Mind's Eye vs. Miniatures

Who knows what horror lurks in the hearts of men? 
Inspirobot knows!

So, it's not really any secret that I favor miniatures when playing most RPGs.  Maybe because we didn't have a lot of those in the 90's, but I've always thought that miniature setups are the absolute pinnacle of game presentation.  Everything is easily represented and interpreted by both the players and the referee.  In this way, miniatures on a table during the game may be the most elegant kind of presentation available, especially if everything on the board is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

Online games, to some degree, can emulate this environment.  Depending on the preparation time, an online game can provide a lot of tools an enterprising referee can use to emulate most things you could do on the table.  Maybe even a few more cool tricks that parrot video game tropes are available, but any online game that makes use of maps and tokens can be very similar to a tabletop environment.

Certain types of game demand something a little different to evoke certain themes and moods.  For example, when running investigation or horror games, there usually isn't much call to actually set up miniatures.  A scene could be set through nothing but exposition, description and following up with dialogue.  The actual physical play area has a lot more to do with making this kind of game or scene work than anything you can put on the table, as much of the action happens in the 'mind's eye'.  It's more about interaction with the themes and the feeling you can produce in the player.  Visual aids are usually employed such as illustrations or pictures of objects, characters and places - but these will only 'aid' the setting of the scene in the player's mind, and are not 'interacted' with like objects, miniatures or maps.

Dialogue and 'description' heavy scenes, in my opinion, are best played without any map or miniatures.  Having too many objects 'defined' during these interactions can be counter-productive as the smallest and most insignificant inclusion can completely captivate players.  This can be of great detriment to whatever you, as referee, may have intended.  Visual cues are almost mandatory in an online game to set the scene and obtain some of that precious player attention you're going to need to run the game.  

Interestingly, I find that because you're not in the physical space with your players it can be difficult to really make these scenes stick in an online game.  Roleplaying at the table will incorporate all sorts of body language such as facial expression and hand gesticulations and this can help focus attention around the table during the game.  Online, in many cases you won't see any faces and all cues given are through voice chat, which can really hinder the impact (or even the message the players can receive) from any convoluted dialogue or hints you may drop.  

You'll need a LOT of image assets.

Another problem online is that you can't control the space of your players, meaning all sorts of other things will probably be commanding their attention at times and you won't even realize until after the fact - if at all.  If I'm running a game at the table, I make sure the room is dark and Spartan as possible to remove all distractions.  Some background music helps a lot, but that's something you can only really control at the table rather than online (although you can make suggestions).

Bearing all this in mind, there are very few games that will be played entirely on the table.  I almost always include these sorts of scenes in every game, to a greater or lesser degree.  In fact, some games almost CANNOT be played with miniatures in most cases, and you will only break them out once or twice in years of playing - and even then, you may find it's not warranted.  By contrast, some games will be almost entirely on the table, with full terrain and miniature monsters and traps and other such.

I'll be running online games for the foreseeable future, due mostly to the absurdly deteriorating timeline in which I inhabit.  It's not all bad - I can do some things here that I can't do on the table.  Eventually, I'll be back on a proper battlefield...but until then we'll have to learn what works and what doesn't.  

Make use of the tools you've got, and and it's easy evolve the game into something that is enjoyable.  Do what you can, while you can.  You can rest assured that the toolset and circumstances will change in the future, whether you like it or not.

New Players & First Sessions

Inspirobot knows how to spread it.

So, I now have a hard and fast rule that I learned the hard way must always be obeyed.

New players, in their first sessions, should be brought into the hobby with Dungeons & Dragons.

Now I hear you all moaning "BLEH NOT SO" and "MAH FURTS GAEM WUH XXX" but hear me out.  I wouldn't say that for no reason.  I have reasons why I'd want new players at my table to experience D&D instead of any other system for their first time playing.  Reasons born of first-hand experience.

You all mostly know my credentials, but suffice to say I've done a lot of games and I've broken in a lot of new players.  I've seen just about every which way it can go; from newb to pro and everything in between.  From all that, I have found (by and large) that a "gamey" environment is the best for any new gamer.  Especially for new gamers.

Why D&D?

It's very basic, you might say.  Especially Basic.  This is easy for newer players to understand, and if you're using an older edition will immediately grab their attention ...with the tension.  Ahem.  5th Edition is bad for new gamers, because it's immediately boring.  That pretty much goes for any "story-game", but more on that later.

If the player already has a 'gamer mentality'; e.g. has played a video game; the tropes and rules of D&D are very easy to get to grips with and understand.  All the numbers will make sense, and even some of the more advanced items like nonweapon proficiencies will easily be taken into account.

More than that, the settings will be easy to digest.  They are all takes on Lord of the Rings, for the most part.  For the worlds of D&D (these generic high-fantasies and whatnot), not much understanding is really needed by a new player.  Most of them, such as Toril or Oerth, pretty much fit the bill of your 'standard' fantasy world.  All the tropes and creatures will make sense right out of the gate with very little exposition or explanation.

Set up a 'fun' and 'gamey' scenario to accommodate the new players.  Don't take it too far in the opening acts, you know what I mean?  Focus on the dice, the miniatures, the 'spectacle' of the game.  Make it tense, but story-lite.  Lean heavily on the action and game elements the players might be familiar with.

It doesn't really have to be D&D - but it needs to be something 'like' D&D.  Some Examples in my library include:

• Pathfinder
• Warhammer Fantasy
• Palladium
• Star Wars D20
• Shadowrun

If you don't follow this course, you might end up with what I experienced to finally change my mind - Real Life Religion Change.

At the time, the club had a breakneck schedule.  We had a couple (who were about to be married, incidentally) join the group who were friends of some newer members, and they had never played the game before but were very interested in doing so.  We had just wrapped up D&D, and moved into a World of Darkness game.

This was to be a story-rich game (storytelling?) and no one even ended up dead this time.  However, the subject matter was rather taut.  It involved spirits and demons and what I felt might be a realistic depiction thereof, and it used our local area to build this story and it's verisimilitude.  For the first time I really, really had the audience's attention and wove that spell of dread around the entire table.  Everyone was truly immersed and engaged.

And then the couple stopped showing up.  No messages were answered.  The very next thing we saw of them , they had gone to a local church. A video was shared on social media of their new Baptism ceremonies.  All the tattoo/emo-metal and sk8/punk attitude was gone.

While this is sort of a point of pride for me, I caution you against alienating folk in such a manner.  There wasn't even much in the game that a 'gamer' would find revolting.  It was all spiritual subject matter, Twilight Zone style moral conundrums.

Neither of them have ever spoken to me again.

What's Canon Got to Do With It?

Inspirobot always gives the best advice.

I've talked at length about CANON before on other blogs, but I feel I need to reiterate this concept for our Iron Seer era.  You know, CANON in all-caps, because it dictates the settings of our games.  It's something we all share, and can agree on...and that helps us share these worlds in ways that wouldn't be possible without a CANON.

For us, canon forms the basis upon which our stories are told, but doesn't necessarily form the basis of our stories.  That is, our campaigns and stories form a new canon for our club.  The most satisfying way this is accomplished is by diverging totally (where possible) from the main story and setting.

For instance, Star Wars games probably won't (but might!) involve folks named Skywalker.  Lord of the Rings games probably won't involve anyone doing anything they didn't do in the books.  We get a lot more leeway with other games but those are the big two.  Yet even D&D settings have their canon, and the trick is finding a spot within the setting where we can carve out our own stories.

Most of the stuff that comes up on RAW RPG will be derivatives of these illustrious works.  This isn't because we lack creativity to make our own settings, but because these are the games we share and play on the regular.  The games we play are the very pulse of Iron Seer, and I personally have seen that we enjoy ongoing, connective narratives for our games.  It makes it all just a little bit "bigger" when it has ramifications for the NEXT game, or another campaign entirely.

Even where names from the canon show up in our games, it will probably be in a 'downtime' area of the main story, and we work very hard to make sure it fits directly in with the main story.  This is easy in a lot of settings, especially where the setting is continental or galactic in scale.  Fleshing out those areas of the canon where we can slip our campaigns into is something we enjoy, and as a group project can be quite interesting as different concepts and ideas slip into the narrative.

In other words, just because there's a meta-narrative doesn't mean you'll be shin-deep in meta-slop in Iron Seer games.

Expect the Meta

Inspirobot eats reptilians.  NOT humans.

Well, we did it.  It's been a few years since D&D went mainstream, and now there's a new set of things we need to be aware of.  Mainly, mainstreamers playing the game and developing 'video game syndrome'.  You know what I'm talking about, but it might be more subtle than you think.

I think I need to define what I mean by 'meta' gaming here.  I think there's two main school divisions as to what is meta, at least two that I can discern.  One is the number-crunching and exploitation of the mechanics, so called min-maxing.  The second is actually reading 'game' material that doesn't have numbers, from monster information to the actual adventure.  I'll have to address both of those individually, as I see them as totally separate things despite the common moniker.

So let's call it "illegal meta gaming" or a "meta gaming foul" when we mean meta gaming in the context of immorally (?) applying knowledge you as a player or character (player character) should not have.

The presence of the internet, with search engines and social media, make it very easy to run across meta game material without even trying.  I've only had trouble with this over the last year, to be honest.  Of course, that's since 5e came along and now everyone belongs to a D&D Facebook group.  So with this in mind, let's explore the meta.

First off - min/maxing.  I do not care about this AT ALL, and further I feel it's an integral part of the game.  If the player read the books and figured something out, good for them.  Unless it's somehow totally game-breaking then it's commendable.  I've never had cause to curtail something in twenty plus years of gaming.   In my opinion, this in NO WAY constitutes illegal meta gaming.  If anything, I feel that half a thought into the character's mechanics actually shows the player is interested in the game.

Now, you might technically call it meta gaming since it takes into account information the character does not have.  Yet, this isn't information the PLAYER shouldn't necessarily have.  The player should definitely have information regarding how they are to play the game, and I believe that includes the information in the Player's Handbook.  The Dungeon Master Guide is also a good thing for the player to read.  I don't even care if they read the Monster Manual, though I don't allow reference of the DMG or MM at the table, for reasons explained below.

So let's further refine our meta gaming taxonomy.  Illegal meta gaming occurs when a player uses information that NEITHER the character nor the player would normally have access to in the ruleset or scenario.  In this case, it's tantamount to cheating because such information would have to be deliberately sought out.

The new players will most likely be focused on the mechanics of the game if they ever played a video game before tabletop, that's just how it is.  Further, you can't expect someone to play a game they don't know the rules to.  We just think it's normal in our hobby because that's how you get gamers into the game, but not everyone that plays in a game buys a book or even bothers to borrow one.

Referencing material at the table should be frowned upon, but who's gonna stop someone from looking up a common monster or magical item in the main books at home?  We just have to assume that (DERP) these characters live in this world, and anything the player might recall from the common books (and even specific campaign books in some cases) MIGHT be something their character knows.  I think a lot of DM's make the mistake of assuming their characters are utterly ignorant of anything other than the races in the PHB, and then forcing the game to operate somehow in that false ignorance.

A character MIGHT know what a monster is or has heard legends of a magic item.  Great.  They might even have an idea of the monster's powers or the item's magic.  They probably don't have such memory that they remember specific details however, like exact numbers and everything else on the page.  This is why I disallow referencing the material at the table.  It's easy for people to Google anything, especially if you are playing on a virtual tabletop.  Make sure folks know the protocol for reference in your game.

Now, the worst type of illegal meta gaming BY FAR is actually reading adventures you are currently playing in.  You can play in modules you've ran or played in before by not acting on information you have remembered, or by allowing your aging memory to completely wipe the adventure from your mind.  However, this type of meta gaming is tantamount to cheating.

DO NOT READ the current adventure.  DO NOT READ adventures you KNOW you will play in.  Especially DO NOT pretend to be ignorant if you somehow do so accidentally, such as before you know you are going to play in it.  I know that's technically three 'do-nots' but it's all really the same thing.  Just don't do that one thing, and you're pretty much golden.

...and that's how I feel about meta gaming.

Roll20 and the Inexorable March of Technology

Inspirobot won't ever annoy you.

So, here's the deal.

We started Storm King's Thunder on a table...albeit a small one.  It wasn't long after we had moved into the new house and space was a premium.  At some point, we got the idea to use the TV on the wall to show some data using some camera and VOIP.  This allowed folks at home to join in, but eventually we moved the game to Roll20.

Everyone eventually decided to show up at the actual game to engage in camaraderie and intelligible conversation.  It was decided that we would be using Roll20 only if folks couldn't make it to the physical game location, and it was better.  At some point, I got the official stuff on Roll20 and subscribe monthly to get those cool light effects.

We have kept on using Roll20 up until this point.  Everyone comes to the spot, but they bring their laptops.  We have very little use for most of the analog items in my lair.

The main reason for continuing to use Roll20 is (I believe) I paid for it on Roll20 already.

Now I like some Roll20.  I think it's really neat.  I liked playing around with it, and it's a very useful tool for long distance gaming.  I think it would have been nice to have that when I was a kid.

I enjoyed building adventures in Roll20, but it's very time consuming...more so even than normal DM work.  Graphic design skills are really a necessity, or at least basic manipulation skills.  If you want it to look really nice that is.

I think I might like to run a full campaign online, where everyone has nice quiet lairs to retreat and enjoy the game.  However, I think I will enjoy having folks at my table better.  An ACTUAL table.  I think it's just a way cooler experience and is pretty much the entire point of the hobby.

Unless I can get all my out of state buddies nailed down for a game on Roll20, I'm definitely heading back to the table after Storm King's Thunder.  Until then, it's usefulness has really run it's course for me.  Frankly, I'll be happy to get back to my terrain collection and all those ridiculous figures I've managed to hoard over the years.

Narrative Combats & the Buckets o' Blood Syndrome

It's going to be very messy.  Very, very messy.

Combat.  It's what's for dinner. 

It's what you're going to get where we are going, in one shape or another.

Today's beef stew has to do with narrative description in combat...namely, the practice of giving every loss of hit points a bleeding wound.  A nick, gouge, slash here...characters really come out of the fracas feeling it, if only for a moment before the healer makes it all better and you don't have to worry about it anymore.  Every time you roll a hit, there seems to be blood.

That works for some games, yeah, fine.  D&D you'll be changing the HP register so many times you'll erase through your paper before your 5e character finally dies.  You don't really have to worry about your ACTUAL wounds as the system of damage is abstracted.  You don't track how many fingers a character has, or if they can even use their gimped up, arrow-transfixed hand again.

Inspirobot will get your training underway.

Gallons of blood are fine, you know...for that kind of thing.

However, in some scenarios you WILL have to worry about things like losing fingers and eyes.  Toes and hands.  You'll be wearing peg-legs and waving hook hands about in no time, and most likely there won't be any socialized medicine to help you.  In those games, sometimes the give and take of "hit points" or "health nuggets" or what-have-you tends to be a lot slower, especially on the mending side of that.

Losing your footing in combat can lead to all sorts of permanent consequences.  This is how it is in real-life, in my experience.  Little nicks and gouges that hardly bring the blood are going to be rare, especially between two experienced warriors.  Rather, it will go back and forth until someone gets knocked off their game or misses an attack or defense leaving them vulnerable.

So I lean more toward an "action movie" style narrative description of combat.  The only time you'll see me describe a hit that brings the blood will be critical hits and death strokes.  Maybe a significant flesh wound by half-hit points, but unless the health track is specific (like World of Darkness or Shadowrun) hit points don't represent your actual blood.

To me, they represent the general footing and combat demeanor of the warrior in question.  He dodges, he blocks, he parries, he ripostes.  He gets knocked around though...even if he himself is doing the moving, eventually the combat will catch up to him if his defenses don't hold up and he takes damage.

As he is hit, his ability to defend himself wanes.  A slight bit of damage from a laser pistol hits the cover you're hiding behind, but makes you shrink back and sizzles your face a little.  A lot of damage from a laser cannon takes out the block of cover you were hiding behind, knocking you back and causing a mad scrabble to regain footing.

Our target's physical body hasn't actually been hurt, so he can retain agency in the scenario.  However, he has less hit points...in descriptive terms he can't block as easily, or dive for cover as fast, he gets dazed or loses his footing.  Eventually, all those HP are gone and he gets clocked proper...however that goes down, it usually ends with death.

And let's not forget how gruesome death by hand weapon is, folks.  You gotta be close, and it's pretty violent.  Once an combatant's defenses (HP) are down, striking a death blow doesn't take much...but it will almost always get blood on the victor.  On the battlefield, you can end up with a lot of blood on the ground...in some cases so much it doesn't even make sense. 

Remember what kinds of weapons are causing the death around you, especially if those weapons are sword and sorcery.  You're kinda walking around covered in gore if you've killed a lot of ...creatures.  Especially if any of those creatures were big and you killed it with a melee weapon.  You're gonna have to hire camp followers who carry washing water if you want to stay presentable...or something.

That's just not socially acceptable in most scenarios.