Today is day 3 of Gamer Lifestyle week here at Dungeon Mastering. We’ve been talking about what you can do as an aspiring RPG author to break into the industry, and build up a fan base of players that will play and enjoy your games.

In today’s article, we’ll tackle the nuts & bolts of getting your game ready to be played, how to get all your artwork done, and we’ll also look at a few different publishing options that should help you get ready to start selling your product.

Let’s talk about presentation …

I mentioned yesterday in our article on branding about the importance of good artwork for your game covers, NPC character sketches, business logo’s etc, and promised I’d give you who are perhaps not very artistic a few pointers on how to get it done.

Whenever I need something done, whether it be an essay on a certain topic I’m clueless about, artwork for a new project, a piece of software I need developed, or something as simple as checking and responding to emails for me while I’m out of town for a week, (within reason obviously), I head over to one of my favorite freelance web sites.

If you’ve never been to a freelance web site before, what I”m about to share with you could be the most liberating piece of information you’ve ever read. It could also be the very thing that gets you “over the hump” with that project you’ve just haven’t had the time or ability to get done for the last few years.

Below, you’ll find a list of my favorite places to hire freelancers to do work for me. These sites have THOUSANDS of highly skilled and qualified individuals that will do basically anything you need them to do in exchange for a relatively low fee (in most cases).

http://www.getafreelancer.com

http://www.rentacoder.com

http://www.elance.com

http://www.odesk.com

http://www.guru.com

http://www.craigslist.com(yes, craigslist can be a great source!)

http://www.99designs.com

The above list of web sites should remove any excuse you have as to why you “can’t” do something.  And the best part about all of them, is you don’t actually have to pay the worker until they’ve completed your project exactly the way you want it to be. In fact as it pertains to the design of your project, 99designs.com freelancers actually COMPETE with other designers, and you get to choose the best one!

Some may have the objection “I can’t afford to hire someone to do work for me!” To those, I’d say I know what it’s like to be tight on cash, but realize that in most cases, all you have to do is sell 5-10 copies of your game and it pays for itself. So think about that with the long term benefit you’ll receive in mind.

Yax has some great thoughts on freelancing as well, and I’ll pull it all out of him on tomorrow night’s webcast =)

So, we’ve overcome the question of “how do I get the hard stuff done?”, so lets talk about publishing your game, and getting it packaged for sale!

Realistic Publishing Options For First Time Authors 

Amongst the options of traditional publishing, subsidy publishing, and self publishing, I’d have to say I’m of the opinion that self publishing is the best way to go for a new RPG author. Primarily because your audience could be perceived as too small for large publishing companies to take on your project, and it gives you the final say over the artwork and content of the project. So without going too far in to detail on the comparison of publishing methods, let’s talk about some specific self publishing methods to get the ball rolling.

1.) Sell your games in downloadable PDF style only.

As of now, this is the way we, and countless other RPG publishers have successfully conducted business for years. To do this, you basically need a word processor that will allow you to convert your files to PDF (openoffice.org is one such program you can download for free), a paypal account (also free to set up), and a method of advertising your book for sale. In most cases, this means your own web site or blog, or a marketplace such as Amazon.com or RPGnow.com…And coming soon the DungeonMastering.com Marketplace? (shhhhh…That’s a few weeks away).

In this scenario, your customers pay for the game via credit card, and are then provided with a download link for the game, which they can then play from their laptops, or print off and hole punch into a three ring binder.

This option works well because there’s little cost involved in producing the actual product other than outsourced cover art and graphics, and you can immediately begin selling your products…Especially if you’ve followed the advice given in the last two days here for Gamer Lifestyle week.

2.) Sell your games as physical books that you mail to customers.  

This method can seem a little daunting, but it’s easier than you might think. Companies like 48hrbooks.com can have your PDF file converted into a real hard or soft cover book, and ready to mail to customers in 2 days flat.

The drawback of going this route is that there is a little upfront cost involved with producing the books, but for those who are willing and able to go this route, the negatives are outweighed by the ability to charge more for each copy of your book that gets sold, as well as the perceived value that comes with being able to hold the product in your hands experienced by your customers. And with a service like 48hrbooks.com, you may actually be able to receive payment online for the book before you actually pay to have them produced in some cases.

Another advantage of selling in physical form is that it gives you the opportunity to have your books sold offline. A friend of mine named Mike just recently had his first comic book published and he sold out his first 100 copies by striking up a deal with a local comic book store to carry it. There’s a good chance you could do the same thing in your area with your RPG’s, and provide the store owner with copies of the book as they need more.

3.) Do both

No one says you can’t do both. And for those who do, your customers will really appreciate the extra effort to over deliver. When you’re just starting out, you likely won’t have large volumes of product to fulfill anyway, so it wouldn’t be that much work to do.  Something to consider anyway…

In conclusion, the “nuts & bolts” aren’t that hard to set up. The tricky part is actually SELLING them, which we’ll talk about in tomorrow’s post, and more importantly, in tomorrow night’s webcast where I interview our very own Yacine Merzouk, about how he and his partner Johnn have successfully published 9 RPG’s, guest written for Wizards of the Coast, and managed to sell hundreds and hundreds of their games to happy players like you and me.

You WON’T want to miss it! If you’ve yet to register to attend the webcast that we’ll stream online tomorrow night at 9:00 P.M. you can do so by visiting the link below.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE GAMER LIFESTYLE WEBCAST

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 In continuation of “Gamer Lifestyle Week” here at Dungeon Mastering, today I’ve got some neat strategies that should help catapult you further into your new career as an RPG author.

The truth of the matter regarding our own personal success in the RPG industry, is that it’s all Expy’s doing. And I’m not just saying that because he threatened to scorch my backside if I didn’t give him credit where credit was due either.

To explain what I mean, I will first need to introduce today’s topic:

BRANDING

In yesterday’s post, we learned that to be a successful author/publisher in any genre, it’s important to do three things…

1.) Establish credibility and build up trust by giving before receiving.  This helps create good will within the market, and a sense of reciprocity. It also keeps our community of gamers from being flooded with a bunch of spammy one and done salesmen who have no desire to provide a fun product to customers, but would rather just take our hard earned money in return for a poorly written product. By first going the extra mile to build a relationship with the gaming community for the benefit of us all, when it comes time for you to officially release your first “paid for” game to the public, it will be received much better.

2.) Reach out to other established authors and bloggers. Much like our first point, its all about learning to love the short end of the stick, and in turn reaping the benefits of reciprocity. Make it your goal to frequent other author’s blogs and comment, offer to review their products on your site for free, and in general, be a helpful kind of person who contributes to other people’s success, and it’ll come back to you 100 fold. I know personally, we get emails all the time from folks with good intentions that ask us to do a promo for their RPG that we have to turn down. If we bombarded our newsletter subscribers with any and every RPG written by people we don’t even know, there wouldn’t be 5,520 happy subscribers on our list today.

However, when a person comes along and says, “Hey, I really enjoyed Zombie Murder Mystery, if you’re interested, here’s a new scenario I wrote for the game that your customers might enjoy playing…” (this has actually happened in the past) we are much more likely to lend a helping hand to that author when they release their own game because they took time and effort out of their schedule to make one of OUR games even better!

3.) Us the 5 X rule. For every $1 you charge for your gaming product, make it your goal to deliver $5 worth of fun to the customer. By over delivering, you will quickly build up a fan base of customers who look forward to your next product/book release, because a level of trust has been established after the first transaction. This also causes a great deal of “word of mouth” advertising to go around within our community. Put your best foot forward and it’ll pay off.

Today’s Advice

Now, today, I want to continue those thoughts by introducing the concept of “Branding”.  When we mention things like building a fan base, and spreading news of what you’re releasing via word of mouth, it’s important to realize that sticking in your customer’s minds is a lot easier to do when your company/product line is represented by a character or symbol, as apposed to your name. (No offense to Yax, but Yacine Merzouk doesn’t exactly stick in your head like Expy the Gold Hoarding Dragon does, know what I mean?)

Not only does the help of a character or symbol make your product line easier to remember or spot in an advertisement, it helps create a healthy sense of bonding with your audience.

Did you guys notice the exchange Elderon and Expy had in the comments section under yesterday’s post in Draconic? For all you players out there with dragon characters, when you read that kind of conversation do you not immediately BOND with those guys?

And since Dungeon Mastering is a blog that caters mostly to Dungeons and Dragons players, Expy does a really good job representing us to the masses. (We love you Expy). And everyone who has had a chance to bond with Expy, knows that “Expy Games” are the most fun games an RPGer could play. bias emphasized =)

The point I’m trying to make, is that when you start out, it is a very good idea to brand your product line with something your target customers will identify with. One of the best examples I can think of is a company I was introduced to over at RPGnow called “Fat Dragon Games”. A name like that is simply unforgetable.

So, here are some ideas you can use to find the right character or symbol to brand your games with…

1.) Choose something that represents the “genre” of your games. Consider our Greek Mythology game “Arete”. When I say “Arete”, what pops into your head? A picture of a Greek warrior, with a gold helmet, shield, and a club…right?

That was done on purpose! When people are looking for a fun Greek Mythology RPG, Arete screams “I’m exactly what you’re looking for.”

2.) Use your favorite RPG character! (Elderon, if you read this, I’m talking to you). Perhaps a brass dragon that gets fire happy on occasion would be just the thing to brand your product line of games with.

Or perhaps your game is one in which players must find ways to defeat a certain kind of monster. THAT monster, would be great to use as a branding image for the game.

3.) A popular item that players use in the game. A sword, battle axe, or magic ruby would work well. Perhaps a scroll, (scrolls of destiny anyone?) or a similiar item that could represent what your games are all about.

In conclusion, I know a lot of you may be thinking, “That sounds great, but I’m no artist, and I have no clue how to brand my games like that!”…The good news is that in tomorrow’s post I’ll tell you how to get all the “hard stuff” done when it comes to creating a brand, PDF files and even physical versions of your game to sell in stores! So stay tuned for tomorrow’s Gamer Lifestyle post.

And remember, if you have yet to REGISTER TO ATTEND THURSDAY’S WEBCAST where I’ll interview Yax, founder of Dungeon Mastering, about how to break into the RPG industry and live the ultimate Gamer Lifestyle, you won’t want to miss it. The broadcast will go live @ 9:00 P.M. EST. Please let us know you plan on showing up to watch it by signing up so we can be prepared to allocate enough bandwidth from our servers (thanks).

Happy Gaming!

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In light of the recent responses to our “Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Dungeon Blogger?” post, I wanted to share a few ideas with you aspiring RPG authors about how to make some extra moola doing what you love.

We’ve received a healthy amount of entries to our recent blogging challenge (btw, if we have yet to publish your article, it doesn’t mean we hated it, we’re just going through all of them one at a time, and there is a good chance it will still be published in the near future. So please be patient ), and we’ve discovered that there’s a lot of great writers that read our blog who have the potential to really do something with their talent.

Being the quiet manager here at DungeonMastering.com, I’ve had the opportunity over the last several months to learn a lot from Dungeon Mastering’s founder, Yacine Merzouk (“Yax” for those who don’t know), about breaking into the RPG industry.

This week, I’ve put together a special treat just for you who are passionate about such things!

So without further adieu, I’d like to present “Gamer Lifestyle Week“.

From today, Monday March 15th, through Monday March 22nd, we’re going to share as many helpful tips as we can for the aspiring author to get their feet wet publishing their first module/original RPG/campaign online or in print to the masses.

The week will climax on Thursday night at 9:00 EST with a special webcast that will air online, where I interview guest writer for Wizards of The Coast, 6 time publisher, and creater of the very blog you are reading that has a fan base of over 10,000 + RPGers, 5,500+ email subscribers, and 9,900+ RSS readers, YAX!

You won’t want to miss it. There’s no cost to attend the webcast, just let us know you’re coming so we can be ready to allocate the appropriate amount of bandwidth for streaming the video. You can do so by registering for the event below:

Click Here To Register For The WebCast

Today, I’ve got 3 tips to share with you about successfully getting started in the RPG industry based on what I’ve been able to glean from Yax and Johnn from RolePlayingTips.com. So here it goes…

1.) Establish credibility by creating a platform for people to get familiar with you.

This is probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned from Yax and other successful online authors. A large reason for his (and other’s) success in this industry comes from the high quality content that is given away on this site for free. In addition to well over 700+ articles that have been published here, Yax created a free guide called “The Instant DM” that has now been freely downloaded by 6,050 people at the time of writing this post. That guide has helped many thousands of players cut their game preparation time down to around one hour for every four hours of game play.

Not only that, but for the 5,516 of those people who have opted to stay on the DMing email newsletter, we’ve endeavored to continue providing valuable gaming content via email every week for months and months to each subscriber.

Lesson: Be a giver before you ask for anything in return!

When DungeonMastering.com decides to publish something new in the store, it’s usually very well received because players trust us based on the mountain of valuable free content that has been given away at no cost here on the site.

So how do you get started?

I recommend you start a blog, and just start talking with about whatever is on your mind that would be helpful to gamers. You can post a few times a week, and before you know it, you’ll have a few dozen posts up that other bloggers (maybe even us!!) are linking to.

You can make a free blog by visiting wordpress.com, or blogger.com, or you could even make a “lense” at squidoo.com. All of those places will allow you to start building a reputation within the industry for nothing at all, and you can start today.

2.) Create Relationships With Established Authors & Bloggers.

Make it a habbit to comment on other blogs. Visit GenCon and other gaming events so you can network with people and show off your stuff. By being a friend to the industry, (by giving away helpful stuff that generally helps everyone have more fun), the industry will become a friend to you.

You might also consider contacting other authors at places like RPGNow.com where thousands of RPG writers hang out and sell their stuff to gamers like you and me. (btw, you can start selling there too). Send them a free review copy of your RPG material and let them write up a review of it on their site. Offer to do a free review of their stuff in exchange. Perhaps you can swap links with them on your blog or in a newsletter you send out.

The lesson here once again: Help others, and most of them will be happy to help you in return.

3.) Use the 5 X Rule When Pricing Your First RPG.

Our rule of thumb here is to produce 5 X the amount we charge for our games in fun. So if your first RPG costs $10, aim to produce $50 in fun. Go out of your way to make great NPC character sketches, extra scenarios, puzzles, and other resources to make the games more “full”.  Offer free updates to the game for life.

The goal here is to “over deliver”. This is especially true when you’re just getting started. People who don’t know you, need you to prove the quality of your games to them. This will allow you to ask a little more in the future for new releases. Its a great way to build a fan base too.

Using the above 3 strategies will help you get started. But don’t expect to “quit your day job” immediately. Yax himself still works as a software development consultant even though he makes a really good “side” living as an author and publisher in the RPG world. (Given, its a really GOOD job, so most people wouldn’t quit anyway. lol) However, using the strategies that we’ll be sharing here on the blog during Gamer Lifestyle week, and more importantly, the strategies that we’ll go into more detail with on Thursday night’s special WebCast, could be the launch pad for you to get paid regularly as an RPG author.

Don’t forget to Register for The WebCast Event with me and Yax this Thursday night at 9:00 EST.

Yax is going to share the entire Dungeon Mastering story of how he got started, how he became a guest writer for Wizards of the Coast, and how he and his partner Johnn have together published 9 RPGs, thousands of articles, and built great incomes in the process of providing value, and loads of fun for 10’s of thousands of gamers like us.

Happy Gaming!

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By Guest Blogger Jason L. Dawson

Players are clever. They scheme, plan, plot and connive their way into and out of the most difficult situations we as the DM can create. This is especially true if you have players in your game who are tactically minded. I have the singular joy (and curse, at times) of playing D&D 4E with a group of real-life combat veterans. Some might call it metagaming, but in the encounters I run for them it just ends up being a simple fact: my players are incredibly tactically minded, and that translates especially well into a game like 4E. Because my players synergize and work as a well-oiled unit without even really thinking about it, I have had to “up my game” in order to keep the game challenging for them. Thus, I have developed a few tricks that I use to keep them on their toes. A recent series of encounters I ran demonstrates several of these minion tricks, so I will use them as examples.

Keep Them Guessing–Sometimes

Anybody who has run or played in more than a couple games of 4E knows that it’s pretty easy to recognize a minion unless the GM puts a great deal of effort into hiding them or disguising them as standard monsters. Once in a while it can be a good thing to put a bunch of visually identical (but statistically different) monsters on the board, and let the PCs figure out which is which by trial and error. However, this is a tactic that should be used with great caution. Most players who decide to use an encounter or daily power and find out they used it on a minion won’t be pleased. In an encounter designed around a theme of trickery or misdirection this can be a good thing, but more than once in a very great while will do nothing more than make your players resent you, and rightly so. The bad guys hoodwinking the characters is one thing—the GM hoodwinking the players is something else entirely. Use this tactic wisely.

Instead of deliberately misleading your players, use the tools in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (especially the second one) to build interesting encounters incorporating your minions. Find interesting ways of introducing them into the encounter. Invent creative abilities and powers or steal them from other monsters to make your minions tactically interesting. And finally, use the players’ expectations of minions to your advantage in how you use the little buggers tactically.

Introducing Your Minions

Spreading your minions out is a well-known means of keeping them from getting obliterated all at once. PCs with blast or burst powers are well-known as minion-killers. That’s part of what the Controller classes are especially good at. But the “spread them out” mentality is something that can be used chronologically as well as spatially on the battlemat.

My PCs were deeply involved in an urban combat involving wererats (skirmishers), a couple dire rats (brute non-minions, much to the PCs surprise) and a bunch of giant rat minions. I had built a total of 16 giant rats into the encounter, and gave them +1d4 damage with combat advantage, befitting their sneaky nature. There were only a couple of the minions on the board when the combat began, and the PCs dealt with them quickly. However, one of the wererats moved over to a sewer grating (marked on the battlemap from the beginning of the combat) and used a standard action to, in essence, use a terrain power and make a screeching rat call into the sewers. From then on, every round on the minions’ initiative, 1d4 giant rats appeared in a square adjacent to the sewer grate and entered the encounter. Each time they did, I subtracted that number from the amount I knew the encounter was built for. The PCs, of course, saw this as an “endless rat generator” and suddenly redoubled their efforts to take down the standard monsters in order to end the encounter. They didn’t know there was a finite number of minions, and it upped the tension considerably. They’ve also gotten far more interested in using the terrain of an encounter after seeing the monsters use it against them.

Another encounter in a Far Realm themed adventure saw the PCs fighting a tentacled, aberrant horror with huge egglike pustules all over its back. This encounter was built as a solo monster of two levels below the PCs and again, a considerable number of minions. The minions, however, didn’t start on the map at all. Instead, every time the PCs hit the solo with a single-target attack, I described one of the egg-pustules rupturing and a floating, amorphous blob of semi-sentient goo being “born” in a square adjacent to the solo. This is how I introduced the minions—the PCs had to decide whether to wail away on the solo and create more minions or deal with the minions and let the solo have time to pound on them. It increased the drama of the encounter just as much as the sewer rats.

Make Minions Matter

The “spawn” minions had a particularly nasty ability: when reduced to 0 hit points, they exploded in a shower of horrific goo. This was a close burst 1 dealing 4 psychic damage to any non-aberrant creature. This added yet another angle to an encounter the players had thought was tactically simple. The players, especially the ones who throw around burst and blast templates constantly, suddenly weren’t just affecting the monsters. Because the spawn appeared in squares adjacent to the solo, the melee characters often had several of the amorphous buggers attacking them at once. They were lower level than the PCs, so they didn’t hit often, but that wasn’t their real danger. Constantly dealing psychic damage to the melee characters was a serious concern, and the players had a good time figuring out how to deal with it. By the end of the encounter, the players had really come to hate the spawn minions, but it was a good kind of hate. It showed me I should definitely use those minions again.

Likewise, in the rat encounter, giving the giant rats a +1d4 damage bonus against targets they had combat advantage against wasn’t a huge deal, but it definitely made the PCs sit up and pay attention when they saw me rolling dice to determine a minion’s damage. They expected a flat number; playing against their expectations made the combat more engaging.

Think Like A Minion

The last encounter of that session was a big, set-piece battle against the cult of Far Realm worshippers. The PCs had fought numerous tentacled nasties by this time, and weren’t particularly surprised by the suicidally fanatic cultists, nor by the carrion crawlers that scuttled their way to do battle. But I used their expectations against them again and made the encounter more interesting by doing so. The cultists were, in fact, hosts for the same kind of “exploding brain amoebas” (as the players ended up calling them) that had spawned from the solo monster in the earlier encounter. I took the number of minions slated for the encounter and split them in half. The first half were the human cultists—simple cookie cutter minions with no special abilities. I did this deliberately to let the PCs romp through them and feel heroic, which they did.  The cultists were especially suicidal, and I described them as such. The PCs took it as typical fanatic behavior, but the cultists knew what was growing inside them and what would happen upon their deaths.

I made sure the cultists went about 1/3 of the way from the top of the initiative order. I also kept track on the battlemat where the bad guys’ bodies fell when they died. I usually do this because I treat the corpse of a Medium sized corporeal monster as difficult terrain. This time, however, there was an additional twist, and an additional number on the initiative tracker. When the cultists died, the PCs did what any well trained soldier does when a target has been neutralized—they moved right past the body and engaged new targets, leaving the artillery characters in the “safe” space behind them.

When the mystery number came up on the initiative, though, the bodies of the cultists exploded in just the same way the egg-sacs on the back of the solo monsters had, spawning more of the “exploding brain amoebas” and making the players curse profoundly. The spawn were now *behind* the melee characters and proceeded to swarm the second-line fighters instead, forcing the PCs to change their established tactics . This created tension and more than a little bit of real fear for the characters’ lives. In the end, the players told me point-blank the encounters had been tough, interesting, and above all memorable. I have a feeling that “exploding brain amoebas” is going to become a common table phrase for this game.

When it comes down to the final analysis, minions have the potential to become boring just as easily as any other kind of monster if not used deliberately. It’s not enough to just throw them into an encounter as filler; likewise so they can use Aid Another or provide flanking or even just to provide cover against ranged attackers. In order to get the most out of your minion mile you need to think about how they fit into the encounter as a whole both in-game and in the metagame sense. Use minions to create interesting tactical situations and give them memorable abilities, and your players will remember them much longer than you might think one measly hit point could manage.

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Sometimes, new people want to try their hand at DMing or old hands want to use a module to help speed things a long. This is not an issue, adventures and modules were made for a reason and it’s not a shame to use them, but it’s also okay not to use it. The problem with a module is a lot of times DM’s try to “Railroad” their players (The act of forcing the characters to do as the DM deems fit and not what the players choose to do.) and that’s not okay. If someone wishes to go their own way, let them. Go along with it, modules are hard to define because sometimes people will go completely opposite what you hope them too. But, for those inquisitive players who like depth sometimes modules don’t cut it, so here’s how you can delve into the depths of someone else’s mind and define it.

I’m the DM; my players constantly find ways to stump me!

Ahh, good ol’ fashion beating the DM over the head with questions tactic…One most players have done.  Including myself, because this is not necessarily a bad thing to ask a lot of question about your surroundings, it helps get everything more defined and “realistic” feeling and it also is a good way to help people get creative. (As explained in another article, where I mentioned Terrain can be used as weapons or advantageous spots for PC’s or even NPC’s.) So remember that DM’s, do not get angry or frustrated at your players for asking questions, they are just getting a flavor for the game and it probably means they are interested in what’s going on, take this as a good thing.

First, read the module ahead of time. Even if you’ve read the module a thousand times before since you’ve owned it, take time within the -same week- that you are suppose to be DMing to read that module. If it’s a larger one, try reading a portion of it that you plan on putting your party through. Preferably, if you can, do this the day before everyone shows up (or within the same day, if time prohibits.).

Second off, do not let the module restrict your creativity and make extra side notes on who, what, where, when, why. A module might say there is a man with some information about something the party has to talk to, give this man a personality, a hair color, eye color, a race (or change it if you wish), give him a background, perhaps an accent. Maybe he conflicts with the party for some reason and now the party has to find another way to get that information or suffer without it. If the party chooses to slaughter the person, then they don’t get the info. Don’t let them find it out some other way! Let them reap their own consequences, or reward. This gives the players a sense of “Every action has a reaction” and shows that not everything will be handed to them. Don’t be a Monty Haul!

Thirdly, leave room for improvement and failure, A party can make a situation worse or better so leave room for this. If the group decides to do it their own way, let them, if they cut the adventure in half and cut to the end somehow — reward them for their creativity. If they choose to go elsewhere, the adventure does not have to stop! Something my step dad taught me is just because the party isn’t doing the adventure, doesn’t mean it’s put on hold. Perhaps the bad guy goes on and wins, or perhaps another adventuring group goes off and gets the job done. If the players don’t do it in the allotted time, that’s their problem! Don’t put it on hold because your party wants a few bar wenches, everything in the world has a time limit and villains ESPECIALLY are no exception. (A few tips from Restelphin who helped inspire this article. Thanks, dad!)

But I -really- want them to do this, but they turned the wrong way!

Alright, sometimes we cheat as DM’s. We give you a fork in the road, and you can go left, or right. You choose right, the module says left. What do we do? Well, flip them! Sometimes you are giving them the illusion of choice, which IS FINE. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, now ONCE THEY GET THERE if they choose to turn around and leave, LET THEM, because changing the direction of the road once in awhile is okay, but not allowing them to turn around and leave (unless of course there is a trap or something of the likes prohibiting them) is no longer improving the story it is RAILROADING. Your job as the DM is to keep the story going, and it is OKAY if the party goes off the beaten path for you to tell them “Hey guys, I didn’t prepare for this. I need a minute or two to prepare/get some ideas.” This is FINE. Most people will understand, because you want a good game and not to ruin it because you continued with a story line you were uncomfortable with this can lead to a bad game and isn’t something anyone wants to experience. I feel a boat load of disagreements coming on, but I stand true to what I said. Tweaking a few things in the adventure in order to uphold the unity of the game is NOT an issue. Of course, telling them you did that will probably lead to a barrage of bashings because no one likes to think they are being controlled in any way, but during the course of playing DnD there will be moments where you take a different, secret, DM’s route. Everyone has different opinions and DMing tactics. This is also okay, there is no one way to run a game.

I’m a player, what does any of this have to do with me?

As a player your biggest responsibility to a DM is understanding. If a DM needs a moment, give him that moment so you get a good game, help give him ideas; like telling him what exactly you are doing, your characters motives, his thought process, what his goals and aspirations are. This can give the DM inspiration and ideas, and can also help develop your character and even give you time to think of your actions more thoroughly. Have fun if he is taking time to prepare, remember he is doing this for you and don’t be afraid to converse with your fellow players. Perhaps, if the DM allows, take this time to sit at the bar with the other characters and chat to get to know each other, or have some random in game moments that really don’t affect big issues. Or ask even if you can shop around in the players handbook for items, this is time for you as the player to also get more prepared for the game, make sure there isn’t anything you forgot.

Feel free to ask questions during a game, about their eye color or surroundings. Ask about the demeanor of patrons around you, does anyone look suspicious? Do you choose to hide your purse or stay away from one character in particular you think is looking to dip his hands into your pocket. It is not the DM’s job to HAND you a story, he is the WORLD and you should go out looking for adventure just as much as he should provide the steps of your story. You are collaborating on a story and your actions can affect the world just as much as his can if you implement yourself correctly. Just like people can put their names in history books. When a DM is running a module sometimes it’s better to take the “obvious hook” if they are new DM’s, don’t be too hard on someone that is new. Try and give them leeway and always give advice, make sure they know it’s okay. And if you know more about the rules and you notice he’s struggling, don’t be an ass — help him, but don’t impose on his game either. Maybe you see him struggling with the tables, or you think he is accidentally montying. Point it out to him, don’t be afraid to suggest things to your DM. This is a GROUP effort to play the game, not one person is entirely in control though respect your DM if he chooses a different route. If you don’t like the style he runs his games in, feel free to run your own, but don’t berate him during a game.

If you know the module that you are being run through, remember “Out of character knowledge!” You might know something, but it doesn’t mean your character does, try your best to stay in character and not to tell him the exact secret pit trap and that you don’t want to step on it. If you are not capable of doing this, let your DM know. If they are answering a riddle and you know the answer to, step away from the table or let him know you wish to sit this one out because you think it wouldn’t be fair to the game. Don’t cheat your DM, it’s silly and pointless. It’s not like you can win DnD.

But mostly, be creative and have fun! This is a game full of possibility so don’t be afraid to take it!

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By Guest Blogger Brendan Stone

“I’m a level 14 Dwarven Fighter.  I’m tough as nails and drink like a fish.  I wear plate mail the color of rust and dirt to hide the blood that flows freely from my enemies.  My axe is a gruesome weapon to behold! “  Wait, what do you mean make an Intelligence check?  I’m a Fighter!  Ok… I rolled a 17!  Oh, I remember that guy at the bar?  From what?  Before?  You mean I existed before there was a party?

Every game we play is a story written and shared by the players and the dungeon master.  True, the dungeon master is the cosmic author and every player is a character, but not all stories are exclusively by the author.  Every character has an origination and a story to go with it.  Take our dwarven friend from before.  He’s a gruff character no one would want to meet in a dark ally.  Not that we want to have couch time with a dwarf, but what is the reason for the aggression and violence?  Is it simple stereotyping or does the player have a good reason?  Characters should have backgrounds, and this is as good a time as any to be thinking about them.

Once upon a time I had a questionnaire that covered the one hundred most important questions you should ask about the character you are playing.  It is time consuming, painful, and sometimes repetitive.  However, taking this much time to develop the parts of a character not found on a character sheet is rewarding for the player, the gm, and the game.  If your character is staying in a tavern in some small city far from civilization, what size room are you going to pay for?  What kind of drink and meal do you order?  Are you a good tipper?  I have yet to find a stat modifier that answers these questions, which means you have to play your character in these situations.  Drawing upon a set of characteristics you develop in a character background makes this role-play easy.

Let’s go back to the dwarf from before.  This character was raised outside of dwarf society in a human city.  His idea of being a dwarf was shaped by two things; first, human songs and writing portray dwarves as fierce and tempered creatures of the mountains and, second, he was antagonized constantly for being different.  A player who wants to have a dwarf with the swagger of violence will role-play that personality with greater success when they can draw on a good foundation for that personality.  As the dm, nothing makes a game flow smoother than when your players willingly play the story for you.

Ok, you might be thinking, and my seven NPC’s will need how much time put into them, now?  Do not answer the full one hundred questions for any NPC.  I could say that you probably don’t have enough time or that you hate NPC’s or something else, but there is a good reason to leave some of the NPC open.  Players want to help create the world and will tell you how they think an NPC might react.  If the players think the bartender is an agent for the evil wizard or a zealot for the fanatical religion, play it that way.  What I want you to focus on can only be found by knowing the backgrounds of your PCs.

You have a grand story to tell but you need to have small, more personalized, stories to fill the gaps.  It’s game night, someone didn’t show and you hate to advance too much plot without him or her.  No problem.  One of your players has a history of troubles with certain elves.  Turns out tonight the caravan the elves have been driving as a cover story has pulled into town.  The party, sans one member, will have to deal with the situations as they unfold.  Another example, maybe you have a character playing Lawful boring and you need them to dig deeper.  An older child bullied the paladin when they were young which led to the justice-avenger mentality.  Now, the paladin is watching a group of thugs beat up a merchant.  Upon arriving to assist the hapless merchant, the paladin realizes the merchant is the same bully from years ago.  Does justice demand protecting the weak or does it allow for vengeance?  Spending a whole night gaming without having to forward your master plot enriches the experience for your players.  Also, it gives you more command of the story when you do end up in the thick of things.

Letting a player, or players, direct some of the plot while you sit back and relax gives you a feeling of accomplishment.  Everyone comes to game expecting to be a part of the story.  Further, when it’s time for a player to role-play their part it can be difficult, scary, and stressful.  Help make their experience enjoyable by giving them reasons to detail their history.  Don’t get me wrong, I want the players to fight those epic battles I have been spending my time planning as much as you do.  But wouldn’t you rather let the players think it was their idea?

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by Guest Blogger Daniel “The White” LeBlanc

One of the most underrated yet important parts of DMing is the creation of dungeons for the adventurers to explore. Too often we focus on the story telling or interesting ways to run the fights, all the while ignoring the fact that the players need places to be in for the story to be told and the monsters to be killed. I use the term ‘dungeon’ to describe any setting that you, the DM, can come up with be it forest, swamp, cave or honest dungeon, built beneath an evil wizard’s tower. Like many, I used to agonize over each and every room, spending countless hours on each map I needed to make however, like everything else, minimal time is needed for preparation if you know what you are doing. This article shows a quick and easy way to generate dungeons quickly and easily. 15 to 20 minutes should be enough to get a playable dungeon.

First, a few materials you’ll need to get started.

1: Paper. While this seems obvious, some types of paper are much better than others. For organic areas with lots of squiggly lines normal paper is OK but these are hard to describe, for simplicities sake I suggest sticking to straight lines until you get used to everything, for this purpose grid paper is ideal. Grab a grid book from pretty much any newsagent or school supplies store; alternatively you can download customizable and printable sheets from many places on the internet such as http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/

2: Pencils. Never, I repeat NEVER, write in pen if you make a mistake it is very messy to fix up. For most purposes a standard HB pencil will be fine but it is great to have some basic colored ones. A blue patch works much better to represent a lake than a circle with a note in it.

3: Misc. An eraser is a must for getting rid of those little mistakes you will inevitably make. A ruler helps for your basic straight line and a protractor makes the dreaded circle room much easier to draw.

4: Dice. Grab your dice bag and get ready to roll. Trust me, this will become clear soon enough.

OK, got your equipment… No? Why not? Grab them and meet me back here to make your dungeon. Trust me; I’ll wait for you… Oh, you’re back, good, time to get started.

I’m going to be assuming an average size dungeon which can be mapped out on a single sheet of A4 paper, for smaller dungeons only use a portion of the sheet, for larger ones use multiple sheets, easy as that. Start by dividing your paper into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, this gives you 9 sectors to work with and a sector of a few rooms is far easier to build than a whole dungeon. Pick a sector to start in, I tend to start at the top-left corner and work towards the bottom-right but the order is up to you. All the basics are now done and it’s time for the fun stuff. For each sector follow the steps outlined below.

1: Determine how many rooms in the sector and how big they are. Grab a percentile die and consult the table.

1-10: 6 small rooms
11-22: 4 small and 1 medium rooms
22-28: 2 small, 1 medium and 1 large rooms
29-40: 1 small and 2 medium rooms
41-49: 2 medium rooms and 1 small rooms
50-58: 2 medium and 1 large rooms
59-68: 1 medium and 2 large rooms
69-75: 3 medium rooms
76-80: 2 large rooms
81-90: 1 large room
91-100: 4 small rooms

2: What shape is each room going to be? Well it’s quite simple; in fact, it is just as simple as working out how many they are in a sector. Grab your percentile and roll for each room, note down each result as you get it.

1-5: Circle
6-15: Octagon
16-50: Rectangle
51-85: Square
86-100: Triangle

Yes, most rooms are going to end up either rectangle or square but trust me, describing and drawing them is much easier than the other shapes.

3: Last but not least you need to know exactly what size each room is going to be, until now all you have had for sizes is the vague description of small, medium and large. This is the longest section since you need to roll at least once for each room. As you roll the size of each room you can draw them in, either number each quarter of the sector and roll a d4 so see where the room lands or pick for yourself. I’ll also give some tips for drawing each style of room. All sizes are measured in squares of grid paper, it is up to you to determine what each square represents. I use each square as 5ft (so a small square room will end up between 10 and 20 feet on each side while a large one will be between 10 and 60).

Square:

By far the easiest room to roll and draw simply roll the dice to get the size of each side of the square.

Small: 2d2
Medium: 2d4
Large: 2d6

Rectangle:

The rectangle is harder than the square to draw, but only because the sides are different lengths. Notably, it is possible to roll the same number for each side which pretty much turns the rectangle into another square, if you don’t want that simply re-roll one side.

Small: 2d3 by 2d4
Medium: 2d3 by 2d4
Large: 2d4 by 2d6

Octagon:

Well, that about wraps it up for the easy shapes, time for the harder ones. For the octagon you have two choices, either you can have the room a regular octagon (all eight sides the same length) or irregular (all sides can be different lengths). I honestly recommend the regular octagon for simplicities sake but if you want the irregular shape you’ll need to roll once for each of the first seven sides (the last one just connects the last gap). The numbers may seem small in comparison to the other shapes but an octagon 4 squares to a side is MUCH bigger than a rectangle 4 squares to a side.

Small: 1d2
Regular: 1d3
Large: 1d4

Triangle:

While there are many types of triangles, the easiest two to use are the equilateral and the right angled. For the equilateral, roll once and make all sides the same length. Place a dot at each corner and use a ruler to connect them. For the right angled one you need to roll twice. Place a dot in a corner, another one directly above it and another one horizontally next to it (the distances determined by the rolls). Connect the dots and voila, a triangle. Of course, if you want to make it complicated on yourself you can roll for each side and work it out from there but you will be kicking yourself when you have to describe the room later. Either choose which type of triangle you want to use or flip a coin, heads it’s equilateral, tails it’s right angled.

Small equilateral: 2d3
Medium equilateral: 2d4
Large equilateral: 2d6
Small right angled: 2d3 by 2d2
Medium right angled: 2d4 by 2d3
Large right angled: 2d6 by 2d4

Circle:

Ahh the circle room, my old nemesis, there is a reason I have left this room to last and why it is the least likely result on my table. First, I hate drawing them, second I absolutely detest trying to get my players to visualize the room, let alone placing it on a battle board. The single easiest way to draw it is to grab a protractor, set the distance to however many squares you roll up and go from there. Failing that pick a midpoint and place a dot at the edges of where the circle will be and connect them up as best as possible.

Small: 1d2
Medium: 1d4
Large: 1d6

Well, what do you know? Your first sector is pretty close to complete, all that remains is to connect them up any way you want. Either you can run a large corridor through the whole sector with some smaller branching corridors or have the rooms connect directly to each other or any combination in between. Don’t forget that you can always leave a room or two connected only secret passages. With that out of the way, go back up to the top and do it again for each sector and connect the sectors in the same way you did each room in each sector.  Don’t forget to give at least one sector access to the outside world.

That about wraps it up, the hard part is done, the rest is up to your imagination. Is your dungeon a cave system? Is it well made or rough hewn? Maybe it’s a swamp with slightly shallower pathways. I suggest numbering each room for easy reference and writing descriptions on another sheet of paper. You need to think about what type of doors (if any) separate the corridors and rooms. Tables and ideas for traps, random encounters and treasure can be found easily with a bit of work, heck the treasure and random encounter tables are in the core rulebooks for most systems, or you can tailor each encounter yourself, or do what I do, decide on the important bits and randomize the rest. Remember, each table is only a guide, you can change the values or ignore them completely if you want, if a room needs to be a certain shape or size for your idea to work the put it in. Maybe you like circles more than I do or you want a more organic looking dungeon, add a few numbers to the circle result and take them away from something else. Maybe you hate triangles, get rid of them, don’t let a random table ruin what you are trying to achieve. Your decision, as always, is final.

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