New Campaign - New DM System

Introducing the toddler to the joys of dice.

Last November I started up a new D&D campaign with an almost entirely new group after the old familiar cocktail of schedule conflicts, long drive distances, and unresponded emails caused my previous game to unravel. The new group is smaller (just four players), and includes my wife, and three friends I made through grad school. Though I really loved my previous long-running group, it's really neat to explore a new dynamic with new players.

Our November session was also the first time that I played with a fully armed and operational toddler station running around our house. What's more, our particular toddler is incredibly fascinated by anything and everything electronic... and remember how he's fully armed? well those arms can now reach the top of the dining room table where we play. As such, I had to adjust my DMing a bit on the fly during the last game by putting away the Surface tablet mid session and switching to scratch paper and note cards.

Over the holiday break, I did some thinking about how to adjust my DM toolkit to better deter toddler interference. I'm currently prepping for our second session happening this weekend, and thought now would be a good time to share some of the adjustments I made.

The short of it is that I am switching to a digital/analog hybrid.

I am keeping Microsoft OneNote as my main record-keeping system. I contemplated switching back to an old-school quad-rule notebook, but I just like OneNote's search and reorganizational capabilities too much. However, I am ditching the Surface as a game table interface. The kid was just too drawn to it, and besides, we still have our 1st gen RT. It's upgraded 8.1 operating system takes up nearly the entire hard drive, though I shifted pretty much the entire file storage system onto a sim card, It still gets really bogged down the longer its on and becomes nigh unusable really fast.

Instead, I plan to shift to printed copies of my OneNote pages at the table. This worked really well for me during a one-off I ran for some of my previous players last summer. It just means that I need to remember to print the sheets.

In addition to the printed OneNote pages for encounters, I am going to try out 3x5 cards for my NPCs, and I did pick up a quad rule Moleskine for rough planning notes and adventure mapping.

I suspect the biggest change the notecards and printed pages will have on my style is to force me toward brevity... and therefore wit, right?

Colored Note Cards! Spirit of the Century!

I am gearing up for my very first session running Spirit of the Century this coming Monday, and as I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, I have decided to try running the game entirely from 3 x 5 note cards. Why the break from my usual OneNote/MS Surface system? I figured that note cards would force me to be brief in my prep and descriptions, which is very much in line with the improv-optimized FATE system on which SoTC is based.

I have worked out the particulars of my card system and discovered that I have inadvertently stumbled on yet another conversion of Johnn Four's five-buckets of sanity system. I picked up some multi-colored cards from Staples because office supply stores are my second Kryptonite after game stores. But, BUT!!! After picking up the cards, I realized there were five colors, like the five buckets. What's more, I figured out that I could have the name of the colors correspond with the type of things that are on the cards! So, in my Spirit of the Century game, my cards will be organized as follows:

• Blue for Baddies and Buddies (NPCs)
• Emerald for Events
• Purple for Places
• Gold for Goodies and Gear
• Red for Rules and other Random things

I also created a FATE dice converter (white note card) to make it easier for my players and I to use regular dice during the game. (FATE dice have two blank sides, two with + on them and two with - on them. It's weird, I know.

I'm both excited and nervous for the first session, because everyone in our group is brand new to the system, including myself. I've been reading through the book during my lunch breaks at work, but I've only really had time to hop around between key parts. I am really excited however for the first adventure I have in mind. The story will begin in Seattle on Valentine's Day in 1924. The adventure title is: Icy Hearts Aflame!

Our final player, who was absent during the character creation session has also worked up his general character concept and is in the process of ironing out the details. I think his character has a lot of potential to create some really interesting dynamics within the group. He is...

Captain Flint Ironstag of the Royal Flying Corps, daredevil test pilot and youngest person to earn his wings during WWI. An orphan raised in a strict boarding school, he learned to watch his six from an early age. He enlisted in the RFC when the war broke out, where he earned a rep as a formiddable pilot, and a heck of a nice guy!

We'll see how that goes over with the hard-as-nails businesswoman, the man-eating diva and  the cute, but socially oblivious greasemonkey.

I'm considering including short story write-ups of the story that unfolds adventure 'zine style here on the blog. So keep an eye out. This is gonna be epic!