Interview with a Dungeon Master

I interview my friend, who has chosen to go by 'A', about his years of experience being a Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons.

C: So how long is it now that you've been DM'ing?
A: I've been DM'ing now for...about 6 or 7 years? Can't remember when I started in California but it's been about that long.

C: Do you make up your own stories, or go with pre-written adventures? What's the idea behind that?
A: Well at first it was all pre-written Wizards [of the Coast] stuff. I wasn't very good at coming up with things at first, but no DM really is. After awhile I created my own lore and setting that would work with D&D rules, and that's the place my friends and I would keep returning to. The D&D settings are cool and all, and a lot of it inspired me, but it's way more personal when you can create something unique that you yourself made.

C: How much wiggle room do you give yourself in your setting and rules? I mean, some players are bound to try to 'break' your game right?
A: Honestly, most people are pretty respectful [laughs]. But yeah, I do give myself some room to, interpret things differently. Usually if it's really something I don't see as possible within my setting, I'll have them make a roll for it, and just be like "well no, your character wasn't able to achieve that, as it's nigh impossible under these circumstances", of course if they roll a 20 then an exception will have to be made, but usually I try not to do too many things like that. There's a time to keep the narrative moving forward.

C: Are your stories usually pretty linear?
A: As far as going from city to city, yeah. But how you tackle my quests, may end up letting you explore additional dungeons for extra loot rolls and such. But I have a pretty good idea of the events that will be happening chronologically in my stories. I kind of leave it up to the players to try to screw it up, like if they really make one of the NPCs made then, well, the party might have to go somewhere else for that information.

C: How do you really moderate interactions between real human beings? How do you make sure what they do and say will all fit within your story?
A: I really don't. Although the overarching story is set, the events that happen in between that are fluid. Fluidity and flexibility are very important aspects of being a DM, and you're never good at them at first. It comes with experience.

C: So for my final question, what advice would you give to budding Dungeon Masters out there?
A: Don't. Give. Up. Learn everything about the game that you can, but most importantly, just start running adventures, even if they're pre-mades. The only way you really get good at DM'ing, is by DM'ing. So get your friends together and just play.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Fine Line Between Choice and Chance

Dungeoneering

When it comes to player choice in a pen and paper RPG such as Dungeons & Dragons(DnD), it's quite a different beast. In some ways, the player has much more choice, and in others less. Instead of an artificial intelligence deciding the constraints of the situation, there is a Dungeon Master, or DM for short, who imagines the settings, characters, and monsters that you and your friends will interact with. The main aspect that differentiates DnD from computer based RPGs is the fact the the DM comes up with the story-line and encounters, but unlike in a video game, these are still mutable points. Depending on the choices of the players and the success of those choices, the story can be changed in an infinite number of ways (up to the discretion of the DM), instead of the finite number of branches which exist in a game such as Mass Effect; these games can give a fair illusion of many choices, but a well thought out DnD campaign can truly provide that.

Roll of the Dice

 DnD approaches choice using a roll of the dice. For just about every action a player can take, there is dice roll called a difficulty check. In order for your character to succeed in their action, they need to meet or exceed this number, which is chosen by the DM, and if you roll a natural 20 (a pure 20 on a twenty-sided die without adding any modifiers) than you are particularly successful at that action. As you can probably tell, deciding what to do in a game of DnD can go a myriad of different ways, as opposed to choosing choice 1 or choice 2 in a video game. Left up to the discretion of the DM, you can do "okay", "great", "not quite", or "botch" (rolling a 1 on the twenty-sided die), or any other rating of performance in between, with infinitely different results. Of course there are guidelines for the DM to follow, but routinely bending rules is one of the ways DnD retains its fun over the years. Choice is tightly wound with chance in DnD, which in many ways makes it mirror reality, where luck is much of the time a deciding factor of success in our lives. Too bad we don't actually get to battle dragons.


Resources

Crowking, R. (2011, May 31). C is for choices, context, and consequence (part I). In Raven Crowking's Nest. Retrieved April 16, 2014, from http://ravencrowking.blogspot.com/2011/05/c-is-for-choices-context-and.html

Massive Effects

Last week, I wrote about how Bioware really pushed the envelope when it came to choice in their early games, namely Baldur's Gate. This week I will continue exploring the accomplishments of Bioware a bit more, and how they further shaped the essence of choice in their extremely successful franchise Mass Effect.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect follows the story of Commander Shepard (you), as he leads his ragtag crew of assorted alien species around the galaxy in an effort to thwart the world-devouring Reapers and save the Universe. Yeah, it's as epic as it sounds. Bioware's major breakthrough with this series of games, however, was the building upon of their conversation tree system, and the inclusion of a morality system. 

Crafting a Player-Character

In order to understand how the morality system works in Mass Effect, the new conversation system warrants an explanation first. Unlike Baldur's Gate, where just a list of responses was laid out for the player to choose from, Mass Effect has the conversation wheel. So the trade-off is this; you get less varied responses than you would in Baldur's Gate, but you can make a choice much faster and therefore actually simulate a dramatic, fully acted conversation with characters in the game--something the Mass Effect series has constantly been lauded for. This all funnels into the morality system mentioned earlier. At key points in the story, the player is given a choice; usually a very difficult one, and upon the conversation wheel will be two color-coded responses; one red, and one blue. As you can imagine, red equated to the 'evil' decision, whereas blue indicated the 'heroic' decision, although not every choice throughout the trilogy is always that cut and dry. What this meant is that each player not only had control over their personal Commander Shepard's combat abilities, but also his or her personality as well, to truly create their own "version" of the game. And all of this was accompanied by a way to port your save file from one game to the next, preserving those choices you made and seeing them ripple across the trilogy was truly a thing of beauty.

Resources

Hillier, B. (2012, March 13). Illusive choice: mass effect takes the "role-play" out of rpg. Retrieved from http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/13/the-illusive-choice-mass-effect-3-takes-role-play-out-of-rpg/

Wong, K. (2013, August 1). Morality systems in roleplaying games. Retrieved from http://the-artifice.com/role-playing-games-morality-systems/

Morality in The Witcher

I want to move on to a more complicated game, namely CD Projekt Red's (CDPR) The Witcher series. It came out just around the same time as Bioware released Mass Effect, and yet offered a far different experience.

Grey Area

When The Witcher first released in 2007, it was highly regarded and deemed a very different RPG experience than the usual "group up and save the world!" paradigm. It was dark, violent, and edgy, set within a fairly unique low-fantasy setting. The game deals with very real issues, such as racism, death, prostitution, and nationalism in a mature way. For this to work CDPR needed to include a way to make the player's decisions matter. But they did not include a measured system, such as in Mass Effect, you did not gain good points or bad points, simply because the choices made in The Witcher rarely just boil down to "good" or "bad." Most of the decisions come down to your own personal moral compass, and what you consider to be right; no behind the scenes points being added or detracted, just your choice, and the consequences that can come cascading back down on you later on in the game. That is the most interesting thing about The Witcher, no side, whether it be the humans, the mutants(elves, dwarves and the like), or yourself, Geralt, a half-mutant, was good or evil; each side was just carrying out actions which it believed to be right, and it was presented in a very believable way. As Geralt, you can choose to side with any of these factions, or stay neutral, and the game presents its' story very differently depending on your decisions, but it rarely ever rewards you for making a peculiar decision, besides with its natural consequence, whether that be positive or negative.

Resources

Bycer, J. (2013, August 1). The grey side of morality in game design. In Game Wisdom. Retrieved April 4, 2014, from http://game-wisdom.com/critical/the-grey-side-of-morality-in-game-design

Podcast: Choices Within World of Warcraft

Tonight, I have my friend Ben joining me to discuss the power of choice within a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, namely World of Warcraft.

Guest Blog: Meagan Talks Death in Fire Emblem: Awakening

Meagan talks a bit about her experiences with the woes of death in the Nintendo 3DS RPG Fire Emblem: Awakening. She also has her own blog about emotions and music here.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is a great role-playing game that really takes character death to a whole new level. If none of you have played the game, you are pretty much going through a great story line and using tactical strategies to take down your enemies. At the beginning of the game you get to design your own character and choose the difficulty, casual or classic. In casual, if one of your characters dies, they simply are taken out of that battle and return again for a different battle. You have two main characters, you and Prince Chrom and if one of those two characters were to die, it's game over and you have to restart that level. In classic, if the character dies, he/she dies for good, which means you can never use them in combat ever again. Fire Emblem calls this kind of death permadeath (an amalgam for permanent-death). If one of your characters die, they are gone for good and the plot-line or sub-plots will be altered or sometimes even non-existent. Even so, these characters are eventually replaced by another, each with their own personalities and stories.

Fire Emblem takes death seriously which makes this game have unique gameplay. You work hard on building the stats of these characters which makes losing them so much harder. Most players, if they have a connection with their character, they will just restart the game to get back their lost player. It can be frustrating to lose something you put so many hours in to which can cause some major game rage. Why would someone want to go through all this just to keep restarting and getting more frustrated? Most people like the challenge and you can pay more attention to your character’s health and stats because you don’t want your character to die on the battle field. You also move around the battle field more carefully.

So if you want a bit of a challenge, play Fire Emblem Awakening with the classic difficulty on and get your rage on.

A Brief History of Role-Playing Games

The Early Days

It all started in 1974, when a couple of guys named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson decided to make a game. Not a video game mind you, but a pen and paper dice-rolling game called Dungeons & Dragons. This is the game that really popularized the role-playing genre; the rules were relatively easy to learn, and playing meant having a good time with your friends around the table. The game in of itself is very fun, but I believe the most important thing about D&D was the legacy that it left and continues to leave to this day. This game was an inspiration for multitudes of RPGs to follow; many games even used modified D&D rules for their systems such as Bioware's critically acclaimed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. D&D set the stage for everything that was to come, whether it was a video game RPG or not

The Renaissance

The mid 1980s through the 1990s are what I consider to be the "golden age" of role-playing games. This is finally where the technology (for the period) caught up to what the storytellers were wanting to accomplish. Out of this period came masterpieces such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, which are still series that are going strong today. A lot of the great RPGs during this time were from Japanese developers, so this is also the time when the distinction between "western" and "eastern" RPGs began to crop up. Speaking of the west, a little company called Bioware released a game called Baldur's Gate in 1998, a Dungeons & Dragons game in fact. I'll be coming back to them later.

The Modern Era

Today, pretty much every game will try to shoehorn in some RPG elements, whether it be leveling mechanics in a First person shooter, or skill trees in an action game, but even if the genre is somewhat saturated today, there are still quality RPGs out there, especially when it comes to giving players meaningful choices. There are three franchises today which I believe encapsulate the modern quality of the RPG; Mass Effect, The Witcher, and The Elder Scrolls. Each of them present meaningful choices which a lot of the time inhabit a moral grey area for the protagonist--especially in the case of The Witcher-- and on top of of that they are of the highest quality in terms of design, gameplay, and art. Games such as these will be the focus of this blog, and I hope you stay with me as we explore the dilemma of player choice in Role-Playing Games.

NEXT TIME: Bioware's early attempts at choice

Resources

Wizards of the Coast. (2007). What is d&d?. Retrieved from https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?       x=dnd/whatisdnd

Schreier, J. (2012, August 8). What in the world is final fantasy? a beginner's guide to the biggest rpg series on the planet. . Retrieved from http://kotaku.com/5931304/what-in-the-world-is-final-fantasy-a-beginners-guide-to-the-biggest-rpg-series-on-the-planet

Dragon quest(series). (2014, March 18). Retrieved from http://dragon-quest.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_(series)

Harris, J. (2009, July 2). Game design essentials: 20 rpgs. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20091109154652/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4066/game_design_essentials_20_rpgs.php?page=10