Roleplaying Tips Weekly E-Zine Issue #479

Contents: 

• This Week's Tips Summarized
• A Brief Word From Johnn
• Reader Tip Request: Fantasy Calendar Maker
• 6 Things Divinity II Taught Me About Running a Better Game
• For Your Game: 100 NPC Descriptors
• New GM Advice @ CampaignMastery.com

 

This Week's Tips Summarized 

6 Things Divinity II Taught Me About Running a Better Game

6 Things Divinity II Taught Me About Running a Better Game

For Your Game: 100 NPC Descriptors

New GM Advice @ CampaignMastery.com

 

Johnn Four's GM Guide Books

A Brief Word From Johnn 

Quest for a second editor

To keep the ezine rolling out (pun barely intended) and to make its production a bit faster and more efficient, I'm questing for a second editor.

You would be taking a first draft of an issue and going through it with an eye for readability, confusion and ambiguity, and tricky grammar items like missing plurals, subject agreements, homonyms.

You would not only enjoy, and have time for, reading 3000 words or so of game master tips and advice each week, but you have an eye for detail to catch the little gotchas in the text. As opposed to an editorial role, you would have more of a proof-reading role.

This is a volunteer request, as payment will just be good karma, and hopefully fun because you like proofreading.

Drop me a note if you're interested.

Win Martial Power 2

In conjunction with GatorGames.com, I'm running a contest this week with a hardcover copy Martial Power 2 for D&D 4E up for grabs. For details, visit:

Win a copy of Martial Power 2

(Note: this contest is restricted to North America. I'll be running future contests, though, that will be available worldwide.)

Welcome to new advertiser: NBOS

A quick thanks to NBOS for supporting the ezine. Readers, Ed is offering you 20% discounts on NBOS software, which is a good deal. Look for The Keep ad after the feature article in this issue for the link.

If you already have a lot of experience with Fractal Mapper, Astrosynthesis, The Keep or Screenmonkey, please send me an email.

Cheers,

Johnn Four,
johnn@roleplayingtips.com

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Reader Tip Request: Fantasy Calendar Maker 

RPT reader Erik writes:

"What I am looking for is a decent calendar maker. There are calendar templates in Word, but they use real world month lengths, names and days. I am asking all the good readers of your list for advice on where to find such a critter."

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6 Things Divinity II Taught Me About Running a Better Game  

by Hannah Lipsky

I received a review copy of Divinity II a while back. It's a game with an interesting premise: your character starts out as a dragon slayer, and eventually becomes a dragon. You can find out more of it here: http://www.divinity2.com/

As always when playing an RPG, I looked for ways I could use the lessons of the game to improve my own. While it was a good game and some of the things I learned I gained from the good parts, I found more lessons in the few things it did wrong than the many it did right.

1. It's Possible for XP to Make Sense

One real suspension of disbelief issue I have with RPGs is that within your first couple weeks of adventuring, your character has doubled in power. A couple more weeks, and they've far surpassed even soldiers who've spent a lifetime in battle.

How does this make sense? Especially if your character's backstory has them spending years training, the sudden power jumps caused by most games' XP systems are just strange. What did three weeks of clearing out kobolds teach you that a decade of perfecting techniques at the monastery while battling border raiders couldn't?

The closest anyone gets to offering an explanation is, "That's the special characteristic that makes PCs PCs instead of just another warrior."

Divinity II is the first game I've seen that actually takes a stab at explaining this in the game world. Right off, your character is told he or she is about to lose all the memories of the years of dragon slayer training you've undergone. This is so there is room for the dragon's memories to fill your mind. But no worries - your training will come back to you, slowly at first, and then more quickly.

Now it makes sense. You've trained for years to be the best, but you can barely kill vermin. Why? Because you forgot it all. A couple weeks later, you're back to bashing skulls with the best of them, and soon after that, you've surpassed all but the finest of the warriors who haven't received your elite training. Why? Because all those years of training are coming back.

It's not an explanation that will work for every campaign. But it is a reminder that even the most meta game mechanics can have a solid in-game foundation if you try hard enough.

2. Mind Reading Doesn't Have to be Game-Breaking

Divinity II has an interesting mind reading system, where you trade XP for the chance to catch someone's stray thoughts. It's a low price for unimportant NPCs, and a high price for more powerful characters.

I know plenty of DMs - I'm one of them - who sometimes flat- out disallow psionic powers like mind reading because of the extra work they entail. PCs can circumvent plots and derail elaborate schemes with a properly timed, "I read his thoughts."

Divinity II's solution to this problem is threefold. First, the aforementioned XP penalty. When you have to give something to get something, reading minds is less of a panacea and more of a strategic choice.

Second, not everyone is always thinking about important things. Just because an assassin is after you and has already killed many of your soldiers to get to you, it doesn't mean you can't spare a few moments to admire your new cuirass.

If that's what you happen to be doing when the PC tries to read your mind, too bad for them. They'll have to find out more about the assassin some other way.

Third, news gets around. If people find out you're a mind reader, they'll deliberately think about irrelevant things when around you. They might still slip up sometimes - try not thinking about an elephant - but if enough of them can focus often enough, your mind reading becomes a far less perfect solution to every information-gathering problem.

These three solutions, even in combination, don't render mind reading useless. But they do keep it from breaking the game. Having NPCs be thinking about other things, either deliberately or incidentally, adds back in a crucial element that mind reading usually takes away - DM choice.

Now the DM can decide if an attempt to mind read means that important information is revealed, or if that new cuirass looks incredibly dashing in the sunlight.

3. NPCs as Motivators: Use With Care

A good way to get the party to solve minor problems is by having said problems afflict interesting NPCs.

Who cares if there's an army descending upon us? We don't really know much about geopolitics; maybe they have the right of it. But this guy seems like an all-around decent fellow: we should probably find out what happened to his livestock.

On the other hand, the fastest way to get the players to want to burn the world instead of save it is by having the main NPC interested in keeping them on track be a screeching harpy.

Sure, sure, we'll leave the livestock where we found it and go ambush the scouts or what have you. If it will make you be quiet, our pleasure. But as soon as we're done saving civilization, we're throwing you off a cliff.

4. A Little Encouragement Goes a Long Way

Divinity II has no falling damage. On the one hand, this is great, because you can climb a lot of tall things, and climbing tall things is fun. On the other hand, once you've climbed towers and cliffs and the like, you start eyeing everything that way.

Climb over lava? Why not. Over a dragon's nest? What could go wrong? Jumping off a cliff while turning into a dragon mid-air is exciting - until you realize that failing to transform lands you on the ground in perfectly unharmed human form, instead of as a red splattery mess.

If you're thinking about changing the laws of physics to support a player's acrobatic style, it's worth considering what that will look like when taken to the extreme. Sure, it's cool that he can pull off awesome stunts without the rules getting in the way. But just what level of unrealistic badassery do you want in your game?

It's easier to take away penalties than add them, and easier to add bonuses than remove existing ones. Consider softening penalties for things like stunts and falling damage. If those don't encourage characters to be more acrobatic, you can remove penalties entirely. But first try a less dramatic solution, just to keep things from getting silly.

5. Shooting Barrels: A Poor Economic Model

Players like shiny things. Put a few gold coins in a few crates, and your players are going to check every crate and barrel they come across on the off chance it has gold in it. In some games, like Zelda, this is part of the fun. But in epic fantasy quests?

It's cool to reward players for going above and beyond in terms of examining their surroundings. But if they don't have too many other ways of getting treasure, this close examination can easily turn into behavior more closely resembling obsessive-compulsive disorder. And does that really add to the fun?

6. Motivation Works Both Ways

If you have players who like to explore the motivations of their characters, do them a favor and let the NPCs' motivations be similarly detailed.

As I mentioned, you start out as a dragon slayer, and end up as a dragon. Unsurprisingly (minor spoiler), the dragon slayers have a problem with this.

But there's something else they might also have a problem with: the giant invading army, which you're dutifully fighting off. Hordes of enemy soldiers fall before your might, keeping the land safe for all. And yet, somehow this minor point escapes the slayers entirely in their utter dedication to ridding the world of dragons.

This makes sense for a group of fanatical cultists, but you'd expect even cultists to at some point justify themselves - armies come and go, dragons are forever. Something like that. The fact that none of the dragon slayers so much as mentions the army is a little jarring.

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For Your Game: 100 NPC Descriptors 

By Alric

http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/

By definition, urban settings in fantasy RPGs are filled with people. Only a handful of the non-player characters in a given city are sought by the heroes, so the remaining inhabitants are reduced to generic townsfolk status.

There is nothing wrong with generic townsfolk living in an RPG setting. Having prominent NPCs quickly enter the story helps players distinguish between NPCs who are clearly to be part of the story and the nameless NPCs who aren't. It also helps players avoid wasting time and energy on an NPC that won't be able to further the plot.

But it is important to remember that the background details make an RPG setting more believable to players, and having such details on hand - even if the players never ask for them - is part of being a well-prepared DM.

The following list of physical and behavioral descriptors was compiled so that a DM can provide better descriptions of generic folk with a handful of percentile rolls, whether in response to a hero stopping passerby to ask questions or just to provide better background imagery when describing a street scene.

This list has been exported as an Adobe .pdf file, and can be downloaded by visiting the Free Downloads page or here: http://rpgathenaeum.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/npc-descriptors.pdf

Roll percentile dice to determine that the NPC:

1. Has missing or crooked teeth
2. Walks with a limp
3. Is unusually short
4. Is unshaven
5. Has a pet ferret
6. Gestures often when talking
7. Has unkempt hair or beard
8. Has freckles or moles
9. Is blind
10. Has a pot belly
11. Wheezes when breathing
12. Wears an unusual hat
13. Has a pet ferret
14. Is deaf
15. Has hairy knuckles
16. Has a prominent, bulbous or hooked nose
17. Has watery eyes
18. Suffers from intestinal gas
19. Has an unusual eye color
20. Is exceptionally handsome or beautiful
21. Carries a sachet of fragrant herbs
22. Has breath heavy with the stench of garlic
23. Has a bandaged wound
24. Speaks very loudly
25. Is missing one or more fingers
26. Is gaunt or thin
27. Smells of manure
28. Talks to his or herself
29. Wears well-made or finely-tailored clothing
30. Carries a small pouch of sawdust for good luck
31. Has ink stains on his or her hands
32. Frequently interrupts others during conversation
33. Smells of ale or malt
34. Likes to eat or is eating carrots
35. Is unusually tall
36. Sings or hums to his or herself
37. Tends to spit or drool while talking
38. Just had a bath
39. Has extremely bushy eyebrows
40. Has large ears
41. Wears a ring on every finger
42. Wears muddy footwear
43. Carries a small mirror, in which the NPC frequently checks his or her appearance
44. Is balding or bald
45. Frequently chews mint leaves to freshen breath
46. Wears a necklace or brooch bearing a religious symbol
47. Is pigeon-toed
48. Laughs easily and heartily
49. Is playing a musical instrument
50. Wears an old cloak, like those issued by the army
51. Has fleas or lice
52. Is overweight
53. Is sweating profusely
54. Has perfect teeth
55. Wears simple or homespun clothing
56. Is barefoot
57. Wears perfume
58. Has calloused hands
59. Has bloodshot eyes
60. Obviously bites his or her fingernails
61. Has sores on his or her face or lips
62. Talks with a lisp or slurred speech
63. Has a severe cough
64. Whistles constantly
65. Wears mismatched clothing
66. Walks with military bearing
67. Has numerous, visible tattoos
68. Has one or more gold teeth
69. Wears hobnailed boots
70. Smells like fish
71. Has a fine pewter stein tied to his or her belt
72. Is heavily muscled
73. Wears threadbare clothing
74. Carries a weapon of high quality
75. Has a thin layer of soot covering clothes and exposed skin
76. Has several skin piercings or nose rings
77. Talks very quickly
78. Laughs nervously between sentences when speaking
79. Smokes a clay pipe
80. Wears a backpack
81. Has profuse nose hair
82. Is sun tanned or sunburned
83. Carries a pet snake
84. Wears a dead rat around his or her neck to ward off evil spirits
85. Talks to his or herself
86. Doesn't seem to blink (at least not often, anyway)
87. Cracks knuckles often
88. Sneezes frequently or suffers from allergies
89. Has a high-pitched voice
90. Has ornately braided hair or beard
91. Grumbles to self
92. Has very long fingernails
93. Is bow-legged
94. Has a habit of picking his or her teeth with a knife
95. Is very affectionate, and punctuates most conversations with hand-shaking, back-slapping and hugs
96. Has sausage fingers
97. Likes to eat or is eating sardines
98. Has hives or a skin rash
99. Has full lips
100. Has visible bruises

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New GM Advice @ CampaignMastery.com 

Campaign Mastery

Read the blog of Johnn Four and Mike Bourke that discusses game mastering advice and issues.

• The Characterisation Puzzle: The Thumbnail Method
• Ask The GMs: Essential Game Master Skills
• 50 Paladin Hooks
• Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow

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