People-Food Dynamics

I was going to head over to a friend's for a game of Dungeons and Dragons. It was probably 3rd edition, I don't really remember. I don't think it matters though anyway for this story. Usually during a game, the host has a bunch of snacks ready for us to eat while we play, such as a bag of chips sitting out, or soda in the fridge. Well, I decided that it would be a good idea to bring over a food item this time. Cake is good; everybody likes cake, so that's what I made. I followed some recipe from a cooking book. This isn't about cooking food though, so I'll cut to the end of the story: the cake had a ton of butter in it, and for better or worse, the cake was the highlight of the day.

I don't know if this whole food thing whole food thing is actually a good idea or not. Depending on the type of food, it may serve as a great a distraction from the actual game. Of course, this all depends on how seriously the game you're running is being taken. If it's the type that's laid back, the game is just an excuse for meeting up with friends, it's completely fine since distractions are fairly common, such as conversations leading to tangents that have little to nothing to do with the game. For a serious game that's fun value comes from the mood it creates, a minimally distracting food would probably be best, and as players become engrossed it will become unnecessary.

When the game is being conducted over the internet, the food situation takes a different form. You can enforce a rule that all participants individually must have a specific food item prepared. This will result in a great success for a few reasons: food tastes good for those that have it. the promise of food will help with getting people to sign down to a specific time to play, you don't have to actually have food for other people, and people that are embarrassed that they don't have the food won't admit it; they'll just pretend they're eating food and no one else will have to know about it.

4th Edition: Unit Combat

I've put together what I think is a pretty good looking PDF that uses 4th Edition swarm-monster design for making swarms of humanoids - combat units! It should be similar enough to 4E that it doesn't distract from gameplay or feel like a separate system, but interesting enough to give large-scale conflict an interesting flavor when it comes up. Enjoy!

Law of the (Fantasy) Land

Your party has entered a small harbor town of your own design for a homebrew campaign. Right away that chaotic rogue gets everyone in trouble. The militia show up to the inn and shout, "Open up! We have a warrant for your arrest!" The rogue wants to know if he has the right to one long-distance telepathic collect call with A. (for Arthur!) Wizard (for Sorceror). Something strikes me as less than awesome about how this situation is being handled!

And it's a gross exaggeration of the point of this post: know your setting(s). While few people, at least in a semi-serious session, would tolerate such a modern (and nonsensical) spin on their fantasy setting, you may have a developed or developing republic. If that's the case, it doesn't make much sense to, later on (and in the same country), have people accept tyrannical oppression as a way of life or express loyalty to or admiration for the divinity of their leaders. Conversely, if the rogue is judged by a magistrate that expresses pride in having been appointed by the king, it's a risky idea to have NPCs (openly) complain about the un-democratic, rights-trampling tactics of the court; chances are, those NPCs don't have any rights to speech, either!

This isn't just about maintaining consistency, but about setting the tone for your setting. What do you want authority to represent? What are peoples' expectations regarding their rights? Is power a corrupting force, or can the common man aspire to it and do great things?

You may think these are dangerous subjects to cover in your game, and if you had your players actively developing the setting with you I'd agree. But until the players start playing, they don't have to know what kind of world they're being dropped into, and chances are they'll take whatever challenges you throw at them - whether it's toppling a military dictatorship or protecting the throne.

Just because they didn't sit up with you all night slaving away over the spiral notebook, designing the world, doesn't mean they still can't shape it. Once their characters are playing in the world they can become a driving force to hijack the setting and take it in the direction that they (and hopefully their characters) want it to go in. Take note of what the players do, and try to figure out why they do it. Are they uncomfortable with a dominantly evil setting? Do they just think all evil is meant to be vanquished? Will this become a limiting factor in future sessions involving similar themes? The foundation of your game's conflicts and the quality of their delivery hinge on these things.

Welcome, Zeefer!

That's right, anxious readers, I've added a new author, Chris K. from Zeefer Madness. Artist, cook and fellow gamer, I'm sure we're all looking forward to his nougats of wisdom.

In other news, I'll have the minimum weekly theme post tomorrow at 11am sharp. You almost get the feeling I have all these articles written up already in a vault somewhere, scheduled to be published even if I wake up dead in a ditch somewhere over the course of the next few minutes.