Our game group is back into a D&D campaign now (still 3rd edition D&D), and this past Thursday was our third game night in the first adventure. We’re running a “round robin” style game, with each Player taking a turn at DMing an adventure. Usually, when we play D&D, I’m the sole DM. I’m looking forward this new play style because it will let me play a character for a while. I think I really need to experience the Player side of the game more, especially with this group.

DMing for this group, there are many times I wonder over why they make certain decisions or choices, why they see certain things or fail to see certain things. When I ask the Players why, I often just don’t understand the answers. One of the Players has remarked many times “You just need better Players.” I don’t think these guys are bad Players, by any stretch of the imagination. They’re creative, intelligent, and generally observant (much more observant than I am most times). But sometimes they just don’t see things that for me is obvious (but as DM, I have all the answers literally written right in front of me), or they see things that I can’t figure out how they come up with. This is one reason I like playing a character in our games often: it lets me see the world from their perspective.

Let me give an example from this current adventure:

The party of adventurers are exploring a dungeon filled with a bunch of monsters. They come to one room where they encounter a big, bad demon monster. They engage it briefly (about 3 rounds of fighting), and find out that they can’t hurt it as they are currently prepared. So they pull back out of the room and regroup. Later, they reprepare their resources specifically to combat the demon. They charge back into the room and defeat the monster (7 rounds). This was all smart adventuring.

[As a side note: this 7-round battle took 40 minutes to play out with 6 characters, plus 2 animal companions and 1 summoned creature against the 1 demon and his 2 summoned creatures.]

In another encounter, the adventurers were trying to leave the dungeon and return to their home base. As they left the dungeon, a WHOLE BUNCH of low-level, low-intelligence monsters were between them and home.

The way I expected this mass combat to go was that the adventurers would see the enemies massing on them and so they would pull back to safety to regroup and come up with a plan for getting through them. (I can think of several ways this group of adventures could get through the mass of monsters.)

But what the adventurers did was to step just outside the dungeon exit and stay there, round after round after round. I explained that they could see more of these monsters coming from the surrounding area, and I directly mentioned that there were many, many more that they couldn’t see yet, but could hear in the distance. The adventurers stayed in their spots and pretty much slaughtered the weak enemies one after another (killing around 2-6 each round). But each round, more monsters arrived, and the adventurers weren’t really accomplishing anything against the swelling horde.

It wasn’t until the 8th round of the fight that one of the Players mentioned pulling back. By this time, there were so many dead monster bodies piled in places that virtual walls were forming from the corpses. On the 9th round, the adventurers starting pulling back into the dungeon, and on the 10th round they were fully disengaged (and the monsters didn’t follow them back inside). Only 1 adventurer and her animal companion had been seriously injured during the standing battle.

Afterwards, the Players didn’t seem too interested in the tactical challenge of getting through the horde. It seemed to be an annoyance to them. When I created the encounter, I had thought it would be a really cool challenge; something more than the cliched just hack the monster till it’s dead. I thought this scenario would be the type of battle talked about for a long time after — “Remember when we had to fight our way through that horde?”

[As a side note: this 10-round battle took 103 minutes to play out with 6 characters, plus 2 animal companions and 4 summoned creatures against never less than 40 monsters on the battlemap at any given time.]

Now, my question is this: How is it the Players realized they weren’t going to defeat the demon monster within a couple of rounds, but against the horde they just stayed there round after round after round . . .? I really want to see what these situations are like from the position of a Player in the game rather than just as the DM. I want to understand if things like this really aren’t obvious, or if the Players get into a mindset that they can’t awake from.

I’ve seen Players, before, get so fixated on things, especially in a battle, that they completely ignore things that to me, as DM, are obvious. I’ve also seen this happen with Players when I’m a Player beside them, but I can’t recall it happening to me, personally. (It may have and I just don’t remember it, though, or I didn’t realize I was doing it.)

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

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