Tips to the New DM - Part 1, the Campaign

I saw the trailer for the new D&D movie, Honor Among Thieves. 

I love the idea that it's titled "Honor Among Thieves" and presents a series of characters who don't seem to be thieves. This is typically problem #1 at the game table, exactly what happens when a DM proposes a game and the players don't have the same idea in mind because they aren't mindreaders. 

It reminds me of the first D&D movie, you know the one where everything was ridiculous and over the top. It was like someone asked: "What if all of our fine actors rolled a 1 for each and every aspect of this production?" Since this actually happens at the table, I thought it was an excellent adaptation of the game. You can read my five-star review right here. 

This highlights the second thing that can go horribly wrong at the table, an overreliance on dice or chance for outcomes for things that don't really matter. If you let dice overrule sensible choices and the agency of your players, everyone gets screwed by chance. Things that shouldn't really matter suddenly are all important. Don't let it happen to you, only roll for the things that need to be resolved by chance. Let the kiddos have agency. 

Anyway, I have been talking to my kids about a new campaign I'm planning. They are all hung up on the basic concept of a "campaign". It's a big word that has never really been presented very well in the core books. The core books of any RPG series, not just D&D. I would define a campaign as both the world where the action takes place and a list of rules and assumptions about the world. This is the highest level meaning of the word "campaign". 

When starting out, the campaign should be vanilla flavored. Zero restrictions on character class and races, no modification to the rules, etc. The players, if you and they are lucky only have the core rules. Don't yank the carpet out from under them by making restrictions or changes on the basics that they do know.  

The second part of the "campaign" is the setting. What type of story is being told? It is a pirate tale, a ghost story, a land grab, an exploration, a quest.  Technically, these are limitations of scope. A pirate tale is very different than a good ghost story. You should not find paranormal events in a pirate story, you won't find vampires in an exploration campaign. It makes sense, so the players don't think it's all a free for all. They don't need stakes and garlic to get on a boat. 

But remember there is always the ability to fuse stories. Dracula starts on a ship, the Flying Dutchman is a tale of pirate ghosts, and so on. You can either have these ideas from the outset or morph things as needed. Just because you start in one place, it doesn't mean you can't land somewhere else. 

Where your first few games go bonkers is when the players hit the outline of what you have created. You'll get the weirdo things like a bard with an electric guitar in a fantasy world, the thief with a skateboard that goes by the name "Zoomer-boomer", and a kleptomaniac cleric in a hair-lined football jersey. Don't worry, just roll with your players, to the extent that you can. Let them have fun at first and after a while, they'll eventually come around to meet you halfway. Or better. 

One good thing to have in mind is a character swap. When starting out, you'll have problems like this where no one wants to play the character they have, and killing off characters is either unreasonable or impracticable. It's really not worth anyone's time to kill off a disliked character. My suggestion is to swap former player characters as NPCs and once you have these wild ones under your thumb, cool them out. Don't kill 'em. Don't make them disappear. Just place them in a more natural and sedate setting for your world and let them be. Maybe they'll grow into something else. This will depend on your player's outlook on their past silliness. To be honest, these wild and wacky characters probably will fade into the background of the setting. 

No harm, no foul. 

Now we are to the setting. What is happening in your world? 

I find the smoothest way to create a campaign is to write a story. Not a huge story or a polished story but one with a set of boundaries that has a clear beginning and a clear end. The DM isn't reading a book to a party of players, you are all working together on a set of tasks that will eventually tell the legends of heroes. 

Maybe, they are heroes. Maybe not. Anywho... 

The DM should prepare their campaign as a set of chapters or waypoints where the goal is to get the players and the characters from A to B to C. Keep to the basics. How do they meet, where do they go, when do things get exciting? 

Simple. Except it really isn't.  

Remember, at each step of the way many things can happen.  Most of which can't be controlled by anyone, players and DM alike. Don't expect sessions one, two, or 27 to end where you decided they would. 

The players should succeed at the end of each chapter, but they can also fail. Failure doesn't have to be death. In fact, if you plan it right, getting killed should be hard. In all likelihood, they won't fail and die. It could be something so simple as running out of health or something as annoying and show-stopping as losing the tools they needed to move forward. They could be captured, they could get drunk or homesick and take a break. Any number of things could and will happen to them and your story, which really isn't the story you wrote down. Don't sweat it. 

The moment the players don't have success, you need to change what you are doing with the players so they can continue. Usually, this results in a quick side story before continuing on to the main event. Hopefully, your players will enjoy this tangent while also wanting to continue on to the main event. Sometimes the tangent will become the main story. That's cool, too. 

There is a variant on party success. I call it the Uber-Win. You created a scenario and presented it to a dozen people. One of those players will figure out something very logical and sensible that you didn't think of and they hop right to the end of the material you created. Instant Win. It happens. Be ready for the strange wine the players serve up at your table. It's really good, albeit surprising. 

There are two other possibilities besides win and lose. A stalemate or a no-sell. A stalemate occurs when the players don't win or lose and is often a variant of failure. These events are easier to adapt to than an actual failure, there is merely a pause in the action while the party prepares to continue. The nice part a stalemate means the players are interested in your campaign, wish to continue, and are invested. They just can't do what you expected right now. Roll with it. 

Mastering picking up stuff after
a mistake. It is the first step to
mastering anything. 

A no-sell is the worst outcome. There is something happening that the players do not like, dig or understand. They simply want no part of your campaign as it exists. That totally sucks because give a table of 4 or more players, the odds are there will be something one or more people won't be interested in. This is more than a simple adaptation. It can mean a change in theme and style of presentation. Or even a total change of story or theme. 

In one of my campaigns, I had a dungeon entirely populated with insects and spiders. After one room of combat, I discovered that one of my players had a visceral reaction to bugs. I had props and everything. Rattles, scrapers for eerie sounds, a bag with something furry inside, plastic toys, and so on. And she would not be having any of it. 

How could I possibly ditch all of that fun for one player's enjoyment or lack thereof? 

Well, since that player was getting ready to pack up and leave, the choice was easy. The next room had rats. She seemed indifferent. Me too because The Dungeon of the Rat was really dumb. 

In the third room, I tried snakes. 

She asked, "Do they look friendly?"  

"Well. No," I answered. 

But it was a lifeline. It wasn't that the players disliked the idea of a dungeon crawl or playing D&D yet again on Saturday night. Just one feature, bugs were not for them. It turned out my props could be used in different ways. They were still effective. And everyone enjoyed The Temple of Serpents more than "the unnamed dungeon of spiders and ick" I planned. 

Sometimes, rephrasing or reskinning a setting is all that is required. 

Other times, you have to completely change course, mid-stride to engage the players. This is an absolute abandonment of everything for something else. It sucks, but it is preferable to the players being forced into certain scenarios against their will.  

This brings us to another concept DMs should avoid, railroading. The above example with the conversion from bugs to snakes is not railroading because the players wanted a dungeon crawl but didn't want to deal with spiders and centipedes. Everyone was on board, a tactic choice to play was actual buy-in, only without spiders. It's a reskinning of an acceptable idea. 

Railroading is a different beast to be avoided. 

Suppose I had created "The Dungeon Crawl to Save Not Just The Universe, but ALL of the Known Universes", and the players wanted and expected a game of courtly political intrigue? Forcing them into my dungeon is a railroad. Don't do it. 

Given that you created a specific scenario that absolutely must be resolved for the world to continue to exist, you, the DM created a massive problem. You are going to have to get very creative to get out of it. In a perfect world, you shouldn't have made the basic premise so all-consuming. If the players aren't going in that hole you made, the main question is who is going in that massive suck hole you made? 

Not the players. They don't want it. However, the players gave you your escape. The Royal Court that hired the players in the first place is your answer. Flesh it out. 

The King wants the Dungeon problem solved immediately before his kingdom is destroyed, but the Queen is looking ahead and wants her son to marry. The Prince wants to marry the Princess of the neighboring kingdom, who is the arch-enemy of his Kingdom. Queen Mom is not enthusiastic about this turn of events but will go along. In secret, of course. The Princess's half-brother happens to be an Uber-Mage that can resolve any issue down in the dungeon with a snap of his fingers if only he was predisposed to do such a thing. Too bad he is only interested in Matilda, the young and attractive spy sent by the Prince's father to neutralize the Uber-Mage before he can take to the field of battle. 

Gee, that has all of the courtly political intrigues the players could desire, and no one but the Uber-Mage has to go down into that trap of a dungeon that you created. Problem solved. 

Sort of. Except you lost all of the hours spent on creating that dungeon. This is the way of D&D campaigns. As mentioned before, there is even a movie about it.  

A railroad would be if the players met the Prince like they wanted to, but then the Prince forces them to go into the Dungeon of Death you created. Or the Queen was kidnapped and the party had to go into the dungeon to get her back. If the Uber-Mage couldn't actually solve the problem, forcing the players into the mucky dungeon. If the King appointed the party to be the Keepers of Honor, leading peasants on a tour of the now safe dungeon, recounting the Heroic Deeds of the Uber-Mage, every weekday morning and twice on Wednesdays... 

Personally, I'd totally use the last one if my players were jerks about the whole thing. But I use a lot of meta humor at the table. It just works for me. It probably wouldn't work all the time or for everyone, but I'm sure I could make it funny. 

Remember, your players aren't antagonists they are your co-conspirators. Read the room and use their ideas to drive the fun. 

So on your first good campaign, you need to know a couple things and master them: 

• Start small, 
• Know what you mean to do, 
• Know where good, bad, and indifferent can happen. 
• Hint: at every party choice. 
• Don't let the dice make choices, 
• only use dice to resolve choices made by the players,
• and never force a choice by dice either for you the DM, or the party. 
• Plan to adapt from there.

The first and the last are just as important as the middle two. Pick anyone to start and you will naturally expand your skills at DMing. You can't possibly sprint to success, so focus on one or two and grow from there. 

Counting the Days... New OSE Character Class for a New Campaign

The counter says 86 days until the OSE books I backed are shipped. I have no special knowledge of the workings of this Kickstarter, I simply set the countdown to October 31st. I hope they start shipping October first, but that is just whistling in the wind. Kickerstarter merely lists an October date as a due date. They could ship on November 1st for all I know and it would still be close enough for me.  

Anyway, I am targeting Thanksgiving weekend for the kick-off of a new wacky campaign. This one uses several new character classes I have in mind: Unicorn, Veteran, Hood or Hoodlum, Kobolds of three kinds, and Monomachus. Of these half dozen or so classes, the most brain power and testing have gone into the Veteran. 

I visualize this character as a Vietnam-era U.S. soldier. The reason I picked this archetype is their depiction in the media is a rather well-documented reality breaker. This type of character often appears with standard-non-standard equipment, anything from WWII to the Aliens franchise, all based on what the prop department had at the time. Oddly, there are records of soldiers of all kinds using anything from spears to Thompson machine guns and everything in between. What is uniformly absent is the host of high-tech gizmos that modern troops need batteries and electricity to operate. 

Then there are the magic numbers. While researching soldiers, I got two numbers: 70 lbs and 210 bullets. This is the number of things soldiers can have. The gist of these two numbers is, that soldiers have to weigh protection vs. lethality vs. mobility. Soldiers pick underwear or bullets or food. It's really simple and apparently, soldiers have been doing it for more than 2000 years. So, while I am picturing a U.S. soldier, it could apply anywhere. That's actually nice. 

I have already posted about guns and bullets. I'll talk about what playtesting showed me about guns another day. 

In this post, I'll share what I noticed about soldiers in general, which allows me to set some standards for abilities and capabilities. Since I know soldiers can carry a lot of stuff, their prime requisite is Consitution. Not only do soldiers use it every day they also are immunized against all manner of things. They start their career through a vetting process which means they are on the higher end of the stamina scale. 

Next, soldiers are trained for combat. They receive both a small historical curriculum of knowledge paired with modern tactics. They are adaptable and wily. For this reason, I can pair physical equipment with knowledge to give them a bonus of 2 on their AC without getting tied up in actual equipment and what stats they should have. A modern soldier has better protection and training to avoid or capitalize on specific historical styles of combat. At least better than any pseudo-medieval type character. This is everything from physical protection like a helmet and body armor to situations one should avoid. Plus 2 sounds reasonable.  

Soldiers have a lot of physical training so they are amenable to using virtually any weapon. They have proficiency but do not have any bonuses for their training. Where they do get a bonus of 1 is in the case of avoiding surprise, which is a combat-non-combat skill. They are always on the lookout for ambushes. 

The other part of their training is time management. This skill allows the soldier and his party to move 5% to 20% faster than typical over a day. They aren't running or moving faster, they are simply making sure everything moves more efficiently. I.E. a five-minute rest stop doesn't turn into a 15 or 30-minute break. This bonus only applies to walking movement. If animals or wagons are thrown into the mix, the physical limits of those things take precedence. Another piece of this ability is soldiers have watches and compasses which are helpful for travel.  

I had considered a number of other skills but decided against them. In particular, I thought about tracking, detecting, and healing. Not every soldier can perform these tasks beyond what an average person already. If I wanted to do that, I wrote a whole book on that subject - Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners. This book provides professional character types like a healer, a scout, etc. which either extend the normal character classes with some new professional skills or allows the creation of a fully formed non-combat orientated professional character. The other advantage of this is this Veteran class doesn't steal any function from any other class such as tracking from rangers or trap detection from thieves.  

Ah... August

For some reason, everything slows down on the blog in summer. I have a ton of things going on apparently. The garden is rocking, there are five family birthdays and an anniversary in July and August. 

We worked in a concert or two and wine tasting. 

In the next few weeks, big gaming things are happening. Looking at the countdown, there are only 90 days until my OSE books are shipped. After that, I plan on launching a campaign for the kids. They have never played old-school D&D and OSE is kind of my go-to set to play. 

I've already started writing the scenario. I'm hoping to have 7-12 players for a couple of months as a playtest. There will be at least 6 non-standard classes for them to use plus all of the regular ones available in the OSE books. I can't wait. 

I hope to develop this campaign into a module or three.  

Recently, I decided to open a new social media channel on Locals. (Update: I decided to close my account. I just didn't use it enough.) I call it The Map Bag, but there is little to nothing about gaming there. It's actually named after the bag I carry around for art supplies and computer junk. It will be a good place for many non-gaming posts, like this one. It's a tip jar of sorts. I don't play on paywalling any posts, but the built-in pay feature is there. 

I do poorly marketing myself and it has been a very long time since I have introduced a new product. I hope that changes because I have some ideas kicking around. I just won't have time for a while. 

So, here are some links to the products I do have. 

Swashbuckler Character Class for D&D and AD&D Swashbucklers for D&D and AD&D

Zero to Hero: Uncommon Heroes Zero to Hero

Character Sheet for AD&D Character Sheet for AD&D

Kobold’s Folly Mini Setting Kobold’s Folly

Compass Rose Inn Mini Setting Compass Rose Inn

The Hex Pack The Hex Pack

I'll see you around at the end of summer. 

Return to Brookmere by Rose Estes

Today, I'd like to look at a bit of nostalgia. The title is Return to Brookmere by Rose Estes. This whole series of books was one of my favorites. 

Title: Return to Brookmere

Author: Rose Estes

Year: July 1982

Pages: 153

Rating: ★★★★ 

In this title, you take the role of an Elf named Brion. The story starts with a multi-page character sheet, the description begins with your height, weight, and appearance before moving on to clothing, weapons, armor, and gear. Of note, you seem to be wearing elven chainmail and have a magic necklace. Your mission is to scout your former home of Castle Brookmere. 

Back in 1982, I would have been 10. This style of storytelling made quite an impression on me. It was a merger of Choose Your Own Adventure and classic D&D. Each entry usually ends with 3 choices to pick from to progress the story. It wasn't at all like the open-end D&D sessions but it was pretty close. Often you hit the "The End... go back to the beginning," which usually meant you did something careless. 

I have mapped out whole adventure games like Star Smuggler. It is rather unnecessary for this title as it's so brief. There are 12 endings, good or bad. There are 24 choice pages and 15 or so jump pages that ask the reader to move to a new page without a choice. I like to call these tension pages as the reader will flip through several pages of text before having to hop to another page for a choice. It's a neat trick. 

Jousting Tourney - An Unusual Game

I am tearing through reviews this month, figured I take a break and talk about something else I enjoy. The first game book that I have extensive experience with was Chainmail. My dad was a huge fan of wargaming and back then it was all WRG. It's a 'tich hard to teach a 3 or 4-year-old the ins and outs of morale, light vs. heavy troops, average dice, army point systems, and the like. 

So on the weekends, Chainmail was our go-to game. My personal favorite section is the Jousting Table. If you don't have a lot of time, The Jousting Table is always there. It's a diceless system made up of a simple pair of tables and a shield schematic. Pick a position and target, compare and there are your results. 

Being my dad, we had 25 mm figures for every entrant in the Tourney. Even better, my dad cribbed lines from books and movies like Ivanhoe, The Lone Ranger, and an amazing number of Errol Flynn movies. The results were not simply "kill", "unseated", etcetera. It was a full-on color commentary on the action. More akin to hockey than jousting. 

Every once in a while, I like to throw a wildly different mechanic at my players. The more complex the rule system, the harder it is to integrate a completely new mechanic. I have simply written ruleset for sprinting, I call it the Movement Game. It is less than one page long, has a picture or two to help, and is largely based on AD&D's regular movement system. It is also remarkably non-lethal and covers a range of scenarios. The danger of it is players will try to invoke it when things go to hell in combat. It's relatively harmless when player-invoked. 

I probably came up with it while thinking about the Jousting Table from Chainmail. Instead of a table, every character has a figure or chit and can move an inch, one right after the other. Dirt simple. 

For my next session in November, I am brainstorming a mechanic called "Evil Eye". A character who has the center position on a gameboard can impose a status effect like "freeze", "fall" or "flee" on enemies. The central player can only affect a 30-degree arc of the playing area, so keeping enemies away is difficult because the players are surrounded. Exactly who is giving the orders really depends on the party, who realizes the center of the board is important, etc. So it could be the Super Amadeus Arch-Machiavellian... or the cook he hired. 

It's so much fun to bring something simple to the table.