Tag: Brian Holland

I haven’t seen my son in about a month because I’ve been traveling a lot for work lately. But he called to talk for a bit while I’m out of town, and here are the DW-related highlights (he plays a wizard in a one-on-one game with me):

SON: You remember that rust monster thing I fought a couple months ago?

ME: Yep.

S: Could I use my ritual move to make rust arrows? So [his archer hireling] can destroy the [an order of Knights we made up]’s swords and armor?

M: Sure, but you’ll need some rust monster blood and some rust. Of course it’ll take several days of experimentation to get the enchantment correct and you’ll need to find a place of power. Plus he’ll need to be REALLY careful with them so he doesn’t destroy his own armor and stuff (because I run him mwahaha).

S: What if we dip them in wax? That way they’ll be safe to handle but the wax will crumble off when they hit something. I have some candles in my adventuring gear.

M: Yeah sure, that’ll definitely make them safe.

S: Cool! I can’t wait to play next time I’m over! Are there more rust monsters in that dungeon…

We talked for almost two hours, and a good 45 minutes of that was about DW. I love how a single monster he fought back in December spawned the idea for at least a couple more sessions. Right now he’s level 4, so it’ll be a while before he can take the Self Powered move, but I’m going to give him a chance to learn it early if he wants to go down that path so he can make his own place of power rather than finding one.

I’m at the Atlanta airport waiting to board my next flight and I just heard a guy a few seats down say “Sure, Defy Danger with DEX”. Dude’s playing DW with crappy WiFi at the gate waiting for the flight!

Played in a fantastic one-shot DM’d by Damian Jankowski, with “co-stars” Chris Gill and Mark Weis (who I can’t tag right now because G+ does this stupid thing all the time where it doesn’t let me tag someone who I KNOW I’ve tagged before!!!!!). It ended about 5 hours ago (so why the hell am I awake??) and was possibly the most fun I’ve ever had in a session.

The story took place in a world we built for a one-shot several months ago – including many elements from that story and even one of the same PC’s – and occurred 10 – 20 years later. The world had changed in some major ways and the character I played in that game had died at some point between the two stories.

Playing two one-shots in the same world, with characters and events in common, separated by a large chunk of time feels really cool, like we’re playing out an epic story similar to Issac Asimov’s Foundation series. The first book was five stories (that I think he had written at different times) spread over a huge block of time, and a total of 500 or 600 years took place over the trilogy (not counting any of the Foundation books he wrote later in life, or that series marriage with his Robot series which takes the entire story up to several THOUSAND years of elapsed time).

This is something I want to talk about with my own play group; the idea that we can play out an epic story with lots of different characters and points in time as a series of one-shots, or “mini-campaigns” of 2 to 3 sessions.

Is anyone doing anything like this now? Any tips or advice anyone can offer?

Here is a One-roll Region Generator to go along with the Dungeon Generator I posted last night.

I think I want to try a Fiasco-style Session Zero with it: roll one of each die (d4 – d20) for each player (so when I do it tomorrow with 3 players I’ll roll 3d4, 3d6, 3d8, etc.) and go around the table with each player choosing one die from the pool and applying it’s facet to one of three (because 3 players) regions that we’re building. The last die of each region will be “wild”, and the player gets to choose whichever item he/she wants from the appropriate table. After all facets have been assigned we’ll flesh out the regions.

This gives the players full immersion in the world building, and helps drive decisions for their characters backgrounds. I’ll post the regions that we create Sunday or Monday.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xxFQY0AvkXEjsI1lgEQrSvJV1JKhQIo0FXppSQ2AmPQ/edit?usp=sharing

I LOVE Perilous Wilds (and have ordered my print copy) but I hate rolling so many dice when I just want some quick dungeon ideas, so I built a one-roll dungeon generator, which borrows heavily from PW and a couple other sources. Roll 1 of each die together (d4 through d20) and consult the tables (see link).

I’ve used this several times for my own games (and will be creating one for regions, cities, factions, and possibly NPC’s) and decided to put it into a google doc to get some feedback. I’m not entirely happy with the d20 table, so any thoughts or ideas on any of it would be appreciated.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MwzY449bz5Xk6NwssT4alFgxxKtVQO9JNWt31dqBEMw/edit?usp=sharing

I sent a questionnaire to my players regarding our upcoming campaign, which I’d planned to set about 20 years after the end of our last campaign. The big bad would be an NPC they encountered briefly near the end of that campaign, who had spent the last 20 years gaining and consolidating her power. After reading their responses to my questions I’m going to have to switch gears.

Two out of my three players stated (in different ways) that they wanted to play a “less epic game”. One said he didn’t want to save the world from Sauron, he just wanted to play a guy that lived in a different world, and got to do things he can’t do in real life. The second said she only wanted to play and didn’t care about “doing epic s***”.

I guess I hadn’t thought about roleplaying that way. I’ve always thought about “how can we save the world THIS time”.

So I had a few ideas for a less epic game:

1) (From a trinket in the D&D5e PHB) Recover the missing pages of a Diary. This could be a campaign long goal, and still allows for lots of player input to flesh out.

2) (From a Shadows of the Demon Lord heritage (race) option): One character is an automaton, one of three (or whatever) created at the same time, and he’s searching for the others. Again, can be pretty long and lends itself to player input.

3) Build an airship and flee from this tyrannical continent.

None of these are about “Saving the World” or “Defeating the Big Bad”, but they could lead to that if the players wanted to go in that direction.

Which would you be most interested in if you wanted a “less epic game”?

EDIT: (Because this should have been included to begin with) – The theme idea that came out of the initial and follow-up questionaires is that the players want to “survive or escape” the big bad, rather than trying to save the world.

I’ve only been role playing steadily for about 3 years, and only DMing for about 18 months. I’m not great at either, so I watch a bunch of videos and read a lot about such things. I watched something today and although I’ve heard this before, something about the way it was presented really resonated with me and made me realize why I’m not such a good player:

“You’re not playing a game and you’re not playing a ranger. You’re playing Aragorn, who in this case happens to be a ranger.”

I spend too much time “playing the ranger” and not enough time “playing Aragorn”.

What is some advice you all have to help make a player better?

I don’t know why I’m lot listed as the author, but here is the second article of a series I’m writing from Gnome Stew.

http://www.gnomestew.com/general/locations-finding-the-lay-of-the-land/

http://www.gnomestew.com/general/locations-finding-the-lay-of-the-land/

Gregory Daily and others (who I cant tag because their names don’t come up on the stupid list even though I type it in exactly: Chris Stone-Bush, Peter J, Andrea Serafini):

This is something I worked up with several of the idea that were being talked about. A deck would be separated into 3 stacks: STR/DEX, CON/INT, and WIS/CHA. Each player would be dealt 1 card from each stack and can choose 1 card to discard, drawing a new card from the same stack.

The card has a damage die modifier (default is d6, and the die symbol on the card will have an up or down arrow, or a dash meaning no change).

Also, an HP modifier is included. Maybe base 16 or something, then each card modifies that total.

Move name and move appropriate to the category it’s drawn from.

The bottom of the card has your modifiers (in this case STR + 2 and DEX + 0, but Called Shot would probably have STR + 0 and DEX + 2).

There’s also a bond on each card, and you get to pick one bond and one player to apply that too.

This setup gives you 3 moves, all six stats, 1 bond, your damage die and HP. Additional thoughts include text along a side edge giving your starting equipment.

Thoughts?