Short Notice

Its been almost a month since the last session with my brother's game, and many months since the last session of any other game. This is probably the longest I've gone without D&D since the start of college, four years ago.

And unfortunately, I'll be leaving town again in the next couple of days. Work calls, and I'll be filming a movie in Toronto, Ontario for five weeks. So now, the immediate goal is to get some kind of gaming in before I leave. Fortunately, my brothers are both in town with me right now, so I can hopefully squeeze in some kind of gaming with them. The three of us have been getting back into Magic Cards lately, and I just reviewed my collection.

Even if I cant play D&D (didnt bring any materials up here), I'll try to get in some short-notice magic card gaming.

First Time Back

Today will be the first gaming session in more than a month off. I was in Canada filming a movie, then graduating from college, and then flying out to NY to watch the screening of the film I shot last semester. All in all a very busy time indeed! It's always too bad when the real world gets in the way of important things like worrying about the AC of a gold dragon or the save DC for spells cast by a lich king.

My brother is coming over in a few hours, and for this session, I want to just enjoy myself. I wrote enough material before I went away to keep his campaign going in the direction I want it to be going in, so all I have to do now is sit back and relax - just letting him explore the world and see what happens. It'll be good old times D&D, without any bullshit.

It's times like this that remind me what D&D is to me. It's a game, but it's also a mentality - a way of life. It is a spiritual exercise. The question I ask myself is "How much can I free myself today? How can I let myself explore my own mind this session? How can I connect with my players in a new way?"

Of course there's also quite a bit to be said for just slamming a couple of trolls and trogs with huge hammers and flaming axes.

Short and Sweet

Had a great game session last night with my brother. We have an ongoing campaign that's been in progress now for nearly three years. It's a Forgotten Realms 3.5 game, and although he is the only player it ranks up there with the most fascinating and rewarding games I've ever DM'd.

He controls four characters (he started with two), and each of them has developed a very specific and defined personality - despite the fact that he is the only player.

Last night's game started at about midnight and ended at four AM (with brief breaks during which I had to feed and change the bedding for my convalescent squirrel, Shamrock... there's a story there). The game began with a terrific battle between the party and an Ogre Barbarian, who flew into a rage at having been awoken from his slumber.

In the first round of battle, the ogre dished out a collossal amount of damage with his greatclub; enough to have one-shot-KO'd the party's own barbarian if he hadnt been enraged. Shortly thereafter, the PCs changed up their tactics, and the sorcerer ended up suggesting that the ogre might find peace, tranquility, and the utmost happiness in a room with a massive iron door to which the party happened to have the key. Even with the +2 to will saves from his rage, the ogre considered this a good enough option and waltzed into the room, only to have the door slammed and locked behind him.

I loved that outcome. The PCs were getting hammered, and instead of standing around and just playing the who-can-dish-out-the-most game with the ogre, they came up with a better (and healthier) solution. This is exactly what cool spells like suggestion are for.

Even though the rest of the session was spent selling loot, it was still fun. A couple of characters presented themselves and were at least an entertaining way of dealing with an otherwise hopelessly boring aspect of the game.

Problems and Solutions

After a long stint of GM burnout, I'm finally feeling that familiar itch to get back into the game. I've decided that what the problem with the past few sessions is that the PCs dont have enough direction. Normally for me that isnt a problem. I'm sort of an advocate of the more "free-form" game and I like it when my PCs take matters into their own hands. However, this usually requires a relatively well-defined environment for them to play around in. At the moment, the campaign does NOT have that, and they can smell it.

I really havent had the time to develop the area the PCs are in right now, and it doesnt seem to be one that evolves well organically through play and on-the-fly DM decisions. Solution? Get them out!

The current state of affairs is that the PCs are in a wartorn city (Braetona) that stands on the border between two warring countries (Amonon = good guys; Vyvnas = bad guys). If the city falls, the rest of the country will soon follow. If the siege is broken, however, the Amonoreans will surely be able to press on into the Baronies of Vyvnas and strike a hearty blow, ending the war and ensuring peace for decades to come. Sounds exciting, but in reality it has been extremely difficult to manage. What I'd like to do is get the PCs on their way out of Braetona and north to the forbidden island of Ig'N'Gaatha - the ultimate destination of the campaign.

Here's my idea for a solution. Firstly, since I dont want the PCs to feel that all their time spent aiding the war effort has been in vain, I want to give them a once-and-for-all chance to swing the balance of battle towards one side. Ideally this will come in the form of a climactic showdown style battle between the general of the enemy forces with his retinue and the PCs. Once he is defeated (or not), the general of the good guys will inform the PCs pretty definitively that there is little more they can do here, and that their support has been the saving grace of the kingdom.

I've already done a lot of work on the island, so once I can get them there, I can give them free reign once again and sit back to relax a little.

Multikills

Finally game night was had on sunday, but thanks to a late start and classes early in the morning, we only had a short session. There was something a little off about the energy too. I'm having a bit of GM burnout with this campaign, and unfortunately we werent really able to get into our stride. With that said, however, I worked in an unusual new house rule: the Hero's Kill.

The PCs in the campaign I played on sunday night are about 12th level, and they are extremely powerful. Since there are only two PCs in the game, I allowed them very high stats and a strong build. At this point, they can dish out enough damage to handle pretty much anything CR 12 or lower without much difficulty - given adequate circumstances for the fight.

I recently listened to Homer's Iliad on my sweet librivox app for my iphone, and was inspired by the descriptions of the mighty heroes in battle. When Ajax, Achilles, Diomedes, Aeneas or Hector are faced with rank and file troops, none can stand before them. They stride through great swathes of men, laying waste with impunity - killing who they might. It is only when confronted with another mighty hero that these men are actually challenged.

With this in mind, I created my new ruling. The PCs are right now in the wartorn city of Braetona, and during the fighting, they are often faced with large numbers of the enemy army's rank and file soldiery. I decided that with a high enough attack roll (attack roll is vs. enemy soldier's AC + number of enemy HD in unit +5), the PC could kill the entire unit, effectively sharing the damage dealt amongst all soldiers present. This made for a kind of cool on-the-fly rule, resulting in some fun roleplaying as well. I asked the PC making the roll to describe the way in which he dealt with the many enemy soldiers who swarmed about him, trying in vain to bring down the mighty hero.

In this way, we had the paladin's hippogriff throwing broken bodies through windowpanes while the paladin shook a dead man's corpse off his lance. The rogue/barbarian laid about him with his axe with nonchalance while devoting most of his attention to the paladin's murderous work across the street.

The New Player Sandbox

I just recently got a new friend of mine into D&D, and naturally, after building a character and playing out a single encounter he's now hooked. Since I've already got several other campaigns in place that I'm DMing, I dont really have the time to set up a whole new one. At the same time, I dont really want to make this new player wait till one of the old campaigns has petered out, and I'm not ready to add him to one of them. So what do I do?

The answer is this: I've begun setting up a "sandbox" style world for him to play around in. The premise will be very simple: Go forth and adventure, my son!

I picked up an overland map from the WOTC map-a-week archives and started populating it with pre-existing adventures and encounters I've wanted to use but have never had the chance. Since there wont be any overarching campaign goal, I dont really have to worry so much about scaling encounters or killing his PC. I want it to be fun for him, but I also want him to get a feel for the danger of the game - which makes it more fun in the long run.

This idea of creating a sandbox world for him to play in is nothing new, but its something I havent done since I was really young and I'm looking forward to seeing how long he lasts. The other thing I dont plan to do is pull any punches on the dice rolls... we'll see how that turns out. I dont wanna scare him away from this hobby just yet. Looks like the NPCs he meets will probably be giving him a lot of advice...

Rule of Threes

My mom likes to work in the garden. When I was a kid and still living at home, I would often help her out. She'd have me do mostly fun stuff, like chopping things up with an axe or doing lots of digging (yeah, that was fun when I was young). Occasionally she'd let me tag along with her to the nursery, where she would always let me buy a plant of some kind to put in the garden. It was when we were planting whatever we'd bought at the nursery that day that I learned the Rule of Threes.

I cant remember her words, but the Rule of Threes basically states that things are aesthetically pleasing when they are set up in threes. A little cluster of three flowers is, for some unknown reason, more pleasing than a little cluster of four.

Now obviously this isnt true of all things, but I think its a pretty good rule of thumb for D&D design. If I'm going to give the PCs a crossroads, more often than not I will give them three choices. For example, yesterday I was coming up with a way to incorporate a new monster I'm designing (which I'll post when I finish the stats). I knew I wanted this monster to appear in a valley.

What I did eventually was make an area the PCs had to get through to reach a major objective. On either side of this area are huge impassable mountains. In between the mountains are two valleys, separated by a ridge that runs down the middle (these all run parallel to the impassable mountains). To get through this region, the PCs can choose to travel down either of the valleys, or traverse the mountainous ridge in the center.

Here's where things get interesting. The ridge in the center is infested with rocs and wyverns (this also helps me dictate just how much the paladin can fly around on his hippogriff, since the inhabitants of the ridge are pretty hungry). The eastern valley is full of the new monsters I created, called ulalumes. The western valley is full of these parasitic creatures called urges which attach themselves to your brain stem and make you want to do things like kill your friends.

Now I've given the PCs three different ways to get through the region, and something about it is just right. Not too many choices, and not too few. Juuust right. At the edges of the valleys, I've imagined huge stone monoliths stand, encrusted with jungle vines, which demarcate the beginnings of the dangerous valleys. As for the ridge, hopefully the PCs will notice the huge shapes flying about the craggy peaks before they decide its just an easy climb.

Preps and Props

A couple of days ago, I talked about running "The Last Breaths of Ashenport" in one of my current campaigns. The adventure, as written, is scaled for a party of 6th level PCs. Since my party consists of two 12th level PCs, I've had to do a few modifications.

First thing I did was scale up the fish-men of Dagon, who form the backbone of the PCs opposition. As written, they are CR 3 opponents. Since they've got AC 18 and 16 hp each, these poor bastards are gonna go down fast and hard unless I beef them up (the Paladin in my campaign often deals in excess of 70 damage when charging on his hippogriff... he lovingly calls this an Orbital Strike).

Using this awesome generator courtesy of Dingle's Games, I made the fish men 5th level fighters instead of 1st level rogues. Updated, they now stack in at 50hp a pop and AC 24. Hopefully they'll stick around a little longer when it comes to blows.

After scaling some other encounters, next up on the list was to come up with a couple of props. As stated in the Yax's illustrious campaign builder, props can really make a game feel special, and I try to use them as often as possible. Since everybody loves maps, that became my first order of business. I printscreened the map out of my Last Breaths of Ashenport pdf and opened it in Paint. It took me a little while, but I eventually got rid of all the tags. I printed it out and mounted it on the cardboard backing of an old yellow notepad. The result was a sturdy, simple map for the PCs to enjoy.

Since everyone is away for spring break, I'll have to wait a few days before we game next; but this should give me some time to do a little more prep.

The map of Ashenport above is, aside from my minor alterations, the work of cartographer Mike Schley.

Ebay (EL 25)

Yesterday I made the mistake of going on Ebay and typing in "d&d minis lot" into the search bar. Dont ever do this.

What happens is, ebay asks you to make a will save (DC 35). If you fail, you are under the effects of a suggestion that tells you to bid on everything under the sun. What you dont realize is that if you actually win all of the items you bid on, you'll be out six months rent. Unfortunately, after you've hit "commit"... well... let's just say its even worse than saying that to a girl you've been seeing.

Even worse is the fact that ebay is like Father Dagon in "Last Breaths of Ashenport": it just keeps calling you back.

Just... say... yes...

Sometimes its difficult to remember who the game is for. As the DM, I've poured countless hours of prep time into the campaign world, NPCs and monsters, political dynamics and every other aspect of the game. Needless to say, when the PCs get to my huge boss monster who has all these great abilities, its kind of a bummer when the paladin riding a hippogriff one-hit-KO's him with a lance charge.

As any DM knows, the PCs can throw a wrench into the best-laid schemes as easily as Shakespeare could pass Creative Writing 101. The most difficult thing for a DM to do is to sit back and let it happen. Lately, I've been thinking about the examples set by the best DM's I've seen. One salient feature of their work - the thing that above all makes their games so much fun and keeps players coming back for more - is that they never say no.

Chris Perkins, who ran the game for the Robot Chicken guys (and who, incidentally, happens to be the Wizards of the Coast D&D Design Manager) is one of the most renowned DMs out there. I've never been to a convention before, but every time I read about someone who's played in his games, they say he's one of the best there is. One of the things that has been noted about him is that he never says no to an idea a player has. If a player wants to do something, he wont tell them they cant - no matter how stupid the idea is. He might make the chance of success very small (its possible, if exceedingly improbably, that a half-orc barbarian in tattered rags could convince a great wyrm gold dragon that he is a master scholar of draconic poetry - especially since he cant even read) but he does not say flat out no.

As a DM, I have the most fun when the players have fun; and as a player, I have the most fun when the DM makes me feel like I have limitless options; like I could go anywhere or do anything I wanted, so long as I was willing to face the probably consequences.

With this in mind, I want to make it my own private house rule to never say no as the DM.

Player: "Can I lance-charge the king?"

Me: "...?!!? But he just gave you 5,000gp for saving his daughter... He has 30 guards in this chamber who exceed your character level."

Player: "Yeah but could I lance-charge him?"

Me: "....*with extreme effort*... Yes. Yes you can lance-charge him."

Ettin Mountain Cave

One of my favorite things about Weapons of Legacy (WOTC 2005) is the adventure seeds that they put in for every legacy item. I find myself skimming through the book every now and again and every time these give me great ideas. For example, just last night I was reading through trying to find the entry for Trimeg's Puzzle Room, since I'd downloaded the map from the WOTC website a while back and wanted to read the description.

While looking through, I stumbled upon this awesome adventure seed for a weapon called Fiendkiller's Flail (pg. 83 I think). The seed is that this Ettin has the flail in a cave waaaaayyyy up at the top of this mountain crag. What I really liked about it is the idea of the ascent to get to his cave. The mountain has different tiers of difficulty. The first 50ft are climb DC 5, followed by 150ft of climb DC 15, then 100ft of climb DC 10, and a last staggering 500ft of climb DC 20.

Now, an ascent like this could be pretty boring. Like traps, I find climbing is often not very interactive unless there's something to make it more interesting. What's more interesting about this climb is that at the top of the hill there's an ettin pitching boulders and javelins at you while you do it.

I dont use legacy items in my current campaigns, and since I'm already using the sanity rules variant, I'd rather not clutter the game with another subsystem. That being said, I'd love to introduce this little mini-adventure into one of my campaigns, even if just to see how the PCs decide to handle it.

Compound Traps

I was watching the writers of Robot Chicken play D&D on d20source.com, and I started thinking about traps. As others have pointed out before (I think it was one of the goals in 4th edition to eliminate this problem), traps in 3.x run the risk of being nothing more than random annoying resource drains. It does seem a little obnoxious that, no matter what description of the trap I give, it still takes the requisite search, followed by disable device checks to get past it. Scythe coming out of the wall? Search, Disable Device. Pass, you get by; fail, you get hit. Poison dart getting shot in your face? Search, Disable Device. Wash, rinse, repeat.

While I was watching the 15th episode, which includes a sarcophagus surrounded by a magic circle of runes, I started thinking about the idea of compound traps. A trap with a number of parts, each of which can be disabled with a certain type of skill or knowledge, is infinitely more interesting. It makes the players feel more involved.

For example, how about a trap similar to the one depicted in the footage:
A magical chest is locked shut on top of a tall statue in the center of the room.
It is surrounded by two concentric rings of runes.
The first ring contains a powerful summoning spell that cannot be disabled.
The second ring contains a powerful defensive spell (maybe a glyph of blasting or some such thing) that is triggered a number of rounds after the glyph is crossed. This second cannot be disabled, or maybe it can only be disabled from inside the summoning glyph.

Disabling the trap then becomes a full party maneuver. While the rogue dashes in and starts scrambling up the statue (climb checks), he knows he only has a few seconds before the inner rune-circle activates to unlock the treasure chest (open lock) or break it loose from its housing atop the statue (disable device, break). Meanwhile, the rest of the party is dealing with whatever nasty monsters have been summoned by the first rune-circle. Perhaps the wizard has been able to identify the effects of the rune-circles (arcana, history). Perhaps the cleric can identify some religious connotation to the whole shebang (religion). Maybe the warriors could bypass the whole thing by slamming into the statue hard enough to knock it over and send the treasure spewing all over the room like a busted pinata - although they still have to deal with the summoned creatures.

The Horror, the Horror...

Hello brave readers!

Lately I've been reading a lot of Edgar Allen Poe and listening to a lot of HP Lovecraft audiobooks (which are available at librivox.com for free), and they've inspired me to re-inject a little horror into my current campaign. The title of this campaign, which I began about a year and a half ago with two close friends, is "The Horror, The Horror... exterminate all the brutes" which of course is borrowed from Apocalypse Now.

My hope for the campaign, originally, was to experiment with a style of gaming I had never worked with before. That is, of course, the horror game. Last summer, I had spent countless hours at my office job desk reading through posts on how to run a horror game. The thing that jumped out at me the most was, of course, the creation of proper atmosphere. I have never been one to use music in my games, but I had had great success before using candles and low-lighting to help create the mood I wanted, so that's where I started.

We all got together at my friend's house for what was to be a "test" game, to decide how much the players liked it. I didnt want to put in dozens of hours of preparation work into a game that the players werent really all that into, so I utilized Yax's ingenious guides to help reduce prep time. The first game was a huge hit. Everything worked out exactly as I had hoped, and the players loved it. Even now, dozens of sessions and months in, they still talk about that first game. Candles, strange descriptions of strange places, and my own improvisation created an atmosphere I've since never been able to replicate.

As we've gone on, the campaign has undergone some major changes in tone. Of course, a year plus long campaign cannot solely revolve around horror - it just gets old. Instead, the players have had their fair share of epic travels (LOTR style), political intrigue, detective work and massive brawls. At the moment, they are having their day in the sun as soldiers in a battle for their kingdom.

Lately, however, I've been thinking wistfully about the first few sessions, when the players were afraid, confused and on the tips of their toes at all times. They had made the decision to stay in character during the game sessions, and I've seldom seen players so intent on figuring out what was going on around them. They were involved and excited, which, as any DM can tell you, is the most gratifying part of the experience. So now that my mind is full of the strange, bizarre and terrifying thoughts of Poe and Lovecraft, I'm ready to begin pouring that into their game once more.

Here are my goals for next session:
1 - I plan on directing the PCs into the small seaside town of Ashenport, where Ari Marmell has set the terrific Lovecraft inspired "Last Breaths of Ashenport"
2 - Hopefully, I can take away some of the PCs "safety" abilities - crutches that make them feel secure - while still letting them play with their hard-earned toys.
3 - I want to allow myself the freedom of improvisation. To prepare for this, I'll revisit Yax's notes.
4 - I will encourage the players to stay in character. When they do, we all seem to enjoy the games more.

Lastly, I want to give a shout-out to all the wonderful blogs that have inspired me to start this one.

Dungeon Mastering
D20 Source
The Keep On the Gaming Lands
Jeff Rients Blog
Chatty DM
Roleplaying Tips