I Am Now DMing For Them.

I am now DMing for them.

So my colleagues learned that I play D&D

Good shout out. For what Dungeon World lacks in crunchy gameplay, it more than makes up for with a complex understanding of player psychology and human mechanics. 

Worth reading up on if you want to learn some ways to improve, and adapt for, your tabletop game. The system is very rules-lite and supremely comprehensible as it focuses on the people playing rather than the game as a concept.

Monday Night Dungeon Mastering - The Surrender Fallacy

Writers can find themselves itching with an idea. This singular concept of story and narrative sits sluggishly on their minds and teases them with a feather between the shoulder blades. The writer sees their idea as a defining moment of ultimate action that must be realised to be itched. It is where the story comes to climax and the reader is struck in their seat with the awe of it. It is so pure and divinely emotional that it rattles the nerves to even contemplate it, but, if only the writer could wrangle their story into getting there.

This obsession over one moment trivialises the story as it ducks and weaves through itself. The world and characters begin bending and straining to the point of collapse to somehow allow this one moment to take centre stage. It’s the ego talking. We believe our own hype, and consequences be damned. Resultantly, the narrative suffers to propagate this flawed ideal.

This issue is prevalent enough within an environment where the writer controls all input. In a novel or script the writer has sole authority over characters and their agency. The world buckles and bends to their command and reshapes as they see fit. Now, imagine a narrative setting where you,as the writer, don’t control the characters …

… not even close.

Spoilers: you don’t have to. The answer is being a Dungeon Master. Big surprise.

As a Dungeon Master (and trust me, I sympathise) you will have these grandiose concepts for story and player character narrative. You want the game to be exciting. You want your players to have fun. But … 

but.

You kinda, maybe, also might want to show off a little. Just once or twice. Y'know, put your best foot forward and give yourself something to be proud of once the session ends. You can’t let them have all the fun. Maybe its your world, or an NPC or villain you are particularly proud of. So you write that in, and you build the scene in your head. You will beautifully narrate the importance of the heroes’ quest, terrify them with the danger of your irredeemable - yet morally complex - villain, and show the best of the world you have poured countless hours over in your study. You have perfected every encounter, named every tavern and drink, statted every character down to the skill points and pettiest of equipment, and you are ready to blow your player’s minds.

BUT THEY WON’T

SIT

STILL.

The illusionist rogue kicks away from his seat and hurries to harass your chieftain-warlord of grotesque, inhuman rage. The barbarian flips her table and rushes your undercover, double-agent assassin with a maul without an inkling of provocation. The wizard casts a counter-spell on your sorcerer as he tries to dramatically teleport away, leaving him stuck in a sad, little cloud of expended, magical smog. The bard just WON’T STOP SEDUCING THINGS. 

So you snap.

You take your player characters, sit them down, tie them up, and force them to listen. For once. You become one of those nightmarish preschool teacher who duct tapes his students to their chairs.

You set your players up for defeat, stacking the odds against them to such an insane degree that they simply have no other choice but to surrender, or maybe you don’t even give them the chance to surrender and kidnap them as they sleep. Every action is batted down, every interruption silenced. You take a breath, and begin to tell your story in peace to your captives.

Do not do this. Please. It is unhealthy and can damage trust.

If you want a passive and silent audience, write a book. This just has the players feeling as if the DM has reached across the table and stolen their character sheet so she can play by themselves.

It manifests in many ways. Overbearing cut-scenes, NPC plot-armour, save-or-die mechanics, vetoed player actions, forced mulligans or redo’s. (Note how these are different from narrative or gameplay effects, like simply being taken prisoner, or getting knocked unconscious / paralysed in combat . The Surrender Fallacy is when the DM refuses player agency and does what he wants without allowing their input)

These are your players - your friends: people who have put aside their time and work to come to your game to play and have fun, not sit by and watch.

For one, they will hate it. They may behave like they accept it at the time, but their resentment will be immediate and sorely bitter. This is not a dynamic you want between your players and your game. If they have no control over their characters or their actions, then they will stop playing and do something else: play with their phones, talk about other things aside from the game. They will not be enjoying their time, no matter how happy you are, and eventually may just choose to not turn up.

To avoid this deathly circumstance you must do one, painful thing: you have to let go of your pride.

Your story will not be perfect - especially with players at the helm of it; it will be disastrous, chaotic, and downright sinister or even unheroic at times. But it will be their story. They will be in control of themselves. They will be acting. they will be playing, and they will be having fun in your world.

Learn to react to their shenanigans rather than demand something of them. Be happy with taking it slow, and do not get antsy when they are not chasing the plot about at breakneck pace. Don’t abandon narrative altogether; continue to keep things tense and the consequences real, but understand that a memorable story is always based off of character choice, rather than having none -  understanding that taking one road of a branching path makes their character unique with the knowledge that noone else would have done that same thing.

Respect your players and their agency, and they shall respect you, and your game.

And, most importantly,

Enjoy

Pixie x

My eBook - Crow Eater - Chapter One: Little Lynchpin - is available for download on ISSUU.com now!

Its here, its free, and its rather damn, sexy if i’m being honest. 

It feels so fulfilling to finally have this see the light of day after all of these hours of pampering and stressing over details. All feedback and comments are welcome, as  I want this project to be a success, and for my readers to receive my best work. 

So, if you like reading fantasy, or about strange worlds of malice and wilderness or merely just like my writing and want to see more of it, then please do check out the eBook here. It is free, it will always be free, and it is available for download on ISSUU.com.

And most importantly, enjoy

Pixie x

Just an update; the record with Tango is 11 natural 1′s in a single session, with 3 of them happening in a row.

Just so People Know ...

I do have a special d20 that I exclusively use for bosses in D&D. It is a transparent and orange one with white lettering and I call him Tango and I love him.

…

He may or may not have single-handedly killed at least three of my major villains through critical failures, however.

I have a suspicion that he might not love me back.

Sunday Respite - Unconventional and Magical Weapons for an Unconventional and Magical World

A warrior is a warrior, no matter for what weapon they work with.

Warriors of steel, of blades, of words, of law, of faith, of bow and string, judgement and patience, shield and hammer - all fulfill their duties within the ranks. For when time peace comes to pass and power swells, war will come. When it does, you will not grow petty over the fashion of the equipment brought to bare against the onslaught. You will hide and pray that whatever warriors there are, will fight well and true to protect all that is good in your world.

That said, some people just can’t be normal and have to put together their own strange contraptions to spill blood and crush bone. These warriors are a fearsome creed, for their unpredictability squanders the tacticians and sends untamed forces into disarray. Often, a successful first attack will be all it takes to win a war, and what better element to success than that of surprise?

So, go forth, my wild lovelies, and take whatever scatter-brained scatter-shot or brain-dead brain-beater you can get your hands on. It may not work, and it certainly won’t be perfect, but on that rare occasion that it does, kingdoms will fall.

Cashier’s Penny-Slot Rifle

To the majority of sane people, this mechanism is surely nothing more than a cube of wood with a crooked tube of tin protruding from its front. The box has a circular hole cut into its top and a crutch-like stock worked into the frame. Into the hole are fed stacks of coins, whereupon they are chewed up by some growling mechanism of gears and pistons. Once a small trigger on the stock is squeezed, the weapon launches forth a wicked barrage of twisted coins and silver shrapnel to chew through flesh and bite into bone. The weapon barks like a bag full of lead cans when it fires and rattles like one too. The motion of it all could easily dislocate a shoulder. Luckily, its the unfortunate buggar on the receiving end that has the more costly interaction of the evening, regardless for the currency dispensed.

Never-Ending Arrow

Only one of the Never-Ending Arrows remains unnotched and undrawn, safely tucked within glass casing, pillowed by lavender linen, hidden beneath lock and key. This is for good reason. Once upon a day gone past, there were dozens of these nefarious little devils, brought to being by some astrologically-influenced fletcher-turned-madman, caught under a pale star’s shine. The Never-Ending Arrow, once fired, cannot be stopped. It cuts through the world like a darting eel would knife through water. Brick, stone, flesh, wood, sea, whatever; there are no exceptions. The saving grace is that, depending upon the geological geometry of your home world, it will either shoot off into space, detaching from the earth’s curvature and becoming the horizon’s problem, or it will find the edge of the great, flat plain, and wire off into the abyss to cause mayhem thereon.

The Great, Man-Eating Cog-Hammer

A heavilly runed warhammer head purrs with a coursing battery kept somewhere within, smoke pluming out of the exhaust on the cap. The haft upon which it is beset carries the humming mechanism like a bull astride a pole-vault, barely sticking upright and swaying with a troubling violence. Set into a cavity upon the business end of the warhammer-head’s face are a pair of broad, toothy gears. They roll into eachother; a hungry, growling maw of iron and coal. When the warhammer is brought to bear upon the world around, the gears are set off to play. They chew into their contact point, pulling skin, steel, silk, and sanity up and away into the rolling, industrial basilisk, ripping and tearing with a dreadfully messy and blunt attrition, spitting the refuse out of a chute at the rear.

Carrion Crow’s Screaming Shield

Beaming brass, shaped into that of a snake’s open mouth - fangs, forked-tongue, and all. Strong, stoic, and utterly perfect in its manufacture: the shield is enough to cover a crouched man from top to toe. This, however, seems to not be enough to entertain the emblazoned, viperous visage it houses. The snake spins upon the shield face as if stuck within an open barrel, cast downhill. Upon command (a word known only to the possessor), the snake’s head will telescopically lunge forward, grasp at a target, snap with toxic teeth, and hoist the victim back with the force of an elephant’s charge, for more personal interactions.

Sword?

Sword? refuses to be named as anything else. Sword? cannot be renamed. Any attempt to re-identify the weapon results in the wordsmith, sculptor, poet, or playwright fumbling at her literature. She turns to the item’s owner, winced expression wearing heavy upon her face, and shrugs, surrendering to call the thing ‘Sword?’ just as all the others did before. This item is a sword, surprisingly. It has a twisted grip of wound leather strips, red over blue, a clean, white blade of a grassleaf’s curvature, and the trappings and tribulations of a well-decorated weapon. However, Sword? is notoriously uncooperative with new users. When first held, and for weeks after - even months and beyond - Sword? will droop in the hand as if it had died. It will fall loose and limp like a severed limb, refusing to turn turgid despite all interactions, pleas, and promises offered. Once Sword? trusts its new friend, it will begin to twist and turn under their command, worming as a dancer’s fabric would. The sword can fit as keys would into locks, activate latches through doorframe-cracks, and even slither down into their throat and return, unbloodied. It is supremely agile. The sword can grow deeply friendly and personal with their new friend, and may go on to follow their command without delay, forever until death.

Enjoy 

Pixie x

Sunday Respite - Verisimilitudinous Villains of Varying Valour and Virtues

There is often a confusion lingering upon the romantic quarters of human minds, one that follows justice about like a hungering dog at the heels of a flock of sheep. The world likes to covet away our greatest virtues and hold them out of reach of others; those deemed unworthy of goodness. The predetermined failures that are doomed to retaliate out of spite eventually succeed in nothing but affirming these twisted beliefs. And so the world keeps turning. This confusion blinds the everyman. He looks to his kin and neighborhood folk with a kind eye, thinking how could they be evil? He sleeps soundly upon his truth, safe and assured. People never learn how close our killers dwell. There are no true monsters of the deep or horrors without, stalking the dark on claw and talon. Nay, the truth of evil is that we all do well by our faith and love until the one, fateful day where enough of the world has fallen and we can justify whatever comes next. We becomes phantoms of our goodness and haunt the world to reclaim it: the stricken foal wandering lost amidst the trees for loss of its mother. We become villains of circumstance. A villain by choice is a hero in another's eye. - So, you want to inspire unbridled terror within the deepest chasms of your player's hearts? Welcome to the club. We have mediocre biscuits and some alright coffee. Here are just under half-a-dozen cretinous cruelties and devilish deviants to chase your adventurers down wind-swept streets and dirtied halls. Captain Witter Thirteen crows flay the dead as they smoulder and rot in the barely field. The houses are flaring red and high against the horizon peaks, great, black snakes of smoke and ember coiling far into the air and off with the morning breeze. The captain lingers on horseback, his men standing by with their pikes against the willow tree by the road. They have their helmets loose upon the grass and are counting coin and assessing some valuables: a belt buckle - maybe silver, maybe tin -, some ivory statuettes from a chess board, a pretty cloak-pin broach. They are waiting on their orders. Where next on this hunt? Captain Witter has not got much further to chase until he meets the coastal cliffs, and then what? Does he think his son's killers sank into the sea or hollered down a lost fisherman and paid their way across to the empire? The questions are all kept close. A loose tongue may be made example of. Besides, Witter has that ghastly look about him again - one that tells that all these questions and countless others are being juggled in that cruel head of his. The captain has the world at his disposal: written warrants and pardons for any and all acts of sin from the desk of the Margravine herself, an army to recruit from with a benefactor in the lieutenant, and a warchest to rival a petty king's treasury. Any of the men would look at Witter and see their fear. For looking upon a man who has all he needs yet nothing he wants is to look upon a man but one poor fortune away from conquering the world. Captain Witter stirrups his horse away from the massacre and off to the road. His men pocket their loot and flock behind him. Caskette Brown When the palace guard were routed, those inside were at the mercy of the storm that was the roaring mob. First were the soldiers who could not flee, then the servants and the kitchen staff, then the maids, then the teachers, and then the craftsmen. The nobility hid in their towers, hoping against hope that their stairs and barred doors could save them. Caskette was in the smithy making horseshoes when the gates were lifted by the short-lived promise of mercy. There were people tearing through the palace grounds, lynching any and all in more than rags and soil away to the town square. She watched out of her window as the guards were beaten and stripped down to skin, then the palace staff were ripped screaming from the halls and carted away by a swarm of the suffering masses, each limb held still by three different men, grips so tight the blood dare not flow. She did not offer a second thought and broke for the stables. She was not going to die here simply because she was better than them. She was not going to scream for their mercy. It was instinct fueling her decisions as she went for the two great draft horses. Fury guided her hand as she latched and fitted them to her Lord's carriage. Hatred had her lash the reins and drive into the horde. But it was justice that had her laughing all the way, shooting through the streets as bodies fell before her, tumbling beneath hoof and wheel, crushed like the ripest, most dreadful of fruit. Myndalir Brasserton A small mind given many options, little time, and saddled with high ideals can bring the world down around him. One such man found himself at the cusp of such a fate and fell hard into its abyss, lapping and wailing as he plummeted beyond retrieval. Myndalir was of a small township, barely sixty persons, and represented those who held disdain for the Baron of the lands. The hills and fields were dangerous and full of horror, yet their lord offered no respite. His patrols were far too infrequent and never came this deep into the woodland unless the taxes were due. Enough was enough, and the people threw out the town elder and succeeded from the barony. Somehow, whether through wit or witlessness, Myndalir found himself in command. He had no spine for leadership, yet was boxed into an authority he never wanted. However, when a regiment of the Baron's rosy-faced men arrived at the town, Myndalir was inspired. Rather than surrender, he redoubled his efforts and gathered who he could to scare the soldiers away. From here, he did everything with one ideal hanging over his empty, little head: defeat the Baron. His people starved, and slaved, and wept for rest. The Baron's taxes of gold compared naught at all to Myndalir's taxes of the soul as he built walls and dug ditches with them. Soon, Myndalir began running out of bodies, as people an away in the night and likely died out in the wild snow. He set about hiring mercenaries to retrieve runners, travelers, and any loner found walking the roads about town. With every passing day, Myndalir was building an empire on pain and fear, but kept his head just as high as his ideals, for he was fighting the true foe of the people: tyranny. The Baron did not even know the town rebelled and spent the winter boar hunting. Mind-Stricken Stories persist of magicians and mages. They tell of wondrous acts of arcane power that would leave pockets emptied for the spectacle, eyes weeping for the beauty, and minds astounded for days on end. The men in robes and hats, speaking of stars and demons. The common folk love stories, we all do. But what we love more than story, is scandal and horror. Rumours circulate the city hold like clouds of flies about a stinking carcass. They tell of people: wives, husbands, priests, bakers - folk who live happy, quiet lives for years without issue or cause for concern, except that a dozen years ago whilst they were young and weak of will, they met with a travelling sorcerer. This man cast upon the child a charm, hypnotising them into a commanding slumber than you do not wake unless you are allowed to. He let them sleep until they dreamt, and then whispered close into their ear a single name of some unknown person from far away. The magician would then wake them and disappear. These children would leave for home, none the wiser, and live to grow into wives, husbands, and the sort. And then, one day, a stranger would arrive in town - some newcomer, entirely innocent and unconcernable of nature. The stranger would live and work away from the person, doing their daily duties out on their side of town, and the two would not meet. Until one day, they cross, perhaps on the market or by the taphouse, and do not even think of eachother. But the person remembers a dream. They recall a sleep, and a wizard who cast it, and a name, and then a face. Their eyes glaze over with mist. They drop their tasks, and turn to the stranger. Without recompense they lunge for them. Wordless, causeless, utterly stricken with madness, they claw at the stranger's eyes, rake at his throat, and bite his flesh. In that moment, they forget who they are and know only one thing: that in that moment, it is either the stranger or them to die, and so they break and tear with their fists. Once the stranger is put out, the person awake to their senses, kneeling in gore by the street side, hands twitching in silence as if the breeze was catching them. This could be anyone. Everyone is a stranger to somebody. Enjoy Pixie x