One-on-One Games

Yesterday we played an hour of a one-on-one D&D 5e game. You can see the recaps here although I probably should put them up on our GamemastersDK channel. Might do that some time soon.

Past Experience
I've played one-on-one games before and my general experience is that it doesn't always end well. One-on-one games are very different from standard group games for two reasons.

1. You only have one player to solve the mysteries and puzzles, and if they don't get it the first time then don't expect to get it at all. This also applies to combat encounters. You only have one player to fight, which means if things go south, there's nobody to help him.
2. Adventures go a lot faster since there's no internal group dialogue, no decision making, and only one player to go through rounds of combat and skill checks.

 If you know about these two facts, you can easily create an adventure suited for a single player, but be warned: don't think you can play a group game with a one-on-one party or a one-on-one adventure with a group. You'll need to modify the adventure in order to do so.

Hero's Quest
The adventure I created is based on the Quest for Glory computer game. I created the first adventure and checked with the creators of the game about publishing it, but due to copyright issues, I was unable to get permission to do so. So the adventure stays in my personal collection and is only played by GamemastersDK.

The first game is called "So, you want to be a hero?" and takes place in a valley called Spielburg where the player has to discover the mystery of the missing baron and baronesse, the children of the ruling nobleman. A standard adventure with a number of shorter side quests.

Last Game
We've played two games, and yesterday we played the third game. In the second game, the player encountered the faeries in search of fairy dust for the dispel magic potion. The choices made by the player would have left the character dead in the real game, but in D&D I gave the player a chance to survive, and the character did indeed wake up the next day in the forest with 2 levels of exhaustion from dancing so much. The character returned to town and went to the Hero's Tale Inn to rest, which is where the game yesterday began.

The player came into the Hero's Tale Inn where I had changed the katta out with an elf. The character got a room and rested for the night, reducing the level of exhaustion to 1, which meant that a whole day of rest lay before the player, which covered the game that we played. We combined the game with levelling up to become an arcane trickster, by having the player go to the Magic Shop and learn magic from the half-elf Zara, who taught the player Firebolt and Mage Hand. The character also bought a scroll of Knock before returning to the Hero's Tale Inn where the character met Abdulla Doo, a merchant who had been robbed by the brigands in the valley.

The player now had two new quests. First of all, Zara had told that anyone who could solve the mystery of Erana's Peace would gain a new spell. Secondly, Abdulla said that if the character could retrieve his Flying Carpet, he would bring the character south to a magical land that also needed a hero. The player spent the evening talking with Abdulla before retiring to her own room and get more rest. This is where the game ended.

Future Games 
The idea is to finish the entire game and hopefully continue through the whole Quest for Glory series. The next game will probably cover recovering green fur from the Meeps in the western part of the valley, or investigating the mysteries of Erana's Peace in search of that new spell.

Tomorrow 
Tomorrow, however, we'll be playing our first Gamemaster game where one of us will be the first GM and then in a few months we'll switch to a new GM. Three of us already have adventures in mind, but three of us are also missing characters, so we'll spend some time creating characters tomorrow before starting the game.

This is my last blog this year. My next blog will be in 2016, so Happy New Years. 

Christmas Themed Adventure

This week I'd like to tell you about  an adventure that one of our gamemasters created. It's a very short adventure that could easily be enlarged and modified, which I will also talk about.

Setting
The game takes place during a winter celebration, in this case the Winter Frostival. The game is placed in a snowy village in the foothills during winter, in this case a stone walled city on a hill called Wintersfall. 

Plot
First a note is discovered on a bulletin board in town which asks adventurers to go to the barracks since the town needs help. On the way to the barracks there's a large decorated pine tree with one important missing element, the star is nowhere to be seen. The clerk at the barracks explains that the star has been stolen and must be retrieved to return light and joy to the Winter Frostival, and that the guards are too busy to check on a ransom note written by the "S.N.O.-C.O.N.E." Investigating the loss of the star and the ransom note leads to a cave north of Wintersfall in the foothills, and the discovery that "C.O.N.E." stands for "Cult Of Naughty Elves".


The Cave
The cave is set up in such a manner that a combination of traps and monsters ensures that anyone who enters the cave doesn't leave before the adventure is concluded. At the heart of the cave is a large bright celebration that is otherworldly. Instead of people celebrating, pine trees and candy canes play music and dance around a large cauldron of hot chocolate and a bright star placed upon the top of a large stationary pine tree. The trees themselves aren't hostile, but the candy canes will defend their celebration from any intruders and the cauldron is trapped so that it tips over and pours scolding chocolate on anyone who approaches the pine tree with the star.

Once all of this is dealt with, "S.N.O.-C.O.N.E." appears, an orc called "Super Naughty Orc - Cult Of Naughty Elves" who explains that people didn't like him and pointed fingers at him laughing. He's pretty much the Grinch since he stole the star so that the people of Wintersfall couldn't enjoy Winter Frostival, just as he wasn't allowed to participate in the festivities.

Once the star is returned to town, gifts are placed under the tree in Wintersfall to those who returned the star, gifts of magical staves in the form of giant candy canes and magical boots of green and red like those that Santa's elves wear.


Twists
Two unforeseen twists happened during the game. First of all, discovering that the star was magical led to a desire to keep the star instead of returning it to Wintersfall, or maybe giving it to someone else instead. To avoid this issue, NPC adventurers were introduced to ensure that the star was returned to Wintersfall.

Another twist was that instead of fighting "S.N.O.-C.O.N.E.", a charm spell enabled peaceful talks and conversion of the evil Grinch like orc to a creature that actually saved the Winter Frostival by being the one who returned the star, which meant that Wintersfall, who was unaware that Sno-Cone was the orc, hailed the final boss as the hero of the story, giving it a happy ending.

Changes

• Monster, trap, and skill difficulties can be modified to suit various levels.
• Random encounters may occur on the trip to the cave in the foothills.
• More active monsters and traps can be placed as safeguards in the cave, creating additional encounters and draining resources.
• The living pine trees may also act as guards, and combined with the animated candy canes and the trapped cauldron, this encounter may prove deadly.
• Expanding on Sno-Cone may create a memorable recurring villain or ally.
• An exciting exit from a crumbling cave with animate monsters and elementals combined with traps could create a good climax.

Review
I personally enjoyed a Christmas themed adventure here in December and the happy tone of the game made my day joyous. There were points where I was afraid, such as when we went into the cave without knowing what we would encounter, or when we encountered traps or animated candy canes that tried to crush us. All of it could have turned bloody very fast. I liked that the game was serious and stuck to the rules with a logical explanation on why it was Christmas themed without forcing it.

If you want a copy of the adventure, leave a comment and we'll find a way to send you a copy of this Christmas themed adventure.
 

First session with multiple gamemasters

Ok, so I'm totally ditching the whole "I'm going to write about christmas calendars" articles. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to reading about them, or getting reviewed. Today, I'd like to write about what we've spent the day doing. Today was the first session where we gathered the group of roleplayers who are going to play a game of D&D 5e with multiple gamemasters.


Setting it up
This project all started with a player looking for a group. Several people responded to his post and we gathered a group just as he wanted. Then we started talking about who should be the gamemaster, and we decided to make this game a new experience by having multiple gamemasters. Instead of running a game where there's only one gamemaster, we would take turns being the gamemaster. After a few games (2-4 sessions), we would switch roles and someone else in the group would become the gamemaster for the next adventure. We decided to meet today to get to know each other, and to set up the frame for our new project.

To begin with, we were 7 people. The initial plan was to meet a month ago, but due to personal scheduling, we moved the event to today. Still, half of the group cancelled. One person completely left the group, a second one has exams, and the third one ended up with a family crisis. So we ended up being 4 gamemasters who met to discuss the frame for our project and to get to know each other before embarking on this new experience.



What did we decide?
We spent 7 hours today getting to know each other, talking about the game we are going to create, and create the first characters.

First we got the awkward stuff out of the way. My wife and I have a 7 month old daughter, meaning that travelling and playing long hours is very difficult. In order to ensure her well being, we made it clear that we had some requirements and that everyone needed to be okay that we wouldn't be 100% invested in the game at all times. This group is made up of 29-37 year olds, so the fact that family came first was not an issue. Furthermore, accepting that we would play mainly at our place also helps matters since our daughter feels much more comfortable in a familiar environment, especially when there are strangers present, and anyone who isn't mom or dad are strangers to her at the moment.

Then we got the basics out of the way. We all agreed to start this group where we would take turns being the gamemaster and that we would use the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition rules. We set up the frame for many details, such as how to handle loot and XP, good and evil, transitioning from one gamemaster to another, how to handle internal and external conflicts, etc. The answer to all of it was quite simple. We would take a mature talk about it if it ever became an issue. This may seem like a dangerous plan, but accepting how other gamemasters work and not being bound by what they create makes it a lot easier to handle. We all seemed to have the same thoughts on how to handle loot (roleplay it, don't overdo, and don't abuse the fact that you're a GM now and a player later). We decided to play without XP and simply play with levels, levelling up at the same time so that the game is more based on story than rules. We also decided that we would accept how the other gamemaster did things. Mutual respect will bring us through our little project.

We decided that we are going to be playing at least once per month and that we would start with 1st level good aligned characters. To ensure proper transition between gamemasters and adventures we decided to create an adventurers' guild. This guild would be the main constant throughout all the games. It would enable us to easily switch out characters, so the current gamemaster didn't have to use his character as an NPC. It would allow players to change characters between adventures if they wanted to play something different. It would give a reason for why good and evil aligned characters worked together. It would give a reason for the very varied adventures we would be running. The guild would have more than one base of operations, or "chapter". Using this concept enables gamemasters to simply say that the party travels from one chapter to another between sessions, giving the new gamemaster the possibility to set his/her adventure in a completely different setting.


The party
We created four characters.

The first gamemaster created a half-orc rogue. This character will probably not come into play to begin with, since the gamemaster already has plans to use this character to more easily transition the whole group from one gamemaster to another. This half-orc rogue is an "occultist" (get it? an orc-cultist or occult-cultist) who discovered that the religious group he was part of were fire elemental fanatics. He left them to join the adventurers' guild but still has knowledge about this fire cult. This character is a bit dumb, and the player uses a specific voice as a gimmick. It'll be interesting to see how much he'll use it. He might even already have a catch-phrase, and as I understood it, he was going to use both heavy weapons and finesse weapons, depending on the situation.

Another character that was created was an aasimar ranger. The character was created as a bloodhound who has ties to the criminal underworld. You gotta understand your enemies in order to be able to hunt them down, right? His character is the hunter of the group, the bloodhound with a crossbow who sometimes switches over to melee weapons. He knows how to find what or whomever we're looking for. I'm certain the player has a lot more ideas and nuances to the character than I'm describing here, but this is the impression that I got from the character creation process.

The woman in our group created a half-elven druid. She wanted to play something else than a rogue, which is what she usually plays. She was thinking about playing a paladin or maybe a bard, but in the end settled on playing a shapeshifting druid. She started out by writing down lots of background and personality information down, including stuff about her character's parents. I didn't read any of it, so I can't tell you much about it, but the character creation process was definitely thorough. She is playing a half-elf that grew up in a human society, which impacted my own character.

I also decided to play something I haven't played before. I often play dwarf or human, usually focusing on a warrior or spellcasting class. I've even played a healer (speciality cleric) before, but I don't recall having played a rogue class. I started thinking about it and looked into creating an air genasi arcane trickster specialized in deception and illusions. This was a bit too advanced so I looked into a much simpler version, playing a human rogue, a thief or a swashbuckler. This could have worked, but our half-orc was thinking about creating a rogue (he decided to be a half-orc specifically because he ended up choosing the rogue class). I therefore told him to play a rogue (he might multiclass into a fighter later on) and that I would play the other rogue class, the bard. I then drew inspiration from my air genasi and created a half-elven bard specialized in diplomacy, deception, and illusion. I decided that my gimmick would be music. I'm not certain if I'm going to be playing the flute at the various sessions (which might piss off some players, especially my wife), or if I should just play a DJ kind of character and control the music that we listen to during sessions. Finally, I decided that my half-elf has grown up in an elven society, specifically because the other player is playing a half-elf who grew up in a human society. I started out giving my half-elf an elven name, but I think I'll change that to a human name to illustrate that he grew up in an elven society and was therefore perceived more like a human.


Next session
Our plan is now to meet again in about two weeks for our first session. The other two players still has a chance to create their own characters beforehand and join us. At the end of winter we should be switching to the second gamemaster, but the really interesting part of this project will be in spring or beginning of summer when we'll be switching over to the third gamemaster. This is a major project that I will definitely be writing more about in the future.

Professional Gamemaster

I know I promised to write about TRPG christmas calendars, but I stumbled across an interesting article that I would like to write about instead.

As a member of the Professional Gamemasters Society, I saw a post by Vb Wyrde who linked to an article on enworld titled "D&D goes to Work Part II: Professional Game Masters"


The Article
The article itself is set up into seven different points:

1. Why would anyone pay for a Gamemaster?
2. What's a professional Gamemaster worth?
3. Trolling Around
4. Going Commando
5. Your Friendly Local Game Store is Hiring
6. The Online Revolution
7. The League of Extraordinary Gamemasters

The first part of the article refers to quotes by Gary Gygax and others on the value of gamemasters. It points out that in the end, being a good gamemaster is time consuming, and they should therefore get paid for their services.

The article then goes over to talk about seven qualifications a professional gamemaster should have. I could list what I'm good at and what I'm not. I could even make up excuses why the bad things weren't actually bad. Instead I'll write a short comment about why my mastery should make me a professional.

1.  Mastery of Gamemastership - With 24 years of experience, good references, and knowledge of many different types of games and systems, I should have mastery of gamemastership.
2. Mastery of Rules - Being able to referee on rules, especially obscure ones is very crucial and something I have experience with.
3. Mastery of Systems - I have always been good to use various systems and interpret them, expand on them, and combining all of it to create my own.
4. Mastery of Adventure Scenario - Check out our Extra-Life 2015, which was a 24 hour Dungeons and Dragons game based on the adventure "Princes of the Apocalypse".
5. Mastery of Campaign Milieu Creation - I have created settings, campaigns, and adventures of various types.
6. Mastery of RPG systems expansions - Ever tried GMing a written adventure that was based off of a computer game RPG? It's a lot of fun, and the challenges are very different from anything else.
7. Mastery of Creation of Role-Playing Games - I once worked on a TRPG with a friend where the players played the crew of a large mech, a humanoid machine of war. It was Warhammer 40k meets Star Trek meets World of Darkness.

The article also covers an example of a guy who earned thousands of dollars over a year GMing, and even outlines an example of how much some players would be willing to pay. The interesting part was that almost everything would be provided along with the pay for the GM, so the gamemaster would only have to pay taxes.

The article covers more examples and games played at local game stores. We have something similar here in Denmark, but it works differently and you wouldn't be able to earn any money off of it. It is mainly used to advertise the store itself. The article also covers the use of digital formats such as Roll20, which personally is one of the reasons I started this blog.

The article finishes off with talking about streaming games, and in my experience that only works if you already have a personality and appearance on the net. Someone like me would never be able to start up and become a famous gamemasters through Twitch.


Vb Wyrde's Post
The founder of the Professional Gamemaster Society covers the article much better than I do, and his insight into it is inspiring. He points out that the article focuses mostly on the gamemaster but that in truth, the article should focus on the player. Why would players pay? Could companies become the players? Why would players go for a professional gamemaster when they can get a free one?

The thing that caught my eye the most was the way that Wyrde set up the business model. Things are very different in different places around the world, and Wyrde posted a business model where 6 players would play 20 hours per week and the pay would have to give the gamemaster a normal standard of living.



My Reply 
I decided to reply to Wyrde's post with this blog article, but also with the following post:

Vb Wyrde, a very interesting analysis of the article and I've taken the liberty of posting a long reply to it on my blog.

I would personally love to become a professional gamemaster, but don't expect that dream to come true. Still, I started up my blog and other minor projects specifically due to the job posting on Roll20, hoping that it would help me in the future. I have streamed 24 hour Extra-Life games for two years now, and am now planning a larger project. I am working closely with my local community and a company to set up an official yearly LAN party. This LAN party will be unique in that it will also include Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40k, and Dungeons and Dragons. I'm in charge of the D&D part and I'm hoping to set it up in a very professional way. It'll be set up for the first weekend of November 2016.

Now for the heart of this reply (sorry for the long post). I tried running the numbers for a business model myself based on a gamemaster here in Denmark. Running 20 hours every 7 days means running a mean of 2.86 hours/day. With a mean of 30.4 days/month and at 33,330 DKK/month (4,859.91 USD/month) the income would have to be 1.095,78 DKK/day (159.78 USD/day), which would give 383.52 DKK/hour (55.92 USD/hour). This nets to a total price of 63.92 DKK/hour/player (9.32 USD/hour/player). True enough, this is very difficult to attain, but it should be possible.

A note on conventions and capitalism, here in Denmark you pay for the convention, but once in you aren't charged an additional fee for attending, and TRPG conventions are very rare. Charging money for being a professional gamemaster isn't about capitalism, but about worth. A professional gamemaster will spend most of his life GMing, just as anyone else spends most of their life doing whatever they do to pay the bills. Getting paid for it simply means that you can do it. I would love to GM more games, but I'm limited to very few games, and I've only played 24 hours in the past 6 months. If I got paid for doing it, I would be able to do it a lot more would be entertained.

Sorry for the long post, and thumbs up on the link to the article.


Next weekend we're officially launching our gamemasters campaign with a simple meet-and-greet where we set up the outlines. I'll write about that in a few weeks. Next week I'll try to stick with the plan and write about TRPG christmas calendars. If you have any ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

LAN in Dalmose

As I've mentioned before, we are working on setting up a LAN in our local community of Dalmose in western Zealand in Denmark. I've already posted various ideas, but this post will include addresses, dates, and further information. Note that all of this has not been 100% decided yet, so everything is subject to change.

What is it?
In 2016 our local community will be hosting 2 official LANs. LAN stands for Local Area Network, and refers to connecting multiple computers together in order to play the same game, at the same time, together or against each other. Instead of sitting at home playing over the internet, we're gathering people at our local community for a weekend to sit in the same space and play together or against each other.

LANs have evolved to include more than just computer games. There are sleep overs, breakfast, booths where you can buy electronics, and competitions where you can win prizes. We have Souless-Gamer running our LAN, and they are organizing three competitions: Counter Strike, League of Legends, and Hearthstone. They are also trying to recruit the Copenhagen Wolves Counter Strike team.


When is it?
We'll be hosting 2 LAN parties. The first one will May 27-29 and the second one will be November 4-6. The first one will be a start-up event to give us some experience since it's the first time we'll be hosting it. Souless-Gamer has some experience with it, and we're hoping to learn a lot at this event. We've set the limit to 100 people, but are expecting less than 50 to sign up. The LAN in November will be our first real LAN where we're hoping to attract over 100 people.

The LAN parties will run from friday afternoon (around 17:00 or something), until sunday noon (12:00). The reason we picked the two dates is because I'm expecting the LAN in November to coincide with Extra-Life and we might host some Extra-Life event. The party in May is set exactly 6 months before to give us some warming up and experience.

Where is it?
 Both LANs will be held at our athletics hall in Dalmose called Dalmosehallen. The address is Stationsvej 53, 4261 Dalmose, Denmark. It is located between the cities of Slagelse, Næstved, Korsør, and Skælskør in western Zealand in Denmark.

What makes this different from other LANs? 
The first LAN in May will be a standard LAN to give us some experience, but the LAN set up for November will include several unique features not available at other LANs in Denmark. This will include Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40k, and Dungeons and Dragons tabletop roleplaying game. Magic and Warhammer will have competitions, and I'll be running the D&D event. I still haven't decided how to run it or if we're even going to make it competitive like the rest of the events at the LAN party. I did come up with an idea to make it competitive, which you can read about in the previous post. Hopefully this will attract more attention to our LAN and give our local community the attention it deserves.


In the middle of February I'll attend another LAN setup by Souless-Gamer and I will definitely review it here. Next week, however, I'll write a little about christmas calendars, especially those related to tabletop roleplaying games. If you have any ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

Competitive Tabletop Roleplaying Game

This week I had a meeting with my local community about setting up two LANs at the athletic hall in 2016. The first one will be set up at the end of spring and will focus only on computer games and will be a sort of initiation for most involved. The second one will be set at the beginning of November, around Extra-Life, and will include Warhammer 40k, Magic the Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons. We'll have competitions for Counter Strike, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Warhammer, and Magic, and I therefore started to think about how to make D&D competitive.

I've surfed the internet a bit, and there are TRPGs that are competitive. There are also a variety of suggestions on how to make D&D competitive, but nothing that I have found would work. I have come up with my own suggestion, which is a first draft and definitely will need more work.



Setup
The game will require two dungeonmasters and a headmaster. There will be two teams of players ranging from 4 to 6 players. Each team will be given a dungeonmaster who will serve as the judge for that specific team. The two teams will then compete against each other.

The rules will be D&D 5e, and the players will have to use either premade characters or create their own characters before the competition following the rules set down by the dungeonmasters and the headmaster. These rules will most likely be similar to the Adventurer's League set down by Wizards of the Coast. The two teams will play in each their own nation, which are two identical nations created by the gamemasters. The adventure itself, NPCs, etc will also be created beforehand by the gamemasters.

The goal will be for the team to ensure that their nation wins the war against the opposing nation, which is done by completing a variety of tasks based on the three core values of D&D: combat, social, and exploration. Each task will take 3½-4 hours after which the party may look at the back of their quest card to see the consequences of their choices, in case they succeed at their task within the allotted time. It is the DMs responsibility to help the players complete the task within the time while still enforcing the rules. There will be 3-6 tasks, depending on the length of the competition, meaning that the competition will range from 12 to 24 hours.

Setup - Example
Two teams of 5 players each sit down with a dungeonmaster each. A headmaster is present but currently not necessary. Each player is given a premade character created by the gamemasters, which have created a mortal nation of humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings opposing an elemental nation with air, earth, fire, water, genasi, and arcane spellcasters. The gamemasters have created an assortment of quests and corresponding questcards with consequences described on the back (or a blank space where the headmaster can write down the consequences). The gamemasters have creatd enough for a 24 hour game consisting of 5 tasks and a potential deathmatch at the end. 



Start
When the players have created their characters and the gamemasters have setup the game, each party will begin with a 30 minute introduction where the characters are summoned to a war council where the leaders of their nation will explain them the situation and what choices they and their opponents have. They can't explain the consequences of their choices because they don't know what the opponents are going to do, or whether or not the players will succeed in their task. The three available quests will cover combat, social, and exploration.

Start - Example

The mortal players are gathered at a council meeting in the city of Aspenta where the leaders explain that an elemental force is attacking the continent through magical portals. The players are given three choices: either go to the front line and help close these portals (combat), investigate strange reports of corruption within the human nobility (social), or travel east to gather the sylvan creatures and druids of the Jungle of Asia (exploration). They are warned that the enemy team, who is playing elementals, are also given three choices: to force their way through the portals to create a beachhead (combat), to magically infiltrate the human nation (social), or to send scouts east to the jungle to look for potential future targets.

Let's say that the mortal team chooses to reinforce the portals, while the elemental team chooses to magically infiltrate the human nation. They don't know what each other have chosen or are playing, but the dungeonmasters inform the headmaster so that he knows and can prepare the consequences of the quests. Each party is given a questcard with a description of what they are supposed to do, and each team plays 3½-4 hours to try and complete their task.



Consequences
Using the three core aspects of D&D gives a rock-paper-scissors type of game mixed with D&D rules. It is possible to create five aspects, or even simply use the three aspects and give each party 5 choices. It is also possible to give players multiple choices under each category, all of which are key aspects of TRPGs. The players will have to succeed at their quests in order to gain the potential benefits.

Consequences - Example
Let's say both teams succeed in their quests.

The mortal team players 2 combat encounters where they fight their way through a battlefield past a number of elementals to reach the portal, and then spend 40 minutes at a skill challenge with the some party members protecting the spellcasters. Within 3 hours and 50 minutes, the party succeeds and the portal is closed.

Meanwhile, the elemental team ends up playing a covert game where they use skills and magic to infiltrate a human city and its nobility. They end up with one combat encounter against a number of guards that they quietly kill and cover up their deaths before they succeed at using magic to get the local lord on their side. They use this advantage to get half the mortal army to desert from attacking the portals.

The headmaster had, beforehand, decided that combat wins over exploration which wins over social which wins over combat. When the dungeonmasters give the headmaster the results of the game, he writes on the back of the questcards the consequences of the games. The mortal team is informed that even though they closed one of the portals, half the army deserted due to internal corruption, and thus the elementals succeed at forming a beachhead elsewhere on the continent. The elemental team is informed that the mortals focus on the front line, meaning that their infiltration tactic is successful and half the mortal armies desert, leaving the continent vulnerable for invasion. The elemental team is now in the lead with 1-0.



The psychological effect
In the next couple of games, the parties learn what type of party they are up against. They slowly learn about their composition, strengths and weaknesses, but most importantly, they learn about their choices. A psychological effect is incorporated where each party needs to outwit the other party.

Psychological Example
At the first two tasks, the mortal team tries to fight back against the elemental team, which is simply outwitting the mortals, and thus winning 2-0. With the information gathered, the mortal team now understands that the elementals are outwitting them, and thus they decide that frontal assaults aren't working.

As a second choice (just for info) the mortal team chose to go to the Monastery of Aspenta to have the knights there set up an inquisition to ensure that the elementals couldn't corrupt more nobles, and any nobles already corrupt would be dealt with (social choice). The elementals chose to travel to the Great Bay. Now that they had the human nobles under their influence and a beachhead on the continent, they decided to search for the best location in the bay for their next plan. After a short underwater adventure, the party summoned a volcano that caused a tsunami that destroyed the elven lands of Aiania, which is why the elemental team is now winning 2-0.

As a third choice, the mortal team gets the following three choices:  Travel to the ruined elven lands and fight the elementals storming the shores from the Great Bay (combat), travel to the dwarven mountains of Berun to gathere the aid of a dracolich in the Underdark (social), or travel east to gather the aid of the halfling druids in the Jungles of Asia, which is the same choice as in the beginning of the competition (exploration). They learn that the elemental team's choices are: Using portals and volcanoes turn the rivers of the continent into lava and lead the elemental armies into the humans lands following these rivers (combat), gather the air elementals, genasi, and spellcasters to cause a rain of salt over the continent to starve out the mortal races (social), travel east while the armies invade the west and prepare a beachhead on the shores of the jungle (exploration).

The mortal races know that the elementals are outwitting the party, so they won't push along the rivers of lava. They also know that they usually stay away from the jungle and think more large scale. They guess that the elementals will start a rain of salt, that can only be countered by the halfling druids of Asia. After the game, the mortal team is informed that their guess was correct, and they are now only losing by one point 2-1.



Draw
It is possible for each team to choose the same type, in which case the result would end in a draw.

Draw - Example
As a fourth choice, the mortal team gets to choose between attack the firelands that have erupted in the human lands (combat), gather the Five Companions who rule over the skyship army of Ur'Lah in the south (social), or travel into the Dungeons of Berun to gather magical items and artefacts to help them against the elementals. The elemental team gets to choose between attack the Jungles of Asia with the use of air magic to counter the druids present there (combat), or travel south to Ur'Lah to destroy the Five Companions who have gathered an army of skyships (social), or gather the wizards to have meteorites appear in the sky causing darkness and destroying the Arterian Citadel with a meteor storm (exploration).

Both parties choose to travel south to Ur'Lah and each end up both helping and defeating the skyships. In the end, the elementals haven't done a significant blow to the Five Companions, only destroying half of them, while the mortals end up with only half an army of skyships. The competition still stands at 2-1 to the favor of the elementals.


 
If a team fails
If a team fails at one of their tasks, then it doesn't necessarily mean that they lose. If the opposing team also fails, or chooses a task that specifically means that they would normally have failed, it ends in a draw. If a team fails, however, a draw results in a victory for the succeeding team.

Failure - Example
Near the end of the war, the mortal team decides to attack the elemental forces over the Great Bay (combat). The elemental team is tired of outwitting the mortal, especially since the mortals seem to have guessed their tactic. The elemental team therefore decides to assemble an army at the volcano in the Great Bay and attack the remaining skyship army. Both parties end up playing a number of combat encounters, but the elemental team doesn't finish all the combat encounters before the end of the 4 hours, even though the DM tried several times to quicken the combat and plans.

If both parties had completed their task, it would have ended in a draw, and since the last part of the competition is a potential deathmatch, the elementals would have won 2-1. Since the elemental team took too long planning their attack and executing it (probably cause it's getting late), then what would have been a draw has ended up being a victory for the mortal team, setting the competition to a 2-2 draw and initiating the deathmatch.


Deathmatch
The deathmatch is an arena fight between the two parties. It is a pure fight where the party gets to use any resources they have gathered throughout the competition. It is set in a location created by the gamemasters beforehand and only comes into play if the competition ends in a draw. The deathmatch continues until one party has been defeated.

Deathmatch - Example
With the mortal team having won the Battle of the Great Bay, they now force their way on to the volcano. The elemental team was defeated by the skyships and were forced to retreat back to the volcano. On the volcano that the elementals summoned, a great battle between the mortal races and the elementals take place, and the two parties end up facing each other.

During the deathmatch, most players perish, except for one of the mortal characters, who successfully defeats the fire genasi and thus wins the competition for his team.



Next week I'll be writing some more about our LAN project, which will be combining tabletop roleplaying games with tabletop miniature wargames, card games, and computer games. This article was only one example of how to combine all of it. If you have any ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

Warhammer 40k

I've been looking at playing some Warhammer 40k tabletop roleplaying game, more specifically Deathwatch. Because of my lack of knowledge on the Warhammer 40k universe, we have decided that I should be a player. Still, I have made a few thoughts about what kind of game I would run if I was the gamemaster.


What is Deathwatch?
First of all, to those who don't know it, Fantasy Flight has created a tabletop roleplaying game based on the Warhammer 40k universe, which initially is a tabletop miniature wargame. It is set in a dystopian science-fantasy setting. It is called 40k because it is set in the 41st millenium, 38.000 years in the future. In this future, the space marines are genetically engineered superhuman soldiers. Space marines are divided up into "chapters" of 1.000 soldiers, and some of these are specifically trained to join the Deathwatch, a group of elite space marines that are made up of various chapters. In the tabletop roleplaying game, the players take on the role of the space marines that make up a squad in Deathwatch. The players are then sent out on special missions and play through their character's service in Deathwatch.


Adventure 1: A Growing Shadow
If I was the gamemaster to such a game, I would create a number of adventures, but due to my lack of knowledge on the Warhammer 40k universe, many players might not recognize Warhammer in the games that I would host. My first adventure would be an invasion game where the players are given any and all resources they desired to invade a planet from a bug-like alien species (I would probably use the Tyranid). The invasion game would be short, especially with all the resources given to the players, but as soon as they go for their exit, they discover that their way off the planet has been sabotaged. Investigating this mysterious turn of events reveal that the people that Deathwatch has been invading the planet for, has been corrupted by more powerful entities (I would probably use Daemons).

The players would now need to find their own way off a hostile planet where all (or the majority of) their resources have been taken away. Creative players would come up with a plan, which I would reward by making possible. Most players would probably try to find a ship, in which case I would either let them steal one, or find a rogue trader that can help them. If the players can't think of anything themselves, I'd send them to the leader of the invasion forces, which hasn't been corrupted yet (not until the players reach him).

If the players go speak with the leader of the invasion forces, they would discover that he too just recently has been corrupted, and they would have to defeat him (he would be the boss fight of this game). Defeating him would lead to a rogue trader that can help them recover a special ancient ship. The players could also skip the boss fight and go directly for the rogue trader or even steal their own ship. Eventually, they should get off the planet, which would mark the end of the adventure, and give the players their own ship that they could use in future adventures.


Adventure 2: Brothers in Arms
Players are playing Deathwatch characters, and their mission in this campaign would be to invade this specific world. Once that is complete, their services to Deathwatch would be over. With the daemons corrupting the invaders, the players would have to defeat the daemons before they would be able to invade the planet. With their own ship at their disposal, they can now travel throughout the galaxy to find the leader of the daemon forces and a means to defeat it. This means that once the party has left the planet, they would have a choice between three adventures.

Their first choice would be to gather more space marines from one of their chapters to aid them. As they arrive to the chapter's home world, they discover that the daemon's influence is much more widespread than just the one planet they were supposed to invade. They are launched into a space battle. If the players aren't into space battles, this part can be skipped. The players then discover than an orbital platform has been captured and sabotaged. It is being steered towards the planet and if it crashes it would cause massive destruction. The players are sent on to the platform to secure it before it crashes. This will save their chapter's headquarters, and earn their favour, which the players will need in the end when they attack the daemon infested planet. I might add more to this adventure, but that is my initial plan.




Adventure 3: Last Stand
Another choice would involve returning to the deathwatch headquarters (is there such a place?) only to discover that it has been completely invaded by the daemon's influence. The players will be allowed to join their brethren on the surface for one last stand. They don't stand a chance, but that is alright, because the Deathwatch plan to lure as many of the daemon's forces to the planet and then destroy the planet. If everything goes according to plan, the planet that the party is supposed to invade will become the Deathwatch's new headquarters.

First the players are set to protect one specific place on the planet. During this last stand, the players will be sent out to destroy certain compounds that serve as planetary defenses. Once the defenses are down, the party will be able to enter more ancient parts of the planet in order to activate some kind of ancient device that will cause the planet to explode. They will have to protect this device until it explodes, effectively giving up their lives, or they will fail. If they succeed, they will be saved at the last minute. If they fail, the daemons will have access to information and devices that would make the final invasion incredibly difficult.


Adventure 4: Forbidden Weapon
The third and last choice the players would have would be to go to a planet in search of an ancient device that can be used as a powerful weapon against the daemons. This is a more peaceful mission where the party finds themselves on a mysterious planet. They will end up in mysterious vaults and dungeons, only to have to fight their way through traps and sentries in order to recover this forbidden weapon that has been hidden away. Maybe I could use this weapon as a plot twist somehow. This adventure would require more details, but this is basically it.


Adventure 5: Into the Rift
Once the party has gone through all three missions, they will have to track down the leader of the daemon. They will have gathered an ancient device from their homeworld, which they can use to track the daemon. This leads them into a mysterious anomaly (I'm sure there's something like this in the universe. Something to do with Chaos probably. I would have to look into it). Within the anomaly they discover a mysterious alien daemon base or something, which they need to infiltrate, blow their way in, and get into the heart of it to defeat the leader of the daemon.


Conclusion
This is as far as my thoughts has gone. I would probably create a sixth adventure where the players would have to return to the initial planet and invade it again, removing the remaining daemons there. I would have to read up a lot on daemons, or use another race. Doesn't really matter since we're not playing this game, but this is what I would create if it was me, and my first step would be to read up on Tyranids and Daemons and create the first adventure.

As a player, I'll probably play a Storm Warden Techmarine inspired by my previous Deathwatch character, maybe I'll even try to copy it. I'm definitely looking forward to playing Deathwatch again, with yet another gamemaster that has the lore under control.


Next week I'll be writing about our plans for combining tabletop roleplaying games with tabletop miniature wargames, card games, and computer games. All of this is being done officially in the western part of Zealand in Denmark, and I'm hoping to have it up and running in the autumn of 2016. Read more about it next week. If you have any stories or ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

Extra-Life 2015

This weekend we streamed 24 hours of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition.

We assembled 913.52 USD putting os on the 29th highest donations on the D&D team. The D&D team gathered 98,291.29 USD, placing us on the 5th largest group to gather money for Extra-Life. We thank all of our participants, donators, and sponsors for your contribution, which has gone directly to the Children's Hospital at Providence in Anchorage, Alaska.

The Game

The game was a modified version of the Princes of the Apocalypse premade adventure by Wizards of the Coast. It was modified so that it consisted of small 4 hour adventures that were placed in my homebrew world of Aresia. This meant that viewers could log on to our twitch streams and follow the stories at 4 hour increments. Every 4 hours we had a 15 minutes break followed by giveaways that were sponsored by Farao's Cigarer, Færge's Kælder, and Dreamstone.

The first adventure we played was "Trouble in Winterhaven" where the party explored rumours about monsters present in an abandoned hut outside the village of Winterhaven. They only discovered a nest of stirges. They were also sent to clear out the Alune Lair outside of town, which was infested with zombies. They cleared out 3 rooms before we ended the adventure abruptly, saying that the characters simply cleared out the rest of the zombie lair.

The second adventure was the "Tomb of Moving Stones" where the party experienced an earthquake that created a sinkhole. They discovered a mysterious dwarven tomb in the sinkhole, that the leaders of Winterhaven knew about. They didn't want the part to investigate the tomb, but in the end they made their way down there anyway. They encountered Larrakh, a mysterious cultist of the Black Earth who tried to recruit the party into the philosophy of the Black Earth. This adventure ended with Larrakh escaping after being attacked and fleeing from Winterhaven.

The third adventure was the "Sacred Stone Citadel". The party travelled to a mysterious fortress in the Cairngorm Hills that housed the cult of the Black Earth. They infiltrated the fortress and captured its leader, a man called Qarbo. Investigating the dungeon beneath the fortress revealed that the cult of the Black Earth hired orogs, ogres, and even used an umber hulk to keep dozens of prisoners working in underground mines. The party freed the prisoners and chased out the cult of the Black Earth, leaving the Sacred Stone Fortress abandoned.

The fourth adventure was "The Sardonyx Knight". The party was called to Rivenroar where they met the Earthwalker Imdarr Relvaunder who tasked the party to retrieve the body of a Sardony Knight called Hamas Bourne. The body was being freighted from Harken in the north to Rivenroar to be interred with honors, but it had never arrived. The party discovered that the group travelling with the body had been ambushed by the cult of the Black Earth. When they returned the body of Hamas Bourne to Imdarr Relvaunder, the Earthwalker revealed himself to be the necromancer who had raised all the zombies at the Alune Lair. He tried to get his vengeance, using Hamas as a newly created zombie, but was slain in the process.

The fifth adventure was the "Lavashield Orcs". A tribe of orcs known as the Lavashield Orcs was coming down from the Zephyra Peaks and raiding the nearby valleys. The party travelled to the valley to protect it and ended up at the Dellmon Ranch where they prepared its defences. The players successfully defended the ranch from the Lavashield Orcs. After the orcs had been defeated, a water elemental sprouted forth from the well in the middle of the ranch and attacked the players, who easily destroyed the monster.

The sixth and final adventure was the "Dangerous Secret". A druid hired the party to travel to the Scarlet Moon Hall in the Cairngorm Hills and infiltrate the druid circle there to discover the secrets of the Rite of the Wicker Giant. Investigating the hill around the hall revealed a group of hell hounds, which drew the attention of fire cultists who summoned a fire elemental. When the fighting erupted, many of the druids in the area didn't know what to make of what was transpiring, but when the elemental went rampant, they fled. After the players defeated the fire elemental, a dragon by the name of Verthicha came forth from Hell through the dying embers of the elemental and eventually brought the party to their final resting place, except for the dwarf Aldric, who avenged his fallen comrades with the help of Kord, the Angel of Strength.

 

 

Donations

We received many donations. Some of these donations were made to influence the game.

$5 was donated for NPCs to “Mention Tabby, the most awesome mercenary EVER!”. This became such a common occurrence that even the players started saying it.

$15 was donated to "include an exciting twist at a key moment in the game, such as a betrayal. This could be an NPC that betrays the players, or an NPC that betrays someone else to the players' benefits." The twist and betrayal was the fact that Imdarr Relvaunder, who was a benign Guinacoia (priest of Lithor, the Angel of Earth) was actually the mysterious necromancer, and that he had sent the party on a quest for an undead that he had hoped would help him have his vengeance upon the party. This NPC was even one that two of the players had gotten to know over the course of a few months.

$25 was donated to give the Dungeon Master a reroll. I wanted to use it to help some of the villains escape, but they all made it away alive without needing to resort to any rerolls, so I never got to benefit from this donation.

$25 was donated "for having one of the bad guys (or an innkeeper) say "I see you are busy reducing the worlds idiot/retard population to just yourselves."" It was mainly the villains who said this to the players, who threw it back in their faces by pointing out that the villains were calling their followers and guards for retards.

 

$25 was donated “For the very cheap healer!". This healer was supposed to be a representation of the American healthcare system. When the players were fighting the fire elemental at the Scarlet Moon Hall, they required healing. I sent in a cleric that came to their rescue and started healing them. I pointed out that she was a representation of the American healthcare system, and they immediately started to talk about cost. True enough, the NPC was supposed to bill the party afterwards. I live in a country where we didn't have to think about the hospital bills when our son died. This is why we started supporting Extra-Life, to help out families in the US with potential financial issues of having children at the hospital. This NPC showed that everyone knows how the US operates when it comes to healthcare, and also shows that it should be changed.

$50 was donated "for adding more dwarf specific". As I've mentioned, we changed the Tomb of the Moving Stones into a dwarven tomb and two of the dragonborn prisoners into dwarves to accomodate this donation.

Part of the $90 giveaway (the wooden snake sculpture by Dreamstone) required me to give the party a break at some point during the game. At the Scarlet Moon Hall they drew a lot of attention to themselves when they drew the attention of the hell hounds. This should have drawn the rest of the druids into the fight, and fighting should have erupted all across the hill. I decided to give the party a break and keep the fighting only to the small area where the players were.

$150 was donated to add a special red dragon called Verthicha. I decided that Verthicha would be Drake's, the Angel of Air (and a red dragon), avatar and consort. She came up from Hell after the party defeated the fire elemental, and the money was also donated to show how powerful Verthicha actually is. In the end, she simply breathed fire on the party dealing 90 points of damage to most of them in a single attack.

For every $192 (which is 1,337 DKK) that was gathered, the party gained an "extra-life". In the end they had 4 resurrections, which Drake used to bring back the four players that Verthicha had slain.

The first threshold of $400 meant that the players got to experience elemental weather. They experienced everything from earthquakes (which opened up the Tomb of Moving Stones) to tornadoes, forest fires, and torrents of rain and floods.

The second threshold of $800 meant that the players got to fight an encounter against an elemental. I therefore summoned a water elemental at the Dellmon Ranch for the party to fight.

 

Future Plans 

This was the second year we ran Extra-Life. We gathered more money than last year, but the experience wasn't as rewarding as the first time we did it. I think the first time we ran our Extra-Life game, it was a unique 24 hour live streaming experience, but now it has already become a chore. Gathering sponsors and advertising for the event was something I did this year to change it a bit, but in the end I believe that the work that was put into the event didn't live up to the reward. There just isn't the same incentive for Extra-Life in Denmark as there is in the US. I will therefore definitely not gather sponsors and giveaways next year. I doubt that we'll even run Extra-Life next year.

We will definitely run some kind of unique roleplaying event, but I believe that we will attempt to run a LAN/roleplaying event instead that will advertise for our local community. We're taking this one step at a time so we'll see how it progresses.

The next two projects we have running is our gamemasters game that begins in December, and my own 3.5 adventure that begins in spring/summer of 2016.

I'm not sure what I'll write about next week. I have just run a 24 game, I'm very ill, and I haven't gotten much sleep. I will therefore surprise you. If you have any stories or ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

World's best Gamemasters

It is always debatable who the world's best gamemaster is, because a lot of it is subjective and comes down to what you, as an individual, like in a gamemaster, and what type of game and what roleplaying game you enjoy.

Chris Perkins 
That said, Chris Perkins probably holds the title of the world's best gamemaster at the moment. This is both because he has a large following due to being the gamemaster for Acquisitions Incorporated, and because he is a game designer for Wizards of the Coast and has released many great games. He even worked on the Star Wars Saga roleplaying game. Amongst professionals he is sometimes referred to as the best, and thus he probably has the most votes. The reason I like him is because of his articles The Dungeon Master Experience.

The Dungeon Master Experience
The Dungeon Master Experience is 106 articles written over a few years. These articles are great because many players and DMs can relate to what Chris writes about. He uses his own games as examples and inspiration, but what makes it truly great is the simple way he explains things that seem hard to overcome and hard for experienced gamemasters to teach others. The way he plays the game is truly enjoyable, and the way he uses the rules and bends them as they should is inspiring.

To take an example, then look at this article. He begins by explaining that he likes to reward players who resort to solving challenges in other ways than hacking their way through it. He shows an example where a player tries to disguise himself as a warforged in order to bypass a challenge without the use of violence. He even explains how he would have rewarded the party if they had continued with their ruse, even if they had rolled a 1. What makes this specific article so great is the fact that Chris explains that the rules are there to be followed, and that DMs shouldn't simply look away from the rules and avoid dice rolls. Instead, they should reward the party in other ways. He bends the rules, letting the players roll a diplomacy check, but ignoring the fact that there should be a lot of insight rolls. As he explains, "Sometimes the rules are more what you'd call "guidelines."", as he quotes Captain Hector Barbossa.

If you want to read more about Chris Perkins, I suggest Powerscore's blog about him.

Monte Cook
My personal favourite gamemaster is Monte Cook. You might know him from D&D 3.5 and Call of Cthulu. He also created World of Darkness and Numenera. The reason I like him is because of his earlier works on Planescape. Planescape is a setting for Dungeons and Dragons created by Zeb Cook, which is similar to Monte's Numenera in that it goes outside the box. You can clearly see Monte's influence on Planescape.

Planescape
There are many campaign settings to chose from when playing any type of roleplaying games. Many gamemasters also create their own settings. All of these are very similar, in my experience, but Planescape is extremely unique. It's a D&D setting that focuses on the otherworldly. You can go to Heaven and Hell, but more than that, you can go to ANY Heaven and Hell. You can go to the Greek version known as Elysium and Tartarus (known as Carceri in the game). You can go to the Norse version known as Yggdrasil or even the Native American afterlife called the Beastlands. To make things even better, he has created a centre for it all, a spire that goes up forever, but at the very top (there's a top even though it goes on forever?) there is a city that lies within a torus that floats above the spire, which is ruled by a being so powerful that she defies even the gods. All of this is only the tip of the iceberg that is the complexity and innovative setting of Planescape.

If you want to read more about Monte Cook, I suggest Powerscore's blog about him.


I'm hoping to write a blog next week about our Extra-Life session. We'll be playing from saturday morning until sunday morning, and hopefully I'll have time sunday to write about it quickly. If you have any stories or ideas on articles (I could try to write Gamemaster Experience articles) that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

Roleplaying Stories

Having played roleplaying games for decades has left me with many stories. A friend of mine suggested watching Counter Monkey. In the first episode, Noah Antwiler explains that he set up the youtube series to tell various stories, in the same manner that people came up to the counter of the shop where he worked and started telling their stories. I have my own stories, and thought that I would make a similar youtube series as well. To start with, however, I decided to gather 10 of my best stories and create an overview here on my blog.


The Submarine
My first story refers back to one of my previous posts where I tell about my first RPG experience. In this experience, and in this story, my friend uses the concept of gnomes as being more on the technological side to his advantage. Combine it with his knowledge of engineering and electronics, he tricked me into letting his character create a submarine. This small act of defiance led to the invention of many futuristic contraptions in a fantasy setting, and eventually to why gnomes don't exist in my campaign.

Teleportation Fight
Another of my previous posts tell the tale of William Pi, a character in possession of a staff that enables him to cast teleportation at will. At one point he fought a demon in the air using the staff. When the demon tried to escape using his high speed, a chase ensued. A red streak (the demon) could be seen in the sky followed by blue dots (William) and the fight eventually led to William gaining the favour of an army of orcs and a dragon as an ally.


Sneeze till you Bleed
Not all my stories will cover Dungeons and Dragons. There will be other roleplaying games, LARPs, and even real life stories. During one session, where the players ended up fighting a god, we were playing in the loft of my parents' house. We had a huge table, and a small box for dice. The box was usually emptied during the game, yet it was always present. This box was used to defeat the god, but also to defeat my brother, who accidentally sneezed, hit his face on the box sitting on the table, and then started to bleed.

The Party that Never Died 
The most common threat you encounter in a good RPG is the threat of death. If your character dies, the game ends. This threat is sometimes removed through resurrection and other means, but this also removes the thrill of the fight and the possibility of losing. Good gamemasters create games where players can still lose without dying, but in the end, the game is about the story and not whether or not you lose. Some of my players believed in this philosophy as much as I did and therefore challenged me to create a game where their characters couldn't die, where they didn't care about the outcome, but where there was still a chance of loss. I succeeded and in the end the players decided to do one last heroic deed that would end their characters' lives since they felt that they had lost the game.

The Betrayal
Not all my groups were good parties. Some people enjoy playing evil parties. Some of the best stories are about how good guys become the bad guys. The best story I have is about a good guy, who makes a mistake, and is forced to do a horrible thing to get what he wants. He successfully deceives the rest of the party, both out-game and in-game, and kills everyone. The plot, however, isn't about death, but about turning the party from being good to being evil, and through deception and death, the player creates a party of undead characters.

Pure Evil
Some of the evil parties I've had to create games for have been more malicious and vile than I could ever be. I've heard other similar tales from other gamemasters who have players with a twisted mind. Still, some of the things my players have come up with is truly horrifying. There are horrible things in this world, but everything evil is usually constrained by the laws of physics. Even if you believe in the supernatural, there's usually a limit to evil. The things that you can do when you combine logic, supernatural, and magic from a roleplaying game is truly horrendous.


The Car Chase
Not all my stories are about games where I'm the gamemaster. Not all my stories about Dungeons and Dragons games. Some of my stories are about me being a player in other games, such as Spycraft. I had a thing for cars and airplanes when I was younger, and whenever I played modern or futuristic games I'd usually go for being the driver/pilot. After the first few games of Spycraft and Warhammer 40k, the other players started to convince me to playing the tech guy instead, cause with me behind the wheel, the game usually ended up in a car chase where I'd crash the car and everybody died. Happened more than once.

Space Battle
Talking about cars and airplanes, I also like science fiction and spacecrafts. I even played a game of Dragonstar where I played a half-dragon pilot. Eventually I even got my own spacecraft, and using my degree in engineering, I designed it. I had many plans for it, and using CAD programs I slowly designed every single little detail of the spacecraft. My plans were never finished, though, cause the gamemaster scared the shit out of me, so I fled from a space battle, trying to save my ship, which eventually led to its destruction.

Hardest Campaign
Just before the release of D&D 4th edition, I was running a very interesting 3.5 game where I had drawn inspiration from the brainstorming that Blizzard did for Burning Crusade. The game involved many aspects of my world, but it was also too long for the players to finish it. When we stopped, my brother decided to use this to his advantage and created a story that followed the campaign, involved his own character and the end of the world, and combined it with temporal mechanics. Groups of players have attempted to play out the story that me and my brother created, and I'm currently playing a fifth campaign about a decade after the game's creation. This has turned out to be the hardest campaign I've ever created, and it is not because of death or its scope. The game is difficult because of temporal mechanics.

Yolo Player

In some of my recent games, most notably my last 4th edition D&D games, I've had a player who has gone complete yolo. Playing with such a player is usually always a challenge, but I've found a way to harness the way the player goes yolo to create convoluted and interesting stories that my other players enjoy. This simply proves that even though the players and the gamemaster needs to be able to work together and play together without spoiling each other's fun, it is possible for the gamemaster to take some of the weird things some players do and turn it into entire stories that the other players enjoy.
 

I have many more stories, such as a story about banshees in a LARP game where I ended up hurting my butt, or the story about my brother striking an altar in real life with a dagger just as a lightning struck down. I have stories about how I nearly pissed my pants in a horror game, or one where one of my players actually had nightmares from a game that I hosted. I even have a story where I accepted a challenge by a group of players, which eventually gave up because I demoralized them, thus winning the challenge. There are also stories where as a player I get tricked both in-game and out-game to do things that I would usually never do. One of my stories even involves how I met my wife over an online computer RPG. All of these stories should end up in my own version of Counter Monkey, which already has 17 stories.


Let us know, which story you want to hear about first, and we would love to share your stories too.



Next week I'll write about Chris Perkins and Monte Cook, the world's best gamemasters. Chris Perkins is considered the best DM in the world and he explains certain aspects of gamemastering in a very simple way. Monte Cook is my own personal favourite, and the way he gamemasters is quite unique. If you have any stories or ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

First level 20 character

I have a houserule. Players must always start from the beginning. This usually means that they have to start from level 1, but there are exceptions. If you choose a special race like an Aasimar or playing a half-dragon, then your effective level in D&D 3.5 is higher than 1st level. In D&D 5th edition I have also started to let players start at level 3, since the first two levels are pretty much just intro levels. This means that reaching the maximum level in my games is very difficult and time consuming. In AD&D there was even a limit to your level, so reaching max level was actually easier. To reach above max level in AD&D you had to multiclass. The first character to have reached level 20, which unofficially is the max level in D&D 3.5, was William the Teleporter. It is so long ago that I can't give you an exact date, only that it was nearly two decades ago. My earliest time recorded note dates back to 1997, but he was already a 19th level Lich by then.


The Player
The school I went to had private busses transporting us from our homes to the school. My own trip every morning and afternoon lasted about an hour, meaning that for 2 hours, 5 days per week, I spent in a private bus. Ofcourse I spent the trip with my siblings, but I also got to know people from the large school I went to. The school I went to had several classes per year, and the bus accommodated every class of every year. Ofcourse there were many busses to accommodate all the students, but the people who lived on my route and near my home were the ones I spent hours with each week. Those closest to my home were the ones I spent most time with since they got off the bus only 5-10 minutes before I did. This is how I met the player who created William the Teleporter and his younger brother.


The Party
I have a list that includes 33 characters played by 13 people, where 15 of the characters were dead when I last updated the list. This list included many of the characters that were part of the same game that William the Teleporter played in. I know my younger brother played in the party, but he has the record of played characters, so I don't remember which character was part of the original party. I know for sure that William the Teleporter had a younger brother called Luke, played by his younger brother. The two characters were both elves. William was a Cleric of War while Luke was a Beastmaster Ranger who hunted dragons, both from the elven city of Blueriver.


Low Level
I have decades of notes and the are hard to keep in chronological order. Still, I know that the first 8 levels that we played were quite peaceful. The brothers would help each other out in their own quests and sometimes have other players with them. Not much changed for the first 8 levels. William took more and more levels as a cleric, gaining access to more and more spells while Luke became a more and more competent dragon hunter, levelling his ranger.

When they reached level 8, everything changed. It wasn't planned, but one event changed the course of Williams future forever. Luke had tracked down a green dragon and embarked on a quest to slay it. William didn't assist his brother on this specific quest (the player was probably ill or out of town or something), which left Luke to hunt down the green dragon by himself. A single level 8 is not powerful enough to slay a dragon, especially one that knows you're coming. The green dragon lay a trap for the elf within an abandoned well in the forest. When Luke stepped into the trap, the green dragon easily killed the ranger.


Medium Level
Some time later, William returned to the game and wanted to know where his brother was. There was no sign of him, so he started to investigate. He eventually discovered the well in the forest and found his dead brother, slain by a green dragon. This tore the elf apart, and though he was already a cleric of war, he decided to become even more aggressive. He multiclassed into a wizard and started to learn everything he could about dragons, especially green dragons. He picked spells specifically to kill green dragons, and went on quests specifically to increase all of his magical potential. He gathered artifacts, magical items, and allies to fight his battles. On one of his quests, he found a magical staff that enabled him to cast teleportation at will. He recruited the aid of a red dragon, and at one point he defeated a powerful demon using his teleportation staff, which earned him the favor of an army of orcs, and his title as "the Teleporter", or Pi (since Pi looks like two t's put together). I don't remember at what level, but when he was powerful enough, he hunted down the green dragon and slew it in the name of his brother.

His journey for vengeance had brought him down such a dark road that he had slowly turned evil. His path also led him into obscure knowledge where he discovered many interesting secrets, including how to turn himself into a Lich. Throughout this time we also switched from AD&D to D&D 3rd edition. We changed William many times, converting him and playing around with his levels. All I am certain of, is that at level 15, he became a lich, turning completely chaotic evil.


High Level
The last 5 levels were played as one-on-one games where William sought out more and more power. His main game hook was following the will of Tempus, the God of War, his patron deity. He became the High Priest of Tempus. He found a way to turn his red dragon into a dracolich, and even captured a black dragon that he also turned into a dracolich. He built a massive temple and summoned an immense army of the dead. He became the most feared villain in my world, but all good things must come to an end. We eventually grew apart and slowly stopped playing, though he did reach level 20 (I actually think he reached level 21) before we stopped.


William's Future
William the Teleporter has played a dominant part of the history of my world. It is only in the last 2 Ages that nothing has been heard from him, and for good reason. At the end of the 3rd Age, I decided to remove William from the world because of another houserule I have. The DM doesn't play with PC characters. But I have a third houserule. The DM only kills PC characters out of game if they die of old age. William was an immortal undead and a PC. To avoid having other players hunt him down or wanting to meet him, or whatever, the two dracoliches devised a plot that fixed everything for me.

William's phylactery had become part of his Staff of Teleportation. He had incorporated the dracoliches' phylactery into the staff as well (along with many other things, enchantments, and spells). This meant that if the dracoliches killed William, then they couldn't destroy him without destroying themselves. However, they plotted and schemed until they had found a means to split the staff, rendering the phylacteries inert until the staff was assembled again. The dracoliches betrayed their master, killing him. It was only a matter of days before William would return to life and punish his dracoliches, but it was enough time for the two dragons to split the staff into three pieces.

The dracoliches didn't trust each other, so they split the staff into three pieces, one for each of them, and a third one for a third party to keep safe so that they couldn't betray one another. The two dracoliches delivered the third piece of William's staff to the Lords and Ladies of Daedaloth and then each took one piece to separate ends of the world. With the phylactery having been rendered inert, they would have to be careful not to be killed since they would fall into an endless sleep from which they could only be awakened if the staff was reassembled, and William brought back.

The two dracoliches still exist to this very day.


Next week (week 43 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be writing about the D&D stories. We might start making a series for these kind of stories, so I'll create an overview and give a short summary of some of the D&D stories I have. If you have any stories or ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

Starting to play RPGs

24 years ago I started playing my first TRPG (Tabletop RolePlaying Game), Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. It is so long ago and I was so young that details are quite vague. Still, I'll do my best to recount how I started playing, my first party, my first world, my first experience.



Background
The first part of my tale begins with a story told by my family. It is not something I remember since I was too young.

At one point, my father broke his leg and ended up at the hospital. I have three older brothers, and being confined to a bed my father had no way to spend some quality time with them. My mother went out and searched for a game they could play without any physical requirements. She found Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. My father was able to spend some quality time with his three sons while being confined to bed. He never really got caught up in the game, but my brothers did.

As time went on, my brothers grew up, and they slowly stopped playing. First my eldest, much later the second, and only a few years ago did my third older brother stopped playing. When I was very little, I had the opportunity to play along with my brothers. I only remember playing with my third oldest brother. There are 6 years between us, and at a young age that makes a big difference. Therefore I took whatever I learned from him and introduced my friends to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 24 years ago.



My First Party
I have a younger brother, whom I'm very close to. There's only 3 years difference between us and, like my older brothers did with me, I taught him how to play D&D. Dungeons and Dragons is a team game and we were therefore players short. I introduced the game to my closest friends, but only one got caught up in it. It was still enough to get things rolling. My first party thus consisted mostly on 1-on-1 games with my brother or my friend, and from time to time we would play adventures with a party of 2. This also meant that in my first real party, I was the Dungeon Master, and I kept being the Dungeon Master for the first few years, only rarely playing with my older brothers, and rarely having my friend run games since me and my younger brother liked to fight a lot.



My First World
As I was the main DM for our games, I created a very simple world. The first thing I learned was that the game, the setting, the world, was not something I created. I simply created the frame while my players were the one creating the world. They thought up characters that were truly fantastic, from intelligent pegasi, to tiny fairies, porcupine midgets, purple elves, feline dwarves, and dragons. At the time I couldn't understand english. My friend was American but I didn't always play with him, and so we usually played without rules and simply relied on our knowledge of Tolkien's world, a story my parents read to us.

The world we created became the basis for the deities of the Second Age of my world of Aspenta. Pegasus became the god of horses, unicorns, and pegasi. Minisien became the god of magic, wizards, and tiny creatures such as fairies. Drake became the god of dragons. My first world was ruled by beings that not only could do impossible things, but by a world without rules, a world that defied the very foundation of AD&D, but it didn't matter since we had fun, until my friend created a gnome.

Using the concept of gnomes as being more on the technological side, my friend used his own knowledge of engineering and electronics to his advantage. He was a few years older than me, and yet I'm still impressed to this day how creative and learned he was. Using a mixture of logic and deduction, he tricked me into letting his character create anything from submarines, to airships, to gunpowder. None of this bothered me, since we didn't play with rules, but the more I learned english, the more I noticed how he bent the rules and used them to his own advantage. In the end, he used his creations to destroy my first world, to destroy the world of my gods.


My First Experience
I never truly forgave my friend for destroying my world through the use of logic, deduction, and gnomes. When I created the world of Aspenta, I took the PCs from my first world and made them gods. I also ensured that gnomes didn't exist and that the physical laws of my world prevented others from creating advanced technologies, such as gunpowder. The easiest explanation was "magic". I drew all of my experience from AD&D and by the time I created my first continent of Espreta, I was good enough at english that I understood the rules and could implement them, thus creating a more realistic fantasy world instead of a divine realm where gods played around as they saw fit. Still, I look back at my first world and my first experience with joy as it formed me as a DM and formed the world I run today, Aspenta's sister world of Aresia.


Next week (week 42 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be writing about the first level 20 character in my world. I'll cover how I met the player, the party he was part of, how his character evolved, and how the game evolved. Playing everything from low-level to high-level is a unique experience that takes many years, and I'll try to cover it all in a single short blog. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

Multiple Gamemasters

On November 21st 2015 we'll have a couple of people visiting us to discuss a potential new D&D 5th edition group. What's so special about this group is that we'll be setting up a game where we'll each take turns being the GM (GameMaster) so we're literally moving GameMastersDK from the internet to the table.



Past Experience
This is not the first time I've tried to run a game with multiple gamemasters. I've tried this without luck several times over the past few decades. One specific example was the creation of Jaydell, which is so far the most successful multiple gamemaster campaign I've run.

Sifting through my big pile of old RPG notes I quickly find the few notes I kept from the game that I created with a friend but never got around to playing with players. Both me and my friend Cordell had played Dungeons and Dragons for many years with a variety of friends. We had taken turns being the DM and it was therefore only logical that at some point we would start working on a project together and create a setting and a campaign where we could run one game with two DMs. We decided that we would take turns being the DM and that the first step would have to be to create a world together.

We quickly settled on a name for the world, Jaydell, which is a combination of my name "Jay" and his name "Cordell". We created a very simple map with mountains on the west, a single river flowing east to a swamp in the distance across the Plains of Peace. In the southern parts of the mountains we created a town called Torelyr, and south of the mountains and Torelyr was a large forest. This was the basis for our setting. Cordell created the deities, creating 4 gods and 3 goddesses. He named them all, and we settled on an elven pantheon because Cordell had a thing for elves. Personally, I have a thing for dwarves, and I therefore created Dest-Cordell, a dwarven stronghold within the mountains where my character Morak would come from. Inserting this dwarven element into an elven setting would make great sessions. Finally, we inserted a human empire that lay far to the east that was only spoken of but never interacted with.

There was a lot of disagreement but in the end we created the setting together. We never got any further. We had the players and the group. We had both created our own characters but we had to create the games, adventures, and sessions as well. We had very different ideas of how to do this, and in the end we never agreed and therefore never started the game. Our largest dispute in this matter was how to transition from one DM to another.



New Group
I have always enjoyed playing RPGs with my wife. I met her through World of Warcraft and including her in our D&D sessions has been a joy. Due to work, we had to relocate 100 km west, which meant that playing rolegames became much more difficult. We tried to make it work, but when we had our daughter we had to set everything on hold. We finished any games we had running before the birth of our daughter.

More than half a year has passed since then and we both miss playing TRPGs. I have started the Extra Life project since we had already agreed to run it in 2014. I also have a 3.5 D&D mid level game on stand-by, which I'll start working on this winter. My wife doesn't like D&D 3.5 and she's therefore not part of that game. When she saw people from nearby communities posting on Facebook about looking for a group to play some TRPG, she quickly wrote back that we were interested. One of our friends, Johnny, took the reins and started planning everything. With a baby girl we didn't have the time or overview to plan any details.

In the end we gathered 6 people, 5 of which comes from the nearby communities. We decided to play D&D 5e and to create a group where we would take turns being the DM. Only two of us have extensive experience being a D&D gamemaster. Even my wife hasn't tried it with a larger group, and she volunteered to being the first DM. You might therefore read and see footages from Pinkpulse in the coming weeks and months about this.

On November 21st 2015 we are going to meet up, get to know each other, set up the basis for a game with multiple DMs and create our characters.



Hopes and Expectations 
I hope that this project will be more successful than my previous tries. Instead of creating a game with two DMs, we're creating a game with six DMs. I hope it'll be fun to play and fun to DM, and that everyone will be flexible enough to accept that we both play and master the game very differently. I also hope that people will be open to actually being the gamemaster for two or three sessions, and that everyone will be okay with the fact that we had a baby girl and that we'll only play once a month.

I expect that our first meeting will mainly be about getting to know each other outside of TRPG. Playing rolegames shows another side of a person, and I therefore think that it's important to know the real person as well. I expect we'll talk about how to set up a game with multiple gamemasters and that we'll create characters. I have no ideas or expectations concerning the party we'll create.

I expect that we'll play once, sometimes twice per month. I expect that we'll take turns being the gamemaster with Pinkpulse starting out, followed by Johnny, then myself, then anyone else who volunteers. I expect each gamemaster to host games for 2 months (2-3 sessions). I expect that most will create their own little setting that we can put together to one large setting after one year of playing together. I also expect some DMs to actually take things that other DMs have created and expand on them. It will definitely be an interesting project that you will hear more about on this blog.



Next week (week 41 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be writing about how I started playing D&D and how I became a gamemaster. I'll cover my early years, my first groups, my first world, and my first challenges. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.

Sword Coast Legends Early Access Review

I preordered Sword Coast Legends and since it has been delayed to October 20th, I had the opportunity to play the early access instead. I have many thoughts about the early access game, but I'll try to stick with my own expectations vs facts so that you can draw the conclusions yourself.



Expectation
I first started reading about Sword Coast Legends after playing Pillars of Eternity, a spiritual success to the RPG game Baldur's Gate. I enjoyed the character creation, universe, and beginning of Pillars of Eternity, but it was still only a single player game, and worse yet, it was a very difficult game, especially compared to Baldur's Gate. I lost countless battles and got frustrated that I had to keep reloading or had to play the game in a certain way for things to make sense or in a certain order in order for my party to survive the combat encounters. About half way through the game I stopped playing, and that's when I started reading about Sword Coast Legends.

My first impression of Sword Coast Legends was a game similar to Baldur's Gate but with two additional aspects. First of all, you didn't necessarily control the whole party. Other players could join and you could play through the game in the same way that you would play through a tabletop RPG adventure. Secondly, it was possible to play as the DM. You could create your own adventures and campaigns, and you could even be part of the game to add a more personalized feel to the game instead of just letting the AI run things. I immediately created the outline for an adventure before the early access.

One final thing I expected was that the game used 5th edition D&D rules. I expected the same classes, races, features, skills, feats, and spells.



Early Access
Last weekend I got access to the second early access. I logged in, all excited to play the game. First I created a character. You can choose between 5 of the iconic races from D&D 5th edition: Elf, Halfling, Dwarf, Human, Half-Elf, along with their respective subraces. My first character was a dwarf and my second was a human. There are 6 classes to choose from: Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard. My dwarf was created as a dwarven wizard while my human became a human fighter. There's a lot of customization about what your face looks like, hair color and style, even the color of your clothing. You also get to choose your starting weapon and armor. The class features I chose was Arcane for my dwarf and Champion for my human, focusing on Sure Strike with my human fighter. There are two skills (Search and Lock Picking), which are chosen with the same point system as your proficiencies and class features, so I opted to stay away from them.

I created my dwarf for the story mode and my human to run dungeon crawls. I wanted to start with seeing the early access of the story mode, but it was greyed out. I guess the story mode will first be available at launch. I therefore jumped into a solo dungeon run, mainly because I had no friends online and whenever I queued up, nothing happened. You get an array of options to create your randomized dungeon crawl. I decided to create a 2 level sewer dungeon filled with kobolds, and even changed the story so that it stated that the kobolds had set up a beachhead in the sewers under the city, which they were slowly destroying, and that it was my character's job to fight his way past the enemy line and destroy their headquarters before the city fell. I even added a quest where my character had to kill a certain amount of kobolds.

Dungeon crawl has never really been my thing, not even in tabletop RPGs, so as soon as I had completed the quest, I returned to the surface to turn it in. I didn't even clear the first sewer level of kobolds. The game restarted when I returned to the surface, leaving me a bit confused. I then decided to look into the DM aspect of the game and create the first encounter in the adventure I had planned.

In the DM toolbox I noticed that I couldn't change the map. The map of the Sword Coast would have to be the template for my adventure, so I changed the location of the city where the adventure began to be set somewhere in the High Forest. I then picked one of the available scenes, one set in a town. I found out that I could set this scene as the starting scene and that there were two accessible buildings. I started filling one of the buildings up with furniture so that it looked like a tavern. I put in the NPC and set up a quest. This is where I imagined that the game would begin. I had forgotten that the starting point was set to the scene overall, and not to the tavern, mainly because there was no option to set exactly where the players started in the scene. I then went outside and created the first encounter by placing 2 mercenaries that I renamed to brutes and changed their appearance. Not knowing the difficulty of the encounter, I simply guessed that two brutes would be good enough. Then I placed the second NPC outside, the one that would complete the quest after the brutes were dealt with. As soon as I placed the NPC, the brutes attacked him. I had forgotten to pause the game. I made some final adjustments and then I started up the encounter with my human.

My human started out in the street instead of inside the tavern. The brutes immediately attacked my character forcing me to kill them. The difficulty was way too easy compared to what I had planned. I went into the tavern, got the quest, but then I couldn't complete it because I had already killed the brutes. This is where my experience with the early access ended.






Future of the Game 
I have hopes and dreams for the future of this game, but in my experience things never go the way you expect them to. Still, here's my view of the future for the game, both short term and long term.

I expect that when the game is officially released it will contain a story mode. I'm hoping that the story mode will let you create an entire party and that you can add NPCs. If you want, you can then switch out partymembers of NPCs with other player characters and RP your way through the story mode. I expect them to create additional story modes, which you probably have to pay for. As long as the story modes they create have enough content and don't cost too much, I won't mind.

I expect that they will add additional races and classes, and hopefully more skills too. I don't expect the class features to change or that you will be able to customize the world even though that would be a sweet feature. I hope that the game evolves in the same direction as D&D 5th edition, but I expect it will take a life of itself and that in a few years it won't resemble D&D 5e anymore.

I expect the game will mostly be multiplayer dungeon crawls where people zerg through the content, although I hope it will be used more as a platform for internet tabletop roleplaying games, but I doubt it. My hope has always been to use this game to play D&D with friends and family who live on the other side of the world, but I guess I'll have to stick with Roll20 or Fantasy Ground.

I expect that they will release additional items, furniture, scenes, maps, quests, monsters, etc. I hope they will add scripts, because at the moment the AI is more simple than the one in Space Invaders. I expect all of this to cost money, which will be quite annoying, but hopefully it will come in bundles along with the additional story modes. If everything comes in such a package and that it doesn't cost too much, then I won't mind paying for it... if I actually play the game or use it to host my own sessions.

I had high hopes for the game, but after having played the Early Access, my expectations have been lowered, and I no longer expect to use the game in the same way that I had initially planned. My fingers are still crossed that it will be a great game to play.



Next week (week 40 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be writing about creating a campaign and setting with several gamemasters. We are starting a project in November/December after Extra-Life where we'll assemble a group of six D&D 5e players who will take turn being the gamemasters in the same setting/campaign. I'll tell you about my past experience with these types of games, how we set it up this time, and what my hopes and expectations are for this future project. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.