The DM with Two Brains

It’s a busy life DMing a session; even more so when you’re trying to keep kids in order as well. Sandbox sessions with their extra workload of extemporising from sketchy notes at a moment’s notice leave little time for keeping an eye on how the players are organising their character sheets, hit points, resources, oil bombs, magic item charges etc, etc.

To begin with, I sweated it all; I kept one half of my mind on what was going on behind the DM’s Screen and the other half on whether the party’s thief had remembered that he’d picked up a +2 short sword, +4 v Undead three months ago and should be using it, or making sure that the noobs used the right dice, or that everybody had taken their second bow shot that round.

After a while, I began to realise that this second role wasn’t really that important; if the players, who had been gaming for several months, couldn’t keep track of their magic items, or forgot to maximise their attacks, that was not for me to worry about. If the magic user cast more spells than they were entitled to, or the fighter used the Large damage dice when the target was Man-sized, the world wasn’t going to come to an end. My responsibility was to keep the adventure on track, make sure I used the right monster stats and delivered an enjoyable session for all (within reason).

Of course, I have an advantage – I have two brains.

I’ll explain. When Team Adventure first started, Mummy Grognard sat in -  partly to chaperone the first two players and partly to see what this D&D thing was all about. As the campaign progressed, she became a true part of the team, actively recruiting for places at the table and keeping things under control when the lads started to get distracted and perhaps a little bit…well, laddish.  As things have got more involved, I’ve also allocated her the role of caller so that we don’t have five boys trying to shout over each other in order to get the DM to listen to them. She also keeps track of the magic, gold and XP I hand out and makes sure that at the end of each session, the players’ totals are up to date, accurate and confirms if anyone has levelled up.

All this and sorting the pizzas and milkshakes as well. All praise to her for what she does and the way she stays cool under pressure. To assist her further, I’ve printed out her spell book and a contents page so that she can check more quickly what her magic user can do, what effect it has and how long it lasts without flicking through the entire PHB each time.

In a way, her administrative activities in keeping five boys under control and organised lift a heavy burden from me and ensure that the game progresses fairly and enjoyably. She also manages to bifurcate her MG and Elysia personae very effectively.

Has anybody else had experience of situations or groups where one player clearly takes over part of the admin for the DM? Did it work or was it eventually more trouble than it was worth?  Or are all your players superbly organised and need no administrative support?

Fear of Leprechauns

In a recent Team Adventure session, Alurax ran into a leprechaun in a forest encounter; the little fellow delighted in using his invisibility and shape changing ability to deprive Alurax of his beloved trident and generally wind him up until he was extremely agitated.

Now all I have to do is whistle a jaunty jig and put on a cod 'Oirish' accent and poor old Junior Grognard reacts like Pavlov's dog when the bell was rung.

I was wondering if anybody else has acquired an irrational reaction to an otherwise anodyne monster following a bad experience? 

Basements

Something that I've noticed over the past couple of years while travelling the blogosphere is that the "Gamers in the Basement" image seems to be very prevalent, particularly in the US and Canada.

It's not something that's in my personal history but that's probably because I'm in the UK where basements are not a standard feature of most houses, unless you are lucky enough to be able to afford a very old property indeed.

So, when thinking of my early gaming experiences, I most often remember tables in dining rooms, bedrooms, a living room or two - but never a basement.

So, today's question - where did you used to game in the early days and where do you game now? And let me know if you're a US or UK gamer - I suspect I can guess most of the answers but there's always room for a surprise or two.

Sorry, did I miss something (30 years ago)?

Just a quick question on the tail of all those posts on other blogs this week concerning the compatibility of Christianity and D&D.

I've noticed that more or less every one refers to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and the impact that this had on gamers. However, when I think back to my teenage years, I can't recall a single instance of this in my gaming life.

I know it's almost certainly that I'm a UK gamer rather than a US gamer, so the question for today is aimed at fellow Brits and is this:

Was there a Satanic Panic in the UK and I just missed it (being a sheltered little grognard in those days) or did we Brits manage to escape the lunacy?

A campaign without humans

I was having a chat with Mummy Grognard the other day, principally about the new Team Adventure sessions. We've already agreed that following Gygaxian guidelines on females and young in lairs is out - no families to be slaughtered. To be honest, I've never played the females and young option, even back in the day.

She also had misgivings about the boys facing human opponents, since they are playing human characters at present (the demi-human options are going to be filtered in as we progress and - inevitably - have to roll up new characters). Her justification for avoiding human on human action is that we're getting enough of this in the real world and for her (and for the boys as well, I suppose) D&D is an escape from the nastiness of the real world - yes, it contains killing but it's in a fantasy milieu, a conceptual step removed from reality and can be contextualised as such. The logical end of this line of thinking, of course, we thought, would be a game in which the boys played demi-humans to the exclusion of other options - in short, a game with no humans.

Now, that set me thinking - I know that there are campaigns out there where there are no demi-humans or the demi-humans have been redefined so as to be unrecognisable from those contained in the PHB but are there (or have there been) any campaigns where the world contains no humans at all?

Rational Role-players?

I noticed when reviewing the replies to my post on scary books that, like me, quite a few of the commenters were rationalists. I wondered to myself if this was common amongst gamers, and thought "Aha, I smell a poll coming on"

I'm not religious but I do have a fascination for where religions and mythologies come from, what basic human needs they answer and how they evolve, shift and develop. I'd like to think that when my game gets some players and gets going, the pantheons will be realistic, rounded and sociologically credible. In true sandbox style, I may even let the players develop their own deities and mythoi.

RPGs have had their run-ins with religion in the past (Dark Dungeons, Pat Pulling, the renaming of devils and demons for 2e...) but I know for a fact that there are religious roleplayers, atheist roleplayers and no doubt a sizeable chunk in the middle.

I'm curious as to the proportions and whether religiosity or lack thereof affects the RPGer's approach to their games, especially given that in at least two (D&D et al, and CoC) the existence of deities as such is taken as a fact.

Let me know your views on this one. I'm intrigued...