XYZ - Examine Your Dungeon Management Style

Okay, "dungeon management style" doesn't start with a "Z". So sue me.

Way back when I was in college (sweet Odin, has it really been almost 10 years?), I had to take classes on management and small group communication. It was lots of stuff that didn't interest me at the time, but ever since I left school and started working a real job I recognize little snippets of those classes' materials every now and then. Lately, I realized some of it might apply to roleplaying games too!

Herding +3 Cats

You're about to play DM for your group. You've carefully worked out a plot and encounters to run and now there's 6-8 people sitting there who are going to do things you never expected to happen in your wildest dreams. One of them is consuming mass quantities of E.L. Fudge cookies. You fear for the well-being of the story and the campaign, to say nothing of your sanity. You have also probably devised means by which to cope with this.

In management theory, you can view the roles of the management and employees lots of different ways. I'm going to briefly go over three of them commonly discussed together, known as XYZ management theory. X,Y, and Z are all different styles.

• Theory X assumes that workers hate work and believes that you have to exert a lot of direct control over the workforce or they'll never get anything done. The boss calls the shots, the workers don't get a say, and if anyone doesn't do what he says they're subject to disciplinary action. Theory X managers are generally not well-liked.
  
• Theory Y is different in that it assumes workers are creative or inspired and would be happy to do work of their own accord if left to their own devices. Management shares decisions with the group, and feedback is generally welcome.
• Theory Z is sort of a hybrid of X and Y. While less participative than Y, it has a much higher regard for the needs of the employees than X. It also assumes that the workforce is happy to do their jobs provided the management is going to support them and look out of their needs.

So what does all this have to do with roleplaying games? While I don't think that XYZ management theory maps 1:1 with everything we do in roleplaying, I do think some important parallels can be drawn.

Dungeon Management Theory X

I'm assuming many of our readers have had to play a session with a DM who might take enforcing the social contract just a smidge too seriously. I've seen amazing feats of douchebaggery such as EXP penalties for a player being late to the session.

This is an example of X, albeit an extreme one. This DM wants things done his way or he will exercise his vast powers and authority and put offenders back in their place. He's authoritarian. (And an asshole, but that is another story.) I'm all about setting guidelines for the group, and if there's a problem you bring it up as a group. If you can't work it out, then maybe it's time for the offender to find a different group to play with. But petty disciplinary action? You're playing D&D to have fun. In my opinion, this does a hell of a lot more harm than good and I for one advocate talking through things like grownups. Grownups wearing elven chainmail.

There are much saner versions of X you'll see now and then. From an administrative standpoint, Theory X groups typically follow the DM's lead. He may have come up with the social contract, or still be using the one that was there when he joined. The degree to which this goes varies between groups, of course. I've seen groups let the DM have sole jurisdiction over everything from where/when they play, if new players can join, to whether he gets free pizza. I've seen a lot of perfectly functional groups work this way, and I've seen some flame out and die when everybody wasn't on board with the man in charge.

Interestingly, I've also seen Theory X groups play and switch DM's. Then it's the new guy's call on everything. (And I've seen a lot of scared looks around the table when the new guy does something way different than the old one.)

As far as actual gameplay goes, I've seen several DMs (myself included) attempt to put the session "on rails", where the players are still doing things but by and large what happens is in full control of the DM. Invisible walls are a tool I've seen used to do this, as are powerful creatures that the PCs can attack all day but never hurt - and the DM explains away everything. This is not to say that Theory X gameplay is necessarily bad, but having the players' destiny out of their own hands too long can lead to unrest.

Dungeon Management Theory Y

Administratively speaking, in a Theory Y group, most things are subject to vote by the group. Where you play, when you play, who's in, who's out, what's for dinner. The group establishes the social contract, and they can collectively change it whenever they feel like it.

In gameplay under a Theory Y campaign, the DM lays out places the party can go and things they can do, and the party decides where to go. They get nudges now and then, but for the most part it's the party's decision. Theory Y can lead to some seriously amazing adventures and it feels wonderful working as a group -- unless the group has no idea where the hell they are supposed to go and they are blind to Leopold the Dancing Plot Point who is doing the Riverdance right in front of them. Then they get frustrated. Too much of that, and you've got unrest among the ranks!

You can't win! OR CAN YOU?

Dungeon Management Theory Z

“If you tighten the string too much, it will snap. And if you leave it too slack, it won’t play.”
- Siddhartha, Epic Level Buddhist

Like its management theory counterpart, Theory Z is a hybrid between X and Y. The DM has a bit more weight in the decision making process than the rest of the group, but the group still makes the bigger decisions for itself. For instance, in our gaming group, the DMs sometimes make a call on where we should play so they can sequester in the basement and plan our demise. But other times, we play somewhere else in case someone can't get a babysitter.

Gameplay under Theory Z is, unsurprisingly, a mix between X and Y. The world may be wide open for exploration sometimes, but there's places to go and things to do that need to be accomplished, and the DM will nudge a bit harder to get them there.
Players in a Theory Z game might recognize the signs that this nudging is occurring, and metagame just a little to go with the flow. There's give and take, and the players know the DM is going to throw them a bone eventually in the name of fun.

But Which One Is My Group?

Good question! Your group may not map to one of these exactly, or it might handle things like Theory X administratively but play like a Theory Y. The point isn't to have a label to assign to your group and to your DM, it's to get you to step back and take a look at how you play. Knowing how you play and how you think might be more fun for everyone might make the difference for your group's roleplaying experience -- especially if some players aren't having a good time right now!

Well, now I don't feel quite so much like all those hours in class were such a waste of time. How does your group play? Are there any variations that your group does that I haven't described here? Throw us a comment, and let us know!

Behind the Screen: Some weather we're having...

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!)

Never Underestimate The Power of Ernie Keebler

When we play D&D, I really love it when I get a chance to step outside the box. I love it more when I can do it in character. And I really love it when I can do it without derailing the plot that our intrepid DMs have set before us.

(Not that it usually stops me.)

Class Is Now In Session

In our group's current campaign, we now possess, through a series of strange events, a magical item that allows us to control the legendary Tarrasque. We weren't exactly sure what we were supposed to do with it, just that we needed it to combat the forces of a dark goddess who was angry at us. So we were riding it back home so it could eat a couple armies.

As it happened, I had been hitting the E.L. Fudge cookies pretty hard before we started playing Saturday night and I was very thoroughly sugared up. I had reached a state of being Dante refers to as "Professor Vanir", in which insanity starts to pour out of my mouth but I speak with confidence about it as if I was a college professor teaching a class. (I am told he imagines a graham cracker mortarboard on my head when I am like this, but that sounds like the ravings of a madman to me.)

The Inevitable Conclusion of Rock

In the throes of my delicious chocolaty berserkergang on Saturday night, I was possessed by the urge to roleplay. And by "roleplay", I mean "let Bat Loaf's freak flag fly". For those who don't know, Bat Loaf is my rock-and-roll bard. He has settled down (after a fashion), and gotten himself married. He and his wife are both epic-level rock bards, totally metal and totally in love. We had a legendary monster at our disposal with only moderate risk of being torn apart and eaten. We had been afforded the opportunity to do things you never get to do in the span of a normal character's lifetime.

Thusly, the only logical conclusion for me to arrive at was to do the single most metal thing that has ever been done: conceive their first child on top of the Tarrasque.

You Want To Do What?

When I announced my intentions to the group, Dante got that glassy-eyed stare that he gets when he simultaneously thinks something is intensely funny and still wants to kill me. Several players (and my wife) simply put their head in their hands and sighed. But we were escorting the Tarrasque for hundreds of miles at a movement rate of 30 and it was literally swallowing every random encounter we had whole, so it's not like we had much better to do.

Initially, I did not know how I was going to get Bat's wife to our location, and I suggested to Dante that he and his wife had a thing that's called "radar love". I also submitted to him the fact that they had both "a wave in the air" and "a line in the sky", and thusly she would know he needed him and would travel to him as quickly as possible. Incredibly, these arguments fell on deaf ears, and I was forced to come up with a more realistic alternative. (Like magic!)

Eventually, I asked the wizard of the party to use Limited Wish to teleport Bat Loaf's wife to our location, and so they took care of the very serious matter at hand for the next 48 hours as we moved. The rest of the party assumed positions and cast the appropriate spells such that they would not be exposed to any adverse sights, sounds, or fluids, and thusly attempted to pretend all of this never happened. Many steps were taken to assure that the union would bear metal fruit, not the least of which was the use of the spines on the tarrasque's back as a Liberator sex wedge to elevate his wife's pelvis. Our paladin also cast Divine Favor to increase our chances of success and realized he should devote part of his life's work to encouraging people to have babies. At the time of this writing, we do not yet know if the Bardic Torpedoes successfully entered the appropriate exhaust port or whether they just impacted on the surface. However, the attempt was pretty goddamned metal, and thusly worth it regardless of the results.

Our paladin, however, was moved to perform rituals of atonement because of the "wicked thoughts" he was having about how one might mate a human and a Tarrasque -- and consequently that got us all thinking about one might harvest a Tarrasque's genetic material. That conversation will haunt all of our dreams forevermore.

Making The Most of a Unique Situation

Having a psychic link to the Tarrasque making him your ally (sort of) affords you some interesting opportunities you might not normally have. One is to cast Haste on the Tarrasque. I wanted to do this for two reasons. One was to make him eat our enemies faster. The other far more important reason was so that I could imagine the Benny Hill theme song playing as he did so. There was some debate as to whether the Tarrasque was intelligent enough to understand that we were allies and thusly could drop his spell resistance, but in the end I have to think that Dante let it happen because it was just too funny not to.

Somehow, the baddies managed to make the Tarrasque fall over and roll on its back. Which was good for us, since we weren't underneath it like about 500 of the bad guys were. Seeing this inspired me to use the psychic link via Bat Loaf remembering the last time he had the bedspins from too much ale, causing our gigantic monstrous legendary indentured servant to lose his balance and do a barrel roll on command. Gotta be careful with that one.

Just Smile and Nod

You may be wondering if there is a point to all of this. Not really! I just wanted to share some of the delightful retardation we had last weekend. D&D is what you make it . Even if you never get anything done, as long as everybody has fun you did it right. I'm pretty sure everybody had fun (after the initial shock), and somehow we actually DID stay on track for what Dante had in mind to happen during the adventure despite the box lying broken and burned by the side of the road, never to be stepped inside ever again.

And if Bat's wife is pregnant, they're naming it "Tarrasque Loaf". Here's hoping!

Morality and the single PC

Have you ever noticed how relative and odd the concept of morality becomes in a D&D campaign?

A couple weeks ago, before the holidays completely annihilated our beautiful regular gaming schedule, Dante and Kanati sent our intrepid adventurers into a city ruled by women. The men were considered second-class citizens, and were not even allowed to speak without permission lest they be beaten. Since I was playing my intrepid formerly-womanizing rock star bard Bat Loaf (and I was under the influence of a lot of E.L. Fudge), it is not surprising that I landed us in hot water by mumbling something about it being "that time of the month" in the presence of the city's Queen.

What? I was roleplaying!

At that point the guards held Bat Loaf down and had been ordered by the Queen to whip him when the proverbial feces hit the proverbial fan. Our paladin and his weaponmaster buddy got very, very angry and started ranting about how outraged they were that this could happen in a civilized society and that no human being (regardless of race, gender, or culture) should be treated with such indignity. Things got heated enough that I wasn't sure if the players were angry (they claimed later not to be but at the time it was a little freaky). And then they declared that they would die before they allowed this indignity to take place, and both drew swords.

They were promptly subdued and placed into the same uncomfortable position as my bard.

There is a point to this post aside from fond memories of our last D&D session. In my experience, players tend to either eschew morality (as the feat) and do whatever they feel like regardless of situation or (ew) alignment -- or they take morality REALLY SERIOUSLY, and blades get drawn at the slightest offense. Think about it, how many times have you witnessed a dispute between two party members, and one's drawn steel on the other? Or decided that a character's actions were "evil" so obviously they must be evil and OMG I'M SWORN TO DESTROY EVIL!!!!! KILL KILL MAIM CLEANSE!!!!!

The interesting part about all of this to me is that I don't understand why this is. It's like their PC's morality programming consists of directives like Robocop's, and they must commit endless, senseless violance against any violations of such. I believe this makes sense for some characters, especially paladins. Any time you're on a holy mission to do something, sense tends to get left by the wayside. But when you get a 2nd level wizard charging a squad of orcs armed only with a dagger and righteous indignation, that's just not good roleplaying. Also, it is stupid.

To finish the story, my bard, (who has no shame in times of need) promptly grovelled spectacularly and pretended subservience to the female party members to enough effect that he avoided a beating and managed to keep the other two alive (although not untouched by the cat-o'-nine). Our paladin swore to return one day to "educate these people in the ways good people live". Which is sad, because our cleric can't true res yet.

Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon in their D&D groups? We'd love to hear your tales.

P.S. What's that? You thought I had abandoned you? Of course not, I was just lying dormant, waiting for the perfect moment at which to strike! (Or five seconds of free time, which is sort of like that.)

A Post About Nothing

I've been suffering from a bit of writer's block lately. Tonight I decided just to sit down, turn my random idea generator on, and see what happened. I was not quite expecting what came out.

I don't see how I possibly could have -- because what came out was "the Gauntlets of Seinfeld". I wasn't even really crazy about that show when it was on! Regardless, I started to chuckle at a few of the ideas that started trickling out so I decided to share. I didn't quite get to the descriptions of a lot of these, so if you want to add something, please feel free.

• Gauntlets of Seinfeld
  
  Ordinary gauntlets that do absolutely nothing. However, everyone loves them and they were highly sought after until 10 years ago when the maker just got bored and decided to quit making them.
  
  The right gauntlet has strange frizzy hair covering the opening where the arm goes in. And has racial epithets about dwarves written on it. These were intended to be funny due to their shock value, but everyone near the wearer simply thinks they hate dwarves.
  
  Both gauntlets have special attachments for removing the tops from muffins.
  
  You cannot figure out why the left gauntlet continues to hang out with the right gauntlet.
  


• Girdle of Soup Nazi Strength


• The Eye and Hand of Seinfeld


• Festivus Pole of Many Parts


• Loincloth of Protection vs. Shrinkage

I believe the line of good taste has been sufficiently identified, crossed, and stomped on at this point. And no, Stupid Ranger, no E.L. Fudge cookies were harmed in the making of this post.

More "serious" D&D stuff in the near future, I promise!

The Most Amazing Breakfast I Will Ever Die At

When I was about 7, my brother got the D&D Basic Set, and as a consequence I knew who Gary Gygax was pretty early on. I started playing D&D myself when I was about 12, and his name was still printed all over practically every sourcebook I owned. I always wondered what he'd look like and what kind of person he was. In 1997, I attended my very first Gen Con, and I was in awe of the giant sales floor. I'd never seen anything like it before, and all the companies from Dragon magazine that I wanted to order stuff from over the years were all right there. In retrospect, it's probably good that I didn't have a large credit limit yet. Anyway, I wandered into a a booth to look at some books and I realized I'd tripped on someone's feet. It happens, I'm tall and I don't always look where I'm going. I looked down and noticed an older gentleman who came about up to my chest. Imagine my surprise when my brain finally caught up to the name printed on his badge: "GARY GYGAX". I don't have to imagine my surprise. I said "OH. BEH BUH SORRY!" and I got out of there as fast as I could. A similar incident happened the next year, followed by a similar unintelligible outburst, and a failing of my fear check. And I didn't see Mr. Gygax again until this year. I'm sure he was around, I just didn't run into him again (no pun intended). I saw him on the sales floor on Friday, signing books.

On Saturday, I attended Hickman's Killer Breakfast, which turned out to be every bit as awesome as I'd heard. Basically, Tracy Hickman is a killer DM, and literally a hundred first level PCs have to amuse the DM somehow to survive. And we were in Ravenloft this year, so that was basically completely impossible. I arrived early because I thought it'd be packed, and to my dismay I couldn't find the generic tickets I had bought for this event. Fortunately, a kind couple walked right in front of me to the ticket taker and said "We have an extra ticket we're not using. If someone else could --" and and that point I was on my feet going "OOH OOH ME ME ME", except in a much more polite way. I hope. I had the choice of being a spectator, or being killed with the rest of the players. I didn't come all this way to spectate, I wanted to be killed by the best. So, I lined up with the players.

Before too long, a man in a black shirt came out and everybody started cheering. I had no idea who he was. I thought they were cheering because they were going to let us in. It was shortly thereafter that I was struck with a very important realization -- Tracy Hickman was a dude. Up until last week, I thought Dragonlance was written by two women. How do you love and cherish a person's creative works for almost 20 years AND NOT KNOW THIS? I felt the geek cred seeping out of my body, and I wondered how I was to survive the next two hours.

They marched us into the ballroom seperately from the spectators, and somehow or another my row got ushered into the spectators section and a staffer came over and put us back with the players about two rows back from where we should have sat. Soon the event started, and Tracy and Laura Hickman (OK, I admit it -- I thought they were sisters until last week) came out and started singing a parody of The Phantom of the Opera. A "safety presentation" was then shown, and then the carnage began. You had to say why your character was there right then, and it had better not be boring or you died. That let you live one round. And you better DO something brave, stupid, or entertaining the next round or you would die. Also, if anyone around you did something stupid you died. You were pretty much hosed.

I'm usually pretty good at coming up with random funny ideas. I was choking. Hard. I thought briefly about several jokes about how I got there ranging from "I'm here to pick up goth chicks" to "my mom and dad gave each other a special hug" (which thankfully, someone else did and he killed them on the spot). But when I was called up to go backstage, I was out of ideas. About 30 seconds before I got onstage, my random thought generator kicked in, and I got an idea. A funny one. I just hoped everyone else thought it was too.

So I got on stage and I was just about to sit down when Tracy Hickman says "STOP STOP STOP! We have a celebrity that needs to be killed next!". And I look to my left and Gary Gygax walks on stage. The crowd goes completely bat-shit insane, and a stupid, indelible grin crosses my face. I almost forget to sit down when Tracy tells us to. And that's when I realize I can only vaguely remember what I was going to say. Fortunately, there was one guy before me and he said something dumb and got killed horribly, giving me time to remember. And so it was, playing D&D with Gary Gygax in front of a crowd of hundreds with Tracy Hickman as my Dungeon Master, I uttered the following words in my best attempt at imitating Peter Cullen:

"I am Optimus Strahd. MegaSoth must be stopped, no matter the cost."

That's right. Who of you is nerd enough to make a Transformers joke in front of two D&D legends, one of whom created the characters you just transformed into undead robots? I AM NERD ENOUGH. Thank GOD everybody laughed, I thought my heart was going to stop.

The guy between me and Gary dies, and Gary says he got there by hitchhiking. We're both still alive. Tracy starts over the table again after telling us a horde of vampires led by Strahd is coming one way and zombies led by Soth the other and we're in the middle. The guy next to me dies. Then it's my turn:

"I transform into a bat and ROLL OUT!"

Less laughter that time, but it's enough to keep me alive. Gary burrows underground, which was smart because the guy at the end of the row hands Tracy a piece of paper with the following words on it: "I prepared Explosive Runes this morning." The crowd went completely nuts, mostly because it was a hilarious joke from Order of the Stick, a very popular D&D webcomic (and one of my personal favorites). All of us died, except for Gary, who was underground. He died shortly thereafter, when somebody threw the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

It wasn't until I sat down that I realized HOLY SHIT I JUST PLAYED D&D WITH GARY GYGAX AND TRACY HICKMAN. Even if it was for only 2 minutes and 17 seconds. And the shame of not knowing Tracy's gender? Fellow gamers, I am healed.



(Special thanks to neal_swint who graciously allowed me to use this picture from his flickr set. I was really hoping all this wasn't some sort of E.L. Fudge-fueled hallucination!)