So, Um, What's Going On?

If you follow me on Twitter (hi!) or are a Facebook friend (hi!) then you know the real life stuff that's going on with me. If you don't know me from either of those places then all you need to know is that real life stuff is going on with me.

I've been quiet here because I haven't felt I would have much to say about gaming, which is the primary focus on this blog lately.

The game hasn't been going well. I think it's a combination of an ill-matched group, an ill-matched GM and group, and moving the game online. The only thing out of those three that could possibly be changed is the online part but it wouldn't fix the other two.

The ill-matched group has some odd dynamics since it's morphed so many times. There's now a husband and wife team, their friend (at least I think he's their friend, he may be the friend of the guy who abruptly left), and one person who's stuck through from the beginning. Their characters haven't meshed into a party - they're four people hanging out and doing stuff but they're not a PARTY in that they're forming interpersonal relationships. Not the players, the characters. Which is also the players but not really.

Only one player gave me enough backstory to work any of it into the game. The others gave me a little along the lines of "I'm trying to find my father but not really" and "I want to learn more magic before I go home". That's not enough for me to find a way to work them into a story. It's separate people with separate goals.

Here's where I get to vent a little. I want them to enjoy the game. I want them to try to put together larger pictures from what they gather as they adventure. I want everyone to have fun. But this group just can't see clues. I wondered if I was being too subtle so I literally attacked them with NPCs that should have spurred them into trying to figure out why they were being followed. Nope. As soon as the encounter was over they barely talked about it even though the NPCs got away. When they were attacked again, same result. How much more obvious do I have to be that there's something going on?

This is why I think the group and I aren't a match. My GM style doesn't mesh with their play style. That's not saying either one is bad. That's saying they don't work well as a game. It means no one is having as much fun as they could and should.

This leads into why my short lived "How I Roll" suddenly ended. I couldn't come up with enough things to continue it. That was an offshoot of me doing game prep and how things worked in my game. Since I no longer get any pleasure from game prep and the things that go on in my game aren't worth mentioning it ended that set of posts. Maybe in the future I'll pick it up again, maybe not. I don't know how much people liked it.

Ending a game is a difficult decision. I've done it in the past when I knew I wasn't giving them the game they deserved. I never heard from any of the players again after it ended so I know I made the right choice. That hurt, by the way. No one even thanked me for that game or the one before (most of the group was from the previous game that ended due to players moving away).

Ending a game in these times is an even more difficult decision. Everyone needs an escape. Gaming is a wonderful escape. But when it becomes something I dread rather than look forward to with anticipation then I know there's problems. Big problems.

I've tried to fix it by asking players what they wanted out of the game and got non-committal answers that didn't help me at all. They were along the lines of what I already said. Mostly they want to play and this is a game they have. It's not that they want to play MY game. It's that they want to play A game. At least that's the feeling I'm getting.

I could run a series of loosely collected pre-generated adventures to keep the game going. No one seems to be looking for a long term story arc. But that would put me in the position of reading Powerpoint slides. That's not what I want to do. Sure, it's easy to prep. Print off a map, print off the adventure, run them through it. I have plenty of those that I use for inspiration. But if that's all they want then there's a lot of other GMs to do that. I want to get engrossed in the story they weave. I'm there to support that and they're not storytellers.

This is me talking myself into ending the game, if you couldn't tell.

I am looking at Fantasy Grounds and running regular one shot adventures for people who just want to show up, grab a pre-generated character, and play for a few hours with no long term consequences. There's so much league play these days where every result is a permanent result I want to think that there's people out there who want carefree play too.

That would let me have some fun with adventures and also play with no long term consequences. Sure it might seem little different than what I said I didn't like about my current game but it's different. It's meant to last a few hours then end forever. One shots as opposed to a string of encounters.

I have a few days left before I need to make a decision. Wednesday before the game is my traditional time to contact the group and remind them we're playing. That's a way for people to say if they can't play as well. I canceled the last game due to the stuff from the first paragraph and one player would have had to cancel anyway due to their real life stuff. So we're already several weeks out from the last session.

What will I do for a creative outlet?

I can work on learning Fantasy Grounds since I like learning things and seeing how to make games there.

I can work on my hobbies.

But I know that my full creativity is blocked at the moment. It's been blocked for a while. The world changed. We're all excused for having bad mental reactions to what's going on. For me it means that I don't think I can run games right now. I can't give myself over to the fun of figuring out imaginary challenges to overcome when we're all dealing with real life challenges. That's not fun.

Anyway. I wanted to let you know that I've been feeling guilty about not posting an update. I'm still around and I hope to be posting about other things that I can do. They probably won't involve gaming as much. I have many other hobbies and interests that I enjoy sharing. Maybe switching to those will put me in a better place to be creative in general.

Forgotten Realms Campaign - The State of the Game

I know I've been really bad about updating the blog with the story that's unfolding. To be perfectly honest it's because I'm not invested in it.

I'll also admit (here) that I'm not all that invested in the gaming group either. It's one that was assembled using MeetUp and then the holes filled with people players knew. If you've read through you know that the group has changed significantly and only two of the original group is still playing. Not that I was attached to that group either.

I kept hoping that as we played things would become more friendly in person. They didn't. And then the world changed and we moved the game online. That kept people distant even when we're playing.

I'm having a lot of trouble getting interested in each session. I used to enjoy game prep because I would work at finding things that the group would enjoy while spotlighting at least one character. Now? I dig through published adventures looking for something to last a few sessions.

One of the reasons I stopped updating this is because I'm really behind on my notes. Using the Rocketbook is great except when it's not. And right now it's not. I have the transcribed notes that I still need to review because OCR is good but it's not good enough to deal with gaming terms and my handwriting. I can see where some GMs would be really happen with it. I'm not and decided I'm going back to paper going forward.

Yes, I know I still need to update the notes that are pending. I feel better about doing it since I know there's an end. Then it's regular handwritten notes like I've done for all my other games. The concept of being able to search for terms and such is nice. I've found that when I would really need it I don't have that capability because it's in the middle of the game.

I will still take pictures of the maps since that's darn handy for setting up continuing sessions. I'm kicking myself for not doing that in previous games as well. It allows for me to redraw maps before the game actually starts.

My lack of interest in the game means I haven't bothered to draw up any original maps. There's no real point to it when there's perfectly good maps out there I can use. As I said I'm grabbing adventures and ideas from other sources so why not the maps too? That's a whole set of tools taking up room on my hard drive now. It happens.

The thought in the back of my mind is that if I'm not having fun I should end the game. I've considered it seriously. There's a couple of things that are keeping me from doing it.

One is that this is the only social interaction I have, as little as it is. If I stopped gaming I wouldn't have any conversation outside of work stuff. That's a hard thing to consider, given that I was isolated before this all happened.

Another is that they seem to be enjoying the game. No one has told me otherwise (even the guy who left didn't say anything) and I've been trying to watch for signs of disinterest. Everyone seems happy enough when we confirm we're gaming. So they're getting something out of it. I feel that sense of obligation.

Maybe if we could start gaming in person again I might feel better about things. I miss the social interplay and cues that you only get in person. I miss handing out the cards with loot and magic items. I miss using terrain bits I can't use now because they get in the way of the camera. It might just be "online fatigue" that's my problem.

Regardless I don't see myself updating the blog with the campaign story in the future. I was struggling to make it a good narrative and never felt like I succeeded to my own satisfaction. If I can't make it interesting to myself then what hope is it to make it interesting to others?

This sounds a lot like a Debbie Downer post. It isn't the most cheerful one I've done. It has some of the serious issues that have been plaguing me about the game. However since I had started doing the narrative I felt that some kind of closure was in order.

If you've been hoping for more updates this will be a disappointment. Unless something really big happens I'm not going to post again. That includes if we dissolve the game. I would consider that big enough to post about because I'll try to give an analysis of why we did. I don't expect it but it's always a possibility when you have a gaming group.

3D Printing - Resin Prints!

I think I've made almost every user mistake that I could with this resin printer. The printer itself is a champ. I'm a chump.

The good thing that's come out of making all those mistakes is that now I know how to fix them and also how to prevent most of them. There's always something that can happen but I can minimize the chances.

So you want to know what the mistakes were? Of course you do.

The first one was not knowing how to get the best settings. There's all kinds of preferred ways. As it turned out the default settings that came with the printer were almost exactly what I needed to use. More on that in a bit.

Once I knew the settings then I had to figure out how best to support the prints. Ya see, these prints need a hella lot of supports. They print upside down so anything that sticks out needs some kind of attachment point. They also work best when parts are vertical rather than horizontal. Here's a visual. Notice the wacky angles of these things. It's a trial and error process really.

See the lattice? That's support material. It narrows to a very fine point where it attaches to the print but it has to adhere to the base. See, there's a battle going on between the resin that's cured on the film at the bottom of the vat and the resin that's cured on the print. The film is supposed to release so that the print builds. Notice those words - "supposed to".

Those supports are nice but they're not enough. The print lost the battle when it came to being pulled up off the film. I did two things to fix that. I added a pad below so that there was a LOT more adhesion to the bed and I slowed down how fast the bed moved up. That way it had time to release the suction. Here's what a print looks like with the pad below the supports.

Yes. Different models. And look at those supports! But that problem resolved itself nicely. From the first picture I put the middle model directly onto the print bed without those supports since she didn't need extras. And I had quite the time prying her off. When they adhere they can really adhere.

What happens when a print fails? The resin builds up on the film below. This is bad since the print bed is going to push down on it for every layer it tries to print. That's why my first film got punctured. And it's why they ship the printer with another film. I've since ordered more, just because I know I'll need them and I won't want to wait or hope they're in stock. 

Cleaning cured resin off the printer itself isn't bad. The glass screen is tempered and sealed so resin won't leak into the workings. Soften it with isopropy alcohol on a paper towel and gently scrape it off with a razor blade. Wipe it clean with the alcohol and it's done.

I've had to clean out the vat and remove the failed print a few times now. It's not any big deal once you've done it. Pour out and strain the resin. Pour some isopropyl alcohol into the vat to soften the print (and to check for leaks). Wait. Gently, oh so gently, pry up the cured resin. Check for leaks. Clean thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol. Wipe dry. Replace and refill with resin.

It's pretty much the same process as for when you change resin, except for that part about prying off cured resin.

I've also learned to check how much resin is in the vat before starting a print. While they typically don't take all that much they do need some. I had a print fail because the resin ran out and even though I thought I added more in time I did not.

The only other thing I've done wrong (that I remember) is the orientation of a print when supporting it. This is a big deal. You want the best combination of angle for printing so the details don't get support nubs but the print is going to be firmly attached. The one I messed up had a weak spot where the model itself broke off when the print lifted. Live and learn.

I also learned to check the print about thirty minutes in. Pause it, let it lift to the top, check the print on the bed to make sure that it's adhered and printing properly. Better to catch errors early than to have a big buildup of cured resin that will poke holes in the vat film. All my prints seem to include complimentary cat hair. I guess that's my hallmark now?

Here's a big batch of successful prints. Some of them are for other people and they asked that the miniatures not be attached to bases because they prefer to do that themselves. Fine. That's no problem for me because I need to use a CAD program (Meshmixer) to combine a base with a mini for printing anyway. Most of the ones in the picture were done that way. A few had their bases already in place. Let's just say I've gotten reasonably good at placing mini files on base files and combining them into a single printable file. I'm kind of proud of that.

To be honest this probably one of my least favorite prints. It's from DesktopHero3D which is a site where you can make your own minis. It's a fun site but the problem I've found is that the resulting files are too detailed. It turns out you need to exaggerate the textures and details for them to print well. On the screen that chainmail shirt has wonderful texture. Here? Not so much. But it works and I'll continue to make minis there because it's fun. I added her to a base because DesktopHero3D only has round bases and square ones work better in my games right now.

This guy is the Vampire Lord from Vae Victus (a Patreon) and I really like that swirly cloak. I'm a sucker for fabric. I think he'll be fun to paint.

Notice the difference in details between that one and the one before it. That's the difference between a file designed with detailed options and one that's designed as a unit specifically for printing. Both are good. The Vampire Lord has some thickness to that cloak that's way out of scale. But it also helps keep the mini solid. You can't see it in this picture but he's on a base that was already included with the file.

The picture is a little blurry but this is the chibi version of a couple of 1920s figures from the Gangster Bang Kickstarter. There's full size minis in there as well to match the chibis but I've been wanting to try painting them for a while and now I can print them. These came on their bases so no problems there. Well. Problem. The sculptor didn't do the chibi eye that's most commonly used here. He used a Japanese style that is meant for decals. We had to ask him to make real eyes since he just had an empty space meant for those decals. It was kind of creepy. But he found out more people wanted to paint them than use the stickers so we could choose which option we got.

In that pile above are a bunch of minis from Artisan Guild. They're a very popular company. If you look closely you'll find several of the same orc pinup girl. There's also some laying down that are theirs. The person who wanted those didn't want the bases. The one who bought the orc pinup girl did want her on the base and the way she's designed she's better on it so that her weapon is accurately placed. The ogre is also theirs. You can see him in the properly supported picture along with the other one lying down.

Now that I've got the printer working I've had to learn how to post process these things. It's not like the other printers where it's ready to go once you pull it off the print bed. Sure there's supports to remove but it's not nearly the same.

The resin is caustic so nitrile gloves are a must. I cheat and reuse them a few times but this stuff will eventually degrade the nitrile. Latex is not to be considered except as a very last resort and even then only for short periods of time. Sweaty glove hands are part of the process.

The first step is nipping off all those supports. The outer layer of the mini has a coating of excess resin so it's soft. Removing the supports at this point is best since they're most easily removed.

Then it's time to take a craft knife to shave off support nubs. That means running your fingers over all the parts where they attached to feel if they were left behind. The soft resin means it's really easy to get rid of them. Care must be taken in both steps not to cut off parts of the mini. At this point you've got a smooth mini ready for the next step.

The excess resin on the surface has to be removed. I'm using Simple Green in a 1:1 mix. There's other cleaners out there (Mean Green, etc.) that work just as well if not better. The sites all say to use isopropyl alcohol but tests have shown that's actually the worst performer and if you get it wet before the alcohol evaporates it leaves a white reside. I drop the parts into a container of Simple Green when I scrape them off the bed and put them back as I work through the set.

I was using a toothbrush to clean off the resin. It can work but honestly it's a lot of work and mess for not exactly great results. The sites all talk about ultrasonic cleaners so I finally broke down and got one. Oh. My. Goodness. The difference is incredible. I put the prints into a small ziplock bag with Simple Green, seal it, put it in the cleaner, add water to fill the container, then run it for 280 seconds.

The resulting Simple Green is a sickly opaque yellow green when it's done. And yes, I pour it back into the container. Once it gets too nasty I'll put it in the sun to cure out the resin, strain it, and add fresh cleaner to keep going. I dump the cleaner, rinse the minis, and put them in a small Tupperware for curing. I cure under water for reasons that are scientific and boring.

Fun note. If the figure is multi part you assemble it now. Then when it cures it's one solid piece. It also reduces the potential shrinkage issues that come with resin printing.

The resin cures under UV light - sunlight. So I have a curing station (that's the CAD design I did up there using Tinkercad) that I've lined with tinfoil, is on a tinfoil base, and has a solar powered turntable where the turntable platform is also covered in tinfoil. The intent is to get as much light from as many directions as possible. The lamp itself sits on top in the brackets meant for it. It doesn't fit complete tight so there's space for heat to vent.

Yes. I printed my curing station on one of my other printers. I'll be posting it up for other people to download at some point. The light and turntable were a package deal on Amazon. 

I put the Tupperware on the turntable, the lamp on the curing station, then let it bake for about sixteen minutes. After that I can handle the prints with bare hands since they're done. Done!

As you can tell resin printing is a lot more involved than the other kind. But you get incredible detail (I'm at the coarse level of 0.05mm per layer. I'd like to get it to 0.03mm. That's as thin or thinner than a human hair.) and honestly it doesn't take as long as you might think since the entire layer is cured at the same time.

I've got a number of print beds sliced and ready to go. Once I clear the prints off the bed I clean it, replace it, check the resin level (important!), and start the next print. After that I can work on processing the previous prints or let them sit in the Simple Green for a while. It's not going to hurt them. Or I can leave the prints on the bed for a day or three until I'm ready to work on them, as long as they're not in sunlight.

Uncured resin is caustic. That means all those supports that I remove need to be properly cured before they can be thrown away. I have a large plastic bowl in the sink where I keep the majority of the mess and I've cured the supports a couple of times by putting the bowl outside in the sun. Now I have supports cured to the stupid bowl. The next time I'm at the dollar store I'm getting clear plastic cups so I can transfer the uncured slag to those, cure it, and toss the whole shebang. 

As I said, live and learn. And print!

How I Roll - The MacGuffin

If you don't know what a MacGuffin is Wikipedia has the full explanation. Think of it as a plot device that has no other use than to advance the plot.

We're all guilty of using them. They're easy to drop into a game and then be forgotten by everyone, including the players.

In a way using these can be considered lazy. It gives the players a thrill of achieving something and then they go on to find something else. It can be unexplained as to why they're looking for it or what it does. It can be and do nothing in particular.

Sometimes that's what you want. Not every encounter has to end with a world shaking revelation or major plot twist. If they find the Amulet of Sugary Cereal then so be it. At that point it can be decided if it has significance.

Who decides? Good question.

If the item miraculously meshes with a character's motivations and/or backstory then hey, it's no longer a MacGuffin! If they decide they must know why the Rock of Shiny Crystals was so well guarded then they're off to the sages. Maybe the name sparks something in that overworked GM brain and it connects with something else that was in the overpacked filing cabinet of ideas.

Or maybe it's just a goal that they'll sell in the next town.

One thing it can do is break the players of the habit of expecting the results of every encounter to have long term ramifications. Finding the Cloak of the Sloth Prince when there's no empire they know of that has a Sloth royal family is an achievement that makes them feel good for finding it but is kind of a sorbet to the plotline palette. It's refreshing, it's welcome, it's not important.

Something that's far too easy to do is to use them too often. If you make most of the things at the end of encounters MacGuffins then you're stringing together random encounters and it's an extended dungeon crawl. You know your group. That may be all they want. Fight their way through to get the treasure then move on to do it again. Or they could be looking for meaning and a longer, deeper story arc.

I use them. I admit it. When I can't come up with a reason for why they're doing what they do I toss a random (probably) valuable reward at the end so they feel they've accomplished something. It also gives them something to RP about when it comes to what it is and how it got there. Sometimes they keep it, sometimes they leave it behind, sometimes they take it along, sometimes they sell it. The significance of the thing can change based on how the players perceive it.

Example time!

I love my random item generators. A rogue was very successful in his pickpocketing adventures and one of the things he got was a preying mantis in black glass. That's what got rolled up and I picked it out of a stack. The way the story was running I decided that this was what a thief from that guild would have with them when they were going to carry out an assassination, as a sign that they should receive all possible aid from others in the local guilds. Of course the rogue who stole it had no idea about that so now he's terrified that not only is he's pretending to be a member of the guild he's also got 'proof' that he's going to assassinate someone. So that one worked out.

Another time they got some minor magic items for their troubles. Minor enough that they sold about half of them since they didn't see a use for them in the future. So those are gone in all respects.

I'm not giving an opinion one way or another on these. I rarely given opinions in these posts. I show examples of what I've done or not done and let you - the reader - decide how useful the information is.

So this is kind of but not quite a MacGuffin itself. Go figure.

3D Printing - The Resin Printer

I've been struggling with my resin printer this week, trying to get it so it prints as well as it should.

In case you're interested (of course you are, you're reading this) I picked the Epax X1 instead of the more common, less expensive printers. I wanted the functionality that's built into this one and has to be tweaked into the others.

Pretty, ain't it? This one is solid metal construction except for that UV resistant orange plastic window. It's a heavy little beast.

The main reason I hadn't started on this when I bought it was that I didn't have the space set up for it. This involved A Process since I was replacing an existing plastic shelf set with a new shelf set for this. That meant emptying the old shelves, finding a place to put them, setting up the new shelves, making sure that one of the spaces was large enough to hold the printer, then putting stuff back on the shelves. Oh. I also had to mount the battery backup/UPS on the wall once I knew where things were going to be.

I finally bit the bullet and did all the reorganization. The new shelves weren't as tall as I had hoped and I'm very short on space so I - ahem - acquired the pieces to make it one level higher and all was well there. These are nice sturdy metal wire shelves and I put a piece of fiberboard (ok - it's a dollar store clipboard but same difference) under the printer for stability and also put it in a tinfoil pan in case of leaks. These printers don't move as much as the other kind since it the print bed goes up and down, slowly. There's no lateral movement. Cool.

There's a bit of a process in getting files ready for printing but I won't go into that. These printers don't allow me to throw on a print server so I have to keep shuffling the USB stick from the computer and back. Someone in the Epax Facebook group brought up the good point of how USB ports can wear out with use so I ordered a short extension cable so I don't have to fumble around for the port.

Oh yes. Gloves. Now is not a good time to be looking for nitrile gloves. Everyone wants them, no one has them. Harbor Freight's price has doubled due to supplier price increases, when you can get them. Nitrile gloves are required because the resin is pretty nasty stuff until it's cured. So when you're working with the printer you're wearing gloves. They have to be nitrile because the resin will very quickly eat latex gloves.

The way this kind of printer works is with UV light. There's a panel under the vat that shines light in the pattern for that layer to cure the resin. The printer moves the plate up so resin can flow back in, then down for the next layer. And so on and so on. This makes print times the same no matter how many objects you have on the print bed, unlike the other kind of printer. Nifty. Even if the print bed is much smaller.

Technically you can cure prints in sunlight. It's got all the right wavelengths. But that's a dicey process and difficult to control. So of course it's back to Amazon for the pieces for a cure station. You can buy fancy ones but I stuck with getting the lamp and a small solar powered turntable. A little work in a CAD program, some time on the other 3D printer, some tinfoil, and I had a curing station. Everything is covered in tinfoil - the foamcore I'm using for a base, the table on the turntable, and the interior of the curing station. I dug out a plastic container that fits inside for curing parts underwater. Trust me, it's just better to do that than cure them in open air. Something about oxygen saturation on the surface.

So. Ready to go. Right? No.

Resin printing involves post processing. In nitrile gloves. That means removing the excess resin off the print surface before curing it. It also means removing supports that you put on it so it would print. The resin print is pretty soft prior to curing which makes support removal easy - nip those suckers off and use a craft knife to scrape off the support point nubs. So prints get dunked into solution, supports removed, cleaned, then cured.

I'm using Simple Green to clean my prints rather than isopropyl alcohol. Turns out it works well, based on the anecdotes in the group and some videos on YouTube. I have two (dollar store) containers - one for the first soak then a second with clean solution for the scrub. That first one gets nasty FAST. Most people have an ultrasonic cleaner but for now I'm using a toothbrush. I'm debating about getting an ultrasonic cleaner.

Dunk, remove supports, scrub, rinse, scrub, rinse, into the curing pot. Then and only then do you have a finished print. Yay!

Except that you need to fiddle with the software settings in the program that converts the file to something the printer can understand. There's only two settings of note - layer thickness and how long to expose each layer to UV light. That's where calibration comes in. It's different for each brand of resin too so you don't get to just do calibration once.

I've been calibrating. And calibrating. And calibrating. The default settings that come with the printer configuration file are for 0.05mm layers. I wanted to push that sucker down to the limits of 0.02mm layers. Yes. The thickness of a human hair or slightly less. So I carefully read up on how to calibrate and got started.

These are all calibration prints. They're all failures. There's three kinds here.

Left - The AmeriLabs Town print. This has all kinds of different things to show how well your printer as a whole is working as well as if your layers are under or over exposed. Or just right.
Center-ish - The Resin-XP-Finder is something that prints quickly and has again a lot of little bits to show if your print is under or over exposed. Print, check, change setting, slice, print, check, etc.
Right - Another part of that Resin-XP-Finder is this seemingly flat piece that shows what happens with different exposure times. It's a boring piece to see but it helps you see how many seconds will give you the best starting point for calibrating.

I've also got piles of not-good prints that I thought would turn out better than they did. They're nice but they're not the detail that I bought the thing for. I would think I had it tuned. I would print. I would be disappointed. I would go back to calibration.

I'm back at the default of 0.05mm layers since at that level of detail there's no difference from 0.02mm unless you're looking at jewelry masters or dental pieces (yes, they have an adapter so it can print dental stuff). Some of the calibration pieces to the far left are at that level. And I was getting close!

I decided to print some small items since they don't use much resin and I could see how the detail turned out in the real world. I chose the familiars from Mia Kay and got them all prepped for printing. That's when it started. The print failed and I had stuff stuck to the film in the bottom of the resin vat. Did I not mention that the bottom of the resin vat has a film for the light to penetrate and 'hold' the layer while it cures? Well. That can backfire and pieces stay stuck to the film rather than the print bed.

Long story short (too late!) I ended up putting holes in my film. I'm cleaning off cured resin from the LCD screen and the printer comes with a replacement film. They're considered consumables and I ordered more so that I could have them on hand when I need to replace one. Tonight I emptied the vat and am getting the cured resin off the LCD. Tomorrow I'll put in a new film and see if I can print something to check out the detail.

Honestly I'm frustrated that it's taking me this long to get the exposure time right so I can print stuff. I see the prints everyone else is getting on their resin printers and I see mine. I'm not happy. The holes in the film are something I may or may not have been able to avoid until later. It's part of resin printers to have to replace those films and now I'll have done it so it won't be upsetting to me to do it again. Annoying, but not upsetting.

Would I recommend a resin printer? Sure. If you're looking for very fine detail and no layer lines then you need a resin printer. Would I recommend this resin printer? Sure. If you want something that comes calibrated out of the box and is a sturdy, supported printer and you can afford it buy this one. And lots of nitrile gloves.

How I Roll - The Lonely GM

A post on Twitter got me thinking about sitting behind the screen. That post talked about how lonely it is to be a/the GM.

It's true. It can be incredibly lonely. There's a party on one side of the screen and on the other side the GM is watching it. Sure we get to be everyone in the world but those aren't the same as being invested in one very specific role.

In my opinion this is why some GMs introduce essential NPCs. That way they get to play and be at least on the fringes of the group. But it's never quite the same. It's always us against them even when it's not adversarial.

The GM holds a lot of the cards. The players know this. They work together to figure out what's going on and how to overcome it. The GM is reactive to that and also proactive in keeping the story moving in some direction or another.

Moving online has made that worse, at least from what I've been hearing and experiencing. They're still a party. The GM is still this nebulous person off to the side, telling them what's going on. With all the problems of a conference call the party is still a group, even if it takes longer to get them all on the same page.

The GM? Sitting there listening and waiting for their chance to say something.

For some in person games there's consideration for the work the GM does. They don't have to pay their share for the pizza. Someone brings the snack they like. There's a time after the game when they're thanked. Or not. It depends on the group. But the option is there.

In my opinion one of the worst things a group can do is treat the GM like a component of the game - rulebook, dice, GM. We're people too and we work darn hard to make sure that there's something for those hours when everyone gets together.

Online I've found that the break between the party and the GM is even more pronounced. People get excited and start talking over each other and the GM until some kind of order is restored. Then they do it again. There's no good way to use body language and manners seem to be different when they're not sitting across from another player. The GM gets even more marginalized when the players don't have to see them sitting there, behind the screen, running the game.

The point of this one is more for me to express the intrinsic loneliness that comes from running a game. Sure the players can be friendly but once the game starts there's a screen between the players and the GM, even if they don't play a game with a screen. It's a power dynamic that can't change.

And it is all about power. The GM decides what encounters the party will face and what happens when they finish it. They decide when the party levels. They have the power over that aspect of the game. The players have power over the social aspect of the game. The GM can't mandate that the players are nice to them, even if they should be.

I've been feeling removed from my game and I think this is why. I think that distance between me and my players has grown as we moved online and given that I don't know when we'll be back in one location I don't know how well the game will progress. I honestly don't know. It may not survive the transition from in person to online. Right now I don't know how I feel about that, which is not a good place to be for creative work.

If you're a GM I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on if you feel lonely. If you're a player I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how much the GM is integrated into the game. Either way I think it's a topic that doesn't get enough attention in the world of gaming.

How I Roll - I Got Nothin'

One of the most frustrating moments when being a GM is when you draw a total and utter blank when trying to do something.

Right now that means me building the story arc with encounters for the group I'm running. It's not really a cohesive group. But that's more specific than these posts are meant to me.

If you can't come up with the name of a town, an inn, and/or an NPC you can pretty much always wing that one. If you know that's a weakness of yours there's plenty of online generators where you can either make a list in advance or bring them up to save your bacon. 

It starts getting more difficult as you try to plan more elaborate things. Encounters are currently my stumbling block. I know I need to progress the story and I also need to make sure the encounters are balanced, appropriate, and enjoyable. That's a difficult set of requirements.

I'll probably go into these in more detail in separate blog posts but here's kind of an overview.

Balance isn't too bad given the CR system to use as a base. That and winging it based on how well the encounter is progressing. The intent is to make the characters work towards the end goal and not stroll through to it. At least it is for me. The characters should feel like they've accomplished something at the end of it.

Appropriate starts getting into more murky waters. That means you should have some idea of a goal in mind. Simply doing a dungeon crawl that ends with a big monster doesn't really advance the story much. Being appropriate can be a dungeon crawl to line their pockets if the loot has been less than what they should have at that point. They're good for that. But a random "hey - dungeon!" can be distracting and feel gratuitous. At least to me.

Enjoyable is another one of those nebulous and difficult things. Enjoyable for who? Do you want to showcase a character's abilities in this encounter? Do you want them to use their skills to the best of their ability? If your players like solving problems do you put the right kind in their path? Do you have players who sulk when they can't be the bestest and how does that come out in their play style?

As you can see there's a lot of questions. I've used pre-build adventure modules as either a base or a launching point for my encounters. I drop in what is suitable for the party and remove what isn't. I change things on the fly if I can sense it's not clicking with the group or if it's going off the rails. I've painted myself into a corner more times than I can count and have to work to pull it out of my hat. 

What I've found works best for me personally is to have a few opponent types available, some kind of reward that they need or want to get further along in the story, and try to make it so at least half of the party can show off their skills. That's my outline. Then from there I can work around it to make a more fully fleshed out encounter.

But I still keep names and other necessary things in physical lists so that I don't have to come up with the name of the goblin in the corner of the inn when they're back from whatever they were doing.

How I Roll - The Monty Hall GM

In a way this relates to last week's post about how fast PCs level. It's about the GM who hands out a heck of a lot of toys and treasures during the game. Suddenly the PCs have access to all kinds of toys.

Mind you, I'm going to talk about 3.5 type games. I'm looking at 5e and there's less of a chance of this happening due to the restriction on magic items but it can still be done. Any game where there's loot given out it can be done. And it's far too easy to slide into that problem.

I consider it a problem. Having been on the receiving end I've got the perspective of seeing what happens in the game when PCs have access to really powerful stuff. And I've seen what happens when the GM simply can't keep track of what they've given out.

I'll give examples.

My PC acquired a sentient weapon that also had several magical abilities. We were of a high enough level that it wasn't completely inappropriate. But the weapon didn't have what I consider to be necessary limits on it. That meant every morning everyone in the party could use it to get four different magical effects for the day and we did. By getting those effects (I can't find the card with all of them) we got the benefits of a lot of higher level spells being cast on us in a way that we couldn't have done if we didn't have that shiny toy. It might not seem game breaking but when you have +10 resistance to something and +2 to an attribute and so on and so on it's going to make it so the PCs are more overconfident of their abilities. And it means taking options away from the GM.

My PC also had masterwork armor and enough money was given to us that I could have multiple magic effects put on it. That armor almost didn't need my PC to function at the end. It was impossible to catch me unarmored as my PC had the ability to summon it and be fully armed as a fast action if my PC was within some distance of it. It turned spells. It did all kinds of things. My PC was not just a tank but also some other kinds of offensive and defensive weapon.

Finally I'll get to one of my best stories. It has to do with careful bookkeeping, judicious GM management, excellent dice rolling, and good players. As the party accountant my PC was very careful (that meant I was as the player) to note what we got, how we got it, where we got it, and when we got it. The GM had one of her pet NPCs (who was like 35th level or something) give the party 3 bags of dispelling dust she made so we could accomplish a quest for her. I noted that down. We used 2 of them in the quest. I noted their usage. We never gave back the last one.

In a different encounter a couple of years later we were up against a wizard who polymorphed himself into an adult dragon. This is where it gets fun. I had that dispelling dust and threw it at him. Since it was created by her pet NPC it easily defeated his save and he went back to being a squishy wizard. The warlock turned him into a greasy smear. What was supposed to be a huge boss fight was over in one round.

The GM was upset and asked where we got that. When I pulled out the paperwork and told her exactly what happened she had to accept it. She gave it to us, she didn't remember to ask for it back, we used it in an appropriate situation. It was really her own fault since without that magic item it would have been the big boss fight she prepped.

Side note - she later tried using Mordenkainen's Disjunction on us in another encounter that wasn't going her way. If you're not familiar with this spell it's a nasty one to cast on your players. The short version is that any magic item you're not carrying has to make a saving throw or lose its magical ability. It's kind of the equivalent of trying to take away all the magical loot the PCs have acquired.

The group rebelled and said if she was going to do that then we all quit. We were at pretty high levels so we had a lot of high level magic we'd found or bought. This was seen as the cheap trick it was and we called her on it. She backed down in the face of unanimous group opinion and realized that she couldn't give out stuff and take it back because she got played.

Anyway. To summarize the point of this. Be careful about how much loot you hand out. It's fun to give the PCs stuff they can use. It's fun to give them treasure. But it's also a way to unbalance your game and set expectations that every treasure pile is going to have magic items and piles of gold. Judge it carefully so the loot is appropriate to the encounter. Just don't go the other way and make the players perpetually poor. That's another blog post too.

How I Roll - The Level Race

I've played in games where the GM seems to be in a rush to get PCs to higher levels. I can understand that. Lower levels mean lower challenges. Or they have a story they want to get to but the PCs aren't ready yet.

I don't like it.

It's part of my Session Zero to tell the potential players that I level slowly. I want them to be able to explore their new abilities and learn more about their characters before moving up the ladder of levels. I find it kind of sad when someone gains a new feat or skill only to get to use it as their premier shiny thing for a few games before they get a new shiny thing.

I also like challenges suited to the character levels. Yes, kobolds are boring after a while but that's a challenge on me to make encounters that are level suitable but still interesting. It also lets me learn about the players and what they want out of their characters, out of me, and out of the game in general.

I start very low level. Depending on the game and players I'll either start at level 1 or level 3. I want those characters to develop. I want them to learn how best to use the character builds they made. I want them to have time to adjust things that seemed like a good idea at creation but aren't working out in the game.

If we're doing more of a "kill the monster, get the treasure" game then character development isn't very much of a concern to the players. In those cases I'm fine with starting at a bit of a higher level and letting them advance faster. But I end my games at level 20 so the faster you get there, the shorter the game. There's always a trade-off.

Players like to level. It's a milestone. It's a visible show of accomplishment that they've done stuff. I can fully understand that and accept it. It's why I use a combination of XP and milestones (more on that in a future post) to level up the characters.

Another thought to bring into the discussion is that the higher the characters advance the more it takes to get them to the next level anyway. Lower levels means learning the basics. Once you get into higher levels there's more options and more things to do before you move up. At least I like to think so.

I also dislike having characters level in the middle of an encounter. It throws everything off when we're in a multi session encounter and in the middle one or more of the PCs levels. It kind of breaks the scene for me. Suddenly they figured out how to Cleave while they're sneaking through the sewers to find the lair of the offshoot of the assassins' guild? It doesn't make sense. So holding off on it until they've got some in-game down time is my goal.

Other GMs like the race to the top. That's fine. If the players want it too then that's the game. It's yet another reason why Session Zero is important. You need to find out what the players expect in terms of character advancement, which is something not typically discussed. While my preference is for slow leveling if the group wants to go faster I can go faster. It means the encounters will be more difficult to compensate for their faster grasp of skills and feats. As I said, it's a trade-off. And it's completely up to the group as to how to handle it.

How I Roll - Cool Points

I like to reward players who come up with really cool ideas and actions. However the dice may not agree with what they want to do. That's where 'cool points' come into play.

Yes. I know many game systems allow for some form of this as part of the rules. If that applies to your game then you're already set.

Cool points are different than inspiration points or bennies. Here's what I do when someone attempts something that is impressive.

Unless they miss the roll by a good chunk of what's necessary to stick the landing I give it to them. That's the reward for coming up with the cool idea. They get to do it. Pretty simple, right?

It means deviating from the strict target number ideas that are embedded in many game systems. It may not be possible if you're playing online. I still need to research that one. But the basic idea is to encourage players to try new things. They may fail, they may not. But they tried.

Honestly I find this applies more to rogues than anyone else. The players who make the fancy rogues tend to want to do the cool things. So I'll use a rogue as an example.

Say the rogue wants to run the length of the table, jump on to the creature's back, stick their dagger into it, then ride down the side of it to the floor while carving a gouge out of its flesh. Pretty darn cool, right?

That's a lot of checks to make if you're going by the book. Off the top of my head that's a jump/acrobatics to get onto the table, a charge (is it 10 feet?), another jump/acrobatics to land on the creature, an attack roll to see if they can get the dagger into it, then yet another acrobatics roll to get to the floor as they intended. That's four or five different rolls and four or five different places to fail.

However it's a darn cool move if they can pull it off.

So. My ruling on this one would be one acrobatics to land on the creature and one attack. That covers getting to where they want to go and sticking in the dagger. If they succeed in both then they're going to do the damage. I'd have them do two damage rolls - the initial hit and then another one for the slice down the side. If I were feeling cheeky or if the player had been overconfident I may have them roll one more time to find out what state they're in when they land but that's situation dependent.

I've reduced the failure points significantly and in my own head I'll adjust the target numbers as I see fit. I want them to succeed on cool things but not if they're way off the mark. If they don't make the leap then of course they're not getting the attack. If they don't make the attack they're not getting the damage. If they don't stick the landing they're going to be prone, if I choose to add that one.

But in all the rolls I take into account the fact that the player came up with a really cool idea and image that they want their character to do. If I don't reward that kind of imaginative play then it's going to discourage them from trying cool things. Which I feel would diminish the player, the character, and the game. Not to mention the example it sets to the other players.

If your game allows for it let your players do cool things. Don't throw the rules out the window but pretend you don't see them if it's going to help the story along and make the player feel like they're made of awesome.

Final note here. Don't forget to reward the player with praise. Bring it up in the game if NPCs saw it. Have a bard put it into song in the next town. Let the character brag about it until the other party members want to smother them with a pillow. But one thing I don't recommend is rewarding them with experience. Not every player can or will try the cool stuff. By rewarding the ones who do with extra experience you're punishing the players who don't. Balance is the name of the game here. They tried something cool in character, reward the character.

And if they roll a 1? See my previous blog entry and be just as explicit about how badly they failed.

How I Roll - Critical Fails

I like critical fails, both for my NPCs and for the PCs. I like critical successes as well but that's another post. Note that my games are role play intensive so I have a lot more leeway in the results of a critical fail. If your games are more action focused then by all means keep doing what you're doing.

Critical fails are really just another 5% chance on the dice. In theory there's nothing special about them. In practice it's a chance to have some fun.

Yes. I said critical fails can be fun. Let me explain.

I don't use critical fail charts or any of that nonsense. I don't have a PC shoot one of their party members on a critical fail. I don't have the weapon break. Instead I embarrass them.

Yes. I also consider rolling a 1 on anything to be a critical fail, even when there is no such thing. You cannot critically fail a save or a skill check. Those are all additive results. But again, I like to have fun with them. Because there's always a chance that not only will the PC fail but they will fail in a spectacular fashion.

Mind you this is my opinion and my play style. If you like the charts and PCs getting an unexpected arrow in the kidney then have at. Some of those charts are really creative. It's my personal choice not to use them.

I also don't like the idea that one bad roll is going to take a PC out of the encounter. A broken bow string may not sound bad but that's at least one if not more round out of combat and if there's no cover then they're gonna get hammered. A broken sword has much longer lasting consequences. Yes I know both happen in real life. But this isn't real life unless my real life is very very dull.

Where I find this especially fun is where a character literally cannot fail a check. Sometimes the modifiers are so high that even when rolling a 1 they're going to succeed. That doesn't mean they do it well, which is where the embarrassment comes into play.

The oh-so-confident rogue can easily climb the knotted rope without a skill check but I have them roll anyway and tell them "just don't roll a 1". Which of course encourages their dice to try to do it. If so they still climb the rope but they aren't nearly as cool looking as they want to be, people notice, and/or they end up with visible rope burns from a mishap while climbing. Nothing changes the result - they climbed the rope - but the circumstances around it change the action.

Another example is when someone using a bow rolls a 1. There's plenty of options here. They drop the arrow before they can let go of the string. They snap the inside of their wrist with the string when they release (which hurts like a mofo and is why archers have those protective arm guards). The string snaps back and leaves a visible red line down their face for a day or so. None of them mean that the PC is out of the action or has done anything really bad. But they sure didn't succeed at shooting the baddies.

Let's face it. We as regular old people make mistakes. We trip over nothing then look around to see who noticed. We try to use the car remote to unlock the front door. We drip red sauce on white shirts. We critical fail in real life quite a bit more than we want to admit. And for the most part it's harmless but embarrassing. Bring that into your game - if appropriate - and you'll let the players relate to the PCs more. They can imagine a minor mishap very easily. Let them.

How I Roll - The Value of Dice

As you may or may not be aware I collect dice. However this isn't about the monetary value of dice. Because I don't want to disappoint if that's what you were expecting here's a pretty d20:

This is a Chessex Aurora Boralis Confetti d20. The value of this is approximately $300 to $500 if not more, depending on the sale. Yes. That's for this single die. The last selling price of the set was over $2,000. Needless to say this is a very high end collector set and yes I have the whole set as well as the extra d20. No I did not pay that much for either of them. No I don't bring them to the table.

Now that we have that out of the way let's talk about GM styles and dice.

There's open roll, hidden roll, and what I call pretend roll.

• Open roll is where the GM rolls in the open and what the dice roll is what happens.
• Hidden roll is where the GM rolls where the players can't see but still uses the results more often than not
• Pretend roll is where the GM rolls and may or may not use the results.

Every GM has their own opinions and styles. None of these is more or less valid than the others. I won't get into that argument but I will give my opinions on them. Which is far different than making pronouncements. In my opinion.

Open Roll

I'd say this is more useful for modules when there isn't much in the way of ability to deviate from what's been laid out as the story. Honestly the only thing that can happen that isn't already considered is that the PCs can die. Otherwise they're going to do what the module says and end up where it says. So the dice are only there to find out if they make it or not.

In a less structured game this is a bit of a harsh way to play. It takes a lot of storytelling options away from the GM. By depending on the dice rolls the PCs may not be able to defeat the minions to get to the BBEG and die on the doorstep. They don't see the hidden door.

Some say this is the most honest way to roll dice. I don't disagree with that, if your intention is to have your game driven by random events.

Hidden Roll

To me this means rolling the dice and fudging here and there to make sure that the game progresses in a fun and semi-coherent fashion. The GM may roll a crit but just call it a regular hit to minimize damage. They can use opposed rolls in whatever fashion they like. Or they can use the rolls as-is to keep things more honest.

This combines the random aspect of dice with GM discretion as to when they should take precedence over the story and the table. By relying on them more often than not there is a randomness that makes the game chaotic like open rolling but not as deadly, unless the GM wants it that way.

Pretend Roll

The GM rolls dice, does whatever the heck they were going to do in the first place. The dice rolling is all for show (sound?) so that the players think there's randomness. The GM may even accept some of the dice rolls as part of the game.

This one has me conflicted. On one hand it means the dice don't run the game. On the other hand it means that there is no chance of something wonky but interesting happening. The GM is pure storyteller in this mode.

Summary

I had to make a break so this didn't seem like part of the roll type descriptions.

Personally I go with the Hidden Roll method. I don't let the dice decide my game but I want to give the players the same randomness they have to deal with on their side of the screen. I fully admit I fudge like crazy, especially damage rolls. My dice want to kill the PCs. I won't let them.

I can honestly react to the dice rolls as well which is a very underrated action. The GM is always on stage. The players are looking for non-verbal clues in how you react to what is happening behind the screen. So rolling dice and seeing what they want can give you ideas and even more important a few minutes to think about where the situation is going.

Yes. Dice rolls can also be used to gain precious thinking time.

As I said I don't leave my story up to the whims of shiny math rocks. I use them as tools to help me figure out what I want to happen in the near and mid term encounters. Maybe a dice roll can have long term implications. But I'm always the one who decides that.

As the GM it's ultimately your decision on how you want to use dice in your game. I will repeat that none of these is more valid than the others. It's very much a personal decision on what method to use, unless you're using a rule set that requires a certain method for the GM to roll. If not then figure out which one suits your style, your game, and your players. Then use it. There's no reason you can't use a different style in a different game. Or even change to a different style in the same game.

Do what works for you. The mantra of most of the advice you get when asking how to GM.

How I Roll - Losing a Player 2

Losing a player is different than losing a character. In game losses are tough. Losing a person at the table can go either way. Let's be honest. As a GM there's players you wouldn't mind seeing the last of.

We lost a player recently. I knew he was unhappy even though the game included things he said he wanted. I asked him about it. The response I got was long delayed and I could tell he was working up to leaving. But I was more than willing to give at least one encounter I knew would intrigue him. The rest of the group would enjoy it as well.

I also think the shift to online didn't help. There will be more on that in a future post. But the disconnect between in person and online seems to have been a problem for him. I honestly think he couldn't keep his attention on the game when he didn't have the people there. I would see him off in other channels while we were playing and he always had excuses why his camera didn't work.

Even when you see it coming a player leaving can be a shock.

In this case he left in the middle of the game, sending a message to the group chat that it's been fun but the game isn't for him anymore, and wishing us well. Completely out of the blue, at least to the rest of the players. It hit everyone.

So how do you deal with it? Especially when it brings the group down below a critical mass for an effective game? I used the time right there to talk it out. I wanted to let the rest of the group wasn't to blame (his message could have read that way) and that we could move forward in a few ways. These work even when the player leaving is something with notice.

First I asked if anyone knew someone who wanted to join. Players talk to other players. The best way to get someone in line with the group is to have someone from the group recommend them. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is that the person already knows what the game is like. The other is that the person has a reason to behave since they were recommended.

We lucked out and one of the players said his wife was interested in joining. She and I talked after the session and she seemed like a potential good fit. I have my own issues with couples at the game table and addressed them (yet another post here). So that's all handled.

If we didn't have a player on hand then I would have advertised the game on Meetup and in the local Facebook groups. Although we're online now we want to go back to in person so that means local. It also means finding a new place to play since the player that left was the host. Really the only place open will be mine, once I clean up my junk. Finding a new player this way means interviewing.

Another option is not to replace the player. Most games are optimized for four players but it can be more or less. If the group has decided not to play when players are missing then it's not that much of a problem. If they do want to play when people can't be there then it is a problem. Again, this is a group thing.

We had another issue with this player leaving. His character was the wizard. As of now the group has no access to arcane magic besides magic items. Since I refuse to force people into "missing slots" and the new player chose a non-arcane class it's on me to rejigger the encounters so they are arcane magic lite. I've also made it so that once a magic item is identified they don't need to roll Use Magic Device to use it. They know how from the identification. This lets me replace the wizard with trinkets.

I won't lie. Losing a player hurts. Losing one this way makes me doubt myself. I've gotten past that by referring to my notes and how the player changed when we had the long break then restarted online. He's an in person gamer. That's fine. I think he really wanted to try the online gaming. It didn't work for him. But he chose a very poor way to leave. No one got the chance to say goodbye.

That's the thing. A group of players tends to be more than strangers who sit down at a table every so often and roll shiny math rocks. They form a party. When he left the game he hurt every person in that party. I had very little issue with throwing shade on him for his actions, both in game and out. His character had been very dickish the last few sessions and getting very greedy. The other players were noticing and were trying to play it out. But alas, it didn't happen.

I've lost other players for other reasons. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes they decide the game isn't for them. Sometimes they don't give a reason.

I recommend spending a little time contemplating what they were like prior to leaving (exceptions for those who leave for real life reasons) and see if there was anything that could have been done. That doesn't mean you should beat yourself up. It's more of an evening worth of going back through your notes and thinking about how that player reacted to things in the game. Then decide if it was the game or the player. Or both.

The important thing is to have an open discussion with the rest of the group. Let them know that they can bring up any problems to you. I know there's a school of thought where after every game the GM asks the players what they did and didn't like. I avoid that kind of thing and I'll tell you why. Issues players are having with other players never get disclosed. I send out occasional emails to each person asking what they think of the game and what's missing for them, if anything. I word it better than that. But it's between the two of us so I hope they feel they can be more honest.

The summary of all this is that you can't please everyone. Players are going to leave your game. The game can go on, the game can end. You don't know. But in every case take the time to think about why that player left and if it's something that can be and/or should be avoided in the future. Just because one player didn't like something doesn't mean it's wrong - don't obsess.

3D Designs - How to Cut Out Shapes

I made a very rough tutorial on how to cut a circle out of a square. While this sounds simple it's a lot of steps.

Have a look here.

I'm using Tinkercad for almost everything I do. You can create a free account and do some pretty complex stuff using their tools and the shapes other people have shared.

But CAD has always been a sore point with me. Mostly I don't 'get it'. Having the 3D printers has changed my opinion of that. I needed stuff that wasn't out there or I wanted to modify stuff that was. So I had to learn some form of CAD.

Anyway. If you're looking for a tool that lets you build more mechanical things (organic is a whole different game) then by all means use Tinkercad. They even have a section of pre-built connectors. Just take your time and do a lot of Google searches when things seem weird.

Personally the part that gets me most is the need to make negatives in order to get the shapes I want. That one I'm still working on since I suck at it.

How I Roll - Session Notes

Session notes. The oh-so-necessary drudge work of taking session notes. It's the only way to remember who did what when where and why. And what is going to happen to them because they did this other thing.

I feel it's necessary as a GM to take session notes in sufficient detail that I can read back to get the flavor of what was going on as well as the facts. That's me. My games tend to be an equal mix of role play and combat. If yours lean more towards combat you can have fewer notes. Probably.

In my past games I've had a spiral bound notebook with notes in my rather unique handwriting that I would have to decipher later, paging through to try to remember when things happened. It worked well enough and I could keep up the with the game for the most part. I'm old school that way as I don't allow electronics at my table.

Honestly I don't know that I could GM and write notes on a laptop. The clicky clicky would be a huge distraction to me and the players. At least that's my opinion.

Mind you, these are my notes. They're never meant for the players. That's a different blog post.

The reason this post came into being is my newer way of taking notes. I use a Rocketbook (link goes to an unaffiliated Amazon product) which was recommended by some of the GMs I follow on Twitter. It gives me the best of both worlds - writing by hand but having the notes electronically.

OK. This isn't me plugging the product. I'm describing how it works so I can move past that into more about session notes.

A Rocketbook is a spiral bound notebook with plastic pages. You write using a particular kind of ballpoint pen that kind of works like a whiteboard marker. You can erase with the end of the pen or with a bit of water on a paper towel. Then when you're done you use the app to take pictures of the pages and send them to online storage. I use Google Drive because it saves the pages as a single PDF and it does an OCR transcription that isn't bad. In theory this is the best of both worlds.

I'm also addicted to notecards so I take pictures of those when I hand loot to players. I take pictures of the battle mat and maps drawn on it.

Since my session notes are made into a document via OCR I have to go back over them and not quite rewrite them but clean them up. Sometimes heavily. I end up with notes in my format and I can embed the pictures into the notes for the session, which is a great thing for me. It really helps me know what was given out and what it does. I also don't have to keep a physical copy of the card for myself since it has the magic effects on it.

I do wonder how much time I save, if any, by using this nifty new toy. I still have a printed copy of the notes in a folder for fast reference. I haven't tried searching the documents as a whole for words. I honestly don't know if a regular notebook and typing up the notes would save me any time over the technology toy.

I do know that transcribing them helps me with getting the flow of the game session in writing. I use these notes to make the campaign posts here. If I'm caught up I do both at once - clean up the notes and write the next chapter of the story. If I'm not caught up I get the notes transcribed because I need the space to write.

I don't know how I'll handle session notes when using Fantasy Grounds. I'll have to play with that in the sample game. I might be tapping away during game or writing it down and typing it in later. That's not really what this post is about.

Now that I'm past all that let's talk about what's in my notes. Don't tell my players.

I try to get a lot of information into as few sentences as possible. I summarize things. I jot down interesting turns of phrase. Notable interactions between players and with NPCs are documented. Anything that annoys me gets documented. Interesting future plot points they bring up as part of trying to figure out what's going on very much get documented. For me it's the playbook of the game. What happened, who did it, who didn't pick up on stuff, who went off into the weeds, who was on the mark, and what happened around them. It's actually a lot of information.

Having said that my notes are generally at most 4 typed pages in a bullet point format. I'm not writing narrative when I take these notes. I'm getting the high points and things I want to remember for later. The players will never read them.

Session notes are also good for doing a retrospective about where things went off the rails. And things do go off the rails. By having decent notes you can see what led up to the change and either get it back where it should be going or find out why it went the way it did. Or both. Without a decent set of notes you can't go back and learn from the mistakes that were made. You also can't snicker over some particularly fun piece of gaming that happened. Without notes you're stuck if a player insists something happened and you don't remember it that way.

Yes. These are also meant to keep the players honest. If you're not tracking the loot you give out then how can you be sure where they got that magic item? Or how many coins they got? Or who struck the final blow in a combat? All these are things that can't be left to memory. Well. Maybe the bandit thing but not if you're going to hang an story on the bandit's sibling tracking them down.

You can't write down everything. You could record the session but then you're in an even worse place for trying to find specific events. There's a signal to noise ratio that each GM has to find for themselves. Some don't care about the nitty gritty and want to know the big things. Some want every detail (not recommended). Most seem to fall somewhere in the middle of wanting to know enough that they can figure out what they had planned before the players screwed it all up. I mean, wanting to know how the group handled encounters and interactions.

Notes are also where you keep track of NPCs, which are yet another blog post in the future. But at least a precis of them - name, race, occupation, where they were - can be helpful along with the names of shops and inns. It's amazing how you can work them back into the narrative and it's also amazing how quickly the players pick up on you reusing names.

If you're running pure modules then you probably don't need very detailed notes. If you're running a long term game with a bunch of stuff strung together then you probably need a decent set of notes. It's a matter of what you feel you need as the GM to keep the game flowing.

How I Roll - Losing a Player

It happens. A player leaves the game for whatever reason and we have to deal with the aftermath.

They could be a member of a closed group. They could be a regular drop in player. They could be someone who never made it past Session Zero. But they're no longer a part of the game.

I've had this happen quite a bit and honestly it still hurts when it does. No matter what their reason I always feel - even if it's just a tiny bit - like it's my fault. Even when it totally is NOT my fault.

Losing a player means a shift in the group dynamic as well.

We just lost a player. I expected it to happen even if I did shift the game more in line with what he enjoyed more without sacrificing what the other players wanted. It showed in both player and PC attitude.

There's no one clue that lets you know you're going to lose them. Well. Saying they're moving out of the area for an in person game is a clue but in general I'm talking about losing one without that kind of concrete situation. It take some attention to detail to pick up on clues, if they're even given.

My players lost before and at Session Zero didn't like how I structure my games. I had one who didn't like not being able to choose their stats and completely control their character. I had a pair that didn't like that I wasn't able to be bullied into changing the parameters of the game. I had two who went through Session Zero and disappeared.

Those aren't as painful and are kind of a relief that they left before the game got started. Losing players before the game begins means that more players can be found and the game can start with them. Losing them and then not having enough players to keep a game running isn't fair to everyone else, especially if the players who left knew that my game wasn't what they wanted. Rude.

Losing a player to situations outside of their control hurts because you're losing a friend. But we get to say goodbye in at least one more gaming session before their character rides off into the sunset. Unless I have a reason I don't kill of characters that leave. They're still out there in the world and they tend to show up in the narrative later. It's a nice tribute.

Losing a player during the game because they choose to leave is the most difficult. This is the one that throws off everyone. Players aren't necessarily tuned in to when one of them is unhappy with the game itself so it can come as a nasty surprise when suddenly one decides to leave. There's no discussion, there's no closure. There's a hole.

As a GM this is the one that hurts. I know that games evolve and not everyone will like the direction it's going. Someone who prefers more dungeon crawling won't like a game where everyone else likes sessions that are pure role playing and visa versa. Some want the spotlight more than they're getting. Some just don't like the game. To me this always reflects back on me.

I soul search after they leave. I wonder if I could have caught it earlier and made the game more enjoyable so they wouldn't have left. I wonder if other players are unhappy and I haven't seen it. I question my decisions as to what encounters I brought to them. I wonder if I'm a good GM.

I won't discuss an unhappy player with the group while they're still involved. I'll try to talk to them privately to see what I can do to include things they want but honestly by that point they've made up their minds to leave. I haven't been able to persuade a player to stay and I don't know that I want to do it unless they've got some valid reason for it that doesn't make the rest of the players unhappy. A player that's going to leave is going to leave.

At this point I send out individual emails asking how each player is liking the game, what they feel could be done better, what they feel is missing, etc. I know groups that do that at the end of every session but I don't like that. It puts players on the spot so if they have concerns and everyone else has a different opinion there's a good chance I'll never hear it. By making it private they don't have to worry about being singled out.

Once the player is gone then the group can discuss what happened and the progress of the game. I can ask if they're unhappy with the specific things that caused the player to leave. I can be more honest at that point. The player is gone and there's no chance of making them uncomfortable. They did that to the group so I feel it's only fair to return the favor. I can be a little petty.

Losing a player doesn't mean you're a bad GM. It really isn't your fault. If the player didn't reach out to say they wanted something else you can't read minds. If you reach out and they don't tell you then you can't resolve it. Even if they do reach out that doesn't mean you can or will change the game to suit them.

Regardless there's a few things to do after it happens.

Decide how the character is going to leave the group. Keep it in the format the player was handling their character. Remove the PC from the game however you feel is appropriate but try to keep the spite to a minimum. You can always have something horrible happen to them "off camera" and let it filter back later.
Talk to the group about it. They can be more upset than you since it's a shock. Find out if they have the same concerns (if you know them) and let them talk it out.
Ask them how they want to proceed. Do they want to add another player? Do they know someone who they think would fit in the group? Do they want to end the game? They're all valid options.
Send an email thanking the player and wish them well. Don't burn bridges and don't vent on them.
Adjust any upcoming encounters to fill the hole. Losing the cleric means lots of undead probably aren't a great idea and add a lot of healing magic to the loot they find. Losing the tank means turning the combat to things they can handle without having someone go through and make kibble out of the opponents.
This is my person one but if you do decide to add another player don't expect them to "fill the hole". Let them choose a character type they want to play and adjust, adjust, adjust. If they really do enjoy playing all the classes they'll pick a character to replace the missing one on their own. Again this is my personal preference but if that's not yours then by all means do what works for you.

To finish up. Mourn the loss (if the player is worth it), talk it out, and move on. Make the game what the remaining players want it to be. You can't fix what one person thought was broken and isn't around anymore.

Forgotten Realms Campaign - Game Update

This is a post to let you know the campaign is still going after a hiatus while we waited to see if we could continue in person or if we had to go online.

We did go online using Discord and there's quite a few sessions I have to transcribe my notes and make them into posts here.

Stay tuned!

How I Roll - That Other Player

I already talked about That One Player and how to work with them to make a decent game. Now I'm going to talk about That Other Player.

This is the player you can't read. Most of the time the players at the table open up and you get a feeling for what they want, what kind of person they are, if they're enjoying the game, etc. Then you get a player who isn't like that at all.

This player makes me feel insecure, personally. I'm not getting feedback to know if I'm running the game in a way that makes them happy. I start to second guess what I'm about to do and how I'm going to engage their character.

This is the one who doesn't want to help the villagers while the rest of the group does. This is the one who doesn't get excited about some kind of mystery they've tripped over. This is the one who does their part in the game but then you don't hear from them until the next game. This is the one who seems to enjoy the game but also seems to find it lacking.

It makes me want to throw a really big d20 at them and make them tell me what they're thinking.

Some things to try are flat out asking them what they think, trailing teasers across their path, paying close attention at various aspects of the game, and other frustrating ways to try to interpret their feelings. I know that flat out asking shouldn't be frustrating but it is if they won't give you a straight answer.

I'm not particularly subtle at times. Hence the "throw the really big d20" comment. I'll keep trying to find out what's in their head until I figure it out or I accept that I'll never figure it out. Other people with actual social skills will have a better chance at it than I do. When asking them if they're having fun gets no definitive answer I'll go with the option of doing what I do unless told otherwise.

This is another one where I don't have much of an answer. Doing the table check at the end of the game asking everyone what they liked and didn't like always feels weird to me since I don't know how honest any one person would be in front of everyone else. And asking separately can get slanted answers because they don't want to hurt my feelings or make me angry. I'm fine with hurt feelings and it would take a lot to make me angry. The d20 thing is frustration, not anger.

I can't draw a conclusion on this one. There's too much going on and it's specific to the group and GM. The game should be fun and a way to hang out as a group, either in person or online. When something feels off then address it and accept the answers given, I guess.

How I Roll - Is It Me?

I like to think every GM asks themselves that question at some point during their games. I know I do.

What brought this to mind was how my group doesn't seem to connect the dots I'm laying out for them. Therefore I have to ask myself "is it me?" or are the players not good at connecting dots.

Taking a step back and looking at the dots is difficult since I know what they are and where they're going. Trying to pretend I don't and reading them as they were presented to the players is difficult but possible to a certain extent. This also falls back into the question of plot hook vs railroading.

In this specific situation I'm going to say my players aren't very good at connecting the dots for medium to long range results. For short term they seem to be on the money. But they don't look at the larger picture. That means it's on me to adjust what I'm doing.

I have three choices that I can see.

1 - Nibbles

I can break the puzzles down into smaller nibbles that build on each previous encounter. This approach means there's still a decent chance they won't make necessary connections but I have more options for letting them roll for what their characters would know.

2 - Bigger Dots

Maybe I stop being subtle, make the dots much bigger, and put flaming arrows in the direction they go. That one feels like it's getting into railroading territory and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

3 - Abandon the Dots

This group may be one that doesn't play the long game, as it were. They may not pick up on wider implications of what they're doing until they get smacked in the face with them. Of course I'd have to mitigate how much of a smacking they get if they don't have a chance to see it coming.

These are options for each group. They're not something the GM can decide ahead of time. Unless Session Zero had the players flat out stating they didn't want to deal with the consequences of their actions or solving mysteries then it's going to come out in game. Even if they do say that there's always a chance they change their minds as the game evolves.

As the GM it's frustrating to me to see them struggle with what I think are basic connections. Even stepping back to try to see it from their perspective it seems basic. Or at least not that hard. There's enough bits and pieces that they should have picked up on some pretty obvious stuff in our last game. They didn't.

So what happens when the players aren't seeing where a storyline is going and they flub every roll that would allow the GM to give them insight? Good question. I wish I had a definitive answer. It would certainly make my life easier.

What I'm going to do is try to use NPCs to fill in some of the gaps. Once they get to town there's always a way to get information to them. I'm lucky that they're heading to one now. Otherwise I would have to drop some more encounters on them to give them more dots to try to connect. Or I would have to abandon that completely and make it less of a cohesive story than a series of short stories or an anthology.

The conclusion here is to try not to be too clever as the GM. We're at a huge advantage because we're the ones who know the intended storyline. It's easy for us to see connections because we created them. Talking it over with someone not in the game but who knows gaming can help a lot. Telling them the basics of what you've given the players can show whether or not you've done enough. Make sure you're not assuming too much and that you're running a game the players expect.