"A Red Rumspringa" - Antagonist Relations Actual Play Podcast 8 - GM Commentary

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Comments are in roughly chronological order as I listen to the podcast for the umpteenth time...

"I don't need any of these things, but I'm taking them." - Antagonist Relations Actual Play Podcast 7 - GM Commentary

You know the drill, go listen to the podcast for episode 7 first... Plus you'll get to peep the maps for this session.

It's been a while, but we're finally about to play episode 8 this week, so it's time to post my commentary for Meat is Meat as I prep. A Red and Pleasant Land is abbreviated as aR&PL below. Also, spoilers for the podcast, though I'll hide any spoilers for the players about upcoming sessions.

Comments are in roughly chronological order as I listen to the podcast for the umpteenth time...

A close up of the map of the dungeon, showing the starting point...

Internet Tables I have Stolen from and/or Consulted Recently or that I intend to Steal from and/or Consult in the Near Future

• Strange Gang Motivations and Descriptions
• d100 Angry Mobs
• d100 Tragic Old Murder Hobos
• Ruined Building Contents
• Random Graffiti Generator
• What's in the Dead Orc's Pockets?
• Signs Your Party is Not the First in the Dungeon
• Weird Taboo Generator
• Random GM Move Tables for Dungeon World RPG
• Yeah, but This Manticore...
• Name That Barbarian!
• d20 Table of Wizard Obsessions
• Giant Slugs!
• Megadungeon Random Area Name Generator
• d30 Table of Taxes, Fines, Tariffs, and Fees
• Fiasco D&D – Desires & Needs
• Lost Cities of the Fallen Empire
• The City of Beggars
• Strange Land/Plane Generator

H/T - Many tables found from On Never Being Able to Find a Table When You Need One

The Murder Hobo's Dilemma… "Are we in the Dungeon yet?" - Dungeon World

(Full disclosure, I'm sure this is more an issue for me, with my wanting more realism in characters and plot than realism in rules.

I've know played in three sessions of Dungeon World and I've been enjoying them but last night I realized that there was something that kept me (yes, I managed to let the group decide I was their leader, must to my chagrin) from leading the group full force ahead into adventure. The premise of the game is a modern day Twin Cities metro, but with magic and dungeons, where Adventuring Companies (emphasis on the company) send adventurers into dungeons but otherwise it's straight forward fantasy version of the present. The GM was explicit that the normal humanoid fantasy races, goblin, orc, kobold, weren't inherently evil, and that is leading to some quandaries. I had gone in expecting a fairly lighthearted game, and tenor of play-wise, it's been fairly lighthearted but the plot has been drifting much grittier.

In the first two session, the party, with the conceit that we were the local "neighborhood watch" went into a dungeon near a graveyard and fought a mixture of goblins and an elf (or two, I don't rightly recall if there was more than one) who were in what the GM described as a teenage party pad (wrecked furniture, oil barrel fire, empty keg) and while the elf was a member of a previous adventuring party to disappear into the dungeon, the goblins were definitely high school kids, ya know, wearing letter jackets and such. Now, there was a lower level of that dungeon with a definitely evil undead creature of some kind, so I think we partly rationalized things as "oh yeah, the evil undead thing was controlling them, so we're not total murder hobos for slaughtering those unarmed teenagers".

A Few Problems with D&D 5E Backgrounds

As I've read the new 5E Player's Handbook, had players create new PCs, recreate old PCs and use pre-made PCs I've come to realize that I have a few problems with them.  That's not to say that they're not a good addition to the game, just that there are things about them I'd like to tweak.

Here are the shortcomings that I've found so far:

• They don't tie the party together.  
• Seriously, this is a big one.  The backgrounds all seem to focus on where the character came from and a little on how the character fits into the world or is motivated to adventure, but they provide very little that ties one character to another in a party.
• Unlike Dungeon World bonds, there's nothing in any of the backgrounds that clearly indicates how your character would be bound to the other weirdos in your band of thieving murder hobos, I mean, your party.
• They're not great about providing plot hooks/reasons to adventure.
• Here is an example of how a player could make a character with the Entertainer background who has no plot hooks/reasons to adventure taken from the background.
• Personality Trait: "I'll settle for nothing less than perfection." (This one almost screams "I won't last long adventuring" to me).
• Ideal: "Beauty. When I perform, I make the world better than it was. (Good)." (Might be an admirable Ideal, but it doesn't really give the player any idea why the entertainer might decide to travel far from the crowds of a city or village to battle goblins in a wild forest or skeletons in a dungeon).
• Bond: "My instrument is my most treasured possession, and it reminds of someone I love." (This one almost, almost could read of a plot hook, but not quite.  As a DM I'd be tempted to steal the instrument and use that as the hook, but the very next bond down in the PHB is that very shtick, so a player who chooses this bond doesn't want that or they would have chosen it.)
• Flaw: "Despite my best efforts, I am unreliable to my friends." (Honestly this one just reads to me like that character is just going to oversleep in the inn while the rest of the party fights the orcs.)
• Maybe I'm being a little uncharitable, but really, what I want from the backgrounds is to provide impetus to the player, to give them a few easy sentences to refer back to when they inevitably go "wait, why does my character care about this Lich again?"
• I think a better implementation would be to have every Ideal provide motivation and every Bond provide a plot hook or at least a jumping off point (ie. the Entertainer's Bond of "I want to be famous, whatever it takes." at least provides a reason why that character would be an adventurer.
• Finally, my last problem with the backgrounds is that many, many more than I like encourage players to just be annoying, the Personality Traits and Flaws especially.
• Some examples, all taken from the Sage background.  Keep in mind that there are only 8 Personality Traits and 6 each of the Flaws presented in the book as examples.
• Personality Traits
• I... speak...slowly...when talking...to idiots...which...almost...everyone...is...compared...to me. (Yeah, that's going to go over well with the other PCs and NPCs.)
• I am horribly, horribly awkward in social situations. (This one isn't as bad as the other two examples, but it doesn't take much imagination to see how it could become annoying if not done well.)
• I'm convinced that people are always trying to steal my secrets. (Another one, not as egregious as the first example, but with plenty of room for it to be implemented poorly.)
• Flaws
• I speak without really thinking through my words, invariably insulting others. (Really not necessary since 2 of the 8 personality traits, a full quarter of the options presented pretty much have the same impact as this flaw...)
• I overlook obvious solutions in favor of complicated ones. (Probably not too bad, but also a possibly abused 'flaw')
• I can't keep a secret to save my life, or anyone else's. (This one is actually interesting and could be done well, but I also cringe to imagine it being played as an annoying blabbermouth).
• And unfortunately the Sage is not an isolated example of backgrounds which have options which easily sink into the "just annoying for the other characters" trap.

But, not wanting to just point out flaws, I plan on taking some time to present additional options for the backgrounds in the PHB that provide additional options that hopefully will provide better motivation and more interesting personality traits and flaws that will at least be more interesting, even if they are still a little annoying.

Using Failure as a Narrative Tool instead of a Player Frustration

How often have scenarios like these come up?

Scenario One:

Needing to kill the Goblin Chieftain, but not wanting to fight the entire goblin war camp at once, the party decides to sneak past slumbering goblins to the chieftain’s tent.  The stealthy ranger, sneaky rogue and unarmored wizard all roll well, but the scale mail wear dwarven fighter rolls poorly, eliciting a groan from the other players as now the goblin sentries raise the alarm and the party is stuck fighting the entire war-camp.

Scenario Two:

The party has just defeated a beholder and its cultist allies in a hard-fought battle.  Now catching their breath, they’re able to search the room.  Before the DM can speak, the player of the wizard says “My wizard will look at those arcane carvings in the wall more closely now…shit… I rolled a one; guess my wizard doesn’t know anything, dur dur dur.”

These scenarios and countless others like them, from the mundane, a PC missing on a melee attack to the esoteric knowledge checks.  Failure is an inevitable occurrence in any RPG, but in many D&D games I’ve played in, and yes, many D&D games I’ve run, failure just becomes boring and when it occurs repeatedly in a session due to a player having a run of bad dice luck it can extremely frustrating for a player.

Most versions of the D&D rules set up these checks as binary PASS/FAIL, maybe with a chance of automatic or extraordinary success (natural 20) and automatic or extraordinary failure (natural 1).  This works okay mechanically but in practice it can be boring, and in many cases, frustrating to players who feel like not only is their character not getting to do anything, their character falls out of the narrative of the game largely, as they repeatedly swing and miss during combat or fail perception check after perception check.  It’s a shame because many other games handle failure much better, implementing, explicitly or not, more of a “Fail Forward” approach where the player’s failures at dice rolls (or whatever mechanical randomizer is used) as a chance to continue the narrative as opposed to the way failure often functions in D&D as a narrative top (think of the dull silence that lays in wait between a player sullenly says “I got a 5, I don’t see anything” or “I rolled a 7 on my attack” and the DM picking up the narration).  In particular I’m going to draw on Dungeon World for examples of strategies to draw upon, mostly because I’ve been reading it heavily lately and also because I recently ran Apocalypse World which was the source for the Dungeon World Mechanics, but there are many other games out there that have good “Fail Forward” mechanics that you can draw on.

Now, not every roll needs to be narratively interesting, it’s okay to have the fighter swing at an orc with her axe and miss but it’s much more interesting to have some of the PC failures drive the narrative of the game forward instead of having them feel like a pause for a player, a moment where the player, due to bad dice luck, just doesn’t get to do anything.  Think of an old Final Fantasy style game from the era of NES and SNES, if you played any from that era.  Remember the frustration that would build when you had a streak of bad luck or your party accidentally ventured into an area your characters weren’t high enough level for yet?  The annoyance of watching the clunky animation of your character making an attack and then the pause before the disheartening “MISS” showed on screen and nothing happening and then having to wait for the round to cycle?  That is unfortunately what D&D emulates all too often, so below are some strategies I plan to implement in my games to turn failures from frustrating pauses in the fun for players into narrative tools to drive my games forward.