GM: Friend or Foe?

Something happened in out last game session that is so unimportant and unremarkable that I don’t even know that I should write about it. It had no effect on the outcome of the session and no one was worse or better off with or without it happening. So what was it? My character tried to set aflame a pile of dead kobolds and the GM said “no.”

The context is that our party was dug-in to a narrow hall in a kobold mine, defending it as our alchemist brewed a concoction that we would need to advance. After multiple waves we had accumulated quite the number of kobold corpses and thought we could use them to strengthen our position. So we stacked them across the hall to provide a barrier and then to add that “little extra” to deter anymore attacks we put our torches to them. Nothing happened. Our GM ruled that it was unrealistic for bodies to catch fire like that and after a very short debate we conceded to his judgement.

Without getting into the science of burning bodies, of which there hasn’t been a lot of research, I feel our GM made entirely the wrong call. He chose to punish or at least discourage our creative spirit over an encounter that will not have any major bearing on our character’s development or story arc. What I mean is the next and last wave that attacked us we thoroughly destroyed and routed. The bodies that we laid were pushed out of the way and didn’t have any major role in the battle.

So I’ve been wondering when it would be beneficial to penalize the players for being creative, which is exactly what happened here. In a recent post by LS he describes how he essentially let a low level character get multiple attacks and access to cleave without having any of the prerequisites. It’s worth reading if you’re a GM. I think in his situation LS made the right call. After all, why penalize players for creativity? Because of rules or reality? Those are terrible reasons.

If a player is willing to suspend his disbelief for a few hours and pretend he is a dwarf clearing a mine of kobolds is it too much for the GM to do the same? (That is suspend his disbelief). Let’s say I read about our situation in a book and the author had his character ignite the bodies using nothing but a torch. I’m not going to throw the book down in frustration because I don’t think that’s realistic. I’m going to enjoy it and keep reading. Why isn’t the same mentality adopted in gaming?

Throw the rules and realism arguments aside for a moment, I think this goes deeper than those.

What I think this comes down to is the way GMs and players think about each other. Is the GM working for the player or against them? Because of our experience in the gaming world (from table top to computer) I think there’s a natural tendency for players to view the GM as their opponent and likewise for the GM to view the players the same way. Because of this mentality GMs will often find themselves trying to defeat the players, especially subconsciously.

To support this, after our session my GM (who I love by the way and I’m not bashing him) even said that he was out of ideas to throw against us in the last encounter. Essentially he had run out of ideas to defeat us. Now our GM is pretty generous with helping us survive so it’s not like he is maliciously trying to kill off our characters. But as he observed we had effectively defeated the obstacle set before us; however, instead of accepting this and letting the story advance, he kept trying to defeat us to the point where he told us we weren’t allowed to defend ourselves by putting burning bodies in the hallway to dissuade any more attacks.

I wonder what end he was trying to reach, surely not a character death or party wipe?

The more I read and research the more I’m aware of how many people view the GM as an opponent. When the reality is that he is a player’s ally. Not just a judge to walk us through the world, but a cooperant, working with us to see our characters grow and enjoy the adventures we go through.

I’m not suggesting a GM hold the players’ hands or fudge so many rolls that we’re never in any danger. Not at all actually. Players want challenges, we even want failures (though not fatal) as they make our victories all the sweeter. The obstacles the GM places in front of us provide the conflict that make our characters’ stories dramatic and worth going through. The obstacle aren’t there to end the story or defeat the players.

So before you, the GM, say no to the players ask yourself what denying them adds to the story. Likewise ask if allowing them to do something takes away from the story. But ultimately for the sake of the story and for the sake of fun, be willing throw out the rules and suspend your disbelief just like the people around your table are already doing. I mean hell, we bought you beer and pizza.

Encumbrance & Backpacks

I want to take a break from the reforging of Pathfinder skills to write about something else.  First, I have been doing a lot of traveling across the blogoverse, especially taking time to study other people’s house rules.  I’ve been loving a lot of what I’ve seen.  But since I’ve mostly been scribbling my thoughts in a notebook and not bookmarking pages I don’t have many links to share with the original ideas.  So I hope that saying what’s written here is inspired and not solely the child of my own creativity will suffice in place of the sources.

(EDIT: Found the source of this inspiration. The Post and the Character Sheet)

Encumbrance through slots instead of weight.

The current system of keeping track of encumbrance is cumbersome. Keeping track of weight down to the pound to figure out what you current penalties are is tedious and takes away from the joy of the game. And as far as I can tell not too many people, aside from large items, bother with this. That tells me (at least for my group) it doesn’t work. By now you’ve noticed the image to the left. That represents my backpack (the common 2gp version). It’s divided into three sections: small pockets, big pockets and weapon straps. So let’s break em down.

Small Pockets (green) are meant to hold stackable items, but the items don’t actually have to be small per say. Stackable items are any item that players naturally stack in their inventory without much thought, such as ammo, potions and trail rations. It will ultimately be a DM’s call what can be stacked. The great thing about small pockets is the items they hold don’t add to a player’s encumbrance, but only stackable items can be put in them. As a DM you should decide how big stacks are allowed to be. For me: Ammo is 20, potions are 5 and rations are a weeks worth.

Big Pockets (blue) represent the main compartment of a backpack. This main compartment is divided into three separate big pockets and like small pockets each can only hold five items. Each pocket, starting from the top and working down, adds different encumbrance effects to the character. As you can see placing an item in the first pocket gives a character a -1 AC penalty. All it takes is one item in a particular pocket to incur the full effect, i.e., additional items in the same pocket don’t penalize a character further. However, once items spill over into the next pocket additional penalties are applied. Big pockets can hold any item, but there are special rules that I will go over below.

Weapon Straps (red) are located on the outside of the backpack and provide a convenient way to carry additional weapons without taking up backpack space. Each weapon strapped onto the backpack applies a -1 AC penalty, but movement is only hindered by quarter speed regardless of how many weapons. Only weapons can go in these slots.

Now what do we do about strength and carrying capacity rules? As far as LOH, LOG, P&D go we leave them as are. But light through heavy loads we ignore. Don’t worry though, super strong characters aren’t forgotten… and neither are the super weak ones.

For strong characters, every +1 to your STR mod turns one big pocket slot into a free slot. (Note: these are individual slots, not an entire pocket – which is 5 slots – additionally start the free slots from the top and work down). Every positive even number modifier (2, 4, 6, etc.) also turns one weapon slot into a free slot. So using our backpack as the example, a character with a +2 STR mod wouldn’t take penalties for the torches, rope or dwarven waraxe. So this character would have a -2 AC penalty and a 1/4 speed reductions applied to him because of the bedroll and shield.

For weak characters every -1 to your STR mod removes a slot from your backpack starting with your small pocket slots working down from the top. Additionally every even negative number (-2, -4, -6, etc.) removes a weapon slot. So a character with a -3 STR mod in this example would lose the first three free slots and a weapon slots. Their penalty would be -3 AC and -1/2 speed. This is because, assuming they carried all the same items, the bedroll would be into the second big pocket.

Additional Rules

I said earlier that any item can be put into a big pocket slot but that there were special rules. The first and simplest is that stackable items act as regular items in these slots meaning they’ll incur the penalties like any other item. The second rule is that weapons can be placed in the big pockets too, but a weapon (or shield – excluding tower) takes up 5 slots. And the last is about armor in a backpack. Light armor takes up 5 slots, medium 10 and heavy 15. Pretty simple.

Masterwork backpacks push the penalties for the big pockets down one set. That is, if this were a masterwork backpack the first big pocket wouldn’t have any penalties applied to it and the penalties would start at the second big pocket (that pocket would only be a -1 AC).

This system also allows you to create your own backpacks. But I would suggest that anything bigger than the common backpack I’ve presented have a strength requirement in order to carry it at all. And get creative with it, you could use this system to create belt pouches that increase the number of small pockets a player has on them or have cloaks with hidden pockets. I haven’t had a chance to take this system for a spin yet, but on paper I like it. Let me know if you use it.

PF Skills: Reforged – Social

Social (CHA): The ability to navigate the labyrinth of politics, barter with traders, sell a lie or discern the truth and perhaps inspire courage or fill a person with fear.  In general, your conversational interactions with npc’s.

Absorbed: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate & Sense Motive

So if you’ve been following this blog you know that the general objective behind all the skill modifications is first) to decrease the reliance on fate (the dice) and second) to increase the value of skill points where possible.  While this skill doesn’t do anything to decrease die rolls it does greatly increase the value of any point put here.  You’re getting 4 for 1 after all.

Because social interaction is so fluid I won’t bother giving DC examples or detailed breakdowns.  But it should be pointed out that each of the skills that have been absorbed are still separate from each other.  What I mean to say is if you get a bonus or penalty to a particular skill (say diplomacy) that negative only applies to that skill without affecting the umbrella “social” skill.  So for class bonuses or starting traits there’s no need to rework them, they still work as is.

It’s very important to be flexible and creative with this skill in finding new ways to apply it.  One idea from Rich Burlew is particularly appealing to me and I’d encourage you to read it for yourself.  But essentially it turns social interactions (in his case diplomacy) into a mini-game of sorts.  Check it out.  I think if a true re-working of these skills is to take place it should be something along what he is proposing.  But I’m not currently up to the task and took the lazy way out by making this skill. (A smiley is probably appropriate here but I will resist the urge).

There’s not much to say about this skill because it really is nothing more than an umbrella for skills that I decided not to change but that I didn’t think were equally valuable on their own.