Marcelo Dior brings as another great guest post today!

Every time I hear people butting heads about combat versus role-play (as if there wasn’t role-play in combat) I ask myself: what about the adventure?

“What’s adventure?” you might ask. Is it interacting with courtiers and equerries? Is it brawling with them? Is it interacting with courtiers and equerries and then brawling with them? Nope. Adventure is the focal point of every single fantasy story that has ever existed and that (probably) will ever exist, from video games to books to comics. Shea Ohmsford didn’t find the Sword of Shannara in his backyard. Luke Skywalker didn’t rebuild his uncle’s moist farm after the Stormtroopers burnt it down. Gandalf wasn’t such a pain in Bilbo’s neck because he wanted Bilbo to stay in the Shire.

Those and so many other fantasy tales are adventures because they’re journeys. Bilbo Baggins went cross-country through half of Middle-earth, putting many adventures under his belt, reached his destination, stole from the dragon, witnessed (or not) the Battle of Five Armies and got back home a completely changed person — and with many tales to tell. Luke Skywalker joined the Rebel Alliance, made himself a great Jedi Master, redeemed his father and set the galaxy free — all the way meeting lots of new people and facing many dangers in worlds stranger and stranger. Shea Ohmsford journeyed the Four Lands, making friends and foes, finding out about his own past all the while looking for the weapon that would allow him to defeat the Warlock Lord — unravelling a myriad of societies, cultures and races along the way.

Last November I talked here about combat and role-play. Well, forget role-play and to hell with combat. The fulcrum of any RPG (specially if we’re talking about fantasy games) is the adventure. How have the best games you’ve ever played started? Probably with the characters heading to another town to investigate a paranormal case or traveling through the sewers to find a Nosferatu informer. Maybe they answered a cryptic plea for help from an unmapped star system. On the other hand, what are the most boring issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian comic books? The ones when he’s king and is stuck in his palace at Tarantia; the interesting stories from that period are the ones in which he has to get out of the city to fight some threat. They had to give the crew of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a ship, the Defiant, fewer than three seasons in because the audience numbers were going down — and why? Because you can only tell so many stories inside a space station, but with a ship that can turn frickin’ invisible mankind’s final frontier becomes a fathomless well of adventures.

Without adventure your best and most well-prepared plot isn’t worth a penny. Your best NPCs are boring, and your greatest fight scenes are nothing but a backdrop in front of which your players keep going through the same moves repeatedly. They need to explore something, be it a previous unknown floor in their building or another planet. That’s the only way your game is deserving of the word adventure.

1. Let go.  Back when 3rd edition went out they released the game system and allowed anyone to produce content for the game .  Expanded rules or new adventures could be published (and sold) by anyone.  This meant less revenue for Wizards of the Coast but a better chance for user generated products to keep the game relevant.  I’m not expert in the field but I have to think the timing was off (3rd edition came out in 2000) to really take advantage of the culture of user generated content that the web has allowed over the past six or so years.  D&D should, therefore focus on creating fertile ground for users to build worlds, rules and supplemental material.
2. Embrace technology.  If computer games are relieving players of the need to focus on record keeping (encumbrance! spells! rules!) why not use that?  Use D&D insider to allow players (and the DM) to use computers (particularly tablets) to track a lot of this stuff.  Die rolls, equipment, damage, etc. can all be tracked and done with a computer and you don’t need much imagination to think about how much easier it would be if you could use a touchscreen.
3. Decide what you want to be.  If you want to be a combat and loot vehicle, own it.  If you want to be a game about roleplaying and storytelling, develop mechanics that can give a group of players a reasonable chance of having a funsession without one combat encounter.

Marcelo Dior graces us with a very personal post this time about his feelings regarding 5e. I echo some of his sentiments, though not necessarily for the same reasons. It’s very likely I’ll be posting a follow-up to this containing my own feelings on the subject.

Wizards of the Coast announced today that they’re preparing a new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, this time with extensive input from open, public play-tests that will last until (I think) GenCon 2013.

I went through this a couple of times. I couldn’t wait to get the AD&D books as a kid when Christmas arrived (I wanted to play with classes AND races!). I looked forward to D&D 3rd edition when it was announced a dozen years ago, and I ate up every tidbit of news about 4e in 2007. Each edition change brought a mix of emotions to me who, like many, started in the hobby via OD&D or AD&D. But this most recent of announcements that we’ll be having a new edition (which, curiously, WotC isn’t calling “5e”) is the first one that is making me feel blue.

Last century, when I heard TSR had been acquired by the company that owned Magic: the Gathering, I was jumping for joy to know D&D would go on. More than decade later, in the year 2000, I’ve just left my parents’ home to build my own life in another town and my internet days were actually nights: using a dial-up connection (all that I could afford back when) I used to stay up from midnight to the crack of dawn because I used to work in the mornings and sleep in the afternoons. That’s how I followed the release and ultimately ordered the three 3e core rulebooks, one at a time. Do you remember they were released a couple of months in between? Also, do you remember they weren’t called “3rd edition”, just plain simple Dungeons & Dragons, albeit the number 3 was suggested in the Dragon and Dungeon Magazine logos?

3rd edition was a very welcome change of pace for me, as I was more than a little bored with AD&D. By the end of the 90‘s, the good ol’ rules system was… I don’t know, old. As I played other games at the time comparisons were inevitable, and the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, even with the more complex rules from the Players’ Options series, looked as if it was way beyond its prime, an old man trying to play with the younger kids. Even so, after the release of 3e I kept running my AD&D campaigns to make transition as smooth as possible — in one of my games, the change of magic system happened “in game”.

With 3e, I played it until I was sick of it — for real. By ‘06-’07 I was literally sick and tired of the game. When WotC announced 4e and started to release morsels of what was coming they found a very, very exciting consumer in me. In fact, I was so thrilled by the new edition that by May ’08 I had sold all of my 3rd edition books — I didn’t even want to see them again, something I hadn’t done with my AD&D books (to this day I still buy AD&D books, mainly Monstrous Compendiums and campaign settings). The transition from 3rd edition to 4e was a relief, a breath of new life into my favorite RPG. I finished up my two 3e campaigns with some kind of world-ending disaster instead of moving them up to the new system. Case in point, one of those campaigns was so long it had transitioned from AD&D 2nd edition to 3rd edition, but it didn’t make the jump to 4e: in the new edition, everything would start anew. From 1st level, with Keep on the Shadowfell.

I’m of the impression that 4e’s life span has been too short. If the next iteration of D&D comes out, as I imagine, at GenCon 2013, the present edition will have lived for five years. Third edition (counting it’s refit, 3.5) lived eight years, and AD&D 2nd edition lasted eleven years. That’s why, I think, contrary to what happened when AD&D and D&D3 came to be, this time I feel I haven’t played or run everything I wanted. There are still a lot of books I want to buy, and there are one or two in my shelf I haven’t read yet!

That’s why I intend to keep on running my weekly D&D game ‘till the very end. I hope the new edition turns out to be an awesome game, and I hope it’ll seduce me (especially because it’ll have to be a helluva game to make me quit playing 4e). I’m going to participate in the playtests if they call me, and I wonder what will happen to the D&D Insider service when there comes 5e — will both rules-systems live together for a while or will 4e options disappear?

That’s it. I’m saddened by the news the bard brought. Damn it, WotC, I still have plenty of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition to play!

Marcelo Dior comes back to us with a review of Heroes of the Feywild, WotC’s latest D&D supplement. He makes it sound pretty good, too.

It’s been a while since I read a D&D book (almost two years) so I was very surprised by the quality of this supplement. At fist, I though “oh boy, a book about fairies and pixies, rainbows and unicorns, all pink and flowery…” Man, was I wrong! Of course there are pixies and rainbows, Princes of Summer and cities of eternal autumn, but they’re the ones from old Greek and Irish myth — dangerous, deadly, incredibly powerful and not at all impressed with humanity. It’s the kind of fairy tale that reminds you all too well how fragile mortal life is, and how fleeting our achievements are compared to the immortal and godlike beings from beyond the Veil.

I need to give special praise for the layout of this book. Throughout the pages you see leaves, masks, branches and uncut stones decorating the book — a very nice touch that conveys the idea of a book about the Feywild. But the best part are the “Bard’s Tales” sections, side-blocks of stories small and large, conveying the most interesting, strange, and bizarre folklore tales. They not only set the mood at every chapter, section, and page, but also give immense amounts of material to weave into your games if you want to.

The only downside of the book is the lack of DM-related material: the book is 95% for the player, who will have a ball with the new backgrounds, races, and builds — not classes, mind you, but new powers for existing ones, and new builds, which I find brilliant, for there are more than enough character classes out there. I’d give special attention to the very last chapter, where you could create a rich backstory for the entire party at random — a tip of the hat to the old AD&D “Complete” supplements, I think. The three races added to the Dungeons & Dragons mythos (the hamadryad, the pixie and the satyr) are surprisingly interesting and fun. I’d not only allow, but indeed invite at least one character from those races in my table at any time.

If it wasn’t for the lack of love for the Dungeon Master, I’d have given Heroes of the Feywild 4 stars. Let’s hope something in the vein of The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond is in the pipeline for the Feywild.

Marcelo Dior graces us with another guest post (those who are unfamiliar with him should check out his older guest posts on The Gamecrafters’ Guild). This time he asks the question: is role-playing essential to the experience of playing an RPG?

A fallacy permeates the RPG scene. The fallacy is that it’s more important to role-play than play; this means that, if you don’t role-play, you’re playing wrong.

The misconception starts by the clumsy affirmation that, when combat starts, role-play stops. Consequently, there’s no role-play during combat. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but to me that idea won’t float. What do you mean, there’s no role-play in combat? Better people than me already tackled the idea: Randall Walker, from Dungeon Master’s Round Table, answered this question on the podcast’s episode 26; “You can role-play in any event. It doesn’t matter if you’re working through a Skill Challenge or if you’re working through combat. Any time the player says ‘I stand up and swing it and hit it with my sword’ it’s a kind of role-play—-it may not be sophisticated, but it’s still a kind of role-play.” Then he adds “Sure [4e] has a lot of mechanics, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t role-play those situations”.

Nevertheless, the whole situation is invalid by the simple reason that, if this isn’t role-play, we’re assuming one should role-play in order to play right! This line of thought is very dangerous because it implies there’s a correct way of playing the game, and a wrong way. This idea is offensive!

Is there a right way of playing RPGs? Is there a right way of having fun? Shouldn’t playing right be playing it in a way that is fun for you and everybody around the table? Isn’t “right” spending a couple of pleasant hours with friends or maybe total strangers in a convention? Perhaps I’m being bold here but I doubt there’s anybody who’d disagree with that logic.

So, as long as everybody’s having fun, there’s really no wrong way of playing—-hence, no right way either. It’s really great when somebody stands up from their chair, wave their arms and says “my warlock traces runes in the air, which shine with mystic energies from Shadowfell, while she shouts ‘thou shall never harm another soul from this sphere, ruffian!’” but it’s equally valid and rewarding if the same player rolls a d20 and say “I hit the mind flayer for 16 point of necrotic damage”. Who’s to say it isn’t? Just because they’re not “role-playing”? That’s not role-play; that’s improv theater.

Therefore, yes, role-play is part of combat (an integral element of so many games) but, more importantly, role-play isn’t essential to have fun. Having fun is essential to have fun! The rest is ornamentation—-bells and whistles-—and some people overreact.

So one of my contributors, mbeacom, has his own blog now, and you should go visit it. It’s good.

In other news, I’ve been spending a lot of time prepping for my upcoming Dresden Files RPG game. A while back I talked about my hurdles prepping for Bulldogs!, which came largely from my unfamiliarity with FATE as a system. Well, I feel like this time around I’m a little better equipped to deal with those pitfalls. Part of it is pure experience, but part of it is also having gone through the character creation/city creation session with my players, rather than making pre-gens without having ever played the game.

See, I have an idea of what my players will find interesting now, so I’m prepping with that in mind. I’m also trying to avoid prepping as if this were D&D, which it’s not. In D&D, I’d prep individual encounters which, while it leads to a lot of fun and dynamic fights, can lead to a somewhat more linear game. In DFRPG, what I’m doing is statting up all of the NPCs that are likely to be encountered, and then coming up with a couple of situations that are currently in play in the city. Then I’ll dump my players into that and see what they do.

Also, I think I’ve got a pretty good opening sequence planned, which I won’t share because some of my players read this blog. But I’m excited, and I’ll likely talk about it after the fact.

The Great Seamus comes back to us, with a fantastic article about how to build your own crazy-awesome looking terrain for D&D. Pictures included.

Make your own D&D Terrain, Made of WIN.

In my ongoing attempts to be everybody’s favorite DM, I found myself looking at the paper 2D maps used for D&D Encounters and feeling woefully inadequate. Things like cover and line of sight don’t mean as much to players or even to the DM in a lot of intense combat situations. For a while I was getting around this by incorporating some of the specialized terrain used in our FNGS Warhammer games. This left me at the mercy of what was available – surprisingly, no rocks, and only a handful of different buildings (most of which are 40K and don’t really fit in to the D&D universe). One of my “rival” DMs began printing his own 2D maps on cardstock with removable magnetic houses and stairs – cool. I felt a twinge of jealousy, since my printer doesn’t even print documents and his prints magnets . . . I WILL NOT BE ONE UPPED. THE BLOOD OF TIGERS RUNS THROUGH MY VEINS.

I set off to make my own terrain (on the cheap, we are in a recession after all). The first thing I needed was a base. Warhammer uses poly-styrene boards as a base, so I was off to Home Depot. I found a large pack of medium thick poly styrene for less than $10, which has enough in there to make enough terrain to encompass at least two whole dungeons if cut properly. Also at Home Depot I found a lot of options for flooring. The nicest looking option is ceramic tile, some of which is already split in 1” squares. This is incredibly costly, and limits creativity in that colors and patterns aren’t as varied as some of the lower budget options. I wound up picking up six pieces of vinyl flooring at $0.45 a sheet. I picked out a nice stone pattern. Also available (completely free!) are numerous smaller samples of most of their patterns, which can also be incredibly useful for smaller rooms or even for elevated terrain. Leaving Home Depot feeling considerably more masculine than I felt walking in, I traded that feeling in by heading to Michael’s for more supplies. I was able to pick up a Styrofoam cutter for less than $10, which allows me to cut and stylize my poly-styrene into any shapes desired. I also picked up some gold beads (large ornate ones and small ones), clear applied / drying Elmer’s glue, and a special gold glitter glue loaded with large flecks of gold, glitter, and metallic colored shapes. Also at Michael’s I got a bag of decorative sand and some small decorative pebbles. Judging myself prepared, I put on “Eye of the Tiger” and spread out my materials to get started.

Wanting to start small, I picked the map used in the final battle for this season of Encounters (SPOILERS), a pretty basic dragon lair – specific enough to be needed, but conventional enough that it could be used and re-used whenever desired. I cut a large piece of Styrofoam and used basic acrylic paint to paint it gray. Taking two pieces of my flooring, I used a sharpie marker to draw 1” lines horizontally and vertically, connecting them with a straight edge to form a grid that covered the whole sheet. From there, I draw the necessary borders of the cave within the grid, just as one would do on a dry-erase battlemat. I then painted all of the unused flooring the same gray color as the foam base, so the only part with the grid was the available terrain. From there, I cut a smaller portion of foam out to serve as a large platform of stone which the dragon’s hoard would rest on. I took a quick hike in the woods outside of my apartment and found five serviceable stones which would serve as boulders – they were then cleaned and painted that same shade of gray, and super glued to the vinyl. Two patches of difficult terrain were manufactured by applying some of the Elmer’s glue to the desired portions in the shapes and sprinkling the decorative sand and pebbles on top of the glue, spreading them out thinly. A small pool of water was made using blue and white paint, which was then covered with the Elmer’s glue, which when dry gives it a shiny and wavy look. To add some finishing details, the gold flecked glue and various gold beads were heaped onto the smaller piece of painted foam. Using a paint brush I spread that glue around over the edge to give it the appearance of spilling off the edge. Finally, I used a larger paint brush to spread Elmer’s glue all over the areas of the cave that were not in use, which were then also covered in the sand and pebbles to give it a rock like appearance. When all the glue as dry, I dry-brushed various shades of gray all over the pebbles and sand wherever they appeared on the map to make them blend in with the natural stonework.

The result is magnificent, and didn’t take all that long or cost that much – compared to, say, Dwarven Forge terrain, or even the requisite sets of WotC Dungeon Tiles.

Before you embark on your own terrain, a few tips from my own idiocy

• Do not use spray-on primer on poly-styrene. It corrodes the foam, smells bad, and scares the wife.
• The same goes for super glue on poly-styrene.
• A rock the size of your fist is scaled to be a boulder the size of a huge or even gargantuan creature. Simple pebbles from your neighbor’s garden will serve as good sized boulders.
• It is very hard to cut through vinyl, especially vinyl with an adhesive backside. There are a number of tools to do it, but it’s much easier to cut your foam to match the size of the tile and simply put in the portions of the tile you don’t need.
• The Styrofoam cutter is HOT. Do not touch the wire when it’s on, and do not leave it on unattended, especially with kids / pets / clumsy dungeon masters in the house. In case of clumsy DM, make sure spouse has hospital on speed dial.
• The foam is light and easy to transport, but it is delicate and can be easily broken. When transporting, do so safely and carry it with both hands on the edges of underneath from the center.

Mbeacom comes back to us with a post about brevity and conciseness in regards to adventure design. It’s a good one; I’ve included some follow-up thoughts at the end.

One of the groups I currently run is taking a short break while I prepare for, and go on, a family vacation.  I had this planned for a while so I was able to make sure the narrative we were engaged in had tied up pretty nicely leading up to the break. There are several dangling strands for future adventure but nothing that is time constrained so as to make the break feel unnatural.  As far as my group of heroes is concerned, they’ve earned a nice chance to kick up their heels and let the locals gush over their hard fought successes.

But where to go next?  As I said, I’ve peppered seeds of adventure here and there but now I need plans for what those seeds may become.  Normally, I like to use published adventures as a framework, at least pulling some villains and motivations from them to lay at the feet of my players. Then letting the players show me what they feel needs attention. If they follow the hooks of the adventure, great, if not, that’s fine too. I like the potential for things to happen that I hadn’t thought of. It makes the story feel more organic and it’s a nice surprise to see where things will lead, rather than having all the spoilers in advance. For some reason though, this group has me a bit stumped. I’m relatively new to the group, having only DM’d them for a few months and not knowing any of them personally prior to the start of the campaign (props to Wizards Encounters program for giving me the opportunity to meet other local gamers).  They’re not a particularly vocal bunch but they definitely love playing the game.

It’s this background that I’ve been mulling over in my mind as I try to decide what tasty challenges to put on the gaming menu.  When I’m in a situation like this, I tend to reach out to the web for inspiration. I try to find an article or story or even a random comment that helps me put things into perspective.  In this case, it was a fantastic writeup by Chris Sims over at Critical Hits.  Chris is a guy I’m really starting to sync up with. His great perspectives and original ideas make him a solid source of inspiration.  Back in February, he wrote this story about game design.  That’s right, about GAME design, RPG design mostly.  However, in reading his thoughts and suggestions, I realized that they’re not exclusively relevant to the design of new games. They’re so fundamental and easily overlooked that they’re useful for almost ANY type of design or creative process.

In my case, I’m going to endeavor to use his tips to help me focus on my adventure design. This brings us to “The Nanopitch”.  Chris describes this as the single sentence one might write in an effort to get their idea in front of a decision maker at a company. What is it about your idea or product that makes it unique? Or, tell us about what your idea means and why it’s worthwhile.

Ideally, you want to couch your nanopitch in terminologies that everyone understands. If you use references to common cultural icons, you can sum up ideas and concepts in a very short bit of text. I think this is not only great advice, but it’s a great way to think about your campaign plans, or even more simply, your story designs. Heck, even a villain could benefit from having a nanopitch.

Whether you’re a player or a DM, think about your game. Can you sum up why it’s great in a sentence or two? Can you make one sentence that encompasses what the story is about? Ok, so maybe campaigns can get more complex than a couple of sentences allow. Even so, I think it’s a great exercise to try to apply the concept of a nanopitch to certain aspects of our adventures. Perhaps each character could have a nanopitch. Perhaps each subplot or quest could benefit from this focused approach.  Just one simple concept of what it means or what motivation drives it forward.  Using this, I think it can help us design encounters, both combat and non-combat. Does the encounter serve the concept? Is it “necessary”? I think if we start to look at things this way, we can avoid some of the oddities of adventure design that tend to creep in. Those things that dilute the awesomeness of the story, or confuse the players as to what is really important.  And as I’ve learned from my experiences of running games, diluted awesomeness and confused players are very often a signal that your adventure design needs to be more focused.

So, as I sit here and ponder what unthinkable evils my players will have to overcome, I’m thinking of them with laserlike focus. I’m designing with greater consistency of theme and purpose.  I hope not to lose that 50,000ft view of the world, even as I dig deep into the wild antics of the skirmisher I plan to use in certain encounters.  I’m resolved to create a “core ethos” and stick to it, letting it guide my design decisions. Hopefully this will help over the long term as transition into Paragon tier. I really want my players to look back and feel like they made a journey, rather than just did “a bunch of stuff”.  Perhaps I should ask my players to make the nanopitch.  That could get really interesting.

This nanopitch idea reminds me a lot of something that exists in the Dresden Files RPG: the high concept aspect. Each player character has seven aspects–descriptive phrases that say something about who and what your character is–one if which is the high concept aspect. This aspect sums your character up in a few words to a sentence, boiling your character down into something short, punchy, and memorable. In fact, all named characters (NPCs included) have a high concept aspect, which helps to keep them differentiated in everybody’s minds. Applying a similar thing to D&D (or to other games) can help you come up with a cleaner, clearer vision of your game world and the cast of characters populating it.

I also want to touch on the idea presented at the very end of this post, the idea of letting your players give you the nanopitch. I love this idea. Again, DFRPG does this to some extent. The first session is City Creation (of which Character Creation is a part), and everyone’s involved. All of the players, in concert with the GM, create the game setting in concert, complete with NPCs, threats, and locations. New things can, of course, be introduced during the game, so the GM is not constrained by what is created in the first session, but it’s a great way to mine your group for ideas, and a great way to get them to tell you what they’re interested in seeing in the game. Chances are, if a player tells you that there’s a mob boss controlling the trafficking of supernatural drugs somewhere in the city, that player probably wants to do something about that problem at some point.

Again, the applications to D&D are intriguing. Setting aside the first session of a new campaign for character creation and setting creation takes a lot of the creative burden off of the DM, and gets the players immediately invested in the world (since they helped make it).

Another post from our friend mbeacom, in which he talks about soliciting player input in your campaigns.

I just read a great article over on Dungeon’s Master and I’d like to use it as a stepping off point for some thoughts and experiences I’ve had on the subject.  In this article Wimwick discusses the subject of player input, and in particular, how much should players have in building the story and even the campaign.

I think he rightly surmises that player input is both vital to the story, as well as incredibly helpful to the DM, a person who often struggles with the endeavor of putting together an intriguing interactive fiction that is hopefully enjoyed by all.  He starts with the tried and true; the player back story. Then he moves on to what I think is just as key to keeping things moving along; the Paragon Path.  Wimwick supports my belief that Paragon Path is more than a few extra class features and attack powers we can expect to get in the mid levels of the game. It’s something we can use to fuel our player progression and set us apart from (or bring us closer to) others in the group in a good way that advances the story while supporting creativity.

So, let’s take those solid building blocks and see if we can pepper in some more juicy bits that might benefit players, DMs, and more importantly, stories moving forward.

The Player Trademark
I play in two alternating groups and DM for two others so I have lots of opportunities to try out different techniques.  One that I’ve been tinkering with, as well as been exposed to, is The Player Trademark.  It’s still in its infancy but I’d like to throw it out there to see if others are having success doing something similar or if it sparks an idea that might improve on it.  I’ve been trying to put together a few little eccentricities (as have some of my players) for the characters I play to give them flavor. After reading posts like Wimwick’s, I think there may be greater potential here.  I can see a possibility where a player Trademark would be a great vehicle for using story to give information to both the DM and the other players in the group.  

An example of this is my Ranger character.  He’s level 7 now and I’m considering the Battlefield Archer Paragon path.  That’s good information for my DM to have for planning adventures and we’ll eventually have the very discussion that Wimwick advocates. However, being the story loving type that I am, I would like to influence the story in more subtle ways as well.  I’m going to try to develop a Trademark that will give the DM even more flavor for developing any portions of narrative that lead to my eventual Paragon Path. Currently, I’ll call what I do a gimmick more than a trademark.  My Ranger has a habit of whispering the name of the enemy he attempts to kill in combat prior to rolling the d20. I’ll probably take this a step further and begin whispering the name to my bow, or perhaps to each arrow specifically, communing with it as an extension of myself. Perhaps I’ll come up with a post-combat ritual to add to this.  Doing this can be an interesting RP exercise as well as giving my DM a peek into what is important to me as a character, i.e. my bow and how I use it to dispatch my enemies.  Knowing this can add the extra oomph to how he plans my trajectory into the Battlefield Archer Paragon Path.  This extra depth allows me to impact the story such that I can help seed the DMs imagination in a way that is in keeping with who I view my character to be.

Player Relationships
Another interesting story seed is player relationships.  This is a pretty common thing to think about. Does the Paladin get frustrated by the Rogue or the Warlock? Does the Dwarf constantly bicker with the Elf in the party? Is the Warlord constantly “over” negotiating NPCs with his intimidate and diplomacy skills?  These are pretty standard tropes insofar as we understand them. However, thinking about this has made me realize there is more potential there for the thoughtful player and DM.  

Others may take this for granted but it struck me recently that these relationships should both be informed by player backstory as well as impact Paragon Path choices.  Our relationships with other PCs, NPCs and even villains, can be a great way to set our characters on certain adventure paths. Do we want our character to be someone who melds easily into society? Do we want them to be someone who struggles to maintain relationships? Do we perhaps antagonize certain types of characters or villains? Do we have things in common with them? How does the way we make these choices, and how we RP them, affect the ideas we have about our Paragon Path choice?  I’m not sure I have all the answer to this one, but I’m certain that with further thought, and potentially some feedback, there is great storyline potential here, especially as we try to link it to our chosen Paragon Path.

Player Weakness
Now this is one that I think has some great potential.  We all spend a lot of time building our characters strengths, powers, and capabilities.  However, inherent in those very designs is weakness.  In many ways, those weaknesses, those “holes” in our character optimization can be just as interesting as our actual abilities. Perhaps you’ve designed your character to be an expert in certain areas. This could very well mean your character is narratively deficient in others. Think about your skills.  What happens when you stack your design to have great scores in certain areas? Naturally, your scores in other opposing specialties will suffer.  This is more than just good game balance. This is a narrative opportunity.  Similarly, those nights where your dice are ice cold can present an opportunity to tell a story that is interesting and different from the nights where they are flaming hot.  This is a story challenge, and even failure can be exciting if you build a story around how it relates to your relationships and even your Paragon Path.  Just like failure needs to be interesting in a skill challenge, so too does failure need to be interesting when it comes to our characters’ abilities and endeavors.

In fact, I’ve recently had discussions regarding one of the games I play in where the DM makes success a bit too easy.  All those potential storylines that revolve around failure, or lifting yourself out of defeat become purely theoretical. Don’t get me wrong, I like to do awesome things as much as anyone (see my most recent guest post) but I also think that the greatest feats of awesome often begin life in the shadows of failure or near-defeat.

Think about your character’s weakness. Perhaps it’s a Barbarian who is weak at ranged combat. Perhaps it’s a Cleric who was built around healing but has little damage potential. Perhaps its a character designed for combat but who suffers in RP situations.  These are all great hooks that can be influenced by backstory and further used to make our Paragon Path choices all the more interesting and potent.

I guess the point I’m trying to get across as it relates to Wimwick’s post is that he’s more right than he realizes.  Backstory is huge. Paragon Path is huge.  So much so, that we need to continue to expand on both as well as what they mean for the future and how they relate to our past.

If you have any thoughts on getting the most out of your backstory and Paragon Path, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Frequent commenter mbeacom gives us is first guest post today. Those of you who’ve followed recent comments might know where this post is going, but I encourage you to read it anyway. Mbeacom does a great job explaining his own little house rule, and backs it up with a lot of, well, awesome stuff!

Marcelo Dior wrote a wonderful column last month on speeding up combat in 4E. It took the bold position of questioning whether or not speeding up 4th edition combat is really as vital as internet message boards would have you believe. It really got me thinking, and based on Marcelo’s well reasoned treatment of the subject, I’d wager it did the same for a lot you.

So I asked myself, “Do I need to speed up combat?”. A year ago, you’d have heard me give a resounding, “YES!”. I was still youthful in my experience as a DM in 4E, having spent most of my time running far simpler versions of the game decades ago. I was a strong proponent of gridless combat and theater of the mind. I avowed collaborative storytelling and eschewed what I understood at the time to be a heavily mechanical design shift underpinning all of 4E’s combat. To put it simply, I thought combat took too long. And, embarrassingly, I endeavored to recreate the combat of previous editions in my 4E game.

A year and several gaming groups later, I’ve come to different conclusions. My understanding of the workings of 4E and its “underpinnings” has changed markedly over that timeframe (much thanks to Brian Engard and this great site in helping with this). I’ve seen all sorts of gamers chew on the rules and spit out wildly different results. I’ve learned that not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder but so too is “speedy combat” in the eye of the gaming group. While one group might grind to a halt at the 45 minute mark, another would burst into the second hour full of energy. I started to put things together and came to some conclusions. These conclusions have lead me to make changes to my own games. In this article, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to share one of them with you.

The most successful initiative I’ve tried over the multiple gaming groups I’ve run 4E for has been what I call, “The AWESOME card”. It was derived as a response to something I noticed happening at every table I ran for and played at in the 4E era. Players would flip through their character sheet scouring over their juicy powers and feats. The funny thing is, they would do this in an almost unspoken effort to find something that wasn’t there. I could see the looks on their faces almost as if to say, “Hmmm, this looks good, but not quite right”, or “Oooh, I like that one but I better save it for later”. To this, I wanted to shout out, “NO! your character sheet doesn’t have the answer!” “Just do something AWESOME!” That’s when it hit me. What SHOULD they do? Did the awesomeness potential of the character begin and end during the process of choosing powers? I certainly hoped that wasn’t the case. So I decided if they couldn’t find that “perfect” power on their character sheet, I’d help them make one up on the fly. And when they did so, I’d reward the effort with a power card of my own, something that says, “You did something creative and entertaining and we all enjoyed it!” I’d give them and “AWESOME! Card”.

Lead By Example

My first step towards insinuating this new “mechanic” into my game was to demonstrate what was possible. As a DM, I started really describing the actions of the enemies. I’d tumble around opportunity attacks and one enemy might leap on the shoulders of another as they both got combat advantage positioning before falling prone in a heap on the floor. My players were initially stumped as as I bent the rules to the breaking point and played up the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies they faced. But it didn’t take long for the craftiest of my players to return the favor. He asked if he could “try” something and my eyes lit up. I was prepared to say yes to my own execution at that point. His idea was great. It was well within the “exception” based rule system of 4E and when he was finished, everyone was impressed. Immediately, they were looking over at his character sheet for something they had missed. We had all visualized an action that was significantly more interesting than “State power, role dice, announce damage”. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes, that’s exactly what needs to be done, but in general, flavoring things up can be a lot more fun.

After he completed his epic turn, I looked to the next person in initiative order and said, “Well, what are YOU going to do?” And to this day, we’ve never looked back. Recently, one of my players informed me, he doesn’t even look at his list of powers anymore, except to try to find some mechanics that make sense for what he wants to do.
I said to him, “GREAT!”

Reinforce The Awesomeness of The Players

Ok, so you’ve shown your players what “awesome” looks like and they’ve even tried it themselves. Isn’t that enough? Sadly, I wish it were so. Unfortunately, with 4E combat being very tactical with powers that make life so easy by telling you essentially what 6 actions are available to a character, it’s easy to fall back into old less-exciting habits. That’s where the AWESOME! Cards come in. Each time one of my players does something really creative, clever, or simply entertaining to the group, I hand him or her an “Awesome” card. It’s essentially just a reformatted homebrew power card that says some funny things and gives a reward. A few examples of the rewards are that perhaps you get to reroll a missed attack, regain a healing surge, recharge an encounter power, or even roll a special giant D30 that I keep around for fun.

These concrete mechanical rewards make the creativity feel that much more awesome. Players feel a sense of achievement more frequently through the course of the combat. This breaks up the work and reward cycle that comes from working hard to achieve a goal. If they work for 1 hour to achieve a goal (defeating the enemy, surviving, escaping), things can get stale because this one singular goal takes a long time to achieve and no single action stands out as making the achievement possible. Then when they finally achieve it, it can feel almost anticlimactic. However, if there are smaller intermediate goals that can be achieved, it removes the sense of slowdown one can get as combat draws toward the hour mark. The bite sized bits of greatness keep things surging forward and keep everyone entertained as each player tries to find some fun thing to do rather than decide which power would be the most effective at that time. The players worry about their characters and what they would actually do, rather calculating the most DPR possible. Now, if you LOVE calculating DPR or dropping mind numbing Novas, that’s great, there’s no “right” way to play D&D. But I’m of the mind that 5 people calculating DPR is generally not going to be as entertaining to watch over an extended period. (although Novas can be pretty amazing) Now, if you want to calculate DPR as well as do amazingly creative things, then I’m all for it. That’s what I would describe as “winning” D&D.

Other benefits

The last thing I’ve noticed since I’ve started using AWESOME! cards with all my groups is that the players’ interaction with the game world seems to be more under their control. What does that mean exactly? To be honest, it’s hard to explain. These awesome cards work much like an Action Point, in that you choose to use it when you feel it would be most beneficial or interesting. This gives the players more agency; more depth in how they can control the game they get to play. And, in the case of the re-roll awesome card, it keeps the dice rolling. Nothing I’ve seen has greater impact than getting that high die roll when you’re really in a crunch. Nothing is more devastating than when you get just the opposite. With a re-roll card in your pocket, you can more frequently experience the best of both worlds. You can fail spectacularly and still have a shot at saving your hide. You have more chances for those elusive crits. In the end, it just gives you that much more reason to do something fun, entertaining, and NOT predetermined by a character generator.

So this brings us back to the initial question posed by Marcelo. DO we need to speed up 4E combat? I think the answer is a resounding . . . not necessarily. Combat really only needs to be sped up if it’s too slow. It’s only too slow if it lasts longer than your players interest and it will mostly likely only last longer than your players interest if something isn’t happening during combat to pique that interest. Well, I’m here to assert that finding ways (one is via in-game rewards) to incent players to entertain themselves and each other through their characters actions. A side benefit of this is that it takes a lot of load off the Dungeon Master as entertainer. It also helps make the game more fun for him or her, as well as everyone at the table. And, isn’t that it’s all about?