Dungeon Masters, Game Masters, and Potatoes

After going back and forth with Tommi, I think I realized I should probably clear something up about some nomenclature I’m going to be using in my blog.

Firstly, I’m going to use the term “Dungeon Master,” or DM. Even though I rarely roll Dungeons and Dragons or any other D20 system. I just prefer the term to “Game Master,” or GM. Why? I don’t know. Nostalgia. The same reason people still ask for a Kleenex or use Google as a verb. The same reason I still call them stewardesses. Because some names and terms come with a certain cachet.

Game Master sounds so formal, Dungeon Master has that je ne sais quoi. I feel Game Master is to Dungeon Master as “You do 14 Damage” is to “You cut off his head with a dastardly blow.”

Also, while we’re working on a little nomenclature, I should clarify something else. I’m not prone to use the word ‘game’. I’ll use the word ’session’ to describe an adventure, an evening with the players. I’ll use the word ‘campaign’ to indicate multiple, successive sessions featuring the same setting and the same PCs. I’ll use ’setting’ to refer to the world of the campaign. And I’ll use the word ’system’ to refer to the rule set. I will use the word ‘game’ to refer to HALO and Clue.

Last, but certainly not least, unless I’m specifically writing about female role players (Geek’s Dream Girl, I’m looking at you), I’m going to stick to the gender pronoun ‘he’. Nothing sexist, but it’s what I’m going to use. I don’t really feel the need to defend the decision.

That’s it. I’ll probably revisit nomenclature later.

The Mega Man Model

I’d like to make my inaugural World Building post about one of my favorite tools for campaign setting creation. I call it the Mega Man Model.

Playing Mega Man as a kid, I was always blown away by the brilliance of the level creation. They took one concept and ran with it. I remember thinking how the Metal Man and the Heat Man and the Wood Man were all, essentially, the same. Thematically, they were just different flavors of the same idea. Sure, beating Heat Man made beating Wood Man easier, but that just made it a game of rochambeau.

This idea stuck with me, and it’s one I’ve tried to incorporate into much of my campaign world design. If you can create one idea (“ice cream”), and then, flavors (“chocolate, strawberry, vanilla”), you can then run with the idea. Come up with a new idea (“popsicle”), and you’ve just saved yourself some work – you now have three new idea – Chocolate Popsicles, Strawberry Popsicles, and Vanilla Popsicles. You can do it again with each new idea – milkshakes, cake, Charleston Chews… You see where I’m going with this.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten myself a snack, let me walk you through how this works in campaign creation. Let’s take a hypothetical campaign. We’ll call it the Twilight Campaign. The world is governed by three mystical powers – Night, Day, and the Twins of Dusk and Dawn. These powers are Gods, they are the colleges of magic, and so forth. These ideas dominate the campaign setting.

First you build your order of wizards. The Midnight Circle, the Solar Brotherhood, the Dawn Sodality. You create your orders of clerics and warriors – the Knights of Nox, the Paladins of High Noon, the Monks of the Setting Sun. And then kingdoms, and spells and so on.

And where it really gets fun is when you’re rounding out your bestiary. A Night Elemental, a Day Elemental, a Dusk Elemental. Maybe a separate Dawn Elemental. Or dragons. A Moon Dragon, a Sun Dragon and a Star Dragon. Try it out with the cosmology – the Demons of Midnight, the Angels of Day, the Saints of Red Sky. Moon Zombies and Sky Zombies and Grey Zombies. Each idea creates its own twists, one for each flavor.

Now, you can’t overdo it. You don’t want your table to start feeling like a video game. (Well, maybe you do, but I would recommend not.) Your Players will need a little variety. While it can be fun to occasionally break this rule, generally you don’t want your PCs to descend into the Temple of Night, and then the Temple of Day, and then the Temple of Dawn.

That being said, this idea can do wonders for anticipation. If your characters fight a Daybreak Golem, and a Meridian Golem, even if you never show or mention a Gloom Golem, they’ll know there’s one out there, waiting, lurking, to kill them.

And not only that, but the Mega Man Model also allows a DM to occasionally weasel out on the prep work.  If a year ago your players delved deep into the Caverns of Sunset, and last month you had an epic, week long crawl through the Black Tombs, and you’ve got a session planned for tomorrow and no inspiration, well, the Diurnal Fortress it is!

Implemented poorly, this can make your campaign stale and predictable.  Used well, I think the Mega Man Model can form a strong backbone to a campaign, allowing the players to feel like they know aspects of the world without ever having experienced it, allowing both the Players and the DM to more fully engage the campaign.

Dreamwalker Revised

Via the Consonant Dude, I took a peak at Peter C Spahn’s new Dreamwalker Revised. And let me say, I liked it. I didn’t love it, but I liked it.

I can’t speak to the game’s production value, since I’ve only read the free online version, which is missing a lot of the artwork. That being said, the game still has a lot more artwork than many other free or not-free digital rpgs I’ve seen lately. Clocking in at over 200 pages and less than $0.01 to purchase, there’s really no reason not to go peak at it. I am rather fond of the inclusion of incredibly pertinent and apropos quotations at the top of the chapter headings, from Aliens to It to the Dark Tower.

Spahn says that one reviewer described it as “. . .one part The Matrix, one part The Cell, and two parts Quantum Leap with a healthy dose of Stephen King sprinkled over the top!” I would say that thematically, that’s pretty accurate. Unfortunately, structurally, the expansion to D20 Modern feels like it might have been written by Kevin Siembeda.

Spahn’s world is one where dreams can come alive, and it feels a lot like the World of Darkness (or of the Matrix), in that a select few are in the know, and the rest of the world stumbles along blindly, unaware of the war being fought in their backyards. Spahn has deftly created a universe where any number of genres can be effortlessly pillaged for extra value. The game obviously lends itself to a cyberpunk/gothic horror mythos, but since the backdrop of the game is dreams, your characters can enter a dream on the Starship Enterprise or the Land of Mordor with ease.

Once, when I was in middle school, first getting into D&D and role playing, a friend of mine (friend of a friend, really, but I was a nerd and couldn’t be picky) wanted me to fight a Turask. You know what I’m talking about. In the end, so that he didn’t kill my character (whom I loved more than my parents), it was all a dream. It was a really stupid idea. In Dreamwalker, it would have been nothing more than a poorly structured adventure.

Of special note is the Denouement, a rather insightful creation on Spahn’s part. Every adventure, in theory, has a point. Group of Heroes intends to accomplish Goal by overcoming Obstacle. (Okay, in middle school, I may be been on, and run, a few pointless adventures. See above.) Spahn has incorporated this goal into the Dreamwalker Cosmology – the Denouement is the dreamer’s intent, and the players frequently have to assist, or occasionally thwart, this goal. It’s a very nice piece of work, and something of which Spahn should be proud.

The Brood, the Taenia Spiritus, are the villains. It feels a little heavy handed, but it’s a good construction. It makes the game a little black and white for my tastes, but I’m sure it’s right up the alley for some. The different Broodlings are all well described, though their ephemeral nature as dream-kind seems to leave a lot of work up to the DM to design them.

The organizations in Dreamwalker Revised are solid. The Sword of Gaia and Project Dreamwalker are modeled perfectly on the Platonic Ideas of templars and government agencies. The Lost City of Revead is fantastic, feeling a lot like Sigil. And the Kingdom of Malice… kind of speaks for itself.

My one complaint is some of the more mechanical aspects. My main complaint is with the “advanced classes,” also known as prestige classes. Many of them feel a little… extraneous. I’m looking at you, “Government Agent.” The Government Agent class really doesn’t feel like it’s needed. I admit, I haven’t spent a lot of time with D20 Modern, but I’ve spent enough, and I don’t feel like the Government Agent adds anything that a bunch of feats couldn’t do. The Influence Memory ability might need to be broken down into two feats, but otherwise, there aren’t really any awesome abilities in the class.

The other prestige classes aren’t that awesome, either. The Tomb Raider (yes, that Tomb Raider) is a class that has almost nothing to do with the Dreamwalker mythos. Certainly nothing to do with the world of dreams mechanically. The Paranormal Investigator seems hackneyed at best. The Totemist and Arcanist are both interesting classes, but really don’t feel like they belong in the Dreamwalker Revised book.

Part of this is my problem with prestige classes in general. I feel like the entire concept creates a Palladium like atmosphere, where each book necessitates the addition of new classes, each more unique and powerful than the last, until the entire concept is relatively meaningless. Some of Dreamwalker Revised’s prestige classes really work, like the Dream Weaver and the Dream Warrior. Others, like the Brood Hunter and the Brood Slayer, feel like overused tropes that have to be included and tailored to this specific setting.

But enough. Over all, the supplement is fantastic. If you run D20 Modern campaigns, or any kind of “paranormal” campaign, then I highly recommend you go out and shell out for the full version of this game. Buy it and support it. If you don’t run those kind of games, download the free version and steal one or two idea for your next adventure.

Overall – 9 out of 13 stars.

The HERO System

Last night’s post about the PS238 RPG made me realize I should probably disclose something, in the interests of editorial transparency.

Full Disclosure: I LOVE the HERO System. The HERO System is my favorite role playing system, and I am reluctant, borderline loath, to run any other system. I will gladly sit down at another DM’s table and play anything. Even Whitewolf or worse, if I have to. But I will really only enjoy running HERO.

HERO is not for everyone. It’s not a perfect system. HERO can do anything, literally anything, but it can rarely do things simply. It can be a very complicated under some circumstances, but it makes up for it in being able to handle any circumstances.

For those of you unfamiliar with the HERO System, think of it as a superior and cheaper version of GURPS. Like GURPS, the HERO System can be applied to any genre – scifi, fantasy, superheroes, horror, whatever. It’s a little more complicated than GURPS, so that might be a drawback. But unlike GURPS, you only have to buy one book. One book for the player, one for the DM. One book for the monsters, one book for the spells, one book for the superpowers, one book for the spaceships, one book for the prestige classes, one book for the cybergear… you get the idea. Not one book for each. One book, period.

As a DM, and as a player, I love HERO. It’s an incredible system, and while it’s not for everybody, it is for me. It requires a mature group, since it can occasionally be prone to munchkining. And it requires experienced players, who are comfortable with RPG rules. But with the right group, there’s nothing better.

And now is a fantastic time to be playing HERO. It’s been around for over twenty-five years, either as HERO or as Champions, and we’re in a Golden Age. While the tabletop RPG market may be struggling, HERO seems to be in a good position. DOJ Games, the current owners of the franchise, led by Steve Long, are incredible stewards. They’re Fifth Edition did wonders to the game. I’m a little nervous about the upcoming Sixth Edition, but we’ll see. The books they’re churning out are awesome. The forums are unlike any I’ve seen – Steve Long chips in every day. I mean, constantly, as do many other members of the team. Feedback is constantly being received and assessed. And to top it all off, the Champions setting, the granddaddy of superhero role playing, is being turned into a new MMO by the makers of City of Heroes. Champions Online could be huge.

This is kind of turning into a review and a plug, as much as it is a disclosure of my tastes.

I intend to make this blog as friendly as possible to all system.s But I thought I’d let you know that my heart is not measured in love, but in Active Points.

PS238

If you’re into roleplaying underwear perverts, but you like ‘em with a twist, then I would highly recommend you go out and buy PS238, from HERO Games. Based on Aaron Williams hilarious comic about the school for child metaprodigies of the same name, PS238 is HERO Games’ first licensed product, and while a review shall be forthcoming, it is awesome, and I highly recommend it.

The DM’s Role, Part 1 – Is

This will be my first post in a three part series: the Role of a Dungeon Master. In this post, I will be tackling what a DM is, and in the following posts I will tackle what a DM is not, and finally, what a DM frequently is, but should not be.

• Player – First and foremost, a Dungeon Master is a player. I think this is something people forget: that at the end of the day, a DM is looking to get the same enjoyment out of a play session as a player. They’re not getting paid, they’re there to imagine. Their imagination may encompass a slightly broader scope, they may be imagining kingdoms instead of heroes, but they’re players all the same.

• Storyteller – The DM, in the greatest abstraction of his role, is a storyteller. A bard, preferably one level higher than his players. The DM is responsible for maintaining the narrative of the game. The DM must be a master, an artisan, of all the things that make good writing – plot, character, dialogue, pacing. They must be able to make jokes, and references to high and pop culture, and use their campaign as a commentary on a greater theme, all while making it relevant to the other players. And the DM must do all of this, all while keeping the players engaged in the story they are collectively constructing.

• Creator – In order to support his role as a Storyteller, the DM must also be a creator. Sure, it’s possible to just buy a campaign setting, and buy an adventure, and run said adventure, but without a little authorship, he’s not really a DM. I’m not saying don’t use published campaign settings, and I’m not saying don’t buy adventures. I’m just saying that if a DM adds nothing of his own invention to a campaign, then he’s more of a Dungeon Facilitator than Dungeon Master.A DM needs to take his campaign, published or original, and make it his own. There has to be something in the campaign that speaks to the players, be it a villain or a village, a monster or a magic item. More importantly, there has to be something that the DM brings to the table every night that speaks to him directly. A good DM takes ownership of his campaign. Even if you’re just adapting the Marvel Ultimate Universe to a Champions Game, you need to bring something new and fresh to the table to surprise your players.

• Arbitrator – Last, but not least, unfortunately, is a Dungeon Master’s role as the arbitrator. The DM facilitates questions in regards to both the rules, and to the players. While there may be better at the table better suited to the role of a diplomat and a mediator, the ultimate responsibility falls to the DM. Why? Because any serious disruption of play can lead to a disruption of the story, and it maintenance of pace falls under the DM’s responsibilities as a Storyteller. It may not be ideal, but never forget that this is part of your role as a DM.

I doubt I have many readers to comment on this post, but the role of the DM is something I feel strongly about, and expect me to come back to this subject again in the future.

You Enter a Small Room…

Welcome to my new blog, The Consummate DM.

It is, as you may have guessed, a blog about roleplaying. And all things related to role playing and being a good Dungeon Master. Movies, books, videogames, arts ‘n’ crafts, et cetera.

And to be perfectly honest, what’s the point in having a blog if I can’t occasionally talk about things that have nothing to do with the theme of my blog, but rather, because I want to spout off. I will endeavor to keep that to a minimum, though – mostly, I’ll be writing about things that have to do with being an awesome Dungeon Master, and an awesome roleplayer.

I’m not going to lie – the industry’s hurting. Video games and movies and collectible card games are taking up valuable time and money from people who might otherwise sit down with some friends and some Mountain Dew. That is why, more than ever, we need awesome Dungeon Masters.

I’d also like to point out that the economy (for the US) sucks. This is in table-top, pen-and-paper role playing’s favor – you can buy one book and it will justify play for years – video games and CCGs require a lot of money for upkeep. As such, I think a lot of cash-strapped players will turn to pen-n-paper RPGs to fulfill their imaginative exploits.

I could be wrong. But in the off chance I’m right, I’ve started a little blog to talk about my thoughts on role playing, and Dungeon Mastering, because it’s needed. Good Dungeon Masters are hard to find.