Lord Tax: (a lost art) Peasants and their Heroes

 In days gone by, the King taxed the lords, not the people.

A Medieval tax system (that could work today)

a Lord was a land owner, and the lord paid a tax on the earnings of the land potential, not its actual. So the lord would need to downplay his lands worth, rocky terrain, forested ridges, valleys and peaks, all un workable land, then get as much profit from the land with as many serfs as he could afford to feed.

Fantasy Roleplay, puts our adventurer outside this system. or as children of the system, who have revolted against such a system. They go off, land and lordless, to gain riches, and in theory become lords themselves if they are successful or die trying.

But how should you roleplay the serfs? Do they look at heroes as... 'super heroes'? or as 'lawless thugs'. Well this would depend on what's happened before.

Maybe the Lord has hired the characters to deal with some issues with monsters, and they are treated as heroes, or maybe the characters failed to do their duty, or messed it up so badly, the monster had its revenge, and the townsfolk suffered, so the town blames the 'heroes' as good for nothing murder hobos. Given the success rates of some games, I'd suggest each town will have a % chance of the two variants, and will have, over the years, built up a love or hatred of heroes in general.

So how would you set this up to play?

If you are randomly determining each town & their past experience, I'd have a % roll of people who believe in the hero & % of those who distrust the hero, making for an interesting dynamic when there is a cross over of people who 'understand' that heroes are super human, yet still flawed humans.

Belief roll for the populace:

<10% little to no experience of heroes doing good deeds, so no discounts, no special attentions, 

10-25% low experience, maybe a lone person might see them for who they are and ask about their deeds from boredom.

25-50% average experience, will pay respects in taverns, maybe 5% discount on large orders, +1 to comeliness checks.

50-75% higher experience, folks will tip their hat in the street, greet with respect, base 10% discount and +d4 comeliness checks. 

75-90% very high experience, expect to see several other heroes in this town, people will treat the hero as a friend, 15% base discount and +d4+1 comeliness checks

90%+ some previous heroes saved the town so well, the expectation for the heroes will be overt, any failure to be a high ranking or powerful hero will backlash and the heroes will be specifically treated like +25% anger chart. If they manage to keep calm and cope with the adoration & expectation (15th+ hero skills) they will be praised, 20% base discount, +2d4 comeliness checks.

Anger roll for the populace:

<10% little to no experience of heroes doing bad deeds, so no discounts, no special attentions, 

10-25% low experience, maybe a lone person might see them for what they are and yell insults.

25-50% poor experience, will avoid in taverns, maybe 5% surcharge if the barkeep thinks he can get away with it, +1 to comeliness checks +1 to barbrawl chance.

50-75% v.poor experience, folks will walk around in the street, or if ranked high enough challenge openly, -10% to an discount checks, +1 comeliness checks & +d4 to barbrawl chance. 

75-90% hatred, expect to be accosted by the guards for minor infractions, plus all the above, townsfolk will openly (yet in groups) jeer at the heroes, telling them to go home. 

90%+ upon entering the town, expect the heroes to be stalked by a small crowd, as the crowd swells, they'll throw rotten fruit and give chase, chasing the heroes out of town, "We don't want your kind here".

Interesting Mixes

If you roll above 30% on one roll and under 30% on another its fairly easy to see what kind of town this will be, yet if you roll very high on both, the town itself will likely be divided, like a football team or political parties, there will be common brawls over if a hero group was loved or hated for its prior actions. the loved will focus on the good deeds, but the hated will focus on the costs of those deeds, and as GM you'll need to figure out whose side is stronger based on the rolls and the direction of your plot.

If your players suffer a massive defeat and are feeling down, maybe the next town they come across will raise their spirits and give them a reason to go on, Or, if your players are getting a bit cocky, maybe raise the anger scale, bring their humility down a few notches. Also, its not a terribly bad chart to use when your own players are staying for a while. each good deed adds another 2d6 %, but each misstep (failed or perceived to have failed) will add to the anger by d6. you can track them, maybe -1% every 3 months from both tracks, so players feel like they're earning their reputation, without needing to use the full reputation rules from the HUB book. 

Side Note:

Modern Taxes, why is it that the poor pay both a tax to the govt, and a tax to the land lord (rent) Have we gone backwards since medieval times? Surely we should have figured this out by now, that only land owners pay tax.

Memory, Roleplaying and Character sheets

 In my past, with less than a handful of characters under by belt, I could rattle off the exploits of my hero without missing a beat, and like many younger, or newer players, I would at every opportunity.

Yet, modern players, maybe, I don't see them doing so often, do they already understand that rattling off your fantasy life is boring for people? have they done it too often as kids from other games such as FF7, scoffed at by peers and decided not to espouse their life story with each new audience?

As a result though, I also see this lack of memory, of what's going on. past exploits, past adventures, contacts, locations of known wares. players just don't seem to remember any of this.. Maybe they have 100s of movies and video games that did the same, over and over, and its become a blur. 

So, how do we deal with

Character Memories

As annoyingly boring, we need to record a LOT of this stuff down now. Its vital to be able to call up a contact mid mission and pull in that favour, access that weapon shop, healing potion, special mc'guffin that'll help out in this quest.

Players have enough going on in their actual lives, so when we sit down at the gaming table, how do we have a chance at remembering that town, that shop, that salesman, and the price of the potion of speed that he was selling.

Lazy GMs and lazy systems, make these goods available in ALL towns, ALL shops, so the players don't have to track their way back for it. why? because in computer games, players will get bored, quit, and play another game, instead of taking the required effort, so they drag that feeling into roleplay, and kerplunk, the RPG game suffers.

So, I have sheets I hand out to players, AFTER they meet their first important NPC, where they can jot down relevant info.. why? because then I don't have to remember it.. I have enough on my plate.

Players can record as much or as little, but with ** and * references for 'important to remember' on certain fields, its not hard for players to track the bare minimum, with those prompts.

Also, as time goes by or anytime a player takes a head trauma, a memory spell, or some other reason to forget some information, I can ask a player to roll on the handy chart, and erase memories from the sheet. This creates some great story plots, and roleplay opportunities as times goes by.

Especially with Illusion spells being so common, passing yourself off as someone else only matters if they can't remember the nitty gritty details of an NPC when they should / could.

I tell you, the look on a players face when they meet the Tavern keep, and I say "Here's Bilt, the Bartender, looking like he always does, scar down his left cheek and his clean shaven head. he's maybe grown a beard a bit longer than normal since you saw him, and players glance at their memory sheets, and say. wait on a sec, his scar was on his right cheek wasn't it? I lost that memory when we fought the mind flayer, I'll look at him further, try and nod at my friends to look at him again.. see if they can get it. 

Healing potions become Healing Poisons

 I'm reading about how, if you eat too many vitamins, you can kill yourself. So in theory, overdosing on Healing potions should be a thing.

When Healing starts to Hurt

The Theory comes from this article on vitamins. If you eat too many, and its the wrong type, you'll do damage, and possibly die. 

Now, not to say that you should be rolling on the poison table every time players take a potion, but.. 

The Thought is this: Players who buy up lots of healing potions, and go into battles, sorta break the flow of the game, not the roleplay, that's another story, but the gaming part of the flow.

Standard games have a cost vs Benefit system, You pay a smaller cost, to gain a slightly better benefit, swapping where the benefit is, maybe you get an axe, its heavier, but it does more damage. then you go up level, it takes time, but you get a strength bonus. Over time, you 'pay' the costs to gain the benefits.

Ignoring 5e DnD long and short rests for the moment, more old school, the players would 'pay' for healing potions, which would allow them to return from a very dangerous situation, almost dying, to a point where they can live long enough to bandage up, return to town, mend their wounds, regroup, possibly researching the bad guy they're about to face, preparing for that battle, and then going out again.

The cost to buy them, would often be restrictive, at 2nd or 3rd level, you'd be lucky to have one in the group, by 5th-6th, everyone would have one, and in times when the game would usually end around 9th-12th, and players would go into negative HP, requiring a few potions to achieve the same effect, the balance was still there.

But then computer games.

You might remember Diablo, now, this huge HP buffer, stacked up with 10s of potions, small medium large, to allocate more and more HP per potion, completely broke this balance. and it bled into roleplay games. Players now expected to complete missions the FIRST time they entered a dungeon. Considering it a fail to need to retreat and regroup. 

I've seen groups, give up on a dungeon, because they got half way and had run out of abilities to continue. They went home, convinced the dungeon was too hard, even blaming me as GM, as if I was in charge of the Half Orcs that constructed this place, and filled it with strategically placed traps, guards and alarms.

no-wonder the youth of today can't follow through with a task. tsk tsk (take the bait, leave a comment)

So, games like DnD, instead of training their players as to the 'right; way of doing things, like good parents, gave into the childish cries of new players and added mechanics, such as partial and full rests, which pretty much take care of the healing potion carts that would accompany mid level players into dungeons.

So, I'm not going back that far, but the thought occurred, as I am mid rules on potions and poisons, that all potions should have decimal places of poison, and if you overdose, you'll trigger poison rolls.

This way, you can allow your players as many potions as they want, as long as they mitigate the numbers, chug down 5 lesser healing and a greater healing, and maybe your severed spinal column will heal too fast and you'll get a limp, or your muscles will cramp and heal too tight, causing pain when you flex.

Then, you've got a quest, for players to need to return to the town, and get proper healing, maybe from shannafria, players didn't leave because they failed. they needed to get rid of this 'curse' before they could defeat the Big Bad Guy. 

Game Grinding.. Grinding your character down..

 "You know how in RPGs, you have to grind and grind interminably to get stronger? It’s repetitive and mind-numbing. That’s what everyday life became, except way more difficult. I don’t know how we got through those weeks. Take-out food and ice cream helped. The thing JRPGs have mistaken is that sometimes, grinding doesn’t make you stronger. Sometimes, the daily battles wear down on a person until they’re barely getting by. More combat doesn’t increase attributes. It makes them more fragile, chipping away at their already weary core." - Peter Tieryas

Got me thinking, Levelling up your character often gives you only bonuses, but what if they come at a price?

in DungeonWorld, I have a Traits and flaws system, Its often abused, but in a fun way, a little taste of Gonzo style play. Enough that I adjusted the rules for GMS and players to decide what level of silliness they want by allowing a +/- Title/Hero Points.

Title/Rank Points are awarded every 5 levels as a player achieves a new Rank in their career path, and players can use them to buy specialist skills, traits and abilities, but as an added choice, players can 'buy' better traits if they also buy smaller flaws to round out their characters.

Traits and Flaws come in a variety of smaller (1 cost/gain) such as a dislike of a given food, or creature, a slight twitch when around certain animals, as examples, up to the extremely advantageous or debilitating (5 cost gain) issues such as a affinity to god magic, or a lethal disease.

They also come in two varieties, Roleplay and Statistical. Players taking a roleplay Trait can choose to take a roleplay or statistical flaw, but taking a statistical trait requires a balance of more than half of the flaws taken must also be statistical, meaning at least for a lvl 1 & 2 trait must be a statistical flaw.

Over time, players may have advanced several smaller traits, affinities to small creatures, magical alignments, roleplay buffs when conversing with races, but to really advance your character you must take flaws to gain those bigger stat buffs. forcing the player to chip away of their weary core, to create stronger armour to protect it.

Just todays thoughts..  

I'm hurt man.. hurt BAD

 Sometimes, I like to experiment with obfuscation of the values, so players can 'roleplay' better, instead of:

Obfuscating the Hit Points

Back in version 1, 2 and even some of 3, I had the old hit points. Players would start with approx. 10, and gain approx. 1-2 per level. When they got wounded, they'd lose HP, when healed, gain HP, when at 0, start making unconscious checks, and at -3 death checks. very old-school.

Players could take extra bonuses in health, KO or death scores.. one player devoted his hero points to this, and at 18th level, had well over 75 HP, a KO of -7 and death at -7 more (-14). Based on the ruling at the time, it was near impossible to kill him. he soaked so much damage, could out last any opponent of similar level.

Players would have, the same above conversation, the tactical advantage of knowing how many HP they had, if they should heal a person or not, based on values, that in real life don't exist. I wanted to get that movie moment, when one character is 'dying' then later they pull it together and keep going, then when their adrenaline kicks in, they do some amazing stuff, even though they're "dying".
So I tried this out (You can use this for a game attempt, its kind fun, for GMs, but might be a little math intensive for younger GMs)

The Hurt System:

First, you make a quick note of players Health, Stress, and the CON and WLP bonuses or your games equivalent for health stats and mental health stats. Players can 'cope' with their Willpower bonuses of damage, but they can take Constitution worth of actual damage.

The point is, to not tell players how close to death they are, just tell them how close to death they FEEL. A player unhurt, will feel like the first cut is far worse than it is, based on how much pain they can normally cope with (their CON bonus), but once in pain, further hits don't feel as bad, because they are already in pain the distraction and adrenaline, will make them feel like the same amount of pain, is actually less.

The way to do this is to glance at the damage done, divide it by the willpower/pain bonus and tell the player "The blade cuts deep into your flesh, you are in extreme pain" according to how much the results were. 

When a player is 'hurt' you inform them to write "hurt" in their health box, If they are in extreme pain, they write extreme pain. 

0-1: Light grazing, 1-2: Hurt, 2-3 badly hurt/ cut deep 3-4: extremely wounded, 4-5 dangerously wounded, 5-6 mortally wounded, 6+ at deaths door.

But here's the rub, A player with 30 health, taking 10 damage, with a pain of 3, is going to be at stage 4 (round up) but another player, with 20 health, taking 4 damage, with a pain of 1 is going to be at pain stage 4 too.

So, then after the 1st wound, when a player takes a 2nd wound, you reduce the 'pain' by their con bonus, to account for adrenaline kicking in..

Player #1 with 30 health, takes another 10 damage, which would be 4 more pain, but her con reduces it by 2, so she only gets 2 more pain levels.. the pain from the wound is just badly wounded, but the total of 6 is mortally wounded, so you'd inform the player they were wounded, and they can feel the icy grip of death nearing.

Player #2, with 20 health, took another 4 damage, since their pain threshold is 1, they feel like they have taken a grievous wound, but since their con bonus is 2, and the total damage is only 8, they are only at the extremely wounded stage (4) rather than their pain threshold level of 8.

Player #1, with 2/3rd of their health gone, is feeling like death, their individual wounds don't feel so bad, but over all they feel bad. Player #2 takes each wound like they are deadly, yet overall are feeling ok.

The purpose here is not to be specific, but instead more descriptive, so the player can easily identify if they are going to die based, not on actual health, but on perceived health.

The Threshold System

Another, less mathmatical intense version is to just keep track of the most wounds they have ever taken, setting an 'invisible' 0, then dividing the difference into 4 or more 'stages'.. 

The above example, we reset, player #1 with 30 hit points.. takes 10 points of damage (a deadly blow, almost killing them!) in their first battle, so the GM jots down 10 as their threshold.

In the next battle, the player takes a quick 3 pt wound, the GM says its a major gash, as its above 1/4th of the threshold, another 5 point wound is also a major gash, later a 3rd major gash pushes their new maximum to 13, and the GM informs the player they are at deaths door as they've gone above their maximum from before.. They retreat from battle, 'barely surviving'

In the next battle, their next 3pt wound is not a major gash, since now, the 1/4th of 13 is 3.25, instead its a minor gash (from the players perspective) yet the 5pt wound is still a major gash.. the player, having seen the earlier 3pt and understood it to be a major gash, now, with another 3pt its a minor gash, wonders... hmm, ok, so I can take more damage than I thought, and like anyone in real life, is probably going to think, Oh, I'm tougher.. rather than 'hey I levelled up'

When they do level up, you increase their actual HP as per normal rules, but you only increase their pain threshold by 1 pt. This works well when you don't announce level ups too, players slowly get used to rolling more successes, but never know their own numbers, just general ideas.. but this is heavy load on the GM to track all players, and only the most pro GMs can handle this level of obfuscation.  

 My Current System

Players, not comfortable with not knowing their damage ratio to death, caused me to try this tactic, which seems to work best for now.

Health points act as the kind of 'threshold' above, if a player has 10 health, they can take 2.5 points of damage, without blinking, if they increase their 'pain' score with skills, it applies to this value.

Once they pass this threshold, the GM warns them, they are now able to be killed. players get cautious when they know any single blow can kill them. which is the effect desired.

Beyond this, players taking damage make system shock tests based on their will power and or constitution, determined by the damage taken vs the total damage already taken.

To evade the constant math that players can sometimes struggle with, the GM will inform them to write in the pain they've taken from any given blow, and the player can see for themselves, what kind of pain they are in. Pain causes negatives to the charactersheet, So players knowing they've taken 1 pain will usually start to question the cost benefit of pushing the battle vs the slippery slope of going on.

Conclusion

The key here, players, will never quite know how far they can push their health & wounds, only the GM, for sandbox games, the GM merely lets players learn via trial and error as to their actual health threshold, and for Narrative style games the GM can allow a wounded character to push on, past actual death, so they can complete the story, and players who have decided to ruin a game, can die off quickly and be asked to leave, without needing to justify the dice results. 

Impulse and Dignity

An Interesting Discussion on this concept here:

http://geekxgirls.com/article.php?ID=12617

A lot of pushback by people, as it takes away player agency, along the lines of Alignment, yet it did raise some interesting thoughts..

Is this a stat?

Impulse and Dignity Stats

Alignment in games, sets a set of 'actions' which are requirements, and limitations for players. Most players ignore the stat, they want to do whats right for the moment, regardless of what their "character" would do, and for a lot of gung-ho gonzo new players, this is perfectly fine. Finding your 'role-play feet' takes time, and some people never get them, their characters are always a chaotic mishmash of tropes, funny things to entertain(and annoy) the table rather than a coherent set of actions by a real person in a real world.

The Idea of Alignment may have been one way to 'control' this by GMs and games designers, you can't go killing that peasant, your god won't like it.

A lot of people rile against this form of control, they don't understand that they are ruining the world, the game, the fun of others at the table, as that peasant was crucial to the plot. Games-master don't like to upset players, because a lot of work an effort has gone into creating the campaign, as much for these specific set of players, so the small actions of one player can mostly be worked around.

Impulse, on the other hand, seems instead to be a gung-ho, zany, gonzo GM, trying to get players who are paying their characters more stoicly, to break out of their shell and do zany things.

(Maybe this Zany GM, has had alot of the gonzo players, and thinks this is the norm?)

Dignity, is more or less a way for the players to be able to resist this, provided they stick to their dignity score themselves.. which is what raises the point.

The player, setting a value, that says to the GM, here, this is a self defined value, I will agree to stick to this value in role-play, and the reward for this, is... you can't make me go outside that boundary.

Mind control in games is... tentative. You railroad a player to do something, because a spell says they have to, as often as not its a pass/fail situation. Players don't usually have much control over this, yet in the movies and books, we see a character who goes along with the spell, until such time the spell crosses a line and the character resists.. where is that line..

Here.. this stat, is that line.

The Player can be Dignified, Regal, and very un-impulsive, so if they are 'taken over' by a mind control spell, anything a few points below their Dignity score, the character can make further resistance checks, and possibly even break free of the spell.. giving players more agency in the region of mind control spells, they take careful note of what is being asked of them, and if at any time it seems to go outside the boundaries, they can call it, and make a subsequent roll to escape the spell.

Moreso, with Alignment, if a player has aligned as a good character, they are unlikely to steal if mind controlled, even less likely to attack a friends and would likely break free if commanded to kill. The player is free to play his/her character as they wish, their alignment score moves to match this, but the lower it goes, the more choices the GM has when mind control is in play.

Its already there with Clerics, Gods and their rules.. but with this addition, its now there for all classes.   

Why would you pay a GM to roleplay?

In case you're new here, I've been a professionally paid gamesmaster for over 30 years. I started when I was 13, I was paid to GM some guys, who wanted to play, had the books, but none of them wanted to GM. They paid with pizza. I hated the system, so I wrote my own. Since then I've worked over 10,000 hours as a paid GM, most of it between 2003 and 2013, because I did it full time.

So I think I know a little about the topic, so here's my opinion:

Don't pay your friends, but compensate a Professional.

There are currently about some major thoughts as to why people would/wouldn't pay a GM. Quite a few threads on reddit, roll20 forums and other locations around the web, there are very valid reasons why you shouldn't and very valid reasons why you should be able to.

Most people play RPGs because its an activity, like a board game, between friends. They get together, maybe have drinks, food, break out a game and play it. Just in this instance, its a roleplaying game, and they've been doing it for a few weeks or months. Typically, the GM of such a group, would be using a module, because prep time is limited, but often eventually, they've invented their own little world, and the players come back month after month, until the social dynamic of the group changes.

Just a round of beer with the mates.. and a DMs guide..

Should people pay for this?

Just like board games night, these people should contribute to the cost of the game, if there is any, you take turns bringing your game around to be played, each player has bought one or two games, so no one individual is paying for all the game.
Yet in roleplay, usually the GM has bought all the core books, used his Uni credit to photo copy character sheets, so its best for players to buy supplements they want to see in the game, or another approach is the players pay for the GMs share of the pizza, especially if he's making up the world and creating all the fun for the group.
Participate in the cost is what I'm saying here, buy and paint your own mini, photo copy the character sheets for them, buy your own dice, buy your DM some dice, make a physical contribution to the group, that's a decent way to contribute, yet consider it a gift, not a payment.

But people shouldn't pay the GM for this. Paying your friends for their time?

Roleplaying has become rather popular lately, the increase of players, due to movies and computer games in the genre, peaks the interest of some, but also like board games, we see the backlash of people being too involved in their phones, they crave being in a room of real people, socialising, away from others who are not of their ilk.

As such, there are a number of people who just don't know where or how they can get into RPGs.. and this creates a market. The vacuum of players with needs to play has outnumbered the people who can run a game, so much so that popular brands have set up cookie cutter plots with GMs to run them at local game shops. The main problem I see with this, the experience of the cookie cutter guilds and leagues is a far cry from what roleplay is really about. Its stale, dry and unrealistic in so many ways. Trying to untrain an initiate of that industrial machine, is so hard. Its damaging the industry as a whole.

Professional Gamesmaster at work in Calgary

So, we can see a market of individuals who have a genuine need for a Paid GM. This Audience of people, interested to get involved, but not sure how to go about it. Partly because of the standard social stigmatism of trying something new and being bad at it. Partly because you'd like to know what you're getting yourself into before making any kind of commitment and Partly because its cost effective to get someone to teach you the first years worth of experience, in 2-4 sessions. Its why people take classes in something.

Paying a GM "Teacher" is a plausible gig for this audience.

What about when they do join a group, what of the other players. In many social groups, there are people who are there, because their friends are there, they have less interest in the game, the plot and the world, than they do blowing stuff up, having a laugh and disrupting everyone else. If your whole group is just being socialable, as a group of friends, just hanging out, this should be fine for you. Yet there are scores of people who put up with these clowns, because of the same reasons that people who don't play but want to, a further niche are those who want to play, properly, but have to put up with the rest because they don't know how or where to find the real players.

A Paid GM, is like a nexus of core roleplaying. Like a course in Uni, you pay for the atmosphere as much as the information.

Over time, a GM figures out the players who are there for the game, who are there to play vs those who are just there. Often I've seen the GM focus their attention on that player. It unfortunately causes the person who has less interest, now that they're getting less attention, to be more vocal and more destructive, which can drive away the player that's there to play. A better solution is to bring that player to a better game.
I know I've cherry picked players to a special game, they get the real stuff, the good plots and adventures and equipment, because for them, its not just a scribble on a page, its a real cross over to an other world.
People pay to be in those games, I've had 6 hours sessions, where we got more done than normal groups do in months. On the other end, I've had groups play out a single day of events, over several weeks, because of all the cross talk, and off topic banter. 4 hours of roleplay, and all we did was ask the tavern keeper if he had a room and discuss grapple rules incase a bar-room brawl broke out.

People pay to have their sessions at regular intervals with like minded folks who are there to get their game on.

People pay a Gym to get focus on their physical health. They can do it all at home, sure, but with distractions, lack of space, lack of motivation, they just don't. When payment is involved, you want focus, you are motivated to turn up, to be there, to actually play, and get involved in the world you are playing in. and you don't want to be surrounded by chit chat and lolly gagging.

People also pay to avoid the riff raff and the ne'er-do-wells.

Now a problem that comes up, is that its not only the players who are sub-par. Some GMs do so, because they like the power trip, or they want to influence people, or they want to tell 'their' story. As often as not, on any GM site or service, there are GMs that are in it for the money and not the game. They might be very decent GMs, yet their focus is on  keeping their players and their income, more than on GMing a good story, this might lead to an increase in magical items, lower chance of death, any number of immersion breaking flaws.

So How can you tell if the GM is a decent GM or not. Some websites and groups, such as the Professional Gamesmaster Society has taken point, on a dialog of ideas and thoughts on the subject. The currently on paused Looking-For-Games-Masters site: http://www.lookingforgm.com/ had a nice ratings system, so you could give your GM some votes if he did a good job, or neutral if on par or sub standard.
This promoted GMs to be a little stricter in their play styles, but I think, given the play styles of the average GM, this is warranted. If a number of poor GMs are out there charging money and providing bad service, it could hurt the industry as a whole.

So yeah, you're also paying to have a decent dungeon/games master.

The Topic of ProPlayers has come up, a Pro Gamer group could try out new GMs, vetting them, so they can't hurt the industry. This is sorta how I see the ProGMSociety working, legitimizing the GMs to ensure a decent group of GMs are improving the industry of ProGMing, so players build trust and more games get played.

So Paying for the right GM, the right group, and a more professional experience, is kind on par with anything in life. You get what you pay for. If you're looking for a roleplay experience.

Now that's a cool roleplay room. I'd pay to play there..

There are some spectrums of the gamut of paid GMing to address:

There is of course the whole "Immersion, Experience and Entertainment" where the GM might have an assistant, colour print outs, maps, sound effects, lighting effects, props, miniatures,  a whole world with backstories and plots ticking along as the players enjoy their little adventure. This of course should be paid for, the extra work and effort to provide such a premium service, is justifiably costly. 

The other given reason people pay for GMs is the scarcity of GMs. While this seems to be the angle of the average paid GM, and I get it, supply vs demand, creates the audience for the paid GM, I think this is where the average "I don't think its right" person rails against. Surely some GM out there is looking for players for free? I think this is where my first point clashes:

"If supply is low, demand is high and people are prepared to pay me to GM, why shouldn't I? My group loves my game, surely other people will love my game and will pay me because I'm doing all this work for them?"

So, yes, if you don't have a local group, and you have a decent enough income, maybe paying a GM will suit your lifestyle.

Yet, there are GMs who should not be GMs, and they shouldn't be paid for it, but the same can be said of any profession. so when the supply is low and demand is high, people are going to pay for anything.

The world is not fair, there are great GMs who don't have the time to be great GMs because they have bills to pay, and either they don't think it fair to charge, and that's fair, yet they probably should, so we can bring the level of quality GMing up in standard.
GMing costs time, prep time, plus game time plus prior experience time. As much as some GMs say that prep time is minimalistic, In my opinion, I can guarantee that their game is so flawed and so broken, that MY immersion would be destroyed within 2-3 sessions.
Good GMing takes years of prep time & sometimes hours before a session, and if you're going to pay for it, might as well get the best. So look for a GM that has that pre-requisite 10k hours behind them (they say, it takes 10,000 hours of experience to be considered a professional)

To Sum Up, Against the idea:

• You shouldn't pay for the stock standard average "I just started doing this 2 weeks ago" GM.
• You shouldn't pay your mate to run your saturday games night sessions, but its polite to cover some of the expenses they go through to set up and run the game.

Yet for reasons:

• If you need someone to train you how to play..
• If you want to join a serious group,
• If you want a group that is on-time, always there and pay attention.

Yet in a pinch, and you gotta get your game on, If there are no groups in your social circle, and you abhore the leagues and guilds games...

That said, it isn't for everyone, There are a multitude of negative and positive reasons that people have for everything in life, expecting it to be different for roleplay, is folly.

Hmm, final note.. did the League & Guild system pop up because their respective system didn't want paid GMs and this was their solution?

p.s. apologies if anything has gone wonky.. Blogger has been playing up of late, seems google is slowly discontinuing it.

p.p.s. This is a Blog, its purely thoughts from my head, while I have researched some of these points extensively over the past few months and years, I'm speaking true from my personal perspective, but I'm not being graded by a professor, this is not a paid for journal, its just me, blogging.

Careful what you say you may ruins someones play.

This blog goes into a few different topics, I'll try to break it up with headings.Mostly its about GMing

Pro GMs Chatting with Casual GMs

Sometimes when your talking to someone that seems to understand what your saying, is on the same page as you, you might get a bit deeper into the topic, but if the other person wasn't really there on the same page, and they have a different world view on the topic, your deeper thoughts can trigger negative thoughts. 

I belong to several RPG chat groups. Its quite common to engage in discussions about new rules. Its as common to me that people pull the strings of rules to see if they are knotted well, or robust enough, so that players won't pull said strings in the middle of the game.

When describing how the players can or might pull at the strings, examples are given.

So, when I saw a fellow community member mention a new rule, I did what I thought was normal and pulled some of the strings of the rule, presenting ways in which a player or a situation could ruin the rule.

Instead I offended the guy, he got extremely defensive of his rule, politely attacked me and when I apologised, politely slapped my face. I was of course miffed, I had too late realised it was a public post, not a group post, so I was likely jumping into his realm and just rambling on about his rule having holes.

Facepalm: Meaning, Oh, Oh sorry, I made a mistake, my bad.. lets look at this differently.

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Player Agency: This was my point in the pulling of strings. And brevity was my downfall.

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I have often forgotten that I'm not thinking about things like others do, and I often don't want to write a paragraph of explanation to get people onto the same page as myself. So I'll often not bother, but when I think that I'm talking to a fellow games master / games designer, I just jump straight in, and I'll talk at the person, like they know exactly what I'm talking about. which often gets mis-interpreted.

Gamesmastering is not simple or easy

Case in point: Story Telling is an Art, not just in that its artistic, but that it requires an artist, to get it right. One key factor that many casual GMs will quote "its just a game". The problem is that regardless if they think its a game or not, Its also an exercise of the mind, it teaches us things, about ourselves, our players, and the world in which we live.

If you present your players with a cliff, and they talk about how to scale UP this cliff, they spend minutes talking about pitons, rope, how far up is it, your players are engaing in player agency, you've given them a chance to shine, for them to solve the problem in a creative way. Do they have pitons, do they have rope, does anyone have the climb skill, do we have spells that can break the laws of gravity, can we go around? Is there anyone nearby that can supply us with tools for scaling? should we actual scale it? is it a good idea. The discussion of how to solve the problem is players engaging in the game. Its part and parcel of roleplay.

You know what it also does? it teaches players, regardless if you want it to or not, it teaches them to be creative in their ability to solve problems. It makes them better people.

Its one of the reasons why Roleplay IS such a great medium. The Agency of creative thought.

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Two ways you can destroy this part of a roleplay experience, either directly or indirectly, is to take away this agency, the players choice in what solution should they use. Because players will often, if not always, take the path of least resistance.

The First, is why the above disagreement happened: Give players an out. Give them the choice to teleport the simple material objects, pitons and rope, to their characters, without any consequence.

If players can, teleport or retroactively buy components, tools, arrows and the like directly to their character, they will always do so. No need to ask around town before leaving, 'what kind of terrain will we cross' and pre-buy the goods needed, No need to worry about packmules for the goods, nor the path chosen, to get to the quest, not even a care, if the character steps on a weight based trap.. his back pack is now empty, but later, it'll be retroactively full, breaking the immersion of the game.. 

The Second, slightly less common, is when the solution is so impossible to solve, that the players, having 0 agency in the situation can only give up, a frustrated GM can't understand why the players can't see the forest for the trees, and the frustrated players can't understand how the GM can think they CAN see the forest, since they're in a desert.

As an example, back at our cliff, no material objects and the instructions clearly say they need to walk this direction, but the players are being chased by a dragon. They cannot think how to solve it, the GM keeps saying he's given them all the hints, and yet the dragon arrives, the GM has to fudge the encounter (the players gain too much XP and become OP for the rest of the campaign) change the plot (the big nasty dragon is actually goblins in disguise, but if that's so.. then how did the goblins manage to enact all those creature powers & fly & breathe fire?) or stick to the reality and kill off the party with a single flame of the dragon.

Face Palm.

The GM points out after killing off the players, that they needed to 'walk' up the cliff, its enchanted. The quote "walk this direction" was so obvious.. was it not? 

Well, unless the players had ANY experience that walking up the side of the cliff was even possible.. this is 0 agency.. they can't make the choice, because they can't foresee it being possible.

The Problem is that Casual GMs might see that arriving at the cliff without pre-purchasing pitons and rope, as 0 player agency, so giving them a retroactive purchase seems like a good idea.

But its not. because you made the choice for the players: You will need equipment, I want you to use equipment, but I know you won't buy the right stuff, so I'll let you buy it retroactively. you took away their agency.

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Player Agency, Don't take away choices

I had a player, who wove elven nets into his clothes, and carried a ball of string. He'd tie objects to his body as A) access easy items and B) crude armour. When in town, he'd buy up sets of things that he felt were needed by the group. often he was asked "why are you buying a fishing hook? we're going to a dungeon!

I had another player who would guide the group on regular outings to find rare and curious material components for spell casting. Each and every time, he'd end up with something curious, and as often as not, the group would encounter some creature, guarding its lair or out hunting or protecting its territory. Not often so horrible, but always a welcome side quest, with XP.

Another player, loved to try out different woods to craft arrows, sharpening his skills as a fletcher. At one point he managed to craft a masterwork redwood sapling arrow with a crystal holder head, allowing a crystal of ice to create his +6 distance +3 armour penetration +6 ice damage arrow , which helped take down a malicious fire demon. 

If I played any of those games where arrows, spell components or mundane equipment and or backpack arrangement was cast to the side by the game or the GM, those players would not still be talking about those events, to this day.

Player Agency allows players to choose to create interesting games, They can do things, without needing to change the plot or rules or interfere with the world building.

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Yet.. for all that's said and done.. players need choice.. so if your players are new.. get them used to the nitty gritty to start with, get them experienced with how it 'can' be done.. then after 5-10 sessions, let them relax on those rules, and present them with faster approaches to do the same thing.

in Dungeonworld, we have a thing called "down time" between adventures, Its done instantaneously for us, but takes weeks in game: Often while the warrior is healing, the mage gathers components, the rogue brews up potions, the archer crafts arrows and the merchant straps all these crazy things to his next set of armour.. Facepalm. 

My Thoughts on Pay-to-Play in roleplay, As a Full-time Paid GM.

At the height of my career, I was taking home almost 6 figures as a paid Gamesmaster. This is my story.

Pay to Play? Gotta be worth it

From 2003 to 2013, I was a travelling English Teacher, I started raw, I didn't know what I was doing, and frankly, it surprises me still that I managed to pull it off. The number 1. thing I did was to learn how to do what I was supposed to be doing every night, until I was as good as I said I was in the interview, it took 3 years.

In 2003, I left Australia to travel the world, and promptly ran out of money. So I needed money. I took on a bar-tending job in Shanghai during the evenings and started teaching English during the day.

I discovered after about 6 months, that I knew nothing of my own language, school had not trained me anything more than nouns, verbs and adjectives, and I still suffer to correctly Capitalise my words.. I capitalise when I emphasize, so if you want to read things in your head, like I say them, then raise your inner voice every-time you see a capital.

So I learned, I downloaded books on the subject of teaching, I studied English for myself and I got better at it.. and I discovered that there was a part of language teaching that I excelled at..

Roleplaying.

In Teaching, Roleplaying is a set of circumstance that puts the student into the 'role' of a person who needs to speak English, in order to get through the task. This might be getting through customs, or buying shoes in a shop, or business negotiations to strike a deal.

For a Gamesmaster, Roleplaying is of course So much More! These books on how to teach? were trying to tell me how to 'teach' with 'roleplaying' OMG I was laughing at it all..

So after getting my feet as a teacher, I started introducing the art of actual roleplaying to my students. I started with the TV series 'lost'. My students were to learn new words each week, so I would write up 20 new words that made sense to learn while being 'lost' on an island.. we put those words into sentences, played the scenario, the students would need to use the words, to survive.. plank of wood, hammer, nail, rope, rope bridge, chasm, I was feeding them clues on how to solve the puzzle, but since the words were not known to them, it was a puzzle unto itself.

the players... ahem,,.. students.. loved it, they came back for my, my classes got more interesting and the students grade went up.

The only problem was management.. when they saw we were playing games.. they thought it was a waste of money and dropped the courses.. until later, when I would provide them with statistical evidence that gaming lessons had a more than 30% improvement in language retention that all other lesson types.. I did this by running the same grammar lessons with one group and no roleplay, I had more than 50 groups, of around 4-6 students a group, at approx 2 years per student of learning, the lower end of the spectrum was 30% improvement, for students that were roleplaying..

That was when I went full time.

Now, jump back in time, remember how I used to run a games club for kids? That was Sunday afternoons, 5 hours, each kid paid $2 to come to the club each week, plus membership fees of around $10 a year, eventually we got up to 3 GMs and a profit of around $60 a week from sales of drinks, minis and entry fees, what I learnt from that was how to set up and run a game fast, how to keep the plot hooks going at the end of the session "Come back next week, same bat channel, same bat time" and how to keep the 'customers/players happy'

A few years later, Instead of catering to the Junior Roleplayers, I had a few phone calls to my club, asking if I could come out to their place and run a game. To begin with, It didn't quite feel right to ask for money, so I simply asked that they chipped in for the pizza and I'd supply the game, but after the first 2 sessions, I was losing cash on the deal as I had to transport myself across town, supply the dice, pencils and paper to the guys, charactersheets and such, so I asked them, would they be ok with chipping in for the costs, $20 a month would do it, else I couldn't afford to cross town for this group of strangers, they agreed and I got my next round of experience as a paid GM.

So, when I was showing my clients the difference between boring class results and roleplayed results, I had more than enough confidence to talk about how I'd been doing this years before and how easy it was to set up and run, I guess my sales pitch succeeded, because they agreed and I was roleplaying, primarily, for the bulk of my income from around 2009/2010.

I was, I consider myself, to be extremely lucky, to be in the right place, with the right experience, to be able to offer this unique service which had proven results, but I knew the laws of supply and demand, so I offered this service, but at a premium price. 2x 1.5 hour lessons, twice a week for $90 an hour, per 'group'. They accepted for those students who wished to participate. which was maybe 90%.

In such a closed environment, I was able to have groups run synchronously in the same world, meeting the same NPCs, either before or after previous groups, the logistics and economy of each group affecting any later groups, "Oh sorry sir, a group of adventurers just bought my finest sword just last week". I could even allow 1 of the groups to be the bad guys, having them just ahead of other groups, plotting evil, leaving traps and ambushes along the way, before they settled down in a well defended location, and only when a player from one group disguised his character as evil (and he asked the group if he could join, because he wanted to play an evil character too) could he then reveal himself at the last possible moment and foil their plans.

After watching this Legacy style play, I invited several other GMs I knew from other countries to participate. One from Estonia, one from latvia, Germany, England and the US, to have their 'groups' running in the same world, I sent maps of events via email to the GMs and their groups interacted, somewhat, with my groups.. I even got my old players from Australia to join in via skype for some epic moments.. it was amazing.

But real life, always seems to throw you a curve-ball.

My boss, who approved the games for the majority of my client base, and his boss who joined in once or twice, moved on, and the new guy was more hard-nosed to the idea of 'games as education', the country went into turmoil over govt restrictions, another of my clients warned me that things were going to get difficult in the next few years, so I left, returned to Australia and decided to knuckle down and get my degree, get my site up and running, and after raising some funds, publish my game.

I've run some Legacy style games since then, gotten my old Russian players and even the American players to join in, I think its the angle that sets my gaming apart from others, knowing that any NPC can often be a PC from another group, seems to wake players up just a tad more and take notice.

 So, my thoughts on Pay to Play

I've talked already in a previous post about how I think you need to bring more to the table than just 'run a game' to be a professional GM. To me, that's attention to detail in your world, your NPCs and being able to run your game without a rulebook. This usually means a working knowledge of Physics, Human communication, Psychology, Cultures other than your own, Sleeping outdoors, walking in caves, fighting in the rain, anything that gives you an edge from any other guy that just 'reads the rules and runs a module'.
When your paying to play a game, you're paying for the convenience of having a GM that is prepared and unable to flake and players of a like minded attitude of "I'm paying to be here, so I'm not going to mess around, or waste time with off topic chatter or argue about rules", Other players are there for the same reason you are, to have fun in the limited time you have, because you work hard, want to rest up, relax and play a game, and you only have 4 hours spare on a thursday night to do so. You could spend $30+ at any number of events IF you had the right friends and the timing was right for that particular time frame, so why not spend your $30 sitting down, relaxed at a table, with some like minded adventurers who wish to get their game on.

As a Paid GM, I love having players that are ready, attentive, pay attention to the details, play in character, don't cancel unless its actually important and bow out if its not the right group, the right setting or the right game, rather than stay 'because its your friends' and disrupt the game for everyone else.

Levelling your Race

A thought occurred while discussing races with my group.. can you level up your race?

I'm a 5th level elf

If classes or professions are a 'set' of bonuses that are applied as you level up, why can't we have a set of 'racial' bonuses that we can choose to 'level up' as well?

I'm curious as to if any other game systems do this too, One that seems closest to the bill is Legend, but its not exactly a specific "level up" so much as just getting Boon bonus's to your race skills.

For the d20 fans, It would essentially be a set of skills, feats and increasing bonuses such as night vision or will save. A decent DM/Games designer could probably come up with a decent list, but the questions for such a system would be, why bother to level up my elf, when I could level up my class?

Maybe if DMs were a little more restrictive with their classes, then this would be a viable idea. i.e. Elves are not allowed to take rogue classes normally (alignment, disdain for such a career), yet elves are stealthy, especially in a forest, so maybe an 'Elven build' with stealth skills, ref saves and the like, Evasion, Uncanny dodge, but none of the Sneak attack, Backstab, Pickpocket skills.

For full Dungeonworld rules, there would be no real point, all skills are able to be increased, and only your motivations to increase them hamper or help this. I already have background skills lists, so this too serves its purpose and you may choose to practice and improve your background skills as you choose..

Yet, Dungeon Delvers Twelve, the simplified version rules, relies on the tropey level up sets of bonuses, pre-chosen to help newer players in understanding their characters better, guiding them. 

This, would be useful to have a 'levelling system' for your race, it would represent the players choice in increasing their background skills.. it could be an interesting set of bonuses, traits (and or flaws) skills and racial goals.. as you think more of your culture, your family and your race, as you return year after year to continue your racial training, you learn more of the racial divide between certain cultures, possibly racial hatreds, which give you combat advantages when fighting the 'enemy'

Just a few thoughts at this stage.. we'll see if I introduce it or not.

Craft Based Roleplay - the Missing Element

     While some might think its a bad idea to reveal your ideas, lest someone steal them for themselves, I don't think that either my idea is new, nor unique, just that I'll be adding it in a way that hasn't really been done in roleplay games. Crafting for adventurers...

Crafting for your Roleplay Group

     One thing that irked me in many systems for years was the inability to really make a half decent magical weapon. At least with a semi-realistic sense of the idea.

     My first encounter with the crafting rules was from Dragon Warriors, Book 2: Simplistic at best, once a Mystic reaches 4th rank, they can begin to craft +1 items, 6th for +2 and 9th for +3. The mystic must go off to a place to remain in solitude, and fast in order to 'attune' themselves to the mystical powers and then begin the 'creation' of an item. There is no talk of 'costs' other than time, 25 days to make a +1 arrow, 100 days for +1 weapon or armour, up to 1500 days for a +3 weapon..

     Yes its simplistic and flawed, A party could leave their 9th ranked Mystic off in some wilderness 'creating' the Warrior a +3 set of Studded Leather armour, and the group returns 1500 days later, now all 15th ranked characters, having acquired several other +2 and +3 sets of armour that are as good if not better from quests and such.. sorta defeated the purpose of creating magical items in the first place.

     Sure a GM could attempt to balance the system, but what ever you do, you'd probably be spending hundreds of hours coming up with some kind of specialized algorithm, that'd break either game balance or usability.. 25 days for a +1 arrow? just to be shot and lost in the very next combat? It only gives +1 to attack, ABR and Damage, its not all that good.

     Dungeons and Dragons does it just as bad, there are countless blogs talking about it just seems to be a kind of 'cash sink' for the GM to ensure the players have a reason to go out looking for more quests, rather than retiring.. even though 12+ level characters are pretty much expected to retire (according to the older forms of the rules, it can be argued) and are only brought out for epic world ending events.

    Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, they have their own rules & houserules, blogs about it, but at the end of the day its pretty much the same.. Heroes acquire treasure, heroes get rich, heroes have little need to quest for the mundane magical items such as +1 items, but they still have a basci need for them, heroes sink cash into NPCs that make the items, or they sink less cash but more time OR experience points (another sink system to keep mages from getting TOO powerful) into making magical items with broader choices.

     Seems like not many people really got into the whole crafting side of things... 

Could be just your experience

Yes, I understand, I haven't played every single game with every single GM, and there are likely some half-decent games that are all about creating interesting items. Yet if you read up on this, by the very creators of D&D it seems that I'm on par:

     "The statement "I want to make a magic item" has the power to freeze a DM's blood. Players, too, can find the item creation process intimidating. Sometimes these fears are justified, especially when someone invents an entirely new item and then wants to sit down and make it - Skip Williams"

    I have crafted some adventures where players are trying to acquire the material components of weird and wonderous items, while I agree that they should have some kind of 'cost' to acquire, I am more of the opinion that it should be a cost of risk vs reward rather than a physical cost.

     I would rather stick to the idea that making a sword, be it magical, mystical or mundane, should approximately be of the same time of a real sword, 2-3 days for the weapon & 2+ weeks for the flair, but its more about "getting it right" because maybe forging a sword and getting it wrong just means melting down the blade and starting again, but if your using elementium steel, then it likely involves a few enchanted tools, some runes of protection against it (so it doesn't freeze or burn you while forging) and you'd only want to deal with it once, rather than risking deadly burns or life altering frostbite twice.

     So instead the "cost" to acquire goods, is for the group to acquire the magical forge, the mystical hammer, the tongs of fire, the cooling Pools of the frostbanes and several kilos of Elementium, Elysiuum Wood, Gems of Brightfire and Rubies of Blood. Once acquired, the Blacksmith/Mage/Mystic of the group gets to work, while the heroes rest their wounds and 3-6 weeks later, the Smith presents the Leader/Warrior of the group with "FleshForger the Magnificent" with all the bonuses (and possible flaws) of the new weapon.

Yeah, we all do that.. so whats your point?    

     Recently, (well, ok, 3 years ago now) We were tasked at Uni to make a game, and my group agreed to try making a "potion making game", We only had 13 days in total to make it (well its over 13 weeks, we had 1 day a week assigned to the task, because of other subjects, exams, studies etc) so in the end we made a game where you chose 3 ingredients and dependent on how you mixed it, it would come up with 1 of 9 possible potions/poisons.

     Now, the key underlying aspect of the game, was to experiment


---------------------------------- APOLOGIES TO READERS------------------------
Due to Google downgrading their system, this post was lost, I managed to find this much via some fancy caching, but from this point forward, I am mostly trying to remember what I wrote, appologies if it seems out of sync. Originally Published 08/04/2017
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The Game

The Experimentation of how each 'part' worked, was the process of the game. In the 'morning' You acquired the 3 ingredients from the forest, randomly, mostly it gave you a 1:5 chance, twice, either gaining the whole plant, the roots, the leaves or the flower, or nothing( 2 chances). You'd return to your workshop by the end of the day, if you had purchased food from town you ate it, else you could eat the leaves or boil the roots as a substitute, no ill effects, just the loss of your days work looking for it.
Lastly, you could try to 'experiment' on your potions. Each of the three ingredients could be fried, boiled or crushed (for oils), no other information was given.
Oh and also you could go to town, in town you could buy food for 1 copper coin each meal, and meals could last 4 days (so you could buy 4 max) but while in town, you heard rumours.. someone was sick, someone had a toothache, someone wanted to poison her evil husband.
The only thing we had in the game was that all three paid money (3 copper), the 'bad' job would pay even for failed poisons, but a copper if you failed and 3 if you succeeded.
So each night, you'd make up some potions/poisons, and when you had a few, you could go to town, and try them out. The 'experiment' was on the evil husband, if he died, you knew it was a legit poison, if he didn't it sometimes made him happy, or angry or no effect.
This was the litmus test. Angry.. probably ill effects, happy, likely good effects, dead, most definitely poison.
Now at the heart of this, was percentile effects, Boil the root and you got soup, you knew this from your own experience, eat the leaves, its not killing you either, So boil the leaves? fry the leaves? crush the leaves? Each has an effect: From memory, Boiling, drew out the potent qualities, but not the oil effects, Frying would destroy the potent qualities, but keep the oil effects, and crushing, gave you a 50/50 effect of both, while eating it raw, would give you half of the potent effect, but all of the oil, So it became a maths puzzle..
Roots had 25% poisonous Oil, but 100% Nutitional Potent,
Leaves had 0% poisonous Oil and 25% healing Potent.
The Flower had 75% numbing Oil, and 10% Poison.

If you boiled the Roots and Leaves and fried the Flower, and threw away the Roots and boiled it again, you'd get a healing potion,
If you crushed the flower, added some raw, boiled the leaves and then threw out the leaves, you got a tooth numbing agent, so they could pull the tooth
and if you Boiled the flower several times, and fried the roots several times, then crushed the Boiled flowers into the roots, you got a deadly poison.   
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The Key to it was trying out different combinations, on yourself, and the evil husband to figure out what did what, and how it came together.

In Roleplay

Firstly, to get this to work in roleplay, you need to have the ability of your group to get stuff made. Like stated before, getting the 'ingredients' is part one of the game, Having your players procure a Firebird feather, a Core of Sphagnum and a Dedicated Crystal, is the adventure that they get to go on.

But having the Unique Powerful item, is only interesting if it is Unique AND Powerful.

To Create this, you have to have more control over the flow of goods and services.

If your players like the idea of crafting their own gear, upgrading it, improving it, then make sure your setting works, Making standard items less common, with technological advances, just recently discovered.

Cavemen/Minecraft: The Most interesting 'inventions' game would be starting from scratch, players probably already know about sharpening stones & attaching them to sticks with vines, but how about baking clay to make moulds to heating fire hot enough to melt ores to even make metals.. Playing the game in a minecraft like environment might even be your players thing.

Shift of Ages: As the Bronze Age was in decline and the Iron Age beginning, we see a whole area of roleplay barely played. Have your entire group in the fall of rome, as the Gauls have just discovered Iron and Steel swords are a brand new thing. The Aquisition of Iron Ore becomes an adventure of its own. Or if your more inclined, Steampunk, as all manner of steam powered things get invented, and usually ones that would never work, steam powered mobile phone anyone?

Post apoc: My favourite (and one I'm building a new campaign for) When everything has gone to hell, and your players can't even get a decent weapon, unless the bring back some scrap metal from outside the safe zone.. This one ties in nicely with fantasy: The players have steel sword, but how to get EarthElementium? or Plogistonium. Bring back a chunk of Ever-cold Metal and have your blacksmith forge up one of those as a Cleaver! or Chukrum!

So, now that you've got the setting, Have an NPC in town, controlled by your rules lawyer/ numbers cruncher, 'experiment' with the numbers, What does Plgistonium do? well its fire based Elementium, All Elementiums are harder than normal steel by 2 magnitudes, Plus they do Elemental based damage, they should cut through armour, like a knife through butter. Cool that's your end point, but now, you have to decide how long are they prepared to wait?

For simplicity, since we have 4 values to go with, 2x harder, knife through butter & fire damage, then we need our blacksmith to experiment with at least 4 variables, so we'll need to get him at least 4 sets of the Ore. Then you make skill checks for the Blacksmith, if he passes, he's made progress on 1 of those 4 areas, Or maybe you can't wait that long.. how about mixing it with normal steel, and halving the final properties.. halving the experimentation time.

See this is where I got bogged down in other systems, Because weapons don't typically have hardness values or sharpness values, or strength abilities, and weapons don't cut through armour, the player dodges & the armour deflects & the person cops some of the damage, but not as real damage, but as exhaustion & its all rolled into one roll or one saving throw.. it takes away the players, and the GMs ability to make cool stuff, unless you know the whole formula for THAC0, or such.

This is why I made my system, Because Elementium can easily have +2 damage, without needing to increase the Initiative costs, it can have a 'ignores 2 points of enemies metal armour' for the ABR and it can have 'flaming weapon if exposed to air' and 'is 80.c', so players know the blade is hot, it burns, flamable objects will ignite, water will slowly boil (or at least start to get hot) and each of these areas can be 'learnt' by the blacksmith as skills:
Active Skill: Manufacture - Elementium - Fire - +1 Damage, no Inititaive cost. 
Once learnt, then he can start to take on the next skill.

This all works for the HUB system of my game, where players have an NPC friend, back in town, that they get to level up and choose his skills between adventures, so that you have a plausible way for players to be getting much better weapons, without needing handwavium or bullsh*t Ecomonic systems. 

     

Childhood to Adult: Character Creation

Most Recent Update - Character Creation process

For a very long time, I've had one big missing element: Character creation. Now you might think this quite insane. How can you have a roleplay game without character creation... well ok, so I mean that it was not so much missing, as, my definition of character creation is a bit more 'plot' based, and that chapter wasn't properly written... at all...hence missing.

This isn't "CHARACTER" creation, beards and hair colour, even rolling stats isn't character creation..
Character Creation is creating "the Character", where was he born, what kinds of family did he grow up with and what skills did they teach him, How did that affect his choices to become a hero. 

    The Version that existed, and still does (as of this blog) is the template system. This is what most people think of when they think "character creation". Players would roll the dice and consult a chart to see what was a good character to make with the numbers they rolled. Pick a race, add race template, pick a Lifestyle, add Lifestyle template, pick a hero career, add Career template. It is/was fast, quick, efficient, and got you a character.. without any character. I had a few players who complained, wanted a more in depth creation system. claiming they felt their character was just a bunch of number and had no life (like most systems).
    So I developed a more in-depth, more story and plot based character creation, and I added a decent amount of crunch to go with it:

How Far do you want to go back?

Technically, if you want to start with your grandparents, you can. Roll up their stats, find out what they did for a living, and how that affected you. Then roll up your Parent Modifiers, adjust your stat sets and finally arrive at a set of characteristics that represents YOU.

Well, maybe not that far

So, Most players will simply roll up their own stats. I've never really been a fan of the point buy system, so while I have created a balanced system for players to use, I've also spent a bit of time creating a structured system for rolling that gives players the ability to balance things themselves (more on that later). 

My system encourages character creation to take place over 1-4 roleplay sessions. You roll up your stats, take a childhood skill list based on where you were born (and where your group will roleplay) then an apprenticeship, which gives you an approx 12yr old.. then you and your 'group of friends' can go out and discover things (Session #1)

Next, your progress your characters to teenagers, take a Journeyman skill set, based on whats available, and roleplay your 'friend circle' as teenagers.. get in trouble, have a local fight with the rival gang, or get lost discovering some ancient crypt & tunnels, that everyone has gone through before, but maybe 1-2 coins were left behind (a treasure to a teen, worth 10 years of pocketmoney) (session #2)

Lastly, why did you become an Adventurer.. take on the Adventurer path that suits you, grab the skills from it, but it also lists skills that you can choose to take, Now the player gets more choices, where to become more skilled, things that don't match the mundane life you left behind..your gang finds some clue, maybe something you already had in your attic, a map in a painting frame, with a stashed coin with holes in it.. now you take your team of adventurers and go find one eyed willies treasure (session #3-4)

Why this works better than the old man at the fire

The old man begins to tell you a story of a dungeon...
The players, realise its a plot hook and leave the campsite..
The DM cries, as all his work for 3 weeks is useless

When players come together, create characters and start roleplaying, there is a missing element of 'how did we get here' its assumed that this will be filled in afterwards. It often never happens. When it doesn't, and a conflict within the group arises, there is no logical reason for the group to stay together, they 'just do' and deal with the conflict 'offline'.. what I mean by that is they don't deal with it in game, so these characters have some unknown reason why they suddenly hate each other, draw weapons, start to fight, but calm down and are best of friends, without ever resolving the reason why they fought.

By including a whole 1-3 roleplay sessions prior to the main plot, all those 'unknowns' become more obvious. Turns out that all this time stevenson and harold were at odds because stevenson got the extra treasure when they were kids and it just ate into harold, and made him resentful to stevenson. (in real life, their players just don't get along, but now we have more backstory)

Also, maybe its just my groups, but I only ever really had 1 player write detailed backstory for their character, sometimes this backstory would be 3 pages and often included some very dubious connections, in that the player was now noble blooded, friends of three other noble families and received a monthly stipend of a few thousand dollars.. game & plot breaking backstory.. 

So now, all players have a backstory, all players have something to refer to in game & in plot.. Also they have a little more than 5 minutes of 'love' for their character.. in this method, I've yet to have throw-away suicides, so they could get a 'better character', though I have had plot reasons for players to 'need' to wade into a suicide missions, which again, made more sense because we had backstory.

This is not for everyone.. or is it?

If your group is only playing 1-4 sessions for an adventure, then having a break and playing a different system, then obviously this isn't for you. But if your going to play for anything longer than two months, I'd suggest this as a viable option, and remember, you can always do this in stages.. flashbacks are a wonderful 'break' from the regular..

The Flashback

I've attempted this quite a few times, and with one exception (I'll get into next) its a great way for players to develop a better background.

The biggest factor is the introduction of your characters in a more unique way that average. You start the game, lets say at 5th level, progress for several adventures and you're around 7th and about to take down the end boss.. all seems hopeless, then the GM points out that you've all forgotten something...

The GM passes the characters blank charactersheets and has them copy the basic stats over, and they're all level one or two, the characters are mid adventure, they're entering a simple tomb, and begin play...

The adventure is a fairly straight forward one, nothing too extreme and guarenteed the players are going to win, but just 'how' they win is important.. push to make some lasting effects on characters, wounds that can become scars, rare, exotic burns or items mundane but interesting, powerful artifacts that do nothing.. once they have acquired the end goal, return them from the 'flashback' to the main story.. that artifact, the one they acquired all those years ago? its the object required to take down the end boss.. they've been carrying it all these years and didn't realise it.. 

Mechanically.. the Flashback is the same as RPing the backstory, just later in the game.. Some GMs might award the XP gained from that adventure to the group, based on their choices and results, some might chalk it up to 'backstory', but the point is, you've added more 'character'.

Dungeon Delvers Changes

Since Dungeon Delvers emulates Dungeonworlds System but as a quick "we made most of the choices for you" kind of way, We needed to made backgrounds and races a kind of "sub-profession" system, This has some interesting nuances that many game systems should probably consider.. I'll blog about these in more detail, but in essence.. you can level up your race and background, to represent your backstory & flashbacks, without breaking the flow of the game.