Know Thy Audience
Poor Bard. Dude just wants to sing for his supper and maybe hit on a few elf chambermaids. He didn’t expect to have to rework his entire repertoire. Maybe he should have though.
If you’ve read this far in the comic, then I hope you’ve learned that RPGs are full of tropes. Our hobby is replete with horny bards, pyromaniac mages, drinking contests, and a vast array of murderhoboism. But just as our games fill up with familiar situations and stock characters, our heads fill up with stock advice. Today, I’d like to talk about one particularly popular adage:
There’s no wrong way to game.
Or how about this variant?
If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.
These truisms knock around message boards and advice columns until they become common wisdom. But even though they’re generally true, I think it’s important to remember why they’re true. And that’s because they’re friggin’ useless outside of RPGs.
Imagine a meeting of game devs working on the next Triple-A blockbuster. The question of quick time events pops up.
“What do you think?” says the team lead. “Should w keep ’em or lose ’em?”
“Well,” says Junior Game Dev #1. “As long as they’re fun, I think they’re a good idea.”
Or a film director asking an editor if bullet time is still cool.
“There’s no wrong way to make a film,” comes the reply.
Or even a fiction writer talking to her beta readers.
“What did you think?”
“It was fun.”
“Which parts?”
“Well I mean… If you enjoyed writing it, that’s what counts.”
Cue boardroom suggestion meme.exe
If you’ve ever asked for feedback on a creative endeavor, then you know that these non-opinions are less than helpful. When you’re trying to figure out how to tell a better story / build a better game / make better art, you’re looking for concrete, actionable advice. That’s because you’re building a particular artifact for a general audience.
In RPGs however, the players are the audience. You’re building a narrative / storyworld / experience together with your fellow players in order to entertain one another. And in that sense, hearing the phrase “there’s no wrong way to game” can serve a useful reminder. For example, dropping a +5 greatsword on a 1st level party in 5e D&D isn’t very balanced. Assuming that your group enjoys those kinds of shenanigans however, then there is indeed ‘no wrong way to game.’ That’s because the tiny audience of “you and your buddies” are all that matters. Opinions like, “Robbing other party members is a great way to create drama,” or, “It’s my job as the GM to kill the PCs,” may not be generally popular, but those attitudes can still work within specific group dynamics.
The critical thing to remember is that other people game differently. When you get out into the wilds of the Mage’s Forum, the constant refrain of, “There’s no wrong way to game,” and, “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right,” serve as a useful reminder. Every group is unique, and what works at one table won’t necessarily work at another. That’s a healthy thing to keep in mind.
And so, at long last, we return to Bard and his unhappy choice of set lists. When you move beyond your familiar home table, whether it’s at a gaming con, with a new group, or in a forum, it’s important to put your own preconceptions on hold. Before you offer up advice to your fellow gamers, remember that every one of them comes paired with a unique set of preferences. That means that checking your own personal version of “the right way to game” at the door is Step 1 in talking shop with your fellow dungeon delvers.
So in the spirit of cultural exchange, what do you say we compare our differences down in the comments? Name a technique or design choice that your group enjoys, but that is generally unpopular. Do you love no-holds-barred PVP? Perhaps you think an adversarial GM can be a fun challenge. Maybe you enjoy alignment mismatches, tracking encumbrance, or putting your own spin on crits. Sound off with the most unconventional elements of your gaming style down below!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
I wouldn’t generally say that I happen to enough alignment mismatches, but they do occur a lot in my group. Our current party has Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral, and Neutral Evil, and we’ve had various other mismatches; a few years back, due to mismanaging the number of DMs during the start up of school D&D clubs, we ended up with a party of nine PCs. Guess how many different alignments there are?
Fortunately, PvP isn’t really something that most of our group is interested in, so my Good paladin wouldn’t come into conflict with the Evil minotaur. We have had they occasional PvP, but these are very swiftly resolved; due to another PC being as tough as you are, most PvPs are swift, one-action betrayals when a trusting ally is weak (though I think that PvP is due to a single player rather than group, as one player, an actor, has been the perpetrator of all three counts). I think we’ve had three counts of PvP in our entire history, plus one count of selling out a vampire PC. No hard feeling given.
…how did I misspell enough as like. (In the first line, replace “enough” with “like”
Hey, if everyone is good with betrayal actor, then there’s no wrong way to game.
Not my bag, but as me old dad used to say, “That’s why there’s 31 flavors when all you really need is strawberry.”
I mean… I guess we always roll for statistics twice, rather than using point-buy or normal rolling? I’m not sure if that really counts as “unpopular”, but I don’t really know much about what is “unpopular” in an RPG, due to not having played in many groups, and thus not knowing what the “standard” is. Heck, lending dice to the DM might be considered heresy for all I know.
You lend dice to your DM? Heresy!
😛
For me, “what’s popular” is mostly about keeping an ear to the ground on message boards. For example, most folks seem to have the same “adding a botch system to d20 games is bad” opinion, so I’d class botch systems as unpopular (or at the very least polarizing).
I recommend that you roll and then apply point-buy to the rolls
I recommend this comic:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/high-roller
There are a crap-load of techniques on this one.
I actually like it when spellcasters/psykers/phyiscs lawbreakers are overpowered. It’s the reward for forgoing initial beefyness in favor of acquiring power later on.
From a mechanics perspective, having a greater use out of a finite resource (spell slots, power points, etc.) sounds like good game design. If they become a problem, one could always increase the number of encounters per day, or somehow limit that resource recovery.
I always remember hearing that protecting the wizard like a newborn baby bird was the #1 responsibility in 0e D&D. You’ve got to let it grow up big and strong and spread its fireball-wings. Do you think that logic still holds in later editions where casters are more survivable?
In one campaign, our group’s battle mage arrogantly yelled at his meat shield fighter to get out of the way so he could rain fiery destruction upon the enemy. The fighter did just that – stepped aside – and the subsequent bad guy swarm demonstrated the folly of the mage’s hubris upon his body.
Nice. Did you make him pay for his own resurrection?
Oddly enough, I don’t remember the aftermath. My vague recollection wants to claim “new character”, but I really don’t recall. Your artist may have some memory of that incident.
Kinda sorta. Haven’t played any 6+ levels of 5e so can’t really speak for that part.
I did run a 3.5e Sunless Citadel for several different parties, though. Let me tell you, it was not an easy experience for the group with 2 barbarians and a sorcerer. The martial classes (especially the ones with 26 effective strength at 1st level) are still the undisputed kings of the low levels, and casters can go down in a single potshot.
I think the later editions favor the experienced player who knows how to build a more resilient caster.
The usual (in a very loose sense of the word) group I used to play in liked being pretty caster-heavy since the 1st level and there were usually few deaths. Not sure if that was due to our powergaming, the edition, or that DM rolled monster dice in combat behind the screen (or a private chat in this case).
I’m just thinking of 3.X with its d6 hit dice and -10 hp cushions vs. permadeath as balanced against literal 1d4 hp in the old school games.
Of course, I’ve honestly never had the chance to sit down and play the latter, so I’m not really sure how it goes in comparison.
My group and I don’t track encumbrance out of habit, but I do think it can be a good thing – provided you use appropriate tools to cut down on the tedium of tracking it all.
Because it’s a key component of fleshing out the least fleshed out part of D&D, exploration. Because saying you want to travel from city A to city B is most of the time just a formality, while realistically it would be a tough endeavor because the cities are far apart – so you need provisions, you need appropriate clothing, you need camping gears, and so on. Encumbrance forces you to make choice in those regards, which in turns bring other challenges. Do we bring a lot of food, or do we try to save up space by foraging? Do we tap into the party funds and buy a mount? Etc, etc.
Nice. I think you and Wizard would get along: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/material-components-2
I’ve played at several different tables, and the ones I’ve run into most problems with cultural differences are, ironically, Adventure League games.
One of our regular weekly DM’s is very much a ‘Rule of Cool’ DM: If you make him grin like a maniac, you’re probably getting advantage.
Another was pretty much reading out of the module book. We made our own fun, and he let us RP and do silly things.
The last is juuuust shy of a Monty Hall DM, and keeps in mind the AL rules, but doesn’t mind flexing them for our table, as long as our paperwork all stays AL legal.
…All of these are GREAT! But booooy did they clash with things when I joined their most recent Extra Life Charity Epic Event! Super by-the-book, super hurry-it-up, and INCREDIBLY inflexible even on some RP-specific stuff. When a demon is silly enough to demand your hand in exchange for something, AND let you pick which hand, you should be able to offer him your mage-hand, dangit! I thought I was being clever, they were amused, but NOPE! It was… a little disappointing.
…But at least my Kobold Warlock has a good story for why she’s suddenly left-handed!
Heh. I thought you were going to offer to marry the demon. (Hand in marriage.)
It makes total sense that AL would be the ground zero for this sort of thing. That’s a lot of different styles coming together, and the temporary nature of AL play means that you don’t have to change your ways to accommodate others. You can just find another table.
My game runs a full battalion of things that would see me crucified on certain game boards cough reddit and gitp cough
I kill characters. And nope, every character death shouldn’t be a special character moment. Some time you just get shanked by a goblin in a needless fight in a dingy sewer, and sometimes you tumble to your death jumping a small gap that most days you would have cleared with ease. Life is unfair, and characters die.
I do plan a rough outline of my campaign. Now, I wont railroad, but if you are expecting a fully open world, that isn’t going to be happen. Which leads me on to:
Minimal backstories. I am happy to accommodate a backstory to a degree, but no great pre-campaign heorics or accomplishments. My standard rule on backstories is the most important event in a characters life must occur at the table.
I use random treasure tables. Oh, so you use a hyper min-max build centered around one specific weapon model. Well, better hope the dice fall well, or your bec-de-corbin weilder is playing til endgame with a non magic weapon. Cos I don’t have magic item vendors either!
Seems to work for my payers, my current group has been intact for over 20 years. But might come as a shock to people with different expectations.
Oh, and one more.
PVP is on. That said, I do enforce that any character betraying the party sit down with me out of game to discuss their reasoning, motivations, and what they hope to get out of it, and will veto frivolous and for-the-luls reasons, but if your character has a viable in-game reason to betray the party, I will support and encourage it. That said, I do make it clear that most betrayers will end up dead in a ditch, and although I will facilitate the betrayal 9with secret messages and codes, etc) I will do nothing to protect the character when the rest of the players discover them and take the entirely reasonable choice to end them.
I’m a big fan of not having magic item vendors. If you can just choose to buy any magic item in the book at the listed price then, well, it takes some of the magic away from the items. They become expensive practical purchases, rather than “Wow, this does what?! How lucky am I to find this!”.
I’m also a fan of random loot, or seemingly useless loot. Give the PCs a Staff of Flowers and let them work out what the hell to do with it, it’s bound to be more interesting than what they’ll do with a +1 sword.
I usually split the difference and let my group by from a selection of random items that the merchant happens to have this week.
You might appreciate one of the upcoming comics. Keep an eye out for Antipaladin in the next couple of weeks.
In our new mummy’s mask game, PVP is becoming a thing.
One of our PCs is an orc barbarian. Full orc. He has a 5 in all mental stats, and about a billion strength. The player has decided that if the character ends his rage without hitting anything, or if he fails something three times in a row, he lashes out at the nearest person. We all find it really funny, which is good given that one punch from that monster could render most of us unconscious. We’re level 1 and there’s a very real chance of a TPK, in part thanks to those orcish punches.
In this group we also added a new player at the last minute. It’s his first time playing a TRPG, and his character is currently called “Fighter”. In session 1 he tried to dropkick the orc barbarian down a mineshaft (I’m not entirely sure why). Luckily, again, the orc’s player found it hilarious.
Why would you choose to party with that kind of orc?
A realistic group of adventurers would just dump him by the roadside or sneak away at night.
Are you trying to have fun or something? For shame!
…did I mention him having about a billion strength?
That’s the in-character reason. That and he does what he’s told (to the limited extent of his mental capabilities to understand it).
Out of character it’s just damned funny.
Also of note: “Goddammit, Fighter!”
Now, you know the situation a lot better than I do, but to me the central paragraph about the orcs behavior sounds like it might be the answer to the question of “why” raised in the last paragraph.
Touché
I don’t mind splitting the party (in most contexts, it’s not a good idea in a pathfinder/dnd dungeon), I think it can work fine for different characters to do different things away from each other while jumping from place to place. Really it’s a lot like sharing the spotlight when people are togetter.
For my money, it’s all about how frequently you swing the spotlight. Focusing on one group for half an hour while the other half stacks dice can get old fast. If you go rapid-fire though, I’ve found that it works a treat.
One of the most fun sessions in the campaign I am currently running was when the PCs were at a fancy party and trying to steal something out of the mansion’s attic at the same time. The party ended up in three different groups (and there was a “guest star” character played by a friend who was effectively a fourth group) and it was really fun jumping around between the two groups in the party area doing social interactions with NPCs (especially since one of them has 7 CHA and an excessively literal mind) while the third group sneaked upstairs and the guest star also sneaked upstairs without the third group knowing.
So yeah, the rapid spotlight switch can work pretty well. Especially if each group is engaged in enough shenanigans that the players not playing are entertained as well.
In our game, we have what’s essentially “the main character”. This guy is critical to the plot and has an extensive backstory, but he isn’t a spotlight stealer. Being a Fighter with no spellcasting in a party of full and half casters has its uses in that regard, you see. After the campaign wraps, the DM is planning to adapt it into a series of novels.
Now see, I know certain subreddits where dudes would be cracking wise about “warning signs.”
But I think the most important question is this: Are the rest of you non-main characters enjoying the support role? There’s a very real risk of folks feeling upstaged in this kind of scenario. But if everyone is down for it, then game on says I.
“D&D (and by extension, Pathfinder) sucks.” That was basically the rule (over ~25 years) up until 5E was released, despite D&D being the go-to example of what an RPG was for the average person. 5E managed to actually be pretty decent, even if it still has some flaws.
The main reason we played 5E was because of a new friend whose first RPG was 5E, and he quickly dove into DMing games. Of course he’s now reached the stage where he’s starting to actually recognize the problems in D&D, and is trying to ‘fix’ them in various ways. Eventually he’ll learn that what he wants is really a non-D&D game, but he hasn’t quite accepted that yet (the most he’s managed is trying out Pathfinder, though we’ve also gotten him to play a Mutants and Masterminds game).
Aside: The flaws in 5E are actually interesting in that they give me something to occasionally chew on when I have my own urges to fix things. 5E is good enough to be usable, but not perfect, so it engenders more discussion and efforts to improve it on a deeper system level, which I enjoy doing on personal time. Pre-5E had so many problems that it wasn’t worth even starting on trying to fix things.
What’s your go-to game?
Hmm. Honestly, I don’t know that there’s any single game that I could put down for that, but the systems we spent the most time in were: Mage: The Ascension; Call of Cthulhu; Legend of the Five Rings (pre-d20 edition); and Lace and Steel. Those all had multiple extended, multi-year campaigns.
It’s not so much having a single go-to game, as having plenty of options to match whatever sort of game we feel like playing. Basically, come up with a game idea; figure out where it takes place; and find a game system that works for that.
Horror? Call of Cthulhu or Whispering Vault. Swashbuckling? Lace and Steel. Steampunk/Victoriana? Castle Falkenstein. Asian fantasy? Legend of the Five Rings or Bushido. Superheroes? Mutants and Masterminds, or Villains and Vigilantes. Ancient powers? Immortal or Nephilim. Serious magic? Mage or Ars Magica. Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk or Shadowrun. Western? Deadlands. Space opera? Coriolis, or the new Star Wars, or Starblazer. High fantasy? Talislanta or Tekumel or RuneQuest. Pulp fantasy? Savage Worlds or Buck Rogers. Paranoia and conspiracy? Paranoia, or Over the Edge. Etc.
The only time D&D was chosen was when we wanted an Arabian setting, so we went with Al Qadim. Otherwise it never did anything well enough to justify putting up with its quirks.
And, in the spirit of the comic’s question, most people (that I know of) seem to prefer to find a single system (or a small set of systems), and use that system for all their games. For me and my group, we swap systems out constantly, picking the system to fit the game, rather than adjusting the game to fit the system.
In terms of alignment mismatches, the table I’m DMing is mostly CN, with one LG, one CG, and one NE. (The player knows to play evil responsibly by not playing it like a mad dog, and instead playing a selfish asshole) They actually seem to get along in spite of the NE character’s petty antics.
Why would anyone want to hit on Elf Chambermaids? The elven personalities, androgynous frame and lack of secondary sexual characteristics kind of kills a lot of the appeal. He knows Dwarven music, he should take his talents where the people are fun and attractive. Dwarves love to party.
Bard made the mistake of trying an elven ballad back at the dwarf hold. He’s beginning to understand why his contract was abruptly cancelled.
The shortest Elven ballad takes 3 hours to perform. When you live as long as they do you’re fine with much longer pieces of entertainment.
Don’t do that… whatever-you-are-of-Wizard. Remember that the Wicked Uncles’s Torture Device come with a Wheel of Torture that also serves as a Death Metal Lyrics Generator. If a Bard would put his well-manicured hands on it he would be able to unleash the POWER OF METAL and bring a new age of darkness, skulls, metal umlaut and ladies with too much bust for their clothes upon the land. Haven’t you seen Heavy Metal? Is that level of awesomeness what you are trying to unleash 😛
excellent thematic riff…
Thanks, if fact i think i made a good plot hook for one of my group’s next game. A one-shot campaign set in the tone of Heavy Metal, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_(film), could be great. Music, booze and women are good ideas for a campaign… and complements for that campaign but that depends more of or funds 🙂
I’ve always wanted to run a “van art game” in this theme. I would plan my sessions around metal song lyrics, then hand my players a mix CD at the end as a souvenir campaign summary.
I mean, I’m betting you could make a pretty sweet session out of this mess: https://genius.com/Heaven-and-hell-bible-black-lyrics
Meh :/
If i were to use metal songs as base for a session or campaign i would use this:
https://genius.com/Blue-oyster-cult-veteran-of-the-psychic-wars-lyrics
or that:
https://genius.com/Blue-oyster-cult-black-blade-lyrics
Boot of them got enough material for a good session or even a campaign. The Elric one give too much vibes of Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, aka normal pc party, with one too much artifacts of doom. I, for one, would jump straight into a Elric of Melnibone campaign, or at least i would do it if there would be a good system to support the campaign. There are lots of rulebooks based on that setting, but each badder that the last
I love me some Cult, but I want to forge my own path, you know? If I put Black Blade on an album, it’s always going to be about Elric rather than the PCs.
Oddly, one of the best fits I ever found for a campaign sound track was some obscure Christian band. The BBEG that time around was the Mask of Winters. The final fight was in Thorns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ20zy7qQZo
Christian metal?
No thanks, not for me. I will not even bother with the video.
One of the good things of having a mother language other than English is that i can concentrate more on the feelings of the song and what evoke than the Lyrics. You should try that with the Elric song 🙂
I haven’t played in enough groups to have had any mismatch problems. And the only betrayal was story planned. We’ve also had some PVP, but it was usually because not everyone could play that day and we didn’t have enough to have a real session. The PVP was fun though. One time we had a battle royal and Irlana got knocked out but Mick went on to win.
Give that pig some laurels! I bet he looked very dapper on the podium.
The first prize was a mini banquet of the winner’s favorite meal. Mick got a basket full of various fruits and berries.
That is adorable
Yes, it was.
This has been a controversial opinion in many tables I’ve played, but generally if I can find a table that lets me utilize it, I tend to do well there. That opinion is this: Just because you have a role in the party (scout, tank, skill monkey, etc) does not mean other players in the same party can’t also service the same role.
I get why people feel the need to have these strict categories. No one likes the warlock’s familiar doing the rogue’s job. No one likes the cleric dishing out more damage than the barbarian. And it is strange to say when the wizard is holding their own in the thick of melee compared to the heavily armored fighter. Really the entire idea of assigning roles to the party is just to ensure martial don’t end up becoming redundant compared to casters, and I understand that.
However this balance is not without its weakness, and you’d have to be the type of player who is willingly sabotaging themselves not to prepare for the inevitable contingency. Maybe the rogue is down and can’t scout. Maybe the barbarian has to occupy a choke point and can’t get that 1v1 he wants with the big scary monster. Sometimes your only meat shield is down and someone needs to save him. I’m just saying that at some point the guy who is suppose to be doing his job can’t, and I prefer having the ability and permission to cover their role if or when I can.
As I said this has caused problems for me as well. Rogue ended up refilling their character after my imp pretty much does everything she does but more efficiently, and even my DM has to come up with arbitrary reasons why invisibility doesn’t grant stealth bonuses (they can hear your imp flying) and eventually just permakilled it. Just as well when I was rolling a barbarian of all things, it was usually me dealing with scouting and survival checks instead of the ranger, and that was mostly due to the Rangers incompetence I feel, but even so I get the blame for over stepping my role in the party.
Go to any online forum and you’ll see the usual newb asking for advice for what class to use to play a role. Supports are often clerics or bards, skills are usual bards or rogues, tanks are Paladins or barbarians, so on and so forth. Trying to stick to your role is an effort in futility for two reasons, one being that if you focus on nothing but your given role you will quickly find yourself in an unenjoyable experience when outside your niche, and the other reason being that so long as your party members are mildly competent, any one of them could do your job possibly better than even you can. Instead of being butthurt about the inequality of mages or martial or how some players are just “too OP”, maybe learn to branch outside your comfort level, get some skills unrelated to your role so you can do more and still do what you do best. And if someone else isn’t giving it their all, you can pick up the slack.
“Maybe the palace serving staff is still trying to turn that non-Elven wine into vinegar, your Majesty?”
Wine press? Yeesh. No bard wants to have his grapes crushed.
I guess the biggest thing I do that isn’t a popular way of doing things is in Shadowrun, where I run most megacorporate NPCs as roughly morally neutral, with a spectrum of people from genuinely altruistic to corrupt villains. Sure, the megacorporations are responsible for a lot of the evil in the Sixth World, but they’re also responsible for a lot of, well, everything in the Sixth World. It’s not that they’re good or evil, they just exist. They’re baked into the structure of the world and that’s that. Plenty of the PC’s allies in my games are going to be megacorporate citizens who either don’t understand how much harm their superiors do, or do understand it and just figure “well, I’ll just do the right thing in my own position, no matter what else goes on above me”. Most people can no more rebel against the megacorps than they can rebel against gravity. I find moral ambiguity much more interesting than monolithic evil, and in some ways it makes the setting darker, not brighter.
This is, uh, not a popular position in certain Shadowrun circles. I once saw somebody ragequit at the recruitment phase of an online game I was also joining, because the GM had asked for PCs who were either shadow people or regular wage slaves, and he threw a fit when I submitted a decker who was an Aztechnology employee, stating his intention to murder any such PC in a game he was in. Luckily the GM was much more sympathetic to my position than his.
Yo… I believe that fellow overreacted ever so slightly.
My sci-fi class just did a unit on cyberpunk, and one of the big characteristics was “boredom with the apocalypse.” The big world-shaping stuff happened in the past, and now everyone is just getting one with day-to-day life within the system. In other words, who the crap thinks that working for THE MAN is unusual in such a setting?
Such a character comes with his own risks, of course. I would look at you and acknowledge that Aztechnology has your Day SIN and probably biometrics on file for you. And Aztechnology WILL be Aztechnology in the game. I’m not going to go out of the way to make them evil, but they are pretty evil as written. As long as you’re fine with that, I am. That’s of course, just a GM perspective.
And other players don’t know you work for Aztechnology, so why does that matter?
there mouse over text… well time to reread the whole archive again
Yes… yes… My evil plots are working as intended!
absolutely devious, i’d expect nothing less.
does he know “Gold, gold, gold, gold”?
it’s sung to the same tune as that knockoff human tune “spam, spam, spam”