Lazy DMing

I've run a few games in the past month, and I should reflect on them here a bit. But this is all through the filter of lazy DMing. I bought a bundle of holding a while back, that had the Lazy Dungeon Master in it. Its pretty good, and I think must have been some of the intention behind those creating 4e.

See, I was also playing 13th Age, and I've come to suspect that the big minds at Wizards actually run games differently than the publish them. Perhaps normal D&D needs to be sanitized a bit for the mass market, and maybe we're getting some of the variants back in 4e rather than scripture to run games by. Anyway, as I look back on 4e I think that its not as bad or video-gamey as people suggest, but the presentation influences the play style to be even more so.

In a 4e game, I often felt like I was building a set of 3 encounters for the night. Now, I would keep things a little flexible, and its a testament to the encounter building of 4e that it was easy for me to swap creatures in and out on the fly while my PCs were taking their turns. It helped that I printed out a huge stack of loose-leaf monster sheets and shuffled through them constantly, I suppose.

I felt a little of this while running 13th Age and a 5e Planescape one-shot. But I've tried to consciously keep it lazy. Its not hard to build a quick list of all the possible monsters and their XP/CR/whatever stats you need to build encounters for the night. For this planescape one-shot, I knew there'd be a mind flayer, probably some intellect devourers, githzerai thralls, rival githyanki hunters, maybe some Harmonium goons, and assorted citizens of Sigil who may or may not be thralls (sad, I didn't end up pulling in the host of children in the end). But this is basically what I used towards the end of my Dark Sun game, just a bit differently organized because I don't have everything printer-ready.

The planescape one-shot would have gone a little smoother if I had had time to write down some more notes on the creatures, and realized that both Intellect Devourers and Mind Flayers force Int saves so I could have given the players that for their Githzerai bonus instead of recommending useless Wis saves. Meh. Live and learn.

Aside: The plot was the PCs were a (mostly) githzerai rrakkma band trying to oust a mindflayer from Sigil. They had a deadline for when a deed would be signed making the mind flayer a property-owning citizen of Sigil, and had to act before that deadline. There was a scheduled delivery of some trunks to the property, and an inn (stolen from In the Cage) where the mind flayer was staying. Pretty darn simple but enough for a solid 6-hour session (1-9pm but we took at least an hour to chat and get started and had a couple minor interruptions, though I also meant to give one more quick break).

I didn't get as much feedback from the players as I might have liked for the Planescape one-shot, so I hope everyone mostly enjoyed themselves. There were 6 players because I wanted to invite people who I hadn't played with in a while, and also possibly get a new person or two into (or back into?) Zack's orbit for his regular games. I had thought going in that I would say from the beginning that I was going to be an anti-phone/tablet tyrant, but decided not to. There was a lot of investigation with a lot of players, and its hard to keep that engaging for everyone. I tried to hand-wave some table-talk by saying that players could still give suggestions and stuff, and I think that worked reasonably well. At least no one was sharing youtube videos during the game, which was an unfortunate thing I also saw recently.

In terms of what to prep to be lazy, I really liked Zack's contacts he gave people for his Planescape one-shot, so I totally lifted that, though it wasn't as well-done as it could have been. Particularly for a one-shot, you need to give people some short and clear info that's useable. I was relatively proud of my Githzerai racial bonds table (though some were lifted from ENworld or Wizards of the Coast forums:

Githzerai Racial Bonds (roll d12 or use the list as inspiration).

1. Any enemy of the mind flayers is a friend of mine.
2. All my friends know I said that githzerai should only think about their freedom and independence, leaving ancient feuds behind.
3. Once, when I nearly died, I had a vision of the Nine Hells flash before my eyes. Now I seek to atone for whatever sins I’ve committed.
4. Our race’s traditions are as important as our personal beliefs.
5. I swore an oath that I would only kill in the most dire of circumstances.
6. I’ve been convicted of a crime I didn’t commit and must redeem myself in the eyes of my fellow githzerai.
7. My significant other is a leader of the githzerai in Sigil.
8. Something from my childhood makes me afraid of the dark.
9. The destruction of mind flayers is more important than any faction or feud (even with the githyanki).
10. My best friend will never walk again because of a battle I provoked. I choose my fights with greater care now.
11. I hate mind flayers and githyankai so much it drives me to take irrational risks, even when I know I shouldn’t take them.
12. My brother is a drunk, so his wife and children depend on me to keep them safe and financially secure.

Obviously not all of these came into play and some could have been better, but I thought it would give players some possibly appropriate personality traits for their Githzerai, who are supposed to be a dour and stoic lot. I even made good use of #7 by replacing the not-so-great NPC (Parakk the Rat Catcher) I was going to used to instigate things with the spouse. This was somewhat inspired by the Appendix A from Hoard of the Dragon Queen which I also loved in its simplicity, though I could have probably personalized it a bit more if I had more time. But its a hard balance between what to prep and how much time to spend prepping it. A few of my own plus some cut-and-paste from a forum search got me in solid B range.

The racial bonds table isn't something you need for every session, but I had a couple very similar lists I was referencing at the table: rumors they might find, the actual facts they needed to discover, and the true motivations of the illithid. But I was ready to roll some random rumors if people were into streetwise checks and that. It turns out when you give actual contacts then players tend to focus on what they have in front of them though (their contacts). Its all about prepping the right lists. Also, I like lists.

Rambles aside, I think that Lazy DMing is a pretty good way to go. At least for me. Though I still love me a good module at times, even prepping a module requires a good list or two.

Adding ladies to D&D; or: Lady up your game!

I recently developed a plan to ensure my D&D games weren't just a bunch of male PCs and NPCs. Its pretty simple. I have a little list each game of the NPCs I might need to introduce. You might have this too. Don't have a list of all your NPCs? Make it. Then if you want to make sure your D&D game isn't a sausage party, follow these little tips:

1) Check if half or more of your NPCs are dudes.
2) If they are, make a coupe of them ladies.

Its literally that easy. If you're not as comfortable portraying a lady, you can lady your game up a bit by at least adding some ladies off camera or in the background. Maybe the previous party to explore an area was lead by a lady, or they find a log book written by a lady, or they're otherwise following the trail of a lady. An off-camera villain can also be a lady. In fact, just about any NPC could be a lady. You could even roll randomly to determine if the character is a lady: odd = dude, even = lady.

Once you have a couple ladies in the background, you can move onto having a major NPC or two be ladies. Try it out first with a shopkeeper: unless the adventurers are in a lady shop doing lady shopping, a lady shopkeeper probably has exactly the same motivations as a dude shopkeeper (and, honestly, a lady shopkeeper in a lady shop probably has the same motivations as a dude shopkeeper in a lady shop). Lady hirelings, lady henchmen, lady sages, lady specialists, and queens probably have almost exactly the same motivations as dude hirelings, dude henchmen, dude sages, dude specialists, and kings.

Once in a while, you might find that the sex of an NPC actually matters in the plot. That's the point where you can spend a minute deciding how the plots might be different depending on the sex of an NPC and let the most interesting plot dictate the gender of the NPC. 

5e Spells: W(h)ither Creativity?

So the disappointing thing about 5e is that it seems sanitised for balance, but in a somewhat half-assed way. That's not right, its pretty well done, but maybe its too much compromise. What getting me at the moment is the utility spells.

So, I'm playing a gnome trickster cleric. I get some nice spells like polymorph and charm person and pass without trace. Things to help with sneaking and all that. Some nice options. But, unlike other spells, these don't scale with higher slots. And some of the higher level cleric spells are just less... interesting.

The DM tried to tell me that spells like blade barrier and banishment were great, and I agree. But not great for a trickster. I want some more utilities. And utilities that last longer. And these just aren't happening. Its sad too, because some spells like Bestow Curse show us the way.

For example, why can't a detect magic spell be cast with higher level slots (think 5th/6th level) that doesn't need concentration? Maybe its just 10 minutes or even one minute without concentration, but that's still great! A 6th level slot might be worth the 10 minutes or an hour. And a 9th level slot lasting all day... is that really unbalanced? The same applies to things like unseen servant, tenser's floating disk, and all sorts of other options. Even a higher level polymorph might let you keep your mental abilities or at least be able to concentrate on it for more than one hour. And this isn't just a problem with some utility spells, but a lot of them. No attempt to make them scale.

Then there's the saving throw issue. You can get advantage on magical attacks to deal damage, but it is almost impossible to give your foes disadvantage on saving throws. That makes my idea of playing a callous, cavalier, or downright evil enchanter rather unappealing (besides that they don't seem to get their one useful feature till level 14). So basically, you have an easy go of it if you're just planning on blasting your foes, but using some non-combat spells creatively never gets much easier. Guess some of that's the limit of bounded accuracy and a game focused on killing your foes rather than avoiding them.

I don't have my DMG yet, but theres a table I hope is in there but kinda doubt is: using spells creatively. Because I think they did some good jobs with spells like Create/Destroy Water and Control Water giving us some likely options, but they could have spelled out some of the combat uses better. Like the light cantrip: in AD&D, you could cast it at your foes eyes to blind them. It seems like a rather iconic thing to do and not all that hard to give rules: target gets a save or is blinded for one round (or dazed or whatever an appropriate condition is). Not always the best use of an action but it could have its uses and makes light a useful cantrip. Same thing with ray of frost: give it a secondary use for attempting to knock creatures prone (maybe they get a save/defense bonus of +1 for each leg they have beyond two? or simply advantage if they have more than 2 legs). These uses could easily be hard-coded into a lot of the non-combat spells: even using unseen servant you could sactifice it for a "help" action in a combat. Maybe not the best, but it gives people a clear use of these utility spells in combat.

But the table though. I want a table that gives good advice for using some spells creatively and how much damage they should do. If I use create water against a fire elemental, how much damage should it do? It barely has to be a table. I'm thinking something like:

• Single Target, just damage: 2d8+1d8 per spell level above 1st.
• Multi target, or single target + condition: 2d4+1d4 per spell level above 1st.
• Area of effect type spells ought to do half-damage on a failed save.
• Apply advantage on an attack roll or disadvantage on a save if it's thematically appropriate (i.e. create water against a fire elemental).

But since they're hard-coding some uses into spells, it seems obvious that create or destroy water ought to be able to do damage to fire or water creatures.  Why is this missing? Stone shape against an earth creature? These utility spells have been sanitised their combat uses. On the surface they have an old school feel because they give you some nice non-combat options, but those non-combat options don't scale well and any combat applications of utility spells are left entirely to the DM to decide. I'd think given the interest in balance in organized play that they'd make some fair and balanced rulings about this sort of thing so they can be evenly applied by different DMs.

I guess maybe this bothers me more because it seems like my current DM has just given up on learning the system: he calls for lots of pointless skill checks (ok, a style issue) and doesn't seem to understand which proficiencies do what (he never uses investigation, seems to misunderstand thieves' tools, and occasionally calls for things like "agility saves" which are usually--but not always--interpretable). So in this world, I'd rather have some clear guidelines on how some of my creative spell use ought to work, and, frankly, we know in D&D that when someone comes up with one creative use for a spell it gets repeated ad nauseum. 5e would be better off giving some of these utility spells a bit more utility, and it could have been better off coding it in the rules.

Virtual Tabletop

I ran a 13th Age game online yesterday. It was pretty slick.

First off, playin' with the guys from long ago was nice. Only two of them, but I think the small group was just fine. There's something about the small group that makes it a bit more personal than a 5+ player group, and I don't think its just the speed at which you get to take each turn.

It is more exhausting as a GM though. You're almost always on, though not quite as bad as the 1-on-1 type game, as the players can chat a bit about things, but it wasn't enough time to let folk chat while you sneak away for a drink or bathroom break.

The virtual tabletop was a slight adventure in and of itself. I think it worked relatively well, though we did need to refresh the browser a few times to keep our audio connected, and that was after ditching the video feeds. I'm thinking I should try connecting with a cable next time to see if that helps a bit or not. But the software worked pretty well for a first try. I can see how if you keep playing it could be decent, though their 13th Age sheet is a little lacking, and it looks like you'd need to pay to adapt it. With only two characters, we might be able to calculate some things by hand (charisma modifiers) and write appropriate macros, or just type /r d20+3 instead of #melee...

Prep wise, doing a 13th Age module requires a bit more flexibility than I was ready for, which basically means I needed to write down a bit more of the info from the book into an easily accessible format. Of course, I didn't know which NPCs I'd want to use or Icons that would be involved until the game started, so when we finish this up next week that'll be much easier. For the tabletop, I need to pick out a few more maps and tokens beforehand to speed things up. I think 15-30 minutes putzing with tokens would have gotten me hitpoint bars and the like set up right away, plus possibly finding come decorations for the map layer, like the corpses. I'm not yet sure how much the actual map pictures helped versus just having tokens and the white background: we've done wonders with that wet-erase battle mat.

Rules-wise, I think it went pretty well. Despite my love of rules and love of enforcing them, I'm of the opinion that you use what you have at the table, make a ruling, and can go back and look up the specifics later unless they seem pretty important. So I think I made that work, though I still want to re-read the icons and combat sections. I even didn't really need to loosen the definition of Sneak Attack as I thought initially, as the rogue gets some powers that let them break their own rules for when they can apply sneak attack. But, eff it. I don't play a game where common sense won't let someone do something, I'd rather err on someone doing something nonsensical (garrote or prone an ooze) than not be able to use the powers their character is built around.

Character creation took longer than expected, if we had only spend 1 hour on it we'da probably finished the module. But I think a good chunk of our character creation was also spent on chit-chat and the players reading their 10 pages of character info. I didn't want to insist on everyone coming with a character already made as I've talked a lot about group dynamics and making a party while you create a character, so it meant the players had each skimmed about 4 classes and then choose from them then and there. The nice thing about 13th Age is most classes are contained within about 10 pages (that's levels 1-10) and for any future game I'd definitely print those 10 pages from the PDF (or SRD if I don't have my fantabulous free color printing) for each player to keep along with their character sheet. I should make a similar rules summary to this 5e one. I also really loved when Z asked if it was ok to take Swashbuckling for his rogue, and I had to respond that I'd be disappointed if he didn't. Some of those class talents just add a lot of flavorful awesomness that is missing in the new sanitized D&D.

All in all, a few things that we could have done differently. There was only one point where we probably had to refresh for a second or third time where I was feeling like the virtual tabletop wasn't going to work out, but now I'd definitely like to try it again and finish the adventure next week. And, foolishly, I've been tricked into figuring out why the various icons in play thus far (and one or two that aren't) are all making the moves they have, such that I could easily run this from level 1 to 10 if schedules and interests aligned. Because I'm a fool, a foolish fool.

At least this time I was tricked by hicks into cleaning out a barn.

5th Edition: I am the goddamn healer...

So, in this 5th edition D&D game I showed up to a couple months ago, I was told that the party could use a healer. Being a good team player, I whipped up a cleric. But the type of cleric I might be more into: gnome trickster domain cleric. I had just read War for the Oaks and felt like I might have a good handle on playing a trickster cleric. Though we didn't discuss everything and a few players picked pre-gens when they showed up, so we weren't building a cohesive party. Otherwise I should have gone with a Knowledge Cleric or Sage Bard because we could have used the encyclopædia role (no actual wizard in the party originally). I'll judge these people as Pathfinder players and they mostly want to do cool things and deal tons of damage.

But last week, it happened: I was going to cast Pass Without Trace for the party so everyone would be able to sneak and we'd do well at it with little risk.

"How many heals with that cost us?"

Eff you.

Because we have a warlock and no one else is really benefiting from short rests except via hit dice, the DM has been kinda stingy at letting us take short rests and the party hasn't thought they're as valuable perhaps. And why should they: the gnome (Candide Voltaire, yep, reusing that name) can heal them.

I'm a little sad at this because in 4e the healer was doing other things while healing, and the encounter-based healing meant that the healer also didn't really have to use as many daily resources. Now, I could exchange Cure Wounds for Healing Word and still be making some attacks, I suppose. And I think I just might start doing that now. Though I was also tempted to multiclass wizard soon to grab some illusions or rogue to solidify some sneaky skills with sneak attack. I could have picked a life cleric and maximized my healing potential, or a bard or druid or something else. But if we've returned to "Don't waste your spells if it isn't healing me..."

Bah.

I was just a little taken back by the comment. Next time I'm just going to cast the damn spell anyway. A good few good sneaks and surprise rounds is totally worth one second level slot for a heal-up. And I just might consider a dipping into Wizard or Rogue to grab some other sneaky trickster powers besides my cleric spells.

Renaming the Alignments in D&D

I've been thinking about revising the alignment system of D&D. Not really revising, but just renaming. Because when I think about it, the system isn't unclear per se, just a bit... stale. This comes out of playing that Temple of Elemental Evil video game where you had to choose a party alignment. I think its a good system, but terms like good and evil are somewhat nebulous, to say nothing of 'lawful' and 'chaotic'. They don't quite describe what's going on in the game as well as maybe they could. So I wondered if they could be renamed to be a bit more... well... evocative.

The thing is, we often think of D&D as a heroic game, at least since 2nd Edition focused on that. The opposite of heroic is villainous, and has been pretty well established. Asking the players if they want to be a heroic or villainous group is pretty descriptive of what will happen in the game, and maybe a bit easier to grasp than good or evil.

There's other options though. I think mercenary pretty well captures the neutral alignment. A mercenary party might not be heroic, but they'd certainly be adventurers. Its also clear that a mercenary party might be selfish, but not really evil.

This gives us a pretty good notion of what sorts of characters might be at the table if you know if your party is heroic, mercenary, or villainous. But D&D has two or three more alignments. The big ones are law and chaos.

Chaos can be described as anarchic. With some of those political implications, an anarchic party doesn't believe in authority figures. You can imagine that Orcs and Goblins are anarchic because they have shifting power structures. While might might make right for them, another anarchic group might be elves who lack a high king or queen but have groups of respected elders: who have earned their places and don't govern from some divine authority (like a Dwarf king might). This has that Robin Hood, libertarian, or wild west sort of feel.

I'm having a harder time with a term for Law. Lawful isn't half bad, nor is Law-Abiding. The idea is a lawful party is possibly authoritarian, or possibly deputized into the governing hierarchy. At any rate lawful groups or characters believe that laws, regulations, and rules are necessary for society to function. Lawful groups will have a chain of command, a clear leader (or group of leaders), and possibly some organizations in place to ensure that the laws or rules are followed. Laws need not be codified and written, but sometimes can just be the tradition of the community. Disciplined or orderly are also reasonable terms here, but I haven't quite picked one that I think really applies both to describe groups and individuals well.

The last alignment is the other neutral, balance. I have kind of a hard time with this alignment when applied to good and evil: because in a way its admitting that there's an unseen order to the universe and being in harmony with it is the way to be. So that begins to sound pretty lawful to me, even if its not law as defined by mortal governments. This druid-alignment is often used as a way of opposing both the law and chaos of civilization in favor of the neutrality, harmony, or balance of nature. It would be a pretty specific type of party, so I'm not quite sure its needed. I also think someone who legitimately thinks the world needs evil in it is kind of a dick. I mean, yeah, there can be philosophical arguments about it, but its sometimes hard to fathom. Which is odd, because I've labeled that as mercenary (i.e. don't care). But the balance between law and chaos is just some sort of pragmatism perhaps, if it doesn't have cosmological implications. I'm not sure that axis needs some hard-to-grasp label when no label works just as well. If you want to do the druid pro-nature story, labelling a party as druidic might be just as evocative as long as players are experienced. I'm not sure if there's a better term but I'm not inclined to mull it over much finding a great term I'd never intend to use.

So, five terms to (mostly) replace the old alignments. The group might choose to be Heroic, Mercenary, or Villainous. They might also be Lawful or Anarchic. I could see a group just choosing one of those, however, and allowing "evil" characters in a Lawful group: the bad cop who uses the rules for personal gain.

Now, do these new terms really do enough to replace the old ones? And how do we get "neutral good" out of the mix? I think players will have a better idea of the type of game they're playing if they know its a Heroic or Mercenary game rather than good or neutral. And the neutrality between chaos and law can be dispensed with if a group need not pick two descriptors: Heroic is good enough and could include Lawful or Anarchic characters.

I think certainly labelling a party as heroic, mercenary, or villainous will give the right impression of a game to players. I can tailor my character idea easily given those labels. Lawful and anarchic might also be doable, but you kinda wonder what an anarchic party's goals are, so those two lose a little. But I think its worth giving players something like this to think about while myopically building their characters or giving the players the agency to decide what sort of game they're interested in playing by choosing the label themselves.

Psychological Stats

As I've been looking through a couple games lately and playing some 5e, I've noticed that the psychological stats are a bit lackluster or hard to use. I think the GUMSHOE system gets stuff pretty close to right, however.

What are these "psychological stats"? In traditional D&D, you have alignment. In the World of Darkness games, you select a nature and demeanor (mostly). 5th Edition D&D has Ideals, Flaws, Bonds, and Personality traits. DungeonWorld has bonds and alignment. Fading Suns actually has opposed traits (ego/faith, passion/calm, etc.) which kinda do some of this. But these are all basically little descriptions of how your character is supposed to act. The problem I see, is they don't always accomplish much.

Older edition D&D alignment basically let the DM punish characters who acted out of character. World of Darkness games let you regain willpower by acting in accordance with your nature, which is a bit nice, though demeanor generally did nothing. 5th Edition D&D has the inspiration system which gives you a tiny bonus if the DM agrees you're acting in accordance with your psych stats, but my current GM hasn't overtly used it since the first or second game. 13th Age doesn't even really have a psych stat at all.

What I really like, however, are the drives of GUMSHOE (e.g. Trail of Cthulhu) and passions of ORE (e.g. Reign). With ORE, you have three passions but you only have one thing that drives you to investigate in GUMSHOE. You could easily adapt this to your drive to adventure in a more traditional fantasy game. With ORE, when you act in accordance with one (or more) of your three passions, you can claim a 1 die bonus per passion, or the GM can levy a similar penalty if you're acting against them. Your drive in GUMSHOE can similarly affect your stability whether you're acting in accordance with it or not. GUMSHOE also suggests drives be used to edge characters into the adventure.

Why do these seem like better systems? For one, its a relatively small bonus and easy to track. I think GUMSHOE does a little better than ORE for simplicity, but they're fairly similar. The great thing is you can keep applying this minor bonus constantly, unlike inspiration in D&D 5th. Advantage is a small bonus when applied sparingly, but its rather huge if it were constantly in effect. So a drive or passion bonus in a d20 type game would need to be something smaller, like just a +1. An issue there is these little bonuses nickel and dime the game towards a big mathfest. I'm curious if a "lesser advantage" system of rolling d20+d12 choose the highest would actually be any advantage or not. Mathing it out looks like its about a +1 since your average result is higher with this than just a d20. However, given that a roll of 10-12 is still going to be a failure, I'm not sure if it'd really be enough of a small, constant bonus. You could do something similar with a d4 in Dungeonworld: instead of 2d6 for your roll, it'd be 2d6+1d4 keep the two highest. You'd be a little less likely to fail, though not much more likely to get that grand high roll. Dunno if that really maths out well, but people like rolling extra dice. Another option with DungeonWorld is changing the system to 2d8 (9+ is ok, 13+ is exceptional) then a reliable +1 isn't quite as big as it is in the normal system. 

Advantage in D&D 5th basically puts you at the mercy of your DM as to your good roleplaying. Passions or drives, on the other hand, are easier to sum up and you can remind your GM that you might merit the bonus: that seems crass in D&D 5th and possibly in some other systems. So the size of the bonus matters (gotta be small so it can be more common) but also the method of bringing your psych stat into play.

An alternate bonus would be awarding XP. That doesn't work in modern D&D when characters just end up leveling at the whim of the DM. In 13th Age you could at least hand out an incremental advance, I suppose. In a game like WoD or Fading Suns where XP works differently, you can easily give XP for adhering to your nature or suffering from your flaws. TSR era D&D could certainly get a small XP bonus (+5%?) for adhering to your alignment each session which might be enough for motivation and to inspire some roleplaying. 

I'm not sure that psych stats would necessarily fix everything, but if they were better implemented in some systems they just might help a bit. Adding a Drive to DungeonWorld or D&D (old or new) wouldn't be too difficult if it had almost no mechanical effects, but it seems that the real benefit of these psych stats is to help people play their character and give them a benefit for doing so.

There's an ancillary issue here too, which is constraining choices to fit a group. I honestly liked the constraint from the Temple of Elemental Evil vidya game, which was you picked a party alignment and then created characters. Back when alignment at least constrained some classes, it meant Paladins could only be in a LG, NG, or LN party. Barbarians couldn't be in a Lawful party, while Monks couldn't be in a chaotic party. Binning drives into similar themes might not be necessary, but its worth thinking about building the party as well as the characters.