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?

Make-it Monday: Character Organization in OneNote

This past week, I spent a lot of my spare time working to clean up my campaign OneNote. I started with the character section and plugged away until I had all of my non-player characters compiled into a relatively consistent format that at least lends the appearance of organization. Then, to celebrate, I made this nifty video where I show you exactly how I keep my characters organized! Hopefully this video will help spark some ideas in my fellow gamemasters for ways to better keep track of your cast of characters without getting totally bogged down in pages of crunch and/or description.

This is the second GM video I have made, and I have hit a couple stumbling blocks that make this particular type of video a bit frustrating to produce. First, my webcam software really does not like to play well with Adobe Premiere, which is my editor of choice. This means that I have to compile and edit any video that shows my face using the much more clunky Windows Movie Maker. Second, it took me several takes to pull this clip together without sounding like a complete stuttering buffoon, and even then I feel like I miss important points or spend to much time on boring stuff. Nevertheless, I want to be good at making videos, and I realize that the only way to get better is to practice!

Anyway, hopefully you enjoy the video, and if there is something else that you would like me to explain or demonstrate in a video format, let me know!

Between Campaigns: Planning and Re-Organization

Now that the wedding craziness has passed, I find myself slowly shifting back into D&D mode. I am currently in what I suspect is a rather rare situation: having successfully completed one campaign and gearing up to start another with (mostly) the same characters in the same world.

I am trying to use this intermission time to get my game notes in order so I can approach the next chapter with a better system of organization. This is not to say that I am changing my current system, just that I have not had a chance to fully implement it. Well, now I'm implementin'! and holy carp is it tedious to do so!

I've been trying to break my tasks into manageable chunks. The first step being to get the character records in my OneNote into a consistent format. Even this is proving daunting as I would often pull in stock descriptions from the 3.5 SRD website to avoid having to pull out a monster manual in the middle of a game, but when I had some time on my hands or was creating an NPC from scratch, I would use my own custom mini-stat template. If I was making a group of allies or baddies, I would often just shorthand a single block and then indicate a couple key stats to tweak up or down when rolling for the group's leader or other unique characters. Well, now that I am faced with getting my DM house in order, I look at this mix of desperate time-saving measures and I want to scream.

I'm sure I could move forward just fine without cleaning up my mess, but knowing that its there really bugs me. I also know that once we get wrapped up in the next campaign that I will never get around to cleaning up this pile, so I need to do it now, or not at all.

While I'm busy on my own trying to get my notes organized, my players and I are also starting to plan out some intermission sessions. These will be less formal get togethers to discuss things like how to incorporate any character swaps, what improvements to make to the party's base of operations and to go shopping with all of their reward money from saving the world.

Have you ever had to get organized between games, or even other creative projects? How do you handle it? Is it worth it?

Make-it Monday: OneNote Organization and 1st Vlog!

Howdy all, for this week's Make-it Monday, I thought I would give you all a sneak peek into my D&D campaign OneNote, and specifically, into how I have been reorganizing it according to Johnn Four's buckets of sanity method.

Don't mess with a guy's bukkits of sanity!

Oh, and to help it make sense, I made my first ever vlog! What!? You can see me and hear me talk! Also, yes, I know I pronounce it vee-log... trolololol!

Let me know if you like the video, and I will consider incorporating more stuff like this into my regular blog. I certainly wont use video for everything, but it's certainly handy when trying to demonstrate how something is made or done... like with movement and stuff.

[Update]
After uploading the video to YouTube, I experienced something I don't feel that often, complete and utter dread. I was fine when making the video. I got a little nervous while trying to edit it, but once it was posted, my brain started screaming at me, "WHAT IN THE NINE HELLS ARE YOU DOING, GEOFF!?" and it kept shouting that all night. I woke up around 3:30 this morning, and gave up trying to get back to sleep a little after 5.

It's seems weird that this project is having such an effect on me. I'm not normally this self conscious about putting my self out there. I've done a lot of stage acting in my life, heck, my undergraduate degree is in theater! I regularly go to karaoke. Heck, I've even been on television and radio for work... multiple times! Some of it live! For some reason, none of those things were as scary as this.

Perhaps, it's because this video was entirely my own idea. Perhaps it is because I am dipping my first toe into a creative medium (web video) that I have been admiring for the past several years, but only now got up the courage to ask out. Perhaps it is the rumors of trolls lurking in the untamed jungle of the internet that have me glancing over my shoulder, thinking, "I should go back."

I think it is all of the above, plus the mutterings of my own inner critic, who is grumpy that I am not a master of the medium right out of the gate. I am a n00b, when it comes to web videos. I utterly flail about when it comes to lighting, editing and structure. I need to acknowledge that, and be okay with it for now. This experience really deepens my respect for the people who willingly put themselves out there in this way.

[/Update]

So, like all good nerds everywhere, the Fiancee and I have been watching Game of Thrones. While we have both read the books, the couple that we watch with every week have not. I have to say that watching their reaction at the end of this week's episode was worth all the jackassery that George R.R. Martin has put me through thus far. Now finish the damn series, George!

During last night's episode:
Game of Thrones viewers on the outside,
someone who has read the books, center.

I'm running a character-building session for Spirit of the Century tonight. Keep an eye out for updates on that new and exciting campaign later this week!

Make-it Monday: Adventure Log

This week's Make-it Monday project wasn't so much making something new as greatly reorganizing something my players have had for a while. The Fiancee and I spent the weekend down in Portland celebrating a friend's graduation from college. We both wound up completely exhausted, and I just didn't have the energy to finish my initial Make-it plan... so, I went with a less-rigorous plan-B.

Months, even years ago, I provided my players with a binder, called the Adventure Log, which they could use to take notes, store handouts, and generally track anything they did not want to forget about the game. It is the players' counterpart to the GM's notes. Well, the binder grew to include some handouts stuffed haphazardly inside, along with a quad-ruled tablet of hand-sketched maps, another legal pad tracking their loots and the stuff in their bag of holding, and various random scraps of paper crammed into the front and back pockets. Everytime you picked the thing up, something would fall out.

I decided it was long past time to tidy up the players' Adventure Log. So, I added labeled dividers with sections for the details on their base of operations, storing provided and self-drawn maps, handouts, and for tracking stuff in the bag of holding. I got rid of the separate notepads and slipped blank, loose-leaf paper into the binder to replace them. I even added a pouch at the front that holds cards with descriptions of the group's favorite buffs and persistent area-of-effect spells.

Learning to Crawl

My regular D&D group got back to business last night after our usual two-week break, and the party finally dealt with the second namesake of the game. In over two years of play, they had been through many dungeons, but finally killed their first dragon. He was a particularly vain blue, who fancied himself an artiste and who had appropriately made his lair in the ruins of an ancient elven museum. He had littered the halls with art of his own creation, mostly sculptures made from body parts and bits of armor he found in the ruins, or took off the victims of his raiding.

But I digress...

I had a couple takeaways from the experience of running this last adventure:

I really like running a game from a notebook as opposed to a computer.
I feel that my note-taking during the game is greatly improved, and it forces me to be succinct in my pre-game prep. However, I am definitely not yet proficient with the low-tech approach, especially during combat encounters. I need to come up with a note format that is easier to scan in the frenetic environment of battle -As a DM, I need to be simultaneously thinking about the monsters’ next move, while responding to and recording hits made by the PCs and noting things like buffing spells that they cast during their turns. Having to take more than a second to check a monster’s Armor Class, or Save modifiers can really break up the flow of combat. I often come out of such encounters feeling like I just ran a mental marathon.

To that end, I think I will restructure the mini-stat blocks I have created, and possibly make use of highlighters. So that only the MOST important stats are included in the quick scan block, with supplemental stuff off to the side. I am also working out a shorthand notation for tracking player moves. I started listing the initials for each character in the notebook to quickly record each move. To add to that, I’m working out a bit of code for recording specific actions (e.g. “FAM v D 24” would mean Full-Attack, Melee vs. Dragon 24hp of damage)

When I actually remembered to make these notes, I found it very helpful for keeping track of what was going on... when I actually remembered.


I really don’t like dungeon crawls.
A dungeon crawl is a classic staple of D&D adventuring. It is typically characterized as a room-to-room exploration of some sort of monster/bad-guy infested complex. Maybe its me, maybe its the way that my group plays, but every time my players enter a “dungeon” it feels like the pace of my game drags to a halt. Take this last adventure. The ruined elven museum had only 5 locations of real interest: The main hall, full of animals trapped in stasis fields, the dragon’s lair in a large auditorium, the arcane library which served as a refuge, a planar observatory where the dragon’s minions hung out, and an abandoned alchemy lab. Each of these locations was basically a single room, but it probably took us 5 or more sessions to get through them all.

That’s pretty much par for the course with my group when it comes to dungeons. The last time we ran through a really major dungeon, a couple of my players expressed that they felt bored and ended up switching their characters. This time, I worked hard to vary the types of events that took place, and I was getting positive feedback from my players (especially about the HUGE payoff they got last night) but I was constantly nagged by an inner voice saying “pick up the pace!” This was further enhanced last night when one of my players mentioned his suspicion that another member of the group was growing bored again.

Hearing that your players feel bored is one of the worst things a DM can hear... but it’s better to know about it than not.


Many of the storytelling mistakes I made early in this campaign (it was my first time running a game) are now feeling like stumbling blocks two years later. 

If I could go back, I would have changed the following:

1. Narrow the focus: I know I was going for epic, but two years of play towards a mission set near the beginning, with lots of meandering tends to bog stuff down.
2. Tease with the villain: Many of the DM blogs I read suggest bringing in a clear uber-antagonist early on (act I) who is too powerful for the players to confront immediately -think Darth Vader attacking Princess Leia’s ship. This provides the group with a sense of the challenge they face, and causes the rest of the story to feel like an mountain climb rather than a walk down the street. I made the mistake of keeping things super mysterious... which really turned to muddy.
3. Have the players provide key elements for their characters at the beginning, such as their softspot (candy, unicorns, boys) a character flaw (perfectionist, jealous, impulsive) the name of an ally and and enemy from their past. These would help me better tie the adventure to the characters’ motivations.

Wow... this is kind of a self-flagellating post!

Speaking of D&D-related flagellation, have you seen the most recent Penny Arcade?

N is for Notebook

First off, I know I am a couple days behind on my A to Z posts. This past weekend I got distracted by a major gardening project that resulted in the creation of three raised beds for a new vegetable garden, some bruised knuckles and pleasantly sore shoulders... I promise I'll get my priorities straight in the future.

Moving on!

I tend to be a bit of a technophile, and if presented with a way to accomplish a task via some sort of spinny, flashy automated, electronically-mediated interface, I will usually latch on immediately.

Managing my game notes is no exception. As I mentioned last month, I have been through a myriad of computerized game-management systems, flitting from one to the next like some sort of horrifying digital bee in search of sustenance. Well, I have found that, contrary to the logic of my highly advanced late-20th Century brain, when it comes to table-top gaming, low-tech solutions often work much better than the shinier hi-tech options.

About a month ago, I decided to switch my game management methods out of the digital realm. I picked up a quad-ruled notebook and have been running my games out of it since. Here are some of my impressions from my first month of running my game from a notebook.

Pros: 

• My players have mentioned that I feel more present at the game table without a laptop acting as a barrier between us.
• Hand-writing my notes provides a kinesthetic experience, which has always helped me to better commit things to memory... ergo, I am less reliant on actually looking at my notebook during the game.
• Because it takes longer to hand-write notes, I am encouraged to stick to the necessities, bullet-pointing lists vs. written out descriptions.
• During the game, it is actually quicker to jot down bad guys' hitpoints and other game related notes without having to worry about being in the correct OneNote or Excel window.

Cons:

• In order to keep my notebook organized, I often find myself conducting my early planning in a digital medium anyway before transcribing it to my notebook. If I tried to work through every bout of writer's block in the notebook itself, I would likely burn through a book a month. As a result, I sometimes feel like I am doing twice the work.
• Complex characters like ongoing NPCs (Non-player characters) or BBEGs (Big Bad End Guys) are still quicker to create digitally. Now, I just print their stat sheets out instead of keeping them on my computer.
• Loot lists and XP are likewise better tracked in Excel. Because of this, and to facilitate music at the table, I still keep my laptop within arms' reach... but not directly in front of me.

Major Workaround:
In addition to the NPC and loot workarounds mentioned above, I have also developed a sort of low-tech method for dealing with mass combat that works really well.

Back when I used my laptop at the table, I utilized Wizards of the Coast's online dice roller to resolve NPC rolls. Because my group consists of seven players, I often find myself forced to throw large numbers of baddies against them in order to give them an actual challenge. The dice roller helped me to resolve those rolls more quickly.

When I went low-tech, I implemented a workaround that has worked brilliantly. When planning my first low-tech session, I opened up the dice roller and rolled 1000d20. I then took the results of each of the thousand dice rolls, which were listed in the results window, and copied them into a Word doc. I then printed the document giving me a sheet with 1000 randomly generated results of a 20-sided die roll. Now when I begin a mass combat encounter, I roll a single d20, count that many spaces into my list, and use that as the starting point for any corresponding "rolls" crossing them off as the session progresses. I find this system works faster than rolling on the dice roller, or even rolling just a few actual d20s.

Okay, now that I have touted the glories of low-tech gaming, my next post will focus on the high-tech bit of gaming narcissism that is "O" for Obsidian Portal!