Blogging’s a funny thing. Sometimes you can’t sleep because you have too many ideas running through your mind. Sometimes when you wake up in the morning, you can’t think of one damned thing to write about, and you wind up not being able to sleep because your writer’s block is driving you crazy.

Problems, and Massively-Multiplayer Solutions

Here at Stupid Ranger, we’ve always had a much easier time writing about D&D when we’re playing frequently. It’s a kind of feast-or-famine thing — and right now, it’s famine. During certain times of year, it’s difficult to get everyone together to play. On top of that, Dante and SR are moving far, far away for a couple years to a place called Colorado (or, as I like to refer to it, “Thunder Bluff”). We’ve been considering several options as to how to both A. keep in touch and B. keep playing D&D together.

I was talking to the lovely Efreak about this situation, and she suggested that perhaps we play World of Warcraft together. Now, you have to understand — I have long been a person who swore that they would never touch an MMO as long as they lived because I was afraid that it would suck up my whole life, and now here is my wife suggesting that I install the beast on my PC. However, she also assured me that my life would be forfeit the moment that getting epic PvP raid gear became more important than my son, and so I decided to bring it up to the rest of the crew. To make a long story short, I now have a level 21 Shaman and I’m very disappointed that Ghost Wolf form makes you neither invisible nor intangible. My cohorts also have characters on the same server, and we like killing things together.

Broadening Our Horizons

All of us here at Stupid Ranger are very broad-spectrum geeks, and D&D is not our only form of fun. Recently, I’ve had the urge to write, but it’s rarely been about D&D (as you can see by my prolific posting here as of late). What I have had the urge to write about for some time now, is videogames and movies and other general geekery. As it turned out, my compatriots have been having similar urges.

Thusly, we are considering broadening the scope of what we do here at Stupid Ranger. Please do not panic if you see a post about how amazing and frustrating Mega Man 9 is, a scathing review of “The Happening“, or epic tales about being a complete newb in WoW. You may also expect to see the same good stuff you usually see here, and we will (of course) tag everything in a way that we can still be RPGBloggers.com compatible (and so those of you who don’t care what my thoughts on Rock Band 2 are can continue reading RPG-related stuff only).

And yes, I absolutely realize the end result is that we’re trying to be Critical Hits. (I mean, who wouldn’t?)

Have Wacom, Will Travel?

In addition, I have been itching to tell more of the Evensbrook story. I have also come to the conclusion that I really don’t have time in my life right now to draw the comic as it was (at least with my sanity intact). Therefore, I am going to ask the Internets for help. If you are an artist, or know of one who would be willing to do this, I am looking for someone to draw the Evensbrook strip. My ideal plan is to have a Penny Arcade kind of setup, where I write stories and funny stuff, and the artist draws the pictures and makes everything look wonderful. Me Tycho, you Gabe. And the position would pay exactly as much as I get paid for this! (And I wouldn’t even make you chip in a few bucks a month on the web hosting, like I do!)

I realize the chances of this actually taking place are slim to none, but on the off chance somebody is interested it might be a lot of fun. A far more likely outcome is that I start simply telling the story as an episodic novel here on the site. Stupid Ranger has several ideas that she wants to start writing about in much the same vein. In any case, we’re going to be firing up the Writers’ Turbines here shortly, so please take your seats and don your protective helmets.

Thoughts?

Admittedly, it does feel a little weird broadening our scope since we have traditionally been a pretty narrow-focused site — but we’re doing this for fun, and this will be fun (hopefully for everybody). We’d love to hear your thoughts on the direction we’re thinking of taking.

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!

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 villain probably didn’t start that way. Very few individuals would kill an entire litter of puppies and then go, “Man, that was great — I sure do love being evil!”. They had to start somewhere. And there’s a lot of ways to get evil, including:
  

  
  
  • Temptation

    It’s said that every man has his price. Somebody found this character’s price. They might have been offered money, or power, or anything — but whatever it was, the character wants it enough that he’ll do morally questionable things to get it.
    

  
  

  • Fear and Anger

    You get enough fear and anger together, and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing anymore. And in your head, committing horrible acts upon whatever you’re afraid of/angry with seems perfectly justified!

  
  

  • Sense of Duty

    This one may contain elements of the previous two. A character works for someone who asks him to do something reprehensible. He knows damn good and well it’s not right. So he’s “just following orders”. Not to say that a mistake flips the switch and makes a character evil all of a sudden, but if this character continues to do this sort of thing and starts thinking of this as “normal” behavior…. who’s to say?

  
  

  
  Note that in all three cases, the common theme of a desire and the willingness to do whatever is necessary to get it exists. It’s in the continued willingness to do evil that lies the heart of a true villain.

Next time, I’ll show you why it’s easier than you might think for a villain to do bad things. Until next time……

Also appearing in the Proper Villainy series:

This week was my first week at my new job in Colorado, however we are not entirely moved out there yet. Most of this week was steeped in the pleasantries of meeting new teammates, managers, and hangers-on and it offered me a unique opportunity to reflect on how these interactions play out both in real life and in roleplaying.

First impressions matter.

The words you choose to introduce characters to one another can really influence the dynamic of their first interaction. If a given character selected slightly more threatening words or a passive tone of aggression, they might be welcomed differently than they would if the person was overtly friendly.

I found that in my (boring ol’) Real Life, the experience I have in roleplaying really helps me identify when my impressions are getting colored by the words people choose and the tone that they take with me. This doesn’t prevent me from making my first impression, it just helps to give a little additional perspective.

You can’t underestimate that ‘click’.

As I began interacting with my new work team, a few people instantly ‘clicked’ with me. The intangible connection that you feel with some like-minded people can really go a long way if you don’t resist it in your roleplaying games. Some good advice I can give to prevent artifical damaging of those inherent connections is not to typecast your NPCs.

Let them have shades of grey and personality quirks that will endear them with the players. Capitalize on those connections as they occur and don’t resist them just because you had a certain idea in your head when you made that character. Let them grow and evolve just like player characters and they will serve your storytelling much better than the alternative railroaded NPC.

The main takeaway from this discussion is to let characters be characters, regardless of who is running them. Let their interactions and first impressions occur, and then evolve as the characters grow. You’ll end up forging some strong character relationships that will serve you all throughout your campaign!

Today, I wanted to re-visit one of my favorite posts from the past.  Inspired by that all-inspiring show, The Simpsons, here is some wisdom for roleplaying, distributed in the unlikely form of insanity peppers, from my post which originally appeared here April 22, 2008.  Enjoy it again!

Visiting the Archives: “I’m Missing the Chili Cookoff!”

One of my all-time favorite Simpson’s episodes, “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Our Homer)”, was on recently. Watching Homer crazed out on the Merciless Peppers of Quetzaltenango reminded me of some of those crazy times in a campaign when you’re not sure what to do, but you’re sure it’s not what you actually are doing.

“To Make Yourself Complete, You Must Find Your Soulmate”

Sometimes it feels as if the DM has set a seemingly simple but deceptively difficult quest, like Homer’s quest to find his soulmate. And often times, we feel unequipped to complete our quest once we learn the true depth of it.

As we embark on this quest, the DM may provide a spirit guide, like Homer’s Space Coyote. It might not be a guide, per se, but some sort of help: a rumor, a prophecy, a random bit of knowledge. So while the quest may seem difficult, at least we have a bread crumb trail to get started.

“This Is Just Your Memory, I Can’t Give You Any New Information”

The biggest obstacle to be overcome in these types of quests is the Great Doubt. This is the time when you’re sure you’ve missed something, and you don’t know what, but you refuse to move forward until you figure out the “missing piece.”

There are two reasons I feel this is the biggest obstacle. First, it is easy to be blinded from that missing piece because you are focused on what you already know. For instance, we recently were quested to save the world, and we had figured out that meant we had to overcome the evil goddess. It wasn’t until much later that we realized (via a Bardic Knowledge check) that the goddess could be killed through a specific ritual. All along, we had known that we had to stop her, but we hadn’t thought specifically about how that could be accomplished. By sitting down and discussing the goal as a group, you’re more likely to figure out that missing bit of information and overcome this obstacle.

The second reason this can be a big obstacle is much more devious; sometimes there isn’t a missing piece to be found. This is a difficult situation because of the mental agony associated with it. You don’t know what to do, and you don’t know how to figure out what to do. You’ve interviewed everyone you can find, you’ve researched every old tome in every library you can find, you’ve even tried consulting with the gods. And now you’re stuck… because there’s no new information to find… there is no “missing piece.” Well, that’s the devious part: this piece isn’t missing, it’s misplaced. The DM is being devious and wanting you to piece together all the obscure bits of information from back to the beginning of the campaign into some coherent, usable body of knowledge. To overcome this particular obstacle, make friends with the historian in the group and review everything that has happened to you since you all met in that tavern.

“The Mind Is Always Chattering Away With A Thousand Thoughts At Once”

To succeed in your quest, you have to overcome the Great Doubt. You have to calm your mind and divorce yourself from the emotional entanglement that comes with your quest. You’ll successfully reach the end of your quest if you take a few minutes of quiet reflection on your goal, and lay off the insanity peppers.

While Dante & I are house hunting this week, our posting schedule will be chaotic at best.  We didn’t want to leave you without the Stupidranger.com content you’ve come to enjoy, I am reposting on of my favorite Dante classics, which originally appeared here August 23, 2007.  Enjoy it again!

On Monday, I began discussing storytelling arcs as seen in other media. Today, I’d like to take a look at everyone’s favorite yesteryear storytelling device, the radio. For many years, our grandparents generation would tune in to radio serials, which told stories in a very different way than television or movies do today.

Situation and Interaction

Most radio programs are structured in a narrated situation/interaction style of prose. Often, you will find a dissociated narrator to the story that sets up a scene, wherein voice actors play out their roles for a small vignette and then the plot progresses. These small plot pieces are sometimes last the entire length of the episode, and the listener must continue to tune it to see how the story slowly unfolds.

To my mind this format is easily digestable, fun, and interesting because it focuses on strong character interaction. The narration is second to the interplay between the voice actors and this can directly map to your roleplaying campaign. This approach really focuses on roleplay, and has the added benefit of being quite easy for the DM to manage. Simply put your characters in a situation, give them some sort of a catalyst, and let the player interaction both entertain and color the story for you.

The main difference between the classic radio storyline and your campaign is that you will have to be sensitive to how long the “episode” lasts. If your players get tired of talking to one another, are confused, lack direction, or are just plain ready to move on you have to be prepared with the next piece of campaign content to continue the story along, but knowing when to let your roleplayers take center stage can really enhance your gaming experience.

For those of you that have never heard any radio serials before, I found that OpenCulture has provided old Abbott and Costello shows, The Lone Ranger, and more for your listening pleasure.

I came to the realization that my desk has actually been overrun with tiny paper elementals that are constantly in battle for supremacy of my work space.

For those of you who haven’t imagined the horror of my desk, it is in fact covered with several piles of paper which are growing at a distressing rate (the aforementioned paper elementals). They have taken over all visible flat surfaces of my desk, four in-boxes, three file cabinet drawers, and they are making serious inroads in their goal to take over the floor space surrounding my chair.

I joined in battle and attempted to eradicate this infestation, and what a spectacular battle it was. I subdued many of paper elementals with the use of my +1 Stapler of Organization, which does not completely eliminate the problem but certainly makes it easier to manage.

The paper elementals fought back valiantly, summoning assistance from the distant lands of the Fax Machine and the Email, and both factions provided reinforcements when the battle looked to be turning to my favor. In the end, I took 1d4 damage to the webbing of my left thumb as one of the tricky little devils bit me.

It is with a heavy heart that I report on my inability to properly defeat this infestation of the paper elementals. It is my hope that when I re-join battle, I will be able to summon the divine power of the Document Retention God, who will grant me the ability to throw away these horrible little monsters.

Pray for me, friends, that I may be victorious.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the crafting of story arcs and how this is best achieved in a roleplaying environment. Before long I started considering the story telling mechanisms employed by other mediums.

Let’s have a look at the moving picture victrolla first

Before I launch into this too far, I’m going to be totally transparent: I finally got around to watching the season premiere of Heroes and that is where much of this discussion stems from. I will attempt to discuss things at a macro level and will avoid spoiling things. Consider yourself warned.

Some dramatic television shows tend to go for the long story arc that will span an entire season. This was similar to the first season of Heroes, however in tailoring a story this way you set yourself up for either a big payoff or a big let down. Most D&D campaigns I have been in build their storylines in this fashion, for better or worse. I have found that unless something unexpected happens at the end, most of my players fail to remember how the campaign resolved itself but remember more the actions of their characters along the way.

Other shows tend to break things up into parallel storylines, which interweave and wrap around each other from time to time and all aim toward a common endpoint. This is somewhat similar to the second season of Heroes, but the downside to this style of storytelling is confusion and the fact that when you’re focusing on one set of stories the rest of the characters (your players in the RPG world) are left out of the mix unless you involve them in some other fashion.

Since there’s not much data yet on the latest season of Heroes, I would like to look at the sum of the existing parts that we have seen so far. The third season has started out in more of a “pressure cooker” mode. In this method of storytelling, a lot of activity and plot happens in a short time. This is intended to put the familiar (and even not-so-familiar) characters on a path so you can get ready to follow them.

This method is usually best reserved for the start of campaign or restart of campaign sessions, where you must quickly reestablish the plot and create some compelling reasons to stay tuned. This mechanism is also quite useful when you’ve noticed that the interest in your campaign is waning or your player characters have recently gotten into something they are not interested in but had to finish by virtue of the task.

A good real-world example is the time I combined a compelling plot point with a pre-constructed module and the module proved to be much longer than I expected. By the end, all the players wanted to do was get done so they could move on, and the time spent finishing the module was grating on them. Once we got out of the module, I kind’ve hit the fast-forward button in order to get them moving forward along the plot again and the new developments made things more interesting for them again.

Stay tuned for more!

I will periodically be selecting a different medium and trying to find out how we can learn by the way they tell their stories. By standing on the backs of these giants, we might be able to build our own stories in a better way!