Theo Dudek, Ultimate Game Master

Now this is impressive — the kind of RPG setup that I would like to have. (Unfortunately, right now I’m living in a 10′x10′ dorm room…). There are some things I would disagree with, such as the inclusion of props from the Dungeons & Dragons movie — that seems more like it would jinx a game or at the very least cast doubt on the taste of the Dungeon Master. I wish there were some shots showing the fog machine at work.

Lots of schoolwork lately, and preparing for a Shadowrun campaign, so sorry for the lack of updates! -_- Here is the continuation of my series of DMing tips for first-time D&D Dungeon Masters (as sent to my friend who’s running a game):

STORY & WORLD-BUILDING
* Building a campaign world is the greatest part of being a DM. This is the part of the game that’s like designing a computer game, directing a movie or writing a novel, only more artistically worthy. Remember that all the really good RPGs (not counting experimental artsy high-concept “storytelling games” based on things like “the Portuguese-American immigrant experience” or “the 1980 Gdansk shipyard strike” :P ), are based around *worlds*. THE WORLD is the heart of gaming, and each world waits for the individual DM to provide story and the players to provide characters. Like chlodnik, chilled beet soup, a campaign world may chill overnight, or indefinitely, until the players and DM are ready to breathe the breath of life into it.
* When you’re making your campaign world, feel free to base it on whatever you like. Any fantasy or science fiction or historical movie or any book, or pieces thereof, might be useful source material. Roleplaying games naturally rely on a Creative Commons philosophy. . (Just be sure that the world has all the types of races & classes that your players want to play… you *could* create a world that has no elves, but it might annoy your players if they want to play elves. -_- But you can come up with whatever backstory for elves that you want… maybe they are the long-eared spawn of the demon god or something.)
* Creating maps is lots of fun, if your game is set in the real world, googlemaps and similar services can provide instant verisimilitude for locations.
* Campaigns are best when structured around a series of branching paths. For instance, the simplest method is a choice of quests that the PCs can take – the old “bulletin board at the inn” or “craigslist for adventurers” method. If the PCs don’t want to take one quest, then there should be another quest waiting for them. Or, the direction of a campaign can hinge on other stuff:
(1) the outcome of a fight (for example, the PCs come upon monsters attacking a NPC. If they can defeat the monsters and save the NPC, the NPC can give them a clue to set them onto a quest. If they can’t defeat the monsters, they don’t get to go on that quest.)
(2) the outcome of a skill challenge. “Skill challenges” in 4e may sound confusing, but they are basically just arbitrary ways to make the plot go in one direction or another based on the PCs making as many successful skill rolls as you think is appropriate. For instance, if the players make enough Bluff or Diplomacy or Intimidate rolls, maybe they can convince the bandits not to attack the town, or even to join up with the PCs. If they don’t make enough rolls, they get attacked by the bandits.
(3) and of course the PCs’ decisions… maybe you give them a choice between an adventure set in a dungeon and an adventure on a faraway island, for example.
* When the story involves lore or mysteries, it can be useful to write down what information the PCs might know based on certain die rolls in certain skills (like Dungeoneering, Nature, Religion, Arcana, History).
* If the PCs don’t want to play the good guys (like if they want to rob townspeople, refuse to take quests, etc.) it’s probably best not to force them to be ‘good’. The DM must give the players free will. If you think they’re borderline evil, you can give them moral tests to see if they will choose the good path (like having desperate townspeople plead them for help with this sad story about being oppressed by evil monsters). If they choose the dark path, you can just give them quests which aren’t based on good or evil, like raiding a dungeon just for treasure… or even raiding the baron’s castle. Maybe the baron is also evil, too, so then you get a dark campaign where pretty much everybody is evil, both the PCs and the NPCs. Arguably this is realistic.
* Some of the most aggravating story moments in D&D can come when one person really wants to play a ‘good’ character, but the other people act evil all the time. But usually, since everybody wants to be friends out-of-character, the ‘good’ PCs won’t actually fight the evil PCs, which would be the logical solution. I even had a player once try to play two characters simultaneously, a paladin and an assassin, who kept murdering NPCs while the paladin looked the other way. >_< The game ended with both characters dying a horrible death pinned on one another's blades, which I have to admit provided a nice sense of closure.
* Sometimes things really slow down when people want to buy new equipment. unless you have some special reason to want to roleplay it out (like having the storekeeper give them a clue), I just let them choose their equipment in the book and pay for it with their gold without roleplaying out these scenes in great deal. You have to know when to summarize and when to act every scene out in detail. It is the DM's responsibility to control time as well as the other aspects of the world, like when time stops in Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Secret Miracle.”
* If the players aren’t moving along fast enough (maybe they’re hanging out at the inn or they’re just distracted by stuff out-of-character, or maybe they are about to start an in-character PvP fight for some reason), an easy way to get things going is: have monsters attack. -_- Have some NPC start a fight at the tavern. Have monsters invade the town. Have a monster/NPC try to assassinate the PCs. Whatever works. Just get them paying attention to the game again! Alternately, have someone suddenly start coughing up internal organs for no reason like in the middle of an episode of “House”! You want eyeballs! (The players’ or the PCs’)
* When you come to the end of a session, it can be fun to try to end it on a cliffhanger – like, some mysterious NPC comes up and is going to tell something to the PCs, or a fight is just about to start, or there is some ‘bad omen’ or something unexpected that might lead in to the next session (like a dragon flying overhead, or the PCs return to the home base town but find that it has been set on fire by enemies).
* In general – always try to split up your time between all the PCs and give them all enough ’story time’ and personal time to satisfy them. Peoples’ tastes are different… some people LOVE to talk to every NPC and will always keep talking and talking and hogging attention, other people like to stay more in the background and just read the rulebooks or whatever. It’s up to you how to divide your time between everyone so that everyone feels involved. One general technique is, when people aren’t saying much, to specifically ask them what they want to do (or what their character is doing). Or to have NPCs talk to those people to try to ‘get them out of their shell’, etc. (’Realistically’, NPCs should want to talk more to people with higher Charisma…) You don’t want one person to dominate the entire game by talking too much… on the other hand, some people just like to be quiet. So you’ve got to balance and know the players.

(to be continued…)

Recently a friend of mine announced that he was going to try running a D&D campaign (at lunch at school) for the first time, so I made a list of suggestions for DM-ing his first game. ^_^ (He’d never even played in a game before, which is super-impressive! Even I played in a game before I ran one, and now I DM at the college level, and sometimes for people in their 20s.)

(BTW, some people have asked if I only play D&D, and if this makes me a corporate shill for the Hassenfeld Brothers. But of course, I run all kinds of RPGs – it’s just that D&D is so popular that you really *have* to know it. If you are doing international business, you need to know English or Chinese (or maybe Spanish). But if Gaelic and Ainu and the various Andaman languages died out, that would be a tragedy. In the same way, it is useful to know D&D, but it is also useful to appreciate all the other minor RPGs about various trivial topics. Should I make a principled objection to D&D, because it is owned by a megacorporation? I say no! In the same way, indigenous peoples who wish to resist occupation and colonialism must nonetheless fight back with modern tools and weaponry.)

FIRST-TIME D&D TIPS (PART 1):

CHARACTER CREATION
* The ’standard’ D&D 4e rules let people allocate their points to create their characters instead of rolling dice. But you can let them roll dice instead if you want — it’s up to you and them. Personally, I think random dice-rolling creates more interesting characters because they have serious highs and serious lows. (A character with all 12s and 14s is kind of boring, but a character with two 18s and a 6 is ‘interesting’ because they have strengths but also a weakness… ) But if you do random dice rolling, some people will want to keep rerolling until they get an almost-perfect character. I have mixed feelings about this, but really, even if a player cheats in chargen, it’s not the end of the world. I mean, if you want, you can always hit them with monsters so tough that it doesn’t matter how high their ability scores are. -_-
* When people are making characters, ask your players a little bit about the backstory and history of their characters. This way, you can adjust the game world/backstory to account for the player characters. (Like letting the player come up with a Secret Society of Paladins, and then having NPCs show up who are also part of the Secret Society. Or having the PC’s NPC friend or family member show up.) Some players might have lots of ideas, others will have none, and that’s fine. You’re just trying to be polite after all, but if they don’t come up with any backstory, it just means that there will be no NPCs to mourn them when they’re dead. In some cultures, it’s believed that ghosts only persist as long as they are remembered by the living, so if your campaign’s cosmology operates by these rules, this will be punishment.

ROLEPLAYING
* Roleplaying NPCs and monsters is incredibly fun. Remember, YOU control all the 5,000,000,000+ creatures — plants, animals, outsiders and aberrations — in the game who are not controlled by the PCs. (For this reason it can be helpful to start out by running a game set in a small space, like a dungeon crawl, a late 1800s rural commune a la “The Road to Wellville”, or a locked-room murder mystery.) Looking at it from a philosophical standpoint, only the PCs have ‘free will’ in the true sense – everyone else naturally and unthinkingly obeys the will of the DM. (Although, a good DM can compartmentalize parts of their mind so that the NPCs behave independently, like when writers say that the characters are ‘writing the story for them.’) Remember, monsters can talk to the players and encounter them in out-of-combat ways (if they’re intelligent monsters) too. And the PCs can get in fights with NPCs too, even when you don’t expect it. (If PCs get in an NPC fight you don’t expect, just use the stats of an appropriate-level monster from the Monster Manual, like one of the Human or Goblin or Kobold monsters, and change the descriptions so it fits the NPC.)
* When I’m preparing a game, I usually write down some basic information about the most important NPCs (their name, appearance, personality, if I am basing their voice or behavior on some actor or some person in the dorm, etc.).
* For unimportant NPCs, like when PCs talk to some storekeeper or some random person on the street, I like to keep a list of random NPC names handy. This makes them feel a little more real and keeps me from having to make up names on the fly. There’s a good one on the web which you can use to print out random names in different styles (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/).
* If PCs are using “social skills” like Bluff or Diplomacy or Intimidate, it’s more fun if they roleplay them out too. You can either just tell the players to act it out, or you can give them a skill bonus (like +1 to +3) if they act it out well. Another option is to make them roll first and then force them to roleplay out a ‘bad’ attempt at Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate if they roll badly.

(to be continued)

Personally, I am not a big believer in dice-related superstitions, but this is an impressive welding of modern-day d20/RPG culture and Ojibwa tradition. ^^

The Old School Rant RPG blog criticized my recent post on the disadvantages and advantages of randomly rolling to determine your character’s stats, background, life history, distinguishing physical features, etc. That’s fine, people are welcome to say whatever they want, but I’m not sure I understand his point — first he compares me to a character from “The Temple of Elemental Evil,” then he links to a website about some Godlike character to apparently make his point that “real heroes spit in the face of determinism.” So real heroes in his campaigns get infinite rerolls, I guess. -_-

Then he says: “Even the word ‘ultimate’ (you know, like Ultimate DM…) is offensive to real heroes.” This is when I really don’t know what he is talking about. ^^* I guess he hasn’t read much media or he would know about Marvel’s “Ultimate” line, the Jump Square character Ultimo, and all sorts of other heroic characters who use the term “ultimate.”

But of course this blog isn’t called “Ultimate Hero”; it’s about game mastering. (I actually prefer the “adventurers, not heroes” model of D&D, and I haven’t even run that many superhero-themed games; I always considered Champions a little clunky-generic and the Marvel and DC Super Heroes games are fun but have their own problems.) I considered several names for my blog but I settled on “ultimate” because it ’s the closest to what I wanted according to the definition of the word:

* the basic or fundamental fact, element or principle
* utmost; extreme
* last in a series, progress or progression
* Representing or exhibiting the greatest possible development or sophistication

All of these are evocative descriptions. What else could I have called my blog? “Fundamental DM” has a nice earthy sound to it, but sounds too old-fashioned and arguably political. “Elemental DM” sounds like I am a Xorn or an Azer or a Water Weird or something. “Final DM” makes me think of a JRPG title, and “extreme DM”, while promising, sounds like I am the Johnny Knoxville of DMs trying to run Dungeons & Dragons games in a flaming car driving down an uncompleted span of the San Francisco-Oakland bridge into the ocean. (Although I’m sure some DMs would probably try that in order to get youtube hits… ^^;; ) “Omega DM” (as in “I am the Alpha and Omega DM”) sounds a little pretentious, like an old ’80s Transformers name. Lastly, I could have gone with “Greatest DM” but that is WAY too egotistical-sounding.

Thus, I went with the name “Ultimate DM”. Roleplaying is the art of the ultimate; it’s about seeking or creating something beyond normal experience. And so, that’s how I came up with the name of my blog. I didn’t think anyone would have a problem with it, but if they do, I hope they can at least express their thoughts coherently. (”Lareth”…?! o_O)

Recently I’ve been reading James Maliszewski’s blog Grognardia, which is devoted to oldschool roleplaying of the ’80s/90s ilk. In addition to information on old games like Twilight 2000 and Traveller, it also has some very interesting discussions of the “pulp fantasy” influence on RPGs — fantasy stories of the pre-Tolkien era, such as Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft (to an extent), etc. Tolkien is still a major influence on fantasy writing, but he’s far from the only influence on D&D. (Michael Moorcock was also a big influence on OD&D, for instance, but he came after Tolkien and saw his Elric books as a sort of anti-Tolkien — his 1978 essay Epic Pooh being the most concise summary of his design philosophy. ^^ )

In his most recent post, Maliszewski writes about the Traveller character generation system, in which it’s actually possible to die during chargen if you roll badly on the various background rolls. Lots of people don’t have the stomach for this kind of thing, and there is something to be said for making the character creation process non-random, as in the Mearls-approved process in D&D4e. I, personally, do not feel that all characters have to be equal, and I think that it’s better when systems allow people to play ‘weak’ or ’strong’ characters without leveling the playing field too much. (Of course, they are all equal in the eyes of me, the DM, even if they are not equal stats-wise. ^^ )

But perhaps the real reason people object to random stats and random character backgrounds is not “fairness” but that it is too similar to what we have to deal with in real life. Determinism based on biology or upbringing is not most people’s chosen form of escapism (unless it is ‘good’ determinism and they are “destined to be awesome because they are the chosen heir of the throne of blah blah blah” etc.) In real life, we don’t get to choose who we’re born to or where we grow up or whether we have Asperger’s or diabetes. But in RPGs, we at least look forward to having an idealized and personally chosen backstory, even if we may get eaten by a dragon or something shortly after actual gameplay begins. In the gray area before actual gameplay begins, in our epic memories, we can all be heroes. It’s when the dice start rolling that the drama and tragedy and mayhem starts.

A friend played this song for me, an old song by the now-defunct British rock band Urusei Yatsura. The lyrics and even the title are distinctly RPG-ish (”on our dice one hundred sides”), although the video doesn’t have any obvious references, unless we are supposed to imply some roleplay element in the band members’ relationships. In any case, it’s an interesting call-out, very strongly suggesting that the band are gamers. ^^

The other night I had a dream that I was playing a tabletop RPG. I was at home and it was nighttime and all my friends were there — Shesh, Mike, Jen, Vartan, Hawwa — and they all wanted to play a game with me. I got out some old 3.0 adventure, a dungeon crawl with goblins and ogres and ratmen — the adventure had a brown cover, the whole dream was very brown- and red-colored — and I could feel my heart beating faster with excitement at having all my favorite players from L.A. and Escondido in one place to play a game. But unfortunately, the dream ended there and we didn’t actually get to play… we just made characters and then things sort of puttered out inconclusively.

I often have dreams about RPGs. Sometimes I even dream of years ago, the first time I ever played roleplaying games. Maybe I’ve spent so much time gaming that it is an essential function of my brain that even happens in my sleep. All kinds of monsters and scenarios float through my mind (Shadowrun, Warhammer, Cthulhu, D&D, Exalted, different science fiction and fantasy homebrews…). Unfortunately, these dream games, like the dream I had last night, often end before the game really gets going. More often than not, I dream that I am *about* to run a game, but then everyone is late or they want to watch a DVD instead or someone flakes out or something like that. :( I guess I’ll have to take comfort in the fact that I dream of gaming, but not be discouraged by the fact that so many of my dreams are dreams of frustration. In the end, I’m confident that the good games, the satisfying games, will outweigh the bad.

I have often regretted that I didn’t get to know Gary Gygax better before he died in 2008. Although I have some issues with his gaming philosophy, you can’t help but respect him. He was one of those onetime giants, like Michael Jackson or Eminem, who was already fading into the past when I was just starting to get into the world of roleplaying. (I don’t know if Jackson or Eminem roleplayed, I’m just mentioning them for a point of comparison. -_- )

I’ve already made my feelings about Gygax and his partner Arneson known in this video. The news that there may soon be a statue of Gary Gygax in Lake Geneva fills me with interest. Some gamers I know suggested that the statue could straddle the harbor of Lake Geneva like the ancient Colossus of Rhodes. Ancient Greek bronzeworking and construction techniques may not have been advanced enough to let the statue actually stand with one foot on either side of the harbor and have ships pass between its legs — that part may be a modern conjecture — but modern metalworking technology would make it easy to create such a structure. In an ideal situation, technology is about bringing us closer to the products of our imagination.

But admittedly, this might be impossible in the current economic climate (although I think constructing a giant bronze statue would actually provide lots of jobs). One smaller-scale option, which I find more personally interesting, would be a lifesize statue of Gygax sitting at a gaming table in a park, eternally playing D&D (1st edition, of course). This isn’t a bad second choice, but I would suggest going one further — what about constructing an automatic D&D-playing statue, similar to the famous Mechanical Turk of the late 18th century? At the time, this statue/robot fooled millions with its ability to play chess with human opponents. It is now believed that the Turk was merely a hollow (but still impressive) mechanical shell with a dwarven chess-player concealed in the cabinet.

The Gygax statue could operate on similar principles, since even today it is difficult to imagine a computer which could perform all the functions of a human DM. DMs could climb inside the statue and, by manipulating Gygax’s hands from within, simulate the rolling of dice and all other game functions. This would give DMs a true thrill — the opportunity to actually BECOME Gygax, seeing the world through his eyes as it were, blasphemous as this may seem. The idea makes me think of one of my favorite movies, “Being John Malkovich.” Some people might say that it is cheating to have an automaton-DM pretending to be a real one, but in the famous Greek temples of Alexandria there were numerous mechanical idols which were accepted by the believers. Sure, these sorts of things are “tricks,” but they may actually make people believe *more* in the game instead of less, and that’s always a good thing.

At any rate I am looking forward to what the statue planners have in mind for Gygax’s memorial and I hope that they will consider these proposals!! Although Gygax was apparently not the best Dungeon Master ever, his mark on roleplaying is indelible. Unfortunately I can probably not make it to GaryCon this year but I will be watching over the interwebs to see what develops. ^^

In some of the worst news I have heard all year, it appears that prison inmates in Wisconsin are forbidden to play Dungeons & Dragons or even possess D&D materials. This inhumane practice was just upheld by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, making Wisconsin one of those shameful government entities, like the IDF, that has an official anti-roleplaying policy.

My own experience with the police has mostly been negative, so I can’t say I’m surprised, but this is incredibly frustrating. It’s the same old argument, used after the Columbine killings and many other times, that says that “fantasy games” (RPGs, MMOs, Settlers of Catan, what have you) will make people engage in violent behavior. Personal experience to the contrary, this is simply not true — roleplayers, if anything, are far more likely to act out their violent impulses in the game rather than taking them out on real people or objects. But once again, like in the old RPG “Paranoia,” the government insists on acting like thought police. (Especially annoying is the prison psychologist’s brainless association of the “Dungeon Master” with a “gang leader” — as if! It’s almost impossible to make a group of players even go on a mission to fight wererats, let alone commit real crimes!)

So prisoners are allowed to work out in the gym, and allowed conjugal visits, but not allowed the freedom of their imaginations. When will the government stop trying to control what goes on in people’s minds? Can the creative space ever be kept free of interference, or is this doomed to be an eternal human struggle between Lawful Neutral and Chaotic forces? I’d like to hope that the forces of roleplaying are victorious, even if this has to be taken to the Supreme Court. Better to roleplay a dragonborn or a tiefling rather than roleplaying a kowtowing yes-man to a prison guard or a tough gangsta gang member to those who know you. :/ But of course, some kinds of roleplaying are accepted by society and others are not.