New Beginnings - kinda sorta

It has happened. It took over a year of advertisements, but I've managed to sell my Royal Enfield Classic 500.  

It's a little depressing. I paid so much for the motorcycle and, five years later, only managed to sell it for a fraction of the initial price. But I did end up selling it to a lady who is passionate about the motorcycle and is already working feverishly on it. So at least it's going to a good home.

I'm doing something epic with the funds received. After 6 years, I'm getting myself a new gaming PC.

I'm both excited and terrified at this venture. The last time I bought myself a gaming PC was just after those mofos cleaned out my house. Getting a computer was a matter of necessity to me and I had some funds available along with the insurance, but I was still rather limited. This time I wasn't as limited. The specs are insane, but again, it has to last another six or seven years before I'd even consider an upgrade let alone a new build altogether.

So what am I going to play on the new PC? I have a few ideas... I might babble about them as I play. Should give me something to write about.

DM Babble: Talk to your players... how that went.

 After ten sessions of my homebrew world with the South Africans, I decided to follow advice frequently dolled out and very rarely done.

"Talk to your players," the advice goes. "Find out what they like and don't like about the campaign you're running. Touch base with them and find out what expectations or desires they might have."

Now this sounds like sound advice, but these internet wise ones neglect with one crucial bit of reality.

Asking for critique is fucking terrifying! Especially when it's about things you've spent hours working on and have poured a lot of yourself into.

So with both these thoughts in mind, I went ahead and warned my players that I was going to ask them feedback at the end of the session. Fortunately with this group, it's a bunch of thoughtful, emotionally intelligent people which means I got a lot of constructive feedback and uplifting comments. Each had a different focus and there are some challenges that I need to overcome, but what I essentially got from the whole conversation was that they were enjoying themselves, that there are a few things that can make it better, but overall there was a general sense of being satisfied.

Yay.

Now comes the question: Would I recommend everyone doing this with their players?

Nope!

You know what players you have. Some of them are critical without really being considerate. Or they're selfish, pushing their desires at the cost of everyone else's. I'm fortunate that I have a group of older, more mature players. Not everyone has that. If you do have that, then go right ahead! Bask in the terror and be prepared to grow. But if you're dealing with miscreants, then don't expect to get much out of the exchange.

Not being terribly helpful, am I. Well, I guess it comes down to how well you know your crowd.

As part of my 'take it easy' drive, I only have one more session with these peeps this year (that I'm running). I'm optimistic that it'll go well. My anxiety isn't quite as high and even if I mess up, I know I have so many potentially cool things that could happen in future. So I'm optimistic.

DM Babble: Feel the burn

Just an update with no real message.

It's nearing December... and I'm pooped. This year has been insane, with lots of people drama (weren't I avoiding them?), work drama (ugh, work), law drama (I'm still waiting for the bill, eek), and just general mayhem.

To date, I've run 54 RPG sessions in 2021 (of which the majority was DnD). A little under half of those were sessions having to with my homebrew. 

Okay, so what's the point? The point is that I might have burnt myself out. The past couple of weeks have been rough creatively as well. Usually I'd be doing nanowrimo (see my previous posts about the joyous insanity) but I just couldn't get myself to do much of anything this year.

So instead of continuing this uphill run while on fire, I'm doing what I can to become unpooped. 

I've stopped running the homebrew with the Brits. I just realised it was a square peg in a round hole scenario (I might post about it later). I've been running Starforged with them, but that's not really working as spectacularly as I would have hoped. I might run something else with them in January. I've begun reading (and yes, prepping) The Wild beyond the Witchlight and it might be a much better fit. 

I'm halting the homebrew with the South Africans in December for the month just to take a break. It's been going really, really well, but I'm running on empty. And I found that it begins bleeding into the game. 

That leaves me with two groups of Dragon Heist. One might not play in December because they have social lives (weirdos), which leaves me with one group. And I love Dragon Heist, I've done it so many times that prep is a breeze, so I think that's going to be okay. 

I wouldn't have thought that 2021 was going to be 'worse' than 2020, but in some ways it has been and I find that I'm basically in disaster recovery mode. I've never had burnout. Been close, but I'm also aware that my depression mimics a lot of the symptoms. Now I know it is burnout. Even writing this post was somewhat exhausting. 

Hopefully I'll be able to report better things in January.

DM Babble: The dreaded metagaming

 A number of people have been talking about metagaming lately. Someone was even nice enough to give a definition of it stating that 'it's the player's real life knowledge that influences the character's decisions when the character wouldn't have had that knowledge at all'... or something like that. Close enough.

Some metagaming is to be expected, I think. If you sit at a table with decades worth of collective knowledge, it's impossible not to see a skeleton and reach for a bludgeoning weapon, or swear when you don't have one on hand. And mostly I'm okay with that. It means a bit more work on my end if I'm DM-ing to get monsters that have a few variations that the players haven't seen and mostly they appreciate the variety.

I'm also very guilty of this kind of meta-knowledge. And it's hard for me to switch off and go "my character wouldn't know this." I get so excited about knowing that I forget I'm supposed to not know.

But this is not the metagaming that I've been recently challenged with. What do you do with someone who actively reads the material prior to a session so as to gain maximum benefit?

I've asked a couple of people and most of the responses I've gotten is to "confront and kick out". Or to actively change the game so that it's different from the book. That's fine and well, but it's a lot of work to do for someone who is effectively cheating. Do I reward them with my additional time and effort by actively working against them? Or do I admit defeat and have them spoil the game? 

I'm currently running a game of intrigue. So the secrets aren't necessarily where the chest is hidden or where the secret passage leads. It's people who have very deep and dark secrets. It's having to interact and not know whether you're really encountering the truth. It means that if you spoil someone with additional knowledge, it's not limited to a room, but to the entire game, all the politics.

Couple of years ago I played a game of Dragon Heist with a group of people. One player innocently looked for pictures on google for a particular character they encountered in the game. She's an artist and I don't believe she meant any harm or went out to read up on anything. But, as these things go, wiki was able to supply her not only with the pictures she desired but the secrets I was keeping from the party. While she didn't say anything to the group, except for admitting to me that she fucked up, it tainted the game entirely. Because she couldn't switch off this meta-knowledge. And so every time they encountered that NPC, she would behave in a peculiar fashion, which made everyone suspicious and so they took the route of caution and were denied the direction of interest.

That is what I'm worried about with this particular game I'm running now. And that is why I don't know what to do about it. I enjoy the player's interactions, mostly. I have no qualm with the person and, while it's still very early to shift from 'acquaintance' to 'friend', the potential exists. But I also know he's not going to stop. And that is a problem I don't have a current solution for.

Gaming Babble: Some games I've been playing

Time flies. 

Granted, I have been keeping busy with D&D and such, but it's still pretty alarming. My country is still in some state of lock down, so I guess I could have called this Lock down list II or something. Anyhoo. Here are some games I've been playing.

Grounded

Yes, I kid you not. I'm still playing this game. I've talked about it multiple times, raved about it, bemoaned the lack of updates, and now I'm playing it on multiplayer which is loads of fun. We even have unofficial roles. One is the builder, one is the scientist, and I tend to play the scout/tank. Still shouting at the spiders, but the screaming has subsided somewhat. 

Green Hell

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. Mostly love though. You play Jake, a researcher, who has come to the Amazonian rain forest for a specific reason. It's another first-person survival game though the emphasis is a lot more on survival than on combat. This lists both the strength and weakness of the game. You learn to listen to your surroundings, avoiding predators and creepy crawlies, treating wounds with various bandages, building different kinds of armor and most likely a home base or bases. But you also have an enemy AI that's not quite up to snuff as compared to The Forest. It's still a very interesting game. The game has a story mode, a survival mode, and challenges. Green hell has a co-op multiplayer mode as well, which I haven't tried out yet, but would probably be fun too.

It also now has a free DLC prequel, Spirits of Amazonia, that's a bit of a mix of story, survival and largely exploration. Bit of a completionist trend though with the prequel, which isn't quite my taste, but I can still recommend trying out.

Medieval Dynasty

I've sunk a surprising amount of hours into this game, but it's difficult to really narrow down what it is.

 Medieval Dynasty is to some extent a first-person medieval town builder with some survival and a lot of crafting elements to it. You are a village leader who starts off on their own, building, crafting and completing quests until your settlement grows. You can marry, have a son, and build a dynasty. Each season is divided into three days wherein you can build, hunt, craft, farm, etc. 

At first the time feels too little as there is so much to do, but the more help you get in terms of villagers, the more it frees you up to do other things. It is a game that's more in the line of a simulation and I find it just generally relaxing. It's a great game to just switch your mind off in.

Valheim

I've clocked almost fifty hours in this game, so it deserves honorable mention. 

Valheim is a third person
survival-crafting game wherein you are a deceased viking dropped into the world of Valheim by Odin to kill monsters. The game is challenging, the art style is interesting, crafting is good and building is fun. It should have all the elements that pull me in, but I struggle a bit with it and haven't played it in months. Still, I'm sure I'll come back to it.

So what have you been playing?

DM Babble: When players surprise you as people.

An update on things regarding my epic journey in my first homebrew campaign(s).

I've been playing my homebrew campaign for a couple of weeks now with the two groups - the South Africans, and the British. Things have been interesting. Both groups took to the concept of the campaign vastly differently. The Saffas took the epic hero route. They took the NPCs at their word and was determined to make everything right again. I got backstory and so many lore questions and just a enormous platform to work from.

The British, on the other hand, not only questioned everything, including the sanity of the NPCs, they also just... didn't play ball. When told not to do something, they'd do it - repeatedly. When asked 'how are you going to save us?' they basically shrugged and said 'sorry, you went through all this trouble for nothing'.

I found myself challenged, certainly, but also frustrated. Not angry but confused... flabbergasted. The campaign hinges on the premise that the players want to be the heroes in the tale. They don't necessarily have to be completely proactive, but they need to at least try and that was just not happening in the latter case. So, after 6 sessions... 18 hours... of trying (and I don't know how many hours of prep), I decided that perhaps I should just admit to myself and the group that maybe this campaign just doesn't fit. It would not be a defeat for me or an insult to them. It's just a matter of oil and water. For a first homebrew campaign, I'm quite satisfied with what I've created for them in those 6 sessions. Like, I felt somewhat disappointed, but I didn't feel like it was a waste as it's material I can reuse in future, after all. 

So I slept on it and decided to go ahead and throw in the towel. 

The response I got from the group, or at least two of the group, was... surprising. They were bemused, not understanding where this was coming from and not wanting to end the campaign at all. I had to emphasise and explain that this wasn't a "You're shit and I don't want to play with you anymore" type  of situation. It was just that I honestly don't know how to progress the story in a way that would fit this group's dynamic. Reassured that I'm not thinking poorly of them, they again reiterated that they want the campaign to continue. And the suggestions they made were definitely helpful, but I found them surprising. Suddenly they were completely willing to play ball. They would change their character's attitudes, they would take action, they would become heroes. They even reshaped the Discord server that we use so that they could take action - creating multiple channels for discussion and character notes galore.

It's left me a little stunned and a little unsure. Unsure because I don't understand... but I'm happy to see them trying.

I've heard many times that you need to touch base with your table and let them also know where you're at. This was my first opportunity to do that and it's been confusing but good. I mean, I can totally work with people who want to do stuff. I still have a lot of thinking and a lot of preparation I need to do to get everything going, but if they really do shift their approach, I might be able to take them for several sessions more.

DM Babble: Outright death in the second session, whoops?

As life would have it, I would end up running the homebrew with two different groups at around the same time. Session 1 was fascinating to experience in both how both groups responded to the game as well as their general disposition. With the Brits, there was a surprising amount of suspicion of their benefactors and daring when it came to interacting with people they should have been careful with. With the South Africans, there was wholehearted belief in their benefactors and firm resolve not to get themselves killed within the first session.

Then came the second session which I've just run with the Brits. (South Africans are only playing again next week). I managed to get them to where I wanted to go - with some paddling and bullshitting and they entered an extensive cave system... and one of them died. The creatures they fought weren't exactly scary. Maybe the problem was just that they didn't play it cautiously enough. Or maybe it was just bad luck. 

The lad got struck with a spell, got rot grubs thrown on him and hit zero hit points before anyone could get to him, which with the rot grubs means that he became dinner.

While the party took it in stride and started speculating one what character he should draw up next, I did come to the sinking realisation that I had not planned for character death and don't know how I will be introducing this new character to the group. 

I had figured there would be some time before I would have to worry about it. Silly me.

DM Babble: Session zero of my first homebrew. Oh boy.

So in D&D, session zero is where you reveal as much as you can / dare without spoiling the game to your players. It's where boundaries are set, questions are answered, and confidence is earned.

Unless you're me.

Usually, I'm okay with session zeros because I've been running Waterdeep Dragon Heist so many times that I'm not fussed or overwhelmed with fear. But recently I did a session zero for my homebrew campaign - the one I've been rambling about here for a couple of posts. And, I got to tell you, confidence was not earned (or shouldn't have been) as I uhmed, ahed, fidgeted, and paddled my way through a mostly disturbingly quiet session zero. I eventually revealed the world map to the group and continent they'll start in. Which could or could not be considered spoilery, but mostly was my attempt to show that 'Hey, look, I actually did do stuff for this campaign and I'm just having a stressful moment, k?'

I know why I'm freaking out though. 

Quite a few years ago, a misguided friend of mine decided that I should write a murder mystery party thinger and she'd host it. I spent three agonising months on it, pouring what little I knew and could into it. Come the night of the murder mystery dinner party and it flopped spectacularly. Some of the people at the party didn't know it was a home creation and tore it to pieces. I was... distressed for quite a few months afterwards and wasn't keen on sharing any of my creations to anyone (even the things I thought I had more confidence in).

So do I believe that my friends are going to trash my first ever homebrew? No. But I'm still afraid it's going to flop. I'm still worried that they're going to be too polite to suggest someone else run something that's more decent. Are these fears valid? Yes and no. A lot of it is just lack of confidence, I know that. But you know, with the exception of alcohol, I've yet to find confidence bottled and accessible to me at any particular point in time. Also, alcohol makes me sleepy, not confident. So there's that.

In my defense, though, the reason the session was mostly quiet was because I had written a primer to the campaign which I handed the players beforehand. So they were told everything I felt was needed prior to session zero so they could make a character at session zero. But I still worried about everything. Because I do that.

As my luck would have it, my Monday group is also going to be running this homebrew soon and I have another session zero to prepare for. I guess the good thing about this is that I get more practice in paddling like a duck.

Also, I'm a sucker for punishment.

DM Babble: Pantheon

I've begun creating a pantheon for my world. This might be a good idea or a bad idea, but it was a fun exercise, so I figure that all is not lost even if there are probably too many gods listed.

I watched a number of videos on Youtube and read some articles on the subject. One can really go pretty epic with gods and their histories and whatnot. Some good material to be found by watching Anto from Icarus Games.

Here's how I created mine: 

1. I listed a bunch of domains that these gods would reside over.
2. I wrote down names of gods and allocated them to the domains, preferably more than one domain at a time.
3. I decided to pay homage to some people/characters by making them gods. Because, of course Mercer would be the god of magic? How could he not?
4. Added a column for descriptions and interactions the gods have with each other and the world.
5. Had fun fun fun!

My list is by no means done, I still need to work out more of the inter-workings of the gods, but here are some of my favourites:

• Deduinne - god of Revelry and Strength, worshipped most often by Goliaths and Dwarves. Named after Grog Strongjaw, Critical Role (Dedoink... get it?)
• Anri - god of Deception and Trickery, at odds with his twin brother Dolos, called The Prankster.
• Dolos - god of Deception and Trickery, at odds with his twin brother Anri, called The Liar.
• Kawi - god of Dreams, Knowledge and Secrets, believes knowledge should be gained with hard work and experience. Secrets are treasures waiting to be revealed.
• Vimpe - god of Nightmares and Pain. Takes the form of a firey black Nightmare (horse). Named after my friend's horse Wimpie who threw her off.

So not much of a long post, but just thought I'd pop in an update here.

DM-babble: Creating the world with maps

Starting location map zoomed in. (Inkarnate)

These past couple of weeks I've been working, on-again off-again, on maps for my homebrew. Why maps? Because I'm hoping it's going to supply me with answers to the story as opposed to creating a map to fit the story I've pre-written. A bit arse about face, but I console myself with the knowledge that I will be using these maps and thus it isn't time wasted.

So what I've been doing is randomly generating maps on Medieval Fantasy City Generator and Village Generator, then going to Inkarnate and reworking them either to fit my 'vision' better or just to make it look prettier. I'm also by no means a map maker. I didn't take geography at school and have no notion of how things should be on a map. But I don't think it came out all that bad. And hell, it's a fantasy land with dragons and whatnot. Sense is not something it needs to absolutely make.

Here are some examples of what I've been up to:

The city of Alsheim doesn't have a governmental structure yet, but I know that it has a river that flows through it. Yay! With the help of mapping, I've gotten some ideas on the wards of the city, if not the actual contents.

Alsheim (Inkarnate)

But! Before my victims... I mean the party... reaches Alsheim (if they decide to go to the city at all), they have a starter village to investigate called Cara's Pasture. This village was randomly generated with the Village Generator and then I decided that it needed the river to flow past the village and lead down into another bigger town of Spelar. I nabbed some concepts for Cara's Pasture from The Lost Mines of Phandelver as the frontier town of Phandalin had a range of handy dandy shops and places that I wanted to see in this village. Plus in terms of location, the two settlements have similar resources at their disposal (or so I tell myself).

Cara's Pasture (Inkarnate)

I do have the village inhabited by a couple of plain characters and one or two more colourful ones. I have the beginnings of tension in the authorities at play, which I think there should be for it to seem a bit more real. And, I have a couple of quests (though not nearly enough) to start the players off. Hopefully the events will transpire the way I want them to and not have the players killing off my innocent little monsters before they can do what I would like them to do. I probably need more quests and thoughts on this, but so far the whole thing is a little daunting.

Spelar is one of the two places that the party may decide to go to on their way to the city of Alsheim. Much like the city, I basically only have the map for it. No NPCs or quests yet.

Spelar (Inkarnate)

Despite this, I still feel like I've been doing quite a bit. My mind has been working in the background thinking of ways to use and populate these spaces that I've created. So I wouldn't consider any of this a distraction though it does sometimes feel like it. I think I'm avoiding the 'big work' of bringing these places to life. I fear that, like my limitations with geography, my knowledge of political/governing systems is going to put a spanner in the works. But I guess that also depends on the type of players I get. Those who are interested in stabby-stabby would not care for who rules in the random port town that they are passing through where as the more role-playing party just might. It's difficult to tell.

Tell me what you think? 

DM-ing babble: My first homebrew setting... oh dear.

I've been playing D&D for close to seven years and DM-ed for maybe three years(?), but they've been pre-written campaigns or one-shots (usually crappy ones with little decent motivations in them). Homebrew in any form has always been a bit of a mountain I haven't dared climb. Well, sort of. I did try a homebrew setting once. It didn't work out well. It was an email campaign... which is mostly why it failed because time zones suck.

Anyhoo, I admire those who do have homebrew settings because I struggle with proper motivations for characters and getting a story that pops. I have similar challenges with writing stories, so it doesn't quite surprise me that this would be a hurdle I face in the TTRPG sphere. 

But... I've found a story... Uhm, no. Let's call it an fledgling idea. So I've found a fledgling idea that I like. I have victims to try it on. And I have ample enough time to plan the crap out of it. 

This is already sufficient motivation to try it out.

And then, the key ingredient, I have committed myself publicly to try. Guilting me into action is always key. Sadly. Damn.

Future post will probably include more detail as I figure it out and ramble about it. 

What I can say now is that I have a starting world map thanks to Inkarnate, Roll20, and Mythic Portal Games' Cartographers Guild tokens. I have both a city and a town that's slowly taking shape, and I have maps for them thanks to Medieval Fantasy City Generator by watabou.

So the resources are in place. Now to populate the world and make it interesting. That's the next challenge.

I don't know how much I will share of the world here. Perhaps a bit, depending on interest. Perhaps only vaguely in case the only interested parties are my players. Tricksy players.

So here's my question for those game masters out there. How would you start off a level 1 party? How does one work towards levelling them up and making those experiences meaningful without it just being a goblin slog? That seems to be something that's done to death. 

Podcasting babble: Guesting for Dragons & Flagons

So I did it. 

I shifted my mic boom arm closer, kept a close eye on my notes, and participated in a podcast. The subject matter was something everyone who has had experience with playing roleplaying games could add their input on:

'What makes for a bad player?'

The previous podcasts the team of Dragons & Flagons did had to do with what makes for good players and good DMs. This conversation was the inverse of that and had us listing some pet peeves that you can get from players. It was an interesting conversation. 

At some point, I had forgotten that I was supposed to be adding to the discussion and listened mostly because I was reminded how, several years ago before I stumbled over D&D, I barely found people whom I resonated with. And while the countries, cultures and even language are different, I still felt that sense of resonance during the conversation. Which was kinda cool. Not necessarily a thought to occupy one's time while recording but still cool.

I've been invited to record the next podcast with them as well. This will be about what makes for a bad DM. My notes are ready and I'm eager to be a part of the discussion.

Hopefully this time I won't get too distracted!

DaF: Holiday special

 This post is a little later than desired. I was invited to join the Dragons and Flagons peeps in a D&D oneshot late last year to save Christmas from an evil Santa.

Link to the first episode here on Spotify. 

I was a little more reserved than everyone else, but it was a lot of fun. The game is probably NSFW, just so you know. I think we did good. :)

Let me know what you think.