Lessons Learned 25

The great plague smothering the land was easing its grip, a cure had finally been developed, and our brave adventurers could once again delve the depths of dungeons that did not allow for the mandated six feet of separation. Yes, my weekly D&D 5e group is finally playing again. Mostly in person, even. We had tried, at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak here in the States, to continue our campaign over Roll20 and Discord, but they just did not work for us. I am by no means disparaging those two applications, in fact, I encourage any DM and party who is looking to game online to use them, it is that my party could not make them work. Well, one of my players who is technologically and financially challenged could not make it work (you can fix or overcome most technology-related problems by throwing more money at it), and as I was not going to run the campaign without him, we decided to do something else. That something else was letting one of the other players run a short campaign online for those who could make Roll20 and Discord work. It was entertaining but short, and per what Seth Skorkowsky said, when a player offers to DM you, their DM, you let them do it. 

But here we are, most of the group was already constantly in contact with the public due to our jobs anyway, the incidence rate is fairly low due to (lack of) population density in the area, and except for one player who has some health concerns and was isolating even harder than everyone else (and another who is having marital issues) who joined us online via an old cellphone and Discord video chat, we are now gaming in person once again. Except when players miss games and we have to cancel. Or they forget to check with their human resources department and their new scheduled days off are not on the days they thought they were going to be. Or when my own work schedule drastically changes the day before the game due to coworker incompetence and I have to cancel. Or one player skips sleeping for a few days to play a videogame and has to cancel. 

Which brings me to the Lesson mentioned in the title of this post - you will never find a group of your friends who all have the exact same schedule or who will not have life interrupt from time to time. I have never, NEVER, played or DM'd in any group where attendance was 100%. If you have - and games that last exactly one session do not count - then I and every other grognard out there envies you, that is the rarest of the rare. Not that I am berating my or any other players (or DMs, we are merely human too) out there, as you have to admit that as fun as it is we are still just playing a game and more important things exist in our lives. Even my employer, who pays me so I can afford my mortgage and car payment, does not get me 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year - I call in sick and take vacations and holidays just like everyone else does. The players are going to miss, the DM is not going to be prepared for every session - shit happens! 

The lesson, if you have not figured it out, is that you need a plan for players who miss. Or if you as the DM misses. Because chances are, from session to session, someone is not going to make it to the game. It will most generally not be the same player/DM (unless they are done playing and cannot quite bring themselves to admit it to the group), which is a relief and makes the infrequent absentees bearable (most of the players and DMs out there) but makes the habitual ones grind your teeth in frustration. What then, dear reader, should one do? As hinted at by my slips of vulgarity, I spent many years in the United States Army, and they have a saying you, as a DM, should take to heart - Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome. What was your first plan? Everyone's plan changes upon meeting the enemy (or getting punched in the teeth, however you prefer that saying), and you need a backup plan, as well as an alternate to the backup, and enough gumption to throw all of the above out on its ear and just plain wing it when required. Oh yeah, and enough talent to not only follow the new plan, but make it work.

What has worked for me is stubbornness - my current D&D group WILL make it to level 20 or their PCs will die trying. And I have outright replaced 2 of the starting players in the group, welcomed one of those back when he replaced his own replacement, tried out 3 other players that just did not mesh with the rest of the group, and added 3 more players that appear to be doing well. Plus did everything I could to keep the group together during a global pandemic that, admittedly, did not get to the level of "zombie apocalypse", darn the luck. One of the biggest things I have done from the beginning is that the players leave their character sheets at my place (where we hold our sessions), and if they cannot make a session, they have to "adult" up and let me know ahead of time who is playing their character. And if their PC dies while they are not present, it still counts. Scheduling is the other big hurdle, and sometimes all you can do is have everyone, including yourself as DM, list out when they are free to play a session. Once you have the list, sometimes the only option you have is what fits best into the most participants' schedules, and you have to be enough of an adult and look at your friend, even if they are your favorite player, and tell them it just is not going to work for this campaign, hopefully they will be available in the future. The game must go on, and when it cannot continue in its current form, sometimes the only option is to start fresh, keep only the players that really show they want to be there, maybe try a new campaign setting, or even a new game entirely, and try again. You never know, you could end up running your game for just one session before restarting from scratch (got a movie quote about that, more in a moment) or you could run it for the next 40 years. The movie quote, by the way, is about bands, and I cannot seem to find the scene by itself, but it is very appropriate to RPG groups. The scene comes from That Thing You Do, the one starting and directed by Tom Hanks from the '90s about a band of young gentlemen in the late '50s/early '60sand their hit rock song. Our protagonist, the drummer of the group, finds himself talking to his hero, a jazz pianist, who has been in the music industry for a very long time. The drummer complains that his band is breaking up, but they have this hit record and song, to which the wise veteran replies, "some bands I've been in, one album is too many". Well, for some of your groups out there, one game session may be one game session too many, and they immediately dissolve. Hell, I myself have tried to get groups together that dissolved before they got through character creation and Session Zero! But you will not know for sure until you have at least tried. Do not beat yourself up if it does not work, bit you have to at least try.

Not so much a lesson, but some other things I wish to share. Just as we were gearing up to play in-person again, WotC released Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (TCoE). My impression of it so far is that it suffers the same issue as Xanathar's Guide to Everything (XGtE) - if it really covers "everything", why would we need any other books? But here we have TWO tomes with similar names claiming "everything"? The goofy name aside, I do like most of TCoE, and am actively using several items from it - sidekicks and group patrons. To be honest, when I started my current campaign almost 3 years ago, I also invented (or thought I had) group patrons. The wife and I several more years before starting the campaign had watched the BBC's recent reinvention of The Musketeers. When we watched it, I was struck that this certain unit in the military answered directly to their ruler, got missions and support from the government, and in return said government got to restrain them from being too excessive. The perfect thing to fight murder-hoboism, I thought. I talked about this, briefly, nearly a year ago when the Eberron campaign setting book came out, the first appearance of patrons to D&D 5e, officially. It took me a while, but recently I realized that what I had done in my own game was give my players a patron. Here I was, thinking at how clever I had been, but the folks at WotC are keeping up with all of us out here in TV Land. 

Sidekicks have also been of great use. Long before TCoE came out, my party went a little "awaken" crazy, and ended up with a badger bartender (who I ruled got a little extra juice in the awakening and also got a little anthropomorphized in the process, but as the badger is not joining the party on the adventures, I deemed it was fine for story purposes), the cleric's giant boar mount, and a dire wolf the ranger insisted on saving after the party almost killed it (did kill 13 of its packmates and its former master... how long does the "charm" portion of the awaken spell last again? 30 days? that should be fine). The party is already 11th level, so while the rules for sidekicks normally only allow creatures/NPCs up to 1/2 CR, I allowed the "big pig" and the wolf to be made sidekicks, just reduced their hit dice pool to match what would normally be given to a 1/2 CR sidekick at level 11, but left everything else alone. Yeah, these two have more special abilities than your average 1/2 CR creature, but at this level, it is not going to make much difference. For the boar, I went with the "warrior" sidekick, as our cleric is not one to shy away from melee combat and also the boar is very not-stealthy, having her own barding. For the wolf, even though it is a "large" creature (a wolf roughly the size of a horse), I decided to go just a bit sideways and went with the "expert" sidekick. Yes, the "expert" is more like a rogue, but it is also more like a ranger, with the tracking and stealth, and the pack tactics special ability of the dire wolf interlocks well with the coordinated strike feature of the "expert". The party has not had much time with their new sidekicks, but I can already tell they are looking forward to getting good use out of the pair. Check out both sidekicks and group patrons in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, I know my party is enjoying both of them.

How to Properly Do a D&D Movie/Show

They appear to be making yet another D&D movie, and I think they are going to make a hash of it. Again. Let us be honest - D&D has done well as a RPG (duh), many novelizations and comic books (but not all of them), but has been laughable at best in theaters and well, the best cartoon they did last aired in 1985. I have said in the past that WotC, instead of trying to make their own D&D movie, would be better served to buy the rights to whatever generic or even lightly branded medieval fantasy movie that is about to come out, and just change the names of places and people to fit any of the many D&D campaign settings. They could have done it with the 2018 version of Robin Hood. It did not seem to have much in common with the standard Robin Hood mythos, aside from some of the names. It also seemed to be full of magic and anachronistic technology and fashion that made no sense for a Robin Hood retelling, so it is not too big of a stretch to see that WotC could alter the script to names from one of their many campaign settings, slap some Spock rubber ears on a few of the actors to make "elves", some beards on short actors for "dwarves", and rename it to, "D&D, the Bandit's Journey", or something vaguely cool like that. It would not do any worse than the actual movie did ($100 million budget, and only $86 million worldwide gross? not a real barn burner, was it?) and if the WotC writers tightened up the plot at the same time they were changing names in the script, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the movie would have actually been successful and made money. I would say it does not appear they are doing any of that, but we know so little about what the new movie contains that I cannot really say much about it. Oh, Chris Pine is reported to be the lead actor, and I have enjoyed his work elsewhere, so it has that going for it.

What? You know I am right, if the setting is medieval fantasy, change some of the names and it is totally a D&D movie. I see that look on your face, you do not believe me, but I, ahem, Mr Matt Colville DM extraordinaire shall prove you wrong.

Yes, if you paid attention, that was Matt describing the most popular geeky movie franchise of the late '90s/early '00s, Lord of the Rings, as a D&D campaign. Also to explain the difference between different styles of D&D games. As long as the story is good, the plot vaguely makes sense, and the characters have a chance to exhibit growth, then it does not matter which exact story you tell. Yes, Tolkien's works pre-date D&D, even influence it heavily enough that the Tolkien estate sued TSR back in the day, but you have to admit that The Lord of the Rings trilogy would have worked just as well with different names for the characters and places. So it makes for a crappy D&D campaign, but still it was more entertaining to watch than The Hobbit trilogy. No, I am not going to link those two, if you have not seen either or do not know what I am talking about, stop reading this, go watch the movies, read the books, and then you can come back. You must be at least this nerdy to participate in this blog.

I would say that the folks behind the upcoming D&D movie are doing any of that, but as I do not actually know what they are doing or even planning on doing, I am not going to say that. Instead I am going to tell you what I would do if I were in charge, as if I had any chance of the folks at WotC listen to any of my advice. Better chance of winning the lottery. Which reminds me I need want to buy some lottery tickets, but no, Powerball and Mega Millions are not high enough as I type this. Anyway, this is what I would do for a D&D movie. First, I would make it a series on one of the streaming platforms. Movies are too constricted, too bland and safe, especially after the COVID (well, eventually after we will be able to go back to theaters to watch them), so I would do a series for the long term value and I would go streaming because that is where you folks, my people, my fellow nerds and geeks, where we watch our entertainment these days. Second, if we are going to go so far as to brand this thing D&D, instead of just making another generic medieval fantasy show, let us really show folks what D&D is all about - you show the players and DM playing the game and then every so often flip over to the action in the game so it is not just another live play show. Wait, what? Yes, you have two complete casts, one that is playing the story like it was an actual game of D&D, complete with jokes and table banter, and another, different cast in full costumes and CGI effects and fancy set pieces, the works, acting out the story the first cast is playing in their game. Oh, and the first cast is doing voice-over for everything the second cast is saying. 

Let me explain this a bit further - the first episode starts out in media res, our action cast in their medieval fantasy finery battling some level monsters (goblins or kobolds, whatever you would normally encounter at level 1 or 2), but the voices do not seem to match up with the characters, and maybe even one or more of the characters is being voiced by the opposite gender. The characters defeat the whatevers and a new voice suddenly starts describing what appears before the characters, and then a whip cut over to a bunch of geeks (the voices we heard coming out of the fantasy hero mouths just a moment ago) gathered around a table, playing D&D. The new voice from the voice over is the, duh, DM. Of course, someone tells a joke at the dramatic moment, which is the reason for the whip cut, the table breaks up laughing and now the audience is pulled into the fun. We watch the players for a bit, the DM calms everyone down, and we flip back to the live action group acting out the new scene. This way you have both halves of what you want from a D&D movie - the medieval fantasy schlock with cool fight scenes and special effects, the story and character development you have always wanted from one of these but never really got, and you also get to see what playing the game with your friends is like.

I just realized that what I described was Harmonquest, Dan Harmon's animated, D&D-as-therapy show that is hilarious and popular with "the youths". For the most part my idea is very similar, but there are some key differences. The biggest is that the cast stays the same, and this will not be played out in front of a live studio audience, sitcom style. Other differences lie in that my D&D show will be scripted, live action for the adventure scenes, and while still containing humor (you have to have a good laugh around the table to have a good D&D game) it will be a much more serious tone overall. 

Now for casting - I think WotC needs to cast big name voice actors like John DiMaggio and Kari Wahlgren who are known for doing voice acting but not known for doing live performance acting. Like the cast of Critical Role before they did Critical Role. Why not just cast them? Because you want to use the good ideas from that show, but not merely recreate it (and they are already doing a Critical Role cartoon that hot Kickstarted for millions of dollars). So you get voice actors who are recognizable by their voices but not their faces, and they are your DM and players of the show. For the "action" cast, you hire all those stunt women and men, like Zoë Bell, who rarely act as themselves but are in great shape and can do all the fight choreography. I like this setup because you still have the names that the very interested fans will recognize, and since this will be a series on streaming, the production team can save themselves some money, as the name draw just is not necessary. Though I did recently see the new Jumanji movies, and it was kind of neat to hear the action cast (Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, etc) mimic the real world cast (the kids, Danny DeVito, etc). But then you have to pay for double the cast, as they found out between the 2 newest Jumanji movies - you have to have recognizable names and voices to mimic with your "action" cast, otherwise it just does not land as well as you hoped it would. 

Which brings us, of course, to the story, and the biggest question all of the previous D&D-based movies have SPECTACULARLY failed on - what exactly is the story of D&D? The answer, of course, is that there is not one singular story for D&D, there never has been, and there never will be. I am not the only one who believes this to be true, and Jerry Holkins is as big a D&D nerd as you can find, so that article is not about how much he hates D&D. Well, that is all then, guess we are done. What? No? Fine. As you well know, everyone thinks of something different when they hear the term Dungeons & Dragons, usually their favorite gaming party during their most epic of adventure arcs or campaigns. And yes, I intended to emphasize that the party is more important than the plot of the campaign, because admit it, in your memories, your friends (ie: the party) ARE more important. Which is why I want to have a cast specifically made to show the DM and the party so we can tell that story and relate to the non-fans how special the relationship around a TTRPG usually is for those involved. Also why I want to script the whole show, as you can often get good table chemistry from any bunch of nerds playing D&D, but from non-players who are voicing lines for the "action" cast, well, it is far easier to feed them the lines so they sound like they are veteran players, have great table chemistry, and easier to match lip flaps with the "action" cast if you are not improvising all your lines at the same time. Then what story do I give to the "action" cast? More accurately, which classic D&D campaign would I have the party play and the action cast act out? Because that is what you need for the action cast - a classic D&D campaign that is recognizable to the fans but still gives a little of everything found in the game to those who do not know (combat, exploration, negotiation, stealth, high adventure, the works). There are plenty to choose from - Against the Giants, Keep on the Borderlands, The Spider Queen - and even plenty that were created for or from novels - any of the Drizz't books or the entirety of the sprawling Dragonlance novels spring immediately to mind. However, the one I have in mind is not as popular in the current player zeitgeist, but I think that would enhance it for the show - the grognards who remember it would be stoked to see it, the younger players would enjoy learning about it from the show, and it has plenty of dungeon crawling and political intrigue. I am talking about the original adventure path, The Shackled City. 

First, a little explanation of what an adventure path is and where they originated from. Near the end of the 3.5 edition of D&D, WotC got a little tired of doing their Dragon and Dungeon magazines (actually, I think it was more towards the end of 3rd edition and the transition to 3.5, but the timing is not important) and one of their biggest users of the Open Gaming License (OGL), Paizo Publishing, offered to take over those magazines for WotC. And they did a fantastic job with them, handling them like champs for many years. Eventually WotC took the magazines back from Paizo (and then killed the magazines, of course) right around the time they released 4th edition. Paizo, having already made plenty of their own products for 3rd/3.5 decided to double their bet and tweaked what they already had published to make their own medieval fantasy RPG, Pathfinder. Which is similar enough to 3rd/3.5 that most players consider Pathfinder (at least 1st edition Pathfinder, but that's a different story) to be D&D version 3.75. Before all of that, though, while they were still doing Dungeon magazine, they came up with the idea of the adventure path - it is not a small series of adventures, but a large one, set to tell a longer story and let your players take their characters from level 1 all the way up to 20. Paizo got so good at adventure paths that they became the main selling point (at least in my mind) of Pathfinder. And Shackled City was the first one. 

There are some caveats. The biggest is that Shackled City appears to be not the greatest, story-wise, as it is far more focused on the dungeon crawling and the lore surrounding the plot is not shared well with the players. I have never played it, so I cannot give you my opinion of it, but I do not see this as a huge problem. Even though it was written by the Paizo folks, the campaign still belongs to WotC as their intellectual property, so they can use whatever bits of it they want and change the rest to tell a more interesting story. In fact, as WotC has already transformed many classic adventures to the new(ish) 5e rules, they could improve the adventure path and release it alongside the show. That is called "synergy", right there. You should also remember that the main draw of this D&D series is not the action scenes, but the interaction of the party members, so whatever adventure they are following is really the sideshow next to the main attraction.

There you have it folks, my grandiose, self-indulgent plan for how I would do a D&D movie/streaming series. Now to wait for the royalty checks to come pouring in. Any second now.

One last thing before you go, if you are fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic), as well as a fan of Red Letter Media, you should check out RLM's commentary track for the original D&D movie. It is really more of a director's commentary style of track rather than the classic MST3K style, but still very fun.