How to Balance Kindness and Antagonism as a GM

There are many kinds of GM out there, and each one is distinct in their combination of traits, attitudes, and skills. There are some archetypes we all know: the cruel GM who tortures their players, the sweet GM who never puts the party in danger, the laconic GM who lets the game actions speak for themselves. What a range! Is there a best method to this? Or is it whatever suits the GM? Arguably, it's a little bit of both, and also some other stuff. We'll get there. First, let's ask ourselves what the purpose of GMing is so that we can answer the question of how to do it in a more focused way. 

What is the purpose of GMing? Some tabletop games resist having clear GMs, opting instead of equal if different roles to create the story. Other games, depending on the GM in particular, make the game all about the GM (especially when railroading and lore-dumping are happening). Can we generalize across all games? No. Tabletop game design specializes in tweaking rules to change the outcome, and that means it's impossible to say something that's true of all tabletop games. Let's restrict our analysis to what might be called "traditional tabletop games"--ones with a GM and a group of players who roleplay as some manner of conscious being. 

Without the GM, it's hard to get a campaign started. We need a story input and a setting, which the GM conveys. The GM is also required to provide reactions from the world to the players' actions. And in cases of something like a die roll or when rules are confusing, the GM interprets and decides how to proceed. I wrote here recently that tabletop games are, at their core, storytelling guides, so if the GM's job is to contribute to that story and to oversee how it proceeds. So a GM exists in order to guide the story. 

So how do we find the right mixture of kindness and cruelty and aloofness and presence? The answer is, frustratingly, that it depends on what's happening in the story. When the party is receiving accolades and gifts for completing the main quest, it makes sense to have a kind GM. When the party is facing off against the big bad, some antagonism from the GM is natural. But these examples are roleplaying more than the GM themselves. What about how the GM behaves in narration, combat, and other out-of-game moments?

These are the moments where GMs define themselves. Let's talk examples. My first GM, an old school AD&D player who had taught his daughter (my classmate and neighbor) to play, had a polished style. His narration was bold but aloof, keeping things in the realm of epic high fantasy; his combat was fierce and animated, and he always seemed to be rooting for the enemies even though he was obviously relieved and pleased when we came out victorious; he had the feeling of a warm father figure I never had who could be playfully stern but was always on my side. He went by Judge while GMing, and you got the sense he was weighing the balance on every roll. There was antagonism in some of what he did, and it seemed genuine to me, but it was in good fun, as in a competition. I recall those sessions fondly. 

Later, I would meet a friend in college whose nerdy interests aligned with my own, and he introduced me to a handful of tabletop games which he GMed very ably. He would narrate as though in a trance and reading from a book, giving the impression that he was possessed by a story larger than him. His combat was descriptive and colorful, always grisly and dazzling, and a clear favorite part of the game of his. He would challenge players on foolish ideas, and a healthy part of each session was spent with him ridiculing the awful plans we put together. He seemed impartial. If we died, he would have been as amused as if we had completed our mission. Those were formative games, and I was glad I had the sheltered nurturing into a full tabletop gamer before meeting him. 

I got to play one campaign with a close friend who was running a storytelling campaign for the first time. There were, to my practiced eye, some cracks in the GMing here. Railroading and lore-dumping happened often, sometimes multiple times per session. NPCs, all with abrasive personalities, seemed to dominate many scenes. It often felt like our GM had some thing he wanted us to do, but we didn't know what it was, and he wasn't telling us. We ended up tiptoeing around and basically asking the GM what to do to avoid the tension. Narration was extensive and focused away from the players; combat always seemed to be an excuse to show off a powerful NPC; the GM seemed upset with us often. It was a hard road, and I still don't know if I entirely understand what went wrong. 

Years later, I played for a first time GM who was trying his hand at a D&D module. I will say this: the GM I just described about who was focused on his own world was less fun than a complete novice GMing. That's not to say it was fun. The first timer had no real confidence as a GM and spent a lot of time looking rules up in the book or triple-checking passages in the module. He was neither kind nor cruel, nor was he really much of anything but scared of messing up. I've lost touch with him--I hope he's stuck with it and found his groove as a GM. 

Most recently, I played a campaign in which I got to break out a long-awaited character concept--the con artist, built as a Charisma-based Rogue--and had my best friend as the GM. I was surprised during our opening sessions--he's a very warm person, but he was very distant as a GM. I got the sense it was a deliberate move, though I'm not entirely certain what the intended effect is. His descriptions were smooth, detailed, and interesting, delivered as though telling a long-remembered story that happened to him; his combat was decisive and varied. The quality of the GMing was excellent, though I'm still puzzled by the distance as a GM--perhaps an attempt to embrace the same energy as my first GM, Judge. 

And how would I describe my style? I tend to blur the lines between in-game and out-of-game selves. I am openly on one side and one side alone--the players having the best time possible. In narration and table talk alike, I voice my opinions on how impressive player actions are, how much I don't want a narrative let-down, and how much I enjoy moments players create. I think it's important that my players know that I want them to have a good time. 

I'm very warm and kind as a GM. I've gone out of my way to design custom classes, homemade campaigns, and whatever else I can to help players have a good time, and I try to be very friendly about it. After all, it's work I enjoy. Why would I be anything but nice--I'm playing my favorite kind of game with my friends and we're being creative together, which is awesome. 

That's not to say I don't seem impartial with the rules. As far as my players know, every die roll I report is exactly what happened, and I do maintain a sense of balance. I'll admit that if things are really going poorly for a player character, I will fudge a roll to let them catch a break. I'll admit that I have erased some hit points from enemies when things were looking bad for the party. But again--I'm here to make sure the players have a good time. Dying meaninglessly would not be a good time. To my players, these are memorable close calls; to me, they're averted disasters. And I only fudge very sparingly if I can help it, since the dice are there for a reason after all. 

To me, it is a matter of leaning into the moment, and it is a matter of personal taste, so it's not as though there are any hard and fast rules. But the moment I realized that I as the GM was playing a game with my friends and not against my friends was the moment that everything became clear to me. I will say that as a rule, antagonism is a pretty toxic thing to bring to the table when the goal is fun. GMs who try to murder the whole party, storytellers who bully the party into following the script, GMs who don't care how a player's experience goes--these GMs create bad feelings in our community. First time gamers leave the community after bad experiences with antagonistic players and GMs. I'd wager that these tensions from playing the game together restrict how strong of friends those people can be. 

If, on the other hand, you say to your friends something else, it could be different. "Hey, I want to play a game with you. We'll conquer foes and have adventures and enjoy laughs and create a story all together. How's that sound?" I like the sound of that. I like it a lot more than, "If you think you can defeat my dungeon, you're wrong, but I'll let you try and die if you want." 

In my experience, there is something of a culture of competitiveness and dismissiveness amongst tabletop gamers. No matter how I have approached the community, I have been ignored or dismissed. Sometimes I have said, "Hey, "I've been GMing for 18 years and have a massive website about tabletop games--I know about this stuff." I have not been believed. I know that antagonism and rudeness and not caring about the players all that much is actually pretty common in our community. And nevertheless, I will say it once more:

We are here to have fun with our friends. There is no need for anything but happiness and enjoying each other's company while you tell a story together. The GM does not win when they kill they party or reach the end of their written adventure--they win when they have a good time, and it's much easier to do that with the players than while fighting against them. 

When I look back on my first days of D&D in Judge's basement with fresh popcorn and big blankets, I think the thing that meant the most at the time was having Judge around. I didn't have a father figure, and Judge was kind and attentive and funny and played games with me. It was his warmth that brought me in. As I stayed, and I got to know tabletop games, it became something bigger--an obsession that has fueled me since. But without my kindly neighbor Judge, I don't know when or where I would have found tabletop games. 

I have been told by friends that they play tabletop games today because I invited them to play with me. They liked me--they trusted me--and my kindness and friendship carried them partway. Tabletop games did the rest of the work like they did for me. And you, humble GM reading this, you too can bring people into the community. You too can be kind to your friends and bring these beautiful games into their lives to share with you. 

I'll be a little sassy if a player tries to convince me of something outlandish. I might roll my eyes at a bad joke. But I don't oppose my players ever. If you do, I would ask you to reconsider, because things can be so much better.

That's all for now. Coming soon: an argument for downtime, reflections on character deaths, and how to not get weighed down by worldbuilding. Until next time, happy gaming!

How to Work Well with Other Players

Beginner players in the world of tabletop games have a lot to learn. There's the rules of the system (which changes between games), their individual character's abilities, the plot being spun by the GM, the in-jokes the party has been crafting, the combination of group and personal goals to consider, and more. It's easy for decisions in the moment to overlook something, be it a minor detail, a glaring issue, or something more subtle. In my experience, one of the first things that drops off in tabletop games is good teamwork. This guide will give you some pointers on how to maintain (or create) a good working relationship with other player characters, something that's vital to having a good time playing. 

The first step is awareness of goals. What does the overall party want? What do individual players want? How can we see player actions as driven by what they want? Where do desires by players overlap or conflict? Answering these questions will give you a good sense of what direction you're headed in. It will also give you the ability to anticipate things better. The next level of this is figuring out what the players want from the game, which will also help guide our understanding of things.

Storytime: Once, I was running a campaign, and I had a player who was playing a paladin. But the player tired of being ceaselessly good and decided that the most compelling thing to do was have him turn evil. Actually, the player wanted to kill the character off and start over, and I insisted we find a way to make the paladin interesting. So we did an evil turn which was preceded by playing the character as increasingly disillusioned and hopeless. The player's intention was to have an epic, exciting turn in his character's story, and that overrode what the character wanted, and since the other players weren't factoring in their fellow player's goals, they were taken totally off guard. It was exciting, but the clues were there had the other players been looking. 

Once you recognize the motivations in your game, it's time to decide which ones you want to focus your energy on assisting. Your personal goals will almost certainly make this list, and the main story should be represented as well; deciding how and where to help your allies is another element of this process. This can be a simple or complex process. If you agree with the goal and the person with the goal is a friend and ally, the decision is simple. What if you disagree with the goal but want to offer an olive branch to the person who holds the goal? What if someone you detest wants to help with a goal of yours? All of these factors can grow complicated, so keeping our base desires (which goals we will prioritize) in mind matters a lot so we can avoid getting distracted. 

Another story: I got to play a con artist build I'd been dreaming about for years. Our DM put us on a sprawling, epic adventure that spanned a continent and multiple dimensions. There were endless fascinating details to latch onto, many of which inspired new goals in our group. We tended to these in the way that D&D players do--"yes, we just slayed a den of vampires, and now I'm eating 40 soft pretzels and watching a boxing match--leave me alone." In the end, our schedules fell apart. There were seven of us trying to coordinate together, and it got to be too much. Our DM gave us a written epilogue wrapping up the campaign and seeing our characters off into the sunset. We all felt similarly: there was more we wanted to do. We never saw the end of the story ourselves. We'd spent sessions frolicking and puzzling and chatting, and the actual story had eluded us. I think if we had kept in mind that real life time was an issue and been more diligent, we would have lived out that story, and while I'm not claiming you shouldn't goof around or explore, I do think that there's a balance to keep. 

Then it's time to coordinate. You know the goal, and you know who's cooperating with you, so you have to figure out who's doing what. Fortunately, tabletop games clearly spell out who has the best chance of success at a task via your skills--you can compare the skill rank of say, Survival, on two different character sheets and see which one is higher. Much of tabletop games involves getting a sense of who is good at what; it becomes intuitive, as having the most skilled person do something is classic and fairly obvious strategy. For more abstract challenges, though, teamwork is usually the solution: brainstorming solutions to problems, collectively convincing someone of something, and outright doing tasks in tandem are all common strategies in tabletop games. What matters most here is that you're strategizing consciously, not acting on impulse.

Storytime part three: In Of Gods and Dragons, my most recent campaign, I tried to pose all abstract problems to my party. I had designed the campaign to be about roleplaying and emotional experiences, and that meant using their wits and creativity to solve problems, not to mention diplomacy. You could see that it was pushing the players to their limits at times--everything was complicated and messy and directionless, and they had to sort it all out. But they persevered. They cooperated. They thought creatively. And when all was said and done, they had amassed enough power to steamroll over every other challenge in their way. But this was only possible because of cooperation. I have never seen a group so focused on the same goals; it was truly magnificent, and I hope to see that again as a GM some day. 

And then it's time to act. This is the easiest part to consider. You declare an action, you roll dice, your GM tells you the result. But! Then it's back to the drawing board. It's time to plan again. 

You may be saying to yourself, but this is all simple enough and can be done without thinking too hard about it. Perhaps. But I have been playing tabletop games for a long time. There are a number of things that happen in practically every party at every table with every game. Panicked decision-making is one of them. Unclear, poorly thought-out, conflicting plans are the bane of every group of tabletop protagonists' existences, and any player or GM who would claim otherwise is unaware of the chaos they live in. 

Storytime one last time, and of a very different nature. I grew up hating myself. I thought that there was nothing positive about me to be said, that people rightfully hated me, and that I deserved the bad things that happened to me. I tried therapies and antidepressants and religions and all kinds of stuff. I was still miserable. Then in my mid-20s, a therapist recommended a book. It was called Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff. It basically argued that if you are mindful--if you can be aware of what you are thinking while you are thinking it--that you can change your thoughts. You can make them gentler and kinder. You can teach yourself to love yourself. It sounded far-fetched like all self-help books, but I saw no reason to not give it a chance. 

It wasn't immediate. Mindfulness is hard and gradual and only as effective as you let it be. But I got into the swing of things and started shifting to gentler thoughts. I learned to like things about myself, then to hope for good things for myself, and finally to actually loving myself. It hadn't been far-fetched. It was neuroscience, and it worked for me. Mindfulness works on whatever you set it to--any change you want to make, even just in attention, is possible. It is, without hyperbole, a total gamechanger in terms of how you exist in the world. 

So what I'm addressing here isn't frivolous or too simple to discuss. If we can use a tiny dose of mindfulness--just a little constant check-in in your mind that asks some basic questions--we can make much better decisions in-game. These are questions like, "How does what we're doing right now relate to our goals? What other paths might we take to get there? How might we simplify our plans? How are my allies in the party and the NPCs we're working with interested in our plans?" These are simple, yes, but they are critical thought questions that keep us from getting caught up in crazy plans or overlooking important things. 

But finally, beyond understanding and contributing to plans well, there is one last key to working well with other players: friendliness. I don't mean your character should embrace a caricature of polite behavior or some kind of chipper demeanor. I meant that you, the player, outside of the game, should be friendly with a player when you work with them. It's a big thing to offer assistance in tabletop games, and a spirit of kindness goes a long way in terms of making that assistance into a meaningful moment in the campaign. We are all here to have fun, so try to embrace the cooperative in-game spirit with the same energy out of game. 

This will guide you in most things. When new situations arise, trust your intuition. Most of all, remember that this is a narrative game. Failure is just as interesting as success, and often more interesting. Don't be afraid to ask for help and guidance if you're nervous. And just have fun--that's the point. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to stop railroading, a profile on the island of Ramsey, and how to "win" tabletop games. Until next time, happy gaming!

How to Know What Class To Play for D&D Beginners

As I've recently mentioned, I spend a lot of time GMing for kids. Everyone experiences games differently, but essentially all kids are petrified by the notion of picking a class for their first character. Picking any one of them means missing out on all the others, so it's a big choice. It's also a big choice because, whether a player knows it or not (be they child or adult), the choice of a class can define a lot about the experience of playing--maybe more than everything but the GM's style. And picking a class for beginning adult players can be tricky. All the same consequences still apply, and having fun or not could decide whether they continue playing. So to help make picking a class easier, I've created a guide to choosing the best one for you, stripped of all the technical talk, focusing on what your experience will be like. Read on to learn which class is best for you. [This guide focuses on the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically the base 12 classes in the Players Handbook.]

One way to choose is based on difficulty. It's true that some classes are harder to play than others, and there's good sense to playing a character whose challenge level to play matches what you want. A pure spellcaster like the Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard takes a more developed understanding of the game to pull off and enjoy than most beginning players are capable of to start. On the other hand, a Fighter can be a much easier introduction to the world of D&D's combat, vital statistics, and game rules without additional systems to learn. In the ratings below, I will rank each class on a scale from 1 to 5 where 1 is easy to pick up for beginners and 5 is a more veteran challenge. 

Another way you might choose is based on what kinds of actions you'd like to be able to take. After all, playing a stealthy rogue and playing a rowdy barbarian are pretty different experiences. To that end, I've provided a short paragraph about the kinds of exciting actions that the class is capable of. These observations will be drawn from a combination of my own experiences playing these classes and my consideration of players playing those classes in games I have DMed. 

You might also be interested in knowing what specifically you'll need to learn in order to be effective with the class. If your character's survival being based on your understanding of how to manipulate rules makes you uncomfortable, there's a whole list of classes (spellcasters in general, clerics in particular, and rogues) that you'll want to avoid since mastering the rules is a core part of these classes. In order to express what types of things you'll need to learn, I'll provide a list of the types of ideas you'll need to learn. 

And finally, you may want to know what role the character will fill in the party. Now, it's worth noting before going any further than any class can have any personality, so if you're worried about roleplaying, make your choice on type of action primarily--class doesn't dictate personality. But if you know you prefer to be a support character or want to be one to serve the character idea, you have options (cleric and bard, most notably). There's a role for everybody, but it's important that you enjoy filling yours. I'll provide a brief analysis of the roles you can easily step into with each class. 

So, based on these four categories of information, I hope to help you find the best class to start with. Let's begin. 

Barbarian 

Difficulty: 1

Actions: Barbarians are best known for their ability to enter Rage, a state in which they are more likely to strike in combat and do more damage, also gaining hit points. Barbarians are a standby for combat-oriented players; this class gets the most health of all classes and can reliably deal among highest damage in melee. Every single special ability granted to barbarians revolves around being more effective in combat, including bonuses to initiative (how quickly your character acts in combat), extra attacks, and resisting damage. 

What to Learn: Tactics. As a barbarian, your greatest strength is combat; you can either be good at it or truly great at it. Without tactics, you'll do well, but with careful attention paid to maximizing your strengths, you'll destroy everything your DM throws at you. This also means getting familiar with the rules that govern your abilities. 

Role: Barbarians are usually tanks--hard to kill and good at killing. It would be possible to develop a barbarian into some other role, but the task would ultimately ignore that this class is meant to be a combat machine and little else. 

Bard

Difficulty: 5

Actions: Bards have a wide variety of abilities. They are capable of magic, have immense bonuses to skills, and are able to help allies succeed. In simple terms, bards are built for support, but are kind of a mixture of all the classes in the game--they're capable of combat, magic, and skills. Bards are not necessarily masters of as many things as they are strong in, so thinking on one's feet is usually another part of what bards need to do, especially since they usually function as the leader of the party. 

What to Learn: Everything. Because bards can do magic, combat, and skills, they need to learn the rules behind each of those skills. But knowledge of rules and mechanics won't be enough--you'll also need to learn to be a good support player and use your spells and class abilities in a way that actually helps your fellow players.  

Role: As with their abilities, bards can be anything. Charismatic and clever bards lead parties and entertain crowds. Tactical bards turns the tides of battles with buffs and healing. Sagely bards become expert spellcasters. You can be anyone as a bard. 

Cleric

Difficulty: 5

Actions: Clerics are the only class in the game given the full suite of healing abilities. Other classes (bards, druids, and paladins) are capable of healing spells, but clerics are specifically made to do so. This means every party could use a cleric, though they're not easy to play. Aside from healing, clerics can also fight undead, cast a huge array of spells, and specialize in an approach to magic that grants special abilities and extra spells (a domain). At the same time, clerics are equipped to be effective in combat. 

What to Learn: Magic rules to start. The cleric's skill as a melee combatant are relatively straightforward (tactics help here), but they're mostly important as a healer and support character, so being very familiar with which spells do what and when is very important. Knowing about the other player characters in your party is also important so you can better support them. 

Role: Clerics are great as a healer and support unit, but since their spell list is pretty broad, they're capable of quite a lot. It's worth noting that a cleric alone can be formidable, but a cleric with someone dangerous is greater than the sum of the parts, so be ready to work as a team. 

Druid

Difficulty: 4

Actions: Druids get several exciting abilities. The most famous is the ability to turn into an animal (Wild Shape), but they can also choose specific "circle" to belong to, meaning a specific region held dear by the druid. These circles are similar to cleric domains, granting special spells and extra abilities. Druids are able to cast magic, and they have fairly diverse spells, making them capable of quite a lot if they're creative about it. 

What to Learn: Mostly magic. Druids are largely defined by their spellcasting abilities--they are not bad at melee fighting, but their strength is in their magic. Once you've learned magic, the only major complication is in the Wild Shape rules--it can be tricky to keep track of which abilities you have in which form during a tense moment. 

Role: Druids are fairly powerful spellcasters whose magic tends to disrupt combat and swing things toward the party. This means that they're direct presences in combat, but standing outside of the fray. Druids are also good guides since they can navigate nature so well. 

Fighter

Difficulty: 1

Actions: Fighters' abilities, like barbarians, are almost entirely focused on combat. With the exception of the Eldritch Knight archetype, the abilities are all focused on making more attacks, doing more damage, and surviving attacks. The Eldritch Knight adds spellcasting to the fighter, but only in the form of protection and damage spells, so the effect is ultimately the same. Notably, the fighter gets to choose a fighting style which grants bonuses based on specific tactics in combat. 

What to Learn: Tactics. Most fighters tend to fight on the front lines, hoping for high rolls against enemies, so knowing how and when to move around the battlefield is a vital way to make the most of your abilities. 

Role: Fighters are invaluable as tanks. Since players tend to make fighters with the intention of focusing on combat, I've never seen a fighter used for some other role. In the hands of a sufficiently-committed roleplayer, I'm sure you could see a fighter party leader, but mostly fighters are fighters. 

Monk 

Difficulty: 2

Actions: Monks are martial arts experts on the surface. 5E has done a pretty satisfying job of coming up with special martial arts combat rules for monks (including different schools of martial arts), and most players who came for ninja-ing around leave happy. Monks also have a variety of very special abilities that help them transcend the laws of reality, which is very fun. But on top of this, monks have a great many special abilities that depend on selection of a monastic tradition, and they range from combat approaches to stealth applications to magic mastery. 

What to Learn: Kind of a lot, surprisingly. You need to learn the base game like anyone else, but the monk rules replace basically all of those rules (but learning them first wouldn't work because there'd be no foundation to start from). I mentioned lots of special abilities--if you don't use those abilities and use them well, you end up being just a watered-down fighter. So get used to the rules and the special monk variants. 

Role: Monks are a strange class in this way. On one hand, monks can be incredibly strong in combat. On the other, they can fill a lot of the same roles that rogues do (stealth expert, specialized attacks). And monks can even be leaders given their wisdom--it just depends on how you play it. 

Paladin

Difficulty: 3

Actions: Paladins are basically a halfway point between clerics and fighters (basically). You get plenty of strength in combat, plus some magic and a dose of healing. Most of the special abilities of paladins revolve around improving their abilities in combat, and the special oaths that paladins take let you decide between justice, nature, and vengeance as inspirations for more abilities. In essence, a paladin is a fighting character with the ability to add some support. 

What to Learn: Like with the cleric, paladins demand that their players learn to operate tactically in combat as well as the basics of spellcasting. Fortunately, the rest of the paladin's abilities function much like the fighter's, so simply focusing on tactics and magic will allow you to do well with a paladin. 

Role: Paladins are interesting in terms of role--they can act as tanks, as minor healers, and as party leaders (especially since their magic is fueled by charisma). It really comes down to what the party needs and how you want to play your paladin. 

Ranger

Difficulty: 3

Actions: Rangers are specialized combat classes as a foundation--they get special fighting styles, combat bonuses like extra attacks, and strength against a chosen type of enemy. At the same time, they get access to a range of spells and extra abilities that grant nature-based boosts and magic. They get the paladin's same abbreviated access to spells (level 5 maximum as opposed to a sorcerer/warlock/wizard's level 9 maximum), most of which are useful in the wilderness or in combat. 

What to Learn: I'll say that like all combat classes, tactics are useful here, and that like all classes with magic, learning the magic rules is useful. I'll add, though, that rangers are perhaps the easiest classes with magic to pick up. The shortened spell list and relatively straightforward spells are less intimidating than other lists, and the combat abilities are comparable to the fighter list. This could be a good first spellcasting class for a beginner. 

Role: Rangers can be a few different things easily: they can be tanks or strikers depending on the build. Some rangers can be stealthy, and others are practically barbarians. A ranger can be almost anyone so long as there's a place to be filled. 

Rogue

Difficulty: 2

Actions: Rogues have probably the most diverse and customizable foundation in the game. They're given formidable combat skills (sneak attack, uncanny dodge), broad subclasses (or "roguish archetypes" such as stealth, combat, and magic), and a load of powerful abilities that apply in many situations (evasion, cunning action). I've seen and played rogues who were assassins, con artists, thieves, and mages. For beginners without a clear sense of what you want your character to be, the rogue can present so many options as to be overwhelming, but the rogue can also be a great way to make an interesting non-combat character who can still hold their own.

What to Learn: Basic tactics will help you figure out how to use sneak attack correctly. Beyond that, you basically just need to keep your many abilities straight. Rogues have lots of abilities that only happen in certain conditions, and remembering all those details is probably the hardest part of playing a rogue. 

Role: Rogues can be, more than any other class, any role at all. A rogue can be an aloof and arrogant tagalong, the charismatic heart of the group, a brilliant expert, or the hilarious goofball--and all at once. The customizability of the class means it's open to your imagination. 

Sorcerer/Warlock/Wizard

Difficulty: 5

Actions: Let's clarify something: I'm placing these three classes together, but they are not identical, and they have different specifics when it comes to abilities. I am placing them together because, from the perspective of a first-time player, they are basically the same enough that we can talk generally about them. Now, these classes are entirely about spellcasting. That means that you have no combat abilities and few skills to back you up--your spells have to speak completely for you. So not only do you need to juggle dozens of spells, but you need to be fluent with using them, or you'll end up without remaining magic and be in trouble. If you're getting started with a magic-centric class, feel free to check out my guide to learning the rules of magic.

What to Learn: The magic rules. This will, in turn, lead you to need to learn most of the rules of the game. Any given spell might reference two or three rules, so knowing the rules and how they fit together really helps with understanding spells. I'd also recommend paying attention in-game to how fights unfold so that you can use that information to your advantage when casting magic. 

Role: Here's where things get especially hard to summarize. Wizards are fueled by their intelligence, so they often work differently in-game than the charisma-driven sorcerers and warlocks. Further, these two latter classes have different sources of magic, further characterizing them: sorcerers are inherently magic from their very blood, while warlocks have made a bargain with an elder god to obtain their powers. You can imagine that details like these might affect your game if story is concerned. In broad generality, though, spellcasters operate as strikers, doing considerable damage and turning the tides of battles. They can also be party leaders, especially the more charismatic of the bunch. 

That's the overview. Hopefully you have an idea of what class you'd like to play. If you have questions or just can't decide, I highly recommend talking it over with your DM. They can help you understand your choices in the context of the campaign you're playing, and they might steer you towards something that serves the game well. What matters most is that you have a sense of what you're getting into--D&D can be a lot, and going on with your best foot forward can help you find your fun. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: religious beliefs by cultural group in my homebrew setting, a dark time-loop adventure in an original system, and profiles on the major cities in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

How to Find Your GM Style

Having a specific style when you run a tabletop game has a lot of advantages. It can help you to find your voice as a storyteller, figure out how to interact with your players, and guide your creative process. Each of these advantages will in turn allow you to be more confident in the game and have more fun. So how do you go about finding your style as a Game Master? This guide will help you to think about your style and how to capitalize on it. 

To get started, it's helpful to think about your history with tabletop games. Consider what you have played and especially what you have enjoyed the most. What moments were the most exciting to you? What ideas did you want to bring to the game? Which experiences brought you closest to your players/GM? Answering these questions will allow you to begin looking closer at what you really enjoy, and you can then use that information to guide you when you GM. 

The first issue worth delving into deals with the kind of game you're more interested in. I've discussed several times before the three types of game that a tabletop campaign tends to utilize. These types are combat, antics, and roleplaying. Let's discuss these types so we can better understand how we relate to them. 

A combat style means that your campaigns are largely based around fighting and the challenges that surround it. A combat-centric GM tends to think about how fights can move a story forward, how strategy impacts a fight, and how strategic choices like levelling up and working together can change the outcome of combat. This means that a combat style will largely deal with interesting enemies, intricate battlefields, and threatening abilities. If these ideas motivate you, you may be a combat GM. Knowing this will allow you to focus your energies on creating captivating fights and building a party which will appreciate those fights. 

An antics style means that your campaigns tend to revolve around creating ridiculous scenarios and funny story elements. An antics-centric GM tends to think about how parts of a story can make people laugh, how to make funny and endearing characters, and how player choices can add humor to the game. This means that an antics style will mostly revolve around outlandish and creative characters, bizarre plot twists, and lots of time goofing around. If these ideas drive you, you may be an antics GM. If you decide to focus your creative energy here, you will probably focus on creating likeable NPCs and making sure your players are having fun. 

A roleplaying style means that your campaigns are canvases on which the players tell their own stories along with yours. A roleplaying-centric GM tends to think about how the story will allow players their own opportunities to add to the campaign's saga, how to create complex stories, and how the players will build relationships with one another and NPCs. This means that a roleplaying style will mostly deal with complicated characters, intricate storytelling, and lots of time spent developing character personalities. If these ideas motivate you, you may be a roleplaying GM. This knowledge can allow you to focus on developing relationships between player characters and NPCs and generating story effects from player actions. 

Once you know the expression of your GM style, you'll be able to design a campaign that corresponds to that style. A campaign that matches your style means that you'll be able to use your natural tastes and strengths to make your best work. But it also means that you can design a campaign around what your players want, matching it to your style. This means more homebrew work, but it also means that you can give your players the best game for them while still sticking to the things you do well. It also means that you have complete control over your game; homebrewing is really the only way to have direct power to change things as you need to. This in turn means being able to cater to your GM style, feeding back into the process all over again. 

But knowing the type of game that you'll run is only part of the equation. It also matters how you choose to interact with the players. Again, there are different ways to approach this, and knowing your approach will give you a better shot at running a strong game. Interacting with the players tends to fall along a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is the GM who is removed from the party--someone who leads the game from something of a distance. This sort of GM can range from an antagonist to the party (especially common in combat-style games) to a guarded storyteller (common in very serious roleplaying-style games). A removed GM doesn't always share in the emotional journey of the players, and the strength of this approach is that it creates a clear problem-solving emphasis: the GM provides a problem, and the players are responsible for concocting a solution. Removed GMs tend to shy away from joking directly with the players, opting instead for a very reserved approach. 

On the other hand, there are GMs who are almost additional members of the party--someone who shares in the experience of the players even while being the voice of the complications. This sort of GM can range from someone who is there to root for the party against their own story (common in some roleplaying-style games) to someone who is there to share in the good times had by the party (very common in antics-style games). A GM who is practically a part of the party often matches their tone to the party's, and this allows these GMs to build a strong bond with the player group; this kind of GM is there more to empower the party and give them opportunities to create their own story moments. A GM of this sort tends to be on basically equal footing with the players in terms of sharing jokes and victories, often directly stating their preference for the players to succeed. 

In the middle of this spectrum is the more moderate approach--being someone who is removed enough to not be a real member of the party while still not being a direct antagonist either. This moderate approach to GMing results in a game where players are neither forbidden from nor expected to form a specific type of bond with the GM. And yet, the moderate GM and the players are not totally disconnected; a moderate GM will often play both sides of the spectrum, averaging out to somewhere in the middle over the course of a campaign. This means sometimes being reserved when the moment calls for it and sometimes being very connected to the players, again when the moment calls for it. This approach is common in all game types, but especially so with games that focus on a mixture of the game styles described above. A moderate GM leans into and away from the party's emotional states depending on the situation. This type of GM tends to want to provide a variety of experiences to the players, which is very powerful when the players want many different things. A moderate GM will sometimes share in jokes about the game's situation, but will also sometimes choose to stay in a more detached position for various reasons. 

Having a strong sense of how you'll choose to interact with the party helps in a variety of ways. Knowing whether you'll be like another member of the party or more of a removed storyteller can help you keep your tone (and the tone of the campaign) consistent. This matters more than some of us realize. I'm currently running a campaign that has wildly changed its tone from its inception to where we are now. It began as a combination of serious storytelling and some silly shenanigans, but that tone didn't work because the players weren't very into the serious storytelling. So I adjusted the balance of style to more antics and less serious story. This also didn't work. After a few more adjustments, I've settled on an entirely silly antics approach. It seems to be working better. And while I know there are good reasons for the changing tone, I think that variation has impacted the campaign negatively. This stems from not exactly deciding on how my style and the party's style would mesh together. It's a wise choice to change your tone to fit the party, but had I gone in with that style decided on from the start, I think the campaign would have been more successful. 

On this note: it's entirely acceptable (and even wise at times) to adjust your GM style to fit the group. Now, I say that with a few reservations. Going entirely against your style is not a good idea. I'm not very into the combat side of things in tabletop games, and when I play with a group of people who really only want combat, it puts me in a bad situation. For the party to have fun, I have to give up my own fun. I try to avoid running combat campaigns because I know I won't have much fun with it. But if I'm playing an antics campaign, which I have more of a stomach for, I can add some combat to that game to match the players' desires without being untrue to my own style. But the truth of the matter is that most groups really demand a certain style of game, often without realizing it. Modifying your approach to meet them halfway can result in some great times--I think back to the time I ran a National Treasure-inspired campaign and how I leaned further into antics than I ever really had before, and I found that my party loved that effort. I wouldn't have adjusted my style toward antics had I not recognized that my roleplaying-centric style would need some changes to match the party. 

The last thing to consider in determining your GM style is to ask yourself, "What do I like to make?" This site is largely dedicated to the creation of homebrew materials, and I recognize that not everyone takes the leap to create their own settings, characters, and stories, but even module-following GMs can think seriously about this question. When you play the tabletop games that you love, what sorts of details do you enjoy including in your game? Think about the moments you've been called upon to improvise; what ideas did you reach for? Maybe you like ideas that fit cleanly within the paradigm of the setting your game takes place in, and maybe you're more inclined to think about more divergent ideas. Or perhaps you're inclined to make NPCs an important focal point in your games; then again, you might enjoy adding bizarre details meant to inspire laughter. These also help you determine your GM style. 

Let's go further in depth on your additions to the game. I tend to enjoy including morally ambiguous stories because I think that they demand that the players get really invested in considering characterization of their PCs. Going back to some of my earliest work as a GM, I've included details like this in order to really get my players thinking (and feeling) in the game. If I consider this fact closely, I can see that I enjoy making my players truly engage with the world and the stories in it. This in turn allows me to see that roleplaying is my favored approach (considering a serious moral conundrum is most at home in a roleplaying-centric game), but it also helps me to generate new campaigns. If I can build my campaigns around these philosophical issues, I know that I will have something to enjoy (assuming my players really engage with the issues), and that means that I can guarantee I'll enjoy a big part of the campaign. So being familiar with your own GM style can also lead to your enjoying the game more. 

One last consideration of how you can focus on what you enjoy making is related to simply being aware of your strengths as a GM. Each of us is especially good at some elements of GMing, and others of us are talented with different things. Being able to bring your best skills to the game helps give the players a better game, but it also allows you go into the game with more confidence. Here's an example from my time as a GM: I developed and ran a mystery-based campaign a while back, and going in, I was fairly nervous. Keeping a satisfying mystery going for a whole campaign without letting the big reveal get discovered for months had me pretty anxious. After all, one miscalculation on my part, and the whole campaign would be ruined. However, in the first few sessions of the campaign, the players managed to think of clever ways to get around my clues and the complications around them, and I in turn managed to come up with clever ways to reward them without jeopardizing the mystery of it all. I recognized then that one of my strengths as a GM is in redirecting players' attention. Throughout the campaign, I was able to keep the biggest elements of the mystery undiscovered. And I don't know how that aim would have gone if I hadn't realized that I was actually pretty good at keeping details undiscovered. The confidence I had in my ability to preserve the mystery kept the campaign going; a lack of confidence about that could have seriously dragged down my ability to keep it going. 

So, as you try to figure out your style as a GM, consider these ideas. What type of game do you most enjoy--combat, antics, roleplay, or a combination thereof? How will you relate to the players--one of them, a detached referee, or somewhere in between? And what do you enjoy making in the game--do you like being ridiculously creative, thoughtfully analytical, or strategically practical? Each of these has its advantages and drawbacks, but what matters most is that they are the things you enjoy and excel at. Knowing your GM style can help you find a good group of people to play with, develop your own materials, adjust your campaign to player tastes, and help players have their own types of fun. And those many advantages are well worth becoming more familiar with who you are as a GM. So take some time to think about what you enjoy in the game and what serves your needs best, and start refining your style. 

One penultimate note: as I said above, it can be helpful to modify your style depending on the situation. As a for instance, I am a teacher who runs Dungeons & Dragons Club at my school; I run campaigns for middle and high school students once a week, and I have for the last two years. My preference for serious roleplaying is not compatible with what the students want--they're interested in combat and some shenanigans. So I adjust my style, but I don't abandon it. I provide them opportunities to fight and silly NPCs to goof around with, but I also subtly offer philosophical issues. Case in point: one group of my students requested an endless dungeon. I wasn't thrilled--running combat as a GM is not what I enjoy about tabletop games. So I added bizarre NPCs to the dungeon, almost all of whom had philosophical issues to resolve. One such NPC, who the students named Borg-Lorg despite his insistence that his name was Keith, Jr., was stuck in a room of the dungeon. He was remarkably powerful-looking and offered to help if the players freed him. At the same time, there was a magically locked treasure chest that would only open if Borg-Lorg died. They then had to decide whether a powerful ally or a load of treasure was more important. (They decided on freeing Borg-Lorg, but threw him down a bottomless pit later on.) My point here is, I could have catered entirely to the students' style (fighting and being ridiculous), but adding my own style to the game by including a complicated situation changed their experience. And they loved it! Borg-Lorg was their favorite NPC, they all agreed later on, and I brought him back for the finale to much excitement. This memorable episode came from me merging my style with what they wanted, and you can do the same in your games. 

And the final note: GM styles change. You may be able to identify your current style, but with more gaming, you're likely to refine or even shift between styles. I began my GM career focusing on antics primarily and combat secondarily--roleplaying was scarcely a part of my early campaigns. But over time, and as I played with new groups, I began to sense that I enjoyed other things. The way that roleplaying drew me in, both as a GM and a player, was powerful. Roleplaying moved from the bottom of my list to the top, and antics and combat moved down accordingly. This wasn't me abandoning my old style--it was me coming to a better understanding of tabletop games and how I interact with them. And that's a vital change that happens to many of us. When you notice your style changing, don't resist it; lean into it, and find out what you learn from experimenting. You'll be pleasantly surprised to discover a whole new way to enjoy tabletop games, and it will help your GM skills to improve too. 

There you have it--a guide to discovering and refining your style as a GM. With this awareness, your enjoyment of the game as well as your players' is bound to increase. Just keep in mind that it's not set in stone, and having a style doesn't mean you can't get creative outside the bounds of that style. So investigate your tastes, try something new, and get on the path to finding your unique voice as a GM. 

How to Connect to Your Characters

Most of what I discuss here on this site revolves around how to be a successful Dungeon Master, but I also think that playing the game is an important thing to address. A while back, I wrote about how to go about creating a player character, which serves as a guide for developing the base ideas that help create the foundation of a character. But that's not the end of the process. Once you have the basics of your character, there is still more work to be done if you want to get everything possible out of your gaming experience. With that in mind, the following is a guide on connecting with your characters. 

In order to illustrate the steps I suggest for connecting with your character, I'm going to use my most recent character, who also happens to be the character I have developed the most (and also the one I feel most attached to). So to start, let's talk about the foundation I created before taking this step--connecting with the character. 

Many years ago, I developed an idea for a character who was a Charisma-based rogue: a con artist with a stubborn streak and the skills to back it up. It was a long time before I had the right campaign to put her in, so I spent a lot of that time imagining who she was and what she was like. Eventually, I had solidified this character into a young woman who had fallen in with a gang but chafed under the unequal weight she pulled compared to her colleagues. My character sheet's space for backstory included this as well as the detail that she had left the gang amid turbulence in order to start over on her own. I liked this idea and thought it was pretty complete even though I hadn't taken all of the steps I suggest in the article linked above. 

I was wrong. 

As soon as we started playing, I realized a few things about my character. 1: Without a more detailed backstory, I had little conception of what motivated my character--Asp, named for the snake whose bite is so pleasurable that the serpents were once used as a form of "humane" execution--beyond greed and ego. 2: Asp's independent streak made it hard for her to work with the party in the campaign; in an early session, she bothered everyone else in the group by pulling a quick con for essentially no reason. 3: An extension of this was that our mission was a good-aligned one, and Asp's independence and Neutral alignment complicated this. And finally, 4: I wasn't getting the experience I had created Asp for--getting to con people; our main quest involves diplomacy, but diplomacy among elves who don't trust halflings like Asp. All of these issues meant I needed to readjust. I needed to connect with Asp (and quickly) or risk messing up the campaign for everyone. (This is part of collaborative storytelling: you need to compromise with the rest of the group.)

So I set about connecting with Asp. The first thing I did, and the first thing I think most any player should do with a new character, is imagine what they look like. If you're artistic and want to draw them, you absolutely should. But many of us are not artistically inclined, nor do we have disposable income to pay an artist to draw our characters. Fortunately, there are ways around this. I personally recommend the site Hero Forge, where you can design custom miniatures and potentially pay for them to be manufactured. I used the miniature-making software to create distinct appearances for Asp--each of the personas she uses while running cons. You can see each of these images on this short profile on her. Because I developed such an attachment to Asp over the course of trying to connect with her, I ended up buying a mini for each of her personas (it's really cool to see all her identities side by side on my gaming bookcase), but even just having images to share with your party is the most important thing. In fact, after I shared my images of Asp's identities with my group, our DM requested that everyone do the same for their characters. It's helpful for having a picture in your mind and sharing that with your group. 

But it's not just about having an image. Designing every detail of your character's appearance gives you time and space to consider who they really are. One such example: the Hero Forge system gives you the ability to add various items to spots on the character's body--for instance, what will you character place at their sides or on their back? You can place weapons and other items in those places. The value of this is that you are essentially being asked, "What kinds of things would this character find useful/regularly important?" This helped me imagine how she portrays her various identities: her reporter character carries writing tools and hides her hair in a cap; her diplomat character wears fancy jewelry to appear more upper class and highlights her long hair; her inventor character has practical tools and tied-up hair that makes her look male. I had imagined the personas before along the lines of what role they served (each persona has different benefits and drawbacks), but I hadn't really thought about how she would differentiate these appearances to keep from being caught. Making these character portraits allowed me to really get into the practical reality of her life in a way that I hadn't considered until I put thought into it. You never know what you'll learn about your character when you add details to them, and appearances are no different. 

I treat appearances as the first step because it's usually one of the more basic parts of a character. Having a good, accurate image of your character is a great start. But it won't give you everything you need to really connect with your character. For that, you'll need to get into their head. I'm going to address two ways of going about this--they're more complementary than interchangeable, but you should do whatever will work for you. These two methods are writing about your character and imagining hypothetical scenarios for your character. Writing is more intensive and requires patience, but it gives you more tangible and helpful results; imagining hypotheticals is easier and less intense, and it helps you stay on top of your character as they continue to develop. I recommend beginning with writing (you need a solid understanding to get started in the game) and staying fresh by imagining hypotheticals. Here's why:

Writing is labor-intensive and can be intimidating to a lot of people. But here's the thing: it doesn't have to be good. It's really just for you (unless you want to share it like I do). Try to forget any anxiety you have about writing. If you have that anxiety, it's probably because the circumstances in which you've written before were forced and about something you didn't care about. (I say this as an English teacher.) This won't be like that. Here's my challenge to you: write one short story about your character. It doesn't have to be good. But it will allow you this huge benefit: session one won't be about figuring out who your character really is--it will be about sinking into the world, the campaign, and the group. That's a huge advantage. 

Before I address how you can start writing about your character, I want to show how writing about Asp helped me solve all four of the problems I mentioned above. Problem 1: I didn't know what motivated Asp. After writing about her, I had an incredibly clear picture of what motivates her. I wouldn't have known it until writing about her, but her stubbornness comes from a combination of insecurity and having to live completely on her own for a long time. This in turn allowed me to play up the wavering between recklessly bold and anxiously insecure moments, and it also helped me understand how she would fit in with a group. I discovered as I wrote that her old gang were people she also struggled to fit in with at first, and that helped me to figure out how to connect to the party. 

Problem 2: Asp was too independent to work well in a group. After I had written about her, it became clear that she actually was very good at working in a group, but only when she understood the expectations of the group. In her old gang, she became one of the most beloved parts of the outfit after some initial growing pains. She also struggled with the leader of the gang--she didn't always listen to the consensus, but learned to over time. This helped me to make her more inclined to work with the party. After the moment where she pulled a con unnecessarily, she apologized for disrupting and upsetting the group and vowed to not act criminally as long as they were together. In the party, she was cast as group leader, meaning that she suddenly had a new perspective on working as a team. These ideas allowed me to help Asp become a key element of the party rather than repeating her previous mistakes (which wouldn't have really existed had I not written about her). 

Problem 3: Asp was true Neutral in a good-aligned campaign. This was a really key problem to fix. Our mission in the campaign is to defuse a mounting war between the elves and orcs of my DM's homebrew setting is an important action which requires constant and pure motivation to do the right thing, no matter the cost. Given the character backstory I initially imagined, this would give Asp little incentive to participate in the main quest. Her independence and amorality were not good fits for the story. So I adjusted. As you know if you read the above-linked profile on Asp, I ended up writing two novels' worth of material about her life leading up to the campaign. At the beginning of the novel that leads into the campaign, Asp really is a true Neutral person whose only interest is herself and her (few) loved ones. But as she worked with the gang, she began to learn to appreciate and trust people. She had a meaningful romantic relationship. She began to enjoy the warmth of positive interactions and began to feel guided to do good things. After some very rocky times at the end of the novel, she gets to the land of the elves and orcs and quickly gets cast as a diplomatic savior of the orcs. She went back to the independence and amorality for a while on her own, but getting placed in the group quickly strengthened all her desire to be a better person. She is now the most outspoken force for goodness in the group and has even become a Cleric of Light. This wasn't the goal I had in mind when I developed Asp, but both my imagining of her life and the campaign itself demanded that she become more good-hearted. And beyond the mechanical necessities of her being less amoral, it's also been a lovely experience as a player to watch my broken little liar become someone who primarily cares about the wellbeing of those around her. 

Problem 4: I wasn't getting to con people like I wanted. This was difficult for me at first. I had so badly wanted to use the D&D system to run various cons on NPCs--I've always been fascinated by con artists, and I brought my desire to portray one to the early sessions. After the first job she pulled with the group, she recognized the offense to the party and promised to not do it anymore. But I still had the itch to see her pulling the wool over peoples' eyes. So in writing about her, I scratched that itch. The novels and short stories I've written about Asp are largely developments of relationships she's had with NPCs (a much more important detail than many players recognize since those relationships inform the ones formed in-game) or about her pulling off incredible cons. In one such story, she plays both parts of a two-person con in order to prove a point. This was so much fun to write, which is its own reward, but I also got to get the con artist stuff out of my system. The campaign we're in clearly has no room for a self-interested criminal, so I cut the cons from the game. I wrote about them instead, and now my imagined version of Asp is rich with a history of diverse and exciting cons. This is a problem I really couldn't have solved without writing about her. 

So writing helps us in a variety of ways--but how do you start? With Asp, I started with a conflict. I knew that she had broken off relations with her family and that her stubborn streak meant she'd probably be slow to join a gang like her backstory called for. So I made one conflict lead to the other: her mother sold her out to the guards, and she had to run to a gang that could help me stay safe. So I wrote a short story (only about three pages) that depicted her clashing with her mom, pulling a con, getting sold out, and meeting the head of the gang. That might sound a little crazy--covering all of that in just a few pages means lots of action in a small space. But it's really all you have to do to get great results. From that short story, I learned so many things about her. 

One such discovery was that Asp was a lot more vulnerable than I thought. I envisioned her as being someone who was very closed off in general, but writing about her changed that. In that first short story alone (which ended up becoming the first chapter of a novel), I realized that Asp cared deeply about her cat, who she loses in that chapter. She had enough of a tie to her mother that her mother could threaten her safety. As much as she wanted to do everything on her own, she needed a gang to help her start over after getting burned. I very suddenly realized that I had been thinking of her being a con artist as a powerful strength, but it's also a weakness--she's susceptible to all kinds of threats. I wouldn't have figured this out without writing about her, or at least, I wouldn't have figured it out until I'd been playing her for a while, and that's too late to know in my opinion. 

Another discovery was that the cons are actually difficult to write about. In order for things to be exciting, there has to be risk and tension. That means that at least some of her cons have to just barely work in order to be engaging. That meant having to find the sweet spot between being in control of the situation and dealing with realistic dangers. Finding this delicate place between these ideas was difficult at first. The con Asp pulls in the first chapter goes off entirely without a hitch, which I used to establish her skill as a con artist, but I had to add complications to later cons to keep them exciting. And this meant realizing that Asp is something of an adrenaline junkie. In one passage later in the novel, I wrote about the way she thinks about this danger inherent in conning people: she both dreads the uncertainty of it and revels in the thrill of it. She's wary of getting caught, but lying to a person's face and being believed is pure excitement. This revealed a new element of her behavior. Now, when I play Asp, I make her a bit more reckless than I originally imagined her. This makes the game more exciting, obviously, but also serves just who she is as a person. 

The short story is a great way to get your head around the big pictures. Continuing to write is where you get even more out of the situation. When I finished that first story, I was overwhelmed with how much I had learned about Asp. So I kept going. I wanted to know what life was like with her gang. It turned out to be very rocky. But I knew that she would become one of the crew before too long, so I wrote more. Soon, she was beloved in the gang and operating like a real member of a team. I needed this dynamic worked out in my head so I could know how she works with the party. And with all that momentum picked up, I pushed into how she ended up leaving the gang. It ended up being a complete revision of my initial backstory. She ended up not leaving the gang because she thought she was above the rest of the gang, but instead because she was (due to complicated circumstances) forced out of the gang and had to move on. This was--and I can't stress this enough--a vital realization. Knowing that she was coming into the campaign with a feeling of loss changed everything. It informed the decisions she made and the relationships she formed. 

Now, obviously the writing I'm talking about is more work than most folks will put into this process. That's okay. I know that I got fairly carried away with myself--you don't need 1,100 pages of writing to understand your character. In the "creating a character" article I linked above, I suggested writing general notes about character history (I again went overboard with the amount of this writing, but the point still stands). If you are 100% opposed to trying to write short fiction, I recommend the notes method. Good questions to ask yourself include:

• What important and defining events have occurred in the character's life? 
• How did they feel about these experiences? 
• What are common experiences that the character has often? 
• How do they feel when they experience those things? 
• What are things they enjoy doing? 
• Why do they enjoy these things? 
• What kinds of relationships (good and bad) has your character had? 
• How have these relationships affected them? 
• What does your character want? 
• How does your character plan to go about realizing these goals? 

Don't just think about the surface level things or the life-changing events--think about your character's internal world. What they think and feel is just as (if not more) important as the events themselves. Once you have answered these questions, revisit the idea of writing a bit of short fiction. Putting these ideas into an actual scene will undoubtedly show you dimensions you hadn't considered. 

Whatever writing you decide to do, you will have given yourself an advantage in knowing who your character is at the beginning of a campaign. But the campaign continues long after that. To stay on top of your character as they grow and change (or even to just stay in touch with your character), begin to imagine hypothetical scenarios involving your character. Many players do this unconsciously--it's fun to imagine what your character would do in various situations. But it goes beyond fun; you can also learn things about your character. Let's talk about what kinds of situations to think about, and then I'll illustrate some of the benefits using hypotheticals that I have used with Asp. 

A good place to start is by looking ahead in your campaign. What sorts of moments are likely to occur? How do you envision the conflicts ahead happening? What do you want to happen? These situations shouldn't just be considered in a descriptive way--you should try to imagine them as though you're really playing the game and your imagination is the DM. As you imagine the scene, roleplay it like you would a moment in the game--what comes naturally? Pay attention to what you feel about how it's happening. This is actually how I realized that I needed to make Asp stop conning people. I ran one small job in front of the party, and they voiced their displeasure at it. I kept daydreaming about the con element of her character, though. I would try to imagine situations where she could use her skills, but I always felt bad about it because I knew it would rub the group the wrong way. That's where I got the idea to write about her doing those things instead. So it can be a really productive place to begin imagining your character in hypotheticals. 

From there, you can branch out into less campaign-based thinking. Unless you've chosen to play someone with literally no attachments, there will be people in your character's life who evoke strong feelings from them. Family and friends are great for this, as are respected competitors. Try to imagine what your character would say to them if they ran into them. What kinds of feelings would meeting again bring up? Does your character have any new desires or plans after meeting with them? Does anything change about your character's feelings about this person? These are all deep mines of inspiration and discovery. With Asp, so many big ideas have come from imagining scenes like this--not to mention genuine enjoyment. As I wrote more and more about her story, she formed a lot of complicated relationships, especially the one with her partner. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what she would say to her ex if she got to see her again, and it all started with my DM dropping a character from her backstory into the campaign for just a moment. I thought, naturally, that Asp would ask about her ex. Learning where she was now was something I noted but didn't think much of at the time. But later, as I imagined their next meeting, I noticed how much affection Asp still had for her ex. As I kept imagining what she had to say, I began to see that she truly intends to track down her ex and talk things over, and that's put a completely different perspective on how Asp feels in the campaign. Her mindset is now, "I have to do this important and dangerous thing, and then I'm getting out of the game." It's added something tangible for me, and it came from just thinking about Asp talking to people. 

One last recommendation I'll make for hypotheticals is consciously seeking out a particular thing you find interesting, meaningful, or just confusing about your character. This is also especially helpful as a tool when you feel like something isn't working completely at the table; this exercise will help you diagnose the problem. What I mean by thinking about this particular detail of your character is to try to describe what this detail is. It might be something like, "I feel like I'm not expressing my character correctly," or "I really like how my character wants to stand up to people." These are big picture issues that many of us face. So devise a situation that would challenge or stress that detail. For the player who's afraid they're not expressing their character right, imagining a similar scenario to one that challenged them can be a great way to reevaluate what's going on. It also gives you the chance to think about these things in advance and come to the table more familiar with their character. Or for the player whose character is so willing to stand up to people, flip the tables on them: how would the character react if they couldn't stand up to somebody? What do you learn about your character when the strength that defines them is taken away? 

This is actually a scenario I've put Asp through a number of times. At various points in my writing about her, she gets very close to getting caught (and closer still in the book about the earlier years). But part of her character is that she's cool, confident, and in control of any situation she's in. So even in those moments, I didn't really get a sense of who she was when things really went sour. That's about when our DM introduced our main quest: bring an end to the coming war between the elves and the orcs. Our "final boss" (diplomatically speaking, of course) is the High Queen of the Elves, who seems fairly predisposed to war. When Asp first met the Queen, she panicked a little. I was really curious why that was, so I started to imagine her having other conversations with the Queen as well as other situations in which she had dealt with important people. Something I noticed was that she tended to get more anxious the more powerful a person was. I realized as I thought about this that she knows the consequences of getting caught grow exponentially with the status of the person you're conning (and yes, she does kind of view diplomacy as con artistry). So her anxiety was natural, and I didn't necessarily need to change that about my performance with her. But without noticing all of this, I never would have realized that I would need her to get more comfortable with the royals if she intended to succeed in her mission. And that's why I've roleplayed her as getting slowly more comfortable around royalty, which I think reflects that she grows and learns quickly, so increased exposure to dealing with royals is making her less anxious. And being aware of this change--even guiding it--allowed me to really enjoy it as an element of the story. I have easily a dozen more examples of ways that I've used these hypotheticals to explore characters, even before I consciously realized what I was doing (and how it helped me). 

Here's my last word: you read this far because you wanted to be able to connect with your characters. As a lifelong gamer whose first character was made for me and whose second character featured customizations in every possible way, I really do understand the drive to connect to these products of our minds. And if you feel the same way, I want you to know how rich and rewarding it is. It does take time and work, but you're here, seeking it out. I know (again as an English teacher) that not everyone loves to write. But at a certain point, it's worth the work to really familiarize yourself with who they are. 

Oh, and as a bonus suggestion, I suggest writing a journal of the campaign and doing so in the first person as your character's actual thoughts. Not only does it keep you engaged with the character throughout the session, but rereading your notes from the previous session before starting a new one is an excellent way to get back into the right frame of mind. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: clothing by culture in my homebrew setting, how to figure out your style as a GM, and lessons from 15 years of my GM notebooks. Until next time, happy gaming!

How to Create an In-Game Newspaper

Writing inside your gameworld can be an especially exciting find for your players. I've written before about general in-game writing, books, and character-written notes, but one of the best opportunities for in-game writing is something I haven't covered yet: newspapers. I remember that, years ago, in a campaign I played in, our DM would make in-game newspapers every in-game day that filled us in about the city, often recounted our exploits, and signaled new plot developments. It's something I have used a few times, though never on that scale, but no matter how often you introduce your characters to a newspaper, it can be a great tool for worldbuilding, immersion, and story inspiration. 

I know a lot of folks are probably thinking, "but how do I write a whole newspaper?" The good news is, you don't really have to. This process only requires writing four to six quick stories that follow the same rule I strive to follow as a GM: add the beginning of a story, but nothing more. The rest is for the party to decide. So let's brainstorm, and brainstorming is different depending on your purpose. The three commonest purposes for a newspaper are introducing a storyline, introducing a settlement, or chronicling something that the party has done. If you're introducing a storyline, you need your one main plotline, plus a few miscellaneous others; for a settlement, you want a mixture of new plotlines and characterizing details; and for a party deed, you need your one recognition story and a few miscellaneous others. In each case, most of what you need is a lot of ideas. So let's brainstorm!

I think I good breakdown for most newspapers includes the following: 

1 leading story (either your storyline or a main quest)

2 secondary stories (best served by characterizing details and sidequests)

2 tertiary details (best served by characterizing details and sidequests)

1 humorous characterizing detail

This breakdown allows you to emphasize stories with different levels of stress--you have different tiers of importance to give to stories, allowing you to up-play or down-play whatever you want. Maybe you stress the story you're interested in, or you minimize it so your players feel like they found a hidden secret. It's whatever works best for you. With all this in mind, let's start working on an example. 

I'm not currently running a campaign that could use a newspaper right now, so I'll imagine that I'm making one for a settlement that some hypothetical adventurers have decided to visit. This newspaper will be basically their introduction to the town, and so I'm looking for quests and characterizing details. Let's say that this town is a desert outpost which recently missed a shipment from their food supplier. So their main story, and essentially a quest hook, is to gather food for the starving town. Another lesser story might demand justice from the town the missed the shipment, asking for a posse of adventurers to go exact revenge. Because the town is between orcish and elven country, there might be efforts in the newspaper to stir up dissent between those two communities, or perhaps a competing story asking for help smoothing things out. On the other hand, our characterizing details should tell us more about this town. Maybe it's uncharacteristically peaceful for being in basically a warzone, so there's a record of public arrests showing that no one has been arrested in weeks. Maybe it's a fairly cultured place, so one of the stories is about a community production of a play. And for the humorous characterizing detail, we might add that a locally well-known person had recovered from an embarrassing injury, which I'll say is sitting on a cactus while drunk. So we have some ideas. 

To turn those ideas into full stories, we need to ask ourselves a few questions. What is this story supposed to be about? It should fill in details that make your other stories possible or which provide setting information. What is this place like? The story should reflect the place in some way so that it makes sense. What should the players take away from reading this? Remember that players will latch onto unimportant details with regularity, so focus your stories only on things that contribute to the direction you want to go in. 

I'll turn one of these ideas into a story with some guidance along the way. Then we'll begin to prepare the visual representation of the newspaper. Let's work with the main storyline I brainstormed above about the food shortage. What is the story supposed to be about? It needs to explain the situation and propose a solution. So the article will describe the reasons for the food shortage and call for helpful people to donate and ship food, noting a blockage in the supply chain elsewhere. What is this place like? The city can grow a bit to sustain some of its needs, but it can't supply everyone. So with the growing hunger, people have destroyed the existing crops, worsening the problem. What should the players take away from this? That the situation is dire and that payment would be offered for help. So the article will specifically state the direness and name a benefactor who is offering payment. These answers resulted in the paragraph below, our story about the food shortage. 

A terrible famine is sweeping our fair city of Nyirin. Our desert rose town has been struck by a terrible blow of fate, and a delayed cart of life-giving food has left people starving in the streets. The problem's root lies with the bad faith business deals which Nyirin has received from our sister city of Yothbalog time and time again. Their fairer skies and loamier soil gives them an advantage over us which they wield like a weapon. We are starving, and the hungry had unwittingly destroyed our crops by overharvesting. This situation requires an answer now, and Baron Cyathin has offered a cash reward to anyone who can bring food to Nyirin before the Yothbalog carts arrive. 

I've written the other articles and will fill them in as we assemble the newspaper's appearance. Start by opening Photoshop and creating a new document with a 9 inch width and a 13 inch length. It should look like this: 

Our blank canvas. 

Then we're going to add an image of parchment texture. Once the image is in Photoshop, resize it until it covers the whole canvas. It should look something like this: 

Our blank parchment.

Then add a title for your paper as well as the date (mine is in my gameworld's system rather than the Gregorian calendar) and some decoration:

Title and date added. 

 

Now it's time to add the text from the stories. It's not something that had a set way it has to be, but people generally expect different sections and columns. Have some fun deciding how big the text box are and how big you want the lettering to be. I'm going to emphasize my main story with bigger print and scale the rest down to fit. Remember to leave some space between the text boxes. I've also added a "Totally Anonymous" tag to the paper because (1) it's an interesting idea, and (2) I don't want to come up with author names. 

Text added.

Now all we need are some formatting lines, and we have a newspaper. I suggest using the box highlighting tool to highlight where you want your line to be, then use the paint tool to fill it in using the same color of ink you used. 

Lines added. 

And then you have your finished product! If you meet physically with your players, you can print it out for them; otherwise, you can share it with them digitally as a part of your world. 

The finished newspaper. 

So, you can add lots of great characterizing information on your world, build for future quests, show the consequences of player character actions, and immerse your party into your world by taking some extra time to create something like a newspaper for your players. It took me about an hour and a half to create the newspaper and the documentation here to tell you how to do it, and you won't need to create instructions, so it's really just a matter of committing to be creative and making it happen. And think about how cool it would be to regularly make newspapers in-game and then have a record of all the plot points and storylines and player accomplishments. It's absolutely within your reach, so good luck. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why I use a combination of 3.5e and 5e, why most first-time D&D players are more Neutral than Chaotic-Neutral, and a list of interesting cities to use in your game. Until next time, happy gaming!