Story Hour: Part 3



Valek, Eladrin spymaster



Again with the tardiness! I'm just messing up left and right here. Still, here we continue where we left off: The players just defeated a rogue mage bent on power and domination. The players found a clue to their next goal; a map with a small pyramid symbol on it with the annotation "more power, pyramid of shadows." So the players left Thunderspire Mountain.

Shortly after they left on their way down they realized they were being stalked. Quickly they gathered and formed a plan; but it didn't really matter as the person stalking them jumped from the trees: an eladrin who introduced himself as Valek. He said he had been waiting for the players but couldn't afford to wait any longer. He urged them to trust him, but he couldn't talk now, as he was being pursued by assailants. If they trusted him and let him use a teleportation ritual to go somewhere safe, he would tell them everything.

Integrating Player Backgrounds

First off, a heartfelt apology to my readers for not posting anything in the last few days. Life has been kicking my butt between home, work and school over the past few days, but I'm back now! Today we'll talk about a topic that has been on my mind for a week or two now: player backgrounds. Not all DMs use them, some require them, and I recommend them. If you're using a homebrew setting, it gets the players to learn about the setting by having them build their character into it. It also helps the DM come up with ideas and populate areas he never had (remember all that blank space we left on the map? Yeah, here's where it comes in handy), which is a very handy technique for world-building (called collaberative design, but we'll get to that another time). For now, I'll discuss how I use backgrounds in my campaign.

Penny Arcade/PvP Podcasts

Today I bring another installment of the "Learning from the Masters" segment, whereby I offer an example of fine DMing talent. This week I bring you another round of Chris Perkins' DMing genius, but this time with a different group: the creators of Penny Arcane and PvP comics. This is a series of podcasts that highlights how to run a decent game even if your players are a bit chaotic in nature.

There are 3 series of the podcast, each one about 8 episodes long. The second series even includes a super-awesome guest player: Wil Wheaton! So I'll get out of the way and let you enjoy some more awesome gaming.

You can find episode one here, and all the rest of the episodes can be found here.

Happy gaming!

The Power of Choice

I don't have a whole lot of time to make a post today, as I'll be prepping for the climactic final encounter for one of the groups I run tonight, and that will eat up the bits of my day that aren't filled with my job. So today I'll talk about player choice, and how you can use it in your game.

A lot of DMs, especially beginner DMs, are nervous about letting the players choose their own path. What if they do something I'm not prepared for? or worse, What if they do something that breaks the story? This leads to what is called railroading: forcing the players onto the path you write for them, without a chance for them to make their own choices. Railroading is bad, except in specific cases where you know precisely what you are doing.

If railroading is at one end of the spectrum, then the other end would be sandboxing. This is a type of game where the DM has no pre-set story or plan, and lets the players do what they will. At its most extreme, this means that plot hooks are not given, and the players are left to hunt down possible adventures. This, like railroading, is bad unless you know what you're doing. So what do you do? Find a happy medium, and that's what I'll talk about today

Story Hour: Part 2

So it is Sunday again, and you all know what that means right? Story Hour Sunday! Today we'll continue the story where we left off last week, following the next big adventure in my campaign. This time, however, I won't bother with trying to teach anything; I'm just going to ramble through what happened in my campaign.

Thunderspire Labyrinth

This is a big adventure, but I'll make it as brief as possible without missing the highlight, if I can remember them. We left off last week after the players slew a cult of Orcus leader around the city of Winterhaven. We pick up this week as the characters, heroes as they are, were asked by the lord of the city to investigate some reports of missing persons in the area. Not only that, but with a letter found on the corpse of the necromancer (yay plot hooks), they were able to deduce that these people were kidnapped as slaves to be used by some group called the Red Hand. They found out that this group was located inside a large mountain a weeks travel away. So off they were, heading towards - dun dun DUUUUH - Thunderspire Mountain.

Adding Horror to your Game

Today I'm going to talk less about procedural topics like campaign building or monster design, and instead I am going to talk about something that even I haven't worked out all the way yet: Being scary with your game. Turning a roleplaying game into a horror game can be tough. Like reputations, it takes a while to build up good horror, and it can be ruined with a single off-hand comment. To this end, I will share my experience with horror, and 5 tips to making it work in your game.

The Story of Orsik

One of my hobbies other than DMing is painting metal miniatures. Usually this goes with my DMing as I can paint minis to use at the table, but my current painting project is a bit different. It's not a mini meant to be used at the table, rather its a diorama, depicting one of the coolest characters I've ever had the pleasure of running a game for. I finished this beast of a project last night, after 3 weeks of modeling, and I wanted to share this with everyone; share the awesomeness that is Orsik.

Best Session Ever

Last night I had one of the best sessions I've had in a while. This was my weekly game where I get to be a player rather than a GM, and I just have to share. I'll try to summarize the background, but there's a lot of details as it was the climactic battle of the adventure, so bear with me through all the little details.

Building a Campaign with Nested Plots

Today I talk about the beginnings of making a campaign. The campaign is what ties a group together, and brings players back each session. Simply put, a campaign is a series of adventures tied together, much like an adventure is a series of encounters tied together. For this article, we'll build a simple example campaign.

There are several ways you can start off your campaign design. If you're like me, you start with the world; draw a map, add some countries, some cities, and let the players choose how they want to play. You could also start with a story you want to tell; the lawful good deity decides the world is not worthy, and is attempting to destroy it to start again, and the players must stop the agents of this "righteousness" and prevent the world from being destroyed. If you're really ballsy, you can take the PC's backstories and weave them into a complex web of seemingly disjointed adventures. For this article, we'll focus on a method of plot-tracking I use to create complex plots and sub-plots.

New Look

You may have noticed the fancy new look I've got going on here with this blog. Let me know how you like it, or if I anything is too hard to read or unclear or whatnot. I will touch up the header image to match the color-scheme in due time, but right now my main issue is that big block of grey that appear next to an ad. Does anyone know of any way I can get rid of that or change its color? I would be eternally grateful for a solution.

I'll also make a "real" post later today.

Learning from the Masters

One of the best ways to learn something new is to watch a master at work. This is just as true with DMing as it is with anything else. To this end, I eschew the long-winded guide today in favor of a video featuring one of my role models as a DM: Chris Perkins, the Senior Producer of D&D at Wizards of the Coat. In this video he is running a game for some of the developers of the Adult Swim show Robot Chicken.

So without further ado, I offer up this video for your viewing pleasure. This is just the first in a series of 25. If you've got two and a half hours of free time, this is an entertaining watch.

Plot Hooks: How to Use 'Em

In this article we'll look at how to use plot hooks, those funny little devices that get players interested in your game. These are a staple for any person running a game, in any system, and I know from personal experience they can be a bit of a problem: Players don't pick up on them!

The trick to getting players to pick up on plot hooks is actually less of a trick, and that is to bombard players with so many plot hooks they can't help but notice them. This shotgun style delivery of story hooks ensures that at least a few get noticed, and gives the players a decent choice.

"But if I do that, don't I have to plan for a bunch of different adventures and quests?" Good point, and here's where the real sleight of hand comes in. You don't. One technique I've used several times is to give the players plot hooks that seem completely different, yet, once the players start investigating, it turns out all the hooks led to the same adventure, in different ways.

Now of course you shouldn't do this all the time, the players are bound to catch on, but once in a while this can break up the monotony of "go here, kill that." For example, say you've got three plot hooks the players have picked up on. 1) Wells around the area have been drying up, leaving only a few areas where water is accessible. 2) Several people have fallen ill in town from some unknown disease, and the local lord fears a plague. 3) Plant-like abominations have begun killing livestock.

Can you see the connections? Here's the adventure: Someone has been emptying the wells in order to force people to use specific water for drinking water, which he has poisoned. This poisoned water has seeped into the groundwater and has corrupted local vegetation, making it sentient. Depending on which hook the players follow, the story can take a different shape. If the players examine the wells, they might find that they've been emptied, and trace that back to the source. If they investigate the illness, they might find it poisoned, and track the poison to a seller/maker, and if the players investigate the plants, they could find the corrupted ground-water.

Plot hooks are great tools when used correctly. They can pique player interest and curiosity and mask what would otherwise be railroading. Learn what motivates your players, and use that to create your story hooks, then relentlessly bombard players with those hooks until they figure out what they want to do.

Happy gaming!

Story Hour: Introduction

The Story Hour is a series of posts meant to track the story of my current campaign and analyze how things turned out. This should not only let me reflect on my game and how I run it, but give you, the honorable reader, the boon of learning from my mistakes and maybe giving you ideas.

For this first installment, I will look at the first adventure the players embarked on.

Setting the Scene

For the second installment of my guides on being an awesome DM, I will backtrack a bit from my last post and start with the basics of developing your setting.

What is a Setting?

As with other media forms, the setting is the place where everything happens. The scope of your setting can be as small as a single city, or as large as an entire continent. How big it is really isn't important, but if you are new to running any sort of game, you will want to start small.