Roleplaying is hard and Monks are lame

It’s been a good long while, but I’ve got another great question, so I thought I’d provide an equally great answer.  Our reader asks:

I have a RP problem. My character earlier on in the campaign killed a baby troll. This did not sit well with the monk in our group and ever since we have been at odds. The only character that stood up for me while everyone else took a step back from the situation was killed by a rock trap and bad dice rolls. I have tried all that I could think of to help him get past it. Also, he has been walking that thin line between good and bad ever since. What can I do?

Roleplaying can be hard.  And I mean actually roleplaying.  Not just rolling dice and killing things, but being someone else for a while.  It’s the reason I discourage new players from being True Neutral, and even Chaotic Neutral at times.  Unless you’re already a little bit crazy, people tend to either roleplay as Good or Evil.  The subtleties in-between can get lost, and then I get annoyed because they’re not playing to their character.

Now, assuming you were playing your character appropriately, and killing the baby troll was acceptable within your Alignment, than there’s really only one good solution to your problem: forget about the Monk’s emotional manipulation.

Take special note of the smug, self-righteous look on her face.

Monks are annoying.  They’re a bunch of uptight, holier than though ass-hats that think they’ve reached some kind of spiritual enlightenment that should be forced upon everyone else.  Sometimes ignoring them is the best way to deal with them.  In general, I approve of ignoring all Lawful characters.

However, if you were playing against your alignment, than you’ve got a potential crisis on your hands.  Begging the Monk for forgiveness may actually make sense, and be appropriate as a means of redeeming yourself. If the Monk is a Good Monk, then they should want to help you do this, otherwise they’re the one with the roleplaying problem, not you.

To summarize: roleplaying should be number one when you have a roleplaying problem.  Dig deep, and figure out what your character’s motivation were.  How justified were they?  How badly do they actually feel?  And how much inner turmoil has resulted from this?  Even if he does feel bad, would the Monk pointing it out just make him angry?  Would he eventually get tired of all the bull-crap and just slit the Monk’s throat in his sleep to silence the voices of regret?

I generally frown upon Player on Player violence, and party instability, but sometimes it needs to happen and makes for awesome drama inside and outside of the game.  When the Cheetos start flying and the dice hit the fan, you know you’ve got some seriously invested Players.  They just might not come back for the next campaign.  And also: screw Monks. 

Don’t forget to check out my brand-new RPG Web Series, One Die Short!

One Die Short: A Tabletop Roleplaying Web Series

Hello lovely readers!  In case some of you don’t follow One Die Short as well, I just wanted to let everyone know that the full trailer is up, and the series is slated to air in February! Please help us spread the word! Huzzah!

The Return of the DM

Well.  It’s been a long while since I wrote anything.  What, with the Kickstarter campaign, pre-production mayhem, and now the endless weekends of filming One Die Short (P.S: the full trailer should be out this week).  But as filming winds down, I’d like to start offering my ineffable advice once again, and I really couldn’t pass up this latest question from “Galadriel”.  It would be a disservice to the entire RPG community if I ignored it:

Dear Sir, (<—- I prefer your Lordship, but Sir works too I guess)

My dungeon master over-describes situations and forces our group into situations that aren’t very enjoyable. We often have to listen to him roleplaying more than 3 characters at a time, hence we have no chance to join in.

In battles, the NPCs help our characters (there are 3 of us) and this leads to the DM being at least two members of our party, and four or more enemies. This leads to very long fights.

We are frustrated because we seem to be voicing random speech to a massive novel that he’s written. (He also tells us when to speak or role plays out our characters actions in story situations)

Do you have any advice?

Holy crap do I ever have advice for you!  But before I get to that, let’s take a closer look at what’s going on here.  As I see it (and I see all), there are three distinct possibilities:

1. Your DM is new to this, and/or is totally clueless as to what he’s doing

2. Your DM is a terrible DM and always will be

3. Your DM is a king amongst Doucheloafs

First off, if he’s a new DM, he’s doing everything wrong.  Roleplaying IS storytelling, and if he has a great story to tell, that’s awesome!  It’ll make for a much more engaging and interesting campaign.  However, roleplaying must also be COLLABORATIVE storytelling.  Without the DM there is no game, and likewise, without the Players there’s only self-masturbatory nonsense.  Or possibly a really good novel, but more than likely it’s this novel:

Literally, EVERYTHING he is doing is bad.  It’s not that individually they’re bad techniques.  They all have there place at the game table, but when all of them are used all of the time, it’s terrible.  As you’ve seen, it frustrates players and makes for really boring gaming. I would argue (as I have before), that the Players are more important than the DM.  DMs like to think they’re indispensable, but they’re really not.

I wrote a three-part series a while back on the basics of being a good Dungeon Master.  Whether he’s new to the craft or not, he could probably stand to read it.  Sneak a link onto his FB page or something.  If he’s been DMing for a while, he might be hopeless, or clueless, or a selfish ego-maniacal turd blossom, but you won’t know any of this until you confront him.

So, my advice to you is have a goddamn intervention.  And I mean that literally.  The three of you need to sit down and forcefully tell this monkey biscuit what’s up, because if you don’t, you’re all just as responsible for the terrible games as he is.  Every DM should be able to tell you what each of their Players likes most about roleplaying, and enjoys the least.

Clearly, your DM has no intention of asking these questions, so it’s up to you three to speak up and tell him what you want. Some people might tell you to be nice about it, but whatever.  If he puts up a fuss and tells you all that you’re wrong, then here’s what you need to do:

Then go find a goddamn new Dungeon Master!

One Die Short: A Web Series about Roleplaying

Well, this is a bit late coming, but I thought an update was warranted:  This blog has obviously fallen to the wayside, and one of the reasons for that was the success of our recent Kickstarter!

If you weren’t following along with it, we successfully funded a web series called One Die Short.  It’s about a group of friends that play a tabletop RPG.  It follows them through their lives as well as the lives of their in-game characters.  It’s about life, love and being a geek.  You can learn more here.

ODS is in production now, and as such, I have little time for anything else (film takes up ridiculously huge amounts of time.  Like, seriously.  You have no idea.  Unless you’ve done it).  ODS is scheduled to be released in January of 2014. Until then, I can’t do much else, though if you have any questions about the show, production, making a web series, Kickstarter, or anything of the sort, please toss them my way and I will do my best to find the time.

Thanks for all of your support over the years, and The Dungeon Master will return!

 

The Home Stretch!

Hello lovely readers!

Sorry to tease you with a new page, but things have been very hectic trying to promote the kickstarter.  We’ve got 4 days left to go on it (it ends July 14th), and we’re now almost 80% funded!

It’s been tons of work and lots of fun, but we still need your help to make sure we hit our goal.  If you haven’t backed the project yet, please consider it; even a few bucks will help!

If you like the comic, you will absolutely love the web series.  We’ve got a ton of talent and support behind it, including Robin Thorsen, who played Clara on The Guild.  We’ve got a lot of awesome One Die Short merch as rewards, including a limited edition DVD of all of Season 1.

Help us reach our goal, and I promise you’ll be glad you did!

Thanks you, as always, for your continued support of One Die Short!

 

 

One Die Short: Season 1 Kickstarter!

Hello friends!  It’s finally here: the One Die Short web series Kickstarter!  So, please, check it out, donate whatever you can (anything helps), and most importantly: spread the word!  Tell everyone about what we’re doing, because we can’t make it happen without your help!

One Die Short: Season 1 Teaser Trailer

We did you guys!  The One Die Short web series Season 1 teaser trailer is finally here, and the Kickstarter will be coming at ya’ soon!  Spread the word!

The One Die Short Web Show: Production Stills

Hey everyone!  Head on over to One Die Short and check out the production stills from the filming of our new trailer, coming out later this week.  (The picture will transport you to magic production land).

Designing Your Own Campaign Setting

Well, in between filming for the new One Die Short web show, I’ve finally found some time to answer a question.  You can read a little more about the plan for the web show here, and keep an eye out for our kickstarter next week.  Now back to business: today, we take a look at designing a campaign setting:

Dear DM,

I’ve finally gotten my 3.5 books and am converting my on the fly campaign into a campaign setting book for my friends at college that reacted favorably when I described General Yipgrowl and the rest of my campaign world to them. Having never done something like this before, I was wondering if you had any advise for writing a campaign setting?

At some point, every Dungeon Master will decide it’s time to try their hand at writing their own campaign.  We’ve all gone through the pre-packaged ones, and there are some amazing ones out there to be sure, but we are storytellers, and we want to tell our own story.  At first, this might not seem terribly complicated.  You have the story-line in your head, or maybe you’ve even written it down.  You know who the main villains and good guys are.  You feel pretty good about it, and so you sit down to start writing the opening adventure, and… oh wait… there are bucket-loads of shit you never considered.

The very first bit of advice I would give you, if you haven’t done so already, is to write down EVERYTHING.  Don’t worry about stringing it into anything cohesive yet, just write down your ideas.  Write down histories and backstories.  Write down character bios.  Write down information about items, locations, monsters – whatever you have in your head, write it all down.  Right now.

Once you have it out of your head, you’ll find it much easier to start stringing it all together, and seeing where the pieces fit.  Trying to juggle things in your head isn’t easy for anyone, regardless of how good you are at daydreaming.  Once you get it all out, start organizing it.  I like to organize my information into 3 basic categories:

World History
Location History
Character History

When it comes down to it, writing a campaign setting is writing a history book, and the more detailed you can make things, the richer the setting will feel, the more your players will be enveloped by it, and the happier you’ll be with it.

From Kidspast.com.

When you start organizing and focusing, I recommend beginning with World History first.  Zoom out, and then zoom in.  If you start with a single Character’s History, you might realize later on that it doesn’t actually work within the context of a larger history, and then you have to change it, and that’s a pain in the ass.  Start big, and go small.

World History
When you’re working on the world history think in terms of our own world history.  What information is the most important?  What do we write down in our history books?  Regardless of what you think about our history books, they still make for a convenient model to work from.  Focus on the following:

Wars
Seats of Power
Important Political Figures
Resource Distribution

This probably goes without saying, as I think every DM in the world loves maps, but make sure you draw out your world!  Knowing what your world looks like, where towns and cities are located, and where everything is in relation to everything else, will REALLY help you get more detailed with your histories.  Context is very important.

From Mad Brew Labs.

Location History
Location histories should read much like a World History.  For towns and cities you’ll want to focus on all of the same things, but get more detailed.  What is the governing structure like?  What people are most influential?  What is the local economy based on?  For environmental locations, you can still consider similar things.  If it’s a jungle, was it always a jungle?  Did another civilization ever live there?  If the land is uninhabited, is it important to anyone?  As with all of these categories, the more detailed you can get, the better off you’ll be.

Character History
This is probably the easiest one for most of us, because we’re always designing characters, whether as a DM or a Player.  I won’t say much here, except that you should really keep in mind how each character relates to their location’s history, the world’s history, and also, how the characters relate to one another.  Think about Game of Thrones.  One of the reasons it’s so enthralling to so many people is because almost every single character in it is effected by numerous other characters.  The more you can interweave things, the more complex and interesting your setting will be.  Believability isn’t even that important if you’ve crafted something very detailed and intriguing.  The Players won’t even notice.

And that’s about it.  I’m not sure if this is exactly what you were looking for, but hopefully some of it’s helpful.  As you go through the process of designing your setting, please feel free to toss more specific questions my way.

Good luck, and roll it like you mean it!

-The Dungeon Master

If you wish to submit a question to the Dungeon Master, please e-mail them to dungeonmastermind@gmail.com, or you can Tweet me a question @AskthedDM. And make sure to review the disclaimer.

You can also see me in action in One Die Short.

Updates and Such

Hello friendly (and also unfriendly) readers!

I know it’s been a long time since any new posts have graced the pages of my majestic blog and so I decided it was about time to let you all know what the deal is.

I am currently in the process of finishing up the final edits on a novel.  Very soon this shall be done and it will be taken out of my hands and placed into to the much more capable hands of my editor.  When this happens, blogs shall return, as will new updates to One Die Short.

The novel is a philosophical, sci-fi, biblical, apocalyptic, zombie (ish), horror-comedy, action-adventure extravaganza.  Try to categorize that publishing companies!  In your faces.

Friends of mine have frequently compared my writing to Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams (Not that I would be comfortable drawing such a comparison myself.  I am not much for self-tooting.)  Both of them are indeed two of my favorite authors, so it makes sense that I would be influenced by what I love.

To summarize the novel:  Pan-dimensional beings try to bring about the end times by engineering a deadly virus, and Harold MacNeil, the morose coffee shop owner, has to decipher his murdered father’s cryptic inheritance:  an ancient Bible.  (Don’t expect actual zombies though, just blood-thirsty crazy people tearing shit up.)

Once it’s ready I’m going straight to e-book format so if anyone has some experience and suggestions in regard to e-books, hit me up.  I have no idea what I’m doing.

Additionally, if anyone out there does reasonably priced book cover designs, let’s talk.

The Dungeon Master shall return.