Key Our Cars

After having DM’d a lot of encounters now in 4th edition and using roughly 90% custom monsters (10% customized) and 100% home brewed encounters I wanted to put my thoughts on the process to paper.  Figuratively speaking of course.

Unless you’re planning on a encounter string, i.e. at least 3 encounters back to back, plan on building your encounter at the far side of Medium or short side of Hard.  You have to adjust this of course for the abilities of both your players and your player’s characters.  So start with medium hards before you go into hards.  I can realistically and demonstrably give my group, warden, avenger, ranger, artificer, warlock(barbarian) level+3/4 encounters.  And yes they’re hard but they’re doable for the most part. I’ve only had one character death from tossing the party into this mix as their sole fight for a day.  And that was due to bad death save rolls as well as heal checks.

When you’re building your monsters, remember that they’re going to be alive for all of maybe 5-7 rounds for the most part.  In the interests of making them interesting give them all 2 or 3 encounter only powers and give them a little bit of synergy among them. 

Example: A standard skirmisher might have his basic +7, 1d10+5 Warclub attack, then encounters of Smashing Blow +7, 1d8+5 and target is knocked prone.  Head Blow: +7 2d6+8 and target is dazed.  Target must be Prone.  And finally Aim Low: +7 1d8+5 damage and target is Slowed.

Then drop them in pairs or trio’s.  One of them does a Smashing Blow on a PC and another one follows up with a Head Blow now that he’s down and the last one Aim’s Low and slows the PC.   So now you have a PC that’s dazed, slowed and bleeding on the ground.

Typically that means he’s going to be able to stand on his turn or attack from the ground.  If you have a trio of these guys then they can simply alternate their three encounter powers over three rounds and beat the heck out of the PC.

The point of this is not, well mostly not, to kill a PC but to force others to interfere on his behalf.  A defender marks the attackers, a warlord pushes one, two people bull rush two of them, a wizard thunderwaves, an artificer thundering armours, whatever it takes to get them off the PC they’ve singled out.  In all things you as the DM should be striving to make them work together as a team, watching out for each other, buffing each other, taking hits for each other.

4th Edition is a balanced edition, significantly more so than any previous edition (please keep the 4e hate spam down about that).  As long as you follow the general guidelines or the Adenture Tools (well worth a one month subscription to get it and the Character Builder) it’s hard to build an unfair monster with just a tiny bit of common sense.   Some combination can be wicked hard, a creature with a minor action to knock prone and a bonus to damage on prone targets is harsh (Needlefang Swarm).  Creatures with auras that stack can be really harsh (Chillborn Zombies) or creatures that have resistances to damage and reduce damage at the same time (Wraith).  These are all examples of monsters that are significantly tougher than their level or exp value warrants as a result (and just bad monster design IMO).

Also as a general rule I really think monsters that Stun should used VERY sparingly.  I don’t use it all, forcing a player to skip their turn “Is Not Fun”.   Dazed is as much of a screw over as I will ever give a player in terms of costing them their turn.

But over time this balance design can lead to encounters that feel the same.  So don’t be afraid to take those guidelines and manipulate them a bit.  With just two or three tiny changes you can drastically alter the feel of an encounter.

By changing the hit points or attack bonus in conjunction with the damage dealt with a power you can rachet up the tension of an encounter in many ways.

As an example, let’s say I build an encounter that’s designed to depict a bandit party that’s venturing into hobgoblin lands to negotiate a deal and the players have been chasing them.  I put in one elite, 5 standards, and 5 minions and generate roughly a level+2 encounter as the culmination of a 3 encounter string, the first two encounters level/level+1 encounters with hobgoblins.

I take the elite and drop his health by 20% but I boost his damage output accordingly.  So he goes from 200 hit points to 160 hit points.  His average damage per round per attack goes from 15 damage to 19 damage.  He’s got a shorter lifespan but hits for more damage so it should equal out assuming no major ’swinginess’ in the attack rolls.

Two of the standards are his body guards.  They’re not ‘elite’ but I want to show them as being highly trained.  I boost their attack chance by +4 (20% more likely to hit) and drop their damage output by 20% (15 damage becomes 11 damage).

3 of the standards I want to be really annoying as a whole but individually they’re not much.  As a group of highly trained archers who go for the sure shot rather than the damaging shot,  I up their attack by +6 and drop their damage from 15 down to about 8.   So they’re a steady unswerving health bleed on the party.

You could also model the boss of this encounter as a little more brutish but not a true brute, a giant of a human who’s armed with a big slow greatsword, easy to get out of the way of but don’t let it hit you whatever you do.  Let’s decrease his attack chances by -6 and boost his damage by 30% instead.   So he doesn’t hit often but when he does, a player REALLY feels it.

As a DM if you take this to an extreme in terms of damage per hit and 30%+ is bordering extreme then you HAVE to keep an eye on your dice and your players.  You’ve changed the encounter from a fairly steady progression of damage sinking on both sides to something that with a little good/bad luck can be very swingy and really hammer your players and you’re not there to do that.  Or if you are you probably won’t have players for long.

With these simple few tweaks though you can have players leaning forward when the boss rolls, wincing as you roll high and breathing a sigh of relief when you roll low.   And cursing out loud as ‘those %$(!*% archers are chewing my ass off.  Would someone kill those little @$@*(*!s?!”

In terms of encounter make up, make sure to mix things up.  Sure throw in the encounter that’s six giant slug like abominations and make it a straight forward bug hunt.  Easy, simple, not complicated, something every group needs from time to time.

But your encounters that are comprised of intelligent creatures are very likely to run something like boss, bodyguards, guards with optional groups of support and minions.   Or that’s how I see it.  The boss is going to want at least one or two people dedicated to his survival in my opinion.  Warriors or casters that stick with him, intercept attackers that kind of thing.  Then there are the general purpose guards, standards that keep the attackers occupied while the boss does his boss thing, they’re the defensive/offensive line of your encounter.

Then you have support groups that consist of artillery, control and/or healing. Typically these should be the smallest presence on the field as they’re the ones that usually sit in the back and go with range powers, they die easily but sometimes getting to them is just flat out hard.

Minions are just that.  Masses of incompetents who die in a loud messy fashion to the enjoyment of the players.   And once the group gets past level 4 or so, plan on your minions having little to no impact on the battle other than to waste a round or two as the party AOE’s them down.   Any more I don’t even count them against the XP budget of the encounter unless they’re artillery that is going to be widely spread out.  It’s realistically impossible to spread out melee attackers, they have to bunch up to get at the players who typically hang out fairly close together. They’re there to make the heroes cool as they kill six guys with one blast, that kind of thing.

I’d also advise you not to get too crazy on your encounter makeup complexity.  The more creatures with different powers you throw out there, especially if you take my advice and give them all some ‘fun’ powers for you to play with, the more likely you are to forget to use them.  I regularly forget to use Immediate powers that I give to my creatures for instance.

Trying to keep track of multiple powers on multiple types of creatures in one encounter servers not much more than to slow things down. Any more I strive for (but frequently fail to accomplish) no more than 3 types of creatures per encounter although with humanoids it’s hard to do.  My bandit, slavers and hobgoblin tribes just like to cover their bases, they want front line, back line, support, artillery, control, pure power and leadership in every fight.  And it’s hard to say no to them as they make sense when they send in their manpower requests. 

Also keep your players’ characters’ abilities in mind.  A group with a lot of radiant output is going to rip your undead encounters to shreds.   A group without any way to control creatures should run into encounters with fewer but tougher creatures.  A group with massive amounts of AOE’s shouldn’t get encounters comprised of mostly minions as a steady diet.  A group without a lot of ways to spend surges during an encounter needs smaller easier encounters but more of them during their ‘work day’ or few but tougher encounters per day.  Things like this keep in the back of your mind as you’re planning their almost but not quite demise.

And the flip side of that, keep your players abilities in mind as well.  A group who’s sole tactic is “I got this one, you go get that guy.” needs a lighter hand on the encounter difficulty than a group that knows exactly how their powers mesh with the powers of the rest of the team and acts accordingly.

So to wrap this up -

• give all your creatures some nifty encounter powers because that’s fun for you
• don’t be afraid to deviate from the monster building guidelines but do it in a balanced fashion because that’s fun for the players
• don’t make your encounters too simple or too complex, not fun for you
• keep the abilities of your players and their characters in mind, not fun for the players
• and most importantly make sure you and your players are having a good time or you’ll be putting your books away to gather dust and that’s a very un-fun thing to have to do…

I hope this is of some benefit to someone, putting it down at the very least helped solidify it for myself and that’s never a bad thing. Next week (or month or whenever) I’ll try and come up with some thoughts on how to actually run the encounter and give you some excuses for why the archers are all focus firing on the cleric for the 800th time.

Image Credits

Episode 6, part 4 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session. Our heroes arrive in Darkmith where they raid the temple of the artificers while the ruined city erupts around them in a fit of evil.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Episode 6, part 3 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session. Our heroes arrive in Darkmith where they raid the temple of the artificers while the ruined city erupts around them in a fit of evil.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Episode 6, part 2 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session. Our heroes arrive in Darkmith where they raid the temple of the artificers while the ruined city erupts around them in a fit of evil.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Episode 6, part 1 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session. Our heroes arrive in Darkmith where they raid the temple of the artificers while the ruined city erupts around them in a fit of evil.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Interlude – Elisssa

“You smell that?  What’s that remind you of?  Smells like… snake.” a harsh voice cut through the evening air.

“Hells no Marti, it’s something with scales alright but I’d say it’s more like dead rottin’ fish.” a sardonic voice replied loudly.

Elisssa shook her head slightly. On the whole living in Larkson was enjoyable but of late the Bain followers seemed to be getting more overt about their humanistic beliefs.

“Oh yeah Jakia, fish might be right. Something smells fishier than an unwashed doxie’s crotch.”

Elisssa snapped over her shoulder without slowing, “Don’t badmouth your birthplace, you’ll make your mom cry.”

There was a startled silence and then, “What the fuck?!  What did you say?”

Elisssa sighed, turning as she heard footsteps hurrying toward her.  Two humans were moving toward her from the mouth of an alley.  The one in front of medium build, hair tied back with dirty blue rag, the other one stockier with broad muscled shoulders.  Thugs the both of them was her first impression.

“Snake bitch you want to be repeating that?  I don’t think I heard you right.”

The stockier one spoke, “Marti, I done think she called your mom a whore.”

The other thug snapped his hand sideways and a iron club grew out of it, fashioned of linked steel piping. “Whore she may have been but she was human and no fuckin’ snake bad mouths a human.”

Jakia’s hands disappeared into his tunic coming back into sight with small metal cylinders that snapped open with a jerk of his hands into twin clubs. “Snake gotta know it’s place Marti and that’s down in the dirt on it’s belly.  You want to get yourself down and apologize now snake bitch and we might let you walk away in one piece.”

Elisssa heaved a deep sigh, sending a mental plea to her goddess, the mother of her race for the strength to not kill the fools in front her.  She eyed the approaching men, slowly counting to five to calm the heat that roiled just below her surface.  ”We can do this hard or easy.  Easy is we both go our separate ways now, no harm no foul.”

“Oh I think you like it hard there snake bitch.  How’s about we give you the hard way.” Jakai leered, holding one of the clubs suggestively at his crotch.  ”This ain’t nothing to what I got for you.”

Elisssa felt her thoughts bubble toward rage and opened her mouth, lightnings playing off her teeth as her inner energies began to race.  With a new found trick she snapped her own hand out and there was a sound of ripping leather ties as Rock Crusher leapt into her hand, the red runes on the flawless black iron maul’s head glowing with a dim light.

“You sure you want hard fuck face?” she snapped, lighting arcing from her teeth onto the maul.  ”You really really don’t want to fucking push me….”

The two thugs faces tightened and they started to spread apart in the street when a voice, tone casual, almost bored spoke, “Hey girl, who are your friends?”

All three of them glanced sideways to see another human coming out of a doorway, dressed in the red trimmed chain and leather of the city watch, the hilts of two swords rising up behind his shoulders and a long bladed knife on each hip.  He leaned against the door frame, cold green eyes boring into those of the two men. His arms were scarred with the reminders of over thirty fights in the pits and a jagged slash rand down his face.  The savage scarring detracting little from his otherwise good looks.

“Hey Torn, I see that the watch took you in.” Elisssa said, after the first glance she’d returned her gaze back to the men.

“Yeah, wasn’t hard, Hells if you defeat all their trainers in one go, they even make you a officer and put you in charge of shit.”

“You sidin’ with the snake?” Marti spat out.

Torn stepped forward, with a blurred motion and rasp of metal on metal he held a short sword in each hand.  The one in the right of arctic blued steel, the razor-ed edge crackling with lightnings identical to those dancing over the great maul in Elisssa’s hands.

“No, I’m siding with my friend.  Now get the hells out here before I have to call a corpse cart.  I hate the paperwork and reports I have to give when I have to do that. Just the thought of it really pisses me off.”

The two men glanced at each other then glared at the dragonborn and the veteran pitfighter. “We’re going. The stink here is about to make me vomit anyway.” Marti growled out.  He jabbed a club at Elisssa, “Just a little advice snake, mind your manners next time a human talks to you. There’s bad things other than snakes sometimes in the dark, you might just run into them.”

The two men turned and stalked away, Elisssa and Torn watching them go.

“What was that about?” Torn asked, sheathing his swords in a smooth crisscrossing of his arms.

Elisssa shrugged, “Bain followers I think.”

“Bain?”

“Pissy little god that thinks humans should rule the world and everyone else should be dead, pets or unpaid help.”

“And here I thought you had such a nice little town.”

Elisssa snorted, the remnants of lightning flaring out to light the minuscule blue tinted scales of her face, “They’re nothing, just some lowlives that need someone to blame for their shit.”

“Seemed rather more than nothing.”

“Nothing to worry about, all talk, they’d of threatened, I’d of warned them off and life would have gone on.  How’s Soozin?”

“Don’t think I don’t know you’re changing the subject El.  She’s fine, I got her a little room over on the east side of town, as a watch leader I get a house allowance and the gold that Torel loaned me she’s not going to need to work for awhile and I’ll start getting a pay sack in a week or two.”

“And how are the two of you doing?”  Elisssa chuckled as a rose of color bloomed on the fighter’s cheeks.

“Wha…what do you mean?”

She reached out and clasped his shoulder, “I may have scales and breath lightning balls dear friend but once you get past that I’m still a woman.  I see the way she looks at you and you her.”

Torn grinned, “I guess we’re going okay.  I was going to wait till you guys get back from that job you’re doing for the Council but I might as well tell you now . We’re going to have a binding ceremony next month after I get a little more gold saved up and I want you all to stand Witness for us.”

“I’d be honored Torn.” she replied leaning forward to brush his cheek with a kiss and give him a hug. “And the others will too or they’ll answer to me.”

“Such a fierce one you are Elisssa!”

Elisssa’s belling peel of laughter rang out through the darkening street, “Come and we’ll tell them now, we’re meeting now at our inn to discuss our trip.”

“I cannot,duty calls El. But look me up when you get back and we’ll make arrangements.”

“The gods themselves couldn’t stop me.  I’ll see you in a few days friend.  Take care of the little one.”

“With my life, El, with my life and more.”

With a final clasp of forearms they split up, the dragonborn warden heading north to meet with her companions…

Image Credits

It’s been brought home to me recently again just how much better your custom content can be if you spend just a little time each day between sessions thinking about what you have going on in the world, past, present and future.
I can’t stress enough really that if you’re going to be creating your own content you really don’t ignore it until game day.

As much as everyone gives lip service to a ’sandbox’ world, “OMG you’re railroading them!”, etc. as a DM you, IMO, HAVE to railroad to some extent in order to give them the best possible gaming experience you can.  Mature, complex, interesting campaigns have a hard time finding fertile ground in a sandbox.  Sand just isn’t conducive to growth.

A sandbox is “Hey peasant, where’s the nearest dungeon?  No we already cleared that one, where’s the next one.” typically.  Or out of character, “Okay guys I have three modules for your level, which one do you want to do?”.  These can certainly be entertaining at the player level, social dynamics, the mechanics of the fights etc. But they’re hard to engage the characters.

I can improv aka play in a sandbox as good as many, better than most I think but I can certainly tell a difference in the quality of experience I can give the players by just spending a few minutes each day thinking on how things are going in the world.

By devoting a few minutes going over current events (assuming you’re doing more than dungeon crawling, a fine past time in and of itself) and putting yourself in the shoes of your NPC’s and their interactions with the PC’s you can come up with some pretty cool stuff I believe.   As an example, Biminey has transcribed details of their trip through Darkmith and sold it to the Temple of Eris (god of knowledge). As I was documenting his payment (125gold for the curious) on the campaign sheet for Biminey’s character I thought about one of the high priests reading these descriptions and realized from my one line personality note I’d scribbled out on him weeks ago that this could have a profound effect on the man.   And that effect is now going to flavor and color multiple interactions  that deal with the PC’s in specific and the NPC’s in general that might be affected.  And flavor and color add a LOT to a session.  No one likes bland white toast all the time.

Your own content also really really has to be flexible. Case in point the group in our last session derailed my story arc by getting captured. [Through all fault of their own. ]

Luckily this happened at the end of our session or it might have either resulted in less interesting events than I think it will now or I’d of had two options. Either called a time out while I rapidly regrouped or improv out the remainder of the session, the first has the advantage of better results, the later of keeping the flow of the game going.

Drastic events like the party getting captured by the bad guys when you’re not expecting it can certainly throw a kink in things. Or perhaps you have one key character in the group that your story arc is founded upon and that character dies. Do you have a backup plan to keep the story on track? Or do you toss out what you have and work out another arc? Do you sink to the level of “A wandering healer comes across the scene and agrees to resurrect the poor man if only you’ll go fetch him 10 belts from the orc tribes in the next canyon.”?

You have to consider these things when you’re working on your storylines. And you cannot possibly consider everything that a group of players might do or things they might simply not figure out, or figure out wrong and be unable to see other clues as result of their wrong conclusion.  But by taking the time to build up this gestalt image of your world between sessions you have a much better stronger tapestry that you can reweave around snags in the thread that might occur.

That’s not to say though that as a DM you don’t have to be prepared to lose work, some things you’ve worked so hard for just can’t be salvaged after the party goes off on a tangent. And that’s okay. There’ll be other times, other places, other campaigns if needed for those events to happen.

Look at every side trek, every derail not as an issue, but as  an opportunity to weave a stronger storyline that integrates the characters’ actions into your world. And integration is something that will involve your players.  This issue with the players being captured in my personal campaign is going to I think really expand some NPC’s in an interesting way, create at least a couple of memorable encounters and has sparked an idea that will have a domino effect that might see wrack and ruin in the region from yet another possible source than those already planned and that might actually cause a redirection of a regional force into a force of while not good, at least not evil.

All this because the players split up like so many chickens with a weasel dropped in their midst during a fight and got taken out by a group they should have been able to beat.  Players definitely get a ‘we always win’ complex and as a result not really take tactics or even thought into consideration.  It’s nice to throw them a curve like this and drive home the fact that they’re not always going to win and there are going to be consequences to losing even if it was unintentional.   In this case they’ve lost 1000’s of golds worth of magical gear, not to mention their basic gear that will have to be replaced from very limited funds.

Improving though with 4th edition can be hard, especially if you lack experience with the system in specific or gamemastering in general. With older editions it was pretty easy to ‘fake it’ with monsters you had to add at a certain point. You just needed a to hit number, a defense and some damage. Monsters were boring, the vast majority of them simply swung, bit or clawed at the players for ex damage in a Flinstones Boxing methodology (aka stand there taking turns swinging till someone died) And those were very easily faked, especially if you had any experience with older editions as faking things is mandatory for a DM as the math was so broken overall.

But 4th edition improv is harder. Sure you can come up with a basic creature fairly easily, just use the basic monster value formulas and you’ll have balanced monsters quickly. They’ll just be a bit boring until you have enough experience under your belt to knock them out.  And remember battles that contain a single creature type can also contribute to boring battles so you have to knock out, print out, look up several creatures per battle.

As a result of the more interesting monsters in 4th, it helps if you have some basic creatures printed out of an appropriate level range for you group, pick a couple of of each type, then just ‘reskin’ them as needed. A level 3 orc can just as easily be a level 3 guard, a war dog, an undead abomination, whatever. Just print out a few in preparation just in case.

So to wrap this up, remember, think about your campaign when you’re not playing it, just a few minutes a day can work wonders.  Think about your NPC’s and what they might want and their reactions to the actions of the PC’s.  And be flexible, be prepared for the party to jump the tracks by having a good idea of the world in general and being prepared with materials as filler/stop gap to give you time to work the derailment into your campaign and make it stronger as a result.

A derailment doesn’t always have to mean a train wreck….

Image Credits

[DM's Note: Overall this was a really good session, lots of character involvement, dialogue, sleuthing and clues and all that. We learn a little about the character's past lives, they learn about their city, there's intrigue and mystery, all that kind of thing.  You know, the stuff that 4th Edition makes impossible according to some people because it's just warcraft on paper.  This is one episode of the podcast that I'd recommend you download when it's available if you like that kind of thing.]

We open our movie with our vaunted cast, Torel, Dra’kin, Elissa, Stak, Biminey continuing their journey homeward.  Biminey glad to be alive on this fine day, feeling like he might have almost been dead just moments earlier.

The terrain grew rougher as they continued moving north toward home.  Small rolling hills turning into craggy ravines and cliffs.

It is one such ravine, almost a canyon that they run into their first major issue. A band of goblins trying to be sneaky and the group spot each other at the same time about 100′ between them.  The goblins scream and shout and attack.  Moments later a giant rounds the bend in the canyon, all 11′ of him and the 8′ tree trunk he’s using as a club.  A club that hurts a lot for those that try to stop it with their chests.

Boulders fly, clubs swing in might arcs and goblins die in rapid succession. Deep rough breathing from a nearby cave is heard as Stak passes near and when Dra’kin is knocked flying by a blow from the club landing in the mouth of the crack in the cave wall.

The hill giant retreats from battle leaning on his club, using the language of the goblins he asks if the group wants to join him, “Yu tough’ens, me yu jone up, we split 50/50.”  Torel and Biminey are the only ones that can understand the large creature and Biminey translates the conversation to the others.

But dragonborn fury is not to be denied apparently and Elisssa cuts the discourse short and attacks the giant who roars out in fury and slams Torel back in righteous anger.  The avenger goes flying through the air landing heavily on his ass.  Regardless of their own inclinations the rest of the group backs the dragonborn’s play the giant soon lies dead at their feet.

A giant wineskin filled with the finest dwarven ale is recovered from the giant, a wineskin that they discover much to their delight refills every day with ale.  In addition a magical belt is removed from the hill giants, a belt that Biminey re-sizes to fit Torel.

They continue their climb up through the mountains, avoiding or appearing too tough to take on and the rest of their journey, although tense and eventful yields no further obstacles and within days they arrive at the gates of their home town.

They’re welcomed as semi-heroes for having escaped the slavers and bought drinks and food and lodgings provided without cost to them.

The town Council summons them and there they meet Garon, Lerik and Teagon, the councilmen.  Also, and un-coincidentally, they’re also the three richest men in the city.  Lerik owns merchants and shops, Garon owns the majority of the fishing fleets, and Teagon runs the shipping, primarily by boat to the cities further inland but with some wagon trains.

During their interview it becomes obvious quickly that Lerik, a middle aged human male, doesn’t appear to like non-humans and in fact later on they discover that Lerik is a follower of Bain, a human-centric god who’s teachings propose that humans should be in charge of anything important.

Garon, another older human male, is intensely interested about the group, his daughter and son having also been stolen during the slaver raid during the Spring festival. Unfortunately the group does not recall his children, both in their early 20’s as having been part of their group although it’s possible they were among those first lost in the sealie attacks.   Those first couple of days after waking on board the ship were hectic and many people died, unknown and buried at sea.

Teagon, an eladrin also male, age unknown but mature seems indifferent to the group.

The group told their story, changing details and saying they sailed the slaver ship they’d woken on to the coast, landing it in Darkmith and then glossing over the details of their journey.  Specifically keeping all details of the elemental ship out of their story.

Part of an old argument among the council comes out during their interview, Garon wants to hire mercenaries from the the mostly dwarvish settlement inland.  He doesn’t want anyone else lost or to lose someone to slavers ever again, Lerik believes it would be a waste of money, the slavers have already hit the city and undoubtedly will have moved on.  Teagon seems to be worried only about the cost, how can they afford it now. Perhaps after the fishing fleet’s harvest starts up in earnest.

Garon gives each of them 100 gold of his own money, assuming they have no money of their own after their harrowing escape to purchase necessities.

Torn steps forth and tells the group he’ll take charge of Soozin’s protection, as it turns out she’s an orphan now, her father was one of the one’s taken by the slavers and her mother died in childbirth.  He intends to join the guards, his skills with a blade should be of use to them.  Torel steps up and gives him 50 gold to provide for the two of them while the group figures out it’s next moves.

They decide to stay together, their thoughts on that elemental ship they left back in Darkmith.  They spend a few days in town, getting reacquainted with old friends and lovers, Dra’kin renewing his relationship with Shük, a half-orc girl that favors her human side, while Biminey visits Sushanna, an acolyte of the Temple of Eris that he’s friendly with from his visits there going through the god of knowledge’s vast collections of scrolls and manuscripts.

Stak and Torel, both mostly alone in the city venture out together several times, gathering news of current events while Elisssa visits her clan, enjoying several celebrations of her safe return.

Stak and Torel among other things learns of a trader ship in the harbor which is rare in these times of unsafe travel, a typical year might see 4 or 5 trading ships from up or down the coast.

Dra’kin asks his sometimes girlfriend to look into Lerik, the man’s non-human bigotry bothers him, while Biminey uncovers in his trip to the Temple of Eris that all information on Darkmith is in the forbidden archives, Merkin, high priest of the temple blatantly refuses him access to those scrolls saying some knowledge should not be known.

A few days after their arrival they’re summoned before the council again, the council is obviously in disagreement but Garon informs the group of the losses they’ve taken on their trade ships returning from inland being taken by bandits and the gold taken.   He proposes that the group recover the gold if they can and he will keep 10%.  Larceny is in their hearts as they ponder this, “Who’s to say how much we recover exactly?”.  Lerik, the bigot, seems in favor of the idea only after his associate, a slightly oily human by the name of Tanner whispers to him about how “wouldn’t Bain approve if these beasts and snakes were killed trying to recover it? ” referring to Stak and Torel, both shifter born and Elisssa obviously.  A whisper overheard by a couple of the sharper eared members of the group.

Teagon seems almost against the idea, saying it’s a waste of time, and they’d be throwing the groups lives away in vain.

The group tells the council they’ll consider the idea and give them an answer in a couple of days.

The ship in the harbor is visited, found to be carrying a high number of skilled fighters, perhaps uncommon or perhaps necessary for any ship to be able to sail the seas and make it safely from port to port.  None of the group who see the ship can say for sure if it’s a slaver ship, a suspicion born of paranoia perhaps as Garon tells Dra’kin when the warlock visits him, pressing for Garon to get on board and search the ship.  Garon agrees to consider the information and says he’ll try and arrange for a visit.

While discussing his inability to get into the archives he needs to get information on Darkmith and the elemental ships, Shük shrugs, “is that all?” and has one of her twin halfing lieutenants show up.  Meri nods, “I can recover items from there for you, it’s a bit of a hassle, hard to get to even for me and I can’t remove much without it being noticed.”

They arrange for her to remove one scroll from several shelves a night and in that way they can zero in on the area that they need.

Torel and Stak interview known survivors of the bandit raids on the ships, finding out that no one before seems to have done much in the way of information gathering and by getting maps they’re able to narrow down the area where the ships are taken by quite a lot.  They also find out that the ships that are taken are always ones in the top percentile of gold coins carried.

This arouse a lot of discussion and suspicion on who might be slipping information, or be behind the stolen gold shipments being stolen.

The group decides to go after the gold thieves, arranging for Meri to continue bringing out scrolls and a forger of Shük’s acquaintance to copy them for Biminey’s return.

After some discussion the group heads upstream to the area where the ships are taken and there Stak finds a trail that leads them to a hidden camp.   He sneaks close but not quite close enough to overhear an interesting conversation that occurs between a man dressed in city clothing who enters camp and appears to be warning the bandits that there is someone after them.  The leader of the group turns and starts barking orders for the bandits to break camp.

Stak sneaks out to tell the group, noticing in passing a hidden archer he missed on the way in.

The group tries to stealth up to the clearing but are hopelessly incompetant and find the camp deserted although the bandits gear is still around.  They circle the camp, spotting a couple of archers moving around as they do.  Stak cuts through the camp and the trap is sprung.  Bandits rise up out of shallow pits covered by bedrolls.

The group is dispersed in all directions while the bandits tend to focus their attacks better and although the bandits take their losses in the end Elissa is down, a glaive at her throat while another rests over her heart and a razor tipped arrow is pointed at her left eye.

The eladrin, seemingly bored, speaks loudly enough to be heard across the clearing, “Surrender now or the dragonborn dies.”

With Elissa down and certain to die, Biminey down, bleeding from multiple wounds, Stak with a growing puddle of blood growing under his feet and Torel facing two more archers solo and bloodied, the group drops their weapons and is captured.

They’re expertly tied up, all their gear except clothing removed and bags put over their heads and that’s where we leave our party to await their fate at the hands of their captors.

[DM's Afterword: This outcome was unexpected although at one time I did have some thoughts on increasing the size of the force to make capture a higher percentage chance that I was thinking it would be.  As a result I can work with this outcome, just didn't expect it to happen.  It does show the necessity of focused play in 4th edition.  ALL of the bandits were hurt, most approaching bloodied status but the damage was simply too spread out.  Since even someone down to 1 hp still deals full damage, hurting them doesn't do much, removing someone from the battle is what makes a difference.

The aftermath of this is that, obviously, the group is going to lose their gear.  I'm so NOT a believer in captors conveniently storing all the capturee's gear in an unlocked chest in the next room and leaving a key hanging just out of but not quite reach to the cell door.  I think that's lame.  But because I'm granting bonuses to the characters inherently as a function of being heroes, it doesn't matter.  Gear only gives them gimmicks the way I do it, it doesn't impact their base attacks and defenses etc.  Sometimes gimmicks are useful but this way they're not necessary.

Because of the holidays the next session will likely be on January 2nd.  Stay tuned to see how our plucky but disorganized heroes get out of this mess. ]

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I’m not saying this might show up sometime in case anyone is reading this that it might matter to, I’m just saying that hobgoblins might have a troop like that takes care of their sneakier things.

And I’m not saying that if you did run into one of these you wouldn’t find them in pairs or even trios…

Or for the worst offenders, say perhaps a group that killed a high ranking hobgoblin officer that was out gathering toys for the grand hobgoblin marshall’s birthday present, you might run into a whole herd of the things.

You can get a PDF and the monster builder filer here [Download not found]

[Warning this is a rambling post that doesn't stay on topic very well or at all really...]

I was explaining my style of DM’ing to someone and thought it might be something that someone else might get some usage out of.  Or might just rile them up if they think differently but I’ve been riled up by the ‘wrong’ way that other people play only to eventually make a change in the way I play. [Ramble Alert!] As a prime example, I had a long discourse with someone about when to grant experience in Neverwinter Nights modules.  I was still very much in the ‘per monster killed’ mindset.  You kill a monster, you get experience.  His was you awarded experience when the players reached a certain point in the game.  Eventually, not then because he was being an ass about it but eventually, I decided that made a lot more sense to me as a DM.  It takes away the [True Story Alert] meta-gaming aspect of XP “I only need 10 exp to level?  I lean out the window and throw a dagger at someone on the street.” and makes it easier to balance things out if you have any kind of branching encounters planned.  If there’s no way the players are going to be anything but 5th level by the time they make it to the Sacred Tombs you can build the Sacred Tombs way in advance and not risk them being 3rd level or 7th level.

I really don’t do trivial encounters; even back under older editions I stopped pretty early.  I lean heavily toward combats that mean someone might get really hurt. (And yet I’ve killed fewer characters in 3 decades of GM’ing than I have fingers).  My harshness is I make the players work for their victories and I enjoy the reputation I have as being harsh and deadly in spite of the fact that in reality I rarely kill anyone.  I just make them know they were in a fight.  You do have to kill someone every now and then though just to show them that they’re not immortal…

4th Edition really lets me go to town in this regard.  Since the players are back to full after each fight and with limited options for them to spend their ‘working resources’ aka Healing Surges this means a) their work day is long enough that sleeping periods fall naturally rather than being forced by lack of resources and b) they can keep going typically for a few encounters even at the level+3, 4, 5’s that I toss at them.

Granted I haven’t really used a ‘dungeon crawl’ yet with 4th edition.  Where there are encounter after encounter after encounter.  But I have problems with those anyway.  I’m as guilty as the next person early on in my career of having a series of rooms connected by passageways with essentially random monsters tossed into each one.  Each battle very sandboxed, you fought these creatures and the ones just down the hall ignored the fight and patiently waited their turn to be slaughtered.  Part of that was definitely a bit of “Oooh the party hasn’t fought one of these before, or this, or this, or this.” and I’d munge them all together.

Then I started doing themed dungeons, waaaaay back in the day when even the commercial modules were still very much a list of encounters built by rolling percentiles.  The Swamps of [Clare] Grogan (Scottish actress that I thought was hot and I thought the name was very dungeony) which was a swamp themed dungeon, lizardmen (and women), giant snakes, crocodiles that went down for like 5 levels.  The Lair of the Eternal Trickster, a dungeon comprised of probably 50% traps combined with creatures.  Party would find or trigger a trap that alerted mechanical guardians or undead, creatures that could be ‘realistically’ parked in an alcove to wait for their queue and didn’t have any intelligence or programming that would allow them to respond to anything other than their set queues.

It was about this time that I started making dungeons smaller in terms of overall population and larger in terms of encounter population.   Or I’d do the ‘obvious’ and stream the bad guys in as a seemingly never ending fight.  Attack the guards in the front room and the guards down the hall would take a round or two to wake up, grab their gear and charge up, yelling for help which would get the guys in the next room up etc and so on.

I find myself now with fourth edition expanding further on this.  Fewer encounters but more meaningful encounters.  Perhaps I’m merely playing to my thoughts or the inclinations of my group but a series of trivial, everyone is down a surge or the cleric used up a couple of CLW’s fights bore me and I presume/assume they bore the players if there’s no story arc reason for the fight.

With 4th Edition I can fairly safely assume that the party will have a full set of hit points after each fight, when they reach the point they don’t then they’ll rest and recover them.  Sure they might be down a Daily power or out of their Action Points but numerically Dailies just aren’t that big a deal, sure they can cut a round or two out of a fight or if everyone burns them on one boss cut that fight out of the day in short order.  But they’re not a valid excuse to have a 5 minute work day.  The only real valid reason to extended rest IMO is when you’re out of surges, not because everyone’s burned their daily powers.

But I digress. [Hence the disclaimer at the top of the article now]

To get back on point, I don’t personally see a need for trivial encounters.  They spend valuable limited game time on something that is a foregone conclusion that the players will win and win without threat.   The only time I plan on using trivial encounters, trivial meaning anything that’s not on the Moderate difficulty scale at least, is when they’re strung together as a series of encounters without a break or when they forward the storyline or add another element to the story.

Case in point, the [I've Got Crabs] encounter in session 2 of this encounter (yes I give my encounters goofy names in my notes), it was a fairly trivial encounter, the party was never in any real danger.  But their focus on dealing with the crabs charging them rather than the crabs menacing the other huddled survivors of the slave ship on the beach cost one of those NPC’s their life.  Perhaps a point lost on the group but still a point that I wanted to make an effort put out there and try to broaden their scope and awareness.  Did it work?  Doubtful.  But I feel better for making the effort.

In my upcoming session I’ve got a skill challenge among others where the characters will try to escape the city.  If they fail on any of the three rounds (I use my own skill challenge design) then it triggers an encounter or two with the ferals of the city.  But these will be narrated out and the party will simply start the next round of the challenge a couple of surges lower.  This will continue throughout the skill challenge.   The only times I have planned to break out the miniatures is when it’s a fight worth playing through tactically.   There will be days in their overland trek that will have them facing encounters but these are again just narrated out, “Over the last three days the lands have changed from tundra to low hills as you continue your homeward bound journey.  Through the use of your skills you’ve managed to avoid most of the dangers of the lands although dusk of one night found you battling for you lives against a wolf pack lead by a strange black eyed wolf with boney spikes protruding from its joints.  They were fought off through the use of your talents and the black wolf seemed to really fear the Torel’s abilities that were infused by the power of his god.” [Just made that part up but now I'll use it Saturday.]

In this particular instance the success or failure of the challenge will cost them surges that they won’t have for the next round.  And of course, obviously?, there will be a tactical encounter at the end of the skill challenge and their success or failure at the challenge will have a direct impact on that encounter.  (in more ways than one but I won’t spoil that right now in case they read this before Saturday).

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In the last 7 days I’ve had 19 visitors using Windows 95 and 9 visitors using Windows NT 4.  How… odd.  For the love of all that’s technical, UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEMS PEOPLE!!!

I’m glad there weren’t any Windows ME visitors or I’d have to really question whether hell actually did freeze over.

Came up with this as a possible encounter for a group of level 4-5 level 3 characters.  [Disclaimer with the house rules I use this is an actually viable encounter creature even though it's 7 levels higher than the group, your mileage may vary.]

This is just an example of tweaking an existing creature.  I took the Hill Giant which is a level 12 brute, dropped his level in the character builder, reset the damages a bit to nudge him closer to a soldier while keeping the defenses and hit points etc of the brute, and added in a couple of powers as the default Hill Giant would be boring as a boss encounter.  With the other things I’ve got planned for this encounter I think it’ll be a good BBEG level encounter for the group.

You can grab the monster builder file here [Download not found] and an image of the creature below you could print out.

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Acquired the following

Thorns x 4
Dark moon monk
Larege water elemental
Human bandit x 8
Quickling runner x5
Medium air elemental
Human rabble x3
Halfling tombseeker
Grimlock barbarian x 2
Grimlock minion x3
Orc wizard x2.

After 30 a lot years of this whole roleplaying thing.  Every time I type that I have images of french maid outfits.  Anyway I was thinking of the ways I’ve started new campaigns over the years which lead me to the whole, how would I do it now question.

I’ve literally done the a wizard has called you to the tavern to discuss a proposition with you approach but that was decades ago before it became a trope and number 1 on the “Ways you should never start a campaign.”

Another time I had the players start a campaign dead.  That was fun writing their charater background stories.  I can be vicious when I need to be.  Actually I should post those campaign background stories here.  It might be interesting to someone.

Let’s see, I’ve had the town attacked by some kind of attacking attacker and the members of the party were the best of what’s left to go rescue the captives.

They’re all strangers to each other in a caravan heading to somewhere and it’s attacked and they’re the only survivors and band together for strength in numbers.

They’re strangers or acquantances that are pastsies for a regicide and are forced to band together to clear their name.  Oh and escape very painful deaths at the hands of prince’s torturers.

They already are a adventuring band although that obviously takes pretty much no thought or planning.  “Okay you’ve all been adventuring for awhile now.”

Hmmm in all these years I guess I haven’t really started too many campaigns.  But then it wasn’t unknown for my campaigns to last 18 months of 4-6 sessions a month.   Long sessions, like 12-16 hours.  Long gone are those days though.  That kind of thing is for the younger ones without lives filled with outside demands.  Sometimes I miss those days.

I believe a campaing should have a good start, something unique, tailored to the characters and the players, a strong middle point that perks up the players after they’re starting to get blase about things and a very memorable ending that the players will be talking about 2o years later.

As a DM / GM that’s your job really.  To provide the framework that the players build on.  And a shoddy foundation is no way to build anything although with enough mortar and duct tape you can certainly add support to a shaky start.

If and that’s a damn big IF, if you can get it from your players, try to get them give you some idea of what they think their characters are like prior to starting on the heroic path.  Some event that occured during their characters life that is a high or low point.  Honestly it takes just a few minutes for a player that’s truly interested in their character to come up with this kind of thing.  And your campaign should be the better for it.

Have an idea where you’re campaign is going.  I know players tend to ‘miss the island’ and a campaign can definitely derail into another direction you didn’t expect at all but if you start with an idea where the players are going to be about midway through the campaign you’ll end up with a better one.  If you’re good at improv you can improv the whole thing but having the luxury of time to work on the midgame gives you a better campaign.

And definitely have an ending to it.  Whether they get their own castle, save the world, recover Vecna’s left testicle, whatever, have an ending to the campaign.  Don’t drag it out past your’s and the players’ enthusiasm.  Things need to have an ending or all the struggles along the way are pointless except for the purposes of survival.  And just surviving isn’t really all that interesting on a global scale.

Anyway, lacking anything better to post about, I thought I’d share this. As always it’s personal opinion and your opinion could and probably will and honestly should vary to some extent.  Don’t be a sheep after all.  If they spark an idea for you awesome.  If it wasted your time reading it, well not much I can do there.

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I had a random thought, where exactly does an Epic level (30th) character spend 3.125 million gold for a 30th level item?  That’s 31.25 TONS of gold. That’s  a cube of 24k gold almost 4 FEET on each side. (roughly).  So you could easily put that in a wagon.  But a wagon that can hold 31 tons? Good luck with that. You’re going to need a treasure train of 32 wagons to haul it to the vendor.

And why even bother buying that level 30 magic item when you can save 2 million and buy a level 28 magic item and hire several kingdoms worth of armies to keep the riff raff away.

I’ve always thought the economies of any system where you can live fairly well for about 20 gold a month and very well for 100 gold a month cannot easily absorb the influx of wealth that occurs because of treasure seekers.

Even if the merchants have two pricing schemes, one for normal people and one for adventurer’s they themselves will swiftly gain money to the point where other merchants will charge those merchants adventurer’s pricing and then so on.

A classic real world example is the issues of the U.S.’s Gold Rush in the 1800’s where gold miners (read: adventurers) brought in a lot of gold and destroyed local economies, towns sprang up just to deal with the miners at crazy prices.

A classic semi-real modern example that a lot of people might be familiar with is World of Warcraft.  I quit back during the Burning Crusade expansion and even then I could farm someplace like Shadowfang Keep for Assassin’s Blades and get two to three hundred gold for them for level 19 twinks.  Why?  Because the economy was screwed due to the influx of gold from long established characters raking it in at the high levels.  Low level gear was crazy priced to the point that new players couldn’t afford anything ‘cool’.

That same thing would happen across any fantasy world as adventurer’s hammered the local economies with gold without such modern miracles as global banking institutions.

Is there a solution?  Of course, hand wave it out the window and ignore the real world issues in buying and selling of things that cost more than a kingdom might have in total coinage.

Is there a solution that fits a fantasy setting?  Separate magic from gold completely.  Have your dragon hordes with 100’s OR 1000’s of golds, not 100’s of thousands.  Put in place rituals that let the characters power up their swords and turn them into something that grows with them or use any of the ideas to remove magic bonuses from items and give them to the characters innately and the magic items become flavor gear with bonus abilities.   The character has a flaming sword, not a flaming sword +1.  I understand the DMG2 has some guidelines on this now as well as the community stuff.

Anyway, that was my random thought about something to post today.

I’ll be upfront and honest, I’m a harsh Gm. Not vindictive or competitive but I do tend to draw out the most from the players.  I’ve very rarely ever killed a character though and the ones I did kill deserved it.  After 30 years of doing this I can still not run out of fingers counting characters I’ve killed permenently.

But harsh?  Definitely.  I once had a specialist archer lose half his hand to critical fire damage (because he thought the flames were illusionary) and be unable to use a bow for half a campaign.  I once had a fighter lose his bonus attack for several episodes because he lost ‘his’ sword and had to make do with substitutes that weren’t as balanced or designed for him.  I once had a paladin pick up a cursed box and become a fighter until he atoned for his ’sin’.   I’m harsh, there’s no getting around it.

Players as a rule tend to push the boundaries of what they can and can’t do.  DM’s tend to push back to keep things in check.  It’s a lot like the parent – child synergy.  No you can’t stay out till 3 in the morning.  Yes if you’re back by 9:00 you can drive the car.  The primary reason is, or at least for me is, to keep the party in balance so that it doesn’t devolve into one person doing everything and the rest sitting back and playing second fiddle. So when the problem child wants to do a triple back flip through the bar and be able to backstab the BBEG because ‘he’d never expect it’ I have to raise the eyebrow and go “Orly.  You think that would really work? No.”

But I’ve mellowed with age. Or perhaps more factually I’ve got more experience at what will really unbalance a campaign and block it and what would simply be unrealistic, cool certainly, but unrealistic and go ahead and allow it.

And you should try to hit the same balance.  It can be a hard line to stick to and fraught with peril.  Allow something too overpowering and the player is going to want to do it all the time.  Don’t allow anything and you’re stifling the creative flow and removing those ad hoc high points that get talked about for years.

Sometimes you don’t see the ramifications of your actions and have to retro them out somehow. As a example is the one time I actually played in a campaign the DM gave the dagger specialised fighter a ring of vampiric regeneration.  This made the fighter invincible as long as he hit about one out of two times he’d get back any lost hit points.  This nullified both the encounters and the other players as it became a “Let Temple get them all, we’ll sit back here playing chess.”  The DM solved the problem by having a fish leap up while were were crossing a lake and bite his finger off taking the ring with it.

As a general rule, you should try very hard not to lock a player out of playing.  This means no long term stuns or disabling conditions.  Don’t kidnap one player and not the others.  Don’t ’steal’ items from them for anything but very short term.  Keep an eye on your monsters so that they don’t have uber defenses against what the party is putting out.

A player’s turn shouldn’t consist of making a saving throw or worse being able to do nothing but wait for someone else to get to him.  Granted this is going to happen from time to time but do what you can to reduce the frequency of it. You can’t always save the stupid though. Some players (or characters) are just not bright and as a result they will through their own actions lock themselves out of playing.  And that’s okay.

I’m very much not a fan of the Stun condition in 4th Edition and I’m retconning it out as dazed on every monster power. I’m not a fan of the Dying condition and the death saves to be honest which is why I came up with the Weebles Wobble rule where I came up with a Mostly Dead condition.  This lets a player be dying and still be an active participant in the game.  I’ve had a couple of notes from people that have tried it with pretty good success and their players reportedly really approved of it. And it makes for a pretty cinematic visual.  Rarely in action movies do you have people laying around dying and not doing anything.  But tons of examples of the heroes limping forward barely concious, blood streaming off them but refusing to lay down as they blow some rubber suited monsters cojones off and snap out a one liner as they do so.

So in closing, don’t screw your players.  Let them play, it’s why they’re there after all.

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No not the cool Left 4 Dead kind but the H1N1, aka Swine Flu, aka Hiney Virus has invaded my home and taken me down along with two of my children.

Curse you Evolution for continuing to raise the stakes with your evolving diseases!

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately and thought I’d ramble on about players from the DM’s point of view, mostly in a bad way of course…

As a player you should remember that you’re part of a group.  You’re not going to be the sole focus of attention so when it’s not your turn let someone else have a bit of spotlight. It’s discourteous to the other players to not give them their chance at the mic.

As a player you should remember that you’re part of a group.  Step up and be heard, get involved.  Don’t just sit back observing or staring off into space. It’s really discourteous to your DM who’s gone to the trouble of creating something for you to ignore it.

I’ve had to deal with both types in my career as a DM/GM.  They’re both more than a bit of a pain after months and years.

Things I’ve found annoying from players in large quantities, and that based on the voice inflections and reactions from Dm’s in the podcasts might be fairly universal.

Constantly going “No he can’t/doesn’t/wouldn’t” to the DM in any form as a common reaction to the DM.

• DM: “Okay the fell necromancer shifts his gaze at you, Alofel and necrotic energies flare up and blast outwards at you.”
• Player: “No he doesn’t.  He doesn’t have that power any more.  It’s a typo.  Wouldn’t he hit Steve instead?  He misses.  I duck out of the way.  I’m immune.”

Once is okay, twice is within reason but constantly over and over ‘retorting’ with some variation on the above every time the DM announces a NPC’s attack gets old fast.

Immersion breaking ‘conversation’ or ‘dialogue’ between a character and an NPC.

• DM as Necromancer: “I shall have your soul chained in a everlasting fire for daring to interfere you pathetic mortal.”
• Player: “U r gay.”

Once in a while, sure it CAN be funny.  But constantly chanting how gay what is supposed to be some scary evil dark wizard is, gets very unfunny pretty quickly to most DM’s I’m betting, myself included.

Most DM’s do what they do to bring to life a cooperative story set in a ‘real life’ world where characters, pc and npc, act in realistic ways.  It takes interest and energy to do all the extra work involved.  Players who show up so they can be the asshole (or pschopath/klepto)  in the game they can’t be at the office tend to be a bit of a burden on the creative energies and interest required to be a DM.

What I call psuedo-cheating (don’t get me started on real cheating).

• DM: “Does a 22 hit you Barkil?”
• Player: “No.”  a minute goes by, “Yeah it hits.”

• Player: “I rolled a… 23.”
• DM: “Okay that hits.”
• Player: “No it was really a 3.”
• DM: “*sigh*”

Please remember during my little mini-rant, that I’m ranting about consistent, frequent, constant behaviour of this type. Like any decent DM I can overlook, ignore, or go along with a reasonable level of this kind of thing.  But constantly doing it gets old.

And no this isn’t some sly subtle jab at my players, due to RL, lack of interest, medical reasons, I don’t have enough consistent players to have a group of players that I can enjoy being with to have a RPG group going on.  At best I get to DM the occasional one-off or playtest or ‘delve’.

As a player remember the DM is supposed to be having fun too.  Try to gauge his or her reactions to your behaviour and adjust accordingly.

Because if the DM isn’t having fun, especially over the course of several sessions, then you’re going to be looking for a new DM.

Any gaming group whether it’s chess, bridge or rpg’s is a social group with the implied social contracts that are always the price of being in that group. You have to be social and sociable.  If you like roleplay then deal with there being rollplay going on.  If all you want to do is roll dice then deal with there being roleplay going on.  And as a DM I know this can change per player on a session basis.  Sometimes a player just wants to roll dice and loot the corpses of the bad guys.  And sometimes they just want to sit back and have an animated discourse on the qualities of the rope they’re purchasing.  But remember you’re one of a group and they also vary in what they want to do.

Know what your character can do.  I personally find myself questioning why players want to bother showing up when they show no interest in the mechanics of their characters much less the game system that’s being played.  Constantly having to wait for a player every session while they ‘re-learn’ their characters abilities or worse, just ’spam’ a single abilitiy over and over regardles of its effect or efficiency simply because they don’t want to be bothered to learn more can be annoying.

It’s not very enjoyable for DM’s who spend excess hours over and above the actual session hours coming up with the adventures, plots, hooks, bad guys, who have the not so easy task of juggling tens of ‘characters’ during every combat, of keeping things in balance for the players so it’s not a cakewalk as well as not instant death, of remembering what’s happened before, what they want to happen and steering a plausible path between those points to have players express a serious lack of interest in what’s going on at the table.  [Massive run on sentence of the day.]

I have a saying, “Looks like apathy has reared it’s head, we’re done for the night.” and it’s had to be brought into play more than once.  When computers started to intrude on gaming sessions, whether it was Doom when we first got PC’s or Ultima Online when we first got MMOG’s  or whatever.  Once the conversation’s saturation point became something other than the game at hand, I’d shut it down.  When I’m running something, I’m there to run it, not talk about the current hot topic.

So as a final wrap up, I think this can mostly be summed up with “As a player in a group game, be courteous.” or in layman’s terms: “Don’t be a dick.”

Or the odds are very good there won’t be a social group anymore.  At least for you.

Found a pretty cool thread that hopefully keeps going on Enworld.  Various DM’s are ‘rating’ encounters they have put up against their players and giving the specifics and how they turned out.

Makes for some really good idea fostering since they’re easily ‘consumed’ and aren’t burdened with giant blocks of stats and all that so you can ‘microwave’ them in a minute or two and go “that’s cool” or “meh” without spending a lot of time at it.  Then you can go stat them up into encounters of your own tailoring.

All the listed ones are good but I thought this one in particular would have some really good ‘visuals’ and could be adjusted with custom monsters pretty easily for any level.

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XP Encounter Difficulty: Level 7+4
(Used on a level 7 party, but it is a level 11 encounter)

Brief summary: Adult White dragon blasting the snow away from graves awakening the dead.

Area setup: An island in the middle of a icy river with precarious stepping stones. The island has a big graveyard, the graves are covered by snow.

Enemies:
Adult White Dragon Level 9 Solo brute with 20% fewer hp, so award 1600xp
3xChillborn zombie Level 6 Soldier
3xMad Wraith Level 6 Controller

Enemy setup:
The Dragon awakens as the party bicker like hell crossing the river, fights them as they come onto the island. It uses its breath weapon to blast the snow away from some graves awakening the chillborn zombies the following round. It stays flying and uses its breath weapon a few rounds later to awaken the Mad Wraiths in the same way

How it went:
The archer in the party was scouting and noticed the dragon, shot it and started the fight with only two PC’s on the stepping stones. Otherwise it went about as planned. One of the fighter pushed the gravestones over the chillborn zombies as they awakened, slowing them by one round. (I didn’t let them use the aura when they had a gravestone on top of them). The dragon never landed and flew away after getting down to 25% hp.

Actual Difficulty:
The encounter is a little easier than it might seem, as the dragon uses it’s breath weapon to uncover the graves and the undead used some rounds getting up of the graves. Difficulty about as a level 10 encounter. The players used all available dailies.

How well did it work(on a scale of 1-10):
The multiple enemies that had to be handled and the big bad guy made for a very interesting encounter for every character type. The encounter has plenty of suspense and the characters feel threatened but not overwhelmed. I would give it an 8.5.

I’ve seen a couple of tweets on the subject and thought I’d ramble a bit more on the subject.  I’ve done it in various veins before here and here with some mechanical ways to speed things up here but those are primarily with 4th edition mechanics.

This time let’s focus on a non-system, non-genre post intended to help anyone who’s going into the storyteller seat whether it’s Heroes or GURPS or Vampire or Top Secret or Warhammer FRP or FUDGE or… you get the point I’m sure.

If you’re wanting to know how to be a good or at least competent game leader (whatever the title might be) here’s some things that I’ve come to believe over the course of my gaming history that might help you.

• Know your material
• Do your prep work
• Keep things moving
• Be descriptive
• Give each player focus
• Don’t bog down
• Keep things moving (yes it’s important enough to list twice).
• Play to your players
• Get rid of distractions
• I am your father

Know your material – Know the adventure you have planned.  YOu don’t have to know it forwards and backwards but be familiar with it.  Have some idea where a creature might run for reinforcements if things go bad for him.   Have an idea of the capabilities of the obstacles that the players will face.  Is there an obvious synergy between some of the forces you have arrayed against the players?  If not an obvious one then try to figure out one. The start of the game should NOT be the first time you crack open the module if you’re using something you didn’t design.  Know the basics of your gaming system, again you don’t have to know every in and out but have a basic understanding of the game.

Do your prep work – Have cheat sheets (you can find them all over the place including this site) for the information you’re going to need all the time during the session.  Reduce the “Steve what’s your _____?” and “Does a 16 hit?” type questions to a minimum.  Make handouts of any ‘notes’ or clues the players might find so you don’t have to hold up game play to slowly read things out while a player writes it down.  Make loot lists on postit notes so again you can simply hand the note to the party leader and not have to wait for the party scribe to note everything down.  Yes this is more work for you but it’s work you can do in your down time aka non-game time.  Which brings us to…

Keep things moving – Don’t have long pauses of silence from you unless you’re listening to your players.  I HIGHLY recommend you listen to the various podcasts out there, RPGMP3, WOTC’s Penny Arcade, Gamer’s Haven etc.  Listen to them in the car or while you’re spacing out at your desk or before you go to sleep.  Take notes of when things slow down.  Inevitably it’s when the DM is reading his material, or looking something up or is just distracted.

Be descriptive – You shouldn’t go, “the goblin rolled a 13 and his damage is 2d6 and you take… 8 damage.”  Use something like “Iowna the goblin stabs you in the thigh with its none-too-clean javelin all the while yelling taunts at you in goblin most of which seem to be describing how unappealing looking you are.  Take 8 damage.”  Be descriptive, even if it’s the 8th office the agents have searched, add a little something, “Apparently Ms. Jenkins the CFO likes her pron because the screen saver on her workstation has a all nude chippendale’s slide show going on it.  A quick search though and you’re pretty sure the datavault is not in here. “  Give descriptors on the smells, the sounds, the visuals of the areas, the objects in them.  Paint a picture through the character’s senses for the players to be drawn into what they’re going through.

Give each player focus – Each turn focus on one player and draw them out about what they’re doing, get them to describe their attack or action in something more than “Does a 19 work for you?”.  Instead try to train your players over time to instead think more along the lines of “I parry the bastard’s blade and then try and gut him for what he did to the healer.” Don’t do it in strict order but more or less randomly but get the players involved.  And to do that you need to know your material so you’re not pre-occupied with trying to figure out what your guys are doing. The third installment of the Penny Arcade podcasts are a good example of Scott Kurtz seemingly to finally ‘get it’ or at least able to pretend to get it.  The interaction between Binwin and the boss Dwarf about Binwin’s ancestry/clans is awesome.  You want that from your players.

Don’t bog down – This is a sneaky way to reiterate keep things moving. Don’t let yourself or a player bog the game down for minutes long stretches.  If you don’t know a DC just use level + 5/10/15 for easy, medium, hard.  Hand wave the crap out of the game rather than let momentum die because someone spent 15 minutes trying to find some rule.   Either give it to them or don’t give it to them and just make a note to look up the real rule later.  This really a subset of Know your material but important enough to bring up individually I think.   Momentum keeps players involved and interested.  And interested players are what the whole point of being there playing these games is about.

Play to your players – It doesn’t matter if you spent hours and hours planning out an awesome murder mystery campaign.  If your players want a hack and slash campaign you’re screwed.  Go with it and give them their hack and slash.  You can’t fit square pegs in round holes.   If they’re playing some scenario they don’t want to they’re not going to be interested and uninterested players = epic session fail.  You can’t force a horse to drink and you can’t force players to enjoy something they’re not intersested in.  You need to be upfront though as to your limits.  I refuse to run evil campaigns for example and I refuse to allow evil alignment as I’ve yet to seem them used as anything other than chaotic psychopath justifications.  If you have limitations like this you just have to let them be known up front so everyone doesn’t waste their time.

Get rid of distractions – Turn off the electronics.  Cell phones, smart phones, pda’s, laptops, televisions, radios, turn all that crap off.  Put the pets outside or another room with door closed.  Get rid paperbacks and puzzle books.  Flat out tell people, either you’re here to play this game or you here to text, read, do sudoko or surf the web.  If it’s the latter there’s not point in us trying this. If you want music then use CD’s or MP3’s, commercials are distractions, distractions bog down game play and that leads to disinterest.

I am your father – Like it or not as the DM the role of parent typically falls to you in most groups.  It’s usually your task to keep people focused on the task at hand but you also have to allow them their dick tuna times as well.  Chris Perkins I think does a pretty good job of this, letting the players derail everything and then smoothly gets it all back on track again for the most part.  You’ll typically be the arbiter of “I don’t like how Bill is such a loot whore.” and “Steve keeps running off by himself.”  Just use your best effort in these situations.  Worst case you have to get rid of a player.  Worst worst case is you can’t get rid of a player for various social reasons and you have to quit playing.  Been there done that and it sucks.

These are a few observations I’ve made over the last 28 years of being a DM/GM in more systems than I can remember.  They might be nothing but ass or they might help you out, you’ll be the final arbiter there. If they do help then awesome.

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