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.