I was driving back from a birthday party with my friend Ned, when we got to talking about his Vampire campaign and the game in general.

Bear in mind, we'd only played one game, and had skimmed the rules a year ago.

One of the chief observations was that it seemed like the default starting age for vampires was way too young. Basically, a new PC was likely to be made in 1980 or more recently.

I suppose from here, players can roleplay the horror of being new, or whatever. But that also skips the fun of being older than all the humans. Who doesn't enjoy one-upmanship conversations like, I remember when the declaration of independance was signed.", or "I barely survived the beaches of Normandy". New players will have to settle for "yeah, I remember when the Challenger blew up" to which the human will respond with "me too, so what".

What makes it worse, is that like most RPGs, the players are gunning for the top position and higher levels. When the game started, there was all this flavor and prestige that the top positions were run by old vampires. The players whole goal is to take these dudes out and usurp their place.

That means, in a few real-years time, and not likely much game time because you'd then be playing CyberVampirePunk, the fresh young vamps have completely taken over and wiped out the oldies.

D&D suffers from the same scenario. The PCs start at 1st level, and in 3 months game time, they're 20th level and they've got more skills than the most grizzled veteran.

Now if you don't consider any of this a problem, you're probably a player. It's OK. I don't blame you wanting more power, who doesn't. And there are some campaigns where this pattern will fit. However, I'm going to give some consideration to it as many GMs complain about it.

Overall, there's two basic vectors for this problem. The rate of XP given over real time, and the rate of XP earned over game time.

Gary Gygax even complained about it in The Strategic Review, the pre-cursor to Dragon Magazine. He had an expecation of how fast people should level up, and he was tired of hearing of high level PCs in a game that he didn't think should outpace his own.

The main value of XP is that it give the player a sense of accomplishment and progress. If you give it out too slowly, the players may feel like they're not getting anywhere. Give it out too fast and you get the problem I initially described.

A wisdom I learned a long time ago, is that if you don't play that often, be a bit more generous with the XP, so the players feel like they're getting somewhere. I'd temper that with the idea that a level increase is progress, you don't need to hand out more than one per session.

With that in mind, the power of math can be used to set a rate of advancement to pace yourself by. Since 3e based levels in 1,000 point increments, just use that as a max and multiply by the PC's level to bring it into scale.

First, estimate how many sessions you're going to play per year (the frequency). Estimate how many levels you want the party to gain that year (the goal). Let's go with a group that meets once a month, and the GM wants to get to 15th level.

15 levels times 1000 = 15,000
divide by 12 sessions = 1250 per session
in game, multiple that 1250 by the PC's actual level to make it scale correctly.

Barring a math error, you'll get the pace you want. If you play VERY infrequently (once or twice a year), you should lower your level goal. It's probably a good rule of thumb that you NOT set it to be much higher than the frequency you play at.

Quick math fun, if you play 50 games a year (nearly every week), at the same level goal,you'd hand out 300 XP as your base (multiplied by the PC's actual level).

That can be construed as "pretty skimpy" which is why as a GM, you'll have to negotiate your numbers to what is palatable for your group and for your own tastes. However, you may find, that if you're playing that often, slowing down the speed will have some benefits.

Now that you've done some math, and presumably are attempting to rein in the leveling speed, you've solved a portion of the advancement problem. By not handing out levels every sesssion (especially in a more frequent game), more game time is naturally going to progress between levels.

The other half of the problem is to let game time pass. If you play very frequently, the tendency is to pick up play as the "very next moment" since we last played" which is till fairly fresh in your mind. If you play infrequently, odds are good the GM has some game time pass between sessions, as he doesn't expect a "moments of your life" memory.

For a player, the inclination is to pick up where we last left and do more stuff. This rushes the pace of things, such that a lot gets done in a short time. And in D&D, getting stuff done gets you levels, and in short time, you're the king.

This can be fun, but it lacks verisimulitude. The trick then, is to set the pace such that time is allowed to pass, but not so much that the player misses opportunities.

Some DM's keep very close track of the passage of time, others don't. If you don't keep track of time at all, I recommend you start doing some basic tracking. Call the first game you start as year 0, and assume a 12 month calendar year just like ours. Then just note what month the game started in, and note what month it is as the start of each session.

Nextly, make time pass. Even in a highly magical society, assume a more medieval (or even 1800s) pace of things. Unlike today, the culture back then was more laid back. Things took time, and the people knew it. You couldn't get instant access to other people. Letters took time to deliver. Seasons impacted travel.

Here's some specific examples: Winter pretty much shuts down roads and mountain passes. Nobody goes to war in the winter (except Napoleon and he lost). This means that once you get to November, nobody wants to do a major journey or military campaign until the spring. There's no resources to support it.

This translates to "adventuring season" being between May and October. Which is a good run. By having travel time force the game clock, a few trips to the Dungeon, will eventually move the clock to Winter, and the PCs will have to wait for spring.

When the PCs get to a stable state, where that are not destitute, they've got new positions and enterprises, advance the clock between sessions. Let a year or two go by, tell them how "great" things were going until Plot Hook X reared its ugly head to threaten their interests. Players like hearing how successful they've been and will be vested in defeating the Plot Hook which threatens to take it all away.

It takes time for news to gather, and for enemies to gather strength. Let a few weeks go by as the adventurers hang out at the inn basking in the spoils of their last conquest. You may or may not "blow their money" in the style of conan (conan always started each adventurer broke and on he run, as he had wasted it on wine and women). The point is, nothing interesting can happen for a few weeks between sessions. This lets time pass. If you keep up a rapid day-by-day pace of enemy after enemy, it's equally unrealistic (if there were that many problems going on in such a short span, the village would have been overrun weeks before the PCs arrived).

In a game like Vampire, where the PCs are sort of supposed to be "ageless", ignore the default rules on how old a vampire is. Let each generation be a span of up to a hundred years. This lets a new vamp PC be minted in 1920, which can add some flavor at no cost in power.

For a real trip, start the PCs in the 1500s and play out snapshot sessions in 100 year intervals (until the present), letting them rise in some power before the "real game" begins. In a small group, you could even have players run the "children" of the other players creating a henchmen-like effect, with players having even more team-work due to the sire relationship.

To sum up, pace yourself on how much XP you hand out. At the minimum, do the math, based on your expectations and compare that to what you're actually handing out. In game, don't be afraid to have some time pass between sessions. Don't use it against the PCs, use it to add some flavor. By trying these methods, you should be able to avoid the PC who reaches 20th level in 3 game months, and instead get a PC who lives a full life and achieves much over a 10 year span of adventuring, and still has fight in him.

Janx

A while ago, I invented my Friend Classification System. It's a bit silly, but it sticks in people's brains, reprogramming them to look at their friends in a new way.

It all started with John. John was a friend of my other friends. When I first met him, I was over at a friend's place, playing video games. Apparently he was notorious for having smelly feet, so they wouldn't let him take his shoes off. And since all the seating was taken, he had to sit on the floor.

At that point, I mentioned that John must be a Class C friend. Good enough to be let into the house, but not allowed on the furniture.

The nickname stuck, and to this day, John's in my phone as Class C, though he has since moved up the ranks, which is in itself a funny story. The day I finally upgraded John to Class B, we were playing MageKnight Dungeons in the garage. I passed him my bucket of miniatures, which he then dropped, and a bunch got broken. He was of course apologetic and we jokingly bumped him back to Class C for the day.

Anyway, the point is that we have many kinds of friends, some closer than others. Some you see a lot, some infrequently. Some you'd call on when you need help, others not so much.

Here's my silly ranking system so you can rank your friends as they currently stand. Remember, their ranking isn't a negative thing, it's just describes their relationship to you

Class I: A new rank I just made up, it describes the people you know online, but not personally. Sure, you may know more about them as time goes on, but you don't actually personally know them.

Class C: a friend of a friend or aquaintence. A simple example is the guy you keep running into at your friend's parties. You both recognize each other, and can talk about something in common, but you're not going to invite him to a movie. A friend you invite to do something may ask if this person can come with, and you'll say yes.

Class B: you see this person fairly regularly, or at major events. But you don't share your private life details with them. They might help you move.

Class A: your best friends, people you do lots of stuff with. You tend to share what's going on in your life with them. They'll help you hide the body.


What does all this have to do with gaming? These are the people you are playing with. Some you know better than others.

I've met folks at a game shop who have invited me to their house to game on the first meeting. That's pretty trusting, especially without a Class A or Class B friend to vouch for me.

While it's a good trait to make friends easily, it's a good idea to temper that with getting to know people, and move them through the ranks, if you will.

This can help you build a gaming group of people you actually like and can trust. Life is too short to play with people you don't like.

Janx

Here's my methods for describing combat:

be familiar with the types of weapons involved in combat. Not an expert, just be aware that a short sword is more of a stabbing weapon, a longsword a slashing weapon. This will help in your descriptions (and for most swords, thrusts, jabs, slashes and hacks will be good enough verbs).

get a list of all the kinds of verbs to describe an attack. A thesaurus may help. For martial arts, know all the kinds of real attacks most schools teach is useful. One my other blog posts has such a list (as I posted one of the monk schools I wrote up, based on my own background). You don't need to be an expert, but just having a sense of how these weapons are used will help you describe attacks beyond "you hit him for 8 damage"

When a player makes an attack, describe each attack differently, using your newly upgrade vocabulary.

Don't overly describe the damage. Firstly, it gets cumbersome when the GM tries to get gruesome. Nextly, since damage in D&D is nebulous, you don't want to commit to a specific injury, lest the players try to lobby for special effects based on that injury. Additionally, combat is fast paced. Your descriptions should be as well, to invoke that feeling.

Since combat takes place in 2 5'x5' squares, there's plenty of room for side-stepping and moving and jumping, enough to explain a miss, besides just blocking it with a shield, or parrying with a weapon, be bouncing off his armor (which are also good explanations).

Here's some examples of what I tell players during their attacks:
"you jab at him, but he just barely sidesteps"
"he catches a grazing blow from your hammer"
"he deflects your attack with his sword, and readies to return the favor"
"your blade skips across his armor"

In all cases, keep it short, and choppy, just like combat itself.

Never use a description that adds more actual event or action that what happened mechanically. If your hammer attack can't knock somebody out of their current square, than don't describe it as "your hammer blow sends him flying across the room." Additionally, since you'll be describing how a PC avoids getting hit, you don't want to ascribe an action the PC didn't actually take, nor block him from his next action that he can legitimately make.

Using these tips will add flavor, without slowing down the game.

Janx

I wrote a program to do this a long time ago, and actually thought about writing a blog entry about the method I came up with.

Anyway, the method I devised is this:

Lookup the age category/life expectancy for the race involved.

Assume that for your population that there is an even distribution, across age.

If you had a pop. of 1000, and the life expectancy was 100, then that would be 10 people at age 1, 10 at age 2, etc. (math= pop divided by life expectancy)

Multiply this by the % of females in the population (50% for humans). This gets us 5 for a distribution.

Now look at the age categories, and figure out the breeding year range. This is basically the begining of adult hood, to the beginning of the last age bracket. Let's say for humans that's 20-80, which is 60 years. If you had to estimate, assume 1/2 or 2/3 of the life expectancy. This is the span.

Now folks don't crank out babies every year, it's simplest to statistically spread them over their breeding span. Divive the breeding span (60) by the age of maturity (20). We get 3. THat's basically 3 kids per person.

Multiply that by the first number, you get 15.

That means for a population of 1,000, whose life expectancy is 100 years, they will crank out 15 people next year. This seems plausible for humans.

Repeat that math for each year you want to pass.

The interesting mechanic is that a shorter lived race has a lower maturity, and they will basically crank out kids like candy.

Let's say you got 1,000 Kobolds that live to age 30, and mature at age 15.
1000/30*.5=16.67 population distribution
30/2=15 = breeding span
16.67*15=250baby kobolds next year


Now this formula is far from realistic or precise, but it's close enough, and the results compare well against real humans, and produces more babies for short lived races, less babies for long lived races. If you actually plug in real human numbers, it is remarkably close to American growth rate (at least it was when I designed it 15 years ago).

The mortality rate is sort of effectively applied by virtue of the life expectancy. Since Kobolds have a short life expectancy, it is already assumed lots of kobolds are dieing.

I designed this formula years ago, when I had an elven nation that had lost a lot of people in a war, and time was passing, so I needed to know how big they would grow back to, after 100 years after the war (barring other cataclysms).

If you're just looking for a generic answer to "time passed, how many people are in this empire or city?" it is close enough for government work.

Hint: Applying multiple years is easier if you write a small program to loop through the math and add it all up...or just stick it in a spreadsheet.

Janx

I've written some on this topic before, and recent posts have made me write more. Here's my view of how to prevent a railroad.

The first step, is to have players who aren't disagreeable, for the sake of being disagreeable. That's kind of like saying get players who will put up with a railroad to avoid having a railroad, but hear me out. There is a type of player, who believes the game world should have no consequences for any PC action. It's almost like everything holds still, while the PC plunders it. The moment the GM has an NPC approach the party with a request to do a mission, he fights it. The moment the GM has a consequence happen for something the PC did, he complains about it. This type of player isn't about railroading. They are the kind of player who will call anything that isn't "their way" a railroad. You can't have a simulationist or narrativist game with those type of player, because either style involves elements they will fight.

Now that you've got the problem players fixed. You owe your players a good game where you don't railroad them. The real trick to not rail-roading is to simply adapt to what the players do. The foundation for that, is realizing that from the start of the game, the GM has visualized what the adventure story will look like. It's human nature, and it's how planning works.

The reality for most GMs is, whether they write it down before the game, or make it up on the fly, once they say, "the party hears a rumor about killings on the docks" it's been planned out. They have an idea of a clue to drop for the party to find. They have an idea of who the bad guy is, even if it's only in their head. At that point, a path has been drawn from party in the bar to party confronting the bad guy. A good GM keeps adjusting that path as the party advances through the story, based on what they do, and how they want to approach the problem. In any even, the goal is to always end at the party confronting the bad guy, though the image of what that scene looks like may keep changing.

In the "Murder on the Docks" mystery, no GM in his right mind creates a murder scene with no idea of the clues left there. And if you don't know who the murderer is, you don't know what kind of clue to leave. So already, a path is figured out. The trick is, that path is not obvious to the players, so you are at risk of running a railroad when the game starts.

When running the game, the GM's job is to adjust that path, per the players actions.

As I've written before, in any given encounter, you can simplify what the players will do to about 6 choices:
-fight their way out
-trick their way out (some spell or item, or sneakiness)
-talk their way out (diplomacy, etc)
-investigate their way out (sneak, find evidence and use it)
-run away (stop trying anything else)
-wait for the other side to act first (react in kind usually)

You can usually set the scene such that some choices are more likely. Confronting the party with a group of armed orcs with weapons drawn will most likely get the fight response. Orcs with weapons sheathed, at medium distance, with one orc calling out to the party opens up the talk option. Orcs seen nearby, but not seeing the party opens up the trick option. And in all cases run away and wait are still viable.

A lot of GMs get sloppy, and don't plan on all possibilities before the game. The most common one is expecting combat from any monster encounter. And for the most part, they're right. Even if you only plan on the most obvious action for an encounter, once in game, being aware of the other types of choice helps you adapt when the players try them.

GM's make a railroading mistake when they have planned solution to the encouter (fight the orc), and the party doesn't do it, and they try desperately to make everything fail but fighting the orc.

The moment the GM hears the party wants to do something unexpected, he needs to pause and consider what's really going on.

When a player doesn't do the expected thing, it comes in 3 flavors:
1) they're trying to quit the mission
2) they're trying to solve the mission, in an unanticipated way
3) they're trying to solve the mission, but going the wrong direction, and don't know it

#1 is easy, let them start quitting, and start showing them consequences as the bad guy moves forward un-impeded. They'll either get back to the mission, or accept the consequences, which continue to roll forward while they "do something else" which you can run for them. This might be occuring because they're the obstinate player I told you to dump in the beginning. Or it might be that the player doesn't think they can win. Or it might be that the mission doesn't make sense for the PC to do, which means your hook wasn't relevant to the PC, which is directly the GM's fault.

#2 is also easy. Pause the game, adjust the "script" to react to the new change, which will probably replace a few encounters and reveal information early, and move them to a different point in the story arc, which is the whole point of finishing any encounter. It's very important to consider what the player's are trying to do and assign a fair and rational difficulty level to it. Don't make it hard, just because you didn't anticipate it. Let it be easy, if it really would be easy to do.

#3 is the trickiest. It can easily happen in a mystery game, but has been known to happen in dungeon crawls, too. The players think some minor element you brought up is important, and pursue it. In a dungeon crawl, this is the KoDT story about the party trying to dig through a dead-end, certain that it is hiding the treasure, when it was really an artifact of the random map generator. In a mystery, it can mean mistaking the red herring as truth, or even worse, following an innocuous element as a lead, which as the GM is trying to make up new material, looks inconsistent, which only confirms the player's suspicions. The sad part is, the players are trying their best, they've simply going the wrong way.

The solution to this scenario takes a lot more work.
Corrective action: establish a house rule that you will tell the party when they've gone too off track, you will tell them. Statements like "Further investigation reveals that this really is a dead end.", "Deeper investigation shows that this person may have some secrets, but they have nothing to do with the case". Etc.
Prevention: Use deception sparingly. While it's obvious that bad guys are going to lie, use misleading information sparingly to increase its effectiveness, and avoid hyper-paranoia.

The Truth should be obvious with any investigation attempt. Let's say there's 3 clues on the ground at the crime scene. If the PCs investigate the red herring first, they learn in a few scenes that it was planted there.

The Truth should lead to the Truth. When a PC investigates a red herring, it should reveal it was a red herring, and further investigation should reveal a clue to who planted it. The reason is the same as to what a clue really is, it's a accidental remnant from the criminal. You can't do a murder with out leaving a trace. For the same reason, you can't plant a red herring without leaving a trace. What you're doing with these techniques is making sure that if a PC investigates it, it leads somewhere. Don't waste their time on things that don't matter, and can lead them too far astray. This is why, red herrings also lead back to where the party needs to go. And it is realistic with crime scenes.


Secrets works best with not expecting them. Don't use the same trick over and over again. Always making the butler the murderer, the NPC who hires the party is always going to betray them, the mission is always evil disguised as good, etc. These are cliche. Cliche's work, but only when used sparingly. Plus if you over-use deceptive practices, the party will hyper-focus on every element, which causes them to go the wrong direction, instead of the obvious and expected "right" direction. If you over-use false clues, hidden elements, betrayals, the party will expect them all the time. This will actually slow down game play (searching every 5' for traps), make for unrealistic role-play (the party distrusts every NPC), and logically a party on alert SHOULD detect these things.


Remember, it's not a rail-road to have consequences for the PCs actions or inaction. "I don't want to find the kidnapped mayor" means the bad guy moves forward. The world is not static. A rail-road is where the party can't choose to be inactive, or a specific action. They're not allowed to. A choice with a bad consequence (that a rational person would never make) is not the same as a lack of choice enforced by the GM who nullifies every action but the acceptable one.

If you can master these tips, by understanding "probable" player action/reaction, and adapt to "actual" player action/reaction, you can run a believable and enjoyable adventure.

Janx

I'm going to recommend a gaming style here. Some might think its controversial. Some might think it can't be done. I'd like to point out that it is done by everyone, it's just a matter of quality.

Everytime you play an RPG, you are creating a story. Anytime you tell somebody about your character's past exploits, you are refining and confirming that you created a story in an RPG.

What I propose, is that there is a way to play the game, such that when you are done with the session, the player feels that they were a participant in the story, and not just a bystander or victim of the GM's story.

Even better, is that a retelling of what happened during the game sounds like a story, and less like a series of random encounters.

To get this story-telling gaming to work, you're going to need to study some story-telling in action. Read some fiction books, and watch some TV and movies. Notice the difference between the typical D&D adventure as told literally, compared to how a story gets arranged in TV or books.

One of the key differences, is books and TV seldom spend time on any scene that doesn't do one (or more) of the following:
advance the story
reveal a twist or complication
setback the protagonist
show a reaction to the last scene

Jim Butcher (an author I read) has a blog series on this stuff, you can read that, too.

Compare that to the standard dungeon crawl or overland journey. When you count how many "fight" scenes occur in a D&D session, compared to a action-hero TV show, movie or novel, it's rather ridiculous how many fights we go through.

As a GM, I suggest that you first streamline your adventures. Cut to the chase, as it were. If it's not fun, just tedium, then hand-wave it. Unless you really want to do a dungeon crawl, this would mean killing the traditional room-by-room dungeon crawl.

This means when the party gets hired to find a missing girl, the do some research which pans out to a witness, who mentions a place, and the party goes there, with no problem, and when they get there, the sneak, fight or talk their way past the guards, get to another set of guards holding the girl, free her, just in time to face the BBEG who just got back from checking on another of his fiendish plans.

That's 3 fights, a couple of talking scenes, with a few sneaking scenes in-between, and maybe a skill check to see which "clue" to follow (which all clues are good, because on the NPCs find the useless clues).

What you've got then, is a game session that's faster, and makes for a better retelling. It's also likely to be fun, because you're not wasting time on the boring stuff, like drawing maps, and random encounters.

Once you get used to the format, you'll also think it's a bit simple, and like writers of fiction, you'll change things up by introducing twists and setbacks, etc. If you actually do it the "follow the standard" first, you'll train your players for "normal" mode, so that the twists and setbacks work.

As a side-note, you can't have every plot hook be a devious double-cross or the players will trust no one. That results in some un-fun game play, and kills your ability to use the double-cross.

In the same vein, you've got to balance how you use setbacks. Most stories should have them, and generally, they are there to make what seemed easy, be scaled to the actual party skill level. It's not about stripping the party down and flogging them every chance you get.

I suspect that this style of gaming can be applied to any campaign. The real crux of it, is to cut out time-wasting activities, and get to the real challenges sooner. By doing so, you'll have better pacing, and keep the players involved.

And as a side-effect, your adventures will make better stories.

Janx

I saw the term "Group Therapy with Dice", recently in a thread. I think it was Mallus who said it. It makes a good point, that gaming with people reveals a lot of their personal quirks and flaws.

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Most of this entry is going to be controversial in advice. Executed to an extreme, it's horrible advice. However, used in moderation, along with good judgement, honest treatment of others, and in positive ways for positive ends, you should get good results.
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If you skim any threads dealing with problem players, you see the same common theme. People put up with broken people.

Consider that in life, you can't really choose your family, your co-workers, or your classmates. You can choose your friends, however. Who you do voluntary activities with is your business. Life is short, don't waste it playing with people who irritate you.

Consider in RPGs, the obnoxious or traitor PC. Your party will probably accept any PC into the party, because the player is sitting right there, expecting to join. Whereas, any NPC party or real life employer would dump or reject anybody who behaves as the obnoxious or traitor PC does.

What's going on is some people don't understand how to actually work together, be a team, and be friendly. They rely on this default assumption of acceptance, and their personal quirks abuse that acceptance.

Consider the stereotypical school-yard pick-up game of kickball. The two alpha jocks take turns picking, each intending to leave out the sucks-at-sports nerd (or stick him on the other team). They understand that you don't take in people who don't fit in.

Now let me make it clear, it ain't right or job to ostrasize or ridicule people. It's right to give people a chance, and show them good behavior through your own. But in the end, you don't have to hang out with jerks. You don't have to play with obnoxious people who can't work together.

It turns out, from my other hobbies, that gaming isn't the only hobby riddled with defective people. Go check out forums dedicated to playing in bands. They have almost the exact same problems. It's creepy how similar they are.

Common defects I see are:
talks a good game, but doesn't deliver
flakes out on making schedules
argues about ANYTHING, just to argue
doesn't do their assigned tasks/help out
is rude, and offensive
says they'll change, but reverts to form
wants everything to focus on them

Now there are people who have these traits, and they work on keeping them in check. The problem people are those that don't. They're in denial that the behaviors cause problems. Fact is, you can't fix them. Nor should you tolerate the behavior, because it will eat at you, which will cause you to behave badly.

Ultimately, the worst offenders are using your group. Humans are social creatures. Even the anti-social ones. It's like a feral cave-baby, sees the campfire and the community, and wants to be warm. But he can't help but bite everyone at the fire, while he's there.

I suggest, that with 6 billion people on the planet, and you having a finite lifespan, you don't need to waste time on feral cave-babies. Identify them, and excuse yourself from their company.

The trick then, is how to identify them. One thing I suggest, is to be neither too inviting nor too closed. I've met people who almost instantly invite you to their game table or house. That's nuts. You don't really know them, and they don't really know you. You should talk awhile about a lot of different subjects. You should be listening as much as your talking. If it's lopsided, that's a warning sign (execessive talking means your not sharing the conversation). If the person is voicing really strong opinions, beware, you may have an arguer. These people seem clueless that somebody may disagree, and feel they have a righteous cause to convert you. They're certainly not respecting (with caution and qualifying statements) that you may have differing opinions.

Some of the other traits require more time. Somebody has to prove they're a flake, or that they really don't mean the things they say. That's why you don't invite them to your long-running campaign with your best friends. You invite them to something more informal. You need to see if they can make and keep appointments, and follow through. If they play like they say they do. If they chip in with snacks, or if they mooch off everyone else, and don't say thanks. Don't invite them to your home or big game, until you're sure you like them, lest the trust you place on them be turned against you.

Another good, though controversial point, is to surround yourself with people of a comparable station and attitude in life. Extreme Example: Poor gamers playing with 1 rich guy, the rich guy has more resources and may feel that everyone else is mooching off him. Or he may lord his stuff over everyone else. This is the same awkwardness the poor guy in a rich group may feel. The rest of the group talks of going to GenCon as if it were trivial (because it is to them). The poor guy will feel left out, because he can't afford to go, and doesn't want to feel like a charity case.

There are plenty of good examples where a mixed group has value. You don't want to get stuck in group think, though I suspect that happens more when there's pressure to conform. And I'm not talking about having cookie-cutter friends. Since everybody's different, you're not really going to have that. I'm simply talking about building a group of friends who have enough in common, that the differences add value, not subtract. The best commonality is that they don't exhibit those defects I talk above.

Side Career Advice:If you want to be successfull, have successful friends. It's not about sucking up, it's about having connections, habits, and ideas rub off on you.

I certainly don't condone the pretty girl with ugly friends technique, just so she'll look prettier. Or the join the popular group, just to belong. That's not being true to yourself. It's really about surrounding yourself with happy, successful people, not losers who don't achieve anything, or bring you down to their level.

Janx

THe thread on "opposite of railroading" problems lined up with some thoughts I had from Mystery adventures, and simulationist gaming.

Here's the thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...l-roading.html

Here's most of what I got on simulationist gaming (snipped and tucked from the thread):

As I see it, GMs who try to run simulationist or sandbox games aren't going to be able to do it to the fullest extent of the definition, nor to a "realistic" level. To truly run a simulation, you need a process/methodology for determining everything. And I mean everything, from the exact x,y,z position of every entity in the world, to what they're carrying, to their current mood and goals. At best, a GM can fake it, and that faking it, is actually the same thing GMs in other styles are doing. The sandbox methodology falls into the same category, it's trying to create an open world, which creates a greater burden on the DM to document everything, to create the possibility of what players might do.

A key problem in the sandbox, is like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion does it. A PC can pick up ALL the quests in the game, but never get around to them. And nothing bad happens. And realistically, the GM has to skip applying those consequences, or the campaign world falls into mega-darkness.

What it gets down to is this: Simulationist or sandbox play is trying to achieve the holy grail of RPGs, which is an environment that is completely impartial, yet "realistic". Where it fails, is that it isn't practical for humans to run, and it doesn't always make for a good story. It's too complex to implement human emotion and drive into NPCs, without a GM to fake it.

The extra wrinkle the OP had, was too many ongoing quests, and the players getting indecisive. This too is part of what I see wrong with implementing simulationist/sandbox style (or what happens if done poorly).

My solutions to how I prefer to run things is next:

Problem: the players have too many threads/quests/missions going on

Solution: only give PCs missions/quests/plot hooks related to the current game situation and their PCs goals. On the first game with no real PC goals in a new world, that means giving them a "save the princess" quest that their PCs would undertake. Subsequent games should have missions/side quests related to consequences, new developments, and PC drive goals that develop.

Consider it like real life. If you work for somebody (say as a cop), you get sent on a call, or you see a crime in progress. You don't see 10 crimes in progress, and if you did, you'd still only handle one, and call the others in. Your boss is only going to give you a certain number of projects. If you have side goals (like moving to a new department), you work those angles on the side, while doing the main project.

If you're a freelancer, you don't often get multiple requests at the same time.

Consider it this way, in your sandbox/simulation, the NPCs aren't likely to bring their problems to somebody who's overburdened with their own (like the PCs).

To wrap it further, consider that ultimately, you ARE telling a story. Every PC session is a story, some are just more boring than others (just like every day in your life is a story). Don't make it too convoluted with a million threads. Therefore, talk to the players before you WRITE the next session's material. Ask them, based on the current game situation, what they want to do/pursue/attempt in the next session. Then write to that.

That's actually another part of the solution. Get the party to agree to which "quest(s)" they're actively working on for the next session. Are they going to the Dungeon of Disasterous Doom, or the Cave of Collosal Catastrophe. Commit them to one, and write that dungeon in the next session.

Problem: Too many threads currently in campaign
Solution: The previous solutions are how I avoid the problem of too many threads. Once you got too many, you need to trim them down, to really get the benefit of the advice. Step 1, tell the players you are going to do a new format, as above, to narrow dowb the prep work to just material the players are going to use for the session. Step 2, have NPCs complete some of the other threads, or have them resolve themselves. Basically pull a Mark Twain and drop the magnificent twins down a well, because they weren't as important. Optional Step 3 You can even roll the hero NPCs in later, as the party has to deal with them (perhaps saving the NPCs on a future mission).
Step 4, explain to the PCs that you've done all this to clean up the game world to things the party is actively working on, and they don't need to worry about it. If the old quests come back later, its a so that you can bring new challenges to the party.



This has been nipped/tucked from the original thread. My real points are this:
Simulationist/sandbox play is an illusion created by the DM
This style is hard to implement well by a human GM or computer
This style makes it hard to effect consequences for failure, because with some many things going on (that the party knows about), the consequences take the game where the GM and players may not want it to go.
Lastly, since the GM is the final arbiter of what happens in the game, why are things happening in the game that don't make a good story?

Janx

A recent thread got me thinking about mystery adventures.

The original thread is here: URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246484-i-hate-mysteries.html"]http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246484-i-hate-mysteries.html[/url]

I see an interesting anomaly in game play with mysteries.

Consider a murder scene the PCs are investigating. There's a muddy footprint. It matches the butler's shoe. It's a short mystery. However, the PC's don't know about the muddy foot print until they make a perception check. The DC is low. They fail. What do you do now?

Compare that to a combat encounter. The party faces a goblin gaurding a door. the party rolls badly and misses all attacks. The goblin attacks back. Then the party attacks again. If things go well, eventually the party will kill the goblin. If they don't the party can always run away, heal up, and try again later.

The difference is that in a "combat" adventure, it's pretty obvious what needs to be done. And if the party fails, they have chances to try again, including trying the exact same thing.

Whereas, a poorly designed mystery adventure has all the clues tied up in skill checks in order to unlock and advance the game. On the face, all these skill checks look like a great idea, finally a use for non-combat skills.

The real problem is that these skill checks are wired up as one-chance barriers, where it usually doesn't make sense to allow another try (because failing changes the situation in a way that prevents retries).

The solution is two-fold:

Firstly, try to accept plausible reasons for multiple attempts. The party can return to the scene of the crime (to check for missed clues again). They can run that analysis on that sample again. In both examples, the price is time. If the BBEG is a serial killer, the effect is, more time = more victims. You don't have to crank out a murder victim per retry, but you can throw one in, if they've taken a number of days, just to raise the stakes.

Secondly, make sure there are multiple clues/solutions. Just as "setting it on fire" is an often effective combat strategy, there are many valid ways to identify the killer. Make sure the killer has left multiple clues (perhaps different ones at each scene). You can also make it such that each crime scene has an easier clue. Thus, at a price of more victims, the murder gets easier to solve. This is fairly realistic, as murderers tend to get sloppier/bolder as they go.

I've got more thoughts on the topic of murder mysteries, but they'll have to wait until another day.

Janx

I like hand-outs and props when I'm gaming.

I like maps, papers, all sorts of stuff. They're fun, they make the game feel real.

It's impractical to hand a party the entire treasue in physical props. It's not hard, however, to give them tangible items in smaller doses.

The easiest thing is paper hand-outs. When the party hears of a dungeon, give them a map. Now they've got something real, and they can collect a pile of them (kind of like Tasselhoff's map pouch).

It also solves a game problem, if you give them a map right away, you can spend less time describing the physical dimensions of the dungeon. Just roll open the map, and point where they are, and ask where they want to go.

When I give players a map, to make it more "realisitic" I'll often re-draw it by hand, from my version. Imprecision will creep in, and i'll leave off any GM secrets. I'll also usually rough up the paper. Fold it a bunch of times, bang up the edges. You could stain it in tea, if you want to make it look like parchment. Carry it in your book bag, if you want some real wear-n-tear on it.

Any extra effort you put into the map, beyond, printing out a player's copy of the map you generated from a computer, will make the map stand out as special to the players. That's the real point, is to make it FEEL special.


I've also done a newspaper series, for my players. That was harder. I created a basic template in word, with the mast head, and date in place, with 2 column format. Then I'd write up short articles, and fill it in. I'd write an article about a recent event PCs were involved in, one about something the PCs would know, one about a game culture/topic (basically teaching them about the game world), and one that would be about the current politics. Overall, it was about 2-4 pages.

Doing travel papers, and such is another easy one. Declare (after some security crisis) that new laws have been written requiring papers for entry/exit from any walled city. Now to travel to somewhere else, you need to see the local lord and pay for papers. Now you can hand them some.

You can also do adventuring party papers. This is one the party could do (or you could produce on behalf of the players). It might build a team spirit, as they're PC names will be on it.

If you're skilled at leather working (it's not hard, you need a cutting board, steel straight edge, razor knife, hole punch, leather stitching thread/needle, and leather), you can make a lot of cool things. Personally, I've got (my mother made some for me when I started, I've made more):

a dice bag (used the end of welding glove gauntlet)

a pencil case (like a scroll case)

a "spell book" book cover (holds 2 books, PH & DMG)

a "papers" cover (as seen in Pirates of the Carribean), a wrap that holds/protects important documents


Other easy projects: a map case, to hold all those maps and paper hand-outs you keep giving them

A tougher project is the wizards spell book prop. For one game, I built a wizards spell book, with diary entries and spells mixed in. First, I learned, the bare minimum of book making. Namely, pages are bound in units called "choruses" of about 8 sheets. The choruses are then fastened to the book cover.

So, I wrote up a ton of journal entries (they were clues) in Word, and used the Futhark font to make them secret. I used a tolkien elvin script font for the spells, which were copied straight from the SRD. This helped fill out the book, to make it worth it. I interspersed spells with journal entries, and lots of blank pages (presumably so the wizard could write more spells in). Then I printed it all out in 1/2 page format, double sided (that's 2 pages to 1 side).
Then in units of 8 pages, I folded them in half to make mini-books. These are the choruses. I stitched each chorus (the equivalent of stapling in the fold, using thread). Once each chorus was ready, I cheated, and made a spine, the length of the fold edge, and width of the stack of choruses, plus a little more. I then stitched the choruses to the spine. Once all that was done, I glued the spine into the book cover I had made and painted. Both the spine and the book cover were made of thick card-stock (the brown stuff). Overall, it worked well. I gave the book to the player who found the book in-game, and they took several weeks to decipher it (any spell they deciphered the PC could try to learn).

That's all I have time for now. It's your turn to post you prop ideas/instructions.

Janx

I just read a great thread about passports yesterday. http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...ml#post4571130

It got me thinking. In most games, nobody has any papers, so there is very little use for the forgery skill. Imagine if papers were used more commonly.

First off, the thread above points out that Shakespeare refers to passports, and there's a historical exampel from the 1400's. So it's reasonable to assume that a stereotypical D&D campaign would have the resources for this.

Travel papers could be required at city gates. I would assume a kingdom might require its citizens to apply for travel papers to leave their home region. Namely because in their home region, finding someone to verify their identity is easy. Elsewhere, not so much. So before you head off to the big city, apply for papers from the local lord, and now you've got proof that you are who you say you are.

This in turn creates opportunity for forging, since people will want to pretend citicizenship or feign identity, and the proof is on paper, not in disguise.

Travel papers might not even be "required" to leave, so much as required to arrive. So the local lord probably just sells them (pay me, prove you're local, and I'll sign, seal, and hand over your papers).

Papers might also be required to engage in activities. Letters of Marque, licenses, etc. Carrying lots of weapons and armor might require licensing. This creates a revenue stream for the local government, as well as a means of control.

Janx

I've talked about Choice with a capital C and choice with a lower case c. Today, I'm going to go into more detail.

Bob Lewis has written about this on his blog issurvivor.com (and IT related blog). Somewhere deep in his archive is a similar article (which originally helped me formulate my own thoughts on this).

I differentiate in the kinds of choices we make. I capitalize the important, meaningful ones. The unimportant ones, or the ones for which the conclusion is foregone are lower cased.

Here's why. Technically, life is full of choices. Quantum theory even supposes that every choice you make creates a branch in the timeline. Ignoring the butterfly effect (can't measure it, can't go back and re-test it), there are a number of choices we make every milisecond.

Consider it this way, right now, as you read this, you can choose to do one of the following (though not limited to):
continue reading the article
stop reading right now
stop breathing
get up and kill the first person you see
walk out into traffic
break down in tears

In all likelyhood, you will do the first one, continue reading. Technically, you made a choice. However, from the list I gave, the only other palatable one was to stop reading. The likelyhood of a rational person doing any of the others is nil.

Thus, you did not make a Choice. The conclusion was predictable. A person reading an article will probably finish it. They might stop, if they're pressed for time, interrupted or disinterested. The other choices were not actions a sane person would take under normal circumstances.

If you were held up at gunpoint in the mall parking lot, you have some choices as well:
hand over your wallet
lie about having a wallet
fumble and drop the wallet, hoping to get the drop on them
grapple for the gun

Now this is a Choice. What you may choose is not predicatable. It may depend on your mood, how much money you've got on you, you're upbringing, the nature and positioning of the gunman.

The hold-up in a parking lot example is a situation that offers a decision-point. When the bad guy says, "hey, give me your money", you've got seconds to react. That's a lot of time, to figure out what you're going to do, though it won't seem like it. Technically, nothing's happened yet*. Since the bad guy isn't in motion (rushing you or pulling the trigger), you've got more practical options.

*Side note, bad guys talking are less likely to shoot, it's hard to talk and fire at the same time. This is why cops get bad guys talking and ranting, because they're too busy, they can't shoot. It's also a good time to shoot them.


If the bad guy starts in aggressively, rushing you or starting to pull a trigger, you're choices are narrowed down such that your reflexes and instincts should kick in. You should be reacting in combat to fight back, or ducking/fleeing (the fight or flight response). It is highly unlikely that you're going to try to hand over your wallet right then, or do the bumbling act to get closer, because you are about to die.


Now let's tie this back into gaming. Understanding the nature of choice vs. Choice helps you design encounters that give real Choice, and know when encounters don't offer them.

When the party peers around a corner into a room, and sees orcs playing poker, they have Choices to make. They could fight, they could avoid, they could talk, they could trick.

Once combat starts, choices are limited to combat choices, because that's all you can do (running away is also a combat choice). Casting Magic Missile versus stabbing with a dagger may seem like a Choice, but in the big view, it's just fighting.

This means, that when you spring a combat encounter on the party, via Surprise, or because the bad guys, on first sight, draw and charge, all the non-combat choices have been eliminated. Yes, it's technically possible that the bard might successfully talk down the orcs from attacking, if he wins initiative, and can say enough in 6 words before the orcs close with the party and rolls well on diplomacy or bluff. But the probability of him trying, in the face of someone about to attack is unlikely.

Thus, any unlikely action is not a Choice. From a DMing standpoint, it's alright if the players surprise you with something you hadn't anticipated (turning a choice into a Choice). You don't want to block those, just because you didn't think of them during the planning stage. Nor do you want to just accept random ideas that may be stupid. You need to consider them, and abjudicate appropriately.

In turn, when you spring an attacking orc party against the PCs. Combat is the only likely option. They might flee, but most parties don't. Since you can predict obvious choices, and the list is short, you have to recognize that you have not offered a lot of Choice to the players. However, if the result is a TPK, you can't justifiably say, "they didn't have to fight, it was their choice."


To come from the other side, it is OK to have some encounters for which there is only one choice. Not all encounters should be that way, and it is good to make encounters and Choices before that, to allow a Choice before the pre-destined encounter. For example, insulting a man in a bar, versus being diplomatic could be encounter 1. In Encounter 4, he attacks the party because of encounter 1. The party made the Choice in the first encounter, the result occurs in the 4th encounter where the only option is combat (one could even argue it's an extension of the first encounter).


The core lesson here is, how you present encounters, how you run them, enables or disables choices. If you do a post-mortem analysis on the session, and find yourself saying "the chose to do that, and see what happened," I want you to reconsider that. Did the players really have a choice. Or were the encounters setup in a way that there were few ways a rational party would react.

Like the old saying, "if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Give your players tools, and therefore Choices. Don't give them just a hammer, and then complain that all they do is whack things with it.

Janx

The following thread makes a point about not having "locationless" encounters:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...e-writing.html

Here's a different viewpoint.

Way back when I started gaming, My DM ran a session where the party had to travel to some other place. He decided we'd be crossing through a demon-infested forest.

We crossed straight through, left to right on the map, and hit five or six encounters.

Later, while talking to him about the art of DMing, he told me the lesson he learned from that game. Apparently, he had drawn up the forest, and rolled up every demon for the entire forest. We're talking hundreds of monsters. He did this, because he didn't know which way the party would go, maybe we'd run from an encounter and go off the trail. And mostly he thought he liked rolling up monsters.

When we plowed straight through, it dawned on him, that all he needed to do was roll up 5 or six encounters and plop them in front of us, no matter which way we went. It would have been much less work, and the players wouldn't know the difference.


Now the lesson from my story, and from the other guy's thread is this. Taken literally, and to extreme, the advice of either is bad.

To avoid using locationless encounters (ones that you force in, regardless of what the party does), one might deduce that you must plan out evey nook and cranny of the game world, in case the party goes there, as well as to cover what's there so the party can find out to avoid it.

To avoid writing up unused encounters, you'd make them locationless, and spring them on players regardless of where they are or what they do.

Both are taking advice to extremes, until they become bad advice.


The truth of the matter is that planning encounters requires planning. Almost all encounters should be avoidable, if the party takes steps to become aware of them and then avoid them.

If a dragon guards the south gate, and a giant guards the north gate, attacking the north gate means the party avoids the dragon encounter.

If a party walks a long a trail through the woods, they're not really avoiding anything, so whichever trail they take is good enough to use the same encounter set.

If they go through the same woods, but know goblins tend to guard the central trail, then going off the trail should avoid goblin encounters.


If the mysterious stranger with a map to the dungeon you planned for this session is staying at the Wounded Unicorn Inn, and the party decides to splurge and stay at the Voluptuous Manticore instead, putting the stranger in the Manticore lets you continue with your adventure hook. It makes sense to make the encounter locationless, because it allows you to get the party to the hook. If the party knew a stranger was looking for them (and waiting at the Unicorn), then moving the stranger would be wrong.

This comes down to Choice vs. choice, and it depends on knowledge. If players don't know about encounters you write up and don't use, you've wasted time, ink. Unless you make those missed encounters matter later, it is as if they didn't exist. Therefore, any choice a player makes that unknowingly skips an encounter, is not really a choice. It's coincidental, and unimportant.

A real Choice is one in which the player makes an informed decision about. To attack the North Gate guarded by a Giant or the South Gate guarded by a Dragon, that is the Choice.

If the player knows the forces arrayed, they are then choosing an important factor. If they are oblivious to what guards each gate, then it doesn't really matter, and you could have a dragon show up the gate they chose (and ironically enough, inform them later in game that a giant guared the other gate).

Here's what I think you should take away from all this when planning an encounter:
Can the PCs learn about this encounter before they get to it? How?
Can the PCs avoid this encounter? How?
Should this encounter be moved, if the situation calls for it? Is it flexible in location?
Is this encounter a chokepoint? What is an alternate Choice?

Consider those questions as you write your adventure's encounters. Plan for them, and your encounters will be better.

Janx

I tried posting this last month. It got ate. I got annoyed. I'm rewriting it now.

How many of us have played in a game, where the group is doing something (counting treasure), and one PC wanders off. The next thing you know, an hour or more has gone by with the PC and the DM running solo, while the rest of the group waits.

If this has happened to you, you've fallen victim to the classic player ploy of forking the party.

It's actually a GMing mistake. GMs love it when players do things. It gets things moving, and its very easy to relay what happens next, get feedback, lather, rinse, and repeat.

The forker is taking advantage of this behavior. Intentional or not, it comes at the group's expense, as they wait for the game to get back to the majority, rather than dominated by the minority.

The first step is to nip the problem in the bud. As a DM, when you detect a fork is happening, stop. Tell the player, "I'll get back to what happens next." Then return to the normal party. Leave the forker hanging there. See what happens to the party, then use that to bring the forker back to the party.

Here's some ways to bring them back together:
party finds forker (forker delayed by encounter)
forker finds party (backtracks, or long shortcut)

Don't reward the forker with tons of encounters, XP and treasure all for himself. That's exactly what he wants.

Now you could dig deep into the psychology of why the player forks. Or you could simply nip the negative behavior in the bud.

Bear in mind, there are some situations that call for forking. I'm mainly advising about the situation where somebody forks to the detriment of the group. They're bogging down the game in a situation where the party should be working as a team.

Janx

I was reading the wikipedia entry for Michael Strazinski (the guy who did Babylon5). There was a great point he made about the show. He had planned an exit strategy for each character, in the event of an actor leaving the show. Case in point, 3 actors did leave the show.

The idea of an exit strategy is very relevant for RPGs. We all know players leave games. GMs often write up sweeping epic plots involving their characters. Yet most of us GMs forget to plan on the possibility of a player leaving (for whatever reason).

I'm suggesting that for the next plot you devise that involves a PC as an integral part, you also devise plot twists that allow for the player to leave (taking the PC out of play), and one for the PC to die. Both should lead up to another PC stepping in with just an important role.

[spoiler alert, but really B5 has been out so long...]
For example, the telepath Talia Winter had a plot line that was leading her to rebel against her own guild (PsiCorps was like a Wizards Guild). When the actress left the show, her last episode revealed she was a sleeper agent, and mayhem ensued when a replacement telepath showed up (a re-appearance).

In D&D terms, this is like finding out the wizard in the party was a Doppleganger (because the player was booted from the game), and a new player joined the party with a wizard who reveals the deception.

You could probably write up some stock responses, the trick is in do you want them to result in PC death or not.

Some examples of removing a PC:
Sleeper Agent
Doppelganger
Reassignment
Severe trauma induced coma


The next hard part is when plots are closely tied to a PC, how do you save all your planning?

Once again, B5 is an excellent example of how to handle it. When the show starts, Sinclair is being setup to marry the minbari Delenn (not right away). He's got a minbari soul even. It was probably even planned in season 1 that he would be sent back in time to become the great minbari leader. So when the actor playing Sinclair leaves the show for season 2, the writers bring in Sheridan, a character with a different relationship to the minbari (war hero to humans), and begin setting him up with a romantic interest in Delenn.

The new character has a different motivation for getting involved, but it's compatible, and can line up with some original plot plans (like marrying Delenn). In either case Sinclair or Sheridan was going to marry Delenn and lead the fight against the shadows and earth.

What's even more important, is it demonstrates a way to get around the "blood" tie to the plot. A common plot in D&D is a quest for an item that only works for a bloodline (kinda like Sinclair having a minbari soul). The trap becomes, when that PC dies or the player leaves, your party is in the middle of a quest for an item they can't use/don't care about.

The solution is to bring in a PC that can, because they're part of the bloodline (or like SG-1, copy the Ancient gene element and install it in others). You would also want to make the item part of a larger plot, which will get others involved, even if they're not directly interested in the item.

For example: The Axe of Bulander (from a dead campaign I ran centuries ago) can be used by a descendant. It was really an excuse for the PC to adventure and quest for a nice magic axe. In the end, the item was only valuable to the PC.

If the PC left the game (because the player left), I was screwed. If I counter the problem by making the axe valuable to stopping a greater evil, I can keep the party searching for it, and possibly adding a quest to find an heir to wield it, or I could drop or change the usable by bloodline-only element so the party could use it directly. It's always a good idea to let the party be able to save the day, then to make them find an NPC to save the day.

Janx