Remember that time we killed a God for my birthday?

Whether you’re fighting your way through a dungeon, running from zombies or ending Odin, there are narrative tricks—and player limits—to keep in mind when combat springs up. This is by no means an exhaustive tool-kit, but the best kits are built by continually trying new techniques to craft a more compelling story.

Yours might have fire breathing dragons.

Tell Us A Story

Narrating combat helps with pacing, engages players, and increases their buy-in. In this case, that buy-in being referred to is their attention and creativity. When a fight is a challenge, stakes are high, and the fight is fulfilling for players, the narrative is working. If you want to cadge a narrative trick, you go to someone who’s been perfecting theirs—like Jack-of-all-Trades GM Cliff Hebner.

Hebner’s spent years waging the good fight against one of the forms of combat with the worst reputation of all time: LARP combat.

In live-action role-playing there’s often a popular set of assumptions about combat:

• it’s boring
• it’s all about numbers
• you’ll be there all night.

LARP or table-top, Hebner’s advice comes from years of straddling the divide between narration and numbers while volunteering for the Camarilla, primarily as a Storyteller. [1]

“If your play group is all Team Number Smash or all Team No Math, then great—it’s not hard to make combat fun for them, since they all want the same thing. The Number Smashers will all want to roll it out down to the last hit point, and the Math Haters will let you take a quick poll of who’s doing what, then narrate the results. So what do you do with a mixed group? You start by talking to the players. Ask them questions.

“Does anyone want to have their PC die in this scene?”

“What’s your goal/intended outcome/victory condition?”

“At what point will you turn tail and run?”

“Is there anyone NOT being attacked/affected that wants to bow out now?” This helps give you a picture of what people want from the scene.

 

Narrative helps you balance player needs, and it’s one of the backbones of good GMing.

Keeping Combat on Track

Combat has a reputation for being a disorganized mess from which there is no escape. Monica Speca keeps the combat fast-paced and on track by drawing on her past as an athlete.

“I have players write down their initiatives on a note card and keep them in a stack in order. From my years as a track athlete, I then call them like I’d call an event. “Player 1 up, Player 2 on deck, Enemies on standby. Player 3, you’re after them. Go.” This works like a charm. While Player 1 is going, Players 2 and 3 are already thinking about what they’re going to do, and possibly building a stunt in their minds. “

No one technique for keeping combat order is one-size fits all. Experiment with what your table responds to. If there are chronic issues you notice—yours as a GM or theirs as players—find ways to address them. If one of your players has a hard time keeping track in combat, talk to them away from game. Are they still learning the system? Struggling with keeping everything organized? You may be able to brain storm ways to experiment with finding a fix that suits them. If you as a GM have specific issues with keeping combat organized, ask around. Your table, and fellow GMs, may be able to suggest things.

Tapping Out and Fade to Black

If somebody gets into a violent scene and cannot continue, it is always okay to tap out. You can still keep things fun—and include combat—without providing an unintentionally harmful environment. GMs can use content warnings, players can choose to stay out a scene, you can ‘fade to black’ and summarize as a GM or group what happened. If someone crosses a line during combat—or a personal line for people at the table gets crossed—addressing that is usually best done in private. Having that heart to heart in private makes people less defensive. When someone is less defensive, they can do a better job of listening with empathy and responding rationally. Most people will point to sexualized violence and violence against children as unacceptable in their games, but many don’t talk to their players about other forms of violence and trauma.

If you have a player who has seen combat overseas, experienced a traumatic car wreck, or was walking to work the morning a skyscraper fell—those experiences may reemerge for them when strikingly similar events happen in game. You’re not expected to know every traumatic event in the lives of each player, but use your knowledge of the events you do know of wisely. No matter the circumstance, if violence or combat hits an unseen nerve, a five minute break—or calling it an early night—are viable ways to address the tripping of personal triggers.

When the Smoke Clears

A good combat encounter helps heighten the experience of gaming. –Rasmus Rassmussen

Combat in a game has similarities to a good sex scene in a book. It has a narrative point, it enhances the experience of the story, and it feels real. Bad combats, and bad sex scenes, often feel like throwaway scenes that don’t move a narrative forward or explore a vital piece of the story. The heist gone wrong or the gun fight with the undead Sheriff are each pieces of the narrative. Well-done combats have purpose, and like the rest of the game, are parts of a story you don’t want your players to forget.

Have some tips and tricks that help you keep combat organized, exciting or engaging? Feel free to share in the comments.

[1] For those versed in Camarilla abbreviations, Hebner is a former DC, iVST, DST, and AAMST.

I was involved with a gaming event recently. I don’t want to cause a scene, point fingers, or have people guessing. Suffice to say it was a big game with a lot of players that I was involved with. All of a sudden, we realized that two other people who were involved were gone. We assumed they’d had other obligations, their absence didn’t stop the game from going, and so we played on, oblivious. It wasn’t until later that someone said that they’d left because they were uncomfortable with all of the open gay couples that were also involved.

When I heard that, I felt like I’d been gut-punched. Had I seen some PDAs from the gay couples? Sure, I had. But no more than I’d been seeing from the straight couples. Could this be true? We did some digging, and innocently asked the person who’d invited them if he knew why they’d left? Had they been having a good time? He said he hadn’t spoken to them, but, without us asking if they’d been uncomfortable, their friend mentioned that he thought that one of the people who’d left was homophobic, and he suspected that’s why’d they’d gone.

Hearing such a thing just makes my stomach ache. It gets me mad, sad, and confused at the same time. So since the fallout is fresh in my mind, I thought I’d ruminate over the subject, as painful as it is to me and many others.

First off, the word homophobia is pretty silly. Taken literally from the Greek, it means “fear of the same”. What it has come to mean, of course, is a wide-ranging category of negative attitudes towards homosexuals, lesbians, and so on. A lot of homophobic behavior I’ve seen has been anything but fearful.

A homophobe walking into one of my gaming groups, the LARP I help run, or just about any other local gaming anything in the Boston area is likely in for a shock. My normal gaming groups include homosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians, crossdressers, transgender individuals, and so on. Gaming, in our area, at least, seems to draw a tremendously diverse crowd. Which is probably why this incident came as such a surprise. My brain wonders how anyone with any experience in the local gaming community can have missed this fact so completely.

The worst I can remember encountering to date has been a sort of “I’d rather not talk about your social life” vibe, which I’ve never had an issue with. When I sit down to play a game, I’m there to play the game. I’m not interested in discussing my sexuality or my players’ sexual orientations. I’m more interested in discussing whether or not Kidalis Havengard’s cousin has indeed turned to the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye, whether Tilly Thistleshanks is ready to take on the massive fey crocodile that ate his father, or if Al’lan Malkier can have Olaf Feyskorn hold his sword, then swing Olaf around by his ankles in order to have reach. (That last one’s still a no, by the way, Jacob.)

I know some of the people I game with, both LARPing and tabletopping, are more conservative than I am. Heck, one of my best friends at The Isles has had a “NObama” sticker on his car since before the 2008 election and considers himself a Fundamentalist Christian. I don’t care about that. I care that he’s personally a really nice guy, and that he’s a good roleplayer with a lot of great plot ideas. He knows I’m gay and married, he knows my husband, and we all get along just fine. That’s the kind of benign “You live your life, and I’ll live mine” sort of attitude I’ve become used to from the gaming community.

Speaking only for myself, romance, no matter what flavor, makes me smile. If I see a couple kissing, whether they’re two men, two women, or a man and a woman, I smile and look away, politely. I’ve seen all of those permutations take it too far, of course, and I’ve either left, or, if it seemed appropriate, asked them politely to perhaps continue once they have a room.

I want to give the people who left the benefit of the doubt. Maybe one of the gay couples was taking things too far, and they didn’t feel comfortable. Maybe rather than cause a scene, they took themselves out of the picture. But part of me worries that they simply left because they didn’t want to be around “those kinds of people.” And that makes me wonder if there are others at our games who are feigning a benevolence they don’t feel. If they are, they’re doing a damned good job of it. Most of the people I roleplay with – LARP, tabletop, online, etc – are like family to me. A whacked-out, dysfunctional family at times, but family none the less.

If there’s a hidden discontent, I’m not sure what I’d hope for. Would I hope they’d just quietly remove themselves like the folks did that I’ve mentioned? Not at all. I’d want them to tell me, to open a dialogue, to see if there’s some substance to what concerns them and not just some cultural or religious reflex kicking in. After all, good old HPL said that the most powerful kind of fear is the fear of the unknown. He may have been talking about cosmic, tentacled horrors rather than sexual orientation, but the fact is that we tend to be afraid of what we don’t understand. Maybe if there were more open, friendly conversations with a real intention to bridge understanding between people, we could put the ghost of homophobia to rest for good.

Maybe.

How did you get into RPG editing? 

I got into editing games on somewhat of a lark. I’ve playtested games before and didn’t realize that my attention to the details of the text (not the mechanics but the words around the mechanics) qualified as editing. I just thought that was what a playtester did and thought nothing more about it. I then continued to keep my game playing separate from my job (which at this particular point was teaching writing workshops and taking on private clients who wanted to write books), but that all changed last November at Double Exposure’s Metatopia Convention in Morristown (only a few minutes and a few traffic lights from my house). I figured it was at least a chance to meet the people whose games I played and enjoyed, as well as give a midnight writing workshop for those interested. Once I arrived and started attending panels, I started giving my opinion and sharing my ideas (which is not an uncommon occurrence once you know me), and that led to several game designers asking me if I was available to work with them on upcoming projects, as well as an interview on the Jennisodes podcast. From that interview, everything has just sort of ballooned, bloomed and blossomed into how things are today – my business has grown into more game-related work than novels (though I’m finding a hybrid with editing fiction lines for games), and I’m enjoying it loads more.

Most RPGs have a geographically diverse staff. How do you build a rapport with your authors and fellow team members who are located elsewhere?

That rapport is critical and for me starts as soon as possible, usually by contacting the authors or whoever is my liaison/bridge to the project and getting into a conversational tone with them. With a more ‘we’re-all-in-this-together-we-all-want-to-do-a-great-job‘ vibe established, it doesn’t matter if the whole staff is half a world away because whenever we come together (through chats or emails or even notes left in Dropboxes), that vibe is strong and clear.  The other advantage to this attitude is moving the ego-jockeying to one side and bringing people together not because they’re just famous names but because they’re good at what they do and we all want the work to succeed.

You’ve worked on a variety of RPGs, some of which have been licensed properties. What unique editing needs have you encountered with licensed games?

While I cannot speak for the other editors I’ve been so fortunate to work with, I can say that for me, the biggest concern is respecting the canon of the source material through the license, rather than taking advantage of it. It is such a privilege to have access to someone’s hard work for the purposes of playing a game with it that I think so many people overlook that fact because they just want to handle their own ‘do-over’ to patch disagreements they had when they first encountered that source material (they thought Character X should have / didn’t need to die, they wanted Characters A and B to get together, they thought a certain plot arc was utter rubbish and want to ‘fix’ it, etc).

But it’s not their job to “fix” it, it’s their job to enjoy it. A licensed game especially has to translate from whatever medium it originated in to whatever marriage of mechanics and development the game incorporates while not radically altering the original material (you cannot suddenly have a flying character not fly because the mechanics don’t permit flight) – because you run the risk of doing a disservice to the license (which makes both the game and the original material look bad) but also alienating your audience (they come to the product with certain expectations and if you’re not meeting them as a product, you WILL hear about it).

Editorially, (again this is my perspective) if I can find the tone and emotion behind the ideas in the source material, I can make sure they’re present in the game material. If a certain property is known to be gritty but have a wise-cracking charm, that has to be present in the text, and that means I often have to read or re-read that text to work out the word choices and the sentence construction along with the chronology and setting (because a licensed property can’t contradict the source). This stems from the idea that the licensed game is an extension of the material, exposing a new audience to the material through a vehicle they understand (rolling dice, character sheets, etc) rather than a “take” or spin on existing material.

What’s working with the rest of the Damage Control team for the Marvel RPG been like?

Far and away the Damage Control team is a wonderful group of incredibly hard-working editors and developers who amaze me with the tremendous amounts of work they do (so much more than many people realize), and who deserve all the credit and praise they’re getting, plus an extra heap more. I have worked with a lot of other people on a lot of projects, and repeatedly I find myself mirroring Damage Control’s organization in other projects – it’s been a profoundly transformative experience. It’s an invaluable asset to me to know that if I have a problem, I can very quickly go to another person, state the issue and we work together to find a solution. It can be so discouraging to ask questions to unresponsive people, and that is not the case with Damage Control.

It’s also the most supportive group of people I’ve ever met, even outside the Marvel RPG work. If I say I’m also doing this or that project, or that I’ve written something for the blog, other people care and do their best to read or comment or share it with others – it leads to a feeling of not being overlooked, undervalued or ignored, which unfortunately can happen when, as an editor, you take on projects and discover that the author may not like you changing their words or that a certain project has quite a few problems bubble up to the surface as you get deeper into it and deadlines loom.

If I may take a moment, I want to single out two people, Amanda Valentine and Cam Banks, without whom I would not be so lucky as to be a part of such a great project and be able to contribute whatever I can to material I believe so strongly in. I owe so much of my recent successes and happiness to their assistance and friendship and am so thankful for their belief in me to do the work I do.

But when the iPad came out, I eyed it with more interest. I liked its larger size. Sure, I couldn’t put it in my pocket, but I could type on it with relative ease, and a Bluetooth keyboard would make it even easier. What finally decided me was the idea that I could leave my Mini-Laptop, Kindle, and iPod at home and just take a single unit with me when I traveled. I become an early adopter.

Not surprisingly, being the RPG obsessed loony I am, before long, I started looking at ways to use my iPad to run games of D&D. As time has gone on, this process has evolved. As I was pondering this week’s article (and making notes about it on my iPad), I thought I might share some of the techniques I’ve come to use that make this sleek lil unit a DM’s best friend.

Caveat

To begin with, I don’t mean this to be an advertisement for the iPad, or to start some sort of weird Apple vs. PC vs. Android war, or anything. I’m sure many of the things I mention in this article are available across multiple platforms. I mean this article to be more about getting you to think of how a mobile device can be used to enhance your DMing skills; I’m not looking for any kooky flame wars.

Made for Gaming

Sadly, Wizards of the Coast isn’t currently offering their books for sale in a PDF format, but many RPG companies are. And even if I don’t have a DM’s guide on my iPad, I can still download a module in PDF format from Dungeon Magazine and have it handy.

While there are many programs available for viewing PDFs, I’ve come to like one called Dicebook. In addition to storing books, it has a built in dice-roller that you can customize. While I generally prefer rolling dice, sometimes I want to roll one without the PCs knowing, and a silent die-roll is very helpful. This flexibility makes it ideal for my purposes.

I initially thought I’d use the iPad to access features of DDI, but this proved to be somewhat difficult at times. Of far more use at this point is a program called Compendium. This useful little app doesn’t function without a DDI subscription, but it turns that DDI subscription into a mobile app for looking up anything that WotC has put into the DDI Compendium. I can look up monster stats, trap details, skills, powers, feats, and more.

With a minimal fee, you can get the version of the app without ads. This version also has a more powerful search engine, allowing you to search for items by rarity, monsters by level, and so on, just like the actual DDI Compendium tool.

The Remote Control for my iTunes

Okay, so two programs specifically made for RPGs isn’t exactly a stunning revelation. But there are other programs that can enhance your gaming experience that have nothing to do with gaming per se.

One of my favorite little apps is a program called Remote. This program lets me hook into my iTunes wirelessly, controlling volume, starting and ending songs, and so forth.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier articles, I have organized tons of music in my iTunes into different musical themes, and I use these to evoke specific moods. I have my Battle playlist, my Creeping Through the Dungeon playlist, my Sorrow playlist, my Wonder playlist, etc. Before my iPad, I had to roll my office chair over to the computer and change the music when I wanted to alter the game’s mood. This wasn’t a problem, but my players would kind of chuckle when I did it. “Uh-oh…I think the mood’s about to change.”

Now, however, I can make these changes from behind the comfort of my DM’s screen. I can slowly fade out the Adventure music I lay when the heroes are riding across the countryside, then cut in with building, ominous music from my Impending Doom soundtrack, and the players will realize that things are going wrong. I can also cut across the music with a specific sound effect to startle them. And they never see it coming. Hehehe.

Organized Notes

I’ve seen a lot of great feedback for DMs about how to organize notes and keep track of details. I’ve seen amazing flowchart programs, and I’ve envied the DMs who can think in three dimensions like that. For me, a well-organized notebook has always been the most useful tool, and I wanted a program that would operate like that for me. I came across Notebooks as I was looking through various word processing apps, and I’ve never looked back. This simple program lets you create different books and store various documents in each book.

I’ve been making “one-sheets” for my campaigns for years, but I used to print them out each game, which was very wasteful. Now I keep them electronically. I store older ones in a notebook called “Past Game Sessions”, organized by date, which lets me go back and check details. When I’m making a new one, I can cut and paste material I didn’t use in the past game for use in the next game.

I also keep a notebook called Brainstorming, where I store all the little jotted notes about thoughts for future games. When I’m preparing games, I go back and look through these for past ideas I’ve had, cutting and pasting material I intend to use in the upcoming game session. This program, more than any other, stays on during game nights.

I sometimes use a sound recording program between sessions to “jot down” thoughts for games. If I’m busy and don’t want to do a bunch of typing, this is a real godsend, as it lets me make a recording of what’s on my mind. I’ve gotten some odd looks on the subway as I make notes like, “Dungeon concept: The Well at the Bottom of the World.”

Showing Off the Visuals

If I know there are pictures I want to show my players, I will sometimes copy them onto my iPod. At the appropriate time, I will pull up the picture, lift up my iPad, and show the players.

Since my housemate and I both have iPads, it opens up some possibilities. There are apps like Dropbox which allow you to share pictures between different iPads. We’re pondering on a system where I can move pictures into the Dropbox so that he’ll have them on his iPad, and he can then pass his iPad around.

I’ve also pondered on a game if everyone had a mobile device. Imagine having everyone on some kind of chatting program (Skype maybe) where you could notice that the Rogue’s Perception was high enough to notice a trap, cut and paste a pre-prepared message about it into his private chat box, and send it. Then the Rogue’s player, seeing the message, says “Hold on, guys…I’m feeling there’s a trip here.” It would add just a tiny hint of coolness to the game. But my group isn’t geeking out quite this hard yet. Give it time.

Your Turn

Do you love or hate electronic devices at the gaming table? Are there any specific ways you’ve come to use an iPad or similar in order to run or play a game? This is a very DM-skewed article, but I know one of my players swears by a program called i4E to use instead of a printed character sheet. Do you use something different? Let us all know.

Fiasco

2009. Bully Pulpit Games. Author: Jason Morningstar. Editor: Steve Segedy.

Truer words were never spoken.  Fiasco is not a campaign game—though I suppose if you’re crazy and/or inventive enough for sequel games, more power to you—it’s a bloody adrenaline soaked cinematic roller-coaster you play in a single session.  I find the rules are always simple to explain if using the play map, and anyone who grew up watching movies can follow the narrative beat, including the full-throttle oh-shit moment of the Tilt, and the fast downhill trip to the Aftermath. There’s a bevy of playsets at the Bully Pulpit site for whiling away a night with your friends, dreaming big, losing hard, and leaving a bloody smear on the cutting room floor.

The Fiasco Companion

2011. Bully Pulpit Games. Authors: Jason Morningstar and Steve Segedy. Editors: Steve Segedy and Amanda Valentine.

The Fiasco Companion is geared towards making your Fiasco games better—advice on writing Playsets, hacking rules, playing with new Tilt and Aftermath tables, and four new Playsets to tool around with. With a foreword from Wil Wheaton and the encapsulated advice of some of the best storytellers you’ll run across, the Fiasco companion sits right next to Fiasco on my shelf. I bought it to add to my Fiasco experience, I kept it because it confirmed what I’d felt the first time I played Fiasco—it’s a game, sure, but it’s also one of the best lessons on pacing and improv most of us will ever get outside of a conservatory.

Technoir

2011. Cellar Games. Author: Jeremy Keller. Editor: Will Hindmarch.

Being a character in Technoir strikes me a lot like being poor, overworked, and stuck in a job you probably hate. It feels light on noir aesthetic but a good turnout for the moral crapstorm present in the genre of people doing very bad things for revenge, personal profit, or the girl. If you simultaneously sex up our world with more neon and slick flash, while bringing your A Game of corruption and technology, the world we know now could be a little taste of Technoir’s world to come. The big draw for me is Technoir’s rules, and the GM approach. The push dice, descriptive nature of stats, and a focus on giving characters an honest-to-Betsy story, not just a tech-draped dungeon crawl, appeals to me greatly. Technoir’s been a hard read for me in terms of grasping all the rules, but the promise shown by the rules is keeping me going.

Shelter in Place

2011. Galileo Games. Authors: J.R. Blackwell, David A Hill Jr., Filamena Young. Editor: Brennan Taylor.

If you’re unfamiliar with one of the most classic terms in disaster response, to shelter in place is the directive for individuals in an affected area (pandemic, disaster, zombie outbreak) to confine themselves to an area, seal off the HVAC, and try to wait whatever problem is on the other side of the door.

Shelter in Place is a cinematic game that expands on the concept in a deeply disturbing and visceral way. The Director (GM) helps coordinate the game, which at its basest of points is a story of survival. Just like any good horror movie, the humans only hope for survival is managing the resources they have, and depending on each other in a world where everything has gone to Hell. The rules are clear for me even on a first read, which makes Shelter in Place an unusual gem for me. As someone who has taken disaster response exercise design (read: drills and game writing) Shelter in Place should be on the list for disaster-response teams to play.

As for a more usual consumer of games? You might want to go to the park this weekend and play Frisbee.

Or you could bring a few extra friends, and see who would survive the zombie outbreak instead.

Have any RPG books you want to recommend as summer reading? Have a new—or old—game you’re reading or reading over again?  I’d love to hear about them! Leave me a comment or find me on Twitter.

By now you should be getting the hang of the skills necessary to write and some of the things you can do to be a professional in the industry. For the next two articles, I’m going to explore the part of freelancing that has to do with your flow of assignments — what you decide to take on and when you get paid.

There are four things that affect your ability to deliver an assignment on time and in the condition that a game company is happy with: how fast you write, how well you know the system, how closely you follow the submission guidelines, and how familiar you are with the setting.

How quickly you can complete an assignment isn’t always an easy thing to understand, because sometimes playtesting is required and other times real life obligations or communication mishaps pop up. What should have been a project that took you five hours now forces you to re-examine your submission over ten or twenty.

When things don’t go as planned, well… That’s where freelancing gets interesting. Your ability to freelance comes down to what your financial obligations are. Personally, I don’t budget based on what I’m going to earn (or what I might). I plan based on what money is guaranteed to come in the door — and that is typically founded on steady part-or-full time work. You might be different.

To any company, you are an independent contractor. You’re not a company employee and you’re not on the payroll. This means that you are part of the company’s billing cycle which is dictated by the terms of the contract or company’s cash flow.

Often, freelancers don’t read the fine print. I’ve seen a lot of arguments pop up about issues that are clearly resolved by reading terms between the freelancer (you) and the company (them). If you’re taking on multiple assignments, you have to juggle your obligations based not only on deadlines, but how and when you get paid.

On the company side of things, freelancers are vendors. When working with a vendor, companies don’t always pay by the date of the invoice, but by the terms of the agreement. Sometimes, those terms do not spell out the date range when payment is owed. For example, vendors can get paid 30 days after the invoice, 45, 60, 90, and sometimes 120. For a game company, the numbers depend upon how that organization makes money. If their vendors are late or they’re not selling enough to make ends meet, the cash flow dries up, and they fall behind paying their freelancers.

With RPGs, that can mean life or death for freelancers who require that money to pay their bills. Unfortunately, this type of business model, especially when you’re counting on a payment, can be really damaging overall. When you start to fall behind on your own bills, you take up more and more assignments to pay the bills. But what happens if and when things go wrong? One assignment may be manageable, but if all the revisions come in at once?

Who you freelance for and how you structure your queue is really on you to figure out. I’ve found that the best way to stay sane is to have a job — even if it’s part-time and pays eight bucks an hour — to cover my basics. You may find you can take on twenty assignments and everyone pays you on time. Or, you may decide to pick and choose the assignments you’ll take on because you find you can’t write what you’re not interested in.

The challenge, of course, is figuring out how to juggle all the tasks required of you and still make enough to live on at the same time. Next month, I’m going to walk you through a few scenarios to help you decide how you want to proceed to Dice Castle.

Recently, something funny has happened. Sam has finally agreed to try gaming with us. She bought her own dice, and we’ve been discussing what she might want to play as a character,

How did we get her to this point? Well, it’s been some work, but let me tell you my strategy for getting someone into the game.

Choose Your Target Wisely

When I was a kid, I tried to convince my Mom to play D&D with us. I cajoled her, bribed her, badgered her…she just wasn’t interested. I’d try to explain the rules to her, and she would lose interest way too quickly. After a while, I determined that my Mom just wasn’t going to be interested in D&D.

Over the years, I’ve learned to sift good targets from bad. Some people just aren’t going to enjoy RPGs no matter how badly you want them to. Others just need the right RPG to spark their interest. People who tried before and didn’t like them are worth a shot, for example. It may be that the game they were playing, or the people they were playing with, didn’t serve to help them get interested.

Sam was a good target. She’d never played before, so she didn’t have a negative opinion of gaming other than her own thoughts on the subject. She loves most things that’re geeky, and her husband likes to play, so it’s something that’s theoretically relevant to her interests. Although she kept saying that she wasn’t interested, she kept being curious about what was happening in the game. That’s usually a dead giveaway.

Use Logic

Although Sam professes a lack of interest in RPGs, she loves board-games, and she’s played a number of games that really skirt the edge. I noticed this when we were playing Betrayal at the House on the Hill. She would be joking, but she’d say something like, “Can’t I use the rope to tie up the stunned monster?” or “Could I try and push the zombie down the stairs?”

I would grin and say, “You could if we were playing D&D.”

Also, I noticed she would read the little details on the character cards. “Sorry,” she’d say. “My character is afraid of bugs. I’m not coming in that room.” She was role-playing in a non-traditionally RP game. I pointed this out to her, and I think that got her thinking about playing.

Start Off Small

The ultimate offer in tabletop gaming is, “Come try a game. We can make it a short one, and, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep playing.” I always encourage people to at least try it. If they don’t enjoy it, then I leave them alone. But, just like your Mom used to say when you were balking at trying a new food, “How do you know you don’t like it, if you’ve never tried it?”

When they do agree to play, don’t overwhelm them. Most people, when they think of these games, assume that, by agreeing to play D&D, they’re in for hours per game, and months or years of gaming. Reassure them that this isn’t so with some really short one shot experiences. Even if you hand them a pre-generated character and run a single encounter, you’re still getting them to try playing.

My nephew, who is kind of a jock and who can be a little “too cool for the room”, agreed to try the game. I wrote a 3 encounter scenario, where each encounter had an obvious way forward. When the first encounter was over, he frowned. “We didn’t find the big bad guy?”

I shook my head. “No, but there’s a door leading out of the room.”

“Well,” he said, “we need to keep going. We’ve got to get that guy, or we won’t get paid.”

We ended up playing for about 4 hours, at his instigation, because he didn’t like the idea of not getting the big bad guy, and because he was having fun. But if he’d said at the end of the first encounter, “Okay, I’m done,” I wouldn’t have fussed. He would’ve tried the game and made a decision. As it is, he’s played with us a couple of other times since then. He doesn’t love it, but he likes it.

Choose Your Ammo with Care

If the prospective player you’re working on gives you an opportunity to have them play a game, don’t squander the opportunity. Try and figure out something they’ll enjoy and play a game that revolves around that idea, or that relates to something they really love.

Sam really likes zombie movies. You can bet I’m planning on having a zombie attack during the game of D&D she plays with us. If I was trying to convince a Star Wars fanatic to try an RPG, I’d probably start with the Star Wars Saga Edition. A superhero fan might get DC Adventures or Mutants and Masterminds. Someone who likes Lord of the Rings might get The One Ring RPG, or a D&D game with orc attacks.

With the monster scaling rules of D&D, you can move any monster up or down to where you need it. Does your prospective player think your beholder t-shirt is awesome? Make sure to include a beholder in the scenario you’re running, even if it’s just a gauth. Does the player love dragons? Work one into the scenario…or if they love unicorns, maybe a unicorn gives them their quest. There’s always a way to tie in something they love. And by tying in something they feel strongly about, you can help link the game to that thing in their minds.

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Stop

I’m fully prepared for the possibility that Sam will play the game and then say, “It’s okay, but I don’t have any interest in playing again.” While I don’t think that will happen, I know it could.

If it does, I’ll smile and say, “Hey, at least you tried it. Now you know what it’s about.” And that will be that. I won’t keep digging at her, because I know D&D isn’t for everyone…like my Mom.

If I keep pushing, it’ll just alienate her further from the game. If I leave it alone, it might be that down the road, she’ll express an interest in trying again. And I’d rather have her decide that on her own than have me badger her about it.

In Conclusion

Sam was the most die-hard non-gamer I know, and she’s agreed to try gaming. If she hadn’t been into things like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and so on, I probably wouldn’t have wanted her to try the game, but I think she’s going to really enjoy it when we play. I’ll write a scenario that won’t take all night, and I’ll give her the option of stopping after each encounter…while continuing to dangle the possibility of a big ending if she does finish. I’ll definitely be using things I know she likes (e.g. zombies) when we play, to reinforce to her that D&D is a fun game. I’m confident that this will lead to Sam liking the game, and, if she doesn’t, it’s no big deal.

Your Turn

Do you think my plan is doomed to failure? Do you have a tried and true strategy for getting people to try RPGs? Do you have a funny story about how you started playing reluctantly? Let us all know.

Evil Hat Productions, May 2012. 200 pages.

Formats: Softcover, Kindle, ePub, iBook. Softcover ISBN: 978-1-61317-012-0.

*Copy provided by publisher.

     Don’t Read This Book has Stephen Blackmoore, Richard Dansky, C.E. Murphy, Josh Roby, Matt Forbeck, Laura Anne Gilman, Ryan Macklin, Monica Valentinelli, Will Hindmarch, Greg Stolze, Robin D. Laws, Mur Lafferty, and Harry Connolly. With a line-up like that, it is in theory impossible to go wrong.  Don’t Read This Book largely lives up to both the expectations of a stellar line-up and the high quality of work I’ve come to expect from Evil Hat Productions.

EHP has recently begun a foray into expanding into fiction. Don’t Read This Book is set in the Mad City, the center of the action in the EHP game Don’t Rest Your Head. The brass tacks necessary for those unfamiliar for the game to stay up to speed are presented in every story. The mad powers of the insomniacs who fall into the Mad City’s grip, the landscape of a place left best not dwelt upon, are seamless instead of meddlesome to reader experience. I think readers could transition from the anthology to the game and find the process enjoyable. Players, on the other hand, will have an enjoyable jolt of recognition of the nightmarish landscape.

This is my first time reading something edited by Wendig, and the job he’s done here is phenomenal. I’m hopeful we’ll see more anthology editing from him in the future. The thematic hand he kept, especially in story order, is deft and appreciated. Each story is smoothly presented, and I’m willing to lay as much credit at the doorstep of each author as I am Wendig. Anthologies are never perfect from the start. They are many-headed Hydras that will devour the unwary editor. Wendig was obviously wary and well-armed.

Because it’s horror, the anthology embraces a lot of particularly unpleasant content. Each story covers a lot of ground, but murder, abuse, and substance abuse are all seen in the anthology. Despite an often very grim setting and subject matter, I loved the recurrent theme of trying to do right, even if the consequences led to violent, bloody, and often unresolved endings. Blackmoore’s doctor [Don't Lose Your Patients], Dansky’s father [Don't Be Your Father], and Macklin’s mother [Don't Lose Your Son] in particular were favorites of mine along that theme.

While there were stories I personally didn’t care for, I can say that a lack of technical proficiency had nothing to do with that dislike and everything to do with my own reading preferences. Preferences aside, the anthology still gave me nightmares. As a lifelong fan of horror, I can’t think of a single nicer thing to say than that. If you’re up for a terrifying night, pick up Don’t Read This Book.

Dinocalypse Now, by Chuck Wendig

Evil Hat Productions, May 2012. 235 pages.

Formats: Hardcover, Softcover, Kindle, ePub, iBook. Softcover ISBN: 978-1-61317-003-8.

*Copy provided by publisher.

Dinocalypse Now is one of the new forays on the part of Evil Hat productions into fiction. Tied to the world of their game Spirit of the Century,this book is kicking off a trilogy from EHP. Considering the Kickstarter for Dinocalypse Now finished this month with $42, 769 after asking for $5,000, I’d say that readers are ready for some pulp fiction action.

If you know Chuck Wendig as the profanomancer penmonkey advice King, or as the author of gritty, visceral novels, you are about to get whip-lash of the best kind. Opening in 1930s New York, our brave heroes, members of the Century Club, are in town to prevent an assassination attempt against FDR. They quickly discover a bigger plot is afoot in the form of psychic dinosaurs and the end of the world as we know it.

Wendig stays as scrupulously true to the genre as possible, eschewing profanity for pulp-appropriate exclamations of displeasure and shock, providing a panoply of human and inhuman villains, mystic secrets, mad science, and a number of problems that can be solved with the proper application of a very heavy wrench.

This is as far from Wendig’s usual fair as is possible, and I’m pleased to see that flex of range in an author. I wouldn’t be reticent to hand this to my teenage niece, my teenage nephew, or adult fans of the pulp genre. I think I would have gotten more from it if I’d played or read Spirit of the Century, but that lack of knowledge base wasn’t overly detrimental to the reading experience.

Deviating from a number of pulp formulas, Wendig has a cast of characters that includes competent women, non-Anglo characters—for that matter, a number of non-human sentient characters—which I felt was a very refreshing update on the genre. I’m personally not an avowed fan of the pulp fiction world, but Wendig may have given me some reasons to take another look.

Long story short, I walked away with a state-of-the-art Dolby 5.1 set of gaming headphones. Thank you, Professor!

Another notable exception was when I had a chance to sit down with some of the folks from Wizards of the Coast in another interview. This time I got to pow-wow with one of WotC’s many men named Chris (I’m pretty sure it was Chris Sims. Chris, if I’m wrong, I certainly apologize!) and uniquely named Shelley Mazzanoble!

For about 30 minutes we traded talk of gaming geekery. I told them about how the Playtest had gone Friday night and about how my husband had built me a custom gaming table (as promised, Shelley, I told him how cool he was. )

They also answered lots of my questions about D&D, specifically about the upcoming Rise of the Underdark event and the future of D&D branching into D&D Next. Here’s what I jotted down as we spoke.

Drow, Drow Everywhere…

The big “Crossover event” as it might be termed, is Rise of the Underdark. I was already aware that the Drow and the Underdark were big this year. After all, I’d already been menaced by Lolth just to get this far! This event begins with “Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook”. This book for players and DMs is coming in May and has lots of new options, including new powers, themes, equipment, and the development of the goblin and the kobold into fully supported player races in 4E. This book is meant to prep DMs and players to handle the dangers of the Underdark and the difficulties of running an Underdark campaign. Hmm. I think I wrote an article about this myself!

Two new products will be coming out this year to support DMs from mapping out an Underdark game: In June, the Urban Underdark Dungeon Tiles set will bring us tiles to help one build a sprawling Drow city or other Underdark dwelling. Then Vaults of the Underdark will arrive in July, a map pack of 3 full color, double-sided maps detailing the bizarre, alien landscape of the Night Below.

And if you have tiles and maps, you’re going to want awesome figures, so get ready for July’s “Sting of Lolth, a Drow-themed minis set for the Dungeon Command game. And Gale Force 9 is bringing out even more fun stuff with maps and sculpted stalagmite pieces to make your games amazing!

If you play D&D Encounter, be ready to face the perils of The Council of Spiders and enjoy new Encounter Cards: Drow Treachery! Yes, the Drow are slipping into the weekly organized play, too, but in a rather surprising way that ties into the piece that I’m most looking forward to.

A ways back, when asked if they had a new campaign setting coming out in August, WotC said, essentially, sort of. I remember it being said that the setting wasn’t necessarily new, but it would be a new way to play D&D. Shortly thereafter, Amazon spilled the beans and announced Menzoberranzen, City of Intrigue. I remember a lot of grumbling online. How was this new? Menzoberranzen had been part of the Forgotten Realms for ages!

Well, the setting may not be new, but the concept is. In this campaign setting, you play drow (and presumably other Underdark denizens) who don’t necessarily have each others’ best interests in mind. Have your players been wanting an evil campaign? Well, here’s a really intriguing opportunity. And I gather that Council of Spiders is tied into this concept. Get ready for some back-stabbing fun!

Beyond this, the action is crossing over into novels, the comic book, the Heroes of Neverwinter Facxebook game, and more. And did you think that the fact that Dungeons & Dragons Online was set in Eberron would keep them safe from Lolth’s plans? Ha! For the first time ever, DDO is going to be crossing into the Forgotten Realms, as the greatest heroes of Eberron are called on to help deal with the machinations of the Demon Queen of Spiders herself. Gonna be a bit of a culture shock from all those scorpion-worshipping Xendrik drow.

Looking to the Future

Whew! With all that Dark Elfy stuff, did we talk about anything else? Why yes, we did. We chatted about two of my favorite subjects: Miniatures and What Comes Next.

Last PAX East, Chris Perkins told me there was a plan for miniatures, and now that plan is coming to fruition. We talked a fair amount about Dungeon Command. It’s being released in themed sets. For example, I mentioned Sting of Lolth above. There are also sets like Tyranny of Goblins, Curse of Undeath, and Heart of Cormyr. Each set contains 12 non-random minis, including one Large figure, revolving around the central theme. If you’re like me, you’ll use them as PCs and monsters for your D&D game, but they also represent a game on their own. This game is diceless, with command cards used to move and take actions. There are also stat cards included to use the monsters with the Adventure Game sets like Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, and Legend of Drizzt. They also include tabbed tiles, similar to the ones from those games to build a board with. This seems like an amazingly flexible and useful product for folks who love fantasy minis.

I had to ask, on behalf of the guy who plays a Shardmind in my game. What about figures for players who want to play the more unusual races in the game? Was there any hope for them? Indeed, I was told. They were starting with the basics…goblins, orcs, drow, undead, etc. Heroes of Cormyr should have a lot that players would find useful, and other sets would be following if these proved popular. I suspect these will be a big hit.

We also chatted a bit about D&D Next, though of course there was very little they could tell me that I didn’t already know. After trying (and failing) to find an avenue we could follow, I told them what I’d been telling people about it: Don’t worry. It’s still D&D. There will be things you’ll find familiar and things that’re new, but it’s still going to be the game we all love. They seemed to like that, and they added that the one thing they want to say to everyone is that the best thing to do is to get involved with the upcoming open playtest and give feedback. The more open playtest is coming “Soon”. Everyone related to WotC that I asked would smile a little smile and say “The open playtest is coming soon.” I have a feeling it’s coming along very quickly indeed.

How important is it to take part? Well, I know changes are coming due to the playtests and feedback, because I’d managed to hear a few details that had changed from the 1.5 version of the rules my playtest was with to the new version that WotC’s designers are already trying out, and the changes had been made directly because of the feedback they’d received.

So get involved, people! No whining if you don’t do the playtest and then don’t like the game!

Your Turn

Are you looking forward to the big Rise of the Underdark event? Will you get involved with the new Menzoberranzen campaign setting and betray your friends? Will you be getting into the playtest? Let us all know.

GDG: Why did you get into game layout?

DS: I grew up playing D&D, GURPS, and other role-playing games, so I had that background in gaming from an early age. Even earlier than that, I wanted to be a graphic designer. (I think when I was a kid, I thought that meant I’d make video games or something.)

Fast forward to college: I’m studying visual communications and learning all the invisible architectures behind typography, contrast, form, legibility, information, presentation, yada yada. It was exciting being able to see the scaffolding that held the elements of a printed page together. Naturally, the first thing I did with my new-found skills was redesign character sheets.

That’s where I began trying to design a better interface for RPGs, both in the character sheets and in the books themselves. That carries over into rulebook and component layout for board games, which is what I’ve been doing more lately.

GDG: How do layout needs differ between types of games?

DS: A lot of it comes from whether the book is written as reference or as tutorial. Each has its own best practices, tropes and problems.

Reference: Take a typical Player’s Handbook, for example. Throughout most of D&D’s history, the PHB has been a reference text. You learn the very basics of play in a few pages. The rest of the book expands on subsequent permutations in exhaustive detail. You don’t have to read the whole thing cover-to-cover, but you can reasonably expect to find an answer to a sudden question somewhere in there. Of course, you will get the occasional enthusiastic gamer who does read and memorize the whole text.

Tutorial: The trend for smaller RPGs has made the tutorial format more popular. Here, you start from page 1 with no knowledge of the game. You are expected to read the whole thing cover-to-cover. The game likely has a strong procedural structure to it. So, players take turns, take steps within those turns, and have a mechanically defined goal of play. Within each step and sub-step, you probably have thorough examples of play that show those rules in action.

Neither format is better than the other, just better suited to the type of game. A sandbox game may seem artificially confined if presented as a tutorial. A procedural game may be confusing and disorganized if presented as a reference. In all cases, the fundamentals of typography and design still hold true. The text has to be readable, the information clearly presented, and the mood distinctly evoked.

GDG: What impact on the layout process does working with writers across multiple projects have?

DS: I’ve developed enough of a rapport with some of my clients that we work much faster than usual. For example, working with Fred Hicks has been a breeze because he’s had experience working in layout and design himself. That background isn’t necessary, of course.  But when you’ve worked with several over a long period of time, you can’t help but pick up some key concepts like white space, type grids, etc. And on my end, I learn the preferences a client might have. Whether they prefer transparency or sudden reveals or if they like to edit or defer to my judgment. Every client is different, but over time we learn from each other.

GDG: When do you come in to a game to start working on layout?

DS: It varies depending on the size of the project. If it’s a small independent production, I’m brought in right after the designer finishes writing the text. If it’s a bigger production, the art director or project manager will contract me while the text is in editing so I make room in my schedule ahead of time.

GDG: Where does layout fit into the experience of playing a game?

DS: It matters tremendously. Especially in the case of tabletop RPGs, the book is the only unique physical artifact of play. It carries many burdens:

• While on the shelf, the book must draw attention from a curious shopper. The cover should also still be evocative even when shrunk to a tiny thumbnail in an online store listing.
• While flipping through the book, there must be several “points of entry” to draw curiosity from a potential buyer or player. Like a magazine, you should be able to open up to any page and find a compelling image or piece of text.
• While learning and teaching the game, key information must be easy to follow with as little page-flipping as possible. Examples of play should be clearly called out, with clear visual infographics where appropriate.
• While playing the game, more detailed information should be properly indexed and linked so precious time isn’t spent at the table looking up one easy-to-miss line of code. Also, the character sheet should be thoroughly tested in actual play, so it is a useful and reliable dashboard.

To follow Daniel’s projects in game design and layout, you can check out his blog or find him on twitter @DanielSolis