of Dice and Dragons

In my last posting Realms of Rylon Post-Mortem - The Good I covered those things that I thought went well or were well received by the players in my campaign. This time around I’m going to focus on those things that went bad. These are the things that with a few minor tweaks along the way would have been in “the good” category but just missed the boat.

As I wrote this I noticed a pattern, many of the items I listed as “good” also came up as “bad.” I realize that for a lot of folks this would seem a bit strange but on reflection it seemed logical. The Realms of Rylon had a five year run, saw many character changes, player departures and returns, new players added, scheduling issues and a few additions to the extended family (some of us had kids) so what started out well and with good intentions over time slipped down a few notches and ended up here.

1. Newsletter

While I did list this among those items that were “good” I also have to list it here as well. Despite the fact that it was well received and provided a lot of valuable information it became difficult to maintain a consistent schedule of publishing for a variety of reasons. Here’s another spot where a really good lesson can be learned - keep it simple! My newsletter included among other things a full listing of NPCs the party had met, not too difficult to maintain early on but as the list approached 100 it started to become a bit too much. The listing only had the NPC’s name and a brief tidbit about them but as the plot lines unfolded the list became inaccurate and less useful and I eventually removed it, a blessing because I didn’t have to maintain it but a curse as I still needed that information and it wasn’t all in one place anymore.

The other major item that contributed to the newsletter being placed here was the time factor. The newsletter only took an hour or two to compile and put out which in the grand scheme of things is pretty small, but when you factor in that I was working for a high-tech startup and in the process of become a father to a set of twins finding that hour or two does become a challenge so there were some weeks (or longer) where the newsletter just wasn’t published.

Lesson learned - keep it short, simple and easy to publish.

2. Plot lines

This is another item that I listed as “good” but it also has to be included in “the bad.” Why, you may ask? The answer is relatively simple, there were too many.

I started off with a basic plot line and then began to add, and add, and add. There were multiple plot lines for each character, red herrings, ideas that sounded good at the time, NPC plot lines, and the grand daddy of them all, I dropped a war in as a backdrop. The more plot lines I added the greater the depth of the campaign but it also meant the amount of work on my part and the players’ part went up as we tried to keep all of it in check and on track.

The result of all the extra plot lines was a campaign that became stagnant and at times lost focus. We had some really good plot lines run their course but also had many that were introduced and after a session or two got lost in the shuffle, never to be heard from again. The bigger issue was that with all these plot lines the main storyline, the driver for the campaign, became stagnant which ultimately contributed to the downfall of the campaign.

Lessons learned - keep the number of plot lines down and keep them moving.

3. Notes

This is the last item I’ll mention that falls into both the “good” and “bad” column. I think just about every GM out there knows the value of taking and keeping notes about your gaming sessions and I started off well but over the course of time I didn’t do as well. Initially I started out following the three part system I wrote about in my posting, A Guide to Session Notes. I had detailed pre-session notes typed up and available to me during the game complete with plot hooks, NPC and creature stats, trap and treasure information. My in-session notes had all the usual combat related items (opponents, round by round checkoffs, hit point tracking, etc.), results of interactions with the various NPCs, plot hooks picked up and any plot ideas that were generated out of the session - players are great for helping generate ideas if you listen to them. After each session I tried to get a read on the session from the players, note what items I hadn’t used yet that could be used later and the repercussions if any of the characters actions.

As I said above, things started out well but over time my session note taking dropped off. There were sessions where the extent of my notes was a comment about the monsters met and the round tracking - that doesn’t leave a lot to work from in the future and certainly contributed to the challenges with the campaign newsletter. In others there was little to no movement on plot lines so nothing was noted and in still other sessions I just didn’t put the effort in. I also started to rely heavily on my memory as opposed to writing things down as I was always thinking about the campaign - fine when you’re playing 3-4 weeks a month, not so good when you take 1-2 months off.

Looking back on things now I think a fair amount of the issue was actually GM-burnout. I liked the campaign, I liked running it, I liked the way the characters were developing but I think “the grind” of being the GM was wearing on me. I’m sure many of you can relate to the issue, the more something seems to drag on you the less enthustiastic you become about doing it. I’ll leave this topic alone for now and save it for a future post.

4. Improvisation

This one may seem a bit strange to see here as I think most would think that being able to improvise is a good thing, and I would agree with you, until you start to improvise and rolayly mess things up.

I’m sure some of players are reading this and I’m sure they will remember the encounters towards the end of the campaign. There were a number of them that were just too lopsided for the group to handle and I had to fudge some things, call off an attack or have an NPC save the day - none are good for the players and was a result of my running things off the cuff. A number of these encounters were to satisfy the group’s desire for combat but were poorly planned (easy to do in a low magic campaign) which is no one’s fault but my own and I hope to avoid this pitfall in the future.

The other major issue that I had with improvisation at the table was that I had a tendency to introduce things early without the necessary prep, or in my opinion even worse, before the characters were ready for it. The war for example was introduced a lot earlier than I had originally intended. As we were gaming things were going along well but had started slowing down so I decided to spice things up by introducing the war element - it was a good plot line to introduce and was well received but created logistic issues and impacted other plot line far more than I had intended.

The result was a campaign that became more than I could effectively manage and keep track of. The result was more improvisation sessions as I just couldn’t keep up - another sign I was burning out but didn’t see it.

Lesson - improvisation is a good thing, as long as you keep it in check and don’t go overboard.

I think that covers the major points I wanted to bring up, I’m sure there are others but these are the ones that stick out in my mind. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post most of these were originally items that were well received but over the course of time fell short; a classic example of starting out with good intentions. The main take away here is to pay attention to how things are going and how the GM is doing because as you can see, when GM-burnout starts to set in things start to slip.

That’s all for now, next up - The Relams of Rylon Port-Mortem - The Ugly.

May your dice roll well.

Be sure to check out the rest of the series:
Realms of Rylon - The Postmortem
Realms of Rylon Postmortem - The Good
Realms of Rylon Postmortem - The Ugly

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Seems I have a bit of an issue with links on the site at the moment. All the content is there but if you try to access something directly (like trying to go to page two of the blog) you get a 404 File not found error.

Wanted to pass along I am aware of the issue and will hopefully have it resolved soon.

Scot

Update - I upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress and now everything seems to be back on track. Please let me know if you come across anything that looks or acts more unusual than normal.

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For those of you that use Twitter you can now get a “tweet” when a new posting goes up here. Just follow me: http://twitter.com/scot_newbury and when a new post goes up you’ll be notified.

I’m still going to have the RSS feed and email updates so if you prefer those methods of notification they’ll still be there, I just want to give as many options to folks as possible.

Now, I’m going to try and enjoy some of this great weather we’re having here in New England.

May your dice roll well.

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My apologies for being a bit late to this party but congrats to the Chatty DM, Philippe-Antoine Ménard on reaching his 300th post - I wish you many more to come.

I have to admit seeing others blogging about gaming and hitting their milestones, whether it be a certain number of posts, RSS readers or traffic level, really makes me feel like I’ve been slacking off a bit - okay, not really slacking, neglecting the blog is probably a bit more accurate. I could make a lot of excuses about it but I won’t. The simple fact is that my available time to work blog posts fluctuates radically month to month due to job deadlines and family functions - hopefully the next month will be a bit more productive on the blog front.

Once again congrats to Chatty.

May your dice roll well.

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After reading through the alpha release put out by Paizo for their Pathfinder RPG I have to say I’m more than a little exicited about the possibilities it holds.

The document itself is more about mechanics and where they are deviating from the SRD and OGL which is fine since it is designed to work with those documents and not be replacement for them. It also only covers the four “core” classes - Cleric, Figher, Rogue and Wizard - the remainder will be covered in future alpha releases along with some of the other modifications they’re making.

On the whole I like the graphics and layout as they match up with what we’ve come to expect for publications in this genre of gaming. The designer notes that are included are a nice touch and tie back to the open nature of the design process that Paizo is taking - they want those that are playing the game to have input and in my experience the best way to get quality feedback is to share the whys behind something.

As for the mechanics and game play - only time will tell and I’m hoping to run at least a few session under the alpha version with my group - I like a lot of what they’ve done. I’m not going to go into every detail (that’s what their rulebook is for) but I will share a few of the things I do like.

First, the slight changes to the races. In a departure from “the norm” they’ve opted to give both half-elves and humans a small bump (+2) on a single attribute, not much in the grand scheme of things but does allow you a bit of customization that wasn’t there before. Human can also now pick a favored class, which grants a +1 to hit points for every level taken in that class - the same benefit gained by the other races when achieving levels in their favored classes.

Second, I really like the changes to the skill system. Gone are skill points and the apparently redundant skills and it’s been replaced with a simpler system which uses the character’s level as part of the modifiers. Also in this system you select a number of skills at character creation and as you go up in level you add skills - no points to figure out just add the skill to your list and move on.

The four classes they included also had some additions. Now you get to add a new feat at every level odd level and a new skill at every even level so there’s always something new to look forward to. They’ve done away with bonus spells for specialist schools (wizards) and domains (clerics) and replaced them with powers that are granted at various levels and both the fighter and rogue now gain abilities at every level.

On the whole the mechanics are designed to streamline what is already available in D&D 3.5 and I would say based on the read they’ve done just that. They’ve also taken the time to write up methods for designing encounters which in my opinion are much easier to follow and look to scale better than what we currently have as well as how to convert from SRD to Pathfinder so you can bring over your favorite PC, NPC or creature.

So now for those of us that play D&D we have three choices when it comes to staying with the system, stay with 3.5, move up to 4.0 or move over to Pathfinder which I think is a really good option at this point and would recommend that if your group is looking to move off 3.5 that you give it a look.

Have you read the Pathfinder Alpha 1 release? If so I would really like to get your thoughts on it.

May your dice roll well.

Other takes on Paizo sticking with 3.5 can be found at Critical Hits and Musings of the Chatty DM

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