Game Mastery

I’ve always defended D&D as a platform for roleplaying.  Sure it focuses on combat by providing an abundance of interesting combat rules, but that doesn’t prevent you from roleplaying in it.  I’ve run entire d20 sessions without even looking at dice.  A character is a character and as long as a system supports a setting appropriate for your character, you can roleplay in that system, right?

Well, I’m not going to talk about that right now.  I’ve been playing 4th edition lately and will be running a pre-written 4th ed module this weekend.  I wasn’t able to get through a full reading of the mod without finally understanding why people take exception to using D&D for role play.  This post is an airing of grievances (in full Festivus spirit) I had while reading through a single D&D adventure.  I’ll bitch and moan and maybe, if we’re lucky, figure out a thing or two about writing good RP by examining the bad.

(continue reading…)

Alright, so Game of Thrones is finished.  It was a good game but had some flaws.  One of the biggest flaws wasn’t entirely my fault.  We had a player who had trouble remembering what was going on.  That player happened to be a spy.  When he got caught and was explaining himself, he fabricated some pretty wild lies.  The problem was that I couldn’t tell if the character was lying or if the player simply couldn’t remember.

Now, I’d done my homework and kept a pretty detailed log on our group wiki.  The information was there, if the players cared to read it.  There was actually a lot of content there, but it was by and large ignored.  With the exception of our “rotating DM” game, I’ve never seen a game’s website get any real use or serve any purpose other than to frustrate the GM.  Long story short, I’ve been discussing this online and somebody posted a very simple, elegant way to get your players to use forums.

Post experience and loot there.  Even if your players aren’t loot whores, nobody wants to miss out on some good magic gear.  Level ups even less so.  Use the loot to get your players into your forum or wiki, and once there they may actually use it.  I think the best part of this idea isn’t even that the players will use the forums, but that division of loot will happen outside of game time.