Complications

            Life is a complicated mess filled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Particularly life in relation to humans and how we view and interact with the world.

Take our brains’ view on change, for example. We hate change with a fiery, burning passion. We like things to be predictable and consistent. Yet, if it is predictable and consistent, we get bored and go stir crazy, with our brains demanding something new. If we rearrange a room, we’ll adapt to it quickly, with our brains not minding very much – but don’t you dare return the room to an old arrangement! No, then something is clearly out of place and wrong.

            Similarly, people often speak of wishing they didn’t have to work a job so that they can accomplish more of what they want to do. However, if you speak to people in such a position, you’ll quickly learn that they wish they had a job to help fill their time. Because having all the time in the world to do whatever you want somehow takes away from the enjoyment of doing what you want.

            We come up with morals to clearly define right and wrong, and very soon break into factions because some things that are clearly right contradict other things that are clearly right, and some things that are wrong contradict other things that are clearly wrong. Ideas that seem so simple to one person appear nonsensical to another – and both can back up their perspectives with valid arguments.

            We seek freedom while binding ourselves with laws – though, of course, the laws are required to prevent ourselves from violating others’ freedoms, and to protect our own. We try to understand the world better, yet as soon as we discover something that doesn’t match what we believe, we’re more likely to dismiss the new information as being incorrect or inconsequential.

            We pay people money to go out and raise money. We have annual feasts when, agriculturally, food is the most difficult to come by. We spend our best years working to achieve dreams we’ll be too old to enjoy by the time we achieve them. We fight wars to achieve peace.

            And as I go through all the strange and confusing contradictions in life, I notice that the common factor is humans. How we view the world. How we treat each other. How we examine and categorize things.

            And I wonder... is life really so full of paradoxes? Perhaps life is actually extremely simple, and we overcomplicate it in our efforts to understand.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

How To Train Your Players

            The more I run Dungeons & Dragons, the more I realize how important it is to train the people who are playing in your game. Not in the sense of teaching them how to play (though this is also very important), but in training them how your world will react to the actions their characters take. Every Dungeon Master runs a slightly different game, and every player comes in with their own expectations – establishing how the game will be run is important, otherwise halfway through you’re liable to have a character get in trouble for murdering or stealing and be surprised that they can get in trouble in a game.

            If there are going to be consequences for actions in the world you create, you need to establish this as early as possible, but with minor situations rather than major ones. If the characters storm around doing whatever they want from the start, without any consequences, they’re going to keep doing so for the rest of the game – and, likely, get upset if suddenly something unexpected happens. They didn’t get in trouble before, why should they now?

            The way to do this is to show the world reacting to the characters – both in positive and negative ways. Every time a character does something seemingly inconsequential – you know, pranks or other things they may do just for fun – think about how people or the environment would realistically respond to them, and make it happen. Even if it’s just something in the background that a random person mentions in passing, having the little details there will show the players that what they do makes a difference in the world – and they’ll begin to treat the world with that expectation. In my current campaign, I’ve had incoming new players told, “Everything that’s happened is our fault!” which isn’t entirely true, but it tells me that I’ve taught my players well.

            There is no easy way to deliberately train players into the feel of the game you are running; that can only come with time, because that part of the game is determined by everyone in it, and it will change as players come and go (if you have players coming and going in your game). For that, there is only patience. Every group forms its own culture, and that can be guided by the game’s content, but not controlled. Give the group time to settle and everything will usually sort itself out.

            One of the more challenging things to teach your players – especially less experienced ones – is how to conserve their resources. In many ways, this is up to them to learn on their own, but it really behoves a Dungeon Master to help them along the way – otherwise the players will simply take a nap to regain their abilities after every battle, which slows the game and takes away from the strategy, the fun, and the sense of imminent danger in the game.

            So, how do you train your players into this? There are two simple ways. The first is to put them in a situation where they can’t rest, be it because of how many monsters there are around, or because there is something like poison in the environment that interferes with resting. The other method is very similar to what I was talking about at the beginning – show them the consequences of their actions. If the players stop to sleep more than once in the same 24 hour time span, the rest of the world isn’t going to stop to sleep with them. The monsters are going to keep moving. The villains will continue constructing their nefarious plans. And the players need to see this in action – be it from visible changes in rooms they’ve already been in, monsters surrounding them when they wake up, or some sort of evidence that their sleep wasn’t quite as undisturbed as they had thought. The world doesn’t stop moving because the main characters are sleeping – and the sooner the players understand this, the sooner they’ll start conserving their skills and spells so they won’t have to sleep as often.

            To make sure your game runs smoothly, you need to make sure everyone is on the same page as to what to expect from the game and the world. Some of this, you can simply explain to the players, but some you have to show them. As a Dungeon Master, it isn’t your job to punish players for not understanding the world you built; it’s your job to educate them until they do understand (or, in the extreme case where they understand but don’t seem to be having fun, to adapt and change the world into one where they will have fun).

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Lark's Landing, Episode 46

Colonial Caerdia: Lark's Landing is a story being told through a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign I'm running at a local hobby shop called the Devil's Bench. If you aren't familiar with this ongoing story, you can follow this link to Once Upon a Tabletop on YouTube to hear the start of it or read the brief summary I wrote when I switched from video to blog.

You can find the previous episode here.


7th of Waning Spring, 1AL

The 3rd Watch have once again descended into the depths of an ancient, ruined temple, seeking the vampire they believe lives within. They have come to a room decorated with a cat motif which has several doors exiting from it. They choose to go through the only one not explored on the previous visit. Beyond is a hallway with walls carved as guards holding hatchet-headed polearms leading up to a pair of doors etched with the head of a panther god.

Finding no signs of traps, Fiaeorri leads the way and is surprised when two of the guards swing out of the wall, crossing their polearms in front of her with a blue spark. The only way to pass seems to be to go underneath. T'Zaric leads the way, making it look easy - however, Fiaeorri, following behind, brushes one of the polearms and receives an electrical shock on her way under. Everyone else makes it through except for Patrick, bringing up the rear. As he slides under, he gets such a jolt of electricity that he gets paralyzed where he is. The others begin to argue about how to get him the rest of the way through, but soon realize that he's still being injured by the electricity and pull him out.

After recovering from their shocking experience, they open the door into the room beyond. A long, narrow room runs to the right and left, lit by faint light. To the right is a well with light glowing from within and a hole in the high ceiling above it, and to the left is an enormous statue of an ogre-like creature sitting on a bed of hot coals, surrounded by skulls and broken weapons. At the base of the statue, a panther crouches, though it gets up and begins stalking forward as Fiaeorri enters the room, heading for the statue. However, there's something strange about it - it seems confused, and looks tight through Fiaeorri as if she wasn't there.

Then T'Zaric enters the room, and the panther makes straight for him, attacking him. T'Zaric evades it by flying up to the ceiling. As the rest of the group enter the room, the panther doesn't seem to be able to see them either, and continues to leap into the air swiping at T'Zaric's feet.

Fiaeorri climbs the statue to have a look in its mouth and is disappointed to find nothing there, while Patrick examines the bones, determining that they are over 10000 years old. Then everyone turns their attention to the well at the other end of the room, which appears to be filled with some sort of liquid light. T'Zaric uses a magically formed hand to fill a crystal flask with it. A tiny amount clings to the outside and appears to be spreading, but he managed to clean it off. Fiaeorri then gets him to pour a drop on one of her lead coins, and they watch as the drop slowly spreads to cover the whole thing - though, oddly, it stops there and doesn't spread to anything else touching it.

Fascinated, T'Zaric dips his mask in the liquid light. Extang uses his ten foot pole to find that the well is about five feet deep, resulting in the pole also getting eventually coated in light.

Frustrated by the continued aggressive attention of the panther, T'Zaric flies up the hole - and finds himself emerging into a room and being smacked into the wall by a giant blue creature with pointed teeth and yellow eyes that declares him to be lunch. T'Zaric grins nervously, then teleports back down into the room below, gibbering to his friends about what he just saw.

Fiaeorri takes the magic whistle that allows someone blowing it to fly and zips up the hole to attack the thing. It delightedly swings back, doing a considerable amount of damage. Most of the others can't do anything, as they can't fly or get a line of sight on the creature up the hole, but T'Zaric follows Fiaeorri back up to throw some spells at the creature. Fiaeorri, of course has decided to get in a few more hits before retreating from this dangerous foe, leaving T'Zaric as the only target. With a couple glaive swings, T'Zaric is barely holding onto consciousness, and he also retreats from the hole, trusting that such a large creature won't easily fit down it.

Below, Quib is furiously trying to heal his friends as best he can. They all wait for a few moments, but nothing happens. Not happy with the idea of letting something live if it wants to eat him, T'Zaric flies to the bottom of the hole and sends a fireball up into the room above, and is rewarded with an enraged roar. Then, down the hole comes the creature - though it seems to have shrunk small enough to fit through - swinging its glaive. A number of others gather around on the ground, attacking from a distance. T'Zaric ignites another fireball, right in the creature's face, taking a fair amount of damage himself, but it still isn't enough to take the creature. It swings its glaive... and T'Zaric is knocked unconscious and begins to fall. Luckily, Patrick is ready for this, and he manages to revive T'Zaric with a spell - which is a very good thing, because T'Zaric then fell into the liquid light, which isn't a very good place to be unconscious.

The creature, heavily wounded, retreats back up the hole, but T'Zaric isn't ready to let it get away. He launches another fireball and follows behind it, finding that it has finished the job - the creature is dead and has returned to its full size. He does a quick search of the room, which is covered in charred and smoldering furs, before getting a rope and tying it to the creature's leg so the others can climb up. The treasure that T'Zaric didn't sneak for himself is gathered and they decide it is time to rest - a feeling reinforced by the poison in the air weighing on them.

They make their way back to the big room without the poisonous air and begin to make camp - but, as they go, they notice that a bit of the liquid light was still clinging to T'Zaric and was spreading. They try many magical ways of removing it, to no avail. Slowly it begins to cover all of T'Zaric - and as it creeps over his nose and mouth he finds his breathing cut off. Thinking quickly, he pulls up the hood of his cloak that allows him to breath under water. This appears to do the trick, saving his life - but leaving him as a strange glowing creature.

Extang, who mostly sat out the last fight, isn't quite ready to rest yet. He grabs Logan and goes to check out the one side passage that hasn't been thoroughly explored yet. It leads to a room the 3rd Watch had approached before, but had determined not to cross. It has a thick layer of dust on the floor that, when disturbed, forms into figures that move around the room. Previously, the 3rd Watch had decided to leave the spirits to their rest, but Extang is determined to explore. He and Logan make their way through the room, attacking the aggressive guard-like figures and finding them to be quite insubstantial.

They pass through the room, and into the hall beyond which takes them to the cat-motif room. Extang notices that the statue of the panther-man is missing just as it attacks him from the shadows beside the door, not so statue-like anymore. Logan is quick to defend Extang, but the creature seems entirely focused on the dragonborn, as if it recognizes him. Extang flees down the hall, and the panther-man follows, tearing into him. Logan, quick behind, is able to arrive in time to kill the monster before it kills Extang - and they watch as it turns back into stone. Not wanting to fight this thing yet again, Extang searches it for anything it has that might be reviving it, but his best guess comes from the strange cavity in its chest.

The two return to the others and join them in sleeping away much of the rest of the day. None of those on watch notice anything out of place. When everyone is awake again, Extang expresses great curiosity about that panther that can only see T'Zaric. They agree to go experiment with it a bit, but on their way there they must go through the cat-motif room - where someone is waiting for them. The vampire they came to hunt stands in the room, commenting on how good it is to see them again. He raises his arms to the sky and calls to some unseen friends.

The 3rd Watch begin their attacks on him, and are surprised to find T'Zaric flying over to defend the vampire. Logan charges in to fight, while Fiaeorri attempts to charm T'Zaric back to their side, only to find that the spell has no effect on T'Zaric - likewise, Patrick discovers that his spell to hold a person in place isn't powerful enough to trap a vampire. So, the young cleric breaks out his secret weapon, casting a spell called Daylight, filling the room with brilliant light. He and the group had discovered that sunlight was the only way to permanently destroy vampires, and they believed this was a surefire way to do the job.

The vampire, however, is entirely unaffected. It seems that, in spite of its grandiose name, Daylight does not produce the lethal light of the sun.


And that's where this game session ends. Find out how our heroes will fare next week in Episode 47.

Out With The Old

            As time moves on, everything we take for granted changes. Traditions rooted in purpose and significance have their origins lost, yet continue to exist because it’s tradition. Festivals and celebrations evolve or get co-opted, becoming entirely new events with little or no relevance to their original purpose. The meanings of words and the structures of languages change, leading to disagreements about recorded information from earlier ages. Sometimes records are destroyed, out of embarrassment or malice, erasing whole sections of history. When events of the past century have been clouded, muddled, and denied, what can we be certain of from even earlier times?

            It doesn’t take long for things to change. How many memes are there about kids not understanding common objects from twenty years ago? We fail to pass on knowledge and history because we take it for granted that it’s common knowledge, and it fades into obscurity. And let’s not forget that history is written by the winners, or that history is nothing but words – and, with enough influence, words can be changed.

            It’s important to remember the important things. It’s important to pass them on. And it’s important to stay aware of how meanings change over time, and move to correct it if we see it happening. Otherwise, it’s out with the old, in with the new.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Lark's Landing, Episode 45

Colonial Caerdia: Lark's Landing is a story being told through a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign I'm running at a local hobby shop called the Devil's Bench. If you aren't familiar with this ongoing story, you can follow this link to Once Upon a Tabletop on YouTube to hear the start of it or read the brief summary I wrote when I switched from video to blog.

You can find the previous episode here.


37th of Waxing Spring - 7th of Waning Spring, 1AL

After reestablishing herself with her former cult, Fiaeorri takes a trip to visit the bronze dragonborn woman whose husband she had murdered. The dragonborn had put out a contract with the adventurer's guild asking for her husband to be found - or some evidence of his death - offering a large reward, presumably with the money the 3rd Watch had given her to help her support herself and her child who has yet to hatch. Fiaeorri is not happy about this and intends to discourage the widow from continuing with her search.

Fiaeorri magically disguises herself as a hideous creature with bloody swords and sneaks into the house where the dragonborn is sleeping, curled around her egg. She shouts out, waking and terrifying the mother, threatening to smash the egg if the search for her husband continues. At that, the dragonborn belches lightning at her and starts screaming for the guards. Mildly singed, Fiaeorri retreats, reiterating her threats before vanishing into the night which is coming alive with people woken by the ruckus.

In the morning, the guards are more active than usual, and T'Zaric catches rumors of an attack the night before, but the group isn't too concerned seeing as how the militia seems to be on top of the situation. They're far more concerned about tracking down the vampire.

Hammer has his own concerns after having been taken over by the vampire. He goes to Stor at the adventurer's guild, now dubbed the Caerdian Explorers Guild, and asks him to find a replacement for him. He doesn't feel up to the adventuring life anymore. He was a guard before, and a guard he shall be again - plus he has plenty of skills he wants to learn now that his life is his own. Stor assures him he understands, and that he will find someone. Hammer returns home and informs the rest of the 3rd Watch. They are sad to see him go, but understanding as well.

Extang sets out to carry on with a plan he had come up the night before, getting a cake baked and arranging a surprise farewell party for Stor. That evening, they all burst into the tavern and the connected guild hall with their cake. Stor breaks out the mead and they have a great time, with their newest member, Quib, entertaining them with music and magic.

Partway through the evening, the door opens and a scrawny young man with over-sized armor and eyes like the sum comes in. Stor waves him over and introduces him as Patrick, the replacement for Hammer. The group immediately begin to question him, but he's hesitant to talk about himself in public, so they return to their home base with them. There he tells them that he's a divine child, born to two worshipers of Epesta who sent him to safety with his monk guardian - who he has snuck away from to be here. As for his skills, he's a cleric of Epesta.

With first Quib, and now this strange young man, some of the group are beginning to question Stor's recruitment talents. Nevertheless, they accept Patrick as one of their number - at least for now.

The next day, they spend their time preparing for their next adventure and gathering what information they can on vampires - with Fiaeorri asking Gregor, as undead are loathed by Pagslas, and T'Zaric seeking knowledge from Patrick's collection of books, which is delayed because Patrick's guardian isn't happy that his charge has been sneaking out and is worried about Somvidian spies. In the end, they do manage to gather some useful information.

The following day, the 3rd Watch finally head out to hunt down the vampire, aiming to start with the ruined temple. There was a little concern about finding their way without Stor's memory for landmarks, and his ability to find enough food to feed everyone, but it ends up not being a problem. After the seven day journey, they camp outside the temple. A couple of them notice that there seem to be more bats and rats around than there were before.

In the morning, they enter the temple, working their way down into the lower levels - noticing along the way that a few traps had been reset. They reach the large room where Extang and T'Zaric, along with the old members of the 3rd Watch, had fought a giant snake with a head on each end. Here, they have three doors to choose from - they decide to go through the middle one, which wasn't explored the last time they were here.

Beyond is a passageway, filled with a yellow haze in the air. After about ten feet, the floor drops away into a long pit with plants filling the bottom and metal bars set across the top every five feet. T'Zaric decides to test walking across the bars, figuring he can fly if something goes wrong. The bars seem stable enough, but the plants below begin flinging thorns up at him. This proves to be little more than a nuisance as he, Extang, and Logan clear the plants, allowing everyone to cross to the far side, where there is a door that looks very much like the back of a secret door.

They open the heavy door, and find themselves looking out into a room decorated with a cat motif, with an ajar calendar stone on the far side, a statue of a panther-man, and stuffed cats everywhere.


And that's where this session comes to an end. Find out what happens in a week with Episode 46.

Necessary Compromises

            The latest event in preparation of the upcoming game Chronicles of Elyria (now that we’ve overcome the plague) is map voting. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for the future players of this game to vote on, and determine, what the map of the world (well, the starting continent) will look like. And each server will have its own unique map – making for a very different game depending on which server you play on. Of course, to me, the most interesting part is how the community reacted.

            I can’t speak for the whole community – only the small piece I interact with – but I suspect it’s a fairly accurate representation of what happened elsewhere as well. It all started with the releasing of the maps...

            I promptly looked through all the maps. Taking into consideration the needs of my kingdom, duchy, and county, I promptly narrowed what I felt would be the best maps for us down to 3 or 4. Within an hour, I had chosen a favorite, which matched one of the favorites of the count of my county.

            At the duchy level, we had a discussion on each of the maps. I was happy to see that the map I’d chosen was also popular at this level of our organization, and I believe it even made it into the top three.

            After a few days, there was a meeting of all the duchy leaders at kingdom level. Each of them had brought their favorite maps – and then they selected the map that they felt suited everyone’s needs, and announced it to the community at large – saying they were free to vote however they wished, but this was the map the leadership felt would be best for our kingdom’s needs.

            I was surprised, and disappointed, that the map was one that hadn’t even been seriously considered in my duchy. I wasn’t fond of it at all, and I wasn’t the only one. A fair number of people were expressing their disappointment in the choice, and demanded answers from the leadership.

            Our king then answered the questions, expressing that this map wasn’t the best pick for anyone, however it was the map that best suited the combined needs of all the groups in our kingdom. He went into further detail about the process that was used, and it was more than enough to make me (and others) accept this map. I promptly switched my train of thought to figuring out how to adapt to this new map, and I was satisfied that, while it was far from the best map, it was quite adequate.

            And, as usual, it got me thinking about the whole scenario, and applying it to the world at large. No matter what decision is made, at any level of an organization or a government, there are always people who speak up and are unhappy about it. It always seems the most remarkable when the leaders, who made the decision in the first place, are unhappy with it – why would they make the decision if they knew it wasn’t great?

            Often (not always!) it comes down to being a compromise. The more people you add to a group, the harder it becomes to make everyone happy about any one thing – and it’s outright impossible to make everyone happy about multiple things. So, in comes the compromise – the decision that nobody particularly likes, but is the best that can be done to make everyone happy.

            Yet, so many people insist on raging and being angry about these decisions. They will shout their anger to the world at large. Strangely, I don’t blame them – because the only thing that is usually presented is the decision, not the means of reaching it. Once a decision is made, it tends to be presented as the best option available, even if it clearly isn’t the case – the goal being to show confidence in the decision. I can’t help but wonder, would it work better if the leadership expressed that it was a compromise? It seems like people are more willing to accept a decision that’s a compromise if they know that’s what it is (provided they actually care about trying to make as many people happy as possible). At least, that’s how it worked out in the case of my little Elyrian microcosm.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.