Libram of the DM: Podcast (News Updates and whatever)
Aug 6, 2019 14:23:06 GMT -8
Post by Daos on Aug 6, 2019 14:23:06 GMT -8
Boy, this podcast has been really useful in getting me to actually go out to the fitness center for my exercises. I haven't missed any days except when I got sick and when the place closes early unexpectedly. In fact, I'm a little worried how I'm going to continue this pace once I run out of episodes. Anyway, I started on episode 17 which is about world design.
Tips on Maintaining frightening Atmosphere - I never really did much in the way of scary stuff, like Ravenloft. To be honest, I'm not really into horror and as a result, probably wouldn't be any good at it. But it's fairly moot, because it's impossible to build tension in a play-by-post. Imagine watching the scariest movie ever made, but you only watch one minute of it a day. Yeah, you just can't build any tension at all that way.
Another problem is that D&D is itself a heroic fantasy, which is very empowering. Part of horror is feeling dis-empowered. Plus, we're sort of taught to see everything in numbers. A group of zombies might be terrifying for a regular person, but to a group of adventurers, they're just 2 HD monsters who always lose initiative. No big deal. There are other games that are probably better suited for something scary, like Call of Cthulu or All Flesh Must Be Eaten.
Still, not saying it can't be done with D&D. It's just tricky and require some careful forethought.
World Building Questions - I tend to spend years working on a game before even recruiting players. I think I spent like three years on Gontoria, for instance, before opening it up here.
Normally my process begins with an idea. Sometimes that can take longer than anything else, just coming up with one. Like, it's usually not enough to just say, "This campaign will take place in Tardiff." I like to first have an idea about what the campaign's theme will be. For Gontoria, it was to explore the idea of race and class, including the beliefs of the players, as well as the characters themselves. Hence the very first quest of that game, where a farm has burned down and there were reports of goblins who raided it, set it ablaze, and killed the farmer living there. The party is sent to investigate. They find some things that don't really add up (the dead farmer has some poorly made bandages on his wounds, for instance, and nothing but food was taken). When the party tracked down the goblins responsible, they could have just attacked and killed them. They were 'only' goblins, after all, and there was a long standing prejudice between the locals and the goblins (they had a big war 20 years previous). But instead, the party took the time to get the goblins' side of the story, and learned that they only killed the farmer in self-defense, had only been looking for food because they were driven out of their homes by an angry bear, and the fire was started accidentally by the farmer himself when he knocked over a lantern. So the party hunted down the bear, the goblins returned to their home, and a second war was averted. So basically stuff like that, and playing on the built-in biases of D&D players (who, for instance, might assume the goblins are Evil because that's what the MM says).
And sometimes the only idea is 'stuff is happening, and the players need to decide if they want to engage with it or not' like with Octhania and Past Glory, which are more sandbox style games. They both have storylines, and the players can pursue them or do their own thing. But if they do ignore them, they continue forward anyway. So if there is a bad guy attacking cities, and the party ignores it, then more cities will get attacked over time, etc.
I also sometimes like to experiment with different ways of running a campaign. Gontoria, for instance, is set in a single location. Instead of traveling the land, and never staying anywhere more than a few days, they are always in one location, and when they venture out, it's not too far and they always return. This lets them build up relationships over time, which is much harder to do when they are basically vagabonds. I also insisted that upon character creation, everyone make their characters either having been born in the town or having lived there for at least 20 years, because I wanted them to have some kind of roots there (family, friends, etc.). So that there are some stakes involved when the place is in danger. I got so tired of people rolling up murderhobos who have no past, whose parents were killed by orcs and their hometown was burned down by the evil empire, and so they have no connection to the world whatsoever.
I usually put a lot of emphasis on culture over race. A dwarf who lives on a tropical island isn't going to act and think like one who lives under a mountain, or in a human city, or in the desert, or up in the tundra.
Anyway, once I have the basic theme or idea for a campaign, I start working on the big stuff first--government, religion, culture, various factions, and so forth. Then I will flesh out a town or city, wherever the party is starting, and I'll usually continue fleshing things out as they go. So if they leave that town for another one, I'll start work on that town while they're traveling, for instance. Since pbp is so slow, there's usually plenty of time. I've actually run dungeons where I'll map out level 2 while the party is still exploring level 1.
I try not to work too far ahead, in fact. Usually while one chapter is going, I'll work on the next. I used to work further ahead than that, but too often something unexpected would happen that would cause me to have to start over. Like I'll spend months working on a special adventure for Ezeze's character, and then she ups and disappears, so I'll have to scrap it. Or do serious rewrites so I can still use it without her. Stuff like that.
As DM, encourage specific classes? - I don't really worry about party balance too much. Most of the time I'll have recruitable NPCs if the party has any gaps in their makeup that they can hire. The only time I'll discourage certain classes is if they won't really fit in a specific campaign well. But I won't forbid it. If you really want to play a druid in an urban game, you can...just don't get upset when you find your character completely useless. I did warn you.
Oddly enough, when I get to be a player, I do tend to roll up a class the party needs most, even if nobody asks me to.
I've never had a situation with a party of all fighters, or something like that, but I have had situations where I've had a party of all back-line casters (bard, sorcerer, rogue and warlock, for instance) and no front-liners to protect them.
World Building: Where to Start? - When I first started DMing, I was only 13. I got into D&D through JRPGs from the SNES era, like Final Fantasy 6, Secret of Mana, etc. So when I first designed my homebrew world, it looked a lot like that. So like, each kingdom had one or two towns. Each town had 5-6 buildings (including an inn, weapon shop, armor shop, and item shop). Actually, each continent was a kingdom. Gontoria, for instance, was not six different kingdoms but one big one. Octhania wasn't a series of tropical islands, but a big Australia sized continent (with a big outback in the middle, even).
I've rebooted the world several times since then, and each time I keep some of the stuff from previous iterations, so as a result, there's always something to fall back on. For instance, when the party in Octhania went to Enott on the island of Draska, I didn't have to do too much work on it, because another party in a previous game visited it, as well, and so I had some material to draw from, even if the world had been rebooted since then.
I really didn't know what I was doing at the time. I started as the DM, having never been a player first, because neither of my two friends who introduced me to the game wanted to DM. So my world was complete garbage. It was nonsensical. I stuck towns just wherever, not even thinking whether they needed to be near a water source like a river or lake. I never thought about where people got food from, or why the town was even built in that spot (resources, politics, etc.). Every nation was a standard kingdom, with a king and queen. No other forms of government existed. There were no cultural differences between one nation and another beyond superficial stuff (like, everyone in Rabbah might wear turbans and have names like Habeeb and Jafar, and maybe the king is called sultan, but otherwise it was no different from any other nation).
Anyway, it's bonkers how much my homebrew world has changed in the past 20+ years.
Tips on Maintaining frightening Atmosphere - I never really did much in the way of scary stuff, like Ravenloft. To be honest, I'm not really into horror and as a result, probably wouldn't be any good at it. But it's fairly moot, because it's impossible to build tension in a play-by-post. Imagine watching the scariest movie ever made, but you only watch one minute of it a day. Yeah, you just can't build any tension at all that way.
Another problem is that D&D is itself a heroic fantasy, which is very empowering. Part of horror is feeling dis-empowered. Plus, we're sort of taught to see everything in numbers. A group of zombies might be terrifying for a regular person, but to a group of adventurers, they're just 2 HD monsters who always lose initiative. No big deal. There are other games that are probably better suited for something scary, like Call of Cthulu or All Flesh Must Be Eaten.
Still, not saying it can't be done with D&D. It's just tricky and require some careful forethought.
World Building Questions - I tend to spend years working on a game before even recruiting players. I think I spent like three years on Gontoria, for instance, before opening it up here.
Normally my process begins with an idea. Sometimes that can take longer than anything else, just coming up with one. Like, it's usually not enough to just say, "This campaign will take place in Tardiff." I like to first have an idea about what the campaign's theme will be. For Gontoria, it was to explore the idea of race and class, including the beliefs of the players, as well as the characters themselves. Hence the very first quest of that game, where a farm has burned down and there were reports of goblins who raided it, set it ablaze, and killed the farmer living there. The party is sent to investigate. They find some things that don't really add up (the dead farmer has some poorly made bandages on his wounds, for instance, and nothing but food was taken). When the party tracked down the goblins responsible, they could have just attacked and killed them. They were 'only' goblins, after all, and there was a long standing prejudice between the locals and the goblins (they had a big war 20 years previous). But instead, the party took the time to get the goblins' side of the story, and learned that they only killed the farmer in self-defense, had only been looking for food because they were driven out of their homes by an angry bear, and the fire was started accidentally by the farmer himself when he knocked over a lantern. So the party hunted down the bear, the goblins returned to their home, and a second war was averted. So basically stuff like that, and playing on the built-in biases of D&D players (who, for instance, might assume the goblins are Evil because that's what the MM says).
And sometimes the only idea is 'stuff is happening, and the players need to decide if they want to engage with it or not' like with Octhania and Past Glory, which are more sandbox style games. They both have storylines, and the players can pursue them or do their own thing. But if they do ignore them, they continue forward anyway. So if there is a bad guy attacking cities, and the party ignores it, then more cities will get attacked over time, etc.
I also sometimes like to experiment with different ways of running a campaign. Gontoria, for instance, is set in a single location. Instead of traveling the land, and never staying anywhere more than a few days, they are always in one location, and when they venture out, it's not too far and they always return. This lets them build up relationships over time, which is much harder to do when they are basically vagabonds. I also insisted that upon character creation, everyone make their characters either having been born in the town or having lived there for at least 20 years, because I wanted them to have some kind of roots there (family, friends, etc.). So that there are some stakes involved when the place is in danger. I got so tired of people rolling up murderhobos who have no past, whose parents were killed by orcs and their hometown was burned down by the evil empire, and so they have no connection to the world whatsoever.
I usually put a lot of emphasis on culture over race. A dwarf who lives on a tropical island isn't going to act and think like one who lives under a mountain, or in a human city, or in the desert, or up in the tundra.
Anyway, once I have the basic theme or idea for a campaign, I start working on the big stuff first--government, religion, culture, various factions, and so forth. Then I will flesh out a town or city, wherever the party is starting, and I'll usually continue fleshing things out as they go. So if they leave that town for another one, I'll start work on that town while they're traveling, for instance. Since pbp is so slow, there's usually plenty of time. I've actually run dungeons where I'll map out level 2 while the party is still exploring level 1.
I try not to work too far ahead, in fact. Usually while one chapter is going, I'll work on the next. I used to work further ahead than that, but too often something unexpected would happen that would cause me to have to start over. Like I'll spend months working on a special adventure for Ezeze's character, and then she ups and disappears, so I'll have to scrap it. Or do serious rewrites so I can still use it without her. Stuff like that.
As DM, encourage specific classes? - I don't really worry about party balance too much. Most of the time I'll have recruitable NPCs if the party has any gaps in their makeup that they can hire. The only time I'll discourage certain classes is if they won't really fit in a specific campaign well. But I won't forbid it. If you really want to play a druid in an urban game, you can...just don't get upset when you find your character completely useless. I did warn you.
Oddly enough, when I get to be a player, I do tend to roll up a class the party needs most, even if nobody asks me to.
I've never had a situation with a party of all fighters, or something like that, but I have had situations where I've had a party of all back-line casters (bard, sorcerer, rogue and warlock, for instance) and no front-liners to protect them.
World Building: Where to Start? - When I first started DMing, I was only 13. I got into D&D through JRPGs from the SNES era, like Final Fantasy 6, Secret of Mana, etc. So when I first designed my homebrew world, it looked a lot like that. So like, each kingdom had one or two towns. Each town had 5-6 buildings (including an inn, weapon shop, armor shop, and item shop). Actually, each continent was a kingdom. Gontoria, for instance, was not six different kingdoms but one big one. Octhania wasn't a series of tropical islands, but a big Australia sized continent (with a big outback in the middle, even).
I've rebooted the world several times since then, and each time I keep some of the stuff from previous iterations, so as a result, there's always something to fall back on. For instance, when the party in Octhania went to Enott on the island of Draska, I didn't have to do too much work on it, because another party in a previous game visited it, as well, and so I had some material to draw from, even if the world had been rebooted since then.
I really didn't know what I was doing at the time. I started as the DM, having never been a player first, because neither of my two friends who introduced me to the game wanted to DM. So my world was complete garbage. It was nonsensical. I stuck towns just wherever, not even thinking whether they needed to be near a water source like a river or lake. I never thought about where people got food from, or why the town was even built in that spot (resources, politics, etc.). Every nation was a standard kingdom, with a king and queen. No other forms of government existed. There were no cultural differences between one nation and another beyond superficial stuff (like, everyone in Rabbah might wear turbans and have names like Habeeb and Jafar, and maybe the king is called sultan, but otherwise it was no different from any other nation).
Anyway, it's bonkers how much my homebrew world has changed in the past 20+ years.