Dreaming of D&D

Savage Swords talks about dreaming of games - this has been happening to me a lot recently. A lot. I recently reacquired the 1e DMG, and poring over it like I used to do when I was 12. A lot of the setup for the overlord side of the game I'm getting together is coming from the DMG - it's sinking into the subconscious. Last night I dreamt of tables - and like there's not enough in the book (can there ever be enough? uh...yeah, probably so...anyway) - like there weren't enough in the book as is, I found a cache of tables I'd never seen before - somewhere in the random encounter by dungeon level area, which was a sort of uber-table.

This was a dream, remember, and it was vague. I was totally psyched - it was the table to end all tables! I think I was generating a dungeon. And, of course, I can't remember what it was about. I remember rolling on it and generating some information and being really excited, feeling like a thorny problem that had existed for years was solved by this discovery - but yeah, in the waking world, I have no idea what the table was. Ugh. Oh well. Perhaps it'll bubble back up out of the subconscious at some point (like while I'm trapped at work, or fixing dinner or something). Perhaps it will appear in the next Fight On! - stranger things have happened.

Makes me think of something I used to do when I ran games pretty regularly. Provide dreams. When the characters slept, (and when I remembered) there was a chance they'd have a dream (the chance was 10% + Int + Wis I believe...)). So I had about a dozen index cards with some content of some generally random dream-things that had no bearing or symbolic relevance to the characters - of course, I did not tell them that - they were free to 'read into it' as much or as little as they wanted to. There were also 1 or 2 cards for each character that DID contain a clue or a message that was relevant to their character, though couched in obscure terms and such. I'd draw a card at random if they had a dream, and give it to them to keep. Sometimes they'd latch on to something that was suggestive of import and really try to suss it out - and this gave birth to some interesting play!

Dream On!

Open Call for Overlords!

I've managed to get a few people interested in some at-table gaming, and they seem initially into Swords & Wizardry, which I'm sure will be cast through a Holmes Basic lens to some extent at first.
It is entirely possible that it will mutate into T&T or something else at some point.

So the starting point is on a large, isolated island with six 'kingdoms' separated by wilderness - this wilderness (of course) dotted with ancient ruins, bandits and other baddies, and such. I am hoping that I can talk some of you online persons to run NPCs in this environment (this has been refered to as Evil Overlord somewhere on the webnet - I have lost the bookmark - it's a good read though). The gist is that these online characters are higher-level characters instead of NPCs run by the GM - so the 'background' (of the tabletop game) is formed by agencies other than just the DM's addled pate.

If you're interested, email me at lexos.gdb@gmail.com. Your character and the disposition of your resources will be randomly generated. And thank you!

EDIT: Here's a link to the page that introduced this idea to me

And a 'testimonial' from someone who implemented it

PS: the "Evil" part of Evil Overlord is tongue-in-cheek - there's no evil requirement. (for the sqeamish - there's no evil prohibition either...)

just curious...

would you have a harder time playing a game where the DM rolled all of the dice for your character, or one in which you did not have access to your character's stat scores and game mechanic information?

EDIT: Let me clarify. Sorry. Hasty initial post.
1. You can look at your character sheet, but the DM rolls dice as required to resolve your character's actions and such (to-hits, saving rolls, etc) OR
2. You never see your character sheet, but roll for your own character's actions.

! play-style (blag)

Forgive a rant...

Alexis at Tao of D&D in this post has said some things which I really find myself in agreement and disagreement with. Obviously there are different takes on "play-style" or methodology or whatever it is to be called - and I generally loathe the analysis and exegis of the variances/pros/cons/etc. The event-of-play works or does not and the 'tenor' of play is decided by the group - and in my (good) experiences has developed organically from that group.

This is a part of that post:

    Successful players are ALWAYS those who do not put 
    on a pretense of being some imaginary character, but 
    players who dig down within themselves to find something 
    which they don't generally display. This usually turns 
    out to be a remarkable trait they possess. I have a cleric 
    in my offline who, when not a cleric, is shy and speaks 
    little. But who will, at play, display vocal support for 
    the party, resolve, bravery and generousity. That is 
    because, deep inside, the player in question has these 
    traits--she isn't making them up for the sake of "character."

    Players should be themselves.

The first statement. This is an issue of how 'successful' is defined. In his case, as I read it, he's defining it as survival. And I agree whole-heartedly. Players who shoot themselves/the party in the foot because it's 'in-character' or whatever are a drag. Decisions based not on reason and evaluation of the situation at hand, but out of dogmatic interpretation of "who-my-character-is" or "how my character would react" are probably going to get in trouble. I tend to rationalize the actions my characters take after the fact, because that's more entertaining to me.

Now as for the final statement...
The fact is that I have never not been myself while playing a game or otherwise. But none of my characters have 'been me'. I'll draw shallow or deep from myself as seems appropriate. When I feel like really identifying with my character then I do, but I do not feel compelled to, and often find play more enjoyable when I don't. Honestly, it's just difficult to read this as anything but a positive/negative judgement - when a player is expressing something they do not express in real life and use the game as catharsis(?) this is good - otherwise, it does not contribute to Success, and is therefore bad...

By the point of the example he gives above, the argument does not seem (to me) to be about success in the game anymore. I'm all for a person's self-actualization, for people finding the positive, good parts of themselves. At whatever time/In whatever medium they choose. Not to sound too emo or goth or whatever, but I'd rather reach-down and pull up ugly parts of myself while in-game - because these don't commonly find expression in my every day life. And this is not why I play games in the first place - I am generally an escapist and prefer to keep my own psychology out of it as much as possible...

I'm not trying to pick fights!
Just writin' on my blog again!

Play-styles.
Ugh.

Divine Railroad -Toot! Toot!

I am afraid of railroading characters. I don't like to have it done to me - I don't like to do it to others. Simple (non-denominational) Golden Rule style.

That said, when I am running a game and there is a 'cleric-type' character (a character whose rationale is service to a deity) that character may sometimes recieve hints or insights. In my defense, I'll sometimes tell the player of an atheist or agnostic character what they dreamed of - and this dream may or may not have some bearing on the game situation - but more often in the case of the 'cleric' these dreams/intuitions/etc ARE relevant to play.

There have not yet been any visitation dreams, nor overt informational or instructional dreams - no
commandments or orders delivered. The player is always open to interpret (or not) as they see fit.

So I am wondering - am I a closet conductor using the divine conduit as an excuse to steer the player? And why is it that in this one instance (character is dedicated deist) more than any other I feel more inclined/justified to 'meta-play'?

Seems like the thing to do...

So, of course, I have restarted running a game. It is pretty haywire at this point - fortunately, only two players (who are also close friends) and I am trying to engage them in systemic decisions while we play - to the extent that they want to do that while we establish some mechanics. They even let me demand random character generation for social-class, race and profession!

The first character has decided not to reveal his name as of yet. He is outcaste mutant dwarf with chitinous skin. I call him "The Clubber". He has a yet undefined rival.

The second character is an upper-class halfling acolyte (read: agent of a diety - not a paladin in the champion/leader/holy warrior sense, but not a vested priest either). When I asked what deity he served, he gave me Dispater. Cool. He also ended up being superstitious and getting a HUGE amount of wealth (3000 gp worth of gems) from random-roll background options. As of now, the player calls him Allen.

I wanted to generate characters quickly, but I also wanted the beginnings of a skill system in place at the outset, so I made a table of 8 'skill categories' and assigned skill points to these categories based on (randomly-determined in this case) social-class, race, and profession, then we defined some of the skills in these families.

Didn't take long at all.

But mechanically, the game is haywire. I'm using my homebrew T&T (more stats for a little finer SR granularity) but a 'to-hit' roll and AAC. Attack rolls are made with 2d10. I used Rolemaster's most recent Character Law for background options,for a few spells the Halfling knew, and a starting point on skills.

They started the game in an isolated, marsh vale - in an economy based largely on the exotic local flora. I had pictured this area as a 'silver economy', at best. I got really uptight about the wealth that had been determined for the Halfling, so I made one of the gems a plot-hook (must be returned to an abandoned temple underground - reverse AD&D PHB cover) - trying to rein in the potential for economic destabilization. It was heavy-handed - in retrospect, I shouldn't have done that, but he still had no problem buying ANYTHING he wanted.

He ended up equipping The Clubber also, which was good, because the dwarf had nothing but a few coppers and some smelly charnel rags. He's intensely anti-social (this so called Clubber). We decided that some segment of the Cult of Dispater deals with burial - so this insectoid(!) dwarf, cast out from the nearby highland castle Absen, wanders south into marsh vale and lurks around the graves. The Cult sends them into the (terrestrial) underworld to restore this valuable gemstone to an abandoned temple.

I have a 100 mile area hexmapped - a lot of mountains with smallish valleys and vales. The setting borrows a few details from Aldiss' Halyconia trilogy - if you haven't read at least Halyconia Spring, do so ASAP. The world freezes and thaws, and there are large underworld settlements (read: megadungeons) to house the population when the surface is too cold or too hot, though that knowledge is only really maintained by organizations and persistent institutions. There is a humanoid race that waxes in the long winters of the world (the ancipitals), and a race that thrives in the warmer period (the humans (which, in this case, includes halflings, dwarves, elves, etc)).

As the Halfling was of high social class, he has available to him an anciptal slave/bodyguard. He decided not to take advantage of this 'resource'.

This post is long, so I'll briefly post-mortem session 1:
1. THEY ROLLED GREAT! I was witness to a stunning series of statistical oddites - they rolled CRAZY!
2. It bugs them to actually look for secret doors, and they are shitty mappers.
3. They are pretty heavily wounded and holed-up in a room behind a secret door (that I openly railroaded them to search for in the first place! Hope they're somewhat grateful...).