I_smile_alot's blog listings. Feed Zend_Feed_Writer 1.10.8 (http://framework.zend.com) http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot Failing, with STYLE! 0 Comments - Leave a Comment ]]> Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:31:00 -0500 http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2012/03/20/failing,_with_style! http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2012/03/20/failing,_with_style! 0 Comments - Leave a Comment ]]> 0 But I wasn't Built for THAT!
Now, I'm finding that really funny. Because firstly, this is the game that was built to get him, and only him, where he said he wanted to go. And the character he built, is very poorly suited for that role as well. As a DM I need to get him to stop thinking in terms of his character sheet and start thinking in terms of his character's story. I need to get the player very comfortable with RP'ing his character, not his stats. I need to get him to start building relationships everywhere in his world, because he's going to need them. How am I doing that? By giving him jobs that are way outside of his characters skills, and inside of his characters abilities. Sounds kinda confusing when I put it like that, because your skills are your abilities, right? No, not really, your skills are the abilities that your training enables you to do easily, quickly and with a certain flair or finesses. Like an explosives expert can build a shaped explosive device with a remote detonater, redundant detonater, killswitch, and a redundant killswitch that will go off at the time, place, shape and with any lasting effect of his choosing, and he can do this with a large variety of items. (Honestly, the stuff they can use would never occur to me could be explosive.) I can't do any of that, but, I can still make a bomb given the stuff I know can explode. His character can't lie, steal, stealth or bluff to save his life, and he's playing in a game of secrets, lies and shadows that's ideally suited for a character trained in stealth, diplo & bluff right? No, not really. I'd have built a different game if he and the other players had been built like that. A game of espionage where they were sneaking, lying and stealing. Instead, I've built a game of very high intrigue. A game where the musketeers that have found themselves plunged into high level politics are a bit lost, and trying desperately to carry out the tasks assigned to them, while they're trying to figure out who's betraying whom and who can they trust. So why doesn't he need diplo & bluff? Oh, he'd definitely have an easier time with it than without it, he's just going to have to find ways to work without it. And he can, their built into the story, but, more than that, they're built into the DM. Old school remember, story driven remember. And as an old school, story driven DM, I know that there's always as least three ways through anything. The two I design and the one the players come up with, no problem. So, how do I expect him to get through this without stelath, diplo & bluff? By using his characters extremely high intelleigence to figure out NPC connections and weaknesses and exploit them to get what he needs. Professor Moriarity isn't at all charismatic, and yet he runs a huge criminal organization. How? Because he's smart enough to figure out who has what he needs and then use their weaknesses against them. Do they have a gambling problem? Do they have a great love? Or a great hate? Or greed? Or desire? He figures out their vulnerability and exploits it for his purpose, and once he's using them he owns them, because he makes sure they know that not only does he hold the keys to their desires, he holds the keys to their continued existance. You don't have to be charismatic, if you can figure out what they value more than their lives. You don't have to be strong, you just need the right leverage. You don't have to be able to sneak in, you just need to buy the right guy for the job. You don't need the right stats, you just need to figure out how to use the ones you've got.
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]]> Sun, 08 Jan 2012 05:35:25 -0600 http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2012/01/08/but_i_wasnt_built_for_that! http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2012/01/08/but_i_wasnt_built_for_that!
Now, I'm finding that really funny. Because firstly, this is the game that was built to get him, and only him, where he said he wanted to go. And the character he built, is very poorly suited for that role as well. As a DM I need to get him to stop thinking in terms of his character sheet and start thinking in terms of his character's story. I need to get the player very comfortable with RP'ing his character, not his stats. I need to get him to start building relationships everywhere in his world, because he's going to need them. How am I doing that? By giving him jobs that are way outside of his characters skills, and inside of his characters abilities. Sounds kinda confusing when I put it like that, because your skills are your abilities, right? No, not really, your skills are the abilities that your training enables you to do easily, quickly and with a certain flair or finesses. Like an explosives expert can build a shaped explosive device with a remote detonater, redundant detonater, killswitch, and a redundant killswitch that will go off at the time, place, shape and with any lasting effect of his choosing, and he can do this with a large variety of items. (Honestly, the stuff they can use would never occur to me could be explosive.) I can't do any of that, but, I can still make a bomb given the stuff I know can explode. His character can't lie, steal, stealth or bluff to save his life, and he's playing in a game of secrets, lies and shadows that's ideally suited for a character trained in stealth, diplo & bluff right? No, not really. I'd have built a different game if he and the other players had been built like that. A game of espionage where they were sneaking, lying and stealing. Instead, I've built a game of very high intrigue. A game where the musketeers that have found themselves plunged into high level politics are a bit lost, and trying desperately to carry out the tasks assigned to them, while they're trying to figure out who's betraying whom and who can they trust. So why doesn't he need diplo & bluff? Oh, he'd definitely have an easier time with it than without it, he's just going to have to find ways to work without it. And he can, their built into the story, but, more than that, they're built into the DM. Old school remember, story driven remember. And as an old school, story driven DM, I know that there's always as least three ways through anything. The two I design and the one the players come up with, no problem. So, how do I expect him to get through this without stelath, diplo & bluff? By using his characters extremely high intelleigence to figure out NPC connections and weaknesses and exploit them to get what he needs. Professor Moriarity isn't at all charismatic, and yet he runs a huge criminal organization. How? Because he's smart enough to figure out who has what he needs and then use their weaknesses against them. Do they have a gambling problem? Do they have a great love? Or a great hate? Or greed? Or desire? He figures out their vulnerability and exploits it for his purpose, and once he's using them he owns them, because he makes sure they know that not only does he hold the keys to their desires, he holds the keys to their continued existance. You don't have to be charismatic, if you can figure out what they value more than their lives. You don't have to be strong, you just need the right leverage. You don't have to be able to sneak in, you just need to buy the right guy for the job. You don't need the right stats, you just need to figure out how to use the ones you've got.
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]]> 0 6 games a week Of the games I play in, one is with a group of outstanding tacticians. I sit quietly and watch in that game and am hopefully learning to be a better gamer. It's a very slow process for me, but, they're a nice bunch of guys and never berate me for poor decisions on my part. The second is with a bunch of guys that are all over the map as far as game preference, from story oriented to very heavy combat oriented, but they each take committment to the game and to the team very seriously and are drtermined to make it work. That's also the game we do the most joking around in so it's a light-hearted bit of fun for me and puts me in a good mood. The third game is very new for me, for all of us really, as it's a brand new game with players I'm mostly unfamiliar with. It's a chance to get to know a few new faces, as well as to experience a different game style, and I'm looking forward to it. I know most people don't get the opportunity to play this much. A few years ago I would have been lucky to squeeze in 2 games/week and would have only committed to 1. A year from now I might be so busy I'm lucky to play 1 game a week. But, for right now I'm glad for this little period of my life where I get to play with a great bunch of gamers. Thanks guys.
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]]> Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:51:32 -0600 http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2011/11/30/6_games_a_week http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2011/11/30/6_games_a_week Of the games I play in, one is with a group of outstanding tacticians. I sit quietly and watch in that game and am hopefully learning to be a better gamer. It's a very slow process for me, but, they're a nice bunch of guys and never berate me for poor decisions on my part. The second is with a bunch of guys that are all over the map as far as game preference, from story oriented to very heavy combat oriented, but they each take committment to the game and to the team very seriously and are drtermined to make it work. That's also the game we do the most joking around in so it's a light-hearted bit of fun for me and puts me in a good mood. The third game is very new for me, for all of us really, as it's a brand new game with players I'm mostly unfamiliar with. It's a chance to get to know a few new faces, as well as to experience a different game style, and I'm looking forward to it. I know most people don't get the opportunity to play this much. A few years ago I would have been lucky to squeeze in 2 games/week and would have only committed to 1. A year from now I might be so busy I'm lucky to play 1 game a week. But, for right now I'm glad for this little period of my life where I get to play with a great bunch of gamers. Thanks guys.
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]]> 0 Seeing is believing. I had a game that was a complete flop today and I'm writing this blog not to show others what not to do, but to remind myself in a year or more of what not to do.

The idea for the story was simple, Seeing is Believing, but our eyes deceive us so often we can't trust them, but what if what your seeing is what you want to see, what you want to believe, then how do you discover the truth. It was very much predicated on a "Matrix" kind of storyline. Players were instructed to have a backstory and to name one item that they wanted to be in the game. For my part I gave them each the one thing they wanted in the game, ie a beholder, a tantron, wings, acceptance, the forgiveness and favor of their god, but no how or why or history. Each time they questioned the how/why/history I hit that player with a Mind Flayer attack as a carrot and a stick kind of incentive to not question the world and just accept "happy land". I knew they wouldn't and that they would cleverly devise ways to "see through the world" by discovering inconsistencies in the design and a skill challenge would ensue that didn't provoke attacks because it wasn't an outright "no this is wrong" question on the part of the players to arouse the attacks and that each success would give them more and more resistance to the attacks, an attack would fail, at least one player would escape the mind flayers and then get the others out and then they'd get out or kill everything and get out.

So, what happened instead, players in the beginning had no clear cut direction on where/how they were supposed to go. Yes, they very quickly figured out by the second attack that they were not where they supposedly thought they were. But, had no clear cut enemy, and no clear cut direction direction on how to proceed. They started actively fighting the "happy land" version of the world which provoked attacks, and those attacks did to much damage and had a daze effect that didn't make sense in the storyline. If I were to do this again, and I'm not doing this again, I would tweak that mind flayer attack to do a small amount of damage and to have a delusion or other effect to supposedly bring them back to happy land. I would insert the BBEG inside the story to "redirect" them each time they "did the wrong thing" so that they had a clear cut enemy once they discoverd the world was false, and i would provide more pre-game story to help them understand why the game was going in this direction and what they were likely facing.

D&D is a wonderful game where anything goes, but players need clear cut goals and a bit of direction for anything to work.

 

4 Comments - Leave a Comment
]]> Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:01:00 -0500 http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2011/08/17/seeing_is_believing. http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2011/08/17/seeing_is_believing. I had a game that was a complete flop today and I'm writing this blog not to show others what not to do, but to remind myself in a year or more of what not to do.

The idea for the story was simple, Seeing is Believing, but our eyes deceive us so often we can't trust them, but what if what your seeing is what you want to see, what you want to believe, then how do you discover the truth. It was very much predicated on a "Matrix" kind of storyline. Players were instructed to have a backstory and to name one item that they wanted to be in the game. For my part I gave them each the one thing they wanted in the game, ie a beholder, a tantron, wings, acceptance, the forgiveness and favor of their god, but no how or why or history. Each time they questioned the how/why/history I hit that player with a Mind Flayer attack as a carrot and a stick kind of incentive to not question the world and just accept "happy land". I knew they wouldn't and that they would cleverly devise ways to "see through the world" by discovering inconsistencies in the design and a skill challenge would ensue that didn't provoke attacks because it wasn't an outright "no this is wrong" question on the part of the players to arouse the attacks and that each success would give them more and more resistance to the attacks, an attack would fail, at least one player would escape the mind flayers and then get the others out and then they'd get out or kill everything and get out.

So, what happened instead, players in the beginning had no clear cut direction on where/how they were supposed to go. Yes, they very quickly figured out by the second attack that they were not where they supposedly thought they were. But, had no clear cut enemy, and no clear cut direction direction on how to proceed. They started actively fighting the "happy land" version of the world which provoked attacks, and those attacks did to much damage and had a daze effect that didn't make sense in the storyline. If I were to do this again, and I'm not doing this again, I would tweak that mind flayer attack to do a small amount of damage and to have a delusion or other effect to supposedly bring them back to happy land. I would insert the BBEG inside the story to "redirect" them each time they "did the wrong thing" so that they had a clear cut enemy once they discoverd the world was false, and i would provide more pre-game story to help them understand why the game was going in this direction and what they were likely facing.

D&D is a wonderful game where anything goes, but players need clear cut goals and a bit of direction for anything to work.

 

4 Comments - Leave a Comment
]]> 0 A junky always needs a fix. I've been playing in the VTT Beta since the first week of April when I got my invite. Honestly, I'd given up being invited and resigned myself to fighting with the two other online tabletops I was in to make them work for me. When I got that invite I did the happy dance and sang, "I'm in the beta!" everytime I remembered for the next few days. (I'd seen a demo at DDXP and knew this was what I wanted.) I ran my first game less than a week later.

Since I've been in the beta I've seen a whole lot of complaints about what the beta doesn't do, and people who've posted that they quit without ever playing a game because it doesn't do X,Y, Z. And, I'll be honest, it doesn't do X,Y, Z, it is very limited in some things and I've become an expert in how to crash a table. So, why am I posting. Because I love the beta. I've made a new network of friends. I'm by the gods actually playing instead of always DM'ing. I'm having so much fun I'm skipping eating, drinking and sleeping at times to play. I mope on days where my work sched. simply doesn't permit me to play and I jump at the chance to play with certain people because their expertise has really taught me a lot.

If you don't like the WotC VTT that's fine, use the system you like, kinda like playing the edition you like. As for me, I'm playing on the WotC site and loving it, the ease of use for a first time user is hands down the best I've tried so far. And the more I play the more I love playing, the more I Dm the more I love DM'ing. This forum is full of a really great bunch of guys, and I'm having so much fun I'm really looking forward to when this comes out of beta and some of the options we beta testers have been begging for become available. Will it be perfect? No, it's still WotC after all, and lets face it, this community wants absolutely everything and a pizza. But, it's still more game time in a month than I get in six months and this particular gaming junky always needs her fix.

1 Comments - Leave a Comment
]]> Thu, 26 May 2011 10:27:43 -0500 http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2011/05/26/a_junky_always_needs_a_fix. http://community.wizards.com/i_smile_alot/blog/2011/05/26/a_junky_always_needs_a_fix. I've been playing in the VTT Beta since the first week of April when I got my invite. Honestly, I'd given up being invited and resigned myself to fighting with the two other online tabletops I was in to make them work for me. When I got that invite I did the happy dance and sang, "I'm in the beta!" everytime I remembered for the next few days. (I'd seen a demo at DDXP and knew this was what I wanted.) I ran my first game less than a week later.

Since I've been in the beta I've seen a whole lot of complaints about what the beta doesn't do, and people who've posted that they quit without ever playing a game because it doesn't do X,Y, Z. And, I'll be honest, it doesn't do X,Y, Z, it is very limited in some things and I've become an expert in how to crash a table. So, why am I posting. Because I love the beta. I've made a new network of friends. I'm by the gods actually playing instead of always DM'ing. I'm having so much fun I'm skipping eating, drinking and sleeping at times to play. I mope on days where my work sched. simply doesn't permit me to play and I jump at the chance to play with certain people because their expertise has really taught me a lot.

If you don't like the WotC VTT that's fine, use the system you like, kinda like playing the edition you like. As for me, I'm playing on the WotC site and loving it, the ease of use for a first time user is hands down the best I've tried so far. And the more I play the more I love playing, the more I Dm the more I love DM'ing. This forum is full of a really great bunch of guys, and I'm having so much fun I'm really looking forward to when this comes out of beta and some of the options we beta testers have been begging for become available. Will it be perfect? No, it's still WotC after all, and lets face it, this community wants absolutely everything and a pizza. But, it's still more game time in a month than I get in six months and this particular gaming junky always needs her fix.

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