Behind the Screen: Nearing the end!

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!

Excerpts from Insanity...

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!

Spicing up the boring road...

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!

How to move from DM to Player Character...

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

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

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

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

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

The time is NOW to roleplay!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come on in, the water is fine!

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

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

That is certainly an encouraging thought!

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

There's always a counterpoint: Spells and Rituals...

My good buddy Vanir did a great job outlining his thoughts on fourth edition character generation, spells, and rituals. The group of us had some excellent discourse on the changes that we immediately encountered, however during the discussion on spells and rituals I really had a "oh good, they fixed that" moment.

My biggest complaint about a lot of the utility spells were the amount of suspending disbelief that was required in order to buy the fact that with a handwave a portal could be opened, or someone raised from the dead. My gut reaction when I saw that most of these focused magical events had been moved into the rituals category was "people aren't going to like this" followed by "but as a DM I really do."

The Rationale Behind My Opinion

One of the biggest pain points as my 3.5 campaign moved up into the epic levels was the relative ease that the player characters were able to exercise complicated, game changing magic. This made for several "Dante aneurysm" moments toward the end of the campaign, one of which left both me and Kanati, my co-DM, scrambling.

The players resurrected the dead gold dragon that we had placed in their path as they fled an oncoming army.

This completely derailed the rest of the plans for the session, and we had simply placed this dead dragon as a "holy crap, strong things are afoot" piece of set dressing. In 3.5, the players were high enough level to have the material components on-hand so I let them exercise their powers and do what they wanted to do. I could've said "hey, the dragon's soul doesn't want to return" but that is very clearly DM code for "NO" and I had no good justification for why the dragon wouldn't want to come back and have at those that killed him.

In 4e, the preparation and casting time would've simply excluded this as an option. The oncoming army simply would've overtaken them.

This is the root of what I like about the new ritual system. The things that should take awhile (making a portal, raising the dead, and so on) takes enough time to give the DM some modicum of control over the situation. This allows the integrity of the written storyline to be retained within the game mechanics if needed, or at very least it provides a bit of time for the DM to get his head around the changed situation while the characters perform the ritual.

Does this mean that I think the players should be limited when they use the rituals? By no means. Do I think that people should roundly convert the rituals back to their 3.5 edition counterparts and treat them as per day abilities? Absolutely not. I can clearly see the value added by the distinction between spells and rituals, and I also see opportunity for growth.

I will be very interested to see what additional rituals get added and how their execution time gets tweaked in accordance with how much they disrupt gameplay or how much relative peril should be undertaken when casting. Aside from the battle simplification, I think that this aspect alone is among the best in the new edition.

Have notebook, will travel...

I'm on the road for my real job again, and before leaving home last night I loaded up a small 512 MB USB thumb drive with a series of D&D related books and some draft campaign ideas that I've been working on.

I find travelling and gamebuilding particularly troublesome. You don't want to waste a bunch of carry-on space with books, nor do you want to check a bunch of baggage with it (since they're charging per bag now, that gets expensive).

For me, the best solution is to go digital. I keep my campaign notes in Google Docs. I keep a running document on my thumb drive for times when the Internet eludes me, or I'm on a flight. The only part I don't have licked yet is how to design maps while on the road. I can draw in a physical notebook, but then translating that elsewhere is often troublesome and sometimes I lose notebooks.

I know there are plenty of mapping tools out there, but I'd love to find one with little to no learning curve and the ability to save your progress in some easily trasmitted format for editing on the go. Ideally, it would be a small enough footprint to carry around on a thumb drive or design in a web browser.

Maybe the interactive 4E tools will fill this void when they're available, only time will tell! Any other recommendations for how to game-build on the go can be added to the comments. If there are any new tools to be tried, I'd love to burn a little of my extra hotel time with trying them out this week!

Recommended Reading: The Silmarillion...

While not one of my favorite books by J.R.R Tolkien, I have long admired the significance of his posthumously published work The Silmarillion. Most other nerds do not share my reverence of this particular book, considering it a somewhat disjointed very difficult read. In fact, many of my Tolkien-loving friends have never finished it.

I consider that a dirty shame.

What is it?

The Silmarillion is essentially a collection of myths, legends, and histories of Middle Earth. This includes, but is not focused on, the Third Age of Middle Earth which contains the Lord of the Rings stories that everyone loves.

This work is considered by most to reflect the main body of Tolkien's unfinished works. He started writing the stories that would eventually become this work in 1914, and continued revising and expanding them all throughout his life. At one point, he heavily desired that The Silmarillion be released alongside the Lord of the Rings stories but his publisher wasn't biting.

Why you should care.

There are five main sections of The Silmarillion, and you can find out more about their contents courtesy of a very well crafted Wikipedia article on the topic. One of my favorite sections is the first, which mirrors an allegorical retelling of the creation story regarding Middle Earth and its races.

As the book progresses, its tone shifts first to myths and histories of the elves and we are given a wonderful love story, "Of Beren and Lúthien". I will not do the story the injustice of being summarized by my clumsy hand, but suffice it to say if you want depth of characters and a lesson in epic storyline construction you really can start there and be completely satisfied.

I could go on and on about how excellent aspects of this text is, but that would take a long time and my hands would be numb from typing. Anyone who delights in world-building would benefit from the depth and grandeur that Tolkien (and his son, who edited The Silmarillion) gives Middle Earth beyond what most people are familiar with.

It is a shining example of how being passionate about world-building does not have to involve every last detail you ever conceived of in every storyline. If Tolkien had included 1/5 of the characters that he speaks about in The Silmarillion in The Lord of the Rings stories, it would've been fifteen volumes and nobody would've ever heard about it because the first person to start reading it wouldn't be done yet. It takes a light touch to color a small portion of your landscape correctly with the right characters, and Tolkien gives a master's course in doing this in The Lord of the Rings.

In addition to the world-building aspect, you also get some excellent character archetypes from the tales contained in its 365 pages. The aforementioned Beren and Lúthien are great examples, as are Fëanor and his line, who created the magical jewels called Silmarils that the collection is named after. The passion, motivation, and depth of these characters are excellent examples of how good character development can be in a short space. Taking a few of these stories, reading them, and reflecting on how you can build characters as dynamic as these would be an excellent exercise to prepare you for your next campaign, whether writing one or playing in one.

This article is clearly biased.

This week, I was able to add a first edition / first printing of this book to my collection and I consider it a true prize. It doesn't trouble me at all that many of my Tolkien-nerd friends don't apprecaite it. I do, and that's the important part!

Better Character Development courtesy of Bruce Willis...

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of re-watching one of my favorite sci-fi movies: The Fifth Element. Stupid Ranger and I had the wonderful opportunity of introducing someone to this film for the first time (they loved it) and it was fun to watch someone experience it.

Great examples of developed characters

Without going into ultra-nerdly levels of detail, one of the aspects about this movie that I truly enjoy is the depth of the characters. Watching it this time around, I tried to identify some of the standard D&D related classes for the characters and how the interesting ways that they were being written relative to that role.

Take Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) for example. He is clearly a seasoned yet retired fighter, who reluctantly breaks the rules when given the proper motivation in Leeloo. I believe he plays a very convincing chaotic good character, willing to break the rules that he feels are unjust in order to serve the common (and ultimately his own) good.

The star of the show is clearly Leeloo herself (Milla Jovovich). Aside from awesome orange hair and a propensity for being topless (and bottomless, see Resident Evil for details), she is my gold standard for actual depth in an action-based character. As the Supreme Being, she is physically very strong and able to absorb information at an amazing rate, but this is tempered by her vulnerability and empathy that she feels for the human condition. Throughout this movie you see how her physical strength and her mental prowess continually get betrayed by her desire to find goodness in humanity. You even get a great example of D&D style language learning ability, as seen when she learns English while Dallas is boarding the flight. I don't think I've seen the likes of that anywhere else!

Learn from examples like these!

There are two real lessons here. Player characters should take the opportunity to watch your favorite films and examine the journey that your favorite characters take throughout. Think about this as it relates to the decisions that you make as you roleplay your character. Do your best to filter out (or use sparingly) concepts that are schticky, unless you intend to temper them with actual character growth (or your DM is running an irreverent campaign on purpose).

Dungeon Masters can learn by watching the broader character interations and the story as it unfolds. Learn to engineer moments to let your characters explore their flaws or vulnerabilities, or get deeply engaged in what is happening on their own terms.

Take special care to allow your story to unfold in as many ways and across as many venues as needed. The Fifth Element covered many different sets and scenarios to get the level of depth and opulence to the futuristic world in which it was set, and in this depth comes opporunities for your characters to branch out and grow.

Finally, don't be afraid to sprinkle in some colorful characters or fun action scenes to spice things up. The Fifth Element wouldn't be what it is without Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker) or that deaf guy that ended up throwing Dallas billiard balls when he needed a gun!

Someone else's Proper Villany...

I was doing my normal morning RSS reading and saw that Yax over at DungeonMastering posted a fantastic (and incredibly concise) DM's Guide to Uber-Villians. There's a LOT of good material in a very small space in this article, and has given me a bunch of seeds to use in my future campaigns.

It strikes me that I often don't use minons enough, or effectively. That will probably be one of the first areas that I flesh out for my next Big Bad.

For those of you looking for our own take on being bad, feel free to have a look at Vanir's Proper Villany series. I've got some random notes on how I tend to handle evil characters, I will gather those up soon and perhaps add my two cents worth on the topic.

I'm never doubting terrain rules again...

I have lived in generally one area, the midwest United States, for my entire life and as a result I have gained a very sheltered world-view. Until this year, I had never flown on an airplane or even seen a mountain, let alone actually go up to the top of one.

I had the good fortune of being selected for travel to Colorado earlier this year on business, unfortunately it was a very short trip and I didn't get a chance to actually visit the mountains. That all changed for me this week. As I write this I am near Denver once again, and Sunday I had the good fortune to get a guided tour up Mount Evans.

Being a "flatlander" from the Midwest, I was told that I would need lots of water and to be prepared for the thin mountain air. No problem, I thought, I exercise regularly and won't have much of a problem.

WRONG! As we approached the summit (which is 14,264 feet above sea level), I noticed that I had a pretty decent headache going and that walking 20 feet to the observation area made me feel like I had just gone on a pretty difficult run. I drank my water and felt better, however it took me until today to shake the headache completely.

So how's this relate to roleplaying? Easy. As we headed up the mountain, I got some pretty distinct (and somewhat frightening) views of drop-offs and loose gravel. I thought to myself all of the times that I've eschewed the D20 movement rules for difficult terrain... let's just say I won't be doing that from here on out. There's no way you can run full boar in that elevation if you're not used to it, and there's even less of a chance that you don't slip and fall on gravel, snow, or ice.

I might entertain arguments that a Toughness feat, a high constitution, or something similar might make it less difficult, but let me tell you... it was rough up there.

I will be back at SR Central late Wednesday night, so until then I will leave you to the cool jazz stylings of Stupid Ranger and Vanir!

Behind the Screen: The Endgame - Epilogue...

I am pleased to report that we successfully chased this campaign into the barn on Saturday. Vanir had accurately predicted based on my Friday post that they had some interesting times ahead, and to my mind the three aforementioned endgame elements played their roles superbly.

Caution: The following contains some description of my campaign and/or characters involved and how our Friday post applied directly. If you hate that kind of thing, head on over to one of our many blog affiliates/buddies on the right hand side today. Also, lighten up a little.

The Big Event

Going up against the goddess of pain and suffering - it doesn't get a lot bigger than that! An interesting sidenote: Kanati and I elected to play our god/goddess rules a little more... uniformly than the actual rules dictate. I prefer goddesses to have a certain uniqueness to their magic, attacks, and damage descriptions than your standard rules imply. Suffice it to say the goddess of pain and suffering tends to be a little... extreme.

Kanati also did an excellent job of reigning our cast into an area where they couldn't explicitly use the environment to their benefit... the group was escaping through underground caverns with a small group of rebels and got trapped by oncoming hordes in an area known as "The Hub"... essentially the middle of a bike-spoke set of caves. The baddies poured in from all sides and cornered them while our goddess made her big entrance.

This ticked off our party and got them to initiate battle... and what a battle it was!

Suspense

Those of you reading along have likely followed our troubles with managing epic characters. I decided to bring about our element of suspense in a different way in this session: hit them hard, fast, and not give them much time to rest. In fact, our end confrontation occurred with most of the party on partial rest, so they were looking a wee bit nervous when she showed up.

The second way we added suspense was with the end of the encounter. The deal was this: whoever took the final blow against our goddess was brought before our pantheon of gods, and told that the only way to stop the goddesses reign of terror was to strike her down and take her power (it really wasn't quite as Highlander-esque as it sounds, but go with me here).

The rest of the party way left scratching their heads as our paladin and the goddess faded from their sight. We led Sir Geekelot, our paladin's player, downstairs and told him this information and he put a lot of thought into his decision but ultimately made the sacrifice to save the world. It was somewhat poetic that he be the one to take the final shot, as the ethical dilemma was heightened because of his strong allegiance to a good aligned god.

The Epilogue

Without going into much further detail, our epilogue was FANTASTIC as a result. Vanir (and Bat Loaf, his character) were so involved in roleplaying the interaction with our paladin/new god that I actually had to ask him to take a few seconds of a break to find out how everyone else in the party was reacting or if they wanted to do anything.

Then it was right back to the roleplaying. I was very proud of our group, how in character they stayed during this portion and how much care was taken to actually react as their character would. We had some of our more "goody goody" characters acted as expected and wanted out of this situation post-haste. Our neutral characters (both of which were very close to our paladin during the course of the campaign) elected to remain around him as he took on his new role as god.

The Conclusion

Happily, my formula appears to work pretty well. I hope all of our players had as much fun during the closing sessions of our campaign as we did creating/running them, and I hope that you have gained a few new ideas for how to execute the final sessions of a campaign!

One final note: never, ever, ever introduce a dead gold dragon on a whim to your epic level players. They will only find ways to befriend/reanimate/abuse this relationship.

That is all!

Three things to ensure a satisfactory endgame...

Tonight should be the night! Barring any further tomfoolery from Vanir and our intrepid bunch of adventurers, we will be looking at the endgame of our campaign! I thought I would share three things that I feel are required to craft a decent final session:

1. The Big Event - Whether it be a major ritual, the ascention of a new pantheon, destruction of the Big Bad, or the out-and-out death of your party you should really save something big to go out with. Even if you want to leave the door open for some follow-up adventures, you should mark the end of each story arc with something significant. (Hint: this usually means significant rewards/treasure too!)
   
   
2. Suspense - Nobody likes seeing the plot coming from down the block, so be sure to keep a few suspense cards in your hand for use during the final session. You want to have that brief moment where things look bleak, the battle becomes more difficult or emotionally significant, or something unexpected occurs to really climax the story.
   
   
3. The Epilogue - I have taken to requiring some sort of epilogue. My job as DM is to tie up the loose ends of the plot, describe the world after The Big Event and frame up any further opportunities for adventures. After that point, I like to turn things over to my players so they can tell me what the immediate future holds for their characters. Will they go home to their families? Continue adventuring in search of the next elusive treasure? Change professions and bake scones for a living, never raising their blade in anger again? This gives both you as DM and the players closure and an opportunity to bid farewell to their characters.

I know there are a possibly unlimited list of additions that should/would/could appear in the final session of a campaign, but I think those three are key components to have some level of success.

Behind the Screen: Getting better all the time...

In case you can't tell from the general overtone of Stupid Ranger's last post, we had a rather crunchy session over the long weekend. Not just any crunchy session, but a particularly epic flavored crunchy session.

Our group of epic adventurers showed the terrible dracolich what death tasted like, however as the rest of the evil armies pressed in on them they called upon an unexpected (to Kanati and I) escape route. They had earned a favor from a particularly old Gold Dragon, and they called on him to provide an expeditious retreat from the invading forces.

After Kanati and I had finished soiling ourselves, we determined that an evil horde of this magnitude would maintain the services of a black dragon. This led us to a utterly fantastic aerial battle that would've never happened if not for working on your spontaneous recovery skills.

There are two takeaways from the above scenario:

1. Take good notes regarding what favors your characters are owed, or what non-standard magical items they have at their disposal. This is more important if you have infrequent gaming sessions like we do. It will prevent the unexpected "oh crap" moment, and that undetermined loss of a few seconds of life as your heart tries to leap out your neck.
   
   
2. When the unexpected happens, try to recover in the most elegant way possible. Commit to your approach and go with it, often if you keep the action up the group will be less likely to question whether or not the evil horde had a black dragon before they realized they could summon their gold one.

Hopefully we will continue getting better as we chase this campaign into the barn, expect more soon!

Behind the Screen: Insane things are fun...

In case you can't tell from Stupid Ranger's last post, we had some fun with Deathshriekers (from the Monster Manual III) last session. For those of you that don't know, their primary mode of attack is a scream that persists for three rounds.

Woo, what do they do?

Each round requires a DC 26 Will save, or else you suffer the following effects: round 1 - deafness for 1d4 rounds. Round 2 - stunned for 1d3 rounds. The final round (and the most delightful) is the spell Insanity as if cast by an 18th level sorcerer. This and this alone is what forced most of the party against one another.

That's not all... because of the extreme power of our party, we elected to ignore the bit in the statistic block that indicates that these creatures are solitary and we threw two of them at our group.

Let's just say it was entertaining results. Entertaining for us!

The result

The party lived through it, but they expended a considerable amount of resources. Several characters were killed, later to be revived by the Staff of Life that one of our PC's bought with their in-between-campaign moolah.

As we've previously mentioned, this convenient return to life may be considered as unbalanced, but the more charges they use off of that staff the quicker it is removed from service permanently. Besides, shouldn't the stakes be higher at epic levels? I think that they should.

The fact that our characters are internalizing the encounters in the way that they are indicate that we have a good set of roleplayers. They actually feel conflicted when a spell forces them to do something that they otherwise might not do, and this is a very good problem to have as a DM.

A Rogue's Guide to Alternagaming...

Stupid Ranger's post on the recent gaming drought that is plaguing various corners of the Internet seems to have struck a chord.

Lack of Gaming and your local DM

From a DM perspective, the lack of frequency can almost be a blessing because it earns you some precious time to actually plan upcoming sessions or take stock of the good and bad storytelling aspects that have crept into your world.

Lately, my co-DM Kanati and I have been discussing the abject pain and suffering that has been caused by our unseemly ascent into the Epic Levels, and discussing what we would do different if we could turn back time. This is mostly just lamenting and gnashing of teeth, luckily we are within a few short sessions of Campaign's End which (at least to me) is quite welcome.

Musings to pass the time...

In addition to the standard fare of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, I've found myself starting to think of some other nerdly pursuits to fill in the gaps where gaming used to go. Developing software for fun (yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am a True Nerd), exploring some other gaming systems/extensions (Mage and the Three Dragon Ante spring to mind), and enjoying the glorious first person high definition violence of my Xbox 360 have all been employed to while away our spare Friday and Saturday nights.

Unfortunately, for me the grind of running the campaign can become a chore. It's usually when nearing this "beg for mercy" stage of plot development that I truly take stock to determine when the best time is to finish up, and I am certain that time is near.

I have some topics to round out the week dealing with further alterna-gaming and some ideas for ending a campaign that I hope you'll like. In the meantime, I'd love to hear how some of you while away your non-roleplaying time and how you know when the point to stop running a campaign has drawn near.

Funny->Story...

Our good buddy Phil over at ChattyDM.net posted this great story about how a joke essentially helped shape the story, with the players essentially driving the whole production. This whole tale reminds me of so many memorable moments from our campaigns... I believe that it speaks to what makes roleplaying fundamentally great.

What's funny to you is often funny to everyone else.

People like participating in events that other people value, and funny events are no exception to this rule. If the initial notion of (in this case) a Microwave Ogre gets a laugh around the table, there is usually one or two people within the group that naturally want to carry on that shared experience by perpetuating the joke or heightening it in some way.

In my experience, it usually takes a "plot focused" person at the table in order for that gag to make the leap into campaign material. It usually manifests by the straight man (or woman) saying something to the effect of: "Hey... will any of the townspeople listen if I start telling the story of the Microwave Ogre?" then the bard of the group offers to make a supporting Perform check to influence the crowd.

Behold, shaping of the plot has begun, and that is awesome.

Support this stuff, people!!

Too often, a serious DM will attempt to squash this irreverent behavior. I am usually thrilled when things like this happen because a.) fun stuff rules and b.) I don't have to write stuff the players come up with on their own!

Maybe I should change my handle to Dante, The Lazy DM...

Behind the Screen: Regarding Chemistry...

Yesterday, Stupid Ranger posted a great piece discussing chemistry and group dynamics. As the Dungeon Master, it is important to cultivate skills in reading the group chemistry and tweaking the way you run your game.

Group Composition

Stupid Ranger mentions yesterday that often the reality of your group chemistry falls into group composition: that is, the people that make up your player group. If you do happen to find yourself in a situation where your group is unbalanced in some way (say, too many leaders or arch-enemies within a group) you can often leverage your storyline to help balance the mix within your group.

If you have a group with too many leaders, for example, and the group is very invested in the storyline you might be able to actually capitalize on this dynamic by creating a plotline that splits your group in some way. This will allow your multiple leaders to flourish and the rest of your group to get some respite from the conflict that comes from this particular type of chemistry.

Plot can be used to solve a lot of these problems, however it is not a silver bullet. Engineering too many of these "artificial" balms to group dynamics will quickly become obvious and hackneyed, so use them somewhat sparingly.

Balance is a difficult thing

I am running into the same difficulty that SR is... describing what good chemistry (and good management of group dynamics) is a difficult thing to explain in words. I am reminded, however, of a certain Futurama episode where Bender is set adrift in the universe and encounters a deep-space godlike entity.

Bender is perplexed at how to direct the small pocket society that had collided with him, and the godlike entity tells him he has to have a light touch, and eventually is quoted as saying: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

Extending that notion to managing group chemistry is the mark of a truly fantastic Dungeon Master, I can only hope to aspire to this kind of effortless plot execution and group management!

Pointless Nostalgia...

As many of you recall, a few weeks ago we returned to our video gaming roots over here at StupidRanger Central by purchasing an Xbox 360. As I traversed the different options made available through the Live Marketplace, I was presented with many games from years past.

This made me particularly nostalgic and got me thinking about some of the things that led me into D&D. One such game was the Milton Bradley classic game HeroQuest.

Ah, the good ol' days

This game came out in 1991, and unfortunately it was during the Dark Times when I didn't have many friends that appreciated the nerdish tendencies that I possessed. My sister wasn't really old enough to play the game, however I was able to get a few of my neighborhood chums to play a few times.

I hadn't quite grasped the notion that you could have creativity alongside a board-game, so I stuck to the stock adventures that came along with the system. The game was played with miniatures and cardboard tiles, and the game master led the players through a dungeon and the goal was to escape alive.

The interesting thing about this game was that it had elements that spoke to pretty much all aspects of roleplaying gamers: character creation (you had to pick a class and learn their skills), dungeon creation (or just a storyline if you are a player), miniatures including set pieces (my first exposure to mini's), and my favorite part... the treasure cards.

Basically, they were fancied up "Chance" cards a la Monopoly. I remember that the cool things seemed to outweigh the bad, but there was always a chance of unearthing a monster or trap when you searched an area for treasure. They really tickled the part of me that would later embrace Magic: The Gathering for many, many years (thankfully, I broke that habit midway through college).

Reflecting

It is interesting to consider how this game was a good teaching tool for the budding Dungeon Master. All the elements are there... building interesting traps/encounters, doling out treasure, killing bad guys... and the best thing about it was it was designed to be a classic dungeon crawl.

I don't know what became of my set... I have a feeling it met with either a leaky closet ceiling or the wrath of my mother's Spring Cleaning... I found a link over at BoardGameGeek that indicates that I could replace it for a scant $111.

Unfortunately, I don't see that outlay of cash happening anytime soon... I'd rather have the memories intact anyway.

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

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

Often it comes down to timing...

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

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

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

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

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

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