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.

D&D Brings People Together

            When Colleen and I signed up to start playing Dungeons & Dragons at a local board game cafe almost two years ago, I honestly had no idea what to expect. We’d played D&D with friends and family before, and enjoyed it, but the games had never lasted long. It seemed likely that a pay-to-play game with a set schedule would have a good turn-out. It was also a bit experimental for me because I find socialization to be extremely taxing, so it was a test to see if I could handle it.

            We were very surprised when we got to the game and discovered that we already knew one of the other players – a member of a home-school group we’d run some chainmaille workshops with. As more players came in, I was impressed to see such a diverse age range. Here we had a group of people with the youngest being twelve and the oldest in their forties. All had different amounts of experience (both with life and D&D), but we all had interest in the same game.

            The fascinating thing is how well the group got along, right from the start. We were a random group of people who had signed up for this game, and from the moment we started playing it was like we’d known each other for years.

            I may have passed it off as chance, but when we signed up for the follow-up game, the same thing happened. Two of the players from the previous game had been replaced, but the newcomers were welcomed in and got along well with everyone.

            Then, last spring, we signed up for the third game being run by the same Dungeon Master, and it happened again. We had one of the other players from the first game and three brand new ones, and this group got along even better than the others. And when, over the eight or so months that the game ran, two of the players had to leave, the players that replaced them fit in well and also got along with the group.

            Now I’ve seen it happen again, this time from the perspective of the DM – the one running the game rater than playing in it. A group of random people were brought together, from teens to forties. A few knew each other, but they were mostly strangers – yet here they were, playing a game together and becoming fast friends.

            It’s been amazing to experience and observe. We’re generally expected to only get along with people in our own age-group, and it’s supposed to be hard to make new friends – yet, here I have evidence that this isn’t the case. All you need is a set time and place, and a good tabletop role-playing game.

            Dungeons & Dragons brings people together.

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.

Swords & Wizardry

            Yesterday I had the delightful experience of playing Swords & Wizardry, which is essentially a revamped version of the very first version of Dungeons and Dragons (available for free from Frog God Games). Aside from being a lot of fun, it gave me a glimpse at what the game was like back in the day. Apparently, back then, Dungeons and Dragons was far more deadly for the characters.

            Before I get into some of what happened in the game, I think it’s important to note some major differences between Swords & Wizardry and modern D&D. The biggest difference is that the newer game is more about storytelling – you put a lot of work into your characters and their back story and the game, and there is a big focus on why the heroes are adventuring as they are. The older game is what we call a dungeon crawl – while there is still some story, the primary goal is to fight through dungeons and gather as much treasure as you can. The difference may not seem very big, but it leads into the second major difference: balance.

In modern D&D, when your characters end up in battle, it is almost guaranteed that you can win – because the game is designed to be balanced. S&W is not so kind. It functions under the more realistic assumption that, were you to go out adventuring, whatever you ran into was what you ran into – it doesn’t matter if you’re level one, you can still encounter something like an ancient dragon that you can’t even hit. This, combined with the third major difference, makes for a high mortality rate.

            In newer games, there are a number of abilities and skills to help your character detect traps, secret doors, and a variety of dangers. Not in the old games – no, you have to specifically say your character is looking at something for you to see it, which means it is way easier to walk into traps.

            So, essentially, in D&D you go into the game expecting to make a character that is not all that likely to die, whereas in S&W you go in expecting that your character will die, so you’re prepared to make a new one so you can rejoin. The way characters’ ability scores are rolled – in newer games, you usually roll four six-sided dice, add the top three together, and then assign that number to whichever ability you want it in. In the old game, you roll three six-sided dice and fill in the stats from top to bottom – making them completely random. As you can see highlighted in red on my character sheet below, that doesn’t always turn out very well.

            For frame of reference, the highest roll possible is 18. Anything below an 8 is really bad, and for something to be useful it needs to be 13 or higher. As you can see, this character’s only decent ability was charisma which, in this game, is almost completely useless. However, the one thing it is good for is having hirelings – extra people paid to follow your character around and do their bidding. And so begins the epic tale of Gorbon the Slovenly, the halfling thief – the character with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, and who, starting with only 3 hit points, we all thought would be the first to die (but we joked he’d be the only one to survive in the end).

            While the four other adventurers were spending their starting money on armor and weapons, Gorbon the Slovenly bought a push-cart, hired two men-at-arms and ten torch-bearers (the cheapest minions around, who can’t even fight – I later claimed many of them were hired from an orphanage). Gorbon paid all his hirelings a week in advance and promised them a share of whatever treasure they helped him carry back. He then climbed into his pushcart and sat back to relax as his minions carted him around.

            The adventurers were then sent to retrieve a book from a temple that had been taken over and desecrated by an evil cult. En-route, they stopped to investigate some desecrated shrines. The statues of gods within had been beheaded – only one head was still around. Gorbon promptly ordered one of his minions to put the head back on the statue. However, the moment the torch-bearer, lifted the statue’s head, he burst into flame and died.

            The amount of damage done by the magical trap – hidden on the bottom of the head an impossible to detect – was enough that it could have outright killed any of our characters except the ranger. It was an eye-opener for the players as to what kind of game this was.

            Gorbon the Slovenly, however, was unconcerned. He heaved himself out of his cart, wobbled over to his fallen minion, and looted the week’s advance pay. He then climbed back into his cart, ready to move on. One of the other players jokingly called the dead torch-bearer “Jimmy” and I resolved to name every one of my minions when they died (you can see the list on the righ-hand side of the character sheet).

            I think I’ve given a good idea of Gorbon’s character by now, so I’ll skim to some more interesting parts. In a secret tunnel, he lingered behind to steal four valuable tapestries that the “lawful” characters wouldn’t take because it would be sacrilegious. When some very powerful spiders attacked the group in a forest, six more torch-bearers died and a seventh (I named him Bilbo) fled into the forest, chased by one of the spiders. Gorbon stayed in his cart, shooting arrows, while keeping his men-at-arms at his sides in case anyone came too close. After the battle, he looted his money back from his dead minions and the adventurers moved on.

            At this point, I started doodling Gorbon being pulled in his cart, along with his dead minions, around the outside of my character sheet. Yes, there is a little corpse for each dead minion – they shall not be forgotten.

            They finally arrived at the temple, thanks to the sacrifice of Gorbon’s minions – of which there were now two torch-bearers and two men-at-arms. That quickly became one torch-bearer when to one Gorbon sent ahead into the temple was killed by another magical trap (on the ceiling we hadn’t thought to look at).

            From this point forward, Gorbon became more careful with his minions, as he needed them to pull his cart. The remaining three survived as everyone fought skeletons, wound their way through a secret passage and into tunnels. However, they came to a place that to proceed forward they had to climb over short walls – the cart had to be left behind. And as soon as they were in one of the parallel tunnels (both with the barricades), an enormous ogre attacked the party from behind.

            When the ogre crushed the group’s other (much better) Halfling thief into jam with one blow, Gorbon took his minions and ran – straight into the ogre’s lair. There he spotted treasure and paused long enough to order his men-at-arms to grab a chest of it, then circled back to his cart via the second of the parallel tunnels.

            By a stroke of luck (a critical hit, for which we had an awesome deck of cards to generate special results), our human fighter beheaded the ogre. Gorbon hid the chest on his cart and assured the others that he had been circling around to attack from behind, not merely fleeing.

            The adventurers found a great deal of treasure in the ogre’s lair, loaded it into the cart, but left it where it was and continued on foot (joined by the paladin that replaced the dead thief) down a side passage – much to Gorbon’s dismay, as he was counselling them to return to town to hire more minions with their treasure. They fought some skeletons, then came upon a wight – which cast a spell of fear that caused all but two of the adventurers to run away. One joined his fleeing companions, while the ranger (having been drained to level 1 by the wight which we couldn’t hurt without silvered weapons) stayed behind and sacrificed himself.

            The spell wore off when they were halfway into the woods. Gorbon convinced everyone to go back for the treasure, then go into town – they agreed on the condition that they run at the first sign of trouble. They collected the treasure and made it back to town without trouble, where they bought silvered weapons. Gorbon opened his secret chest to find three potions, one of which was poison and killed his last torch-bearer who was testing them to identify what they would do.

            Gorbon hired twenty more torch-bearers. All the other characters, being “lawful”, couldn’t bear the thought of hiring people and sending them to their deaths, so they set out again. By the time they reached the temple again, three torch-bearers had fled and another eleven had been killed by orcs and spiders.

            We then took a different route in the temple, that led us to a room that spawned four skeletons every two rounds that a “lawful” character was in it. Gorbon wisely told them to retreat, but the other adventurers decided that there couldn’t be that many skeletons. When the cleric died (leaving only two of the original adventurers alive), the remaining three decided to run to the exit on the far side of the room, the whittle down the remaining skeletons once they stopped spawning. Gorbon, still in the first hallway, had his minions pull him all the way back to the edge of the forest while he fired arrows at the two skeletons chasing them. There he was joined by the cleric’s replacement, who was a “neutral” character (he’d learned his lesson) that helped slay the skeletons.

            Back inside, the other skeletons were killed off, but not before one of the three was knocked unconscious. The new “neutral” character crossed the room to join them, but Gorbon the Slovenly stayed behind – his henchmen were all lawful, and he wasn’t going to go on without them (or his cart), and he certainly wasn’t going to let them spawn more skeletons. He did, however, go far enough into the room to loot the dead cleric.

            The remaining three adventurers carried on until they found a large glowing rune. The two “lawful” characters (one carrying their unconscious companion) stood back while the “neutral” character opened the secret door, breaking the rune and, in so doing, summoning an frog-demon which magically changed all but the fighter (the second last of the original adventurers) into its minions. The fighter dropped his unconscious companion and fled – but not fast enough. The frog-demon destroyed him, and walked deeper into the dungeon with its new minions in tow.

            And so it was that Gorbon the Slovenly, he with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, was the only one to survive the adventure. In the end, the game claimed the lives of five adventurers and twenty torch-bearers. A further three torch-bearers fled home, and one was lost in the woods, being chased by a giant spider.

            We still don’t know if poor Bilbo survived.

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.

My Life and Times of D&D

            When I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons, it was with edition 3.5 (okay, that’s not entirely true, technically my friend and I invented our own version before that, but I don’t think that counts). At the time, I didn't really understand the mechanics of the game since I was being taught on the fly, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. Because of the sporadic nature of our playing, though, I never really took the time to learn that version of the game, as much as I enjoyed it.

            Years and years later, I started playing 4^th edition D&D with my wife and a couple of friends. I was the only experienced player (except for the friend running the game), so to make sure I could best help my allies learn, I read the Player’s Handbook cover-to-cover.

            I now had an understanding of the game far greater than I could imagine. We played and had a lot of fun, but it didn't last very long because the friend running the game got very sick.

            The next time I played, it was with my family. This time, my wife was the only experienced player, as I was the Dungeon Master running the game. At this point, I’d still only read the Player’s Handbook (I didn't want to invest in the other two main source books until I knew we were going to keep playing) and the adventure I was running was modified from a free one online.

            I did end up getting the other books – The Monster Manuel and the Dungeon Master’s Guide – and I also read those cover-to-cover. Now I understood the game extremely well and my imagination danced with the possibilities of what I could do. Ironically, my family have never played again after that, largely due to how busy everyone has become.

            I did, however, start playing much later with my wife and sister-in-law (and occasionally her boyfriend). Through running a game with my new knowledge, I started to master my Dungeon Master skills.

            Then, over the course of last year, 5^th edition D&D was released. Extremely out of character for me, I bought each of the three core books as they came out. When I read these, my jaw dropped. In essence, it was the same game, but these books contained so much more.

            The 4^th edition of the game has received a lot of criticism – so much so that it almost killed the brand. It was extremely rules-based, designed so that every player would be completely balanced with all the others; no one would be powerful than anyone else. The rules also focused almost entirely on the combat side of the game, which isn't good for a role playing game where the goal is group storytelling. Not really knowing any better, I hadn't seen a problem with it.

            But then, 5^th edition. It went way beyond the mechanics of the game. It went in-depth into character development, world building and even plot structure that I would advise any writer (especially of fantasy) to pick up the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide just to learn all they have to teach.

            More than that, simply reading the book made me desperately want to play the game. Normally when playing games I have particular classes I want to play (usually rogues or other stealthy roles), but this game made me want to play everything. It made me sad, because I knew that, as a Dungeon Master, I was unlikely to ever get to play as a character again.

            I did come up with a solution to that, though. My wife and I have started an experimental game where we’re running the game cooperatively and both playing characters. In addition, we’re using Minecraft to make our maps for playing on/in. So far, it’s working out quite well! In fact, we’re writing it all down, so I may end up sharing the interesting story with you in episodes as the adventure unfolds.

            In conclusion, Dungeons and Dragons is fun for friends and family, 5^th edition is amazing, and people learning to write should read those books. This blog was in no way endorsed by Wizards of the Coast. Thanks for reading.

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

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.

Books vs Video Games

            An argument has been popping up over and over for the last couple decades: books versus video games. The arguments go along these lines: Books have greater intellectual value, are thought provoking, influential on society, entertaining and they stimulate the imagination far more. Video games can improve hand-eye co-ordination and reflexes, be played socially, are interactive, entertaining and challenging. My question is, why are we comparing them?

            I've spent a lot of my life playing video games and reading and I love both forms of entertainment. Each has its merits and neither can really be compared to the other. Sure, they have similarities, but in my opinion they complement each other more than anything else.

            What got me thinking about this was when I started playing through Final Fantasy IX and Colleen, periodically looking up from whatever she was doing to watch the game, suddenly said, “This game’s a lot like reading a book!” My reply was, “Of course! Video games are the bridge between books and movies.” They really are. It’s like watching a book where you can take control of the characters.

            So why, if video games are a combination of two of the world’s most popular forms of entertainment, won’t they ever take over the entire entertainment industry? Because they can never replace either of them. Let’s take a comparison of books and movies as an example. When have you ever read a book, then gone to the movie and been entirely happy with what you saw? I can’t say I've ever heard anything other than “the book was better”. The reason for this is because there is just too much information in a book to translate into a movie; all that can be done is an interpretation of the book. The same is true of video games – they can fit in more information than movies, but never as much as books.

            At this point you might say, well, it sounds like books are better, to which I reply, no; they’re just different. Books rely on your imagination, which is great, but sometimes people actually want to see that amazing setting or action scene. Video games feel more like you’re doing something and take more concentration (unless you’re reading while there’s a lot of background noise or buzzing flies). The closest a book can get to giving you a choice is with those ‘choose your own adventure’ books and the only way a book can improve your reflexes is if you have a lot of flies you need to swat.

            You can say books deal with important topics – games frequently do, too. Most games deal with morality issues, I’ve played games dealing with handling finances, environmental issues, racism – just about anything books can cover. Books teach you things – if you play the right games, they do as well. It all comes down to choice; what you choose to play, what you choose to read, what you choose to read and play.

            As an author, I also have to look at plot lines and characters. Some of the characters I've become the most attached to are in games. Some of the greatest stories I've ever come across were in also in video games – they even inspire some of my own writing. I currently have the good fortune of working behind the scenes on a video game. I'm on the writing team for an upcoming game called Anaria Online and, let me tell you, it has been far more challenging to work out the plot lines for even a small portion of this game than it has to write three complete books. I’d go so far as to say that I'm becoming a far superior book writer through my work on this game.

            So, readers, before you harp on video games, I suggest educating yourselves. Sit down with a game (an RPG would be best, such as Final Fantasy or Assassins’ Creed) and play through it. Gamers, just read a book. Most of you have done it before, you just need to find one that you love to remind you how much you enjoy reading. Then we can just stop comparing these two wonderful entertainment mediums and perhaps find ways of making them work together even more than they already do.

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

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.