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.

If I Were You

There are a great number of expressions in English that seemingly make no sense, while there are others that make a kind of half-sense. One expression that has been preying on my mind is the semi-accurate “If I were you...” It’s an expression we use when giving advice, which actually means “If I were in your place...” but we’re so familiar with it that we automatically translate it in our heads. Yet, taken at face value, “If I were you...” is quite inaccurate, and shows a symptom of one of our greatest struggles as individuals.

            When interacting with other people, on an intellectual level we know they are very different from us – their thoughts are different, their likes and dislikes are different, and their entire life experience has been different. Yet, when we tell them about something we have experienced, we instantly expect them to understand how we experienced. After all, it hurts when I stub my toe, don’t you feel exactly the same thing when you stub yours? But, for all we know, there could be someone out there who thoroughly enjoys the sensation of a stubbed toe, so they go around kicking things.

            For a more down-to-earth example, my brother loves cars – everything about them. He can (and has) go on at length about all the parts and how they work, and will generally do so every chance he gets. He knows when the people around him don’t share his interests, and he knows that they have different likes – but, at a fundamental level, he doesn’t understand why it is that other people don’t all love cars as much as he does.

            We all have a certain element of that in us, that little part that wonders how other people don’t like what we like as much as we do. I love bacon, how can you not love bacon? Yet, somehow, there are people who hate the taste of bacon. Intellectually, we know this, but deep down there’s some fundamental part of us that believes everyone else is just like us.

            So, when I say to my brother, “If I were you, I’d get a mechanic to fix the car,” I am superimposing my own self onto him, and making my statement completely inaccurate. If I were him, I’d love cars, because he loves cars, so that’s how I’d feel about them if I were him – and I’d then proceed to fix the car myself. A far more accurate statement would be, “If you were me, you’d get a mechanic to fix the car.” You see, then I’d be expressing what he would do if he had my interests, rather than what I’d do if I were in his place.

            It may seem a small change, and rather pointless considering the well-established expression, but the way we say things is important. It shapes the way we think. If we go around expecting others to conform to our life experiences, we’re going to regularly run into problems. On the other hand, if we go around expecting people to have entirely different views and experiences than ourselves, well, we may actually begin to make some progress.

            If you were me, you’d be amazed that this was the 300th blog you’ve written. And if I were you... well, I really don’t know, do I?

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.

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.