Brent P. Newhall's Blog
Role-playing – Dec 2008

31 Dec 08 – The Advantage of Familiarity In Regards to Huge, Slavering Hell-Beasts

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I've noticed something. Of those wonderful people who think up horrifying monsters for players to encounter during a tabletop role-playing session, many of them struggle with originality.

They strive to create thoughtful histories and almost complete ecologies for their creatures, in the attempt to create a monster that's not just another vicious humanoid.

I'd like to take a moment to say: They don't need to.

If I'm questing through a dark, eldritch forest, and something leaps out at me, I want to know how to react. Do I swing my katar at it? Do I make threatening moves? Do I very much not make threatening moves? Do I close in or keep my distance?

If I'm fighting a completely original creature, I've no idea how to react to the thing. So I usually have to resort to careful investigation ("Does it seem particularly muscular?"), trial and error ("I poke it."), or having fun with it ("I rush in and stab it, screaming the whole time!").

How much fun is that? Not much (for me, anyway). And certainly not if the same scenario occurs for creature in an adventure. I need some facts I can grab on to.

If, on the other hand, I encounter a bear with lizard-like skin, I know roughly how to react. It may spring plenty of surprises on me, but at least I have a framework within which to act.

Which is fundamental to role-playing. One reason for D&D's popularity is its medieval universe, which is familiar to all of us from reading The Hobbit under the covers as children. We know how to react to most environments in the world, at least basically. The challenge lies in keeping our characters alive and achieving their goals, which usually have nothing to do with the originality of the random creature that drops on their heads as they creep through the Sapphire Caverns.

Now, I love a well-thought-out, unusual creature. I applaud it. But if creature #5 is basically a wolf, don't worry. It'll still be fun.

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16 Dec 08 – Practical Advice: Initiative Cards

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I believe that speed is essential to good role-playing. Think of a good action movie or an engrossing book; the story rockets from revelation to revelation, leaving you breathless. Not that a GM should rush from one plot point to the next, but there's no point in taking a plot slowly.

Unfortunately, many of the rules and resolution mechanisms in role-playing systems slow down the game as players roll dice and compare numbers. They're necessary, sure, but the time they consume needs to be minimized.

Enter initiative cards. This one of those little tricks that drastically speed up a game.

Imagine a 3x5" card that contains the following information:

Imagine writing up one of these for each character (player and non-player). When a battle begins, write down the initiative scores, and order the cards by that score.

Boom. You call out the name of the player on the first card. The player attacks an NPC. You pull out the NPC's card, note any damage, and slip it back in. You then flip to the next card and announce that player's turn.

And battle zips from one player to the next. No need to write down a temporary initiative list, and all vital stats are in one place.

Even better, on subsequent battles you just sort in the appropriate NPC cards. Takes about ten seconds to set up for a battle.

It's greatly sped up my games. I'd prefer to just do away with initiative altogether, but that's another blog post.

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10 Dec 08 – What I like about D&D

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All right, I admit it: I play Dungeons & Dragons. This may horrify some of my evangelical friends, but trust me: there's nothing wrong with it.

You may ask, why play D&D when it has so many negative connotations? Why not use one of the hundreds of other role-playing systems out there, like FUDGE or GURPS?

First, I'll use Saalon's metaphor: D&D is like Microsoft Windows. Everyone uses it and it works okay, though it's kinda bloated and sometimes confusing.

I contend that World of Darkness is like the Mac, and FUDGE/GURPS are like Linux, but those are different subjects.

So, I play D&D because it's a standard. It provides a common context for discussing role-playing with others, and if I'm playing with a bunch of folks I don't know, D&D's a convenient default.

But that shouldn't be the only reasons. I play D&D because it's fun. It's exciting and adventurous; it feels like a big, epic fantasy action/adventure movie.

Well, the current 4th edition feels that way. I also played 3.5 Edition, which felt more like an overly-long series of fantasy novels.

4th Edition D&D provides a huge world, brimming with possibility. There are dozens of fascinating races, all scrambling over an ever-evolving world of good, evil, conflict, and flashing steel. You can throw yourself into combat, or negotiate with merchants, or haggle with kings.

(Can you tell that I love setting?)

The system works quite well, too. It's a heavy system, compared to all the others out there, but it works. You choose values for six core attributes, such as Strength and Intelligence. Your race and class (profession, like cleric or warlord) may improve those numbers, and will give you access to a menu of powers. Some powers can be used as often as desired, others only once per battle, and others once per day. You then choose from a set of skills, which are all affected by your attributes (a high Strength score makes you better at Acrobatics).

I'm not as crazy about the two-step combat mechanic, where you roll a 20-sided die to see if you hit, then another die (number of sides depending on the weapon) to determine how much damage you do. Combat can grind to nearly a standstill as half a dozen players roll their dice in turn.

But even that has its charm, with players picking out a shiny d8 or d10 to roll their damage.

It works. D&D is fun. It's goofy, and overly complex at times, but it's a fine way to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, romping through a huge fantasy world and baring your teeth at dragons.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.

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4 Dec 08 – Standards For Published Adventures

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Before I published War in the Deep, I wanted to be sure I was publishing a good-looking, professional adventure. So I bought a few.

D&D adventures are of startlingly high quality, even those made by individuals. Of course, the official, published, $30 adventures look fantastic, though I knew I wouldn't achieve that level of quality on my first attempt.

I did have some minimum standards, though:

I satisfied all those criteria. The adventure is for characters from level 1 through 10 (the Heroic Tier), with maps created in Inkscape, and using Creative Commons-licensed Flickr photos of underwater scenes. Of course, I'd like to have done more with it, like use artwork instead of letters for items on the maps, and use the two-column layout that RPGers seem to love—but nothing's ever perfect. I'm satisfied, and I learned a lot for the next adventure.

What about you? What standard elements do you need in an adventure?

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2 Dec 08 – How I Introduce Myself To New RPG Players

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New players are a fact of life for GMs. They may have never played a tabletop RPG before, or only using vastly different systems. How do you introduce yourself? How do you lay the ground rules?

I'm still figuring it out, but I do have a few things I make sure to go through.

  1. I describe my policy on character death, that while I don't actively try to kill player-characters, neither will I re-arrange the laws of physics to prevent willful character death.
  2. I explain what I love about GMing. This lets players know what to expect from me. I explain that I love to create worlds, so my games tend to be expansive and original, but not heavily detailed.
  3. I describe what excites me in players. I figure, as a player, I'd want to know what sort of player the GM expects. Heavy role-playing? Intimate knowledge of the rules? Whatever. For me, I love players who really get into their characters, and who are ready when their turn comes up in combat.
  4. I describe what gets me angry. I think this is vitally important, yet I never see folks write about it. What are those hot-button issues? Let's get them out in the open, so they don't surprise anybody. Mine are dealing with too many questions at once, and stubborn insistence on looking up every rule even when it halts gameplay for 10 minutes. So I explain that I'll sometimes come up with a reasonable temporary ruling if a rule look-up takes too long.

I also talk about a few of our house rules and social policies, such as:

  1. Cell phones should be turned to vibrate or switched off.
  2. If anyone has to leave the table, they should announce where they're going. They can leave instructions on what to do with their character while they're gone. If they don't, and they're gone for a full round, we'll skip their turn for that round.
  3. The GM is happy to keep character sheets if players have trouble remembering to bring them.
  4. We use "luck tokens," which can be turned in to either immediately succeed on a die roll, or add one fact to the world. The only restrictions on the latter are that the new faact cannot change history, and that if a luck token is traded in to immediately resolve a fight or problem, the players get no experience points for it. Players start with one luck token per session, and win more for good role-playing.

Once I began explaining this to new players, everyone gets up to speed much more quickly, and we don't spend valuable playing time with unhappy players.

How do you tell new players about house rules and such? And what are your house rules?

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