In Memory of a Fallen Gamer

R.I.P. Logan. You will be missed.

Nearly two weeks ago, I received a message that felt like a vicious punch to the gut. I learned that a close friend of mine by the name of Logan Masterson had passed away the previous afternoon.

My initial reaction to this horrific news was to not believe it. Part of me hoped this was some kind of morbid April Fool's Joke, that he'd show up at our FLGS the following Monday, revealing this dark ruse for what it was. Unfortunately, deep down inside, I knew this wasn't a joke...

I only knew Logan for about a year, but I quickly grew to care about him. He was easily one of my favorite people to game with. Name the game and he'd give it a try, and he was down for just about anything as long as it would lead to an amazing story in the end. Same was true when he took the seat behind the Game Master's screen. 

He also helped me through some pretty tough times this past year. He helped me deal with that mental asshole known by most as Depression and encouraged me to not give up on my own creative endeavors. I'll greatly miss the times we'd spent in his garage or office, talking about numerous geeky topics (mostly comics, gaming, and music), simply enjoying our break from the hectic nature of the outside world. 

Knowing I'll never see my friend again is still a concept I find incredibly hard to accept. I'll never make the trek up to our new FLGS to see Pepper, the orange car he named after the Marvel character Pepper Potts, sitting outside with him standing under the tailgate rolling up a cigarette again. I'll never get the chance to run Mage: The Ascension for him, which was his favorite game and he believed that I'd do a fantastic job with. I'll never get to talk to him about our gaming projects and so much more. 

Most importantly, I'll never get to tell him how much I cared about him and thank him for being apart of my life. I just hope I left as big of an impression on him as he did on me and I hope this post does an adequate job at honoring his memory. 

The Breaking Point

You can only put so much pressure on something
before it finally breaks...

Last Monday, an incident occurred with one of the players in my Savage Worlds campaign. One player, who I'll be calling "Harry" for the purposes of this post, has been a thorn in my side since the campaign began. He made every session a frustrating experience & I dreaded seeing his face each time I sat down at the table. The only reason he lasted as long as he did was the fact that he came as a packaged deal with another player who's presence I actually enjoy.

That marginal toleration came to a breaking point last Monday, and I unfortunately broke. Harry, being his annoying self, slapped an NPC who almost sacrificed herself to save his character, actually slapping the wound she gained performing this action (magic can be a dick like that). I swear I stared at Harry flabbergasted for a solid five minutes, trying to figure out why he'd do such a thing.

Turns out, his reasoning was rather stupid. His justification for the action was the NPC, a 35 year old witch & mother to one of the player's characters, was the party's only ride back into town. This character used a magical shortcut to save his character (a 10 year old middle school student), and he felt the best way to respond to that was to slap the wound she received as hard as possible. Shortly thereafter, he went into a misogynistic diatribe before calling me dumb for not understanding his actions.

That's when the metaphorical chain shattered, and a few different paths to handling the situation presented themselves. The first path was the emotional path, the to that would have felt good, but would have caused more problems than it solved. This path would most likely involve some choice words & a punch. The second path was the less cathartic path, but much more level-headed in nature. This path would involve me remaining calm and informing Harry that he is no longer welcome at my table.

Thankfully, I went down the latter path.

Now, I'll admit this caused me to lose an additional player, but yesterday's session felt so much better. I was no longer having to deal with Harry's shenanigans, letting me focus on the other players so I could make sure they were having a fun time. I'll miss playing with Harry's friend, but I'm okay with making that sacrifice for the health of the group & the campaign.

I'm sure I'm not the only GM who's had an experience like this. We've all had a really problematic player, one that slowly kills all the enjoyment you derive from the game like some humanoid tumor. While some will cut that tumor out as soon as possible, others (like myself) tend to let it fester for far too long, bottling up that frustration until the cork finally pops off. The quick flood of negative emotions is usually what causes someone to punch the offending player or flip a poor, undeserving table.

The key to not doing that is learning how to quickly barricade those explosive emotions, and letting them out in a more focused stream that's more productive. This usually manifests as either you leaving the table to calm down, probably ending the session prematurely if needed, or removing the problem player if things cannot be reconciled. I'm not going to lie, there will be repercussions for these actions (like losing another player who chooses to stand beside your own, personal Harry), but they are easier to manage than the ones resulting from a player punch or a table flip.

Have you ever experienced something like this? Have you ever had a player that was so problematic that you were eventually pushed past your breaking point? How did you handle it, and do you have any tips for those who might have to deal with it in the future? Leave your answers in the comments below.

5e Musings - Simplified Encumbrance

Making encumbrance work seems to be a strange goal of mine. Throughout the past few years, I've been tinkering with several alternatives for different systems. Since I'm not getting more into 5e, I figured I should try my hand at doing one for it as well.

Here's the result of my brainstorming. Characters have a specific limit to the number of significant items they can carry without being negatively effected. This amount is known as the character's Carrying Capacity.

Carrying Capacity is equal to 1/2 the character's Strength score (rounded down). A character can carry an amount of significant items equal to or below this amount without any problems.

A character carrying a number of significant items passed this amount, up to double her Carrying Capacity, is Encumbered. While Encumbered, she drops her speed by 10 feet. Carrying a number of significant items equal to or greater than triple her Carrying Capacity will make her Heavily Encumbered. Like before, her speed is reduced by 20 feet, but she also suffers disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.

Now, I'm sure you noticed throughout the above text that I used the term "significant items" several times. Instead of every item counting towards a character's Carrying Capacity, only a specific few do. The following items are considered significant enough, but Dungeon Masters may add or subtract to this list as they see fit:

• Armor, Weapons, & Shields
• Magic Items
• Bundled Items (Ammunition, Coinage, Rations, etc.) 
• Containers (Backpacks, Quivers, etc.) 

Let's take a look at what this might look like at the table. Lauren's character Althea has a Strength of 15, meaning she has a Carrying Capacity of 7 (1/2 of 15, rounded down). She can carry 7 items without a problem, becomes encumbered when carrying 8 to 14 items, and heavily encumbered at 15+ items. 

Like the Simplified Ammo rules I posted a few weeks ago, the main goal of these rules was to abstract the mechanics in order to make their application at the table much easier. I believe only focusing on specific items and basing the amount you can carry on 1/2 a character's Strength score achieves this pretty nicely.

With that being said, I acknowledge utilizing 1/2 Strength does seriously hamper those characters that happen to have lower Strength scores. Those wishing to relieve this can make the number of significant items that can be carried easily equal to the character's Strength score instead.This will inflate the later numbers a little, but that might just be a necessary evil. 

The Doom that Came to Pandemic

Debuting at Gen Con 2016, Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu will be a Mythos-themed version of Matt Leacock's popular cooperative game. The designers heading this project are Leacock himself and Rise of Cthulhu's Chuck D. Yager.

Very few, concrete details have been released about Reign of Cthulhu. However, we do know what the basic premise will be. Instead of playing CDC agents attempting to cure several diseases spreading across the entire globe, you will take the role of investigators trying to seal numerous portals throughout Lovecraft Country while battling insane cultists.

Imagine that Arkham Horror had a weird, yet surprisingly kinky one night stand with Pandemic, and this game was the aberrant spawn of that freaky moment in time.

This just proves to me that Z-Man Games knows the secret to separating me from my money. Take one of my favorite board games and add a heavy dose of Lovecraftian goodness.

What do you guys and gals think? Are you excited for Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu? Are you apprehensive, and if so, why? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

You Can't Forget the Classics - Wizards of the Coast Releases OD&D in PDF (Again)

Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast made the PDFs for the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons available again.

These are based upon the Original Collector's Edition released in 2013. For $9.99, you will get all three books contained in the original box set plus the Reference Sheets booklet.

I'll admit something here: I've never played OD&D. I came into the hobby with 3.5, and my experience with older versions of the game have been rather limited until very recently.

However, I've always wanted to give the version presented in those three, white booklets a try at some point. This might be the perfect opportunity to do so, allowing me to check that off my gaming bucket list.

Those interested in purchasing the PDFs can find them at D&D Classics. $10 for a piece of gaming history is a pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

5e Musings - Simplified Ammo

The tracking of ammunition is very similar to the management of encumbrance in Dungeons & Dragons. They're both rules that should be used do to the effect they'll have on the adventuring lifestyle. However, I can count the number of groups that actually enforce these rules as written on one hand and still have fingers left over.

The most common reason for this is it tends to bog down the actual gameplay with a particularly boring level of bookkeeping, especially in regards to encumbrance.

This inspires people such as myself to attempt to create alternate ways to implement these rules that do away with the negative aspects while maintaining the interesting elements.

Today, I'm going to present a house rule for ammo tracking that's inspired by the Ammo tag from Dungeon World.

Instead of tracking individual pieces of ammunition, players will purchase a specific bundle based upon the weapon being used. Bows use a quiver of arrows, crossbows use a case of bolts, and a sling uses a pouch of bullets. The price of these bundles match the prices for the ammunition listed in the Player's Handbook (pg. 150).

Each bundle has a numeric rating of 3, abstractly representing the amount of ammunition the character has on hand at the time. As long as the bundle has a rating above 0, the character is considered to have ammunition for the appropriate weapon.

Every time the owner of the bundle rolls a natural 1 on an attack roll with the appropriate weapon, she will lower the bundle's rating down by 1. When this rating hits 0, the character has run out of ammunition and must purchase a new bundle.

I believe this rule does a good job at keeping the actual tracking process incredibly simple. All you need to do to see if you have ammo left is look at the rating of your bundle. Furthermore, you only decrease that rating on a critical failure instead of every attack roll means you will not have to worry about it too much during the actual session.

However, there is still an annoying wrinkle that I have yet to iron out: magical ammunition. There's a part of me that wants to air on the side of caution and just keep track of it as normal due to most characters rarely having a large amount of it at a time, but another part of me wants to keep things uniform. Maybe one could have "magical bundles" with a much lower rating to represent the rarity. I'll come back to this when I find a satisfying answer to this situation.

WoTC Delivers a (Late) Christmas Gift - A New SRD for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

Wizards of the Coast finally did it.

They finally released a System Reference Document (SRD) for the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons under the OGL (version 1.0a).

This is a very positive development in my book. I've been begging WoTC to release something like this since Day One. I wish they would have come out with this sooner, but that's really just me picking some nits out of the situation.

I've been flipping through it over the past few minutes, and I'm happy to see so much content presented within it. I'll admit, part of me worried the Basic Rules would be turned into the SRD, but I'm glad that's not the case.

Anyway, feel free to click the link above to check out the PDF of the new SRD.