There are days, like today, when I would trade in my doctor for a good cleric and his repertoire of divine spells. And as my loving husband, Dante, pointed out, characters never get sick; they have clerics that can cast Remove Disease or any Cure spells to make them feel better. So, here’s my cleric-inspired post, mostly because I’m sick and forgot to post something earlier.

Never Leave Home Without One

Clerics are among the most important characters in any party; it’s not impossible to adventure without one, but you’ll usually wish you hadn’t left home without one. Clerics have that wonderful ability to make you feel better when the orcs have tried (nearly successfully) to remove your sword arm. Plus, they have all other kinds of handy make-you-feel-better spells; it’s not just about the wounds. Neutralize Poison, Remove Disease, the Restoration spells… all kinds of things to make you feel better.

Not Just For Healing

Besides ensuring the good health of the party, clerics can also contribute on the combat front. They can hold their own in combat; clerics have simple weapon proficiency, as well as armor and shield proficiencies. Plus, they are great against undead, not just with their ability to turn, but also with their arsenal of undead-damaging spells, which also work great against not-undead too!

Today, my lovely wife Stupid Ranger and I set out into the cold weather to do some Christmas shopping. We ended up as we often do: at Borders.

While she was agonizing over the sale tables, I ventured into the roleplaying section to peruse the new offerings from my favorite publishers and while I was looking at all of the bindings and titles I began to think about what draws me to certain supplements.

I work in the manufacturing industry and there is a concept called “fit and finish” that is used to describe the final touches that are put on the product before it is considered complete. As I looked at those bindings, idly selecting one or two to pull of the shelf and flip through I found that some very superficial things made me actually pick up certain books and look through them.

Things like fonts, cover art, and titles are what initially drew me to some titles. I grabbed a few books and found that their layout or typeface was so appalling that I couldn’t stand to read more than a paragraph at a time, which placed those into the “right out” category. I believe that is why so many roleplaying resources are moving online: you can choose how you want to receive the content, many times controlling the superficial things that help you drive down into the content.

On the car ride home, I was thinking about what good gaming opportunities I may have missed or dismissed purely on these criteria. Essentially, in my opinion usability matters. If the “fit and finish” is off and I can’t get past reading a single paragraph, or I can’t read the chart easily from arms length I very likely won’t buy the book, and often times I have found that I marginalize anything in that same given series purely due to the manner in which the information is presented.

Am I alone here?

In the spirit of Black Friday, when those who love to shop worship the After Thanksgiving Sales in crowded stores, let us not forget that most players love to shop for their character and thus celebrate this most impressive of shopping holidays in the manner best fitting our favored past-time.

Beginning with the Basics

In addition to armor and weapons, there are certain things most character will need to procure before adventuring in the great wide world. I try to never leave home without the following:

• Backpack
• Bedroll
• Winter Blanket – I love to use these for more than just camping in the colder months; they’re handy for a make-shift litter or awning, and in a pinch, you could create a blanket rope.
• Scroll case, parchment, ink & pen – a great DM with whom I once had the privilege to game had a house rule that unless you character was carrying the necessary equipment for taking notes, you as the player didn’t take notes. So if you wanted to keep a copy of the prophecy, you character better be able to write it down. Ever since that momentous session, I have always equipped my character with the necessary writing materials.
• Flint & Steel
• Mirror – sometimes you use it, sometimes you don’t. But you never know when a mirror will come in handy.
• Rope – of course.
• Waterskin & Rations – even though our house rule doesn’t specifically monitor such things, I always have them on my character sheet.
• Class-specific requirements – holy symbols for clerics, instruments for bards, thieves’ tools for rogues, etc.

Adventurer’s Wish List

Beyond the basics, every character has a wish-list of items they would buy if they had enough money. For me, these tend to be:

• Amulet of Natural Armor – since most characters don’t have anything to provide natural armor, this is a quick boost to AC without the tedious mucking about trying to figure out what kind of bonus it is and do you always have something with that bonus.
• Stat-boosting items – gauntlets of ogre power, cloaks of charisma, gloves of dexterity, anything that will boost the primary stat for your character class
• Bag of Holding – true shopping can only begin when you can sell more loot! And to sell more, you must be able to carry more.
• Magic weapons – for the fightery-types, magic is always better, especially if it comes with some sort of extra enhancement, like fire damage or keen-ness
• Magic accoutrements – for the spell-castery-types, bonus spells are always a plus… magic wands, extra scrolls, anything to fill the void when you’ve used up your best spells for the day
• Magic Armor/Robes – anything to make it harder for the enemy to hurt you is always cause for celebration, whether you need shiny new plate or a fabulous new robe.

I know I always have a great time when I get to cash in my share of the loot and upgrade my character’s equipment. And it’s even better than Black Friday door-busters, since you don’t have to wake up before the sun just to get the best deals!

To all of our American readers – Happy Thanksgiving! To everyone else – Happy November 22!

Real World Holidays and Gaming Enthusiasm

I was reflecting on the holiday season and it got me to thinking about our gaming schedule around the holidays. Most times, as expected, there is a marked decline in the frequency of our gaming during the last months of the year.

The neat difference between frequent and infrequent gaming is the level of enthusiasm that comes from each gaming session. When we’re gaming frequently, I see the level of enthusiasm drop generally week by week… some consider it a chore, some are just tired out from the pace of Real Life that the gaming session itself takes a toll. When we game infrequently, there is a level of built up passion for the game again and it seems to really pump up the entire group. We saw this last weekend in our own group: one of our members was so excited to game, she insisted on wrapping up our social contract discussion early just so we would have some time to really get into the game. That’s a really great thing to behold when it occurs.

In Game Holidays – A good time for roleplay

I am always amazed when times of great character backstory tend to permeate into the normal game. Several of our players in this campaign are worshipers of Horus Re, a lesser sun god. I was very surprised when our fightery type was asking what time of year it was (summertime) and whether or not there were any scheduled holidays to Horus Re that they could celebrate.

This question took me aback a bit, but I arrived on a Midsummer Festival that presented a good opportunity to celebrate the light that Horus Re brings. Satisfied, we went along with that but they regularly would interject some questions about holidays, or even make up some of their own anniversaries and celebrations to mark on the calendar as the in-game years tick by.

I really appreciate it when my players take the trouble of actually internalizing their characters and think through the details in this way. Sometimes I feel that the off-the-cuff response that this usually generates is perhaps less satisfactory than it would be if I could’ve given the answer a little thought.

How do you handle the holidays (both in-game and out-of-game)? Do you integrate any real world holidays into your gameplay?

Disclaimer: I’ve been coming down sick and almost didn’t post today, but I didn’t want to disappoint the regulars, so I apologize if this post isn’t up to my normal standard. Bear with me, and I’ll try to make it up to you over the holiday weekend.

Finally, a Plot Hook I Can Really Enjoy

At the beginning of our Act 2 campaign, I had a hard time finding motivation for my character, but we finally encountered some crazy-scary plot hooks that have pulled me back into the game. First, we encountered a horribly evil goddess bent on tipping the balance of good and evil towards evil (big surprise, huh?). She’s an evil, scary enemy that we totally didn’t deserve. After all, we saved the world just 4 short years ago! One would surely think our contributions have earned us a little peace and quiet, but, alas, that is not to be.

Then, in a follow-up twist, we were called to a council of the gods, who told us that Evil Lady had a good point, that we made the world too good when we saved the world last time. So, the gods can’t stop Evil Lady, and we’ll just have to figure out how to defeat her ourselves.

WHAT!?!?!

We’re being abandoned by our various gods! On the verge of world-wide war, we’re being given a secret mission to defeat an evil goddess, but we can’t count on our gods for assistance. This is the kind of treatment I would have expected if we’d failed our last attempt at saving the world, but being the proven heroes we are, I would expect a little more support, especially as our characters all have strong religious connections.

And so it is that we embark on our assigned mission to save the world once again in these desperate times. There are few times more intriguing than that moment when you realize that (once again) the fate of the entire world rests on your ability to overcome the unreasonable, evil goddess.

The Player’s Perspective

This is always a tense situation, because we if we fail in our mission, the world will be overcome with darkness. I love the intrigue of this particular type of plot hook. The difficulty I find is how to accurately represent my character’s reaction to this kind of responsibility. For Ari, an accomplished fighter, it’s not so much about the impending battles as it is the overwhelming knowledge that failure means the destruction of the world she has already fought to save; unfortunately, this isn’t the easiest reaction to roleplay, so I have my work cut out for me.

Share Your Stories

What kind of crazy-scary moments have you encountered or (for the DMs out there) created? And how did you (or your players) roleplay their reactions?

So I’ve been playing Super Mario Galaxy for the last couple days, which is why *ahem* there will be no comic today.

That game is completely insane. Nintendo basically designed a platform game engine with really flexible physics and gravity, and told their designers to do whatever the hell they wanted.

So you end up with a bunch of levels that are loosely related to each other at best, but instead of being dumb they’ve figured out how to make it fresh – every level.

With most games, there’s a certain point at which I go “okay, enough with the <insert annoyingly repetitive item here>“. I don’t know if it’s because of the smaller, freer level design but I haven’t gotten annoyed or bored yet.

What does this have to do with D&D, you ask? Ever run a campaign where it just keeps grinding and grinding and everybody’s listless and the Next Big Thing seems to just fall flat for all the players?

Lose your mind a little bit. Throw something weird at them. Take them out of the carefully-constructed box they’ve all been living in and replace it with a propeller beanie. It doesn’t have to be outlandish or break the plot you carefully constructed over the last months. But do something that requires them to use abilities their classes have that they don’t typically use.

For example: life’s been getting in the way of our group playing regularly or very late, so all Dante and Kanati have been able to run is short sessions of 2-3 hours. In this time it’s been a lot of exposition and a lot of preparing the armies we’ve constructed for war. And somehow, a lot of our game time has been eaten up figuring out how to keep them fed so they don’t die on the way to the front lines.

Under normal circumstances, this would have bored me to the point of committing seppuku. But this weekend, our friend Sirgeekelot’s paladin was trying to figure out how to feed his troops and came up with a wild plan to have his troops march through a line of towns on the way and use sending to notify the churches to start canned food drives right now for their arrival.

It was a great idea, but then I realized clerics were good for more than just healing. “Say guys, can’t clerics cast create food and water?” And due to our backstories, we had a Lot of clerics. And bards can cast it too, and I had a Lot of bards. Sirgeekelot’s quote afterward was the best: “Not only will we be able to feed our troops, but it will be Thanksgiving every day”.

Stepping out of the box on these player abilities, at least for me, brought some fun to an otherwise boring situation. As DM’s, you can try to nudge people toward this. As players, it is your sworn duty to put on that propeller beanie and give your DM as many aneurisms as you can.

Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have to DM a campaign that I’m playing in. <grin>

Dealing with higher level characters is difficult. Right now we’re playing in a near-epic campaign… our characters are all knocking on the door of 20th level. That makes many common plot-telling devices fall flat, or be easily dismantled by the party’s soaring feats and skills.

Up the ante

Obviously, near-epic characters can deal with near-epic topics and bad guys. Like-leveled bad guys help, however it is still quite difficult for any level rogue to sneak up behind a character that can have a listen check of 40+. You’re dealing very closely to “hearing a gnat fart” levels of auditory skill there.

Upping the ante works, but only when you utilize the skill set of your bad guys completely. I’ve found it is increasingly difficult to just snag a baddie from one of the Monster Manuals and go, because most of the elements that make a creature viable at higher challenge ratings are their specialized attacks, skills, feats, or spell capabilities. Something with complicated methods of attack or a complicated skills requires some planning which makes shooting off the hip somewhat more difficult (for me, anyway).

The Interactive Narrative

Lately, Kanati (my co-DM) and I have been taking the approach of having our party deal with the pantheon of gods in a somewhat direct way. This allows us the ability to take the “easy path” of freezing time or suspending reality as the gods interact to outline thematic elements to the party.

It takes some care to do this in a way that isn’t insanely frustrating for your characters… every time you take their skill checks or abilities out of the equation, they get irritated (rightfully so). In the last session, they were transported to an audience with one of their patron deities… as some flavor the encounter was supposed to start in a fog of mist that became a grey void around them.

Vanir, in all his wisdom, decided to use some weather controlling abilities that a magic item gave him to clear the mist away as he saw it starting to gather. After a few OMG moments in my head, I decided to let him do this but they could see in full their trip through the starry cosmos as the planes were folded beneath them.

Allowing your characters to interact with your narrative scene in a non-destructive way can help them remain engaged, but still allow you to tell your story in a semi-believable way. You’re not forcing them into your storyline with brute force, you let them control some elements and you control others. Hopefully this will aid you in being able to tell your story without sacrificing player enjoyment.

Well, I had intended to write a serious post in the New Player Orientation series, but instead, all I could think about was Leopold the Dancing Plot Point. So, here’s a little story I think we can all enjoy.

The moral of my story: DMs, try as you might, you can’t always disguise the dancing plots points, but that doesn’t mean we won’t figure out a way to follow them.

I have long wanted to make a sorcerer or mage dedicated to the art of magic item creation. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be the D&D equivalent of Santa Claus that comes rolling into town with a new complement of toys and cool magical devices? I know I would. The trouble with such a character under the normal D&D 3.5 rules is that magic item creation requires two things: a lot of dedicated time and experience loss.

Both of these things are counterintuitive to the whole notion of an adventuring party, so I never really got to execute my vision of a traveling mage that specialized in the art of magic item creation.

Learning lessons from Technology Past

For several years, I was a huge fan of the Gemstone IV multi-user dungeon (or MUD, for you acronym lovers). They handled magic item creation in a much different way than D&D… in their system they had an Enchant spell that could be used to raise the enchantment level of a particular magic item effectively raising its to hit and damage.

The trick to this system is that it required incremental casting, meaning you had to prep the item with a special (somewhat expensive) potion and cast at the item multiple times in order for the final enchantment to take. The item was extremely brittle and unusable for the multiple days (sometimes weeks) that the item was being cast upon, but it could easily be stored in a pack or something while you were working on it.

Also, the Enchant spell was very much a black box process and there was a distinct risk of failure… there was conjecture that things like time of day, amount of weight that the caster was carrying, time period between casts, and whether or not any other protective spells were active all affected the success of the cast. If the cast failed, you ran the risk of being forced to start the time intensive process over, unenchanting the item, or blowing up the item causing severe bodily damage to yourself and anyone nearby.

I found this system remarkably interesting, and it had the notable bonus of being do-able while “on the road”. The mystery surrounding the proper method for enchanting led to some very interesting rituals by those that chose to specialize in this spell, and personally I believe that all magic in roleplaying should have the same air of mystery.

Translating to D&D

I’ve seen several attempts to replace the current item creation system in D&D. I’ve seen point-buy systems, material based systems, and many other combinations therein. One system, that was created by our buddy Sir Geekelot (currently a player in our campaign, then DM of his own campaign) actually went as far as to create an entire player class encompassing this topic.

There was nothing wrong with any of these approaches, but most (if not all) were logistical nightmares, causing the player to keep track of a lot of materials, points, combinations of items, and the like. That, or the systems would be out of balance in some other way such as enabling the creation of low point cost and high power items.

None of them seemed to match the general elegance of the Gemstone style Enchant spell, and this is something that I hope D&D 4.0 addresses. If nothing comes of the 4.0 edition, I may try my hand at translating the elements of Gemstone’s enchant system myself, but I’m always concerned about game balance when introducing major new systems like that.

Has anyone else had success with an elegant enchantment or item creation system? Please share, because I sure would love to get this character out of my head!

I’ve been suffering from a bit of writer’s block lately. Tonight I decided just to sit down, turn my random idea generator on, and see what happened. I was not quite expecting what came out.

I don’t see how I possibly could have — because what came out was “the Gauntlets of Seinfeld“. I wasn’t even really crazy about that show when it was on! Regardless, I started to chuckle at a few of the ideas that started trickling out so I decided to share. I didn’t quite get to the descriptions of a lot of these, so if you want to add something, please feel free.

• Gauntlets of Seinfeld

  Ordinary gauntlets that do absolutely nothing. However, everyone loves them and they were highly sought after until 10 years ago when the maker just got bored and decided to quit making them.

  The right gauntlet has strange frizzy hair covering the opening where the arm goes in. And has racial epithets about dwarves written on it. These were intended to be funny due to their shock value, but everyone near the wearer simply thinks they hate dwarves.

  Both gauntlets have special attachments for removing the tops from muffins.

  You cannot figure out why the left gauntlet continues to hang out with the right gauntlet.

• Girdle of Soup Nazi Strength
• The Eye and Hand of Seinfeld
• Festivus Pole of Many Parts
• Loincloth of Protection vs. Shrinkage

I believe the line of good taste has been sufficiently identified, crossed, and stomped on at this point. And no, Stupid Ranger, no E.L. Fudge cookies were harmed in the making of this post.

More “serious” D&D stuff in the near future, I promise!