A New Monster: Wherein I turn a dream into a creature

So I had a weird dream last night. There were some strange creatures in it, and I've decided to turn them into monsters.

Meet the Pollex. The pollex is an evil spirit that manifests as a giant humanoid creature made of stone or wood. Pollex move through the earth as though it were water. They spend their time almost completely under the ground, with the exception of their thumbs. One thumb of a pollex (usually the left) appears to be a completely normal person (usually a human or an elf, but dwarf-thumbed pollex are not unheard of and are called Pumilo; these are always made of stone). The pollex can make the thumb move to mimic a person, and can even make it speak, but the pollex can only speak in words and phrases it has heard before. The "feet" of the thumb can never leave the ground, as they are connected to the pollex's hand, but the pollex can make it appear that the thumb is shuffling along almost like a normal person.

Pollex are created by accident when dark magic disrupts the balance of nature. When a pollex is discovered, nearby druid groves will attempt to seek it out to confront it. A pollex whose deception is discovered emerges from the earth and will attack the discoverer; however, if the discoverer asks the pollex a question immediately after it emerges from the ground, it will delay attacking long enough to answer it. A pollex subsists on the despair of sentient creatures, so it uses its thumb to trick travelers into getting lost deep in the wilderness, then feeds on their emotions as they lose hope. A pollex who is slain will be replaced by a new one within one month as long as the dark magic that spawned the original is still around. Pollex always know the nature and location of this magic.

Although pollex can move and speak through their thumb, they cannot see, hear, smell or taste with it (they can still feel, it is still a thumb, after all). Pollex can sense anything that's on the ground by detecting vibrations in a manner similar to echolocation in bats. This sense also allows them to hear what's going on above them. They cannot see birds or other flying creatures that are in the air, but if it flies close enough to the protruding thumb, they might be able to hear wing beats.

I am not an artist. I apologize for my terrible picture.

Pollex are formed by dark magic that disrupts the balance of nature in a region. Many kinds of dark magic can form a pollex, but it is never intentional. Pollex are always the byproduct of an evil intention, never the intended result. Attempts to create one intentionally always fail. Here are some examples of occurrences that might create one:

1. An evil necromancer raising an army of undead bears.

2. A cult making regular virgin sacrifices to appease their dark god.

3. The ritual slaughter of unicorns to summon a demon.

4. A coven of witches killing animals to read their entrails.

I do hope you enjoy the pollex, and if you use it, please leave a comment about how it went.

I Made a Thing: Wherein I share a helpful document

5th edition is awesome. The 5th edition Player's Handbook is not awesome. It lacks convenient indexing and quick reference material. So I made a Google Doc to help make character creation a little easier.

5e Character Creation Quick Reference

I hope this helps someone.

-Daniel

Distractions: Wherein I discuss keeping players on track

I haven't posted in a while now, but not for lack of want. I simply haven't been able to get a session together. I did finally get one yesterday, but not of my normal game. This time it was a different group (with some substantial overlap) of players, and we were trying out the new D&D starter set running the Phandelver adventure. I don't know if it was because my brother was present and he tends to derail games (which is why I don't usually invite him) but it seemed like the session went off topic more than usual. I noticed numerous times where cross talk distracted some of the players (and even myself once or twice). There were also issues with players looking at their phones a lot, which slowed the game down causing other players to look at their phones. I'm making it sound worse than it really was, but it did slow the session down noticeably. I'm normally a pretty easy-going DM, but I think it's time I instate a few table rules to keep distractions to a minimum.

1. No phones at the table. Once one player starts looking at their phone and slows the game down, it makes other players take theirs out to do the same. I had one player Snapchatting, one on Reddit and a third reading Tumblr. I think this is the most important one to be strict about, since there were so many disruptions from phones. I'll probably amend it to allow checking texts, and obviously I'm not going to stop a player from picking up on an important phone call. Other than that, phones should be in pockets for the entire duration of the session.

2. Minimize off-topic chat. I like my players. We're all friends and we all hang out regularly. We like to talk about the things we all like, video games, TV shows, etc. But when we come to the table to play D&D, we should play D&D. There were several occasions where people started talking about what show someone else should watch, or what games they should play. I even got in on some of these conversations, so some of this is my fault. This one isn't so much a rule for the table as it is me needing to remember to cut those conversations short so we can focus on playing the game.

3. Manage speakers. Several times during the session, I couldn't hear what one player was saying because two others were talking at the same time, and slightly louder. This was probably the most disruptive problem, because I missed people rolling for things, asking if they could do certain actions and making inquiries about the scene. I can't pay attention to everyone at once, so I need to come up with a reasonable solution so I can hear what everyone has to say.

4. Make the players pick a course of action. It only happened once or twice, but the players spent a good ten to fifteen minutes discussing the pros and cons of two conflicting actions without actually getting anywhere. At some point, at least one of the players got bored and started staring at his phone (see 1 above), no longer contributing to the discussion, nor making any decisions. I don't really know how to fix this, other than maybe finding a more decisive player to add to the group. It's not usually a problem in the other game, because one of the players has taken kind of a leader role. I don't want to force the players into any action, because then they aren't making choices themselves and aren't really playing. At the same time, if they never make a choice, they aren't playing the game anyway.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on table distractions. I hope my regular game gets back on track so I have more things to post about.

-Daniel

Addition: Wherein I discuss adding new players to an established game

Due to general player flakiness real lives, I found myself short a few players in the last few sessions. To solve this problem, I invited two new players to the game. Unfortunately, it took rather longer than I would have liked to introduce them to the homebrew setting we use. I asked the other players to introduce their characters and explain what was happening, but it ended up being an out-of-character discussion that quickly became sidetracked. Maybe it's an issue with my players, but as a GM who is supposed to keep the game on track, I don't accept that. The players also had some difficulty explaining the variant rules we use, even though they demonstrably understand them.

In all, adding the new guys was a bit of a clusterfuck, and I need to come up with a more efficient method. I'm considering asking one of the players to write a kind of in-character journal entry at the end of each session. And possibly having them rotate if they would prefer that. This would actually solve several problems: first, adding new players would be a breeze, as they could simply read the journal to catch up on the story. Second, it would serve to refresh the players' memories at the start of each session, since we don't play weekly and they forget things sometimes. Third and finally, I think that it might get the players more invested in their characters. Plus, it might be funny to see the barbarian dictate his entries to the wizard, since he's illiterate.

I'll try it out and report back.

An Aside: Wherein I discuss something that happened to me in class

I am a student at a community college. Lots of people attend this school from all age groups and backgrounds. The semester is over, but what prompted this post happened on the first day of my Public Speaking class. About halfway through the class session, we were given an assignment to interview one of our classmates. We were then responsible for introducing our partners to the class in a very brief (under two minute) speech during the next class session. My partner, Lisa, was extremely nice and I ended up sitting next to her each class and chatting. While she was interviewing me, she asked what my hobbies were, so I told her about my D&D game. Now, Lisa is  most definitely not from a nerdy background. All of my friends are nerds, the shop I hang out at every week is a game shop filled with nerds, I live and breathe nerd-dom. So it was very jarring when she asked me, "What is an RPG?" She had never encountered the concept. I can't fault her for that, she just has different interests than me. I don't exactly remember my response, but it was brief and felt unsatisfying to me. So, for my own benefit, here is a real answer.

"What is a Role Playing Game?"

At its most basic level, an RPG is a form of storytelling. Storytelling and stories in general have been around pretty much as far back as archeologists have been able to look. As humans, we love telling stories and we love hearing stories, but more than that we like to make up our own stories. In the past, we invented stories about how the Earth was created, how the stars got in the sky and all sorts of other things. Even though we eventually learned where those things came from, stories still endure. What makes RPGs unique as a storytelling device is twofold. First, RPGs are cooperative storytelling. This is a point of contention with some GMs who would prefer that players not “trample” their carefully crafted narratives. These people forget that the players have free will and want (as most people do) to change the world based on their own ideals. The second way RPGs are unique is that they are storytelling gamified. There are concrete rules in place that determine how to adjudicate the way in which the players interact with the world and vice-versa.  Because success is not always guaranteed in the real world, the same should be true of our stories. If there is no possibility of failure, there is no dramatic tension. So we use dice or playing cards or tokens or even skillful tasks to determine success in the game world. The actual method of determining success is mostly irrelevant, so long as it is not simply an arbitrary choice.

Now that we know what an RPG is, why are there so many of them? RPGs only really differ in a few ways: different allocation of responsibilities, different systems for determining success and different niche roles. Many RPGs follow a very standard allocation of responsibility, the GM is the architect and arbiter of the world he or she has designed, and the players’ control extends only to the actions of his or her own character. This is not a bad system, but it does tend to discourage new players from attempting to fill this role due to the amount of information that the GM must keep track of. It’s a daunting task to even some veteran players. However, some systems give the players more ability to affect the game world than this. On the minor end of the spectrum are games in which the players are given some ability to simply change the world around them in the current scene. At the other are games where there is no GM at all, and the game is entirely cooperative. As for different systems to determine success, the majority of RPGs tend to use dice. While all of these games use the same type of tool, the way in which it is employed is often vastly different. Some games use one die per player; others require each player to have dozens of dice. Some games only use on type of die; others use several. Most games use normal dice, in the shape of the platonic solids (and the ten-sided die as well); at least one uses dice with unusual numbers of sides, such as three and five. The room for variety is very large. However, dice are not the only system used. Some games use playing cards drawn from a deck, others use tokens. At least one game uses a Jenga tower. Finally, different RPGs are designed to fulfill different desires, or different niches. Many are based in Tolkien-style fantasy, some are sword and sorcery. Some take place in space, or at least the distant future. Some involve magic, some don’t. Some are based on the horror genre, some on superheroes, and there are even ones about entire alien civilizations. Each serves a slightly different purpose, and shuffling them around is often not a good idea. Superheroes don’t work well in a game designed for horror any better than a wizard does in space (usually).

I don't think that Lisa really understood my description RPGs when I explained it in class. This is likely the work of my half-assed response. I did tell her about this blog, so maybe she'll come here and read it. Maybe she'll gain a better understanding. Or not. Regardless, this is a much more fitting description, and maybe now I'll stop perseverating over it and get back to writing my damn game. More likely, I'll get back to my crippling addiction to Diablo III.

-Daniel

Argent: Wherein I discuss my success to design an engaging puzzle

As promised in my previous, and rather downbeat post, I'll now counterpoint my failure with a success. The reward for the unfortunate dungeon, The Paper Maze, was the location of the next leg of the quest. The "Treasure" room contained little of the sort, but it did contain a large table with a detailed map of the island in which were placed two pins. One pin marked the party's current location, the other sat a few days' journey away and was labelled "Argent". Now, the title of the dungeon was a hint (argent is the Latin word for silver) and easily deciphered by one of my players who happens to be a chemist. A degree in chemistry is not required to complete this puzzle. Once they arrived at the location, they were met with a small stone building with an open entryway leading to stairs down and two more lines of those strange runes I previously mentioned. It is at this point that I feel I should mention that the runes I've been talking about are not simply some cut-and-paste from Tolkien, nor an extant written language. I personally developed a system of (mostly) consistent logographs, complete with their own grammatical structure. I did it for fun. That's how I spend my free time. Well, that and actually writing the game. *cough* (I will include details on these runes in a later post)

Anyway, on to the dungeon proper. Descending the stairs brought the party to an ornate metal door. The rogue searched for traps and found a trigger for one. Unable to discern its purpose, he disabled it. Had they simply opened the door, they might have found that it merely unfurled a welcome banner. (These dungeons are clearly designed by a wizard with a sense of humor.) Once past the door, the party enters a very large and very empty room. The only object in the room is a dome-shaped pedestal with six buttons on it. Each button contains two runes. These runes, as the players correctly determined after some experimentation, are an adjective and a creature or weapon. Pressing one button causes it to light up and an illusion of the thing described by the runes to appear in one corner of the room. Pressing a second button causes a second illusion to appear in the adjacent corner. Once two illusions have appeared, they become solid and "real" until they are dealt with. I use scare quotes because the things summoned are not entirely real. The creatures summoned only have partial hitpoints for a creature of their type, and damage that they deal is partially healed after the encounter. The one weapon that can be summoned, a copper sword, simply flies at the other illusion (or the activating player if summoned twice) and deals this same illusory damage. Not all of the summoned things are hostile (as it turns out, three of the four my players encountered were, but that was mostly bad luck). The correct response ended up being to summon two silver dragon illusions who then opened the door forward. All of my players found this puzzle to be particularly fun (even the one who died to unfortunate critical hits, more on that in later posts).

So now that I have a successful dungeon and a failed dungeon, I need to compare and contrast to determine what I did right and what to avoid in the future. So what were the major differences in the planning stage? Well, to start with the obvious, I spent a lot more time planning Argent than I did on the Paper Maze. But I sincerely doubt that planning time necessarily equates to a better dungeon. They both had an interesting theme, and the descriptions of the dungeons were cool, so that also can't be the problem. So, in my mind, the problem comes down simply to the fact that I handled the Paper Maze so poorly as to make an otherwise interesting encounter into an unengaging snorefest. I believe that if I had simply handled it a bit better it could have been very fun. To that end, I plan to try it again with another group whenever I get the chance.

Long story short, don't be dumb. It can only hamper the fun of other players at the table.

-Daniel

The Paper Maze: Wherein I discuss my failure to design an engaging puzzle

I can think of no better way to start off this blog than by discussing a major failure I had when designing my current campaign. I will begin by giving some backstory for the campaign, continue with an explanation of the failed dungeon and conclude with thoughts on what ought to have been done differently. This post deals with puzzle dungeons, which some people do not think make for good game design or particularly engaging games. However, this post is not about puzzle dungeons in general, but simply a single instance of a particularly bad one.

My current campaign started when an acquaintance of mine purchased a large, castle-shaped DM screen at my local game shop. It's a beautiful set piece on the table, it has racks for miniatures and two of the parapets contain dice towers (one faces out, the other in). It does a wonderful job of keeping my notes hidden, making secret dice rolls and, importantly, really sets the mood. I asked him if he was a big D&D player, since I'd not heard of him playing any RPGs before. He told me that he's never played, but he enjoys collecting the minis, and would like to play at some point. I immediately set to work recruiting four more people (two of whom have been friends since high school) and thus my campaign began. We're using 3.5 D&D in a homebrew setting with custom deities, maps, et cetera. We use old-school style hex clearing and heavy combat as well as a story rife with homage to classic modules.

The dungeon in question came up as part of a quest line in which all of the dungeons are puzzles. This was the first dungeon in the quest, and the hook for the whole line. It was a short dungeon, meant only to break up the over-land travel, and provide more directions for the players to go. It was so short, in fact, that it had only three rooms: the entrance/exit, the "treasure" room and the room containing the puzzle itself. This puzzle wasn't too complicated (the get trickier as the quest line progresses), it was pretty much just a simple maze marked with undecipherable runes. Normally in 3.5, pretty much any text is decipherable (given time and a wizard), but these runes are actually part of a later puzzle, where the players will eventually have to determine their meaning themselves. The interesting part of the maze was that all of the walls were made of paper panels. As is common in D&D, one player immediately tried to bust through one of the panels, which sprung the trap. He was hit with a Maze spell, and was stuck on a pocket dimension for several rounds. The players then proceeded, mostly unmolested, through the maze, only having party members Mazed two or three more times.

As you may have guessed, the failure of this dungeon was that the players had basically no meaningful choices to make. They simply walked through a maze while I described things. Occasionally, dice were rolled to determine if anything interesting happened. I had pretty much reduced their agency to zero, while I narrated the dungeon. Fortunately, only one player complained, and the dungeon was short. I think the only reason that I didn't have five angry players at the table was that my narration was interesting enough that they didn't think about it until after the game ended. Also, the concept of a maze that Mazes you is pretty cool. My failure was not so much in the design of the dungeon, but how I resolved it.

So now I shall end this post with some possible solutions to this problem dungeon. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I could have made the experience better, so here are some of my ideas. I could have made the dungeon more engaging with a large, printed map (so as to avoid having to draw on my wet-erase mat), then had the players pull from a Jenga tower as they moved. A collapsed tower is a Maze. Or I could have had some sort of motivation to keep moving forward, like a (possibly illusory) lava flow, forcing them to make reflex saves to avoid breaking the walls if they move faster than a cautious walk. There are a number of ways I could have made the experience more engaging, but I failed to adequately plan the encounter, choosing instead to focus more on the combat encounters and the worldbuilding details that I will discuss in a future post. Since that session, I have allocated much more of my planning time to ensuring that my puzzles are both engaging and challenging.

This post is already much longer than I had anticipated, so I shall rather abruptly end here. Next time I post, I think I'll describe a much more successful puzzle dungeon, and contrast it with this one to figure out what I did differently.

-Daniel

Dantroduction? Introdantion? Puns are hard.

My name is Daniel. I like Dungeons & Dragons and puns. I also like other role playing games, but those are harder to make puns with. I'm a 24 year old college student, a gamer and a GM. I've read other blogs about RPGs, but I think that there's only so much a person can learn from reading about game theory, player agency and theory of adventure design without spending some time on a critique of my own skills as GM. I strongly suspect that no one will read this blog, with the exception of a few friends, but that's okay because it's not really for other people. I've started this blog, mostly for my own benefit; both as a way to focus myself when I find time to plan my next session and also to critique my own performance after each game. This does raise the question, however, if I'm not blogging for other people, why have a public blog at all? The reason is simple: honesty. I believe in being honest to others, but I sometimes have difficulty being honest with myself. As long as I know that there's even the slightest chance of someone else reading this (and let's be real, this is the internet, someone somewhere reads everything) then to follow my own beliefs, I must be honest. I expect that I will only post maybe once or twice a month, as my current game is only meeting on a monthly basis, so that's about how often I schedule planning time. Sometime after finals, I'll try to find the time to make the blog look half decent. Maybe I'll use my actual GM notes for the background art, who knows? I will also likely make more than once-monthly posts at the start, as I've got several sessions of critiques to catch up on.

Anyway, that's enough for an introduction. I'm going to get back to studying for finals. (This was a between-projects break.) I look forward to updating this blog, and maybe getting a reader or two.

-Daniel