Tag: CrashsCourse

Crash’s Course Ep 13: Youth Group

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Hello and welcome to Crash’s Course, a short form podcast where I share my thoughts and advice on playing and running tabletop role playing games in roughly about 5 minutes.

A friend of a friend recently asked for advice on taking up the DM mantle for a bunch of elementary students. I gave my answer in a more direct fashion, but thought it would be worth sharing here as well.

To start, I do not suggest spending any money up front. (OK, maybe on dice, but who can resist shiny math rocks?) Instead, remember that the Basic Rules are free and now under a Creative Commons license. You can download the whole thing directly from the WotC website to save or print out, or, if you’re playing somewhere with an internet connection, 5esrd.com has done a decent job organizing the free rules and adding in a significant amount of open content, including tons of stuff from Kobold Press.

You still might end up buying books afterwards (that’s what WotC hopes you’ll do) but even then there’s plenty of companies releasing 5e content so you might decide to go with one of those, or maybe just build on the free stuff like they did.

The person in question had played in college but apparently not recently. In a case like this, I’d recommend a starter adventure. Not only are they written for new players, they’re frequently written for new (or newly returned) DMs as well. Most pre-printed adventures will include all the stat blocks and additional information not found in the basic rules, and if they’re designed for new players they tend to gradually build up the difficulty with simple skill checks and moments for role playing before getting too crunchy with the numbers and abilities.

I still haven’t played it myself, but Lost Mine of Phandelver continues to be recommended by others as a great starting point. I think it’s out of print but I’ve found a few copies at thrift stores ( shopgoodwill.com for the win…) and it looks like you can still claim a copy for free on DnD Beyond’s website if you make an account there.

(Yes, I know, DnD Beyond … but free is free.)

OK, so you’ve got the rules, you’ve got an adventure. Now what? Now you’re ready for baby steps. By that I mean, don’t have everyone create complete characters right away. If you have pre-made sheets, that’s nice, but I’ve found kids (and adults) get more immersed when they make their own from scratch.

To that end, start your first session with the players picking their races and rolling their stats. (I’m personally a fan of the standard array, but let my players decide between those two things.) Explaining races and stats to new players is a job in and of itself, but when that’s done you have a starting point. You can have the characters meet up somewhere and begin to interact. I suggest mandating that they all have something in common as a hook to get things started. When DMing for kids, telling them their characters all go to the same school works particularly well.

The next session, have them pick their classes and backgrounds. Even this might need to be split into two parts, but combined you still might have time in the session to continue the role-playing and continue or start the adventure.

By the third session, you can have them picking their equipment and, if applicable, their spells.

Finally, I would strongly suggest that the players make backstories for their characters. Not all of the kids in my after school club have wanted to do this, but the ones who did really got into it. Any chance you get, tie the plot in with one or more backstories. There is nothing like seeing a kid’s face light up because they RECOGNIZE the name of the big, bad, evil guy while everyone else is clueless.

That’s all for this episode, subscribe to just this podcast on Mastodon at is.aaronbsmith.com/@crashscourse or subscribe to all my TTRPG podcasts at is.aaronbsmith.com/@cogwheel.

Music is Deadly Windmills by JAM from modarchive.org, used with permission, as it’s public domain.

This podcast is distributed under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

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MP3 Download: Crash’s Course Ep 13: Youth Group

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Thanks to our current Patreon Patrons (as of this upload…): Chris, Cindy (Patron Emeritus), Ellie, Erik, ShanShen, and Walter!

Crash’s Course Ep 12: Rerolling

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Hello and welcome to Crash’s Course, a short form podcast where I share my thoughts and advice on playing and running tabletop role playing games in roughly about 5 minutes.

Today I want to talk a little about rerolling. OK, not every TTRPG requires players to roll anything when creating a character, but whatever. I’m talking about those moments in a longer campaign when one of your players decides they want to try a different character.

There can be a lot of reasons for this.

Perhaps the player decided that after a certain plot development, it didn’t make sense for their character to decide to stick around. This could be because they felt betrayed, because they’d finally found a place that felt like home, or something else entirely.

Perhaps the player felt inspired to create a new character, and didn’t want to have to wait for the next campaign to try it out.

Perhaps they’ve decided that character they made looked neat on paper but they’re just not getting the emotional attachment they wanted or expected.

Perhaps they’re just bored.

And … perhaps the character died in a spectacular fashion.

I’ve had players come to me with all of these reasons and more, and they’re all valid.

Look, TTRPGs are supposed to be fun. If something gets in the way of that fun, that’s a bad implementation, and you should change things. I won’t say I’m the perfect GM, but at this point when designing a campaign I try to also think about how new characters can be added without breaking the established plot.

Yes, even in the all-kobold game where they crash landed on a planet without kobolds. The ship was full of more than just the party, and the escape pods worked for everyone but the NPC captain (R.I.P. Sniv Stonetail). Any new character could just be assumed to be a survivor whose pod landed somewhere else.

There’s mixed schools of thought on what the power level of the new character should be. I’m of the opinion that it should be comparable to the rest of the party (yes, even if the new character didn’t “earn” those levels – the player earned them on another character), so if the rest of the party’s level 3, Joe McNewcharacter should also be level 3. If they’ve acquired a few magic items along the way, I’m likely to allow McNewcharacter to pick something off a list.

In Cypher System it can be a bit trickier, because even if you award XP evenly throughout, players can spend it on long or short term benefits. I have a situation like this that I’ll be resolving on Monday, and in this case some of the players have spent enough XP to get halfway to Tier 2 so I’ll be letting the player of the new character check off two boxes on their character sheet (their choice which) but have them otherwise start with no XP.

In my games, that’s a state that won’t last long.

One last thing: Just because a character’s leaving the active party does not mean they’ve left the campaign setting. One of my favorite things is when the plot provides a reason for that character to make a return, either as an NPC or, better yet, with the original player reprising the role with an appropriately leveled older and wiser PC.

Bonus points if they end up playing the old and new characters at the same time, but try to not force them into a situation where they have to have a too long conversation with themself.

That’s all for this episode, subscribe to just this podcast on Mastodon at is.aaronbsmith.com/@crashscourse or subscribe to all my TTRPG podcasts at is.aaronbsmith.com/@cogwheel.

Music is Deadly Windmills by JAM from modarchive.org, used with permission, as it’s public domain.

This podcast is distributed under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

Follow this series on…

MP3 Download: Crash’s Course Ep 12: Rerolling

Keep us ad free by supporting us on Patreon!
Thanks to our current Patreon Patrons (as of this upload…): Chris, Cindy (Patron Emeritus), Ellie, Erik, ShanShen, and Walter!

Crash’s Course Ep 11: Stereotypes

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Hello and welcome to Crash’s Course, a short form podcast where I share my thoughts and advice on playing and running tabletop role playing games in roughly about 5 minutes.

Today I want to talk a little about stereotypes. Outside of a game setting this can be a deep conversation that can lead to some very nasty subjects, but inside a game setting, the same thing can happen and make things be unpleasant all around.

It’s my hope that most people can agree that assuming stereotypes are true is not the recommended path to take, but at the same time, most games I see with orcs have them as big, burly brutes with a penchant for smashing things, goblins are chaotic, murder-happy munchkins, and elves are aloof, self-centered elitists.

Also, most dwarfs appear to be from Scotland? That’s odd.

Now I’m not saying you should stay away from the occasional angry giant as an antagonist, and people have gotten a lot of use out of stereotypes in their games over the decades, but that doesn’t mean these concepts are carved in stone. Consider, if you will, a goblin paladin who helps the weak and poor, an orc mage who’s calm, collected, and maybe a bit of a pacifist, or even a horde of machine-hating gnome barbarians.

I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Those who’ve been paying attention to the various editions of D&D may have noticed a decreasing emphasis on Alignment. Sure, they still include it as part of the character sheet, but there it’s meant to be a shorthand guide. “In the lore of the default campaign settings, X creatures are usually YZ Alignment.” It’s a useful tool for a starting GM using pre-created materials to get a quick handle on a recommended way of how those beings could be expected to behave.

But look at the spells Dispel Evil and Good, Detect Evil and Good, & Protection from Evil and Good – none of these actually mention Alignment outside of their names, unlike the previous edition versions that were either about evil beings or good beings, you had to pick when you prepared the spell.

In truth, I don’t even like the term “evil” as a concept. There are beings who are selfish and self-centered, of course, but the number of mustache-twirling ne’er-do-wells tying people to train tracks out there is mercifully small.

OK, so you still want a horde of goblins to besiege the PCs town. Go for it, but just … give them a better reason to do it than “they’re evil goblins, that’s what they do.” Hunting, gathering, and farming are occupations that result in way fewer goblin deaths, and goblins can be intelligent enough to understand this.

Perhaps their crops failed, or a passing army scared away all the game, or they were chased out of their previous home when a dragon moved in, and need supplies to travel further.

None of these options insist that the goblins are evil, but still give them a reason for taking from the people who aren’t them and don’t like them (because of stereotypes, most likely). Better yet, an enterprising party might be able to intervene and find a way to prevent loss of life on both sides. When you assume the enemy’s always evil, that becomes a lot harder to do.

Players of my campaigns have gotten used to this being an option, and have intentionally sought diplomatic options when facing bandits, goblins, necromancers, the undead, undead necromancers, and even dragons.

Of course sometimes an antagonist is just not interested in having a chat, and battle’s inevitable. That’s OK, so long as there’s a reason for it.

(And for the record, “this one’s a bit of a jerk” is a valid reason.)

That’s all for this episode, subscribe to just this podcast on Mastodon at is.aaronbsmith.com/@crashscourse or subscribe to all my TTRPG podcasts at is.aaronbsmith.com/@cogwheel.

Music is Deadly Windmills by JAM from modarchive.org, used with permission, as it’s public domain.

This podcast is distributed under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

Follow this series on…

MP3 Download: Crash’s Course Ep 11: Stereotypes

Keep us ad free by supporting us on Patreon!
Thanks to our current Patreon Patrons (as of this upload…): Chris, Cindy (Patron Emeritus), Ellie, Erik, ShanShen, and Walter!

Crash’s Course Ep 10: Reskinning

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Hello and welcome to Crash’s Course, a short form podcast where I share my thoughts and advice on playing and running tabletop role playing games in roughly about 5 minutes.

Today I’d like to talk about an invaluable tool in my arsenal: reskinning. The term comes from video games, but it’s essential to how I run my TTRPG sessions.

When I’m running adventures, I like to tailor encounters to match the theme of the session. While I frequently can find a monster stat block that fits the occasion perfectly, thanks to the number of source books I’ve purchased (no I don’t have a problem), sometimes that’s just not possible. Continue reading “Crash’s Course Ep 10: Reskinning”

Crash’s Course Ep 09: Worldbuilding

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Hello and welcome to Crash’s Course, a short form podcast where I share my thoughts and advice on playing and running tabletop role playing games in roughly about 5 minutes.

I’ve been on a worldbuilding kick lately, so I thought that would make a good topic. I mean, sure, there’s lots of good campaign settings out there ready for you to use, but they’re not yours, you know? Why not make something original, and as an extra bonus, have it be something where that one party member can’t buy the same source book and as a result can metagame everything.

Continue reading “Crash’s Course Ep 09: Worldbuilding”