Roll20 - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

 

OK, maybe there is no real ugly, at least not as ugly as Eli Wallach. Though until the last few weeks my experience was hit and miss. The other year I did have my first campaign, around 12 sessions, with my friend and longtime player "T," and a couple of local guys (one I eventually met because he was a department manager at the hospital I worked at - luckily not MY department). It went well, and the guys did not have deep experience with the Roll20 experience, so my technical failings were no very pronounced. Hey, as long as we could talk and move tokens around without the system crashing I was happy. 

But that ended due to family and school schedules, and my attempts to get something going directly off the Roll20 forums was mixed at best. One try had a couple of knuckleheads who seemed like great guys at first. Then an hour in a dude who seemed to know what he was doing didn't even have a character sheet done up (I was yet to require digital versions of them) when we needed it. I should also mention that this fairly normal sounding guy insisted on being called "Morpheus," which is a thing that is awkward for me. Fucking Morpheus. Sheesh. 

Anyway, the other guy, when combat started, was hung up on the movement measuring. It was so odd. He was having measuring tool issues, and for some reason was refusing to just use the squares already present on the map. I didn't get the problem. I started wondering if these guys just made a hobby out of going into games and being idiots. 

My real-life name is "Orcsmasher." 
My characters name is Joe. 

My next attempt had a couple of ladies (one was trans, the other CIS, which is fine though I had all kinds of terms and such I had to learn so as not to use the wrong pronoun. God). Anyway, after a couple of games that seemed to go well it was announced to me that they just wanted to learn how to do a game for each other, and that was that. 

Another try had a lady want to team up with me to start a group on Roll20, but she was hella into D&D Beyond, which I have limited experience with (none at all). She wanted me to invest in it and tie it into my campaign pages and such. I was still learning the basics, so that did not appeal to me. So no go. 

Disappointing, and yeah, I guess kind of ugly for me. Not long after I was tapped locally by a group to run some face to face. That was going well, but then the host told everybody he had to move his sick mother in with them and we would suspend things indefinitely. That was several months ago, so I guess that is over. 

But I didn't mind so much. As I get older I get fed up schlepping every week to somebodies house across town with all my shit, and getting set up, and trying to get a narrative going in a home where visitors seemed to come and go constantly, for me disrupting the game. It kind of beat me hosting though. I really no longer value having people in my home that are not close friends of mine. 

Yeah, I just feel done with a regular face to face for D&D. But with my Roll20 horizons suddenly expanding I can see a life without running in front of a group. You see, we are now past game three, and it is going super well. Everybody has way more experience with Roll20 and D&D 5th ed. That was intimidating at first, but most seem willing to help as I am up front about my technical lackings. They like my game clearly, and they want it to continue. And my goal was to get noticeably more adept with the format each session, and that is happening. Whether its formatting images better, or learning to use the built-in turn counter, I learn something new every damn time. Its kind of exhilarating. 

So lets see. The good. Well, not having a table full of people staring at me for three hours is nice. And on a personal note being able to drink what I want and smoke what I want right at my game table is pretty awesome. And having a colorful map to move tokens around on is great. Searching google for maps and monster and character images is fun in itself. Making those into tokens and such.  And everybody gets to be home. Nothing like the comforts of your own crib. And if anybody needs to deal with family, or I can hear dishes clattering around (one of the most annoying sounds in the world to me), I can just ask them to mute until things calm down. 

And the resources are amazing. Besides some "DIY" you can buy various module packs, most with pre-made maps and tokens, and the majority of such things are fairly cheap. 

And man, no more miniatures. There was a time when I loved them. But I long since stopped painting, and I for sure don't want to buy more. Sooooo..goodbye mini's! I'm thinking of selling them all on Ebay. 

And looking in books and shuffling papers around? Not in my command center. Last session I attempted to be paper free. My notes and tokens and even the basic books are all available in my campaign. And when a character uses a skill or spell of their E-Sheet, it can post to the chat section so I can look at it. No more looking up spells in a book! I think by next game I will be totally paperless outside of some emergency notes like you often have in case players go off the rails. 

And wow, The Charactermancer. It's like magic. Using it helps keep you from forgetting anything for your character when creating it. It will remember for you. It won't let you forget a certain proficiency you might miss on your own. In a lot of ways its the greatest part of the format. 

OK, well, The Bad. It really comes down to learning to do things differently. The main thing I would say is not being able to see each other, you can miss things. Personally I am a fairly animated DM who gestures a lot and such. Thats gone, though there are ways to convey the same things with voice and how you describe a situation.

But I have learned that I rely on seeing the player a lot in face to face as far as when I ask a question of a player. In person you can often get an answer just by their expression and body language. But with just voice you need to be more clear and so do they. More needs to be verbalized. 

And of course there are technical issues, but I am surprised by how few of them there are. If you drop off the program its easy to jump back in. Its not like waiting for your XBOX to reboot. Anytime I have an issue I'm back in like 30 seconds. 

A month ago I would have said the selection of quality people from the forums is sketchy at best. But I put together this great current group almost entirely from the forums. It turned me around on it. Yeah, you have to hand pick from it, but it paid off now and it could again. But man, these folk are great. Into role-play, and engaged with the material, they have been a pleasure so far. I knew it was a good sign when I wanted to level them to 2nd after the first session, and the pretty much unanimously stated they would not mind be 1st for another game. Refreshing. 

And I suppose with the possibility of one wacky pandemic after another in the future, this is a good way to go in that regard. 

I know that another popular online format out there is Fantasy Grounds. I have no experience at all with it. I assume people have their preference. But I certainly would not like to put time into learning another thing. For the foreseeable future, and perhaps the rest of my future, Roll20 will be how I roll. 

The Tragedy of The Drunken Troll

 Alright, game 2 of the new Roll20 campaign "Trade and Turpitude," taking place in the last caravan season of the year in the Southern Shires of the kingdom. 

Everybody showed up. Good sign. Though I won't usually consider it a campaign until after game three. Law of averages dictate somebody will drop out by then, but everybody seems to be having a good time and are interacting with the material in the ways I like them too. I think I come up with some interesting ideas here and there, along with lots of trope stuff. Something like 40 years of GMing will give you that. And my old experiences with "out in the weeds" stuff in the deep past; Arduin and Judges Guild and such, lets me interject some more wacky elements, but mostly keeping it D&D. I look to more modern sources for ideas, random tables and such, but usually if I think the hell out of something various angles and hooks emerge that I think will be interesting to an encounter. Hey, there is plenty to brag about when you pluck most of the ideas you integrate into play out of your own head. 

Haha, really, a DM's ideas should come from all over the place. Anyway, I was sort of having trouble coming up with some things. The first few games of this campaign will be travelling around with a small caravan of high-end merchants from the big city up north. Besides some village and town encounters already in my head, I need to come up with some incidental encounters that can occur along the way. Things to fit in here and there along the way when I need some filler. 

I look at various random tables online, road and country encounters. Most of them aren't very filling. Things like "you meet an old man who is not what he seems," or "You see a coffin up against a tree with the lid closed. Do you investigate?" OK, these are meant to be filled in, but are hardly things you can't think up with nice creamy filling on your own. I wish these examples were a little deeper. 

But if I mull on it a bit (couple refreshing adult beverages never hurt) I usually hit on something. For this game it was "..hmmm, what if the caravan comes across a troll laying across the road, passed out from drinking barrels of powerful whiskey." 

We were still in the tavern with the party meeting the caravan master, having finished the previous games encounters there. But off to the caravan grounds to meet the merchants. 

A wine merchant, a weapon seller/trainer, a music teacher and instrument seller, a bookseller, and a clothier. It was night, but the wineseller still had a few local lords tasting some wine. The party immediately noticed a heavy set, traveler shoplifting a couple bottles of expensive cabernet. "Fat Mike the Traveler," a professional thief and con man. 

Size increased to show texture.

It was an amusing little encounter, and the long and short of it was the PC's got a few gold richer by getting the wine back and extorting Fat Mike for some coin. A typical "give you my wallet? No, give me YOUR wallet" situation. 

Next day when the caravan got on the road for a couple hours, it was second encounter time. This time it was the caravan coming around the corner on a country road and almost running into a bit old troll passed out drunk and blocking the way. 

Size NOT increased to show texture. Nobody
wants to get too close a look at this. 

Clearly it as a troll who stole a cart of big whiskey barrels and he was passed out snoring in the road. Even had a nice big puddle of whiskey puke next to him. Ew. 

Turning the caravan around in the smallish area to do it would have been time consuming and noisy. Plus at least one character didn't want it on his conscious to have a hungover troll around for others to bump into. But what to do? 

Slit his throat and roll him out of the way? No way, man. He's a troll. You can cut a trolls head off and it will still be active, the head still alive and controlling the body. Trolls are very coup de gras resistant. Get some fires going? Well, everything was wet from light rain. 

Everybody, character and players, knew that they were no match for the thing if it got up and started laying into them. As they moved around trying to figure it all out, the troll seemed to almost wake up a time or two. The shadow elf ranger was a monster hunter, and he just wanted to start chopping into it. But the cooler heads gathered, torches and lanterns fetched from the wagons, and lantern oil was spread over the blacked out beast.  

With the wetness, and me not going old school napalm with the oil (I have always said; oil is for keeping lanterns lit, not for going all Apocalypse Now like so many neckbeards from times bygone like it too). But with the troll waking up, they had to go on the attack with what they had. 

In 5th edition any fire damage will keep the regeneration from working for that round. That combined with the characters getting some licks in before it could even stand up (with some advantage) helped. I mean, they were scared. My number one new player "M" sounded a little annoyed that I was hitting them with such a strong creature. But I certainly gave it disadvantage that first round. It all helps out. Because one solid blow could kill a 1st level PC. I did explain that I am old school and that characters need to be over their head now and again. At any rate, after the fact she apologized for doubting me when the encounter was won (though it's not really over even though they think it is). 

But they did alright. I mean, this was kind of a puzzle encounter, where the trick was to attack while you had as much advantages as possible. They did alright with that, and its hit points were plummeting down. "Zip" the commoner fighter made the spectacular move. There was still a full barrel on the cart. He opened it, set it aflame (I had it be strong dwarvish stuff), and the cart became an instant fireball. He turned it around and ran it right into the suffering troll. Woosh! That roll went up like an old dry Xmas tree. It was pretty cool. That took it right down, and as we were going late we had to end right there. 

This "trade roads" portion of the campaign seems to be going well, and the theme feels like it will remain even after they are off the road. But what was going to be a couple of game portion of the campaign is probably going to be more like a 5 or 6 game portion before I get them to my version of Apple Lane and Gringles Pawnshop. It's going so well and there is great character development here. 

I don't plan to post about every session. Who needs that, right? And there are other aspects to the Roll20 experience I want to write about. I'm loving it, and in all honestly it may be my format for good. Player M said she is done with the face to face group experience, and I kind of feel the same way. I don't really like having people who are not close friends in my place, and I don't always like to schlep to another persons house, especially as you cannot really control the gaming environment in that. But online I have all the control. Its awesome. 

But however I do it, it feels great having a full group. My besties B and L, my boardgame buddies I talk about all the time here, are wanting in on some Roll20 as well, so my player pool is for sure deepening. I'm so glad I took another chance on getting a group going from that sketchy Roll20 forum area. I finally lucked out! 

Cheers

Roll20 & the Player Experience

 

With a new campaign that is promising, and a successful 12 or so campaign during the height of the pandemic the other year, I got the chance to sit down as a player in a Roll20 game.

A player in my game, who has been super helpful in guiding me into getting up to snuff with various Roll20 functions (charactermancer, initiative, etc), had scheduled a one-shot that some of her regular players could not make it to. I was invited. 

The kicker was it was a Sunday morning. We would play from 11-3. NOT my favorite time frame to game in. But I live right across from a park at a protected biophere of the River where, when the weather gets nice, all sorts of events happen, most commonly "fun runs." This one was for Mothers Day, and they shut down various streets nearby, and traffic goes from almost nothing to apocalypse for a few short hours. A good excuse to make a big breakfast and a pot of fresh ground coffee instead of the usual handful of drinkies, and chill out and learn some things. Well, actually, by around 130 I went for a couple of ciders. What the hell. 

The major score for me here was I had yet to experience Roll20 play AS a player. So when I run a session I'm not always sure how the players see things. But also in the course of play, I have to get to know the character sheet usage better and it was a great lesson in that regard. Some things I just muddle through in my own game are easier now. Sweet. 

It was a decent group to play with, mixed male and female an nobody annoying in any way. I ran a meat and potatoes basic fighter mercenary, and the others were the modern "look how cool my character is" more advanced types. But I didn't mind.  No big woop. 

The encounters themselves were classic dungeon stuff that surprised me. Though I think my new friend M is old enough to have played some older edition, I did not peg her as dungeon minded. But there we were. We dealt with a ghostly child and her playroom, a mirror with our evil selves on the other side, and in the end an owlbear attack for the characters who did not join us to fight those dopplegangers. Me and a halfling on the other side of the evil mirror, and the rest of the party quickly dispatched by the owlbear. It was a TPK. Split party 101.

Now, I don't often do one shots. But when I do I just try to have like three interconnected encounters. Just stringing things together. But I think M was working on a larger dungeon, and we just dealt with sections she wanted to tweak. 

Thats all good. It was a great learning experience, and I got a few laughs with my cool dry wit, so maybe I'll get invited to more? 

Trade & Turpitude

 

GAME 2: "Roads Hold the Gold" - so, you are going to be a worker on the trade roads? Well, keep in mind, they still building the southern shire portion of The Great Tanmoorian Highway. For 20 years the queen been paving trade roads and promoting the highway. It's not all fine stone and slurry. When going south it won't be long past River Town that the paving stops and you start to see the kingdom's best road workers taking long lunches and holidays off where the pavement meets the country soil. Don't fool yourself. The Kingdom doesn't care where the pavement starts and stops. When it comes to the Southern Shires, it's profit that moves the maps..."

-Overheard from a seasoned caravan worker...

(above: campaign front page blurb for next weeks game)

So just like that I'm running a campaign again. 

After a handful of years working non-stop in health care, including a major regional hospital during the deepest parts of the pandemic, I decided to take a few months off from work. I live in a beautiful mountain area, known for plenty of outdoor activities. So I want to smell the roses, NOT have to get up early, be able to do some things during the week, and chill out. But this also makes me wish I had some extra gaming to do outside my XBOX. 

So on a lark I posted a "want to start campaign" comment in the Roll20 forums. I didn't have much hope. I have had only moderate success sourcing from the forum.  It's a place rife with Critical Role wonks and people who are looking for games where members are all into "alternative lifestyles" and require you to learn a list of ways they need to be referred to. Not that I'm biased against anybody. The first person to call me when I moved to a new city to see how I was doing was a transgender neighbor of mine. I'm good with anybody who is a good person. But the general populace of that particular forum are very particular about what they want in a game, and what they want you to refer to them as (and god help you if you get it wrong). 

I was clear about my background and how I go about DMing. Long and short of it, I eventually had 4 great sounding players wanting to be in a new campaign all within a week or two. It happed very fast. The first person I was contacted by was a gal (who I will call "M") who as it turned out was in my very same neck of the woods! Most of the rest are actually in different time zones. I rounded out the group by of course inviting my long time player and one of my best old friends, "T", to come in and play. Though not exactly a techie, T seems to enjoy the Roll20 stuff I did in the past. Once she gets up and running at game time she's loving it. 

My interactions with most of the folk in the days before the game made me hopeful. Flakes abound off of the forums. But man, everybody showed up. 

I ran Roll20 games very low rent in the past. Throw some maps up, move tokens around. Maybe a little jukebox music. But M was very helpful with some basic stuff. Helping me use scripts to set up a player welcome package which shows them the fillable character sheet right away. 

It had been awhile for both me and T in the format. The usual opening night technical issues slowing things down a bit. When T went into Roll20 she was confused to see herself still in the old campaign pages haha. 

Everybody had cool characters. Nothing too outlandish. I did expand on the material I was going to allow as far as characters (I still only own the PHB and Monster Manual. Oh, and the DMG which in 5th ed is next to useless. Summer reading material maybe). There was a shadow elf dude, a halfling druid with some dream connection thing, T ran a female dwarf, and there were two young commoners who decided they would be from the same local village. A male fighter and a female paladin. The paladin was outside the usual form you expect a paladin to take (at least in old school). Just simple townie clothing and a sword. No real deity. Just a connection to the cosmos. Maybe because she is, in part, one of those Assimer(sp) semi-angel people.

So there were no Cyborg Ninja Minotaurs, which was nice. But everybody had way more 5th ed experience than me (and also Roll20 experience, which is a little intimidating to a noob). But for their sake I had to start allowing going out in the weeds a bit with character gen.

I had this campaign idea for a long time, one where after a few games I would have the characters arrive at my D&D version of Runequest's Apple Lane, one of my favorite old modules. Get them all caught up in the pawnshop attack and eventually to The Rainbow Mounds. 

But I figured a caravan thing for the first couple of games. My style has evolved to where I like the first couple of sessions to just be "settle into our characters games," and caravan guard situation is kind of perfect for it. 

 I decided to focus on the trade season atmosphere for the entire campaign. Late fall where the last caravans of the year are getting in some last of the year travel. The towns and roads busy with profiteers. I can fit in flavor for this all over the place, in many situations. And make the characters want to earn more and more money by letting them see cool, expensive stuff to buy.

And while my urban city games might have a lot of Tarantino and action movie influences, I like to go with a David Lynchian vibe for the country. You know, everything looks nice and innocent, so the odd and terrifying things are all the more so. "Look at that lovely field of grain; oh shit, and Ankheg just popped up and ate that farmer!" 

That, and some things I was planning had me land on what I think is kind of a unique (if not clever) campaign name. "Trade and Turpitude." 

They all started in River Town, "the gateway to the southern shires." It's the next largest community after the main city, and in the decades of my game I have grown it bigger and bigger. 

The couple of commoner characters are on a quest to find a friend of theirs who ran away months ago based on dreams of a beautiful woman he felt was actually out there somewhere. So as they got to know the characters (the ones who were at the table anyway, The shadow elf lurker in a balcony nearby) they also inquired around about their friend. 

When I had the obligatory tavern fight go down, it was a table full of locals who were arguing over the towns bid to have the Queen of Tanmoor declare it a sister city to the capitol. A portrait of the queen was above the fireplace, and a single derogatory remark about her got the fight going. 

Even in campaigns where characters are never going to meet the queen, I like to get some lore in about her. Even minor mentions. This was an NPC in my game going back decades. She was around player characters since childhood (her father, the late King, tapped into player characters frequently for secret missions). Even my pal "T" has history with her. She has an old high level druid character who is Queen Libertines best friend going way back. 

Anyway, these days I like to have a tavern brawl act as one big, possibly growing creature, and I use a cartoon fight cloud to represent it. 

PC's can interact with it in various ways as it rolls around and endangers others. It will grow if others dive into the brawl, or it will shrink as parts of it are knocked out or brawlers removed from it. It always seems to get a hearty chuckle out of the players who see it for the first time. 

Caravan leader, Marge (who T's dwarf had already hooked up with) got the characters together to offer them a job. She took them to a secluded upper area to eat, drink, and makes some deals to work for her small caravan concern. 

I got my second chance to have another fight here. A mysterious figure who I won't go into in this post was at the bottom of the balcony area and started playing a spooky flute. There was a big stuffed bear up there with the characters (it just so happened the tavern map I sourced had it there!) and it very atmospherically (the wood and plater frame creaking and rubbing as a disembodied bear spirit was heard growling) animated to attack them.

 It was of course less deadly than a real full bear, but the characters were nicely freaked out by the sudden situation. Very out of place in a nice, busy inn. David Lynch, yo!

We ended the night with that crazy stuffed grizzly fight.

As I stayed on Roll20 to work on a few things, and hearing from some of the players seems to have us locked in for a second session next week. So far so good! I always figured that if you make it past a 1st session ionto a 2nd one then you know you have a campaign. If I do what I usually do, that is to try to top each previous game, it should be in the bag. 

But man. It's interesting how a group and a campaign can come out of almost nowhere in online formats. Sunday early Mary is doing some one shot thing with some of her regular players and I'm invited to join in for the day, so I'm going to get a chance to finally see Roll20 working from the players side of the screen. I feel not having done that is a major weakness in my own use of the format. The more I learn, the better I can be. 

Cheers

Player Appreciation and Beyond

 

(note: for most of my gaming life my groups were made up of friends I already had. This post is about experiences with mostly strangers that made up a new group)

I've probably mentioned in a lot of my posts over the years that my main pet peeve as a GM was to feel like running a game was a job that didn't pay. It has been a few years since I actually felt that way. But during my 10 years run for a group in Santa Monica (my first group that was mostly made up of strangers) from around 2008 to 2018 I felt like that fairly often. Now, it's not a TOTAL buzzkill. Sometimes it was even fun. At first. Kind of "pretend player vs. DM." One of the long-time players was a guy we called The Power Game man. A big white South African guy, he would create a character that seemed interesting and layered, and you would soon realize he was just min-maxing. Using stats, race, and class in combination to create especially powerful characters. 

Now on the face of it that isn't so bad. That is kind of baked into current D&D.  Lots of players do it, and it's part of their process. It's part of their fun. But where I get frustrated is when that kind of play treads on not just the other players fun, but especially mine. A couple of these "power game types" came along during that group's existence. And don't get me started on our long-time host then, who was not just a min maxer to a degree, but also one of these guys who liked to live vicariously through his characters getting laid and seemed to think I was his PC's pimp. So while Power Game Man was busy treating every NPC as an enemy (a power gamer trait I have always noticed), the host was always trying to fuck them. 

Look Andy, I'm not going to role-play the
process out for you; just roll your charisma
and we'll leave it at that...

As a DM you are in a unique situation where you have the power to pretty much come up with a sneaky way to kill any character that bothers you. But I was never like that. I was never an "enemy" DM who was out to get characters. Quite the opposite. I was fair to a fault, even in my earliest childhood games. And the worst players, like Power Game Man and some others, could tell that and use it as an advantage. And Therin is where the worst of my frustrations come in. I don't usually have some well-crafted story written up, or a way things have to go in game in order for me to have fun with it. I just try to make it a fair and interesting setting for the characters to romp around in and look for hooks. If I get into a players vs. DM situation, its because I got dragged into it. I'm not really into that mess and I resent it when I feel I've been put in that situation. I just want us to all have fun together.

I may complain (a lot), but I can see silver linings on any cloud. In the case of our old host, though in a lot of ways he was a pain, he was very supportive of my desire to run things other than D&D. It was in large part due to his support that I had successful campaigns of Champions, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, and even Metamorphosis Alpha. I will always be grateful for that.  Power Game man? Naw, I have nothing to be grateful for there. Just an ass in a seat at best. 

But hell, for any player at my table who isn't a total annoying wack job, I'm grateful for them giving their time and putting their gaming fun in my hands. But every now and again I have to appreciate the players who, without even trying, seem to value what you are doing as a DM, and in turn are valuable themselves. 

So I'll mention two "points of light" in my player pools. First is my old Friend "T." She has been in a majority of my gaming groups since the early 90's. She doesn't exactly go out of her way to make my experience better. But her mellow and consistent play style jibes well with my styles. She just...plays her characters. There isn't a power gamer bone in her body. Oh sure, she wants strong characters. But its usually just enjoying the life path that unfolds for her many characters in my campaigns that motivates her. She accepts the good and the bad that happens in the game. She is patient as hell. She gets along with other players. She quietly and steadily just role plays her characters. Even the very infrequent evil character she runs isn't a pain in the ass. But she is the anti-power gamer. In my Night Below campaign years ago her fighter character got a wish from a Deck of Many Things. Of all the things she could have wished for, she wished for an NPC her character fancied to propose marriage to her! Some would call that a wasted wish, but that was her just role-playing her character. Outstanding. T still lives in my old town, but we get to play here and there through Roll20, and she remains reliable and dependable player. 

In most recent times there is "B and L," who I mention a lot in my board game postings. Its thanks to them I got my first group together in my new town. L had no experience with gaming, but B played 1st Ed. in the service (D&D in Afghanistan, ya'll!). They were looking for a DM through the local shops Facebook page, and we hit it off right away. They are not the most outgoing players, they certainly are not there for community theater. But I specialize in somewhat introverted players, and they have come out of that shell pretty well. Quiet players much like "T," but they come up with some interesting moments. L, a woman straight as the day is long, had her female half orc fighter end up in a same sex relationship with an NPC. It was a situation that I certainly did not push, but the fact that it happened organically in the course of the games points very much to a role-playing frame of mind. 

Anyway, not just getting me as a DM and putting a group together, B and L would bring me a six pack of expensive beer or ale every damn game just for me. Even now, a couple of years later when we have a board game day, they bring me the same. Even during the times they are on health kicks and not drinking. I'd be like "look guys, if you aren't even drinking its not right to being me drinks." But deaf ears. Any time they come over they bring it to me. And me being raised on not showing up at a house with empty hands means I very much appreciate it. Its not the main reason we became so close so quickly (I'd take a bullet for them, meanwhile my oldest friends I've known for decades can go take their own bullets). That is mainly because this younger couple sort of adopted me at a time I didn't know anybody in my new town. Had me over for Xmas day only knowing me a brief time, when I would otherwise probably have spent it watching TV and eating Jack in the Box tacos (or maybe in a casino). I have been in a couple of relationships (with non-gamers) since coming to town, but most of my time with B and L is just me and them (and sometimes with some of their local pals). Dinner, drinks, local theater..I love being a third wheel with them. 

Now, you aren't always going to get close to people you met through gaming. As a matter of fact, they are the only case where it happened to me. We are already like brothers and sister. I appreciate the hell out of them in games or otherwise. They are my besties. And as I get older, in gaming or otherwise, I try more and more to focus away from the pain-in-the-ass players (or whoever) of the past, and put more of it, more positivity, into those who truly deserve it. People being positive towards you should make you want to be a better person. For them and for yourself. 

But we should all go through life doing that.

 

Professional Dungeon Masters

 

Pictured above: profile pic of a Roll20 forum member

advertising as a "Paid DM" 

In recent months I've been exploring the Roll20 members forums. Here people advertise that they are looking for games to play in, looking to start a campaign, etc. I've been interested, surprised, annoyed, and even appalled (I'll post more on this in the future), but the most stand out thing to me there is the phenomenon of "paid DM's."

Around 10 years ago when I started exploring the "OSR" online, there wasn't much in the way of "professional dungeon masters." Sure, somebody like Frank Mentzer and other mid-level gaming luminaries might be getting a payday for running a convention game. You can make your own call as to whether such sessions are worth the time and money (I try not to be judgmental but I don't find this grizzled veteran very compelling in his refereeing), but I was never much of a convention dude. 

At some point right before I originally started this blog I was lurking around a forum, I think RPG.net, and some young fellow calling himself Captain Kommando or some such made a post discussing the possibility of running games for a living. Apparently he lived with his granny and money was an issue. In order to help he wanted to earn some bucks, and he thought DMing for pay would be a great way to save the homestead. He would don masks and do voices and provide you an interactive experience. That forum, at least then (I have zero recent forum experience; in the past I found forums such as rpg.net and Dragonsfoot to be cesspools of tired old school gamers clinging to tired old notions) was full of people who thought their way of having fun pretending to be elves was superior, and they kind of ate Captain Kommando alive. "pay to play? the hell you say!" But he dug in his heels. I think that after he sat on a train for an hour to go run a free trial game for some folk at a mall food court, and none of them showing up, he gave up on his dream and went back to a regular job search. 

Flash forward some years, and the roll20 "looking for games forum" is full of folk advertising as "paid DM's." Literally 25-35 % of the posts are from DM's looking to get 10-20 bucks a sessions from their players. And they often seem to be able to find a group to pay. They call themselves "legendary DM's" though readily admitting they have only been doing D&D for two or three years. That's gotta chap the ass of anybody doing it for free for decades. Hell, sometimes a group will post looking for a DM to pay. 

Now, none of that really appeals to me. For one thing I don't really need the money. But to have to have an expectation that you are "working" for the players really turns me off. Too many times in the past, especially outside my own hand-picked groups, have I felt like running a session was like a job that didn't pay. For every player that brought me a six pack of high end beer, there were two who didn't seem to give a shit about what might be fun for me in the game. And I was giving it up for free. 

The added pressure of getting paid for it for sure does not appeal. A role playing game as customer service? Just like life in general I have found that when it comes to being a player the secret to happiness is managing your expectations. If you are paying somebody you certainly have high ones. 

Honestly, I think this notion is another side effect of  the popularity of Critical Role. 

Roll20, where've you been all my life?

 

Until recently I had almost zero experience in playing RPGs online. That's mostly because I had zero interest in it. With the exception of a handful of times in my life I was always able to get some kind of group together for face to face. My most recent long term groups lasted about 10 years. We played 1st edition D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Runequest, etc. But in the end it disbanded as I made the move out of Southern California. It took awhile to get a Group together in the new town, and even that only after I made the dreaded switch to the newest edition. I sailed along with That for awhile, but the couple who helped me start the group moving away, combined with The apocalypses, shut that down. 

A local DM suggested I try out Roll 20. It seemed like time to give that a shot. But rather than try to get in on a game to experience it from the players side, I dove into learning enough about the system to get a campaign up and running. As cornerstone players I tapped a guy who was going to join our face to face game right before The Virus hit, and an old player of mine from my home town Los Angeles, and recruited a couple of others and got it going. 

Though I was a Roll20 noob, I just started small and used each session as a chance to learn a bit more each time. I marveled at the way I could yoink a map out of a google search and lay it right down and put squares on it. The first couple of games were set in the hobbit shires, so I just needed country roads, farm fields, and hobbit houses and cottages. 

I discovered a token maker, and loved it. I could put any creature or NPC into a cool little ring. Players pointed me out to artwork online and I whipped up tokens for them. 

Suddenly buying and painting miniatures seemed like a real hassle (I never loved it... the process was a necessity). With the tokens the sky is the limit. Just put some keywords into your Google machine, use a stamp app to make it look like above, and get on with it.

Players are granted control of their token. DM has his. Move them around the map you laid out (maybe going that extra mile by locking the grids in properly for ease of tactical movement). The majority of the rest of the work is using your actual books next to you. Or use PDF stuff if that floats yer boat. Find a map online that suites your encounter then slide it into a page and place grids on it. Wow. 

The above video is of my "Control Center Alpha." My set-up for game night. The music in the background is live from a college radio station, playing from my alma mater Santa Monica College's radio station KCRW, and what is playing was totally unintentional but so appropriate for the moments before everyone logs on to play. When I'm in the "command chair" I feel a lot like the guy running games from behind the scenes in Larry Nivens D&D based novel Dreampark.

Man, I'm loving it. I want more. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I may like it more than face to face. My DMing is more concise, focused, and this format appeals to my episodic style. I keep it tight now that I'm not right in front of faces waiting on my next utterance. Not seeing the players has helped me open up in a way. I know, right? Somehow impersonal is making it more personal for me. Yeah, its weird.