The Sample Character Looks Just Like Me

My ten year old brother is excitedly flipping through the 5th Edition Player's Handbook.  He is excited A) because it's D&D and B) he found a sample character that "looks like him," and wants to see if there are more.  My ten year old brother is adopted, and he is African American (or whatever the PC term is this week), and he is telling me how he likes this book more than other editions, because it has black people in it so he can play a "normal" person when I let them play this time so he doesn't have to play a half-orc.  Oh, and can we play D&D tonight?  He really wants to play, and it warms my heart.  His enthusiasm is simultaneously wonderful and tinged with a bittersweet emotion for me.  He is excited because this edition has people who look like him.

There are people who look like him.

This is the character he now wants to play.

Now I'm going to say some stuff that sounds scattered, but will (hopefully) eventually make sense.

Earlier today, I read a  John Wick article on what makes an RPG, and my brain was titillated, and it made me rethink what rules I would slavishly follow and think about focusing on telling stories, and it was good.  Then I found a link to an RPG Pundit article basically saying that John Wick's article is wrong and bought into the sense of small and pointless outrage that John Wick could dare call D&D not an RPG.  Then I posted John Wick's article to my Facebook so that a few of my friends who like RPGs and discussing RPGs could see it and hopefully get out of it what I got out of it, then two of my friends mentioned that the pontificating done in the article was similar to the pointless pontificating done in academia.  Then they told me to write a blog about it, so I am.

Several months ago, Zak S. of Playing D&D With Porn Stars and being-a-name-inside-the-5th-edition-book fame and I (and a few people who have opinions I respect) had a disagreement in the comments on a blog post I made.  Now, I will fully admit that my blog was not as well thought out, worded, and constructed as I want it to be.  Also, not everything Zak S said was wrong.  And not everything I said was wrong.  However, both of us (and the other people commenting) got stuck on being "right" and ignored the point.  The point I was trying to make was that we shouldn't make people feel like they don't belong and scare them away from something that could be awesome for them.

As an interim: several of my younger siblings are now crowded around the Player's Handbook.  They are looking at the picture of the druid, who is the only character in the book who is wearing, essentially, a fur bikini.  My thirteen year old sister asked if she can have a tiger like the druid lady, but she didn't want to have to wear the fur bikini.  She wants armor like the Paladin, because a fur bikini isn't good to fight in.  My thirteen year old sister is wearing a shirt that is too tight and jeans that are too tight, and I ask her if the druid might just be wearing the fur bikini for fashion.  She says yes, but that she still wants the armor, and she can wear a bikini under that in case she needs it to be on a runway.  That prompts a discussion of if they can design their own clothes for their characters.  I say yes, and I'm sure there will be artwork by the time I visit again next weekend.  The point is that a thirteen year old understands that fur bikinis have no place on a battlefield.  The point is also that a thirteen year old might want a character in a fur bikini, but also knows that there is a time and a place for it.

Some barbarian princesses might like to feel sexy some of the time...

I have a bachelor's degree in English.  I do not want a master's degree.  I do not want to continue my education with a graduate program (at least right now).  Mostly, it's because I'm sick of academia.  There are lots of interesting and useful things taught in academia, and I loved most of my college courses.  There are also lots of pointless things in academia that mostly boil down to people trying to feed their egos and separate themselves from other people and build up ivory towers.  That is why I decided not to continue my education.  It is also what I hate most in RPG conversations.  See, I love ideas.  I love big ideas, small ideas, and middling ideas.  Creativity is awesome, and thus things that breed creativity are awesome.  

Being an asshat about why your creativity is best is not awesome.  

I love a lot of what D. Vincent Baker has added to the RPG industry.  Dogs in the Vineyard is an awesome thought exercise and presses the limits of what RPG mechanics can do.  The thought processes that the game espouses has influenced some of my conflict crafting in RPGs I've since run, and my friend and longtime GM, Jacob, used a version of it in a few of us playing out world creation in a fun thought exercise.  His focus on the story part of story games is laudable. 

I hate a lot of what D. Vincent Baker has added to the RPG industry.  Dogs in the Vineyard is an awesome thought exercise that devolves into pedantic preaching about how some types of gaming are badwrongfun.  It makes the book frustrating to read.  It makes you feel bad about liking certain aspects of roleplaying or annoyed that someone thinks the parts of roleplaying you enjoy are not things that should be enjoyed.  

Similarly, I still read Zak S's blog.  I read RPG Pundit's blogs.  I read John Wick's blog.  I read RPG.net (and sometimes even engage in discussion there), and I read (or otherwise engage in) various and sundry other places where RPG conversation can be found.  They all have good ideas. 

They all have good ideas.  

They also all devolve into pedantic, angry, dickish, and obnoxious bickering over how people are having badwrongfun or arguing over social issues that should be solved by people just being nice to each other and treating each other like people.

I realize that I get on my soapbox from time to time.  It's something I need to work on.  It's also something that the RPG community in general needs to deal with.  RPGs are about having fun, sharing ideas, creating stories, and playing a game with other people.  They're about a the joy of discovery of a ten year old dressed as Spiderman telling me that he wants to do that awesome fire dragon spell he saw in the Sorceror section of the Player's Handbook.  It's also the joy of discovery of a twenty-seven year old nerd finding someone's writeup on goblins living on ceilings and speaking backwards on a blog written by a pornstar who plays D&D with a distinctly unique group of coworkers. 

The edition warring and backlash over who consulted on what is negative energy that would be much, much, much better used by encouraging someone's sense of creativity and pushing each other to make more cool things.  Someone encouraged someone to make the black fighter in the D&D Player's Handbook, and it's sent ripples through my little siblings (two of whom are black) as they now have a new source of inspiration.  They now know that there are people like them in this game, that fur bikinis are okay, but mostly impractical, and are one step closer to realizing that only their imaginations are the limit.  They now know that this is something they can be included in. 

Benedict Cumberbat and Little Tiny Hugh Jackman Abs

The recap of this latest session has been delayed by work, sleep, and general laziness.  We had to meet a little earlier in the day, most of us had worked a lot that week, and many of us had a rough week in general, so about an hour and a half at the start of the game was spent de-stressing, leveling up (from last week), detoxing from life being generally tough, and shooting the breeze.  That led to a chatty and not overly focused session of gaming, which isn't bad in general, and honestly was what most of us needed (I think).  However, that means this is going to be a shorter than usual blog.  People leveling meant Aaron, Caelin, and Tracy got to pick their class specialties.  Aaron surprised me by picking Oath of the Ancients for his Paladin oath, meaning he's all about protecting life and light and liberty now, which I think will be a cool turning point for his character.  Caelin waffled over choosing between Necromancy and Evocation, but settled on Evocation, because she likes blowing things up.  Tracy picked Circle of the Moon so that her druid could wild shape better.  I look forward to what she is going to think up to turn into.

What we all hope Caelin will be doing in a few levels.

We started the session with everyone walking through the woods.  Tracy announced that the pet goblin dogs we picked up last session were named Sharpwizzle, Fizzlewrench, and Pepperrocket, which she evidently got from a random goblin name generator.  Because I decided that due to the scattered nature of everyone's mood we shouldn't go for a more freeform and loose encounter that I had planned, I announced that it was raining badly, and everyone decided their characters wanted to get out of the rain very much (especially Eric, because his character is shrouded in layers of carpets and cloths and he didn't want to be a wet blanket...badum tshhhh).  As a GM, I was kind enough to provide them with a ruined tower in the wilderness.  

This raised all sorts of questions, because a ruined tower in a storm at night is obviously a hook for a GM to do bad things to the players.  However, the rain was "really coming down hard, guys, and there is no sign of letting up," so they decided to go into the tower.  The top of the tower had mostly crumbled in.  Tracy used a spell to make a "scary noise" within the tower, which led to some good natured druids-are-all-hippies jokes about ghostly voices telling people to shave their armpits and saying Aaaaaannnnn Couuuulllterrrrrrr and Rrrrreeeppuuuuublicaaaaaans.  I told them that in response to the sound, some bats and a disgruntled owl flew out of the tower.  Caelin misheard me, and thought I said Benedict Cumberbatch flew out of the tower, and then found a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch's face photoshopped on a bat, which caused a lot of hilarity.

I am darkness!  I am the night!

Amid general joviality, they entered the tower.  The top of the tower had fallen in, so they descended to the lower level which consisted of a main room with a smaller room with a well, and a room that was mostly caved in off it.  They managed to get the Barrys (the taxidermized chimera heads) down the stairs in their wheelbarrow, and the party decided to poke around and make sure there wasn't anything that was going to kill them/treasure in the abandoned basement of a ruined tower.  Eric covered up the well after everyone joked about pulling a Pippin in the Mines of Moria and dropping a rock down it.  The rest of the party decided to break open a moldy box in the corner hoping to find...I dunno, rupees or something.  They found splinters, moldy grain, and a desiccated rat corpse. 

They decided to sleep, and Eric took watch because his character doesn't sleep.  This led to some jokes about what he does while the party sleeps (mostly about him braiding Aaron's dwarf's beard and whispering creepily).  He did none of those things.  Everyone slept around the baby fire elemental they'd "liberated" from the house they found Barry in.  Sal, the fire elemental, was named Sal, because it's the first three letters of "salamander."  Tracy likes naming things.  The goblin dogs slept piled up in a corner and smelled like wet dog more than usual.  The Barrys slept in the wheelbarrow by the stairs in case a quick escape was necessary.

Eric also evidently puts hair-bows in Aaron's dwarf beard too...

As people slept, Eric saw a set of eyes peer out from a crevice in the collapsed room.  He tossed a bit of bread at it, cast a spell of light in the room, and was greeted by about a dozen sets of eyes staring out from the rubble.  A bunch of Nuglub gremlins attacked, and got the drop on everyone as they started waking up, because Eric was yelling.  Brandie, being small, was grappled, and a nuglub started dragging her to the well room.  Another nuglub had done the same with a dog too, and the rest started attacking the party and trying to throw blankets over them to tangle them up.  I made the mistake of describing them as "little men with claws and big manes of black hair," which made Caelin think of little tiny Hugh Jackmans with little tiny abs which further derailed the game.  

Nuglubs look nothing like Hugh Jackman, just for the record.

People killed Nuglubs, Aaron started smiting, Brandie critted a nuglub like a badass, Eric cleared off a few that were coming down the stairs, and Tracy found out that she couldn't cast Entangle in places with no plants and decided to find a good florist to get some potted plants later.  Caelin is not a very wizardy wizard, and went full barbarian smashy smash with her quarterstaff, and it mostly paid off while the Barrys cheered them on.  Eric climbed the stairs to see if there was more out there, and saw something moving in the shadows.  It was a giant, centipede-ish creature that looked like a human centipede version of the critters they were fighting.  

Aaron even made me a picture of it.

It scuttled into the room on the ceiling, grabbed Tracy, then Aaron smote it, Brandie (riding Eric, because that's what happens when there is a gnome in the party) stabbed it, Caelin smashed some more Nuglubs, and Tracy got dropped then put a javelin through the Great Nuglub's face which killed it.  Caelin killed the last Nuglub, and they rejoiced in being alive.  Brandie found that she could worm her way into the collapsed room, and the other party members moved some rubble to get in as well.  They found dead, gnawed on bodies of of other travelers, a silver ring, a silver sword, and a lot of money.  Then we ran out of time, so we'll pick up later and hopefully be more on track.

How To Be A Highly Functional Lazy GM

Running a game is hard work.  Before you, dear reader, say "well duh" and just scroll to read my picture captions, understand that I am saying this out of a cathartic quasi-bitching that I'm not playing a game currently (and wish I was), but am amazingly happy to be GMing, because it is rewarding and fun. It's just fun in a completely different way from playing.  Also, saying that running a game is hard gives weight to the fact that it actually is.  I have never had a sustainedly (not just a few good moments) good time in a game where the Dungeon Master didn't actually put in quite a bit of work.  In fact, I've never been in a good campaign where the DM's work didn't fully eclipse the work put in by all the players combined.  That is a scary revelation for people running games everywhere, especially people like me who are inherently lazy as hell.

One of the several sins of which I am a fan.  The other is using the fuck word which is evidently my favorite word tonight.  #sorrynotsorry

Gamemastering feels out of control.  No matter how prepared you are, no matter your improv skills, knowledge of the setting, rules ken, and how well you know your players, they are going to out-think you, throw you curve balls, and just end up being obstinate.  Corralling roleplayers is like herding cats, and no matter how smart you are, it's almost certain that the combined intelligence of your players is greater than yours.  This article was inspired by the latest Two Nerds Podcast about running a game, and, in the spirit of this being a blog about Gamemastering, I figured I'd lay down some fat wisdom from my time as a lazy and seat of the pants Gamemaster.  Here's the golden rule:

Save yourself time and work whenever you can

I swear I'm prepping for next session.  Serious.

You can totally work yourself to death planning a game.  One of the biggest DMing pitfalls I've ever fallen into is making an entire world down to the minutiae of naming random NPCs and giving them more backstory than your players will ever afford their characters.  The worst part of this is that making a world on that level is awesome.  Seriously, so much fun.  All of the fun.  I have entire worlds in binders all over my bedroom, because it's cathartic and neat.  The issues with this are sixfold:

1) Your players will never love your world as much as you do, or at least for the reasons you do.

2) They will inevitably fuck it up.

3) You will never get them to experience everything you want them to.

4) Even if you do, they won't experience it exactly the way you want them to.

5) They won't take it as seriously as you and will make fun of something you thought was awesome.

6) You should be more attached to the characters than the world.

The last point is the most important.  Having a DM rooting for the NPCs is a surefire way of pissing players off and derailing a game.  The PCs are the heroes.  They are the focus of the story.  Everything else is the stage on which they...well, do whatever fuckery PCs do.  Therefore, the story should focus on what the PCs are doing, where the PCs are, and what their goals are.  That doesn't mean that outside forces shouldn't pressure them.  If there weren't outside forces pressuring them, there would be no need for a DM, but you don't need to plan High Priest Whothefuckcares's last words as he dies to the great evil that the PCs are going to fight about three months in gametime later.  Just having a plot point that "this badass demon killed a high priest and is going to LOL about it to the party" is good enough.  You don't need to plot the demon's exploits pre-encounter.  Just make up a list of like 5 bullet points (such as "tempted the Murder Queen, Ivanna Killemal") and just have him ramble random impressive sounding shit.  You don't need a paragraph, or, heaven forbid, a five page paper on each little thing.  Your players won't notice.  They want to kill the fucking demon (and possibly take his stuff, depending on genre).

Now, here's the rub.  You're the DM.  Your players expect you to have full knowledge of the world.  Most will expect you to have detailed the world in exacting OCD details, and, for the most part you want them to think that, because it has the fun effect of making it seem like you know what you're doing.  Players fuck around more when they don't think the DM knows what they are doing.  It's like they sense uncertainty and push boundaries, because that's human nature.  There's a very delicate line between not having a clue what's over the next hill, because you didn't plan it, but having something to do in case the players decide to run over there.  

Your reaction when your players run completely off script.

That is why you have lazy play aids that make it easy to improv when invariably the game goes somewhere far away from anything you ever imagined or planned.  The easiest one, and the one I use the most is a list of (semi) random names.  It is something I need to bust out again for this current game I'm running, because, even though I'm usually great at coming up with names on the fly, I ended up naming a taxidermized chimera Barry.  Now, that didn't end up so bad, because it added a sense of Douglas Adamsian whimsey to the already...whimsical I guess...theme of the game so far, but imagine getting into a throne room to meet a really important king and just being all "I dunno guys, I guess his name's Herbert."  It's not good.  

A key aspect of the name list is to not make it unpronounceable or redundant.  Broadsiding players with Xxanadrizzithinia'tkul the barmaid is not cute.  Go with easier names like Deor, Geoffrey, or Sophia that are (or at least similar to) real world names that people may have heard.  They're pronounceable, easily remembered by players, and you'll remember it too, because you need to.  Your players will remember everything you think they won't, so make sure you remember it too.  Also, while Deor son of Beor son of Jeor is cool, don't overuse it (redundancy).  If every NPC in your game has a name that starts with the letter "A," your players will notice and call you out on it.  It takes some work for the list, but it will save you so much work in the long run.

Don't let this be you.

Making lists of names for small towns, cities, marshes, forests, etc can also be useful, and maybe make a terrain feed list as well.  Terrain feeds are just a list of terrain types (forests, swamps, plains, deserts, etc) you want to use, and then listing what can adjoin each other (forests can be next to swamps and plains, deserts can be near mountains and plains) so that you don't have a swamp in the middle of a desert, because your players will ask a lot of questions that really don't have a lot to do with the plot.  Also, lists of professions/shops in a town can be useful.  Some of these lists can be adapted to roll on for random results if you are so inclined.  All this saves you from having to plot every aspect of the world out as you go and allows it to grow organically as the players decide to visit things outside the normal tourist attractions.

I have said that you should not detail the world in exacting minutiae, because your players won't care about at least half of it.  There is, however, a surefire way to make up world stuff with your players that they will actually care about and will matter.   Not only that, you can make them do almost all the work for you.  Just meet up with them and discuss their characters' backstories.  Discuss, collaborate, delve, and write shit down.  Not all the players need to give you a Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) or complete plot.  All you need is one, and then the rest of the players can give you some random crap about the backwater town they came from that you can use to flesh out the world.  It's also helpful to hook in reticent roleplayers.  If the guy who is hesitant about roleplaying is put into a situation where you tell him that the town they're in has a festival his character remembers from his farming village in his childhood, then he has a hook he can latch onto.  This will also inform you of where the players want a game to go.  If you plot a big save the world plot and the players want to dungeon delve, you can pick up on that from the meet up and re-calibrate.  

Now, meeting up with the players sounds like a bunch of actual work as does remembering the stuff they come up with.  The first part shouldn't be so bad.  I'd assume that you actually like the people you play with.  You're probably friends with them in real life.  That means you should spend quality time with them (says the man who plans to spend at least the next 24 hours only interacting with his computer and cat), and like most people, talking about mutual interests is a normal thing to do.  Just pay attention.  I pretty much make a rule to only take one page of notes per character.  

The one page rule is also another good jumping off point for just about everything.  Notes for the session: one page.  Notes for each character: one page.  Notes for the plot: one page.  Notes for the session recap: one page.  Notes for an encounter: one page.  Don't even feel that you have to use the whole page.  Here are my notes for last session:

 1) Have Aaron find priest.  Goblins eating priest's legs.  Priest tells Aaron to follow girls.

2) Brandie and Eric on train. Dark cloud comes in.  Dragon and [expunged because my players read my blog] ride in and blow up train.  Brandie and Eric need to find party.

3) Caelin and Tracy need to meet party.

4) Maybe fog rolls in and everyone gets lost in woods and finds each other?  Only use if necessary.

5) House in woods.  Has talking Chimera heads stuffed on walls.  Special books on shelves.  Mini elemental in stove.  No one home.  Chimera heads refer to "master" if asked.

6) Oh yeah, Tanya the bard needs to find them then disappear at some point for [expunged because of aforestated reasons].

7) Goblin and goblin dog stats for a prepared encounter (more on stat blocks later in article).

8) Another mini encounter with a single being that I never used, because the players roleplayed a lot and we ran out of time.

All of this was one page front and back (more like half a page on the back)  and that was only because I wrote big so I could read it easier.  I had space next to each encounter to keep track of initiative and hit points and other expendables.  I didn't even get to my whole second encounter, and we played for four and a half hours.  My after game notes are technically this blog consist of one solitary sheet of paper that I scrawl on as the session goes on.

This segues perfectly into my hatred of stat blocks for encounters.  Games like Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons (3rd edition specifically) have giant, complicated, involved, hard to read stat blocks for monsters.  I really don't need to know a monster's move speed, skill modifiers, feats, ecology, and whatever if they're not going to necessarily pertain to the encounter.  Honestly, I'm not sure that all of them should, because it's just more stuff to keep track of.  I try to boil down my stat blocks to as little as possible so that I have fewer moving pieces for me to forget.  Here's the stats for the goblin encounter I used last session:

Goblin Weezard:

10HP

AC 13

Attack: Stick +4 1d4+1 or Smelly Potion +6

Once a PC has been hit by Stick or Smelly Potion, can cast Witch Bolt on that character

Goblin Doggie:

10HP

AC 12

Attack: Bite +4 1d10+2

Once bite attack is used, doggie's jaw locks. If they hit, they are locked on PC and PC has disadvantage on all rolls.

There are five Doggies and three Weezards.  That is all the encounter was.  

That's all that I used for that encounter?

And honestly, that's more than I usually have.  I haven't really played 4th Edition D&D, but the only time I played, we fought against minions.  I have no clue what the actual minion rules are from 4th (if someone wants to enlighten me, that would be awesome).  I know all I need to know: when I use them, I don't have to track hit points, and hitting a minion kills it because it has one hit point.  I can throw lots of goblins at my players and feel okay about it.  I know there's also something about saves (meh, I eyeball it anyways and write a random number and go from there usually) and using average damage for weapons, but I like rolling dice and don't want to deprive myself of rolling them.  I usually roll far under average anyways, so my players should actually be happy.  But the take home message is that I usually don't give enemies anything more than HP, AC, attacks, and a special ability or two.  Tracking spells and skills and saves is just a lot of work.  Saves can be important occasionally, so I'll block them out really quickly before I start rolling if they come up, but I usually don't do it beforehand, because they don't come up even usually in my experience.  I also don't bother to balance things, because I use another awesome trick:

I make encounters open ended and start small and keep adding if necessary.  I still had my goblin stat notes from the session before, and if they players last week had mowed through the goblin weezards and doggies in short order, the non mounted goblin reinforcements would have shown up.  Another example of this kind of encounter is the zombie trap from one of my previous blog entries.  On one hand, it can be a grinder of endless zombies.  On the other, it can just be slow pressure to make an easy fight progressively harder.  I use things like that less ruthlessly than many DMs I've played under.  However, because it seems like the same kind of thing but isn't, I don't condone adding HP to a monster mid combat to make it hard, but a spellcaster could very well have a self healing spell or a healing potion, or, they could just run away, get cover, or just do something to make life difficult for the party.  Very few of my monsters just stand and fight if the fight isn't going their way.  

No.  No the enemies are not...

Lastly, one of the ways to make life much easier for yourself, and a tried and true technique that I always have on hand is a seemingly random encounter that actually has some relevance to what is going on.  For example, in session one of the current campaign I am running the players encountered a goblin king and his village, burned most of the village down, failed to kill the goblin king, and killed a whole lot of his people.  The goblin encounter in session two seemed randomish, but the fact that the players left the goblin king alive means that goblin war bands, bounty hunters, and killers will be following them and showing up randomly until they deal with it.  I can throw a goblin encounter in any time I feel things are getting slow.  It can seem random, but it's not.  It's a mini plot of its own.  Just make up a few and hold them until you feel it necessary to throw in.

So yeah, lazy DMing is a lot of work, but it's not as stressful as managing main plots, reading pages of notes, remembering thousands of NPCs of dubious worth to the plot, exactingly remembering stat blocks and encounter tables, and various other bits and bobs that tend to bog the game down.  It takes a lot of confidence and improvisation to run this way, but in the end, it feels closer to playing (at least to me) than bookkeeping, which is a step in the right direction (again, at least to me).  My average session prep time is maybe half an hour to an hour a week tops with this method, meaning I have more time for Netflix, sleeping, and doing other fun things, because honestly, running a game should be fun, not another chore.  Too many DMs burn out, and from what I've seen, most of it is due to over-planning and stressing out about the game too much.  Cutting your stress as a DM and leaving planning to a series of in game decisions when you have some play aids to ease the decision making means that the job gets easier, meaning you can pay attention to your players more, do funny voices, and generally have far more fun.  And, after all, that's what roleplaying is all about.

Session Two: The Deuce

There are moments that I have had in my career as a DM where I curled up into a ball as my players made a mockery of my carefully planned plots and ran roughshod over my beautiful world and rich, intriguing histories.  I disconsolately rolled dice to fend off the assaults of uncaring murder hobos as they burned and salted the ruins of temples full of tales that would rival Tolkien and Salvatore.  Luckily, I got over that about five minutes into last session of my campaign, re-calibrated, and have embraced the madcap antics that my players have seemed to wholeheartedly embrace.  I don't need to run a game in Westeros.  I can do Discworld just fine.

Yes, Troy.  Yes it does. Also, let's see how many Community pictures I can find that fit this blog.

And it was very Discworld-esque.   But first, there was happiness, because Aaron and Tracy brought buffalo chicken dip and I made three ingredient chocolate chip cookies (literally crushed graham crackers, chocolate chips, and sweetened condensed milk) and there was Dr Pepper.  It was a grey, chilly day, but man does a good smorgasboard and a passle of awesome friends make a day awesome.  I had Aaron, Caelin, and Tracy recount the tales of the last session (more or less accurately and more or less embellished for comedic effect), because it brought Brandie and Eric up to speed (because this is their first session) and because it lets me gauge what went well, what went poorly, and who was actually paying attention.  Good news: they all seemed to like last week and they all mostly paid attention.  

We forayed onwards.  I started with Aaron's dwarven paladin standing on the corpses of the goblins he killed last session in the goblin village that Caelin and Tracy lit on fire last session.  He was all alone and started looking around for the priest that his character is friends with who was an important NPC who got hit in the head with a rock and and then abandoned last session.  Aaron found the priest lying unconscious while two goblins hacked his legs off.  Aaron killed one goblin and the other ran off with one of the priest's legs.  Since he hadn't used it last session, Aaron used his Lay on Hands on the priest, reviving him, and, after screaming in pain and shock, the priest told Aaron to follow the girls and protect them, because one of them might actually save the world or something (although it would take a miracle at this point).  Aaron set off into the woods after Caelin and Tracy.

The cleric now also only has one leg and may or may not come back as a cyborg villain in the future.

Brandie (a gnome  rogue) and Eric (a carpet and turban swathed something or other that has a quarterstaff, darts, and might cast Prestidigitation) were on the train from the last session that everyone abandoned because fuck the plot.  They were treated to the sight of a dark cloud of roiling black badness coming from the direction of the capitol city and rolling directly towards them as people panicked on the train.  They also were treated to the clouds glowing red and parting to reveal a magma dragon with a black mailed figure riding it as it dive bombed the train and blew up the entire back end of the train.  Brandie and Eric disembarked in an orderly fashion as all the other assorted NPCs panicked and were eaten by a dragon.  They ran off into the grasslands and looped back to the forest where, Brandie sitting on Eric's shoulders, they set off to find a person strong enough to shovel coal so they could steal the remnants of the train, because that's the kind of players I have.  

It really really is.

Caelin and Tracy were running through the woods until they found a ravine and decided to take a (short) rest so they could get more HP (because that's a thing in D&D 5th Edition).  Caelin slept and Tracy used her Nature skill to find food and stuff. She rolled well, so she found some berries, wild onions, and a vole (because I was broadsided by the question and named the first woodland creature that came into my head).  Somehow that ended up feeding all five players, because the other three stumbled upon their campsite and Jesus somehow like multiplied the vole-with-onion-and-berry-sauce or something, and everyone was saying things in character that made everyone crack up, and we really were just laughing too hard to care.  It's a good group of super snarky, sassy, quick witted roleplayers.

With calculating food intake that is.  And Community pictures.

Fed and united as a disfunctional unit of mayhem, the party set off back to the train to commandeer it, because now that it could be stolen, the plot train seemed like the place to be.  The NPC Sara Mclauchlan bard from last week (who also had followed Eric and Brandie) and Tracy and Brandie expressed concern over a dragon being there, but Caelin, rife with confidence in her Dragonborn glory (and knowledge of the Draconic language) told everyone that she'd just talk to the evil dragon of doom and ride it the fuck out of there because they were like probably cousins or some shit.  I informed her that it was more like the cousin who was addicted to meth and jailed for being a serial killer, but that did little to dissuade her confidence.  Luckily, by the time they got back to the train, the dragon was no longer present, neither was its rider, and the train was ruined and covered in slag from the magma dragon's breath weapon, because if they don't want to ride the plot train when I'm in charge of it, they don't get to change their minds and steal it later.

They decided to head south to The Library at Howell, which is evidently the only piece of my world and plot that they thought sounded interesting enough to fixate on (probably because my description of it made it sound like my world's version of Hogwarts).  They settled for the night to rest so everyone could heal fully, and Eric said that he'd watch all night, because he doesn't sleep, which is a hint as to what kind of character he is playing.  In the night, he saw a magic trail leading off into the woods, and, when everyone woke up, he told everyone that there was probably something cool that way, and they followed the direction the trail had led.

The trees thickened, and there were fungi and mushroom circles everywhere.  Ahead, they saw sunlight streaming through the trees and in a small glade, there was a small cottage.  Jokes were made about finding a better gnome than Brandie until Brandie and Eric noticed (with perception checks) that the house was slightly too big to be a normal humanoid's house.  They dared the NPC bard to go in first, she did, and then when nothing happened, the party followed.  The cottage only had one room, and there were some cupboards, a stove, a bookcase and some other stuff. There were also three (poorly) taxidermized heads on the wall: a goat, a lion, and a very lumpy lizard-ish thing.  The heads introduced themselves as Barry (actually, the goat introduced itself, the lion chimed in, and the lizard head mumbled incoherently).  The party promptly decided to liberate the heads and most of the other things in the house, including the baby fire elemental in the stove.

Badly. Taxidermized. Lion. Head.

They also stole a wheelbarrow, loaded it up with the Barrys and assorted loot, and set off into the woods again.  Mind you, completely disregarding the fact that they had just stolen a bunch of shit from something that is slightly larger than an average human who had talking chimera heads on its fucking walls.  They also left about $2.50 in coins and a slightly apologetic note on the table.  Also, the NPC bard disappeared sometime in that time frame, and the party mostly didn't care.  They aren't the most discerning or careful group ever.

As they trekked through the woods, they heard the baying of dogs and the yells of goblins.  Caelin, Brandie, and Tracy climbed trees while Eric stashed the Barrys and loot behind a tree then stood his ground behind Aaron.  Five goblin dogs and three goblin wizards came pelting through the trees.  Eric and Aaron both got goblin dogs latched onto them.  Brandie sniped the dog on Eric, but the dog was already stuck.  Tracy cast Speak With Animals and started talking to the dog under her tree.  Caelin cast Magic Missile and split the three missiles to three targets and didn't kill any of them and was not happy about it.  She also used her dragon breath to kill the dog under her tree.  Aaron failed multiple times to do anything and the goblins in front of Eric and Aaron doused them with bottles of smelly liquid.  Brandie killed a goblin climbing her tree, Eric beat the goblin in front of him to death with his quarterstaff, and the goblin on Aaron cast Witch Bolt on Aaron and dropped him to three hit points.  Aaron used Lay on Hands on himself to not die, Caelin jumped out of her tree and clubbed the goblin on Aaron to death.  Tracy convinced the remaining three dogs that they were all friends, so she has three goblin dogs following her, and they figured out the massage technique to un-clench the dogs' jaws when they clamp shut.

And that was that.  They got to level two, and we get to pick up next Friday for more mayhem and chaos.  The party has grown by three goblin beartrap dogs and taxidermized chimera heads, and is now five...beings strong.  We'll see how it goes, but it's going to be nothing but ridiculous and entertaining.

The end.

Shameless Plugs and Rambling

So, I've been mentioned on a podcast, which is cool.  Eric (one of my players who I haven't played with yet and hopefully will this coming Friday) has a podcast called Two Nerds with his roommate and friend, and Brandie (his wife and another one of my players who I haven't played with yet and will this coming Friday) guest stars on it.  Here's the link to the episode where they talk about their first impressions of 5th Edition and mention my game and blog.  Here's another link to their newest blog about D&D edition wars which is fun because they actually like and have played 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition D&D and have played all of them a lot and have good opinions based on actual play.  Anyways, shameless plug aside, they're cool, and I look forward to the second actual session of my game which will hopefully be this coming Friday.

I'm mostly blogging, because last week all my carefully-planned-for-maximum-plot-and-fun plot went completely pear shaped.  In retrospect, I should have figured.  I haven't seen a plot go well in a sandbox-ish game in pretty much forever.  Also, my best friend, Caelin, is too much like me to let anybody get on a plot train (and I literally had a plot train that she got people off of) despite the fact that I thought since she was new I'd be able to pull it over on her.  I was wrong, I admit it, I wasn't super attached to my plot, and now have retooled things now that I know how my players are motivated.

When you literally have 2/3 of your players just say "nope" to your plot...

In the past week or so, Caelin and Aaron have both been talking D&D with me quite a bit.  Both have been bitten by the D&D bug.  Aaron has been writing extensive backstory for Dagarkin, his Hill Dwarf Paladin, and has been thinking about how all the items in his packs came into his possession.  He's even given the random trinket he rolled (a pair of bone dice with skulls on the 6 face) a full on backstory and tied a young, Half Elf, Cleric NPC into his backstory.  Aaron is the player who is easy to hook in, because he's excited about the narrative, is a team player, and has already provided my (unknowingly) with story hooks to keep him with the party.  Caelin has been saying that she is excited about having adventures, and, after briefly talking to her about some aspects of the campaign world, she is super excited about visiting a certain location involving a lot of magic and bees that may or may not be a "vacation" destination for the party. She seems to be motivated by seeing and getting neat stuff.  As long as she gets to see and get neat stuff, I think she'll be easy to keep on track.

Tracy is the one I'm having a hard time pinning down.  She's the player I know the least, the quietest player, but also the one who has had the most out of the box thinking thus far.  Tracy at least has the shining grace of going (mostly) with the flow.  Of course, I also am going to have Brandie and Eric playing for the first time with us this coming Friday, meaning I have to get a good grasp on their play styles, because I've never played with either of them before.  That's the blessing and curse of playing with an all new group; I have fresh perspective, but I also have no clue what exactly makes them all tick.  I do have fun plot ideas to tie Eric, Aaron, and Caelin's characters together, and Brandie's Gnome Rogue will likely fit spectacularly into the running chaos that is Caelin and Tracy.

Chaos! Goblins! Smashy-Smash! D&D!

Today I DMed 5th Edition D&D for three brand new Roleplayers.  Brandie was, unfortunately, sick and Eric had to work, so both had to miss the first true session of my game.  That left me with Aaron, Caelin, and Tracy who have never actually played pen and paper RPGs before.  They're all interesting, fun, creative people, but I had no clue how this would all go, especially since I had only planned a bare bones session (as I usually do), I'd never DMed 5th Edition before, and I'm out of practice DMing in general.

I spent a large portion of this session mentally in the "what I  usually do" position.

Luckily, the three of them handled the game like old pros, i.e. they trashed my plans, mostly ignored the plot, murdered stuff, caused mayhem, and have already burned down a house.  I should have never worried about making the plot grab their attention.  I should probably not have had a plot, honestly, although it gave Aaron something to do and reasons to be places since he's playing the only character who is not completely out for themselves.  Caelin and Tracy are both playing Chaotic Neutral, heavy on the Chaotic Selfish, which immediately means that forcing them onto the plot train is similar to herding cats.  I shall adjust my tactics accordingly...  We finished up the last tidbits of character creation from last week that we didn't get to, specifically rolling trinkets and making sure everyone's modifiers were in all the right places.

They started off in a small town on the back end of nowhere.  Rumors had circulated that the high priest of the country had prophesied that some indistinct bad thing was going to happen.  Around one in the afternoon on a random day, silver flames appeared over the heads of all three characters and several other people , and Aaron, playing a dwarven paladin, was in the local church when it happened.  It was explained to him that the high priest had indeed predicted doom and had sacrificed himself to cast a spell to mark those whose destinies were entwined with that doom.  As  the local priests explained to Aaron, however, the now dead high priest had been a bit senile and had misworded the spell so that it literally marked every single person who was tied up in the coming events.  That ended up being a lot of people, so the church was rounding them all up, shipping them to the capitol, and sorting out the mess from there.

As part of the church and as a lawful good paladin, Aaron went along with said plan.  Chaotic selfish Caelin and Tracy balked when approached by a paladin and a priest in a bar and asked to come with the clergy on a matter of "national importance."  I quickly realized that I was going to have problems and told them they would be compensated in a monetary fashion for their time.  That got them going after Caelin (the dragonborn wizard) spoke with her weasel familiar and decided that they were comfortable with leaving and Tracy failed her stealth roll and Aaron prevented her from getting away.  They were loaded onto a train along with about 30 other people who were marked with these (slowly fading) silver flames over their heads and settled in for a long ride.

Their train car had the young half elf priest from earlier, a few hill dwarves, prissy elf rangers, and a female human bard who I described as a bad mix of Sarah Mclachlan and John Mayer who Caelin decided to hit on.  They also went around the table and described their characters and gave their characters' names (which Caelin rolled randomly, because she found out Aaron did and had just been calling green dragonborn wizard Madame Vastra until that point).  That delayed the game for a few minutes while Tracy googled tiefling pictures to figure out what her skin color was and Caelin looked up dragonborn pictures.  Tracy is now a bluish silver tiefling with silvery hair and violet eyes.  Aaron's dwarf is a total ginger with ruddy cheeks.  Caelin's character has a bearskin cape and giant scaly boobs, and her weasel familiar does not have a name and is just called "Weasel."  Also, a group of weasels is called a sneak, confusion, or boogle.  

Yes, that Madame Vastra

Those little introductions out of the way, we continued to the point where the train stopped for the evening at a small elvish outpost along the train tracks.  The priests got off and told everyone to wait. They were gone for a really long time, and Caelin and Tracy became restless and bored.  They decided to get off the train and find out what was happening, Aaron tried to stop them, and they told him that they needed to take the weasel outside to let it go to the bathroom and that weasel urine was terrible and that he didn't want to clean it out of the carpet.  He had none of it, Tracy tried to cast charm person on him, Aaron made his save, caught her, and then Caelin just let the weasel run off and she and Tracy said "oh well, we need to catch it now" and left the train anyways.  Aaron followed to babysit.

They followed the weasel to a house in the elvish outpost where some elves were conferring with the perturbed priests.  Caelin barged right in demanding to know what was going on with Aaron on her heels and Tracy peeping through a window, and all of the party caught a glimpse of an illusion map of the country with a giant dark cloud of evil blackness where the capitol was supposed to be.  Then the weasel made a stealth check and took a magic crystal off the table without people noticing and dispelled the illusion.  They got the priests to give them the full rundown of what was going on, and then were informed that they weren't going to the capitol because a rift in reality had overlayed the area with one of the "lower planes" and the capitol may or may not be there anymore.

Caelin and Tracy said fuck this job.  Offering to double the money did not work in keeping them there, and Caelin stormed off down the train tracks back home, Tracy ran off into the forest, and Aaron followed Tracy trying to beat some sense into her that the evil planar overlay was spreading and she'd have to deal with it eventually.  Tracy decided the fastest way to ditch a dwarf in full plate mail was to climb a tree and jump treetop to treetop outside of his line of vision and succeeded in getting away.  I made one last ditch effort to get Caelin back on the plot train by having Tanya the Sarah Mclachlan bard run after her and ask what she was doing.  After telling the bard that part of the country blew up, she rebuffed any and all sexual advances, crushed the bard's spirits, was told that there were trolls in the area, and left for reals.  She and Tracy climbed separate trees in separate parts of the forest, tied themselves to branches, and fell asleep like Katniss Everdeen.

Caelin was plagued by mosquitoes and "one sharp pointy bite that woke her up before going back to sleep."  Aaron dealt with the bard telling everyone else on the train that the capitol blew up and everyone was going to die (thanks to hyperbole and Caelin not telling the bard any of the correct facts of what was going on), slept for a few hours, then was woken by the young priest and told that the "dragon lady" had been captured by goblins and the tiefling was sleeping in a tree above the goblin camp.  With a few of the local elves, Aaron and the NPCs ran off to the rescue.  Tracy woke up to hear goblins yelling and being goblins, looked down, and realized she'd gone treetop to treetop and camped right in the middle of a goblin camp.  Caelin woke up with a headache and realized she was trussed up and the last mosquito bite had been a sleep dart.  Her weasel was nowhere in sight, and she immediately jumped to the conclusion that I had made the goblins eat her weasel.  

There was also a goblin king sitting on a makeshift throne of random odds and ends and he had all of Caelin's stuff.  Tracy slipped lower in the branches and cast Entangle on the goblins below.  Caelin's weasel made an appearance and chewed through her ropes as Tracy cast balls of fire from Produce Flames at the entangled goblins below.  Aaron showed up with the young priest NPC and three elf rangers and waded in with a warhammer.  He squashed six goblins.  Caelin gathered up her stuff with her weasel's help, took a blow from a club, and ran off.  Tracy threw a few bits of fire, then took off jumping branch to branch again.  Caelin was chased down by the priest NPC who healed her before taking several thrown rocks to the head and going down.  Caelin used her green dragonborn poison breath to melt two goblins, Tracy failed an acrobatics check to jump tree limb to tree limb and fell on Caelin.  They decided they would both run away from the fight together, and Caelin lit a goblin hut on fire with Chromatic Orb, and they ran off into the woods.

Aaron was left in a goblin camp full of burning huts, dead bodies, and general disarray.  The girls are running through the wilderness.  Caelin's weasel had stolen a few shiny baubles from the goblin's treasure trove under the throne, so I rolled on the trinket table and she got Michael Jackson's white sequined glove (seriously, it's on the table on page 160.  it's item 35).  All of them were quite involved, after the first few minutes of explanation, and I never really felt that I had to entertain them as I occasionally feel with new players.  They all caught on to roleplaying and most of the rules quite quickly.  

Weeeeeeeeasel!

So, all my plot to get people on a train and take them to exotic locations and have them do heroic things are completely down the tubes, and everyone is now wandering around in the middle of nowhere in the woods and a rift to the lower planes is open somewhere else where they can't fix things and none of them really seem to care (except Aaron).  Tracy seemed excited to find out that Speak With Animals means that she can talk to Caelin's weasel, and Caelin is excited that her weasel steals stuff.  Aaron's paladin seems exasperated, and now I have to figure out how to work in Brandie and Eric's characters next time we play and plan things for them to do that don't involve saving the world or the greater good or avenging fallen allies or anything that is even remotely altruistic, because those motivations obviously don't work.  I shouldn't have expected anything else.  

First Impressions of 5th Edition

Dungeons & Dragons has now officially released a 5th edition, and I finally get to play again.  Or DM, actually.  I'm DMing, and I have five actual real life players who I've never roleplayed with before (because my old group did that annoying thing where they grow up and pursue professional stuff and don't have any time anymore and moved and stuff).  Even better, two of my five players, Caelin and Aaron, have never done pen and paper roleplaying before, although the number of videogame hours they've collectively logged make my life look practically Amish...  A third, Tracy, has only rolled up one character and messed around with D&D once.  The other two, Brandie and Eric, are a couple of old hands.  Caelin has been my best friend and general partner in crime for years (since our Sophomore years of college), Brandie and Aaron are my coworkers, and Eric and Tracy are Brandie and Aaron's significant others.  Caelin also brought Aragorn Son of Arathorn the King of Gondor who is her adorable and extraordinarily friendly little dog.  He didn't play, but he liked the people.

Because I'm a roleplayer and we bitch and moan, despite the fact that this art is awesome, there should be an actual dragon on this cover.

Brandie and Eric, being long term gamers, ended up buying the 5th edition book the day prior and mostly making characters beforehand.  Having a second book was awesome, because with three newbie players, there was a lot of reading that needed to happen, despite the fact that I printed off a class/race/gear/background cheat sheets for me to read off to expedite the process.  The book, despite being really pretty and containing awesome stuff, is not awesomely laid out or indexed and does not lend itself well to trying to shepherd groups of people who don't know what a Tiefling or Warlock is through character creation.  More on that later.  Brandie drunk texted me through her character creation process the night before, and Eric had me on Facebook after he evidently wrested the book from her and her wine glass.  Brandie made a Forest Gnome Rogue with a Charlatan background.  Eric made something mysterious and stuff with an Entertainer background that only he and I know the details of, because his character's gender, class, and race are all shrouded in shawls, heavy clothes, and a turban.  He left a lot of background stuff up to me, and I plan on exploiting the crap out of it.

Aaron had talked to me previously and was pretty set on playing a Dwarf Paladin, which was awesome since I pretty much just had to flip to the right pages, and getting him through character creation was pretty easy.  He settled on an Acolyte background, we filled in some proficiency bubbles, he got a warhammer, and off we went.  Tracy and Caelin were a little more time intensive, because while Tracy had made a character before, it was in something that sounded a lot like AD&D, Caelin knew pretty much nothing about all the classes and races and backgrounds and whether she should be rolling things or not.  After reading through a lot of stuff, Caelin ended up playing a Dragonborn Wizard with the Outlander background and a weasel familiar.  Tracy is playing a Charlatan Tiefling Druid with some very aggro spell choices and a bunch of javelins.  

This is Aragorn.  He will play Caelin's weasel familiar.

Backgrounds, races, and classes, I feel, are really self explanatory, easy to figure out, and easy to plot out on character sheets in the new edition.  While it took us about three hours to make characters, it was mostly because we were explaining things, chatting, eating tasty food that I cooked (and doughnuts that Brandie and Eric brought), and snuggling a puppy that was very happy he had multiple people around him.  The only part of character creation that seemed odious was spell selection for our casters (who just so happen to be two of our newbies).  The rest of the book isn't awesomely laid out, but it's done well enough that finding things isn't a problem.  The spell section really really really needs a short description of what each spell does right next to it.  Having to page to the actual entry to figure out what some of the (very complex or poorly named) spells do is a touch annoying.  Pathfinder does it, and their PHB was printed long before 5th Edition was even in the works. The index is also kinda annoying. It has several entries that refer you to other index entries instead of just giving you a page number.

That complaint aside (as it is kinda minor, all things said and done), the system seems quite fun, easy, and easy to teach. Most of the new players already have a good idea of what their characters can do already (although I'm printing up a sheet of what their spells do for Caelin and Tracy, because they have a couple spells with different modes such as Thaumaturgy).  We didn't actually play though, mostly because of time constraints and us taking our time with character creation.  We're having our first session on Labor day coming up, so I look forward to putting them through their paces.  I do find it entertaining that three of the five characters (Caelin's Dragonborn Wizard, Tracy's Tiefling Druid, and Brandie's Gnome Rogue) are chaotic neutral and Aaron is playing his Dwarf Paladin as lawful good despite being told he doesn't have to.  I have plot hooks and stuff to make up for that disparity in the party though at least, and I have quite a bit of DM experience, so hopefully they don't kill each other.  I highly doubt they will.

Exclusionary Culture, Leviathan, and Why More Girls Don't Roleplay

This is about to get serious.  The rolepaying hobby is a prime example of a self destructive industry.  Roleplayers are an exclusionary culture..  As it often does, Cracked.com had an article that made me think.  The author mentions roleplaying as, "It's the scorched earth method of social interaction, which is what happens when aggressively antisocial people are forced to be around each other for an entire evening."  Why are gamers viewed so negatively?  I'm introverted, but not aggressively antisocial.  Now, I've played with some aggressively antisocial people.  Dear God, I've played with them.  Public gaming can be extremely scary, and there are catpiss men, B.O. barons, and creepy people who use RPGs as their own personal way of fulfilling their fantasies that should not be aired.  However, most of the people I play with are relatively well socialized.  Now, we're weird, but functional members of society with friends, jobs, and good social standing.  Some people I've played with don't even come across as nerdy.  Some of the best roleplayers I've ever played with you'd never think they even gamed.  I've sat across from youth pastors, popular high school cheerleaders, football jocks, and rednecks.  From my experience, roleplaying transcends labels and cliques.  However, it's perceived as a pit of the creepiest, women hating misanthropes.  Many people who would probably love the hobby are driven away, because they do not want to associating themselves with neckbearded mouthbreathing basement dwellers who smell like funky cheese and desperation.

I have played with far worse than this.

One of the big reasons that gamer stereotypes are allowed to perpetuate is that it is extremely hard (or in some cases almost prohibited) to turn people away from public gaming, i.e. the most visible form of gaming. If you sit down at a folding table in the corner of a comic shop, God only knows who's going to sit down with you.  Most likely, you will meet one of the players who can't find a group to play with for very obvious reasons, and, if you're at a public space gaming, often it's because you've put out an open call for players and it's considered rude to tell someone you don't want to hang out with them because their breath is toxic and they haven't bathed in two weeks.  So they sit there, and when your normal, well adjusted friend comes to a game to see what it's about, they get a less than pretty picture of what roleplaying is like.  I've had some pretty funky fellow players when I gamed at comic shops.  I've had half deaf players who practically screamed what they were saying, people who tried to enact rape fantasies at my table, and even a guy who was way into bestiality (like, he got arrested for it and everything) and so were his characters.  

This will be important in a moment.

Thomas Hobbes wrote a book called Leviathan which was published in 1651.  It's a book on society and government that I had to read bits of in some of my college courses.  One of the segments that really struck me was that a ruler was a composite of his people (see image above), meaning that if there is sickness or dissent in the body, the whole thing is affected.  For purposes of my argument, the RPG hobby is the ruler, and all the roleplayers are the body.  The body excises unwell parts, meaning that for new people to be brought into the hobby, the less presentable specimens of gamer should not be presented as the norm.  I'm not saying completely shun people.  Just remember, it's a game, if you're not having fun, don't play with the people who aren't fun.  Even more important, don't inflict the not fun people on newbies.  Roleplaying is a hobby that more people should experience.  Don't scare potential roleplayers off.

A huge attitude common in the industry that scares off many potential roleplayers is a chauvinistic and/ or bigoted attitude.  Now, chainmail bikinis, hypersexualized women in RPG and fantasy art, and slut shaming have been beaten to death in discussion, but they still happen.  Fantasy worlds are typically misogynistic places, women are usually identified as second class citizens or pidgeonholed into bitch or whore roles.  Even in settings that don't fall into those pitfalls (Rokugan from Legend of the Five Rings comes to mind) still have to contend with the actual players.  Never in my life have I heard more overtly misogynistic comments than at a gaming table.  Every woman referred to as a bitch?  Check.  Casual rape comments?  Check.  Continual objectification of women?  Check.  Poorly played female stereotypes?  Check.  Several of my female friends who have played with even my most well behaved groups have remarked about it and been obviously uncomfortable, and by scaring off women, we are scaring off 50% of the world population.  Many of the most entertaining roleplayers I've ever played with are women, and if the general population of the RPG hobby would curb their tongues a bit more, people probably wouldn't wonder why so few girls play RPGs.

The same thing goes for the LGBTQ community.  If anything, roleplaying games and settings are less friendly to non-traditionally straight roles, players, and characters than they are to women.  So is the gaming table.  Forget that women's rights issues are more commonly accepted than LGBTQ right issues, the common slang is just flat out damaging.  If I had a nickel for every time I heard "that's so gay," or a gaybashing reference during a game, I wouldn't have college loans to deal with, and most of my gaming in the last five or so years has been with an extremely accepting group of friends.  

Especially considering that even if gay characters are mentioned, they look and act like this...

Roleplaying is a very vulnerable hobby and needs to be played from a place of safety and security.  It's a game about opening up and having fun and being goofy and somehow expressing a side of yourself that you probably never reveal in public (seriously, most of us have some Barbarian in us somewhere).  If there is a fear of harsh critique or even mockery (especially when it does not come from friendly jibing), there will be less fun had by all, because nobody will be able to truly let go and experience the game and immerse themselves.  

And let's face it, when this face is making fun of you from behind a DM screen, nobody is having fun.

Even worse, if you can get a new, possibly non-traditional players past the bigotry, meanness, awkwardness, and get them comfortable in a gaming chair, there are the rules to deal with.  Games like Pathfinder, GURPS, and even several editions of old faithful Dungeons & Dragons are almost prohibitively difficult for non-gamers and new gamers to pick up.  Not a lot of people have the mindset, attention span, expectations, or even necessary math skills to calculate Base Attack Bonus, remember attacks of opportunity, remember THAC0, and consciously deal with Force Point Economy.  Number crunching and rules lawyering are very few peoples' idea of fun, but experiencing a fantasy world and immersing themselves fully into it are.  This is a gigantic failing of the industry and a way that it alienates itself from new members.  Sure, there are games that are far more intuitive than industry mainstays, but they're more niche games, and don't have the exposure and brand appeal to expand public perception of the industry or have the table time to show new players a different aspect of how games can be played.

Why yes, let's play a "simple" game of Pathfinder.

There is, however, a solution.  One that will take people out of their cliques, require some work, be uncomfortable for a while, and probably seem like it's not worth it for a while.  The solution is to bypass the smelly nerds at the comic store.  Let them play with each other.  Be the Jehovah's Witness of gamers.  Find new players, play with them .  Find a new group, and go outside your introvert comfort zone.  Zak S of Playing D&D With Porn Stars fame is a prime example of this.  He grabbed porn stars and strippers from his work to make a group.  Now, he lucked into some former gamers (and more importantly, some disenfranchised former gamers), and so can you.  When you grab new players, play something simple and/or make it as easy as possible for your new group to jump into action with a minimum of frustration.  

My friend and DM, Jacob, volunteers at his old high school's band camp that happens to be hosted at a church that is right next door to my parents' house.  One night of band camp a few years ago, he called me to come and DM a game of Pathfinder for him, his friend Joe (who I'd played with before), and two of the band camp kids.  It was...memorable.  Immediately the rules were a problem.  The new players barely grasped them, and they really didn't understand their characters' abilities.  The Rogue tried to cast a spell, the wizard tried to swing a sword, I had to pull punches not to kill them and they realized it, and it sucked the fun.  Jacob and Joe were playing very vulgar and extremely violent characters who just steamrolled everything, and there were no approachable female roles for the girl playing to approach.  It was a mess.  Now, we had fun, but one of the players said she probably wouldn't play again, and the other player was awkward to play with for quite some time, just because he took the confusion, number crunch, and immaturity of that original Pathfinder game to heart for quite some time. 

Forget that there really wasn't a lot of women bashing in that game.  I made a few blunders, and the first one was bringing full blown Pathfinder complete with Ultimate Magic and the Advanced Player's Guide.  Character creation took forever, because I gave the players an overwhelming list of options to choose from instead of saying "just make something up."  It wasn't a friendly first taste.  It was overwhelming, overstimulating, and uncouth.  Last summer, Jacob got a few more kids to play at the same band camp, but this time they played Hunter: the Reckoning.  That game grabbed several roleplayers who had never even considered gaming before and quite a few of them have become real gamers since then.  I attribute this success mainly to Hunter being an easier access point for most of the players.  They were already comfortable, because they were playing with friends, and it was far easier for them to make up a "normal person" than to pick a fantasy race, and the modern day vibe is easier to relate to.  Also, the Old World of Darkness dice pool system of Attribute+Stat is extremely easy to master.

Plus it has a one page character sheet.  I love one page character sheets.

In fact, the system and themes of Hunter brought that group together, and several people in that group were hesitant to try other systems, because they liked Hunter so much (Vampire: the Masquerade was an easy transition, however).  We ran another one shot a few weeks later, and the newbies showed up excited and already knowing how to fill out 90% of their character sheets, knowing the Hunter Creeds, and understanding exactly how to figure out what they needed to roll.  It was magical, because they threw themselves into their roles, acted in character, and a few even affected special voices.  If time constraints weren't such an issue, I'd play with most of those kids weekly.  

My normal group is made up of veteran roleplayers, all of whom are GMs in their own right.  I find that group fighting with staleness, because we've been there, done that, seen it, and tend to snark at each other more often than not possibly due to boredom with the game.  We tend to over-analyze, try too hard for uniqueness, and not embrace actually playing the game.  We've had several scheduling issues with that group too, and I think I may embrace the whole "Dungeons & Dragons Witness" thing and find people who haven't played and immerse them into a hobby I've enjoyed for over half my life.  I'll find people who know each other, who are comfortable with each other, and take the character sheets and have them roll dice and have fun.  I can do the math faster than them, and, over time, they can start understanding it better, and I can hand them the mechanics piece by piece.  We'll probably start with something really easy, too, like the New World of Darkness or Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures.  Y'know, things that drip with flavor and not with rules.  

I'm thinking it'll loosen it up a bit if it drips with wine too...

An idea I've seen bandied around roleplaying circles recently is a player/GM contract.  In its simplest form, it's a set of expectations for what everyone involved expects out of each other during the game.  Some games such as Whispering Road, even include a version of setting up such a contract in game creation.  It's an excellent way to gauge what people find uncomfortable and what will really excite them.  For new players, this can be key.  If I can get a checklist of what will hook them right into the game an hobby, you bet I'm going to use the hell out of it.  It will help me inform the pacing and content of the game.  If someone writes "no sex, please," that immediately means I'm probably going to phase out that band of succubi that I was thinking about adding later on.  If someone really really wants to kill tarantula people, that means I get to include tarantula people, probably sooner than later.  As with most ventures, communication at the outset is key for success.  Also, be nice to people and thoughtful of their feelings.

It's something that we nerds, for all our preaching about being inclusive because we were bullied and blah, blah, blah seem to be pretty bad about...