Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Maybe one of them is an Elf

Surprisingly, as much as I thought D&D was to some extent looney toons, I've been surprised that quite a few people are interested in playing.  Rapidly approaching critical mass.

(Obviously, the Penny Arcade series of recent D&D games have been both good and very welcome.)

Sunday, March 29, 2009

No dice

I realize this is silly but over a long period of time I managed to pick up quite a lot of dice.

The smallest one:

Friday, March 27, 2009

Wil Wheaton's DM suggestions

Some thoughts that indirectly spawned my last post.

DM Styles

My friend Kris wrote:

I don't know a lot about game theory, but I do know something about giving form to creativity - a structure of some kind. The dice rolling provides an objective structure upon which an elaborate foray in creativity can be had. I would think simple rule-making would not be enough, since rules, by being made of language, which is in itself ambiguous and arbitrary, can be bent, broken, disregarded, etc.

Going to pull back the curtain a little bit about how I work all this stuff out.

Kris' idea here has been a tension for me basically since I started DM'ing when I was 14. How do I tell a cool story while at the same time letting people decide the direction of that story? The interactivity makes it hard for me to plan.

To handle this tension, there are actually different DM styles that I'm balancing currently. First is a strict rules structure, which can be tedious but *absolutely* fair and controlled. There's a "rail" (like a railroad -- only going down one track) structure where there's less interactivity on the part of the players and more of a storytelling component. There's a "referee" style where the DM is very hands-off, giving the characters a situation and then lets the characters choose on their own what happens. He's only there to stop them when they do something illegal. There's also a more freeform style that relies very little on the rules and is much more about style.

Rail systems fail for obvious reasons: if there's no interactivity, its just watching a movie. I've had some incredible DMs tell some astonishingly cool stories, but our characters were very, very secondary. Entertainment factor was high but I didn't care about my character. Elf? Minotaur? Who cares? We're still getting into the castle. Now tell me what happens.

Freeform oddly fails because there is no real danger in dying. This is because if someone's going to lose their character, they want to know that they *really* died and you weren't just punishing them for something intangible and casual. People take that personally and quit playing so DMs can't kill anyone. When you hold death over the head of your players, they're more concerned about what's going on, get deeper into the game, and avoid needless risks. Success and failure in freeform games are mostly based on real human charisma (not some kind of in-game charisma). You often have to talk the DM into it, which is a bit silly and absolutely vague. Here's an example freeform scene:

Player: I'm going to jump off the cliff. I'm going to aim for that little outcropping.
DM: You're @#$% dead.
Player: I hate you!

The Referee style sucks too because there's no direction:

Team: Where are we going?
DM: Wherever you want.
Team: I want money. Where's the money?
DM: In the dungeon.
Team: To the dungeon!
DM: How do you get there?
Team: Is there a door?
DM: Maybe.

Since the DM doesn't seem engaged, the players aren't likely to come along with him. Like a Freshman trying to decide his major in college, players want direction. Very creative players can thrive in this situation but too much freedom is like asking the players to do your work for you.

Strict rules systems involve lots of looking up of information. You're continually pulling up a book and looking for the table that does whatever. If there's no table, what do you do? Sometimes you make one. You have to have a lot of patience for this and be very focused on the game mechanics and usually you fancy yourself a role-playing-game-system writer. On the upside, the DM is not culpable; when something goes wrong, the players might as well argue with the book authors.

Player: I want to shoot him.
DM: You missed. Roll to see which direction it went.
Player: Uh. Left.
DM: Your team mate is to the left. Roll to see if you hit her.
Player: Oops. I hit her.
DM: Roll dexterity check.
Player: Still hit.
DM: Roll for damage.
Player: 5
DM: Roll to save vs. death
Player (to teammate): Idiot! Why were you standing there?!

2009-03-15 - Third session

Still in the tunnel from last session. Had plans to go deeper and do more but things fell apart and had to let them out early. Notes:
  • Kind of the disaster. Lost track of many of the things I was planning on doing, partly from the confusion from new member of the party.
  • Everybody quickly gets bored of adventures that involve only combat.
  • Even when a character walks into a bad situation, they don't want to be punished for making a mistake. This early in the game, they should be given a little leeway and you should remind them of their get out of jail free cards. Kris got stuck by that guy but didn't get a reward. Make sure he approaches her again later and gives her something valuable.
  • Az (new player) likes being involved. Need to give her things to do and problems to solve, by virtue that she's a magical creature and very noticeable. Everyone will always approach her first.
  • Role-play element was mostly missing. What role-play we did get into didn't work because me and Az didn't iron that out ahead of time. Bleh.
Session rating: Double-bleh.

2009-03-09 - Second session

Group went into a "dungeon," which was just an abandoned underground storage tunnel used by ancient black-marketeers. Notes:
  • Party had fun playing a slaughter event where they overpowered the orcs easily. Shows the promise of doing die rolls in front of the party to show them that they are genuinely going up against a legit enemy.
  • Characters molds came out during play. K's character is the lawnmower -- angry and strong, Kris is whimsical and illusory, W is rude and the leader. Need to try to test / play with these roles somehow without taking away the player's fun with that character. Maybe bring out the color of the characters and give them dilemas. K should be sympathetic / have to NOT fight [based on a dream or a situation]. W must be polite to someone and make choices for the whole group [like a group of clerics approach them and W must convince them one way or another for something].
  • They like the black-and-white nature of combat but obviously want something more complex that stretches their brains.
  • They liked the idea of just making a massacre -- this needs to happen from time to time. They don't want to do this often but they liked the idea of trying to do something and succeeding at it fully. Previous adventures its always been a challange to defeat an enemy so this was a welcome reprieve to give them an idea of just how quickly they can dispatch lower powered enemies.
  • They enjoyed the roleplaying element greatly. Need to package into every adventure a little roleplay. Its becoming one of the reasons we play every week. If we have that at the beginning, a tedious fighting session won't be so damaging.
  • They may encounter friends, companions, or non-orc race or person who isn't friends (maybe enemies) with the orcs but isn't friends with the characters either- little roleplay to try and get him to help / not interfere
Session rating: Supersweet

2009-03-02 - First session

Just got done with a very prepared tabletop game and moved into the real books.
  • Team really seemed to like roleplaying their characters. They've all already come up with colorful, interesting characters and a sense of identity. Think this is going to be a driving force behind the continued fun of the campaign.
  • Party paid attention to detail, wanted to know about background, names of towns legends, all sorts of stuff that I cared about but didn't think anyone else would. The progress of the story should go carefully in line with these legends, stories, and backgrounds. No random encounter adventures, except as filler.
  • Need to make combat more interesting, detailed, and involved. Obey the rule system as well as critical hits, near misses, other elements that just make sense to combat.
Session rating: Huzzah!