Behind the Screen: What comes first?

As I begin the process of designing my next campaign, I found myself inspired in a different way than I am used to. Normally, I tend to generate my campaigns based on two major factors: what classes that my players have selected and cues from the backstory of my campaign setting.

This time it's all about me.

Well, maybe not about me explicitly... but about my NPCs. As I was driving across the frozen plains of Nebraska *shudder*, I came up with some very vivid ideas for some NPCs. In the past, I have stuck to major archetypes for my main characters and improvised many of my lesser NPCs.

A sidenote: often my improvised NPCs are the more memorable ones. Anything born from spur of the moment roleplaying and the influences of sugarfied Vanir is bound to be somewhat memorable.

Anyway, back to the point... the NPCs that I stitched together in my mind varied wildly in character class and background, which left me with another quandary: how do I integrate all of these guys together within one storyline?

Essentially, that's where I am at now... I'm trying to generate an underlying plot that will span disparate cultures in a meaningful way. I suspect I will create several plot episodes that patchwork these characters together, with a common plot backing material and stuffed with the warm cotton batting of interesting roleplaying.

That's it for a strange quilt metaphor now, and I'm off to put a log on the fire because the cold is apparently getting to me! Game Masters, how do you generate your storylines? NPCs first? Characters first? Plot first? Let's hear it!

Looking forward to 2009!

As we bound headlong into the new year, all of us over at Stupid Ranger Central met and came up with some resolutions for 2009.

Annoying things, begone!

Because of this fact, in the coming weeks you will see some changes over here at StupidRanger.com. We have been using Google AdSense to monetize our site, and two things happened: we've made effectively nothing from this effort and we often see annoying or irrelevant ads on our main page. So AdSense is gone for 2009!

This is not to say that advertising will never return, but it will be only to projects very close to our heart and will be entirely relevant to gaming.

In addition, we've decided to part ways with CafePress. We truly love many of our shirt designs, but we cannot price them competitively enough to make up the cost of maintaining the storefront. Vanir is going to make some of our more popular designs into desktop wallpaper which will be made freely available as he has time.

For the record, our good buddy Yax over at DungeonMastering.com now has a small collection of newly limited edition shirts! Thanks for the support, Yax!

Getting back to the fun of it!

StupidRanger, Vanir, and I have had a lot of fun with this site over the past year and a half. We're going to focus on providing the content that is important to us. Speaking purely for myself, I intend to continue to explore the ins and outs of being a better Game Master. That means one of my immediate resolutions is to get a gaming group together in our new locale. We know there is a small body of gamers right in our subdivision, and my coworkers have expressed some interest in getting back into D&D so this should be an easy win.

Both Vanir and Stupid Ranger have expressed a desire to stretch their creative writing muscles, so I suspect you will see more content from them on this front as 2009 progresses.

Relocating across country to a very demanding job has been taxing on SR and I, and Vanir's new wunderkind has drawn some of his recreational time lately so you can expect that our post frequency might not remain at the daily level that it was through much of 2008.

But that being said, understand this loud and clear: we are not going away. If you do get to feeling lonely and need some extra roleplaying content, you can always go drink from the industrial strength firehose that is RPGBloggers.com. Don't worry, we'll be there too with every roleplaying related post that we write!

I hope everyone gets their New Year off right, we're really looking forward to getting back to the fun stuff in 2009!

Behind the Screen: Old vs. New?

Stupid Ranger and I have recently made the long round-trip to Illinois to spend the holidays with our family, and this resulted in a fairly long hiatus from our standard RPG fare. Thankfully, our good buddy Vanir threw in some excellent roleplaying holiday specials for you all to enjoy!

Out with the old... or not?

On the 16 hour car ride from Illinois, Stupid Ranger and I mulled the start of our new D&D campaign, which will begin in coming weeks. I told her that I've got some exciting ideas percolating and we should get serious about pulling our group together, and then she asked a fairly innocuous question: "Are you going to run [D&D] 3.5 or 4.0?"

On one hand, we are both intimately familiar with D&D 3.5 and she knows the rules inside and out. When starting to play in a new environment with a new group of roleplaying friends, the familiarity is very attractive. One wants to bring his A-game to a new group, yes?

On the other hand, if I am never forced to fully acclimate to the new rule set I am unlikely to ever learn it. Our small group of players are returning to D&D after a long lapse, so they will be unfamiliar with either option which should allow some bandwidth for SR and I to learn along with them. Regardless of the final decision, I'm going to get out my D&D 4.0 books and really give them another read.

I will gladly welcome sage advice on this matter as I plunge headlong into campaign planning!

Thanks for putting up with the cold winter hiatus, we've got some exciting things in store for the new year that will be announced soon! Stay tuned!

Looking back at our five-day forecast...

This week, Stupid Ranger and I are seperated by the vast expanse of 900 miles as I am back in Illinois working this week. She will join me next week to celebrate Christmas with my family, but in the meantime we've both been experiencing severe bouts of winter weather.

I had the good fortune to drive home in nearly four inches of snow and ice, so the going was slow. I had quite a bit of time to think about the site, and I remembered this post from an especially strange bout of weather we had earlier in the year and thought I'd put it up again for your continued consideration.

We are still experiencing our holiday gaming drought, hopefully we will get our gaming schedule (and therefore our posting schedule) back to Regular Status after the new year. Until then, expect to see roleplaying themed holiday merriment, glimpses back into our archives, and new content as the muse strikes us!

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Originally posted by Dante on 2/4/08

Here in StupidRangerVille, we have been experiencing some very strange weather today. It is what is known as a thundersnow (or winter thunderstorm) where the primary precipitation of snow and sleet is accompanied by thunder and lightning... it is relatively rare and quite interesting to behold.

Sir Geekelot, one of our current campaign-members messaged me to confirm said strange weather and heralded it as a sign of The Apocalypse... and that got me thinking about weather in the context of our D&D sessions.

Wow, it's raining again...

In most of my campaigns we have often hand-waved weather, or used it as a relatively cliche' foreshadowing element to illustrate impending doom. I know that many rules systems exist for actually interacting with weather-systems and how to use it in your settings, but often having to look up those charts for movement encumbrance or situational modifiers to attack and damage is too much work for me so I regularly just use an ad-hoc method of doling out pluses or minuses depending on the situation in front of me.

I have found that as characters advance in levels, their level of concern for environmental conditions seem to wane. Flipping through a few of the Monster Manuals, I have found a few elemental based baddies that seem to be intense concentrations of (or elementals created by) terrible weather conditions. We had a seafaring campaign in college that actually got to experience some of those creatures first-hand, and I can tell you that it is a unique experience.

If you don't like the weather, just wait a few days.

I haven't loosed any of these terrors on our current campaign (yet), but I would be interested to hear if anyone has done anything cool with the weather based elemental creatures or used weather in an interesting way to color your campaigns.

Has anyone been able to make the environment significant enough that characters actually care how it impacts them as they progress to higher levels?

Before everyone starts sending us boxes of E.L. Fudge cookies and order-by-phone pizzas as provisions, never fear... its supposed to be 50 degrees here tomorrow! (Although donations of sugar and pizza are always readily accepted!)

The Twelve Rounds of D&D (abridged for your sanity)

On The Twelfth Round Of D&D
My DM Gave To Me:

12 Garys Gygaxing

11 Runes Exploding

10 Mounds A-Shambling

9 Umbers Hulking

8 Fighters Tanking

7 Clerics Casting

6 Rogues A-Sneaking

+5 Ring of Protection

4 Ioun Stones

3 Undead

2 Saving Throws

And A Hit I Rolled Critically

Of Hobbits and Adventures

This past weekend, Dante & I went to a dinner with some of his coworkers who also relocated to Colorado.  Our post-dinner conversation turned to a very familiar theme, one our good friend Tolkien incorporated into his well-known books:

You Can Never Truly Go Home

This is a theme that is very true to life.  As you grow up and move away from your childhood home, change will set in.  The places may or may not physically change.  But those you left behind will change as they have new experiences.  And you will have new experiences that will change your perception of things.  Things will never be exactly the way you remember; you can never truly go home.

And how this is related to roleplaying...

In my experience as a player, as life in adventures moves on to great things, the hometown seldom changes.  It provides a comfortable place to which adventurers can return when things are tough or just to unwind and refocus energies to their "save the world" quests.

There are occasions when this has not be true.  I played a character once whose mother was murdered by the Big Bads.  I had a difficult time moving my character beyond the destruction of her home environment, and for the rest of the time in that campaign, there was always that unsettling knowledge that she no longer had a home.

And my point to all of this

As a player, I never want to see my character's home environment change throughout the campaign.  But I also know that changes occur while you are out adventuring.  The challenge for the DM is to understand how your players are attached to the home environment and incorporate change according to your players' needs.  If returning to the home town is an integral part of the players routine, introduce small changes that don't disrupt their way of life too much but are significant enough to be noticed.

Behind the Screen: The Winter Drag...

In addition to the gaming hiatus due to our relocation, we are also smack in the middle of the Winter Drag that affects many roleplaying groups. With all of the social obligations, shopping, and general merriment that is involved with the Thanksgiving/Christmas corridor, often there is not time for traditional roleplaying.

But there's always exceptions!

The olden days of college gaming were about the only time during the holidays when we would roleplay, and we had many contributing factors to making this happen: proximity to other gamers, the need for a break from studying, and the lack of family members demanding various holiday gatherings until it was time for the short Thanksgiving or Christmas break that we were given.

Ways to Donder your Blitzen during the holiday season

If you do really want to game during the holidays, one-shot campaigns are your best friend. That, and stringent scheduling. I usually put some cycles toward campaign planning during the winter months, putting together a few episodes worth of common campaign encounters is a pretty quick and easy prospect that doesn't require other people to complete.

I also like to plan some holiday related encounters during my campaigns so the characters in my campaign have the opportunity to relax and celebrate in-game. I've had Santa Claus drop off a few fun presents, and the occasional useful item to my players in the past. The Easter Bunny shows up in every one of my campaigns in some way or another (the vorpal Easter Bunny from another dimension was fun one year) and most of the time the players appreciate the fun diversion.

Occasionally, you will have a player or two that balk at the anachronism or find the presentation of holiday related campaign events childish, but those people can officially Cram It With Walnuts.

Take the time to relax and enjoy the holiday season, however don't forget that you can use these times to create some great moments for use in your campaigns once the presents are unwrapped and the turkey is far into leftovers!

Roleplay better by being personally accountable...

I've been doing a lot of reading on management-style topics lately as a result of my new job, and after you read several different books in rapid succession you start seeing patterns. One such pattern is that of personal accountability, and most of the books and websites that I have been reading are discussing this topic in preparation to become a better employee or to "go that extra mile" in order to make you stand out at the office. (Not that I need this advice, I'm already pretty outstanding, thank you very much!)

Be a better roleplayer by asking how you can make the situation better.

Many people complain about their roleplaying experience as a function of the shortcomings of the DM or the interaction of the roleplaying group as a whole. Blaming others is as natural as drawing breath for most people, and in some cases it may be warranted and deserved. I want to challenge everyone to stop blaming everyone else and take some in-game actions to get noticed and inject your character into the roleplaying mix.

Ask yourself the following question: "What can I do to get more actively involved with this story or my adventuring party?" By being personally accountable for helping to steer the story or interact with the other players, you will drive yourself to not be a victim of circumstance within your group. This may spawn a myriad of different results given your roleplaying group and DungeonMaster, but I'm sure it will open up some roleplaying avenues to make you a more satisfied player.

This also works for introverted roleplayers too!

As you all may know, the DM often has many things to juggle behind the screen and it can be quite easy to overlook the more quiet and subtle roleplayers in the group. If you're not a very outgoing person and this is an especially hard challenge, ask yourself what you can do to support someone else's strong roleplaying. Often, acting to support another player's roleplaying will get you noticed because its so darned unusual that most DMs will take pause when you do this.

This advice should also help in groups with very strong roleplayers, and it will help safeguard you from getting drowned out by their bold style. Having fun is the first step, that should cause the DM to notice and throw some more formulated roleplaying/adventuring opportunities your way!

Spicing up the boring road...

Stupid Ranger and I traveled home for the Thanksgiving holiday this week, making a very dull 16 hour drive from Colorado to Illinois to visit my family with our very own riding dog, Teddy, in tow. In between cycling music CDs and keeping tabs on which state license plates we saw rolling down the road alongside us, my thoughts inevitably turned to our D&D campaigns and the inevitability of longer haul travel.

Does that sign really say that? Yeah... it does. Wow.

This is a topic we have covered before in some fashion, however I found myself interested in the small details as we went down the road. Strange things sparked conversation, such as a giant hand painted yard sign in the middle of a field that said "OUTLAW SODOMY" in big letters. Adventure is ensured for the intrepid folks that would seek out the people so dedicated to that particular cause that they got out the ol' bucket of Dutch Boy and made that thing happen!

Other, less controversial points of interest caught my eye... weird storefronts, museums to historical figures I have never heard of, even some truly strange town names. Before long I was keeping a little crib sheet in my head of ideas for my next D&D campaign.

It just goes to show you, new ideas can come from anywhere!

Surviving the Crazy Times -- The New Home

Dante & I successfully completed our cross country trek and are settling nicely into our new home in Colorado.  Life here is pretty much the same with some very notable exceptions.  One exception, a very happy one, is the fact that we can see the mountains anytime we leave the house.  Another exception, not so happy, is that we haven't played D&D in a Very Long Time.

Around all the unpacking and trips to various stores to buy those things that a) didn't make the trip or b) we didn't need before and now we have to have, we have been trying to keep up with the gaming culture via World of Warcraft.  It's something, but it just doesn't have the same level of interaction and spontaneity that I truly enjoy in a good RPG.

A couple of our readers have mentioned that they live in the area, and I'm hoping after the first of the year, when things should (hopefully) be more settled, we'll be able to get together to meet the local gamers.

In the meantime, with little happening in the way of RPG in our household, Dante & I are a little stretched for RPG-related content.  You may see fewer posts on RPGBloggers.com, but you can still expect to see some random posts, as well as WOW-related content showing up on our site.

So far, we are surviving the crazy times.  I'll keep you posted if that changes. :)

Monstrous Advice

Surprise!! I'm still around, but with the move, I've been a little busy lately.  I hope you all didn't miss me too much! With the holidays, I'm sure things will be a bit chaotic around stupidranger.com, but I'll try to be here more often for you!

I had one of those blog moments... when you read someone else's blog, and it sparks an idea that sinks into your brain and rattles around until you decide to do something about it.  Shelly Mazzanoble posted a funny and insightful look at the fact that geek girls do not often fit the general profile for popular women's magazines, especially the advice columns.  And it got me to wondering what kinds of letters would be submitted to monster women's magazines.  Here's what I think we might see:

Dear Popular Monster's Magazine:

My awesome monster boyfriend has invited me to move in with him.  I'm really excited, because he's so awesome, but his cave is less than fabulous.  He works in a dungeon as an adventurer-control technician, and he is always bringing home bones and armor fragments that he leaves all over.  Worst of all, he brings home every wand he comes across, and they are just sitting a pile in the main room of his cave.  It's a disaster!  I'm afraid that if I try to organize his collection, he'll be mad.  I really want this to work because I think he might be The One. Please, can you tell me what to do about the mess?

Monstress in Love

And for the monsters getting ready for their big wedding day:

Dear Modern Bride-Zilla:

My future monster-in-law is driving me crazy!  She insists that the wedding should be in the old-fashioned swamp instead of the up-scale dungeon my fiance and I both want.  She thinks all the bridesmonsters should carry swamp weed bouquets instead of the stink blossoms I want.  We are not getting along, and my fiance wants to give in to all her demands.  How do I find the right balance without compromising on my dream wedding and not alienating my future monster-in-law?

Worried about the Wedding

It's all starting to come together now...

Stupid Ranger and I are finally getting settled into our new home! Fortuitously, as if by some divine plan, I received a sales email from the guys over at Geek Chic lauding their new demi-Sultan table that will be released to the masses on November 23rd.

Cursed Consumerism!

This just threw a healthy splash of gasoline on the fire for me to plan my new gaming sanctuary at my new home. While I might not be able to afford the Sultan (unless their big reveal is more economical models!), I certainly would like some sort of a custom gaming area to inhabit with my motley band of adventurers.

The space itself needs some finishing, so once that is done I am looking ahead for some good multi-purpose ideas for using that space as a gaming/recreation area. I'm thinking a big, home-rolled whiteboard would be nice both for drawing encounters or keeping score for the ol' dart board. A more high tech solution might come along depending on how my research into multitouch surface technology goes... that may take a back burner until warmer months when I can comfortably build things outdoors again.

Other necessary components, aside from a place to rest one's butt:

• A food/drink/alcohol dispensary of some kind.
• One to many book containment units
• One to many miniature containment units
• Some sort of music system to provide some mad roleplaying tunes
• The all-important ambiance factor, meaning a place to display the ample Lord of the Rings prop/sword collection
• Some sort of glorified display for my autographed OD&D sourcebooks, perhaps with mini Gygaxian Shrine (seriously not a joke here people, I want this!)
  

I will provide updates as they develop... or when the guys at Geek Chic finally get the hint and drop ship me their newest model for... uh... review and testing purposes. Heck, I'll even take their slightly loved used equipment off their hands!

As I return from dreamland, feel free to shout out whatever random stuff that comes to mind when you think about your ideal gaming space. Coolest ideas I haven't thought of already will likely get you hugged if we ever meet IRL, and have a distinct possibility of being implemented in the final Roleplaying Dungeon!

Continuing to fly your roleplaying flag...

Amid the hail of boxes and packing paper, I found a few minutes tonight to catch up on reading the comments to last Wednesday's post on your right to be unique. Comments on that post are certainly a fascinating read and spawned off enough material to warrant another post on the matter, since many of you seem to have some valid points.

Humility replaced with shame/bravado

One of our commenters, Marty Lund, pointed out quite correctly that humility isn't something that comes commonly in our culture. This is cutting very close to exactly the point I was trying to articulate... you can take ownership of your nerdly leanings in a humble way and not defaulty replace it with shame as many of us do.

When I am approached by someone at work that notices the d20 on my desk or my "Chewie is my co-pilot" sticker in my cube, I usually just tell them plainly that I enjoy roleplaying games (yes, like D&D) and I let the conversation unfold. Usually they don't throw holy water on me and cast my demons out, nor do they laugh and tease me... in fact, most folks that I work with have at least tried roleplaying or know someone that is into it well enough to have some context, and it turns out to be a good conversation.

I will admit to being a little pumped up from watching a certain president-elect speak when I wrote the last post, but I really am not advocating you jump up on your chair at work, cite page 32 of the OD&D sourcebook, put on a towel as a cape and run around your cube to show how much you're into the roleplaying nerd genre. In the end, I'd just be happy if we fought a little bit against that common (but not universal) reaction to self-deprecate.

That being said: I really wouldn't MIND if you did the things I mentioned above. :)

For the record: yes, Anonymous, I am married. To Stupid Ranger (the person, not the site) and luckily she's as much of a nerd as I am!

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post, the intelligent discourse was certainly refreshing!

Visiting the Archives: Travelling...

This Behind the Screen piece was posted in a much simpler time before Stupid Ranger and I were cast across the country for my day job. We are in the process of unloading boxes at the moment, so please feel free to sup at the banquet of this post while we figure out which drawer gets our silverware and which one gets our character sheets.

Enjoy!

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originally posted by Dante on 10/13/2007

This weekend the StupidRanger crew is heading out of town and that got me to thinking: how does everyone handle traveling long distances? I would like to recount one failed attempt on my part and open up the floor to obvious criticism and comments.

Rollin', rollin', rollin' (wheels, not dice!)

In one of our recent campaigns, the party was tasked with traveling across country to locate pieces of an important artifact. It was all fun and games for awhile, I had a few episodic encounters put together for them to experience along the way and I augmented that with a few random encounters.

Even though the encounters fit into the landscape (feral wildlife and whatnot), eventually both the players and I tired of the encounters. They still had a long way to travel, and having already established this as a "dangerous" territory it didn't stand to reason that they would be able to travel unmolested for a week or more.

How not to see the coastal plains on just three gold pieces a day.

Eventually, I ended up giving up and in the best interest of the players I handwaved a fair portion of the rest of the travel. I wasn't very satisfied with this as a DM, I felt as if I should have come up with a more interesting way to transport them across hill and dale without just nixing the "dangerous" aspect of the terrain. The group ended up getting from Point A to Point B and things quickly picked back up once they were wired back into the plot, I suppose a good solution would've been not to establish plot points half of the coastal lands away.

Has anyone else run into this difficulty before? If so, how do you quickly move your group without having a random wizard show up and teleport them where they need to be conveniently?

You have the right to be unique!

I have recently arrived in my new office environment here in Colorado, and there have been more than a few introductions and "getting to know you" type of moments. I am constantly amazed at the number of people that charactarize themselves as being "kind've a nerd" in a given hobby or interest, and the associated sheepishness or shame that comes along with having interests.

You have the right to be unique!

This statement can apply to so many different areas... but you have the right to be unique in your roleplaying or gaming interests, in your choice of characters, even in the systems you play or the modifications you made to said systems. That is one of the lures that makes the roleplaying game space so interesting to me... it is almost always up for interpretation and modification.

Why do nerds always feel ashamed?

It is your right and duty to engage in your roleplaying games, video games, systems, friendships, and interests in whatever way you desire, and it has constantly puzzled me why gamer nerds have this near universal shame that goes along with their interests. I've even seen it spill over into professional areas like computer programming and graphic communications. People seem to want to distance themselves from their passions and skills and I have never understood why.

Me? I'm a nerd and I'm proud of it. I like roleplaying, computer programming, and Heroes. I think it is time that we collectively stand up and embrace our nerdly leanings!

Who's with me?

Visiting the Archives: The Evolution of Your Character

Today is my first day living in Colorado for good, and as a result I got to experience the opening of a new chapter in my own life. For these reasons and more, I decided to look into the archives to find discussion on growing and evolving ones character so I could relate all of this real life change with the changing "life" of your roleplaying characters.

I found this excellent piece written by our very own Stupid Ranger on exactly that topic, I hope you enjoy it! Stupid Ranger and I will be undergoing a significant amount of change over the coming weeks, and as we get adjusted we will augment our new content with some of our favorite archived posts, of which this is one. Enjoy!

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Originally posted on 8/28/2007 by Stupid Ranger


As your character gains experience and continues to explore the great wide world, you may notice the need to evolve. Not to worry, it's completely normal for your character to evolve. There have been many, many campaigns in which I developed a character only to realize that some facet of my character doesn't fit with the group dynamics.

Evolution for the Good of the Many

I originally intended for Skythorn to be more of a background character, there for the battles but nearly invisible during NPC interactions. However, the realization that Lumbar had a tendency to make things more... chaotic meant that Skythorn had to take a more hands-on approach with some NPC's to ensure the party survived the interaction long enough to actually accept the quest. Skythorn did became more of a negotiator and spokesperson than I had originally planned, but she didn't go out and introduce herself to everyone in town or seek additional attention. She evolved for the good of the party without betraying the underlying Skythorn-ness that made her unique.

Evolution for your Own Sanity

Recently, I found myself in another situation in which my original character concept was in contrast with the rest of the group. We started a new campaign, and I build a multi-class Fighter/Cleric since most of the rest of the group were not combat-types. I didn't have a lot of time to develop my backstory , so I fell back on one of the classics: country bumpkin. Silvia was from an unknown outlying community, brought to the group because she could offer support in battle and with healing; she didn't appear to be highly educated and seemed very naive. Unfortunately, the rest of my group all hadbackstories placing them in wealthy families from town or other lines of nobility. My country bumpkin just wasn't working out, and it was making life difficult for me to keep Silvia on good terms with the rest of the group. So, when we were dismissed from our meeting with the king's representative, I dropped the hokey accent and explained to the rest of the group that while I was from a small community, I only played the "simple country lass" around the authority figures to avoid having to deal with their stupidity. She now has two personae: one for the bureaucrats and one for the group.

Evolve Modestly and Logically

If you're having difficulties with something about character after a few sessions, try examining the problem. If it's just that the guy across the table has decided that his character will be in perpetual conflict with yours, nothing you do will change that. However, if your character's personality could be tweaked for the better good (where better good = you having more fun), start identifying a few small steps that would improve your character. Once you've decided on a change, don't just stand up and announce your intentions; find some in-game roleplaying opportunities to introduce your newly evolved character traits.

I do believe, however, that you shouldn't change just for the sake of changing. Evolution doesn't just occur because everything is going great; some catalyst sparks change for the best. Examine the circumstance. Review your character's personality, backstory, profession, race. Take a look at everything carefully before deciding if you really need to change. Then, if you feel that a slight evolution would be for the best, start planning how to implement that change. Remember, this is all about having fun, and if you're not having fun, maybe it's time to change.

Does video game facilitated roleplaying actually exist?

I've had a precious few extended jags in World of Warcraft over the past few weeks as we prepare for our move, and as I played the game by myself I found that it was pretty easy to engage in the storyline. A few times, in fact, I actually felt invested that my character would want to actually help the world and it mattered.

Then I got the opportunity to run through an instance of Ragefire Chasm with some more experienced players. I understand that each person plays the game in their own way, and often the raids are about efficiency. My experience of actually engaging in the storyline was pretty well shattered by "talk to this guy, get this quest, then get back down there and more killing."

So I ask you, loyal readers... has anyone had a satisfactory roleplay experience using a packaged video game (such as WoW, Neverwinter, etc) as a medium? Granted, we weren't trying to replicate D&D style roleplay in our World of Warcraft efforts, but it was a bit amazing how quickly things devolved into hack and slash, efficiency gaming once a group came into the mix.

So let's hear it from you... does video game facilitated roleplay actually exist? Can it be done?

Visiting the Archives: Roleplaying Pitfalls pt. 2: Hogging The Spotlight

Today we bring you the second installment of Vanir's Roleplaying Pitfalls opus, where he details spotlight hogging and how to manage that urge!

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Originally posted on 10/10/2007 by Vanir

I'm SO guilty of this one: you have concocted a brilliant idea that puts your character in the spotlight and provides hours of roleplaying opportunities - for you.

Enjoy your time in the spotlight, but don't hog it every week. If your group spends more time on hastily-constructed side quests that you caused (or worse, watching you complete them alone) than they do on the actual plot, you might want to back off a little bit.

If You Must Hog The Spotlight

Make sure it's worth it! In our group, we usually set aside some time every campaign for some PC-specific stuff, which is a lot of fun. So when it's not my character's turn and I decide to do something completely off the map, I usually try to do something to further the story in my own way.

A good example of this is the time I thought everybody in our party had been captured aside from Bat Loaf and I decided to convince a bunch of low level wizardry students to help me rescue my comrades by showing them how to score with the ladies. Off the tracks: you bet. Hogging the spotlight: check. Well-received by the party: well, nobody threw anything at me (even the Stupid Ranger!) and it was entertaining enough that everybody seemed to be having a good time!

An even better solution would be, if possible, to convince your compatriots to join you on your crazy mission. Your GM's head might explode, but at least you've involved everyone AND you still get to do what you wanted.

Metagame (Slightly)

There's a certain point where you just need to shut up and go with the party. Yeah, I know it's not what your character wants to do and he totally would just leave them and do his own thing in this case. Usually, a D&D campaign is based around the fact that the party has a common goal and is willing to work together to reach it. There's some leeway there, but by and large that's how this game works. As I frequently say on this blog, there are other people at the table, and they probably want to play too. Would you rather play D&D with your friends or continue to play in your sandbox by yourself?

Like so many other things, being in the spotlight is best when done in moderation. A little can be entertaining, too much isn't fun for anyone. Keep the lines of communication open with your group, and you'll find the right balance. Until next time!

Visiting the Archives: Roleplaying Pitfalls...

Last year, our good buddy Vanir created a truly excellent thread on Roleplaying Pitfalls. I would like to present the first installment wherein he examines schtick and its effect on your roleplaying experience.

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Originally Posted on 10/7/2007 by Vanir-

In a lot of gaming groups I've played in, it's not an unusual occurrence for eyes to roll and mumbles of "damn it, not again" to be overheard when somebody decides to roleplay. Frequently, this is because the would-be roleplayer has decided to do something stupid and/or outrageous in the name of roleplaying. Having put much more emphasis on roleplaying in the last several years, I think I've figured out a major reason why -- and how to minimize its effects.

Schtick
When some people roleplay, it's more like they're following a list of unchangeable rules they've established for their character. They're dedicated to "fighting evil" and that's what they do no matter what.The worst example of this is the dreaded "attack on sight" mentality.

I've also seen a lot of people who think a particular concept would be funny and that's their character's schtick for the whole campaign. For instance, their character is afraid of rats so they'd make a big five minute deal about checking for rats under every snowbank if they were in the middle of the Arctic tundra. These kind of characters seem to me like the player is telling a joke that takes six months or more to tell -- but the punchline still makes everybody roll their eyes. It wouldn't be so bad if this was something this character does somewhat regularly in the course of roleplaying, but when it happens without fail, even during battle, it is murder-inspiringly annoying.

You've probably figured out by now that I'm not crazy about this particular brand of roleplaying. Either the characters just get irritating or the players do things that cause things to go horribly wrong "because that's what their character would do". Like charging a dozen orcs all by yourself with a first level wizard.

Of course, there are always the characters that you didn't mean to end up this way. These are the ones that you've honestly set out to roleplay fully, but either the concept didn't work out as well as you'd hoped or the setting changes or doesn't allow you to do what you had planned. And you end up doing the same thing over and over and over and getting bored. Bat Loaf is a very good example of this -- he was a ton of fun to play for the first 5-6 sessions. The problem with Bat was that there were many, many roleplaying opportunities well-suited for him in the beginning and it was fun because his misadventures would spill over into what the other players were doing and vice versa. As the story progressed these roleplaying encounters dried up in favor of Major Plot Events -- but there was still an inn, booze, and women in every town we'd travel to. Eventually the cycle of "go to inn, get drunk and find chick, run away, occasionally Inspire Courage +2 in combat" got old. For everyone, since it meant splitting the party pretty much every single session. And it just got boring for me.

Intentional or not, the problem with schtick is that it eventually gets in the way. One-trick PC's are either a direct hindrance to the game for everyone, or they just aren't fun anymore after awhile.


The Cure

I think schtick comes from three sources: lack of imagination, laziness, and an inability to sense danger. A little effort goes a long way when making your character. And the reason the other players get irritated when a Schticky player does things is because he's not playing the same game they are anymore. He's playing his own and doesn't care about the consequences for everyone else. Which makes them want to hurt him.

Here's a few ways to avoid personal bodily injury:

• Well-Developed Characters
  Well-developed backstory and character motivations and schtick don't mix. They cannot exist together. A well-developed character with a frequent quirk is fine - it's just a personality trait and doesn't define the character. The difference? A one-trick PC is that same quirk armed with a battleaxe.


• Acknowledge That Your Character Has Intelligence
  Your character REALLY hates orcs. Your character is also, in most cases, an experienced warrior. They know it's dumb to face a dozen orcs alone. Instead of attacking them all, think of strategies. You might even use (gasp) TEAMWORK. Or decide that you could do more damage later if you live to fight another day. Most one-trick PC's are roleplayed as if their INT was about 6 or 7. Their INT scores are probably much higher, which means they wouldn't think in such simplistic terms as "ORC! BOB SMASH NOW!". Act smarter than that, and make your PC's act smarter than that.


• Change Things Up
  Nothing says your PC can't change if it's not working as planned. Hell, an emotional crossroads makes for a good roleplaying excuse. Incidentally, that's how I saved Bat Loaf from one-trick PC hell -- I married him off, got him some new abilities, and had him start a bardic rock academy / militia. All of a sudden the old boring stuff became backstory for me to build on and he's fun again.

Hopefully, this will significantly decrease the number of eye-rolls at your gaming table. Have you had problems with Schtick in your gaming group? We'd love to hear them, and how you deal with it.

In the next installment of Roleplaying Pitfalls, I'll talk about another issue plaguing today's modern roleplayer: the dreaded Spotlight Hog!

Until next time....

<evil laughter>

Oh wait, wrong column. My bad!

Constantingly spiraling to new heights...

The weather is starting to turn cold here in Central Illinois, and on a slightly brisk walk out to my car I mused for a moment about how great it would be if I didn't care about what the weather was doing. We happen to be in an area that constantly gets hit by tornados over the summer and we tend to get several bad snowstorms a year that are generally quite inconvenient.

Constantly heightening...

For no particular reason, I started thinking about weather effects in the D&D campaigns that I have ever been in. In the sessions that I have run, I tend to like to use weather to color a scene and not generally as the main focal point of a game, however I have often run into the problem of how to introduce weather as being significant when it hasn't been to your characters up to this point.

This problem is compounded by the fact that as characters get higher and higher in level, they tend to be less and less concerned about environmental factors to their adventures. You could always cop out and make some sort of "killer storm" crop up that does 20d6 lightning bolts, but that just seems a little tired and obvious.

The only sessions that I have been truly impressed by the use of weather as a plot point happened to be a seafaring adventure that we did. The DM essentially made a terrible storm that just hung around and kept getting progressively worse, until it spawned elementals for the group to do battle with. The combination of setting, urgency (if we didn't get off the ship, it was going to sink into the middle of the ocean), and appropriate use of weather-based creatures made this scene a real winner in my mind.

I would love to hear some other success stories where DMs (or players) have used weather to augment a story in a organic, meaningful way. I tend to struggle with this as a DM, hopefully the comments will generate some great new ideas!

Dealing with dramatic stress...

As a side-effect from our relocation proceedings, I have been One Stressed Out Dude. Last night as I sat on my couch waiting in vain for some of Fox's Animation Domination to be funny, I was thinking about stressful situations and how they play out during your standard D&D campaign.

The Dramatic Stress

The first stressful situation I would like to discuss is that of the dramatic stressor. The dramatic stressor is any scenario engineered explicitly to be stressful for the characters. This could be a dramatic plot moment, a tough decision to make, or some other storyline element that requires the players to choose between A and B. (I usually pick A, as a general rule.)

With this approach, you must engineer a way to foster roleplaying as a foundation for the stress and the decision making process. I have had several DM's employ a DECIDE NOW! mechanism of compelling overly thoughtful players into making a snap decision, but I find this approach only limitedly effective for keeping the storyline moving.

Yes, that's amplifying the stress levels felt by the players, but in reality there is a certain amount of thought that goes into your standard character response as it comes from a player. "What would Randor the Magician do in this situation? Wasn't his mother eaten by boars and wouldn't being commanded to feed the pigs be very offensive to him?" and so on.

Stress can help build a cohesive group.

If you can engage your entire group in the decision making process, the dramatic stressor can really turn into a teambuilding experience for your roleplaying group. It is a tool that can be used effectively quite often, so long as you're not forcing your characters into making a decision that they won't benefit from in some way. Keep in mind - plot advancement is a benefit, sometimes as much as treasure or experience!

I'm giving away the big secret!! (Steal this idea.)

During a recent discussion with my lovely co-host Vanir, we got on the topic of the exceeding amount of "regular life as relating to roleplaying" posts that we've done over our time in our tiny little corner of the Internets.

I find the process of relating roleplaying to other areas of life a pretty natural fit. In fact, if you sit back and think about it pretty much all roleplaying decomposes into social interaction and imagination... two cornerstones of most of our lives. I think that in part this realization gave rise to the Great Roleplaying Blogger Boom of 2007, bringing you such greats as Critical Hits, Musings of a Chatty DM, DungeonMastering and others, but it also provides you a very useful all-purpose tool for improving your pencil and paper roleplaying experience.

Step One: Think about the social or creative dynamics of your life.
Step Two: Think of an aspect of your roleplaying game (could be anything, really).
Step Three: See how #1 and #2 interact with one another.

This will lead you to some interesting notions about how to make better characters and build better (or more believable) roleplaying settings, and might even inspire you to take up the digital pen and write your own thoughts.

Good thoughts, like good tape, stick together and if you are so compelled to share your insights with others you might quickly find yourself interacting with our very own blogging community and sharing your own perspectives!

So there you have it. This is a fair measure of my creative process that I use to write my posts every other day, the big secret is out.

Allow me to pose and then answer a few questions:

Q. Does that mean I'm going to change my process?
A. Maybe, but probably not for awhile.

Q. Does this mean that I will cease writing posts using this formula?
A. Heck no, it seems to do pretty well for us so far!

Q. Will you link me if I do steal your idea and start my own blog?
A. Probably, if your stuff is any good (and linking us back too would be nice).

I seriously enjoy considering roleplaying games and how they can impact and be impacted by the way we live our lives. I am historically bad at starting trends like this, but it would be kind've neat if any of my inspired blogging cohorts give this process a try and link back to your resulting post (preferably in the comments for easy tracking).

I'd be interested to see how others interpret roleplaying as life!

Visiting the Archives: Proper Villainy, pt.1 -- Evil 101

One of the great series to grace the halls of this hallowed blog is Vanir's "Proper Villainy" series.  Vanir does a great job of dissecting villainy into little bits of evil, beginning with this first part, which originally appeared here September 2, 2007.  Enjoy it again!

Proper Villainy, pt. 1 -- Evil 101

As recently discussed on dungeonmastering.com, villains add a great element to a campaign: an opposing force that the players can invest themselves in fighting against.

But what makes a really good villain? Let's start with some basic concepts:

• What The Hell is "Evil", Anyway?
  
  I've never been real crazy about declaring alignment for characters. If you have a Lawful Good character and he's homeless and penniless and he steals some bread to survive, does that make him not Lawful Good anymore? What about a man who kills someone in a jealous rage but is otherwise good? Is he now "evil" or is he still a good guy who made a horrible mistake?
  
  People are more complicated than that. "Evil" people are still people -- it's just that the way they view the world is a bit more twisted than most everybody else.


• Nobody Is Born Evil
  
  Bad guys act the way they do because they're EVIL, right? Well, sometimes. In a cartoon or a crappy movie, yeah. The bad guys are just bad and that's the way it is. But a good