My last blog article justified the existence of magic shops. I'm going to look at the topic from the opposite.

First off, let's agree that a small community probably doesn't have a shop, as there is not enough demand or money to support it.

Nextly, let's agree that any magic shop is likely limited in its inventory. It is improbable that a shop could exist realistically, that had every item possible. It's even possible that all the magic shops in a region may still not cover all items (items may very likely have regional availability).

Those first two points bound the problem such that a PC should not expect to get whatever they want, whenever they want, just because they have the money. In short, if you are going to have magic shops, there are rational limits as to what they contain.

Let's cover the social barriers a magic shop would have to overcome.

A king might be leery of having unregulated magic items flowing through his kingdom. If he's not regulating them, he doesn't know what they are. If he doesn't know what they are, he doesn't know who has what items that could be a direct threat to him. That alone would encourage a king to restrict and regulate the flow of magical goods and services.

This means our magic shop has even less inventory, due to outlawing of certain products. It also means it can't buy or trade certain items, at least without permits and registrations.

All it takes to make this happen is a king of this mind-set (perhaps warned by a wizard advisor, who seeks to limit any threats to himself even). Then he sets up a regulatory board, maybe requiring a geas from people seeking a permit to posess, and things are rolling.

The church can also have a hand in things. In the real world, various religions considered charging interest on loans to be a sin, as the loaner was making profit, without doing work. At one point in history, the catholic church forced prices to be static on commodities, not yet being aware of the laws of supply and demand, nor the science of economics. It is entirely possible the church can condemn the use or ownership of certain items that it deems harmful to society.

Odds are good, the only things on the shelves of s magic shop would be low-threat items. Anything else would be black-market.

Lastly, let's consider the rogue element. Namely the 5 finger discount, referred to as shrinkage in the retail industry. A magic shop with rows of items on racks, particularly not behind a counter would be rife with stealing. New shop-lifting spells would have to be invented, because there don't seem to be any that can protect an entire store, not just single items. A building built for customers to walk in, would be a target for after-hours break-ins as well. Once again, requiring siginificant steps to protect against. It would take a high-level wizard to run such an establishment (which would justify the high value amount of gear he owns).

It may be possible that somebody is dealing in small quantities of items, sub-1000 GP perhaps. The risk isn't any greater than a jewelry store.

But larger stuff, is more likely to be black market, heavily regulated, or private transactions. All of it low inventory count.

Because you can easily protect that extra longsword +4 you're trying to sell. Not so easy is protecting a rack of wands, rods and staves, a shelf of armors, and rack of swords, a box of rings and a case of potions.

Janx

It's all about inventory and volume.

If in your campaign, there are ZERO magic items, then there will be ZERO magic shops. There's no items around to create a supply, regardless of demand (I'd still want a magic item in a non-magic campaign).

If in your campaign , there are FIVE magic items, there still won't be any magic shops, and odds are good nobody's buying or selling (prolly killing for).

However, if you play in a world where NPCS clerics and NPC wizards are cranking out minor magic items (potions and scrolls), you have the foundation of justification of a magic shop.

Note, I define magic shop as a place that sells magic items, not services. It's also entirely plausible that you can only buy magic weapons from an arms merchant. The nature of the shop is unimportant, only that there is an NPC that PCs can go to, and buy some magic items.

When you consider how many extra items the typical PC gets by 5th level, 10th level, etc, you start getting into having a SUPPLY of magic items. Every PC I've ever played has had a fair amount of these, either oddbal items, or items outside my chosen weapon set.

From there, obviously the PCs want different magic items or money (so they can get different magic items). This is the DEMAND.

Consider the old rule of thumb that 10% of the population is leveled (i.e. NPC adventurers, etc with level appropriate loot). This means that in a large enough population, there are NPCs with similar piles of unwanted magic loot. Once again, creating supply and demand.

At that point, some enterprising individual (likely an NPC adventurer looking to convert his unwanted magic items) will start a business selling and trading items. And making money off it.

All it takes to justify this is two categories of people:
1) minor item makers who crank out commodity items like potions and scrolls selling to adventurers (PC or NPC)
2) higher level chars with items they don't use, looking to trade them in for stuff they can

Given how easy it is to crank out the small stuff, that justifies a "magic shop" that sells the small stuff.

And if I was a new PC, I'd be looking there for magic stuff in general, because those folks are in the know.

And if the campaign I played in was fairly generous with items, I'd easily have stuff I don't want (yay, I found a +2 sword, maybe I can trade in my +1 for something else).

Businesses exist because of SUPPLY and DEMAND. There is DEMAND for magic items, it is the number one reason PCs go adventuring for (that and XP and gold). The SUPPLY is the total magic items in the world. They are not all sitting in a dungeon, waiting for a PC to find it.

There is a demand for a whole lot of things in our real world. And there are people making businesses out of it. Just because you don't like the idea, doesn't make it unrealistic or unfathomable. Otherwise there wouldn't be the gambling, drug trade or human slavery. If people want it, somebody will find a way to get an inventory and sell it.

I suspect that the real root of not wanting magic shops in a campaign has more to do with GM control. The extreme example of anti-magic shoppism is that a PC can declare what he wants and walk into any magic shop and buy it. These types of GMs seem to loathe the idea of a player getting whats he wants. Whereas, all the examples by GMs who accept the idea of magic shops point out that the DM has full conrol of the inventory and prices. Many of these examples include some rather clever integrations with other real world business ideas. I've not seen one example of a magic-walmart, where a PC can buy whatever they want and run rampant over the campaign.

In short, barring a low magic campaign where there isn't enough excess magic items to sell, it defies logic and real world comparison that there would NOT be some form of magic shop.

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

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

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'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

The previous articles I've done talking about evil parties and playing evil PCs, is touching on the importance of the group getting along. Evil characters can interfere with that.

By this point, most of us are aware that players play for different reasons. Among them: killing things, getting cool loot, acting out a story, building something, kicking-butt, and gaining power. I assume that for any given player, one or more of those reasons is fun for them.

I also believe that my fun should not come at your dispense, and vice versa. And that if we can't find a set of fun that respects that, we should not be playing together. This means that picking on your PC, stealing your stuff, bullying isn't fun for most people, and therefore isn't acceptable for me to do to your PC.

Another important aspect of the group, is to get everyone involved. In Improvisational Theatre, a blocking action is always frowned on. This is where you do something that prevents the other actor from continuing on in the scene. Gaming has the same thing. What are you doing to hog the spotlight? What are you doing to bring another player into the scene with you and involve them?

A good example of that is the party introduction. I once ran a game with an existing party, and we were adding a player (who was a friend we all knew). Upon meeting up with the party, the new PC was argumentative and hostile, and acted like he didn't want to join the party. The new player was blocking. He could have adopted a stance that would make it easier to join the party. In the end, he joined the party, but had it been a real interaction, the party would have walked off, muttering about the cranky dwarf they met.

So the key point is, determine a way to introduce your character that is believable, yet conducive to joining the party.

The corollary to this, is that a new character is always allowed into the party. What group has refused a new PC? Because of this, the party skips the background check, and other safeguards they might normally make with an NPC. This therefore means the new PC does not have an open invitation to betray the party, for the sake of betraying the party (I've got a friend who does this with every other game we've played with).


A last point is when making PCs, some players pick an topic of controversy, and then push that agenda aggressively, to a point it results in PC deaths. A good example of this are the elf hating dwarf. The dwarf player has a choice, to play up a bias against elves as a distrust, which shows up as roleplay, or to be openly hostile to the elf in the party. What's even more foolish is to choose a hostile attitude when you know the party has elves in it.

It's interesting roleplay to make the dwarf not eat any food prepared by the elf, until he sees others eat it, or to mutter "darn elf" everytime the elf points out something correct. It's another to bring the game to PC vs. PC armed conflict. This almost always results in no fun for somebody, and can destroy a campaign.

Rich Burlew (the Order of the Stick guy) has a great article touching on this as well: http://www.giantitp.com/articles/tll...4H9k6efFP.html


To sum up, here's a list of tips to bring about party unity:

• when joining a party, act in a way that would get you invited
• avoid active hostility and sabotage towards other PCs
• always try to bring another PC into a scene (or the next scene by going to them)
• don't disrupt the game or story for the sake of doing so
• always try to de-escalate a disagreement with another PC

My main argument is, some players create conflict within the party for the sake of conflict. This is bad playing, and kills the fun. Conflict that comes up because the game's story invokes it is a different animal. And even then, coming to blows over it is something to be watchful for. When PCs start killing PCs, the fun usually stops.

Janx

I've categorized today's article under my Real2RPG (bringing real life stuff into your campaign) and RPG Philosophy (what I think about RPGs).

I think there's a real cross-over effect of what your know, and its impact on the game. It think there's two categories of this. The first category is Knowledge skills (things I learned that a normal, basic PC might not know). The second category is skills I have that immediately help my PC, compared to another player that doesn't have those skills.

The age old idea of "if I know how to make gun powder, can my PC invent it?" comes into mind, for a knowledge skill. Basically, bringing your real life knowledge into things to try in the game (be it med school, herbology, engineering, etc). The most blatant attempts at this is the gun powder trick. Where the player says, "I mix charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter and then light it, what happens?" The GM usually comes up with some lame counter of "nothing, science doesn't work in this world".

I think this is the wrong approach for the player. Instead, think about putting ranks in a skill that you know a lot about, and then using your knowledge to explain what your PC is doing when he uses that skill. Even with my meager guitar skills, my knowledge of playing will let me better describe what my bard is doing than my musically challenged DM. Using your real knowledge this way adds flavor, but doesn't give your PC an advantage.

The next step, is to use your real knowledge and appropriate ranks in a skill to advance the state of the art in the world. The trick is to start primitive. Really primitive. You can't jump in and do open heart surgey, just because you have 9 ranks in Healing. But you can start introducing the idea of sterilizing bandages, cleaning wounds and tools, as well as washing your hands before an after, to reduce infection, which might get you a +1 to your roll.

And you can justify it by "my PC has noticed that wounds tend to get red and worsen when the environment is dirty through years of tending to the wounded".


The second type of skills, is trickier. These are skills that not all players have, and you can't necessarily go to school for (though some folks have managed to improve). Two obvious ones to me are social skills and combat related skills.

Let's talk about social skills first. I take it as a fact that a persuasive person is more likely to get their way with a GM, than a non-persuasive person. Arguing with this is like arguing with the definition of "persuasive", it means to get your way with someone.

This means, that PC skills aside, a persuasive player will be more likely to convince an NPC to do someting, or get an in-game effect from the GM. This is a social skill. Not all people are good at it.

In the old days (1E), players had to be nice to NPCs and persuasive to get what they wanted. Rude and terse players seldom convinced the king to be nice to them, because the GM reacted to the player. Nowadays, (3E or higher), a tactless player can just make a Diplomacy roll. But here's the catch, a GM will probably forget to require a roll (or grant a bonus) to the socially adept player. Whereas, the tactless player will probably get asked for rolls with every rude sentence his PC utters. In short, real life skill impacts the game.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the social skills in the game. I prefer the player to role-play it out. It is jarring when a tactless player says tries to schmooze the king badly, and then says, "I rolled an 18, does he give me what I want?" There's a camp that says this is OK, because it opens the social characters up to the non-social players. I think this is hogwash, as combat skills suffer the exact same defect, yet nobody argues that the game balances it for tactical idiots.

Here's why tactical geniuses have an easier time, compared to non-tactical folks. 3E's use of the battle-grid helps reveal it. The short of it is, a tactically adept player will make better moves, get more flank opportunities, better coordinate attacks, and avoid attacks of opportunity, compared to the less combat saavy.

How many times have you played, and watched a player do things that were "stupid" compared to what you would have done, and seen that those actions incurred more damage and risk? Now some of this is due to experience, and rules knowledge, but that's my point, it's things you know and think about in a game fight, that they do not, that gives you an edge.

Here's a fun example: I played a game where our 1st level party were in a kobold tree city (think evil ewoks). The kobolds started cutting bridges. We're 60 feet up. My friend gets the idea to run and jump his dwarven monk 30' to the next platform. I tried to pause him and say "wait, tie a ...", but he thought I was trying to tell him what to do. Luckily the GM was nice enough to talk him down. The point being, I was always mindful of the tactical situation (we're high in a tree, that's a farther gap than we can jump), my friend was impulsive, and was not paying attention to such details (a common problem). My point, left to our own devices, I do fewer stupid things with my PC than he does, and with a crueler DM, my PCs would live longer.

Now being a tactical genius doesn't mean dawdling all day planning, it just means using your awareness of the situation to your advantage. Strategic geniuses are the ones who plan.


What all this means is, your social skills will help you with NPCs. Your tactical skills (knowldege of game rules, chess, situational awareness) will help you in combat. Those who don't have these real skills but have the same game scores as you are at an disadvantage.

From a role-playing perspective (as in playing a personality, not a group function), I try to act the way my PC's scores are. Low social stats, means doing less diplomacy and talking to NPCs. Lower intelligence, I tend to coordinate less with the group in combat (though I still avoid doing dumb things). I don't believe in taking sub-optimal actions just because I have bad stats. I simply avoid acting counter to those stats. Meaning the dumb guy with low charisma doesn't act as the effective leader or persuasive diplomat. I let others do it, I simply follow, in those cases. My fellow players get the impression that my PC isn't smart or suave, but I don't cause problems because of it.


In the end, my gaming philosophy is that the game need only simulate events that can't be handled in the real world. Combat and spell casting are examples. I need rules to simulate how strong my PC is and how much damage he does. I don't need rules to simulate if I out-maneuvered you in combat, because if I'm skilled and you're not, I will.

A counter-argument to this logic is, that if the game has rules so I can have a strength level that allows me to pick up cars (something I personally can't do), there should be rules to allow someone else to schmooze the king (something he can't do). That's probably fair. I'd just like it to not be jarring to my sensibility.

Janx

Despite the redundant word play, the title of this blog gets to the meat things. I think there are 2 definitions of role playing, as it relates to RPGs. One is performing a function in a group, such as Fighter, or Rogue. The other definition is playing a personality.

The mentality of the former, playing a function, is an element of why some folks like playing evil characters. The "I can do whatever I want" excuse drives it. Pick a class, and do whatever it takes to get what you want done.

This mentality is also what drives some folks to hate the alignment system, especially being constrained by it, or having to choose before you start the game.

I don't fall into that group. During character creation, I like to figure out what my character is like, and then play it that way. The challenge is to set a personality, and stick to it.

I just learned about a game called Dread, from Piratecat's thread. http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/194714-dread-jenga-beat-up-my-dice-my-results-indie-horror-rpg.html

The sample chapter has an excellent quote on character, "...keep in mind, the players are pretending to be people other than themselves, and should act accordingly."

I believe that quote sums up the latter definition of role playing quite well. In my view, its what makes an RPG fun, and makes a game campaign memorable, because it has memorable characters.

Now I don't advocate full on over-dramatic acting. No drama classes are needed. I simply believe the point of playing a character is to set some boundaries for how your character is to behave, and then play to those strengths and weaknesses. Doing so is how interesting stories will be created.

In the past, I've done this as simply as buidling a character and deciding which existing fictional character mine is like. I don't build a copy, I just use it as a template, to set the expectation. I've used a lot from X-men. I've had a thief based on Remy Lebeau (Gambit, including a silly cajun accent). I've done Wolverine in a fighter. I've even done a half-orc barbarian as Sabretooth. For me, it worked. It quickly set how my character behaved. And as the game progressed, I made adjustments (my version of Sabretooth wasn't quite a bad guy, but had other traits in common).

My point is, consider making your characters have character. Your game will be better for it.

Janx

Continuing on my last entry, about evil parties not being much fun, a key question should arise. Why do some players like to play evil characters.

I often hear the same thing I said when I made my first PC and I chose Chaotic Neutral for an alignment and I said, "so I can do anything I want".

I think the idea of "being able to do anything you want" with no rules saying you can't is appealing to some players. It's not just a being able to do illegal things desire (which most campaigns have law enforcement to deal with as a challenge anyway).

I think the attitude is that creating a character with built in limitations (alignment or character behavior traits) that will prevent you from doing things at some point (whether you plan now on doing them) is dumb.

I don't plan on robbing anybody or killing the king, but I sure don't want to be stuck with an alignment that says I can't, should the whim strike me.

I suspect a player with this mindset doesn't like to make characters with NPC ties that can be used against them. The stereotypical orphan, so the DM can't screw with them.

That I think is the crux of the matter. Some players view these things as weaknesses that the GM can exploit to take them down, and make them do things.

I've got one friend who's takena fancy to the Forsaker prestige class, just so he can avoid having a dependency on items so the GM can't yank him around. Same problem.

I think these players are missing the point. A character with limitations, and dependents creates opportunities for storytelling and challenge.

Consider it this way, most players enjoy talking about their characters. A character with no problems can only tell about his deeds. This doesn't make a good story.

I think this is the core of how D&D left the dungeon. When it first started, I have no doubt it was Gary making a dungeon, each player picking a role (fighting man, wizard) and then going in killing monsters and taking their stuff. Only as they began adding the idea that the PC was a CHARACTER and had background and codes of conduct, did their characters become interesting, and worthwhile stories generated from their exploits.

Janx

It's been my experience, evil parties and evil PCs aren't much fun to GM.

Now, I suppose for players, it's a different story. And some GM's can handle an evil party with no problem.

However, I think in general, evil parties don't make for good adventure design or storytelling in an RPG.

It's all in motivation, both of PC and player. For a good PC, threaten a village, kidnap a loved one, or have an NPC ask for help, and you probably have the player biting the plot hook and starting the adventure.

For an evil PC, the rewards have to outweigh the risks. This means easy money or threaten with a more powerful enemy. Otherwise, the evil PCs will back out and leave when the going gets tough, and they will seldom care about consequences.

I was talking to a friend of mine about our old gaming group (of which he's still gaming with because he still lives there), and he agreed with me. The signifigance of that being, he used to love playing evil campaigns. But his observation over time was that the GM had to resort to more tricks to trap the party into the adventure (so they couldn't bail). He also was a big fan of remote controlling a death knight (he worked out the right spells for his wizard) so he wouldn't face any risk. The GM couldn't fathom why the PC wouldn't go himself.

That's my point. An evil party has completely alien motivations (usually they're psychotic sociopaths) such that it makes it harder to write for, and prepare a fun campaign.

I suspect part of the problem is smart players of evil PCs play them as psychotic sociopaths, rather than people with a disregard for some groups of others. Most real bad guys have SOME loyalty to a group, witha disregard to a majority. That difference means the GM has little leverage to build a story on.

Janx