Playing Bashfully
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

Playing Bashfully

I’m not sure why, but sometimes I’ve had players who downright just play like wimps. It is a stereotype (or perhaps assumption) that spans far and wide regarding player characters in RPG’s that label them as heroes or extraordinary in some way. You would think these people who weave elemental and divine powers from their fingertips, transform into beasts, leap chasms and wear plate armor brimming with weapons would charge headfirst into danger.

Apparently not always, as my most recent homebrew campaign first started I’d never seen so many players take the “safe route” so often. By safe route I don’t mean “Let’s see if we can convince the baron of X before we try Y” I mean when encountered with a graveyard that may have a few zombies lurking around they opted to sleep until daylight before investigating, even though an urgent matter was at hand. Unfortunately I didn’t punish properly for taking a casual approach to dispatching evil.

I had a cinematic encounter laid out before them, the moon was full and the graveyard thick with mist where an ominous winged silhouette appeared each night perched atop an abandoned tower. A barmaid offers them a key left by a stranger who said it would unlock the towers mysteries also offering gold to vanquish whatever sinister thing that resides in the tower. “You say the shadow appears there every night, and it’s yet to attack?” “Well then it’s probably not going to do anything tonight either, let’s get some rest and investigate when the sun rises, it will be safer this way.”

Dire elephant at the game table
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

Dire elephant at the game table

Once a week we invite everyone over into our home to play D&D. Everyone just walks right on in, takes their shoes off and we sit down together for a good friendly game – hell my players don’t even knock. My gaming group has remained the same for some time now; my wife, my best friend, his fiance, his dad and his fiance’s dad whom both have been playing since their teenage years. More often than not on game night we provide food and beverages for everyone, and most of the time someone brings beer or something else to drink or eat, it’s communal and no one keeps tabs or anything and there’s never been a problem.

Everyone really gets along swimmingly and the party plays well together – they always manage to find a less than obvious way around things and I’m never prepared however good times always ensue. I prepare our campaign with heart and soul each week, I have no co-dm and I painstakingly set up our game to be as fun as efficient as possible, and I’m always looking for ways to bring the experience to a new level. I attempt to cater to my players needs and wants to achieve maximum fun for all.

I wish all of the above said was true, which actually it is mostly with the exception of one of those players. They are downright rude there’s no other way to put it, at first their demeanor was a minor snag in the flow of our game sessions. I can put up with a few comments here and there or shrug off the inappropriate mentions of my wifes breasts.

Dropbox: A DM’s best friend
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings Tools

Dropbox: A DM’s best friend

Some time ago, a co-worker turned me onto a free storage service called Dropbox, it’s basically a cloud storage system for Windows, Mac, Linux, & iPhone and I’ve found it to be an indispensable tool for our gaming group. No matter where you go, when you put a file in your Dropbox it will sync across the board and be retrievable on any device you also have Dropbox installed on and even if you don’t install the app your stuff is always reachable from the internet via the Dropbox website. You can share folders with friends and it even archives stuff so if you delete it and later decide you need it back, you can restore it with 1 click. For each friend you recruit into using drop box they give you an extra 250mb of space tacked onto the 2Gb you start with as a free account.

What we use it for is – everything. Adventure logs, character sheets, pdf reference books, music & playlists for our game, DDI magazine articles you name it we throw it in there so everyone in our gaming troupe can have access to it anytime. When we find good reads, or resources we toss them in. As a DM it’s especially handy

Carebears Anonymous, an update
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

Carebears Anonymous, an update

Hello, my name is Jerry and I’m a carebear Dungeonmaster. I’m here to inform you all briefly of an encounter I ran this weekend that actually managed to incap two of my players (nearly killing one). Some of you may have read my previous article about being a little too easygoing on my players, and what I should do to combat it. Well I designed a rough encounter and ran it this weekend and let me just tell you that the pit of my stomach fell a bit as I heard “wow I’m dying, my character is gonna die”. I knew I’d finally managed to make them sweat in an encounter to the point of incapacitation and possible death, but I felt horrible about it!

Now I must admit, for a party of 5 level 4 characters (and a level 3 NPC who’s an amateur at best) an XP budget of 1300 is kinda high, but hey that was the point

Fleshing out your campaign world
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

Fleshing out your campaign world

So over the years I’ve always arbitrarily planned out my campaigns, starting with a central idea/location and spiraling outward. The DM’s guides have always suggested to do so and it’s always been the easiest way to just (for lack of better words) pull stuff out of your ass to create a game world. I realize some of the best campaign worlds may have been taken from thin air with little to no planning, however I’ve always envied a fully realized idea. Having everything done from the get-go can really put your head in the game when it comes to planning motivations and dripping your storyline with vivid places and NPC’s. Looking at some of the maps of Faerûn can make your jaw drop, so in an attempts at fully realizing something I took my current campaign world and sat down and took some time to spiral it outward in leaps and bounds.

Digital Dungeonmaster: the lack of tactility.
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

Digital Dungeonmaster: the lack of tactility.

Recently I posted about going 3D with papercraft dungeons and dungeon tiles, another thing I’ve been playing around with lately is the idea of eliminating mini’s and maps and such and just trying to emulate my own Microsoft Surface setup without spending $15k. So last night I ran a session completely off of Masterplan, a very robust and feature filled app that you can grab for free. I hooked my 22″ widescreen up as a secondary display for the players, I know this is no “surface” like the fancy table, but I’ve yet to give this a whirl using a projector to put the images down onto a table (more on that next week).

I crafted a semi elaborate encounter prepared for them, complete with traps and multiple floors as well as dynamic line of sight as their markers moved around the ‘board’. The combat/initiative tracker is very very intuitive and makes short work of a lot of arduous DM record keeping. You can even display video-game style health bars under each PC and Monster that shows their hitpoints – transitioning from green to red as HP is lost. You can even ‘roll’ monsters saving throws for ongoing effects right there in the DM controls. I was prepared for the new apex of my tabletop experience, the holy grail of homebrew nerd-dom but I found myself feeling empty and superficial like I’d stolen the soul of  ‘friendly game at the kitchen table’ right outta’ D&D.