#behindtheblind

DOWNLOAD

Going In Blind is a Dungeons and Dragons actual-play podcast with vision impaired players.

This week we go Behind the Blind, with 5 RPG Facts about our DM! Jorgan Menkins... or whatever his name is.

We've been tagged by MiniTerrainDomain in a Dungeons and Dragons version of the Ice Bucket Challenge! Answering 5 RPG facts about ourselves (or more specifically about our DM)!

Today is fact FOUR: Tropes our DM uses & how he times adventures.

Shoutouts to Syrinscape as our in-game audio!

DOWNLOAD

Going In Blind is a Dungeons and Dragons actual-play podcast with vision impaired players.

This week we go Behind the Blind, with 5 RPG Facts about our DM! Nick... Dave... Boris? Whatever his name is.

We've been tagged by MiniTerrainDomain in a Dungeons and Dragons version of the Ice Bucket Challenge! Answering 5 RPG facts about ourselves (or more specifically about our DM)!

Today is fact THREE: I LARP.

Shoutouts to Syrinscape as our in-game audio (and to LouisXIV for reminding us to link them)!

Also Calamacil, LARP weapon-makers, & Kiruna LARP!

Episode 09 out Tuesday, our time.. so Monday?

Being a Master of Dungeons (or Games) requires a lot of work.

I have found out, in more recent years, that if you want to play Dungeons and Dragons, you want to be one of the people who tricks your friend into buying the books and modules. Those people are called 'Players'.

The ones who get tricked, like me, are called Dungeon Masters.

Players get to rock up, eat all the snacks, destroy all the plans, eat more of the snacks, raid the dungeon, raid the fridge, and somehow crit their way out of every situation. For the sake of a metaphor, they get to just play the game of Football.

The DMs get to build the teams, the motivations for playing, the field, stadium, locker rooms, the other teammates, the opposition, the crowds, all their motivations for attending the game & the rest of the world around the game just for good measure. And they get to (initially) pay for this privilege. Then bring the snacks and drink. DMs spend hours putting together intricate madness specially tailored to their players, while the players just assume it 'happens'.

Now, you may be assuming this is coming from a place of some sort of feeling of superiority, but it doesn't. It comes from a place of having first been a player who greatly underestimated the work being put into the game by our DM, to learning what sort of and how much. I garnered a new-found respect for our DM, and all DMs out there, and tried to emulate them. And failed. I'm still trying to this day, and the day I start to feel comfortable or knowledgeable is the day I change to something I know nothing about..

Anywho, here's the first bit (in no particular order) of how I put together adventures, sessions, worlds and all the rest of it.

Building The Basics

Like the weather, or rust, or food, or going to the bathroom (most things normally relegated to the background of a story, be it Dungeons and Dragons or otherwise), aren't important until they are. Supposedly as a GM we're meant to make these big, sweeping decisions at the start of an adventure that will effect the outcome of how everything will function and play out in the world. Will everything unfold in real time, or will we just skip ahead to the interesting parts? If we walk for days without rest, do we get Disadvantage from chafing armour? If I haven't explicitly stated I relieved myself earlier, does the ambush make me wet myself?

But in the same way the big, sweeping decisions you make for yourself at the start of High School or College or during your mid-life crisis aren't set in stone, neither are these.

That said, when starting an adventure, or even just a single session, or a delve, we have to try and answer these questions. Part of this comes from your players, what they expect from the adventure (and what they'll put up with). Do they want to know exactly how many horses they have on their home property, & how to manage their holdings whilst on adventure? Do they want to focus on having to eat and drink? If so, what sort of food do they have, how are they storing it, and what time of day is it? That last one especially becomes important, if you're tracking food.

And a lot of these questions get answered when you realise what it is your party needs to keep track of. If it's food, then time is important. If it's armour, time and the weather are the main two. Knowing what you're focused on helps lend credence to any flavour text you've come up with.

Again, these are not set in stone. If you find your players, or yourself, gravitating towards one type over another, or certain details resonating more or less, feel free to start ditching the ‘deets’. Something about wheat and chaff, possibly involving separation. If no-one cares about the upkeep of their manor back home, and just want to go on a carefree hack-&-slash adventure, fine. Let's stop focusing on when we last ate, or if there's rust on something, or how a light drizzle with fog might obscure sight. This sort of campaign will never have one of the main player characters suffering from blisters as they break in their new boots.

However, if your players start to zoom in on such details, well now it's your job to keep them up, and keep giving them meaning. This is where some of the deciding has to come from you, from the start. If you know you hate having to keep track of certain elements, you either make it the job of the players to keep track, or you don't introduce them to begin with. If the players are never aware time could have been a factor, it never will be. If getting shot in the arm with an arrow only effects your total HP and not that arm, they won’t equate wounds with, you know, being actually wounded. No sewing-kits and gut threads are in their future. Of course, if you need it to be later, you can sneak it in for a few sessions before and after 'the event'. Players will be quick to pick up on when something has lost its relevance (unless you're an evil DM and were counting on that. Eventually they will trust nothing).

Any time you're just starting out an adventure, you'll want to have this clear picture of what strange little elements you are willing and able to have in your world, what your players want or expect, and how well each one plays out over those crucial first sessions. Once you've essentially play-tested them, streamlining the process as you go, you can really start to dig into the meat of an adventure, with the help of backgrounds of characters, which we'll talk about next time. Maybe.

Today on twitter we got a question from Stories of the Fifth Age, a podcast ‘exploring creative storytelling opportunities using the latest Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying system’.

"I have a question. I've been listening to you and learning how to use smells and sounds more in depth. It's something that I've overlooked as a GM. But it's hard to know what smells and sounds to focus on, and how to add depth without it sounding like I'm really pushing a plot point. The GM on your show seems to do it effortlessly without it being distracing, it adds to the overall theater experience. What tips can you fofer people looking to embrace those senses effectively?"

So firstly, how to use smells and sounds more in depth.

In any adventure, it is important to tie it to reality. I know, sounds crazy right? But it's true. If I tell you there's a dragon waking up in-front of you you'll get an image of a dragon waking up, but it will be flat. 2-Dimensional. Now if I were to say that the cavern shakes with each breath, which smells of sulphur, that's raised a little. But do we know what sulphur smells like? What the breath sounds like? What a shaking cavern really means?

The scales on the Great Wyrm's side rustle and click as it breathes deeply and sonorously, radiant heat blasting from its mouth like a furnace, accompanied by a noxious smell like bad eggs with every dry breath. The coins beneath its bulk shift and slide down the hill of gold and towards the feet of our players, a metallic waterfall that rings through the jagged-edged cavern, mingling with the signifying death.

Not my best work, I'll admit. But it gives you most everything, bar some beard-singeing & a deeper description of the creature (which I'd save till a perception check), to paint a 3D picture of this great creature waking up. We don't just see it. We feel it. We know that smell, have stood too near a fire and felt that heat. If I could have I'd try to combine the sound of the breath with some sort of machine the players could relate to. A possible 'Out Of Character' description of something of our world if there wasn't an in-world equivalent they'd know.

How to choose?

How do we choose what to make 3D and what to keep 2D? The same way an old children's book would. The really big set-pieces of a kids book, back in the old Enid Blyton days, would have a whole page devoted to an image, just to help really 'paint the picture'. These were normally in the big bits. The beginning, middle and end. Or conflict, climax & resolution. To make sure you aren't overly pushing the idea of 'all the senses', for the first while focus on just these points of each session.

At the start, really set the stage for what is to come by giving them that oculus-rift feel, complete with a spray-bottle in hand if it's raining (metaphorically speaking. Don't actually spray anyone). Then when the central conflict of that session sets itself up, give them that 3D feel. Put them in it. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel (phisically, not emotionally)? And What do you smell? Try and tie them together, so they get a real sense of the space and what they're up against. Make them feel the mud sucking at their boots slightly with each step. Hear the wet plop, the odd slickness, the slight slide in their gait if they misstep, the clean scent of the air after the rain. Then for the biggie, once they've dealt with the big conflict of that session. Once the baddie has died, or run away, or the townsfolk stop fighting, or one member of the party is cleared of that murder.

Finally, for now, at the start of the next session, use all these senses to kick them off. The smell, sound and sight of the aftermath of their actions is like a kick to the gut, in a good way, lending gravitas to past actions. And with all these sorts of descriptions, that's what you're doing. Lending gravitas to moments to make them larger and more memorable. So pick the already large ones and make them fantastic. Later, when the party is used to this, start playing with them. Take smaller moments and bring them up to that level. Start using it as a red herring, giving meaning to mundane things. Slowly build up their tollerance but remember, like with all flavour text or description, don't overfill it. If you're already a large paragraph of 'this is what's happening'then feel free to cut out how something sounds or tastes or smells.

But I don't want to use it on the large set-pieces.

Then don't. What I've posted above is a way to ease players into the idea of their world being broader in emotional scope than they'd previously thought. Once you've got them feeling and reacting to their surrounds (which should only take a session or two), you stop attaching it to just the big bits and pepper it through the game. Like a joke-per-minute checklist a standup can have, aim to have a sense-per-1/4hour. Every 15 minutes or so, tell the players, or a player, how something feels, or sounds, or smells, or tastes (& that's another part of it. Taste. And not the 'putting things in your mouth' kind of taste. But the taste of the air. Or a metallic taste in the back of your throat right before a nose starts bleeding, or the dirty river water they've been forced to drink and what that's doing to their gut). It just adds that little bit of complexity to the proceedings without overwhelming the players senses, so to speak. But even if they aren't central to the plot of the adventure, these additions should be central to the feeling and growth of the world. To the realism. To things we can already grasp and understand, then use to connect us to this imaginary world.

Now I have no idea if this answers any questions, or helps anyone. At best I ramble and segue, at worst I travel down a rabbit hole of unrelated madness no-one wants to know about. In my first attempt at writing this I ended up just talking about how I create adventures, a much more dense topic than this one. But I hope that answers the question from the folks at Stories of the Fifth Age, or at least begins to put them on the path to creating fully fleshed out worlds that feel real. And if not, ask again guys! Always happy to attempt to help!

Syrinscape, the app that does all the music and sound effects for our Going In Blind tabletop games with vision impaired players, had a request for sound effects...