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Something to improve your experience...

Okay, so there's a new supplement out written by Tracy and Curtis Hickman (one of the creators of the Dragonlance setting and his son), and illustrated by Howard Tayler, the writer-artist of the Hugo-nominated Schlock Mercenary. It's called XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery and is designed to be non-system-specific, improving your game and making it more fun whether you're usually a DM or usually the P behind that PC.

There's a review from the usually-DM's perspective here and one from the usually-player's perspective here.

I've got four copies pre-ordered (if you pre-order you get it signed by both authors and the illustrator) - one for me, one for my first-ever GM (I'll give it to him at GenCon Oz), one for my current GM, and one for one of my best friends, who's also a GM, but half a state away. It sucked down quite a bit of my disposable cash - I won't be buying any minis or video games for awhile, although books will still make the purchase list, but I don't think I'll regret it.

Just thought I'd share - plus, the authors/illustrator posted on their respective sites and asked everybody to spread the word.

RecklessPrudence wrote:Something to improve your experience...

Okay, so there's a new supplement out written by Tracy and Curtis Hickman (one of the creators of the Dragonlance setting and his son), and illustrated by Howard Tayler, the writer-artist of the Hugo-nominated Schlock Mercenary. It's called XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery and is designed to be non-system-specific, improving your game and making it more fun whether you're usually a DM or usually the P behind that PC.

There's a review from the usually-DM's perspective here and one from the usually-player's perspective here.

I've got four copies pre-ordered (if you pre-order you get it signed by both authors and the illustrator) - one for me, one for my first-ever GM (I'll give it to him at GenCon Oz), one for my current GM, and one for one of my best friends, who's also a GM, but half a state away. It sucked down quite a bit of my disposable cash - I won't be buying any minis or video games for awhile, although books will still make the purchase list, but I don't think I'll regret it.

Just thought I'd share - plus, the authors/illustrator posted on their respective sites and asked everybody to spread the word.

I got a small preview of it a few months ago, looks like a lot of fun. Howard Taylor (of Schlock Mercenary) did most (or all, can't remember) of the illustrations, and had a lot of fun with it. Overall it looks like a humorous and very helpful resource.

I'd be interested in hearing if he's continued his "death comes easy" style from other media into this. Honestly, I feel that these things often over-emphasize the merit of killing a player character--something which I think quickly reduces your playing group's desire to shuffle along any further. For that reason alone I usually find myself at odds with the Hickman style of DMing. Not a fan of the illustrator he picked either, but I'd be interested in hearing what the book actually talks about, since I presume it must be thought-provoking. The reviews are pretty useless. If someone owns the book, they should give some actual comments.

Well, the books are being mailed out Monday, so I haven't gotten my copy yet (plus, I'm in Australia, so it'll take awhile for mine to arrive, anyway), but here's a two-page preview, and it seems to emphasize that roleplaying's about the players, not about how many ways you can kill them.

I don't understand this. Should this be new to anyone? Are most roleplayers stupid?

Oh wait. Nevermind.

3.5 DM Master Guide D&D

Page 5 wrote:Providing Adventures
Your primary role in the game is to present adventures in which the other players can roleplay their characters. To accomplish this, you need to spend time outide the game sessions themselves preparing. This is true wheter you write your own adventures or use prepared adventures that you have purchased.

Stark wrote:I don't understand this. Should this be new to anyone? Are most roleplayers stupid?

Oh wait. Nevermind.

Yes. I'll reserve judgment though on how useful this is until I get further information. Not because it is reasonable, but because I'm not buying it although my brother might.

I think that a lot of people who play and run these games do so with antisocial wheels turning in their heads, and as such, derail games. It gets worse when a lot of people might join a game and need to conform to an entire set of new norms. It can get pretty extreme, so yeah, they can be this retarded.

I'm glad the tone of the book interior is better than the exterior though--since the whole 'natural selection should apply to players' thing makes me first think of "die when the DM stops being amused" style of the Killer Breakfast sessions they run, and these were mentioned in the game reviews, which would have made me never buy the book if it were true. There's nothing more detrimental to me wanting to weave an elaborate story around my character than having the first beautiful tapestry burnt by the DM. The link posted, about the "if you're a DM who thinks the adventure is about you, we want to flog you senseless" ethic, I think is a good one.

I don't understand this. Should this be new to anyone? Are most roleplayers stupid?

Well, any RPG book can be the first for a new player, so they have to cover the basics. Also, even after all this time, players can still run into DM's who think their job is to be the opposing team to the players, who have to be told otherwise.

Stark wrote:I don't understand this. Should this be new to anyone? Are most roleplayers stupid?

Oh wait. Nevermind.

Early in its history, tabletop gaming was incredibly adversarial with a PCs vs DM mentality. Its one of the thigns that gave rise to rules lawyers. I, personally, view my role as DM as that of a host or guide, ensuring my players have a good time experiencing the story I'm telling.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:

Stark wrote:I don't understand this. Should this be new to anyone? Are most roleplayers stupid?

Oh wait. Nevermind.

Early in its history, tabletop gaming was incredibly adversarial with a PCs vs DM mentality. Its one of the thigns that gave rise to rules lawyers. I, personally, view my role as DM as that of a host or guide, ensuring my players have a good time experiencing the story I'm telling.

I've played with DMs that have the "me vs. the players" mentality and I find the experience much less satisfactory than playing with a DM that sets out to be partners with the players in the story-telling experience.

When I ran a Dark Heresy game a few months back, some other DMs criticized me for not trying to kill off more of my players. I didn't listen to them because I knew that my players were happy that they were being presented with plot points that might kill them, not things trying to kill them that happen to be plot points.

Lord Relvenous wrote:
When I ran a Dark Heresy game a few months back, some other DMs criticized me for not trying to kill off more of my players. I didn't listen to them because I knew that my players were happy that they were being presented with plot points that might kill them, not things trying to kill them that happen to be plot points.

That's sad. The GM is omnipotent. Killing players is both easy and not the point. The point is to have fun.

Stark wrote:I don't understand this. Should this be new to anyone? Are most roleplayers stupid?

Oh wait. Nevermind.

You probably already know this but a fair amount of DM's go by the phrase "If you have not killed all of your party off by the end of the game, you hae not done your job", similer attitudes to try to kill players comes into..err play as well and you even get some sad idiots who take pride in getting their players killed in a total wipeout. Its not like not the DM is to serve as a person who sets out the foundations and settting of the adventure and lets the players take it from there

Remember Stark, its like Monoploy, the job of the banker is to make it as hard as possible to win the game and bankrupt the other pl-oh wait.

Killing the party is only the right thing to do if the players enjoy the game despite dying.

Indeed, the olden days of role-playing was DM vs PCs but people haven't realized that without PCs a DM is sitting at the table by their self weeping softly.

Throw tough things at your players, sure, push them to the very brink of defeat before they bounce back and succeed, but unless you know that the players are okay with failing and having to start over or whatever, don't go making things so difficult that they are going to be losing all their characters every couple of sessions.

As the first person in the thread to chime in against the way they had previously set up players to die by the droves, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a second and say that a DM who is one-tenth's your nemesis is still going to give you a fun time. For this reason goblins and other tiny shits are my favorite foes--the DM feels free to be devious and brutal, and the players have only as much risk as they put themselves into.

I've run into DMs that disagree. One that I had inflicted some grevious casualties on a different party by having an invisiblity-spelled kobold shaman on the top of a wide cavern mouth use a wand of fireballs (available by treasure-drop table but not by normal castable level) on a party as they prepped to enter it, and then when the party fled back across the lake several of the boats capsized and the players drowned, nearly without them having any real opportunity to do much. I myself died in that game when I was somehow sucked into a dreamworld, didn't play "guess the verb" correctly, and my body died in the sleep from dehydration. Talk about lame. Death should always be in the hands of the player--not random.

But a game that lets me pull out to save myself, or risk it to go down in a blaze of glory? There's nothing wrong with that, and that's more fun than simply trudging along knowing that the game is designed to keep you roughly at the same level of difficulty. Risking death in an RPG can be a choice. It's a form of gambling, with your character's status as the stakes--and at some point I think it makes sense to let the player go 'all in' on his bet. So long as the players are allowed to fold and escape, there's no reason to require them to win.

It really seemed obvious to me by the time I was all grown up what the PC-DM relationship should be. I'm not sure why some people need to be explicitly told this via expensive books

Covenant wrote:But a game that lets me pull out to save myself, or risk it to go down in a blaze of glory? There's nothing wrong with that, and that's more fun than simply trudging along knowing that the game is designed to keep you roughly at the same level of difficulty. Risking death in an RPG can be a choice. It's a form of gambling, with your character's status as the stakes--and at some point I think it makes sense to let the player go 'all in' on his bet. So long as the players are allowed to fold and escape, there's no reason to require them to win.

Turns out the GM runs the setting, and the players control their actions (and should have the opportunity to control their risks)? Amazing.

Cov, write a book. You'll make money. Not much, given the size of the RP industry, but more than zero.

I've played very 'deadly' campaigns - in that nobody is fudging roles to keep you alive and the game is reasonably deadly mechanically - but the idea of GMs specifically setting out to kill players is laughable, dickless power-nerd stuff. Things are there, the players react, things happen, EXCITEMENT. Not the GM spends a weekend plotting a series of events designed to kill the players.

But hey, GMs who can't adjust to the powerlevel players want/end up with are very common too, and that's not hard either. It just turns out most RP nerds are fucking retarded idiots and they train new players to be the same.

Hmm...a different subset of the problem is where your players are retarded enough enough to dive straight into a highly dangeorus situation in the first ten minutes of the game and get themselves killed almost immediately. It's kind of hard to have a neat adventure then, unless you're really good at improvising

Again, that's just part of being a GM. You need to quickly learn what is likely to be on your players radar and what isn't; there's no point having a complex background of intriuge and mysterious danger when you're playing with fifteen year-olds.

Stark wrote:Again, that's just part of being a GM. You need to quickly learn what is likely to be on your players radar and what isn't; there's no point having a complex background of intriuge and mysterious danger when you're playing with fifteen year-olds.

True, this is mostly a problem with a new group where you can never be completely sure what they expect of the game. Of course, if they're mature enough, you can just plain ask and it's gonna be good, but teenagers sometimes don't know what they want or think it's soooo obvious. Surprises follow

Competently written systems even say to survey your players right there in the basic rulebook, instead of putting this advice in a 50$ supplement...

The idea of playing a cooperative game with friends without even bothering to ask what they're interested in is crazy to me.

I mean, the appeal of 'tournament' play is to try to fit yourslef into a restricted setting/character/goal/etc but many people don't want that.

Stark wrote:The idea of playing a cooperative game with friends without even bothering to ask what they're interested in is crazy to me.

It is. I didn't understand it when I was fifteen, though. Right now I always survey a new group, so the problem isn't as bad (well, it's non-existent, really), but if I'm crazy enough to GM for a group of teenagers, surveying doens't always work. If they're honest they just want to kill shit and blow things up, we have a blast.

Ok, to be honest, I once had a 25 year old who seemed to go along with the adventure's style, untill he did a complete 180 and started extorting other PCs for money. That was bizarre.

He later claimed he wanted to "see if the other guys would be willing to sacrifice their character's personality for the good of the game".

Stark wrote:I mean, the appeal of 'tournament' play is to try to fit yourslef into a restricted setting/character/goal/etc but many people don't want that.

I never dabbled in that kind of play.