Game Mastery

A couple months back I read about a new way to play D&D that was intriguing and simple.  It’s called 6e or level 6 epic.  The idea is that once you reach level 6 your character is considered epic level.  None of that level 7-20 business (obviously a game could be run with a different epic value, the idea remains the same).  Instead of leveling, characters gain feats.  They grow in power, but remain pretty much mortal.

But I get bored of feats.  You get too many of them this way.  Instead, what I suggest doing is repeating levels.

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I’ve never had a cleric in a game I ran.  Long term anyway.  One player got her bard ousted from the group for being too much of a bitch.  She came back with a friendlier cleric, but that was two sessions before the game ended so it hardly counts.  And I had a cleric in the rotating GM campaign, but since I wasn’t the only GM that counts even less.

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So I’ve been putting some thought towards GNS Theory lately. As usual, it was instigated by a forum post, which got a little heated and so I post here.

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Like most GMs out there, I have limits on how much game can live in my head at any given time so I have to keep notes and lots of them. Everyone has their own style in terms of what works for them, and everyone’s style evolves as they GM. Here’s what I’m currently using – borrow what you like, critique what you don’t. (continue reading…)

Haven’t posted in a while.  Sorry about that.  Work has been busy and I’m trying to give my carpal tunnels a rest when I’m at home.

I stumbled upon this article which discusses the idea of rolling dice only to resolve conflict.  It’s kind of a back to the basics thing.  Anyway, I liked it because of its consistence with my first post on this blog regarding a diceless system that uses bid based mechanics for resolving conflicts between characters.  Basically the idea is that your ability to climb a tree has no effect on the story and should not result in a die roll.  Your ability to punch a attacker in the face does change the story and you should break out the dice.

I’m having a very hard time writing this post. This is at least my 5th attempt. Rather than building up to the point I’m trying to make I’m going to start with the point and babble from there.

Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo to try and write a novel. I knew I wasn’t going to write a good novel. I just wanted to see what it was like and learn a thing or two about writing, a topic I’ve always found interesting. It was something I’d wanted to do since reading Stephen King’s On Writing, but had been putting off.

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I’ve always been a big proponent of beating up the characters a little just to make their victories more meaningful. Okay, so I’m a big proponent of beating up players a lot. It’s how I make the game personal. If a bad guy kicks their collective ass, but the players narrowly escape, they will both respect and hate that bad guy. The next time they get to fight him they’ll be really into it because this fight is personal.

This kind of storytelling (as opposed to “you just killed the bad guy, but wait! His daddy is here and he’s got 10 more barbarian levels. Now kill him instead!”) has served me well for creating meaningful villains in my stories. I recently took it a step further and it backfired spectacularly. I know why the game session failed, but I’m still at a loss for how it should have been run.
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I did a bad thing on the bus this morning.  I tried to apply D&D alignments to some characters from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.  Characters in that series are all shades of gray.  Even the most evil bastards seem perfectly reasonable when you see things from their point of view.  You just can’t fit those characters into one of nine alignment slots.

So instead I tried to fit alignment around those characters.

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Good RPGs invariably lead to good stories. I have a love/hate affair with this particular story. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty damn awesome. I’m just a little sick of it because a) I’ve been repeating it for the last five years and b) no matter how many games I GM I’ll never do anything this cool ever again.

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Ever since I’ve been running D&D I’ve been opposed to using experience to level up characters.  I’d rather they level when I tell them to level.  I don’t hand out experience, but I do hand out a level after roughly three sessions (don’t ask how crafting works, nobody has ever wanted to do it in one of my games and I’m not going to bother figuring it out till someone wants it).

But it’s important to give your players some sort of reward for their actions.  Especially in a greedy game like Dungeons and Dragons.  I blatantly ripped off Fate Chips from Deadlands to use as a D&D reward.  They’ve been very popular, or so my players tell me.

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