I’m writing to you on the eve of my first vacation day of this calendar year, and my musings about enjoying some free time to get some household projects caught up led to musing about character downtime and how often it is glossed over.

In fact, the only characters that I know of who actively sought out roleplaying their off time all exist within our current campaign, and they run the gamut from scoring with local barmaids to providing extra prayers and service to their chosen deity.

Tomfoolery For Dummies

Unfortunately, too many DMs hand wave downtime or worse yet handle it like a cutscene from a film or a training montage from a Rocky movie. It doesn’t have to be this way! I can remember many satisfying days spent in campaigns just doing something in character to pass the time, usually while the DM was looking up a rule or arbitrating something with another few characters.

In one of our college campaigns, several of us took to inventing a dice game (complete with bets) while the DM was busy doing something one-on-one with another character. After he was done, he asked what we were doing as we had attracted most of the other five players into our game at that point, and he had an NPC gambler show up to play the game with us for awhile. This didn’t lead to any specific plot point, but we ended up making some platnium pieces off of the gambler before the night was over. We also got a chunk of roleplaying experience for doing something interesting with our downtime. It was fun for all involved.

In my own campaigns, I have taken to letting characters run with their downtime pursuits. Sometimes these activities, if given some time to grow, can be used as plot points or opportunities for impromptu fun. Other times, its simply a means for character development.

Everybody can get in on the fun!

Players can capitalize on this by really thinking out what their character does to unwind. Don’t take it as assumed that your character does this certain routine each night, especially if you are one of those players that claim to be bored for much of the night. Wander around town, find someplace interesting to go. You might even be able to ask your DM something like: “I’m looking for some adventure tonight! I wander around town to see if anything looks interesting.”

If you’ve got a good DM, they’ll bite every once in awhile and give you that something interesting. Who knows, it might even lead to places you didn’t expect!

Every now and then I hear an argument that has been around as long as there have been laptops and PDA’s to bring to the D&D table: “You’re not using REAL DICE!”

Some say it takes away from the spirit of the game or sucks the magic out. I’ve seen go so far as to accuse the guy running a dieroller program of cheating. I have to say, I don’t really get either of those.

In Which Vanir Divulges The OTHER Reason He Is Surprised He Successfully Wed

I’m a computer programmer by trade, and I’ve been coding since I was literally about 5. Granted, the programs back then were about the Dukes of Hazzard and didn’t really do much aside from:

10 PRINT "BOSS HOGG IS MEAN"

20 GOTO 10

Regardless, once I got a little older and learned about generating random numbers, it wasn’t really a giant mental leap when I realized rolling dice was just random number generation for luddites. And while I can say there is a definite thrill in rolling a d20 during a critical moment and having everyone watch the die roll from your hand, hearts leaping in anticipation with every bounce to see if they all live or die — well, that anticipation is still there if the player clicks “ROLL” in his die roller. It does suck a little that everyone can’t see what you rolled, but then again I know lots of people who use DM screens or simply just have too much junk on the table for people to see what got rolled. And I can’t honestly say I haven’t still cheered when one of our laptop-die-rollers saves the day.

“But”, you say, “dierollers aren’t TRULY RANDOM!” Well, no. But it’s close enough. Computers usually use what’s called pseudorandom numbers, which in a nutshell means the computer takes some number it has access to that is going to change rapidly and often (like the computer’s internal clock) and does some math on it that produces a number that is, for most intents and purposes, random. If you’re going to run quantum physics experiments, or you’re a hardcore computer scientist, or you’re just THAT ANAL, then yeah, pseudorandom numbers might not work for you. Rolling d20 to hit a goblin? Not really an issue so much!

Dirty Rotten Cheaters

As far as cheating, anybody who thinks dice are 100% fair is kidding themselves. Loaded dice have been around ever since it became profitable to cheat, and they even sell loaded polyhedrals at Gen Con. And I can remember attempting to come up with harebrained schemes at a teenager with a friend of mine on how to influence our die rolls by spinning the dice or palming a certain number up. It didn’t always work, but it did sometimes. I’d be willing to bet holding the dice funny would get you really closely watched at a casino at the very least!

Sure, writing a computer program that cooked the results wouldn’t be very hard. And I suppose it might be a little harder to detect if cheating had occurred. But if you’re rolling 19 or 20 every other roll, people are going to look at you funny no matter what you’re using.

Besides, people who cheat at D&D need to die from blunt force cranial trauma from a PHB regardless of method.

Die Roller Resources

For those of you who want to use a die roller on your PC or Mac, here’s a good one that probably does WAAAAAY more than you need it to.

http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/dice_roller/

Linux guys, sorry — they don’t have a version of that out for you. But if you install Ruby, you can use this instead! (Or write your own, I know how you guys are.)

http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz61.html

There’s a swell web-based die roller at Pen, Paper, Pixel:

http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20dicebag.htm

If you have an iPhone, you could always try out this web-based iPhone dice roller (but don’t tell Yax — he didn’t much care for it!)

http://yoav.org/dice/index.html

Me, I stick to real dice most of the time but if I’m playing somewhere without a real table to roll on I’m using a homebrew application on my Nintendo DS (you’ll need a cartridge that lets you run homebrew).

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=14642664&postcount=2

No matter what you use, it’s always a good idea to check in with your DM to make sure using your shiny new die roller is kosher. PHB’s don’t do subdual!

In our campaign, our storylines tend to shape up by crafting a few major story elements and the rest gets filled in by our absurd crew of player characters. Occasionally, my co-DM and I will come up with some really great idea that we feel like dropping in at the last minute, just for fun.

Sometimes that goes well, and sometimes it doesn’t.

The Situation Gone Wrong

In our campaign, the drop-in gone wrong was the mysterious appearance of a dead gold dragon, a portent of Bad Things Happening in our world. It was iconic, neat, and generally a fun idea that we had late in our planning session and we decided to go with it.

We didn’t factor in that at Epic Levels, our characters might have the paltry ability to restore life to the fallen creature, forcing us into interactions we weren’t planned for. When someone mentioned Resurrection, both my co-DM and I threw up the “oh no” signal and quickly went to work via chat to spackle up the holes we had left.

Let’s look at how we can prevent this from happening to you!

Best Practices for Drop-Ins

1. Know Your Limits – If an idea is too complicated or too large, consider putting it off until you have the ability to flesh out the idea a bit further. If you practice writing episodic content, you can use the great idea that you had as an episode and drop it in later after you’ve thought it over. Discretion is a powerful ally!
2. Know Your Players – If you can come up with more than a half-dozen ways that your campaign group can derail a given idea, consider plugging some of those holes before you use the idea.
3. Keep Player Character Abilities in Mind – In my example above, if we would’ve kept the abilities of our party in mind we would’ve remembered that they had the ability to restore life. Important details like that can make or break your drop-in, so run a quick sanity check against major known abilities to prevent the “oh crap” moments.
4. Let Your Players Succeed – If you do miss something and your players capitalize on something that you didn’t consider, make every effort to let them succeed. Nothing sucks worse than railroading, so learn to think on your feet and let them have their victories.

There’s my road map to a successful drop-in! Go forth and run with all those fun ideas that you’ve always dreamt about!*

* Caution – Actually running campaign ideas that spring forth from your dreams may result in physical, mental, or social damage. Please consult a psychiatrist if you experience blurry vision, loss of appetite, or night sweats. StupidRanger.com is not liable for any damage caused from using dreams in your game.

Stupidranger.com received its very first “letter to the editor” this week (a phenomenon that seems to be contagious).

My name is Jamie, I’m 19 and an enthusiastic player (big fan of the site, by the way).
I have a question for my specific situation. In our group we have five players, including myself, and one DM. The other four players are rather new and inexperienced. Some who have played very little, some entirely unfamiliar to the game. However, all of them are wonderfully engaged in the game, especially roleplaying. I have a large advantage in our group due to the fact that I’ve been playing regularly for almost two years, having played almost every base class and race, and the experience of playing with different groups and DMs. I don’t consider myself a better player because of this, I certainly don’t lord it over everyone condescendingly but I try to help anyone who needs help doing things like leveling or understanding certain abilities that I’ve almost memorized. I know that our DM takes a certain amount of relief in having at least one player who can level their characters without needing it checked over for any accidental feats or extra skill points, and one willing to help others without the worry of misinformation.

In play sometimes our DM will ask me if he’s correct in his memory of a rule, ability, spell, etc. not wanting to interrupt a combat scene by searching for a book. So, I have obvious acknowledgement from our DM of my sometimes obscure knowledge of the game. My concern is about the other players and our DM’s feelings about my role on the edges of the game where the character and player are blurred.

I don’t want the other players to feel as though I have a DM-esque authority over the game, especially if they viewed it as on par with our DM’s actual authority.
My worry with our DM isn’t about unintentionally stepping on his toes but that he might be too open with me about the intricacies of our campaign. I’ve played with our DM since he first started DMing, and have been friends even longer. I think that because I’ve been his only consistent player (I’ve never missed a session of his) he feels more comfortable involving me in the planning process of our campaigns. It’s never anything huge, for example: a detail he needs to tell me about in order to make sure I’m comfortable with my character being last to have their backstory examined in the campaign, or some insight into other options for enemies (one of our players actually has an intense fear of zombies so variety in undead enemies is slightly stunted).

He might also be holding back any complaints about my behavior during a session where I might answer a question asked by another player that was probably directed more towards our DM. I don’t do this often as I remember we’re in-play but it happens at least once a session.

Personally, I like answering questions I know so it’s hard for me to reign in the habit.
So my question is whether there’s any obvious sign of oncoming problems and if there’s anything I should do, or talk to him about, concerning the boundaries of the player and DM.
I’m flattered to be included in the process of campaign planning but I definitely wouldn’t be selfish enough to enjoy a special status at the risk of causing tension in the group.
I’m all ears for any advice you may have.

Sincerely,

Jamie Q.

Well, Jamie, for starters — if we didn’t know any better we would swear you were talking about the Stupid Ranger. And because of this, you’re going to get a couple different answers. One from a person very like yourself (Stupid Ranger), a person in a similar situation to your DM (Dante), and an indifferent third party with an opinion he cannot keep to himself (Vanir). We’ll start with Vanir first.

• Vanir says:

  Jamie, what I think we have here is a failure to communicate. If you have not already, I would take some time before or after your next gaming session and discuss a few things with your gaming group.

  I would not worry so much about being the Unofficial Gaming Encyclopedia. We have one of those, and her name is Stupid Ranger. She is a valuable resource. The DM gets the final say. And by that, I mean whoever is the DM right now. We’ve had some issues with Dante taking a break and someone else giving it a go, and when a call needed to be made several heads turned toward Dante instead of our new guy. Not cool. You need to talk to the group and decide what the protocol is on such things. But really, it sounds like your DM trusts your judgment and will make his final call based on yours. If I had to guess, he doesn’t like dealing with the rules much and you take some of the load off him. As long as the group is cool with that, then there isn’t a problem.

  As for having “special status” — well, again it depends on your group. Talk to your DM, talk to the other players. If one of them is angry at you, you’ll find out why and be able to work something out. I applaud your sensitivity to others’ feelings in the group, but it looks like you share a common problem with me in that I frequently avoid talking to the people that I worry might be mad at me. Then I attempt to figure out how I could act to prevent them being angry and dance and rules lawyer about until hilarity ensues. Even now, in our current group, every time I worry about something and sit on it and don’t say anything, I end up regretting it. It’s easier just to bring it up and be uncomfortable for a minute. Vanir promise.

  One tool that will probably help you deal with this is the Social Contract. A lot of groups use one and don’t know it, but we found out about it through Martin Ralya’s awesome (and sadly, on-hiatus) site Treasure Tables. You don’t have to make a big deal about it, or make anyone walk the plank if they screw up one of the group’s rules, but it will help you and your group establish a protocol to clear things up when you’re worried about things like you described.

  But anyway, yeah. In short, talk to your group!

• SR says:

Jamie – I know how tough it can be to be that in-between person… you know a lot about the game and its mechanics, you have a lot of great advice to give, you want to help, but you don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

I’ve been that person. And what I’ve discovered is that each group needs one of us, an adviser, to keep the game moving forward and especially to maintain the DM’s sanity. The DM has to maintain the balance between plot development and game experience; adding the mechanics to this mix jumps the DC on that save. By helping out with the little details, you can make things much smoother and easier for everyone involved.

Vanir is absolutely right; you should discuss your concerns with the group. If they are happy to have you continue in this adviser role, I would give you this piece of advice: it’s very important to keep your advising under control. First, you don’t want to burden the group by enforcing rules that will detract from everyone’s gameplay. For instance, I don’t see how it’s possible for anyone to spend “quality time” with their spouse while on the back of the tarrasque, but arguing those mechanics would have ruined a great story and really detracted from Vanir’s roleplaying experience.

Second, the DM will ultimately make the decision, and you never want to undermine his authority by arguing if he makes a decision that is not in alignment with the rules. Having an all-out argument on the rules vs game play will definitely make it look like you think you’re better than the DM, and we know that’s an impression you want to avoid.

• Dante says:

  Jamie,
  I will give you a slightly different take than my partners-in-crime. As my friends pointed out, I suspect you may be a bit over-sensitive to the way this situation is being perceived. As a DM, I really enjoy having a few people in my group that really know the rules, or are willing to dig into the rules while I come up with The Next Big Thing on the side. This frees me to be able to worry about the compelling creative stuff while someone else argues the nuts and bolts of the fight mechanics, spell rules, or what have you.

  Secondly, I think that your concerns about being the DM’s outlet for more confidential campaign information is well-founded. If its making you uncomfortable to know what’s coming or to have extra perspective to plot points that are in progress, you simply have to ask your DM to stop including you at that level. If you don’t mind it so much, I think the rest of your group will raise the issue if it is truly something they perceive badly. Personally, I try my best to not share any privileged information about the campaign in progress unless it can’t be helped, or I am completely at a loss tying an aspect in to my characters backstory (read that as: I forgot something I should’ve known). That is my personal preference, I know there are others that roll a different way than I on that matter.

  Finally, if you’re still feeling really badly about the level of exposure you have or how much you are influencing the gaming session, I recommend a brief stint (maybe even a one-nighter) as DM yourself. This assumes, of course, that you’ve never done that before… I suspect that a few sessions behind the screen will have you understanding how welcome your input is and how valuable your storyline guidance can be.
  

Thanks for writing in, Jamie! We hope our advice helps you and anybody else who finds themselves in your situation.

Jamie’s letter also gave us a pretty cool idea — if anybody else out there could use some advice, we think it’d be pretty cool to have a semi-regular advice column. If you’d like to take 12d6 of advice damage and promise to fail your save, please email us at contact@stupidranger.com.

This post actually comes from a relatively weird place. You see, my good friend Vanir was scoping out Living Dice and linked me to a story where they were discussing the creepiest or most disgusting gamers that people have ever come across in their travels. After reading a few of these I was shocked… I thought that gamers like this were overblown stereotypes, misconceptions concocted by those that don’t understand our ways.

I was appalled to behold the tale of Jack. This single story has eroded my faith in our subculture’s ability to conduct itself.

Please allow me to lay a few things out for you all.

We aren’t the largest site on the Internet, however there is a somewhat increased chance that the Jack’s of the world might be reading this site so there are a few things that I have to say.

1. Wear deodorant – They tell you this in the GenCon Book every year, and its not a funny joke. If you don’t shower every day of the convention, at least have the decency to fall on top of some SpeedStick or spray yourself with some Axe before you leave the hotel in teh morning.

   GenCon is a very magical place, however it does not prevent you from sweating if you are normally susceptible to perspiration. Magic like that cannot be contained by the RCA Dome.

2. I can’t believe I have to spell this out, but don’t crap yourself around others. Now, I’ve been known to bust some stink occasionally, but if you know there’s a greater than 70% chance that The Real Deal will occur, go to the can.

   And I promise you this: if I am at the gaming table with you at GenCon and you crap your pants and don’t have a medical reason to do so, I’m going to punch you in the throat. Adult human beings should not need to have this explained to them.

3. Don’t be annoying. This is a general rule, but applies to the rest of the areas of nuance that I don’t have the bandwidth to elaborate upon here: Just because you think its ok doesn’t mean that it is.

   Jack’s story had me really taking stock of my annoying habits, thankfully I don’t believe that I or any of my campaign-mates have flaws as grandiose as ol’ Jack. A little introspection can’t hurt though… try and rank the top three things that you do that might offend sensibilities, and do the rest of society a favor and work on these things a little bit.

   I’ll even start for you: aside from the aforementioned relieving of gas, I sometimes make large scale crude and/or offensive jokes during our gaming session. Most of our group doesn’t mind these things, but I’m aware of it to know when enough is enough (most of the time). Acknowledging it is the first step to eliminating it, so I suggest some stock-taking occur for the better good.

   For the record: that includes answering nature’s call in front of other humans with reckless abandon.

I hope I don’t have to revisit this topic.

There are many other rules that dictate common social graces that nerds need to examine, but I hope we don’t have to start a regular feature here about what not to do when around other members of the human race.

If you want a little continued reading on the matter, visit the forum I linked above and read all about the worst of the worst. If you recognize yourself in any of those stories, change your freaking behavior!

Our good buddy Yax over at Dungeon Mastering is hosting a contest where you can win a free set of D&D 4E books if you subscribe to his RSS feed via email, and he’s asked us to spread the word.

So, if you:

A. like getting emails with cool D&D stuff in them

and

B. enjoy getting free D&D books

then I would highly recommend you go get more information at the following link lest we think you have taken temporary stat damage to your INT and WIS scores.

http://www.dungeonmastering.com/news/dnd-4e-subscribe-and-win

Consider yourselves informed!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday night while leveling up, we all were pleased to discover we were level 21 and thusly able to take our first real live Epic Feat. I decided to go for Epic Inspiration from the DMG, which would make many of the effects of my music last 10x longer. However, way back at first level, I had taken Lingering Song from Song & Silence, which just doubled it.

Given that I now had redundant feats, I decided to use the retraining rules from the PHB2 that let you swap feats. I was all ready to take this cool feat that let my music affect the undead and swap out Lingering Song when I read a little passage that basically derailed my plans. Apparently, if you’re going to swap a feat out, you can only take another feat that you would have met the prerequisites for at the time you took the first feat. And since I took Lingering Song at first level…. I couldn’t so much do it.

Well, needless to say, this got my bardic panties in an uproar and I immediately brought this offense to the attention of our DM’s. It simply did not make sense that I wouldn’t be able to swap these, not knowing that I would need to keep track of my prerequisites when I take every feat. Hell, the PHB2 and this silly rule wasn’t even out when I made Bat Loaf. Plus it was redundant and it was sort of an upgrade anyway. And I didn’t meet the prerequisites then but I certainly do NOW. And I should be able to swap my feats without these silly arbitrary rules getting in the way dammit!

Our DM’s carefully thought about the situation and determined that no, there’s a reason for this. Taking a feat with prerequisites means it’s more powerful. And if I can just swap out all my first level feats for stuff that I couldn’t take until 15th level, I’m going to be a lot more powerful. Some might even say unbalanced.

Unfortunately, that made sense to me, so I was forced to stop my campaign to get my feat swapped out. Fortunately, the Stupid Ranger was at the table and quickly determined two things. First, I had taken Skill Focus (Perform) as my last feat, which I could take whenever the hell I wanted (including first level). Secondly, I had somehow forgotten to take a feat somewhere along the way. Which she figured out two seconds after seeing my list of feats somehow. (“Are you a human? Did you forget your bonus feat at first level?”) She scares me sometimes, but I am really glad she is on our side.

Anyway, now I’ve got all the feats I wanted plus one I didn’t know I was going to get. The moral of the story? There are two, in my mind:

• As a DM, you are going to have players (like me) who are going to argue that rules should be changed because they “don’t make sense”.
• As a player, you must realize that some rules really don’t make sense, but are necessary for game balance.

Honestly, I sort of suspected there was a reason behind the feat-swapping rule, but I just wanted to see if I could push my luck. But one of the hardest things for me to deal with when roleplaying is a rule that exists just to support part of the system. A good example of this is the rumored 4th edition rule where a magic ring will work for an 11th level character but not for a 10th.

I ran across a fantastic post on the ENworld forums that helped explain it a little to me — there are Simulationists (people like me, who think the rules should reflect how things would work in the “real” world) and Gamists (people who think gaming systems should be balanced and the world constructed to meet those rules). I think 4E is going more toward the Gamists, which I can’t honestly say I’m happy about, but I did realize something important that is going to help me deal when 4E drops:

The real world isn’t fair. People have unfair advantages all the time. People get screwed all the time. That’s just the way it works. Gaming (well, good gaming) doesn’t work like that. Steps are taken to ensure that play is balanced so everybody has a good time. And if you attempt to make sense and install order in a simulation of the real world (or a fantasy version thereof), it starts to get arbitrary and unnatural. The trick, I think, is going to be putting in just enough rules so it’s balanced enough but not so much that you might as well play World of Warcraft.

The thought occurs to me that maybe I don’t like this shift in gaming because it’s going to be a lot harder to rules lawyer and get Dante to agree to silly things. I am crafty, though. We shall ponder this, yes.