GM (looking at Player 1): What do you do?

Player 1: I’m going to do X.

Player 2 (glancing at Player 1′s character sheet): X? Are you kidding. You have Y, why wouldn’t you use that?

Player 1: Fine, I’ll use Y then.

This is a classic example of a player using OPC (other player’s character (sheet)). Sometimes, OPC is used to help teach a newbie the ropes (“Did you know that your character can do X?”). On the other end of the scale, there are players that use OPC to further their own ends or ensure optimal play at the expense of discretionary play.

For example, I’ve seen OPC at a table where experience is not a factor. For whatever reason a player has not shared all of her abilities with the rest of the group, yet Player 2 scans her sheet and wonders aloud why that player isn’t using X, when there’s no reason in-game for Player 2′s character to know about X. This is particularly onerous when Player 1 refuses to use power X because she doesn’t think her character would use it in that particular situation.

I’ve also seen cases where OPC gets really obnoxious. I’ve seen players demand to know why other players aren’t spending XP (usually with several suggestions on how to spend it) or players starting vendettas against other players because power X wasn’t used and it screwed over a player.

There are occasions when OPC can be a boon. Besides the aforementioned inexperienced player, there are players that simply can’t be bothered with remembering things outside of a session (they’re lucky if they remember what character they are playing when they arrive). This is especially an issue for one-shots or irregularly-scheduled campaigns. In these cases I find that OPC eases my burden as a GM.

So how about you? Do you regularly slap down OPC in regular campaigns when all of the players are experienced, or do you let it slide? Have you seen any especially good or bad uses of OPC in your campaigns?

I don’t play D&D and its derivitaves all that often but when I do I notice that players tend to approach every encounter with an expectation that their character sheets have enough on them to get through it. If a monster or monsters confront the characters, the question is often not “should we face this or flee” but rather “how many rounds will it take us to defeat it?” That’s not to say that balanced encounters aren’t challenging or don’t result in PC deaths, but rather such events are attributed to sloppy play or bad dice rolling rather than “we should have run in the first place.” (Worse yet is the “why did you pit us against that if we couldn’t defeat it?” mantra).

I’ve noticed that this idea of balance infects other games as well. Many games employ the concepts of a “minions,” NPCs that PCs can easily steamroller, and “villains” that the PCs, working together, can defeat in combat. PCs are sometimes given “bennies” to tip the balance in their favor as well.

Still, one need only go back to one of D&D’s literary sources, The Hobbit, to see an example of a PC in over his head hoping not to wake up a dragon while he steals something from it. I also recall several adventures in my old school days (including old school video game days) where the PCs would get spanked something fierce if they encountered something too powerful and didn’t run.

So today’s Hot Button is this: Should players have an expectation that they can overcome every scene/encounter? Or is it okay to have some encounters where the PCs have little to no chance at direct confrontation?

“I roll to see if I know anything about ancient ankthyrian architecture and where they might have hidden a secret door. Crap, didn’t get it. Let me just try that again…”

or how about?

“Ok, I know I’ve rolled 8 times to try to force the door, but the 9th time is the charm!”

or what about this golden oldie?

“Ok, we want to avoid a fight. I’ll try to talk them down since I am the only one who knows their language.  Crap. If they don’t immediately attack, can I try it again?”

Rolling the dice in most games denotes an attempt at an action by our characters, if the dice come up in our favor then the action is successful, if they don’t we are usually screwed. But is the failure scenario always such that the action can’t be attempted again? Since some actions can be attempted again we, as players,  sometimes feel like other actions can be attempted again and will try for it. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it isn’t, but it is often fairly subjective as to when a reroll is appropriate.

So that is the hot button for today. When do you allow players to reroll actions? Does it depend on the type of action? Physical, remembering something, diplomacy? Does it depend on the fail scenario? What about when the players are in a jam and really need to get a win scenario? Will you let a reroll occur then, even if you haven’t before? Do you consider the reroll a separate action? What if enough time has passed between rolls for something like remembering info or figuring out a puzzle, will you allow a reroll then?

To me, this is one of those issues right up there with fudging the dice as a GM. I’ve got players who will try to push the bounds and reroll anything. Other players will consider themselves doomed and walk themselves to the guillotine, even when I would have given them a chance to work their way out of the situation. Like so many questions and issues, I find this very subjective. So how does it play at your table? What issues do you have with it or what situations will you absolutely disallow it in? When do you consider it acceptable to reroll a failure?

IMG BY hatchibombotar | CC 2.0

At first, my players thought it was pretty sweet that they got to choose their favorite dice and just count evens. However, when I picked up a set of Ubiquity dice (different colored d8s that let you roll less dice and just add the results), my group found them much more preferable. The Ubiquity dice are simply more convenient and speed play.

This got me thinking about dice pools. As an old-timer, I’m hardwired to prefer single-roll systems, such as using a d20 or percentile dice. When dice pool systems such as Shadowrun and Vampire: the Masquerade came around, my groups had difficulty adjusting. While the settings were very compelling, we usually ended up adapting them to GURPS (which was done for us in the case of Vampire) or some homebrewed single-roll system. I believe that the Victorian age supplement for Vampire actually included a “one-roll” option.

There seems to be a general consensus that dice pools get unwieldy after a certain point, as most dice pool systems that I’ve read include methods to cut down on dice rolling (limiting the number of dice, granting automatic successes in place of dice, using an average, etc).

Even today, while dice pool systems no longer bother me, I still lament the amount of time that dice pools take compared to single-roll systems, especially those that allow “exploding” dice. Players actively avoided fights in my 7th Sea games just so we wouldn’t get bogged down in a long dice-fest (which ironically kept us from enjoying what was supposed to be the meat of the game).

I’m wondering if this was just an issue with my group or if other groups have difficulty adjusting to dice pool systems (or, heck, single roll systems if your group is used to dice pools). Is there something about a dice pool system that makes you cringe, or do you not even blink when you realizing that “hot new game X” uses a dice pool? As a corollary, have you found some dice pool systems better than others?

A Common Language In The World?
D&D has common, modern/realistic games assume that most characters will speak the language of the country being played in unless specified otherwise, and futuristic settings often have commonly available means around such issues (such as translators). It seems that the rule, as opposed to the exception, is that a common language or means of communication exists, at least in the sense that most people the PCs encounter will be speaking the same language.

Realism
But is a common language realistic for an entire setting? It depends. There might be driving forces that spread a language across many otherwise insurmountable divides. Things like commerce across country borders spread languages. Conquering armies bring languages with them and leave them behind. Some forces, like the internet or television, can take a single language and spread it across a vast space and number of people.

Aside from a driving force, a language has to have an ability to spread in the world setting. Some force that lets the language be learned by those far from its originating source. Without something like widely available transportation, some global means of communication, or a reason that the common language can spread can a common language exist. There could be many reasons for this in a game setting. Perhaps a setting spanning empire mandates a specific language, a shared commerce language might exist, an ancient empire might have seeded the commonly spoken language, or translation magic or technology allows enough people to pick up the language. While we in the real world have no common language, there are many ways to write a realistic one into a fantasy setting.

Pros and Cons for  A Common Setting Language

Pros

• Increases the number of people the party can communicate with
• Removes annoying Abbot and Costello translation routines that could slow down game play
• Allows you to handwave away any language barrier issues that would slow down gameplay by saying that it occurs in the common langauge.

Cons

• Adventures or ideas that rely on a lack of communication can be foiled because players expecting the common language
• A common language may not be realistic for the game setting
• Removes comedic Abbot and Costello routines that could add to group enjoyment
• Can remove a sense of uniqueness about countries or regions

I, personally, have trouble deciding whether world settings should have common languages or not. Some settings make them feel very natural and realistic, others just seem to have them for the sake of ease for play. My biggest complaint about common languages is that they can sometimes kill the uniqueness of a game setting. Travelling to other countries doesn’t seem nearly as epic when they speak the same thing there as they did in the last one.

If There Isn’t A Common World Language, Is There Even A Common Language In The Party?
Slightly easier to tackle than the idea of a common language in the world is the thought of a common language in the party. Ever had the situation where at least one party member doesn’t speak any language that the other party members speak? Groups that enjoy hardcore roleplaying often start out playing up the efforts required to translate between the languages the party speaks. Does the human have to translate for the dwarf so that the elf can translate into Oricsh so that the mage can translate into elemental? This can be entertaining and funny for a while, but often gets tedious. I’ve found that most groups I’ve played in usually deal with any language issues on their own. Eventually the group handwaves the language issue away in-group or people pick up a common language that they can share. Often one that few other people in the world would speak.

This is an issue that I’m very curious about, which is part of the reason I wrote this as a hot button article. So, how does your group handle the language issue? Do you find common languages in the world annoying or lifesavers? What about common languages in the group – does your group usually have a common language or do they do without?

IMG © Hans Hillewaert | CC3.0

This struck me at first as rather quaint and old-school, but when we generated characters for a playtest I was also reminded at how much fun random generation can be. In a way, it’s reflective of real life. You are born with certain traits and you make career choices based on your interests and what you were born with. I remember playing “iron man” (A)D&D (3d6 or 4d6-1 die in order) where I was thrilled that I could finally play a paladin as well as being disappointed by generating numerous “red shirt” characters that were only qualified to be poorly-skilled fighters.

Random generation also sparks players to create concepts that they’d never think of on their own. Depending on the RPG system, a PC could have an intensely rich background and career by the time the player is done rolling on a few charts.

Another benefit to random generation is that it’s easy to draw in new players. Essentially, six rolls in (A)D&D and its derivatives pretty much determine a character’s class and race as well as give the player an idea of her character’s physical, mental, and social traits. Other games go a step further and use random rolls to determine class/careers (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay), physical appearance and personality (the pot-bellied lone wolves of various Palladium games) and even the size of your private parts (F.A.T.A.L.).

However, I also remember all of the arguments against character generation: it makes an unbalanced PC party, it encourages cheating, you may not get to play the concept that you want, and that the randomness of real life shouldn’t be imposed upon you when playing make-believe.

I’ve also seen many attempts at a middle ground, such as arranging scores as you see fit, rolling an extra die and dropping the lowest, automatically granting high scores in ability scores essential to your class (Rolemaster), making more rolls than necessary but keeping the best, or granting players that rolled less than the best-rolling players extra points to make up the difference (ironically often making the poorest-rolling player get a better character than the best-rolling player).

In one extreme example, I know of one D&D group that had each player roll 4d6 nine times. She’d keep the best six and drop the lowest die from each. Needless to say, most characters in that group had very high scores.

What this all boils down to is that I’ve seen players and GMs that embrace random generation as well as players and GMs that absolutely loathe it. I’ve even known some gamers to refuse to play in or run games that included it.

How about you? Do you embrace random generation in your games or do you tend to take steps to mitigate it? Have you ever added randomness to a point-buy system? How did it work out?

meta- 1.a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, with the meanings “after,” “along with,” “beyond,” “among,” “behind,” and productive in English on the Greek model: metacarpus; metagenesis; metalinguistics.

When we refer to things that are meta, in almost all conventional usage, we are generally referring to things that are beyond or above the subject at hand but still related. The metadata in our MP3s and images reveals information about the MP3 or image that isn’t the music of visuals that are important. When we refer to the metagame surrounding our roleplaying games, it is usually in the sense of things the player knows that the PC wouldn’t.

And that brings up the question behind this Hot Button article. Do you, as the game master, allow meta knowledge in your games?  There are some pros and cons to allowing metaknowledge and metagameplay. Here are just a few

Pros To Allowing Meta

• Can speed up gameplay.
• Can compensate for the lack of seeing it from the characters’ eyes. (i.e., The characters would pick up on things actually being in any real situation that the players wouldn’t by merely having the situation described to them.)
• Can create roleplaying moments when the players describe how or why their characters would logically know something they know.
• Can provide a different perspective on various game elements by letting the players make use of knowledge they would have. (i.e., A character might not know anything about forensics, but the player knows some very basic facts and can treat a crime scene differently.)

Cons To Allowing Meta

• Can defy a sense of realism about the game.
• Can provide unfair advantage.
• Can prevent roleplaying because players don’t feel the need to do things “in-game”.
• Can make specialized knowledge that a character is built around less valuable. (i.e., Why be a traveling scholar with skill in the cultures of various lands when the characters can know anything the players read about?)

I phrased everything in that brief list in terms of “can”, because it really comes down to how the metaknowledge and metagameplay occurs in the game, and that brings up the really important part of this article – your game. Do you allow meta knowledge to be a big factor of your game? Are there situations where it feels appropriate and situations where it doesn’t? Some part of the game always occurs in the meta-space surrounding the game, but how much of the game do you think should go on there?

IMG: Public Domain

“I’m sorry Vansha. While you can clearly see the princess is in this castle, she is protected by a magic force field that can only be breached with the sword of Armun.”

“This poison is very strong, and only a dose of the blood of a 3 toed griffon can be used to make the potion to cure him.”

“The only way past this door is by saying the correct word to release the magic barring it.”

Situations like these are pretty common. They sometimes seem to be the bread and butter of pre-published adventures. When magic gets used as a story element like this there are usually two types of responses:

Sure Why Not – Let’s Roll With It

“Ok, time to go quest for that sword!”

“Hmm, 3 toed griffon are rare. What skill would I roll to know where to find one?”

“Hmmm. Lets see, friend? What’s friend in Elven. It’d be something lame like that. Did we see a clue along the wall? Oh wait, this clue here says we have to go talk to the old man in the woods. Let’s go hiking!”

Wait A Minute, Page 89 Says I Got This

“Ok. force field right? I can use my 10 foot teleport to jump through, then jump out again. I’ll grab her and go back out. I can do that if I cast the spell twice and I’ve got two of it. This errata here says it will even work across dimensional barriers, so I think that trumps the force field. Wait, I don’t even need to do that. If this is Glamhorn’s Majestic Barrier Spell, I can bypass it with a roll and a piece of Iron dipped in rosewater.”

“You just need blood right, well I can shape change into any creature I know about. Since I made my roll to know about 3 toed griffons I won’t have any chance of failure. Just cut a few points of blood off of my wing and have the cleric heal me.”

“Ok, wait, no. I can use my consultation once a day to get the word, so uh, hey Generic Good God, wassup? U-huh. Yup. Yup. Ok, I say friend in elven. Open up.”

I’ve seen magic like this go both ways, and I’m sure you have too. When magic gets used as a story element it is usually meant to progress the story along or push the characters in a certain direction. Sometimes they go with it, sometimes they don’t. If the McGuffinish magic is based on the mechanical magic of the game system then there is probably a way around it. If there isn’t a way around it then there is probably another spell to trump it. It there isn’t a spell to trump it, the Game Master usually has to fiat it or think really really fast on how to do without wherever that McGuffin lead to. If the McGuffinish magic isn’t based on any mechanical system in the game then it can end up feeling like a one-way fiat.

So which is better? Should McGuffin magic be based on the rules? Should McGuffin magic be used as the story element that it is? Should McGuffin magic just be avoided? This is one of those questions that there are a lot of answers to – what’s yours?

GM: Sorry you couldn’t make it last session, Walt. We had a brutal last stand against the Chaos Horde that was absolutely epic! It reminded me of the Battle of Helm’s Deep except that the players managed to keep the walls intact.

Walt: Sounds great! How’d my techno-knight do? Did Sal play him okay?

GM: Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you about. Your character was impaled by a Cyber-Troll’s death lance. Critical hit to the neck, too. Blew his head clean off with the secondary damage from the heat pulse.

Walt (sarcastically): Wonderful. Serves me right for actually spending Mother’s Day with my mom.

All kidding aside, it sucks when you lose a character and it was out of your control. It also sucks when you have to worry about whether the group wants to use you as a suicide red shirt to soften an enemy or whether your substitute properly used your sheet or acted the way that your character would normally act.

In current games, I tend to avoid the issue by “walking off” a PC for a session (in my games I’ll usually grant XP to a missing player, so there’s no penalty for missing the session or need to have your character present when you aren’t), or allowing the PC to be played, but is simply unconscious and removed for the rest of the session if she “dies.”

When I do “walk off” an NPC, I’ll also grant PCs access to things that the absentee PC would have given them to mitigate the loss as much as possible (e.g. this computer door lock was designed to challenge Skeeter the Decker, but since he isn’t here you guys can get through with a simple lock-pick roll).

How about you? Do you allow the possibility of absentee PC deaths in your games? If so what rules do you put in place? Have you ever been burned by allowing an absentee PC death?

A few sessions in our host (not the GM) wanted to let his son join the game. His son was about 12 at the time and it was fairly obvious that the host was going to let him play regardless of the group’s opinion (hey, his house, his rules, right?).

When the GM informed me of this he was obviously agitated. After I talked him out of moving the game to another location I asked him what the big deal was. Most of us, after all, had gotten our start around the same age. His response was that he didn’t want to water down his “adult game,” and told the host so. It didn’t matter that we weren’t doing anything particularly “adult.”

I’m happy to report that the boy joined without any real problems other than the usual “newbie” growing pains. He’s now joined the ranks of regular GMs in my gaming circles.

Still, my GM buddy had a point. He was comfortable gaming with a certain age group and wanted it to stay that way. I’ve seen similar comments on various RPG boards. I’ve also seen at least one GM post that he views gaming as a “poker night with the guys” and doesn’t want women in the group.  On the player side, I know a gamer that refuses to play in any campaign where the host has children. I also know people that refuse to game with an ex-lover or with anyone connected to him or her.

In addition to one’s comfort level, there are also social concerns when joining a gaming group. I certainly don’t want to be the forty-something guy explaining to the nice officer why I regularly invite a teen girl or two to roleplay in my basement with a group of guys my age (props to the EN World forum comment that inspired that one-wish I could credit it properly). I’ve been the teenaged boy trying to explain to my parents why I should be allowed to hang out with a bunch of twenty-something guys until 3 in the morning.

So today’s Hot Button is this: Do you draw a line when it comes to prospective players? What players aren’t welcome at your table? Have you played in a group where that line made you a bit uncomfortable? Have you ever left a group over its exclusivity or because they lacked a line?

Unless you are playing yourself, there is always going to be a divide between what the player knows and is capable of and what the character knows and is capable of, but how should that divide be played out?  If the sheet says the character’s charisma couldn’t convince a cat to sleep but the player gives an incredibly eloquent speech that would net her an Oscar, what wins? I think that this is always going to be a hard question to answer, due to the unique merging of player and character that occurs in all sorts of gaming. Mechanical skills are used to represent things the players aren’t capable of, but without the player controlling the character nothing would happen. So which element is more important to the game and to the player’s, and the group’s, fun?

I’m pretty sure there is no definite answer, but there are a few overarching ways that I can think of to approach this Player or Sheet conundrum when it comes up:

• Extreme Realism To The Game World – The player doesn’t exist in the game world, so they can only puppeteer the character in a way consistent with the sheet. If the sheet says the character has no skills in an area then the character can’t even begin to attempt it with a reasonable chance of success.
• Logical Grey Area – Even if it isn’t on the sheet, there is no way to represent every little bit of accumulated knowledge a character might have. Sure the character isn’t skilled with dealing with royalty on the sheet, but her chance flipping through the channels one day might have ended up on a history channel show about royal customs, so we’ll let her knowing the correct way to curtsy stand.
• Moderate Realism To The Game World – The player plays as close to the character as they can, but they will never have the knowledge and perspective of the game character. The player might suggest something that the character wouldn’t necessarily have thought of in-game, but they can pull in enough character knowledge to support it. This happens occasionally and we don’t worry too much about it so long as it isn’t an extreme breach of the character.
• Fun Grey Area – Sure the warrior failed the roll to force the door, sure the barbarian did too, sure the thief failed to pick the lock, but one good kick from the mage and it popped open despite his low strength. Why the hell not? It’s not like it will happen all the time, and that was a damn lucky roll!
• Extreme Lack Of Realism – Who cares if the character can only jump a foot and a half off the ground, the way the player described that awesome wire-assisted kung-fu leap through the air and landing on the giant’s head was great. I’ll even give a +5 bonus!

There are an endless number of situations where a player or sheet conundrum might come up, and each one probably has many suitable answers that depend on play group, style, game, and countless other factors. The Player or The Sheet is an incredibly big question with no real right answer. In one situation Extreme Realism might be the appropriate response, while in another situation in the exact same game the Fun Grey Area might be a much better fit. So how about it? Ever had a deep issue between the player or the sheet? Does your group have a particular way of playing it when it does come up?

IMG: Here | Public Domain

Rather than roll up or design  Clark Rogers, Steel Patriot, Defender of Metro City, I was expected to play Walt Ciechanowski, overweight gamer who randomly rolled his powers and, with his other two unexceptionally physical superfriends, bravely defend the local mini-mart and pizza joint from supervillains with questionable ambitions. That’s right, you were expected to play yourself and defend your hometown (to be fair, I think the rules suggested using the closest city, but I’m pretty sure Philadelphia warranted better superheroes).

Needless to say, character generation was a nightmare, with the rules suggesting arm wrestling each other to determine Strength (how we figured out the baseline is another matter)  and comparing I.Q.s or SAT scores to determine Intelligence (I guess we had to go to the local mall and try to pick up dates in order to determine our Charisma scores…looking back on my 12 yo social calendar, I must’ve ended up with a very low score). I don’t think we ever actually played, as giving ourselves scores created such a fuss that we abandoned it and used the “optional” character generation system buried elsewhere in the book.

So can having your group play themselves work? I don’t know. I only have one other experience to go by, and that was a Vampire: the Masquerade game. My buddy decided to run a campaign with all of us playing ourselves. While I protested (still obviously emotionally scarred from my V&V experience a decade and a half prior), I gamely played along. We were allowed to stat ourselves normally, so apparently my hedge mage self worked out a lot more often and spent more than a month and a half in a dojo.

Unfortunately, the campaign failed to capitalize on our backstories other than to give us a common bond to get involved in the adventure. We really could have made up completely new characters and been given the “you’re all childhood friends” speech and we would’ve been fine. The GM felt a little stung when we told him it wasn’t very interesting and he ended the campaign rather quickly.

All that being said, I could see playing yourselves as something very cool for a one-shot Call of Cthulhu or Wild Cards (assuming you don’t pull a Black Queen) adventure, but in my limited experience I’ve just never seen it done well.

There is also much stock to be put in the argument that you roleplay yourself all the time, so why would you want to do it at an RPG session? There’s also the consideration of real-life loved ones being harmed in such a campaign, as well as “interesting” complications (“why is your character hitting on Rob? We’ve been a couple for three years! You’re cheating on me!”).

So today’s hot button is this: Have you ever been involved in a “play yourselves” situation? If so, how did it go? If not, would you consider running or playing such a campaign? Why or why not?

Reading a fascinating Guild Wars 2 design diary about character death penalties (via Penny Arcade) got me thinking about PC deaths in RPGs — and specifically, about why PCs should ever be killed at all.

For your consideration:

Dying? Yawn

In the vast majority of traditional-style campaigns, regardless of the game, PCs almost never die for good. D&D is the main example, and also the source of why this stereotype tends to be true: Most gamers have played D&D, and from that experience have taken away the concept of PC death being an inconvenience at best.

Fuck You, Players

Dying, even temporarily, generally means that the PC’s player is taken out of the action, so the penalty for PC death is applied to the player, and the penalty is not getting to have fun until their PC is brought back from the dead.

No Really, Fuck You, Players

When PC death is permanent, whether due to play style or your RPG/setting of choice, it can be a huge blow to the player who’s impacted. Why should this happen as a result of what’s supposed to be a leisure activity?

Delicious Fudge

Keeping PCs alive is the biggest reason most GMs fudge die rolls, and we all know where any discussion of fudging leads: MADNESS. This contentious issue can be sidestepped by removing the source of the problem, fudging to keep PCs alive.

We Do This Why, Again?

If PC death is a) infrequent, b) penalizes players, c) can emotionally impact players, d) often avoided by GMs, and e) generally just an inconvenience, why should it ever happen without the affected player’s consent?

Universal Doesn’t Meant Good

PC death is a near-universal consequence of bad luck and/or bad decision-making that’s included in the vast majority of RPGs whether it really needs to be there or not, much like PC stats/attributes. By way of comparison, it’s nearly universally excluded from the vast majority of movies, TV shows, book series, and narrative-driven entertainment in general.

You know Frodo will succeed in getting the One Ring to Mount Doom. You know Jack Bauer will save the day in the nick of time. You know Luke Skywalker will defeat Darth Vader. You watch and read their stories because they’re good stories, and because seeing how they pull things off is part of the fun — even though the conclusion is essentially foregone, and not really the heart of the matter.

So: PCs should never be killed. Problem(s) solved.

This is an extreme position, and it’s worth noting that it’s not my personal stand or take on the matter — but my interest in it, and in the issues underlying it, is genuine and goes back at least four years: …And Then James Bond Spends a Month in the Hospital.

I’ve wrestled with it myself, I’ve pondered it during and after games as both a GM and a player, and it still fascinates me. I’m not really sure whether it’s right, wrong, needs work, or what.

So here’s one end of the spectrum in black and white: Take PC death off the table, explicitly and permanently, and everyone will have more fun at the gaming table.

Let’s put the biggest argument against this concept right out front: Games without PC death are for…

Glad we cleared that up.

Is that wrong? Right? Crazysauce? Let’s talk.

Mr. Hindman astutely notes in his article that “…I’ll be pissing off some opinionated D&D folks along the way…” and he’s absolutely right. I enjoyed his article and it’s a good guide for players who want to play monster races, but it doesn’t address two very major issues with that phenomenon. Namely, why everyone in a group with a player of a monster race wants to hurl bricks through that player’s car windows during smoke breaks, and what you, the GM can do to help curb the perfectly natural hatred that you and everyone else at the table feel for a PC with a monster race.

It’s important to remember that the problems I discuss below are common enough problems that we’ve likely all seen them from time to time, but not universal ones. Hopefully if you play a monster PC, or someone in your game does, none of the below apply to you.

One of the many reasons players and GMs alike hate monster races is that monster races are custom designed for munchkins. They’ll talk a good game about how their charisma penalty cancels out the bonuses they got to their strength, or how their role-playing restrictions balance their ungodly dexterity, but  it’s all smoke and mirrors to let them get an unbalanced PC under your nose, saddled to the brim with restrictions that will never see the light of day. As a GM, it’s important that you take a careful look at any nonstandard race requests, consider role-playing and social penalties or whatever their “downside” is with the appropriate weight for your group’s play style, and don’t be afraid to either say “No” or suggest alternative options.

Monster characters are also often spotlight hogs. Because of their special background, monster characters provide a jumping off point for social encounters that would otherwise be hand-waved and they come with prominent back-story, kickers, and hooks that almost force the GM to weave story arcs or even the entire campaign around them. You may be able to tell from what you know of the player in question if this will be an issue. If not, the first few sessions will be a dead giveaway. Fortunately, as the GM, you control the spotlight. This means that you have easy control over this problem. A steady hand on the rudder will ensure that all players get equal spotlight time, and if the offending player pushes the issue, you can always re-direct the scene to another player. For example, the monster player starts an argument with a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper turns to another PC and says, “Aren’t you embarrassed to be associated with trash that would act like this?” thus dumping the spotlight on that PC for their reaction.

Often, monster characters are one-legged cheetah men, created primarily to disrupt the game, ruin other players’ fun and drag down the rest of the group. Monster PCs are no different than any other party member. They need to have a minimum level of functionality and they need to play well with others. “I’m a monster” is no more of an excuse for disruptive behavior than “It’s my Alignment” or “I’m just playing my character.” This is especially a problem with monster characters because their inhuman heritage is a legitimate excuse to be played like jerks. Faced with this sort of PC, monster or not, a GM needs to evaluate the source of the behavior and help re-design the character if the problem is inadvertent, or put a stop to it if intentional.

Let’s take another look at Mr. Hindman’s opening claim: “Let’s get something straight: Evil is cool.” Sure. Most of the time, evil characters, monster characters included, are very cool. But the important thing to ask is “When are they not cool?” The answer is that evil characters and monster characters aren’t cool when they’re tired re-hashed overdone, trite pieces of boring crap. Which is why despite the fact that , as Jared points out a few paragraphs later, Drizzt Do’Urden is the man, there has never been a Drizzt rip-off character who has ever been cool, despite the fact that you can’t pee in the street after a drunken bender without hitting one with splash damage. This means that when a player brings you a monster character, with the hope of re-creating his favorite hero in his dewy little eyes, it’s your sad duty to help guide him in a direction that makes his creation distinct. If nothing else, it prevents your game from copyright infringement lawsuits.

So your campaign has been rolling along smoothly, or maybe you’re starting a game in a setting where monsters are savage foes of the normal PC races and usually killed on sight. You know, like almost every game setting ever? Yet suddenly, a player has the urge to play a monster race, and for some reason, despite the fact that every other orc in the world is public enemy number one, and anyone who associates with them is treated with suspicion and distrust at best, this fails to apply to the PCs. Sure, the innkeeper may give the orc PC the hairy eyeball, and make some racist remarks, but he doesn’t do what he’d do if any other orc were to wander into his establishment: call the guard and have the lowlife scum drug off to be fitted for a hemp necktie. When a monster PC is treated just like any other PC in a world whose lore doesn’t support this, not only does it ruin immersion, but it’s contradictory to the point of playing a monster PC in the first place. If you’re early enough in the campaign, and it doesn’t create too much trouble, simply house-ruling the monster race as normal accepted members of society solves the immersion issue, but still takes away part of what makes a monster race special. Another alternative is to give the monster PC a special status that marks them as not a threat. Maybe they’re branded with the symbol of a reformed criminal or heretic. Maybe they’re owned by another PC, and thus are assumed to be that PCs responsibility. This is something that needs buy-in from the player in question, but a monster PC needs something that makes them readily identifiable as something other than target practice.

What about you? Why do you hate monster PCs? (You know you do.) More importantly, how have you dealt with the unique challenges they bring to your game?

Cheating can certainly have a negative impact on a campaign. I’ve seen what would’ve been challenging encounters easily overcome through cheating, other players getting frustrated by a cheating player (at times to the point of leaving), and additional stress on GMs trying to minimize cheating. To take one example, I had a player that loved to “glance” at my notes. If my headings were too descriptive she’d gain an advantage. For a time, I had to put my notes in code and ensure that they were sufficiently hidden. It was definitely a PITA.

Some of the cheating I’ve encountered over the years include peeking at the GM’s notes, “forgetting” to add or subtract dice roll modifiers, reading a copy of the adventure being run, adding abilities to a PC beyond what they should have (hey, where did that extra skill/feat/advantage/power come from?), and using metagame knowledge that their PC doesn’t know.

Some forms of cheating are more acceptable than others. I’m more likely to forgive the occasional modifier “miscalculation” than someone peeking at my adventure when I leave the table. I’m also lucky that my regular group is made up of mature players (read “old enough to remember seeing Star Wars in the theater the first time around”) and that they rarely cheat. Still, it wasn’t that long ago that I felt the need to cut down on cheating.

Over the years I’ve seen many ways to deal with cheating. They run the gamut from “not giving a crap” to “screw you cheaters, I’m going home!” Here are a few “in between” solutions I’ve seen or implemented:

1. Dice roll verification: One player rolls the dice while another reads the result.

2. Say your modifiers before the roll or they don’t count.

3. Make everyone use giant dice (I bought one from Chessex at the last Gen Con as a joke; one of my players and GM for another group immediately wanted to purchase a bunch for his game).

4. Copies of PCs are given to the GM. If it’s not on the GM’s copy, it doesn’t exist.

5. Checking the math on a newly created PC.

6. Taking your materials with you when using the bathroom or going to the kitchen (or turning on the laptop password).

These are just a few examples; I’m sure this list would be three times the size if I thought about it a bit more. Note that these methods take a passive approach; rather than calling out the cheater specifically, a rule is imposed on everyone at the table.

Today’s Hot Button is this: How do you handle cheating in your games? Are certain kinds of cheating more tolerable than others? Do you tend to take the “passive” approach or do you deal with cheaters directly? Have you ever walked away from a game due to cheating?