12 Tips to be a Better Roleplayer

Roleplaying comes easy to a few, the rest of us have to work at it.  Let’s face it roleplaying asks you to be an actor and we weren’t all meant for the big screen, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to at least play on a community theater level.  Here are twelve tips to becoming a better roleplayer.

1.Create a character you are able to rolepaly.

Set yourself up for success by creating a character that you are better able to roleplay.  If you are new to roleplaying or recognize that it is a week point in your game then start by creating characters that closely resembles yourself.  When deciding what actions to take in the game you are always having to ask yourself not what you would do in this situation but what your character would do.  Creating a character that has a similar personality and moral compass to yourself allows you to more easily answer this question.  Make the character just different enough from yourself that it’s easy to answer the question of what your character would do instead of yourself.  As you get more comfortable roleplaying you can make your characters increasingly different from yourself.

2.Play up your backstory.

D&D is a world that only exists as we create it.  Spend time on your character’s backstory, as it should shape how your character acts and thinks.  Having an elaborate backstory though doesn’t do you any good if you don’t include it in your play.  Only what you say or do actually exists.  Your character’s back story is nothing but words on paper until you either talk about it or have your character act in ways that are directly related to it.  Your character’s backstory is the blueprint for how your character acts, thinks, feels, and behaves, make use of this tool by playing it up.  It does you no good to write an elaborate backstory of how your character fell in love with a dwarf who broke their heart and now they hate all dwarves  if you don’t act that out whenever your PC interacts with a dwarf.  Give life to your character’s back story because by doing that you create a much more memorable experience.

3.Be creative.

This one can be kind of difficult because in some ways you’re limited by how creative your character is.  Still play your character as creatively as you can.  Make him or her unique and memorable.  Maybe you create some sort of quirk for your character, like a dwarf that always has a belching fit after drinking ale.  Another way to get creative is to have your character come up with nontraditional ways to handle a situation.  It’s easy to have your rogue pick a lock but maybe your rogue has a wizard polymorph him into a spider that can fit through the key hole to sneak in and scout the room before opening the door for the party.

4.Be engaged in the game.

Be an active player not a passive player.  Don’t let others at the table make all the decisions, you don’t have to put in your two cents all of the time but make sure that you are participating more than just during your turn in combat.  Give the game your full attention and participate.

5.Don’t become distracted by the outside world.

 A game of D&D is supposed to transport us to another world.  Turn off cell phones and put away any other distractions when it’s time to play.  The DM and your fellow players deserve your full attention.  You can’t enjoy the game if you’re not paying attention to it. 

6.Take part in telling the story.

A campaign or quest is a story to be told that isn’t fully written.  The DM has a general outline but it is really up to the players what direction the story goes in and what happens along the way.  Make your character meaningful to the story.  Make your character advance the plot line in some way.  Involve your character in more than just combat rounds.  Interact with NPC’s.  When you’re in a shop, for example, ask if the shop keep has any family in the area.  His or her answer could lead to a side quest or just a richer experience when you’re in town because by making your character take an active role in the story telling you make the other characters come to life.

7.Don’t tell other players how to play their character.

Everyone has their own way of viewing what their character would and wouldn’t do, their character is their creation.  It is not up to anyone else to decide how someone should play their character.  If it’s an alignment issue trust that the DM will work it out in game if it is necessary.  You want to play your character how you envision him/her, afford other players the same right. 

8.Get along with the others at the table.

 No one can focus on properly playing the game when there’s infighting going on between players.  If you have an issue with another player pull them aside before or after the game and talk things out with them.  Chances are talking to them will resolve any issues.  If that doesn’t solve the differences between you then at least come to the agreement that you will keep your personal differences aside during the game.  Just because everyone at the table needs to get along doesn’t mean the PC’s have to be best buds.  Your paladin may not trust your buddy’s rogue and that’s okay as long as you don’t let it go too far in game and as long as the conflict between PC’s doesn’t carry over to the players.  Maybe your paladin keeps a closer eye on the rogue than the other PC’s but don’t have your paladin strip search the rogue, while amusing that takes things too far.

9.Respect the DM.

DMing is not an easy job and your DM is putting in a lot of hours behind the scenes to bring you an enjoyable campaign.  For the length of your session your DM has spent at least that same amount of time during the week preparing things.  The DM works hard and deserves your respect. 

10.Don’t be a rules lawyer.

Rules lawyers can drain all the fun out of a game.  Honestly the rules are more like guidelines and to make things work in any given campaign the DM is going to have to fudge the rules a bit or make their own house rulings.  Don’t argue with the DM over rules or other things, trust that your DM has a method to their madness.  When you start bickering with the DM you take everyone out of the moment and drag them all back into the real world and bring things to a screeching halt.  Respect and trust in your DM and play on.  If you really think that something needs addressed discuss it with the DM outside of game time.  The game isn’t so much about the rules as it is having a good time and telling a good story.

11.Accept failure.

The dice are going to hate you some nights.  Maybe you can’t succeed on an acrobatics check or you don’t get the information you need from a NPC or you fail your death saving throws.  At some point in your D&D career you’re going to fail at something.  Do so gracefully and figure out a way around the problem.

12.Have fun!

The most important thing to being a better roleplayer is to have fun and the more fun you’re having the more fun everyone will have.

5 Tips to Help the DM Play Adversaries

Part of being a quality DM is creating memorable encounters and in order to do that a DM must be able to bring creatures and villains to life. We spend time creating memorable NPC’s but it can be easy to forget about role playing and make combat nothing more than a numbers game. The following are some tips for the DM to bring the creatures and villains in your encounters to life.

1.Read the description in the monster manual. This is a role playing game and it’s not just the players who role play; the DM has the daunting task of role playing all NPC’s and all of the opponents that the party will face. It’s easy to get caught up in the combat and forget that it’s not just as simple as slashing with a sword and casting spells. Playing the advisory is more than just a numbers game, and it is the DM’s responsibility to make encounters richer by role playing each creature and villain the party encounters. When you choose an opponent for your players to face the first thing I recommend you do is read the description in the Monster Manual. It is not just fluff, the description about each creature contains valuable information to help you play the opponent you’ve chosen.

2.Do they fight alone or with friends? This ties in with tip number one. Some creatures fight alone, some fight as a pack, some are usually found alongside other creatures. Reading the description in the Monster manual will give you insight into this question. By following the advice found there you can construct more fulfilling encounters. Fighting an ogre that has crossed the party’s path is fine, but knowing that ogre bands are frequently found with goblinoids, orcs, or trolls makes an encounter much more exciting.

3.Play up or down to their intelligence. It’s easy to have the creatures just fight as you deem would be the best course of action, but remember this is role playing. You have to think about how intelligent your creature or villain is. Ask yourself, “How smart is this creature or person? Would it have the sense to take out the biggest threat first or would it just target whoever is closest to it?” An ogre is not going to have the same tactical knowledge that a half-elf barbarian has. As the DM you need to look at things through the intelligence level of the creature you are playing and be sure to play true to that creature's abilities.

4.Find their motivation. Being a DM is a lot like being an actor. Good actors always know why their characters are doing what they do. Role playing a creature or a villain is no different. Why the creature is doing something affects how they do it. A halfling forced to steal an artifact or have his family killed is going to have a different fighting style than a human warlock bent on world domination. Always know the back story of why your villains and creatures are doing what they do even if the motives will never be revealed to your players.

5.Understand their tactics. This is where you need to have at least a little knowledge about how animals hunt and military strategy. You don’t have to be an expert but having some knowledge will help you out. Watch some documentaries on predatory animals. Knowing that a wolf and a shark hunt in different ways will help you to bring life to your creatures by making your encounters more fleshed out. Watch some history documentaries, how was the Huns’ fighting style different from the Romans or the Celts? By looking into these real world examples you can make your villains more three dimensional and realistic. Have different villains or creatures use these different tactics and you will create memorable encounters.

5 Tips for the New DM

I remember the overwhelming feelings I had the first time I DM’d. It seemed like a most daunting and perhaps even an insurmountable task had been laid before me. I didn’t know any other DM’s at the time, I had no one to ask for advice or to guide me through the process. Below you’ll find a few things that I’ve learned that can help out those new to DMing.

1.Make the game more important than the rules. Yes, we need agreed upon rules in order to play the game but don’t become a slave to them. No rules lawyers need apply. What is most important, first and foremost, is providing a great game for the players. Sometimes the best way to do that is to fudge the rules or in some cases make your own rules. What playing D&D is about is telling an engaging interactive story. Never forget that your most important job as a DM is to tell a great story for the players. Everything with DMing is a judgment call. Trust your judgment, if a player wants to do something and it doesn’t quite fit with the rules but it would make for a great part of the story always feed the story, not the rules.

2.Don’t be afraid to really role play NPC’s. It can be difficult not to feel self-conscious but as a DM you need to have multiple personalities and act them out. One of the things that is often talked about among DM’s is how to get their players to better role play their PC’s. The DM sets the stage. Play your NPC’s to the hilt. Firstly, because it makes the game more alive and memorable. Secondly, because the DM sets the tone. It may take some time but if you as the DM throw yourself into role playing NPC’s it will set the example and create an atmosphere where players are more comfortable with role playing themselves. They don’t have to feel so self-conscious because you’ve created an environment where role playing is normal not, weird and they aren’t alone in role playing. One thing players have told me as to why they shy away from role playing is because they feel weird about it. They don’t want to be the only one at the table doing it. If as a DM you are putting your heart into role playing then the players no longer feel weird about it because they aren’t the only one trying to role play.

3.Appeal to the senses. None of it is real but a good DM tries to make it feel real to the players. Immerse your players in the game through their senses. Don’t overload them but whenever they are in a situation try to appeal to at least two of the five senses. Do they smell pies cooling in a window or maybe the stench of sweaty mud covered orcs? It’s easy to focus on what the players see but be sure to include other senses to make the encounter more complete.

4.All creatures are not created equal. Your players will encounter many creatures and villains through your campaigns and they do not all used the same fighting styles and tactics. An abolith doesn’t fight the same way as a kobold or an acolyte. Part of roleplaying is making sure that you make things challenging and interesting by basing your creatures’ actions on their own intelligence level and what tactics they would naturally use. The monster manual can help with this, read the description of each creature you will be using. Take some time to think about what that creature’s natural behavior would be. Does it make knee jerk reactions or is it more calculating? Is it usually found alone, in a pack, or with specific other creatures? Answering these kinds of questions will give you a better understanding of what makes the creature tick and using this information will make your encounters richer and more memorable.

5.Don’t be afraid to wing it. Whether running a mod or a campaign of your own design you must keep in mind what I call the law of DMing, “Your players will always find a way to mess up your best laid plans.” At some point they, are going to deviate from what you expect or want them to do. Don’t let this send you into the wall. Wing it. Always be ready and willing to wing it. One of the things I do is think about what some of the different choices my players might make when presented with a situation. Thinking about this ahead of time helps me to be more prepared but even then I still have to wing it at some point in almost every session. Have no fear and remember that your campaign isn’t written in stone; it’s okay to just fly by the seat of your pants. The main thing you have to remember in pulling this off is not to let your players know that you’re making it up as you go. If you’ve ever seen a cat fall off of a chair and get up and walk away like, “I meant to do that,” that’s the attitude you need to take. If you act like you meant to do that all along your players will never be the wiser and the game will go on without a hitch.

Demonic DM

Last night we had the joy of all of us being able to play in person instead of over Roll20. Carter was home, as he is once a year, so we made the drive to pick up Hal and we all got together to play. It was the first time Carter and Hal got to meet in person. It was definitely a memorable night full of complex decisions and DM treachery.

Normally I’m pretty straight forward with encounters. I put a baddie before them and they engage it, but last night I was more devious. Several times during the night they had to decide if they would engage what lay before them or find some other way to handle the situation. They managed to navigate things well. Instead of attacking the deep gnomes they bartered with them to pass through their territory. Instead of taking on waves of duergar they snuck through the outskirts of their underground town. Narrowly escaping detection.

One of the more interesting battles was against a group of drunken orcs fighting each other over water skins. First, from behind cover, they took out the alpha orc. Then I treated the remaining orcs, now fighting amongst themselves in complete chaos without their leader, as a swarm. Not technically how one should play it but these were untrained orcs, with little more sentience than a dog, who were more concerned with fighting each other over the water skins than the outside threat. After defeating the orc swarm the group discovered that three of the water skins actually contained healing potions.

Most memorable of the night is e magic items they found in a chest. Judgeing from the tracks two duergar had dropped the chest and ran back towards the duergar town. After looting the chest the party discovered the likely reason the duergar abandoned the chest; an umber hulk. For those interested here is a list of the magical items they discovered.

Amulet of Guen ~ an amulet containing the eye of a displacer beast. It allows the wearer to use the beast’s displacement ability as a reaction once per encounter.

Winged Boots ~ these were for my halfling who was having a little trouble keeping up with the party. They are a set of boots with small hawk wings on the side that allow the player to move as per the Fly spell once per encounter.

Mage Bane Armor ~ this is a set of studded leather armor. The wearer has resistance to any spell that requires an attack roll. The wearer has disadvantage on casting any spell that requires an attack roll.

Short Bow of Bestow Curse ~ this was for my monk who uses his bow as a melee weapon in close quarters combat. When the player uses the bow for a melee hit on a target the target becomes cursed and takes an extra 1d8 damage anytime it is hit with an attack.

Hand Axe of Ensnaring Strike ~ twice per day when a target is hit with this weapon it suffers the effects of Ensnaring Strike as per the spell. It regains this ability after a long rest.

Dagger of Agiel ~ this was my favorite one. Taken by Hal, when he picked it up all he knew was that it gave him a +3 to atk and dmg rolls. Turns out the dagger houses the soul of the demon Agiel who now can control Hal’s halfling. When the demon wants to take control of Hal’s character Hal must roll a wisdom saving throw with a DC 17. If he succeeds he fights off Agiel’s influence but if he fails he must do whatever the demon commands. The dagger cannot be destroyed, put down, or be given away. The only way to get rid of it is for someone to cast remove curse.

My players were dumb struck that I would give one of them a cursed item. They are on their way into the underdark, none of them can cast remove curse and they’re moving into hostile territory where there is no one who would be willing to help them. They are on a covert mission, which just got infinitely harder since the demon can take control of their barbarian at any time.

It was so much fun to play in person and I wish we had that option every week. There’s just something about playing in person and rolling real dice that makes the game so much more interesting. I’ll be sad to go back to Roll20 but at least it’s a way for us to play with all of us being in different areas.

The Flailing Barbarian

Last night's session began with a plague of technical difficulties which put us all in a flippant mood. After we got over our microphone difficulties we discovered that roll20 is in the middle of revamping their character sheets so all of the player characters and my NPC's were all messed up. We overcame these issues and moved on with the session. It was just one of those nights though.

They began the night on the outskirts of the surface drow town they had been hired to go to. In order to get there, they had to cross a less than spectacular bridge. This began Hal's night of horrible rolls. Near the end of the bridge he fell through. He then failed his check to grab onto the bridge as he fell. He did manage to grab onto some rocks on the side of the cliff to keep himself from falling to his death. Then he failed his dex check to retrieve his rope and hook from his backpack and lost his rope down the chasm. After all of this Tyr lowered his rope over the edge allowing Hal to grab on and be pulled up. There was some joking and some cursing, during which Tyr rolled a sleight of hand check to tie a rope onto Hal's belt, he then proceeded to kick the halfling over the cliff and let him dangle a moment before pulling him back up.

They took care of the niceties in town and then headed off into the cave system. The cave opens into a dwarf mining operation that has a series of catwalks leading all over it. Our pour halfing was as nibble as a rhino on rollerskates. Again he failed his check to make it across the crosswalks. By this point Carter had had enough of the fumbling barbarian and picked him up and carried him across the remaining catwalks.

The group then encountered a group of goblins who demanded gold from them in order to pass. Figuring they'd be able to make quick work of goblins they declined to give up any gold and engaged them. For the most part, they did well but then the goblins started to make mince meat out of Tyr, hitting him several times in a row. In the end, only the goblins died.

Owlbears

We have started our newest campaign and so far it's a success. The party this time consists of; a half-elf ranger, a halfling barbarian, and a shifter rogue/monk. My husband and I homebrewed the shifter race for this adventure. He wanted to base his character off of the character Geth from the Eberron book series and we used the 5e race format to create his race based off of existing races.

The party started at level one, so the session was really about small encounters to get them leveled up a little before they get to the meat of the quest. I like to have times during the quest where my players are expecting one thing and get something completely different and I got to have a great one of those moments Sunday night. The party was moving through a stand of young trees and they could hear a stream ahead. They started to hear some splashing in the stream and started to sneak closer. Carter, the half-elf ranger, rolled a perception check which resulted in the following. “Through the trees, you, see what appears to be two bears splashing about in the stream.” They debated, should they go around or engage the bears. Hal, the halfling barbarian, wanted to go around but he was out voted. They snuck forward and I reveled the slide showing what they were fighting. “What the fuck is that!” Carter exclaimed. They were not up against two bears per say, they were up against two owlbears. What followed was a pretty impressive encounter that left Carter's character nearly dead.

Sunday was the first time I DM'd without the use of encounter maps. Hal was of course bummed, but I loved it. I think the encounters were much more fluid and it made my players better describe what they were doing in combat. Tyr and Carter are getting used to it, they both kind of like the visual of exactly where they are in relation to everything but they both said they thought it went well. It's only been one sessions of playing this way so I'm going to reserve judgment until we've got a few more sessions like this under our belts. At this point though I'm really liking the theater of the mind over the encounter maps. I'm not wasting time on tokens that didn't properly tie to character sheets, messing with the faulty initiative roller, or having to move tokens for players.

Changes to my Style

The Underdark is the main backdrop of my next quest, but the setting isn't all that's different. I'm approaching things in a couple of new ways. Normally I compose a quest by coming up with a plot skeleton and then I write out certain scenes that I plan to occur during the quest. Now, I've been fortunate in that this has worked out for me. I've never had to force my players into a situation. Thankfully they've always taken the hints and got themselves to where I planned them to be. I've been lucky because goodness knows they've thrown me a lot of twists and curves and polygons over the years. This time I just have the skeleton of the plot planned out, I don't have any prepared NPC dialogues or scenes. I normally DM 80% improv, 20% planned out in advance. For this quest, it's 1% plan and 99% by the seat of my pants. I generally do well at improv so I'm expecting that things should go well since I'm pretty good at coming up with things on the fly.

The bigger change this time has to do with mapping, I'm not using any. This is a pretty bold move given that we are playing on Roll20.net. Instead of maps players will have to use the theater of the mind. I've combed the net for tons of artwork and as they move through the quest I'll take them to different slides that will set the mood, the rest is up to their imaginations. I consider this to be a big positive because I don't really like using encounter maps on Roll20 for a fair few reasons.

Here are some reasons why I don't like them. A decent sized map takes up too much room on the grid, you can't see the map all at once without giving up tons of detail, and it's too hard to find the part of the grid you're working on when you actually have the map at a size where you can see all of the details. I've been using small maps so that the whole map fits on the screen but then I feel like I'm limiting the players' range of movement too much.

Tokens have proven to be a problem and I don't like to take time out of the quest to try to fix them. One of the problems we have is that Carter plays on an iPad and the app very often doesn't let him move his token. We waste time with him trying to move it and then I wind up just having to move it for him. All of which takes us out of the moment. The other problem I have is that tokens don't always reliably connect with character sheets. I've had so many occasions where I've tied a token to a character sheet and it works fine on one map but when we move to the next map I've got to retie the token to the sheet. I feel that tokens also take away from the players' imaginations. Rarely can you find a token that exactly or even closely resembles how a player envisions their character and I feel that that mismatch visual cue takes them out of the fantasy and makes it harder for them to role play their characters. In my last campaign I had a token that was very disruptive. The guys decided she looked like a stripper and there was no end to the pole and glitter thong jokes. Funny stuff, but what was supposed to be an intense wizards battle was way too light hearted. Don't get me wrong the guys had fun but my goal is always to get them deeper into their characters. Things in the quest can be funny, and I encourage that, but when the jokes bring us out of the reality I've created it's a problem in my book and that's why I'm going theater of the mind on this next quest.

My other problem is that I use Dundjinni to make the maps. First off something is wrong with mine, making me very limited in my map making choices. Making things worse than usual because I feel the program can't keep up with my creativity on a good day. I can't make maps that match what I imagine in my mind. For one thing it's a square system and my mind works on curves. When in nature do you find things that are a 90 degree angle? Now I know that there are curved walls you can use and there's always the pencil tool that allows you to draw but I still just can't get things close enough to my imagination. I think it's better to give good descriptions and let the players draw their own scene in their minds rather than throw a sub par map at them which gives them a visual cue that takes away from their imagination.

Tyr is game for this change and I think Carter will be just fine with it once he plays an encounter or two this way. Hall on the other-hand is not going to be happy about this change. Hopefully I'll be providing an exciting enough quest that by the end he will forgive me for not using his beloved maps. I hope this new quest with these changes will be as exciting as I feel it has the potential to be. I know I'm excited to dive into it.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, to the Underdark We Go

Things have been a little hectic lately and we've been hit or miss on playing which is why I've been lax in my posting. Last week we finished out the campaign, called Volk, that I based around Hal's cleric with an insatiable lust for killing the undead. I've noticed a trend in my campaign construction when my end villain isn't a dragon, I seem to make the uber “bad guy” a woman. I also tend to make evil NPC's women as well. It has something to do with the way I think. When you're driving down the road and someone's driving like a moron the average person will refer to the idiot driver as the opposite gender to themselves. I on the other hand always assume it's a woman and my husband always assumes they're a man. We're weird, what can I say, but I think it's the wiring in my brain. My players didn't bat an eyelash at the evil women NPC's but for some reason, a female necromancer at the end kind of threw them. They all expressed their shock and said from the way the quest had gone they were really expecting a guy.

This coming Sunday we move on to a new quest, most of which will take place in the Underdark nervous about this campaign. I shamefully admit I don't read the Drizzt books or the Dragonlance books, and I know nothing of Faerun, but all of my players do. Hal and Carter are a little familiar with the underdark and Tyr, my husband, is an underdark expert. I think I have a really good plot, but I'm afraid they won't find it up to snuff. I'm afraid I'll have something in the quest that they'll go, “that just wouldn't happen.” I've had Tyr give me an overview of the underdark. He's walked me through the levels, the races, fighting styles, monsters, and politics. Which I think has given me a pretty good handle on things. Still I'm nervous, I feel like I've got a lot to live up to and high expectations to meet. I've tried to read books that feature the underdark but to be honest I'm dyslexic and I can't read every old authors writing style. I do read, a lot, but books have to be written in certain styles for my brain not to turn them into a jumble. My plot seems pretty solid to me, though this one is a little different from my usual plot set up, more about that in another blog post. Despite my anxiety I'm really excited for this campaign, I think I'll be providing a rich experience that my players will be able to immerse themselves into. I'm always trying to get them to go deeper into their characters and I think this setting and plot will help them do just that.

Puzzling

Our last session was pretty combat intense. I try to balance campaigns out between story line and the amount of combat because I want my players to get caught up in a story not just smashing things. The way it worked out though, was that last night it was mostly combat. There were two breaks from combat and the first of them was in the ruins of a warlock’s tower. The warlock was still there and offered to play them at a game of Loki’s dice, a game I was inspired to come up with. I’ll dedicate a blog post just to the game when I get a chance. Both of the PCs played until they won magical items. 5e is written to be low in magical items but with just Tyr and Hal playing I felt they could use the boost. They are playing well but let’s face it, magic weapons and items are just freaking cool. Then the PC’s got to try out their new gear as they fought their way through a crypt of undead, where they found a mysterious amulet.

We moved back onto the main track of the quest as Tyr and Hal proceeded to a set of watery ruins. They are on an island but the ruins they must investigate have sunken into a small lake. It is here that the boys encountered a medusa and Hal became turned to stone just before Tyr could deliver the deathblow to the Medusa. With only two players I allowed Tyr to transform Hal back to himself with the death of the Medusa.

Their tribulations for the night didn’t end there. After defeating the medusa the next door they needed to get through was a puzzle. There is a mural around the room and a door with a strange locking mechanism. The mural is done in 10 frames. They depict in order; a boar, an elk, a bear, a snake, a fungus, a blink dog, a kobold, a kenku, a medusa, a hydra. The first of the three dials on the door has a snake, a fungus, a kobold, a kenku, a hydra. The second has a blink dog, a snake, a boar, an elk. The third and inner most has a hydra, a bear, a medusa. Answer: snake, blink dog, hydra. It is simply that the animals follow the order on the mural. So the first animal on the mural that is on the first dial is the snake. The nextt animal on the mural on the second dial is the blink dog and the next animal on the mural on the third dial is the hydra.

This puzzle is where we get into some principles of DMing. I’ve talked to a lot of DM’s who say, “When I make a puzzle that I think is easy my players find it incredibly difficult. When I make one that I think is hard, they solve it in seconds.” I thought the door would be easy, especially since I was emphasizing the words “in order” but my players found it too difficult. Granted it was after midnight when they were trying to solve this. Which leads me into one of the principles of DMing that I learned early on; always give your players an out. Never give them something that is impassable and quest ending. With this puzzle I gave the players an out. Tyr started to play with the door and discovered that when he landed on a certain animal there was a “click.” He played with the door until he got the right combo and thus it unlocked. Did I want things to work out that way? No, but everyone was tired and I felt the best thing for the quest was to give my players an out.

First Impressions of Roll20

Here are my first impressions on using roll20. First I have to say that my preference is always to play in person. I like the human interaction and my DM style with props etc. is just far more suited to playing in person. The situation we find ourselves in does not make in person play possible right now and our only option to continue playing was to find some way to play online. At first, we considered playing over Skype but that uses up a good bit of bandwidth and posed some sound problems. We decided to try out roll20.com and overall I think it worked well for having to play online. My overall review is positive but I’ll go through what I did and did not like.


Pros


~ I can add portraits in to set the mood, something I didn’t do in person.


~ I can import my handmade maps after scanning them onto my computer.


~ The whisper feature is great for passing DM notes.


~ 3d dice roll for those who prefer a dice roller to actual dice. I prefer real dice but Hal prefers a dice roller.


~ I control who has control of what tokens on the board.


~ The “ping” feature lets you draw someone’s attention to a specific point on the map.


~ The drawing feature makes it easy to mark the area of area effect spells. It also allows players to plot out their movements Madden style before actually making moves.


~ You can choose to use video & voice, just voice, or just chat to communicate with other players. You can enable the squares for video and have small or large screens or you can just show the nameplates of players. You can also mute a player, which comes in handy because Tyr and I are actually in the same room. This way I hear his actual voice and not his voice with a delayed computer echo.


~ I control what page players are on and I can view another page while they are on the page I assign them to.


~ Now I haven’t used this feature yet, I’ll be using it when we play next, but in theory, it seems good. It’s called fog of war and it lets you hide parts of the map and reveal sections to the PCs as you play. I had to watch a tutorial on how to use it because it’s not obvious what you need to do to make it work.


~ If we choose to in the future we can look for an additional player through roll20.


~ My players had a great experience.


Cons


~ We used voice only and it kept dropping out. We’d have to wait for it to come back, which held up game play. We’re going to download Teamspeak and give that a try. Which I find inconvenient, it just makes one more window I have to have open on my computer.


~ It takes a lot more time to set up a quest/campaign in roll20than it does to set one up for table top play.


~ Handmade maps don’t match up with the roll20 grid. There are ways to work around this but I still find it annoying.

~ Large maps are hard to use on this platform. You really need a small map that fits into the dimensions viewable on the map screen without having to scroll.


~ This is only an issue for the DM. You need too many windows open at one time and in order to see my word document where my quest is typed out I have to cover the chat box during battles or the whole screen when reading text.


~ It really is not designed for my style of DMing. If you’ve watched Chris Perkins at PAX he generally has his PCs on one map for the whole session and that works perfect with roll20. I on the other hand can go through ten maps in one session and that can be kind of cumbersome on roll20.


~ This goes along with the last con. This was a point Tyr brought up. He has to reenter his HP on every map. Time consuming and annoying. Now, technically as the DM there is a way I could make their HP carry over from one map to the next but then every time they level up I’ve got to go in and redo their token and then if I have maps already made up I’ve got to go in, delete their current tokens on those pages, and replace their tokens on those pages. I’ve got too much to handle as a DM as it is without adding that to it.


Again I have to say, nothing beats DMing in person. If you find yourself in a situation like us then roll20 is a great option.

Ship Combat

One of my challenges for this quest was coming up with a sea battle between my PCs’ frigate and a pirate frigate. Sea battles are one of the areas where I wish WOTC would iron out and have a set of rules and stats for. Since there are no 5e rules, at least at this point, for running ships I had to come up with my own. I devised an AC and HP for each ship and came up with ballistas and their stats. My PC’s decided they didn’t like the ballistas because they had to roll a strength check to load them and then make an attack roll to try to hit anything. So when the pirate frigate approached they choose to lob spells until the ship was close enough for boarding. I felt the strength check was necessary because Omar’s PC was a halfling, who obviously did not have the strength to load the huge ballistas on her own.

Liar's Dice

I love using props in game; so last night I added a hands on game in the game. The Player’s Handbook offers proficiency with a gamer’s set for some of the backgrounds but I’ve never found instructions for how to play the D&D in game games that it lists. I didn’t want to use chess or have the PC’s play poker with the playing cards because I was afraid that using such everyday games would pull the players back into reality instead of enriching the role-playing. I decided to have the PC’s play Liars Dice in the tavern. Some of you may have seen Liars Dice before; it was featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest. I think this was very successful because it was something different and it fits in perfectly at the port city tavern.

Room Markers and Tabletop

I got tired of my players using post-it notes on the table to mark the dimensions of rooms. My solution was to use stone spray paint on Duplo blocks to make D&D wall markers for our table. As a side note our playing table is upcycled from a coffee table I hated. I took the top off and wood burned in a grid. The squares are 1.5” by 1.5”, perfect for minis.

Dice Tray

So it was one fall that we started playing D&D and Omar keep complaining because the table we were using at the time was padded and he couldn’t hear the dice roll. Now I agree, it’s nice to hear the dice roll but it doesn’t ruin the game for me when someone uses a dice roller or when the table is padded. It was ruining the game for Omar which, because we had to hear about it on every dice roll, was ruining the game for the rest of us. I let them use a decorative autumn tray I had to roll their dice, with the stated expectation that Omar would come up with a permanent tray. That never happened and my decorative tray got ruined. So just yesterday I finally broke down and repainted my tray to make it an official dice-rolling tray. Why we still need it when they can roll on the new wooden table I don’t know but here it is and this is how I made it.

I started by repainting the tray black. Then I printed off the design on regular printer paper and cut it out. I applied a coat of mod podge to the back of the paper and placed it on the tray. Then I let that dry before applying a coat of mod podge over the top. Just a tip: when you print your design let it dry for a bit so the ink doesn’t smear when you do your top coat of mod podge.

Inspiration Tokens

I was inspired by another DM to make these. They are Inspiration tokens made from wood slices embellished by a wood burning tool. Now I have something physical to hand my players when they earn inspiration. I like having props that make the game more tangible.

NPC Cleric

Over the weekend we started our Ravensrest campaign. One of my favorite parts was unveiling my NPC Cleric to travel with the party. She’s a Moon Elf dedicated to Sehanine Moonbow and a pacifist. She has taken a vow that prevents her from causing any physical harm to another being. Her past is sordid and mostly a mystery but she is a powerful healer for the party. We’ve also decided to convert the campaign from 3.5 to 5e which gives her, even more, depth and mystery.

DIY Potion Bottles

These are super simple to make.

I used the jars from an old spice rack. Wash them out really good and fill them with water. Add a few drops of food coloring and stir with a chopstick. Keep adding water and stirring until you have the shade you desire, then cap with the bottle toppers or use a cork.

Making Your Own Parchment Paper

I like using props when I DM and one of my staples is making maps and notes for the players that look like old parchment. Here's how I do it.

When making notes I use my computer to print them out in a font that I feel suits the tone, theme, and purpose of the quest. If you need to find some interesting fonts check out dafont.com for some great ones.

Maps I tend to hand draw on printer paper.

Either way, once you have your note or map you'll want to make the edges less perfect. There are two options that I use. First, you could just carefully tear down each edge of the paper. The second is to burn the edges with a lighter. *Be very careful when doing this both for safety and not to burn away a part of the map or note.

Now to make it look and feel more like parchment. Brew a batch of tea and let it cool to room temp. Once cooled I pour it into a glass baking dish that will fit the paper. Submerge your paper in the tea. Ideally, you want to let it soak over night and I don't recommend putting more than three pieces of paper in. If you don't have over night or just don't have the patience a couple of hours will get you a light version of the effect.

After it's soaked I carefully pull the paper out of the tea and set it on a crumpled up bath towel and use a blow dryer on it until the page is completely dry.

Viola, you've got parchment!

How I Became a DM

This is the tale of how I came to be DM and how our group got started. So in what seems like a far away time and place our hero Tyr, who was laid off, took a temp job and at this craptastic slave pit where he met Omar. Hours spent inside a sweltering box truck got the two to talking and they discovered that they both loved D&D but hadn't had a group to play with in forever. Their problem was that they both came across players from time to time but they almost never found someone willing to DM or that was any good at being a DM.

In the past, on more than one occasion, Tyr had tried to get me into playing D&D but I'd never really had a good experience. While the general rule is that you have to put in some serious time playing before you can think about being a DM, Tyr saw something in me. Over the course of a month or so he talked me into coming up with a quest and being a DM for him and Omar. During that time Omar got in touch with his cousin Hal who also wanted to play. They were both skeptical that a female who had barely any experience could be a competent DM but they were willing to give me a shot since they all wanted to play and didn't have a DM. Both Hal and Omar had played since D&D began and I quickly gained their approval. Hal has played in groups all over the U.S. and says that he's amazed by me. That even though I don't have a lot of player experience I'm one of the best DMs he's ever seen, which to me is some pretty high praise.

Dumb Dwarf came a long a little while later. An 18-year-old nube who we took in and taught the game, his girlfriend was our baby sitter.

And that's pretty much how our group came to be.

DMing for the First Time

Being a DM for the first time seemed like a daunting task. My palms were sweating and my stomach hurt as we all sat around the table. I knew that no matter how I did my husband would appreciate me for trying, even if I turned out to be terrible. Hal and Omar had never met me before and part of me was afraid that they'd tear me to ribbons. Part of me felt like a fraud with such little player experience behind me. I felt like I was on stage, and really being a DM is a performance where you play most of the rolls. By halfway through the night, I had started to become more at ease with my role, the guys were getting into the quest, and they said I was doing well.

After a couple of sessions (we generally play for around 6 hours) I really got into it. I enjoyed coming up with the story, maybe all of those writing classes in college were actually coming in handy. Theater class was coming in handy too as I tried to bring my NPC's to life. The guys told me flat out that I'm unlike any other DM they've ever had. I even try to make physical props whenever possible; from antiqued notes and maps to potion bottles.

The longer I DM the easier some of the aspects get, like mechanics of the game. Other aspects get harder, like handling a problem player or guest. It's never easy but I find it more rewarding than being a player. Now that I DM, I can't imagine a life without D&D.