The Civilized Guide to Tabletop Gaming, page 15
Answer Rules Questions
When someone asks basic questions about a game, don’t give him a standard RTFM (read the f*cking manual) response. Instead, cite the specific page of the rules that applies, and help him develop an understanding of the game. If it’s a complex situation (such as when rules conflict), help guide him through how you’d sort it out. Never assume he’s being lazy or an idiot. Sometimes the issue is the translation of the game’s instructions, or a player may not be aware of a recent FAQ from the publisher, or maybe it’s just a basic misunderstanding of the game’s rules.
Discuss the Metagame
The metagame (or meta) describes how players play the game, what strategies are successful, and how prevalent these strategies are. While the Internet has facilitated the spread and dominance of specific metas throughout many competitive circles, some metas can be geographically limited: How a game is played (from a strategic standpoint) in one area is often different from how it is approached in another. The rules of the game remain the same, but the path to victory is often varied. Discussions of meta, where there is a recognition of the validity of all perspectives, is a great way to engage in conversation online. Most players recognize that most games can be won in a variety of ways.
Extinguishing the Flames
Sometimes to extricate yourself from an especially hostile conversation with a stranger online you need to walk away from the conversation. There’s no reason to care about being right with someone whom you don’t know. She or he is likely not worth your time and effort.
Three Kinds of Gaming Forum Trolls
What a wonderful world the Internet would be if trolls only existed in nursery rhymes. Some people are never happy, and that fact is key to understanding and addressing trolls on the Internet.
For the past few years, one of my New Year’s resolutions has been to argue less with people on the Internet. Some years I’ve been more successful than others, but something that has helped me not get sucked in is knowing the kind of trolls that hide under Internet bridges.
Here are three kinds of trolls you want to make sure you’re not, as well as the easiest way to deal with them.
The Jilted Kickstarter Backer
I’ve seen more complaining about Kickstarter fulfillment in online forms in 2016 than any other topic online. It’s millions of voices screaming at the same time, “ Where’s my game?!? ”
Before we get into the details of this, let’s be straight: Most Kickstarters don’t fulfill by their estimated delivery date. Production issues, unforeseen costs, and other problems can delay the release of a game product by months—or longer. These risks that Kickstarter backers choose to take on are part of the Kickstarter experience.
Most Kickstarter backers understand and accept this. There may be some grumbling when a game is late, but for the most part its backers will be mild in their comments—especially if the Kickstarter project’s initiators explain what’s happening and when they expect the game to release.
For one variety of troll, though, there’s no rational explanation that can please them. They’ll start complaining about not having their stuff even when a company is transparent about the process and even when a company has a historical record of always fulfilling on past Kickstarters, despite hiccups along the way. Clearly, to the troll, what’s going on is a conspiracy to cheat him out of his contribution to the project. Obviously, the project’s managers are showing bad faith. It’s completely obvious to anyone with half a brain.
Here’s a hint: Complaining loudly about a Kickstarter project (or, for that matter, any other kind of crowd-funded project) on forums or Facebook pages will not help you get your game faster. It’s about as productive as farting in the wind. If you really want specific delivery dates, e-mail the project initiator instead. The Internet is not a genie, and constantly wishing loudly won’t have your wish or your backer rewards fulfilled.
If you really want to avoid being this jilted troll, consider buying the game from your FLGS when it becomes available.
The Fanboy
Being a passionate and enthusiastic evangelist for a game is a good thing, unless you start letting your enthusiasm put other people down or turn them off from the game you’re advocating for. Fanboys are unable to rationally respond to (or even ignore) criticisms of the game, whether or not they’re founded.
Sometimes critical dialogue between gaming communities and publishers is required—it’s potentially important feedback, and if the criticism is fair, that conversation can help make the game better in the future. However, fanboys can’t see that. Every criticism is an attack, not just on the game but on them. They start jumping down the throats of critics in order to ardently defend the game, its designer, or its publisher. Their worst feature is they make the community seem elitist, exclusive, and hostile. That’s a bad way to be a champion for a game.
The Hater
This one is the counterpart of the Fanboy and just as obnoxious. One of the things that boggles my mind is when people join communities just to complain. The Hater can’t recognize why others like a game. Like the Fanboy, he is unable to respect the opinions of others when they conflict with his own—except in this case his opinions are entirely negative.
Haters can’t see outside the narrow confines of their own tastes. They join communities of people who are fans and immediately issue a litany of complaints about everything from the mechanics to the price. There’s no pleasing a Hater; like every troll, he can’t be reasoned with.
Know When to Walk Away
Sometimes, when a discussion turns heated, you and others participating may be able to walk away while retaining respect for one another. After all, we’re all passionate about games, and passion fuels emotion. But if the discussion turns personal, with name-calling and other forms of overheated negativity, that’s the time to just step back and carefully walk away. That’s a discussion that’s going nowhere in a hurry.
If you ever encounter any of these types of trolls (or any new subspecies of online personalities that lessen the gaming community), the way to address them is simple: Walk away. You can’t satisfy them, and you risk letting them drag you into their cesspool by engaging with them.
Now if only I could learn to take my own advice, I wouldn’t keep having to make the same resolution every January 1.
Chapter Eleven
Being a Hobby Champion: Help Others to Love Gaming
If crafting or competitive play isn’t your thing, you can always become a hobby champion, working to grow and spread the love of gaming.
When I got pregnant, it became impossible for me to actually participate in my hobby. Sitting in chairs for extended periods of time when someone was taking up residence in my body was far too uncomfortable.
So I did what any rational pregnant woman who missed her hobby would do: I started planning an eighty-person tabletop war-gaming tournament. Of course, because I had made this decision in a completely emotionally stable state, I went in completely prepared and wasn’t at all out of my depth.
Not.
Just the fact that the project was ridiculous didn’t prevent me from doing it. It took two years of planning to run my first event, and it was such a blast I did it again the year after.
It may seem as if the moral of the story is that you have to be as irrational as a pregnant woman to want to take on something big like hosting a tournament. That’s not entirely untrue, but doing so is immensely rewarding. And it helps when you have someone around who’s done it to give you pointers so you can skip the harder parts of embarking on any of these ventures.
Work Successfully with Publishers
There are a lot of game publishers out there who have programs for volunteers who are willing to be community stewards for their games. Publishers may reward these volunteers with special expansions and models, and credits toward more games.
Most publishers advertise their hobby champions program (or however they brand them) on their websites, so if you have a particular love of a game, check out the site of its publisher. E-mail them to see if there’s a program for you. If there is, they’ll require you to prove your qualifications and go through a screening, but after that, you’re in.
At the same time, volunteering for publishers has a set of expectations and standards that you must fulfill. Here are the ways to be a game’s local champion.
Have a Good Relationship with Your FLGS
To be a great hobby champion, you’ll need places that you can demo games, run events, and promote the game. While your basement may seem like a terrific gaming cave, inviting strangers over to try games there is exactly as off-putting as it sounds. You’re trying to come across as a game champion, not a serial killer.
Make sure you have a great working relationship with local stores. Stop off at their events, support them, and be an advocate for them, so that when you ask them to host a demo night or gaming event, the staff will know who you are and be receptive.
Be a Good Representative
Whether you’re demoing games or spreading the love of your games on Facebook, be aware that you’re representing the publisher and the best of gaming. Expect to be held to a standard where you’re inclusive, supportive, and always looking to convey a love of gaming. Don’t be elitist or exclusionary; that kind of attitude only quashes someone else’s interest or love for a game.
This includes what you post on social media networks, even outside your role as a game ambassador. Be aware of your audience and conduct online—it lives forever.
Make Sure You Have Enough Time
Usually in order to qualify as an official ambassador for a publisher, you’ll have to organize and run a certain number of events or demo days. In addition to the time spent to run the event, you’ll need to set up, organize, and plan it, which can take more time than you expected.
Publishers often give a lot of support and guidance to their hobby champions, but you’ve got to do the legwork, since you’re the boots on the ground for their games. You may not need to know how to organize a competitive event, but with support from your FLGS and the publisher, you can quickly learn.
Being a hobby champion can be overwhelming if you have a lot of other commitments, but if you truly love a game and want to find more people to play it with you and enjoy it as much as you do, being a champion for it is the best way to do that. The benefits certainly outweigh the challenges.
Learn to Be an Advanced DM
Chapter 8 covered the basics of dungeon mastering. As you grow into the role, you’ll soon learn that there are many skills that make a DM great. Novice DMs can get through an adventure, but being a great DM or a professional DM (yes, it is a job—check out the sidebar) requires a skillset that goes above and beyond the basics. An exceptional DM is an actor, an improviser, a rules savant, and a great storyteller.
Getting Paid to DM
Like many things in life, if you do something exceptionally well and there’s a demand for it, there’s often someone willing to pay you for your skills. DMing is no different. Some FLGSs will hire DMs (or pay staff members) to run RPG campaigns within the store as a service for their customers. Similarly, some freelance DMs will offer their services for hire to players who want to have a DM but have little experience within their group and are willing to pay for the shared experience. Some companies have business models structured around creating great RPG experiences: Roll20 is one such company; it has DMs on its staff who create campaigns for their users. Once again proving that if you’re passionate and skilled at doing something, including gaming, you’ll likely find someone willing to pay you for it.
If you want to raise the game for your players, here are five rules you should follow.
Know the Story You Want to Tell
Great DMs know like the back of their hand the story, the setting, and the world that they’re guiding their player group through. They know each NPC character beyond simply the words and script set before them and how said NPCs would react to the unexpected, and they are able to react when their players do things that are unanticipated. The ability to respond to players and the whackadoo things they try to pull is directly related to how much the DM knows the world and the story she’s telling.
That often means fleshing out an adventure on the fly or knowing ways to bring players back to the path of the story without making them feel as though they had no choice.
Take Care of Your Voice
Great DMs do a lot of talking: describing scenes, narrating action, and characterizing and voicing various NPCs and foes. Too often, they strain their voices. If you’re going to do voice acting when playing NPCs, make sure you have warm, soothing liquids for the night. You may also want to consider warming up your voice using various techniques specifically for vocal cords (you can easily Google them; singers and actors often employ them).
You have to be kind to your voice, particularly if your sessions are long and regular. It is not unheard of to have four- or five-hour weekly sessions. In those circumstances, the strain placed on your voice is extremely great. As I’ve advised you elsewhere in this book (though for different reasons), stay hydrated and take care of yourself. You are the key to a gaming session, after all.
Find Ways to Reward Player Immersion and Imagination
In the fifth edition of D&D, players can gain Inspiration tokens as a reward for playing the game in a way the DM appreciates (you can only have one Inspiration token at a time, and it gives you a bonus to a dice roll). It’s a great way to reward players who are jumping into the spirit of the game, but it’s not the only reason to reward players for contributing. Beyond rewarding players who continually demonstrate excellent role-playing, storytelling, and creative problem-solving skills, you also want to reward players who have made a clear effort and have shown improvement. As an advanced DM, you’ll be able to recognize it as it happens, so you want to make sure you positively reinforce it.
Consider finding ways to increase a skill of a character or give him extra experience points when his player continually demonstrates skillful play. Similarly, you can find ways to explore a character’s backstory, help her fulfill a personal quest, or make special equipment available to her.
Rewards such as these help players feel accomplished beyond the standard achievement of beating foes and gaining experience points. That’s part of your job as a DM—to help players feel like they’re actually accomplishing something and not stuck in one place.
Invest in Your DM Sessions
If you want to really make your games memorable, invest in ways to elevate the experience for your players. This may include crafting tablescapes for your adventures, but it can also include finding ways to create an atmosphere for your players. Atmospheric music to set the scene is a great place to start, as is having visual references available for the various foes they’ll face.
There are many auditory soundscapes you can download to help enrich your gaming experiences, from rowdy tavern background noises to creepy woods (complete with odd bumps and howls in the background) to drippy and echoey caves. Accessing what’s available online will help make your campaigns all the more immersive for your players.
Similarly, you’ll likely end up investing in a great number of references such as monster manuals, spell and equipment resources, maps, and other aids to help you in your DMing vocation. Beyond investing the monies (many resources are free, after all), you’ll also want to put in the time it takes to become familiar with everything. And when it comes to creating monsters, items, or spells from your imagination, more investment in time (and potentially in an artist to create visual references for your creations) will also be in order.
Elevating your craft is a great undertaking, and the gratification it brings to you makes it a task worth undertaking.
Look at What Other DMs Are Doing and Borrow from Them
In this age of live streaming and broadcasting role-playing sessions online, you can find great DMs whose style and presentation you can incorporate into your own DM style. Matt Mercer of Critical Role, Wil Wheaton in his Titansgrave series, and Chris Perkins on Acquisitions Incorporated all have their own styles as DMs. Chris is a permissive and generous DM when the rules don't explicitly cover the actions his players want to do (like steering a flying dirigible into a dragon to impale it on the mast—he didn't know which skill was applicable for a skill check so he just gave it as a success). Matt is remarkably descriptive in critical rolls for killing blow (letting players choose the method of death and then narrating an epic finishing move for that action) and Wil’s detail and focus on character development makes sense given his acting background (he worked with all his players in developing a rich backstory for all of them which informed all their actions and relationships in the game). Watch and listen to them, and feel free to borrow some of their techniques.
With Twitch and YouTube you can find some lesser-known DMs running adventures. Many of them have a style all their own that can inspire you to do things in a way that is more enriching to your players or easier for you as a DM.
There are so many resources available to DMs who want to share and learn from other practitioners to improve the play experience for their players. Online groups, websites, and blogs are all great ways to find and connect with other DMs and find new solutions.
