Player Engagement

So you have your player and you have your player character, but they are having a bit of difficulty getting involved in the role play. Maybe they haven’t done it before and or they have difficulty around other people. Or it may be that the group are having trouble connecting, there’s are all problems that most groups have the first tom around. Now there are various ways to deal with this and most of the can be quite fun. Now when your starting out it’s probably a good idea to take a session just to hangout try watching a film together this is a good way to spend time together. Spending three hours in a room together is also a pretty god way of telling you won’t get sick of them during a game. Another way to deal with this is just play a game together, something like cards against humanity or exploding kittens, these are games that always have a numerous outcome and cards against humanity is particularly good at this because if you can say some of the outrageous stuff you shouldn’t have a problem role-playing.

Now the other problem, is people having difficulty role-playing this can be quite difficult to deal with it is either can be shyness or they just find it hard to role play I have two techniques that could be used to sort this the first option will let them build confidence, it’s a game called Everyone is John this is a role play game where you take over a character and while trying to complete a goal with two other players trying to do the same thing. You have to play the game in character it can be daunting but there are fewer people so makes it easier to get into. The other option is to have a one to one session sessions like these can be good to build confidence and a player will have more one to one time with a Gm which is always beneficial. In the next post we will begin to cover combat

Story Building

 

There’s no point in playing Dungeons and dragons if you don’t have a good enough story. It needs to be something to compel the players into finding out more. People will get bored of they don’t have something they can focus on, whether it be a common goal or person, or a single goal that they are working towards in secret. Bit first let’s talk about how you make your player characters meet.

 

Now you have quite a lot of option in this you could start with all your Pc’s knowing each other, or they meet in a tavern, or maybe one of your Pc’s or Npc’s are looking for people shall we say, to go on an adventure. Either way you need a good strong reason for your group to be together staying together is the next part of the problem. Once you’ve formed the beginning of the story you need to form a sort of anchor point that will hold your characters together this can be as simple as them heading to a new city to be paid for services they completed, or they are hunting someone down or just that they became friends and decided to travel together. Now you have them together and staying that way you now have to get a goal for them to work towards, now they don’t even have to know this is what this is or even when it’s happening they could take the wrong path one day and lead them to this or someone within the group is leading them into this encounter, but you can decide that for yourself. Now what you can do is link this into one or a few of your Pc’s back story, this can give a good way to round off certain story lines if you get to this point and it feels very unfinished.

 

Now one of the hardest things to deal with as a GM are back story’s you’re never going to remember them all so take good notes and refer and update them constantly because players add things all the time even little snippets of information that could always come in handy or contradict a whole situation it’s always best for you to make your players give you all the updates they make to their character, they will anyway because the will write something interesting that will have them giddier than a 4 year old on Christmas day, just keep on top of it and give them chances to develop it. In the next post, we’ll be talking about player engagement and how to help people who may struggle with the role play aspect of the game.

Character Creation

Ok so, so far, we have gotten what you need to create your game and your world. But these are pointless without players and player characters to match, so let’s discus what you should do. Now there are many options you could explore, for instance there are sites like Roll20 it’s an online resource that allows players to connect with game masters over the internet. I will add the link to the site below. You can also go to your own local gaming shop, quite a lot of them will hold events or just have people who would like to play. Also, you could get a group of friends. Now this can be difficult unless you have friends who are into the hobby or are quite open minded, but if you do why are you reading this go and play, but if they aren’t ill cover how get them how to engage with roleplay and the game itself in a later post.

So, you have your players, now you need your player characters. This will rely heavily on your player, you will just have to give them a guiding hand. Have them begin with their race and class explain the benefits and drawbacks behind of each race and class as well as abilities and lore, also give them links and printouts they could need. Once you have this you can roll their stats beginning with Strength, Dexterity, Mind and Charisma. Begin by rolling four D6 dice, drop the lowest dice and total the remaining three dice then add any bonuses from the race and class and repeat for the remaining three stats. Now you will fill in the skills, Physical, Knowledge, Communication and Survival these will all be rank one unless there are bonuses from you class or race. Now your Hit Points, Armour Class and Magic Points.

• Hit Points, are found out by taking stat and roll one D6 dice and total the two
• Armour Class is calculated by adding 10 + your dexterity bonus + armour bonus
• Magic Points are equal to your Hit Points and are used to cast spells you can add one Magic Point to your pool for two Hit Points

Now we can move onto equipment, start with a pack this can be found on page 6 of the microlight20 purest essence manual, you can pick your pack 2 different ways, you can pick your pack or you can roll one D6 and chose a pack that way it’s up to the GM how it’s done. Then work out the amount of gold you have to spend. This is used to buy your weapons, armour, clothing and various items you need. Now you’ve gotten the basics you need to make the actual character starting with the name, there are plenty of name generators online to help, then the physical description, languages known by your character, their alignment, their backstory and if possible character art. These last parts can only be left to the player all you can really do is give advice when needed and not shout at people. Next time we will cover how to build your story.

World Creation

So, you’ve chosen either to go prebuilt or make it yourself. Now going prebuilt you won’t have as much options as a custom-built world, but the beauty of D&D is you can change certain things to how you like because there is always a bit left for interpretation. Now if you’ve built a custom world you have complete freedom to do whatever you like within reason. But remember to try to keep it believable, e.g. don’t use technology that wouldn’t exist and things like that. The next thing to consider would be the actual makeup of the world, I have included a map to give you a bit of a guide.

So, start by deciding what the continent is like, e.g. connected to another continent or an Island, then cities, towns, forts and army emplacements, the landscape, the races and the wildlife.

• Cities
  • Your capital city
  • Any other major cities
  • Anything about the city that is relevant to the story
  • Important history of the city
• Towns
  • Scale of the town
  • Any specialisations (e.g. mining, wood, trade, fishing)
  • Story significance
  • Any abandoned village (if so what happened)
• Forts and Army Emplacements
  • Forts
  • Encampments
  • Military presence
  • Military history
• Landscape
  • Mountainous regions
  • Rivers
  • Lakes
  • Tundra
  • Underground terrain (The Under-Dark)
  • Ruins
  • Forests/Jungles
  • Volcanoes
  • Any other significant natural landmark
• Races
  • Chose what races you would like to use e.g. the basic race list or the expanded race list
• Wild life
  • Find animals you would like to incorporate into the world
  • Top predators
  • Farm animals
  • Domesticated animals

Once you have the basics written down you can start to build the detail out, and go into the politics, people and history, for instance laws, organisations, events (e.g. holidays and special celebrations) and world history.

• Laws
  • The main government of your world
  • Political state
  • Laws and who upholds them
• Organisations
  • Army
  • Police
  • Guards
  • Secret Organisations
• Events
  • Holidays
  • Religious dates
  • Special celebrations
• World history
  • Important events
  • Events that will have impact on the story

Thanks for reading, I will be making a small amendment on gods and deities as I believe they deserve their own little section at some point down the line, next time we will cover character creation

Getting Started

From the standpoint of the game master it can be quite a lot of preparation depending on how you go about it. You can go out and buy or download a pre-built campaign, this is a good way to start if your GM’ing if you haven’t done it before or you’re looking to get a game started quickly. Or there’s the second option, building something from scratch, this option while very time-consuming and a lot of effort, will give you the most control and flexibility. Now once you have decided this you can gather the equipment you need, this will include but is not limited to paper, pencils, character sheets, a monster manual, a GM’s hand book and dice. The monster manual and GM’s hand book are available for free and I have included them in this post as well as the character sheets I have created myself. Dice will be available at your local gaming store. There are several other items that could be useful but aren’t needed so I shall cover them in a different post. Next time we’ll get into get into world creation and all the issues surrounding that. Thanks for reading.