Working with Player Choice, Catalyzing Chaos

In the mind of the game master, the world they created is a glorious clockwork machine filled with carefully constructed intrigue, adventure and drama.

Players, by their nature, want to play! They want to explore new worlds through the medium of the tabletop experience. Through all five of the player senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, and hitting things with medieval cutlery, players want to interact with everything. They are also people, as such they act about as predictably as the dice they wield.

Players may completely ignore the city the game master created, after having spent many sleepless nights researching civic infrastructure, and instead insist on setting sail upon the nearby sea. By some small slight or misspoken word, the players may just slay that all important NPC with a backstory that took up several three ring binders! They generally don’t do this maliciously it is simply in their nature to act in a way most exciting for them.

Some game masters might be utterly demoralized by this, harboring animosity for derailing what they had felt was a truly majestic story. This might come out as petty cruelties.  Or perhaps as despondent acquiescence to whatever the players feel like doing leading to a meandering adventure that eventually leads no where.

Myself however, I invite it. For me there is no greater pleasure than a collaborative story.

Being a game master is essentially a combination of author and actor, one must gain proficiency in both to run a successful game. This includes improvisation, in fact I would hazard to say that improvisation is key to the success of a game. Your players are essentially improvising every step of the way so it only seems polite to meet them in this.

Allow me to recount an example from my most recent game, a Halloween session of Call of Cthulhu. The players were all engaged in tea and desserts aboard the orient express. Seated at their table were two NPCs, an occult minded dilettante and a land owning hunter. The players felt they had reason to be suspicious of both of these characters and tailed both in their own ways.

Unknown to the players, the hunter was a restless spirit, given unnatural life by way of a boon of the underworld. This semblance of life had a time limit which I was keeping track of by way of an hour glass. The players of course had no idea what the hourglass was measuring, simply that I had turned it over when play began. I had intended the hunter to return to his cabin on the train and perform the rite that would keep him enfleshed. Having done this, he would participate with the players in the fight that would happen soon after against a monstrous creature assaulting the train. In this way, I hoped to keep the players somewhat more loyal to someone they had fought alongside as a greater reveal later when he turned on them.

What I had not counted on was a series of terribly good rolls as the players silently stalked the hunter and then jumped him in his room. They knocked the hunter unconscious and forced him to waste what time he had left to his spell. Upon waking they had intended to question him, which is when he transmogrified to his true, putrid, inhuman form.

In the first half hour of the game one of the major antagonists had been revealed and his method of disguising himself, the pips of a magically enchanted pomegranate, were stolen from him.

I hadn’t planned on this by any means, I had assumed the hunter would be found out far later in the adventure after some pre-arranged slip up or by way of deduction. His scenes and short narrative arc involving his villa had to be scrapped and needed to be filled in immediately as this was meant to be a one session game.

But I was so immensely pleased, because it meant I could start the game out in a far stronger way than I had intended. The players put themselves in occult danger immediately, facing down the hunter in his undead, cervine form in the tight confines of the sleeper car. Without knowing it the players had created a far more exciting scenario for their first scene than I would have written! Now they would be injured and rattled from the experience of seeing a man twist and decay before tearing through the window into the dwindling light of dusk.

I’ve had so many incidents like this, such as a dungeons and dragons session where my players were exploring a swamp and the random monster table demanded I send frogmen to attack them. My players were charmed by my descriptions of the beasts and decided to befriend them instead of kill them. They made good rolls so I let it happen. I felt like the frogmen needed a good reason to have attacked the players and reasoned that perhaps there was some clan war going on. The players had inadvertently stumbled into the middle of it and the frogmen that attacked them were starving and desperate.

What followed was a team of adventurers sharing their food with the beleaguered frogmen and giving them assistance in their war. On the fly I assigned two other major clans to be antagonists and gave the players the benefit of their surrogate clan being very amenable to trade and goodwill with the nearby city. The war wrapped up by the end of the session and now the players had some treasure, experience, contacts in the fledgling frogmen settlement and even a frogmen hireling!

In the games I’ve run there are some fundamentals I’ve always stuck to:

• Learn what your individual players think is fun or cool then make that happen.

• Every critical success should yield something exciting. Player wants to woo the red dragon with his charisma to try and get out of being fried? He rolled a 20? Well now that player has to deal with the intimate interests of an ancient red dragon, I certainly hope he keeps scrolls of fire resistance handy.

• Avoid saying no whenever possible, this tends to make players feel stifled and slowly will breed resentment.

• Use redirection whenever possible in the place of just saying no. Tell the players what they can do rather than what they can’t do.

• Be ready for your players to be creative, to ask weird questions, to do weird things. Try to practice your improvisation with writing exercises, read as much as possible in the genre you want your game to exemplify.

• Also be ready for your players to obsess over incredibly inconsequential stuff and immediately write off vitally important details. If necessary, just switch them around, they will never know the difference and you don't need to waste time having heart palpitations over it.

• Understand what you think is fun, what you really want to get out of the adventure, let that be your guide for how you run the game rather than the specific crunchy details.

• Make any detour your characters drag themselves into feed your story. Try to imagine the threads of your story, your villains or your heroes, how far out do they spread?

• Never feel like the fantastic set pieces you create are wasted if the players don’t get to them. You can always adjust the details and fit it in somewhere so don’t worry about losing that gorgeous prose you prepared or that really exciting character you’ve been rehearsing for days.

You are the game master, the storyteller, the dungeon master and ultimately the host. The only way for the players to have fun and ultimately to experience your story is through you. Your players have to contend with the challenges you lay before them, but for you the challenge is to engage with your players and create a fun experience with them. It can be a little more difficult than rolling to hit armor class zero but for me the rewards have always been incredibly satisfying. 

The Beginner's Tabletop Game Guide

Tabletop gaming is a beloved pastime for gamers and roleplaying enthusiasts – an outlet for creative problem-solving, character development, and old fashioned monster bashing. But for someone looking to either join a tabletop party for the first time, or start a game of their own, the endeavor is overwhelming.

I remember my first foray into the possibility of playing Dungeons and Dragons. It was a late night after a cast party – a character sheet covered in a hideous spill of math and statistics, and not enough brain cells to process it from lack of sleep and sugar high. Stat after stat we tried to render, having to stop and desperately search a slim packet of rules for something we understood. In the end, we admitted defeat and went to play video games instead, and I learned a valuable lesson: tabletop is a difficult hobby to get into, or enjoy, without experienced players to take your hand and show you the way.

And so I became Professional Fangirl.

Nine years after that unfortunate evening, now with years of successful campaigns and friendships forged around the dungeon map, I have the opportunity to give back what was offered to me: the know-how to make the beginning of a tabletop adventure manageable and fun.

The first thing that any aspiring tabletop player should know about this hobby is that it is not something you can get away with doing on-the-fly. As much of the rules of tabletop gaming are ALWAYS secondary to enjoying yourselves, they exist to maintain balance, and, in many ways, enhance the challenge and storytelling possibilities of a campaign. Even the best players need to consult rule books from time to time, and even the best storytellers can continue to find inspiration in mechanics and obscure skills and feats that will challenge players and make the campaign engaging. To avoid frustration and overwhelming everyone involved, please allocate time generously to letting the rules of character creation, combat, and role-playing sink in. While this is not always the case, I usually plan to have a first session (about four hours) dedicated purely to character crafting. That way, everyone involved has access to rule books and time to iron out any kinks before the game truly begins.

Disclaimer aside, it is also important to mention that there are a wide variety of tabletop games with unique and vivid settings. If traditional fantasy ala D&D does not appeal to you, you might enjoy the cyberpunk universe known as Shadowrun. If a modern setting with a magical twist is more up your alley, try White Wolf’s Mage: The Awakening, or perhaps Werewolf, or Vampire: The Masquerade. The world of Celtic mythos opens with Changeling, and the steampunk realm of Tephra also offers options for people who are squeamish at the thought of the quintessential fantasy with dragons. These settings come with their own sets of rules, materials, and varying degrees of difficulty in learning, but, with a little doing, all offer endless options for adventures to suit anyone's tastes. This small list has only a few of the many games you could explore, but they all have a few things in common: dice, rule books, and character sheets.

When Borders was going out of business in my hometown, I took a gift card and plunged into the sales frenzy. My curiosity piqued once more as I saw a pile of D&D manuals on sale. The urge to try my hand at tabletop had emerged again since that fateful night of confusion, and as I rifled through the good nine or ten volumes, all with different titles, I had the sinking realization that, once again, I had no idea what I was looking at. Monster Manual, Players Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, all these titles meant nothing to me. Which did I need to start a game? Which were optional? They were expensive – even on sale – so once again, I gave up. I used my gift card on chocolate and manga.

So here we go. You ready?

The comprehensive guide for what a fledgling tabletop game needs, doesn't need, and where to get them!

Dice:

Whatever game you have chosen to take your group into, most have different systems – which means a different set of rules and tools you use to play. Many of these systems are defined by what kind of dice they use. The more infamous system is called d20, which means, in short, it is a system that mainly utilizes a twenty-sided die. White Wolf games utilize a d10 system – 10 sided dice. Shadowrun uses a d6 system. Naturally, the first thing you want to procure will be your dice.

The average person has probably seen a d6 in their lives, whether in games of Yahtzee or Monopoly, but it is not common to run across, say, a d4, d8, or that elusive d20. You won't find them at Walmart. It's one of those little mysteries that people who are outside of the hobby run up against.

The answer: the internet.

Chessex is the largest producer of officially-weighted tabletop dice. They sell what is referred to as the “basic set,” which is the collection of 7 dice that covers most of your tabletop needs. Inside will be a d4, d6, d8, d10, percentile die, d12, and a d20. This set is designed for any d20 system, like Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, Pathfinder, and others similar. Aside from being rather beautiful, these dice are the backbone of your campaign.

Keep in mind that, more often than not, you may need multiples of the same dice – especially if you're playing a White Wolf game. These d6 or d10 systems tend to rely solely on one kind of die. If your first game is Werewolf or Shadowrun, buy many d10 or d6. The d20 systems tend to be more conservative when it comes to how many dice are needed for each player.

While it is not necessary for every player to own their own dice, its speeds combat up, and it is more fun to have a personal set all your own rather than constantly trading around a communal pool. The most cost-effective way to get a whole party the dice they need is to buy a Chessex “Pound o’ Dice,” which will have many of each denomination in various colors, and is only $20 on Amazon. For those fortunate enough to have a comic or gaming store in their area, dice, as well as many other supplies, can be purchased (at full, painful price) there.

Rule Books:

No matter what system you're interested in, all will have a core set of rules that dictate character creation, lore, combat, and other facets of gameplay that players and storytellers alike should adhere to.

This is your table top bible: the Player’s Handbook, or PHB. It is the first book you will want to buy, and is really the only one that is necessary to run a game. Yes, there are an overwhelming number of books for alternate settings, special monsters, and even premade adventures, but these books will not have the necessary information to run the actual meat and bones of your campaign.

Now, when buying rules books, it is very important to find out what version of the game you are buying. Everyone likes to save money, and so finding rule books used online or at used book stores is easy, but if you have never purchased a tabletop manual before, you can easily buy books and supplements that do not match each other.

Tabletop has been around for a long time, and old systems have been revamped. Rules have been changed. New content has been added. Dungeons and Dragons is the best example of this. It has been through many incarnations: the original, advanced D&D, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, 4.0, and the most recent incarnation: 5.0. Picking up a rule book from 2.0, a setting from 3.5, and a monster manual from 4.0, will be not only be a headache, but downright impossible for you to use together.

So which system should you use? Well, in my experience with D&D, at least, there is a general consensus: 3.5 is beloved for not only its breadth of materials, but also its very in-depth rules. The drawback is it is complicated and has a huge amount of information to learn. It also requires many additional books and supplements if you want to get to experience that depth.

The system that shows a great deal of promise in simplification of the system, as well as incorporating unique customization in your starting books, is 5.0, the most current edition. Because it is a new addition, you are unlikely to find reasonably priced used versions of the 5.0 PHB. 3.5 has been out for years, and is much cheaper and easier to get a hold of.

In the end, which edition you choose to play is purely a matter of taste. Just keep in mind that whatever game you play, whatever edition you play, all the supplements you use must match the version that your rule book is.

Character Sheets:

The last essential for a table top game is the character sheet. Rolling a character, aka creating them with all of their statistics and gear, is a process – a long one if you haven't done it often. Having an organized place to record stats and be able to find them mid-game is essential. Most PHB’s in any system will have a character sheet in the back of them. Making copies of it for yourself and for your fellow party members is a good idea.

For the people who purchased a used book, or are playing a system that has no unique character sheet, once again the internet saves the day. There are many fans sites and source pages that have free downloads of character sheets and spell lists. Fill them up, mark them silly, and update them often. Years later, I occasionally pull out my old character sheets and enjoy the memories that come with them.

Welcome to tabletop, and to Professional Fangirl. In coming installments, I will expand upon my guide for new players, breakdown character creation, party compositions, storyteller tips, and much, much more. Happy International Tabletop Day, and may you find adventures worthy of you wherever you go.