Hiding your Rolls, Quick Thoughts

Posted on by Henry

This will be another quick one, I’m still with family. These thoughts are brought to you by an excellent post on hexcrawls I read a while ago… one I’ve unfortunately forgotten and thus cannot cite here.

In RPG systems where the storyteller must roll dice, there’s a long tradition of storytellers hiding the results of their rolls. There are plenty of reasons for this (fostering tension, keeping secrets, the fact that sometimes characters don’t know whether they’ve succeeded, etc.), and some of them are useful. But it’s worth noting that not every roll needs to be hidden. This especially applies to combat in D&D.

I’d argue that—whenever possible—not hiding your rolls is the better course. There’s more to this: when you don’t hide rolls, it’s okay to not hide foes’ stats. You needn’t reveal them immediately, but as PCs spend a while fighting an NPC they will slowly get a feel for the NPC’s capabilities, and that is perfectly natural. This also speeds up play, as you needn’t try to reference material while keeping it secret from players.

With this approach, there are still times when hiding your rolls is better for the feel of the story. For example, hiding your rolls works well when the PCs are surprised or don’t know what they face. This experience of information asymmetry matches the experience of the PCs. In fact, when players are used to getting information about their foes, the sudden lack of information might completely change their assessment of a situation (likely for the worse).

Note that when you’re not hiding your rolls, you aren’t able to fudge them for or against the PCs. Some players love this, some hate it… and it’s definitely more dangerous to the PCs, as dice are random and capricious. Simply put, when not hiding rolls it’s harder for you to protect your PCs from your own mistakes in creating challenges without foreshadowing them sufficiently.

When you’re not hiding rolls, I would suggest playing more openly in all ways; talk with players about what the PCs are able to see, what they might guess based on their previous experience, and what capabilities they know their opponents have (thus far). Be generous with that information! Nobody likes to be “gotcha’d,” and there’s no need for you to trick players in that way. Save that cleverness for creating exciting and tricky encounters, puzzles, or what-have-you.

Of course, all these suggestions cultivate a particular flavor of game. You needn’t use them if you don’t like them. But I’ve had good experience with them, and I think my players felt more rewarded by their victories when they knew that I hadn’t coddled them by fudging die rolls in their favor. I hope you find them useful.

Forbidden Spells & Summonings, Quick Thoughts

Posted on by Henry

My family is waiting for me to run a game, so this will be short.

My brainworm of the day was wondering why wizards in D&D 5e have so few summoning spells. That’s morphed into thinking about what kinds of summon spells wizards would have.

Traditionally, at least in my brain, wizards have a long history of calling on powers they cannot control and meddling with things they do not understand. It’s part of why wizards have a bad rap in some places. It’s also part of why the ones that survive end up so powerful. Drinking from the firehose and all that.

In the 5e Player’s Handbook (and the other official 5e spell collections I’ve seen), wizards are able to safely summon elementals and a few spirits (Unseen Servant, etc). And if you think of the official 5e spell collections as the “mostly safe and authorized” spells, these limits make sense.

But there’s a model for unsafe summoning spells, via Contact Other Plane. So what if PC wizards researched their own forbidden spells, to let them summon dangerous entities without any guarantee of control? These summoning spells might take the shape of an encounter table, with one entry being the entity the PC was aiming for while the other entries are unknown to the PC.

If clerics can summon celestials, and druids can summon the fey, perhaps wizards dabble in the unsafe arts of everything else. If they manage to make bargains with the things they summon up, they might become warlocks. If they fail to contain the dangerous things they call on, they might become dead—along with most other people around them.

There’s probably some correlation between the level of the spell and the power of the creatures it could reliably control. A PC wizard might begin their spell research by learning about what to expect, with early missteps possibly leading to greater danger down the road.

Clearly, the more ambitious the wizard, the more dangerous the spell.

I’ll explore this more later. Right now, some eager adventurers are calling for me.

The Tower of Peng the Unprepared

Posted on by Henry

This is a quick glance at a location that came to me this morning, something I might put to use in a story or game in the future. It’s deliberately scant, intended to spark more ideas and let me fill in the details later, without committing it too firmly to any one setting or story. I’ve written it such that I can replace any backstory I establish here without altering the physical location. Maybe you’ll also find it useful or inspiring.

Continue reading →

Taking PCs’ Stuff: better D&D via Apocalypse World

Posted on by Henry

This post is primarily about D&D’s 5th edition (5e), though it is more broadly applicable. If you don’t know anything about roleplaying games, you might want to read this article first.

This post looks to Apocalypse World (AW) for inspiration on when to take away, use up, or activate the downsides of PCs’ stuff in 5e. Some of these ideas are already present (or suggested) in 5e, but I’ve frequently forgotten to use them. My hope is that this thought-jumble will remind me to use them in the future, and that my ponderings can be useful to other people as well.

Some games are better served by *not* using these ideas. They create a specific tone, more consistent with gritty explorers and dungeon delvers rather than high-powered fantasy adventure or flashy social intrigue.

Lastly, I think it’s important to implement these ideas from the outset, or to introduce them gradually and explicitly. Using these ideas changes the way the PCs’ world works, and might not meet the players’ assumptions. It’s rude to pull the rug out from under the players by making changes suddenly and without warning. I’d want my players’ buy-in before incorporating these ideas into my game, whether that means setting the game’s tone at the start or getting the players’ agreement to them mid-campaign.

With that out of the way… when should we take away the player characters’ (PCs’) stuff?

Continue reading →

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers

Posted on by Henry

TheLongWaytoaSmallAngryPlanet

This book is a delight.

This is one of the most character-focused small-scale stories I’ve read in a while; it feels both literary and feminist in that way, delving into personal moments and paying attention to humanizing (“personizing”? Several characters are aliens after all) every character. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has emotional depth that was often lacking in the science fiction I read growing up, and delivers the wanderlust and quiet tension of venturing between the stars. I love it for that.

This book is a series of well-crafted vignettes that build upon each other time and again. Subsequent layers add depth and import, making the journey of the ship and its crew as much an emotional one as a physical one. I know I’ve just described how most novels should work, but something about this story made me hyper-aware of that fact in a very good way. Let me try to explain.

Continue reading →

Overlord

Posted on by Henry

overlord-poster

Overlord is a pulpy, terrifying thrill ride of a B-movie. It feels like an over-the-top World War 2 Delta Green scenario, and an homage to a genre I learned to love through John Carpenter’s films. Having read more about the movie, and learned more about the practical effects used, I’m even more impressed.

As a B-movie it’s quite good, though it rang a bit hollow for me. I think there might have been a little more to the character development arc for Jovan Adepo’s Boyce that didn’t survive to the theatrical cut I saw, and I would have loved to see that. But it’s probably okay: high tension Nazi-killing historical science fiction B-movies aren’t best known for their character development.

I initially wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or miffed about the movie’s portrayal of the 101st Airborne as an integrated force when it was not. Here’s Wikipedia’s article on racial segregation in the US armed forces.

The happy side has won. It’s very easy to explain.

Continue reading →

Duality and Thematic Tension in RPGs: Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts

Posted on by Henry

I’ve recently been working on a swords & sorcery-inspired Apocalypse World (AW) hack, trying to create something which fits the themes present in Robert E Howard’s Conan stories, Steven Brust’s Taltos novels, and Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories. In doing this, I’ve had an interesting realization about the construction of AW and the games it has inspired: dualistic tension in the games’ principles drives the dramatic and thematic tension which fuels their best stories.

Continue reading →

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson

Posted on by Henry

BaruCormorantTraitor

From the end of my reading-log entry for this book: “How the fuck does he do it? Read it again, write in the margins. Buy your own copy.”

What can I possibly say about Seth Dickinson‘s The Traitor Baru Cormorant?

I fear my words will scare you away. This book is painful, heartfelt, and beautiful. I cannot convey the magnitude by which this book surpasses others I’ve read. You’re missing out if you do not read this. Take care of yourself when you do.

I nearly finished it on a rainy day last spring. A twinge of self-preservation made me put down the book with several chapters remaining; I somehow knew to finish it when the sun was shining and I could take time for myself.

I was right. Finishing it, I cried as the book continued to do what it had always done: grab my heart and then methodically twist it into pieces, leaving just enough for hope.

Continue reading →

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor

Posted on by Henry

UK Daughter of Smoke and Bone

With only a little exposure to her work, I’m already a fan of Laini Taylor‘s words. Her evocations of character and place, particularly in Daughter of Smoke and Bone, are sumptuous and possess the brilliant clarity of a portrait etched in glass. If you’re fond of reading beautiful things and you like romantic YA fantasy, this is a good book for you.

There were several pieces of this book that made me bounce, but I think most of them are because I’m not this book’s target audience. For example…

Continue reading →

I return!

Posted on by Henry

Hello everyone. It’s been a while.

I’m revivifying Fistful of Wits, which has (you may have noticed) lain fallow for a while. There are a few ways in which my use of this site will change, and I’ll outline that here.

First, I’m planning to post more regularly again. Probably weekly.

Second, I’m not going to post nearly as much fiction as I used to. I’ll explain that in a moment.

Third, I’m going to post more teaser-y things. I’ll explain that too.

Fourth, I’ll tell you what I’m wanting from all of this. I’ll cover that last.

What will I post? What will I tease?

To start, Fistful of Wits will continue to be mostly about stories, games, and story games. I’ll return to my old habit of occasional reviews. I may also post essays of a sort—their focus and quality may vary, and some of my reviews might transmogrify into essays in the process of writing them. I’m likely to post the beginnings of long-form projects. Since I want to finally publish a few RPG scenarios of mine, I may post pieces of those. I will, occasionally, write about whatever comes to mind… but John Scalzi already has Whatever so I can’t just steal the url and rename this site.

I’ll also use this site to tell you when my work has been published elsewhere.

What about those explanations?

I won’t be posting as much fiction as I used to because (as I may have noted before) anything I publish in full here is nearly impossible to sell elsewhere. I do want to sell my work and have it published to a wider audience. Until this site offers me a broader audience of people who’ve never heard of me before (definitionally unlikely), selling my work elsewhere is the name of the game.

My idea for teasers is roughly as follows: I can post rough drafts of the early chapters of longer stories, and fragments of other kinds of work. My old openings to both Barium Deep and Miska are decent examples of the first option. For the second, I might use the opening hooks and setting elements for a scenario, or the tables and adventure tools I’ve been creating. I would be happy to find other ways to share things here, but I’m not sure what those would be. If you have ideas, please share!

What do I want from this? What are my goals?

I want to share my stories and games and ideas with the world. I want to know that they’re being shared and (ideally) valued. I want to preserve (and grow) my future publishing opportunities, and I want to increase the value of creative work in our capitalist society instead of depressing it. That last bit means I refuse to be a scab or work for free.

My goals here are to (re)grow a community of readers; create new writing, editing, and storytelling opportunities for myself; sell people on the work that I create; and spread the word about the fun, cool things I love. I may create a crowd-funding setup for myself—to share more of my work with you without precluding publishing it, and let you suggest new directions for me to explore—but I’m still reading the related fine print.

If you like the sound of all that, stick around.