of Dice and Dragons

How many times as a GM has something like this happened during one of your gaming sessions:

GM - Okay everyone roll your search check
Player 1 - A two, guess I don’t find anything
Player 2 - Alright! A five guess I’m in the same boat.
Player 3 - Can you critically miss a search check?

So what do you do now? The players know they missed the check and you’ve got a piece of critical information they need. In most cases the players are asked to roll again and they keep rolling until they make it, you write off the item and try to adjust later or you give them the piece of information anyway typically resulting in “Why did we roll in the first place?”

I’m as guilty of this as just about everyone else is so I thought I would pass along this piece of wisdom - don’t touch those dice!

When you’re presented with a situation when you need the party to find something just pass along the information to the most logical individual. The character searching in the area or maybe the one with the highest ranking in the skill. You can decide but don’t roll it as it’s a needed piece of information.

You could also do this in any situation where the chances of the group’s failure is very small or non-existant. An example of this is when you have a powerful group of characters who come up against a modest number of opponents which pose no real threat, just describe the combat/outcome and move on - save the dice rolling for the critcal events and encounters.

At one time or another just about everyone who has ever played a fantasy role-playing game has played a spell caster. In most cases you need to track what spells your character knows and what spell they still have memorized. The first one is fairly easy as you can create a simple list but for keeping your memorized spells straight using sticky notes is a great method.

When your character goes to memorize spells for the day write each spell on a sticky note. You can then take the sticky note and place it on the table, the front of your player’s guide or another convient location. As your character uses a spell move the sticky note - place it inside your book, on the back side of your character sheet or create a small pile in front of you by placing one on top of the other.

Now with a quick look you’ll be able to see what spells you still have available and the sticky notes can be reused through out the session and possible even for more than one session.

If your character has spells associated with more than one class (such as Cleric and Wizard in Dungeons & Dragons) you can use a different color for each class making it easy to distinguish between the two.

Do you use sticky notes during your gaming sessions? Why not post and share?

In a number of role-playing groups little to no attention is ever payed to the character’s family. Do they have any brothers or sisters? Are mom and dad still alive? What about grandparents? Aunts and Uncles? Are any of the characters married with or without kids?

Since little is usually done in this area it is a great item to use to not only bring about a role-playing encounter but it can also be used to add depth to your campaign and storyline. Have the party encounter someone that looks similar to someone in the party or comes from the same area of the world and have one of those “Ah-Ha!” moments where the NPC points to the character and say something similar to, “I thought I recognized you. Don’t remember me do you? I’m your uncle Baelin, your mother’s younger brother. I haven’t seen you since your father tossed me out of his house.”

You get the idea, put a tie to the character but have a plausible reason that the player and character wouldn’t remember them. Once you’ve introduced the NPC there are a number of things that they can be used for.

- Backstory. Want to fill in some information gaps about the world your campaign is set in? Here’s your opportunity as this relative was recently traveling there.
- Adventure hooks. This relative has been cursed and it can only be lifted by another member of the family, “Boy am I glad I ran into you!”
- Resource drain. Does the PC have more money than they know what to do with? A long lost cousin who has a number of outstanding gambling debts may be just the help you need to “relieve” the PC of that extra cash.

You could also combine this with The Ghost encounter idea I posted a couple of weeks ago. The ghost they run into is a long lost relative in need of the assistance of a blood realtive and the PC is the only one they have found still alive.

Got an idea that could be used with the long lost relative? Feel free to post it!

Be sure to check out these additional encounter ideas