Dino Wrangling
Over the years I’ve told you guys a lot about my games. You’ve heard about my ongoing megadungeon. My many Exalted exploits. My journeys to the depths of the Underdark, the haunted halls of Ravenloft, and the odoriferous reaches of the local suite of game cons. But today, I’d like to tell you about a heretofore unexplored aspect of my gaming life. I’d like to tell you about my dog.
“The Doggonian Empire demands popcorn. Comply, or we will open fire on your starship.”
For the past three years, I’ve been the proud parent of a greyhound. He’s a tall boy. His name is Pratchett, and he gets separation anxiety. As such, I’ve got to make a devil’s bargain every time folks come over to game. Either he’s in the room with us, which means that his weird giraffe neck is in reach of the gamer snacks, or he’s sequestered in another room, which means that my guests are treated to a serenade of abject doggy despair. You picks your poison and you makes your choice.
From what I’ve seen online, I’m far from the only person with a furry co-GM. There’s an entire subreddit dedicated to cats playing D&D, and I’ll admit to stacking dice on my roommate’s miniature displacer beast more than once. It always seemed like a good compromise to me. The cat gets to be on the table; I get someplace to put my dice. It’s super cute until he knocks all my favorite platonic solids off the board in retaliation, and I don’t think I have to tell you what happens next.
Pets are interesting not merely because they’re cute, but because they represent the intrusion of the outside world. When I sit down to write the weekly Handbook of Heroes blogs, I’m usually thinking about game design concepts. My head is full of stuff like player agency, and well-balanced encounters, and interpersonal dynamics. It’s easy to forget that these games we play are more than mental. They take place in a material world. There are flesh and blood gamers at the table, which means there are flesh and blood concerns. Do you have adequate seating? Is the heater working? Does your mom’s basement smell like feet and thirty years of Lucky Strikes? Even if you’re chucking virtual dice on Roll20, you’re still dealing with the out-of-game considerations. Connection speeds, time zone troubles, and bio break frequency are all at issue. These are not the sorts of things we think of first when we decide to tell an epic story of heroic adventure, but they are vital for success.
What I’m saying is that it pays to plan for the practical. That may come in the form of adequate seating, a properly air-conditioned rec room, or suitable defenses against a freaky tall dog with a taste for your buddy’s Cheezos. When it comes to designing a killer gaming experience, take a minute to make sure you’re providing a good experience period. Happy humans make happy gamers, which means that the practical concerns of hosting a game night are worthy of your attention.
So how about it, gang? Have you ever had a session overshadowed by IRL problems? Did the pets invade? Did the power go out? Did you realize to your horror that no one had brought dice? Let’s hear about your run-ins with the mundane and the material down in the comments!
REQUEST A SKETCH! So you know how we’ve got a sketch feed on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon? By default it’s full of Laurel’s warm up sketches, illustrations not posted elsewhere, design concepts for current and new characters, and the occasional pin-up shot. But inspiration is hard sometimes. That’s why we love it when patrons come to us with requests. So hit us up on the other side of the Patreon wall and tell us what you want to see!
Dang it, Collin… I want to think of a funny story, but I’m to busy looking at cat pictures!
Did I say, “dang it”? What I meant to say was, oh my gosh those cats are so cutes thanks for the amazing link!
As a student of popular culture, I am pleased that my long hours of meme-cat research have finally paid off.
Half of our last group were living on a US Army base, and one of them was hosting. Now, being foreign nationals, the rest of us had to get signed in every time before entering the base, and signed out after leaving. Now, that wasn’t a problem, since it took at most a minute or two.
One time, however, there was some kind of exercise between the base’s border security and the local emergency services. As a precaution, we’d brought multiple forms of IDs, but as it turns out, the higher security level meant even that wasn’t enough – we couldn’t get in.
So we found some place to sit down, ran some non-combat/RP stuff. You know, things you don’t need dice for. When the exercise took longer than expected, we started trekking through town to get lunch (the first place we went to was actually closed that day), has some drinks, eventually returned to the base, and finally, mid-afternoon, were able to start the session proper. Fun times.
Most of my Air Force buddies back in Cheyenne were kind enough to come off-base to game. I went through the song and dance of getting through the gate exactly once, then decided not to bother with it no more. Such a practical pain in the butt!
Is there such a thing as a greyhound without separation anxiety? They are adorable but… needy. But maybe all dogs have that Advantage / Flaw duality.
Greyhound: “I swapped my sense of object permanence for the ability to run really fast. It was a good trade. Oh he’s gone. Was that guy just a figment of my imagination? Does anything exist outside this room? WHERE DO THINGS GO?!”
It’s always bizarre to think, but dogs don’t have much of a sense of the future. There’s only NOW and FOREVER.
“My human is here NOW! This is awesome!”
“My human is gone FOREVER! Noooooooo!”
That last “nooooooo” should be understood as a long series of howls and scrapes at the door while I’m trying to describe a spooky castle.
You’d be surprised. There are a few stories floating around of dogs who memorised their owners’ schedule so well that they had a routine of breaking out, visiting and begging snacks from friends around town, and getting home just in time to pretend they’d been bored and lonely all day.
I think I’ve seen that behaviour somewhere before… but where?
https://youtu.be/i-80SGWfEjM
I was thinking about the practical yesterday actually. In my Zeitgeist game we play in a pub, and the GM will stop the session a couple of times over the course of the evening to grab drinks and head to the toilet, so we all take a break together to do those things. In my RotR game we play in a FLGS and our GM never takes breaks (probably partially because the drinks are less interesting!) so we all just take breaks as and when.
I much prefer the former approach. In the latter the narrative continues and people miss things, and then we have to recap or someone doesn’t know what’s going on, and it’s a pain.
I’m noticing the need for “formal break time” in my Roll20 sessions lately. It can be touch sitting and staring a monitor for four hours at a time. There’s no getting up to stretch the legs, you know?
I hope we get to learn more about this cutie as time goes on. c:
I shall endeavor to train my dog in the ways of gaming. Fighter is a good first class, right?
This is the way to go for giving your pets classes IMO:
https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA_Sidekicks.pdf
I imagine a well-groomed white cat would make an excellent visual enchancement when roleplaying a BBEG. Preferably while sitting in a comfortable, rotating leather chair. The cat’s soft purrs while you scratch its ears and the look of contempts towards the players will certainly add an extra layer of “wow this guy is suave” impressions to your character development.
Just make sure the cat is on board for this activity. Nothing worse than saying, “Welcome, gentlemen. It seems you’ve fallen into my SONOFABITCH! The little shit scratched me!”
If that happens, it’s a great opportunity to do a complete 180 on the character and go with the rich-but-incompetent archetype! 100% guaranteed comedic value that will get the players stunned in laughter while you’re off getting bandages from the bathroom!
From Blofeld to Dr. Evil in .2 seconds!
Even better idea: force it to be on board by replacing it with a cyborg death kitty! Nothing’s better than your players engaged in a battle to the death with a laser-shooting electric murder cat while the villain engages from afar or uses the conveniently place escape route.
If you’ve got a cyborg death kitty lying around, you’ve got a far more interesting gaming group than I!
Good to see that Arcane Archer Fighter and Circle of the (Error 404 file not found) Druid worked out.
As I’ve said in the past, I play in a store because my attempts to organize a home game always fall apart. Pets are not an issue there. In terms of meatspace issues interceding on the game, I did DM a game there once with the store’s Monster Manual that was in the process of disintegrating so I couldn’t find half the entries I needed and proceeded to wing it.
No access to the SRD? Most critters are floating around somewhere online. I guess that’s another consideration though: Do you have adequate WIFI?
I have a flip phone. Money may be an issue.
And also access to adequate tech. Democratized media doesn’t apply when tech is restricted to the well-off.
Besides, I don’t think Daemons (Yugoloths if you’re the kind of boring person who calls your Demons Tanar’ri) are SRD.
There was the session I had to call a sudden unexpected break due to pad leak (time of month), and it completely derailed the entire rest of the session as we started wondering how the various fantasy races handled monthly messes and if they’d attract certain kinds of scent-based predators for a week or so every cycle because “Wounded prey! I smell blood!” and that of course had us speculating about mermaids and sharks (none of us kept fish so we had no clue how it worked for them, but we decided whatever strange biological magic it was that kept the sharks from noticing, the mermaids must use that, which led to, of course, speculation on Mermaid Eggs, and why they need mammary glands, and so on).
We got no further in the game, but we had a fantastic time exploring the world OOC. And we all decided we really liked the elven solution (“monthly moss”; super absorptive and also use for packing elven baby diapers) but unanimously banned the DM from using random patches of it here and there in horror tropes, because we all recognized that speculative, evil-plans face.
And of course, if we’re going to talk about embodied design, choosing exactly which Jodie’s we’re talking about is a concern. I can safely say that “monthly moss” is not something my lived experience would have generated.
Well once everyone forgot his dice, lucky us we were going to have an Amber game. Unlucky us the DM forgot the books 🙁
On the real life problems lately my group have got some problems to make a session. All of January the only girl in the group, and the only one with air conditioning in his house, choose to take vacations with her family. Since here in my country is summer, the rest of us guys we were unable to play. February has been more merciful with the weather except for the rains, storms, lightning and thunder and general bad weather. So it have been a slow summer. We were lucky of finishing our campaign before anything of this to happen and since then we have been doing mini-campaigns and one-shots 🙁
About today comic: Which kind of fox Arcane Archer is? I am curious about that for completely innocuos reasons 😉 er… i mean 🙂
I’ll have to check in with Laurel on fox species. My script only called for “a kitsune.”
Well in any case Arcane Archer looks great, full of horror and fear. Just like a fox who just found a wolf… or a… em… um… dinosaur? I really like his design, his expressions and faces are great. Good work Laurel 🙂
Now about Colin, i have a question in my mind and i need to ask it. In each comic you tell a story that is related to the question of the day. So this is my question: In each case you mention many games, D&D, Pathfinder, Exalted, but you mention few sci-fi games, other than Shadowrun, so do you don’t like them, don’t you play them or what?
I asked Laurel. She said, “I unno.” Then she went back to eating her burrito.
I’m running Starfinder at the moment, and I’ve been in a pair of Firefly games (Savage Worlds, Fate, and Serenity RPG system… we switched a bunch). But no, my groups tend not to play many sci-fi games, which is a pity. Everything I hear about Traveler makes it sound like a blast.
About Laurel and the fox-boy 🙂
Starfinder 🙂
Firefly 🙁
I don’t like neither the game nor the series. Sad when the likes of the rest of the players don’t let you play what you want. In my group we tend to play some sci-fi now and then to change for the fantasy. Sometime ago we use to play Star Wars, the old game so we could play in different eras. We don’t touch FFG not even with a stick. Now we play more Stars Without Number.
We’ve actually got a bunch of the FFG Star Wars stuff sitting on a shelf. Laurel’s more into Star Wars than I am, and keeps threatening to run something. So far she hasn’t made good on that one. *shrug*
Power outages are a staple of online gaming with roll20 style platforms. 😐
I think that storms rolling through have been the worst we have dealt with. Especially when it’s the DM… sad times.
Oh yo… That kicks everybody, doesn’t it? You can’t even chat among yourselves while the DM kicks the generator and logs back on.
Any fixes for that situation?
No it won’t kick everyone else, but if it’s a bad one like a hurricane in their neck of the woods then the campaign won’t be moving forward any time soon…
The only real fix would be having a co-DM to take over or if it’s not a combat scenario then the DM may be able to resort to a phone connection to Skype or Discord…
My DM made a rule that if the host’s cat jumps on the table, a dragon shows up. He had to make an exception for one cat, because fighting a dragon every session wouldn’t be fun for anyone involved.
How did you defeat these mercurial beasts?
I play online, so there’s no table for the cats to leap on. Didn’t stop one of them from shouting over me one time. At the time we had a very loud cat – one of my players said he sounded like her cat in heat. Nope, he was always that shouty. After a few minutes of yelling directly into the microphone he wandered off.
Couldn’t you… I mean… Couldn’t you just push him down?
So the Dm has a dog named cecil he’s a sweet bean,
the rogue who plays trains dogs brings over about three a husky, a something or other and their brother.
Finally the cleric brings a cocaine addict that claims to be a puppy that humps or fights everything that dares look upon it.
4 hour games are usually 2 hours of just dealing with them. It’s a bit rough.
Think there’s a solution in there? Dog sitters? Puppy play dates? Boarding? Or can gamers not stand to be separated from their precious fluff balls?
The dogs are rambunctious enough to warrant a sitter but millenials so no money for sitters.
That puppy keeps jumping on the couch and last time they stepped in my food.
I’m pretty sure HoH-world is using pathfinder rules, not 5e. So Arcane Archer is prestige classed and druid circles don’t exist. Dunno what archetypes any of them may have.
Indeed! Street Samurai and Thief are among the most popular Pathfinder classes. 😛
I’m just glad to see Arcane Archer and Druid still around together, I think I mentioned how much I utterly adore seeing them in a relationship, speaking of pets and D&D, I ended up re-naming a fortress in the mountains Entei after my mate’s dog knocked over the model on the tabletop, I think its best to take pets with a grain of salt.
You’re not the only one who loves those two. Laurel has been going nut with the Druid/Arcane Archer sketches on the other side of the Patreon wall!
Wait though… the dog is named Entei? How did he earn the fire type?
By having the energy of a 45kg German shepherd while actually being about 12 kgs worth of pug- fox terrier mix, they called him Entei because of his fiery temperament, I think I ruled that the fort was nicknamed that after its Commander who himself used his house name or some half-hearted excuse like that.
The most IRL game disrupting moment had to be when I was running a combat encounter on Rolld20 and had to call it because a very large part of the ceiling fell in. Turns out the Water Heater had been leaking water, which had been absorbed by the insulation, which caused it to grow heavier and eventually the wet sheetrock collapsed. Never ended up going back to that game, cause the group broke up due to scheduling issues and two of the players basically ghosting me. It was very awkward.
lol. I can just hear the conversation on the other side.
“Did this GM’s ceiling just fall in?”
“Ugh! Lack of commitment!”
*ghost ghost ghost*
My current GM has 2 cats and a dog (and a 2-year-old) that transient through the gaming/dining room at various points during the night. Not allowed on the table, but they do frequently find their way into laps for scritchies.
Hey, as long as they’re not breaking the flow, it’s all good.
I’ve got a buddy who’s easily startled though. Every time a dog noses at her under the table it’s a like a diamondback wandered in for pets.
Once saw a session end very shortly after it began, when the police showed up and took away the GM’s father. Not an average real-life issue to deal with, I suppose, but certainly one that caught me off-guard.
Still not sure what our was actually about. I didn’t stick around that group for long.
O_O
I’m not sure that the fuzz is something one can plan around.
We had a greyhound come to our game and he stole Buffalo wings from a player’s hand, ate a mini, and a whole block of soft cheese. We miss him a lot despite all this.
Now see, I wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing at my game. I’d probably make sure that such a greyhound moved to Georgia and never returned! ;P
We almost had a session cancelled due to a faulty fireplace. It was during the most recent super-cold polar vortex thing and we figured, hey, since we’re in the basement and there’s a fireplace down here, we should try having a fire. Turns out when the weather gets cold enough a chimney creates a massive downdraft that blows all the smoke back into the room.
We managed to open a few windows and get enough of the smoke cleared out to where we could play (though it was still quite chilly), but for a while we were thinking we might have to switch houses because one of my group has asthma (she decided she was cool to stay once the smoke cleared out, though, and we all figured she’d know best whether she was going to be okay or not).
Haven’t ever had any disruptions due to pets (neither my sister’s basement nor the room attached to my garage have pets, though we have cats at my house, and anyways at least one of our group is actually allergic enough to cats that his hands get itchy from touching something with cat fur on it). The closest we’ve ever had is the toddler of the family my sister rents from wandering past, but she’s never been particularly disruptive.