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

Do I like Champions more than D&D?

D&D is my first and always will be my best love. I think.

I’ve been running my 1st ed. (started out as OD&D) game world for over 30 years, and it would be hard not to look at it as a favorite son. And jeez, I can run it in my sleep. I practically phone my games in a third of the time, and the players still love it. It’s easy peasy, and satisfying.

But see, I have these other two games I love. Call of Cthulhu has been a fave since before I ever read Lovecraft. At around 14 years old I played in some games at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, and although I found those to be lacking in the fun department (I have to be honest, most of my worst gaming experiences happened in the 4-5 years I spend time at Aero), I fell in love with the feel of the game and the system, and was soon running my own games of it. In the 90’s, I did long running campaigns. My D&D players would hem and haw when I suggested it (not one of them then was a Lovecraft fan), but after a game or two they were often preferring to do it over the D&D. It was great, but unlike my D&D it was a world I didn’t create, just one that I presented (I’d like to say I invented the 1920’s, but that would take Al Gore balls).

So the only thing that came close to my D&D game world love was my Champions campaigns. I started early on in the late 70’s with Superhero 2044. Most people to this day find it a perplexing set of rules to use, but my young mind didn’t seem to have much trouble working around the lightness of the rules. I have spoken elsewhere about my experiences helping playtest, then running Supergame in the early 80’s, so I won’t waste more breath on that here. Soon my friends and I were on to Villains and Vigilantes, but by the mid-80’s it was Champions that had captured my comic book loving heart.

I created my own futuristic game world for it. Heavily influenced by Superhero 2044’s “Inguria,” I made my “New Haven” a pacific island metropolis. America and a lot of the rest of the world was blasted by nuclear war, and New Haven was a place that accommodated many refugees – the majority of whom were rich and or/scientific people. Always exactly 20 years in the future, this setting has grown since the 80’s and the world has become a thing of my own. The 90’s were my heyday with New Haven, and much like CoC my D&D players fell in love with it after giving it a try.

The open nature of what you could create with Champions/Hero System (and in the 90’s I focused on the Hero System 4th edition book) appealed to what I was trying to do with New Haven. That is, create a setting where you could have not just superheroes, but anything that you can imagine from science fiction could be worked in. Aliens, interdimensional beings, things out of fantasy, whatever. Of course, seeing as I was setting my game world in a futuristic version of the Marvel Universe, combined with my weaning on Marvel growing up, many Marvel elements entered into it (I even had a futurist version of the X-Men as a campaign long ago). But my inspirations came from many other, more alternative sources, such as The Watchmen, Marshal Law, and Judge Dredd. Things that turned the superhero myth on it’s ear.

I loved the world, and the open nature of being able to have anything you can envision, and during the 90’s some of my greatest memories are of that game. Close to the year 2000, I pretty much ended my last campaign with a several game long assault on earth by an alien empire. After that, my game group and my gaming in general sort of petered out. And I was well into my 30’s and sort of just figured I had outgrown gaming for other things.

When I started my current group the other year after several years off, it was put together for AD&D 1st edition. But in my mind I knew I would be doing Call of Cthulhu or Champions as an alternative. Well, it is Champs that has come up as the alternative (finally). Regular players Dan and Ben have to take June off (Dan the big South African is getting married, Ben is going to his hometown in Vegas for a few weeks), so I sat down Wed night with Terry, Andy, and Paul for some Champs.
Right before the holidays I had gotten together with Paul and Andy to work up a couple of characters, and even did an encounter with them. They came up with some pretty good dudes. What I was going for was a version of my old Justice Incorporated campaigns (more or less a Dark Champions cross between the A-Team and the X-files).

Andy came up with a cool, Jackie Chan type Hong Kong cop who is in hiding from enemies in New Haven. Paul, still pretty new to gaming generally, came up with a French chemist who, besides having a bit of Savate kick boxing skill, carries chemical compounds that have various affects (gas, smoke, knock out).

Terry, whose characters featured prominently in my 90’s campaigns, came up with “Jane Doe,” a female Bourne Identity type who is a government assassin with amnesia.

I can’t tell you how jazzed I was to be doing a Champions game, especially with Terry, again after ten or more years. This is how gaming is supposed to feel! Terry, who is often a bit slow with her turns and such in D&D, took back to Champions like a duck to water, pouring through the Hero System book to work up her characters. She remembered the rules better than I did!

In that first short session with Paul and Andy, I had their characters hanging out near the theater district near downtown. A mysterious nun in black, wearing white chainmail, and bearing a broadsword showed up to each of them, and guided them into the back alleys where a yuppie couple was being mugged by several gang members. Sister Mary Alice, or “Malice,” was one of my old NPC’s in the game, and was the ghost of a nun who had been murdered. Both the characters, Ken and Jacques, beat up the muggers and saved the couple.

So in this week’s session, the couple thanked them (and unknown to the players Sister Mary will later possess the young woman to have a flesh and blood vehicle for her murderous vengeance on rapists and murderers) and they took off. But Sister Mary guided the two to another assault down the alleyway (comic book alleyways are just chock full of evil doing). They came upon a girl in a hospital gown being menaced by almost a dozen more gang members. The girl was “Jane Doe,” and she had woken up in a hospital with a head wound, hypothermia, and no memory. She woke up with doctors and nurses around her, and thinking she was being tortured she struck out, knocked them away (luckily not killing anyone with one of her heavy killing strikes), and took off to end up woozy in the ally. She came to in time to help Ken and Jacques beat the hell out of the mugger gang.

Successful in the combat, the three strangers were approached by Tawny, a girl who it turned out worked for industrialist Elizabeth Patricia Kyono, a billionaire of Irish and Japanese decent (I’ve always had a great mini for Kyono, and luckily found it). Kyono also ran the hero for hire office Justice Incorporated as a hobby from time to time, and she had Tawny out at night looking for possible employees. As comic book fate would have it, she found three at the same time.

Long and short of it, after meeting with Elizabeth Kyono and agreeing to work for her, the three new members of the new Justice Incorporated took a job protecting some merchants in the bad part of town from a martial arts Dojo turned criminal, and managed to top the night off with them beating up some vandalizing members of the gang. Nice high kicking and karate chopping combat session!

It was great fun, and these being basically martial arts characters very easy to run. They really seem to like their characters, and next week we are hopefully finishing up this adventure.

So right now Champs is my game of choice. When Ben and Dan get back in July, they might not be into it but that is fine. We’ll get back to the D&D, and Champions is best with two or three players anyway. When we are missing a couple D&D players, it’ll be Justice Incorporated, my friends.

p.s. –and oh what a joy to only have to use D6!

Night of the Walking Wet

Even though it is maybe months away, I keep thinking about what I would like to do for the early part of my next campaign, so I have been going through my older game stuff for ideas. Over the weekend I took another look at my old and beaten copy of The Dungeoneer Compendium.

The first 6 issues of The Dungeoneer from back in the day each had a featured dungeon. Each of these were great examples of Judges Guild’s wild and wooly take on Dungeons and Dragons. For one thing, the entries for rooms and areas were just like I did mine in my game notebooks, specifically, poor spelling, grammer, and amusing misuse of words. A lot of the time, you could barely grasp what the author (usually the great Paul Jaquays) was getting at in some of the entries, just like one of my players might find my notebook jots to be if they snuck a glimpse. This stuff was so very amateurish, and for sure that was a good thing. It was one of the charms of the stuff; it was written the way I wrote for my games, and how could that not appeal to me? It was homey and warm, and you automatically felt like the author was your buddy, a regular guy in a way Sir Gary never could came off in his flowery prose.

At one time or another, I ran each of the dungeons featured. Borshak’s Lair, The Pharoah’s Tomb, Merlin’s Garden, etc. Actually, I ran most after the Dungeoneer Compendium came out and collected the dungeons of the first six issues. That great book not only contained all those dungeons, but also placed them all on the land map of Jaquays’ great Night of the Walking Wet setting. All those places, and more, were right there in the Castle Krake area, and I used that to my advantage.

I made a decent mid-level campaign out of it. My teenage sweethearts’ Elf character Noradama “Nord” Calingref won Castle Krake in a card game, and took her adventurer pals along with her to clear out the Slime God, and the Type 4 Demon and ghoul army of Krakesbourough. That Walking Wet scenario is hella cool, and is pure Judges Guild.
I have great memories of all those dungeons set near Krake. In The Pharoah’s Tomb, one player had a desert ranger, and he was able to scramble over all those sand-trap rooms while other characters struggled and got trapped. He loved using an ability I gave his character that he thought he would never use. He was so jazzed, his character skittering over the sand floods and ululating “ayiayiayaiyaiyai!”

Within Borshak’s Lair, a magic tomb invaded by orcs, one character found the hilarious “Fred the Magic Amulet.” The sentient, +1 protection amulet had awesome illusion powers, and I would have it transform into a giant, inanimate shark that still spoke in Fred’s high pitched Mickey Mouse voice. Dark Tower was great, but this shit was Paul Jaquays best work as far as I was concerned. Was he as stoned as I sometimes get when he was writing these scenarios?

All these dungeons featured old school D&D staples, i.e. plenty of magic affect statuary, and traps that were usually more weird and scary than deadly. I had so much fun with this stuff as a teen. Sadly, I eventually got more serious with my adventures, heading more into “High Fantasy” despite sticking with 1st edition.

But I think it is time to revisit some of this classic cheese of time past, so I may just be making the dungeon-heavy Castle Krake area and it’s interesting sandbox surroundings the setting for the next campaign.

Thinkin’ about Tegel (Manor, that is)

Having owned it since the late 70’s, I’m surprised that I never used Tegel Manor more. My maps are worn more from floating around wherever I stored my game stuff over the decades than from use. The players map has only a few halls and rooms penciled in (including the wizards tower), showing that I never really had the place explored by PC’s much.

I really only remember two or three sessions of using Tegel Manor. Once I was around 15, fairly new to gaming, but more experienced than my schoolfriends, mostly because of spending a lot of time playing at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica with the older creeps who hung out there. My game world (still in use to this very day) was new, so there was no need for things to make much sense in my setting. A funhouse dungeon fit just fine.

I really only remember a couple of things from the first time I used it. The thing that really stands out in my memory is that I had the players greeted by Green Martian Warhoons in the front ball room. Yeah, I know. I don’t know why I included them, but the main reason might have been that at the time I had some great Green Martian miniatures and probably wanted to use them. My main memory of that is the player who was pissed that I didn’t give the Warhoons minuses to hit because they laughed heartily as the blasted away with their radium rifles.

A couple of years later I was visiting my teenage sweetheart in Ventura, and as she was up for playing some D&D I pulled out Tegel and she had two or three of her mid level characters visit the place. I remember later that night the PC’s fleeing from the manor in terror from some ghosts, but I also remember before that Denise having great fun checking out the Rump Family portraits (not liking “Rump,” I actually called them the “Tegel Family”) down one long hall.

But after those halcyon teen gaming sessions, Tegel has floated around in my game containers for decades. My game world had really evolved from a Judges Guild/Arduin Grimoire “anything goes” type of world into a more adult, “realistic” fantasy world. Zeus and Thor etc. were replaced by gods of my own creation (or created by cleric player characters that came along), and crazy funhouse dungeons were mostly replaced by locations with ecologies that made some kind of sense.

Although I haven’t been to Disneyland in decades (blasphemy for a Southern Californian), I went two or three times a year as a kid and teen. The Haunted Mansion was my favorite, and I think that is why Tegel really caught my imagination. You could picture a band of adventurer’s hacking and spell-ing their way through HM just as they would TM. Something was going on in every nook and cranny.

So over the long Memorial Day weekend, I found myself digging out Tegel and giving it a look over for the first time in years. I soon came to the conclusion (probably thanks to a bit of help from some Fat Tire Ale) that there is indeed a place for Tegel Manor in my world. In fact, I never had it go away. I have had it referenced to a time or two within game, and so it must of course still sit up on a hill above Tegel Village, a few short miles North of my main world city Tanmoor.

During my campaign last year (the same one pretty much that goes on currently), a mage character found references to Tegel Manor amongst some books in a treasure trove, and at the time it looked like the seed had been planted: at some point this mage was going to visit Tegel. Unfortunately, that player eventually dropped out of the group, so Tegel left my mind at that point.

But taking another look at my Tegel Material, I see that the ecology of the place (in a fantasy world) is very clear. The family (Rump, Tegel, whatever) is one seriously cursed group. Something weird going on with each and every member of that tree. Therefore, the mansion itself is cursed, soaked in the awful souls of the Rump/Tegel family, and attracting all sorts of evil and undead into it’s rooms and behind the walls. It’s a self-perpetuating evil, one that will probably exist there long after the elves of the forest have faded away and man drives around in horseless carriages.

A campaign to explore Tegel sounds fun on paper, but really, it would be a long haul and a deadly one. One wraith too many, one ghost over the line, and you have characters that have been seriously reduced in level, and seriously aged. Player might not appreciate that , especially considering the low treasure yield. But a mini-campaign, 4 or 5 sessions, might be just the thing for a party of 4th-6th level dudes.

So after a handful of games in my next campaign (probably to start late this year or early next year when I finish The Night Below campaign), I think I’ll lead the new PC’s to Tegel. Right now, I’m envisioning characters on a quest for a mage or sage looking for some item in the manor. I’d have them focus on one corner or wing of the castle, perhaps pitching a temporary camp in Tegel Village, the garden patio at the back of the house (close to the haunted outhouse indicated on the map!), or even inside at the main ballroom near the front door. From there, they would set out about that portion of the house, looking for clues to the McGuffen they would be searching for.

Months away, I know, but it’s fun to start thinking about it, and about my players (who all seem to have never heard of Tegel Manor) reacting to all the weird, scary, and cool shit in Tegel!

Party finally faces real challenges – film at 11

In this week’s game taking place in The Night Below, the party finally arrived at one of the deadlier areas – the caverns surrounding the Temple of Jubilex.
Night Below is written as a meat grinder, but after a dozen games or so, the party seems to have made themselves nicely at home in the hellish depths. Couple of near deaths, but no cigar.


Well, in this new area there were some serious dangers to them. First cavern had some piercers and a lurker above, which made for a nice little start to the action. Up next was a cave with a large, intelligent fungus creature, an “Obal,” who just hung out on the ceiling. Even though the creature was not aggressive, Andy’s half elf bard Vaidno shot an arrow at it for fun, and it immediately attacked the half wit and the others with it’s pointy tentacles.

Taking care of the Obal in short order, the party didn’t get time even for a breath as a Black Pudding from the furthest part of the cave rolled in and attacked. It managed to deal a good bit of damage before eventually being reduced to several small and harmless mini-puddings.

In the next cave though was a 12 Level magic-user, a captive of slavers who handed him over to the Mind Flayers, but he managed to escape with his teleport spell just before going beyond the gates of the City of the Glass Pool. Flubbing the spell, he has ended up in this area desperately trying to hold off the beasties within. Insane and desperate, he will do anything to get his hands on a teleport scroll, or anything else to get back to the world above (note: although not done so in the module, I made this guy the same magic shop owner from the town above whom the party knows as having been kidnapped by Drow slavers before the party ventured underground, just to give him a bit of a connection and gravitas).

This guys best item was a very awesome scroll (I took away the portable hole he has in the book, plus a couple of other items I didn’t want players to have). It is a regenerating scroll with Invisible Stalker, Monster Summoning 4, and Fireball on it. Each spell comes back in a few days if you don’t fail a small percentage roll that makes that spell disappear off the scroll for good. Nice, eh? This is a good bit of power to fall into the player’s hands, but with them assaulting the City of the Glass Pool in a few games they need all the help they can get.

The MU had recently cast his fireball and Inviso Stalker spells from the scroll in the last couple of days, so at least those would not be available to the players right away when they got their hands on it. He actually had two Stalkers available as the player come into the area. One to guard the cave entrance, and another to act as bodyguard to him. As the PC’s entered the cave, the first Stalker struck, ringing Vaidno with a powerful blow from out of nowhere. Though invisible, the party managed to defeat it in just a few rounds, just in time for the MU to cast Monster Summoning 4 and bringing a couple of giant wasps unto the battlefield. Unfortunately for me, I never got much fun out of them, because Lumarin the High Elf MU made with his want of lightning and toasted them right up.

Vaidno led the battle against the second Invisible Stalker, and with the help of a couple others took it down. The high level MU didn’t like that, so he unleashed his Polymorph Other upon Vaidno!

OK, here is where I had to make the hard decision regarding System Shock vs. death. I’ve been debating it in relation to the Haste spell. Still wishy washy on this, I decided I needed to go to the book when in doubt. “Andy, do Viadno’s System Shock. Miss and he’s dead.”

I have to admit, despite my doubts about “SS or die” I found the tense drama of that roll to be pretty exhilarating. Here was a PC somebody has been running for more than two years in my game, and his life was dependant on an 80% or less.
Vaidno turned into a small newt. Luckily, he kept his mental facilities, but he was affectively out of combat. Horny as ever, he crawled up Krysantha the female drow’s pants leg to have a look around.

Scorched by a lightning bolt from Lumarin’s wand, and struck by a pair of arrows from Kyrsantha, the MU was put to one hit point, and he went down screaming “I only want to get out of this hell hole!”

Lumarin charmed him (a couple of attempts had already been made by other characters, but they failed), and demanded he change Vaidno back, but unfortunately the MU had used up his dispel magic. Lumarin took pity on the tortured and deranged MU, and traded him a teleport scroll for the awesome regenerating scroll with the cool stuff on it. After being grilled heavily on what little he knew, the MU was allowed to teleport away.

It sure would have been fun for Vaidno to stay a newt for awhile. Too bad Krysantha had dispel magic, and despite being much lower level than the casting MU (who was 12th), managed to turn Vaidno back. Made for an exciting second system shock, however. Vaidno lived to fight another day.

So it turned out to be a pretty brutal game for the party, and luck had a lot to do with nobody getting croaked. They are only half way through the area though, and although they plan to avoid the Temple of Jubilex itself (and passing up some nice treasure) they will trudge through more mayhem before they are out of these particular caverns.

With our D&D games going on hiatus for a bit (couple of players being out of town in June), I’m maybe going to do some change of pace games with some Champions in my old Champions game setting. When we get back to the Night Below in July, I’m gonna kill me some characters!

I played me some AD&D

So last weekend I played in regular player Ben’s game. I won’t lie to you, I was severely hung over. My older bro and I stayed up till almost 5am drinking whiskey and Jager. Ugh. Getting too old for this.

But with a little Sam Adams for “hair of the dog” I was able to participate. We all car pooled from Santa Monica to Dan’s Mulholland abode, a really nice house with a view of various multi-million dollar properties. I got renewed respect for Dan after seeing where he lived and after meeting his girlfriend. The big South African dude (white) is really chasing the American Dream.

So here are my player observations and feelings after sitting down as a D&D player for the first time in almost 20 years. Firstly, it was almost 3 hours into the game before we had any combat or physical stuff of any kind. We were elves and half-elves from Elfland, and a human knight and some troops came to ask for help for their land. It seems some kind of enchantress was charming away soldiers to her dungeons, and they wanted us for our natural charm resistance. So there was meeting humans, parties with humans, then travelling to human land with humans. In a nutshell, with a spattering of role-play, that was almost a full three hours. I went into the game really wanting the release of action, but it took a long time to get to any. I understand Ben wants to set-up his world and so forth, but really I gave up running the previous Wednesday evening game of Mutant Future so we could spend that three hours on character creation and not have to do it Saturday. We should have been treated to some kind of action sooner (travelling with a large company of humans, so there were no wandering monster attacks).

We had maybe an hour and a half left to play, and so Ben hit us with some encounters on the way to the dungeon. There was a Warg attack, a Stirge attack at our camp, and then outside the dungeon we fought a group of ogres. Between Andy’s Cavalier and retainer, and Paul’s fighter and two retainers, the monsters were mopped up pretty easily. So here was my next gripe. Between Andy and Paul there are three retainer-types, so effectively they get to do attacks and rolls for a total of 5 individuals. And for some reason, me and Dan’s cleric/thief went last despite being pretty good in the Dex department (Ben is going by the book, which I guess means go around the table for turns. How this is superior to going by Dex order I will never know).

Me and Dan were both pretty annoyed that not only did it take forever to get a turn, but that two characters and their retainers were mopping up the place with their turns. My fighter/MU did get to shine a bit when he got great rolls and bowshot stirges off a couple of characters backs, but that was about it.

I understand that in D&D there are retainers and henchmen and all that, and it is a part of by the book gaming. And in my current game I let Terry run two characters for a few games (so there would be a cleric) and have an NPC in the party, but still my turns seem to just fly by, and Dex order seems to work out pretty good in my game. I don’t normally work a lot of henchmen and hireling stuff into my games. I like players to mostly focus on their characters, and things seem more heroic to me when it is pretty much just the player characters taking the chances.

All in all, I’d say Ben does a bit better than average DM’ing a game. But just as I recall from the late 80’s and early 90’s when I switched to GM’ing only, I am mostly unsatisfied with the player experience. I just kept wishing that Wednesday night last week and then on Saturday night, that I was running one of my games. It’s just what I prefer. Oh well, I did go into this wanting the player experience to help me be a better DM, and so I can do more of that we’ll let Ben run his game again.

I also went into this because I wanted to experience by the book AD&D again just to have a second look at my own house rules and such. I have to admit, nothing made me want to give up my rules and go by the book. Quite the contrary, with Andy’s cavalier and other fighters with double specializations doing over 20 points of damage at a pop, some characters just seemed too powerful for low level games.

I think that for my future games I’m going to leave the Unearthed Arcana out of it except for the extra spells.

The Painful Character Creation Process

Wednesday night this week I was supposed to run a bit of my Mutant Future campaign, as one of the regulars could not make it for D&D. With regular player Ben doing a session of his D&D this coming weekend, I offered that we should at least do up our stats for his 1st ed. Game so we could have more game time on Saturday. By around 9:00 we were still working on characters, so I offered up that we should just go ahead and finish the characters so we could get right on it this weekend. I was a bit miffed that we put so much time into it that we didn’t actually do any gaming. I mean, I’m giving up a weeknight to run a game, not work on a character. But I originally suggested Ben do some D&D for some of the reasons I gave in this recent post, so I figured I would be supportive of that, and the MF games are just a sort of throwaway when we don’t have the full group. If I was doing my D&D there would have been no other stuff but the game, but I wasn’t so it was OK.

Ben is doing scenarios that are elf-centric. Our only choices for race were elves, half-elves, and human monks. No humans otherwise. I thought this was a bad start, because supposing you don’t like elves, and don’t get the stats for a monk? I know many DM’s like to do things like this, but I never liked doing elf, dwarf, etc. centric games. I like players to be whatever race they want or class they want, so I rarely restrict.

Ben is going by the book 1st ed, a far cry from my methods. When people have asked me if I go fully by the book, I say “as if.” So he let us use any of the methods from the DMG – 4D6 pick best 3 and put where you like: roll each stat on 3D6 in order six times, etc. FYI – my method is 4D6 method, with an elimination roll and possible bit of point switching.

Not everyone had arrived, so I went for it first and did the method that lets you do up 12 characers with the 3D6 method. I got pretty lucky, and ended up with Str. 13, DX 16, Con 16, Int 17, Wis 13, and Chr 13, That was pretty perfect for the half-elf Fighter/MU I was envisioning.

The other guys weren’t all that lucky. Poor Paul, a guy still fairly new to tabletop, decided he would go for the human monk. Nice try, but no stogie. He didn’t near have the stats for monk. I have to admit I could not resist getting in there and saying “aw, give him a break. But no go. Paul would have to settle on a very low wisdom, not that strong nor fast straight fighter full elf.

Andy did good enough to get a Cavalier with the 4D6 method. Daniel arrived a bit late, and he decided on the roll 12 characters method as I did. It took him forever, and it was very painful. Almost all of his stat rolls included a very low number for each possible character. He would have liked a ranger, but it wasn’t happening. Poor Dan, he decided on some kind of cleric/thief or something that he didn’t sound all that happy to pursue, but did anyway.

Long ago in my games I decided that we would do our best to let somebody have a character they wanted. There had to be some decent rolls in order to get a ranger or monk or whatever, and my 4D6 method including an elimination roll would often provide them. Maybe a point or two would have to be moved around. Whatever, as long as I was convinced the player wanted the character for a desire to role-play it, rather than just to be a powerful character, I would do my best. Ben’s strictness reminded me of some bad old game times from the early days, from a character standpoint.

One thing that really chapped my ass was this: In my game Ben is running an MU. When the system shock or die element of using a Haste spell was brought up in my game a couple of weeks ago, Ben vehemently argued against it. I asked him last night about it in his game, and he smilingly said he would be going by the book. As a DM I felt a little manipulated by that in my game, so good old Ben can expect me to lose a little bit of my easy going nature when it comes to his MU and his spells.

Am I too much of a soft touch in my game? Too easy on characters and the character creation process? I don’t tend to have power gamers in my group (for the most part), so it is easy to be more open. If somebody wants a ranger, we will do our best for them to have the stats for it, even if it means moving some points around.

We’ll see how Ben’s game goes Saturday night, but I get a feeling I’m going to be experiencing a lot of things that gave me reason back in the day to start putting in some of my own little rulings.