AD&D Question - Weapon Specialization

We've recently converted our D&D campaign to 1st Edition AD&D, and one of the questions is whether we should use Weapon Specialization.  Specialization was published in Unearthed Arcana, and is presented as an optional rule in OSRIC.  It was certainly carried over into 2E and beyond through feats.

Pro's:
Specialization beefs up the fighter quite a bit, if you think they need a patch; +1 to hit, +2 damage, and extra attacks.

Con's:
Without specialization, fighters are free to pick up most weapons and use them equally well (unless you're using proficiency slots, which limits the pool a bit).  Once specialization is introduced, the fighters tend to use only their specialized weapon for the rest of the game (reducing overall choice).  Most everyone picks longsword.

Previously, we were using a "weapon-by-class" house rule that gave the fighters equal damage regardless of weapon, and that was pretty awesome, fighters ended up using all sorts of weapons and were much more opportunistic.  But all house rules have been repealed since we've converted to AD&D to level set again.  One of my goals with this AD&D experiment is to try and play as By-the-Book as possible*.  Allowing weapon specialization would probably be the first house rule.

Let me know how you feel about 1st edition's Weapon Specialization.  It seems like a good time for a new poll, too.


*So far, we've only had two problems to discuss.  In Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion, alignment restrictions on the paladin's companions are looser, and so a druid henchman was introduced by one of the other players.  An AD&D paladin, by-the-book , won't support a Neutral NPC in the party long term.  Our house rule will be that as long as the party's quests are supporting Law and Good, the paladin will accept the presence of the druid as a contributor on those quests.

The other one is the awesome BX Staff of Healing, which doesn't exist in AD&D.  We're using it "as is".  The AD&D Staff of Curing is significantly different.

Target Rich Horror Gaming

Blogthulhu continues!  I've been looking at how to structure a Cthulhu campaign and enable some of the free-form sandbox play we enjoy so much in old school D&D and avoid the linear rail road.  The sandbox style is one where the players have a high degree of choice and agency, there's no formulated story, and the events of the game unfold primarily through player interaction with the setting.  Sandbox is far from the only successful style of play in horror gaming; at some point I'll take a look at some of the pros and cons of the famous published rail road campaigns in the genre, but for us, sandbox is the style we prefer.  For the D&Ders, most of this idea should also carry over into weird horror gaming in any historical setting.

Previous installments of the series have declared an overarching metaphor for horror gaming (points of darkness), discussed the difference between active and passive plot hooks, and then argued for the importance of an investigative organization to provide a campaign framework.  A framework solves common problems in Cthulhu gaming, like access to plot hooks, replacement characters and continuity, and a lightweight approach to getting new characters in the game without a ton of back story.

Now let's look at how choice defines sandbox play.  There are two scales of choice that are important to me when enabling player agency - at the campaign level and at the adventure level.  On the larger scale, there's the question of which adventure the characters are going to pursue; when they've made an adventure choice, I then want to make sure it's structured to support player planning, different strategies and roads to victory, and variability of outcomes.

Let's use a simple example from the D&D space.  The ubiquitous elf, dwarf and a cleric, at the local tavern, learn there are bandits in the nearby woods, a weird hermit stalks the north woods, a dangerous swamp lies nearby with rumors of reptilian marauders, and beyond the nearby hills, the legendary Caves of Chaos await.  This is that top level of choice - what will they do?  Once the party makes the decision on which rumor to investigate, the actual adventure site offers many different approaches to how the group resolves their exploration.

In horror gaming that first level choice emerges via the plot hook.  The first hurdle in porting a similar sandbox approach to Cthulhu gaming is to provide a "target rich plot hook" environment - the equivalent of deciding between stopping the goblins in the woods or heading out to the ruined moat house.

The nice thing about the organizational frameworks from the last post is that the Keeper has a venue for introducing options to the players and giving them the same kind of experience.  "According to these news bits from our clipping service, there's an art gallery in New York City displaying a series of paintings from that notorious artist, and there was a ritual murder in Central Park last week.  It could be nothing.  The other item that's come in off the wire is this announcement of a new fraternal order recruiting in Boston - anyone care to join the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight?"

A risk with an organizational frame work is to provide real choice, and not make these plot hooks directives from an NPC boss in the hierarchy.  One criticism I have with Delta Green is that "missions" tend to be presented as immediate orders from superiors - pretty much the opposite of what makes player planning in a sandbox fun.  The default setting in Delta Green assumed the players are rank and file agents that take orders; in my preferred style of play, that would be adjusted.  There would still be some reactive, urgent missions, but players would also be able evaluate intelligence and make decisions on longer term cases to pursue.  It's a simple but important switch to flip.

A nice opportunity emerges regarding plot hooks that are passed over; other NPCs in the organization may investigate those plot hooks instead, and that can add some interesting verisimilitude later on.  "Remember how we sent Doctor Horton to investigate that Hermetic Order in Boston?  He's stopped phoning in reports… we may have a situation."

So one key component to this style of campaign is to have an input funnel that regularly presents plot hooks to the player characters to create that target rich environment.  Looking at some of the sample organizations from the previous article, it could be projects or expeditions presented by the Miskatonic faculty - "Should we outfit a voyage to the Yucatan seeking the legendary crystal skull, or pursue this rumor that the tomb of Nephren Ka might have been found in Giza?"  It could take the form of intelligence briefings gathered by Project Covenant, Delta Green, or The Laundry.  The Gilchrist Trust might use a news clipping service as they try to find positive evidence of the supernatural on their globe trotting search.  The Bookhounds scour auctions and estate sale posts seeking forbidden tomes.

One interesting variant to the plot hook funnel is a true info-dump.  When I was thinking about a similar campaign in the D&D space last summer (The Library of de la Torre), the idea was that the characters could inherit the journal or library of a recently deceased adventurer who had made a career of exploring occult mysteries and fighting monsters.  I saw this character as an analog to Howard's Solomon Kane, but you could port this type of idea into Cthulhu gaming just as easily.  I hear there's a famous Lovecraft story that used the same technique… it's on the tip of my tongue… Call of… Cthul-something or other.  Kidding aside, don't lose sight that The Call of Cthulhu story is essentially an info-dump of the memoirs of a deceased Lovecraftian investigator, and the protagonist sifts through the material and then launches his own investigations.  It's the epitome of the target rich investigative setting.

A published adventure following this approach is The Armitage Files; the campaign dumps a lot of information into the player's hands at discrete intervals, giving them massive freedom to determine how to proceed.  Masks of Nyarlathotep does this as well.

You may be thinking, Beedo, are you out of your mind?  If I give the group multiple plot hooks every time we start a new adventure, doesn't that mean I need to generate all those adventures?  I have a life outside of gaming, you mad monkey!  I'm well aware of balancing sandbox constraints, and I've referred to it in the past as the sandbox triangle.

It's a fair criticism, and I have a few suggestions.  The first one is a really simple Pro Tip:  Don’t present plot hooks at the beginning of a gaming session!  Present the next briefing or opportunity to review leads at the end of a session, or in between sessions, so the group can discuss the pros and cons of different leads and make their choice ahead of time, giving you ample time to prepare for the following week without having to over prepare.  It's a fair trade-off for giving them so much freedom to pick their adventures.

Another recommendation is to leverage the massive back catalog of published adventures for Call of Cthulhu.  Chaosium has been producing collections of short adventures for 30 years, they're all compatible with the current rules, and most are available in PDF.  Couple that with short adventures from Miskatonic River Press, Pelgrane Press, and The Unspeakable Oath, and you've got a ton of material to intersperse with your own creations - just file off the plot hooks, which are typically passive plot hooks, and add your own that would bring them to the attention of an active investigative unit.  There were some additional magazine publishers as well - The Black Seal and Worlds of Cthulhu - but I never collected them.  The Black Seal was focused on the modern UK and I wasn't collecting when Worlds of Cthulhu was printed.  I'm hoping Worlds gets converted to PDF some time.  If you read those, let me know what you think of them.

Alright, that's enough for now.  I'll see where the Cthulhu muse takes me next, either a review of The Armitage Files (since I've mentioned it a few times now) or on towards open-ended adventure structures.  Ciao!

Book Review: The Mathematics of Magic, The Complete Enchanter Series

About the time I started blogging, a little over a year ago, there was a movement towards rereading the classic fantasy works that inspired Gygax and Arneson for making Dungeons & Dragons.  These have been listed out most famously in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide Appendix N.  You'll often see lists identified online by one gamer or another as 'my version of Appendix N'.  I've aspired to read through my own list as well, and finally got the chance to finish another one - The Mathematics of Magic, a collection of novellas by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.

The protagonist for this series is Harold Shea, a clinical psychiatrist who discovers a way to slip from our dimension to various alternate realities where the worlds of earthly literature and mythology exist as real places - he visits mythic Ireland and Finland, the world of the Norse gods, the realms of literary creations like The Faerie Queene or Orlando Furiousa (The Madness of Roland).  Other realms that are visited include Kublai Khan's Xanadu, the Land of Oz, and Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom.

If you like stories where modern characters either travel back in time or find themselves in a fantastic realm, you'll appreciate the central conceit for each of these.  Harold Shea is brainy and bold, and constantly has to match wits with dangerous "heroes" that are both stronger and a bit homicidal.  Protagonists that seem to be idealized stand-ins for the author are oft referred to as a "Mary Sue", and Shea falls into that space.

One aspect of the stories that will be fairly interesting to gamers is this; Harold Shea is a fencer, and many of the challenges involve using fencing styles against other styles and armor.  At the end of the collection, there are a few interesting essays from the 1960's debating whether fencing would work in other times and places, including various field tests by the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism).  There's also a letter by a young General Patton, then only a lieutenant, discussing sword techniques for the pre-World War I era army, and revising army doctrine around slashing and stabbing.  Considering the frequent arguments in the blogosphere regarding shields in D&D, table top gamers would find the essays quite interesting.

The writing in the Shea stories isn't fantastic, but many of the fantasy books I've read from the 40's through 60's don't light the world on fire with their prose, so take that as you will.  The primary reason I found the collection enjoyable was because of the author's interpretation of those various mythic and literary realms traversed by the characters.  For instance, I've never read The Kalevala, but Harold's adventures in mythic Finland are intriguing and I could see myself adding that to the reading list.  Same with mythic Ireland, and the stories of Cuchulainn bounding over the turf in a chariot and chopping off heads to mount on his wall of trophies.  I would recommend reading one of the novellas, going off and reading something else, reading the next one, and so on.  500+ pages of Harold Shea straight through started to feel like a grind.

Inspirations for Gaming
The Harold Shea stories are often held out, alongside Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, as inspiration for the magic system used in Dungeons & Dragons.  I tend to think Vance's influence was primary, but Harold Shea does need to learn various verbal, somatic, and material components to perform his spells, and anyone who's played 1st Edition AD&D is familiar with those terms.  The magic in Shea's stories often uses theories of sympathetic or contagious magic, as well, which we see in the choice of material components in AD&D.

This book is likely the inspiration for the D&D green dragon; in the Norse tale, a dragon emerges from a cave and breathes poisonous, chlorine gas.  Other creatures I remember include cockatrices and griffins.  But most of the antagonists are the violent, homicidal "heroes" of myth and folklore.

So perhaps the most direct inspiration is on AD&D's Deities and Demigod's Cyclopedia.  The heroes and gods of Finnish, Irish, and Norse myth are featured in the book, along with some introductions to their mythic realms, and an enterprising game master could use the Deities book, along with the source materials and the staging in the Shea stories, to create a campaign built around traveling from one mythic realm to another.  Don't tell me that wouldn't be totally awesome.

Premature Evocation - Gothic Greyhawk Game 52

Player Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-7: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf F/MU 5/5: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-6: Mike
Shy, a Fighter-6:  JR
Leonidas the Paladin-5:  Nogal
Digit, the Elf Thief-7:  Z
Konstantine, Magic User-5: Smitty

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf Fighter-5
Grumble the Smug, Halfling Thief-7
Donavich, Cleric-4
Boris, Druid-4
Meatshield 1, Ranger-1
Meatshield 2, Ranger-1
Ireena, a Fighter - 5
Vlad the Inhaler, Magic User-1
Meatshield 3, Cleric-1
*Italicized characters are back in Barovia

If you read the bit earlier this week about My Big Mouth™, you already know about the Druid and his pet bear.  The druid finessed the party past an encounter with some hungry grizzly bears.  When they made camp later that night, I haughtily heckled pointed out to the druid that he could have used the Animal Friendship spell he memorized (not sure why he took it, otherwise).  The problem with shooting off your mouth in such a way is this; the party might remember they're loaded with Rangers, that Rangers are known to track things, like bears, and just because the druid forgot to use his I-Always-Wanted-A-Pet-Bear spell today, he wouldn’t forget to use it tomorrow.  After the Rangers guided him to the bear, of course, because I reminded him about the spell.

So now the Druid has a pet bear, and the player is quite happy about it.

Overall, they're still slogging through the mountains trying to find… something.  The adventure is to find THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH, but I think they're trying to find a valley of Gnomes, first.

(See what I did there?  I'm rereading AD&D and Gygax always capitalized D&D product names.  Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth:  Not Gygaxian.  LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH:  Totally Gygaxian.  This campaign is now totally Gygaxian.).

More interesting than the quest for Gnome Vegas was their fight with an army of hobgoblins.  It wasn't a big army, mind you, but more hobgoblins than you'd face in a dungeon - 70 or 80, something like that - archers, skirmishers, and lots and lots of pole arm wielders.  And not halberds, but military forks, glaives, guisarmes, and bill-guisarmes, in great detail, because this is Gygaxian!  The hobgoblins were camped along the side of the valley, and the party noticed thin wisps of smoke rising into the air when they were still a good distance down the valley.  A good portion of the remaining game time was spent with the players huddled over the table, intensely scrutinizing the hastily sketched map of the camp, the location of the cave, the deployment of the tents, disposition of the units, the pickets, and the archers.  The party huddled behind a  spur of boulders and rock-fall while the halfling scouted (with a ring of invisibility) and everyone else crouched and planned.  Isn't that the essence of a good gaming night - the scouting, sneaking, planning, plotting, using up resources, figuring out the perfect attack plan?  Good stuff.

They used Silence 15' magic to mask the approach of their armored guys and get them into position for a charge, while some of the unarmored guys quietly climbed into a position to rain magic down on the camp from an overlook.  Mister Moore opened up hostilities with the wand of fireballs, raining blasts across the camp over the course of a number of rounds; Constantine sent his one memorized fireball down on the camp, too.

Once the magic started flying, the fighters jumped up from where they were crouched behind an embankment, and started their charge across open ground, yelling and hollering.  The hobgoblins were scrambling to regroup after getting pounded by fireballs, but they had enough time to form a rank of pole arms against the charging fighters, and they inflicted massive damage on them - 20-30 points to each of them.  But once the fighters got past those blades, the hobgoblin line quickly collapsed under a vicious series of slashes.

The DM's other moment of almost-glory was when an overlooked group of hobgoblin archers piled out of some hidden tents and formed a squad to pepper Mister Moore with arrows.  8 hobgoblin archers, using AD&D's 2 shots per round, meant the unarmored Mister Moore had close to 16 arrows coming his way (a few went towards the nearby Grumble the Halfling).  But I had a disastrously bad run of d20 rolls, Mister Moore survived, and then he hit them with a fireball… in the FACE.   It was all over for the hobgoblins except for the crying.

So that was another spectacular victory for Team BK Inc., beating up a horde of 1 HD mooks (albet in style).  Now, about the title of the post.  We switched back to AD&D this game, and it's been a long time since we played with segments and casting times and that kind of stuff.  It was completely fun, and I loved pulling out those 1970's classic hardbacks.  But the players were disappointed spells were taking so long to resolve; they'd win the initiative, but the spell might not happen before the monsters acted.  Segments and casting times are a big change from BX's simplified approach.  And thus, the great punch line of the night was set up:

Konstantine (seriously):  "Mister's Moore's wand goes off so fast, it's faster than my magic!"
Mordecai:  "Yeah, isn't that what his hot NPC wife was saying the other week, Moore's wand goes off too fast?"
Forlorn:  "They have a term for that, you know; it's called Premature Evocation."

We could have ended the night happy right there.

Campaign Frameworks for Cthulhu Games

Cover image from The Armitage Files

I've been interrupting the regular stream of Dungeons & Dragons posts this year to bring more Cthulhu blogging, and my first big project has been to step through campaign structures and different approaches to launching campaigns.  I'm particularly interested in exploring ways to run investigative sandboxes to enable the kind of free-form, sandbox style I enjoy so much in D&D.  If you're wanting to run a weird horror D&D game in a mundane or historical world, these posts should offer ideas for that as well, since there's a lot of overlap with games like Cthulhu Dark Ages or Cthulhu Invictus.

Last week's entry, Points of Darkness for Horror Gaming, contrasted a horror setting with the typical D&D fantasy approach (points of light).  It emphasized the importance of plot hooks for engaging the characters;  I further separate plot hook approaches into "passive" or "active".

Passive plot hooks are related to the back story of the characters before the adventure:  "You are all gathered together as friends of  Important NPC™ Jackson Elias."  Or, "You receive a letter from your old friend, Henry Hancock, the African explorer, asking you to come to Scotland and help him at his current dig site…"  I have issues with the passive plot hook approach.  They trade on some pre-existing emotional connection between the player characters and the NPC.  While I expect players to buy into the general premise of the game, I don’t like having to tell them to feel a certain way towards an NPC so they have the right emotional resonance with the scenario.  That's not very old school.

The second issue with passive plot hooks is that once the scenario is initiated, there's no longer a credible reason for replacement characters.  One of the in-jokes in COC gaming involves a party narrowly escaping a TPK, needing replacement party members, and recruiting the waiter, the store clerk, the taxi driver - you get the idea.   Here's one caveat; while I dislike the passive plot hook approach for a campaign game, I recognize that it works well for one-shots and convention games; the Keeper can distribute pre-generated characters with appropriate backgrounds and push the game right onto the tracks.

This isn't a new problem.  There was an 80's publication that took a tongue-in-cheek approach to an organized group of Mythos busters (The Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society) but it wasn't until Pagan Publishing's Delta Green (1997) that a campaign setting outlining a comprehensive framework for investigations altered the face of Cthulhu gaming.  I consider myself an old timer, so I'll trace the evolution of these frameworks from Delta Green through the latest books I've seen published.

You might ask, what's the big deal?  Important characteristics of the investigative frameworks are that they provide built in objectives for the game, as well as solving the problem of credible replacement characters and campaign continuity.  The campaign now transcends the player character party and a TPK is no longer fatal.  The casual dramatists and authors in the group can still write their detailed character back stories, but the frameworks make it easier for everyone else to make their 15 minute character and start rolling the dice.

Delta Green
Delta Green is a (fictional) conspiracy within the United States government, to investigate and stop Mythos activities, and keep the existence of the Mythos horrors secret.  Players take on the roles of cross-departmental government agents who manage to use official cover, appropriations, and false orders to get involved with investigations that have alien or supernatural elements.  One guy could be in the ATF, someone else in the FBI, and so on.  It tends to feel a bit like The X-Files, badges and guns, with more hardware and spy tech (since it's an underground conspiracy communicating through back channels).

The most interesting part of the Delta Green setting is how other corrupt organizations have learned of the existence of Mythos magic, kept it secret, and attempted to wrest power from the supernatural by weaponizing  the Mythos.  It always goes horribly wrong.  The signature opponents in Delta Green include various inhuman Nazis that have extended their lives unnaturally, and the Majestic 12 group (formed after the Roswell incident) which has been benefiting from alien biotech while turning a blind eye to alien abductions.  Don't get me wrong, the opponents in Delta Green are not like the pulp Nazi sorcerers you see in a Mignola Hellboy comic; the situations in the Delta Green books tend to be fairly dark; they're smart, slick, and mature.  Delta Green captures that pre-millennial conspiracy angst from shows like The X-Files or Millenium.  The books are hard to get, but I hear PDF versions are nearing release at the usual places, and an updated version of the setting for the post-911 "war on terror" world is underway as well.

Call of Cthulhu d20
I wasn't a fan of the d20 level-based approach to COC, but the d20 book itself was still chock full of useful campaign advice for Call of Cthulhu; John Tynes, one of the driving forces behind Delta Green, had taken his skills to WOTC during this time and worked on the d20 Cthulhu book.

The d20 book recommends the use of a tentpole NPC - a powerful figure behind the scenes that ensures continuity for the investigation - or the creation of an organization.  It goes on to describe Cthulhu setting genres and  sample organizations for each one, such as Lovecraft Country, Hometown Horrors, Private Investigators, Badges and Secrets, Esoteric Orders, and Global Hot Spots.  (Delta Green even makes a cameo).

The other thing I really liked in the d20 book was that it took each of the genres and looked at how it might change for different time periods, and included good movies or TV shows to help set the mood.  Good stuff all around.

Trail of Cthulhu
Last week I did a review of Trail of Cthulhu; Trail provided three detailed campaign frames, two of which have been further developed in later books.  The first one, the Armitage Inquiry, assumes the various professors of Miskatonic University, having previous Mythos encounters  (as detailed in some Lovecraft stories), recruit like-minded individuals from the faculty and student body to explore and document Mythos occurrences.  The second frame, Project Covenant, suggests the Naval officers, involved in destroying the Deep One colony at the end of The Shadow Over Innsmouth story, form a secretive investigative arm of the government - similar to a 1930's version of Delta Green, but with actual government backing.  The final suggestion is Bookhounds of London, which puts the players in the role of book merchants collecting and selling rare and highly sought volumes (and frequently encountering the mad occultists seeking said books for all the wrong reasons).  It reminds me quite a bit of the excellent novel, The Club Dumas.

Two of those campaign frames get the full treatment in The Armitage Files (cover pictured above) and Bookhounds of London.  Both are excellent, so I'll definitely review them in the future.  The (award winning) Armitage Files is unlike any game book I've seen, and warrants a full post (and a warning!)

The Laundry RPG
I don't have The Laundry yet.  It's a BRP system like COC, based on a series of books by Charles Stross (The Atrocity Files), that details a secret British agency known as The Laundry.  The Laundry is tasked with keeping the world safe from occult horrors.  My perception is that it mixes quite a bit of office-culture and Information Technology humor juxtaposed against high-tech Mythos investigations in a world where computers have made monster summoning a not uncommon affair.  I'm not sure how the black humor would work out in game play, but I'll keep my eyes open for getting a copy and plan on reading The Atrocity Files at some point.  Although I'm a purist at heart, I'm sure my group of regular players, all tech geeks, would probably find this approach entertaining.

This discussion waxes long!  Providing a framework for ongoing investigations has become de rigeur in the Chaosium licensees making modern Cthulhu games.  There is an alternative to a structured organization, mentioned briefly above, it is the idea of using a "tentpole NPC" to anchor a campaign; I'll visit that one shortly.  Then we'll return to campaign development, perhaps looking at structuring investigations, and what makes for a good one.  Ciao!

What Hat is the DM Wearing?

Yesterday's brief post about my big mouth generated some good comments - the issue of the DM or gamemaster offering advice to the players is fairly nuanced.  Is the DM's role that of an impartial referee?  Is the DM an adversary?  Is the DM a coach?  In many cases, the DM is the most experienced gamer at the table (or knows the rules the best) so one could argue the DM has a duty as coach and teacher of the rules.  Does that drop away when the players are sufficiently experienced?  How about coaching for strategy and tactics?  When the players are tossing ideas back and forth regarding how they're going to attack their current problem, should the DM interject and point out which ideas would or wouldn't work, or should he or she keep quiet unless directly asked, and let the players execute their plan, making the rulings then?

Then there's the bad poker player, the DM that's having a hard time keeping their mouth shut about that obvious thing the players are overlooking... that was me with the bear, the bad poker player.  But in this age when folks have a ton of things on their mind, distractions at the table, faulty memories, should the DM play it close to the vest at all?  These questions are a bit of a parallel issue to Stuart's GMing badges regarding game mastering philosophy, albeit these are more subtle elements of presentation.

My own position is that the DM needs to give the players space to execute their own plans; success or failure should come from their own efforts.  When they succeed, they've earned it, and they can feel great that it came honestly.  And don't fudge the dice.  If there's a crushing defeat, after the session I might spend some time tossing out some alternative approaches they could have used if the players seem stumped.  It's their game, and they need to have the freedom to play it - and sometimes that means they miss things, or choose a sub optimal tactic, or forget they're carrying the silver bullet all along.  At the same time, don't you take a lot of pride in your players when you throw everything you've got at them, and they pull out an amazing victory? I know I do.

Oh, and lest I forget - sometime's the DM should even play the fool -  this video exhortation over at Alexis's place was great:  Vlog the Fool.  We need to be able to put on that silly hat and that performer hat from time to time as well.

The DM Has a Big Mouth

Let me ask you if you have this problem, too.  The party just got pasted by a monster, they run out of there dragging their dead companions and cursing the unfairness of gaming, the session wraps for the night, and you mouth off about all the things they forgot.  "You didn't even have to fight the Elemental.  What's-his -name has the Protection from Evil 10' radius spell and you guys could have hedged it out and moon-walked across that room…"

If I have a fatal flaw as a DM, it's giving the players the DM's perspective after their failures and not letting them figure this stuff out for themselves through head banging, frustration, and trial and error.  It's one thing doing an after action review with some newbies, but I'm always blabbing my mouth off about play refinements, even with the seasoned vets.

Case in point from the other night, and this one came back to get me.  The party was making camp in a stand of evergreens (they're way up in the mountains) and their ranger scouts noticed a small group of grizzly bears come down out of the opposite trees and start splashing in the river that split the valley.  Then one of the bears rises on it's haunches, sniffing the air.  Did it smell their horses, or the cooking meat?

The druid goes out there with a sack of food, cautiously uses Speak with Animals, ends up convincing the bears to be on their way, after giving them a few weeks worth of rations to drag off.

So they're camping later that night, and I snicker, "Good thing you didn't remember you took Animal Friendship…"  That's the spell that lets druids turn an animal into a permanent companion.   The gears started turning in the minds of the players… could they afford to miss a day of travel, and have the rangers and druid double back and track the bears, so the druid could attempt Animal Friendship?  Dang it!  By the next night, the druid was working on teaching his new bear companion some tricks, after burning a few Speak with Animals and Charm Mammal spells out in the wilds.

In all truth, this was a fine turn of events for the players, the druid guy loves his new animal companion - "I have a bear!" - the players laugh during Speak with Animals when the bear talks like the Yogi Bear cartoon character, and seeing a grizzly bear maul hobgoblins later in the session was entertaining all around.

But seriously, I need to learn to shut the hell up!