Recurring villains

Scott misses the point of this earlier post. It's not the recurrence of villains that's annoying, it's the "no chance of cornering or defeating" part.

We had a hobgoblin that Barik freaked out by "coming back from the dead" with healing potions. He ran off, and we ended up meeting him later and wiping the floor with him. Nobody complained about him, and not just because he was relatively easy to defeat the second time around.

The issue was, when we fought him originally, it certainly seemed like (a) it could've gone the other way in our first encounter, but even more importantly (b) it wasn't a priority to us whether he ran off to face us later or not -- we had other fish to fry.

Either one of these elements is sufficient for a recurring villain to be appealing to both players and DMs (and movie audiences). Specifically, (a) gives the players the impression that the encounter didn't have a foregone outcome, and we hate to be run on rails: some of the best "recurring villains" are completely organic -- they just happened not to die in the first encounter. I say (b) is more important because it establishes what sort of encounter we're having, and some useful hint of that is critical in every encounter.

Players want to have some sense of what sort of encounter they're having, so that they can behave appropriately. (Characters in movies don't have this problem). If you run into Darth Vader in the opening scene, you know that you should probably keep your head down and your mouth shut -- this is a bad guy you're developing a hate for now, but that you aren't really expected to confront until later on. If you run into an opponent whose roughly at your level, and there isn't some ongoing plot effect (like you have to kill everyone who might report your existence, for example), then the encounter can resolve in dozens of acceptable ways: you can defeat and kill them, defeat them but they turn tail and run off, capture them, reach some sort of standoff, get captured by them (and manage to escape later), get beaten by them and you run off, etc. In many of those results, both parties survive, and might run into each other again, and that'd be the kind of recurring villain that can have lots of development and dynamic relationship if they keep surviving, or just provide a little thematic consistency if they only last two encounters.

(A somewhat rare possibility is the recurrent thorn in your side who's unquestionably weaker than you: an enemy who surrendered and you let live, for example, who you then keep running into in circumstances where they can continue to annoy but not really harm the party, and it's never convenient enough or necessary enough to eliminate them. A rather funny example would be if Scott's lovely backstory of an orc grunt had a happier ending where he ran away, and the audience got to hear about this guy who happens to be in every orc horde the party ever fights, and haplessly manages to survive several times.)

I'm not sure if Jacob correctly interpreted John's original comment: I thought he meant that right now, in this fight, we've got multiple enemies who, having given annoying speeches and fired off magic attacks at us, smirk and "just vanish". I certainly find that annoying. Even the orcs I know wouldn't follow someone like that -- it's cowardly, leaving their underlings to face the mean PCs, and just because they're fodder doesn't mean they want to be treated like it. :)

Similarly, the most annoying sort of recurring villain is one that seems very much scripted to be a recurring villain from the beginning. There's an encounter, and, contrary to player expectations, things play out in a way that seems helpful to the DM's plot, and impervious to player attempts to derail it.

Anyone who tells you...

that Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series isn't top-notch fantasy is an idiot.

Okay, I haven't read the whole thing (I'm partway through book 2, "The Subtle Knife"). But it's awesome. It transcends subgenre. Which might sound stupid, but lemme finish. It's not an alternate history story, quite; it's got a lot of parallel worlds, but that's only incidental to the first book, and there's more to it than that. It genuinely blends fantasy and science fiction (specifically, a fantastic description of dark matter). It's a child-heroine fantasy too, complete with absent/evil parent issues, and oh, did I mention it's also a sequel to Paradise Lost? And just for flavah, it's got a cowboy air balloonist. And talking polar bears!

Tolkien. Lewis. Pullman. Not a stretch.

Comics -- Marvel advertising for the opposition

I tried to let it go. I read Deadline, and although I of course caviled to whatever geek or wife would listen, I didn't make too big a deal about it. Occasional references would come up here and there -- I recall a bit in Alias, and the whole Civil War storyline perpetuated the offense.

But in "The Initiative: Avengers", it's run amok, and I can't keep quiet any more.

What is the slang, in the Marvel Universe, for superheroes? The answer, obviously, is "capes". Capes are referred to in Avengers #1 (not New Avengers, not Mighty Avengers, just Avengers -- little too much vengeance, people?) four times. Admittedly, sometimes they're used to mean the superhero, and sometimes they're used to refer to the expected costume of a superhero, but nonetheless, capes are clearly what superheroes wear.

Only, of course, it isn't, unless all these Marvel people only read DC comics.

Go down the list of Marvel superheroes, and just like kid sidekicks, capes are in extremely short supply. Rather less common, in fact, than your average ren-faire. Spider-Man? Captain America? Hulk? Iron Man? Wolverine? Fantastic Four? Nope, capes are definitely NOT superhero standard issue. Here's the most visible heroes with capes in the Marvel Universe that I can come up with (let me know if I missed someone).

Dr. Strange -- (Yeah, it's a cloak, still counts)
Storm, old costume (I've got no idea what she wears these days)
Thor
Marvel Boy/Justice/Vance Astrovik
Sentry
Vision
Quasar
Stingray
Sabra
Ghost Rider (Western)
Nighthawk's wings sometimes kinda look like a cape.

I might've missed someone more visible than Stingray, but overwhelmingly, the Marvel Universe is filled with costumes that DON'T have capes. Why would anyone start referring to heroes as "capes"?

Unless they've been looking at Batman and Superman, that is. Unsurprisingly, I don't recall any instance of Marvel Universe denizens seeing a DC comic book in-story, while we DO know that in-universe comics include "real" characters such as Captain America (at one time drawn by Cap himself).

"Masks" would be more appropriate (though still with many exceptions to the rule). But if you're going to go to the effort to make up a fictional jargon, shouldn't it have some semblance of internal consistency?

I feel like this promulgation of "capes" has to be some sort of intentional but misguided "irony". In the entire aforementioned Avengers #1, Justice has a cape, and no other character, new or old, including the Mighty Avengers that make a cameo, has one. Is this supposed to be some sort of dig at the distinguished competition -- when the Marvel superheroes are unpopular, they're referred to as capes? In my opinion, it just sounds like you don't care which company or comic culture you're writing for.

For my fellow obscurists, and in the interests of full disclosure: at the center page (where the staples are), thre's someone in the background with a cape, and someone flying in the background next to Stature who has semi-capelike wings. Are these identifiable characters, or just made up "new recruits"?

Update: I see in Avengers #2 that Phantom Rider (is this _not_ the Western Ghost Rider?) has a cape. Also, Hardball says, of the others flying away "half those guys have capes or wings, and it's not like we're gonna grow a pair of---" What? Capes give you the power to fly? Where would he have gotten such a notion?

Oh, and looking back at Avengers #1, I'd like to comment that artists' depictions of Warbirds outfit have really seemed pretty inappropriate for a while now, but (see p. 12, counting ad pages) I really wish they'd stop drawing it as a thong. She was the first feminist super heroine, for crissake.

And now I see that in Avengers #2, in the big splash page, they couldn't resist another look at Warbird tushie. Classy, the way the search for the next pussycat doll is classy.

Follow-up to dndblog comments

I would like to agree with Aaron that "a good fight should make us all feel much much better", but there are two related points that occur to me:
1. a year from now, a random fight with grimlocks, unless it segues into the big boss killing us all, isn't going to be nearly as memorable as the whole "Drusilla ends up with one leg covered in...well...you get the picture. (Hey, this is an R rated game, not NC-17)."

2. unlike face-to-face D&D, there's a near-timeless record on the blog of what has gone before. Jacob and Scott have talked about "turning this into a book". Maybe we shouldn't be so pretentious about it, but the fact is, the story's all there to be read, warts and all.

I guess I wanted to point out that while I want to feel better, if we go from grisly scene of grim torture to grisly scene of sexual disempowerment, always being (gratefully) distracted by a new fight, I feel like I'm being used to contribute to a story I don't want to be a part of.

And I don't want that to seem too high-falutin'. Just because I don't want to be a part of a story doesn't mean that it's wrong to tell. Fabio says "if `no obscenity' is a rule here, I will more than happily respect that." I don't know if that's a rule here. I'm not trying to make the rules unilaterally. I'm just saying that there's a rule _for me_, and the line is somewhere between "obscenity" and player characters ejaculating on each other. I figure these rules are decided as a group (with a lot of weight given to the DM), and I don't want to speak for anyone but me. I think I've expounded on my position enough -- I'd like to hear what other people want out of the blog, narrative motif-wise.

I also agree with Jacob that this "spiral" isn't anybody's fault. Fabio's tried to play his weird character, Scott has expanded on it and pushed the envelope, Aaron's attempt to shut the issue down without sacrificing game actions got misinterpreted, and I, for one, didn't have the wisdom and initiative to come up with an in-game response. In retrospect, I think I should've just tried to kill Slthm.

Sexual Assault in D&D -- an antipathy spell I failed to save against

Hi. Been a while.

I owe you an explanation for my long hiatus. Well, that actually depends on who you are, but I do owe the 3 or so people who are actually going to read this an explanation.

Some time ago, a lull in the dndblog campaign led to some discussion of the question "what are the most memorable moments of the campaign so far?" And I think my response was some of the distinctive game-action moments. But it occurs to me now (especially now) that those aren't actually what I remember most vividly.

Until February, the most vivid moment was Bishop anally raping a half-orc with a hot poker. Which is still a creditable second. But Slthm ejaculating on Drusilla, having his penis ruptured (or not), with attendant jokes from Gonzo Gamer, and Scott casually "moving the game along" -- there's Grimlocks to kill, you know -- has clawed its way deep, deep into my brain.

And I'm not cool with either of those. Frankly, I'm surprised you are.

Figuring out why I'm so upset by the Slthm-Drusilla scene has been instructive for me. Of course, there is the nature of the thing -- coming on someone against their will is a particularly violent and repellent act, not sexual in any sort of good way. (Hannibal Lecter and I agree on this.) And of course, this is a narrative, not factual, which makes it worse. Gonzo thought (and presumably still thinks) that "a taste for sexual harassment is a nice touch for any PC!" I don't think I can communicate how much I disagree.

Dungeons & Dragons is, partly, a jointly developed story. The skeletal structure of the rules presumes an adventure story of heroic action. The DM develops the setting and the plot, and the players provide the characters. I want to contribute to a story of overcoming adversity, conquering evil through courage and wits. But now we've got a story in which the one woman is treated like...like a fucktoy, is the only way I can think of to say it. Aaron's participation in this endeavor is playing and developing Drusilla's character, and his/her serious acts are met with "oh, Slthm's into S&M, and spews on her". I don't have any interest in being a part of that story.

It's gratuitous, but I don't care about that. It's prurient. It's debasing. I used to encourage my wife to read what we were up to on the blog. I thought about telling my students about the blog, and encouraging them to check it out if they hadn't seen games like this before. Mentioning the blog's current webpage to a class now would be professional suicide. With good reason.

I'm probably coming across as prudish, which I think Jacob will confirm I'm not. I think there's a swirl of issues that have come to a head, and it's more than just my visceral response to Slthm's scripted behavior that I have trouble coping with.

Going back to the collaborative storytelling idea: D&D players have conflicting motives. Once the character is developed, we want the character's actions to reflect that character. But separate and sometimes in opposition to that, we want to preserve the storytelling experience -- to keep playing the game. Barik found these humans irresponsible, corrupt, foolish, hostile -- and yet came up with reasons that he should go along with them. At times Grell, Bishop, Acavel and Slthm have earned the distrust and dislike (to put it mildly) of the party, and yet we have put up with each other and even sacrificed ourselves to help other members who clearly weren't worth it in-game, but we were focused on the big picture of "making it all work" rather than just playing our roles.

Feeling like the DM is just screwing with you is pretty common (and usually just paranoia from a run of bad luck), but in this case, another player is causing the problem. Gonzo has more or less said he's screwing with us -- "I've never played such a disruptive character -- I'm having a blast!" is the message I'm getting from him. In other words, he's having a great time putting us in the position of having to choose "keeping the game going" rather than "playing my character's role", because he's been playing his role with complete disregard for keeping the game going.

This is exactly the same message I got from an irritating jock when he announced how much he liked just trying to get under people's skin sometimes, really prod at them until they couldn't take it. There's a word for a person who is consciously trying to make your life difficult because it amuses him. The word is asshole. I didn't have the impression until recently that Gonzo was an asshole, but one thing I'm sure of, I don't like playing games with assholes.

I was (literally) dumbfounded by the response, or lack thereof, by the DM (and his PC, Bishop) in this scene. Gonzo started the whole "horn-dog" moment, but the DM followed it to its grisly conclusion, and then tried to move on as if nothing of significance had happened. I felt rather similarly back at the Bishop torture scene, which Scott clearly laid out in careful detail, then remained obstinately unresponsive as Barik and Acavel refused to let it drop. I was trying to convey then that both I and my character are not okay with this, and that if that's the sort of thing we can expect out of this story, we'll pack up and head for a less evil place. Now that I think of it, we haven't seen the "bad guys" in this adventure do anything as evil as members of our own party. (The hill giants eating Agar is the closest, and I suppose Acavel has suffered dire stuff in hell, but that doesn't seem the same.)

It's late -- I'm going to start summarizing.

As you know, we all have various pulls on our time. Work is demanding more of my time than it used to (new job), family, the everyday tedium of living, and thankfully several avenues of recreation. For the last month and a half, it's been more appealing to play PlayStation games or read comic books (From Hell has taken quite a bit of time -- lots of chapter notes) than to try to wrestle with the issues of the dndblog. Because, frankly, this whole scene's left a bad taste in my mouth. And the one thing Scott's DMing philosophy and the limitations of the blog format guarantee is that it's going to be a long long time before we reach another shortlived "victory moment".

So, I kept not getting around to it and kept not getting around to it, until here we are. I know, my nonresponsiveness is a lousy coping mechanism. That's been made abundantly clear to me several times before, but it's a negative behavior I have that I may never be able to shake. I apologize for disappearing for so long without a word. As the last several years indicate, it doesn't happen all that often, and I'll try not to do it again.

Which brings us to the present. What do I do now? Well, blogwise there's nothing to do -- Barik is apparently Stone-boy of the Nine Toes at the moment. I hadn't meant for this to come off this way, but looking back over this, it looks a lot like a "here's why I'm ditching the blog" message. That's not my intention.

But let's be honest. Maybe you're just thrilled by all the edginess and drama that ejaculating gnolls and anal penetration with hot pokers provide. Maybe you find delicious the feeling of being on tenterhooks because of the maverick play of characters who don't care what the fate of their character, the party, or the game is. That's fine. If that's the way you want to play it, then maybe Barik would be happier off doing something else.

That's not what I want. Overall, I've enjoyed the experience of the blog, I want to know how the story turns out. It's been fun to get back in touch with Jacob and Aaron, and interesting to find out how two strangers (John and myself) who I'm pretty sure wouldn't abide being in the same room in real life can meaningfully work together and communicate in this game. Until these recent events, I had the impression that Fabio was an interesting guy that has some common research interests with me. I don't want to leave.

I'm not trying to make this as some sort of ultimatum or a "I'll come back with these conditions" kind of thing. If Barik gets unstoned, I'll play him. I'm not telling you what to do -- but I am telling you, if this story continues down the road it seems to be, which seems to me to end with turning Drusilla into nothing more than the butt of doggie-style sex comments and the game disintegrating into a competition of whose character is the most entertainingly dysfunctional, my entry's going to be that Barik commits suicide, death by opposing army if possible, but he's not picky. That Barik, such a zany guy.

DMs make the best teachers

I ask you, what's a game?



The notion of "game" is intuitive, but tricky to pin down, especially with the advent of videogames, MMO communities, etc. But here's a vague description that's not too far off the mark: a game provides challenges, and somehow quantifies the player's progress through (or victory over) those challenges. D for instance, and all RPGs, are "about" facing trial after trial after ambush after trap after trial, coping with each in one way or another, and getting rewarded with levels and booty, the better to face the next hurdle.



A class is also supposed to provide challenges, and quantify the student's progress through (and ideally, victory over) those challenges. It's harder to find distinctions between games and classes than similarities.



What are the traits of a good teacher? Some are strict, some are friendly, some are innovative, some stick to tried and true methods. But a good teacher makes classes compelling, makes the subject interesting, keeps students interested.



Thus, the post title. A dungeon master (or any other game designer) starts with a bare structure, and builds a compelling environment, and a dramatic storyline that doesn't just make you follow it, it makes you play a part in it.



If anyone's got a good campaign idea for College Algebra class, pleeeeeze let me in on it. Seriously.



Of course, every good DM uses some of the fine resources already out there. I'm going to start out with Module Q1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits.



"Okay, Stephen, you're the thief, hiding under the drow altar. Peering out from under the black velvet, you count 46 legs. Meanwhile, from her vantage point peering down from the balcony, Vanessa the barbarian sees 16 drowish heads. After your companions report what they've seen, it's up to Ashley the mage (who has the highest Int): how many driders and how many drow are out there?"

powered by performancing firefox

rats...

I'm annoyed (mostly at myself) that I didn't post promptly. As a good dwarf, Barik'd much rather get a useful MAP than blindly follow an inconsistent and suspect gnoll. But, you sit around too long and next thing you know, you're in some lizard lair and the DM's asking for the marching order again.

Another bit o' D&D software

I've been looking at kLoOge.Werks (see link above), which is quite a funky D&D app. Also, it and Gametable (link in post below) are the first I've seen of semiserious people actually distributing Java programs (rather than applets). This is very cool for me, because it's genuinely portable -- I can run kLoOge.Werks on my Linux box happily, yet normal people can use it too.

Mapping Software?

I've brought up other web formats (like wikis), and in that post described some of the basic D&D "functions" you'd like an online campaign to do easily. These are from the point of view of a player, who wants to view the page, see both the current situation and the relevant past information (like his/her current character, as well as easy access to past conversations and encounters), and then describe his/her current actions.

One point that Jacob highlighted (and I agree with) is that "relevant past information" could be anything, and being able to store all the past history and search through it later is important.

I briefly mentioned the idea of interactive map software, which might be terribly complicated, but OpenRPG (for example) has a very nice one, and I would think there would be a lot "shared whiteboard" stuff out there. But the sharing isn't what I want to talk about at the moment.

I'm interested in hearing about good map-drawing applications. If I recall correctly, Scott uses Visio, which seems a little like using an elephant gun, but it certainly seems to work well. Unfortunately, not only do I not have Visio, I doubt it's available under Linux, which I much prefer to Windows (I don't have Windows at home at all).

I've done a little Googling, and some of the (Windows) software out there includes Dundjinni, Campaign Cartographer (which, to me anyway, looks ugly), and Campaign Suite, and that seems to be just scratching the surface. Here's some more links, in case you've got a yen to go surfing:

AutoREALM
GridSmith
TavernMaker

And those are just the ones with high-PageRank individual sites. The programs appearing in long lists of available software are innumerable: if I figure out how to put some sites on a blogroll, I'll put some aggregated sites there, just for reference.

I said I wasn't talking about whiteboardy stuff, but I'm breaking my own rule because this has the benefit of being OS-independent (and apparently does mappy stuff too).
Gametable
seems to do all the cool stuff OpenRPG does, only without a special client.

Do you know of other mapping tools? Got any experiences to share? I care about functional over pretty, although I draw the line at "illegible", and speedy development is most important of all; if it's easy to draw maps, we'll see a lot of them with lots of updates, and if it's a pain, we won't.

I did have bold plans of setting up a deme.org wiki-style faux campaign, just so we could take a look and try it out. I still have that plan, but it's too late and I have a big phone interview tomorrow.

Copyright concerns

(Note to Jacob: I really will actually reply to the comments -- but I also want to keep posting the seeds of ideas, to keep a stream of topics running through the heads of the thousands of readers. Dozens of readers. OK, reader.)

Once a new online D&D campaign actually gets spawned from here, I want to incorporate as many colorful resources as I can (ideally, without too much effort). Over at dndblog, Scott's graphics have really brought things to life -- not just the maps, but pictures of mountain lions and images from the Monster Manual too.

The graphics from Wizards.com, although hard to find (hence the lack of link), generally have text around them indicating that they intend you to use them to enhance your own campaign. On the other end of the spectrum, a typical book with lots of artwork has very dire warnings against using any of its art for any purpose at all.

I want to solicit from people likely to play in the campaign where their vision of "fair use" lies. While the chances that some litigious copyright holder is going to trip upon this blog (or wiki, or whatever) are remote, I want to make sure everyone is comfortable with anything that gets uploaded from anyone. So we should all be on the same page in terms of what's appropriate. I'm going out on the limb of assuming no one's going to upload pornography to a D&D site, so next on the list is "possibly infringing material".

Let me first state my attitude. I think I tend to fall more in the "yeah, it's fair use" camp than "no, you can't use anything without permission" camp. For example, I'm of the opinion that links to images on the web (img src="somewhere.com/picture") aren't really much in the way of copying: someone's made the image available to be viewed on the web, and making it appear through a window on our page isn't meaningfully different from viewing it in situ. But that's just me. You might feel differently (and might have case law on your side; unfortunately, the courts haven't yet adopted the "Bob reasonableness standard").

One might ask whether worrying about copyright is even relevant: I mean, the vast majority of stuff is going to be created by us, and what little snippet pictures from magazines or books or what have you we throw in has gotta be fair use, right? That may well be your point of view, and certainly in terms of a local D&D game, using some visual aids with your group seems like fair use to me. However, if our online stuff is accessible to everybody in the world, scanning your favorite Boris Vallejo print and putting it up on the campaign website lets more unscrupulous people, unassociated with our D&D campaign, grab that art and print it on T shirts. Are they violating copyright laws? Of course. Might they try to pin it on us and get us involved? Maybe. Might _we_ get unfriendly cease and desist letters? Unlikely, I think, but possible.

Some possible resolutions to this:
- don't put possibly copyrighted material on the blog at all. This is somewhat annoying, since, for example, I'd like to use images from coffee table books about the Crown Jewels to show the cool treasure you've just discovered. Also, it's hard to tell what's copyrightable/copyrighted/usable and what's not. What about the geomorphs at the back of the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, or a map made from them? How about a picture taken of lead figures on the tiles from Dungeon Floor Plans? (That said, Flickr.com and Google's Advanced Search options, and everything Creative Commons does, can help find images that are explicitly usable. And convenience in and of itself is no excuse -- it's cheaper for me to steal food instead of buy it, but that doesn't make it right.)

- make a secured, "login" part of the page (or the whole campaign website), so that only a small group of people have access. Now you're not sharing a picture of your Boris Vallejo print with the whole world, but only with 6-10 people. Trying to justify to yourself that this is fair use is a lot easier. Of course, this means you have to login to the page, and someone has to figure out how to manage Web security, at least a little.

- analogous to this, the page could have only public domain/licensed to share stuff, and occasional color material could be delivered by snail mail (or email). I kind of like the idea of players getting occasional mysterious funky envelopes with arcane bits of parchment inside, and/or pictures of treasure or monsters or whatever.

- Possibly, I'm blowing this whole issue out of proportion. We put up what we like, and in the unlikely event someone complains about it, we take it down. No harm, no foul -- at least, that's our story and we're stickin' to it.

The most important thing is, everyone feels comfortable with the policy we take at the outset. I know some of us are professionals and copyright holders ourselves, and might feel strongly about these things. I don't want someone not playing D&D, or worse, quitting D&D, because I put something up on the web that they don't want to be a party to. I would like to be sensitive to all concerns.

But if it's no big deal and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I'm okay with that too. Whatever you want.

Ug

I am being, as they say, "beaten like a ginger-haired stepchild" at work. Not literally. And I don't mean any offense to, as I would call them, redheads.

But I will not let _another_ day go by without putting out some incoherent D&D thoughts. So here they are:

I wanted to put something more coherent here, but I simply don't have the time, so let's assume it'll shape up on its own, wiki-like...

Actually, that's point one. Is the blog format the _best_ way to implement a web-based D&D game? I've looked a bit at wikis, openRPG, and the crazily interesting Deme (on groupspace.org), and you should too. Had I been able, I wanted to make a little sample campaign deme site, wiki, and blog, and compare how they felt to use.

Seems to me some of the functionality you want from a D&D campaign website is:

A) effective character viewing/manipulation (probably have to be a dynamic webpage with a database backend)
B) an easy "post action" interface (which blog does well)
C) make it easy to see the current situation so you know what action to post: this ties in with seeing your character, but also might involve graphics: having a powerful way to view a map, maybe even draw on it so you can clearly indicate what you want, where you want, would rock. OpenRPG has this, but that's all XML and seems to be tied to the OpenRPG server, which makes it not as usefully asynchronous as the web (OpenRPG seems to need the players and DM to be online at the same time, interacting through chat.)

A downside to the blog is that it's hard to see what the deal is, _now_. I find myself flipping through the blog all the time, looking to see what got used when, scrolling down to the last map, etc. The nice thing about a wiki is that you can insert your action, the DM can shuffle them around on the same document, and you end up with a nice description of what started out as everyone's separate actions. Similarly, a map graphic (if not an interactive whiteboard) could at least be downloaded, modified, then uploaded by players to show their movement or lightning bolt or whatever.

Lemme know what you think.

Rebecca's awesome

So, a weekend ago I was wurfing at school ("wurfing": sorta work, mostly surfing; worth coming into school to surf sometimes because my screen there is so much bigger.) And before I come home, Rebecca drops me an IM that I should check out one of the charity shops she passed by, because it's got a bunch of D&D mapping stuff.

It was a treasure trove.

Clearly someone was clearing out a lifetime collection, because the "Save the Children" shop was selling books (AD&D Unearthed Arcana, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, v.1 (second edition, orange spine) Players Handbook, v.1 Monster's Manual II, v.1 Fiend Folio, v.3 Players Handbook), lead figures (I'm guessing at least a hundred, mostly Grenadier AD&D, but some others too; almost all of them are very charmingly stored in old matchboxes), and the aforementioned mapping tools: Games Workshop's Dungeon Floor Plans 1,2, and 4, the last two in their original boxes and provably complete. Also, a Judge's Guild booklet w/maps for a variety of boats. And some transparencies with hexes printed on them -- I dunno if the original intent was to overlay them on maps, or for projecting onto a screen.

I'm going to return most of the books tomorrow, since I've got them already, except for the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and the v.3 Players Handbook, which I'll keep. The v.3 PH is mostly for reading about the "old" rules so I can carp about how much better the "fixed" 3.5 version is. :) The DSG has the supa-cool perspective mapping advice and templates in the back (remember the crazy castle map in Ravencroft?)

The Dungeon Floor Plans are basically a lot of 1" tiles, intended for you to cut out either singly or in strips or chunks (most of them have been) and laid out as a map. So, for example, you cut two strips of flagstones, and voila! Ten foot wide passage. Put a door at the end of it, with some grass and trees outside, and there's your dungeon entrance. They recommend putting it on a black background, so the untiled space gives the impression of solid wall. Set 2 has room details (statues, tombs, pits, stairs), water, and grass & trees. Set 4 has rough tunnels and mine accessories (carts, rails, wheelbarrows).

The whole collection was 35 pounds. I'm not sure how best to leverage these things, but they're freakin' sweet. And my appreciation for Rebecca, in particular her willingness to aid and abet my dungeonphilia, cannot easily be expressed in words. :)

Okay, okay, so it takes me a while to figure out how this whole `blog' thing works.

I've been thinking about D&D in general, and dreams of this particular online campaign in particular, like every day. I write down notes on random bits of paper spread around various locations as they occur to me...and then as I was thinking "I should really put all this stuff somewhere I could always get to it", the penny dropped.

Oh, you mean, I'm supposed to actually just put random thoughts up on _the blog_, instead of just thinking about them, losing track of them, _and_ letting what could be a vaguely interesting blog to as many as three other people fall into dusty abandonment.

So, my plan is _now_ to try to post to _this_ blog way more often (like daily), and to my other random blogs once a week. (I probably shouldn't make promises I can't keep, but if I don't make 'em, I _definitely_ won't keep 'em.)

So, some D&D thoughts of the day:

When you think about it, there are a lot of weird things about the supposed culture in D&D. I mean, the bits you get from the Players Handbook, your own background notions, and various fantasy sources is that you've got a sort of pseudo-medieval feudal thing going on, with pre-gunpowder technology, lots of peasants farming out a living, but lots of magic around that does all kinds of cool stuff, and lots of fantastic beasties like dragons and stuff.

Think of how some of the most common magic would have crazy effects on society. First of all, if you can talk to animals and they can talk back, isn't there something weird about eating them? I mean, sure they're not very bright, but it still seems cannibalistic. Besides, as Rebecca points out, as an even more common bit of magic, you can make food. Explain why all those peasants are farming again?

Heck, clerics can heal wounds and cure disease. I'm not even talking about raising the dead, which is a whole new kind of brain-twisting. Try to imagine the way the world would change if every disease, and nearly every injury, could be cured, instantly, by one in every few thousand people. Then think about the Middle Ages, only without the plague. It's like talking about Russia in the 20th century, only without the Communism.

Summary: The whole construction of D&D's fictional culture has fundamental distortions that are usually swept under the rug.

d-n-dblog observation

Just a little note in regard to Acavel's comments about hitting a skeleton with a mace:
I don't think there's any bonus for hitting the skeleton with a blunt weapon, just that there's a penalty for hitting them with anything else (swords and arrows, e.g.)

I want the upcoming campaign to be as easy to use as possible. I think I can set up the website so that you log in, and then can see your character sheet online. That way, when you check out the website from your vacation in Maui, you'll know what spells you've got, what's in your backpack, etc.

Does that sound like a feature you'd want? Is it something you'd use regularly enough that I should look into it further?

Jacob/Linnam asks about starting up his character, and while it'll be after Christmas before I'm able to offer sweet campaignin' action, any and all comers are welcome to start putting together characters now. If there's more you want to know about the campaign background, or you want some seed ideas, just let me know.

(If, contrary to expectations, I get more than a dozen responses from people that want to play, I'll have to cut down the size and/or restructure things.)

In keeping with Principle 1, all that is required for a new character is to send me a paragraph (or a few) describing who they are. Keep in mind that characters are essentially normal people with some exceptional aptitudes and vast potential. So if you say "Bjorn is a superhuman who is great at everything" what you'll get is a character who is above average in everything, but in practical terms not very much above average. If you want to be quick as a cat, say so. Insofar as I can from your description, I'll make sure my description (and internal rule details) are true to your character concept.

And I will take just about any character you want, with the following conditions: if you want to be someone that wouldn't be in a fantasy medieval-European style town, I leave it to you to come up with the backstory of why your alien cowboy (or whatever) is there and how they've managed to fit in, insofar as they have. Second, if you want to be the evil villain, or the king, or whatever, that's fine too -- but you'll probably have to accept that that character may not have daily interactions with everyone else. Furthermore, in the case of the king, you might have some very atypical to D&D situations to cope with. While in the case of the evil villain, you should come to terms with the fact that your character is not going to win in the long term, and is much likelier to come to a bad end than the "regular" player characters.

If you do want to try these funky character choices out, I further encourage you to take on several roles, from grunts to town guard captains, so that you'll have more interactions with the other players. I am more than happy to offer such "temporary roles" to people interested in a change of pace.

Two scouts or one: the effect of skill check rules (reference to dndblog.powerblogs.com)

So, the following issue has come up: the party has one rogue, Acavel, who's the best hider and silent mover (understandably). Barik, a ranger, could pour his skill points into hiding and moving silently, and together with a cloak of elvenkind or armor of shadows, could be as good at hiding, and a few ranks lower at moving silently. On the other hand, the one rogue could use the armor instead, and be _really_ good at hiding. So do we want one character to sneak around, recon, etc., or two?

Tactically, there's a lot to be said for having a team of two instead of one. If they find something, one can report back while the other keeps an eye on the situation; if they run into trouble, one can hold off the hordes while the other gets help, or at least the two can support each other in an organized retreat. Or, they could go off into different directions, surrounding an opponent or covering more area faster.

Here's the problem: suppose the two of them are headed down the corridor, and something might hear them. How's that get resolved? The way I interpret the rules (at least at first), they each roll their Move Silently checks, and the something rolls its Listen check, and if it gets a higher score than one of them, they're rumbled.

Probability-wise, this is quite a bit worse than one of them going alone, even if they have the same skill. In that case, it's the same probability as if the one going alone rolled his Move Silently, and Evil DM (tm), after seeing that roll was too good, said "naw, don't like that...roll again, see if you fail this time." To put it even more mathematically, if either scout had an M in N chance of being undetected (i.e., 1 in 2=50%), the two together have an M squared in N squared chance (25%, in the previous parenthetical).

That's a pretty vicious penalty. So PCs adopting the two-scout strategy should reconsider -- although a two-watchman strategy when you're camped out makes a whole lot of sense.

Unless you're a diehard fan of D&D rules trivia, stop reading now. The last paragraph was the most useful comment you're going to get out of this.

Group skill checks are one of the times when the situation for a group of NPCs need not be symmetrical to that of a group of PCs, although it's quite unclear. The DMG's section on Skill Checks (3.5e, p.30) indicates that for "influencing one person, creature, or group" or to "perceive one sound or sight", the "DM decides if NPCs are acting as individuals or as a group." How or if this applies in opposed checks is not at all clear; I go into detail about some possible schemes at the bottom of this post, below the line of asterisks. Don't read that unless even the other diehard D&D trivia fans think you're a freak. In the meantime, let's assume that this grouping thing doesn't apply; in opposed checks, every PC rolls and every NPC rolls, and each Spotter/Listener detects all the Hiders/Movers who scored less than they did. This makes it awfully hard for anyone to sneak past a group, and can generate boatloads of die rolls, but at least it's "fair".

How hard is "awfully hard"? Consider a "commando team" of rangers, sneaking up on a camp of orcs all gathered by the campfire singing "Kum-bay-ya". Let's say there's 5 rangers, around 9th level. Counting their +4 from dexterity and +2 for circumstances and the max +12 skill ranks, they're +18 on both Hide and Move Silently checks. These are just a score of grunt orcs, and let's give them a -2 for circumstances, so they're +0 on both the Spot and Listen checks. Unless a ranger rolls a 1 and an orc rolls a 20, the rangers won't get discovered.

The odds of one orc rolling a 20 and one ranger rolling a 1 are 1/400 (0.25%). But the chance of at least one of the 20 orcs rolling a 20 and one of the rangers rolling a 1 are 14.47%. And that's just the chance of the rangers being spotted. The chances of them being spotted _or_ heard are 26.9%, just over 1 in 4.

Here's a more typical example. Suppose a single rogue has a +10 to their Move Silently roll, and he or she rolls a 10 while trying to sneak pass a room. If it's got one guard in it, with a +6 Listen check, the rogue has a 70% chance the guard won't roll the 15 or more he needs. Change the number of guards to 4, and that chance drops to 24%. That seems low to me -- although if the "opposed check" were a tug-of-war, maybe that'd be about right. One way to try to fix this would be to give the guards all a -2 circumstance penalty (because they're distracting to each other) -- then the chance of the rogue's success improves some, up to 40%.

Or we could pretend three of the guards are really doing "aid another" attempts for the first one's listen check -- I don't even know how that would change the probabilities, but it could make things worse, not better. Or maybe after the second guard, the other two don't really help any, and can't make checks. And if that isn't complicated enough, how do we treat the inverse problem of a group trying not to be detected? Do we not have people after the first two make checks, because they don't contribute to the silence?

The simplest alternative system would be that in any opposed check, each side only makes one roll: the best Spotter/Listener rolls vs. the worst Hider/Mover, for example. But that ignores the contribution (or lack thereof) of the rest of the people entirely. Why is it always Hawkeye that catches the goblins? And does he see all the goblins, or just Klompy? What if some of the quieter goblins were coming from the other side? Do we treat them as a separate group? Oh geez, I thought this was the problem we were trying to simplify away...

********************************************************************************

[This is the consideration of "asymmetrical" opposed checks, where a group of NPCs is treated differently from a group of PCs. If you haven't been riveted by the post so far, you're really going to despise the time you'd be wasting if you read this. You've been warned.]

The examples in the DMG indicate that a PC would get one check to spot a group of NPCs at a distance [Note: it's not clear if this is an opposed check, but it seems not], but that a PC Moving Silently would face the Listen checks of every NPC in a group. But what about a group of PCs Moving Silently? Do the NPCs get one number to beat, or the worst of two? There isn't a clear example I can find in the DMG of opposed checks where the NPCs are treated as a group -- would that mean they make one roll, or that they only have to oppose one roll, or that NPCs each make their own roll in opposed checks, and are never treated as a group? The third case makes the most sense, that I talked about above, although the first one isn't completely crazy. The second one is in fact completely crazy, and I'm worried about my own mental health just as a result of thinking about it.

The first case isn't symmetric, but it's not entirely unbalanced: if a group of NPCs rolls once for the whole group, that means they'd be harder for an individual to spot that a group of PCs (since they'd only have to succeed once, while each PC in a group would have to succeed), but they'd be worse at spotting an individual (since they've only got one chance to succeed, while the PCs would have a chance each.) If a group of NPCs and a group of PCs try to sneak past one another, there's still a good chance they'll run into each other, since the PCs have a lot of chances for high Spot/Listens, but just as many chances for low Hide/Moves. The chance would be considerably reduced from the "everyone rolls against everyone" scheme, however. The PCs would be wise to have multiple people on watch, but only send one out for scouting reports, so they're not fighting the probabilities.

The other asymmetric case is that the group of NPCs only opposes one roll (that is, all the NPCs make a check against one roll for the PCs.) This seems pretty antithetical to the idea of D&D, since the NPCs are being treated more individually than the actual characters with individual free wills, but let's put that aside for a moment just to consider this silly case for academic purposes. Then the roles are reversed, and the only interesting twist is how to decide what the bonus on the PC roll is: is it the bonus of the most skilled PC, the least skilled, an average, or is it different for different skills? (A group of generic NPCs are pretty close to the same skill level, so I didn't mention this for the previous case.) No matter the bonus selection mechanism, the PCs don't gain anything by having more than one night watchman; in fact, if the PC bonus is anything but "same as most skilled PC", it actually hurts them to have more than one! On the other hand, it doesn't hurt them to send out several scouts -- if several PCs have the same skill bonus, there's no penalty for numbers. Again, opposing groups (PCs vs. NPCs) are likely to spot each other, this time because the NPCs have lots of chances to get high and low rolls, but not as likely as in the "everyone rolls" scenario.

Here's a little taste of campaign background; I have hopes of including some nice "primary source" material, but I wanted to give you something to gaze at (comment on, argue with) while I work on that.

The geographical setting will just happen to look exactly like Great Britain. The starting point will just happen to be right where Bristol is, and the name of that city will be (somewhat unoriginally) "Bridgstow".

While the setting will have bits and pieces that are distinctly evocative of historical Britain, that's partly an illusion; I've got a Greyhawk gazetteer, and I'm taking a chunk of that land mass, mushing it into a Britain-shape, and associating pieces of it with their approximate historic/legendary equivalents. So whether you think of the theocracy to the north as the Prince-Bishop of County Durham or the Archbishop Hazen's Veluna is up to you; the names and geography are mostly the former, but the social structure and characters are mostly the latter.

Here's some social background that's a little different from what the 3rd edition D&D folks are used to; for everyone else, you can just take it as the way it is for this campaign, or argue about why the campaign world's destined for trouble if it's set up this way.

Halflings are like hobbits. Unlike the current D&D image, they are not short gypsies. Instead, they integrate very well with human society, with many towns going by two names, a halfling (actually, they prefer "hole-builder" or "hill person") name and a human one. Effectively, the hill person town co-exists with the human town, generally managing to share space without fighting over resources. This is because the humans tend to farm the lowlands and the hill people tend to, uh, live in and off the hills, herding animals on land that's not desirable for farming and farming terraced slopes that are too steep for humans to want to fool with.

Gnomes, on the other hand, are (or at least seem to fit stereotypes of) short gypsies. Most gnomes the non-gnomes see are in visiting caravans, usually circuses or musicians, but sometimes merchants with exotic snake oil to cure your every ailment. Gnomes are tolerated, rather than encouraged, by many town authorities. Often the gnomes set up outside the town, and are not welcomed in. "By all means, go to the circus -- it's the best show all year! But leave your money-pouches at home, kids -- if you've got nothing to steal, you've got nothing to worry about." Gnomes have a reputation as flim-flam artists; everyone knows that a gnome can make you see whatever he wants you to see. Fortunately, although they're sometimes out to line their pockets at your expense, they're not particularly malevolent.

There are no kung-fu monks walking the earth and acting aloof. Well, there might be some in Asia, but there aren't any in Bridgstow.

Okay, I'm thinking maybe I went a bit overboard, and put too many posts out on the blog at one time, so everyone's thinking "dude, I don't want to work that hard...I'm going over to the KODT website" or something similar.

By this logic, this post is compounding the problem.

Nevertheless, I want to urge everyone who ever reads this to feel free to post (or comment, or email, or whatever) about whatever thoughts pop into your head, even if they are only peripherally related to blogging, D&D, or any combination thereof. Do not feel like you have to read all this stuff. I'm not going to harass you (well, any more than I currently am) if you write the same thing someone else wrote, or the exact opposite opinion of what I wrote, or something both incoherent and wrong. I will read whatever you say, and consider it seriously.

Everyone else who offers you the same is lying. But not here. The Trollkien loves you.

The last (?) issues brought up so far: Crowding and Absence. (Let me know if there's something not closely linked to the previous posts that I've missed.)

How many players/how many characters? Parties seem to get unwieldy after about 6 characters. Partly this is just because stereotypical adventuring isn't built for it -- 10 foot corridors are too tight for more people. :) And also, with too many "main" characters, it's hard to build a narrative with everyone getting some attention.

That's not to say it's impossible, particularly if the game works not as one party, but as separate "scenes", with a few people here, a few people there, affecting each other's situation as they go along...

I'd love to be able to run something like that. However, I think the amount of time and energy required for administration (by me) might be far more than I'm willing or able to provide. If the revenue from the game reaches the point when I can do it as a full time job, then we'll try it out. ("Revenue? What revenue?" Stop freaking out -- it's just a joke.)

I am hoping that some players will prefer to be "character actors" - running several characters who aren't "proper" PCs: the mysterious druid, the barkeeper, the prince, the villain. As a result, the main party will be in the more typical 3-7 person range.

I have the theory that then the DM's role will more often be that of referee, rather than referee _and_ source of conflict. If the bad guy figures out what the secret plan is, it's got nothing to do with what the DM knows, just that the bad guy really was clever. Also, the "NPC's" can be more 3-dimensional, with more personal effort being put into them, and on several occasions, players won't know if they're interacting with a DM mouthpiece, or with another player.

In terms of DM's "cpu time", I'd like to think that players running more of the story characters would make for less work for the DM day-to-day, but surely that will be offset by getting information to and from more people. But overall, I'm optimistic that this would give more of the DM's personal attention to your character, and a better story, than if we had one big 12 character party. In addition, some people might find playing occasionally-occurring characters easier on their schedules than striving to send an update every day.

Which brings us to player's absence, or at least nonresponsiveness. I like the idea of "phasing", partly because it reminds me so much of Vaarsuvius's conveniently appearing familiar in Order of the Stick. I recall treating absent people in tabletop games in much the same way.

My concern is that "absence" in a blog game is bound to be more stilted, because of the time dilation. Not being around for a 4 hour game session makes it easier to elide the character away; if someone is out sick for a day right in the midst of their character rescuing the rest of the party from the mind flayer's clutches, it's hard to throw them into hibernation. Perhaps this would work, if every day (or at least every week) of gameplay had some closure. If every fight were concluded in one day, then having someone phase out could work, while having someone phase out mid-battle would be hard to manage.

It seems to me that this is one of the tradeoffs of the blog (or online, non-live) format. If the players are willing to give up some of the control of their character, the game can move along faster. If you give up some of the granularity of the combat process, then the combat can be resolved in a few days, rather than a few weeks. If alternatively you accept that when you're absent, your character will have an "understudy" representing you, then the game won't be halted waiting for people.

But these aren't tradeoffs for me as much as they're tradeoffs for y'all. What do you think -- what do you want to happen to your character when you're unavailable? How specific do you want to make your combat decisions?