find them.

There's no need to try to shoehorn your PCs into someone else's story -- they have their own to tell. If you can get the players invested in their characters and what they're doing, it will be interesting. Your players are not unimportant in the grand scheme of things if you focus on their story instead of the grand scheme of things.

From The Mailbag: How Do I Play D&D With My 10 Year Old Daughter?

2009-02-09T11:59:00.007-06:00

Occasionally, a reader will sneak in and drop an email in our poor, emaciated inbox. In accordance with state inbox cruelty regulations, I am required to elicit a response to this:

Peter Blood writes:

It has been 25 years since I played D&D in college and I still miss it. Now my 10 year old daughter loves fantasy, LOTR, and has read the whole Harry Potter series. I want to play D&D with her but do not know how to start. I am not at a level where I could set up my own dungeon and be a DM. I can't remember all that stuff about how to attack and saving throw stuff.

How can I play D&D with just the two of us?

Is there an online game where the computer is the DM? Is there a video game without much killing?

I am all ears.

First, Peter, let me inform you that I am totally jealous of your awesome name. For a moment I thought a pirate or sorcerer was emailing us and, with a name like Peter Blood, the person sending the email could not have been under level 18.

Now, getting down to business. I have personal experience playing D&D one-on-one with someone else. I did so all through high school with a friend of mine, and that was the only way I knew how to play the game for years until I found a regular group to play in. I was 13 years old, and the adventures were ridiculous and terrible, and occasionally I get all misty wishing I could have that much fun again.

If you intend to run adventures for your daughter, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to get around learning some game mechanics. However, I completely feel your pain on this one. When I run adventures, I feel as if I am going to choke to death on how many things there are to keep track of. Under normal circumstances, you have a couple of options.

Our group has relied on a two-DM system where one person primarily does story and the other handles the nuts and bolts of combat. This leaves the guy who doesn't want to deal with the numbers free to roleplay his fool head off. However, this isn't really a solution for you, because it's just you and your daughter.

This means you need plan B, which is what I do to cope as DM in any size group: rules light, roleplay heavy. By this, I mean you need to learn the barebones of combat and a few other actions -- but a lot of the time you will just make a judgement call or handwave a skill check. Make the game less about the rules, and more about the interactions between your NPCs and your daughter's PC. What do I mean by this? For example: have some orcs capture her PC and make it clear that she's going to get killed if she tries to fight her way out. Play an orc, and make her figure out how to get out of there (either by escaping somehow or talking her way out of the situation).

DMing is difficult, especially at first, but don't get discouraged (and don't forget nobody is expecting you to be perfect right out of the gate!) Everything gets a lot more comfortable after plenty of practice and mistakes. I know our group saw more than a few spectacular disasters when I was running last, but at the end of the night everybody was having fun so it was OK.

You don't have to come up with the dungeon and everything in it on your own, either. Expeditious Retreat Press has a whole bunch of modules designed for one DM and one player titled, oddly enough, 1 on 1 Adventures. I would add that I think these are D&D 3.5e and not the new 4e, but it is somewhere to start (and you'll probably want to avoid this one, for obvious reasons). If your daughter enjoys solving puzzles, you can sprinkle some into your adventures too. Cloud Kingdom games has some awesome books on this topic.

As far as videogames go, there are lots and lots of RPGs out there, but most are single-player. However, if you've got multiple computers, you could go with something from the Neverwinter Nights series or one of its predecessors. With videogame RPGs, though, you're pretty much going to wind up chopping up lots of people and monsters into tiny little pieces to get XP. I'm having a great deal of difficulty thinking of one where that is not the case (unless you're playing Myst or something). If you're looking for nonviolence, my recommendation would be to stick to tabletop adventures where you can be assured of everyone's peaceful demeanor via your omnipotence.

There is one other option that may terrify you, but it's so crazy that it just might work: give your daughter the books, and let her run a game for you. She's older than the age I was when I started getting into this stuff, and I guarantee you it's a great way to spark her creativity. I would keep it super extra rules light though -- perhaps eschewing the D&D rules for a much simpler set you two agree on (combat settled by rock-scissors-paper, for instance).

Hopefully, this was of some help to you, and you both will have a good experience like I did when I was starting out: ridiculous, terrible adventures -- and lots of fun.

An Oath Of Vengeance

2009-02-06T16:15:00.005-06:00

So it was that Dante, Stupid Ranger, and I found our characters wandering around Outlands in Hellfire Peninsula. We were freshly 60 and, as an enhancement shaman, I was thoroughly enjoying sending my spirit wolves to feast upon everything I could. The gear was so much better than the old world, and I was running around territory that looked like something out of a Doctor Strange comic. Life was good.

That is, until the night I met the greatest griefer who ever lived.

I was soloing that night, cheerfully mass-murdering the Bloodhollow Orcs over by Spinebreaker post, collecting a basket filled with their vas deferenses so this guy I knew could make stew. Then I noticed I was dead. I panned my camera to see what killed me, but did not see anything. So I found my corpse again, and had only collected one more vas deferens before suddenly I was dead again.

This time, I saw my assailant: it was a red-bearded level 80 human paladin, and his name was Mwxyywyxm. At least, I think that's what it was. I think he designed his name specifically to cause cranial bleeding. I waited until he flew away, and then I resurrected. Two seconds later, I see him swoop down in front of me. Then I died again, and he made a rude gesture at me. I decided it was time to get the hell out of there.

However, my dear friend would have none of this. When I would get to my corpse, he would kill me. When I would rez at the Spirit Healer, he was somehow close enough to know and he would quickly find me and kill me (which made the 25% durability price ever so much more worth it). I eventually decided to hearth, but he got to me before I could leave.

This was starting to become upsetting.

Fourteen resurrections later, I managed to get on my horse and take off toward Zangarmarsh. I must have caught him when he was going to the bathroom or microwaving a defenseless puppy for dinner, because I found myself still alive after a couple minutes. Surely death was right around the corner, waiting to swoop in and kill me! Had I escaped?

Turns out I had. But that's when the real fun started. I started to notice messaged showing up in the local defense channel:


Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
PhatLewts4Me> zomg wtf
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
Spinebreaker Post is under attack!
PhatLewts4Me> f@## ret pallys killing everyone
FredOrcWaffles> omg somebody come kill this guy

That continued for a few minutes, and then all was silent. Then, another tidal wave:


Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Aggrodamus> ZOMG HELP MEEEE
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!
PincheeLoafu> jessus everyone in thrallmar is dead
PincheeLoafu> f*#@(king ret pallys
Thrallmar is under attack!
Thrallmar is under attack!

Falcon Watch fell in a similar fashion several minutes later.

Then it hit me. Holy crap. He couldn't find me, so he decided to mess with me by killing every quest giver in the zone. What a DICK.

So I went to Un'Goro Crater and farmed leather. For hours.

I told the tale to my dear friend SirGeekelot, who immediately pronounced: "That guy is my hero".

A week later, I was back at it. The rest of the SR team and I had been doing quests in Winterspring. Sure, we could level quicker in Outlands, but we're new to this so it was nice to see all the "old" stuff. Plus that asshole was still out there. But it'd been a week. Surely he's gone. Right? Right?

So we went through the Dark Portal once again, and we were happily collecting the mutated fel-sphincters of some helboars when all of a sudden I saw Stupid Ranger suddenly fall over dead. Dante, as is his nature, immediately charged her assailant. I applauded his bravery, but I already knew the result. I saw the red beard. I saw the jumble of w's, x's, m's and y's. I saw enough damage to make Kel'Thuzad call in sick to work. It was that bastard again.

A half hour later, he'd killed all of us no fewer than twenty times each. We finally decided to call for help from our guildmates. SirGeekelot came to help us on his lvl 80 hunter, either from a desire to help his friends or to meet his new hero. He cheered as the epic battle began.

And then two seconds later, he died. SirGeekelot, that is. WHAT. THE HELL. This happened a couple more times. Then SirGeekelot checked his stats on the Armory. Oh dear, a full set of this year's Arena gear. He was basically a walking PvP machine. Great.

So we called another of our guildies in, and he brought his lvl 80 mage in. And then both of our guildies died, because that asshole had awesome gear and apparently no soul. About 20 minutes later, he eventually flew off. Probably to go kick a nun in the shins.

We never saw him again. But Dengus and I have both sworn this: when we are level 80, we're going to get geared to the teeth, and we're going to find that guy and kill him repeatedly until he wishes he was never born. Then we will kill him again.

Guide to Decorating Your New Dungeon

2009-02-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

Congratulations on your recent acquisition! You have a wonderful new dungeon, ready to fill with all your nefarious traps and your troves of treasure, or to keep as place to escape the pressures of the world and all those pesky adventurers.

Before opening (or locking) the doors of your dungeon, we recommend that you finish the interior design. The stone walls, floors and ceilings original to your dungeon will do a lot to create that cozy atmosphere, but you may want to also consider these accessories:

1. Portcullises -- There will be rooms that not everyone needs to be in, but it would be nice for them to see the architecture. A portcullis is an attractive alternative to a wooden door.

2. Sculptures & Tapestries -- Add some art to keep your dungeon from feeling uncultured. Sculptures are a great way to add a touch of class. But why pay a lot of money for some measy art? Shop the factory seconds. They may have some dings, scratches, cracks or missing appendages, but those imperfections can adda lot of character! Of course, you should probably have a little variety, and some threadbare tapestries can be a great complement to your sculpture seconds. Don't go overboard, though, because you don't want to hide all those great stone walls behind cloth.

3. Dead Ends -- A must-have to help deter those annoying adventurers, dead ends will create a level of confusion and frustration that will demoralize most of your uninvited guests. Plus, they create great places to put some of those sculptures!

4. Ever-lit, smokeless torches -- You will want your visitors - welcomed or otherwise - to be able to appreciate the architecture of your dungeon and all your great design choices; it's the new standard for dungeons to be lit, but regular torches won't do for illuminating your dungeon. You don't want to constantly be relighting torches, and you don't need smoke getting in your eyes if you need to defend your treasure from adventurers. Spring for ever-lit, smokeless torches; you won't regret it.

Your new dungeon will provide you with many, many years of dungeon-y happiness, especially if you take a little time to add a few personal touches.

Behind the Screen: Roleplaying the process of training...

2009-02-02T09:49:00.004-06:00

As a Dungeon Master, often it makes sense to handwave events that are deemed too dull, too boring, or happen too often to "waste" time on during the gaming session. Over the weekend, I had an "a-ha!" moment that made me realize why letting some events like class training, cleric prayers, or other character specific events have their moment in the sun is important.

Learning by Doing

For those of you that don't know, I am a somewhat experienced martial artist (as is Vanir). I have been training in Shotokan Karate for the last 18 years or so, and as a result I have had an opportunity to train with some very interesting people. After relocating to my current job, I was told of a sensei in our area that is one of the greats, so I sought him out to train with him.

Now, that in itself correlates heavily with most roleplaying games: the student seeks out a very skilled teacher to train him further in his chosen craft, but over the weekend I got the opportunity to participate in a few classes for their club's annual "spirit training". This involved an early morning training session with his entire school (around 30-40 people showed up) packed all in a tight little room to train intensely from the hours of 6 am to 7 am all week long. (I only participated in two days due to schedule conflicts.)

Stupid Ranger and I settled around 40 minutes away (during rush hour), so that meant I got the distinct pleasure of rising around 5 am to get ready and make the trip to the training session.

OK, that's great, but how does it affect being a Dungeon Master?

It's actually quite simple: if I was a player character and my DM simply just hand-waved my morning training rituals, the character development just wouldn't have been the same. The whole experience of training in that way, with that group of people vastly improved my outlook for those days. I was tired and sore, but upbeat and mentally energized at the same time. This would've looked somewhat odd from a player's perspective to just jump into that state with nothing more than a comment like: "Ok, ok, you get up and do your training in the morning, let's get back to the plot" from the DM.

Putting yourself in the shoes of your character in a real way by acting out their training regiment from time to time, or asking the DM if there are any heightened opportunities for class training with others or a seasoned instructor nearby can provide an opportunity for roleplay and fun. Dungeon Masters should be open to this type of interaction and seek it out, it makes a big difference in the quality of your character development.

Behind the Screen: A new beginning...

2009-01-27T01:14:00.004-06:00

This weekend, Stupid Ranger and I were cursed with a prolonged internet outage. Thankfully, it is all resolved now but know that we put our time to good use meeting up with our new intrepid band of adventurers for our next campaign!

New beginnings, new social contracts...

Like all good campaigns, ours started with the simplest of discussions: what, when, where, and how often. We decided to pick up Keep on the Shadowfell since we had several newbies to 4th edition (myself included), and we committed to playing twice a month at minimum. The rest of the incidentals went along standard lines... they have kids so we'd likely play at their place more often, around dinner time like our old group was just fine with them... and the discussion went off without a hitch.

We did cover some more complicated matters on handling character death, playing of non-present characters (we elected to have them run by another member of the party in order to keep some party balance during fights), and just general approach to gaming. We entered into some discussion regarding gaming background in order to divine what type of gamers they are, and happily it seems like they fit the mold of many of our friends from back in the frozen plains of Illinois.

Regarding the module

Neither Stupid Ranger or I have much experience in running from a module. I'm looking forward to it as a learning experience and I've not yet loosed it from its plastic wrappings to find out what joys lie within. Our group seemed pretty excited to start into it with their own characters, so I've been wondering how much impact there would be in running the module with our characters instead of the pre-generated ones.

In the end, I suspect it will be fun regardless of the decision on that front, but I think I'm edging toward making it work with our own unique characters. They both seem pretty excited about that prospect, and I find playing with my own character much more involving than playing with a pre-generated character. Granted, just about my only experience playing a pre-gen was at Nascrag, which is an entirely different beast... but the point remains.

If any one has recommendations on how to approach running a module, I'd be happy to hear them. We start this weekend!! Wooo, game time!

In case you haven't checked your email

2009-01-22T08:00:00.001-06:00

In the GenCon newsletter this week, they announced that badge registration for GenCon Indy 2009 (Aug 13-16) will begin Feb 15, and hotel registration will begin Feb 17. Mark your calendars!

Thanks For All the Fish

2009-01-21T14:11:00.002-06:00

E and I have received so much support for our book, and as of today, we have had 173 gamer girls and 185 gamer guys complete our surveys. In addition to the basic survey, we asked the girls if they wanted to complete some follow-up surveys, and we received overwhelming response on the follow-ups as well.

In fact, we've received so many surveys, we had to close them earlier than originally anticipated. So the surveys are no longer available. We do appreciate all your support, and as we work our way through the many, many surveys, we will update you on our progress.

Thanks again for all the fish! :)

Gamer Girl Suvey: Update

2009-01-19T08:00:00.000-06:00

I wanted to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has participated so far in the Gamer Girl survey for the book e and I are developing. We have had such fantastic turn-out on our surveys, and we are both really overwhelmed with goodwill and support.

As of Sunday night, one week from our survey release, we have 185 guys' surveys nd 146 girls' surveys. Having reached our goal for the guys, we have closed the guys' survey, but we are still taking girls' surveys at: http://geeksdreamgirl.wufoo.com/forms/girl-gamer-book-survey-for-girls-only/.

For those who have completed our survey and/or offered support, we both extend our gratitude. If you're a girl gamer and haven't completed the survey, or if you know a girl gamer how hasn't finished the survey, please send them the link!

Thanks! :)

StupidRanger goes to Catan...

2009-01-15T08:40:00.000-06:00

It has been a very long time since I've tried something completely different in gaming. Last weekend, I jumped at the opportunity to visit an old high school friend and her family and she recommended that we try Settlers of Catan from Mayfair Games.

Overcoming the Nerdgasm Effect

Now, whenever I have heard Settlers of Catan mentioned in nerdly circles, I was quickly met with the all-too-familiar "hurrrr" sound of nerd joy. This sound was usually followed with some fevered discussion of an expansion or version of the game that the person had heard of without a shred of explanation regarding what the game was actually about.

Going in, I had no expectations... for all I knew it was some sort of deep space RISK or involved trading cow udders for favor from Greek gods for some reason. I was happy to find out that it was a really fun strategy game containing none of those things that I mentioned.

Dynamics...

I like that Settlers is a game of both luck and strategy. The goal is to accumulate Victory Points by developing a settlement that consisted of roads, settlements, and cities. You buy upgrades to your settlement by spending resource cards, which you get relative to where your settlements are placed .

I have to admit that watching my friends set up the board was rather daunting, but the dynamics of the game are essentially dead simple but very fun. I really enjoyed the fact that both luck and strategy is involved, and that the game is structured such that there isn't all that much direct conflict amongst the players.

Even though the game dynamics are simple, they produce a surprisingly complicated set of strategies for accumulating, controlling, and spending resources. Add in some friendly player interaction and you've got yourself a great gaming experience (even though Stupid Ranger won!)

Stupid Ranger and I are going to pick up a set for ourselves before long!

Female Roleplaying Gamers Needed for New Book!

2009-01-12T00:30:00.002-06:00

Geek’s Dream Girl and StupidRanger are joining forces to write the ultimate guidebook to female roleplaying gamers around the world.

We need YOUR input! Girls, you are the heart of this book; share your experiences with us!

Guys, you have an especially important role in the success of our book. Not only do we need your input, we also need you to get out there on Facebook, Myspace, IMs, forums, chat rooms and Friendly Local Game Stores to spread the word to every girl gamer you know!

Topics to be covered include:

Token Girl at the Game Table
Friendly Local Gaming Store & Gaming Conventions
Gaming With Those You Love (Significant Others & Children)
Sexism and Stereotypes
Your Gaming Style, Your Games, and Your Characters
Explaining D&D to Non-Gamers & Attracting Other Girls to Gaming
The RPG Industry
Calling the Shots: The Girl GM

This book will celebrate all the ways girls contribute to the gaming culture and we’d love to have you be a part of it.

Want to see your name in print as part of our book? Please take our surveys:

GIRLS:
http://geeksdreamgirl.wufoo.com/forms/girl-gamer-book-survey-for-girls-only/

GUYS:
http://geeksdreamgirl.wufoo.com/forms/girl-gamer-book-survey-for-guys-only/

Become a fan of “Female Roleplaying Gamers” on Facebook!

Thank you for sharing your experiences and helping build our bestseller!

- E. and SR

Surviving the Crazy Times: Beginning Again

2009-01-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

So we're finally getting boxes unpacked, stuff put away and generally settling into life in Colorado. I've been working on setting up the smallest bedroom as an office/library, which has lead me to the realization that I have a lot of books. The disappointing thing is that after unpacking the obvious boxes, I still have gaps on the bookcases where I various books are missing. Ah, well, they'll turn it eventually.

Beginning Again

Dante is coordinating with some of his new co-workers on getting a group together. It's been a long time since I've sat down at the gaming table with my books and my dice spread out before me, so I'm pretty excited to get the new group together and see how well we all play together.

Of course, this is the "beginning again": finding a group, getting to know new people and figuring out how to play in a the group. Prior to this, I have always been part of a group where I knew at least one person (other than Dante). This will be the first time I'll be in a group composed of people I've only met once or twice at after-work get-togethers where spouses were invited.

Hello, My Name Is

So, how do you integrate a bunch of individuals into a group? I figure we will need to start out getting to know each other a little bit before we try to get a game going. To me, roleplaying seems to be a more natural process when you're not facing a bunch of strangers. Of course, that may be partly due to the fact that I'm a little shy. Just like your characters need to meet each other before setting out to save the world, you need to know your fellow players before you begin playing those characters.

Behind the Screen: What comes first?

2009-01-05T18:41:00.002-06:00

As I begin the process of designing my next campaign, I found myself inspired in a different way than I am used to. Normally, I tend to generate my campaigns based on two major factors: what classes that my players have selected and cues from the backstory of my campaign setting.

This time it's all about me.

Well, maybe not about me explicitly... but about my NPCs. As I was driving across the frozen plains of Nebraska *shudder*, I came up with some very vivid ideas for some NPCs. In the past, I have stuck to major archetypes for my main characters and improvised many of my lesser NPCs.

A sidenote: often my improvised NPCs are the more memorable ones. Anything born from spur of the moment roleplaying and the influences of sugarfied Vanir is bound to be somewhat memorable.

Anyway, back to the point... the NPCs that I stitched together in my mind varied wildly in character class and background, which left me with another quandary: how do I integrate all of these guys together within one storyline?

Essentially, that's where I am at now... I'm trying to generate an underlying plot that will span disparate cultures in a meaningful way. I suspect I will create several plot episodes that patchwork these characters together, with a common plot backing material and stuffed with the warm cotton batting of interesting roleplaying.

That's it for a strange quilt metaphor now, and I'm off to put a log on the fire because the cold is apparently getting to me! Game Masters, how do you generate your storylines? NPCs first? Characters first? Plot first? Let's hear it!

Posting issues...

2009-01-03T04:15:00.003-06:00

The astonishingly silent mouth breathers over at Blogger have broken something so badly that we have been trying for 18 hours or so to put up yesterday's post.

It seems they have created an intermittent problem that forces us to perform arcane rituals with our publishing settings to get anything posted correctly. I am able to post this announcement due to the combined intelligence of the people affected by this issue, who came up with a series of workarounds after it became apparent that the guys at Blogger couldn't find the handle on this thing. Some blogs have been experiencing these issues since 12/26. That's last year, folks.

Add one more thing to the New Year's resolution list: switch to Wordpress. I fully expect to hear "I told ya so!" from the rest of the roleplaying blogosphere now.

Thanks for staying tuned, we'll be back with you shortly.

Looking forward to 2009!

2009-01-02T12:53:00.005-06:00

As we bound headlong into the new year, all of us over at Stupid Ranger Central met and came up with some resolutions for 2009.

Annoying things, begone!

Because of this fact, in the coming weeks you will see some changes over here at StupidRanger.com. We have been using Google AdSense to monetize our site, and two things happened: we've made effectively nothing from this effort and we often see annoying or irrelevant ads on our main page. So AdSense is gone for 2009!

This is not to say that advertising will never return, but it will be only to projects very close to our heart and will be entirely relevant to gaming.

In addition, we've decided to part ways with CafePress. We truly love many of our shirt designs, but we cannot price them competitively enough to make up the cost of maintaining the storefront. Vanir is going to make some of our more popular designs into desktop wallpaper which will be made freely available as he has time.

For the record, our good buddy Yax over at DungeonMastering.com now has a small collection of newly limited edition shirts! Thanks for the support, Yax!

Getting back to the fun of it!

StupidRanger, Vanir, and I have had a lot of fun with this site over the past year and a half. We're going to focus on providing the content that is important to us. Speaking purely for myself, I intend to continue to explore the ins and outs of being a better Game Master. That means one of my immediate resolutions is to get a gaming group together in our new locale. We know there is a small body of gamers right in our subdivision, and my coworkers have expressed some interest in getting back into D&D so this should be an easy win.

Both Vanir and Stupid Ranger have expressed a desire to stretch their creative writing muscles, so I suspect you will see more content from them on this front as 2009 progresses.

Relocating across country to a very demanding job has been taxing on SR and I, and Vanir's new wunderkind has drawn some of his recreational time lately so you can expect that our post frequency might not remain at the daily level that it was through much of 2008.

But that being said, understand this loud and clear: we are not going away. If you do get to feeling lonely and need some extra roleplaying content, you can always go drink from the industrial strength firehose that is RPGBloggers.com. Don't worry, we'll be there too with every roleplaying related post that we write!

I hope everyone gets their New Year off right, we're really looking forward to getting back to the fun stuff in 2009!

Behind the Screen: Old vs. New?

2008-12-31T02:18:00.002-06:00

Stupid Ranger and I have recently made the long round-trip to Illinois to spend the holidays with our family, and this resulted in a fairly long hiatus from our standard RPG fare. Thankfully, our good buddy Vanir threw in some excellent roleplaying holiday specials for you all to enjoy!

Out with the old... or not?

On the 16 hour car ride from Illinois, Stupid Ranger and I mulled the start of our new D&D campaign, which will begin in coming weeks. I told her that I've got some exciting ideas percolating and we should get serious about pulling our group together, and then she asked a fairly innocuous question: "Are you going to run [D&D] 3.5 or 4.0?"

On one hand, we are both intimately familiar with D&D 3.5 and she knows the rules inside and out. When starting to play in a new environment with a new group of roleplaying friends, the familiarity is very attractive. One wants to bring his A-game to a new group, yes?

On the other hand, if I am never forced to fully acclimate to the new rule set I am unlikely to ever learn it. Our small group of players are returning to D&D after a long lapse, so they will be unfamiliar with either option which should allow some bandwidth for SR and I to learn along with them. Regardless of the final decision, I'm going to get out my D&D 4.0 books and really give them another read.

I will gladly welcome sage advice on this matter as I plunge headlong into campaign planning!

Thanks for putting up with the cold winter hiatus, we've got some exciting things in store for the new year that will be announced soon! Stay tuned!

'Twas The Night Before Game Night

2008-12-23T14:21:00.000-06:00

Twas the night before game night
and on his PC
the DM was scheming
to kill you and me

Three traps were set
at the entrance with care
with hopes that the rogue
would not find them there

The CR's were set
about seven too high
and the players, he thought,
were destined to die

Through pit traps and owlbears
through freakish large kobolds
through mephits on crack rock
and axe-wielding stirges

Suddenly ghostly white vapor appeared
And swirled 'round his feet, as he saved vs Fear

The spirit jangled etherial chains,
"I am the Spirit of Awful Campaigns!"

"You spend all your time crafting mayhem and doom,
and yet not one player has fun in this room!"

"Give them a challenge, but still make it fun.
Encourage roleplaying from everyone."

The spirit fell silent, bathed in dim light,
and just then the DM's rebuttal took flight.

"I've tried for years, but they just won't budge.
They just make fart jokes and eat E.L. Fudge."

"They ignore my puzzles.
My plots are dismantled
They min-max. They rules-lawyer.
I'm +5 disgruntled!"

The spirit then nodded and reached in its pocket,
filling the heart of the DM with fear
But all that came out was one social contract
"This should evoke much more roleplaying cheer."

"Steroidal beholders are not a solution,
and neither are mindflayers armed with C4.
You'll both give and take, and set down the ground rules
and quite soon your issues shall be no more."

With that the spirit faded away,
and the DM's CHA score gained three points that day.
And laying a pencil atop of their sheets,
the players were awarded two bonus feats.

And the DM told all,
as the players arrived
"Happy game night to all!
Please try to survive."

Dear WoW Gold Farm Comment Spammers:

2008-12-18T14:50:00.003-06:00

The way I see it, you have one of two options:

Stop spamming your shit on our blog please. I am tired of cleaning it up.
Give me 1000gp a day, and you can post as many retarded gold spam comments as you want. Hell, we'll let you write a guest post. (But, in the popular urban vernacular, bitch had better relinquish my money lest they suffer the backside of Bigby's Pimpin' Hand.)

The choice is yours.

Looking back at our five-day forecast...

2008-12-16T20:10:00.002-06:00

This week, Stupid Ranger and I are seperated by the vast expanse of 900 miles as I am back in Illinois working this week. She will join me next week to celebrate Christmas with my family, but in the meantime we've both been experiencing severe bouts of winter weather.

I had the good fortune to drive home in nearly four inches of snow and ice, so the going was slow. I had quite a bit of time to think about the site, and I remembered this post from an especially strange bout of weather we had earlier in the year and thought I'd put it up again for your continued consideration.

We are still experiencing our holiday gaming drought, hopefully we will get our gaming schedule (and therefore our posting schedule) back to Regular Status after the new year. Until then, expect to see roleplaying themed holiday merriment, glimpses back into our archives, and new content as the muse strikes us!

Originally posted by Dante on 2/4/08

Here in StupidRangerVille, we have been experiencing some very strange weather today. It is what is known as a thundersnow (or winter thunderstorm) where the primary precipitation of snow and sleet is accompanied by thunder and lightning... it is relatively rare and quite interesting to behold.

Sir Geekelot, one of our current campaign-members messaged me to confirm said strange weather and heralded it as a sign of The Apocalypse... and that got me thinking about weather in the context of our D&D sessions.

Wow, it's raining again...

In most of my campaigns we have often hand-waved weather, or used it as a relatively cliche' foreshadowing element to illustrate impending doom. I know that many rules systems exist for actually interacting with weather-systems and how to use it in your settings, but often having to look up those charts for movement encumbrance or situational modifiers to attack and damage is too much work for me so I regularly just use an ad-hoc method of doling out pluses or minuses depending on the situation in front of me.

I have found that as characters advance in levels, their level of concern for environmental conditions seem to wane. Flipping through a few of the Monster Manuals, I have found a few elemental based baddies that seem to be intense concentrations of (or elementals created by) terrible weather conditions. We had a seafaring campaign in college that actually got to experience some of those creatures first-hand, and I can tell you that it is a unique experience.

If you don't like the weather, just wait a few days.

I haven't loosed any of these terrors on our current campaign (yet), but I would be interested to hear if anyone has done anything cool with the weather based elemental creatures or used weather in an interesting way to color your campaigns.

Has anyone been able to make the environment significant enough that characters actually care how it impacts them as they progress to higher levels?

Before everyone starts sending us boxes of E.L. Fudge cookies and order-by-phone pizzas as provisions, never fear... its supposed to be 50 degrees here tomorrow! (Although donations of sugar and pizza are always readily accepted!)

The Twelve Rounds of D&D (abridged for your sanity)

2008-12-10T14:56:00.005-06:00

On The Twelfth Round Of D&D
My DM Gave To Me:

12 Garys Gygaxing

11 Runes Exploding

10 Mounds A-Shambling

9 Umbers Hulking

8 Fighters Tanking

7 Clerics Casting

6 Rogues A-Sneaking

+5 Ring of Protection

4 Ioun Stones

3 Undead

2 Saving Throws

And A Hit I Rolled Critically

Of Hobbits and Adventures

2008-12-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

This past weekend, Dante & I went to a dinner with some of his coworkers who also relocated to Colorado. Our post-dinner conversation turned to a very familiar theme, one our good friend Tolkien incorporated into his well-known books:

You Can Never Truly Go Home

This is a theme that is very true to life. As you grow up and move away from your childhood home, change will set in. The places may or may not physically change. But those you left behind will change as they have new experiences. And you will have new experiences that will change your perception of things. Things will never be exactly the way you remember; you can never truly go home.

And how this is related to roleplaying...

In my experience as a player, as life in adventures moves on to great things, the hometown seldom changes. It provides a comfortable place to which adventurers can return when things are tough or just to unwind and refocus energies to their "save the world" quests.

There are occasions when this has not be true. I played a character once whose mother was murdered by the Big Bads. I had a difficult time moving my character beyond the destruction of her home environment, and for the rest of the time in that campaign, there was always that unsettling knowledge that she no longer had a home.

And my point to all of this

As a player, I never want to see my character's home environment change throughout the campaign. But I also know that changes occur while you are out adventuring. The challenge for the DM is to understand how your players are attached to the home environment and incorporate change according to your players' needs. If returning to the home town is an integral part of the players routine, introduce small changes that don't disrupt their way of life too much but are significant enough to be noticed.

Site Maintenance: Take that, Chinese WoW comment spammers!

2008-12-08T02:58:00.005-06:00

I tried to resist this, but the continuing onslaught of comment spam lately has forced me to enable Blogger's captcha system. It appears to be largely World of Warcraft related goldfarming spam, so you can take this opportunity to thank that subculture for this change. I recommend thanking them with repeated kicks to their groin.

I was making a feeble attempt to clean up these messes as they ocurred, but with all of the other draws on my time I have been a bit less diligent about patrolling comments on posts that were a week or more old. Stupid real life getting in the way of internet fun!

Those of you that are not comment spammers, please accept my apology for the addition four to five keystrokes to prove you are a human being with a soul. We fully intend to migrate StupidRanger.com to a platform where we have more control over the spam blocking features (*cough cough* Wordpress *cough*), but until then please bear with us!

Behind the Screen: The Winter Drag...

2008-12-05T02:59:00.003-06:00

In addition to the gaming hiatus due to our relocation, we are also smack in the middle of the Winter Drag that affects many roleplaying groups. With all of the social obligations, shopping, and general merriment that is involved with the Thanksgiving/Christmas corridor, often there is not time for traditional roleplaying.

But there's always exceptions!

The olden days of college gaming were about the only time during the holidays when we would roleplay, and we had many contributing factors to making this happen: proximity to other gamers, the need for a break from studying, and the lack of family members demanding various holiday gatherings until it was time for the short Thanksgiving or Christmas break that we were given.

Ways to Donder your Blitzen during the holiday season

If you do really want to game during the holidays, one-shot campaigns are your best friend. That, and stringent scheduling. I usually put some cycles toward campaign planning during the winter months, putting together a few episodes worth of common campaign encounters is a pretty quick and easy prospect that doesn't require other people to complete.

I also like to plan some holiday related encounters during my campaigns so the characters in my campaign have the opportunity to relax and celebrate in-game. I've had Santa Claus drop off a few fun presents, and the occasional useful item to my players in the past. The Easter Bunny shows up in every one of my campaigns in some way or another (the vorpal Easter Bunny from another dimension was fun one year) and most of the time the players appreciate the fun diversion.

Occasionally, you will have a player or two that balk at the anachronism or find the presentation of holiday related campaign events childish, but those people can officially Cram It With Walnuts.

Take the time to relax and enjoy the holiday season, however don't forget that you can use these times to create some great moments for use in your campaigns once the presents are unwrapped and the turkey is far into leftovers!

Roleplay better by being personally accountable...

2008-12-01T12:38:00.006-06:00

I've been doing a lot of reading on management-style topics lately as a result of my new job, and after you read several different books in rapid succession you start seeing patterns. One such pattern is that of personal accountability, and most of the books and websites that I have been reading are discussing this topic in preparation to become a better employee or to "go that extra mile" in order to make you stand out at the office. (Not that I need this advice, I'm already pretty outstanding, thank you very much!)

Be a better roleplayer by asking how you can make the situation better.

Many people complain about their roleplaying experience as a function of the shortcomings of the DM or the interaction of the roleplaying group as a whole. Blaming others is as natural as drawing breath for most people, and in some cases it may be warranted and deserved. I want to challenge everyone to stop blaming everyone else and take some in-game actions to get noticed and inject your character into the roleplaying mix.

Ask yourself the following question: "What can I do to get more actively involved with this story or my adventuring party?" By being personally accountable for helping to steer the story or interact with the other players, you will drive yourself to not be a victim of circumstance within your group. This may spawn a myriad of different results given your roleplaying group and DungeonMaster, but I'm sure it will open up some roleplaying avenues to make you a more satisfied player.

This also works for introverted roleplayers too!

As you all may know, the DM often has many things to juggle behind the screen and it can be quite easy to overlook the more quiet and subtle roleplayers in the group. If you're not a very outgoing person and this is an especially hard challenge, ask yourself what you can do to support someone else's strong roleplaying. Often, acting to support another player's roleplaying will get you noticed because its so darned unusual that most DMs will take pause when you do this.

This advice should also help in groups with very strong roleplayers, and it will help safeguard you from getting drowned out by their bold style. Having fun is the first step, that should cause the DM to notice and throw some more formulated roleplaying/adventuring opportunities your way!

Draconic Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T08:00:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time in a faraway village, the citizens lived in constant fear of attacked by the local dragon. While the dragon had not attacked in the village in all the years anyone could remember, there were stories told by the elders of their grand-parents' days of gruesome, dragon-related deaths. No one could actually claim that the local dragon featured in any of the stories, but the current generation, sure that the dragon's taste for livestock would evolve into a taste for villager-stock, decided that after completing the harvest, they would mount an expedition to the dragon's lair to eradicate the threat once and for all.

The dragon, possessed of exceptional hearing, overheard the plans as he was selecting a tasty morsel from the herd of cattle grazing just outside the village. He was outraged, as he considered himself to be a great neighbor, dining only on livestock and keeping more aggressive dragons out of the area. While he did not want to destroy the villagers (who else would provide him with such tasty cattle?), he was not sure how to proceed. So he went back to his lair to ponder his predicament.

The villagers mounted their expedition a few days later. Waving pitch forks and torches, they climbed the mountain trails to reach the dragon's lair, only to find it empty. When they turned around to head back to the village, they found their path blocked by the dragon. This was when they realized that a flying dragon may be a terrible sight to behold, but a dragon up close is much more terrifying.

Most of the raiding villagers scattered, seeking shelter behind rocks, trees and each other, trying to find indirect paths back to the village. One man, however, stood his ground in the middle of the path. "Oh, Dragon," he said, "We are here to bring eternal peace to our village by destroying you. Yield to us now."

The dragon raised his eyebrow at this speech, taking in the absurdity of the speaker's situation. "Oh, Human," he replied, "I will not yield for my destruction will bring not eternal peace but many years of heartache and despair. For upon my death, another, more terrible dragon will take my place."

The speaker looked around for his fellow companions, uncomfortable with this turn of events. Another, more terrible option had not been considered. Realizing that he was in this alone, that all of the other villagers had fled, he shuffled his feet, digging in the loose dirt with the toe of his boot. "We cannot allow you to live for fear of our lives, yet we cannot survive a more terrible dragon. What solution do you propose for resolving this impasse?"

The dragon refrained from stating the obvious, that he had never taken a life of a villager. Instead, he attempted to reason with the speaker. "If it is only fear of your lives that prevents us from being neighbors, perhaps we can reach a compromise. If I swear only to eat your livestock and never your families, can you swear on behalf of the village to leave me in peace?"

The speaker appeared thoughtful for several moments, knowing that the decision he made would affect the entire village for many, many years to come. The fear of a more terrible dragon, however, forced him to consider this compromise as the best possible option. "I swear, on behalf of the entire village, that so long as you only dine upon livestock, no action will be taken against you by our citizens."

Making it official, the dragon stated, "I do so swear to only dine upon livestock." Both the speaker and the dragon smiled, the dragon only a little to avoid showing too many teeth. Then the dragon proposed a feast to celebrate this newly established peace. The speaker promised a spectacular feast in three days' time and returned to the village to share the good news. While many still gazed fearfully upon the mountainous trail leading to the dragon's lair, most were willing to accept peace at the price of a cow.

And so, when the sun rose on the third day, the dragon carefully settled himself in the field and shared a spectacular feast featuring the fruits of the harvest. And thus, all were happy, especially the dragon, who had become quite found of cattle.

Spicing up the boring road...

2008-11-25T01:20:00.003-06:00

Stupid Ranger and I traveled home for the Thanksgiving holiday this week, making a very dull 16 hour drive from Colorado to Illinois to visit my family with our very own riding dog, Teddy, in tow. In between cycling music CDs and keeping tabs on which state license plates we saw rolling down the road alongside us, my thoughts inevitably turned to our D&D campaigns and the inevitability of longer haul travel.

Does that sign really say that? Yeah... it does. Wow.

This is a topic we have covered before in some fashion, however I found myself interested in the small details as we went down the road. Strange things sparked conversation, such as a giant hand painted yard sign in the middle of a field that said "OUTLAW SODOMY" in big letters. Adventure is ensured for the intrepid folks that would seek out the people so dedicated to that particular cause that they got out the ol' bucket of Dutch Boy and made that thing happen!

Other, less controversial points of interest caught my eye... weird storefronts, museums to historical figures I have never heard of, even some truly strange town names. Before long I was keeping a little crib sheet in my head of ideas for my next D&D campaign.

It just goes to show you, new ideas can come from anywhere!

Surviving the Crazy Times -- The New Home

2008-11-21T15:42:00.002-06:00

Dante & I successfully completed our cross country trek and are settling nicely into our new home in Colorado. Life here is pretty much the same with some very notable exceptions. One exception, a very happy one, is the fact that we can see the mountains anytime we leave the house. Another exception, not so happy, is that we haven't played D&D in a Very Long Time.

Around all the unpacking and trips to various stores to buy those things that a) didn't make the trip or b) we didn't need before and now we have to have, we have been trying to keep up with the gaming culture via World of Warcraft. It's something, but it just doesn't have the same level of interaction and spontaneity that I truly enjoy in a good RPG.

A couple of our readers have mentioned that they live in the area, and I'm hoping after the first of the year, when things should (hopefully) be more settled, we'll be able to get together to meet the local gamers.

In the meantime, with little happening in the way of RPG in our household, Dante & I are a little stretched for RPG-related content. You may see fewer posts on RPGBloggers.com, but you can still expect to see some random posts, as well as WOW-related content showing up on our site.

So far, we are surviving the crazy times. I'll keep you posted if that changes. :)

Monstrous Advice

2008-11-20T08:00:00.001-06:00

Surprise!! I'm still around, but with the move, I've been a little busy lately. I hope you all didn't miss me too much! With the holidays, I'm sure things will be a bit chaotic around stupidranger.com, but I'll try to be here more often for you!

I had one of those blog moments... when you read someone else's blog, and it sparks an idea that sinks into your brain and rattles around until you decide to do something about it. Shelly Mazzanoble posted a funny and insightful look at the fact that geek girls do not often fit the general profile for popular women's magazines, especially the advice columns. And it got me to wondering what kinds of letters would be submitted to monster women's magazines. Here's what I think we might see:

Dear Popular Monster's Magazine:

My awesome monster boyfriend has invited me to move in with him. I'm really excited, because he's so awesome, but his cave is less than fabulous. He works in a dungeon as an adventurer-control technician, and he is always bringing home bones and armor fragments that he leaves all over. Worst of all, he brings home every wand he comes across, and they are just sitting a pile in the main room of his cave. It's a disaster! I'm afraid that if I try to organize his collection, he'll be mad. I really want this to work because I think he might be The One. Please, can you tell me what to do about the mess?

Monstress in Love

And for the monsters getting ready for their big wedding day:

Dear Modern Bride-Zilla:

My future monster-in-law is driving me crazy! She insists that the wedding should be in the old-fashioned swamp instead of the up-scale dungeon my fiance and I both want. She thinks all the bridesmonsters should carry swamp weed bouquets instead of the stink blossoms I want. We are not getting along, and my fiance wants to give in to all her demands. How do I find the right balance without compromising on my dream wedding and not alienating my future monster-in-law?

Worried about the Wedding

It's all starting to come together now...

2008-11-17T03:02:00.004-06:00

Stupid Ranger and I are finally getting settled into our new home! Fortuitously, as if by some divine plan, I received a sales email from the guys over at Geek Chic lauding their new demi-Sultan table that will be released to the masses on November 23rd.

Cursed Consumerism!

This just threw a healthy splash of gasoline on the fire for me to plan my new gaming sanctuary at my new home. While I might not be able to afford the Sultan (unless their big reveal is more economical models!), I certainly would like some sort of a custom gaming area to inhabit with my motley band of adventurers.

The space itself needs some finishing, so once that is done I am looking ahead for some good multi-purpose ideas for using that space as a gaming/recreation area. I'm thinking a big, home-rolled whiteboard would be nice both for drawing encounters or keeping score for the ol' dart board. A more high tech solution might come along depending on how my research into multitouch surface technology goes... that may take a back burner until warmer months when I can comfortably build things outdoors again.

Other necessary components, aside from a place to rest one's butt:

A food/drink/alcohol dispensary of some kind.
One to many book containment units
One to many miniature containment units
Some sort of music system to provide some mad roleplaying tunes
The all-important ambiance factor, meaning a place to display the ample Lord of the Rings prop/sword collection
Some sort of glorified display for my autographed OD&D sourcebooks, perhaps with mini Gygaxian Shrine (seriously not a joke here people, I want this!)

I will provide updates as they develop... or when the guys at Geek Chic finally get the hint and drop ship me their newest model for... uh... review and testing purposes. Heck, I'll even take their slightly loved used equipment off their hands!

As I return from dreamland, feel free to shout out whatever random stuff that comes to mind when you think about your ideal gaming space. Coolest ideas I haven't thought of already will likely get you hugged if we ever meet IRL, and have a distinct possibility of being implemented in the final Roleplaying Dungeon!

Continuing to fly your roleplaying flag...

2008-11-12T00:31:00.006-06:00

Amid the hail of boxes and packing paper, I found a few minutes tonight to catch up on reading the comments to last Wednesday's post on your right to be unique. Comments on that post are certainly a fascinating read and spawned off enough material to warrant another post on the matter, since many of you seem to have some valid points.

Humility replaced with shame/bravado

One of our commenters, Marty Lund, pointed out quite correctly that humility isn't something that comes commonly in our culture. This is cutting very close to exactly the point I was trying to articulate... you can take ownership of your nerdly leanings in a humble way and not defaulty replace it with shame as many of us do.

When I am approached by someone at work that notices the d20 on my desk or my "Chewie is my co-pilot" sticker in my cube, I usually just tell them plainly that I enjoy roleplaying games (yes, like D&D) and I let the conversation unfold. Usually they don't throw holy water on me and cast my demons out, nor do they laugh and tease me... in fact, most folks that I work with have at least tried roleplaying or know someone that is into it well enough to have some context, and it turns out to be a good conversation.

I will admit to being a little pumped up from watching a certain president-elect speak when I wrote the last post, but I really am not advocating you jump up on your chair at work, cite page 32 of the OD&D sourcebook, put on a towel as a cape and run around your cube to show how much you're into the roleplaying nerd genre. In the end, I'd just be happy if we fought a little bit against that common (but not universal) reaction to self-deprecate.

That being said: I really wouldn't MIND if you did the things I mentioned above. :)

For the record: yes, Anonymous, I am married. To Stupid Ranger (the person, not the site) and luckily she's as much of a nerd as I am!

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post, the intelligent discourse was certainly refreshing!

Visiting the Archives: Travelling...

2008-11-10T23:05:00.003-06:00

This Behind the Screen piece was posted in a much simpler time before Stupid Ranger and I were cast across the country for my day job. We are in the process of unloading boxes at the moment, so please feel free to sup at the banquet of this post while we figure out which drawer gets our silverware and which one gets our character sheets.

Enjoy!

originally posted by Dante on 10/13/2007

This weekend the StupidRanger crew is heading out of town and that got me to thinking: how does everyone handle traveling long distances? I would like to recount one failed attempt on my part and open up the floor to obvious criticism and comments.

Rollin', rollin', rollin' (wheels, not dice!)

In one of our recent campaigns, the party was tasked with traveling across country to locate pieces of an important artifact. It was all fun and games for awhile, I had a few episodic encounters put together for them to experience along the way and I augmented that with a few random encounters.

Even though the encounters fit into the landscape (feral wildlife and whatnot), eventually both the players and I tired of the encounters. They still had a long way to travel, and having already established this as a "dangerous" territory it didn't stand to reason that they would be able to travel unmolested for a week or more.

How not to see the coastal plains on just three gold pieces a day.

Eventually, I ended up giving up and in the best interest of the players I handwaved a fair portion of the rest of the travel. I wasn't very satisfied with this as a DM, I felt as if I should have come up with a more interesting way to transport them across hill and dale without just nixing the "dangerous" aspect of the terrain. The group ended up getting from Point A to Point B and things quickly picked back up once they were wired back into the plot, I suppose a good solution would've been not to establish plot points half of the coastal lands away.

Has anyone else run into this difficulty before? If so, how do you quickly move your group without having a random wizard show up and teleport them where they need to be conveniently?

Wowbservations

2008-11-06T13:24:00.002-06:00

I have been playing World of Warcraft now for a few weeks, and I have noticed a few strange things:

They Seem To Have Borrowed Death From Pac-Man
To a certain extent, anyway. The ghosts in Pac-Man don't die. Their eyes just go back to their cage and they start again. Some might argue that this is inaccurate because the ghosts do not go to find their corpses and ressurect themselves there. I simply believe the ghosts do not care about resurrection sickness and they have no inventory.

Not All Creatures Are Created Equal. (Or Symmetrical.)
One of the most annoying things about WoW to me is that when I need to go find 18 Thunder Lizard Tails for some random dude, I will very likely need to kill about 40 Thunder Lizards to get them. I can clearly see that you all have tails, Thunder Lizards! A friend suggested that perhaps during battle, I damaged the tails, and that makes them unusable. I would submit that I have 200 ranks in Skinning, and that my devotion to my craft and comittment to making quality leather products would prevent me from doing any such thing. Plus I have a policy of only attacking Thunder Lizards in the face. So unless they are uncontrollably pooping lightning and damaging their tails, I AM OFFICIALLY CALLING SHENANINGANS.

The People Of Azeroth Are Unbelievably Lazy
In every town, there are all these level 40-50 people standing around, and they've all got problems. Oh, the Sand Kobolds are causing a ruckus and their numbers need thinned! So they need help, and my l33t level 10 skills are just right for the job. So I volunteer. And then I walk down the street a little bit (almost close enough to still be able to see the guy who gave me the quest), kill the offenders, and then go turn in my quest. What, is somebody gonna steal the stump you've been standing on all year? Or do you only have 1 durability left on that level 45 garden hoe you're wielding and you sure as hell aren't gonna pay Groshnak the weaponsmith the 2sp it would take to repair it after what he pulled at poker night???

Maybe they're not lazy. Maybe they're all old people in disguise, and I am simply a lawn-clearing enforcement officer.

Vengeance Is A Dish Best Served With Specific Details
The quest structure in WoW usually dictates you need to get X of this or kill Y of this. For an RPer like me, this makes some of the quests a little strange. If a local militia leader wants you to drive out a bunch of demons from the forest, he knows how many it will take to do it. If somebody's family's been murdered, they know EXACTLY how many dead Quilboars it will take to make them feel better.

I wish I had that kind of information in my daily life! Then again, when I go to Taco Bell, I would probably have to order and pay four times before one would actually give me a taco (though my inventory would be full of bean burritos).

You have the right to be unique!

2008-11-05T13:57:00.003-06:00

I have recently arrived in my new office environment here in Colorado, and there have been more than a few introductions and "getting to know you" type of moments. I am constantly amazed at the number of people that charactarize themselves as being "kind've a nerd" in a given hobby or interest, and the associated sheepishness or shame that comes along with having interests.

You have the right to be unique!

This statement can apply to so many different areas... but you have the right to be unique in your roleplaying or gaming interests, in your choice of characters, even in the systems you play or the modifications you made to said systems. That is one of the lures that makes the roleplaying game space so interesting to me... it is almost always up for interpretation and modification.

Why do nerds always feel ashamed?

It is your right and duty to engage in your roleplaying games, video games, systems, friendships, and interests in whatever way you desire, and it has constantly puzzled me why gamer nerds have this near universal shame that goes along with their interests. I've even seen it spill over into professional areas like computer programming and graphic communications. People seem to want to distance themselves from their passions and skills and I have never understood why.

Me? I'm a nerd and I'm proud of it. I like roleplaying, computer programming, and Heroes. I think it is time that we collectively stand up and embrace our nerdly leanings!

Who's with me?

Visiting the Archives: The Evolution of Your Character

2008-11-03T02:04:00.003-06:00

Today is my first day living in Colorado for good, and as a result I got to experience the opening of a new chapter in my own life. For these reasons and more, I decided to look into the archives to find discussion on growing and evolving ones character so I could relate all of this real life change with the changing "life" of your roleplaying characters.

I found this excellent piece written by our very own Stupid Ranger on exactly that topic, I hope you enjoy it! Stupid Ranger and I will be undergoing a significant amount of change over the coming weeks, and as we get adjusted we will augment our new content with some of our favorite archived posts, of which this is one. Enjoy!

Originally posted on 8/28/2007 by Stupid Ranger

As your character gains experience and continues to explore the great wide world, you may notice the need to evolve. Not to worry, it's completely normal for your character to evolve. There have been many, many campaigns in which I developed a character only to realize that some facet of my character doesn't fit with the group dynamics.

Evolution for the Good of the Many

I originally intended for Skythorn to be more of a background character, there for the battles but nearly invisible during NPC interactions. However, the realization that Lumbar had a tendency to make things more... chaotic meant that Skythorn had to take a more hands-on approach with some NPC's to ensure the party survived the interaction long enough to actually accept the quest. Skythorn did became more of a negotiator and spokesperson than I had originally planned, but she didn't go out and introduce herself to everyone in town or seek additional attention. She evolved for the good of the party without betraying the underlying Skythorn-ness that made her unique.

Evolution for your Own Sanity

Recently, I found myself in another situation in which my original character concept was in contrast with the rest of the group. We started a new campaign, and I build a multi-class Fighter/Cleric since most of the rest of the group were not combat-types. I didn't have a lot of time to develop my backstory , so I fell back on one of the classics: country bumpkin. Silvia was from an unknown outlying community, brought to the group because she could offer support in battle and with healing; she didn't appear to be highly educated and seemed very naive. Unfortunately, the rest of my group all hadbackstories placing them in wealthy families from town or other lines of nobility. My country bumpkin just wasn't working out, and it was making life difficult for me to keep Silvia on good terms with the rest of the group. So, when we were dismissed from our meeting with the king's representative, I dropped the hokey accent and explained to the rest of the group that while I was from a small community, I only played the "simple country lass" around the authority figures to avoid having to deal with their stupidity. She now has two personae: one for the bureaucrats and one for the group.

Evolve Modestly and Logically

If you're having difficulties with something about character after a few sessions, try examining the problem. If it's just that the guy across the table has decided that his character will be in perpetual conflict with yours, nothing you do will change that. However, if your character's personality could be tweaked for the better good (where better good = you having more fun), start identifying a few small steps that would improve your character. Once you've decided on a change, don't just stand up and announce your intentions; find some in-game roleplaying opportunities to introduce your newly evolved character traits.

I do believe, however, that you shouldn't change just for the sake of changing. Evolution doesn't just occur because everything is going great; some catalyst sparks change for the best. Examine the circumstance. Review your character's personality, backstory, profession, race. Take a look at everything carefully before deciding if you really need to change. Then, if you feel that a slight evolution would be for the best, start planning how to implement that change. Remember, this is all about having fun, and if you're not having fun, maybe it's time to change.

Does video game facilitated roleplaying actually exist?

2008-10-30T17:43:00.004-05:00

I've had a precious few extended jags in World of Warcraft over the past few weeks as we prepare for our move, and as I played the game by myself I found that it was pretty easy to engage in the storyline. A few times, in fact, I actually felt invested that my character would want to actually help the world and it mattered.

Then I got the opportunity to run through an instance of Ragefire Chasm with some more experienced players. I understand that each person plays the game in their own way, and often the raids are about efficiency. My experience of actually engaging in the storyline was pretty well shattered by "talk to this guy, get this quest, then get back down there and more killing."

So I ask you, loyal readers... has anyone had a satisfactory roleplay experience using a packaged video game (such as WoW, Neverwinter, etc) as a medium? Granted, we weren't trying to replicate D&D style roleplay in our World of Warcraft efforts, but it was a bit amazing how quickly things devolved into hack and slash, efficiency gaming once a group came into the mix.

So let's hear it from you... does video game facilitated roleplay actually exist? Can it be done?

Visiting the Archives: Roleplaying Pitfalls pt. 2: Hogging The Spotlight

2008-10-28T00:04:00.000-05:00

Today we bring you the second installment of Vanir's Roleplaying Pitfalls opus, where he details spotlight hogging and how to manage that urge!

Originally posted on 10/10/2007 by Vanir

I'm SO guilty of this one: you have concocted a brilliant idea that puts your character in the spotlight and provides hours of roleplaying opportunities - for you.

Enjoy your time in the spotlight, but don't hog it every week. If your group spends more time on hastily-constructed side quests that you caused (or worse, watching you complete them alone) than they do on the actual plot, you might want to back off a little bit.

If You Must Hog The Spotlight

Make sure it's worth it! In our group, we usually set aside some time every campaign for some PC-specific stuff, which is a lot of fun. So when it's not my character's turn and I decide to do something completely off the map, I usually try to do something to further the story in my own way.

A good example of this is the time I thought everybody in our party had been captured aside from Bat Loaf and I decided to convince a bunch of low level wizardry students to help me rescue my comrades by showing them how to score with the ladies. Off the tracks: you bet. Hogging the spotlight: check. Well-received by the party: well, nobody threw anything at me (even the Stupid Ranger!) and it was entertaining enough that everybody seemed to be having a good time!

An even better solution would be, if possible, to convince your compatriots to join you on your crazy mission. Your GM's head might explode, but at least you've involved everyone AND you still get to do what you wanted.

Metagame (Slightly)

There's a certain point where you just need to shut up and go with the party. Yeah, I know it's not what your character wants to do and he totally would just leave them and do his own thing in this case. Usually, a D&D campaign is based around the fact that the party has a common goal and is willing to work together to reach it. There's some leeway there, but by and large that's how this game works. As I frequently say on this blog, there are other people at the table, and they probably want to play too. Would you rather play D&D with your friends or continue to play in your sandbox by yourself?

Like so many other things, being in the spotlight is best when done in moderation. A little can be entertaining, too much isn't fun for anyone. Keep the lines of communication open with your group, and you'll find the right balance. Until next time!

Visiting the Archives: Roleplaying Pitfalls...

2008-10-27T16:10:00.001-05:00

Last year, our good buddy Vanir created a truly excellent thread on Roleplaying Pitfalls. I would like to present the first installment wherein he examines schtick and its effect on your roleplaying experience.

Originally Posted on 10/7/2007 by Vanir-

In a lot of gaming groups I've played in, it's not an unusual occurrence for eyes to roll and mumbles of "damn it, not again" to be overheard when somebody decides to roleplay. Frequently, this is because the would-be roleplayer has decided to do something stupid and/or outrageous in the name of roleplaying. Having put much more emphasis on roleplaying in the last several years, I think I've figured out a major reason why -- and how to minimize its effects.

Schtick
When some people roleplay, it's more like they're following a list of unchangeable rules they've established for their character. They're dedicated to "fighting evil" and that's what they do no matter what.The worst example of this is the dreaded "attack on sight" mentality.

I've also seen a lot of people who think a particular concept would be funny and that's their character's schtick for the whole campaign. For instance, their character is afraid of rats so they'd make a big five minute deal about checking for rats under every snowbank if they were in the middle of the Arctic tundra. These kind of characters seem to me like the player is telling a joke that takes six months or more to tell -- but the punchline still makes everybody roll their eyes. It wouldn't be so bad if this was something this character does somewhat regularly in the course of roleplaying, but when it happens without fail, even during battle, it is murder-inspiringly annoying.

You've probably figured out by now that I'm not crazy about this particular brand of roleplaying. Either the characters just get irritating or the players do things that cause things to go horribly wrong "because that's what their character would do". Like charging a dozen orcs all by yourself with a first level wizard.

Of course, there are always the characters that you didn't mean to end up this way. These are the ones that you've honestly set out to roleplay fully, but either the concept didn't work out as well as you'd hoped or the setting changes or doesn't allow you to do what you had planned. And you end up doing the same thing over and over and over and getting bored. Bat Loaf is a very good example of this -- he was a ton of fun to play for the first 5-6 sessions. The problem with Bat was that there were many, many roleplaying opportunities well-suited for him in the beginning and it was fun because his misadventures would spill over into what the other players were doing and vice versa. As the story progressed these roleplaying encounters dried up in favor of Major Plot Events -- but there was still an inn, booze, and women in every town we'd travel to. Eventually the cycle of "go to inn, get drunk and find chick, run away, occasionally Inspire Courage +2 in combat" got old. For everyone, since it meant splitting the party pretty much every single session. And it just got boring for me.

Intentional or not, the problem with schtick is that it eventually gets in the way. One-trick PC's are either a direct hindrance to the game for everyone, or they just aren't fun anymore after awhile.

The Cure

I think schtick comes from three sources: lack of imagination, laziness, and an inability to sense danger. A little effort goes a long way when making your character. And the reason the other players get irritated when a Schticky player does things is because he's not playing the same game they are anymore. He's playing his own and doesn't care about the consequences for everyone else. Which makes them want to hurt him.

Here's a few ways to avoid personal bodily injury:

Well-Developed Characters
Well-developed backstory and character motivations and schtick don't mix. They cannot exist together. A well-developed character with a frequent quirk is fine - it's just a personality trait and doesn't define the character. The difference? A one-trick PC is that same quirk armed with a battleaxe.

Acknowledge That Your Character Has Intelligence
Your character REALLY hates orcs. Your character is also, in most cases, an experienced warrior. They know it's dumb to face a dozen orcs alone. Instead of attacking them all, think of strategies. You might even use (gasp) TEAMWORK. Or decide that you could do more damage later if you live to fight another day. Most one-trick PC's are roleplayed as if their INT was about 6 or 7. Their INT scores are probably much higher, which means they wouldn't think in such simplistic terms as "ORC! BOB SMASH NOW!". Act smarter than that, and make your PC's act smarter than that.

Change Things Up
Nothing says your PC can't change if it's not working as planned. Hell, an emotional crossroads makes for a good roleplaying excuse. Incidentally, that's how I saved Bat Loaf from one-trick PC hell -- I married him off, got him some new abilities, and had him start a bardic rock academy / militia. All of a sudden the old boring stuff became backstory for me to build on and he's fun again.

Hopefully, this will significantly decrease the number of eye-rolls at your gaming table. Have you had problems with Schtick in your gaming group? We'd love to hear them, and how you deal with it.

In the next installment of Roleplaying Pitfalls, I'll talk about another issue plaguing today's modern roleplayer: the dreaded Spotlight Hog!

Until next time....

<evil laughter>

Oh wait, wrong column. My bad!

Fun-Eating Zombies

2008-10-23T13:30:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned a couple days ago, Team Stupid Ranger has started playing World of Warcraft. I've been fairly pleased with the game so far. It's a bit heavy on the kill <number> of <creature> and bring me its <body part>, but overall I've been having fun exploring new places and doing things as a group.

However, as part of the launch of their new Wrath of the Lich King expansion, zombies have started to appear everywhere in the game (especially near major population centers). And, like most zombies, they kill people, who in turn also become zombies. Sort of. When a player gets turned into a zombie, they can still control their character, and they can't use their old skills but they get a new set of skills revolving around the eating of brains and infecting others. Sometimes you get infected but you haven't turned yet, and it's a race against time to find someone who can cure disease.

It's a very cool idea, and a great thing to do during their Hallow's End celebration. It's a lot of fun for everyone -- well, except low-level players like myself. You see, the problem is that when a level 70 player gets turned into a zombie, he's still strong enough to kill my poor little level 24 shaman in one hit. Sometimes I turn into a zombie, other times I just die outright. Now imagine being me, just trying to turn in some quests so I can keep levelling for the first time. I go into any major city, and a group of at least 10 level 70 zombies is waiting for me. After dying/getting zombified 5 times trying to get away I try to escape this madness by questing in the Barrens, which is basically a field that contains nothing but grass and deadly velociraptors, and there are frickin' zombies roaming around killing low level characters.

I'm really not enjoying this. This makes levelling insanely hard (which makes me even angrier since I am on a limited-time Refer-A-Friend, and I want to try to get a couple characters to lvl 60 before it ends). I'd really be mad if I wasn't playing on a PvP server, those poor bastards on PvE and RP servers are getting PvP they didn't sign up for.

You'd think Blizzard would have learned from what happened in the Corrupted Blood incident a couple years ago that it's a giant pain in the ass when all your major cities are infected and the vast majority of the NPCs you need to talk to are dead (or trying to eat your brains). But that was a little different. That was a bug that people exploited and it spiraled out of control. This is Blizzard basically giving the greenlight for mass griefing. When you get zombified, you're really not able to do much aside from walking around, infecting others, or killing others. So we've got hundreds of players who are basically now bored and have one option available to them. Oh yeah, plus this is an MMO so the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is in full effect, so not only are they going to kill everybody they see, they're going to stand around with 50 of their friends and camp your corpse too. If the zombies couldn't all one-shot-kill me, it would help. And I can't play the game I wanted to play, and most of the time I can't play with the zombies infecting others because I'm either dead or one of the level 60 guards kills my weak little level 24 zombie ass (in one shot). I can walk back to my corpse. Over and over again. Which, frankly, is not worth $15/month. What I wish they'd do is make all the zombies weak and slow. You know, like zombies. God knows there are enough of them, and you could even spawn more that weren't players to make it feel like a real live zombie invasion.

Making this worse for me is that the roleplayer in me finds this whole zombie scenario completely amazing. If I didn't have to level and I had to help defend the last bastion of civilization from wave after wave of the undead, trying desperately not to join their ranks, this would be AMAZING. But the execution leaves something to be desired. And by that, I mean if the zombies are here to stay, I'm going to cancel my account. Especially since Blizzard appears to be trying to get more new players and for existing players to make new characters with their triple XP referral program, this is a completely terrible idea. This thought keeps me thinking this is temporary and for effect, so that you take the Lich King seriously as a world-threatening villain. But if they really expect brand new players to hang in there not having fun and never getting anything done for a month while they're ruthlessly repeatedly murdered by members of their own faction "having fun", I hope it comes back to bite them in the ass. Turning it, obviously, into an ass-zombie.

Constantingly spiraling to new heights...

2008-10-22T12:01:00.002-05:00

The weather is starting to turn cold here in Central Illinois, and on a slightly brisk walk out to my car I mused for a moment about how great it would be if I didn't care about what the weather was doing. We happen to be in an area that constantly gets hit by tornados over the summer and we tend to get several bad snowstorms a year that are generally quite inconvenient.

Constantly heightening...

For no particular reason, I started thinking about weather effects in the D&D campaigns that I have ever been in. In the sessions that I have run, I tend to like to use weather to color a scene and not generally as the main focal point of a game, however I have often run into the problem of how to introduce weather as being significant when it hasn't been to your characters up to this point.

This problem is compounded by the fact that as characters get higher and higher in level, they tend to be less and less concerned about environmental factors to their adventures. You could always cop out and make some sort of "killer storm" crop up that does 20d6 lightning bolts, but that just seems a little tired and obvious.

The only sessions that I have been truly impressed by the use of weather as a plot point happened to be a seafaring adventure that we did. The DM essentially made a terrible storm that just hung around and kept getting progressively worse, until it spawned elementals for the group to do battle with. The combination of setting, urgency (if we didn't get off the ship, it was going to sink into the middle of the ocean), and appropriate use of weather-based creatures made this scene a real winner in my mind.

I would love to hear some other success stories where DMs (or players) have used weather to augment a story in a organic, meaningful way. I tend to struggle with this as a DM, hopefully the comments will generate some great new ideas!

Dealing with dramatic stress...

2008-10-20T15:28:00.003-05:00

As a side-effect from our relocation proceedings, I have been One Stressed Out Dude. Last night as I sat on my couch waiting in vain for some of Fox's Animation Domination to be funny, I was thinking about stressful situations and how they play out during your standard D&D campaign.

The Dramatic Stress

The first stressful situation I would like to discuss is that of the dramatic stressor. The dramatic stressor is any scenario engineered explicitly to be stressful for the characters. This could be a dramatic plot moment, a tough decision to make, or some other storyline element that requires the players to choose between A and B. (I usually pick A, as a general rule.)

With this approach, you must engineer a way to foster roleplaying as a foundation for the stress and the decision making process. I have had several DM's employ a DECIDE NOW! mechanism of compelling overly thoughtful players into making a snap decision, but I find this approach only limitedly effective for keeping the storyline moving.

Yes, that's amplifying the stress levels felt by the players, but in reality there is a certain amount of thought that goes into your standard character response as it comes from a player. "What would Randor the Magician do in this situation? Wasn't his mother eaten by boars and wouldn't being commanded to feed the pigs be very offensive to him?" and so on.

Stress can help build a cohesive group.

If you can engage your entire group in the decision making process, the dramatic stressor can really turn into a teambuilding experience for your roleplaying group. It is a tool that can be used effectively quite often, so long as you're not forcing your characters into making a decision that they won't benefit from in some way. Keep in mind - plot advancement is a benefit, sometimes as much as treasure or experience!

Restoring One's Muse (By Inviting Her Hot, Pixellated Friends)

2008-10-17T16:28:00.002-05:00

Blogging's a funny thing. Sometimes you can't sleep because you have too many ideas running through your mind. Sometimes when you wake up in the morning, you can't think of one damned thing to write about, and you wind up not being able to sleep because your writer's block is driving you crazy.

Problems, and Massively-Multiplayer Solutions

Here at Stupid Ranger, we've always had a much easier time writing about D&D when we're playing frequently. It's a kind of feast-or-famine thing -- and right now, it's famine. During certain times of year, it's difficult to get everyone together to play. On top of that, Dante and SR are moving far, far away for a couple years to a place called Colorado (or, as I like to refer to it, "Thunder Bluff"). We've been considering several options as to how to both A. keep in touch and B. keep playing D&D together.

I was talking to the lovely Efreak about this situation, and she suggested that perhaps we play World of Warcraft together. Now, you have to understand -- I have long been a person who swore that they would never touch an MMO as long as they lived because I was afraid that it would suck up my whole life, and now here is my wife suggesting that I install the beast on my PC. However, she also assured me that my life would be forfeit the moment that getting epic PvP raid gear became more important than my son, and so I decided to bring it up to the rest of the crew. To make a long story short, I now have a level 21 Shaman and I'm very disappointed that Ghost Wolf form makes you neither invisible nor intangible. My cohorts also have characters on the same server, and we like killing things together.

Broadening Our Horizons

All of us here at Stupid Ranger are very broad-spectrum geeks, and D&D is not our only form of fun. Recently, I've had the urge to write, but it's rarely been about D&D (as you can see by my prolific posting here as of late). What I have had the urge to write about for some time now, is videogames and movies and other general geekery. As it turned out, my compatriots have been having similar urges.

Thusly, we are considering broadening the scope of what we do here at Stupid Ranger. Please do not panic if you see a post about how amazing and frustrating Mega Man 9 is, a scathing review of "The Happening", or epic tales about being a complete newb in WoW. You may also expect to see the same good stuff you usually see here, and we will (of course) tag everything in a way that we can still be RPGBloggers.com compatible (and so those of you who don't care what my thoughts on Rock Band 2 are can continue reading RPG-related stuff only).

And yes, I absolutely realize the end result is that we're trying to be Critical Hits. (I mean, who wouldn't?)

Have Wacom, Will Travel?

In addition, I have been itching to tell more of the Evensbrook story. I have also come to the conclusion that I really don't have time in my life right now to draw the comic as it was (at least with my sanity intact). Therefore, I am going to ask the Internets for help. If you are an artist, or know of one who would be willing to do this, I am looking for someone to draw the Evensbrook strip. My ideal plan is to have a Penny Arcade kind of setup, where I write stories and funny stuff, and the artist draws the pictures and makes everything look wonderful. Me Tycho, you Gabe. And the position would pay exactly as much as I get paid for this! (And I wouldn't even make you chip in a few bucks a month on the web hosting, like I do!)

I realize the chances of this actually taking place are slim to none, but on the off chance somebody is interested it might be a lot of fun. A far more likely outcome is that I start simply telling the story as an episodic novel here on the site. Stupid Ranger has several ideas that she wants to start writing about in much the same vein. In any case, we're going to be firing up the Writers' Turbines here shortly, so please take your seats and don your protective helmets.

Thoughts?

Admittedly, it does feel a little weird broadening our scope since we have traditionally been a pretty narrow-focused site -- but we're doing this for fun, and this will be fun (hopefully for everybody). We'd love to hear your thoughts on the direction we're thinking of taking.

I'm giving away the big secret!! (Steal this idea.)

2008-10-16T14:37:00.005-05:00

During a recent discussion with my lovely co-host Vanir, we got on the topic of the exceeding amount of "regular life as relating to roleplaying" posts that we've done over our time in our tiny little corner of the Internets.

I find the process of relating roleplaying to other areas of life a pretty natural fit. In fact, if you sit back and think about it pretty much all roleplaying decomposes into social interaction and imagination... two cornerstones of most of our lives. I think that in part this realization gave rise to the Great Roleplaying Blogger Boom of 2007, bringing you such greats as Critical Hits, Musings of a Chatty DM, DungeonMastering and others, but it also provides you a very useful all-purpose tool for improving your pencil and paper roleplaying experience.

Step One: Think about the social or creative dynamics of your life.
Step Two: Think of an aspect of your roleplaying game (could be anything, really).
Step Three: See how #1 and #2 interact with one another.

This will lead you to some interesting notions about how to make better characters and build better (or more believable) roleplaying settings, and might even inspire you to take up the digital pen and write your own thoughts.

Good thoughts, like good tape, stick together and if you are so compelled to share your insights with others you might quickly find yourself interacting with our very own blogging community and sharing your own perspectives!

So there you have it. This is a fair measure of my creative process that I use to write my posts every other day, the big secret is out.

Allow me to pose and then answer a few questions:

Q. Does that mean I'm going to change my process?
A. Maybe, but probably not for awhile.

Q. Does this mean that I will cease writing posts using this formula?
A. Heck no, it seems to do pretty well for us so far!

Q. Will you link me if I do steal your idea and start my own blog?
A. Probably, if your stuff is any good (and linking us back too would be nice).

I seriously enjoy considering roleplaying games and how they can impact and be impacted by the way we live our lives. I am historically bad at starting trends like this, but it would be kind've neat if any of my inspired blogging cohorts give this process a try and link back to your resulting post (preferably in the comments for easy tracking).

I'd be interested to see how others interpret roleplaying as life!

Visiting the Archives: Proper Villainy, pt.1 -- Evil 101

2008-10-15T08:00:00.001-05:00

One of the great series to grace the halls of this hallowed blog is Vanir's "Proper Villainy" series. Vanir does a great job of dissecting villainy into little bits of evil, beginning with this first part, which originally appeared here September 2, 2007. Enjoy it again!

Proper Villainy, pt. 1 -- Evil 101

As recently discussed on dungeonmastering.com, villains add a great element to a campaign: an opposing force that the players can invest themselves in fighting against.

But what makes a really good villain? Let's start with some basic concepts:

What The Hell is "Evil", Anyway?

I've never been real crazy about declaring alignment for characters. If you have a Lawful Good character and he's homeless and penniless and he steals some bread to survive, does that make him not Lawful Good anymore? What about a man who kills someone in a jealous rage but is otherwise good? Is he now "evil" or is he still a good guy who made a horrible mistake?

People are more complicated than that. "Evil" people are still people -- it's just that the way they view the world is a bit more twisted than most everybody else.

Nobody Is Born Evil

Bad guys act the way they do because they're EVIL, right? Well, sometimes. In a cartoon or a crappy movie, yeah. The bad guys are just bad and that's the way it is. But a good villain probably didn't start that way. Very few individuals would kill an entire litter of puppies and then go, "Man, that was great -- I sure do love being evil!". They had to start somewhere. And there's a lot of ways to get evil, including:

Temptation

It's said that every man has his price. Somebody found this character's price. They might have been offered money, or power, or anything -- but whatever it was, the character wants it enough that he'll do morally questionable things to get it.

Fear and Anger

You get enough fear and anger together, and you don't know what the hell you're doing anymore. And in your head, committing horrible acts upon whatever you're afraid of/angry with seems perfectly justified!

Sense of Duty

This one may contain elements of the previous two. A character works for someone who asks him to do something reprehensible. He knows damn good and well it's not right. So he's "just following orders". Not to say that a mistake flips the switch and makes a character evil all of a sudden, but if this character continues to do this sort of thing and starts thinking of this as "normal" behavior.... who's to say?

Note that in all three cases, the common theme of a desire and the willingness to do whatever is necessary to get it exists. It's in the continued willingness to do evil that lies the heart of a true villain.

Next time, I'll show you why it's easier than you might think for a villain to do bad things. Until next time......

Also appearing in the Proper Villainy series:

Roleplaying with Rock Stars

2008-10-14T08:00:00.001-05:00

Dante & I had the great privilege to go to a Death Cab for Cutie concert Sunday night. And the part of my brain that loves music was suddenly merged with the part of my brain that loves roleplaying, and I had a musically inspired roleplaying epiphany.

In all roleplaying ventures, there are three readily-identifiable personality types: the Star, the Second and the Stage-Hand.

The Star

The Star is the lead, the spotlight character, the one who leads nearly every encounter with little effort. The Star loves the attention, the grandiose plans and high adventure. The Star can ascend from any class; since this is mostly personality driven, there is very little dependence on class. However, the Star may take a step back if it becomes necessary for another character to take the lead, but such role reversal will not last long.

The Second

Like your back-up singer, the Second is the character that helps bring it all together. The Second doesn't usually like to draw all the attention and enjoys being in the background, helping the plot move along and keeping the Star from Certain Death. Of course, a Second may occasionally step up to the mic and lead a Star-quality solo performance but will usually revert to the Second role very quickly.

The Stage-Hand

The NPCs in your adventure are Stage-Hands who perform those little behind-the-scenes tasks that need to happen in order for the adventure to progress. Whether it's testing the mics or detailing the prophecy that will lead to fame and glory, the Stage-Hand makes sure things run smoothly.

Life in the Band

A good performance requires all three roles to be filled. Without everyone involved, the set will generally fall apart or, at the very least, will not be very entertaining. Not every player is suited to every role, just as not every character is suited to every role. I personally prefer to be a Second, but I enjoy taking the Star role every once in awhile; however, I have played the occasional character who was better suited as a Star than a Second. Be aware of how your band is composed, treat each other with kindness and respect for your roles, and enjoy the beautiful roleplaying music.

Meeting a new cast of characters...

2008-10-13T10:48:00.003-05:00

This week was my first week at my new job in Colorado, however we are not entirely moved out there yet. Most of this week was steeped in the pleasantries of meeting new teammates, managers, and hangers-on and it offered me a unique opportunity to reflect on how these interactions play out both in real life and in roleplaying.

First impressions matter.

The words you choose to introduce characters to one another can really influence the dynamic of their first interaction. If a given character selected slightly more threatening words or a passive tone of aggression, they might be welcomed differently than they would if the person was overtly friendly.

I found that in my (boring ol') Real Life, the experience I have in roleplaying really helps me identify when my impressions are getting colored by the words people choose and the tone that they take with me. This doesn't prevent me from making my first impression, it just helps to give a little additional perspective.

You can't underestimate that 'click'.

As I began interacting with my new work team, a few people instantly 'clicked' with me. The intangible connection that you feel with some like-minded people can really go a long way if you don't resist it in your roleplaying games. Some good advice I can give to prevent artifical damaging of those inherent connections is not to typecast your NPCs.

Let them have shades of grey and personality quirks that will endear them with the players. Capitalize on those connections as they occur and don't resist them just because you had a certain idea in your head when you made that character. Let them grow and evolve just like player characters and they will serve your storytelling much better than the alternative railroaded NPC.

The main takeaway from this discussion is to let characters be characters, regardless of who is running them. Let their interactions and first impressions occur, and then evolve as the characters grow. You'll end up forging some strong character relationships that will serve you all throughout your campaign!

Visiting the Archives: "I'm Missing the Chili Cookoff!"

2008-10-08T08:00:00.001-05:00

Today, I wanted to re-visit one of my favorite posts from the past. Inspired by that all-inspiring show, The Simpsons, here is some wisdom for roleplaying, distributed in the unlikely form of insanity peppers, from my post which originally appeared here April 22, 2008. Enjoy it again!

Visiting the Archives: "I'm Missing the Chili Cookoff!"

One of my all-time favorite Simpson's episodes, "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Our Homer)", was on recently. Watching Homer crazed out on the Merciless Peppers of Quetzaltenango reminded me of some of those crazy times in a campaign when you're not sure what to do, but you're sure it's not what you actually are doing.

"To Make Yourself Complete, You Must Find Your Soulmate"

Sometimes it feels as if the DM has set a seemingly simple but deceptively difficult quest, like Homer's quest to find his soulmate. And often times, we feel unequipped to complete our quest once we learn the true depth of it.

As we embark on this quest, the DM may provide a spirit guide, like Homer's Space Coyote. It might not be a guide, per se, but some sort of help: a rumor, a prophecy, a random bit of knowledge. So while the quest may seem difficult, at least we have a bread crumb trail to get started.

"This Is Just Your Memory, I Can't Give You Any New Information"

The biggest obstacle to be overcome in these types of quests is the Great Doubt. This is the time when you're sure you've missed something, and you don't know what, but you refuse to move forward until you figure out the "missing piece."

There are two reasons I feel this is the biggest obstacle. First, it is easy to be blinded from that missing piece because you are focused on what you already know. For instance, we recently were quested to save the world, and we had figured out that meant we had to overcome the evil goddess. It wasn't until much later that we realized (via a Bardic Knowledge check) that the goddess could be killed through a specific ritual. All along, we had known that we had to stop her, but we hadn't thought specifically about how that could be accomplished. By sitting down and discussing the goal as a group, you're more likely to figure out that missing bit of information and overcome this obstacle.

The second reason this can be a big obstacle is much more devious; sometimes there isn't a missing piece to be found. This is a difficult situation because of the mental agony associated with it. You don't know what to do, and you don't know how to figure out what to do. You've interviewed everyone you can find, you've researched every old tome in every library you can find, you've even tried consulting with the gods. And now you're stuck... because there's no new information to find... there is no "missing piece." Well, that's the devious part: this piece isn't missing, it's misplaced. The DM is being devious and wanting you to piece together all the obscure bits of information from back to the beginning of the campaign into some coherent, usable body of knowledge. To overcome this particular obstacle, make friends with the historian in the group and review everything that has happened to you since you all met in that tavern.

"The Mind Is Always Chattering Away With A Thousand Thoughts At Once"

To succeed in your quest, you have to overcome the Great Doubt. You have to calm your mind and divorce yourself from the emotional entanglement that comes with your quest. You'll successfully reach the end of your quest if you take a few minutes of quiet reflection on your goal, and lay off the insanity peppers.

Visiting the Archives: Using Spell Research to Augment Your Roleplay

2008-10-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

While Dante & I are house hunting this week, our posting schedule will be chaotic at best. We didn't want to leave you without the Stupidranger.com content you've come to enjoy, I am reposting on of my favorite Dante classics, which originally appeared here August 23, 2007. Enjoy it again!

Visiting the Archives: Using Spell Research to Augment your Roleplay

Once upon a time, there was a wizard named Medric. Medric was fascinated with rope tricks, so much so he spent much of his youth learning how to tie knots, do simple rope magic tricks, and generally annoy his parents.

As Medric ventured out into the world and had to use his spellcasting ability to keep himself safe, he quickly became resolved to use his interest in ropes to aid him in his quest.

I asked my Dungeon Master how he wanted to approach spell research, and his answer surprised me a little: write up a spell description based on the rules, and also begin to roleplay researching the spell. When he was satisfied with both sides of that equation, I could add the spell to my repertoire.

Medric spent the next several sessions researching different spells to base his rope magic, and he decided on a force spell similar to Magic Missle to propel the end of his rope through objects, after which it would do some residual rope burn damage if he continued to concentrate to direct the rope.

While he was researching, he decided to use this spell to bust through some melons and other various produce. After some practice, the DM allowed me to use the spell on some attacking orcs. It didn't end too well for the orcs, and Medric was happy that his research paid off.

During the spell research time, the DM would flex how effective the spell was based on a d20 roll. Sometimes it would do more damage than I had written in the spell description that I provided, and other times the spell would fail outright. Once, Medric's rope backfired and entangled him for several rounds.

I found this to be a much more engrossing way to research new spells, and certainly a lot more fun as a player than spending time slaving over a spell description and just having it appear as reality. It also presented some great opportunities for the rest of the PCs to see what was coming and experience the highs and lows along with my wizard.

I liked this approach so much that I have adopted it to use with my own campaigns. I'd love to hear thoughts on this process!

Storytelling Arcs: Radio...

2008-10-01T10:07:00.002-05:00

On Monday, I began discussing storytelling arcs as seen in other media. Today, I'd like to take a look at everyone's favorite yesteryear storytelling device, the radio. For many years, our grandparents generation would tune in to radio serials, which told stories in a very different way than television or movies do today.

Situation and Interaction

Most radio programs are structured in a narrated situation/interaction style of prose. Often, you will find a dissociated narrator to the story that sets up a scene, wherein voice actors play out their roles for a small vignette and then the plot progresses. These small plot pieces are sometimes last the entire length of the episode, and the listener must continue to tune it to see how the story slowly unfolds.

To my mind this format is easily digestable, fun, and interesting because it focuses on strong character interaction. The narration is second to the interplay between the voice actors and this can directly map to your roleplaying campaign. This approach really focuses on roleplay, and has the added benefit of being quite easy for the DM to manage. Simply put your characters in a situation, give them some sort of a catalyst, and let the player interaction both entertain and color the story for you.

The main difference between the classic radio storyline and your campaign is that you will have to be sensitive to how long the "episode" lasts. If your players get tired of talking to one another, are confused, lack direction, or are just plain ready to move on you have to be prepared with the next piece of campaign content to continue the story along, but knowing when to let your roleplayers take center stage can really enhance your gaming experience.

For those of you that have never heard any radio serials before, I found that OpenCulture has provided old Abbott and Costello shows, The Lone Ranger, and more for your listening pleasure.

Roleplayers Trying to Survive the Office

2008-09-30T08:05:00.000-05:00

I came to the realization that my desk has actually been overrun with tiny paper elementals that are constantly in battle for supremacy of my work space.

For those of you who haven't imagined the horror of my desk, it is in fact covered with several piles of paper which are growing at a distressing rate (the aforementioned paper elementals). They have taken over all visible flat surfaces of my desk, four in-boxes, three file cabinet drawers, and they are making serious inroads in their goal to take over the floor space surrounding my chair.

I joined in battle and attempted to eradicate this infestation, and what a spectacular battle it was. I subdued many of paper elementals with the use of my +1 Stapler of Organization, which does not completely eliminate the problem but certainly makes it easier to manage.

The paper elementals fought back valiantly, summoning assistance from the distant lands of the Fax Machine and the Email, and both factions provided reinforcements when the battle looked to be turning to my favor. In the end, I took 1d4 damage to the webbing of my left thumb as one of the tricky little devils bit me.

It is with a heavy heart that I report on my inability to properly defeat this infestation of the paper elementals. It is my hope that when I re-join battle, I will be able to summon the divine power of the Document Retention God, who will grant me the ability to throw away these horrible little monsters.

Pray for me, friends, that I may be victorious.

Storytelling Arcs: Television...

2008-09-29T10:28:00.005-05:00

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the crafting of story arcs and how this is best achieved in a roleplaying environment. Before long I started considering the story telling mechanisms employed by other mediums.

Let's have a look at the moving picture victrolla first

Before I launch into this too far, I'm going to be totally transparent: I finally got around to watching the season premiere of Heroes and that is where much of this discussion stems from. I will attempt to discuss things at a macro level and will avoid spoiling things. Consider yourself warned.

Some dramatic television shows tend to go for the long story arc that will span an entire season. This was similar to the first season of Heroes, however in tailoring a story this way you set yourself up for either a big payoff or a big let down. Most D&D campaigns I have been in build their storylines in this fashion, for better or worse. I have found that unless something unexpected happens at the end, most of my players fail to remember how the campaign resolved itself but remember more the actions of their characters along the way.

Other shows tend to break things up into parallel storylines, which interweave and wrap around each other from time to time and all aim toward a common endpoint. This is somewhat similar to the second season of Heroes, but the downside to this style of storytelling is confusion and the fact that when you're focusing on one set of stories the rest of the characters (your players in the RPG world) are left out of the mix unless you involve them in some other fashion.

Since there's not much data yet on the latest season of Heroes, I would like to look at the sum of the existing parts that we have seen so far. The third season has started out in more of a "pressure cooker" mode. In this method of storytelling, a lot of activity and plot happens in a short time. This is intended to put the familiar (and even not-so-familiar) characters on a path so you can get ready to follow them.

This method is usually best reserved for the start of campaign or restart of campaign sessions, where you must quickly reestablish the plot and create some compelling reasons to stay tuned. This mechanism is also quite useful when you've noticed that the interest in your campaign is waning or your player characters have recently gotten into something they are not interested in but had to finish by virtue of the task.

A good real-world example is the time I combined a compelling plot point with a pre-constructed module and the module proved to be much longer than I expected. By the end, all the players wanted to do was get done so they could move on, and the time spent finishing the module was grating on them. Once we got out of the module, I kind've hit the fast-forward button in order to get them moving forward along the plot again and the new developments made things more interesting for them again.

Stay tuned for more!

I will periodically be selecting a different medium and trying to find out how we can learn by the way they tell their stories. By standing on the backs of these giants, we might be able to build our own stories in a better way!

Behind the Screen: Memento Mori...

2008-09-25T08:59:00.000-05:00

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!