Comments on: DM Chronicles, New Player Intro: The legend of the Broken Dice

By: ChattyDM

ChattyDM — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:15:00 +0000

I could not say it better Alex.

Word!

By: Alex Schroeder

Alex Schroeder — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:46:00 +0000

I started three groups in the last twelve months, and noticed a lack of roleplay in all three groups. I think this is natural and PM is quite right when he says that he had no “anchor” – and I don’t think this is something that can be expected. I’ve seen it fail the other way around: Players have ideas in their head, secrets and backstories they want to bring into play, and they just don’t jive with the rest of the party. The problem there was that these anchors were single character anchors. They were not rooted in a group experience. When you’ve played for four or five sessions, you’ve started building a common experience that allows you to define whether you’re humble or proud, nimble or dim. You will have found your anchors by playing. That’s why I like to kick of new campaigns with some generic introductions, dive right in, and let players explore their characters as they play. No homework, no need to come up with a backstory. The present will turn into the backstory of their future selves!

By: Yan

Yan — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:48:00 +0000

Did you bought new set of dice for the campaign?

That might be the cause for the bad roll… LOL!

By: ChattyDM

ChattyDM — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:08:00 +0000

Thanks guys, it means a lot to me that you enjoyed it.

The RP element is usually something that develops later, if it ever really does.

Talking in-character and immersing yourself in another persona takes time and a certain level of inter-personnal comfort, especially for non-extroverted.

As PM points out, imposed pre-generated characters is usually an extra obstacle to RP-ing.

Add to the fact that by the time we went 'into the story' we were partially spent from 2 hours of fighting.

But hey, I'm really glad you liked it!

By: PM

PM — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 13:41:00 +0000

This first introduction to AD&D was a lot of fun even if our dice rolls suffered in successes.

I really liked the description of the disctracted goblins licking the blood off their dogslicers.

The roleplaying part was a bit like I feared… It was a little hard because I felt like I was in over my head. Not that we were put in difficult situations (we were the local heroes after all) but I didn’t have an anchor to help me react to the other characters. Maybe that’s a common problem with pre-generated characters? Am I looking for fame or am I a humble woman of the cloth? Or maybe I’m a bon vivant who likes to play tricks on party members while hiding behind a religious facade so they don’t suspect me.(I could very well be I think…)

By: Kem CPU

Kem CPU — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 13:26:00 +0000

Dont be too hard on yourself, dear DM. It was a very good session and i had a lot of fun. Maybe, with only one veteran in our group of players with 2 “newby” and a VERY rusty player, the RP aspect wasnt much exploited; i feel we needed a bit of action at first to really get involved in the story and, my goodness!, did we got some! Those dice rolls were killers for poor pretty lvls 1 as ourself! (note to self: never again accept and play with dice offered graciously by the DM. You can be sure that he cursed em!)

You can count on me to pursue our adventure at Pathfinder… you did a great job to introduce us to the game and i really enjoyed it. With time we will become more confortable with our characters and the RP will become more natural…

And there is that McWoD thing…. cant wait to play alongside our beloved chatty DM