rpg

The other day on Twitter, I confessed to a rather embarrassing incident from high school. As a freshman, I was in a "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus" skit for our Christmas variety show. I played the role of Virginia, hair in pigtails, wearing overalls and skipping out to the middle of the stage, alone. After sitting down and swinging my legs back and forth off the edge of the stage, I started reciting the famous letter. At some point, I completely froze, the type of freezing where you can't even remember your own name. The audience felt it and, well, being an audience full of high school students, started laughing. I took a deep breath, stuck out my tongue like any little kid would do. Suddenly the lines came to me and I stuck up my index finger, waved it towards the crowd and said, "Wait, there's more."

Perhaps a rather extreme example of a common scenario in role playing, but a useful one nonetheless. Sometimes in the course of play, players freeze, some more than others. They will have that moment of extreme stress and anxiety and the feeling that they are failing at the game. And trust me, it's every bit as bad as doing it in front of an entire high school.

So, what do you do when a player freezes? If that player is you, remember to take a deep breath. If you have an impulse to do something, whether it's breaking eye contact, playing with your hair, etc, do it to help break the tension you're feeling. Often it's hard for the person in the midst of a freeze to do anything but wait until their brain opens up again.

If you are one of the other members of the table, especially the DM, call time out. Of course it varies from person to person, but often trying to pepper with questions or press on with the role play just makes things worse. The person who freezes feels that they are "failing" and with each question they can't answer or remark they are not able to make, they feel like even more of a failure.

During the time out, try to figure out what is causing the problem. Often, the player will feel like they have no idea of what their character would do in this situation. It might be a lack of information, if you just asked him to negotiate a contract for wages, he might not understand enough about the gold system to know what a fair counter offer would be. For me, I'm often an emotions-based player, so if I don't feel a strong connection to some part of the game, whether it's the NPCs, the setting, or the adventure hook, I'm much more apt to freeze. Telling me that the flowers are in bloom and that I can smell the sweet fragrance of lilacs might be enough to break me from the spell.

Now I have something else to confess, even though I'm prone to these sorts of freezes, I still enjoy playing charismatic characters. People often define charisma too narrowly. Not everyone with high natural charisma is in front of the crowd or on the TV screen. They are often the ones who quietly get the group together, negotiate in the background to make sure everyone's needs are taken care of, and who deflect compliments and other kind words to others. Charisma doesn't have to always be showy, just like you can have a quiet fighter.

When I play these characters, I try to make something in my background explain why I might be a little shy, particularly at first. For my first character, Sarah, I explained her as someone with front of the house looks and natural charisma but who viewed herself as back of the house material. This gave me room so that over time, as I played with the group and we got comfortable, I could mold her, and myself, into our true selves.

So the next time someone freezes at your table, particularly a new player, try to help them out. Pause the game for a moment, find out the issues, and try to rectify them. They might just need a minute to think or a better understanding of the scenario. As time goes on, they'll probably get a better feel for the game and the investment will be well worth it.

Yesterday I made a rather bold announcement on Twitter:

The only #dnd rule that I attempt to follow 100% of the time is that the game will be fun. What fun means is determined by the group. :)

Rob Donoghue replied that it's a dangerous rule because "it means you may end up violating every rule-based methodology of how it should be done. Which is not really dangerous, just Internet dangerous." I agree with him. The Internet is great for many things, but we will read what we want to from statements such as this one, particularly when the 140 character limit of Twitter limits our word choice.

The first part of the rule seems pretty easy. We play because we enjoy it and I have yet to hear of a group that follows every D&D rule to the letter. My observation is not limited to just 4th edition, people ignored or changed rules going back to OD&D. It's really the D&D way.

The second part is the hardest. First, it's difficult to understand motivations that we don't have and what it is about them that makes the game fun for others. If I hate puzzles, I'm going to have a hard time wanting them in the game or understanding what about them makes the player next to me do a dance of joy every time we come across one. This failure of shared understanding is particularly difficult for dungeon masters since we are expected to provide a fun game to a wide-variety of play styles, many of which are not our own. To some degree, it requires that we put aside our own egos and look at everyone's needs and desires.

In addition, this requires that we understand the goals of the rules. Rules generally aren't arbitrary, they are meant to encourage certain behaviors or reactions at the table. If we can understand why the rule exists and what it is trying to achieve, we'll be in a better position to massage it into something fun for our groups. The newer errata gives explanations for rule changes; I think in a large part to facilitate this sort of discussion.

This understanding helps us figure out which rules to enforce. For instance, many players are fine with getting hit by a monster, it's to be expected after all, but they hate missing on their attack. If you have a group like this and load up on monsters that give negatives to attack rolls or who have high defenses, your players may get frustrated at you, even though you are following the "rules." If the players are just rolling through the encounters, there are other ways to fix the problem, such as using terrain elements or choosing monsters with high damage paired with ones that give boosts to accuracy. Still all within the rules, but geared towards the group's desired play style and definition of fun.

Of course, to do this, we need to understand what is fun for ourselves and the other players. Unfortunately, this really only comes with experience. New players might have some ideas about what their play style might be, but it's not easy. While I knew that I loved tactics because that was my favorite part about playing Avernum, I also thought I would enjoy puzzles a lot more than I do.

Also remember that what you enjoy may change from group to group. In some groups, you might love comparing kill numbers with your buddy across the table while in another group, the focus might become who is the most cunning linguist. My best advice for the entire group is to play a few games together and then have a real conversation about what is and isn't fun. DMs should try to have these conversations on a one-on-one basis since people might be afraid of hurting someone else's feelings by saying something isn't for them.

Once people have an idea of what they want, it's time to provide it. Often this rests on the DM's shoulders but everyone should try to pitch in. For things most of the group likes, try to make them a core part of the campaign. With those items covered, sprinkle in the rest the other things your players like, possibly during their spotlight. Make them shine doing the things they love. Players can help by recognizing a spotlight scene and cooperate in making it awesome. Don't be a jerk and ruin it for the player or the group might devolve into petty squabbling.

One last thing, remember that DMs are players too. That means they get to have a say in what happens from time to time as well. They shouldn't abuse it; if most of the players like the role play and the DM consistently hand waves every tavern scene, that's a big problem. On the other hand, if the DM likes to run a tactically hard combat every once and a while, maybe it's best to acknowledge the motivation and let it go.

It's been about a week since I posted my rough attempt at a lumber mill delve, and it's time to go back and review it. Since I didn't post them in my last entry, this is a good time to put down what I'm hoping to accomplish with this delve. First, some working parameters:

• I'm using a format similar to the one in the Dungeon Delves book, 3 encounters, starting at a level equal to the players and increasing by 1 level each encounter. Thus, a delve for 1st level characters will include encounters at levels 1-3.
• Game mechanics over story. Most of the delves in the book provide some story hooks in case you want to include them in a normal campaign, but overall, I'm not going to worry about developing a story line too much.

This last one is particularly important. While I'm not going to worry too much about tying the delve to a longer story arc, the delve itself should be memorable in its own right. That means one of my criteria will be judging how much each encounter, monster and trap reinforces the theme, in this case a lumber mill. For me, that meant conveyor belts and saws. Wanting to focus a bit more on the fantastical, I made it a mill run by gnomes.

With some guidelines for the feel that I wanted and how I wanted to accomplish it, it was time to create the first encounter. It made sense to me that they would start in the room where the logs would be debarked and cut into manageable chunks. I tried to think how gnomes might accomplish this. A few of them with a tool for debarking, along with a ceiling mounted saw seemed like a good idea.

Updating the Debarking Gnomes

There are a few things that I could do to make this better, playing up the tension and increasing the difficulty a bit. First, let's throw out the bit about the gnomes being surprised. Given that they just kidnapped some local children, I'm sure they are all going to be on high alert. If the group wants to try to sneak in, we should have the member with the lowest stealth modifier roll a group stealth check. We will use the difference between the stealth and perception to determine the starting action:

• If they succeed, the gnomes are surprised.
• If they fail, the gnomes hear the PCs approach and have the chance to hide themselves. One of the gnomes will run over to start the bucking saws before the PCs enter the room and the other two will start under the conveyor belt and attempt to hide.

Now that we've evened out the start of the encounter a bit, let's work on the gnomes themselves. Gnomes have low-light vision, and there isn't much of a need for bright light in the room. Let's add in some terrain elements that provide dim light for the gnomes to see by, since they won't use fire based sources on the account of the sawdust. With that added in, I should add back the "Reactive Stealth" power.

Also, I want to update the damage from the attack. The updated damage from MM3 would be 1d10+6. However, I'm thinking 2d6 + 4 instead. The extra dice might make the players feel like the little gnome is tougher, but the average damage is about the same.

Simplify and Strengthen the Bucking Saws

Now that we've reworked the gnomes and environment, it's time to simplify the saws. For story reasons, let's have one of the gnomes turn on the saws as soon as a PC enters the room. This is done via the control panel and the doors to the next room lock at the same time. If the PCs somehow take out the gnome near the control panel before it can turn the machine on, the next gnome will try to do that first.

The current mechanics for running the saw are a bit too complicated and really need to be simplified.

So those are some of the changes I would make to the encounter. Next time, I'll look at the second encounter. In the meantime, what changes would you make to this encounter?

One thing that often surprises me is how much, and yet how little, we change when we create fantasy worlds. For instance, we often radically change the look and feel of the world. We add new wondrous species, awe-inspiring locales and epic legends. However, rarely do we change the fundamental underpinnings of our societal structure such as our views on gender, race, and disability. In these aspects, our worlds are more likely to mirror our reality than our desire.

Why is this? For one, we have a hard time imagining people with motivations and a world outlook different from our own. This is evident in our insistence on giving modern motivations and sensibilities to historical events and people. Given how I was raised, I can't imagine what it was like before the advent of modern medicine, when most children did not live to see adulthood. Likewise, I can't imagine being willing to sacrifice a child or to kill someone for stealing the seed grain. But yet people did those things and made those value judgments. I can write them off as monsters or acknowledge that perhaps they thought about the world in a way different than I do.

Often, these societal views are tied to fundamental issues of identity. Our race and nationality often tie us together to certain value groupings and orderings in ways that are difficult to escape, or, at the very least, lead others to group us in ways that are unfair to our individuality. Gender identity confronts us every day, from the ways we address each other to which restroom we use. Those with disabilities are often acutely aware of them because they call out our individuality, often at times when we most want to be part of the crowd. We allow these things to define us because our societies define us by them.

The fundamental nature of these rules means it's often easier to change ourselves than change the rules. We go through great lengths to "fit in" whether it's neutralizing accents, getting plastic surgery or going into debt to have the newest shiny. It's no great surprise then that we have a hard time ignoring these impulses when we design our fantasy worlds. And, when we do escape their pull, we have a habit of pointing it out, often in a jarring manner.

This underlying issue is why the lack of character diversity in D&D upsets me as much as it does. I know that there is no vast conspiracy, corporate or otherwise, to keep anyone "in their place." Rather, the problem is that we lack a bit of imagination and a willingness to reshape the rules of our existence. Even in a world where trains move by magic and people can call lightning from the sky, we often have few female adventurers, far fewer than the 50% of the population they presumably comprise, and most adventurers are healthy without a scratch on them. Our characters still conform to Western European ideals of gender and color and the virility of man.

Not every writer, DM, or player is like this, but enough are that the promise of fantasy still outweighs the reality. I'm sorry that it saddens me a bit, but I would be lying if I said otherwise. It's an incredibly hard problem to solve and, for the majority of players, often not a fun one. I wish I had some easy fix and I know it's much easier to just shrug our shoulders and ignore the issue entirely. But I'm making a resolution to think about these things in my games and, I hope, that some of you will join me.