Parsing the Social Competencies of GMs

Okay, I can't help myself. For over a decade my job as a coach was built on three pillars: turning abstract goals into simple, effective plans, calling people on bullshit in a professional capacity, and teaching people social skills as simple, easily practiced procedures. 

When I wrote my last article, I went overboard on the first section and added in tips and tools for having the best impact in the social aspect of running a roleplaying game. 

It would be a shame to let that material go yo waste. So, here it is. 

Some Advice You Probably Haven't Heard About Being a Game Master

A relatively new D&D player decided to ask for some advice on running the game on Twitter. And, as I have been looking for a smarter topic than reviews with which to engage you all, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. He was getting all the usual good (& awful) advice from the rest of the Peanut Gallery, so I thought I would answer him with advice he probably wouldn't hear, and then tease it out on the

So here is some advice that you probably won't hear about being a Dungeon Master, but should.

Sourcebook Review : The Delve 2e Companion Expanded

Review: The Delve Second Edition Companion Expanded

Cover Art: Delve Second Edition Companion
Expanded ©2020 Feral Gamers Inc. 

Author: Monochrome Monkey
Publisher: Feral Gamers Inc.
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG
System: Delve 2e

The Delve Second Edition Companion Expanded is a book of additional rules and materials for Delve 2e. Delve was the first TTRPG I chose to review on this blog because it had a few clever innovations, but had gained practically no attention on the Internet. Almost to the day from when I downloaded Delve 2e, they released the expanded version of the Companion. It felt like coming full circle to make it my first review of year two of Welcome to the Deathtrap. 

Delve 2e aims to take the best of Wizards-era Dungeons & Dragons and fuse it with some of the best parts of the early Editions of Warhammer Fantasy. It then takes this strange hybrid and accentuates survival, placing it on the desolate and ruined island of Cragbarren where the PCs are castaways. It adds detailed rules on equipment degradation, unstable light sources, thirst, hunger, scavenging and an economy based on salvage and barter. I find Cragbarren reminds me of the video game Path of Exile. 

The Companion originally adds some more elements and options for players. It offers backgrounds much like Dungeons & Dragons 5e's system. Each background offers a few additional skills for a character. It also offers two new playable races Gnomes (that feel much like Dragonlance-style Tinker Gnomes), and Goblins that feel rather like Pathfinder's playable Goblin race: a race where a minority have given up Evil to try to live in the society of humans and Dwarves, but are prone to falling back on criminal activity. 

It also adds two new subclasses a Cleric subclass for Fighters and a Bard Subclass for Rogues, as both had been previously not included in Delve 2e. The classes that did not previously have spellcasting ability also now have spell progression and spell lists.

The Companion also adds a number of monsters 

Its April 2021 re-release as an expanded version includes all adventures published for Delve to-date, which include a few additional rules:

• The Dungeon of Gark the Everdead
• Lost Tower of the Unholy Shroud
• The Hunt for the Many-eyed God
• The Ruins of Wind-torn Manner
• March of the Dead
• The Orcs are Restless 

Resource: Trilemma Adventures

I have been meaning for over a year now to do a two-part feature on Michael Precott's Trilemma Adventures as a way of revisiting the One-Page Dungeons and sharing a favorite online resource at the same time,

For those not familiar with them, The Trilemma Adventures are a series of  adventures built around one of Prescott's gorgeously drawn isometric maps of dungeons, shantytowns, strange wilderness encounters, and extraplanar hubs. Here is an example of the kind of art you can expect from his (relatively) recent adventure "The Sequence of Deel".

"Crevasse Tomb" by Michael Prescott; ©2019 Michael Prescott, CC-BY-NC 4.0

Each map is surrounded on the front side by a title, description of the situation that will likely bring the PCs to the location, and notes on each of the locations in the map, as well as a random encounter table. The back of the page includes details on the dangers, unusual and wonderous effects, important objects, encounters, and puzzles the PCs may run into during the adventure. Usually it includes one or two elegant illustrations as well, All of which is detailed in a way that makes the content system-neutral.

Rules Cyclopedia Update

 I featured six new rules, including five alternate Magic rules in the Deathtrap Games Rules Cyclopedia. Expect more tomorrow!

• Spell Points
• Spellburn
• Spell Fatigue
• Free-form Magic
• Metamagic Components

As well as the controversial You Not Your Gear rule. 

Deathtrap Games: A Year in Review

Mirdon the Mad reading the Black Book
of Queen Maeve. Created using Hero Forge
And used in accordance with their ELULA

It has been one year since I started Welcome to the Deathtrap. A year making new friends, trying new creative projects and joining in a hell of a lot games. I want to take a moment to reflect on W2tDT's first year. 

Gaming

Before I start with the content of the blog, let's talk about what inspired it: the games. 

2020 saw the end of one business and health issues made me have to indefinitely suspend the other. (People who insist on voice acting with chronically sore throats, don't voice act for very long.) This left me with more time on my hands for my hobbies as I cared for my sons. 

But two small kids, and a wife whose job got crazier due to the lockdowns meant that while I has more time she had less. So I started to look for faster, simpler games than Dungeons & Dragons 5e to play, and took a derp dive into OSR and indie material. 

I fell in love with two games in particular Index Card RPG Core 2e, and Low Fantasy Gaming. I ran three lengthy ICRPG campaigns this past year: one with nearly 250 hours of total play, another that mixed in elements of Blades in the Dark with about 75 hours, and a third that ran about 80 hours. Plus a couple that failed. 

Meanwhile I joined in Stephen Smith's World of Weirth playtest group running Low Fantasy Gaming and have played for 25 sessions, most of them as my lovable scumbag character Lieres who is the character I have played the longest in my entire TTRPG career as a PC. I have enjoyed it so much that I have run one short (24 hours) campaign with my home group, and have one ongoing game at 66 hours and counting. 

That is on top of making my own system, several short "fizzles", running an ongoing game of Basic Dungeons & Dragons for my son, solo games in Pacts & Blades and Four Against Darkness, playing in a few one-shots, and signing up for but being unable to play in a West Marches OSE game.

I have played more and got a lot more game in with each session than I thought possible. And that has made me very happy. I have had a lot to write about! 

Planning for Mothership RPG: Building a Cast

Image by Lucija Rasonja from Pixabay

In my last article I mentioned that I am working on cobbling together something for Mothership RPG. My intention is to play a game that lasts 3-6 sessions each containing an adventure that is structured like a five room dungeon.

I find this structure ideal for horror game play, as it allows a story to unfold, but also is forgiving if there are a lot of player deaths or mission failure; knowing it is finite changes the way players engage with the PCs. They aren't likely to get attached thus take greater in-character risks that serve the horror element of the game well.

I already have a fair premise and a clear idea of the most likely chain of events. But, of course, the plan is to let myself be surprised as often as possible. 

I find one of the most important things to keep in mind when planning such a short campaign and in a system that your players are not familiar with, is that character generation is going to stretch out a very long time if you allow it. It can damage enthusiasm for the game as much as it can build it.

It's usually easier to just have some pre-generated characters available, with enough background to give some role-playing tips, and with a little world building done in character generation. I like to have two pre-generated characters per player if I can, that way there's plenty of choices. Often players will surprise you by deciding to go completely off of their usual pattern. 

This is a horror game: it is going to be lethal. Having at least two PCs per player means you can kill a few off early without bringing your game to a halt. This actually puts a limit on which systems are appropriate for this kind of game: if the characters take too long to build the investment is not worth the payoff for the GM.

I have not played Mothership, and these will be the first characters I make for it, and so this will be the first test. Most horror games are played in a relatively short format campaign like this. If the characters are too time-consuming we would see a place where the mechanics would fail the game's aims.

On top of that, I'm going to want a handful of NPCs who will die horribly early or serve as sources of information. I will break the characters into three groups.

Planning for Mothership RPG: Player-Driven Antagonists

From the Cover Art of Mothership
Sci-Fi RPG by Sean McCoy;
©2018 Tuesday Knight Games

Right now I am working on making a Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG short campaign. Well the system looks a lot like eclipse phase, there are enough little differences that I didn't feel like I could review the system effectively without playing it a couple of times first. I thought it might be helpful to talk about useful tools and ideas that I will be applying to the design of this particular short series.

One of the biggest and most complex design decisions I have made has been the inclusion of human Player Character villain. For over a year, I have had a fantastic play test group to help me refine my various modules and rules designs. But, life has been getting in the way for a couple of them since the new year and we haven't been able to get together more than a few times. My cousin Kat, in particular has been struggling, thanks to a change of professions halfway through the last campaign.

Now aside from being a Family,  TTRPGs are a mainstay of our friendship. I taught her older sisters how to play Dungeons & Dragons in 1991 and it has become a fixture of their households as well. I ran her on her first role-playing game adventure in 1997, and it has been one of the things other than our love of heavy metal and family gossip that keeps us close.

However, despite her older sisters being hardcore gamers, she hadn't had much opportunity to actually play except with me on and off. So, when I invited her to play in my group in 2019 it was the first time she had played in an extended campaign. She took her thief Livia from a frightened prisoner with no weapons, armor, or memory to a cunningly talented assassin, and eventually a wealthy baroness and a diplomat who's acumen help that you're in a new era of prosperous trade between three different nations.

She always approaches the game with a learner's mindset, which is invaluable when you're otherwise playing with a bunch of Old Guard players who have a lot of preconceived notions about the game. When she had to leave the group earlier this year, it was a real loss. Everyone in the group was sad to see her go, and we would still be playing with her if scheduling hadn't made it impossible for her to keep attending my Monday night game. 

Needless to say, I really want to be able to find a way to include her... and I think I have.O

The House of Archer: My (Mostly) Nonviolent D&D Campaign

Coat of arms created with Worldspinnner

I would like to tell a story of a campaign I played in 2003. It is unlike many of my campaigns. It is an outlier, and a game that I wish I could recapture. Given some of the discourse on Twitter as of late, I thought it would be worthwhile sharing it.

This campaign was set on an interdimensional empire. A sprawling kingdom on one world discovered the means open up doorways to alternative Prime Material Planes, and so began an endless expansion from world to world filling in empty places with colonies. Trading with intelligent life on numerous realms, and often incorporating them into their political structure.

Culturally, it was designed to resemble Tudor England. At its heart, the empire was ruled by a myriad of entrenched political families with complex rivalries, debts, and alliances so Byzantine said it could be difficult to track. There were a total of 83 Noble houses spread across 11 planets. Wealthy trade guilds a growing merchant class had come into power to rival that of Nobles

The Player Characters were part of a minor house called Archer. One player character was the third daughter of the house, trained as a priestess of Hieroneous, (I was lazy and used the Greyhawk gods listed in the D&D3e core books.) The others were trusted retainers, including the daughter of a stable hand who is trained as an assassin, a lady in waiting who is also a talented alchemist and amateur transmuter, and a footman with levels in fighter.

All of the PCs had a secondary role as spies and secret agents of the house. Using the pretext of the daughter of the house traveling to tournaments, concerts, and theatrical performances across the empire to find a husband, the whole party engaged in sabotage, espionage, and intrigues to improve the position of House Archer, which was at the time suffering from faltering fortunes due to a drought.

Three Micro-Reviews from the Help Tiago Bundle

Cover to "The Moon King Wants to Party" from
Roll 4 Tarrasque

So, yesterday I grabbed the Help Tiago Rolim Fight COVID-19 Bundle. Today I thought I'd talk about a few of the cool things I grabbed in rapid fire, just because they were stand-out items.

Most of the material in this bundle is business card, pamphlet, or 'zine style creations in line with the Brazilian OSR aesthetic of keeping everything compact and minimal. The BROSR guys know that you already know how these games work. They aren't keen on wasting energy or words. Most of the time this works in their favor. Most if the documents here are both short and brilliantly done.

The Moon King Wants to Party

Author: Roll 4 Tarrasque
Marketplace : Itch.io
Engine: Troika!

This module has been something I've considered ever since I read its premise and saw the absolutely glorious cover art.

The Moon King Wants to Party embraces the weird, surreal, and satiritical tone of Troika! complete with biting social commentary. The PCs are forced by law to serve as the retinue for an entitled aristocratic buffoon who appears to have had his common sense gland removed along with his Charisma.

The PCs have to keep this stupid, spiteful lush alive as he attends a party with multiple bounces attended by genies, demons, and alien intelligences, and hosted by creatures who punish killing their buzz with Death.

Help Tiago Rolim Fight the Bug!

You guys know me, I don't sell much of anything here. I don't even try hard to sell my own stuff here, so bear with me...

Tiago Rolim, the creator of Numa, is sick in hospital with COVID-19 and having trouble getting the coverage he needs.

The Rolim Brothers are friends of Welcome to the Deathtrap! Tiago's brother, Lucas was the first writer to send me a book to review, and both have relentlessly promoted me to their amazing Brazilian OSR audience. I consider the Rolims friends. 

To help him cover medical expenses Guilherme Gontijo, who created one of my favorite resources for game developers, has put together a bundle of 72 books from the BROSR's coolest developers to help Tiago pay the bills. It costs only $10 USD, but it will go a long way for Tiago. 

If you haven't yet got Pacts & Blades after all of my gushing, this is your chance!

Grab the Bundle here!

... And expect a lot of reviews of Brazilian products on W2tDT in the near future! 

Zine Review: D8 Monthly - Issue 0

Zine Review: D8 Monthly - Issue 0

D8 Monthly Issue 0 Cover Art
By Dean Spencer 

Editor: YumDM
Marketplace : YumDM.com
Engine: Edition Agnostic Dungeons & Dragons 

Russ from YumDM and I banter occasionally on Twitter, and I have been keeping an eye on this project of his since it first crossed my feed. Now that it is finally out, I thought I would spread the word by giving it the full W2tDT treatment.

D8 Monthly is intended to be a free monthly 'Zine with locations, tools, tables, NPCs and content for use with any edition of Dungeons & Dragons.  It definitely has that cool O5R vibe of making cool Old-School content available for 5e players.

The pilot "0" issue is not entirely an army-of-one project, but a lot of Russ' style and a good chunk of his campaign comes through. And that is a good thing: he keeps it straight to the point, and uses evocative language that makes the most out of fluff.

Most of the articles in Issue 0 are interconnected; they flesh out the town of Dolfar, which serves as a low-level "home base" town. 

There is lots worth stealing here.