Forward: Delvers of Dàrkmesa

The Delvers of Dàrkmesa campaign rules represent the culmination of my ten years exploring the theory and spirit of tabletop roleplaying games in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons.

This project began in 2008 in the wake of D&D 4th Edition. But that inflection point needs some context.

I had been playing D&D since 2003, when a new friend gave me a copy of the 3rd Edition D&D Player's Handbook, having recently upgraded to 3.5 himself. I read every word in that handbook one thousand times over. I was running games of 3.5 for my friends soon after, and quickly settled into a nice groove: each campaign I tried to run would last three to four sessions, only to spiral out of control due to my lack of experience.

In my heart, I usually blamed the players for how things would fall apart. I had played the epic campaigns through in my head, and tried to run them all to that end. Didn't they know that Tolkien-level excitement and wonder awaited them, if they could just go along with the story? They never seemed to march to the tune, despite their best efforts. Luckily, we were young, and all still in school in our home town. Starting a new game every month was never an issue. I had a million tired fantasy tropes that I yearned to emulate at the table, and a good handful of friends more than willing to indulge me.

I never admitted that I blamed them, and that was good, because it was my fault and I didn't know it. I didn't know that the stories I liked to read and write were not the ones I liked to play in or run. I couldn't see that my campaigns as conceived were little more than setting and stage direction. It was truly the bliss (or perhaps, frustration) of ignorance.

You see, the friend that introduced me to D&D was the first person I ever met who played. That made me the second person I ever knew who played. Each of my other friends who I invited to play then became the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. We were making it up as we went. Sure, we were using the rules. But the rules don't tell you how to play. Not really. And back then, it was faster to walk to the library and check-out a Dragonlance novel than to look up anything online. How other people played was a complete mystery to all of us.

Around 2007, the older cousin of a friend of mine came to town. His name was (is) Nick, and besides being a math genius, he was also an avid player of 2nd edition D&D. Once he found out his little cousin and co were all playing D&D on the weekends, he offered to run a (3.5 converted) game of Ravenloft for seven or eight of us.

That was good D&D. I played a monk, which was a terrible class in 3.5. But the D&D was good, so I had fun.

Then we went back to playing our own games (which I ran), and they sucked again. I would often pine away in my memory for the details of that game, searching for its secret sauce.

In 2008, 4th edition D&D is released, and for the first time, the veil of design is peeled back for me. The deliberate ways that the game was laid out and organized, the brutal crackdown on the numbers, the every inch regulated and standardized.

D&D it was not. My friends all lamented the something that was lost in translation. I maintained always that I loved 4th edition, but found it rather hard to express precisely why in the language of fun. In my eyes, 4th edition was designed to a very specific end: tactical combat play. In that, it succeeded. It was designed to be learned quickly. Again, it succeeded there. It was designed to look modern and aesthetically consistent. A+ again. It was the right product, but for the wrong market.

So my theory crafting and homebrewing began. "There must be a way," I thought, "to bring the principles of design from 4th edition into 3.5 such that we can play a superior hybrid game."

It should be said: 3.5 was universally regarded as broken by 2008. How broken exactly was up for debate, but the sheer lack of direction for the design of the game and its splat books was becoming a malignant issue. There was too much game, and no central idea to measure each component's worth and validity against. One of the primary draws to a new game from the player's perspective was the chance to try out new classes and options. But from the other side of the table, every new feature was a chance to break the game.

Notebook after notebook did I fill with my Frankenstein D&D hacks. If I recall correctly, the first things I ever scribbled house rules about were skills and feats. Did we really need over 36 skills? And who knows how many hundred feats? Do those options really enrich play, or do they just tickle the fancy of min/maxers?

By 2009, my family had DSL and I had my own laptop for school. So I decided to start Googling these questions and delving for answers in the dark halls of the interweb.

What I discovered was called the Old School Renaissance. It had begun around 2006 or 2007, as best I can tell, with some bloggers connecting on various forums and posts. They shared ideas from their history with the game, which stretched back to its very beginnings, and even before. They knew the old rulesets weren't perfect, and offered their solutions to the age-old problems. There was debate and proselytism among great grognard philosophers, and countless quiet members of the community, like me, just trying to absorb it all.

These champions of the old school tore my fragile conceptions about D&D apart, like the Twelve prophets of the Hebrew Bible chastising Israel. What was this game I had been playing all these years? Where had it come from, and what great pillars of its history had been lost to its many transmutations? Had we taken the wisdom of its forefathers for granted? Nowhere else have I seen such thoughtful effort by people to justify their ideas about a hobby and its function. While everyone else spent three years learning Pathfinder, I was mesmerized by the mysteries of OSR games.

If this era (c. 2006-2011) was indeed the Old School "Renaissance," then what happened in 2012 was the Old School "Industrial Revolution." In January, Wizards of the Coast announced that the short-lived 4th edition would soon be replaced by a new D&D, "D&D Next." In May, they began a massive open playtest of the rules they were working on.

The forums that existed on the old WotC website containing all of the playtest feedback and discussion were truly a treasure of knowledge and design theory. I was well into my obsession with writing a better ruleset by 2012, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the chance to explore those million musings before they were archived later that year.

For two years, there seemed to be no word of the next D&D, but my mind never stopped swirling around the problems the OSR had illuminated. As I got further into college, time for playing the game became scarce, but my interest in thinking about it only grew. The homebrews I made became smaller and simpler. There were fewer and fewer rules each time I would revise or start again. I was getting better at the design, but deep down I still didn't understand what I wanted. I was designing for better design's sake, but not for the sake of better play. Indeed, most of my homebrews never saw the light of day. The ones I did test largely felt like playing any other ruleset.

It doesn't matter much what font you write the stage directions in, turns out.

In 2014, D&D 5 came out, and my friends loved it. It was the greatest thing since sliced bread, fixing all the problems with 3.5, but still holding onto that something that 4 had abandoned.

But when I looked at it, I was disappointed. Sure, advantage/disadvantage is a great mechanic. And yeah, the monk is way better now. And oh hey, they are consciously keeping the official splat books and feats and skills and classes under control. All good things, no doubt, for those of us content with the quality of play we had achieved throughout the years. But D&D 5 didn't do what I desperately wanted it to do.

It didn't show me how to design toward something. D&D 5 is the everyman's game. It's a story game, it's a tactical combat game, it's epic high fantasy, it's gritty low fantasy. It's everything, and nothing. At the table, it feels just like 3.5 did when my friends and I couldn't yet afford the extra books.

Fast-forward another year, and Critical Role is D&D's technological revolution. D&D is sexy now, and it rivals the best TV shows for hours of content and number of dedicated fans. Like all instances of celebrity art, Critical Role is at first inspiring, and then soul crushing. Inspiring because it shows you what tabletop RPGs can deliver, and soul crushing because I am not friends with a cadre of professional voice actors who want nothing more than to practice their acting around my narrative, with some combat thrown in to spice things up. It isn't just an unattainable ideal, it may actually be an un-approachable ideal depending on the friends you have.

A cursory scan of D&D subreddits these days will show you the Critical Role heartbreak phenomenon writ large. DMs are afraid to let their players fail. They're afraid to change the plans they have for their narrative in response to what the players do. They hand their players stage directions, and instead of amazing voice actors and improv artists, it turns out their players are just regular people. The story-based D&D facade all comes crashing down when you try to fit it into the real context that the game has in our lives. A weekly hobby for a handful of non-writers and non-actors with shifting schedules and more important things to remember than the evil motivations of the Demon Vicar of Nowheresville in your tabletop soap opera guest-starring the player characters.

But even a few years into playing and DMing 5e, I still maintained that top-down DM fiat narrative was a viable play strategy. And it wasn't until a little later, when one of my close friends ran a short-lived game in which I played, that the final trigger for my OSR metamorphosis would occur.

The setup was this: the party (which had several new members) were asked to convene at an inn to receive a quest from an NPC. We did, and the NPC told us how to get to a mythic dungeon full of (literally) civilizations worth of treasure. If we do it, the NPC gets to keep whatever scrolls and spellbooks we find in the loot. My guy is a fighter, so that is fine with me.

The party leaves for the dungeon, which is in the center of a crazy necrotic swamp that has emerged around it because the dungeon is the fossilized remains of an ancient dragon god (cool) which is causing the land to transform as it decays (super cool). When we arrive, there is a crew of evil dudes camping around the dungeon entrance, which we battle and defeat in a fight (sweet). Then, upon entering the dungeon, we find out that all of the treasure has already been looted and thrown through a portal into the plane of Limbo (...what?).

Now, from my friend's perspective, he was offering the potential for a sweet adventure on a rarely-explored plane of existence. And had that been the hook for the adventure from the beginning, I would have been more than excited.

But from my perspective, my character's motivation to adventure had been flushed down the drain. That might not be so bad (hey, things don't always turn out the way your character wants), but my poor dwarf was also trapped by the swamp. I tried to make a choice about what adventure my character would pursue, and then when that was turned on its head, I was denied a second choice. Not only was the original intent of the adventure no longer an option, but if my character jumped through that portal, there was literally no way for me to control whether I could turn back. No way for me to make an actual choice.

I was outraged after the fact, and it surprised me! This was no different than a hundred other times that one of my friends or I had weaved a D&D web around our players to get them to do what we wanted. The difference this time was how obvious it was to me given the mindset that I was in. I didn't blame my friend, I blamed our collective understanding of the game.

The swamp was not an obstacle to the treasure, because the treasure wasn't there anymore. The swamp was an obstacle to beginning the adventure, or any other adventure for that matter, if the party had changed its mind. The dungeon was the single source of player-DM agreement ahead of time, and it was thrown out. The foundational structure of the game, that there was a treasure to be had if some obstacles were overcome, was abandoned for the sake of an unsure reward (the treasure was in Limbo, after all) after an indeterminate amount of time and obstacles.

The contract of the game was broken, I was mad, and that was the answer I had always been looking for. What was the contract that my games should make between the DM and the players? Whatever that contract, design the game toward it.

D&D 5 makes no contracts. All forms of play are equally valid, and therefore there can be no measure of what games succeed or fail except on the scale of fun. This makes DMing, and DM prep especially, a nightmare of guesswork no matter how many books or tips or tools you have. What type of game will be fulfilling? What type of game will last? How do I get the players to ask about my availability to play rather than trying to chase them?

Well what if, given the wealth of OSR knowledge that I had absorbed, I made the contract of my campaign specific in the way that is time tested:

In this campaign, the player characters will explore a megadungeon for treasure. They will frequently return to the outlying town or towns to restock and rest, and may occasionally pursue non-dungeon adventures when the desire strikes them. New players and characters can come in or be swapped in at any point while the party is in town. No individual player needs to attend every session because no individual character needs to be on any given delve.

I, the DM, promise to prepare for that. The players promise to bring characters that will eagerly pursue that cadence of play. It doesn't create any unspoken requirements to attend every session for the sake of keeping in the loop of the plot. It doesn't mislead players as to what they will be doing. And most importantly, it takes a hard line on the boundaries of the play area, but within that play area, there is real choice with real consequence. No Quantum Ogre, no DM fiat.

And so, if I designed a ruleset around that contract, and DMed the game around that contract, I would be able to actually improve the game from session to session because I and the players would be pursuing the same goal. Which finally brings me to Delvers of Dàrkmesa.

Once I landed on the idea of the megadungeon as a distillation of the time-tested campaign promise, I thought about making my own take on Dwimmermount (if only for the supremely euphonic nature of the name), but decided instead to go completely homebrew. That's how Dàrkmesa came to be. I was struck by the double meaning of mesa (a huge rock formation that could easily fit a megadungeon inside, as well as the Spanish/Latin root for table), and what would a dungeon be without darkness? The Delvers part is just to drive the point home. Both in the sense that the characters will be primarily engaged in exploring a dungeon, and in the sense that the game is about them and about their exploration, not some arbitrary story I have concocted.

The rules and classes and example spells to include all fell into place now that I had a gameplay goal in mind other than "have fun." Many of the strangest parts of old school games that I could never understand before started to make sense and became incredibly attractive aspects of the experience for me.

Of course the game should be deadly, because that is a large part of what creates drama in a campaign with no forced plot. Of course random encounters were necessary, to keep the players and the DM honest as they all pursued the campaign goal: random chance is what keeps a non-narrative game alive. Of course two hundred pig-faced orcs appearing in a dungeon cavern is a good encounter, because it forces the players to bring to the table what makes them good players, not well-statted characters. And finally, of course the dungeon is the primordial soup from which all good games emerge, because it is the most apt compromise between what the DM needs to do, and what the players need to do. It creates strict boundaries that allow the DM to prepare more of the right thing, but when done right it forces no specific action on the players other than to engage. They want the treasure, and however they get it is by definition a fine way to play. That's why we all play this game, to get the treasure that exists hidden in the forgotten halls of our collective imagination and good company. So why hide the ball? Why not be clear about how agency works in the game right from the beginning? Why not embrace the canvas that was originally conceived for the game, and was so important that it became the first word in its name?

Luckily, it only took me ten years of searching to figure that out. Now I have the rest of my time to play.

Where is the Drama?

Simple post this time around: death rules and how they relate to what people believe about the game.

If you play with instant death at 0 HP ("Save-or-die" effects would fall in this category too), then you believe the drama occurs in two places:

1. Before the fatal blow is struck, and...
2. After the character has died (e.g. What do we do now that party member X is dead? Can we resurrect him? Should we? etc.)

If you play with death or stabilize at 0 HP (or less), then your system splits the drama into 3 categories:

1. Before the potentially fatal blow is struck, and...
2. In the moment a character could stabilize or die, and...
3. After the character is dead

If you play with unconscious at 0 HP with follow-up death or stabilize check, you add a fourth category:

1. Before the potentially fatal blow is struck, and...
2. In the round the allies have to potentially save the character, and...
3. In the moment a character could stabilize or die, and...
4. After the character is dead

If you play with unconscious at 0 HP with 3 follow-up death or stabilize checks, you add a two more categories:

1. Before the potentially fatal blow is struck, and...
2. In the first round the allies have to potentially save the character, and...
3. In the second round the allies have to potentially save the character, and...
4. In the third round the allies have to potentially save the character, and...
5. In the moment a character could stabilize or die, and...
6. After the character is dead

If you play with unconscious at 0 HP with bleeding-out/negative death totals, you add an indeterminate number of categories:

1. Before the potentially fatal blow is struck, and...
2. In the first round the allies have to potentially save the character, and...
3. ...
4. ...
5. ...
6. ...
7. ...
8. After the character is dead

What's the point of extrapolating this?

My theory is that there is only so much drama a narrative/game can contain. A good session builds drama and then dissipates it, ebbs and flows, so to speak. Without clear and concise climaxes, the drama gets spread too thin. Players can only keep their feeling of excitement going for so long. If your character takes five rounds to finally kick the bucket or get back up, it isn't dramatic anymore. It also sucks the drama out of actually hitting 0 HP, because you are still multiple rounds away from a verdict on your character's fate.

The faster the rules allow you to resolve something, the more the drama is pointed and powerful. If the situation calls for a little gray area between an event and its resolution, that can be ruled on ad hoc. Adding all the extra layers between life and death a priori takes away from the immediacy and the danger.

"But I don't want my games to be that deadly!" You say.

Easy. Give your players more healing potions.

Extending the moment between life and death robs it of it's power.

How to Escape the Railroad D&D Game: Get off at a station

Quick announcement: Haven't posted in a while (got a full-time job), but plan to keep posting as often as possible. Will most likely shift my focus from game system design to adventure design, as that is where my head is right now.
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"Some players, Mr. DM, just want to watch the world burn." 
 - Someone afraid of sandbox games

"Players don't panic when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying."
- Someone afraid of railroad games
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Oh that unanswerable question: railroad, or sandbox? So short, and so mystifying. Within its seemingly binary choice are paradoxes and contradictions enough to fill entire college courses. See: Free Will vs. Determinism.

But let's boil the idea down to this: every DM wants their players to feel as though they are making choices that impact the world, but how do you do that without needing to literally create an entire world spontaneously?

Some will argue that you make a little "sandbox" and let the players do whatever they want in that little area. Easy. My response is this: even generating a tiny area that is a "free-roam" zone for the players is an unimaginably huge task. The idea doesn't ever scale down. PCs can cover a lot of ground in one session. You can't pre-generate all those possible paths, even in a very limited sandbox. And if you're thinking, "you don't generate everything the PCs can do, just the things they are likely to do" I say, welcome to a railroad game....

Meanwhile, if your argument is that you create some basic details and improvise the rest, you've entered into a similar paradox. If you magically incorporate your details into any path the PCs take, then you are running something VERY close to a railroad game. Best described as the "Quantum Ogre" effect. On the other hand, if you are willing to entirely abandon what you have prepared for the sake of maintaining player agency, then why prep at all? What are the odds that your players will choose exactly what you have prepared for them without railroading them at all?

To further confuse things: For every player that will purposefully avoid a pre-built story for something they think will be more exciting, there is a player who will do the opposite: ignore any hook or moment of inspired DM roleplaying for the never-ending slog through what they see as the "story."

The only way to appease both of these player types is to give the entire decision process over to the players, and then hold them to their choices. Your game must have cause and effect relationships, or the "watch the world burn" types will have no boundaries. Just so, the game needs to have very regular moments of choice, or the "go with the plan no matter what" types will quash everyone's creativity.

Okay, enough theory. Let's talk about putting this into practice.

Step 1: Prepare shit. There are no two-ways around it. You have to prepare sessions if you are going to give them any substance. Dynamic combats with interesting monsters, unique NPCs with believable spots in your world, competent antagonists, and many other parts of great D&D only thrive in the pre-game creative process. Maybe your random tables, acting, and improv are so good you don't really need to prep. If that's the case, I hate you.

Step 2: Accept that session 1 is railroad-y. Every D&D party has to suspend disbelief for long enough to accept that they are together, that they are at least allies in some respect, and that they will continue to work together until further notice. This is not an easy narrative step when your players are supposed to be brimming with "free will" and "agency." As the DM, you have to put your foot down and tell the PCs, "Welcome to session 1. Your characters are are all gathered in ______ for _______ and are planning to do _________. Go." Get the game going, regardless of whether every player is 100% into the mini-plot you have for the first session.

Step 3: Everything in the world has space for a hook. You have to bake hooks right into the body of your game world. Every corner should conceal another hook. But you need to expand your definition of what a hook is. Magic items are hooks. (What is it? Who can tell us? Where are they?) Information is a hook. Overheard conversations. Letters. Gossip. Everything. (The baron's raising an army? Why? Where? Someone mentioned the God of Socks. Who is that? Where can we learn about such a deity?) People are hooks. The dark spells cultists use are hooks. Statues are hooks. Paintings are hooks. EVERYTHING CAN BE A HOOK. Write a sentence for each good one you think up, and remind your players that these hidden treasures of adventure are everywhere if they pay attention and ask questions.

Step 4: Pace your sessions correctly. This will end up being a whole other blog post, but the short version is this: be smart about how long to spend on things around the table, and when to initiate them. Big combat after 4 hours of roleplaying session? Probably a poor idea, especially if it's getting late. Remember: you can always stretch things out with good roleplaying and description. You cannot, however, speed things up arbitrarily. When players focus on something, the time management is under their control. Prepare enough content to fill 50-75% of your session, then stretch it as needed.

Step 5: Finish your sessions at a choice, and have the players make it before ending. This makes #4 doubly important, because step 5 depends of successfully executing step 4. Each session should contain minimal "choice" points at the beginning and middle, because the more your players can veer off the path mid-session, the harder it is to make that session tight and satisfying. BUT, a major choice about what to do next that is placed at the end of a session allow players to tell you exactly what to prepare for next time. This choice point doesn't have to be "multiple choice" either. It can be "open response." So long as you have a week to prep what the PCs choose to do, they can do anything they want. Now THAT is agency.

Hooks are not choice points unless the players have nothing more urgent to do. Hooks can be kept in the back pocket of the party until some adventure time is freed up. This maximizes player agency, because it allows the players to choose the next part of their story organically, based on what most interests them about your game world. Free yourself from the trap of the escalating railroad campaign! You are better than that!

But let's be real: at the end of the day, even this style looks like a railroad. Pre-planned sessions that the PCs can't really change much once they are prepped by the DM.

But railroads can take you anywhere. Railroads (in the sense of pre-prepared sessions and stories) only become constricting when the players get an urge to jump off mid-way between stations. Solution: put in more stations. One at the end of every session. Keep the sessions focused and let them flourish into more depth instead of more plot if you have extra time in the moment. Your players will naturally want to follow mini-stories and plots to their immediate ends. Keeping players focused on a plot for one session is not an impossible task. 

Trying to milk that one major player choice for three or four sessions of material is asking for trouble.

Stories Better Told In-Game

I took the cleric and paladin classes out of my game because I felt that a character turning toward a religion was something that should happen during play. That moment that a warrior defends a temple and holy light shines down on them and they receive Pelor's blessing is too good to be passed up as mere "backstory." That's the meat and potatoes right there, not the appetizer!

A mortally wounded adventurer is carried into the hut of an old hermit woman, and as she prays over him, he sees a vision of Elhonna calling to him, telling him she needs him to spread her teachings. It's his destiny, which if not achieved, would yield terrible consequences. Boom, cleric (or missionary) origin. It has a sense of urgency and reality, rather than the distant and ephemeral relationship most cleric class members have with their deities.

This game decision was extremely freeing, because now religion didn't have to be part of the campaign if I didn't want it to be. Sure, characters could be religious, but unless I chose so, no divine powers (and thus near-direct deity involvement) would be required. Pantheons take a long time to make, man. Sometimes I just want murder-hobos fighting dragons in a godless hell-hole, but as soon as any divine class is allowed, there is an entirely new dimension to my world that I need to fill out, whether it will be used a lot or hardly ever.

Not to mention, NPC members of religions also got toned WAY down, so that they are nearly all mundane people with regular reasons for being religious, rather than magically gifted healers who can be the deus in your deus ex machina plot problem. AND a great corollary to this is: magic healing is much rarer, therefore the game feels more dangerous. May not be your thing, but it is so my thing.

This train of thought led me to arcane magic-users, M-Us, or "moos" for short. A moo is basically in the same boat as a cleric or paladin: they have some supernatural ability that everyone wants to know more about, but the narrative drive it creates is crippled by the game always beginning en media res of their development. A moo's first experience with magic is a defining and contextualizing moment of unprecedented importance in the story, but when it is resigned to the backstory, it matters not at all.

So, you can take moos out too, and make magic exactly like religion: you get it during play, if at all. Again, the freedom this offers is immeasurable. Now, if I don't want to incorporate pact magic and patrons in my game, I don't have to worry about a player choosing the warlock class. It also means magic (and religion) can be totally mysterious and not balanced, because it's all in-game development. It puts the risk-reward balance in player character choices, rather than character creation. No need for spell slots, no need for domains and specialization rules. Just cause and effect story.

Each spell or magical power is its own rule module with its own limits and costs and risks. If you want a bigger/better/cooler/flashier version of what you have, you can't just kill stuff until you level-up, you have to go out in search of the better version and learn how to do that. But be warned, it may have costs you are not willing to pay, or be on the other side of a challenge you are not ready to face.

Not having any set rules for how magic functions allows you to try different things for each moo, like magic atrophy, crude magic, modified vancian magic, wizard garment restrictions, a panoply, i.e. collection of magic foci, or the spell components you've been ignoring your whole life.... And so much more!

But wait! Won't these magic systems spin wildly out of control? Won't my moos either become gods among men, or slump over and give up because the costs of magic are too high and not balanced with the real classes?

It's all in how well you DM, of course. But rest assured, your moo isn't just a moo, he is also a warrior, or a dwarf, or a scoundrel, or some other mundane/race class first. Not all D&D characters live beyond their first couple adventures, and not all moos ever get to cast fireball before blowing themselves to smithereens in a magical mishap. All game systems have edge cases that screw things up. You deal with them as they come along. But at least with in-game magic only, your players (and you, to some extent) get the excitement and mystery of magic back in your campaign.

Players now have to actually choose whether gaining magical power is worth the risk. Parties now have to gather information on their sorcerous enemies before charging in, or risk death by unanticipated magic abilities. Playing a moo well now requires learning and exploring above all else, and especially above choosing the best spells at each level.

This fantasy RPG hobby of ours is about three things. First is being with friends, and what system you play should have no effect on that. Second is exploration of a magical world. If gaining magic is part of exploring, rather than part of the rulebook, then that's just more exploring to do. Win-win. Third, tabletop is about problem solving in a more dynamic and complex environment than any video game or board game can model. If you make magic a problem to be solved, and a challenge to be overcome, rather than something characters are just handed from the get-go, then you have all the more material to work with as a DM.

Until next time.

What "Say Yes" Really Means, Part 2

If you haven't caught up with part 1, please do.

So, we were talking about Saying Yes, and then after hundreds of words, we got to an example where I said a human fighter and dwarven cleric ought to be able to jump a chasm without a check, even though the elven wizard spent a fly spell to cross it while carrying the halfling rogue.

The catch was that the DM told the burlier, armored player characters they could jump the chasm if they ditched their backpacks and weapons, where normally, a DM playing D&D 5 or the equivalent might just ask for a skill/ability check.

And the question I left you with was, "Why?"

Why not use that rule that the game has put there specifically for this case instead of making up some gamble you want the players to take instead?

The answer is complicated, but I will try and express it as best I can.

Essentially, your players should NOT be lame. They should be the stars of the story, and the stars of the story don't just miss a jump and die for no reason.

When the fellowship was fleeing the Mines of Moria, they weren't constantly falling off the very thin and precariously angled stairs, even though they totally should have been in real life. Why?

The reason is two-fold.

Firstly, the Lord of the Rings is a story, and stories are different from real life in a few very important ways, not least of which is that if slips, falls, and deaths are not built up to and satisfying on a narrative level, then they are cheap and lame and shouldn't happen.

Aragorn falls off of a cliff while tied to a warg because it builds up narratively to a sweet comeback moment at Helms Deep. And the plot reason for his fall isn't because he misses his footing. He's dragged off the edge by a leather buckle caught on his bracer. Nothing he could do about it.

Secondly, adventurers are awesome. Not immortal, or invincible, or the most powerful beings in the world, but they are awesome. Gandalf is awesome, that's why the only plot reason that would work for his falling into Khazad-dum is that the Balrog is pulling him with his fiery whip. And the narrative reason for Gandalf falling into Khazad-dum is so he can have an epic fight with a demon while hurdling toward the center of the earth and then die and come back even stronger.

They did NOT fall anywhere because they failed a regular ol' jump check at some random moment during the game when the d20 decided to roll a 1.

And guess what!?

That hypothetical D&D situation with the chasm and the extra weight in nearly identical to Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-dum. He had a grip on the ledge, and the rest of the fellowship was there. They might have been able to pull him up to safety, but if they had tried to, they may very well have been turned into pin-cushions by goblin arrows. That would have been exactly what the DM told them at the table.

DM: You can leave him, or you can try to save him, but if you do, each of you is very likely to be targeted by at least two goblin archers a piece.
Frodo's player: "We have to save him! I go grab him and help pull him up!"
Aragorn's player: "I stop him from moving forward. We'll never survive that many shots."
Gandalf's player: "Fly! You fools!"
Legolas's player: "Yup, that decides it. We're outta here."
Frodo's player: "I resist! Opposed strength checks."
DM: Nope.* Aragorn is much stronger than you and he's already got a hold. You're going with him whether you like it or not.
Frodo's player: "NOOOOOOOOOOOO! GANDAAAAAAAAALLLLLLF!"
DM: Woh, dude, chill out.

*See there? That's another place where the dice would have gotten in the way. If the DM allows a halfling to try and escape from his strong human companion who's already grabbed him to pull him to safety, then all you are gonna have is inter-party conflict. And then one character is biting another character's nose off, and it is just a mess.

I guess if you are looking for a hard and fast rule concerning say yes, to make things more concrete, here it is:

Say "Yes" or "Yes, but..." as much as possible outside of battles. That is the part of the game where it is easiest to create excitement and drama with simple give and take/cause and effect. "I want to do this." "Okay, it will cost you this." "What if I did this." "Okay, it will only cost you this, but this might happen too."

When you get to a battle, there is an assumption that neither the DM nor the players are not in total narrative control. You can't adjudicate combat with a give and take method like you can exploration, because the goal of combat is to leave with as close to what you came in with as possible. Yes, there may be treasure at the end of combat, but the combat is not necessitated by the search for the treasure (unless it is dragon skin or nightmare ashes or something like that literally ATTACHED the thing you have to fight). At the end of a combat, someone is going to lose a lot, and the great thing about having rolls decide who loses and who wins is that it keeps the story interesting, for both the DM and the players.*

*Quick note: this requires that your combats be meaningfully setup in the story. If you just throw some monsters in for no reason but to be in the way, then whatever fair and randomized result the dice give you, no matter how heart-breaking or mind-blowing, is not going to be narratively interesting or earned.

So I say roll all the dice you like for combat. In that instance, they are like salt: mostly about taste, though way too many will definitely kill you. Outside of combat, try not to roll any unless you, as a DM, can honestly say, "I don't know how I would narrate this fairly or appropriately without some randomized result." Then sure, roll a die or two. But no more.

God I hate this...

What I think this implies for game design is this: skills/specialties/whatever you call them are actually worthless mechanics from a roleplaying perspective. If you give certain characters "skill" in something, it sends an immediate message to the players who don't play that kind of character that they cannot succeed at that particular thing unless they have that mechanical bonus.

If you think your character should be aided by their level of experience in a particular area, then make it known that your character is experienced in that area. Your DM should just allow you to do more things related to that experience without any issue. You were a renowned blacksmith back in your home city? Then you can smith a sword, no check necessary.

Ahh, so you want to smith a special kind of blade that you've never made before? Roll me intelligence! Let's see if you become even more renowned over night...

What "Say Yes" Really Means, Part 1

I am an RPG player and rules tinkerer who came into the hobby in the 'new school' age. D&D 3/3.5 was my first tabletop, pen and paper RPG playground. From there I went to D&D 4, Pathfinder, every other OGL system under the sun, and now I am playing mainly D&D 5.

In the design diaspora that was D&D 4, its aftermath, and the announcement of D&D Next, I began wandering the internet in search of RPG wisdom. Little did I know just how vast the halls of the RPG internet realm were, and how much the players of 'old school' games had to say.

Let me tell you, the blog posts were titillating, and the house rules, desirable.

But coming from a new school background, and having no old school players nearby to join in with, I had to take all this information and decode it like some ancient codex. What was it that these old-schoolers were so crazy about, and how did their games appear to have such a laid back and easy-going feel to them, while simultaneously sounding deadly and challenging?

Well, you will have to ask them, not me. I'm sure I couldn't explain it half as well.

But! There was one old-school rule that has clanged around in my head for ages, which I have only recently come to understand. Sort of like how Buddhism has seven stages of enlightenment. Or maybe not like that at all. I don't know.

That rule is this: Say Yes.

So simple! And yet so complex!

At first I thought that Say Yes meant you should never shoot down a player's idea. If the player says they want to attempt something, don't tell them "No, you can't do that" or "No, your character wouldn't do that."

Weeeeeell, that's not really it. It is important to have an open mind, as a DM, and remember that the game is at least partially about entertainment. That doesn't have to mean silliness, but it does have to mean engaging your player characters in events and challenges that they find interesting. So, if you prepared a dungeon crawl based around helping the bartender get rats out of her basement, but your players want to accompany some randomly generated NPC, who they met in the bar, on his trip to some randomly generated town because it sounds like fun, weeeeeeeell.... you better start thinking up possible road encounters.

But the Say Yes rule goes even deeper than that. Say Yes is a rock-bottom credo about where the drama and action are in your game. The more you Say Yes, the more you focus the challenge and drama onto the most important parts of the game, and onto player skill.

Here is a little hypothetical D&D type situation: the party (a human fighter, halfling rogue, dwarven cleric, and elven wizard) is fleeing the underground goblin city, and they are being chased by a half-a'gabillion goblins. They come to a chasm that is juuuuust slightly wider than is comfortable. The wizard has cast fly on himself, picked up the rogue, and safely made it to the other side. The fighter and the cleric remain.

In a world without Say Yes, they ask the DM "Can we jump it?" and the DM says: "roll jump checks." The fighter probably has a 50% chance to clear the chasm. The cleric will almost certainly fall to his doom like a stubby-legged anchor.

What if they asked the DM about their odds of clearing it? He/she might say "eh, not great." But then what? Grappling hooks? Magic? Pitons and rope for godssake? If the DM wants to keep the adrenaline pumping, there is no time for that, in-game or out of game.

And you can't toss a dwarf, obviously.

So what is the solution? Not put any chasms in the game? Oops, we have a heavily armored dwarven cleric, I guess we can't ask the party to jump anywhere this campaign.

In a world with Say Yes, the DM assumes that the characters can accomplish the task before them, though a sacrifice may be necessary. Does the jump have a DC? Some target number that they have to roll a check against? I don't know, maybe.

But should it be relevant? No!

When the players for the fighter and cleric say "Can we jump it?" the DM should say something like "YES, but you think you'll need to ditch the backpacks and weapons to clear the distance."

See what this does? It gives the players a whole scope of options to fiddle around with. It says "Here is the situation, and here are all the variables. Figure out a solution, if you can, and preferably one that doesn't get everyone killed."

Now, those two players are practically running around the table figuring out a plan, "Quick! Toss your backpack over the chasm. You guys on the other side will catch them, right? Can we toss our weapons? What if we tie rope to our belts and then to the ends of our weapons? Could we jump the gap and then pull our weapons over from the other side? Let's try it."

Now you've got compounding variables too, because you have allowed your players to do something other than succeed perfectly or fail perfectly. The DM makes a roll, and the goblins show up just before the party can pull their warriors' weapons over. The goblins grab the weapons and begin pulling the opposite way! Now what? Does the party cut their losses, literally, and lose their weapons? Do they get into a tug-o-war with a whole cadre of goblins? Will one of them be pulled back to the other side?

"But wait!" Some of you may say, "How can they jump the chasm without a jump/athletics/acrobatics check?" Isn't that what those skills are for?

Well, I'll have an answer for you in part 2.

d20 NPC Hats

Hey! It's been a long time, so let's get into it.

You can tell a lot about a person based on the hat they wear.

Like whether they are a little fancy...

Or really REALLY old....

Or dangerous...

Or intelligent....

Or mischievous...

So, here is a 1d20 table of interesting hats, helmets, cowls, and other headgear for your NPCs:

1. A black bowler hat with a row of rainbow feathers like a mohawk down the middle.
2. A steel set of shoulder pads which connect to a cross frame that wraps around the sides and top of the head, ending at a polished metal beak which covers wearer's nose and has some holes for breathing.
3. A headband of animal claws strung together, all pointed up and inward, like a crown. In between the claws are shed snake skins which hang down around the wearer's face like a veil.
4. A leather headband with two arrows that sit above the ears, pointing forward and slightly up.
5. A stone bowl that goes down to the cheekbones, with two rough arches carved into it for the eyes to look through. On the front is a deep blue gem the size of a tangerine.
6. Either of these bad boys:
   
7. A dark silk hood that attaches at the front of the collar instead of the back, and is pulled over the face, having two (or more, or fewer) holes for the eyes of the wearer. There is a lot of extra material that hangs down the back to keep the hood on during activity.
8. This guy just has chains wrapped around his neck and head, held in place by a couple of steel locks that thread through them.
9. A turtle shell, front and back, connected by leather straps. It fits over the head with one shell protecting the face and the other the back of the head and neck.
10. A tough cloth hat that is folded to look like a paper crane without wings.
11. A bronze helmet styled to look like several humanoid hands pulling at the wearer's face and hair.
12. A set of cow udders that have been tanned and turned to leather. Pulled over the top of the head with the shriveled utters pointing up.
13. A wooden cube, the size of a small apple, with a string running through it. The cube sits on the head, slightly to one side, and the string is tied below the chin.
14. This hat resembles a sombrero, but instead of one wide brim, there are three brims: the bottom one is very wide, the middle one is about two thirds that size, and the one near the top is half that size again.
15. The lower half of a large monster's jaw, which is attacked by a cord around the neck to the lower half of the wearer's jaw.
16. A wide brass ring which pierces the septum (lower, central nose cartilage), and is rotated up and over the head to rest on the ears.
17. A small skull cap, like a yarmulke, with a very thin metal sheet sitting flat-wise on top of it. The sheet bears the life story of the wearer, thus far, in a minuscule font.
18. A small, fleshy creature which nests in the hair of the wearer, and can speak if spoken to, but usually sleeps. Supposedly it hunts at night and returns before the wearer ever wakes up. If anyone attempts to remove it against its will, it bites at them viciously.
19. A woven net of some unknown fiber, equipped with dozens of treated horsetail hairs that stick straight out roughly two feet from the wearer's head. If any of the hairs touch something, the wearer becomes aware of it immediately.
20. A cap made of the head pelt of a large predatory canine or feline. It covers the top of the head and back of the neck, and includes the animal's ears on both sides. The ears have had some of their original organs preserved, and connected to two enchanted pebbles, which dangle from the inside of the cap, and are inserted into the wearer's ears. Once on correctly, the wearer has heightened hearing, and anatomical control of the ears on the cap.

The Force is Strong with this Villain...

Darth Vader was awesome because he was the Chosen One before Luke was the Chosen one.

Vader knew secrets and wisdom about the Force that Luke had barely scratched the surface of when they first fight. He was more highly skilled than Luke in all the areas that Luke had been training in. Not only that, but he had his own plans. Plans to overthrow the SAME GUY that the good guys wanted to overthrow. Vader's option was a kind of Option #3, where a different part of the dark side ruled the galaxy.

GMs should do this in their tabletop RPGs. Have villains be older, morally failed versions of the PCs. Have villains that are working against, or tangentially to, another villain. If you have a wizard in the party, have a villain that is a VERY OLD wizard who specializes in the same kind of magic. That way, the evil wizard isn't just an evil wizard, but a master of something close to the party's heart as well.

Evil monks? Evil monks are badass. How about Zaheer from Legend of Korra? He is a far more memorable villain than, say, Fire Lord Ozai, because his philosophy and point of view had merit. They were taken to extremes, and used to hurt people, thus making him a villain, but he could still teach the avatar a thing or two about air bending, and herself.

Your campaigns need villains like this. Villains that react to changes in the world, and make use of them for their own ends, rather than villains that spur on changes in the world.

Have a meteor that will destroy the world in 1 week? Well, there should probably be a group of cultists who use it's intergalactic presence to bolster their magic and try to take over. But once the PCs defeat them, it should be clear that the meteor wasn't summoned by them, they were just opportunists. Maybe now, the PCs need to work together with the cult's knowledge to stop the impact.

Make your PCs begrudgingly respect some of your villains. Not because they're so cool, or suave, or powerful, but because they are actually talented and intelligent in a way that even the PCs must acknowledge. Have the villain complement your PCs during the fight.

The end of that Star Wars clip is thematically perfect, because this first major interaction with Vader forever changes Luke, emotionally. He will never look at himself, or the Force, or his master Obi Wan the same. AND, he lost a freakin arm as a metaphor for that change.

So I guess the moral of the story is have your villains chop off more of your PCs arms.

Help! My Players Don't Know What To Do

So your players aren't biting at those hooks you set.

Or perhaps they are biting...just too easily. They don't bother to do any oblique thinking. They willingly railroad themselves into a plot. They wait for you (the DM) to hand deliver them a quest, but you want them to explore with some self-direction.

Your problem is that your world has no detail.

Dedicated players cannot help but be intrigued by world details. But the details that DMs usually put in don't spark action, or generate questions.

For example: "You walk into the next room in the dungeon, a forty foot by thirty foot by ten foot chamber with more dark stone walls and carved floors. It isn't as musty as the previous rooms. There is a wooden table with matching chair in the center of the room, a goblin body is sprawled across the table with a roughly crafted dagger sticking out of its back. There are six silver pieces in the goblin's pockets. On the other side of the room is another wooden door."

You can probably pictures that room well, and you would be confidently interacting with it if you were a player. But you wouldn't get anything from it except "you should probably continue into the next room, and there are other things alive down here, if you didn't already know that."

But that isn't enough. Where are the things that the players will hold onto when they leave the dungeon? Where are the tiny hooks into future adventure?

The answer is: on a half dozen random tables that you need to generate now. Like, right now. d100s.

Table 1: Random names. Each entry should have one humanoid name and one monstrous one.
Table 2: Motives. A big list of things this creature or NPC could be doing/involved with.
Table 3: LOOT. A list of stuff that enemy or NPC might have on them.
Table 4: Details. Roll with the LOOT table to get unique treasure every time. Ex: "Has an elvish rune on it."
Table 5: Dungeon Motifs. Yeah, it's dwarvish. But maybe it was built by dwarves that had giants as slaves...
Table 6: PLOT TWIST. A list of random things that an NPC or monster could do to mix things up.

The point of these tables is that, without them, the DM rarely fills in these blanks, even though they would always be filled in if this were real. That dagger in the goblin's back will just be a shitty dagger if not for these tables. But a shitty dagger with an elvish inscriptions? (Hell, make a random inscription table...) Now that's interesting and worth questing about.

Every time you, as the DM, put a goblin in the dungeon that doesn't have any reason to be there other than as an encounter for the PCs, you've wasted time and energy. But giving each goblin a story while you prep for the session would be ridiculous. That's what the tables are for. If the PCs are in too much of a rush to loot and examine that dead goblin, then that's that. Other things are more interesting right now, and you can leave that goblin as "just a goblin." But start encouraging your PCs to explore the details.

You'd be surprised at the level of storytelling that emerges from stupid details.

Think about it. Those six silver pieces in the goblins pocket? Why are they there? Money doesn't just appear in people's pockets (unfortunately). That goblin did something to earn those silver pieces. Maybe he found them on the ground while heading back to the dungeon after being kicked out of his goblin group. Maybe he killed someone for pay. Maybe he cheated in a card game, and his opponents let him keep the silver, but put a blade between his shoulder blades as a parting gift. That could be another table: How did this guy get this money, d100. You get the drift.

Just be ready to fill in the details when the PCs want you to, but don't do random details off the top of your head. Put them together earlier, and craft them to be sure every single detail is a stepping stone for more adventure.

He had a Gaping Vortex in his Chest

Enter O'Malley. An undead dwarven justicar with an eldritch vortex of infinite pain taking up most of his torso.

He was an NPC that I'll never forget. And he is the result of an encounter that was too high level for the PCs.

This reaches back to the infamous Nick's Campaign (3.5 D&D) that I mentioned in my introduction page. I was a player, and I was a monk, and I hated it. But Nick was such a fantastic DM, and my friends were so swept up in the awesomeness of the sessions, that I couldn't help but get swept up too. Ah, nostalgia.

See, Nick had done something that many, many DMs refuse to do: he posed us, a group of rather inexperienced players, with an encounter that was way, WAY out of our league. He let us prepare for it. He let us think that, with the (then living and quite friendly) Justicar and some townsfolk with pitchforks, we could handle it (what the actual encounter was I no longer remember).

We could not handle it. Not at all. We had to flee. And the worst part, we had to leave the Justicar behind.

To die.

To be raised from death.

And to be controlled by a terrible, horrible, evil wizard from Ravenloft named Ian Mcalister.

O'Malley returned a few sessions later, looking bad, but not so bad that we saw his as a threat. He walked right up to our wizard in a tavern an double crit on a surprise attack.

Bye-bye wizard head.

Ian Mcalister had sent O'Malley after us, to hunt us down and kill us with the very man who embodied our failures as a party. O'Malley was our past sins pulling the strings of our future fate.

We fought against O'Malley, his wizard overlord, and countless other abominations in a final-stand fort-defense battle. Our wizard (resurrected, though painfully), used some dark magic tome to cast Finger of Death on Ian Mcalister and save us all.

But O'Malley got away. No longer was he a puppet, but he still harbored a hate for us that could not be satisfied.

And we had sinned again. Our wizard had given in to the dark side to defeat evil, and this set in motion an entirely new course of events.

We were not heroes. We were survivors. We had abandoned people when it put us in too much danger. We had used arcane horrors to fight back the darkness. We had delayed and allowed the forces of evil to muster this far.

But such is war. Lord of the Rings may feature shining heroes without a bit of red in their ledgers, but we've all heard Lord of the Rings. It's over now. Good vs. Evil is no longer an interesting story when the lines are drawn so clearly.

Fantasy books and Fantasy RPGs have gone beyond fairytales and bedtime stories and become literature. They have become about people and their faults.

So give your players something to fail at. Give them situations with no easy answer. Give them hard choices. It shouldn't be a cheap shot, or contrived. It should be organic, and the guilt and regret should come from the players recognizing that their character took on a responsibility, and failed to live up to it.

We tried to save O'Malley's town. But we couldn't. We wanted to. We really did. But we misjudged our enemy. And Nick, the DM, let us do that. He let us walk into a death trap.

Sure, in the long run, fleeing meant losing a battle to win the war. It was for the greater good.

But the greater good should always have consequences in the now. That's why it is the greater good. Because it takes honest roleplaying and hard decisions to achieve it. If it were easy every time, or if the encounter was always winnable, then it wouldn't be a story about the greater good.

It would just be a story about regular ol' good. We have real life for that.

Character Backstories Done Better: Part 2

[See part 1 here]

How do we make a backstory system that creates more Blood-back Jack vs. Fives McGee dynamics? More histories that are usable?

Well, Jack and Fives aren't technically backstory, they're relationship occurred in-game.

But that's still good character development, and that's really what backstory is all about, right? Establishing a character that you can then develop.

But rather than develop your character's in the vacuum of your mind, why not use the details of the game as a jumping-off point for in-game improvisation?

Whether GMs should prepare or improvise is a long-running debate, and I think the answer has always been "do both, and go with whichever is most appropriate in the moment." But I don't think I've ever seen an RPG blog post about player improvisation.

Picture the scene: a group of adventurers is visiting the human king of Somewhere after they helped to defend the local farms from a gnoll raid. The king (GM) is preparing to ask the heroes to complete another quest, and guarantees them a handsome reward if they do. Then one of the adventurers (players), a half-elf, steps forward and pronounces himself the bastard son of the king. "I will go on this quest for you, father!" the player roleplays, "But as my reward, I want to be acknowledged as your son."

The GM and the other players gasp. Woh! That's not in the script! And didn't I say that these "heir to some throne" backstories are rubbish? I did, because those backstories are usually built outside of the GM's world. They require some other kingdom to be built into the world. Whatever race that player chooses defines the kingdom they can be heir to. These backstories are the network agents to the GM's TV show. "I don't care what the dynamics of your beautiful story and world are, I want to be a prince."

That kills the GM's creative freedom, where as the big throne room reveal builds on it. It limits what the character can do (if the player was playing a dwarf, sorry son, but you aren't the heir to the human king), but it limits them only to what fits with the GM's world.

Also, it allows the players and GM to be honestly surprised by other player's characters.

This does throw some wildcards into your sessions. Ideally, not every session. If each player claims to be the heir to some throne or merchant fortune, well, they aren't being creative enough. That's the long and short of it.

I'll let you consider the numerous ups and downs of this. It's how I'd prefer to run games. Let me leave you with one development of this kind of in-game backstory improvisation system: mind-control rules.

The party wizard gets in deep with some devil stuff, and has to roll against being dominated by a pit fiend from another plane. Rather than having the player roll against the mind-control publicly, have him/her do it alone. No one else sees, neither the players nor the GM. The player reads the mind-control's effects, and then rolls and figures out how to play their character from there: just as they were, or as though they are now part of the devil's greater plots. No one else knows either way.

Won't it be a surprise when the wizard throws his allies under the hellish bus at the key moment? And won't it be more awesome when the other players survive the stab in the back, or die valiantly trying?

The GM and the players need to be the storytellers in the game. That's when you get the best stories, and in my opinion, have the most fun.

Character Backstories Done Better: Part 1

I hate asking my players for backstory stuff before our first sessions. It feels like assigning homework. And not the fun kind of homework, like pouring over game books to choose a race, class, feat-tree, spells, etc. The crappy kind, like a creative writing assignment for college. Ew.

Even I, an aspiring creative writer, would rather just be able to sit down and do only the stuff I enjoy about the game. It is a game, after all. How many potential RISK games have ended before they began because of the laborious setup? Even if it is a small investment, like one hour out of six hours spent on the game, it is at worst off-putting for many new players, and at best a chore for the pen & paper veterans out there.

The standard way of getting players to characterize backstory is by asking them for a write-up of some kind to be delivered to the GM before the game. The GM then (ideally) takes these backstories and tries to shoehorn them into his/her already pretty much established story line.

[Note: Sandbox games would seem to avoid this conundrum, but then you have the problem of no plot momentum. A player's backstory will only become relevant if the sandbox party decides to pursue it. Pick your poison.]

I don't like the standard way, because I have played games that do it better. Bully Pulpit Game's FIASCO, for example, is a storytelling game where all the players (there is no GM) decide their characters' backstories by a combination of randomly generated details and collective brainstorming. This all happens before the game technically begins, so the surprises in the story come from peoples' actions as opposed to their history and connection to the story. But that is the point of FIASCO, that is its narrative niche, and it works.

In other words, FIASCO has a backtory mechanic (or system, as it were) that produces backstories that fit the narrative scope of the game. The backstories all result in people with unstable relationships, bad habits, questionable morals, and dirty secrets. Put them in a contrived plot, and you get a FIASCO. Success.

So what kind of characters does the "standard" backstory system (never really written in rules, just accepted as the "best we can do" by GMs and players everywhere) create, and what does this tell us about the stories that pen & paper RPGs are going for? A few examples:

• This character is a loner, whose family/wife/child/best friend/village/etc. were killed/wiped out. They walk the world alone now, like some non-drow Drizzt book, forever alone and maybe seeking revenge. *Queue sad music*.... Oh boy am I guilty of this one. Everyone is. We write out a backstory about how our character doesn't have/do well in relationships, in a game where the whole point is to work as a team. Terrible. Either your backstory will be ignored for the sake of the game, or the game will be run into the ground for the sake of your backstory. Or the GM will be running four separate mini-campaigns to fill in everyone's backstory quota. This is bad.
• This character has an enormous organization or country unique to his/her backstory that will need to be entirely fleshed out in order to incorporate it into the GM's plot. He/she is a pirate king, the wealthiest merchant in the seven seas, a robber baron, the leader of a robin hood-type band of countrymen, a knight of some far-away land, a cousin to the king of the neighboring country, etc. But for some reason, they choose to explore dungeons and kill trolls instead of do the things those kinds of people would actually do. I'm guilty here too. 

I'm gonna stop at this second one, though I could do more, because I have a particularly salient example for it. Let me introduce you to one of my favorite characters.

Blood-back Jack.

A human merchant man named Jack, and his beautiful daughter of sixteen are stopping in at an island coastal town to trade and sell wares. As Jack and his daughter are about to take their small merchant boat elsewhere, pirates attack the town. They take Jack and his daughter captive. Jack they leave alive so they can appraise his wares and get an idea of what they might fence them for. The daughter they leave alive for other more obvious reasons.

First they torture Jack by tying him to a tree and whipping his back raw. He tells them everything they want to know. They let him go, leaving him naked, with no food or money. (Hey! That's bad backstory #1!)

Jack runs into the jungle of the island in search of help. Anyone that might save his daughter. He finds an old shaman woman, perhaps a native of the island, not like the (now dead) townsfolk. He beseeches her to save his daughter's soul. Save her innocence, he pleads, and give him the power to fight off the pirates. He will give the woman anything she wants in return. 

Anything? Anything.

The shaman woman spins dark spells and incantations, and produces a crystal ball. Jack peers into it, and sees the ghostly face of his daughter inside. She says, "Father?". 

Jack looks up to the shaman woman, to see his daughter looking back at him, with the shaman woman's dark and manipulative eyes staring out of her innocent looking face. The shaman woman has sent the soul of Jack's daughter into the crystal ball before the pirates could defile her. Her chastity is safe. In payment, she has taken his daughter's body and youth for herself. Oh, and one more thing.

The shaman woman touches her rattling wooden staff to Jacks head, and everything goes dark.

Jack wakes up in the same place, the crystal ball sitting next to him. His daughter's soul is still trapped inside. The shaman woman in his daughter's body is nowhere to be found. But now Jack can feel a dark power coursing through him. The wounds on his back have all closed over with a deep red scar tissue. 

He returns to the town, to find all the pirates searching for his daughter who disappeared hours before. Jack exacts his revenge on them with blasts of dark energy, leaving none alive. He takes the pirate ship for himself, builds a crew, and declares himself Captain Blood-back Jack. Some call him Jack Fiend, for his hellish powers. He roams the seven seas (this is all bullet #2) in search of a magic that can restore his daughter.

That was a backstory I made up for a human warlock I played a number of times. He is one of my favorite characters. But none of his backstory was ever resolved, or even mentioned in game.

Ever.

Because in the first session I played with him, his pirate ship was blown to smithereens by a (WAY too overpowered) Gnome Sorcerer Merchant named Fives McGee. Jack declared Fives his arch-nemesis from that session on, and he never looked back. Jack's backstory was my story of Jack, but my friends' story of Jack was totally different, and when I played with them, I have to admit, I wanted to learn more about that Fives McGee story line.

Because it happened in game. Everyone at the table knew about it. The drama was real instead of forced.

I think that is where I'll leave off this first part. Tomorrow I'll give you my suggestions for how to make your backstory mechanics so that they create interesting, collective stories, as opposed to fantasy-writer-in-training-esque shameless ego-stroking.