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.
lørdag den 24. oktober 2015
søndag den 18. oktober 2015
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.
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.
søndag den 11. oktober 2015
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.
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.
søndag den 4. oktober 2015
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.
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.
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