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.

Laughing at the Pain

            It has occurred to me that in our culture there is a distinct link between humor and bullying. Or, rather, a lot of out humor comes from one form of bullying or another – and it just might be that this leads to bullying for the sake of humor.

            Let’s start with the most obvious one: slapstick. This is a type of humor based entirely around pain being caused to other people in humorous ways – such as accidentally getting struck from behind by someone carrying a long plank and getting pushed headfirst into a bucket of whitewash. Although a more modern version would be the videos of people accidentally hurting themselves that make up a large portion of the viral photos on the internet. We watch these things, and we laugh, believing it is harmless – either it was staged, and no one was really hurt, or it was some hurt to someone in the past and it wouldn’t have been posted on the internet if it wasn’t okay to laugh at them.

            Is it so harmless, though? We are witnessing pain, and laughing. More than that, we go on to share it with others – family, friends, children – and encourage them to laugh as well. It seems to me that this could very well desensitize people to the pain of others, and even encourage violence – because it’s funny. Especially when it happens to someone we think deserves it.

            Teasing is another one – it’s very common for people to playfully tease those they are close with. Again, it’s often harmless – or at least meant to be. But sometimes it goes too far. Sometimes the person being teased doesn’t even mention they’ve been hurt, so no one knows that it’s gone too far. Other times, the person says something and proceeds to get teased for having been hurt. We cause pain or embarrassment, then we laugh. It might not be so bad if we kept it to ourselves, but we then pass it on to the most impressionable people around us, who carry it on and spread it. Causing pain in certain ways then becomes synonymous with amusement, and leads to bullying.

            We can see more examples in the comedies we watch. We have shows that normalize making fun of certain cultures. How often do you see nerds being made fun of for being weird? How often do you see jocks being made fun of for being stupid? How often do you see mental illnesses being used for comic relief? And we take all of that back out into the world and spread it around – because it’s funny, and if it’s funny, it can’t really be bullying, can it? Meanwhile mental illness is stigmatized and people find themselves ostracised because of their interests.

            I think we all need to take a very good look at the things we find funny and consider, why are we laughing? More than that, we need to consider the harm that might be caused by passing this specific sense of humor on to younger generations – keeping in mind that they won’t necessarily understand the subtleties of the joke.

            Above all, we need to ask, is this humor, or is it bullying?

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.

Fear Always Works

            “Fear always works.” I watched Zootopia for the first time today and was impressed by how filled it was with social commentary, but that particular line in the movie (said by the villain) stood out to me. It’s true; fear always works. But, what if it didn’t?

            One of the reasons fear always works so well is because it’s instilled in us from childhood. Why? Because it always works and, quite frankly, is the easiest way to control someone. Why don’t we touch the things that will hurt us? Because we will be punished with something that we fear. Why don’t we eat the things that will make us sick or damage us in the future? Because we will be punished with something we fear. Why do we obey the rules set forth by parents to keep us safe or to keep them from worrying about us? Because we don’t want to be punished with something we fear.

            It continues on into the school system (we do schoolwork because we fear the consequences of failure), then into the work force (we do whatever we’re told, even sometimes when we know we shouldn’t, for fear of getting fired) and even our entire social structure (we obey the laws out of fear of fines and jail). Everything is predicated on fear. So, is it such a surprise that fear is used so much to control people?

            Okay, so the question then becomes, why do we always use fear? Quite simply, because it’s so easy. Look at sheep herding. With the right amount of fear in the right place, the sheep will go wherever the shepherd wants. It’s the same with people – it preys upon our survival instincts, our natural desire to stay safe. And it takes so little effort.

            Children are taught that they are to follow the rules or they’ll be punished. This simple bullying is enough to keep them mostly in line. They will follow rules that make no sense to them, just because they fear the consequences. Parents see nothing wrong with this – and why should they? They were raised the same way, and it held true for everything in the rest of their lives.

            Now, of course, they could always try explaining the rules to their children. That way they would hopefully understand why the rules are there and why they should be followed. They could be taught to keep themselves to be safe, and to respect and understand the feelings of others. But that takes a lot of time and most people don’t believe children are capable of understanding – or remembering. But a punishment, that is easy to remember.

            Still, I can’t help wondering what the world would be like if we were all raised to be mindful and empathetic rather than fearful. Would the world be a better, more compassionate place? Or would fear tactics, on the occasions that people decided to use them, become even more powerful because we aren’t so used to dealing with it?

            Either way, it seems like fear will always continue to work. I guess what we need to do is raise people to overcome fears – that way, someday, fear will no longer work.

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 life coaching 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.

Ageing Time

            Woah, is it August already? How did that happen? I could’ve sworn it was barely July. I guess it’s true when they say time goes faster the older you get. It seems a bit too fast for someone my age, though.

            It makes me think back to my days in school, when each day dragged on and on. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I disliked school, but I always found it tedious. I enjoyed learning, but the information I was taught was spread out over too much time. I always felt that everything covered over the course of a school year could’ve been taught to me in a month or two.

            Then, there’s all the time that was spent reviewing what was taught in previous years. True, it was necessary to a point, but I always felt I was being re-taught what I already knew when all I needed were a few key points.

            I look back at all those years now and think, what a waste. I know that I learned a lot of valuable things – my love of reading and writing was greatly nurtured by school – but, at the same time... I feel like I learned far too little for the time spent. Especially with how much longer the days felt.

            The absolute worst part, though, is the skill I became most proficient in. The skill of how to do nothing.

            Either because I finished my in-class work early or because my brain wasn’t feeling up to it at the time so I was leaving it for homework (this was quite common in the heat of summer, during the two allergy seasons that hit me or if I had a cold in the winter), there were times in school when there was simply nothing to do. Everyone was supposed to be working, so we weren’t allowed to talk (not that I was much of a talker). So, I learned the art of doing nothing.

            If my brain was feeling functional, I could spend the time thinking – the favourite pass-time of an introspective child. If not, well... it was simply a trick of looking like I was working while waiting for the class to end.

            I almost feel like this is something intentionally taught in school. The other side of looking at it is “how to pass the time when there is no work to do” which is, sadly, directly applicable to the workplace. It’s almost as if we are intentionally taught how to waste time.

            Then we get older and time goes faster. We’re proficient at wasting time, but there no longer seems to be time to waste. We base all our perceptions of time off how long those days in the school room were and we wonder how much we could get done if we had that much time and energy again.

            Whereas a day used to be a long time, soon it becomes short. Then a week becomes our definition of a short amount of time. Not long after that, months go flying by as if they were only one week long.

            Before long, a year is thought of as a short span of time.

            I watch all this time zipping past and wonder how fast time will pass for me in another decade. More than that, though, I look back to my years in school and wonder why I was forced to waste so much of my most valuable time.

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.

Teaching D&D

            I always enjoy watching people learning to play Dungeons & Dragons for the first time – which is what I was doing tonight. A friend of mine works in a store that is going to start running the official Wizards of the Coast gaming sessions and tonight, in preparation, he was running a game for new players. He asked me (as an experienced player) to come along to help advise the new players.

            The important thing to know about D&D is that it’s a storytelling game, specifically designed to give the players as much freedom as possible. As such, it can be a little complicated to learn – but the hardest thing to learn, I feel, is that you’re allowed to think outside the box and bend the rules to suite your needs.

            The best story I have to describe this involves a game I was playing that was run by the same friend. I had encountered a door that, to get through it, my character had to will himself through – becoming part of the door before passing through. So, I asked that, if my character could will himself to become part of the door, couldn't he also will the door to be part of him? After looking shocked for a moment, my friend agreed. My character absorbed the door and walked around, able to manifest a door at will.

            That’s the sort of game D&D is – anything goes and, in a society built around such solid rules, that’s a hard thing to learn. This group of players did a splendid job, however. At first, they stuck to the mechanics of the game, but while they were in a room with what sounded like an army coming after them, they became more and more creative in finding ways to secure the area. They started with trying to wedge a knife under the door to keep it shut and eventually tried using an ice spell to freeze the doors together.

            The best part is I hardly had to suggest anything. All the players picked up the game quickly and flowed right into it. A lot of credit needs to be given to me friend running the game – he taught the basics and prepared brilliantly for working with new players (if I ever teach a new group again, I’ll take a leaf out of his book). The end result was everyone had fun and there are now a bunch of new people hooked on D&D.

            I bet we could get a lot more outside-the-box thinkers in the world if more people played D&D. Maybe we should teach it in schools. Ah, if only I were the ruler of the world...

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.

The Hidden Message

            I have been asked many times before why it is that I love fantasy so much. To be honest, I don’t know all the reason – it is simply the only subject that completely captivates my interest. However, there’s one reason that I do know: I love the hidden meanings in the stories.

            To be fair, that extends to a lot of fiction, but fantasy in particular tends to have carte blanche to say whatever it wants. The writers can explore into the depths of morality, use allegorical political and religious situations and even express the odd scientific supposition.

            And no one questions any of it.

            Why? Because it isn't real. No one will ever tell you to watch a fantasy movie or read a fantasy book and tell you it really happened (at least, I hope they wouldn't. If they do, you may want to run away). Anything that is said can easily be brushed off.

            But hidden deep within those stories is an element of truth. The story may be an adventure, but underneath is a brilliant examination or commentary on human nature. What’s more, they usually don’t preach – more often than not, an idea is simply presented as if asking, “Hey, have you ever thought about that this way before?” I think that the inherent creativity in fantasy also encourages the reader and writer alike to think outside the box – something immensely important to our society as a whole.

            Recently I've been reading Colleen a lot of the books I read when I was younger. I'm amazed at how often I've come across phrases or ideas that stuck with me for years when I had no idea where they came from. These books shaped who I am today – not because they told me how to think, but because they presented me with ideas that resonated with me so much that I could never forget them.

            I think that future generations should probably take a cue from this fact, particularly when it comes to teaching. So often, these days, our education teaches what to think, rather than how to think. If we took the fantasy approach, by presenting a story and letting the student decide what is right, people would end up a lot truer to themselves.

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.

Communication

            I had a thought today. Well, okay, so I have thoughts every day, but this one stood out as one I’d like to share.

            Whenever we are communicating with others, we are functioning under the false assumption that they can understand us. The reason I say it is false is because all words have slightly different meanings to each person.

            For example, the word “yell”, defined as “to say something very loudly especially because you’re angry, surprised, or are trying to get someone’s attention”, inherently has multiple meaning. Yet, to each individual person the word has a different connotation. To some people, a yell is inherently negative, while to others it’s entirely neutral. Some people even use it to describe speaking angrily, even without the volume mentioned in the definition.

            The reason for this is really quite simple: it all depends on the context the word was used in when the person learned it, as well as the exact definition they assigned to the word for themselves. You see, no matter how hard we try, we can’t accurately teach what a word means, because we teach the word using other words. The result is that even someone learning words directly from a dictionary assigns their own understanding of the word to their own definition of the word.

            In the end, we can’t actually accurately communicate with each other. We can get a decent idea of what someone means when they say, “I'm happy”, “This sandwich tastes good”, or “Are people actually able to communicate?” but we can’t know exactly what they mean if we don’t know their personal definition for all the words they used.

            It’s often a minute difference in definition, but because of this, I've heard people having arguments where they were both saying exactly the same thing, only in different ways. Other times, people get upset because their definition of a word has a negative connotation while the speaker’s has a positive one.

            We can only ever do the best with what we have – obviously there’s no way to sync everyone’s definitions. It’s an important thing to keep in mind when communicating, though. Do your words mean the same to you as they do to your listener/reader?

            Did you understand any of that?

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.

Workshopping with Homeschoolers

            Last Monday I had a delightful experience. My wife and I taught a chainmaille workshop for a homeschooling group.

            When I was first asked to run this workshop, I asked the mother who’d suggested the idea to have the kids look through my website to pick projects they’d like to learn. The reply I got was that they wanted to learn the techniques and be allowed to make what they wanted after that.

            This, in itself, was a bit of a challenge, since it’s hard to plan for such an unstructured lesson – particularly for materials. However, I also understood the benefit of allowing the children free reign with what they created.

            So I went and I taught a group of eight (including one of the mothers and the curator of the museum we were at) the basics, then stuck around to teach more to those who wanted to learn more patterns and help the others with what they were making on their own. It was a wonderful time – it felt like I was there having fun with a group of friends. It was also great to teach people so eager to learn.

            What impressed me most, however, was the only member of the group who didn't really take to the craft. He struggled with the pattern, but still gave it a good try. Instead of throwing a fit, like many kids his age would (and I could see the emotions that would accompany that written on his face), he tried his best and gave up when it became too frustrating.

            In response to this, where many mothers would scold him and tell him to keep trying, his mother thanked him for giving it a try and doing his best and gave no objection to him returning to playing with Lego (what they’d been doing before the workshop).

            I think this demonstrates one of the major advantages to homeschooling – there is a much greater level of respect and understanding between the parents and their children, since they spend so much more time together. Children are also encouraged to learn and ask questions, but not forced to learn if they don’t want to, which makes them more willing to learn. They even enjoy it! Whereas children in the school system usually rebel and take a great dislike for learning.

            I wonder if there is something our educational system can learn from this. Perhaps there’s away to teach children in large groups while respecting who they are instead of trying to change them to fit the system. It might even make a friendlier society at large.

            Oh, did I mention how polite homeschooled children are? At the end of the workshop, that same boy who had trouble learning made a point of coming up to me and thanking me for coming to teach. I'm looking forward to my next workshop with the group very much.

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.