Everything I needed to know about DM'ing I learned in Prison

Ok, let's talk about this. When I was out before, we played once per week, and I did my best to put on a good game, to come up with interesting challenges, and have some fun. But I did so at a severe disadvantage: I played once per week.
When you only play once per week, you don't necessarily have time to compile the lessons learned from previous sessions.
Its like watching a tv series one episode per week as compared to marathoning the whole thing back to back in an afternoon. Little things you didn't notice before just jump out at you.
So when I went to prison and found a few players, they wanted to play every-freaking day. So we did. I had a lot of chances to try out new things and learn what works and what doesn't, to put together a long term cohesive game, and grow at an amazing rate.
How fast of a rate, you might ask?
Let's do the math:
I used to play 1x/week, and depending on the day, for 3 to 10 hours in that one week. Lets average it to 6.
While inside, I played six days per week for 4 hours per day.
So in one year, on the old math, at 52 weeks times 6 hrs per week, we played 312 hours.
In one year, inside, at 4 hours per day for six days for 52 weeks, we played 1248 hours.

Here are some of the lessons I learned:

• Stick with point system or basic set - (15,14,13,12,10,8) or, for a more powerful game, (16,15,14,14,13,10). That's it. Don't do 4d6, reroll 1's. Someone will end up with low scores, someone will end up with (3) 18's, and someone will feel like the other players are superfluous and treat them badly, with many comments about, "Stop sucking."
• Keep challenge ratings appropriate. - Yes, its fun to get your ass handed to you and feel like you came out on top. But not in every encounter. Some encounters should be simple, some a decent challenge, and boss fights should almost kill you, but in the end you can overcome. If every fight is about to kill your players, then the players feel like it is only dumb luck or DM fudge rolls that are saving them, and discouragement happens.
• Take copious notes - I created little booklets that I could jot down notes on player questions, wish lists, investigation things that had to come back to them, etc. This way at night when I was preparing for tomorrow's game, I could come up with the answers to keep them on the trail (or throw them off). Yes, out here I can go to the store and buy a small spiral notebook for 35cents. In there I had to make them.
• Don't give away lots of magic and gold - It is fun for the players to find treasure. When you try to be nice and hand out cool stuff, it comes back to bite you in the end. Yes, they should have something special about their character, such as an awesome droid, a special weapon, a power that no one else has, but keep it small and retain balance in your game.
• Hold something back - Don't make all the powers available at the beginning. Don't have all the gear available, even if it is in the player's manual. Hold it back as a reward for later on. If they ask about it, tell them it isn't available, or they will have to find someone that knows it to learn it from them. Holding back will give them something to search for and give them a goal.
• Throw in a treasure hunt, even if you aren't sure what the treasure is yet - I had a random encounter with a derelict freighter that had obviously been in a pirate raid. The players searched the captain's quarters and found a datapad that had notes about a lost treasure, and included three possible locations. No matter which location they went to in what order, the third one had the next clue. After 9 locations, and they were to the place where the treasure should be, that's when I had to decide what it was, and I picked something that would help them in the final battle against the Sith Lord, a few crates of clone embryos. Now they can have their own troops to lead against the Shadow Lord's armies.
• Create custom prestige classes that are designed just for them. - I'll post mine later, but that was a big hit. I created a special prestige class designed specifically for each of my players that made them unique designed around something that happened to them in the game, such as Konan becoming a Werewolf Lord, or Lone Wolf becoming a Dragon Rider.
  In prison I did not have the books, and it was actually against the rules to play, so we had to make up everything. If some of these prestige classes exist in books, I didn't have them, and I'm sure mine are quite different.
• Sometimes what makes a player happy to play his character is a simple boon - Try giving him a 'Frost Giant' bloodline, so he gets a Cold Resistance 2. Simple, but it helps the player feel special, different, and adds to background.
• Try playing without the books - As I mentioned, I didn't have access to the books, and if I wanted anything, like Spell Descriptions or class abilities, I had to spend 3.50$ and call Skipp and hope he stopped talking about Warhammer long enough to look up what I needed before the end of the call. Monsters, had to make them up. Locations, had to make them up. Vehicles, had to make them up. We made up new spells, items, powers, equipment, modifications, rules, everything. Our game was loosely based on 3.5, with a twist of pathfinder, and we were constantly tweaking and testing new rules to find what works. Creativity flourishes when you don't have resources. Try it.

Well, those prolly aren't all the things I learned, but its a good amount of them. I hope someone learns something, and if you don't agree, that's okay. These are the things I learned after finding that it didn't work out, and came back to bite me in the ass.

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Sage's moment of Triumph

I set up an encounter to push my heroes a little. Have them think it over. Make them work for victory. They're 5th level now, and I wanted to kinda worry them.

I had an ambient youth run up and had a datapad to my wife's hero, a small flying assassin droid named T1-NK, and tell her that he was paid to deliver the message.

The datapad told her that someone knew why they were there and wanted the heroes to meet him on such and such landing pad at 0200 (yes, its mostly a twist out of DoD e3. i was rewriting it and keeping some of the elements to assist in flow).

So the party decides that they will scout the landing pad out early and just send in the assassin droid, not all of them. The kel-dor scout goes in 2 hrs early to an empty landing pad and passes thru the atmosphere shield, locking his magnetic boots to the outside to watch.

Time goes by.

A well dressed man in a uniform enters and stands on the landing pad, gazing out at the glow of the planet before him.

Tee-One enters a few minutes later, alone.

The man hears the doors and turns, smug, but is slightly startled when he realizes the droid is alone. He was expecting more. "Well, no matter," he says, "We'll catch up with your companions later. Now. Drop your weapons and... float down to the deck." At which time ten heavy stormtroopers enter behind her and line up pointing their blasters at her back.

Tee-One drops her blaster. A small panel on her back opens and from a spring loaded launcher flies a thermal detonator, landing right center of the group of storm troopers. One bloody mist cloud later, the storm troopers have been decimated and the commander stands stupidly slack jawed.

Tee-One, without missing a beat, "You had some information for me?"

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House Rules

This could also be subtitled as, "Big name publisher made hundreds of rules to control your little imaginative world, but you thought of stuff they didnt think of and made even more".

I read on a forum recently that it is a good idea to write down your house rules so they are not forgotten, misunderstood, or at least so there is a reference of them so the players don't think you're just making stuff up arbitrarily.

So, here's my top rules that follow me pretty much any d20 (or similar) system I play:

1. Character Creation - When rolling ability scores, roll 4d6, dropping the lowest die, re-rolling all 1's. If you roll a set and you aren't happy with them, you can roll again, up to four times, but you can't go back to any previous set you've rolled. You have to use one of those five sets.
   Typically, this gives us heroic characters. Like... very heroic characters. If we compare our current Star Wars character's ability scores to the point buy system (which recommends 24-28 points), my party characters range more around 48-54. Are they overballanced? Maybe. But c'mon.. They're heroes. And no one likes to have an 8.
   
2. Encumberance - This is kind of a tough one. I view it more like the video game equipment. You are not encumbered by things that you won't be using. Such as the seven suits of storm trooper armor that you plan on selling in the next shadowport. But all your gear that you wear and use on a regular basis should be accounted for.
3. Ammo - You have enough ammo for just about any situation, unless you roll a 1 on your attack. (because rolling a 1 on attack is so confusing about what should happen, I like this rule. No worrying about if it blows up or shoots your buddy instead.) If you roll a 1 on the attack, roll 1d4. On a 1, you are out of ammo. Looks like you should have remembered to recharge that e-clip, or the e-clip failed. I might expand this to make 2-4 do other stuff on fails, but for now, I'm happy with that.
4. Party bag of holding - I did this one to help with my wife's need to loot abso-freaking-lutely every baddie they kill. She sells the majority for 50%, keeps all grenades and explosives in this party bag that anyone can grab from. It's just for little stuff like grenades, that can be easily shared, without having to worry about who had them. I guess I can see the challenges that can be part of: "I throw the thermal detonator at the four clones and the badass bodyguard coming to capture me." "Nope, Sorry. Elzebub has them and she's on the other side of the station, " But i'm more of the mind that worrying about inventory takes away from the fun part. So, yeah. bag o' grenades ftw!
5. Shooting into Melee - If you miss the shot by more than 5, random roll to decide who it hits. Damage is base weapon damage only, no bonuses of any kind. (level, sneak attack, etc) If you miss by more than 10 or less than 5, complete miss.
   

What are some of your house rules and where did they get their start?

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Game Theory - The Total Rewrite

This phrase really freaked me out when I first heard it. What could be cooler than a theory of games? But you know what? It isn't the cool new college course that all the design publishers are looking for, its actually military strategy. Which kinda works, if you're playing Total Annihilation. But I'm not talking about military strategem, or TA. I'm talking about design.

My first major campaign for Star Wars Saga Edition is going on. We are up to the third episode, and since I didn't care for the original RPGA written episode 3, I'm rewriting it.

Now, I've got to tell you, this is not just an easy throw something together thing. There is real thought and planning behind building an episode for an existing established campaign. I wanted to keep some of the same elements in the game so that key things that took place in the original will still happen in the rewrite, but will fit my new setting and events.

But it doesn't work to just cut and paste areas of the text, because they are very different in content.

For example, I just couldn't bring myself to put my very aggressive players thru four days of playing cards. It just wouldn't have worked. They would have been killing random npcs by the second day. So that had to go. But there is a purchase / exchange that happens during the card game. Now I have to have that purchase / exchange go down anyway, but in a diffent manner, and to where the players discover it anyway, and make it more interesting than hiding in shadows evesdropping or sitting somewhere high up and watching thru macrobinoculars.

So. For the first installment of my new RPG focused hobby blog, here we have:

Episode 3. Rewriting the Adventure.

1. Keep the NPCs the same, just change their role. Rather than your Rodian being a scoundrel card sharp, throw him in position of the Noble. Dress him up in fancy clothes and give him an entourage.


2. Keep the setting similar, just change the location. The original may take place on Jabba's Sail Barge over the dune sea. But that doesn't fit your new setting, since you aren't including Jabba, or the Tatoonian Dune Sea. How about a five day-six night stay aboard the luxury star cruise Correlian Star Resorts Cruise & Travel.


3. Keep the main plot of the episode, just change the detail. The original was a rescue of the princess from the evil Empire's new space station detention facility before she's executed. Well, perhaps in your game, the Empire's base is an underground facility, and the rescue of the princess is freeing slaves. Plot: Rescue. Details: location / rescuee.


4. Add in new stuff that makes your game different, but similar. Basically not all the encounters from the original episode are going to work in your new location/setting/goal. But coming up with interesting encounters can be a challenge. You don't want your episode rewrite to be the same. you want to give it your own flare and creativity. Let's say in the original the heroes were going to come across a datapad that would lead them to an NPC that knew what they were looking for. Well, that's a data encounter. How about instead, your hero's droid slices into the central station computer and that data that was going to be provided from the NPC is available there.


5. Make it exciting. No matter how much you didn't like the original write, something about it made it exciting to the writers. Try to capture that element. It's okay to borrow from their example to do it. Just as the heroes save the princess and disable the tractor beam, escape from the big bad evil super villain (BBESV), they blast off into space only to discover their hyperdrive has been disabled. Dun dun DUN! Now they have to fight off waves of TIE fighters and fix the hyperdrive at the same time before the shields give out!

Yeah, keep that part.

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Scum and Villainy

Ok, let's talk about Challenge Levels.

There has been a debate on the d20radio.com Order 66 board about effective challenge level for encounters. It seems very fair that a nonheroic CL1 stormtrooper is -not- a challenge for four heroic level1 characters.

So, keeping that in mind, and because of an unfortunate snowstorm, we were short one player in our game tonite. That's fine, I picked up Scum & Villainy last night and it has a pregen adventure in the back for scoundrels. Well, Sage has been working her heart out on three different characters for our Star Wars campaign for the last several days, and when I brought up a side adventure, she almost cried. No trubbs, I had a Level3 Scoundrel on hand.

I figured Level 3 because there are only 2 of them, so that should make up the difference that 2 more players would have made. OK. So first encounter is against 2 CL3 force sensitive thugs.

o.O That's right. Force Sensitive thugs. Granted, per the rules, this only makes it a CL2 (total enemy CL/3 or 3+3/3=2), and they have an average party level of 3, but because they have only 2 people, we add 2 to the challenge. CL4. A difficult but doable challenge. Well, that depends on the evilness of your GM. Because these thugs wield force lightning and force grip. If I had been evil enough, I could have TPK'd them in a couple rounds. But i'm not evil, so they survived. Challenging, but survival.

Second encounter a little while later (after some healing), three more of these thugs!!?! well, i only pop'd 2 on them, because that would have been just too much. But with the way the setup of the encounter was, they were being choked and shot at, and it wasn't going well, so we stopped.

Now, granted there were only 2 party members, but come on.. this adventure is for 4 level 1 characters, and the first two adventures have them up against 2-3 CL3 heroic enemies. Did anyone playtest this adventure? Should we be using our Second Wind in the first 20 minutes of the game? I don't think so. If I play this adventure again - which i most likely will because the story is pretty good - the party will not be level 1. Mostlikely four level 3 or 4's.

And how is the rest of Scum & Villainy? Oh, pos def worth it. Lots of great stuff in there.

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Star Wars Saga Edition

Ok, so the procrastination post actually came from looking at one of the blogs my wife reads titled procrastination, and i had an epiphany and had to post. but now i'm on to real hobby-ing stuff.

Recently i've been itching to game. Not video games or board games or card games, but paper-and-dice-character-sheet-pencils-and-game-master-friends-around-the-table game. So i've convinced my friends to create level 3 characters to play in our Star Wars game, and i've written the beginning of an adventure that should take us a few days to get into, and then i have a couple campaigns and some plot hooks to take us further. should be pretty interesting.

But the hobby part. The blitz part. the part i get way too into. I went to the WOTC site and i downloaded it. The whole thing. Well,.. pretty much. I have now six additional planets, three space stations, eight new ships, four bad guys to collect bounty on, three adventures, twelve characters, and a four part essay on what it means to be Sith. I've downloaded the core rules book, four sourcebooks, and seven of ten parts of a national campaign. I think i've got a good start for them. Now I just have to make sure i do my part and keep their interest long enough to make use of it.

Collecting e-books is a bit of a hobby of mine as well. At home i have the entire D&D 3.5 system (up to a point, around last... April?), most if not all the Conan books, the entire D20 Modern and Future set, the new D&D 4.0 edition, Iron Kingdoms, World of Warcraft (Yes, as an RPG, not a video game), Traveller20, and a few random ones I've never heard of that I ran across and figured I'd better grab them "just in case". I have them neatly organized in My E-Books folder under RPG/D20/*.* and I've read each of them once or twice. Generally I just bookmark the pdf's for future reference. But I've played almost none of them. The Star Wars ones will be some of the lucky few. Maybe someday I'll find a party that loves to play and will want to make use of them, but for now, my few friends that will show up are proving to be true friends to put up with me and my blitzy ways.

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