Roll20 in-game chat makes me feel like a Twitch streamer

 

So, I think we are going on game 15 in my regular Wednesday night 5th ed game in Roll20. I could not be more pleased with how things are going. Despite almost everybody having more 5th ed and Roll20 experience than me, I have yet to lose a single player due to my shortcomings. I'd like to think its my old schoolish style and over 40 years of experience as a DM. But whatever it is I love this group. Good role players, respectful, friendly, funny, patient. It's all there. I may never have a group like this again, and it makes me want to get the most of it. 

One thing that is really awesome to me is the in-game chat box. I did not pay much attention to it for my first few games. But something it has come in really handy for is posting a spell or ability you are using, official text on the particulars. The player simply has to click on it in the digital character sheet and the spell or what not appears in the chat for me to look over. This along with the in-game compendium searcher has made it so I don't really need any books or paperwork at the table. And I use this as a learning tool as well. After a session I have one last beer (or three) and go over the chat box to bone up on the spells and things. 

And once I got in the habit of checking, I discovered something else the players are furtively doing there. They have an ongoing text chat during each session where they comment and discuss or make jokes on the current encounter or occurrence. You see, I'm too busy to always have that chat box open. When somebody makes a dice roll, I look quickly because that is where the modified number shows up. But I'm usually doing 5 things at once. 

But those chat comments. It's a special treat for me to go in after a game and see what the little dickens have been up to there. It's kind of a hoot, and a new thing I am experiencing, and extra pleasure, I never had in face-to-face games.

So, I'm not streaming, but this little feature makes me feel like I am. And it's yet another thing making me feel, more and more, that this is the format for me to DM in for good.

DM's Character Assumptions

There are a few things I assume at character creation that a character can do that perhaps not the average man can do in a low-tech setting, but in my mind are basic to the survival of a standard dungeon delving character. You can call them skills if you want, but by any other name I think a character needs these things, and what continuing character in a campaign has time to learn such things in the course of games? Background skills I come up with on the spot based on whatever the player wants for his character (son of famers, then got some farm skills Son of a mason, can do a little stone work, dads a sailor, then tie some knots well, etc).But I think since the earliest forms of D&D some unspoken skills are assumed into characters (in most cases).

I recently posted about this to a forum, and guess what? Yet another thing to divide players on. Some think characters should have to take time to learn these basics, and a good deal of folk think in medieval Europe terms and say almost nobody should historically be able to do these things (c’mon folks, this is not the real world we are talking about. It’s D&D).


Again, a lot of my assumptions maybe come out of having played (since childhood) editions where you had to come up with your own options and ideas for mundane things outside the class abilities. And I liked it in that things didn't need to get too bogged down with skills and more and more things that players have options and choices with outside of the most basic stuff that made the PC's D&D characters. Too much of that and you flash forward to talents and feats etc etc etc and may as well break out my Champions rules to use for fantasy gaming.

Here are some things I pretty much automatically assume about characters at the start of a campaign (I have no idea if any of these are assumed in the PHB or DMG anywhere). Do you have these or some of your own?

*All characters can read and write their own language.

*All characters have some experience in at least light horse riding (they can saddle a horse, ride it up to a medium trot with no difficulty, and attend to its basic feeding and grooming needs properly after a days ride).

*All characters can drive a horse/mule cart/wagon (max of two animal-driven)

*All characters know the basics of starting a fire (with flint and steel) and setting up a safely contained campfire.

*All characters can swim

*Fighter types know how to properly clean, oil, and sharpen their weapons. Those proficient in bow can restring a bow (but could not necessarily create a bow and arrows from scratch).

*That clerics and monks (in most common cases) will belong to an organization in the area (temple, monastery) that acts more or less like a guild they can go to for aid or safety.

*All characters can do very basic math equivalent to 1st year Jr. High skills (money grubbing adventurers that they are), and MU’s can do higher math (some algebra-type functions or beyond)

Economics of the Dungeon Age

In a land where multiple dungeons exist (Arduin had dozens), the ultimate financial impact had to be felt by the economies of the kingdoms to some degree.

First, there is the village, and especially the tavern, that are in the dungeon vicinity. Even if a party of adventuring Elmer Fudds only come stay every few weeks, some serious coin is getting dropped even before the dungeon crawl. There is always that supply mercantile with all your dungeoneering needs, from spikes to ropes to ten foot poles. Soup to nuts. And of course a good DM will have his merchants charging big markup. We are practically in the wilderness, you know. An especially well traveled dungeon’s village will perhaps even have a magic supply shop (run by a high level mage, of course) where the parties “Wiggle Fingers” can replenish components and scroll supplies. And that store ain’t cheap.

The local tavern may just fare the best from deep pocketed delvers. The locals know dungeon crawlers when they see them. Word gets around town and in minutes locals are pouring in to see what the fuss is about. Adventurer’s new to the area will know that locals are the best source of info about the dungeon and it’s rumors and legends. Liberal spending, even upwards of 100 gold for endless rounds of ale and meat pies, will not only loosen some tongues, but also guarantee good will from the tavern owner. And that tavern owner knows more rumors and legends than most.

So a party goes to deeper levels, and when they are done the survivors will set out for the bigger towns and cities loaded with wealth. They’ll spend that money in the city, or perhaps higher level PC’s will go off to build housing for their retainers and followers. And if you are playing 1st ed. by the book, then there will be trainers and mentors all over the place profiting from the characters hard fought cash. Magic users will spend much dungeon money, from guild fees to research materials. Clerics will enrich temple coffers (and hopefully the temple leaders will see fit to invest in the local infrastructure) of their favored god. Fighter, thieves, and bards will debouche their money away into the economy in a thousand ways.

The affect of dungeon money upon the economy may depend on your campaign world. Perhaps, as was suggested in a comment in my last post, the Dungeon Age is a time of failing civilization, where these dangerous places are a decaying product of the withering world. In a case like this, an influx of wealth may fall flat in a barter economy, or it may overwhelm the delicate system that still finds worth in coin and gem in small settlements.

In my own game world, I think of the Dungeon Age as a time of great civilized growth. Treasure from dungeon delves flowed eventually to town and city economies, and added to the advancement you find in new, successful civilizations.
In time, The Age of Dungeons mostly passes, these secluded mythic places drying up or falling into ruin. The magic that kept them going begins to unweave and float away into the ether. Mountain and forest towns in the howling wilderlands, once booming from dungeon gold, slowly shrink and eventually fall to ruin and abandonment.

On comes an age of high adventure, when greed and lust gives way to heroics. There are still secluded dungeons like those of the bygone age, full of magic and treasure. But they are now few and far between. Occasionally the greedy seekers of loot hunt down these fabled places, just like the delvers of the past age. But the norm for a hero of this bright new age is not to delve for gold and silver, but to fight in great battles, and to go on great quests, perhaps travelling to faraway lands. More so than in The Dungeon Age, able bodied adventurers set out to evil places not for merely wealth, but to destroy that very evil, or other noble cause.

But do not step into those dark corners of the world lightly, even in this luminous new age. Though the Dungeon Age has passed, there are still dungeons hidden away. Some are still vibrant with hostile intent to those who invade them. But they are there. And they are waiting for the greedy to seek them out.

Game Immersion is not a thespian exercise

After a week of vacation at a big hippy music camp in Northern California, I had some game related things based on that I wanted to talk about this week. I’ll get to that later this week, but I want to comment on a weekend post James made over at Grognardia that kind of got my goat when I was relaxing last night with a couple of ales after my long 8-hour drive back to LA.

In a post about dungeon blocks, James makes mention of how he doesn’t really go for “immersive” game play, and that it is somehow some kind of thespian stunt. He claims to have a middle ground, but to me it sounds in this post (and others that he has made) that his players don’t come to really play D&D. It sounds like something James wants to be going on while they socialize. I guess it’s not wrong, but it sure is great D&D when the players come with passion for the game.

I personally don’t consider acting as being a part of immersion. Sure, I happen to have a certain degree of stage improv experience, and it has served me well when presenting an important or interesting NPC. Do I do voices? Hell no, but I do try to have a growly voice for things like orcs, and a calm voice for elf types. I try to do a soft voice for women. But shit, that ain’t acting. Not all (maybe not many) DM’s are even comfortable presenting a character in this way, but I can do it, and having a little charisma doesn’t hurt.

But that is not immersion. Immersion is the DM being in touch with his game world, NPC’s, and the players characters. The DM must be a part of the world and it’s presentation, otherwise he is just the banker in Monopoly. And what helps me is that I use the power of my imagination to get in a mind set where all this stuff is real.

Yeah, I know it’s a damn game and we have to break character constantly. But to feel it and pretend to believe in the world and the characters is a great skill to have. In a little place in my mind and my heart this world is really happening. That is the power of imagination. Do you read a good fictional story constantly reminding yourself that the story never happened? No, you let yourself believe it in it’s own context. The same with a good game that you can feel in your heart, and not just in your head at what is basically just a snacking and shooting the shit session.

All games have some outside chatter and joking, but ultimately that takes away from the game. You don’t have to sit there and act in character or anything, but I think focusing on a game is the best way to get the most out of it. Too much and my players complain. So I kind of make it my job to help “flow” by getting as much focus on the action at hand. We play for three hours on a weeknight twice month, so I do my best to give as much of the game as I can for my players. That is what they are there for. If I can immerse them a bit, all the better.

100 Posts, ya'll!

Holy cow, I only noticed this weekend that I hit 100 posts! Hurray for me!

Really, no big deal. Anybody can do a bunch of posts. But in the last several months or so I have tried only to post when I actually had something to say or get off my chest (besides a little bragging here and there about fun sessions). When I started the blog, I was just aping James at Grognardia and others, writing about old game products I liked and such, and I have to admit it wasn’t very inspiring for me or anybody else. So I got a bit more real. I posted about some old bad game experiences of my childhood and my teens and onward. It was a bit cathartic really, so before long I decided that I would continue letting off some steam by bitching about my games, my players, and my own possible short comings when it came to my gaming. Oh, and mentioning the fun here and there as well.

Thanks to all of you smart and creative gamers who have taken a look at my crazy posts, and for commenting in the positive and the negative. We are all a part of this semi-underground creative culture of imagining, and we enjoy this collective experience.

I’m off for a week’s vacation starting tomorrow, going north of San Francisco to work at a big world music camp some friends of mine are putting on. A lot of my best friends are even teachers at this thing. It’s gonna be a blast, and I’m going to work on some other types of instruments besides my Highland Bagpipes (irish bodhran drum, bongos, and middle-eastern belly dancer music ensemble). Take a peek at the website for the camp if you are interested in such things. Maybe see you there next year!

Have a great start to your summer!

Elmer Fuddism in Dungeons and Dragons

Yep, it’s a term I have proudly invented for a certain kind of D&D. It’s the kind a whole passel of us somewhat older folk experienced when we first got into the game. Characters rolled up with 3D6 in order, an early form of gameplay that was about exploding chests, worms that lived in doors who ate your brain if you put your ear up to it (in a game that practically demand you put your head up the parasite infested wood), and screwjob rust monsters, and a dungeon master who delighted in your characters pain made real by your own personal humiliation when you realize the DM thinks he’s smarter than you because you just didn’t check that section of wall thoroughly enough.

The characters, often made subpar physically compared to even local farmers and shopkeepers because of the unyielding numbers brought up by 3D6, where like some dark ages Elmer Fudd (“kill the wabbit!”). Your character stumbled into the dungeon, with the DM playing Bugs Bunny with an exploding cigar in hand.

Concepts like resurrection, reincarnation, and wishes just implied that characters should die early and often in the game, and if the person being DM had any asshole qualities at all, those would surely come out in their style. DM’ing was a great way for even the most dorky 70’s/80’s version of Napoleon Dynamite to live out his God complex.

Although I tired of that type of gameplay not too late into my teens, I’m sure “push the button and die horribly” gaming was still going on (and many other non-D&D genre games that were coming out, like Paranoia, seemed to have come out of that classic D&D mode.). I stopped hanging out at Aero Hobbies because of the older creeps and the sucky gaming, and I really wasn’t somebody who would go to conventions (if anything to avoid the smell – they were pretty bad in the 80’s) anymore than for a few hours once in a very blue moon. As I said in my last post, my style in the 80’s and beyond evolved mostly because of the presence of girls and newbies to gaming into a softer, gentler DM.

Poking around the online game community in the last couple of years, I have noticed that there are still a lot of gamers who prefer “Fuddism.” Yep, do up your character with 3D6, laugh at how retarded or weak or in ill - health they are, and march him into the labyrinth and laugh at how easily he dies. Some even suggest that having shitty stats promotes good role-play!

Look, we all love Conan or Tarzan or John Carter of Mars or whoever, but we all know that these aren’t the powerhouses we are going to get with any system of stat rolling. But if you are anything like me, when/if you sit down as a player, your hope is to have a couple of stats above average and nothing under a 9. Do lower stats happen in my game? Sure, even 4D6 pick best 3 can lead to unhappy results. But generally you get a guy who even at 1st level can best the local stable hand in either physical prowess or the brains department. Hey, to have a paladin or a monk or whatever you still need to get some lucky rolls, but the chances at getting anything but the base 4 classes using 3D6 in order is actually pretty damn seriously low. Like 1 in a 100 low. Yeah, you should come in prepared to run a cleric or fighter or whatever, but if a paladin is in your heart for a long campaign, a slightly more generous method like 4D6 is going to serve you well.

As a DM (which is what I do as opposed to being player 99.9999% of the time), I don’t want to be Bugs Bunny and I don’t want the characters to be a bunch of Elmer Fudd’s or Damien Dipshits or whatever you want to call them. I want to run great, challenging adventures for characters who may have a fault here and there physically, and may not always make the right decisions, but are generally exceptional physical specimens born to adventure, and not some kind of normal schlub who has to hire on some even less normal schleps just for a chance at survival in the depths below. Not Robert E. Howard heroes necessarily, but jeez, at least they should be on the physical level of the wife beater- wearing “Guido” at the gym doing arm curls while smoking a ciggy.

I had recently planned on doing an OD&D game at an Orange County gameday event a couple of months ago, but the main thing that had me drop the whole thing was I was too conflicted over the stats. I wanted to do it by the book (that was going to be the whole point, D&D as museum piece), but 3D6 in order was just something I didn’t want to deal with. Poor little Billy with his Strength 13 fighter with a 6 constitution. Screw that.

So 4D6 is the way for me, and I think it is the most popular. I’ll even allow an elimination roll for anything under 9. Whatever it takes to get you a decent, survivable character you can be happy with and get the game under way.
And…I hope this does not conflict too much with my last post ranting about being too soft a DM…

Dungeon Master as Civil Servant

Am I too easy as a DM? Is this really a low paying (read: non-paying) job that forgoes my fun or frivolity for the service to others?

I started as much an adversarial DM as anybody from my time. That’s how D&D games were generally approached back then, especially by young boys. Characters were a bunch of Elmer Fudd’s with sub-par physical characteristics, walking unwittingly into the torture and humiliation chambers of the DM as Bugs Bunny. It was a very sadomasochistic relationship. You go into a dungeon, you press a button, and *kablooey* you were more often than not dead, as the DM laughed and snickered as if you are some dumbass he has gotten one over on.

The main thing that got me out of that mind set by the early 80’s was having girls at the game. Especially in the case of a girlfriend, it was hard to have them setting off traps and falling into pits. So it was girls that started my softening, I think. Had me go more in a high adventure frame of mind. Twas Beauty killed the Beast.

Then from the mid-80’s on I went through a certain phase of causing characters more emotional anguish than actually pain and death from traps or unbeatable monsters. Most of my players in the late 80’s and the 90’s were newbies to gaming, and lots of death and carnage heaped upon them can turn these new players off. But kill their family or pit them against the other players and you’ve lit a fire under their ass. They love the drama, and it has much more emotional weight than tricky dungeons and screwjob traps.

Death among characters has become a rare thing in my games, and even in my long Cthulhu campaigns of the 90’s, there was some insanity brought on but not much death (although more than in most genres I run). And in my Champions games, forget about it. You aren’t supposed to die there.

But I think my softening over all those years that worked pretty well with newbies in the 90’s is not serving me that well as DM in my latest group. For this new group I had one old player from the 90’s, Terry, along for the ride. Terry was always a good player. Although she internalized a lot of her characters stuff, she was consistent and not at all a power gamer, meta-gamer, or complainer. She just played.

But everybody else who started in this new group had experience with the game (one version or another of it), and at least a couple of them came in with power gaming backgrounds and desires. I especially think Andy and big Dan, like sharks, sensing my softness when it comes to characters, were a bit too obvious in their power-gamery at first. Andy pressed me a lot for things, and because he is our host I often cracked and gave him what he wanted early on. He sort of softened on that, but Dan still hits me with “player entitlement” attitudes that chap my ass. He wants more more more, and the more you give the more he wants. He is a good guy, but Dan more than anybody is getting me more in the mindset of my youth “Fuck the characters, I am God here. Bend to my will and die in my goddamn dungeon.” Dan even seems to want my rolls made out in the open (I think any time I have an NPC make a saving throw against his charm person or whatever, he assumes I’m fudging). I let this guy run a female drow, a race I am sure he is running just because it is so powerful in Unearthed Arcana, and he has made me (and some of the others players) regret it all the way.

What am I, a civil servant? This is my world! I call the shots! I don’t work for you, you are here to play in my game not be served.

I was especially hardened recently when I ran some sessions of Star Wars Saga: Knights of the Old Republic for a group of middle-age Star Wars fans who had played together for years, but were complete strangers to me. A couple of them were actually quite cool at first, but it was apparent by the second game or so that I was looked upon as somebody coming and serving them up a game like it was a job or something. When the session was over, they didn’t even want to socialize with me. They waited until I left (as it turned out) to talk about the game and how I was doing. Can you believe that shit? Especially the host, Joyce, seemed to have had an idea of how the game should be run (like one of the lame-o movies I guess). If things didn’t go her characters way, she would even get pissy and go sit in a corner (this lady is well into her 50’s, by the way, so she was no kid). She seemed to have paranoia about NPC’s, and the fact that I had a really interesting NPC be a catalyst for the adventure drove her nuts, even though he was very much in the background. The slag even had the balls to tell me “you can’t run the game like that, we are used to it like this and that…”. I went home that night after the fourth session and wrote them an email telling them I was done with the game probably as they were still standing around the table discussing my “Performance”. Didn’t even get a “thanks for trying.”

So the last year or so of experience has me starting to rethink my “player friendly DM” attitude of the 90’s. I’m kind of tired of being soft. I don’t want to be a dick DM, but I really think at least a couple of my players need a less kind hand and some hard truth that I am not from a soft DM background. Some hard lessons need to be learned. Some damn characters need to die!

I’m not your D&D civil servant or underling. I’m your damn Game master! The next few games…watch out!

“Hell is coming for breakfast!” – from The Outlaw Josie Wales

Taking off the DM hat (at least a little)

I always preferred GM’ing to being a player. From the mid-80’s through the late 90’s, I was the DM/GM 99% of the time and was the guy who would put the gaming group together. The last time I sat down as a player was around 1998 for a couple of times in some local folks GURPS games. I had no experience with GURPS, and there was nothing special about the games to make me a fan. With a GM who had no real talent and seemed to make it all up as he went along (“notes light” is fine, but I don’t trust any GM who doesn’t even have a notebook to refer to during the game), that didn’t last long for me. I re-resigned myself to GM’ing only.

When I put my current group together a couple of years ago, I had no intention of being a player in it. I had just taken around 6 years off from gaming, and I came back to it with a thousand ideas in my head, pent-up in me like sperm cells in a set of blue balls. Although one new player from last year clearly had joined us to try and get us to let him run his games (he wasn’t at his first game an hour before he started inquiring about anybody wanting to play in his 3.0 D&D – what cajones on the dude), my other players have been happy to go player only.

But since getting involved in the online gaming community the other year, I have started to have a little bit of a hankering to sit down as a player (and it’d be nice to sit down – I run our weeknight games standing up the entire time). Not out of a great love of playing a character. Outside of doing the occasional Champions or Call of Cthulhu campaign, my first and greatest love is my AD&D world setting. I started it out at around age 14 towards the end of the 70’s. It has grown and expanded over the decades, and has seen the coming and going of hundreds of player characters. My love and attachment to it has kept my away from various Forgotten Realms and Grewhawks and Blackmoors since day one (well, I did dabble a good bit in the City State of the Invincible Overlord setting around 1981).

But I feel that perhaps not being a player in D&D has made me jaded, and maybe even a bit out of touch. So I have wanted to get a little player time in, and one of our newer players has offered to step up when I feel like having a little break from DM’ing, or when an important player cancels and I don’t want to do one of my alternates. I plan on wrapping up my Night Below campaign (at least the first half of it) by late July, and I may not want to jump right into DM’ing another campaign. So I’ll need a break at some point.

I had planned for a rare weekend session this coming Saturday, but with a crucial player not being able to make it, and me not wanting to do an extra long Mutant Future alternative (we are doing that Wed night this week) I gave Ben the go ahead to get a game ready for us. I think he is pretty excited about it.

Ben started with us around late fall of last year, and he is an excellent player. He knows 1st edition well, and that is a plus. I actually would like to lose a few of my less necessary house rules and go a bit more by the book when I do my next campaign, and Ben wanting to go by the book for his games will give me a chance to re-familiarize myself with rules I haven’t used as-is in decades (if ever).

So I am looking forward to coming up with a player character for the first time in forever, and about blogging about my player experiences rather than just my GM joys n’ headaches. Ben wants to make it elf-centric (he runs a high elf in my game, so he obviously has an elf fixation), so I think I’ll do up a rakish half-elf Fighter/MU.

Running games in pain

Last Thursday I crashed my mountain bike and took a bad fall. I hit the concrete like a sack of bricks. Nothing seemed to be broken, but I had bashed my forehead, tore most of the skin off my right knee in addition to bashing it, bruised my hip bone, pulled a groin muscle (haven’t done that since high school football), and badly sprained (or worse, seeing a doctor finally today) the fingers on my left hand to the point that a week later I still can’t make a fist.

I had a Star Wars Saga KOTOR game to run on the following Sunday in Hollywood (my second game for this group of strangers that asked me to run it). Even with a broken leg I could have made the game, but my biggest worry was the nausea that often came to me when I popped pain pills (like a real man/dumbass I was refusing to go to a doctor at the time, so I bummed some Vicodin off a family member). So my biggest worry was getting sick and having to end the game early.

But I went for it, ran the game, and luckily did not get sick. But the pain of the various injuries made things a little difficult. For one thing, I liked to GM mostly standing up. Keeps me energetic and also makes more room at the table. Well, that was not an option. I had to pretty much sit for the 5 hours. Also, I’m fairly expressive with my hands, and I kept punching that busted up left hand and smacking it on the table. Ouch.

Last night I had my Wed night AD&D 1st ed. game, but luckily that groin pull and hip were much better, and I managed to stand the entire 3 hours as usual.

This was, in my best recollection, the most injured I have been and run a game in all my 30 years of it. So I was wondering: have you ever GM’d while badly injured? How did you cope? And if you did it with a gunshot or blade wound, I REALLY want to hear about it.

Ah well, off to the doc within the hour to see about these fingers that don’t seem to be getting better. Hope it ain’t nerve damage…

Alignment: great role-playing device, or pain in the ass?

Although I never really used alignment languages or any of the stranger alignment tropes in my 1st e. AD&D games, it still has been an important part of my scenarios. For me it is a great device to get players role-playing, and this more than anything else is where characters tend to have a great variety of personalities, but each must subscribe to certain parameters of behavior. And really, it is part of what makes D&D what it is.

It seems like a minor thing at first in my games, but a player new to my style is often surprised at how seriously I take it when it become an issue. And it became an issue in my game this weekend.

In a nutshell, a chaotic good bard (not classic D&D bard, but one of my own creation that had more to do with music) moved to finish off an evil female half elf spellcaster whom had been (or at least appeared to be) defeated. She was cut-up and had been stung for a few rounds by a druids summon insect spell, and a young female fighter player character had picked her battered body up in her arms out of pity. The bard (also a half elf) was rabidly trying to run the still body through with his longsword, while the female fighter moved and defended to protect it. The fighter put down the girl, and stood her ground as the bard continued to try and attack the prone figure. The girl (apparently) died, so the situation was rendered moot.

OK, so keep in mind that the enemy was a complete bitch, and a thorn in another player characters side for many years, but the bard didn’t know that. He had never heard of her nor fought her before. He only knew that she was the enemy, and that she was a spellcaster. In my opinion, the character was being played with player knowledge as opposed to true role playing, and that is really one of my pet peeves. I’m always surprised at the shamelessness at which many players do this, but that is probably a subject best left to another post.

So the issue for me is: do I have this chaotic good character make an alignment change to chaotic neutral? I always give one free alignment change in a characters life before they get penalized for it. For me, outside of just trying to kill the character later, the only real punishment would be a forced alignment change.

Also somewhat less under consideration was the characters past actions, which were not exactly laudable. Besides often just seeming like a jerk in general, the bard has seduced young women and ignored them the next day (I think the player’s comment then was “why would I talk to her today, I already screwed her” – nice). OK, not really evil, but we aren’t trying to make him evil just for that, or even for trying to kill a helpless enemy. We are talking about not letting him have the term “good” in his alignment description.

I posed this quandary to a chat thread today, and got a very mixed response. Even since the early days of D&D, everyone had their own idea of what is “good and evil.” It is the same today. Here are some comments:

*…Oh, neutral rather than good in any case...However, I wouldn't say that it warrants an allignment change- yet.You can be a real asshole and still be 'good' as long as you are working to benefit society at large before yourself (well, mostly in any case...)Now if he had succeeded in killing off a helpless target and showed no signs of remorse, switching to alignment to neutral might be in order…*

*…Those poor victimized women in your games... :PHow do they normally handle fallen foes in your game? If that was an orc that had taken a hostage and the PC wanted to kill it after it was knocked out, how would you handle that? In your campaigns, do defeated-but-not-killed enemies tend to stay cowed or do they find a way to get back at PCs later?...*

*…In my experience, when everybody but one player (player and PC) wants to not kill an NPC, and that player (player and PC) decides to try to kill the NPC anyway, and it's not something that's discussed out-of-character or anything first, that player is a fucking asshole and will ruin your campaign. I've had this happen to me TWICE. If I ever see another player try it, they're getting kicked out on the first offense, since I warn at the beginning of the campaign not to do this shit. These have only been strangers I've gamed with that do this shit, and they keep doing it after being told repeatedly before and during the game by the GM and all other players that it's not cool and that they should make characters that don't do that kind of thing…So yes, alignment change at the very least. Even if his character had some kind of knowledge that the others didn't, a good-aligned character (regardless of being chaotic) would explain and reason with his friends before trying to traumatize them by murdering a prisoner in front of them (and possibly fighting them as well.) I'd probably ask the player what his problem is and if he perhaps noticed that he's pissing off other players and the GM…*

*…Alignment change. It doesn't hurt to set high standards for goodness…*

*…I'd warn the player that his bard is on the way toward an alignment shift…*

*…I'd ask the damn player. I mean, seriously. "Do you perhaps want to play a neutral character, or did you simply not think the situation through?" Also, I'd point out that as soon as you decide killing people is acceptable for characters with "good" alignment, whether they're unconscious or not is really just quibbling over details…*

*…This does sound like CN behaviour. But I would always ask the player before doing something like that to them.CG: "Hmm. Guys, this bitch just tried to magic us in the face. If we hadn't knocked her out pretty much by accident we'd have killed her without compunction. What are we going to do with her? We can't stab her where she lies. I say we let her come round, point out how easily we beat the crap out of her and tell her to skip the country."CN: *tries to stab evildoer, is told not to do that* "Hey! She'd do that to us if she had the chance. Are you guys really trying to take her as a slave? Can we even afford to keep a slave? *pause* Oh, you're trying to redeem her, or something. OK, but you have to feed her and clean out her cage."CE: *tries to stab evildoer, is told not to* "OK, no problem, but she *is* a caster and so we probably can't meaningfully take her prisoner without muzzling her. Tell you what, I'll cut her tongue out. We can always have it regrown if we need her to tell us something."

Out of all of the replies, I think this one is the most along the lines of my thinking. If the battle is over, there is the luxury of thinking things out for a minute. If your thought process is “fuck the wait, let me stab this bitch” then you are for sure chaotic, but should the term “good” be majorly applied to you?
For me, and my world, it is hard not to think of acts like putting a helpless enemy to the sword on the battlefield, or later cutting out somebodies tongue, sounds more like things a chaotic evil character would do over somebody who says ”hey man, I may be chaotic, but I’m good!”

I just don't think you can put helpless women to the sword (enemy or not) and have "Good" be in your alignment data.

The majority of players are of the "born to fun, loyal to none" attitude, but just because a lot of players and DM's prefer to have their worlds awash in amorality, you can't sell "good" short. Not black and white good and evil, but I think most of us here know the diff. Just because a society or individual thinks raping little girls and drop-kicking babies off cliffs is an acceptable act (Khmer Rouge thought they were doing good), we still need to have established opposites if we are going to use alignments at all. Players should not choose an alignment lightly.

And when considering it, they should realize they should not think of it in terms of modern politics or something, they should think of it in terms of the tropes of fantasy gaming. You are good, you are evil, or you are in-between. The tweeners should not have evil or good as part of their alignments description.

Beyond the Crystal Cave: Role-play and non-violence

Published by TSR’s UK division in 1983, UK1 seems to be inspired by “forest/garden levels” in dungeons. It is, of course, a dungeon-like adventure, in that you cannot fly nor float into the area due to an impenetrable force field. You can actually destroy the force field - If you are a 20th level wizard, that is. It is so funny when modules actually describe how you can affect something, even when there is no chance in hell of having what you need to affect it! This module is designed for levels 4-7, so it’s doubtful anyone involved would have the contacts to get a super-wizard to help out. Note that just like any other aggressive act in the module, destroying the force field has a consequence – the dispelling wizard will be sucked into a vortex, and spewed out in some random place and time. Why did they even bother to go into this? Sheesh.

Created on an island (in the World of Greyhawk) by a wizard and his elvish wife, the gardens still go on long after they had passed away. It is always summer in the garden, and it is full of various sylvan creatures, including leprechauns, pixies, centaurs, an Ent, dryads, and unicorns.

The local governor asks the party to enter the gardens and bring back a young couple. The official offers up 10,000 GP for their return, a hefty sum for any rescue mission. The party will eventually have to earn it, because all of the creatures in the gardens believe the young couple to be their old master and mistress reborn. Within that fact dwells the challenge of this adventure: there is no evil in the garden, but every living thing is your enemy. Many of them, as described in the module, will attack on site.

Like many TSR modules, many spells did not work as normal. In this case, many of the most common spells a druid might use did not work at all. This was a very strange thing, considering druids also were granted a level while they stayed in the garden, but things that did not make a lot of sense were often included in TSR products.

This adventure heavily stresses non-violent parlay, and role-play is more essential to this adventure than most others. In something like “Steading of the Hill Giant Chief,” you ultimately won’t have much choice but to barge and bash your way through it. But in UK1, every page is full of bad things that will happen to you if you are aggressive, steal anything, or harm anything in the garden. Even worse, the official who hired you has an amulet of ESP, so if you show up after a nasty act looking for the 10,000, he will deny you and have you thrown out of town. If the party really is evil, this would be a great time to show it. Kill the governor, take his amulet (easily worth over 50,000 in my game), steal a boat, and disappear for awhile.

There are two combat encounters in the caves leading into the garden. There are some Mudmen, a by product of the magic stream exiting the cave, and also an ochre jelly. But after these fights, don’t fight anything else or you not only forfeit the reward money, you’ll have the entire garden population after your head. The young couple is held up in a magical tower in the garden. This place pretty much would count as a mini-dungeon, but once again you have to walk on eggshells or face dire consequences.

The "boss monster" (forgive the video game lingo-lax) of the gardens is "The Green Man." The spirit of John Barleycorn is alive and well in the place. This meant nothing to me in the 80's when I got this module, but later on when I joined a group at the local Renaissance Faires based on Morris Dancing and folk music, I learned a lot about this old English country spirit. Morris dancing is about making the "ale crops," barley and hops, grow by doing worhipful dances and country dances in his honor. If I run the scenario again in the future, I will use him more than I did the first time.

There is a magical oracle force in the “Cave of Echoes” that lead into the garden that can be entertaining. As described in the module, it will pretty much grant any minor wish to a zero-level NPC who is in need. It has no respect for greedy players though – if they wish for something, it just gives mysterious gibberish. So great fun can be had with this, and you can really see who the greediest player character is judging by how they approach the oracle.

Most DM’s would find it a challenge to keep players entertained, seeing as most of the adventure is passive (or is designed to be). I actually altered things to make it easier: I had a powerful party of evil NPC’s enter the garden to loot it, and that way the players had somebody they could fight and not incur wrath.

As a player character, the most troubling aspect of the gardens is the time stream. For every hour spent within the garden, a month passes on the outside. When I ran the module for the first time, I think the party spent 8 or 9 hours in the garden, and that was after finding out about the time slowdown a couple of hours into it. They stepped it up a bit, but a party unaware (as the module hopes they will be) could easily spend a night or two in the garden, especially if they happen to befriend some creatures and hang out with them. So a typical scenario could have the party come out to find 2-4 years have passed. Yowtch. At this point, have the players put the character sheets away and start new ones. The world will catch up to the garden visitors eventually.

Eldritch Wizardry was my first porno

Nowadays it is probably rare for a boy of 11 or 12 to get by without seeing nudity somewhere. With cable TV and the internets, it is damn hard to avoid it. But when I was a kid in puberty, I had yet to see my first depiction of a nipple. My folks were hard working lower-middle class catholic immigrants, and we didn’t exactly have a lot of fine art laying around. Most of my friends had older brothers who had treated them to magazines or lent them film reels, or that they had spied on them sneaking a girl into the house, but I had two older bros and there was not a nude woman to be found. They kept those National Geographic’s and underground comics well hidden.

I had seen some Frank Frazetta artwwork, probably on my brother’s Conan books that I would soon be reading, but those women being threatened on the covers were always a bit blurry, a mix of colors.

I think my first real memory of gazing at a monster’s boobs was a harpy somewhere in the first three books. Blackmoor? But it was 1976’s Eldritch Wizardry, D&D supplement III, that really got me going. I’m sure that cover made it so most boys under 18 had to keep it well hidden under the other books. I’m not sure my mom would have confiscated it, but it would have raised questions about this “game” I was getting into. Check out that blond on the cover, stretched out on some sort of altar. No high priest or monster is shown, but you know she is in some kind of trouble. OK, so maybe she is just a kinky elf chick giving a treat to her horny adventurer boyfriend, but I get the feeling something bad is going to happen to this naked wench. That mix of sex, fear, and violence may not be good for the development of a young man, but besides feeling of lust for her I knew she would be safe. If you count safe as being saved by Conan and then savagely ravished by him.

It is very interesting to note that this drawing of a sexy woman in such peril was created by a woman.

You look at that picture, and the filthy possibilities seem endless. It still turns me on. That body is so tight, that hair so perfect. Is she an elf, or just a gorgeous human? That fleshtone just shimmered in that brazier-light. I think I can remember the tactile sensation of the book, the roughness of that cover as I moved my hand across – um, OK, so this is getting weird. Calm down, Mac.

There are a few nice breasteses within the black and white pages as well. The Type V demon, the female with six arms and a snake lower body, is shown twice. Once under her entry, and again in an action piece where she and another demon fight a couple of adventurers. OK, she is a demon who would kill me just as soon as look at me, and the snake part of the body is a turn off. But man, those breasts, that face, that hair – at least that part is perfection. The six arms don’t bother me so much. Long before I DM’d, or even bought this book, I had a character killed in one of my first games by a type V that came out of a picture and attacked me. The sneering, cretinous DM (whom you can read a bit about in the first entry at mygaminghistory.blogspot.com) declared “she had some fun with you before you died.” Oh well, at least somebody had some fun in that game.

There’s a naked succubus within the pages as well. Cute face, but outside of the breasts her body looks a little mannish. Might be a tranny. Also, although she isn’t naked, there is a scantily clad young female cleric, very cute, summoning Orcus. Dave Sutherland’s art wasn’t tight, but his females were always hot, naked or not. A powerful woman is always sexy to a young boy.