D&D Encounters is an Excellent Entryway Into Organized Gaming

Those of you following my Twitter and Facebook streams know my updates on Wednesday evenings have been more peculiar than normal. That's due to me live Tweeting the weekly D&D "Encounters" adventures from Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica.

If you are unfamiliar with it, "Encounters" is a series of 60-minute weekly episodic gaming sessions. The current season is twelve weeks long and ends on June 2, 2010; it takes place in Undermountain (a famous dungeon in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting).

One key purpose of "Encounters" is to introduce new players to organized play. Currently, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) supports one organized play campaign entitled Living Forgotten Realms, or LFR. Organized play is a key component of corporate strategy to keep gamer involvement in D&D high and represents the primary form of gaming at conventions. "Encounters" serves as an excellent gateway to organized play for several reasons.

First, "Encounters" introduces a time constraint on gameplay. Each session is 60 minutes long and encompasses one encounter (usually a fight, but occasionally a skill challenge); in order to finish in a timely fashion, players must learn to pay attention and begin to prepare their next actions ahead of time. These skills are critical during strictly timed convention or tournament play and are difficult to introduce in home games. The time limit is generous, however, and affords the GM and players ample roleplaying time. This function is key, as a lack of roleplay is often cited as a reason folks choose not to play at conventions; learning how to fit roleplay into a timed event provides another important skill for convention players.

Additionally, "Encounters" introduces the importance of keeping accurate game records between sessions. Many home games only require that you track your xp and treasure. Organized play requires additional record keeping, such as adventures played, awards received, and sometimes ongoing status effects. "Encounters" maintains hit points, healing surges, action points, and power usage from session to session; players acclimating themselves to this additional record keeping will be ready for the needs of organized play.

Finally, "Encounters" introduces one of the more terrifying aspects of organized play: random players. Over the first four weeks of the program, I have DMed for or played with 15 different people. Naturally, this variety introduces many play styles and personalities; I think this a good thing and is one of the reasons I enjoy organized play so much. However, players used to home games with only friends often find this transition difficult or unpleasant; the "Encounters" model helps folks adjust to playing with a lot of different people.

In short, "Encounters" is a fun and time-friendly way to introduce players to role playing, D&D, 4th Edition, and organized play in one feel swoop. Sounds like a great tool to me.

Enjoy!

Stretching As An Artist

I find myself trying to grow as an artist. This past weekend I challenged myself to take three sets of portraits following some simple guidelines; I didn't adhere to that challenge as strictly as I should have, but I did come away with two good sets of pictures of folks and I intend to keep at it.

Yesterday, Heidi and I went back to the Descanso Gardens specifically to catch the blooming cherry blossoms; there is a two-week period that occurs sometime during the first three months of the year in which the trees bloom. That leaves a very narrow window in which to take some stunning pictures.

I did get some very cool photographs (you are welcome to see them at my Flickr site). But I also put four images on Facebook as a tickler, and for the captions of those images I chose to compose Big Idea Haiku; since I don't write poetry, I thought this an interesting challenge.

I'm happy with the results. Tell me what you think!

Weekend Photography Challenge

With everything going on this weekend, the sensible portion of me suggests that I not plan too much crazy stuff. Fortunately, I fine my sensible portion to be about as useful as a second appendix and ignore it as frequently as possible.

Accordingly, with everything else that is happening this evening, tomorrow, and in fact all weekend, I am going to use this weekend to become more proficient in my portrait taking.

Christina Dickson posted an excellent article at the Digital Photography Studio entitled How to take Striking Portraits in 15 Minutes or Less and I am going to use this article as the foundation for my project.

This weekend, I will take at least three sets of portraits to get a sense of the different ways these images can be done. Unless something drastic happens, I will have at least 27 shiny new images to share with folks. And I am looking forward to that.

So check in here on Monday (possibly Tuesday) for the link to my flickr account to see the resulting images.

Running a Game at a Convention

This "post" was originally written as a response to a call for advice on author/screenwriter/gm Chuck Wendig's website Terrible Minds (http://www.terribleminds.com). The author's post asked for advice on running a game at a convention. Here's my response...

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First, you must determine YOUR goals for the adventure. Running an adventure specifically designed to introduce players to a new system is very different from running a "competitive" scenario; both of these differ significantly from running a mod with a great story or a killer finale battle. Only in knowing exactly what you want to accomplish will you find success.

Second, all of your planning and prep should enhance your goal. if you are introducing a new system, make sure you have good rules summaries / cheat sheets to hand out to folks and spend a bit of time running through the basics. Should you be running a competitive scenario, make sure you understand the scoring and timing rules and that the players are aware of everything they should know up front. Have a great story? Figure out best how to tell it. Make some GM cheat sheets for the major NPCs with descriptions, voices / accents, and whatever else you will want or need. Your adventure have a tremendous climactic fight? Then make sure you allow enough time for that final encounter. Foreshadow the hell out of whatever you can to build the tension and excitement for that showdown.

Third, find as many ways to inject some descriptive RP into the session. Role playing tends to be the first victim of 4-hour con slots and that does NOT need to be the case. Make your attacks descriptive enough to evoke a simple image and expect the same from your players. If they very statically tell you their attack results, quickly ask them for the nature of the attack and give it a description. Make sure when players give you their own description you play that up a bit so folks get the hint.

Fourth, finally, and most important, do whatever you need to do to ensure that you and your players have fun. If everyone has a great time, you done good.

The Pareto Principle

Italian Economist Vilfredo Pareto developed the 8/20 rule in the late 1800's; it suggests that 80% of effects stem from 20% of causes. The most common example used is that 20% of the population control 80% of the wealth; another commonly used business example is that 20% of your clients contribute 80% of your business.

A few Big Idea folks espouse the notion that, if we eliminate the "other" 80% of our daily responsibilities we could focus on the 20% that contribute to much of our productivity and happiness. I am not convinced it's so simple.

If we assume a standard day, there are 16 awake hours and 8 sleep hours (yes, yes, I know - not with MY lifestyle - just go with it). That means that, out of those 16 hours, roughly 3 hours contribute 80% if our happiness and productivity. I find that difficult to believe. If we examine just the standard work day, there are 8 hours (again with the laughing?); 20% is 1.6 hours. If we could truly accomplish 80% of our daily workload in under 2 hours, I suspect more folks would work towards that goal.

I suggest that, when it comes to personal productivity, this Pareto Principle best serves as a reminder to try to focus on the important stuff than as an actual rule of thumb.

What do you think?

Collage Stories

Herman Melville's Moby Dick and john dos passos's The USA Trilogy extensively incorporate literary collage into the story-telling; dos passos heavily influenced Steinbeck, leading to his incorporation of the technique in The Grapes of Wrath. There are chapters in the latter work detailing conditions in Oklahoma arising from the Dust Bowl - bleak weather, foreclosed farms, the trek to California; these are not part of the Joad saga but advance the story just the same.

Literary collage incorporates a variety of "source" materials into the story: traditional narrative, dialogue, newspaper, radio, theater, tv, song, websites, can all contribute to a chronologically nonlinear story progression. A story may break the chronological narrative with a newspaper op/ed piece, for example, describing public sentiment regarding an issue central to the story. This sentiment becomes part of the story without belonging to a story "event".

Given current technologies, more media can contribute to a story employing literary collage than ever before; Robert Heinlein utilizes this technique to great effect in Starship Troopers by presenting the story as a collection of snippets (with some interactivity, such as a website or personal reader) which, at least in theory, contain additional detail should the reader "... like to know more...".

I think I will explore this technique in some of my immediate work; it's captured my interest and, by specifically including certain source materials, strengthen the setting. Were I to introduce radio dramas and newspaper hawkers to the narrative, I've firmly identified the time of my story without specifying a date.

Let's see how it turns out.

Living vs. LIVING

It's been said that the secret to life is living. Isn't that what we do just by being? We breath, we eat, we sleep, we live.

Yet no one talks about living in those terms unless the subject is life or death. When dealing with the great sleep, "still breathing" matters a great deal.

That dichotomy suggests there is more to life than just living - that there's a process, a vital process, that transcends survival and rudimentary functioning to capture and explain what's really important.

We all know what that is; it's everyone's favorite four letter pejorative that has become both the weal and woe of our species: love. I say that the secret to life is love.

That over-whelming passion is what lifts the human condition beyond mere survival and breaths vibrant emotion into our existence. We MUST cradle that spirit within us for someone(s) and/or something(s) if we are to claim our birthright.

Love represents all strong, genuine passion that flows through the bedrock of our souls and causes the rumblings deep within that drive us to action. Hatred, sorrow, love, joy: these are the keys to our true selves, the selves we yearn to inhabit and be.

So then, if this emotion is the secret, how do we use it? That is both easy and hard; it's easy to say "we must fuel our lives with this passion" but it's terribly challenging to grok HOW to do that. It's a simple thing to say "I love 'x'" but far more demanding to find ways to live so that our passion for 'x' is realized in our work, our leisure, our subconscious. And yet only folks who manage to collect the essence of these emotions within themselves ever fully experience life.

Everyone else just lives.