This is a continuation of the observations I made while watching a D&D game at my local game/hobby shop. There were seven players — one DM, six Players — and all seemed to be having an enjoyable time. At the time I was there, they were in the middle of a battle. The battle map showed four PCs and three man-sized monsters in a melee, and two PCs and another man-sized monster out, away from the group cluster.

I watched the game for about five minutes, and only one Player took a turn in that time. They seemed to be playing 4th edition D&D for the first time (was a couple of days before its release), going through the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure. So part of their slowness in playing the game came from them learning the rules and not knowing their PCs well. I noticed something in their play that I found amazing, in a frustrating way.

The Player of the cleric wanted to use some power that affected the enemies negatively and affected his allies positively. The range was 3 squares, and he counted the area around his mini on the battle map. He explained the ability out loud for all to hear — the negative, the positive, and the range.

“It might not get this guy,” he said about a monster at the corner of the 3 square area.

The DM leaned over and counted the squares of the area. “Yeah, it gets him, too,” he said.

Now, you’d think that would be the end of figuring out the range for this situation, but no. Another Player leaned over the table and counted the area. Then another Player counted. “I don’t think this guy is in it,” a second Player said. “No, he’s in it,” another Player said.

Debate went around the table as all six Players and the DM counted out the range — the Player using the power counted the range twice, and the DM counted the range three times. That’s ridiculous. The discussion went probably 60 seconds longer than the 6 seconds it should have taken because everyone had to check the area on the map and interject their opinion of the range.

Then the Player said what the power did, again. “The monsters take [whatever the penalty is], and all my allies within 3 squares get 5 hit points back every round.”

“What?” the DM questioned. “That’s not right. Let me see your sheet.”

The Player handed the DM his sheet and started bragging about how cool the power was and all the other Players congratulated him on it.

“No, no,” the DM said, “they gain extra hit points this round and then in following rounds if you heal them during those rounds.”

“Oh,” the Player said, a little disappointed. “Okay, then, everyone gets 5 hit points.”

The other Players were happy, and one of them, whose character was well outside the range of the power, said, “All of us?” He and the other Player whose character was outside the range of the power started writing on their character sheets.

“No,” said the DM, “just those within 3 squares.”

“Oh,” said the Players.

Now not only had the Player who was using the power stated two or three times that the power had a range of 3 squares, but both the Players with characters outside that range had counted the 3 squares on the battle map. I don’t think they were trying to cheat, I think they were just caught up in the excitement. But their excitement just complicated the situation further.

And then the power Player corrected himself, “I mean, everyone gets 8 hit points back. Not 5. It’s 5 plus Wisdom bonus.”

“Our Wisdom bonus?” one of the other Players asked.

“No,” the power Player answered, “my Wisdom bonus.”

“Nobody’s Wisdom bonus,” corrected the DM.

“What?” the power Player said. He checked the text of the power again and said, sheepishly, “Oh, yeah. Just 5 points.”

At this point I had to leave the store.

What I witnessed for that five minute turn was pure chaos. Everyone was talking over each other, there were misreadings, misstatements, and misunderstandings. I thought, “My God, that would be torture to try to DM.” [“That” being the game group, not the game.]

I mean, just the counting and recounting and debating the area of effect of that one power was taking such an absurd amount of time and brain power. Watching that group play, I couldn’t see anything fun or interesting about playing D&D. It looked like nothing but a headache to play.

I’m still thinking about what lessons to take from watching that game. One thing I’ve definitely decided is a lesson to remember: when it’s not my turn in the game, stay still and quiet. Don’t add to the chaos of sound and action. Trying to “help” seems to not be so helpful.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I was in my local game/hobby shop with my boys this past week, and I took a few minutes to watch a group of guys playing D&D in the back of the store. This store is set up with half the floor space covered by tables and chairs for all kinds of game play. I’ve seen miniature war games, card games, and board games played there as well as the ocassional role playing game.

This group of guys was playing D&D 4th edition, but really, what I noted about their play has nothing to do with the edition of the game. I’ve seen similar situations in all editions of D&D, and with many other RPGs. There were seven guys at the table — one DM, six Players — and they all looked like normal guys. But two of them . . .

Keep this in mind when playing games in a public place:

Don’t swing an “air sword” at the game table. Even the most normal-looking guy will look like a total dork when he’s swinging his invisible great sword around. Especially don’t make sword-clash sounds with your mouth when you swing. The youngest guy at the table (probably 19) did this, and God bless him, he looked so incredibly stupid doing it.

Don’t say, “huzzah!” and raise your fist like in the air like a superhero even when your character performs a cool stunt. You can say, “Yeah!” and pump your fist; you can do a number of shouts and gestures to get across your excitement. But no normal person says “huzzah!” in public, and no normal person poses with their fist in the air like they were about to fly up. One of the older guys at the table did this, and God bless him, he might as well have screamed, “I’m a dork!”

For full disclosure: I have done both of the above gestures and sounds when playing a game. But, I game in the privacy of a home, not in a public venue, even a game store, where “the norms” can witness my dorkitude.

Remember, when you game in public, you’re representing all gamers. Try not to look like a dork. Please?

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I went by my local hobby/game store and bought the new Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook. D&D 4th edition is out, now, and I’m interested to see what’s new and improved. So instead of writing a blog post right now, I’m gonna sit down and thumb through this book. Sadly though, I’m not real excited about it — I’m just very curious.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

My game group is starting a new D&D campaign. It’s been a few months since we played D&D — we only played two nights of the psionic campaign back in January. This time we’re going to all share the Dungeon Master duties. We’ll each run one adventure, for two or three game sessions, and rotate through us so everyone gets to play a character and run an adventure.

I’m pretty excited about this campaign, because I like DMing and playing a character. I usually DM when we play D&D, but after a few months to a year of running the game, I burn out and need a break. It can be a good deal of work to run a role playing game, and I just don’t have the free time for the prep work that I used to.

So, anyway, in anticipation of being able to play a character after I DM the first adventure in our campaign, I got a Reaper Mini catalog. I like to find a cool game miniature and build my character based on it. No one has to do this, and most people don’t do it this way, but it’s just something that I like to do. I can build dozens of characters just off the top of my head, but it’s a little bit of a simple challenge to build one based on a miniature. Besides, it’s extra cool when you can show your fellow gamers exactly what your character looks like by sitting a 3-dimensional representation of him on the game table.

<- This was the character I chose to build for our game. I dubbed him “The Holy Hammer of Hessia” and I was excited to play his the personality and mechanics. (For you readers who aren’t familiar with D&D-type miniatures: the figure in this image is about twice the size of the real thing.

I ordered this mini, and half a dozen more, through my local game store a few days ago. When they called me to let me know my order had arrived, they apologized that two of the minis were not available.

I knew one of the two would of course be this mini, and it was. I had already designed and written up the character from the core rules, and I’ve been looking forward to playing this guy for over a week. And now, sadly, I can’t get the mini. I may end up playing the character anyway, without the figure representation, but it just looses some of the cool factor without the mini on the table.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com