After yesterday's discussion on narrativist vs gamist styles of play, here is some DM advice I found (paraphrased). I want to stress something to start, this is good advice for a story focused, "narrativist" gaming style, but it is not for a "gamist" style. In a narrativist style, the referee works actively to ensure that the players stay on task, and their actions are directed towards fulfilling the story. The expression I often see is that all game elements should "serve the story". This advice does that.

Unpopular opinion time.

I run games with large parties, most PCs have henchmen, and many players have multiple PCs. An average sized party is around 20 characters or so. You might think side-based initiative would be simpler.

https://twitter.com/d20play/status/1784641833600983384

The issue I have with side-based initiative and large parties is that they absolutely destroy single large HD targets. Large HD targets tend to have fewer attacks per round, and unless the party is clustered up in one spot, they are hard to target

Over the last few years I have a few friends who got into D&D with 5e and run regular games. One of them was over last night and we had a chat about backstories. She uses them, I don’t. She mentioned that backstories are a hook for player engagement, why wouldn’t I use them? First off, let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with using backstories, if you do, then all the more power to you! Trying to incorporate the backstories of multiple PCs into an ongoing campaign is a lot of work, and it impresses me whenever anyone does it

Sometimes you need to sit on things for a while. I created a necromancer class for Bhakashal, and they are, of course, good at animating the dead! But Seers (preists) can also animate dead, how should I differentiate them?

I identified this problem a while back, and left it. This week I have been designing the underworld for Bhakashal, and I hit upon the idea of having one of the factions of the underworld having necromancers.

Once I revisited the class with fresh eyes the answer was obvious!

Sometimes you just need to walk away and come back.

So my Wednesday group is going through Barrier Peaks. They encountered this lovely beastie on level 2 of the ship. They located it with a Divination spell, and got surprise on it. They had just retrieved a laser pistol (found with Divination as well) and shot the wee bairn. It ends up that it is immune to laser pistol shots, LOL, so they yelped at that! No problem, they let loose with arrows and crossbow bolts! None did any damage as it is immune to less than +3 weapons!

What was interesting was that they concluded it was immune to missile weapons

Sigh, another beautiful sunny day, another Twitter post by someone claiming that D&D mechanics are terrible. Today it was hit points, tomorrow something else. It’s all so tiresome. Hit Points do what many DMs already do (by fudging), reduce the chances of the PCs dying too often or too soon, except the DM doesn’t have to do anything to make it happen. Brilliant game design. Do they get excessive at high levels? Yes, but there are “save or die” mechanics

In a situation like this I have a few options:

1. They travel to the town they are interested in, that’s a few days journey, there will be random encounters and role play along the way that gets us to end of session and I set up the new town between sessions

https://twitter.com/yamaking666/status/1642333304765534210

2. I have a number of supplements like Cities of Harn that detail generic cities / towns you can drop in to your game world as needed

3. I improvise the town as they explore it, keeping notes as I go, if I don’t have the town made up ahead of time

One criticism I see here often is that, in a sandbox game, the players will end up wandering around lost as they are not given any structure or goal, and that the game becomes sort of disconnected monster hunting without any overall purpose Many people believe a "save the world" narrative with a clearly defined BBEG is the way to ensure engagement and "buy in", and gives you a prod to keep the players on point.

OK, a thread on WotC's recent decision to change the term "race" to "species". Rather than respond to a bunch of individual Tweets, I thought I would address this with a long individual thread. And it is going to be long because the issue isn’t as simple as it looks. Historically, the term “race” was popularized in the Early Modern period and became part of scientific theories that were used to differentiate people based on physical characteristics like skin color.

Today I have beheld a fierce battle between two groups, the first who use "safety tools" and the second who do not. Both have ways to signal to perspective players that their tables are appropriate only for certain groups. If you were a new player, you would know instantly if you were comfortable with either group, either the presence of, or the absence of, safety tools/consent checklists would signal the appropriateness of the table for you.

This book continues to fascinate me. Case in point, Roman soldiers choosing to use less armor as it is uncomfortable. This is an element that the D&D abstraction engages with somewhat through encumbrance. Bhakashal does it with that and exhaustion rules Hey all you simulationists, much of what we know about Medieval weapons is based on artistic representations, not “archeological exemplars”, so keep an open mind.

I often see people suggesting that divine magic is “less powerful” than arcane magic. I think this is borne of two things:
1. Thinking that divine magic is primarily healing magic
2. Running a combat heavy game New players look at the spells and think that the magic-user is hands down better. Then, as the game progresses, they discover there are a LOT of useful clerical spells.

Let’s review.

“Command” gives no saving throw for creatures of less than 6hd or an INT of less than 13

Working on a thread/blog post (I'll decide which when it's written) on divine/clerical magic. One of the results of viewing D&D as exclusively a "combat" game is that people miss out on the value of non-healing, non-damaging clerical spells. In almost every campaign I've run in the last 40 years new players ignore clerics in favor of magic-users, and then by about 10 or so sessions in they have seen the light as the party cleric has been far more useful, and even crucial to their success.

Moving on to 5th level phantasmist spells before getting back to preparing the first adventure for my new campaign next week. Here are a few 4th level spells I have finished editing One of my goals was to make lower level versions of higher level illusionist spells, build off what was already there. Shadow walking sounded boss...

Over the last few years here I have noticed people mention playstyle choices that impact PC survivability, specifically with respect to hit points. There are other factors beyond HP, but I wanted to focus on them here.

What I’ve seen mentioned here: 1 - Starting groups off above 1st level
2 - Giving full HP at 1st level, or HP bonuses, or rerolls
3 - Ensuring that PC parties have at least one healer, or sending NPC healers with parties

While putting together Bhakashal I have to decide what to include in the supplement, as it is a retroclone built on an AD&D chassis. I'm starting to hit the more complicated choices, and would like some opinions This is a homebrew Bhakashal spell. One bit of interest is at the end. For every spell, Bhakashal describes the casting process listed in the components. So for this spell, the caster places a gold piece in the palm, puts the missile into the palm, and then moves their arm...

I see a lot of bashing of early edition D&D around here, but I wonder how familiar people actually are with the game. 1e AD&D has a lot of rules people don’t know, and many of them are interesting and well designed. #DnD #ADnD So I’m going to do a series of tweets where I outline the brilliant rules in AD&D. THIS ISN’T A KNOCK AGAINST ANY OTHER SYSTEM, it’s a celebration of what works well in early edition D&D (not everything does!) You might find things you can pinch for your game.