Someone once said to me that when it came to roleplaying, my house was a shrine to D&D.
I think he meant it a little disparagingly, but all it did was fill me with pride.
Damn straight it is.
Like many others, my first taste of fantasy role-playing was the Steve Jackson/Ian Livingstone Fighting Fantasy game-books. The first one I played, ironically, was Starship Traveller, bought as part of a school scheme to encourage us to read outside of the class-room (can you imagine a game-book being part of such a scheme now?!).
Traveller was one of the hardest and least rewarding of the series, but it certainly got me interested. (By the way I absolutely refused to cheat my way through, and still, to this day, have never completed it!)
I would have been 8 or 9 at the time. Afterwards, pocket money, birthdays, and Christmas were all earmarked as occasions to fill out my Fighting Fantasy collection. There was no internet to learn about release schedules. My search engine was a weekly trip to the John Menzies' book department.
Showing posts with label I Dungeon Master. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I Dungeon Master. Show all posts
Wednesday, 30 September 2015
Thursday, 7 August 2014
D&D's Theatre of the Mind (Part 2)
Combat without the battle-mat is set for a come-back in 5E. For DM's accustomed to having the battle-mat as a visual aid, this might take some getting used to. This was certainly the case for me when running some AD&D recently, so here are some ideas on running effective encounters where everything is literally in your head...
Player vs. PC awareness - It's in the nature of the game for players to have limited knowledge. What they do know depends entirely on the DM, how he describes a scene and how he responds to their questions and actions.
Their characters, on the other hand, should always be assumed to have any knowledge that they could reasonably glean from their environment.
This is doubly true in combat, where bad information costs lives, and triply true in Theatre of the Mind, where it could reasonably be claimed that a hill giant throwing boulders from the back of the fight would probably have been something the PC's would have noticed.
So make sure your players have all the information they need to make good decisions, and be willing to roll-back the round if they make a good case for it. Be generous. TotM gives you, the DM, almost all authority, so you have it in your power to make the game run smoothly, fairly, and dramatically for everyone. The best DM's exercise this power to the fullest.
Player vs. PC awareness - It's in the nature of the game for players to have limited knowledge. What they do know depends entirely on the DM, how he describes a scene and how he responds to their questions and actions.
Their characters, on the other hand, should always be assumed to have any knowledge that they could reasonably glean from their environment.
This is doubly true in combat, where bad information costs lives, and triply true in Theatre of the Mind, where it could reasonably be claimed that a hill giant throwing boulders from the back of the fight would probably have been something the PC's would have noticed.
So make sure your players have all the information they need to make good decisions, and be willing to roll-back the round if they make a good case for it. Be generous. TotM gives you, the DM, almost all authority, so you have it in your power to make the game run smoothly, fairly, and dramatically for everyone. The best DM's exercise this power to the fullest.
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
D&D's Theatre of the Mind (Part 1)
With its release in 2000, 3E rejuvenated a depressed D&D scene with a spectacular and modern set of rules that brought table-top roleplaying into a new golden age.
One of the many ways that 3E differentiated itself from its predecessors was the inclusion of a satisfying tactical combat mini-game which brought war-gaming sensibilities to a past-time which hadn't seen the like in twenty-five years. These new rules eased D&D away from the abstract combats of AD&D and towards more battle-mat-focused miniatures play.
You could certainly play the new edition without miniatures, but you only had to look as far as the illustrations in the Combat chapter to see that Wizards of the Coast would much rather you bought-in to their imminent -- and frankly rather good -- D&D miniatures line.
I had not problem with that, and to be fair, it's not like we hadn't used the occasional metal miniature, token, or scrawled tactical map for AD&D. It certainly wasn't the norm though (ironic given D&D's origins), and most combats took place in a shared imagination constructed on the DM's narration and the inevitable, subsequent interrogation of him by the players ("Can I..?" and "How far..?" being the queries most-often heard.). We now call this style of play "Theatre of the Mind" (TotM).
One of the many ways that 3E differentiated itself from its predecessors was the inclusion of a satisfying tactical combat mini-game which brought war-gaming sensibilities to a past-time which hadn't seen the like in twenty-five years. These new rules eased D&D away from the abstract combats of AD&D and towards more battle-mat-focused miniatures play.
You could certainly play the new edition without miniatures, but you only had to look as far as the illustrations in the Combat chapter to see that Wizards of the Coast would much rather you bought-in to their imminent -- and frankly rather good -- D&D miniatures line.
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| Heroes vs. the undead in my 4E campaign |
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
I, Dungeon Master (1)
Starting a series of posts in which I talk about various lessons learned in the course of DM'ing the Cradle Plain campaign.
Scarily, it's coming up on 2 years since the latest edition of D&D was released. Through hard work and no small amount of good fortune, I've managed to build and sustain a weekly campaign for most of that time. This is a big deal, because the last time I managed it, I was 13, and in those days, Saturday afternoons were for playing D&D, and Sunday afternoons were for planning next Saturday afternoon. Those days may have gone, but the nagging dreams of weekly D&D and long-term campaigns never did.
The game, and those who play it, mean a great deal to me, and for the first time in just about ever, I've been roleplaying regularly enough to start ironing out the creases and actually evolve a campaign which responds to its players.
To celebrate this, I humbly submit Wedge's Top Tips for successful role-playing, in no particular order. Bear in mind that we haven't hit Paragon yet, so I can only vouch for this advice in the Heroic tier (and it would be very interesting if the advice changed tier-to-tier).
#1 - Monsters Take 10 For Initiative
PC's with good Initiative scores (those with a healthy Dex, and feats or other external factors) will always have an Initiative in excess of the average monster at their level, and on the whole can expect to act first. Strikers will want to get in there before the bad guys have lifted a finger and exploit Combat Advantage; Controllers will want to pin them to the spot and delay big-hitting melee enemies from closing as long as possible; Defenders will want to make themselves target numero-uno; and so-on.
Simply put, you should always aim for them to do this.
This tip has a couple of solid mechanical justifications (for example, a good surprise round can reduce the chances of the fight deteriorating into an unwelcome grind), as well as a few healthy player-upkeep justifications (chiefly, groups looove catching the bad guys with their pants down), but most importantly one supreme, all-governing gameplay ramification: it tends to stop your combats getting bottle-necked.
You know the drill, I'm sure. You've planned a nefarious encounter area, with multiple subtle terrain features, strategising opponents, and deadly defenses; the party approaches, kicks in the door, and boom! You roll the villains' Initiative and groan inwardly as you realise, most of your guys are going to go first.
You have a couple of choices in this situation. First, you could outright lie. Frown, tut and shake your head at the clattering dice before the screen... then ignore the 19 that came up, and jot down a 4. We'll assume that egregious dice-fudgement is out of the question though, so moving on...
Second, you could have your guys delay or ready. For melee creatures, this tends to look horribly contrived unless the circumstances warrant it (say, an ambush); it may have looked good for Neo, but having brutes and soldiers thumb their noses at the PC's instead of charging in to get the first attack while their opponents are stuffed into a cramped corridor suggests less intelligence than I usually want to give them credit for.
If you're lucky, you have an encounter group where an enemy Controller can spend a round buffing his allies. This looks good, seems like intelligent behaviour, and provides opportunity for trash-talk, all points in its favour.
In my experience though, more often than not in these situations, you will have a melee contingent in the encounter group, they will gain a strong advantage by rushing the PC's, and it would make no sense for them to not to. So they do, and your carefully-planned milieu is reduced down to a 4x2 square zone just inside the door, neatly excising from the encounter one of the main combat improvements that make 4E what it is: mobility.
Cue static 3E-like combat, the unleashing of terribly uninteresting At-Will's, and the hilarious scattering of miniatures as you struggle to apply your magnetic markers to a wizard surrounded by nine kobold miniatures, all with spears.
I exagerate, but the point is that you should always strive to get the PC's into your encounter area before you engage them. Let the Striker sneak round the back... all the better, because when he gets into trouble, he'll have to call for help. Let the Defender mark his foe and get toe-to-toe with him... he'll probably have stepped through the front rank to do so. Get the protagonists in places where they can strategise, look for synnergies, and really exploit the fluidity of a good 4E encounter.
Everyone will thank you for it, friend and foe alike.
Scarily, it's coming up on 2 years since the latest edition of D&D was released. Through hard work and no small amount of good fortune, I've managed to build and sustain a weekly campaign for most of that time. This is a big deal, because the last time I managed it, I was 13, and in those days, Saturday afternoons were for playing D&D, and Sunday afternoons were for planning next Saturday afternoon. Those days may have gone, but the nagging dreams of weekly D&D and long-term campaigns never did.
The game, and those who play it, mean a great deal to me, and for the first time in just about ever, I've been roleplaying regularly enough to start ironing out the creases and actually evolve a campaign which responds to its players.
To celebrate this, I humbly submit Wedge's Top Tips for successful role-playing, in no particular order. Bear in mind that we haven't hit Paragon yet, so I can only vouch for this advice in the Heroic tier (and it would be very interesting if the advice changed tier-to-tier).
#1 - Monsters Take 10 For Initiative
PC's with good Initiative scores (those with a healthy Dex, and feats or other external factors) will always have an Initiative in excess of the average monster at their level, and on the whole can expect to act first. Strikers will want to get in there before the bad guys have lifted a finger and exploit Combat Advantage; Controllers will want to pin them to the spot and delay big-hitting melee enemies from closing as long as possible; Defenders will want to make themselves target numero-uno; and so-on.
Simply put, you should always aim for them to do this.
This tip has a couple of solid mechanical justifications (for example, a good surprise round can reduce the chances of the fight deteriorating into an unwelcome grind), as well as a few healthy player-upkeep justifications (chiefly, groups looove catching the bad guys with their pants down), but most importantly one supreme, all-governing gameplay ramification: it tends to stop your combats getting bottle-necked.
You know the drill, I'm sure. You've planned a nefarious encounter area, with multiple subtle terrain features, strategising opponents, and deadly defenses; the party approaches, kicks in the door, and boom! You roll the villains' Initiative and groan inwardly as you realise, most of your guys are going to go first.
You have a couple of choices in this situation. First, you could outright lie. Frown, tut and shake your head at the clattering dice before the screen... then ignore the 19 that came up, and jot down a 4. We'll assume that egregious dice-fudgement is out of the question though, so moving on...
Second, you could have your guys delay or ready. For melee creatures, this tends to look horribly contrived unless the circumstances warrant it (say, an ambush); it may have looked good for Neo, but having brutes and soldiers thumb their noses at the PC's instead of charging in to get the first attack while their opponents are stuffed into a cramped corridor suggests less intelligence than I usually want to give them credit for.
If you're lucky, you have an encounter group where an enemy Controller can spend a round buffing his allies. This looks good, seems like intelligent behaviour, and provides opportunity for trash-talk, all points in its favour.
In my experience though, more often than not in these situations, you will have a melee contingent in the encounter group, they will gain a strong advantage by rushing the PC's, and it would make no sense for them to not to. So they do, and your carefully-planned milieu is reduced down to a 4x2 square zone just inside the door, neatly excising from the encounter one of the main combat improvements that make 4E what it is: mobility.
Cue static 3E-like combat, the unleashing of terribly uninteresting At-Will's, and the hilarious scattering of miniatures as you struggle to apply your magnetic markers to a wizard surrounded by nine kobold miniatures, all with spears.
I exagerate, but the point is that you should always strive to get the PC's into your encounter area before you engage them. Let the Striker sneak round the back... all the better, because when he gets into trouble, he'll have to call for help. Let the Defender mark his foe and get toe-to-toe with him... he'll probably have stepped through the front rank to do so. Get the protagonists in places where they can strategise, look for synnergies, and really exploit the fluidity of a good 4E encounter.
Everyone will thank you for it, friend and foe alike.
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