Winter Break

Seven trains, five subway trains, one AirTrain, two flights, and a few mild personnel department woes later and I am back! Just in time to catch up on a bunch of character chats and such. Never-Ending Game, I’m telling you.

And, just in time to leave again for a week!

In my experience, breaks can be just as hectic, if not more hectic, than the actual quarter. Which in turn can make rescheduling games rough. My advice for working out scheduling is this:

1. Reconnaissance
2. Review
3. Reassign

First, scout out everyone’s schedules. Who has more mobility? Who’s locked in place?

Second, review who can rearrange their schedules to suit game and who can’t, to figure out for whom you have to make allowances, and of whom you can ask small adjustments.

Lastly, reassign (or assign, if you’re talking about the first time through) the date and time according to your findings.

No problem!

Brief hiatus

I hate to do this, but I gotta put the blog on pause for a little bit. Just spent 15 hours traveling to get home from Savannah to DC, and I’m heading out again tomorrow to go north to my old university to meet up with some friends, then off to California to visit family for Thanksgiving! I am going to be one busy busy bee for a while, and won’t have my laptop to access the internet.

I know I have some outstanding comments to reply to and posts to write, but I’m afraid I will have to call rain check.

See you guys again on December 1st!

Player non grata : rules lawyer

So my plan for my next Player Non Grata post was to talk about Rules Lawyers. By chance though, I opened the DungeonMaster’s Guide for 4th Edition today and found a great little section that very clearly defined what a Rules Lawyer is and how to deal with one.

SO, not to like, cop out or anything, but I just wanted to transpose that instead! They said it more concisely than I would anyway, I bet.

“You don’t have to be a rules expert to be the DM, but that doesn’t mean one other player should assume that role. A rules lawyer is a player who argues against the DM’s decisions by referencing the rules. You should welcome players who know the rules. They help when you’re stuck or you make mistakes. But even helpful rules lawyers become a problem if they correct you continually or give you rules advice that’s just wrong. Much worse are players who can’t stand negative results, and who comb the rules for loopholes and misinterpretations that their characters can exploit.

“A table rule about holding rules discussions until the end of game is enough to dissuade some rules lawyers. Stay open to minor corrections, though, as long as they’re not too frequent.

“If the game grinds to a halt while a rules lawyer tries to find a specific rule or reference, invite the player to take as long as he wants to search for it while you and the rest of the players continue the game. The rules lawyer’s character essentially steps out of the game for as long as it takes. Monsters don’t attack him, and he delays [his own actions] indefinitely. This solution makes the other players happy, because they get to keep playing D&D instead of letting one player stop the game.”

My emphasis, of course. And it really just brings me back to my earlier points about respecting the DM and the other players, and not indulging a sense of entitlement.

God I hate entitlement.

Three a.m. pasta

So the following post has almost no bearing on Dungeons and Dragons whatsoever, but it’s 4 in the morning and it’s finals week and at the moment it seems like a good idea.

Also it is an exercise in humility: while I like to think I am a moderately competent DungeonMaster, I am occasionally a very INcompetent human being.

I was just downstairs in the Microwave Room of my residence hall holding a bowl of add-water-and-nuke-it pasta.

Like so.

It had water in it, as is sort of required for add-water-and-nuke-it pasta, and I was holding it while waiting for a friend to clean out the microwave due to a prior spaghetti-o explosion.

Like this, only with more boom.

I then did something spectacularly fail-tastic.

I dropped the bowl, splattering wet noodles and clumpy cheese-water all over the floor, my jeans, my shoes, and the rather bare toes of an unfortunate friend standing at my side.

In D&D this would be known as rolling a 1 on a Dexterity roll.

Like this, only less edible:

nom nom.

I wasn’t even doing anything that would, in a game environment, necessitate a roll. I wasn’t chewing gum and walking and holding the bowl, or jumping rope while holding the bowl, or trying to catch something with one hand while holding the bowl in the other, or anything even remotely complicated.

I was simply standing there, talking, and holding the bowl.

And then suddenly I wasn’t holding it anymore.

So we just spent probably five to ten minutes cleaning the floor of my ridiculous cheese failure, and my jeans (and sneakers) are now in the tub.

***

In closing, all I have to say is this:

Guys.

Don’t do what I do. Please.

Art imitates life imitates art

Sometimes when you roleplay a character in-depth, you end up picking up traits from that character. I’ve seen some people’s lives go down the tubes because they were way too involved, and let too much of the character’s stress wear on the player. That can get really ugly. Fast.

At the moment the main character I play for Rising Legions is Jacob, Jonan’s younger brother. Due to some… unfortunate circumstances involving a world-ending plot he got involved in, he’s going to start sleeping less, and will experience night terrors and paranoia.

All quarter long I haven’t been sleeping terribly well—not that I actually blame any characters for that.

But if I start waking up in the middle of the night, screaming or crying or something…someone just like, smack the Jacob out of me, please.

Pre-writing, revisited

One other disadvantage to pre-writing DM posts:

In the process of copying and pasting passages from say, a Wordperfect document into the chatroom, be sure you’re using everything, and in their proper sequence.

Otherwise you might, say, go from:

[Jacob] lifts the other hand with the key and pulls his shirt open, slowly pushing it into his heart and then wrenching it to the side. He laughs, and the sound is almost like the unbridled, joyous laugh of a child, but somehow horribly wrong at the same time, and the sound grates on your nerves and mind.

to

The one falling[, (the real Jacob,)] looks like the man you’ve known these past couple weeks…

And maybe, JUST MAYBE, no one will actually ask how Jacob suddenly started falling and the big bad villain that just got released from its captivity in his head is stepping out.

As Homer Simpson would say:

Cuz ah’m D. M. T., I’m dynamiiiite

“DMT” is our code word for “DungeonMaster typing.” We use AOL Instant Messenger chatrooms for game, which gives no indication of if a member is typing or not. This can be very unfortunate, especially when there’s lots of things going on and everyone is trying to respond.

To a point, you can ask your players to say if they’re typing or not, but that just causes more delays and slows action even more, so it usually isn’t even worth it.

But as the DM, you’re often writing paragraphs.

Especially if you’re like me and get really into description. Case in point:

You arrive in Svelvar in early morning, and the ship is a bustle of activity as sailors dock and prepare the ship for unloading, moving cargo off and helping passengers down to the “piers.” The port is an extension of the city that is built out onto two adjacent cliff faces, so that piers extend outward into open space, though there are several hangars of varying size tucked closer to the stone. The city itself is not a particularly kind looking city, mostly dark wood and stone. Its most dominant feature is the church at the center of the city, around which the city’s buildings and citizens spin like a top. The church is an impressive building, towering over the rest of the city and sprawling over a good chunk of its heart, spires piercing the air like beseeching hands, though from some angles they seem more like the sky-facing points of the spears of an army.

Ew, I know. And that’s just the first paragraph.

But for this past session I performed an experiment: writing DM posts ahead of time.

It’s not the best way, maybe. D&D is so prone to switching at the drop of a hat, especially when it’s so dependent on characters’ actions. You may end up having to cut entire paragraphs, may end up rewriting whole sections. Which is fine. But if you’re like me, you’re prone to getting very attached to certain lines or phrases.

One downside to pre-writing, for me, is the temptation to not want to cut paragraphs, and instead twist the way the game plays out so that I can use what I wrote.

But if you can avoid hemming the players in too much and are comfortable rewriting and editing as you go, pre-writing is a good way to keep things running smoothly and not end up spending half the game session writing instead of actually playing.

Money woes

It’s a staple of Dungeons and Dragons that the characters, after killing the evil wizard, loot his library and treasure chest to see if he has anything of value. They take the weapons, the armor, the trinkets. Drink the potions once you know they’re safe, and sell anything that isn’t useful.

This is normal.

But then sometimes you have a paladin in the group, who shouldn’t loot on principle. Other times the characters just don’t feel morally comfortable with it.

That’s fine, but it sometimes makes it very difficult to make sure the characters are well-equipped for upcoming, more difficult battles.

One solution:

Have a high-ranking political figure or some other sort of benefactor who can, for all intents and purposes, shove money and magical gear down their throats.

Rising Legions has two paladins and a couple characters who just don’t really…loot. It’s just not something they always think about.

So I ended up using the Organizer, a King-level figure who set them on their current quest to begin with, to give them a sort of “allowance” to spend on items that will help them in the next leg of their journey.

More ideas to come!

Secret door rolls are overrated anyway

So one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give is this: have copies of your players’ character sheets.

There is nothing so terrifying as the DM rolling a die, pausing to do some mental math, and then leaning over to ask “Hey. What do I need to roll to hit you?”

But there’s two main reasons to have a copy of the characters’ relevant stats:

1. Streamlining. If you don’t have to ask for Armor Rating or other important things all the time, you can save yourself some time. Especially during combat sequences, which are already sort of long and complicated.
2. Just in case someone loses his or her sheet. There is nothing quite so heart-wrenching as to have to try to re-make a stat sheet from scratch. The more the DM has on hand in his/her notes, the less has to be remembered or made up anew.

This applies to online or in-person, but still. It can’t hurt.

Plus, if you really want to scare them, you can just go ahead and ask for Armor anyway, even if you have it on record.

Guaranteed, it’ll make them flinch.

“Be still! Pharaoh speaks.”

Title here at 4:40-ish, if you’re unfamiliar with the line: