Category: Gaming

Let the players help write the story

DnD, Gaming

Over on r/DMAcademy, a subreddit for Dungeons Masters to ask and give advice to each other, u/AstreiaTales asks the question “Do you, DMs, let your villains plots get foiled?” They give a number of elaborate examples, but ultimately state that their players want to feel like superheroes at the finale of a long arc, being outnumbered and outgunned because the villan powered up and is on the verge of completing their big, bad, evil plans.

Do you let your villains’ plans get foiled before the climax? How do you balance player agency vs. telling a good story?
byu/AstreiaTales inDMAcademy

But the user also understands that tabletop role playing games are about making reasonable choices, and are sprinkled with bits of chaos and randomness, and they’re unable to reconcile those two ideas. So they’re asking for advice in finding the balance.

Here’s my answer. I’ve given the short version of this to my players and I try (I hope I try) to reinforce that during every session.

I lean more towards choices and randomness, and I do that by abandoning the whole idea of being the sole storyteller. It’s not my story. The story is what happens at the table, when everyone is there, choosing and acting, influenced by the dice.

As a Dungeon Master, I don’t write stories. I don’t write plots, where this happens and this happens and then the big finale happens. If I tried to do that, the characters and dice would quickly intervene and send the whole “plot” crashing into unknown territory.

I write characters who live in a world and have goals. I write situations, and decide who and what would reasonably be involved, and what people would have to reasonably overcome in order to achieve those goals. Then I put those situations in the path of my players.

My players write characters who live in a world and have goals. When we’re all sitting at the table, we make choices for our characters, and then play out the results, including some randomness so that we can all be surprised how things advance.

I’m not a novelist. I’m not even a showrunner, dictating how this season is going to play out over the course of the campaign. If anything, I’m one writer with slightly more responsibility for filling the world with interesting things and people, in a writer’s room with the rest of the writers, bouncing ideas, breaking stories into beats, and shaping a story that we can then share with others once it’s all played out.

My play style is heavily influenced by the tradition of improvisational theater, short and long form, as documented by many but primarily Keith Johnstone and Clive Baker. Everyone on stage (or at the table) has responsibility to bring up the parts of the story they want, and to allow everyone else to interact with them. No offer of a beat or line or imagined element should be refused, but everything is incorporated into the evolving story.

If the players want a big flashy battle with a big bad evil guy, facing incredible odds and overcoming the challenges heroically, then they can, through their choices and actions and exploration and interaction, nudge the story in that direction themselves.

Do my villains get to achieve their ends, or are they foiled by the players’ characters? That’s what we’re playing to find out. Everyone gets to be surprised. My villains might end up frustrated by an anticlimactic fizzle; if so, it means the players played well and had luck on their side. That’s the story of that game.

This may not be everyone’s style, but this is my style and my players love it. They trust me, and I trust them, to help move the story toward whatever is going to happen next.

If your players truly want big epic high-stakes conclusions to stories, then encourage them to play that way. If they don’t want that level of trust, then you’ve answered your question for yourself: you write the plots, figure out what happens when, and lead the players through the story beats. If they complain, then maybe try it my way.

Lessons learned from tonight’s D&D game

DnD, Gaming

This won’t be 500 words but I still wanted to post something.

Played D&D tonight. I gave the players a combat that wasn’t just hitting enemies until their hit points fall out. And they seemed to enjoy it but it did drag a bit and become a bit of a slog. Took the whole session and ended on a low note of the bad guys getting away with the information they were there to get, thanks to a crafty evil badger.

The bad guys also set a blazing fire at the start to draw the heroes away from their target, some log books and notes and receipts. They also dropped a few hints as to what they’ve been doing, and left behind casualties and stragglers that the party can loot.

It was a success but could have gone better. I’m always hard on myself for technical issues but I should realize that those are going to happen regardless.

Still, it was fun, and I got to challenge the party. They’re hitting 5th level and they are now ridiculously capable. It’s only going to get harder from here on out.

Lessons learned: I did not need that many enemies for the plan to work. They were spread out and did not cluster in one spot, so fewer of them would have meant the combat ran faster, mostly because I would not have to keep track of so many different statblocks and actions.

Essentially I don’t have to plan much for next session, since I already drew up the plans for what would likely happen next, and I guessed correctly! Yay, me!

Seriously, though, I love this game. It’s my favorite thing to do.

The characters are the heroes of the story

DnD, Gaming

One of the recent recurring topics around here is my D&D game, which is a bright spot for me and my life right now. I love creating and writing settings, characters, and events/ my players are all great at playing games collaboratively and creatively, and are invested in their own stories and their place in the world; and the game sessions are one of the few times I get to hang out and chat with other people (living mostly alone and far away from my friends and family and being unemployed means I don’t get out much.)

So I spend a lot of time writing notes, thinking about what might happen next, creating characters and making maps, picking monsters and treasures, and all that comes under the umbrella of prep. Prepping for a game is one way that a Dungeon Master (DM) engages in play. Worldbuilding is all by itself a way to create.

I can get lost in my worldbuilding, much as anyone else who loves outlining fictional worlds. When I feel my imagination running away, though, I try to reign it in by focusing only on what would be important at the table. I try to only make notes about things the characters, and my players, care about. I try to focus on the characters, and treat them as the heroes of the story. I do sometimes get lost but I can nearly always pull myself back from the brink.

Where did I learn that? I learned it from other, more experienced, Dungeon Masters.

First, Matt Colville. He has a lot of excellent advice for Dungeon Masters, and in the years before I started this new campaign, I watched every single video in his Running The Game series, and many many more from his channel. And one of his philosophies about table top role-playing games is, the game should center around the players and their characters. “Be a fan of the characters” is one way to phrase it. I can’t find exactly where he said this, and linking to a video in a text post isn’t idea, but he does touch on it in this particular video, “The Sociology of D&D.” He says at the beginning of the video that he, the DM, had fun if the players had fun, regardless if they engaged in his plots and plans or not. I’ve internalized that idea.

I will mention Ginny Di, from whom I have also learned a lot about running a game. She has a hot take, though, on prep for DMs, specifically the common “don’t overprep” advice that seems ubiquitous. Her complaint boils down to two points: that trope doesn’t say how much prep is too much, and it doesn’t help a new DM decide what kinds of things to prep or even what counts as prep. And she’s right. It’s helpful to have some kind of advice on how to get ready for a game with your players.

Enter, Mike Shea, a.k.a. Sly Flourish. I’ve read so much of his work but I can point to the main idea I’m elaborating on, about focusing on the characters, because in his work he literally makes that starting point in his seven step Lazy DM’s Prep list: Step Zero, Review the Characters. His other steps flow from that initial act of prep. Once you know who the characters are and what they want, create events, fantastic places, and challenges for them specifically.

Also, Jason Alexander, a.k.a. The Alexandrian. The philosophy of including the characters and the people who play them in the flow of the game as it exists at the table infuses nearly everything he writes. When he says “Don’t prep plots, prep events” he means that you, the DM, only control the starting point, the first encounter, the hook that draws the characters into the world; the story is what they do with those hooks. By following his advice, I can be surprised by what happens next, once the other players have found out what’s going on. They react, and interfere, or push, or ignore, and we’re off into terra incognito for everyone, myself included. The campaign becomes a virtuous circle; I give a hook, the players do… something with that… and I have to take that and decide how my NPCs and the world changes and reacts. This automatically centers the players; they’re shaping the narrative by what they focus on. It’s led amazing places for me. I had no real idea when I started this whole thing that we would end up where we are now.

It’s good for the DM to be surprised, along with everyone else at the table. It’s fun, and games should be fun. And it’s because “I am a river to my people!”

Couple of Early Tips for Fallout 3

Gaming

I’ve been playing Fallout 3 for a while now, inspired to get back into a Fallout game when the TV show turned out to be good, actually. I’ve got two saves going, one for streaming where I’m trying to play as myself and make decisions I would make in the game, and another save that’s just for goofing around, testing things out, finding good ways to resolve quests, and figure out where to find all the good treasure and loot (and be evil if I want to.)

Side note, you should definitely subscribe to my YouTube channel and come watch me play. Right now I’m aiming for streaming at least twice a week, on days I have named Wasteland Wednesday and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Sunday, unless I stream on another day. It’s fun watching me mess around, and sometimes the game or my streaming set up or my home internet breaks in hilarious and not-at-all-angering ways while I’m trying to be smooth and professional and fun and not angry. Come watch!

But because my stream playthrough is only a couple of hours a week but I can play the other save whenever I have some downtime while I desperately look for a day job and struggle to pay my bills and make sure my dad is comfortable and entertained and healthy while he’s staying with me… where was I? Oh, right, my offline save is far more advanced and leveled up than my stream character. And I’ve figured out some good early things to do. Here’s some basic advice if you want to be better at things.

Bring tech to the Outcasts. Find Fort Independence, make the deal with Casdin, and then get as much 5.56 ammo you can get. Ammo doesn’t have any weight so you can carry all of it whereever you go, and having 1000+ rounds for your assault rifle (or, if you can find one, a Chinese assault rifle which does more damage but breaks faster and is a little less accurate) makes taking on raiders and ghouls so much easier. I managed to take down a couple of Enclave soldiers and you can get, like, 600 rounds for the armor and helmet from Casdin. It’s great!

Get the dart gun schematics! You can buy them in the shop at Tenpenny Tower. If you don’t want to go there, there’s a power station way up in the northwest of the map at a power station (MDPL-05) but it’s way out in the wasteland and might be hard to get to at lower levels. Tenpenny Tower is close to the Robco factory you have to go to for Moira’s wasteland survival guide quests. Dart gun will cripple the legs of creatures, which makes them slow and prevents them from closing with you.

I’m having a lot of fun roaming around the wasteland, even though I’m burdened with narrative dissonance from not caring about the main quest, which is to find my dad who sort of abandoned me for reasons. But that’s normal for the Bethesda Fallout games (strangely it’s not an issue in Skyrim or Oblivion or Morrowind.) I love the feel of the Capital Wasteland and it’s evocative; lonely, blasted, eerie. That mood is what Fallout 3 does well.

School’s Out

DnD, Gaming

It’s late but I’ve gotta write something. Which is weird because I’ve been writing all day. My D&D players gave me, the Dungeon Master, homework, which isn’t normally how things work.

Just joking. What happened is that a couple of my players wanted to do some research during their downtime to follow up on in-game plots and characters. They gave me a list of topics, and I told them the game mechanics of how that would work, and then I sat down and wrote out paragraphs of information, from the stuff everybody knows, to the facts that only learned scholars know after years of study. It was fun!

Mechanics-wise, the rules for downtime research in D&D 5E are pretty straightforward. Each topic takes about a work-week of time (5 days), and at least 50 GP in fees, bribes, or materials. At the end of the week the player makes an Intelligence check; the higher the result, the more information gained. Spending additional money gets a bonus to the roll; every 100 GP above and beyond gets a +1, up to a maximum of +6. And having access to a good library or knowledgable sage gets advantage on the roll.

Since it’s an Intelligence check, I also allow the players to apply the bonus for any applicable skill proficiency they may have. Researching magical items, for example, can benfit from a proficiency in Arcana.

The table in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything for downtime research shows a scale, from one piece of lore to up to three pieces of lore, which kind of breaks my brain a little. I just wrote out a bunch of stuff, getting more and more detailed as I went, for each topic. I was a little sad that the players won’t see everything I write, unless they got really lucky, so I didn’t spend a lot of time on the more esoteric stuff.

There’s also the matter of complications, which for research are pretty low. A complication comes up at a rate of 10% per week spent in research, and range from mild, to gaining a rival or finding oneself obligated to another quest or adventure. All fun stuff!

But I’m really bad at keeping secrets. I want my players to know things. I want to reward them for their curiosity and engagement with my silly secondary world. Ah well, such is the nature of games. They’ll find all this out in due time, one way or another. My philosophy as a game master is that I try to only prep stuff I’m going to actually use. Now that I’ve come up with these plot hooks and lore, I will find ways to introduce it.

This group of players I’ve found myself in are a gift. They’re mature, intelligent, thoughtful. They pay attention to my silly plots and characters, take notes, show up to nearly every session ready to play. It’s terrific and I am so glad to have this bright spot in my life right now. So when they ask me for more information about the game and the world, I am more than happy to provide it to them. Having players like that makes worldbuilding easy. It’s so much fun. Did I mention the fun? I’m having a lot of fun with this campaign and this group of folks.

Dungeons and Dragons and Diplomacy

DnD, Gaming

One of my players in my Dungeons & Dragons game has told me that they want to do something bold, dangerous, and secret from the rest of the group and I am allowing it. They want to take a group magic item, walk into a hostile encampment of enemies, and try to negotiate a trade for a different magic item the party missed earlier in the campaign.

I have no idea what’s going to happen. Could go pear-shaped very quickly or could turn out to be an amazing move that makes or breaks the story. The only way we’re going to find out is through play and that is very exciting to me.

Sure, I’m the Dungeon Master and I run the game; at some tables that means I am in complete control over the past, present and future storylines that will happen. What a dumb and boring way to play a game though. I like being surprised during play as much as anyone else does. Why else would we use random chance in the form of dice rolls, if we did not want to introduce at least a small amount of chance?

No, I don’t prepare stories for my players. I prepare situations: People with motives, ways for them to get or lose power, locations with authentic furnishings in logical locations. I then put these things in the path of my players and let them react to them as they see fit. Story will naturally arise out of that interaction. Once we have a new status quo, I shake my box of people, things, and places again, and see what the new configuration is, and we do it all again.

The player in particular who is kicking off this new storyline is a warlock, of course. High charisma, so I think they’re confident in their ability to talk things through. And if the events turn against them, they have their powerful patron (a fiend, of course) to back them up. And the item they want to trade away is something that they know to be sacred to the enemy they’r meeting, which is also in their favor.

Things I know that the player does not, and which I will couch in vaguaries in case they’re reading my blog: the strength of the enemy NPC’s feelings about them and the object; the location and value of the item the warlock is trying to gain; how far they will go to gain this item; lastly, what the NPCs will do once they gain this item, their plans and the consequences that will fall out after this trade is concluded.

Things I do not entirely know: how the other players are going to react to this action, and what they might do once they find out. At least part of the play is going to be determining if the warlock can succeed in stealing this object without their notice; the plan might die on the vine, actually.

I am not in control of the outcomes, and neither is the player, and that is making for a pivotal session of play. Stay tuned.

One who shows contempt

DnD, Gaming

I’ve been thinking about dragons lately. It’s for my D&D game. Dragon names, dragon titles, dragon culture and heirarchy.

In my campaign setting, there was an ancient red dragon, the most powerful mortal dragon ever, who was slain by a band of powerful heroes about two decades prior to current day of the game. The dragon’s name was Tountomos, but I always referred to her as Tountomos Perjorative, which was at first a reference and also a bit of a joke.

The reference is to the movie Dragonslayer (1981), specifically the dragon in that movie, Vermithrax Pejorative. What a terrific name! And the best movie dragon ever. That movie mostly still holds up, and they made that dragon look great before CGI.

The joke, I think, is that I always thought the word “pejorative” meant a curse word. When I would see it used is in place of words or phrases like “fuck off” or “god damn”. Which I guess is true? So Vermithrax’s name was a curse word. When I used it for my big bad dragon, I was paying homage to Vermithrax, and I thought of it like a title, or an epithet. A dragon so bad their name itself was a curse.

But the actual definition of pejorative is “a word expressing contempt or disapproval”. Which doesn’t quite seem strong enough for the worst dragon in the world, right?

I’ve been expanding the titles, though. Since I use Latin as the stand-in for the language spoken by the Old Empire, I’ve been finding terms I can use for titles for the evil dragons in my world, and then translating them into Latin for that added touch of antiquity and class. Words like Descrare (desecrator), Praenuntia (harbinger), Deceptor (deceiver), Occultare (concealer.)

But I couldn’t recall or find through regular Google searches a term that would mean “one who shows contempt or disapproval.” Contemptor? That… doesn’t appear to be a dictionary word, although it’s meaning is obvious from the useage. I wanted to know if there was an existing dictionary word (I keep wanting to type “real word” but since I’m more of a descriptivist than a prescripitivist when it comes to language, “real word” doesn’t mean much to me.)

Exhausting my google-fu I turned to ChatGPT. Could it help me find the word I was looking for? Or would it just make something up, like it’s done for me in the past?

I asked it to tell me the word for someone who shows contempt and it came back with “misanthrope.” No, that’s a label someone else would put on someone, and it’s too human-centric. I pushed back and it tried to tell me “misogynist” or “misandrist” but I said no, not gender-specific. I kept pushing and it came back with “scoffer”, which is far too mild, and “cynic” which is far too passive.

So I gave it the examples above (desecrator, harbinger, deceiver) and… holy shit it came back with contemner, which I first thought was it pulling something out of its ass again; but, no, a Google search showed it was a real word, although generally applied in legal contexts.

Screenshot of a conversation with ChatGPT: OK maybe this is going around in circles so let me give you similar examples. A harbinger is someone who brings doom. A desecrator is one who desecrates. A murderer is someone who brings murder. In this vein, what would someone who brings scorn be? ChatGPT Ah, I see what you're getting at now. In that case, a suitable term might be "contemner." This word refers to someone who holds others in contempt or disdain. You Holy shit that's perfect and you've taught me a new word

Holy shit, ChatGPT taught me a new word! It took some back-and-forth but it got there. I then plugged “contemner” into the Latin translator and it spat back… contemptor. Contemptor is the Latin word for “one who shows contempt.” LOL. LMAO. OK, fine, language wins this round.

Above the table talk

DnD, Gaming

D&D game last night went great! My character helped lift an ancient curse, and restore honor to a fallen lord. Also blasted an enchanted suit of armor and gained a magic sword, not bad.

Before everyone split up, I talked about my plans to use the next session, when we go back to the campaign I run, as a new season or fresh start. I asked everyone to think about what kinds of things they would do in downtime, gave them a sheet that outlined how that would work mechanically, and generally set the stage for the next chapter of these heroes.

I said that the players were free to travel, catch up with friends, and meet back in one location. My hope was that they would decide what that location is so that I can plan ahead and have something concrete ready for them. They… didn’t do any of those things, at least not last night before we wrapped up.

So I want to talk in this post about what I did, and talking about things above the table, and at the table.

At the table, or in-character talk, is communication that comes in-world, from a specific person’s viewpoint, whether it’s an NPC directly talking, or a note or a book written by some author. I make it clear to players that those aren’t always 100% accurate, and there may be missing or incorrect information, or even lies, depending on the topic and the person.

Above the table talk is what would be considered meta communication. Me talking as a person playing a game, or running the game. It’s useful because even though we are all invested in maintaining the illusion of the fantasy world as something that exists and follows its own rules, we are also real people, friends and colleagues, who are getting together to run a game and have fun.

One of my players said that they weren’t sure their character, who only joined the group very recently, would have a reason to meet back up. That shocked me! At the time I offered the idea that they had forged a bond of adventure but I could tell that wasn’t that convincing. I wasn’t sure at the time if that was in-character talk, or if it was above the table talk. It worried me.

It’s entirely possible that my players do not want to engage in downtime or non-adventure activities. Even though they have fun with the game and seem to enjoy the way I lay out the world and the lore, they’re just here to play a game and have fun. They don’t want to do what they see as homework. And that’s fine. I’m fine with that. Nobody is going to care about my made-up world more than me. But narratively I think it’s important for there to be a gap between the last chapter and the new chapter. If nothing else I need in-game time for all my various cults and factions to advance their own plots.

Today, in the Discord for our game, I tried again to get the players to talk about downtime activities they may want to do. Two of the players immediately said they wanted to go… follow the next logical plot point and seek a reward. Oy. They really do not want downtime.

If nothing else, I can just narrate a time jump. Hand-wave it and just skip over a couple of weeks to the next major event. If they object I can push back and say “I gave you every opportunity to fill in the gap with your own choice of action; you have no right to object now.” They’re all gamers and I think they’ll get it. I don’t have to say it that bluntly, of course, but that’s how I feel. If I offer something, there’s a reason for it and I want them to take advantage of it.

But I was still worried about the player who wasn’t sure about their character re-joining the group after a break. Since I’m the Dungeon Master (DM) I can’t just tell them reasons why they would want to stick with the rest of them; that would be heavy-handed. I could have their patron tell them it’s in their best interest to do so. That would be in-character, in-world communication. But… It would seem insincere,; it’s a reaction to their comment, instead of something that organically comes up during play. I’m afraid it would break the shared illusion.

Instead I just mentioned what I had noticed, and told them, completely sincerely: “I wanted to say that you are a valued member of this group, you’re a great player, and you will always have a seat at my table for as long as you want to play.” I said that above the table. They liked that!

And then we conspired to try to nudge the other players into taking downtime. Hopefully that will go over well. Time will tell!

How To Restart Your D&D Campaign

DnD, Gaming

Screenshot of a portion of the map for my D&D campaign, a piece of digital art in an old-fashioned style in sepia tones. It shows a large walled city, Kopno'domas, on a river, surrounded by suburbs and villages, forests and hills, ruins and settlements.
The great walled city of Kopno’domas, Jewel of the Crownless Lands, and many of its suburbs. Art created in Inkarnate by Brian Moon.

Almost two years ago I started running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign using the Fifth Edition Rules. When I started, I hadn’t run a game in over a decade, and I wouldn’t call my previous games all that successful. Sure, we had fun at the time, I even wrote some fiction set in that world (like The Princess and The Brewer, or A Beggar’s Tale) but I didn’t really grasp the core skills of how to keep a game going, how to incorporate the players and their characters into the ongoing plot, and how to keep the focus on what happens at the table and not get bogged down in pointless worldbuilding. I vowed to do better in this new game. I had learned a lot over the years about how to keep things interesting, what level of preparation is necessary, and how to make the game collaborative, not just one person’s (the dungeon master’s) vision.

A huge help to me was Matt Colville’s “Running the Game” series on YouTube. I even modified his “Delian Tomb” basic adventure and used it for an early session. Good stuff! Also good: The Alexandrian, who was the first person to introduce me to the idea to prep situations not plots, or the Three Clue Rule for creating mysteries the players will love.

I started to prep for that first session by pulling out the campaign maps and notes I had used a decade ago and using them as a starting point. I used the old games notes as the recent past on which to build, to give a sense of history and a living world, and then dropped the new characters into the middle of things. I had factions, situations, people with goals… and no idea where it will all lead. I let the player’s actions be the inputs; how does what the players do change the world and affect the various factions?

We had some player changes over that time but have settled into a core group of five characters. In our last session, a couple of months ago, they had managed to defeat an evil sorcerer who was trying to imbue a giant brass golem with arcane and powerful energy. A big boss battle, in other words.

One of the players has wanted to run his own game, so we arranged to have him run some adventures for a few sessions to give me a break and let me play my own character. That’s been going well; Vic’s a natural gamer, understands story and plot, and it’s been fun seeing him come to the table with his own ideas.

That being said, after this next session, it seems likely that we will be moving back to my own campaign, so I’ve been thinking about how to restart the game. I now have a group of 4th level characters, who know a bit about the world they live in and the various factions, who have worked together and started to gel as a team. They each have their own backstories and goals but also have friendship and the bonds of pulling through tough situations. My intention is to come up with a summary of what’s transpired so far, and a recap of the groups, cults, and factions they have been ignoring while tracking down and killing the sorcerer. Those other leaders have not been sitting on their thumbs, no; they are now a little more powerful, and a few steps further along toward their own goals.

Again, the design philosophy I intend to follow: I’m going to create situations, and let the players interfere (or support!) those other people’s goals, and just see where it leads.

I may be running the game, but I can also be surprised by what happens next. This is the best and most successful campaign I’ve ever run, and I can’t wait to get back to it.