(After writing part 1, I realized that I got the order of how each of the four plots were introduced wrong.  Instead of correcting it, I’ll adjust the tale accordingly. Let’s just assume that the PCs convinced the Drow to give them a few hours’ respite).

When the PCs, standing on one of the City’s upper terraces, saw that an Adamantine Dragon was eating everything it could get its claws upon, they started thinking they were in way too deep.

However, when I mentioned that the Dragon seemed to be very careful not to eat or hurt anyone,  going as far as removing inhabitants from a house before eating it all, the PCs relaxed and gathered for a little Pow-Wow.

Romero rears his head

As the PCs were discussing how to deal with the current problems I decided to drop the final bomb on the group.  While the players were chatting excitedly, I reached over to Franky and I pulled on his sleeve repeatedly.

When he looked at me, I mimed wiping a runny nose…

Snotty Kid: ” Mister Shaman Sir?  My poppa tole me to come an find you. (SNORT)  He says that some Advenchewrors died at da Inn last night and now they be walkin’ all over da place!’”

Franky (recoiling from me with horror): No, No, No, you have GOT to be kidding me Phil! ZOMBIES?

‘fraid so dear Franky…

Seeing that the dragon wasn’t killing anyone yet the PCs followed the kid to the Inn and got confirmation that it was overrun by Zombies!   They called in the city’s militia and had the Inn surrounded, strongly suggesting that the soldiers not let anything leave the Inn under any pretenses.  Dworkin (Franky’s dwarven Shaman) also had the snotty kid be placed under tight surveillance, convinced that he was the source of the Zombie plague.

How to fast talk a Dragon and blow the DM’s socks off.

The party then returned to the dragon to see if it could be reasoned with.  It was obviously ravenous and seemed to be looking for something that would appease its unnatural hunger.  I informed that players that getting the Dragon to acknowledge the PCs as a credible source of  help would require a Skill Challenge (5 successes, 3 failures) based on the Diplomacy, Nature, Arcana and Bluff skills.

What followed was a beautiful example of team play where players with low skill bonuses used ‘aid another’ so that skills would have maximum bonuses.  However that wasn’t just dice rolling.  If a player had a hard time coming up with a description of how his PC used his knowledge, other players (and myself) would suggest examples. Some were so cool that they garnered hefty bonuses.

It made for such a great narrative. Some PCs recalled reading an old legend about a draconic champion of Bahamut who was as proud as it was hungry for riches and glory.   The legend said that Kord chastised that dragon to eternal hunger until it found, somewhere in the City Within, the one thing that would satisfy it.  It slept, buried deep, for 200 years and woke up whenever the Nexus departed.

The PCs then tried to convince Carilyx (the dragon) that the curse was likely a parable and that to break it the dragon likely had to perform some sort of act that Kord would approve of.  Then Corwin sealed the deal by saying:

“In FACT I’m 100% sure that what you need to do is fight the enemies of the city in it’s hour of need!  Just stop eating for some time and we’ll give you some juicy enemies!”

All this, the players made up as they were going along.  I looked at my notes for what I had written as likely solution to deal with the dragon and then promptly chucked it away.  My player’s solution was so much cooler!

At this point I said something about not having had one fight yet, to which Math responded “We don’t need one, this is too much fun!”

What more can a DM ask for?

Carilyx accepted to wait for up to 3 days before it would start eating again (the skill challenge called for 3 days, minus 1 per failures).

Ah the sweet stench of knowledge!

With still some time on the clock before dealing with the Drow, the PCs came back to the lava problem.  It was apparent that they had to find the 5 original souls that would need to sacrifice themselves.  Jaiel (Deva Avenger) was one of them so she went out to seek the other 4 Devas that were the City’s sworn defendant.  I told them that he could easily find 2 of them.  He was also preety sure that a third one could be found in University burg.

Jaiel went there to look for the 3rd Deva but was shocked to see the whole place overruned with Zombies!!!  She promptly turned back.

Mwa Ha Ha Ha!

Drow Faceoff!

As the PCs were getting ready to face the Drow, I told Rocco (halfling Rogue) that he had learned some interesting facts about the Drow while getting ready to move his career from the surface to the underworld.  Before the event that destroyed the world so many centuries ago, the Drow were a force to be reckoned with.  But after their patron goddess failed to capture this world, her interest in it vanished and the Drow were left to fend for themselves.  All Drow cities were destroyed or were abandonned and the few remaining Dark Elves were usually nothing more than Mercenaries or Hustlers.

When I was done explaining that, all my players decided to go and confront the Drow as a bunch of frauds out to steal from the city’s overly gullible gouvernment.  Seeing their bluff being called, the drow gambled on killing the PCs.

A fight was finally at hand, but I had only one hour for it as I had a teeneaged babysitter at home.

The fight was hard, the Drow were all a few levels higher than the PCs. The details are fuzzy but I recall dropping one PCs into negatives .  By the end of the hour, most drow were either KOed or Bloodied, that’s when I called that they all surrendered.

And that’s when the players realized…

“Huh, guys?  What will the Dragon fight now that we’ve dispatched the drow?”

Priceless.

This such an awesome game!

Lessons Learned

• The 5X5 Formula of interweaving plots worked wonderfully.
• While I worried that I PCs would not have to make significant choices, I was wrong as players made choices and took some decisions that sent the adventure in places I didn’t foresee.
• I need to give better descriptions of key NPCs when major scenes with them happen.
• Part of what slows 4e is players looking at power cards and trying to find the best move. There’s not much we can do about that except keeping gentle pressure to keep things moving and ask players to prepare turns in advance.

Post Mortem

After the game I got a fairly detailled written feedback post from one of my players.  One point bears mentionning here.  The player told me that he had the feeling that the Leadership of the city was seriously lacking.  He had the feeling that the City Council was not a credible gouvernment and that should the PCs leave, he was sure that the whole place would topple like a house of cards.  He mentionned that while the Dungeon had a clear plan, the City didn’t.

He is entirely right.  In trying to make the PCs feel like badass heroes, I underplayed the role of City leaders.  My friend would have an easier time immerssing himself in the game if there was a circle of competant leaders that supported the PCs in whatever mission was at hand.

I noted his feedback and will try to work this into the main storyline when we return to it in August.

Since late May a panel of 6 judges: Chgowiz, Dave: the Game, Sham, Amityville Mike, Alex Schroeder and myself have slogged through 112 entries and we’ve finally arrived with the final results.

If you are curious about our judging process, have a look at Alex’s excellent post on the subject.

So without further ado, here are the winners of the first ever One Page Dungeon Contest:

Honorable Mentions - these dungeons will not receive a prize, but they are extremely worthy of note and made it into the final Judges Picks before we had to whittle the list down to the last winners.  These dungeons will be included in the Winners One Page Dungeon PDF publication. The category listed was the decision of the judge who selected these honorable mentions.

Best New School Dungeon: Cry of the Gravegod by Heron Prior
Prizes: Bundle of Necromancer games product, Fantasy Grounds II License, Wizards of the Coast – Dungeon Delve book and Adventurer’s Vault book, 6 month membership to Obsidian Portal, AvatarArt free artwork, Quarterly membership to DungeonADay.com

Best Old School Dungeon: Valley of the Necromancer Kings by Andrew Gale
Prizes: Bundle of Brave Halfling Production products, Demon Idol Miniature, 6 month membership Obsidian Portal, Fantasy Grounds II License, AvatarArt free artwork, Bundles of Fight On and Knockspell issues

Now here’s the best of the best! This dungeon was highly favored by almost all of the judges, once we lined up our top picks, this entry got unanimous support to be declared the grand winner of the contest…

Best Overall One Page Dungeon: Secrets of the Old City by Simon Bull
Prizes: Patron membership of Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design, Kobold Guide to Game Design, Quarterly membership to Monte Cook’s Dungeon a Day, A full License for Smitework’s Fantasy Grounds II, 1 year membership to Obsidian Portal, 50$ Gift Certificate from One-Bookshelf, Bundles of Fight On and Knockspell issues.

Also, please note that we  will also be offering passes for the Las Vegas NeonCon gaming convention to any of the honorary mention, Runner ups and Best of winners, that would like to attend.

Our next step will be to create a swanky PDF with all the entries described in this post.  The PDF will feature a  color cover to be created by the recent winner of the Erol Otus/Fight On!/Otherworld art contest: Mark Allen and will feature a scene from the Secrets of the Old City winning dungeon.  It will  also contain a few One-Page dungeon related posts that Chgowiz and I wrote and will feature a copy of the template itself.  The PDF will be distributed for free by Tabletop Adventures and will be available on most RPG PDF outlets.

We will also create a second PDF which will feature the winners and runner ups, but will not feature the color cover and additional freebies. This PDF will be placed into an archive (ZIP) file which will also have all the entries for you to download. Yes, if you want to see all 112 entries, you will be able to do so. We’ll work out where that will be hosted, but be forewarned, it’s a large 68 MB file.

This contest would not haven been possible without the tireless work of Chgowiz and the active support of the other 4 judges. I also want to thank Graham Poole who had initially signed on as a judge but got called away by real life.   I also want to thank you all dear readers and Twitter followers who have been so enthusiastic about the whole thing, making us even more motivated to see this through.

Finally, I wish to extend a big thank you to all Sponsors who have been so generous and have provided so many great prizes:

• Avatar Art
• Brave Halfling Publishing
• Fight On Magazine
• Goodman Games
• Malhavoc Press/DungeonADay
• NeonCon 2009
• Mythmere Games
• Necromancer Games
• Obsidian Portal
• Open Designs
• Otherworld Miniatures
• Smiteworks
• Tabletop Adventure

All right!  This is done!

Now who wants to hear about my “Kill Drittz for Charity contest” idea?

A bit like a Comic Book  ‘annual’,  the Tales of the City Within had a plot that was completely separate from the Myth Arc we’ve been building with prior sessions.

I had 4 plots broken down in 5 scenes.  Each scene was usually detailed as a paragraph and would include combat  stats if a fight was expected or a very short description of a skill challenge.

Now, just so recent readers get what our campaign setting is about:  The adventure occurs in an underground city being built within an ever expanding Dungeon.  The Dungeon is sentient and at the middle of it sits the slowly eroding prison of a Primordial.  The City fights the dungeon by growing within it (hence its name).

At  the core of the conflict, two opposing energies fight for dominance.  First there’s the Dungeon’s energy, representing the Primordial’s consciousness growing ‘feelers’ farther out.  Second is the ‘Nexus’ energy, a Divine Source of energy attuned to Erathis, Goddess of Civilization.  The Nexus protects the city and also keep the Primordial’s prison intact.

Divine Prelude to Chaos

While we were settling down, I opened up the game with a short scene where Usul (Mike’s Elven Invoker of Kord) was busy checking the flow of divine energies traveling all over the City from the central Crystal spire that was the Nexus.  While doing this, Usul felt a beefy hand on his shoulder.  When he turned around, he saw this big muscular guy smiling at him.

It turns out that this was an Avatar of Kord that wanted to tell Usul that things were going to get dicey over the next few days.  Pointing at the Nexus, he told Usul that its power (along with the power of the Dungeon) would flicker out for a few days, leaving the town without its usual protection.   With a hefty pat on the shoulder, Kord’s avatar nominated Usul as his agent to keep protecting the city in the coming days and he vanished.

I somewhat fumbled that scene.  By focusing on the message rather than on the messenger, I failed to convey the feeling of grand importance that this NPCs should have had.   My players completely missed that Usul was chatting it up with a God and that broke suspension of disbelief for a few players.

Anyway, when Usul mentioned that the Nexus energy and it’s Dungeon equivalent were gone, the party started to investigate.  I told Jaiel (Deva Avenger and one of the Divine agent that helped found the City) about a book of the Erathian prophecies called ‘The Cycle of Shadows”.  It explained that every 200 years, the Nexus and the Prison sitting at the center of the Dungeon both shifted into the Shadowfell, leaving the city to fend for itself.  The only way to bring both back was to sacrifice the Original Pentad, the five original souls present at the Foundation of the city.

At that point Yan started dreading what was coming (his Deva Avenger is one of those original souls).

Things were shaping up!

Cracks in the Foundation

I then picked up my notes and looked at the 4 plots I had ready, each a pressing problem that would require immediate attention.  Not knowing where to start, I picked up a d4 and rolled to see which one I would trigger first.  I rolled a 4.

Chatty: “You all feel an earthquake shake the whole city”

Players: “Uh oh!”

After letting the PCs do what they were doing (shopping for Magic Items, checking on the new spirits, etc) I had panicked reports come from the lower City.  A rift had opened in the lowest Delve and lava was pouring into the City, destroying everything!

Of course the PCs ran to the site of the event.  As they approached the rift, they saw a Beholder flanked by a pair of Fire Archons and a pair of Fire elementals standing on a rock island floating on the lava.  The beholder was shouting an announcement again and again in Common.  Something about it being the time to bring the traditional tithe to appease the lord of the Volcano and bring back the two opposing energies.   When the PCs talked to the beholder, asking what was the tithe was, it said that it was the City to find out and provide.  It also said that they had 3 days to do it as the level of lava would keep rising until it flooded the whole city.

Fun!

The Peace Dividend

Right after that scene, Jarl Botten, the Hobgoblin Mercenary summoned the PCs for something urgent.  A group of five Drow diplomats had appeared, asking to see the city’s Grand Council.  The PCs were required to act as a security force during the meeting.

At this point, Corwin (Math’s Halfling Sorcerer) tried to make a point that the party had much more pressing matters to attend to, what with Lava threatning to fill up the whole city.  To this, Jarl responded that the Drow were menacing to invade the city immediately if their demands weren’t met.

Corwin: Let them invade the freaking city!  It will soon be filled with lava anyway!

Somehow, another PCs, probably Usul or Rocco the Rogue, convinced the Sorcerer to calm down.  All the social characters went to meet with the Drow to stall them for time.

There they learned that the Drow were  asking for a grotesque peace dividend (i.e. pay us not to wage war on you) and had a Scrying device showing tens of thousands of Grimlocks and Spider mounted  Drow ammassed in a cave nearby.

The PCs managed to stall the Drow for one hour while they could think about dealing with the Lava situation…

That’s when an Adamantine Dragon burst out in the middle of the City and started eating everything in it’s path.

Franky: What the hell?!?!

Stay tuned for part 2!

I’m also focusing on completing my freelance writing assignments and will likely send out my Kobold Quarterly article tonight.

(And I’m late in providing Wizards of the Coast with an outline for the adventure they green lighted)

However, I thought that now would be a good time to share with you links to the Podcasts I participated in recently.

So here they are in order of participation:

The Tome Show

• PHB2 Episode: Bloggers square off about the new race, classes and feats.
• D&D 4e: One year later: Bloggers ask WotC about the past year and the upcoming one for 4e
• Monster Manual 2:  Bloggers pick their favorite monsters and argue about Solos.

I really need to lower the volume of my microphone in that show!

The Open Design Podcast

• Halls of the Mountain King: Where Wolfgang Baur and I compare adventure creation techniques and general DMing.

If you liked my participation in that last show, tell them!  I’d love to have a regular feature where I chat up a storm with my Nemesis!  While shooting the breeze with him before we recorded we had already identified 2 subjects that I think many of you would like.

All right, expect to see my game report based on the 5×5 adventure sandbox design method and the results of the One Page Dungeon contest this week.  Plus another Chatty Presents on Friday.

Have a good week.

Chgowiz and I will be announcing the 3 grand winners and a bunch of Category winners on Wednesday July 1st. Don’t miss it!

Then, a few weeks later we’ll publish the entries as we promised to do.  More details to come.

Have a great weekend!

Today I want to give new Dungeonmasters some help by pointing them to the high quality blog of Enrique the Newbie DM.  In his own words, here is what the blog is about.

So, about NewbieDM.com… I write the blog from the perspective of a new DM, and what sort of experiences I’ve encountered along the way.

I started DM’ing with 4th Ed., it’s been about a year now, and I’ve had plenty of time to think about how to make my DM’ing life easier, and how I can improve my game for both my players and myself.

I try to pass some of that knowledge on to other guys who may be in my position. I always try to assume that I’m writing to newbie DM’s like myself who might benefit from what I’ve picked up along the way. I’m humbled to say that in the small amount of time my blog’s been around

I’ve gotten a steady number of readers, I’ve been published in the Open Game Table Anthology, and have become an active member of the online D&D community. If I’ve helped out just one DM with any of my stuff, then I’ve done my job as a blogger for this awesome hobby.

Enrique is one very enthusiastic blogger who has spent a lot of effort being genuinely helpful to other new DMs.  His posts are almost always focused on the reader and how they can learn from Newbie’s own experienced.

Here are 3 examples of Newbie’s work that will be of interest to potential readers:

NewbieDM Tutorial – Counters, Tokens, or Pogs

For gamers on a budget, Newbie provides a comprehensive tutorial about creating D&D tokens (or Pogs) using nothing more than paper, a copy of ‘Gimp’ (a free graphics application), a 1″ hole puncher and some metal washers (or other dime-a-dozen counter-shaped pieces).

The tutorial covers all the steps and provide hint and tricks to create tokens with normal and bloodied sides.  This is absolutely brilliant.  So much so that the article was selected in the Open Game Table anthology.

The DM Starter Kit

Using the tricks he taught in the token post discussed above, Newbie DM recently created a complete 4e starter kit (in PDF form) to help out new DMs.  Focusing on Kobold Keep, the introductory adventure included in the Dungeon Master Guide, the PDF includes all monster/condition tokens, combat maps,  an initiative/combat tracker.

This idea is pure genius.  I find that Kobold Hall is the perfect little adventure to teach/learn the 4e mechanics.  While very low on required roleplaying, the adventure showcases most of the basic adventure mechanics of the game : varied monster roles, traps, tricks and a Solo Boss fight.

Heck, I’ll probably make use of this when I’ll next teach the game.

Advice for new DMs only!

After writing his blog (and DMing) for one year, Newbie shares his acquired wisdom in one condensed post.  Going over it, I have to say that I agree with all of his tips, especially the one about asking players to be ‘condition keepers’ and ‘PHB experts’ to help the DM keep a good pace.

I don’t think I would add much more tips to those, the poor new DMs have enough on their plates as it is, except the following one, which reader will recognize:

• Be on the lookout of your player’s reactions and mood throughout the day.  Quickly note (or memorize) what makes a player excited and thrilled and what makes them clam up in frustration.  With time you’ll be able to find what motivates each player and plan your scenes to hit those motivations.

And that’s it for this edition o Chatty DM presents.  Give Newbie DM a visit and tell him ‘Hi’ from me.

If you have any other good resources for new DMs to share, feel free to link them in the comments.  If your HTML-fu sucks, use the following template:

<a href=”url”>Link text</a>

Also, if you have a RPG blog you would like to showcase please contact me at chattydm@chattydm.ne, I have a few ones in the queue (Wyatt, you’re next in line, I promise!), but there’s a good chance I’ll get to yours eventually, if I like your content…

This year, most of my players have manifested an interest to keep playing so.  In my mind the ’season’ and the first Primal/Within mini-campaign ended with the last session,  setting the table for the next season in August with Paragon level PCs.

So while thinking about this weeks’ game, I asked myself how I could experiment with a DMing style that wasn’t my own.  While I excel at scripted adventures and well-thought out set pieces, I still have trouble dealing with improvisation.  So I started toying with doing an adventure without my usual prep (I can easily write a 8 page manuscript for a 5 scenes adventure).

When I Twittered about it, some old schoolers, one in particular, started jesting that I was going to the dark side and jumping on the Sandbox bandwagon. The thing is, I’m not interested in doing a classic exploration-based Sandbox game.  This actually requires a lot of preparation as you must detail large areas of your setting in order to give your players something to do wherever they go.

Then I remembered an episode in the second season of Avatar called ‘Tales of Ba Sing Se’ where the 30 minute show featured about 5 different stories not directly related with the serie’s main plot arc.  I had also recently seen ‘He’s just not that into you’ with my wife and all these criss-crossed stories gave me an idea.

What if I made the next adventure into “Tales of the City Within” and I only wrote the outline of 5 plot lines that would be interwoven, ripe for players to get tangled into?

Then it dawned on me that someone had already written about that very method to create a campaign.

Enter Dave the Game’s 5X5 method.

The gist of the method is:

Take 5 major, distinct quests. Give them an appropriate title. Then, for each of those 5 quests, give 5 steps needed to complete that quest. Each one should provide enough to provide an entire adventure. Give each step a location, preferably spread out all over your map. When possible, make these locations near each other at different points on the other quests. That way, PC’s may decide to work on a different quest after finishing up one part simply because they’re geographically nearby.

As Dave presented it, this gives you about 25 adventures, some of them sharing the same locations. That’s enough for a whole tier in D&D 4e parlance.

Now that’s way too much for my needs.  My summer campaign will likely last 4, maybe 5 sessions tops.

But since we usually play 5 scenes per session (2 of which can be combat), I thought that maybe I could use the 5X5 method but with 5 quests made up of 5 scenes each.  Instead of just choosing common locations for some of the scenes, I could enlarge the definition to include NPCs or events shared by some scenes.

Thus I could have a 25 elements Sandbox where players could pick up to 5 quests (or get caught in more than one event) and play them through.

So last night I sat down and I brainstormed for 5 quests, I asked for help on Twitter and got served!

Here’s what I got, both from Twitter (user named in parenthesis) and my own stuff:

• A Plague spreads like wildfire through the city, turning people into Zombies
• Some strange people are looking for love in the worst possible places
• An ancestral inheritance threatens to very balance of the City
• Corrupt city board members conspire to control a civilian uprising by poisoning the sewer/water system. Dungeon/City all in one (Josh Dalsher)
• Secret Agent from the Surface tries to steal City’s greatest secret
• A rampaging Dragon bursts from underneath the City’s looking for his Blanky
• The Devil rises at Dawn!  Asmodeus makes his move on the City.
• Mutated creatures from the undercity rise up to destroy the Surface Dwellers (Josh Dalcher)
• A slighted council member booby traps the infrastructure of the city, group must find and disarm a series of traps..
• City-wide hazing, a Trollish Rite of Passage
• The All-Spark is in the City!  Objects rise up and rebel!
• King of the city swats and kills a subject during a holy day. Everyone can’t stop talking about it (Rpgaming)
• A noble is murdered in the city, he was rumored to have acquired the Helm of Archon days before hand (Kal Agrim)
• Volcano Season is here, the city must prepare its sacrifice for the Volcano lord or the city will be covered in lava (Kal Agrim)
• A Pacifist cheerful Mindflayer prophet shows up and announces the dawn of a new era of Peace and Harmony
• The Prison of Soul’s seal breaks and the undying Archons escape, the 5 parts of the Rod of Divine Sealing must be found and fused together by Magic Fire.
• The PCs must recover a magical artifact from a museum where it has unwittingly been put on display
• Organized Grime: an intelligent ooze masterminds the cities criminal underworld. (cpbye)
• Someone’s planning on tearing down some old buildings and putting up new ones. Too bad the dungeon doesn’t like that idea. (allgeekout)
• 5 Bullywugs named Steve escape into the city. City officials panic about “confirmed reports” of monsters in the sewers (Vulcan Stev)
• vehicles have all been replaced with other-worldly beings intent on our destruction. No one realizes until too late (Vulcan Stev)
• A group of changelings set up in town as the new management, killing off and replacing any who disagree with them (Kal Agrim)
• The local wizard’s girlfriend runs for mayor after winning, she begins collecting souls without his knowledge (Vulcan Stev).

So what I have to do tonight is choose 5 of those and break them down in 5 scenes.  Each scene would be one paragraph long and should provide me with enough to let me improvise it (NPCs, goals, complications, PC choices, etc).

That’s quite the challenge but I’m willing to take up the challenge.  I’ll have all my battle maps with me, along with a bunch of minis and I’ll have my laptop open to the online D&D Compendium.

If you have more plot ideas or tools that would help me make it to Friday with a game, please feel free to share.

I’m curious to see how it will turn out.

Being overly Chatty and prone to a certain dose of creative crazyness, I decided to all out geek and delivered the following Birthday Challenge!

Wish Her a Happy Birthday…and Live!

A person dear to the party’s hearts has just turned 30 and you decide to convey your warmest wishes without having her go all Epic level Solo on your sorry asses.

The PCs must manage to wish a happy 30^th birthday to the High Priestess of the church of Sexy Awesomeness without becoming chiseled Spam on the dungeon floor.  Using all the tricks allowed by their very limited palette of D&D 4e’ skills, they must cajole, flirt, bluster, spin doctor and, if they have a death wish, lie outrageously to make her happy.

Complexity: 5 (12 successes before 3 failure. We’re talking about dealing with a woman here)

Primary Skills: Acrobatics, Nature, Diplomacy, Bluff

Other skills: Insight (Yea, right!  Dream on boy!)

Victory: Your friend tears up, cries out in gleeful happiness and crushes the whole party on her impressive bosom.  The party regain all their healing surges and are out of breath for the rest of the encounter.

Defeat: You don’t want to know what will happen if you fail…  Seriously, you don’t!

Acrobatics: Hard DC (1 success, 5 maximum): You jump through hoops, dodge conversational pitfalls, avoid putting your foot in your mouth and manage to talk to her without sounding like a complete ass.

Nature: Moderate DC (1 success, no maximum): You enumerate the countless advantages of being a 30 year old woman, including the fact that she’s still 2 years away from her sexual peak, that she’s mature enough to be confident yet young enough to drive young bucks insane with desire.

Diplomacy: Moderate DC (1 success, no maximum): “Don’t you know that 30 is the new 20?”  “Have you been exercising?  You look Fabulous”  “This sacrificial dagger is so you! It complements your whole outfit!”  “I swear I thought you were the Goddess herself when I came in”

Bluff: Hard DC (1 success, 3 maximum, then she kills you):  “Hey, what’s that written on the label of your robe? Made in Heaven?”  “If I told you that your body was awesome, would you hold it against me?” “Hey baby, how ’bout you and I go work on that half-slaad template?”

I’m preety proud of that little baby, I hope you enjoyed it!  I hope ‘e’ will enjoy it!

Happy Birthday Girl!

(Also, it’s also Rory’s (my baby girl) 6th birthday today, Happy Birthday pumpkin!)

Many such group exhibit a classic pattern where the Butt kickers become impatient whenever there’s any roleplaying going and the storytellers are dejected and uninterested in the fight scenes.

In more uniform groups like mine, where everyone is at least partly a Butt Kicker or a in a group filled with passionate storytellers, there’s no issue. However, mixed groups can have a hard time to achieve a sustainable level of fun for the majority.

In fact, I’d bet that  mixed groups who haven’t reached the Norming stage can lead DMs to feel that any game is doomed to fail and that power gamers/butt kickers are incompatible with psychodramatist/storytellers.

I can attest that this is false, at least in groups where players are willing to compromise.

I’ll deal with the Butt kickers in a future post.  Today I’ll focus on what we call Storytellers.

Storytellers is a broad term used to group together a wide range of players.  In my post on player types and motivation, I defined storytellers as players who

• Enjoy exploring a story unfold around a character’s actions and choices.

When you break down storytellers into what motivates them to play, you would find that they prefer

• Story: Seeking the range of emotions that comes from a game’s narrative and non-crunch achievements.
• Psychodrama: Seeking to explore and develop a character from an internal perspective.
• Setting Exploration:Seeking new horizons in a setting and learning the lore of in-game objects, locales and events.

If you, as GM, are motivated by the same things, chances are you know how to make Storytellers happy.  If your whole gaming group loves to spend a entire evenings lounging in comfy chairs, discussing the finer points of kingdom politics without ever reaching for dice then everything’s fine.

However, if you have players complaining that the game is only about combat and Munchkinism, chances are you have storytellers whose needs aren’t being catered to.

Thing is, it’s actually rather simple to make storyteller/psychodrama/explorer players happy.

You need to have each scene, even combat encounter, have a meaning in the larger story.

If your game has no overarching story, like some sandbox of game (MegaDungeons or West Marches types of game) you need to pepper your various sites with bits and pieces of story that Storyteller can discover and play.  At the very least, make sure that the story that the party is building gets disseminated through the NPCs of your game world so that storytellers get some validation of the ‘work’ they put in your game.

For other types of campaign, you must make sure to include story/setting elements throughout your adventures.  You need to have original NPCs come to the party with meaningful quests. For example,  have the PCs escort the hidden heir of the Imperial Jade throne through a ravaged Orc-ridden war zone to her father’s deathbed.  Also, each combat encounter must be staged to move the story forward. If the party gets attacked by ninjas while escorting the young emperor, have the PCs find a letter ordering the PCs execution and bearing an enigmatic seal that the Storytellers will want to investigate.

Gaming with storytellers is all about linking scenes together through NPC interaction, overarching plots and tantalizing clues and hooks.

It doesn’t mean that you must spend 2 hours discussing the weather, but even the most impatient of Butt kickers will listen in on a 10-15 minute negotiation just to see if the Lich-Baron will order his minions to attack or offer to help fight the Beholder-King.

How about you?   Do you suffer from the Butt Kicker/Storyteller syndrome? What have you done to make your storytellers (and assorted player types) happy?  What’s your winning formula?

With the economy taking a bad turn, many gaming companies are having a hard time getting sufficient volunteers for their various Gen Con events.

As some of you may know, I will be among the DMs referees of the Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classic tournament held this year at the Indianapolis Crowne Plaza.

Turns out that they’re still looking for some DMs, so if you want to experience DMing at a Con and want to rub elbows with some very nice industry people, send an email to Adrian at adrian@goodman-games.com.

Plus I hear they have a party called ‘BeerCon’  that can’t be bad right?

The Tome on Monster Manual 2

Last Thursday I had a blast participating in another (my 3rd) episode of The Tome Show hosted by Jeff Greiner.   In that Episode, I had the pleasure of discussing the Monster Manual 2 with Jeff, Quinn from at-will and Mike Shea from Sly Flourish.

We had fun discussing the new monsters and rapping about dealing with Solo monsters. Mike made me laugh when he referred to the tendencies of Solo monsters to become crippled with status effects as “The Bucket on the Head” syndrome.

I must say that I haven’t experienced this all that much, mostly because Solos aren’t usually caught in status effects for long.  However, many of the Solos from MM2 have abilities that allow them to save more than once per turn, so I guess that WotC also thought about this issue.

So have a listen!

(EDIT) Geek Dad link Love

I was happily surprised this morning to have been mentionned on Wired’s Geek dad column.  Thanks to Bob from The Dice Bag for the link love!  Robert was one of the newly appointed Geek Dads.  Kudos to you sir!