DM Theory: Does Someone Really Have To Be a Cleric? Thoughts on party composition.

Does someone really always have to be a cleric?  Sometimes it’s a drag to always have a priest around.  What if everyone wants to be a wizard? Will they all just hide behind one another whenever danger appears? Or, God forbid, what if the entire party is a bunch of Fighters?  How will they ever win? D&D is not just a role playing game, but also a game of well defined roles among the party.  Each character meshes with those around him to form a perfect combination that is well suited to wreak havoc on their environment. Sort of like Voltron. But what if the players just make the characters that they want to make and some essential aspect of party cohesion gets over looked? Well, it’s certainly not the end of the world. And as a DM I actually really like when traditional class roles break down and the party is forced to be creative to circumvent a problem that is tailored for a class that they may not have.  Watching a group of Fighters try to deal with a locked door is generally a lot of fun.  Or some negotiating when no one has a Charisma above eight.

Since it’s inception, D&D has sort of had the iconic four character party as the ideal.  The brutish warrior, the sneaky and clever thief, the cleric that patches everything up and the aloof wizard that saves the day when everyone else is overmatched.  And that’s all well and good, but it gets old and can be boring.  And divvying up the treasure is always far too peaceful.  Whenever we are starting up a new game and it’s character creation day I do my best to encourage players to make the character that they want to play, not the one that they think that the party needs.  Realistically, these characters were born and raised totally independent of one another so it seems highly unlikely that a group of strangers will have perfectly complementary abilities and skills. It’s fine if two characters both have Knowledge (Nature), it’s a good skill.

I’m currently DMing for a group of five players that has a party composition that leaves plenty to be desired.  They consist of a ranger, fighter, barbarian, monk, and dragon shaman. You’ve probably noticed that they have no arcane magic, no divine magic, and really no thieving skills (the monk and ranger can sneak around, but they ain’t getting in places without the key). So what have I done to make sure that this party isn’t chewed up by a world that expects certain attributes from it’s adventurers? Nothing. I have done absolutely nothing differently to cater to them. Why would I? Just because none of them wanted to be a rogue, it doesn’t mean that everyone in town forgets to lock their doors.  Or that treasure hoards don’t have wands.  For me, it’s very enjoyable watching them try to figure out how to deal with a problem that could easily be solved if they had a different type of character with them.  A recent example of this is a locked metal box that the Ranger found in the cabin of a ship that they had stolen.  He had no way to open it and was afraid to bring it to a locksmith for fear that it would be recognized and he would be caught with stolen goods.  Instead, he held onto it for about seven adventures and waited until the Dragon Shaman could breathe acid and melt the lock.  Of course, he then had to split the treasure with the Dragon Shaman, but that’s the way it goes. Teamwork!

It’s also interesting to watch the party begin to evolve and understand what their strengths and weaknesses are, and then try to set up situations to take advantage of what they are good it and to also hide their deficiencies.  When they do it well (which, admittedly, doesn’t happen too often) it’s awesome to watch and rewarding for everyone involved. In a way it’s a very advanced form of gaming because they need to think slightly long term and not just about what is in front of them. In a traditional party the group can sort of walk into any scenario and feel confident that they have what is needed to handles things because they can do almost everything.  Not so with this group. 

The other upside here is that it seems to be more fun for the players since they get to be the character that they actually want to be.  I have noticed that there is a pretty noticeable lack of clerics in games that I run. That's sort of too bad.

DM Theory: Total Party Kill

In some campaigns it is merely a hushed whisper never given life, in others it is an all too harsh reality. The Total Party Kill. For the uninitiated it is just what it sounds like, the death of every player in the game and, by default, the current campaign. Now, I don’t think that a GM should ever kill a party deliberately, but I do think that there are plenty of situations in which the entire party gets themselves annihilated. Let us discuss.

At the end of one of our most recent Shadowrun sessions one of the players remarked, “I can’t believe that worked.” As a GM I liked that comment for a lot of reasons. For one, it was rewarding for the group to develop and execute a plan. They had a lot of fun with it and ultimately accomplished their goal. However, the reason that I really liked it was because it shows the outcome of the situation was genuinely in doubt. The players know that if they mess up there is a very real chance that they are all going to die. I can’t imagine playing in a game where the outcome is essentially predetermined, which I think is the case if there isn’t the actual threat of death hanging over their heads. I’ve talked to many fellow GMs over the years and I am shocked at how many of them never have PC death, let alone a total wipeout of the party. It blows my mind. Like I said, I don’t intentionally kill players but dungeon crawling and shadowrunning and exploring the far reaches of space are dangerous professions. If people aren’t dying from time to time then something is wrong. But the total party kill is more than just a death because it means the end of the game. But that’s just an opportunity to make new characters and get a new game started up. It’s like a forest fire. Sure, it seems like a gruesome and pointless thing, but in actuality it’s necessary in order to keep things healthy and moving along.

So, how exactly does a Total Party Kill come about exactly? Well, it’s just like one character getting killed but it happens a couple of times in succession. Which is actually plausible if you think about it. Characters rely on one another and they all fill roles, and sometimes if one or two of them are unable to fulfill their function (because they are dead) then the whole house of cards crumbles. It could be bad rolls that gets the ball moving against the party, or it could be a poorly executed plan. If it’s the result of the party coming up against a vast number of superior foes than I feel the DM is to blame. That seems like you are just setting up a party to be killed. Of course, running away is always an option but I find that it is one that players rarely go for. If the assumption on the part of the GM is that the party will recognize that they are outgunned, than it’s a bad assumption. But other times it just happens. Like I said, these are dangerous times.

I think that the biggest argument against the Total Party Kill is that it ruins everyones fun. Only a rotten GM would do such a thing. Essentially all of these nice people have gathered together to share in this fun, communal activity and now it is destroyed. All that they have worked for has been left unfinished, food for the crows of the battlefield (or the alligator filled pit or the underwater science lab, whatever it may be). So what? It’s a game and a new one can be started right away. But it gets back to the idea of accomplishing something in a roleplaying game. Now, treasure and levels and money and all the other rewards that players receive are all fake. We all know this. This is a game and none of it is real. However, success isn’t as fleeting when measured in accomplishments. If you don’t always win there is a chance for a real reward. Knowing that you and your friends looked at a problem and found a solution to a difficult situation is a lot of fun. So is getting some lucky rolls and feeling like you got by on the skin of your teeth. But sometimes it goes the other way. You can’t have one without the other.

And the other side of this is that “winning” does not necessarily mean you have had fun. Shockingly, I have seen smiles on the faces of characters as they are all being painfully killed one at a time, slowly becoming aware that their number is up. Everyone gets to go out fighting or empty their bag of tricks in a last ditch effort to save the day. Some die as brave heroes and others go out as chumps. But as players, rather than characters, we all get to try again some other day.

One final point is that campaigns, or any long term games, have to end somehow. I’m not a fan of the eight year campaign. Maybe it’s because we play every week and the idea of playing the same characters in the same world for that long would drive me insane. So assuming that a game has an end it really only leaves a couple of options. The players achieve what they were trying to do, the game just sort of dwindles away or everyone chooses to end it, or everyone dies. I have been involved in multiple campaigns of each variety and they all have their merits, but in some ways the TPK is the most memorable.

By the way, the Shadowrun game I mentioned above ended the following week with a Total Party Kill.

DM Theory: The Goblin Cave

It’s easy to think of role playing games as sprawling, epic adventures in which the fate of the very universe hangs in the balance. The players are heroes (or villains) in the utmost, with each of their actions sending ripples through the entire world that they inhabit. And while that can be true, there is also nothing wrong with the Goblin Cave (or as it known in some circles, Bargle the Wizard). Often players and DM’s get caught up in these gigantic story arcs that ultimately crumble under their own lofty ambitions, thus squashing a game before it ever has a real chance of succeeding. To those games I say, have you been to the Goblin Cave?

The Goblin Cave can take many forms but at it’s heart it is a straightforward adventure that allows the players to make decisions, roleplay, learn something about their characters and have a good time. It goes like this: the party is somehow hired to kill the bandits that are stopping the local caravans. They lay in wait, defeat the goblin bandits, find some way to track them back to their cave lair where they kill the leader of the crew. They probably find something in the cave (a map, a hostage) that plants the seeds for the next adventure. I know, it sounds totally simplistic and it is. But it’s also fun. And for new players and DM’s it is a great way to play the game in a relatively closed environment and figure out what it is all about. Think of the opening scene of a lot of action movies. In many cases it is just a way to meet the characters and highlight some key traits that will pop up later on. This is just like that!

Another nice aspect of the Goblin Cave scenario is there is no pressure to create some sort of lasting villain that always gets away and continues to harass the party at every turn. The leader of the goblins dies in the goblin cave and then he is looted by the party. He is recognizable only by his slightly better weapon than the one’s wielded by his minions (perhaps a short sword to their clubs?). Maybe he yells out to the party just as the melee is joined. If he needs to be a little more memorable than sometime earlier in the adventure the party can learn his name and a little physical description, so that the party knows who he is when they go up against him (“The goblin with the short sword and long red hair, that must be Greasy Garth!”). There is a sense of accomplishment when he is defeated, knowing that he had been wreaking havoc on the townsfolk and now that has been ended by the actions of the party. It’s an immediate reward for the group.

I’m a big fan of promoting discussions amongst the party regarding their motives and intentions. To me it’s kind of what makes a roleplaying game so much fun and different from video games and board games. And the Goblin Cave has many opportunities to get the players talking and learning about their characters. Why are they taking on this assignment? Is there a bounty on the goblin bandit? Do they feel the need to protect the community and undertake the mission for altruistic reasons, or do they just love violence and despise goblins? What happens when they find stolen merchant cargo in the cave, is it returned to the original owner or is it claimed by the party as loot? The point is that there is a lot that can go into such a seemingly simple adventure.

DM Theory: Planning Too Much?

Running a successful, long term gaming campaign is a lot of work, and there is no guarantee that it is going to be worth it in the end. I’ve seen many games that lasted less time than a goblin in padded armor. So, what can you do to make your game fun and lasting? Well, there are a near infinite amount of ways to approach gaming but I can’t talk about all of them here. One that I would like to comment on is the amount of preparation that goes into a single session and into the ongoing campaign. Contrary to popular opinion it is possible to plan too much for a game, sometimes to the detriment of all involved.

If you are (un)fortunate enough to be the GM, DM, Keeper or whatever for your group there is no need to burden yourself with additional planning and long term masterminding that may never come to pass, or even worse, be forced upon the group of players. In my experience one of the worst things that a game master can do is to plan too far in advance, have the whole arc of the campaign scripted out before the first dice are rolled. It’s important to realize that the Game Master is just one half of the equation, with the players comprising the more volatile, explosive part of the game and the GM providing the framework that it can all exist inside of. It has to be a collaborative effort or it’s going to fall short. A couple of years back I was running a D&D campaign and when I was putting together my initial thoughts on the story I had in mind a plot involving the poisoning of the land by a clan of evil blighter type druids. Ultimately I assumed that the players would battle the druids and find their way to a mystical isle of legend where they could find the cure for the blighting that would be tearing through the land. I had some plot hooks that would interest all of the PC’s, but the PC druid was going to sort of be the driving force as to why they were getting involved in all of this. Well, guess what? The druid totally sucked as a character (she was fun and everyone liked her, but grossly ineffective) and wound up getting killed halfway through the campaign. But even before that I was able to adjust where the game was going by letting the players steer the course and in the end we had what may have been the best long term game that the group had experienced. It was a ton of fun. However, if I had spent a month writing up NPC’s, drawing maps and creating monsters I think that I would have been much more hesitant to scrap it. And this allowed me to adjust to what they did want to do, rather than just going along with what I had planned.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is that sourcebooks are there to help you. Honestly I’ve never been a big fan of the D&D books for specific locales (Greyhawk being the major exception) but the Shadowrun ones are great, as are a lot of other games. Use them, make it easy on yourself. Especially if you are new to running a game, piggyback on what others have done before you and play around and see what you and your group are most into. No need to reinvent the wheel.

It’s also very useful to have some key plot points or NPC’s that can be used in any location, that is to say that they are not tied to a certain inn or an event that will only happen if the party decides on a certain course. For example, the party is looking for a piece of information while investigating the disappearance of a college professor. You know that the info that they need is inside the head of a colleague of the professor’s. Now maybe that guy is usually hanging out at a certain watering hole, but he doesn’t have to be. Guess where he is going to pop up? That’s right, wherever the PC’s wind up. That seems simple, but look at it from the player’s standpoint. You have not railroaded them anywhere, they have been free to check out a whole bunch of places and ask around for this guy, which is good. Players don’t want to be told where to go. But in the end they find what they have been looking for and also get explore the location a bit. And you’ve really just created one NPC (of course, you are going to need to be able to adlib your way through some social encounters. If you can’t do this, you may be in the wrong line of work.)

In the end nothing is more important than understanding the group that you play with, and it takes time to breed that familiarity. But I know that I like to game every week and I don’t always have 10+ hours to set aside for preparation so I’ve learned to get by on less and less prep time. And some of the best sessions we’ve every had came as a result of having virtually nothing planned (don’t tell the players that) because it becomes a real group effort with everyone contributing to the action.