DMing

A photo from a D&D game I was DMing. How nerdy is it to whip out a DSLR while playing D&D? Very.

While I haven’t been playing Dungeons & Dragons lately, I have been playing other games in a somewhat similar vein, such as Arkham Horror, and I’ve come to completely change my mind on how a successful Dungeon Master runs the game.

I used to view DMing as refereeing. And if you look at the Wikipedia article for Dungeon Master, it uses the word “referee” explicitly. This makes the DM a rules arbitrator, someone who tells players “that’s how your action resulted” or “no, that doesn’t work, the Arcana skill doesn’t allow for that”. This is a perfectly valid role for a DM.

But I’m starting to see a DM as someone whose role is to break the rules, not reinforce them. Any player can compare the Mage’s Fireball attack roll to their Reflex and see if they got hit or not. But only a rule breaker might determine that the Fireball weakened the wooden floor, creating a possible danger for players or monsters to fall to the basement below. Only a rule breaker can see that this fight is going to drag on for hours, and find creative ways to speed it up.

So recently I’ve been a rule breaker, not a rules enforcer. Arkham Horror is entirely automated by card shuffling and dice rolls; shouldn’t D&D be different?

A surprisingly useful pen & paper tool . . . with no pen or paper

So I found what might be my favourite DM tool for D&D since my dry-erase battlemat; an iPad.

I know, I know, calm down. I’m not suggesting we remove books or imagination from D&D or that we all sit around staring at screens rather than at each other. But I was playing around with Numbers, the iPad’s official spreadsheet app, and something clicked: it’s actually really useful for running battles, and in some ways, better than a pencil & paper! I’ve just written a tutorial on using Numbers for your D&D game, and afterwards I’ve got a few brainstormed ideas on other ways you could use iPad or another tablet to level up your D&D game. So, without further ado, let’s roll!

First, set up a simple table featuring the stats of your PCs. Toss in maximum HP, basic stats that you’d want to reference (AC, Fortitude, etc). Make the first non-header row a row of checkboxes, and label that row “Turn”.

Something sexy like that. You can see that I named the chart “PCs”, and the sheet it’s on “Fellowship” to indicate that this is the base sheet for my party. Had I spent more time preparing this idea (I literally created this 5 minutes before I started writing this post) I’d include a second table listing skill bonuses and other things about the PCs you’d like to reference, especially stuff you want to reference without them knowing, like Passive Insight scores. But it’s key that those things should be in a second table, especially if you’re going to be detailed, because we’re going to copy this simple stat table.

So, copy the first table into a new sheet. If you’re planning an adventure and you know the PCs will be getting into three fights, make three new sheets and paste that simple stats table into each sheet. Then go ahead and add in the monsters that the PCs will be fighting, each with their own stat column, although you could condense 1 HP minions. You don’t need to have Initiative filled in, we’ll be entering that later. Then tap the new sheet tab at the top, and choose ‘New Form’. Set the form to be for the table you just created with the PCs & monsters. You should end up with a setup like the following:

Note how I’ve named my sheets. Weathertop has all the core stats I’ll need for the Weathertop fight, Weatherform is my form entry for Weathertop, and Fellowship is the sheet I created earlier that has all the standard stats. So you can quickly see your different fights and move from one to another, like Weathertop, then Balin’s Tomb, etc. Our preparation is essentially done!

Let’s fast-forward to the battle. “Roll initiative!” I cry. And as players start shouting out their initiative numbers, I can fill them in on Weatherform. I don’t need to worry about ordering them or making sure I write the Initiative down somewhere where I won’t lose it, this bad boy keeps track of it all for me.

C’mon Aragorn, stop texting your girlfriend and give me your Initiative roll, or else you miss the first round!

And when I swap back to the actual table, my initiative will be all filled in. I can just tap on the header and drag the various columns around, so now I have this:

And now the fight can begin (man, these players are screwed, look at that HP). I’ve got all the stats I need right here, so I don’t need to constantly ask Frodo what his AC is. The different columns indicate turn order, so in this case, the Nazgul King is going first. Aragorn’s pitiful Initiative result puts him in dead last, even behind the generic Nazgul A & B. The check boxes allow for easy tracking of who has taken their turn and who hasn’t; great if you’ve got a pile of mobs to keep track of, or if your players tend to let their minds wander (I recommend using form entry to check the boxes). After a while, your sheet might look like this:

Note how I’ve been using the Turn checkboxes (so it’s Aragorn’s turn) and how poor Frodo has already slipped down to -9 hit points. But there’s a little surprise I never mentioned yet. If you take a bit more time to prepare, you can really turn this up to eleven. Check this out:

I am fully aware that at no point in the Lord of the Rings is a Displacer Beast relevant.

Now i’ve got images of the minis down there. Imagine putting art of weird monsters down there, or even in another sheet. If players ask “What the hell does a Nazgul even look like?” you can either zoom in and show them the art, or describe it to them. Also, imagine putting a mini underneath each column so I know exactly which mini corresponds to which stat-column. This is great if you don’t have a huge selection of minis, so you might have a Skeleton Archer representing Nazgul A and a Bandit representing Nazgul B. You can drop quick images of those minis beneath the columns to remind yourself of which is which.

I even have a stat block down there, so I have all their attacks and traits and things also at my grasp, but with the super-key information like HP really easy to reference and change. I also imagine you could put a picture of what you want the battlemap to look like, to help you arrange your Dungeon Tiles and get everything set up. And it’s all on the same sheet!

And the best part? This is all doable/changable on the fly. If a character’s initiative changes, you can re-order the columns in about five seconds. If you realize that Aragorn is blowing the Nazgul away and the players need a trickier fight, duplicate the Nazgul column twice and suddenly reinforcements climb up the side of the mountain! And with the Turn checkboxes, you’ll never miss a turn or forget whose turn it is if you all go out to grab some pizza before continuing the fight. No awkward erasing and quickly writing things down, the paper getting more and more difficult to read as the battle wears on, no more losing where you wrote down the Nazgul King’s HP, no more accidentally writing on your Monster Manual when you meant to write on your scratch paper but you’re juggling 3 books at once …

There are some other sweet uses of the iPad for games like D&D. I won’t go into detail here like I did above; consider this section just a bunch of ideas I’m throwing out.

Obviously, having a Safari tab open to the Rules Compendium would be fantastic, and if you’re running a home-written adventure of a Dungeon Magazine adventure, having that sitting in iBooks as a PDF would be invaluable. Being able to look up art on the fly would be pretty killer too; imagine a player asking what the hell a Barghast is (seriously, what the hell is a Barghast?).

And if the players are all carrying smartphones, firing off an email or text with a secret message (“Boromir, the Ring has taken control of your mind. Try to take the Ring from Frodo when the two of you are alone.”) can help keep truly secret info secret, without passing around a giant note or calling a player aside. Or imagine if the guy playing the Wizard couldn’t make this week’s session due to exam studying; maybe he could send a message to the party warning them of danger via Skype or FaceTime, or provide buffs via Twitter (@Wizards_DnD style). It’d be silly, sure, but I bet it’d also be pretty awesome. And if your group isn’t too distractible, turn on some generic fantasy music to set the tone.

The non-DM uses are pretty nifty too. Get a drawing or sketching app and suddenly dungeon cartography isn’t so bad! Running up against the edge of paper and finding out that the Mines of Moria keep going is a total pain, but with a tablet, you can just zoom out and keep drawing. Keep all of your power cards on one small screen (I’d recommend a smartphone over a tablet for that purpose), and write down your loot digitally so the scrap of paper won’t be lost. Send messages to fellow players if you’re planning something secret that you don’t want your DM metagaming about, or send him a message if you want to investigate a fellow party member without arousing suspicion (“Boromir is acting odd, can I use Insight without letting him know?”)

Now, those are just ideas. Maybe they’ll be totally useless for your game. I know that adding technology to this inherently non-electronic game is often viewed as something dangerous. And sometimes the appeal of D&D is that you aren’t playing around with touchscreens and sending emails, and I’d never want to take that appeal away.

I’m not presenting any of this as the way you should be playing, but I do enjoy experimenting with new ideas, and I think some of these would be a lot of fun, depending on you and your group. Feel free to experiment with them, and if you ever do try anything along these lines, let me know in the comments! Or if I’m missing some really sweet idea, feel free to sound off as well. Do you use technology in your game at all?

A Player's Hidden Motives

Sometimes (most of the time?) there’s conflict between the DM and his players. The worst conflict is where the players want something, and where they’re good enough to get it, but that thing would cause problems for the game. A great DM won’t just give it to them (especially when game balance, fairness, and challenge are on the line), but nor will he withhold it just to be an overbearing, controlling DM like me. The best DMs will find out why they want it. 

These players are busy scheming how to mess up their DM’s plan.

I was playing a Dark Sun game the other day. The players were in a cliché-bar where they were investigating the going-ons at the gladiatorial arena. Now, these players love to befriend NPCs, and they have the skill bonuses to do it; their “life-debted” Thri-Kreen is guarding their backs, one spear in each pincer. They looked for the scariest guy in the bar, and saw a half-giant in the corner, huge cloak covering his lumpy shoulders, holding a greataxe the size of the dwarf.

Rather than asking him their question and going, these crazies decide “this guy needs to join our party”. So the Dragonborn rolls up, flexes his muscles, and pops an Intimidate check. Poor roll. But how does the Half-Giant intimidate a macho Dragonborn? By removing his cloak, revealing a second head with purple eyes. And this was my miscalculation. The players considered this guy a conquest. Rather than realizing he was a badass who would never join them, now he just became more desirable; you want what you can’t have, right?

So the Gnome Wizard sidles up to the half-giant and tries Diplomacy. Rolls a 20, plus various modifiers and checks and whatnot. I check my DCs, and realize that this would actually convince the Half-Giant to at least go watch the fights with them. Oh dear. So he follows them to the arena, acting slightly deranged, as his heads don’t necessarily agree (again, cliché).

Fast-forward, the players are fighting in the arena. The Gnome casts Ghost Sound, and tries to convince the half-giant to fight with them. Natural 20, again.

I could have easily just said “no”. But that’s not cool - the Gnome legitimately convinced him. And I’m working on “saying yes”. But … Convincing a deranged half-giant with a disembodied voice doesn’t always work the way players expect.

He jumped into the arena, did a massive ground attack against everybody, smoked their main target with his axe, then next turn he screamed “NOT THE VOICES AGAIN!” and barreled out of the arena, smashing through the wall (a hole the players later exploited).

This is an artist’s interpretive depiction of the twin-headed half-giant fighting in the arena, only he isn’t a half-giant, twin-headed, or related to my game in any way. Still a great example of some of the amazing artwork Wizards of the Coast has been commissioning lately.

The players loved it.

See, their actions and statements told me they wanted this guy to join their party. Partly because he was cool, partly because he’d be an asset, but mostly to exercise their control over the game. But there was something more.

Most of the players jonesing to get (as I refer to him) Gorchuk & Gorchek to join the party come from videogaming backgrounds. The idea that they could actually convince an NPC to do their bidding outside of preset interactions is new and exciting.

But if the half-giant truly joined the players, everything would change. Encounter design would have to take this super-badass into account, encounter areas need to be larger to accommodate his 2x2 mini, his place in the plot would be questionable at best, and he either becomes a DMPC, or a player has 2 characters to run - there’s really no way for this to work well.

My solution gives everybody a win; the players meaningfully exert real control over the game world (and as an extension of the world, Gorchuk & Gorchek), their efforts gave them an in-game advantage (he really did hit hard), and I don’t have to deal with trying to find appropriate challenges for the party and their new, amazingly powerful pet. They have a great time and a few laughs, and a few “ooohs” when he rolls lots of big numbers for damage, and then he runs off in a way that was consistent with his personality and the Ghost Sound spell. And now there’s an enraged nutter running around the desert, who could be an enemy or ally to the players in the future. Who knows?

Sometimes, identifying somebody’s motives can be better than giving them exactly what they want.

Link: Game Balance, or "How To Downgrade A Paladin"

Patrick Benson, at Gnome Stew:

When everything is balanced nothing is special.

It’s hard to disagree with this statement, or the post as a whole. It’s absolutely true. Still, I find that the “nothing is special” approach is great when it comes to the math undernath a game system; I was once an ordinary player-character in a game where another player is “special”, and had that been my first pen & paper experience, I don’t think I’d have ever played again.

Gamma World - First Session!

I’ve talked relatively little about pen & paper games here on the site. It’s high time I changed that. I snagged Wizards of the Coast’s new Gamma World boxed set on Friday. I had been on the fence about Gamma World; it sounded like a lot of fun, but it’s a bit of a pain to coordinate a pen & paper game sometimes. Then I read the following:

”I had them all create characters at the table before the game and right away everyone was already laughing. After rolling for their starting gear they ended up with a busted pick up truck being pulled by horses and a sack of flashlights. From that moment I think they were sold on the world.“(Mike Krahulik, of Penny-Arcade fame)

Count me in as sold too. And having played Gamma World once now, let me state this unequivocally: Gamma World is one of the most enjoyable pen & paper games I’ve ever played.

Photo by Maciek

Post apocalyptic worlds are actually pretty ripe for humour if you stop and think about it. They can also be extremely dire and dark [1. And award-winning.], but you’re stuck on this planet after the end of the world has already happened. That’s gotta be brutal for the guys who love the “if it was the end of the world, would you …” line.

Gamma World exploits the potential weirdness of this sort of world, throws in mutations, and then cranks up the meta jokes to a level that’s not so high as to make the game feel like a bad joke, but just high enough to make it truly hilarious for geeks [2. Let’s face it; geeks love references, we squee at the mildest of head nods.].

The entire package is incredibly well designed. Opening the box was a great experience, with the rulebook lying atop the deck of cards. Moving the cardboard up revealed the rest of the package. The box is a bit bigger than it needs to be, but I view this as a good thing; I’ve now got a spare pencil and a few dice in the box, and the extra room will come in handy for those future expansions and the like. The game rulebook is very well written, with a lot of really useful advice. My favourite bit was the paragraph about how you determine what your character looks like. To that end, the weapon chart was incredibly abstract to the point where my players thought I was reading off headings (“One handed melee light weapon, two-handed melee light weapon…”). The idea is incredibly clever and appropriate for the setting; rather than listing off 400 weapons with rules for improvised weapons, there is simply a huge set of broad categories. Fighting with a stop sign? Two-handed heavy. Fighting with a dagger? One-handed light. Fighting with a piece of an Ikea bookshelf? One-handed light (no assembly required!).

Character creation was a total snap. The character sheets brilliantly act both as a record of your stats, but they also guide you through the character generation process. The steps are literally numbered on the sheet [1. Although they artificially lower the amount of numbered steps by including 2a, 2b, and so forth. Still, it’s typically for related elements of the creation process so I can’t whine too much.], making following along and not missing anything quite easy. Page numbers would have been nice, but I could see them being a bit of a pain once your character has already been made. Despite not having had the time to read the rulebook prior to playing I was able to help my three friends create characters quite easily.

The first person who created a character made “Sir Geribald the 14th”, a giant [2. More great humour from the Gamma World writers; the description for ‘Giant’ actually says something along the lines of “Think Andre the Giant size”. Funny stuff!] cat-man. He carried with him a flashlight, several rolls of duct tape, nightvision goggles and a reinforced cane. I invite you to think about an eight foot tall anthropomorphic cat with nightvision goggles and not smile. The best part is that his two origins had abilities that both are useful and make logical sense; when falling 50 feet or less, our felinoid giant will always land on his feet (!). Oh, and his Constitution score ended up being an unfortunate seven [3. For the non-D&D geeks out there, a score of 7 for Constitution means his character is physically frail and possibly sickly; the average human being has a score of 10, give or take a point.]. He also had a weird mutation allowing him to create a force field, and last but not least, a Freeze Ray [4. Not a death ray nor an ice beam, that’s so Johnny Snow; the card for the Freeze Ray specifically mentions that it’s neither of those. Another +10 awesome points for the Gamma World writers!]

The second player created a doppelganger speedster, loaded down with more duct tape, another flashlight, and a generator. This character actually proved to be another incredibly awesome combination, as he could create a duplicate of himself (doppelganger), and with his speedster speed send the doppelganger quite the distance to attack while he hung out behind a boulder.  He kitted himself with Voldo-style katar blades. He ended up getting both a mutation and an Omega Tech (essentially phat loot) that helped heal himself.

The third player ended up with the most logical character origin; an electro-powered android. Sort of a dry start, but she compensated by setting him up with an electro-powered katana and randomly rolling a pretty good healing item, plus a sweet ray gun. She ended up with more duct tape (!!!), another flashlight, and a wagon. She really went for the whole “Android death grip” thing and ended up just choking enemies to death with her machine hands, then possibly throwing them into pits if they survived.

As I didn’t really feel like making it up as I went along, I began by introducing the players to the adventure that comes with Gamma World, but quickly realized that they had nothing; no setting, no knowledge of where they were, nothing. I thought of the last post-apocalyptic setting I could and was reminded of Claptrap from Borderlands … so they found themselves in the town of Clap, so named because “The only working electronic device in Clap is a broken ‘Applause’ sign, and nobody can pronounce that word here”. I fit the adventure in this town and within a few minutes the players were investigating the trail of a potential android attack. Rather than tracking the androids, looking for information, talking with the people who had their belongings stolen, they immediately canvassed the town for car wheels, tied those to the wagon, attached the generator and some duct tape, then duct taped their flashlights to the front and … voila, Rolls-Royce was born [5. I realize that a busted pickup truck and a sack of flashlights does bear some similarity to a wagon powered by busted up wheels with flashlights acting as headlights, but I didn’t tell them the Penny-Arcade story prior to us playing, promise! People just like fashioning ghetto cars.]. By this time, we were roaring with laughter.

They then followed the trail to a clearing where they genuinely snuck up on some anthropomorphic badgers and pigs and began the assault.

One thing I find in a lot of RPG games is that a lot of character elements and traits go unused. Players might learn languages that never end up spoken, or forget to use their abilities, or have abilities that are so niche they only get used once or twice. Because Gamma World is so goofy anyways, my players didn’t mind using tactics they normally wouldn’t have, making the fight both more dangerous and exciting but also funnier.

Player 3’s Android may have had a ‘classic’ origin pairing, but nobody complained when she ripped out a foe’s guts with her machine hands. Everything went well until the last foe knocked Player 2’s speedster into the radioactive crater; between the initial hit and the fall, the poor guy was not only brought to one hit point, he was also irradiated and would take 8 damage at the start of his next turn. But one of his mutations saved the day, then the android healed him and he escaped successfully from the pit, over which a force field was then constructed, for safety reasons. And the giant cat did fall off a cliff, and he did land on his feet. Everyone playing was roaring with laughter; the whole thing was ridiculous, but also incredibly dangerous: one person was reduced to near death in a single attack.

Alas the night ended far, far too soon as bedtime drew near and people had to retire. The session essentially ended right when the first fight did, preventing us from even finding any Ancient Junk, which is unfortunate. Still, everyone is itching to play again. I agree with the majority of reviews that I’ve read in that I don’t think Gamma World is appropriate for a full-time, months long campaign, and that’s alright; I also don’t think it’s intended to be. But as a break, or as just a really fun game to play over a few hours, Gamma World is barrels of fun. The other night was easily one of the most enjoyable pen & paper sessions I’ve ever played, and I look forward to the next one.