I've been seeing a fair number of discussions recently on DMs fudging dice rolls, and unsurprisingly, there are a lot of strong opinions on both sides. One group boasts that they don't even use a screen and roll all their dice out in the open. The other group insist that even Gary Gygax himself advocated rolling dice merely for the sound it makes. Both make too many sweeping generalizations, as the anti-fudging crowd insists that if the players "find out" you fudge rolls, they'll either never fear death or never trust you, where the pro-fudging crowd contains some who won't play under a DM unless they admit they will fudge rolls if it would make for a better story. The anti-fudgers counter that if all you care about is story, you probably shouldn't play a game with a dice-rolling system, and should just let the dice fall where they may.
The role of a DM is not easy. It may be fun, and some people may just be naturally good at it, but let's be honest, it really isn't easy. If you've been following my blog so far, you know that I advocate strongly that DMs shouldn't view it as their job to actively try and party-wipe, but to challenge the party. Part of that responsibility is making stories and battle exciting. To me, that means your tie to your D20 should be carefully balanced. I hate playing alongside DMs (and other players, for that matter) who insist on rolling that die for *everything* (see my earlier-referenced anecdote about the DM who neglected to tell us we'd been walking on yellow slime for a half-mile just because nobody rolled a Spot check for it). Especially as the party grows in power, certain things just do (and should) come easier for them, and you shouldn't be so tied to the D20 that you can't just let some things happen. I don't take it to an extreme, though. Certain things should be left to chance, thus the die is rolled.
What makes a good DM, I feel, is knowing when and what to fudge. For example, I never fudge damage rolls. Perhaps it's because my players track their own HP, but I just feel damage is something I'm willing to let stand. But when it comes to attack rolls or skill checks by monsters, I'm willing to let a few things slide. The question asked by the anti-fudging crowd is "then why bother rolling anything?" To me, I like a bit of chaos. While I know overall that most non-boss battles probably are not going to end in anything but a party victory, the actual struggle itself, I don't mind leaving up to chance. In fact, I don't want the job of orchestrating each turn of the battle. A little chaos during the battle is a good thing. But if my d20 suddenly gives the party a break and won't roll anything higher than a 6 for 5 turns in a row, I'm willing to give the battle a little nudge by making sure the next one hits. Not criticially, just enough to make the fight interesting again.
The die rolls both ways, too. Due to a house-rule I use where a natural 1 is a Critical Failure that grants an attack of opportunity (with combat advantage, no less), I have been known to speed the end of the battle along a bit by faking a crit-fail to let the party get a couple of free hits in.
Do my players know I on occasion fudge die rolls? Of course they do. I've never denied it. I happen to be lucky enough to have players who have all DMed at least one session (1 is actually a rather experienced DM) themselves, and they have never asked me to prove any rolls. They know I play fair most of the time, and only fudge if things really call for it. They know I won't stop a character's death, nor unfairly cause one. The knowledge that their DM fudges rolls sometimes hasn't damaged their trust in my d20, nor made them feel like I won't kill the characters. In fact, their lack of fear of death only comes from the fact that the cleric is an amazing healer.
So, do I advocate all DMs fudge their rolls? Probably not ALL DMs, and definitely not ALL rolls, either. You have to basically be inconspicuous while fudging a roll, and not overdo it. If you can make it believable, then you should be fine. If you're a player, don't worry too much about your DM's dice unless something is really fishy. Worry about your own character and your own dice. It's the DM's job to lead the story, and as long as you're enjoying the story, don't get too bent out of shape if they impose a bit of order on the chaos from time to time.
I recently read an interesting discussion on r/rpg, and I wanted to address it here. The topic is one I feel pretty strongly about, and I have already briefly touched on part of the point I want to make in a previous post. But I think it bears more than a brief mention. And this also will have bearing on both DMs and players. I'm talking about the Plot Train.
You don't know about the Plot Train? Sure you do. We talk about it all the time, just discuss it in different ways. As players, we accuse the DM of "railroading" us. As a DM, we get upset when a player "derails" a session. But both are aspects of the same thing, and I think it's no surprise we use the train analogy for both.
Let's take Railroading first. The general player consensus is "railroading is bad". I once had a discussion with a prospective player for my campaign who argued that in all circumstances, bar none, railroading is bad. And I think that there are plenty of circumstances under which is can be bad, not to mention plenty of DMs who do it poorly. But as a rule, railroading is not only good, it is often necessary. The important thing that DMs must do is make it feel seamless.
Oh sure, we hear about making it "invisible" and giving the illusion of choice when really both paths lead to the same destination. But a group of players can know full well they're being swept down the tracks of a railroad and still be perfectly fine with it, if the story is interesting. That's the key. It's easier taking a train ride if the scenery is pretty. I have very often done "cutscenes" or just straight up given no options, and as long as the party was interested in the story, they don't mind at all. The only time they've ever fought against an intended railroading was if I hadn't given enough incentive or a good enough story.
For instance, I recently ran a session that basically was one big ride along a set of rails. The party was following the footsteps of another adventuring party who had gone missing. They even found all puzzles in their path completely solved and the aftermath of a battle already fought and won. At the end, there was a cutscene in which they caught sight of a new adversary, and were dropped into the heart of a mountain. They literally had nothing to do but follow the tracks of the missing party, and were even on the mission because they were ordered to go by their benefactor. But not once did they complain, but rather excitedly tried to piece together what had happened. After the session was over, I asked for feedback and everyone said it was one of our better sessions, and they were really happy with it. The whole session had been nothing but a guided tour without even so much as a single puzzle to solve, and yet they had a great time, because the story was intriguing to them.
In fact, I have been in a campaign as a player with a DM who almost NEVER railroaded. He was truly as open-world as could be, and we had total autonomy. It was one of the most boring campaigns I've ever played in. Since he was so against railroading, he barely even gave us clues. Oh, he insisted they were there, but we just didn't know where to look to find them, so we wandered aimlessly. Entire sessions were devoted to randomly searching spots on the map, hoping somewhere we'd find these elusive clues to help us move the plot forward. But since the DM didn't "railroad" us, the campaign probably took about 150% longer than it should have and it was both boring and frustrating.
From the other side, equally aggravating are the deliberate derailers. Now yes, I know that any given player in any given session could potentially do something unexpected and derail the plot, but some people have a reputation as perpetual derailers. They get a clue and essentially say "Hmmm, the DM wants us to go here and do this, so I will go over THERE and do THAT!" And woe to any DM who tries to keep them in line. They claim they're after freedom and autonomy and full choice of action, but what you usually end up with are disrupted sessions, aggravated and marginalized characters from the REST of the party, and a stressed-out DM.
Seriously, when was the last time you read a fantasy book about a group of adventurers who hear about a quest and all decide to go their separate ways and don't form a cohesive team (even if at first they don't, by the end they usually have)? If such books exist, they are probably few and far between.
So the overall point I'm trying to make is that a D&D campaign should operate like a contract between the DM and the players. The DM should offer a compelling enough story that the players actually want to see it through. If the DM presents a great story, the players shouldn't mind if the action moves forward in a direction the DM specifies. And in return, they don't intentionally disrupt the main plot. There's still plenty of room in this agreement for the DM to present multiple courses of action for the players to choose from, and there will inevitably be times when the players do unexpected things and the DM's plot goes out the window. But as long as the overall story keeps going and the DM offers enough clues and doesn't act like a dick (see many previous posts), your average player won't mind moving along the tracks (within reason).
And yes, there are DMs who misuse railroading (or don't use it at all, which as I've explained, is just as bad), and there are players who derail for the sake of derailing. If you're one of these two groups, that's fine for you, but keep an eye out for signs that the rest of your group is not enjoying themselves. After all, as I've said before, D&D is a game and should be enjoyed. If you're causing the rest of your group to hate coming to session, perhaps you need a different group. Some of us would rather give up a small fraction of "free will" for the sake of a good story.
Good vs. Evil, Law vs. Chaos (Alignment: You're Doing It Wrong)
Among the many details about a Dungeons & Dragons character recorded on their character sheet is their Alignment. The benefit of alignment is a matter I've seen debated often, both in general terms and when comparing editions. Indeed, one of the complaints of those who hate 4E is the change made to the alignment system.
I intend to address alignment in two ways: first in general terms (specifically what it is and what it isn't), and then why I think that the 4E 5-alignment system is better than the 9-alignment system of all the previous editions.
To begin with, I would like to offer my opinion on what Alignment is not. It is not a set of shackles by which your character's behaviors are stifled, nor is it free license to justify whatever behavior you want. People who complain about alignment in general and ignore it in their campaigns frequently cite one of two ways in which they see the whole mechanic as flawed. Either they claim it forces their characters to act in ways they may not like, or that other players use their alignments to basically act like trolls, pointing at "Chaotic Neutral" and saying "U mad bro?"
For me, I've never looked at Alignment as a limiting factor in role-playing. Quite the opposite, in fact. Rather than trying to nit-pick what I want to do and internally asking "Well, does my alignment allow this?" I prefer to use my character's alignment to conceptualize their attitudes and outlooks, and from there the natural reactions and opinions of that character just flow.
For example, the most recent time I played a character, I was a Lawful Neutral Sorcerer named Lyp. Lyp's outlook on life was summed it nicely in a phrase I came to repeat several times in stressful situations, which was "I follow the rules!" He wasn't particularly interested in the moral high ground, and the only reason he hated the concept of Evil was because he saw evil-doers as destructive, though individual characters aligned with Evil could still have redeeming qualities. But to Lyp, the Rules were sovereign. Far from shackling my ability to role-play Lyp, it made getting into his mind incredibly easy. As long as a given action followed whatever set of Rules he currently acknowledged, he had no problems. But when tempted by something that either broke Rules or tended toward the destruction of Evil, he resisted fiercely.
To me, this exemplifies what alignment should actually be. Your alignment is the set of core values that guide your actions. If you look at it as a list of dos and don'ts that keep you from having fun, then you are not only setting those limitations on yourself, you're also probably picking the wrong alignment anyway. If you approach D&D as an excuse to hack'n'slash your way through the world without caring about the consequences, you probably shouldn't try to play a Neutral Good character. It just doesn't fit. This is also why I hate playing alongside Evil characters, because by definition, Evil characters are selfish. And too often, players want to play Evil characters so that they can kill whoever they want whenever they want, which really destroys the idea of epic fantasy role-playing that is the true core of D&D. Then there are the people who cling so tightly to the idea that "Neutral" means balance that they contend that a True Neutral character might even switch sides during battle if "Good" was beating "Evil" in order to maintain balance.
Another complaint that many people (including myself) have that makes a smashing segue into the second part of this post is that several of the alignments are frankly so similar as to make them almost redundant. For example, unless you are actively seeking to play up the Law vs. Chaos spectrum (far more than the average player), Neutral Good is hardly any different from Chaotic Good. Both are willing to operate outside of established rules, and both would be willing to depose an evil ruler or even an entire government if it served the greater good; Chaotic Good might just be a little happier about tearing down organization, but that could easily be a role-playing nuance rather than a strongly-defined mechanic. Similarly, unless you are trying very hard to separate Good from simply Not-Evil, the Good/Neutral part of that spectrum is very subtle as well, and a Lawful Good character and a Lawful Neutral character might choose many of the same actions against a destructive evil force like, oh, just about ANY decent end-game villain.
This is why I think the 4E streamlined alignment system is far better. It pits Good against Evil very simply and lets the nuances of HOW the characters act on their alignment rest on the players. For those paragons of virtue or destruction, there are still Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil. And then squarely in the middle, for those who really could care less about all this morality crap and just want to be left to their own devices, there is the aptly-named Unaligned. And that's it. There's no trying to fine-tune an alignment to "fit" what you want to play. Just pick where they stand on Good vs. Evil and go. The details will get hammered out.
People who stand so firmly on alignment have actually said to me (when complaining about 4E) "But I can't be Chaotic Good!" This statement is false and shows an adherence to a system over role-playing. Here's how you play Chaotic Good in 4E: Choose "Good" as your alignment, and then let your actions show your disdain for established authority. There, that was easy. You can play the character the exact same way, and the only thing that's different is that "Chaotic" is written on your actions rather than your sheet.
Further freeing about 4E as pertains to Alignment is that there are no longer alignment restrictions for classes. Part of the frustration I had at playing 3.x was that whatever class I picked had a strong possibility of determining my alignment. In my opinion, that is far more restrictive to role-playing than 4E's removal of 4 nuances on alignment. After all, a Lawful Good Druid may be odd and quirky, but why should it be disallowed just because they aren't neutral in some way? And of course everyone who's ever wanted to play a Paladin that wasn't Lawful Good has chafed at that particular restriction. In 4E, the only restrictions on alignment are for Divine characters, and it merely states that they must be within one "step" of the alignment of the deity they worship. Which seems reasonable. After all, would an Evil character realistically worship Pelor?
All in all, I see Alignment as one of those parts of the character sheet like Gender and Height - important to the role-playing of the character, but not mechanically necessary. If you describe your character in terms of their alignment, then I think you're doing it wrong. I don't introduce Tarak as "a good-aligned Fighter", I describe him as "a two-weapon-wielding, full-plate-armor-wearing, dumb-as-a-brick badass" (or some such).
One final note aimed at DMs: at the risk of broken-record syndrome, don't be a dick when it comes to alignments. If your players are role-playing well, the last thing they want to hear is that the awesome thing they just described isn't allowable because they're not the right alignment. Far better if you legitimately think the action would go against alignment is to make them feel conflicted inside next time they have a chance to sit and think, and let that be the catalyst to either nudge toward an alignment shift (if warranted) or let them justify it. Obviously an alignment shift has consequences (even more so in 3.x), but if you let them play it out or even possibly repent and maintain their current alignment, it makes for a far richer character development experience than stopping someone in their tracks and saying, "You can't do that because it breaks the law!" or "OK, now you're Evil!"
As with many aspects of D&D, Alignment is intended to put the "RP" in "RPG", and if you treat it as such, it becomes just another part of the intricate tapestry of your character's story - important but not the main focus. Players who try to fight it or use it to justify whatever they want are only ruining the overall picture by highlighting the canvas rather than what's painted on it.
DISCLAIMER: The example contained in this post is pretty much specific to 4E, though the general principle is not.
Despite what I've posted several times on this blog about story being the most important part of a good D&D campaign, the players of D&D will always want battle. Depending on your DMing style, battles can be fun, but can also be tedious. I mean, after all, there's only so many ways you can craft a well-balanced encounter so that it will work with the party.
The DMG tries to help give you some options with their encounter templates, where they take the roles codified in 4E (Brute, Solider, Artillery, Controller, Skirmisher, and Lurker) and give you some guidelines as to how to put those together in groups that make interesting encounters. But one day, while throwing together some battles for my party, I came up with a rather interesting idea that was both scary and somehow insanely fun for the party.
I combined the suggested encounter group of 7 Skirmishers of level n with the mechanic of replacing a standard creature with 4 minions of the same level, and created the 28-minion battle. So the party approaches a warehouse and suddenly 28 little enemies pour out and I call for initiative.
What makes this an interesting dichotomy is that it really is both scary and very fun for the players. It's fun because they're surrounded, but the minions only have 1 HP, so they can literally cut a swath through the crowd. As long as they beat a defense, whatever they hit is gone, so there's no need to keep track of HP or whittle down a handful of bad guys. It's just hit and take down. But where it's scary is that minions do a set number of HP in damage, so there's no low rolls where a character might only take 1 or 2 damage. It's a consistent amount. And with 28 on the board, even against a party of 5, there's a LOT of potential damage to soak before the healer can get around to shoring everyone up.
So it becomes a flash-in-the-pan battle of AOE attacks, damage-tanking, and a flurry of healing. But just as soon as it begins, they slice down the last minion and it's over. The battle's worth the same XP as a "standard" 7-skirmisher battle, but it was a little more threatening, and probably more fast-paced. My group loved it.
As I disclaimed at the top, the mechanic of the Minion sub-type is pretty much specific to 4E (though I'm sure you could just literally create a 1-HP monster even in 3.5 and treat it the same way), but the general advice I'm trying to give out here is that throwing a curve-ball off-beat battle at the party is a great way to break up the monotony of a dungeon crawl or XP-grind or any other bit of tedium your campaign might be slogging through. The players will love you for shaking things up a little bit.
Oh, by the way, the very next battle I threw at them was literally fighting a building - a factory that was churning out mechanical enemies I called Clockwork. As each quarter of its immense HP total was worn down, I increased the size of its heat aura, making melee combat difficult. It was another off-beat battle that was only received less gladly because our Rogue was incensed she couldn't knock a factory prone. Ah, D&D physics.
If you're a D&D player reading this blog and noticed that so far, I've focused on DMs, get ready, because I'm talking to you now. Overall, the same advice about not being a dick also works for players. However, there's one additional thing I'd like to say to you, although I grant that the audience who needs to hear this might be kinda small.
Please find a way to stay in the party!
OK, so metagaming is bad, and you're "just playing your character". Well, if you created a character to play in D&D that doesn't want to stay with the party, then your character is bad. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. And there are plenty of reasons for saying that.
Firstly, from the perspective of both DM and fellow party member, there is very little more frustrating than spending a lot of time convincing someone not to abandon the party. It wastes time, bogs down the plot, and eventually, the impulse is just to throw up your hands and say "FINE! Leave the party!"
A party member leaving is problematic, considering that unless you start off with 2 or 3 backup characters, there's a delay while you roll up a new character. It also is a strain on the DM to introduce your new character, and a strain on the party to meet, trust, and accept this newcomer without more metagaming. If you create a character that you don't intend to keep, why should a second character be taken any more seriously?
From some of my fellow players, I've heard the defense that "I'm just being realistic and playing the character as written!" Well, again, my response is that your character is poorly written. After all, when you're creating a character for D&D, it's not a surprise that you're not going to play a solo game, so why would you create a character whose personality doesn't play well with others or want to make friends? It makes no logical sense.
Lest you think that I don't understand how sometimes a character just doesn't click like you thought they would, let me assure you that I have been there. My most recent experience playing (as opposed to DMing), I initially created a Forest Gnome Sorcerer named Lyp. During the group's character creation process, Lyp's relationships with the rest of the party were pretty clear to me, and I worked hard to keep them at the forefront of my interactions with my group.
So when two party members Lyp felt close to were taken by their players in directions that I felt Lyp would feel betrayed by, Lyp got very upset. Even so, with the knowledge that my character was getting more and more alienated by the party, those two players only continued down those paths. Eventually, Lyp felt as if of the 4 other party members, only one was still his friend, I could no longer justify his decision to adventure with them, and he left the party.
So yes, I know what it can be like to want out of a party, but in my case, it was character concern that I felt was completely legitimate, and I gave plenty of opportunity for the rest of the party to work with me to make me feel better again. For probably 4 or 5 sessions, I made it abundantly clear that Lyp had a problem, and was eager to work it out and get back in good graces with everyone else. But nobody took it, and Lyp left.
Even then, a few sessions later, circumstances lined up such that the DM brought Lyp back for a scene, and I had to dual-RP with my new character as well. The DM even started pressing Lyp back toward the party, so I had him re-join and was forced to dual-wield characters for the rest of the campaign.
So basically, what I'm saying is that D&D is a group activity. You know this. So don't create characters that are loners unless they can be loners in a group setting. And in times of party conflict or character dissatisfaction, don't just give up on a character, work on ways to make things work out. A character leaving the party should be a last resort.
Friends, Geeks, Dungeon Masters: Lend me your ears!
By now, I hope you've read and enjoyed these past several posts on being a Dungeon Master. I imagine some of my stories will have corollaries in your own DMing experiences. What I hope is emerging is a theme, which in my opinion sums up my advice to all DMs: "Don't be a dick!"
Seriously, that one idea is the single most important thing I can think of to give as advice to prospective or current DMs. Don't be a dick.
You may think that as a DM, your goal should be to kill the party. But I ask you, why? Is it just because you control the monsters that set out to attack the party? That kind of attitude can be a slippery slope leading to player frustration and general dislike of your campaign. After all, you're defeating the purpose of D&D.
D&D is an RPG, the important letter there being "G": "Game". D&D is a game, and games are played because they're fun. This is the trade-off for being the DM; you may be the one controlling all the bad guys and to an extent controlling the story, but you're also meant to be the loser in the game. Of course, players can (and probably will) lose characters, but their best-case-scenario means they won and you lost. Your biggest, baddest villain fell before them. Frankly, if you can't deal with that, you have no business being a DM.
That's not to say you should shy away from difficult combats or challenging bosses, but if your players feel like they can't possibly affect anything and your story leaves them behind, even if they might win the combats you put them into, you're still "winning". The best campaigns I've played in were run by DMs who let the players feel like they were a real part of the story. And the campaigns I've played in where the DM's story happened and the characters were irrelevant were the most boring and frustrating. After all, why bother playing if the best you can hope for is mediocrity? People play D&D to change the world and be heroes. Let them.
One more thing that also follows under the heading of "don't be a dick": don't force the party to ask for literally everything. Yes, the biggest clues should require some sort of check to find, but I once played under a DM who didn't tell us that as we were exploring an underground cave system, we started walking on yellow slime. It wasn't until we were in the same room with the monster that left the slime trail that he told us it was there, and when we all angrily asked why he didn't tell us before, he shrugged and told us we didn't say we looked at the floor. We argued that regardless of whether we said we looked at the floor, if you're walking on dirt and rocks, you're going to notice if you're suddenly walking on slime. And even if you're not looking down, you can see the floor ahead of you. He said we'd walked about a half-mile on the slime, somehow without noticing it.
This is what I'm talking about. Don't do stuff like that. Your players will hate you. Be reasonable and give the players information they would naturally have, and save the secrecy for times when you want to leave results up to chance.
There's a time and a place for flexing your DM muscles, so make it count when you do. If you've been proving to the party that you're not only able but willing or eager to kill them during the whole campaign, how can you expect them to be intimidated by a boss battle?
If you're willing to accept the role of eventual loser and can be happy with the party when they overcome obstacles to their success, you're well on your way to avoiding Dick-DM Syndrome. Your players will be happier, and so will you.
There's an old saying about the best-laid schemes of kobolds and elves often going awry (or something like that). And quite frankly, there's nothing more disruptive to a DM's story than the party. What can a DM do when plot meets party?
This is the quandary I have struggled with many times, especially when dealing with certain players. As always, I will illustrate with an example.
One week, I was down to the wire with no good ideas for session. We play on Sundays, and Sunday morning, I was staring down the day with no idea what the party was going to do that day. They had just accomplished a major goal (re-defeating a couple of villains who made a reappearance), and were working out where to go next. But I knew they'd be looking for some kind of clue about that, and I had nothing.
So I figured, take the easy way out. My group can often be the Party Of Slowness, and battles take a lot longer than they should, so whenever I'm running dry on story ideas, I throw in a battle to flesh out a short session and keep them on their toes. Searching through the Monster Manuals, I ran into Yetis. They were about the right level without having to adjust anything, and I figured it might be fun for them to fight a yeti or five. Quickly, I whipped up a mission idea where an ally of theirs - the dean of arcane studies at the big university - needed help getting some of her students back from an arrogant despotic asshole of a king who was holding on to them. Not quite a hostage situation, but a little bit more than diplomatic negotiations. I figured they'd ask the king to let the students go, and he'd make a deal that if they took out a few of these yetis causing trouble in his kingdom, he'd let the students go. Simple. Easy. Straightforward.
I made a horrible mistake. I neglected to take into account Viraren.
Viraren was an Elf Druid, and the player controlling him was playing him as a frustrated, willing-to-be-violent hippie. He loved Nature and despised anyone who screwed with it. What I failed to take into account was that Viraren saw the yetis as natural creatures, and unless they directly attacked him, he saw hunting them down just to kill them for no good reason as deplorable. He thought I had put the king there specifically to be an antagonist. He attacked the king.
Session ground to a halt as I stared in shock at the player who had just attacked the king. Finally, I started spluttering about how he couldn't do that, and he insisted he had just done that. I insisted that the king was defenseless, and while arrogant, was at worst Unaligned, and by attacking him, Viraren was going to shift alignment to Evil for murder. He swore up and down that the king was evil and killing him was justifiable and even good. The rest of the players took their sides and the room echoed with the arguments.
Finally, I let him have his attack, but my character, Tarak (see my post about him), turned around and attacked Viraren. Before they could come to further blows, the Cleric of Kord, Khaylin, Dismissed Viraren just to get a handle on the situation. He sent Tarak outside like a scolded puppy, then healed the king and convinced him that perhaps the students should just be let go now. The king agreed, and the party convinced Tarak that Viraren had only done what he thought was right. I still pushed the alignment shift to Evil, but at least the session could continue, though it was definitely not what I had expected.
In the end, what happened that day turned into some interesting character development (especially the relationship between Tarak and Viraren) and launched a HUGE plot arc that still ripples in the campaign as it stands today.
So the point I'm trying to make is that it's very easy to get frustrated when a character so completely derails your plot, and you shouldn't be shy about making sure there are consequences (in Viraren's case, the alignment hit). But it all comes down to the same idea I learned from the evolution of Edina (see my previous post about her); that if you're willing to let the party follow what interests them, and don't force what you expect or want down their throats, you can recover even from a massive derailment. It may not be easy, and years later, you may still groan whenever someone brings up the "king and his yetis", but the fact that it was so memorable will smooth down the rough edges and make it into a story worth retelling.
It may come off as a truism that a good DM has to be able to think on their feet, adapting to whatever the party may get it in their mind to do (and I plan to post later about what can happen when plot meets party). But honestly, I wonder if most DMs only worry about that when it comes to the little things like whether the party wants to walk, ride horses, or portal from one destination to another.
For some DMs I've been under, the story is relatively static. Once they kick off the campaign, certain events happen regardless of party presence or actions. To an extent, that's not a bad thing, as it doesn't feel like the party always just happens to be where all the action is ("Well, isn't THAT convenient?"). Having some action happen "off-camera" is necessary. But what can be frustrating for some players is the feeling that their characters are completely replaceable - mere cardboard cutouts saying "Insert character here". DMs who treat the party as unimportant to the story run the risk of losing player engagement, leading to boring, frustrating games. I've been party to a few of those.
A good DM plays a balancing game - making sure the world feels like it keeps turning no matter where the party is, while maintaining the feeling that this group of people is actually important to the story. After all, they are kinda central to the story being told - the main characters in a book. Not to mention as the characters level up, it represents the people getting stronger and more powerful. That kind of thing shouldn't be mundane.
A good DM also doesn't try to enforce their own pet characters on the party, but should play off what the players attach themselves to. And just like any decent TV chef, I have an example I prepared before posting.
Relatively early in our campaign, I sent the party on a fairly standard type mission, to cleanse the taint of evil from a nearby manor. My ulterior motive was to begin tying some threads together and introduce a villain who I intended to be a recurring villain for most of the game. In order to show what a horrible person this man was, when the party first saw him, he had his hand down his pants watching his vampire mistress *literally* eating out a helpless, tied-up girl. Yeah, I went there. The whole point was to shock the sicken the party so they'd want to kill this bastard.
The girl tied up on the bed was basically Generic NPC #14 - intended to either die (if the party didn't get to her in time) or be rescued and dropped off with the city clerics for healing. No further consideration went into her other than physical description. So I wasn't really prepared when - after the villain predictably escaped and the party killed his vampire mistress - they started asking her name and where she was from. Still, I figured she wasn't going to be around long enough to matter, so I fell back on the tried-and-true amnesia approach and thought it was over. They took her to back to the city clerics and dropped her off. That was that.
Until they went back to check on her. Why should they do that? I had no idea, but since they seemed so interested in her, I decided to just run with it and had her start to develop a crush on the Dragonborn warlock, Ehlresh Durgh. By the next session, I had even derived a name for her: "Halitrad", which according to an online tool, is Draconic for "mystery" (I believe...might be "unknown"), and the party started calling her "Hali" for short.
A short time later, the party was framed for murder and exiled from their home city, and I decided to see how they'd react to Hali tagging along. Little by little, she wormed her way into Ehlresh's heart, and by Level 10, she was a fixture in the party. I let her regain her memories, including her real name of Edina. She also earned a backstory, including the reason she had fallen for Ehlresh being that she had been engaged to another Dragonborn man who had been killed by her kidnapper. Except that he DIDN'T actually die, and when she found that out, she couldn't resolve her two loves and killed herself.
Even that wasn't the end, as all through the next 8 or 9 levels, she started haunting Ehlresh's dreams and then his waking reality as well. Finally, I let it be known that the Raven Queen (goddess of death for the 4E-unaware) was going to let Ehlresh have Edina back if he'd start serving her. He agreed, and as of right now, Edina is a Revenant, once again in the party being Ehlresh's love.
So what started as a nameless, helpless girl tied up on a bed being maimed by a vampire has become a central plot point to the development of one of the party members. Her presence became so real that during the session in which she killed herself, the player controlling Ehlresh actually got visibly saddened to where I honestly thought he was going to cry, and he said all the week following it, he was depressed thinking about how she died. She became REAL to us.
So you see, it's completely possible to adapt story around the party. So if your party gets really interested in something or someone that you originally had no plans for, don't be afraid to run with it, even at the expense of something or someone else. I've dropped (or minimized the role of) more NPCs than I can count just because the party showed no interest in them, or even acted annoyed by them. Other DMs I have played under don't seem to grasp that concept and will doggedly force their favorite NPCs down the party's throat.
But the point of the story of Edina's creation and growth to me highlights the principle that the players will engage in a story better, and will take the hard hits even more epically, if you make them feel like their choices and likes actually impact the story you're telling.
Allow me to introduce you to Tarak. Tarak is a half-orc fighter. But rather than a brute or thug like you might expect a half-orc fighter to be, Tarak is a friendly, loyal ally to his teammates. A Good-aligned follower of Moradin (strange, I know), Tarak stands tall on the battlefield, broadsword in one hand, scourge (a type of flail) in the other. Tarak is a trusted, valuable member of my group's party.
Tarak is also a DMPC.
Those four letters can instantly turn off a vast majority of D&D players as they think of bad experiences when the DM just can't let the party play or think for themselves, as has to insert a DM presence in the party, whether that is to keep the party "in line" or just to make it easy to make decisions, or just because the DM wants to play too; many D&D veterans shudder as they think of a DMPC.
And I can sympathize, too. As I alluded to in my post a couple of days ago, my first-ever campaign was ruined by the DM, due in large part to the DM's pet Bard that he had shoved into the party. This Bard was supposedly just as low-level as the rest of the party, but somehow he was almost the only character who ever killed an enemy. Oh sure, we fought as a group, but he almost always had the last hit on everything. He could cast ridiculous spells from the start (rescued the party once by using Dimension Door...at level 2), and if we struggled with any puzzles, the Bard came along and solved them for us.
He also was the sole decision-maker, it seemed, as every destination was chosen by the Bard, as well as how we interacted with anyone. At Level 3, we stumbled onto a silver dragon and a red dragon locked in heated battle. Not baby dragons - adult dragons. Any sensible party would have tip-toed quietly away, praying to Pelor they can make it to safety. Not this Bard. He charged in, to help the silver dragon, and only the fact that he had forced backstory on me that my character was the bard's childhood best friend kept us from just abandoning him.
So yes, I understand the recoil from DMPCs because of DMs who abuse the privilege. But that's not Tarak. Tarak is proof that a DMPC can not only not be a pain in the ass, but can also be a valued member of the party.
The first step to creating a DMPC your party doesn't hate is to make sure he's actually needed. It can be tempting for a DM to want a piece of the action and join the party, but because of players' general dislike of a DMPC, I would only advocate a DMPC if the group would be too small without it. D&D (especially 4E) is built to be played with a 5-player party. Having 4 or 6 is not bad, but if you really want that sweet spot of 5 (or you only have 3) and you just can't find anyone else to join, that would be a positive case for a DMPC.
The next step is to make absolutely sure you don't give the party a reason to hate the DMPC. This means he must be a follower, not a leader. This usually means to make him stupid. That may sound harsh, but the fact of the matter is that if your DMPC is intelligent, it would be too easy to lead the party around, which is what you don't want. If the class the DMPC needs to be uses the INT stat and you can't let him be literally stupid, find some reason that he can't or won't make any party-affecting decisions or solve any puzzles (beyond making checks or following party orders). Otherwise, you will run the risk of making the players feel railroaded.
However, don't go to an extreme. Remember the "C" in DMPC: "Character". He should not be less of a character just because he's stupid/mute/whatever. It's OK for him to have a personality. Tarak, for example, has a lovable, childlike quality about him, and he has become attached to the Cleric in our party as practically a father figure, and the Warlock as a brother. Which gives plenty of chances to role-play completely in-character without making any decisions that would steer the party too much. The most this does is means if someone bullies or attacks either of the two characters he admires, he will get enraged and want to smash your face in - which, since he's a Fighter, he is very good at doing.
It all boils down to building trust between the DM and players. This may sound weird considering the DM is technically controlling every bad guy and monster that wants to kill the party, but it's possible for the party to trust that the DM will play at least somewhat fair. I'll delve more into that later, as it's a topic I have very strong feelings about. But for now, just know that if the party trusts the DM, they will be more likely to accept a DMPC in their midst.
I hope today I have helped DMs understand when you should or shouldn't bring a DMPC into the party. I also hope that players will be a bit more accepting of DMPCs, although as the saying goes, trust is earned, not given. DMs, don't abuse your power. If done correctly, being in a party with a DMPC can actually be perfectly fine or even great fun for the players and DMs alike. After all, it sometimes gets very lonely behind the DM screen. It's nice to be a part of the camaraderie.
Generally, when winding up to speak on Dungeons and Dragons, my first obstacle to overcome is the great deal of Edition Loyalty that geeks seem to cling to. Everyone seems to have their favorite Edition of D&D (nothing wrong with that in and of itself, BTW), and if you start talking about ANY other edition, you run into a single-minded stubbornness that would make an Orc proud.
I have already in other formats tried to put forth a case for my particular chosen D&D edition, which happens to be 4th Edition (AKA 4E). This is apparently a very unpopular edition to get behind among solid D&D geeks, and I have had to fight against a large amount of backlash for my decision to play and DM within 4E pretty exclusively. When I first got into 4E, I made a 3-part blog post on Facebook trying to defend it by enumerating the ways that it's still D&D, and the ways in which it simplified some of the really rough patches people who are new to D&D run into when playing any flavor of 3rd edition (AKA 3.x). Predictably, some people still have their 4E pet peeves, some people weren't against 4E to begin with, and many people's opinions pretty much boiled down to "meh".
As I created this blog and started pondering my first few posts, I thought I would once more have to open up with a defense of 4E. But considering I already have done that pretty extensively, I am going to instead try and explain WHY I am an unapologetic 4E supporter.
My first several experiences with D&D were playing in a 3.x environment, and I will honestly say that the first DM I sat under was a real piece of work. For one thing, he said I couldn't start as a level 1 Paladin - I had to start as a Lawful Good Fighter, and he told me that somewhere around Level 4 or 5, he'd let me undergo a ritual to become a Paladin. I have since found out this is utter nonsense. He also led the party around by the nose via a pet NPC Bard, and then proceeded to pit us against an army led by red-dragon-riding Wraiths who could wipe out every memory of our existence...at level 3.
Subsequent DMs were much better than this, but still, my eyes would glaze over looking at a character sheet, and no matter how good the DM, the mechanics of the system just eluded me. Weapons, armor, powers, leveling up, everything was just beyond my reach. I kept thinking maybe one more good campaign and I'd "get it". I also was getting more and more intrigued by the idea of being a DM myself, figuring that while the impetus would be on me to provide good story and battles to the players, the monsters themselves were already created - all I had to do was just come up with a decent villain and pick-and-choose good monsters, and the rest would work out just fine.
I sat down to DM my first campaign after playing in 4 campaigns under 4 different DMs. Perhaps a bit green, but very enthusiastic. You might call the edition 3.0 since the character builder we used came with the 3.0 PHB, but the monsters I picked were from the 3.5 SRD, so I guess it was truly a 3.x game. I had a fairly simple idea to run with - a random group of Generic Adventurers is hired by a local noble to investigate some unrest in the kingdom, which leads to the discovery of a plot by an old and evil mage, who is planning a coup on the kingdom as revenge against his former best friend (another mage), who fancied himself the protector of this kingdom. The biggest problem I had was actually coming up with encounters. I couldn't make heads nor tails of the "Challenge Rating" system, and even if I ratcheted the CR up to several levels above the party, they always proceeded to wipe the proverbial floor with my monsters. Closest I came to a fair fight was an 11-headed Hydra they fought right before the end of the campaign. The characters in that campaign are still talked about, over 4 years later. But I'll get back to that.
While overall my first campaign was interesting, I felt like I was constantly struggling to "get" the system, and half the time I was afraid I was making rules up as I went along. I had enjoyed telling the story, and watching the characters evolve, but I was afraid the system was just going over my head. So while I turned the DM reigns back over to others in the group, I pondered when I could DM again. And that's when it happened.
4E was released, and I bought the core rulebooks, mostly because the 3.5 rulebooks were no longer available once the 4E books hit the shelves. And suddenly, it all made sense. The streamlining, the powers, the items, IMHO even the combat system - all of it suddenly came into focus. I immediately started planning for my next campaign, setting my sights as high as possible: a full Level 1 - Level 30 campaign. Yes, it would take a long time, but I suddenly knew I could do it.
Of course, at the beginning, everything was a little shaky. After all, there were no veterans, as the system itself was brand new. So we all took a few levels to adjust to the new mechanics. And of course, I made plenty of DM mistakes. To be honest, we're still not finished, and it's been over 3 years. Granted, we haven't been able to play every single week, we've had breaks and setbacks. But the party is now level 24, so we're approaching endgame, and the storyline has gotten so epic that it's hard to think about the humble beginnings the characters had.
But you know, I've noticed something. Everyone in my group has played 3.x before and even during this campaign, but nobody gripes about these characters. And I've managed to rope a few 4E-naysayers into some one-shots and even a shorter-scope sub-campaign, and despite their dogged insistence on bashing the elements of 4E they don't like, they're still playing, and still having fun. And this has led to a revelation that to me SHOULD be common sense, but that apparently isn't.
D&D is only as good - but *IS* as good - as the DM. The edition shouldn't impact your enjoyment of the campaign, and if it does, you need to lighten up. Seriously! Look, if 3.x is your system of choice, you can't really fully enjoy your game if your DM sucks. All the nitpicky customizations in the world can't save your character if your DM seems to give you no choice but to walk into a cave that turns out to be an ambush by literally 100 hobgoblins and bugbears. You're going to party-wipe. And what I've managed to convince some of my friends is that you may have nothing but negatives to say about 4E as a system, but if your DM makes you sit on the edge of your seat and howl in anguish at the cliffhanger that ended tonight's session, you can't deny that you're playing an awesome game. With a game like D&D, the DM is one of the biggest factors, and the better they are, the more you will enjoy yourself regardless of edition.
Whether you're a 3.x purist or an adventurous 4E player, you're still a D&D player in my book. So as you read future posts on this blog, you will find I will mostly describe things that have come up in my 4E campaign. If 4E is not usually your D&D Edition of choice, I ask you to simply take D&D as D&D. The stories I will tell will be no less awesome just because they were 4E, and the advice I intend to give will be edition-agnostic.
Just embrace D&D in all its epic awesomeness, and let's go behind the DM screen together.
