#archipelago campaign

[rottenappleheart]

I made symbolic scribble rocks for the other players & our DM.

[rottenappleheart]

Supposedly, my DM's original impetus in forming our group was a convention panel that encouraged the audience, "if you've never been in a role-playing group with all women [or at least no cis straight dudes], you should try it - it's a very different experience."

I've been in a few mixed groups, and more often, been the only girl in a group of men, and... yes, it's like playing a whole different game.

... for a lot of reasons, but the one on my mind right now is: because when we get together to play, it's a feast. No doritos and mountain dew. One night we had garlic-parm risotto; the next, saffron meatballs and farro salad with tomatoes and mint. We spent eight hours just eating fancy cheeses and mixing increasingly elaborate cocktails.

I kind of never want to go back to a "standard" social game environment again???

[rottenappleheart]

I'm at my only scheduled vacation of the year, with the girls who got me into D&D in the first place. We are drinking a lot of fancy cocktails and talking about depression.

Our DM made the choice to have NPCs intone "all hail ____" whenever a god's name is pronounced and we've all just taken up muttering it at every conceivable interval.

It's a great respite from everything, being here on a mountain rolling dice and drinking hard in safe company.

[rottenappleheart]

A thing I thought lying awake last night, re: D&D and other tabletop RPGs, that I haven’t seen emphasized much: you have to give the players what they want.

Not “everything they want, as soon as they want it,” of course. That is... boring. That’s what quests and foreshadowing and payoff are for. But in terms of general enjoyment, I think it’s really important for a DM to read what makes their specific players happy, and make sure they are getting that out of the game.

I wasn’t very good at that my first time DMing a campaign, but I hope I’m getting better now. And I definitely notice when DMs for games I play do or do NOT do this.

For instance: at Saturday’s pick-up oneshot in town, I’d rolled up a character who was raised by goblins, liked them, defaulted to prefer “monstrous” races (because of course I did.) However, the DM’s story was “kill goblins in large quantities.” My attempts to find alternate solutions, to negotiate, to use non-lethal tactics were all thwarted. Even though my character spoke Goblin, the DM decreed that it was a different dialect. Was it the DM’s right to make these decisions about how their adventure worked? Sure. But was it fun for me, the player? Not especially. And that’s something that should have been obvious to the DM.

On the other hand: the DM for my long-term ocean campaign is very, very good at paying attention to what pleases her players, and throwing it at us. For example, to feed one player’s Bad Family Drama storyline, she arranged a widescale battle for the rest of us while that player got to duel an Old Nemesis without interference. It was extremely dramatic and rewarding for that player, and the rest of us enjoyed seeing it happen (while still getting to continue our own game.) 

It makes me think about this post re: Griffin’s “railroading” in TAZ. Did he have a story in mind for them to follow? Sure. But he also knew his players, his family members, really well, and built the kind of story that they would instinctively fall in line with, because it was what they wanted to do anyway. He planned for things that they would enjoy, and it shows.

All of this is to say that last night I ran a side adventure about Bug Monsters (TM) in which the players had to do charades to communicate and then rescue a baby grub. I absolutely had combat sheets ready in case my players did decide to raise hell instead of helping out, but I was 95% sure I would never need to roll initiative, because I knew my players would 1) try to talk first, fight later and 2) would want to rescue a baby even if it were a horrible bug monster baby. There was very little doubt about how that would go. Monster battles are fun for them, but charades-and-baby was even better. 

[rottenappleheart]

in the d&d game i play, our dm just opened the session with an npc waking the party from their various hangovers, to announce how happy and honored their community was that we have joined their tribe! forever! and now will not leave the island for the rest of our days!

there followed absolute silence from all the players

and then one player just. lay back down. to continue being hungover.

[rottenappleheart]

In the game I play (vs the ones I DM), a player has just challenged a master sorcerer & leader of the Free World to a DANCE-OFF for the hand(s) of his magically enchanted fiancee, aka her octopus ex-girlfriend.

D&D is a beautiful game.

[rottenappleheart]

last night my dm made us go to the fantasy dmv to register our pirate ship so it wouldn't get towed

"this is the best episode yet," the players said

"if this were a tv show I would make so many gifsets of this scene"

[rottenappleheart]

I’ve played other tabletop games before, but 5e won my heart right away with its beautiful straightforwardness* and focus on the adventure over the process. Which makes me look back at the other crappy systems I’ve put up with over the years and go “… but why.” More on that later**.

Some of this is specifically due to my 5e DM being an absolute gem. I’m learning a lot by watching how she handles the player/character dynamics and the dice rolls, the narrative and the scenes. I want to take a minute to talk about some of my favorite things I’ve seen her do – not specific stories or scenes, but how she put the game together.

Gave the PCs clear reasons to get involved in the adventure from the very start. The ship on which all the PCs had all taken passage, for whatever reasons of our own devising, was attacked by pirates. Surprise! We didn’t have to debate over “Would my character volunteer to go look for the missing children in the goblin mines? Would they want to be paid for it? Are they too much of a coward and will be dragged kicking and screaming into their heroic destiny?” The self-defense angle was beautifully simple.

Turned this into a reason for all the PCs to bond with each other. By the end of the first session, we knew one thing about each other: These were the other people who got tough when the going did. These were the people who had my back. We don’t know much about each other, but we got the most important detail out of the way: we could instinctively work together.

Made the first session very engaging and memorable. Unavoidable encounter with pirates, complete with hostage-taking, net-throwing, rope-swinging, swash-buckling, and comically successful persuasion rolls. None of this “in the first session you found the dungeon, disarmed two traps, and fought a goblin, but you still haven’t found the Plot parts” nonsense. Even if we never played another session, that first exciting, self-contained adventure was brilliant and memorable.

Encouraged the players to do the cool thing they had in mind, but weren’t sure if it would work or was a good idea. She is always encouraging us to describe what we do and how cool it is, rather than just rolling the dice for attack & damage. It goes a long way toward making even a starting-level encounter feel amazing and epic. “Okay, I got a 12… with a plus five… does a 17 hit?” “Yeah, you hit him alright. How are you doing it?” “Oh, I uh… hmm… You know what? I do a fancy spin, kind of dodging out of the way of his last attack, and as I come back around I slash at him with the sword using the momentum of my spin.” “Neat. Roll for damage! [rolling] You lop his head clean off. It bounces across the deck in a gross but impressive fashion. The other pirates recoil in horror.”***

Checked in regularly to know what each of the PCs were doing and how they reacted to situations, even if it wasn’t actively contributing to an encounter. It really helps to visualize a scene and make plans to have a regular check-in like this. It also is helping me, as a player, indirectly get to know the other PCs without specifically role-playing a scene together. It makes the session feel more like a story, and—while I can’t speak for the other players—it makes me feel more confident about making character choices, because I know the DM is paying attention to each of the PCs as personalities and not just collections of statistics. (This is a particular relief, and helped me realize how much it bothered me that a different DM just started ignoring my character unless I spoke up. No, I wasn’t confident and full of ideas at the beginning, but his reaction only made me feel less sure, rather than more daring.)

Gave us fun NPCs to interact and bond with from the very start. We left the first session with four NPCs attached to our team, including two former pirates (remember the comically successful persuasion rolls?) I’m looking forward to rejoining them at the end of our current exploration/dungeon crawl. Our DM is doing a great job using them to model roleplaying for some of the new players, and to reassure us that being silly or dramatic is perfectly okay. The old bard who is accompanying us on the current adventure may or may not continue to be our plus-one in the future, but while he’s here, he makes a great “hint from the DM” excuse about puzzles and solutions—and continues to motivate us toward the intended goal. I’m a little afraid he’s going to die, too, which is good! (Not that he dies, but that I would care.)

Overall, she has been exemplifying the kind of DM I want to be (and helping me see where I’ve misstepped in previous one-shots.) She’s doing such a great job embracing the “yes and/yes but” principle, and I do feel as though she is playing with her players, not against them. 

Not that she didn’t derive obvious and unwholesome glee over the flying electric eels. 

And that, too, was memorable and horrible and I loved it.

* Relatively speaking. There’s still math to do. Just… less than other systems.

** No promises, y’all should know by now I have a short attention span.

*** This exact situation was made up for the sake of this post, but I think something similar did happen. One of our players definitely did Legolas-and-the-oliphaunt her way through a battle and it was fantastic.