I have grown rather irritated by the tedious, repetitive, and illogical claims that Mystra's Chosen, or equally narrowly focused but powerful NPC groups, are somehow an impediment for every DM to deal with, and with the equally tedious, repetitive, and illogical idea-threads for removing, slaying, or neutralizing them simply to address the non-issue of their potential disruption of the campaign. Therefore, rather than dealing with them individually, I will simply put an end to the fallacy here.
According to the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the population of Faerûn consists 68,000,000 inhabitants. Therefore, in an average Forgotten Realms campaign consisting of four players, there are a minimum number of 67,999,996 corresponding NPCs. According to the Dungeon Master's Guide, 50% of all randomly generated NPCs will be of a chaotic evil, neutral evil, or lawful evil alignment. That in turn means that on average there are 33,999,998 potential NPC villains for a good or neutral oriented party to slay, thwart, or capture; or alternatively for the PCs to be slain, be thwarted, or be captured by.
By contrast, there are 9 named Chosen of Mystra in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, and arguably less than 12 (alive, dead, in-between, or otherwise out of the picture) Chosen of Mystra in total who have been named and/or given statistics in subsequent 3E/3.5 official Forgotten Realms accessories and web enhancements.
Therefore, not only do we have the statistically illogical possibility of the Player Characters ever randomly encountering, being aided, or being confronted by such a character, we likewise have the supremely illogical possibility of such NPCs acting as an automatic impediment, plot-foil, or spotlight stealer for the adventure, or as the only line of defense against the forces of evil.
Even if each of the 9 named and listed Chosen of Mystra in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting suddenly and illogically chose to drop everything at hand and devote ALL their efforts to tracking down, ambushing, and neutralizing 1 random evil aligned NPC villain per day---be it a 2nd level Aristocrat who has imprisoned the 1st level party, or a 30th level archwizard who could one day threaten Faerûn itself---it would take them 10,350 years to kill every evil being in Faerûn who had been in existence at the time they began such an endeavor. Incidentally, in a fraction of that time frame the entire population of evil beings in Faerûn would have been replaced as more beings are born (whose alignments will be just as random as those who had birthed them), and in turn gain experience and power over the years, and fill the vacant roles of conqueror king, corrupt baroness, thief extraordinaire, vile cultist, foul necromancer, or any of a dozen fantasy campaign villain clichés.
That of course is ignoring the rather obvious fact that non-player characters of the power and position of Mystra’s Chosen have an infinite number of other things that aught to be occupying their time, apart of single-handedly "ruining" an adventure before it begins; such as ruling a country, and/or heading an organization, and/or instructing apprentices, and/or creating new spells and magic items, and/or tending to the Weave, and/or pursuing the goals of their patron Goddess, and/or dealing with their own agendas, foes, and goals (as opposed to the agendas, foes, and goals of the PCs), or even in the case of a few of the Chosen--the rather simplified daily agenda that comes with being outright dead.
Apparently it is too much to ask for the endless throngs of Mystra-haters to actually read the "Concerns of the Mighty" or the "Make the PCs the Stars" sections of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Instead we on these boards and other avenues of realms discussion endure an endless stream of player/DM-contrived scenarios where they are explained out of the adventure, explained out of the story, or simply killed off altogether, when not one of the above is ever a necessary or rational approach to dealing with the phantom "problem" of their existence.
If you are a DM and the Chosen of Mystra are a “problem” in your campaign, either as potential insurmountable adversaries for your evil player characters, or as potential plot-foil and/or spotlight thief for your good player characters, then you only have yourself to blame, because the rules, guidelines, and demographics of the Forgotten Realms ensure that they reliably won't be.
If you are a player, and the Chosen of Mystra are a “problem” in your campaign, either as potential insurmountable adversaries for your evil characters, or as potential plot-foil and/or spotlight thief for your good characters, then you need to find a DM who has read the books necessary for running a campaign in the Forgotten Realms, namely the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, and/or a DM who doesn't have a fixation for using Iconic NPCs as "DMPCs", and/or a DM who understands that events found in novels focused on a given character, or massive realms-shaking events that might occur in others, are in no way representative of consistent daily life in Faerûn (for adventurers or otherwise).
Lastly, if you are a novel reader, and the Chosen of Mystra are seen as a “problem” in your ability to enjoy reading them, then a simple suggestion would be to exercise the minimal amount of common sense to not purchase novels with the names or likenesses of the Chosen of Mystra on the cover, in the title, or mentioned somewhere on the back cover blurb. It should hardly be an unbearable shock to anyone that a book bearing the name “Elminster” in the title would actually have the (gasp) audacity to show Elminster of Shadowdale as a protagonist and (double-gasp) one who, as one of the most powerful beings in Faerûn, actually succeeds in his endeavors.
Mystra and her Chosen, or arguably any other powerful NPC organization, are not a problem or impediment for enjoying the Forgotten Realms. By contrast, it would be players, DMs, and readers who cannot understand simple D&D demographics, and/or who do not read or adhere to the rules and campaign guidelines, who then in turn contrive the false idea that any ability to enjoy a campaign in Faerûn must invariably mean the ad-hoc mass-elimination or mass-omission of a mere handful of NPCs, amidst the massive pool of 68,000,000 others.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Which edition should I play?
Believe it or not, "Which edition of D&D should I play?" is probably the most common question I'm asked. In some cases it is because the person asking the question wants to argue with my choice, but most of the time the questioner seems to sincerely want my opinion. Unfortunately, I can't really answer the question -- because there is no "one true answer." The best edition of D&D is the edition that best fits your needs. The answer for me may not be the answer for you as what you and your group want out of your game may be much different from what I want out of my game.That said, I will list the various editions of D&D in the order I personally rank them based on how well they meet the needs of the types of games I like to play in and run. Your list may be much different than mine -- and that's as it should be. There really is no one best edition for everyone. Those who tell you there is are probably trying to sell you something.
1) Original Dungeons & Dragons with the Supplements: Fairly simple rules with a lot of room to make the campaign and the game your own with house rules. OD&D with the supplements is a lot like playing AD&D but without all the complex stuff AD&D added. Combat is fast and abstract -- just the way I like it.
2) BECMI Boxed Sets/Rules Cyclopedia: The Rules Cyclopedia (The BECM boxed sets in one hardback book) is probably the best version of D&D ever printed in hardback. It is a complete in one book, well-explained game that one can play for years without much modification, yet it is simple enough to easily house rule to fit your own group and campaign. Like OD&D, combat is fast and abstract.
3) Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert Boxed Sets: Later expanded into BECMI, this earlier edition only takes characters through 14th level. That is its only major disadvantage compared to the BECMI rules, but it is a great set for those who prefer low level play.
4) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (First Edition without Unearthed Arcana): If you want more complete rules to reduce the amount of GM rules decisions, First Edition AD&D is the way to go. Compared to later editions, it is still rules lite, but it is much more rules dense than previous versions and has a number of rules designed to better balance character classes -- although not is the same way people seem to see "balance" today. Combat is more detailed but still abstract and fast.
5) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Second Edition -- Core Rules Only): This is a cleaned up and slightly simplified version of AD&D, it really isn't all that different from first edition, but it lacks the character of Gygax's writing (which is a bad thing in my eyes, but is a good thing to some).
6) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (First Edition with Unearthed Arcana): All the advantages of first edition with some extra classes and spells. Unfortunately, some of these extra classes turned out to somewhat overpowered.
7) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Second Edition -- Plus the Kit Books): The kit books basically add a large number of subclasses to each standard class. This provides a lot of mechanical variety in characters at the cost of extra complexity and having to buy a large number of rule books.
8) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Second Edition -- Plus the Kit Books and the Skills and Powers Books): The skills and powers books add a great deal of complexity to AD&D. They also start the trend of needing minis and battle mats to play out the complex and slow combats. As I like fast and abstract combat and am bored to tears at combats that take more than 10-20 minutes max to resolve, this is where D&D and I began to part company.
9) Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 This is the last edition of D&D that really feels like the D&D game I started playing in 1975 to me. While there were a lot of changes and additions, all the basics of D&D were still there and had not changed so much that they were something different with the same name. Combat is slow and tactical, it's hard to run without minis and battle mats. The designers tried hard to make a rule for everything and to reward players who mastered the manipulation of those rules. Not my cup of tea. GM prep time is unreal if the GM cannot or will not simply wing it. Houseruling can be hard as the game systems are tightly interrelated, changing something can have expected side effects in other areas of the game.
10) Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Lots of changes to spells and other areas: the names are often the same but the effects can be completely different. Minis and battle mats become almost required and combats are even slower. GM prep takes even more time, but there is a rule for almost everything any character to ever want to do scattered about the many, many volumes of rules.
11) Dungeons & Dragons 4e IMHO, this is a tactical minis skirmish game with roleplaying interludes between the battles given the D&D label. It has very little in common with any previous edition of D&D besides names. 4e character classes and monsters are extremely well-balanced for combat -- and if that is what is important to you, D&D 4e is probably the only edition you will want to play. However, it's not for me at all.
1) Original Dungeons & Dragons with the Supplements: Fairly simple rules with a lot of room to make the campaign and the game your own with house rules. OD&D with the supplements is a lot like playing AD&D but without all the complex stuff AD&D added. Combat is fast and abstract -- just the way I like it.
2) BECMI Boxed Sets/Rules Cyclopedia: The Rules Cyclopedia (The BECM boxed sets in one hardback book) is probably the best version of D&D ever printed in hardback. It is a complete in one book, well-explained game that one can play for years without much modification, yet it is simple enough to easily house rule to fit your own group and campaign. Like OD&D, combat is fast and abstract.
3) Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert Boxed Sets: Later expanded into BECMI, this earlier edition only takes characters through 14th level. That is its only major disadvantage compared to the BECMI rules, but it is a great set for those who prefer low level play.
4) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (First Edition without Unearthed Arcana): If you want more complete rules to reduce the amount of GM rules decisions, First Edition AD&D is the way to go. Compared to later editions, it is still rules lite, but it is much more rules dense than previous versions and has a number of rules designed to better balance character classes -- although not is the same way people seem to see "balance" today. Combat is more detailed but still abstract and fast.
5) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Second Edition -- Core Rules Only): This is a cleaned up and slightly simplified version of AD&D, it really isn't all that different from first edition, but it lacks the character of Gygax's writing (which is a bad thing in my eyes, but is a good thing to some).
6) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (First Edition with Unearthed Arcana): All the advantages of first edition with some extra classes and spells. Unfortunately, some of these extra classes turned out to somewhat overpowered.
7) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Second Edition -- Plus the Kit Books): The kit books basically add a large number of subclasses to each standard class. This provides a lot of mechanical variety in characters at the cost of extra complexity and having to buy a large number of rule books.
8) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Second Edition -- Plus the Kit Books and the Skills and Powers Books): The skills and powers books add a great deal of complexity to AD&D. They also start the trend of needing minis and battle mats to play out the complex and slow combats. As I like fast and abstract combat and am bored to tears at combats that take more than 10-20 minutes max to resolve, this is where D&D and I began to part company.
9) Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 This is the last edition of D&D that really feels like the D&D game I started playing in 1975 to me. While there were a lot of changes and additions, all the basics of D&D were still there and had not changed so much that they were something different with the same name. Combat is slow and tactical, it's hard to run without minis and battle mats. The designers tried hard to make a rule for everything and to reward players who mastered the manipulation of those rules. Not my cup of tea. GM prep time is unreal if the GM cannot or will not simply wing it. Houseruling can be hard as the game systems are tightly interrelated, changing something can have expected side effects in other areas of the game.
10) Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Lots of changes to spells and other areas: the names are often the same but the effects can be completely different. Minis and battle mats become almost required and combats are even slower. GM prep takes even more time, but there is a rule for almost everything any character to ever want to do scattered about the many, many volumes of rules.
11) Dungeons & Dragons 4e IMHO, this is a tactical minis skirmish game with roleplaying interludes between the battles given the D&D label. It has very little in common with any previous edition of D&D besides names. 4e character classes and monsters are extremely well-balanced for combat -- and if that is what is important to you, D&D 4e is probably the only edition you will want to play. However, it's not for me at all.
Styles of Old School Play
If you read some “old school” blogs, forums, and web sites, you might get the impression that there is only one “old school’” style of play: a style with expendable player characters who spend all their time in dungeons designed in the style of the old “Tomb of Horrors” module where an adventuring party is only one slipup away from death. This style of play is often shown in early modules.What most people forget is that these early modules were designed for tournament play where the party that lasted longest and make it deepest into the dungeon was the winner. While a few gaming groups did run their regular campaigns like this and enjoy it, most people did not enjoy such games and the GMs who ran them were often referred to as “Killer GMs” (who often found themselves without players). Instead most home campaigns were a mixture of the following four styles – some campaigns stressing one or two styles over the others. Power-Gaming: Many players start out playing in this style. Many soon get bored with it and add more and more of other styles. A power-gaming campaign is all about character power. Characters are known by their class, level, special items, and amazing powers and deeds. (“I killed the Demon King with my 15th Level Fighter/Magic-User/Druid. It only took two hits from Thor’s Hammer to knock him out. Then I cut off his head with my vorpal blade.”) There is often a lot of player competition for the most powerful character in campaigns that stress power-gaming. A lot of people look down on this style, but it can be a lot of fun to play a pure power-game in a group of players who all like the style.Wargaming: This is probably the style old school rules were originally written for. The wargaming style of play is a competition between the player group and the GM. The GM sets up tactical battles, puzzles, and the like and the players solve them for treasure and experience. Fudging die rolls and ignoring rules (either for or against the players) is frowned upon as it detracts from the challenge and fun of the adventure. Characters in pure wargaming campaigns often were expendable and had little personality or goals (beyond staying live and getting rich) as a character with such might be tempted to do things dysfunctional to survival. Published tournament dungeons like Tomb of Horrors could be considered examples of extreme forms of this style. Once the RPG hobby became known outside of the minis and board wargaming community, pure forms of the wargaming style quickly became uncommon.Role-Playing: A pure role-playing campaign is almost the opposite of a pure wargaming campaign. Player skill, tactics, and rules aren’t really important. What is important is the player’s character and that character’s life in the game. In a pure role-playing campaign, players create the personality of their characters in great detail and players generally have a large emotional investments made in them and do not consider their characters expendable. Players tend to have their characters act within their personalities and within the beliefs they're supposed to hold – even when doing so is not the best thing to do at the time within the game. The object is to live your character’s life in the campaign world. You “win” be having your character achieve his goals, goals which may or may not have anything to do with the game’s goals of exploring and accumulating treasure and experience points. The modern computer game The Sims is an example of this style of play.Story-Telling: While all campaigns tell a story after-the-fact (that is, you can tell a story based on the characters actions in the game), in a story-telling campaign, the GM has worked out a story in advance and the player characters are the protagonists. The campaign world usually has a detailed background and back story behind it. Knowing this background may be more important than knowing the rules. Some pure story telling campaigns are little more that single-line railroads where the characters play their almost pre-scripted parts in the story. In other cases, things are more free-form with story flow and events created by interactions between the GM's basic outline of story events and the actions of individual characters during the campaign. Some people consider the more pure forms of story-telling campaigns boring straight-jackets while others love the idea of being a major part of a real story.These four major styles of play appeared early in the history of role-playing games. They were first mentioned in a general circulation publication in Glenn Blacow's article “Aspects of Adventure Gaming” in Different Worlds #10 (the October 1980 issue). The important thing to take from this section isn’t the four styles or their labels (as there are other systems for describing this with their own labels), but the idea that there were many different styles of “old school” play back in the “old school” days – not just the single style stressed in some “old school” blogs, forums, and web sites. Don’t let those sites make you believe that you aren’t playing old school right if your campaign isn’t strongly in the wargaming camp. Most successful campaigns back in “old school” days were a mixture of all four major styles – and a heaping helping of minor styles.
Reasons Magic-Users Did Not Dominate Play in Early Editions of D&D
I often hear complaints about how spell-casters dominated play in D&D 3.x -- especially at higher levels -- and that preventing this domination was one of the reasons that spell casters are limited far more than they ever were before in 4e. Most say spell-casters did not dominate the game in earlier editions of D&D (before the Skills & Powers "upgrade" to 2e). Before D&D 3.x, magic-users were very powerful at high levels, but they seldom got to those levels (as they were very weak at low levels) and other character classes -- especially the fighter -- were far more effective at high levels than they were in later editions.
There are several reasons for this:
* High level characters and monsters had very good saving rolls -- especially at high levels -- so spells were less likely to be fully effective and save-or-die spells cast against high level/hit dice opponents resulted in "save" more often than not. Fighters had very good saves versus spells in general.
* If a spell-caster took damage in combat, his spell did not go off AND he lost it from memory just as if he cast it. Spell casting, especially of high level spells, was not fast which meant non-magical opponents of a a magic-user casting a high level spell often got their chance to attack before the spell was finished. If they hit, the spell was disrupted. There were no special abilities like "Concentration" in early editions to prevent this. Prevention was other characters preventing the monsters from attacking the magic-user.
* Spells selection was much more limited, especially in core 2e and earlier editions. There were simply fewer spells available to use which meant that intelligent opponents would have a very good idea of what spells were likely to be used against them and could plan accordingly. Also, magic-users did not get to select whatever spells they wanted to learn every time they went up a level, spells had to be found by the character in the game.
* There was no 15-minute work day. When magic-users ran out of spells, they had to make do with their daggers and staves. The rest of the party was unlikely to head home just so they could recharge their spells (as the absence of magic spells was not as telling as it became in later editions) and even at high levels the MU did not have spells that would reliably get him home on his own. Spells also took a long time to re-memorize -- a high level wizard who used all her spells would need days to re-memorize them all.
* Clerical magic in early editions was pretty much non-combat. Clerics were almost as good as fighters in combat, however. And their undead turning ability was one of the most useful powers in the game -- turned undead could not drain levels.
* There were very few "buff" spells and most of those that did exist were not overpowering. The few very powerful buffs usually had an "Achilles heel" that would negate them fairly easily.
* Monsters had far fewer hit points which meant weapon hits still did a sizable amount of damage so wizards were seldom as absolutely necessary to take them out as they became in later editions.* Fighter classes were the only characters who got multiple attacks in early editions of D&D. A high level fighter could mow through low level opposition each and every round while a spell-caster -- no matter what level -- could cast only one spell per round.
There are several reasons for this:
* High level characters and monsters had very good saving rolls -- especially at high levels -- so spells were less likely to be fully effective and save-or-die spells cast against high level/hit dice opponents resulted in "save" more often than not. Fighters had very good saves versus spells in general.
* If a spell-caster took damage in combat, his spell did not go off AND he lost it from memory just as if he cast it. Spell casting, especially of high level spells, was not fast which meant non-magical opponents of a a magic-user casting a high level spell often got their chance to attack before the spell was finished. If they hit, the spell was disrupted. There were no special abilities like "Concentration" in early editions to prevent this. Prevention was other characters preventing the monsters from attacking the magic-user.
* Spells selection was much more limited, especially in core 2e and earlier editions. There were simply fewer spells available to use which meant that intelligent opponents would have a very good idea of what spells were likely to be used against them and could plan accordingly. Also, magic-users did not get to select whatever spells they wanted to learn every time they went up a level, spells had to be found by the character in the game.
* There was no 15-minute work day. When magic-users ran out of spells, they had to make do with their daggers and staves. The rest of the party was unlikely to head home just so they could recharge their spells (as the absence of magic spells was not as telling as it became in later editions) and even at high levels the MU did not have spells that would reliably get him home on his own. Spells also took a long time to re-memorize -- a high level wizard who used all her spells would need days to re-memorize them all.
* Clerical magic in early editions was pretty much non-combat. Clerics were almost as good as fighters in combat, however. And their undead turning ability was one of the most useful powers in the game -- turned undead could not drain levels.
* There were very few "buff" spells and most of those that did exist were not overpowering. The few very powerful buffs usually had an "Achilles heel" that would negate them fairly easily.
* Monsters had far fewer hit points which meant weapon hits still did a sizable amount of damage so wizards were seldom as absolutely necessary to take them out as they became in later editions.* Fighter classes were the only characters who got multiple attacks in early editions of D&D. A high level fighter could mow through low level opposition each and every round while a spell-caster -- no matter what level -- could cast only one spell per round.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Bad DM's
Just five things I've seen in recent Games, done by Bad Dm's:
1.Unpreparedness. It may be hard to blame the DM for this one (for all I know he was handed the adventure 3 minutes before we started), but it’s hard to get into a game when the first 20 minutes are spent waiting for the DM to read the module. Granted this was better than if he just made stuff up because we wanted to experience this specific adventure. But, it’s too bad that we missed out on a few cool features because he probably missed it in the cursory glance. Also I felt like there should have been “Loading…” screens between encounters while we waited for him to buffer the adventure into his brain.
2.Unfamiliarity with the rules. I have been playing D&D for over 20 years and I can’t come close to understanding the rules. At least once a a while I get a rule wrong . Because of the of constant debating of rules I am quite confident about about certain ones that come up often with our group and we have successfully resolved. Things like line of sight, grappling, charging, dazed, and stunned. I have a lot of sympathy to the GM who has to adjudicate rules, and I don’t mind even if they rule wrong as long as I get a fair hearing. What I don’t like is a GM who gets the rule wrong and won’t even consider it. It’s one thing to hear arguments and rule quickly so the game can continue, but another to just say “No” without listening or glancing at the PHB open to the appropriate section.When this happened I let it go rather than fight. If the DM still refused to listen, I’d politely demand their reasoning, and if unsatisfactory (“because I said so”, “I don’t want to go back on a ruling”, etc) and I’d look for a new game. I understand not everyone has the luxury to find a new game, so I’m curious how people might deal with an unlistening DM and keep gaming with him or her?
3.Lack of Enthusiasm. Everyone’s got his own degree of comfort acting around the table, especially with strangers (but who are D&D’ers to judge each other?), but no matter how mechanical and dice-rolly the group might be, if one player wants to role play, the DM should encourage it. Not only was this DM not encouraging but he himself wasn’t that into it. Image in your most monotone voice: “The crowd goes wild, roaring with excitement. Gazal shouts ‘Release the creature, and die for the glory of King Kalak!’” Yeah it was like that.If I were giving advice to DMs, I’d tell them to fake the enthusiasm for the benefit of the group. In this session I didn’t want to call out the DM for not playing it up, so I faked my own enthusiasm. I have to admit that I was pretty tired and without the encouragement of the DM I wasn’t able to sustain it, but at least I tried. I also tired to encourage the other players with their role playing, by responding their actions in character and supporting their characters’ decisions. Not everyone can bring it every week, and so when you have the energy, players should step up and take on the mantle of their characters.
4.Adversarial role. I don’t know if it’s age or experience, but I definitely felt the DM had a little adversarial relationship with us. It wasn’t anything explicit like overpowered monsters, just more a glee when someone took damage or frustration when we were doing well. The latest hotness in DMing is the “Philosophy of Yes” where the DM encourages the players to be creative. For example during the skill challenges when suggesting using a skill he said “explain to me how you use it” and instead of working with it or accepting it and using a high DC, he said “no, you can’t do that.” Also despite what it said in the module, he did not let us some skills multiple times (see next item).There wasn’t much I was able to do to counter this without getting confrontational, so I just kept guessing until I found an avenue that worked for the DM. As for the combats, he wasn’t out get us so much as “make us earn it” and so were able to slog through to eventual victory. I don’t have any good advice for players here other than talking to the DM outside of the game and discussing how to make the games smoother, and chipping in to buy him a copy of the DMG 2. I’m interested to hear your advice on this matter.
5.Letting the story drag. It felt like were playing 20 questions, and he was content to sit there for 10-20 minutes while we racked our brains and character sheets instead of suggesting what options were available. A great DM will use even bad suggestions by latching on to them as clues to your thought processes and turning them around to guide you.What we can do as players is try our best to work within the GM’s framework to drive the story on. When that doesn’t work, using increasingly direct questions to illicit the next steps. Start with general investigation “What else can you tell me about the NPC? Is there anything useful in reach? Do you think Nature might be applicable here?” then move on to, “we’re all out of the obvious options, what else might our characters consider?” all the way up to “it seems we’re stuck, what have we as players missed that our characters might know about this situation to help us move forward?” And if that doesn’t work, call a break and have a heart-to-heart.
1.Unpreparedness. It may be hard to blame the DM for this one (for all I know he was handed the adventure 3 minutes before we started), but it’s hard to get into a game when the first 20 minutes are spent waiting for the DM to read the module. Granted this was better than if he just made stuff up because we wanted to experience this specific adventure. But, it’s too bad that we missed out on a few cool features because he probably missed it in the cursory glance. Also I felt like there should have been “Loading…” screens between encounters while we waited for him to buffer the adventure into his brain.
2.Unfamiliarity with the rules. I have been playing D&D for over 20 years and I can’t come close to understanding the rules. At least once a a while I get a rule wrong . Because of the of constant debating of rules I am quite confident about about certain ones that come up often with our group and we have successfully resolved. Things like line of sight, grappling, charging, dazed, and stunned. I have a lot of sympathy to the GM who has to adjudicate rules, and I don’t mind even if they rule wrong as long as I get a fair hearing. What I don’t like is a GM who gets the rule wrong and won’t even consider it. It’s one thing to hear arguments and rule quickly so the game can continue, but another to just say “No” without listening or glancing at the PHB open to the appropriate section.When this happened I let it go rather than fight. If the DM still refused to listen, I’d politely demand their reasoning, and if unsatisfactory (“because I said so”, “I don’t want to go back on a ruling”, etc) and I’d look for a new game. I understand not everyone has the luxury to find a new game, so I’m curious how people might deal with an unlistening DM and keep gaming with him or her?
3.Lack of Enthusiasm. Everyone’s got his own degree of comfort acting around the table, especially with strangers (but who are D&D’ers to judge each other?), but no matter how mechanical and dice-rolly the group might be, if one player wants to role play, the DM should encourage it. Not only was this DM not encouraging but he himself wasn’t that into it. Image in your most monotone voice: “The crowd goes wild, roaring with excitement. Gazal shouts ‘Release the creature, and die for the glory of King Kalak!’” Yeah it was like that.If I were giving advice to DMs, I’d tell them to fake the enthusiasm for the benefit of the group. In this session I didn’t want to call out the DM for not playing it up, so I faked my own enthusiasm. I have to admit that I was pretty tired and without the encouragement of the DM I wasn’t able to sustain it, but at least I tried. I also tired to encourage the other players with their role playing, by responding their actions in character and supporting their characters’ decisions. Not everyone can bring it every week, and so when you have the energy, players should step up and take on the mantle of their characters.
4.Adversarial role. I don’t know if it’s age or experience, but I definitely felt the DM had a little adversarial relationship with us. It wasn’t anything explicit like overpowered monsters, just more a glee when someone took damage or frustration when we were doing well. The latest hotness in DMing is the “Philosophy of Yes” where the DM encourages the players to be creative. For example during the skill challenges when suggesting using a skill he said “explain to me how you use it” and instead of working with it or accepting it and using a high DC, he said “no, you can’t do that.” Also despite what it said in the module, he did not let us some skills multiple times (see next item).There wasn’t much I was able to do to counter this without getting confrontational, so I just kept guessing until I found an avenue that worked for the DM. As for the combats, he wasn’t out get us so much as “make us earn it” and so were able to slog through to eventual victory. I don’t have any good advice for players here other than talking to the DM outside of the game and discussing how to make the games smoother, and chipping in to buy him a copy of the DMG 2. I’m interested to hear your advice on this matter.
5.Letting the story drag. It felt like were playing 20 questions, and he was content to sit there for 10-20 minutes while we racked our brains and character sheets instead of suggesting what options were available. A great DM will use even bad suggestions by latching on to them as clues to your thought processes and turning them around to guide you.What we can do as players is try our best to work within the GM’s framework to drive the story on. When that doesn’t work, using increasingly direct questions to illicit the next steps. Start with general investigation “What else can you tell me about the NPC? Is there anything useful in reach? Do you think Nature might be applicable here?” then move on to, “we’re all out of the obvious options, what else might our characters consider?” all the way up to “it seems we’re stuck, what have we as players missed that our characters might know about this situation to help us move forward?” And if that doesn’t work, call a break and have a heart-to-heart.
D&D Word History: Dweomer
The Spell that Wasn't: *Dweomer
One of the most curious words in the entire corpus of Dungeons and Dragons booksis *dweomer, which is defined in the 1st edition Advanced D&D Dungeon Master'sGuide (1979, p. 228) as follows: "From dweomercraeft, the art (craeft) of magic(dweomer)" . Fair enough, but then whence dweomercraeft? Turns out it is a real,if obscure, word used in Middle English (and presumably in Old English). (As aside note, I find words that start with dw- to be very compelling. The onlycommon ones in English are dwarf, dwell, dwindle, and their derived forms, buthow do you like dwale?)Dweomercraeft first shows up in Layamon's Brut, an epic history of England inverse, a sort of ancestral text to the Arthurian legends, written about 1215(over a century before Chaucer), which uses almost no Anglo-Norman (i.e. derivedfrom Norman French words). Layamon writes, "And Peluz hit wiste anan thurh hisdweomer-craeften". This doesn't help us much, but we also know of an Old Englishword gedwimer meaning 'sorcery' and gedwimere meaning 'sorcerer, juggler'. There is also a Middle English word dweomerlayk 'magic, practice of occult art,jugglery', also used by Layamon, and used by some later Middle English authorsas 'demerlayk'. And so the OED, based on this evidence, defines dweomercraeft as'jugglery, magic art'.Nevertheless, *dweomer is an entirely novel term, coined by decomposing and folketymologizing the compound dweomercraeft in a way that no earlier author haddone. Gygax has re-etymologized 'dweomer', as in D&D it always describes a spellor an act of magic rather than sorcery in general. It's a very innovativeneologism, one with nearly 8,000 Google results, and has been used elsewhere inprint by fantasy authors such as Katherine Kerr, a gamer whose novels have beenstrongly influenced by D&D. Despite its great antiquity, 'dweomer' is truly newto English.A possible origin: 'dweomerlayk' shows up as 'Dwimmerlaik' in Tolkien's Lord ofthe Rings, as an epithet applied to the Witch-King of Angmar by Eowyn at theBattle of the Pelennor Fields - you know, that whole 'I am no man' spiel.Tolkien also refers to Dwimorberg, the Haunted Mountain, and Dwimordene, thename given by the people of Rohan to Lorien. All of these 'dwimmers' and'dwimors' mean 'haunted' in the Rohirric language, which is of course just OldEnglish (cf. Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth, p. 101). There's nospecific evidence that this is the source of Gygax's *dweomer (Tolkien certainlynever uses it in that spelling, or as a noun, or as a non-compounded word of anysort), but it certainly could be, given the influence of Tolkien's oeuvre on theconcepts and settings of Dungeons and Dragons.
One of the most curious words in the entire corpus of Dungeons and Dragons booksis *dweomer, which is defined in the 1st edition Advanced D&D Dungeon Master'sGuide (1979, p. 228) as follows: "From dweomercraeft, the art (craeft) of magic(dweomer)" . Fair enough, but then whence dweomercraeft? Turns out it is a real,if obscure, word used in Middle English (and presumably in Old English). (As aside note, I find words that start with dw- to be very compelling. The onlycommon ones in English are dwarf, dwell, dwindle, and their derived forms, buthow do you like dwale?)Dweomercraeft first shows up in Layamon's Brut, an epic history of England inverse, a sort of ancestral text to the Arthurian legends, written about 1215(over a century before Chaucer), which uses almost no Anglo-Norman (i.e. derivedfrom Norman French words). Layamon writes, "And Peluz hit wiste anan thurh hisdweomer-craeften". This doesn't help us much, but we also know of an Old Englishword gedwimer meaning 'sorcery' and gedwimere meaning 'sorcerer, juggler'. There is also a Middle English word dweomerlayk 'magic, practice of occult art,jugglery', also used by Layamon, and used by some later Middle English authorsas 'demerlayk'. And so the OED, based on this evidence, defines dweomercraeft as'jugglery, magic art'.Nevertheless, *dweomer is an entirely novel term, coined by decomposing and folketymologizing the compound dweomercraeft in a way that no earlier author haddone. Gygax has re-etymologized 'dweomer', as in D&D it always describes a spellor an act of magic rather than sorcery in general. It's a very innovativeneologism, one with nearly 8,000 Google results, and has been used elsewhere inprint by fantasy authors such as Katherine Kerr, a gamer whose novels have beenstrongly influenced by D&D. Despite its great antiquity, 'dweomer' is truly newto English.A possible origin: 'dweomerlayk' shows up as 'Dwimmerlaik' in Tolkien's Lord ofthe Rings, as an epithet applied to the Witch-King of Angmar by Eowyn at theBattle of the Pelennor Fields - you know, that whole 'I am no man' spiel.Tolkien also refers to Dwimorberg, the Haunted Mountain, and Dwimordene, thename given by the people of Rohan to Lorien. All of these 'dwimmers' and'dwimors' mean 'haunted' in the Rohirric language, which is of course just OldEnglish (cf. Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth, p. 101). There's nospecific evidence that this is the source of Gygax's *dweomer (Tolkien certainlynever uses it in that spelling, or as a noun, or as a non-compounded word of anysort), but it certainly could be, given the influence of Tolkien's oeuvre on theconcepts and settings of Dungeons and Dragons.
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