Winning in RPGs

It has been a common question asked. How do win in a RPG?

This could be seen as a misconception that since RPG has the word game in it, there is a winning objective. Through skill, imagination and wit you have beaten the game, you have defeated every challenge thrown against you and you are the champion.

While traditionally you can't 'win' in a RPG but instead of saying 'no, you can't', we could embrace the spirit of 'yes, you can!' This is where I think as GMs, we can actually use the word 'winning' to our advantage.

After giving it some thought, if I'm ever asked 'how do you win in a RPG', my answer now would probably be, 'you decide as a character'. There are so many things you can do in a RPG that it isn't a question of a lack thereof objectives but a matter of which one you think gives you the greatest satisfaction as if you have 'won'.

Think about it, would you feel like a winner if you character has accomplished the following?

• Your fighter becomes a king/warlord with his own army to command and a land to rule over.


• Your wizard has gain ultimate power, a tower with a hoard of powerful artifacts and is the undisputed mover and shaker of the land, kingdom and universe.


• Your rogue has overthrown the thieves' guild leader and now you are an influence in the underworld, feared and respected by everyone in the streets.


• Your character has reached epic levels, has learned all the feats, skills, spells/powers and a combination that he/she could ever learn to become the perfect character.


• Your character has found a powerful artifact and used it to save the world.


• You avenged the death of your village by destroying the BBEG, rescued the damsel in distress and fulfilled your destiny as written in your background.


• After living as an adventurer for 25 years, you safely retire with limbs in one piece and enough a fortune to last you and your family for a lifetime. Your children are born in a world that you know is safer by your hands and they themselves grew up to be heroes of their time.


• Your character ascends into godhood, dictating the lives of mortals and your name has been uttered in legends and myth.


• Your character went into the dungeon and slew the dragon and took their stuff.

As mentioned earlier, there isn't a lack of objectives. On the contrary, the sky is the limit and beyond. It should up to your players to decide how do they want to beat the game. Not everyone has to have the same winning condition and this is where motivation comes into play.

As a GM, letting your players choose how they want to 'win' a RPG is telling you what is the motivation of their character and you can be sure that they are willing to give it their all in order to reach that objective, it's their end goal. It not only gives their character a purpose but also your player to come to your table every game day.

So how would you win in a RPG?

Questing's Readings - RPG Bloggers Network Edition

When Dave Chalker, Danny Rupp, Graham Poole and Phil Menard have announced that they will no longer be in charge of the network, it did send shockwaves across the blogging community.

Their labor of love and passion has benefited many bloggers (including yours truly) and may have even been the reason why some roleplayers started blogging in the first place. We cannot deny that without them there wouldn't be a network to wrestle over with today.

Although some harsh words were thrown before they came to that decision, not all have been criticism against the founding members of the what I called the next best thing since ENWorld. Perhaps there were some regrets of what's being said about these gentlemen but that's not what I'm trying to point out here.

In this special edition, I have compiled a list of posts by bloggers who show their gratitude for the (apparently, thankless) job that Dave, Danny, Graham and Phil have done for the past year. Although it was a sadly short run, it was a good run.

This is my gift to them and I bid them good luck in whatever the future might bring for them.

Dungeon's Master
On the RPG Bloggers Network

Geek's Dream Girl
Oh Captain(s), My Captain(s): To The Men Behind The RPG Bloggers Network

Rule of the Dice
To Dave, Phil, Graham and Danny... Thanks for creating the RPGBN

Stargazer's World
The RPG Bloggers Network won't die ...

Symptoms of Madness
Dave Chalker, I salute you

The Geek Gazette
Goodbye RPGBN, it has been fun

The Spirits of Eden
A Round of Applause

Questing's Readings - 25/10/09

It is one heck of a week with ups and downs. This will not be your regular Questing's Readings as nothing has caught my eye for this week for some reason. One reason could be that the events that had transpired this past week.

The whole RPG Bloggers Network debacle from last week has escalated and climax into an ugly controversy. After discussing among themselves for a few days, it has been decided that the administrators (Dave, Danny, Graham and Phil) will be stepping down from their respective positions and are looking for someone that can bear the torch.

They have delivered an ultimatum that if no proposals are forthcoming or to their liking by the 27th of October, the RPG Bloggers Network will be shut down.

Factions have emerged with their own differing views of how they would run the network but we will find out the future of the network on the 31st when the former committee will make their decision on who they will handover the network to.

But in the aftermath of this, Uncle Bear, Berin Kinsman, who was one of the contenders for the RPGBN withdrew his campaign and started something else. The Roleplaying Media Network is a social network very much like Facebook and 'Wizbook' but it is growing very rapidly and has seem to gain more traction with the members of the RPGBN.

It is not a feed aggregator and is not a replacement for the RPGBN but a place where members can interact through forums, groups and share videos and photos.

At the same time, there's still some good things going on between bloggers who are still giving back to the gaming industry. Zach from RPG Blog II had this idea of a Small Press Week where he and a few gathered bloggers went out to interivew, review and post about anything done by small game publishers and their games. You can read find a compilation of the links made during Small Press Week here.

Who knows in the future, there might be more Small Press Weeks in the future.

Questing with Kobold Quarterly 11

I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Kobold Quarterly 11, courtesy of Wolfgang Baur and I can safely say that it is a mixed bag of articles for anyone playing 3.x or 4E. Being someone that is interested in both, needless to say I was enjoying the best of both worlds.

Out of the 13 articles, I have selected several articles and separated them based on interest in 3.x/Pathfinder and 4E.

For 3.x/Pathfinder readers,
Howling Werebeasts and Ecology of the Vampire are articles that touches on the aspect of becoming a lycanthrope and being a vampire respectively. Both are great articles that talks about how one becomes their respective new forms and what sort of processes do they go through like the physical trauma experienced and how to live as one.

Although the mechanics are in 3.x, I would say that the main attraction of the articles is still the fluffy details. It really helps to get into the minds of a lycanthrope or vampire. Players will find it a useful guide on how they should roleplay as these characters and GMs are given a few pointers on how to handle them.

Spell-less Ranger is a Pathfinder variant for the ranger class as the title speaks for itself. This is probably the first Pathfinder incarnation of the same variant for 3.x in Unearthed Arcana.

Torture and Fear on the Tabletop is a very short and simple method of implementing the fear of torture into your 3.x game. It introduces three tables varying in the degree of torture implemented on the character with devious effects from straightforward damage (lethal and non-lethal) to permanent ability drains. The best part of this is that it makes the player roll the result rather than staining your hands with the pain you are inflicting on them.

For 4E readers,
Most articles I feel are crunch heavy and to be honest, I think the design of their crunch is not as strong as their 3.x/Pathfinder counterparts. In Wishing Well, they tried to put wish spells back into 4E but what they did in the end was just make it an abstract magic item. It is an interesting idea but I don't feel that it takes any radical steps to make them game-moving as wish spells had always been which cheapens the spell.

Monstrous Paragons are racial paragon paths for the minotaur, kobold bugbear and hobgoblin. I felt that the designers jumped the gun a little since the minotaur will be appearing in the Player's Handbook 3 and most likely be overlapped by the racial paragon paths that will be in that book.

What I do like about these paragon paths is that some of its features builds upon the racial powers or traits when you use them as playable races from the Monster Manual. One small nitpick for this article is that the color coded powers were a little confusing at first until you've read them properly.

Don't be fooled by the Mysteries of the Philosopher's Stone which is actually about an artifact that leads you to create the philosopher's stone with a ritual. This will be an interesting artifact to drop into your game with a heavy alchemist theme like Full Metal Alchemist.

For everyone,
The Howling City is an evenly fleshed out derro city (with a nice map) with 3.x and 4E stats but the next article that I'm going to recommend sold me for this issue.

Other than the crunch and fluff presented, I feel that the best article of the whole issue is Running Across the Screen where they asked 16 game designers/writers on various questions about gamemastering. You are not going to find any place else where they've gathered the most diverse selection of people from various companies and game systems that share their thoughts and style of gamemastering.

From Jason Bulhman (Paizo), Monte Cook (Malhavoc Press), Chris Perkins (Wizards), Mike Mearls (Wizards), James Jacobs (Paizo), Chris Pramas (Green Ronin) to Robin D. Laws (Laws of Good Gamemastering) and some folks from White Wolf, they talked about what is the job of the GM, running encounters and sandboxes. Reading this article just emphasizes the point that there is no 'one true way' and that every GM has their own style.


I've already reviewed 9 out of the 13 articles (not including the editorials) so if you find that this issue is going to fit your bill, you can find it at DriveThru RPG as a PDF for $5.99. Don't let the kobolds scare you.

Questing's Readings - 18/10/09

There's been some heavy (and sometimes heaty) discussions going on between bloggers of the RPG Bloggers Network on the evaluation criteria of accepting blogs into the network fold. You may have read this post by Chogwiz which sparked the discussion after a nasty retort by a blog that was rejected by the people who form the network.

I'm staying out of the whole politics mostly other than just being a spectator but I do commend to the founding members (Dave, Danny, Graham and Phil) for being very open to criticism (and flak) even if everyone had not been too happy with their transparency in running the network.

I really don't like to see these sort of things happening within such a noble endeavor but things like this happen when love and passion boils over into something less pretty.

I hope this mess gets sorted out soon and peacefully. Perhaps this will make the RPG Bloggers Network a stronger community because of it.

In the meantime, the highlight for this week's readings is a couple of post on giving narrative control to players.

Back to (Role-Playing Game) Basics
Hey, you got your story in my game!
A very charming way of introducing narrative control to your players. While I do the first methods introduced but I've never thought of giving out treasures when the players are on to something. I think the 4E treasure parcel system would work nicely with this idea.

Campaign Mastery
Ask the GMs: Giving Players The Power To Choose Their Own Adventures
A really great article on sandboxing and how to design rumors as plot hooks.

Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer
Learning a new RPG: a Step-by-Step Process
It is not very often that I read new RPG systems and the task can be pretty daunting at time. Although I might do things in a different order than what he suggested but it might help to speed up the learning process.

LivingDice
DM Resource: Warscholar.com
A useful link if you are researching for a wartime campaign. It has a timeline from the ancient to modern wars, information about equipments used and other military technologies.

Questing's Readings - 11/10/09

It seems to be a pretty slow week and there hasn't been plenty of good advice posts so I've been picking up some interesting posts rather than those that contain any real advice. Also, it's already been more than a week and I have yet to see a single post for this month's blog carnival. I guess Morality is a really hard question to answer.

Bard of Valiant
Elements of a Good Treasure Map [Advice]
Some useful questions to ask yourself when creating a treasure map. Honestly, I haven't give it much thought so this is quite helpful.

Campaign Mastery
Ask the GMs: “Let’s Split Up.” – “Good Idea, we can do more damage that way!”
Comprehensive recommendations on how to handle party split ups of various length and frequency.

The Literary GM: Expanding your resources for a better game
A list of different types of books that will be useful for DMs to have around. It looks pretty daunting and an overkill for me but it is helpful if you are running a sandbox campaign.

GamesTopica.Net
Reading D&D 4E: Concerning Combat
A dissection of the combat system in 4E and how does a rules-light and mainly narrative-based GM sees this. I do agree that with his points mostly that the 4E combat system can be a hit-or-miss for some GMs despite the credits given to it.

Jonathan Drain's D20 Source
A Wizard Did It: Patching 3E to 4E Continuity
There has been some notable changes between 3.x and 4E. Here's a a list of narrative explanations that could justify the mechanic changes if you are transiting your 3E campaign to 4E.

RetroRoleplaying
Three Solitaire Role-Playing Games Using Regular Playing Cards
Some really interesting links to card-based solitaire RPGs. I haven't check them out yet but the idea that these kind of games exist is intriguing.

RPGCentric
Update on Burnt Offerings: "We Be Goblins, Ye Be Food!"
A school in Portland, Oregon is doing a play based on the first Pathfinder module. This is just some little information about the school, the students and the roles that will be appearing on the play. I would really like to see the play.

Theo Dudek, Ultimate Game Master
Gamer Outing: Robin Williams
Some first hand accounts of Robin Williams's gaming activity.

The Spirits of Eden
Review: Jones DND Soda
Wyatt being a connoisseur and doing some soda tasting reviews on a range of D&D themed sodas. Want to know how Illithid Brain Juice taste like?

Uncle Bear
I Have a Home Ga,e Why Do I Need a Game Club?
Several reasons how networking can help build a gaming community. Although not everyone seems to agree with him but I would be taking this as a reference.

Burning Question - RPG Books: Precious Gems or Just Dead Trees?

I had just recently receive my hardcopy of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook a couple weeks ago after waiting over a month for it to arrive. Since I bought it though, I haven't even opened the wrapping around it. This is probably the most extreme case of how I treat my books but when I do get a new book, it is put into caring hands.

I don't put them on dusty surfaces, wash my hands before reading them, try not to crack the book too wide and I'm hesitant to even fold a page that I'm reading. One of my players share this trait of mine saying that books are too previous. To him, each book is also part of a collection that needs to be well taken care of.

Conversely, my brother doesn't give any respect to the dead trees. He cracks, rubs his boggers off the pages and does other things when reading the book that would make a book lover commit murder. To him, a book is just a book and doesn't deserve any kind of special treatment.

So I decided to ask this question to other gamers and see how do they treat their books.

RPG Books: Precious Gems or Just Dead Trees?

Here are some quotes of those who believe that they are gems.

precious gems, some of my books are kept in sealed plastic. I still have some books from the early 80's with little sign of wear - jonathanshade (via Twitter)

Precious gems. Honestly, I treat all of my books that way. I don't write or highlight, and do my best to keep them in pristine condition. If there's any damage, it was usually there when I bought the book. - karlindel (via ENWorld)

I treat them well. I don't write in them, I don't bend them, or toss them around. I treat all my stuff well it's just habit. I like nice things. - Crothian (via ENWorld)

Some were taught that books are not only gems but sacred.

I've been instilled since a young age to treat all books as sacrosanct, e.g. not write in them, fold pages, etc - asmor (via Twitter)

Heh, my mom's a librarian. She'd whack me with a shoe if she saw me writing in my books. I've always treated my books with a heavy dose of respect. - Hussar (via ENWorld)

There are gamers who believe in treating their books well but are not above writing on them.

All of my books are precious gems to me! I keep them all in the best shape I can. I only write my name in the books I know other players in the group have to keep them seperated. - DEP (via ENWorld)

Well, you can definitely tell which of my books have seen heavy use. I also don't mind making notes or applying errata right into the books.

But they're still precious to me in a way. So far I've never thrown away a single one even if they're in tatters. - Jhaelen (via ENWorld)

If a book is broken then fix it.

I will admit that I do write in my books, but that is because I treat them as working books; I treat them them very well otherwise (people are often impressed with how well the bindings of my older rpgs are holding up, but I am a Master of Marginalia. Must be the medievalist in me. - Wombat (via ENWorld)

I don't treat em special. If they start falling apart, Glue, staples, wire, drills and duct tape will be used to keep them in functional condition. - frankthedm (via ENWorld)

On the other end of the spectrum, books are just dead trees.

I freely write, highlight, and annotate them. I carry them around on occasion, and they get banged up. I don't really worry about them being damaged, until they start falling apart.

More or less, I treat them like I treated my college textbooks... except I open them more. - Obryn (via ENWorld)

And can have multipurposes...

dead trees. non water proof dead trees. My rpg books have been coloring books for my son lately. - kaeosdad (via Twitter)

I treat them like pooh-pooh.

Write notes in the margin, do math in the margins, highlight important parts, fold pages for place holds, put sticker tabs on all the chapter pages for easy access. I even used a book to coral a spilled drink from splashing over the table onto the floor/rug once or twice. I mean it's just a book, not a newborn. - Woas (via ENWorld)

I know I won't be lending him any of my books. But overall, I think it's important to strike a balance to how we see our books. It's good to take care of them to maintain their fine condition but it is meant to be used so don't be too cautious.

This guy gives a good idea.

I'm generally a bit anal when it comes to my RPG books. Most of my books are still in excellent condition. The two exceptions to this is the Magic Item Compendium, which has slightly frayed corners and my Shackled City Adventure Path hardcover which has started to wear along most of the edges of the hardcover. I think this damage has come as a result of them travelling in my backpack (the SCAP book has seen a lot of travel with me as I prep on the train to and from work). I have considered buying another SCAP hardcover to keep on my shelf since this first one has really started to get trashed but I haven't been able to justify the cost to myself just yet.

I never write in my RPG book, not even just putting my name on the inside of the front cover. I've used post-it-notes and post-it-flags in them before though. At the table I'm happy for players to use my books as I like to see them get used. However if they've just been eating something greasy or sticky I won't hesitate to ask them to wash their hands first. I do ask nicely though!

I am very, very reluctant to lend my books out to anyone due to a couple of bad experiences. When I lent my 2E AD&D core rulebooks to a friend back when I was a teenager they were returned with 2 of the spines cracked. On another occasion a few years later I lent a friend the Kingdom of Kalamar Campaign Setting. The spine of that book isn't quite right either now. As a result I almost never lend out my books. If I do I make sure the person borrowing them knows of my previous experiences with lending my books and that I would be very unhappy if I got books back in that condition again.

Overall though I don't mind if my books get damaged due to wear and tear from using them. I just try and take precautions so that they stay in excellent condition for as long as possible. - Olaf the Stout (via ENWorld)

Thanks to all who took the time to answer the question but let's get more answers.

What about you? How do you treat your books?

Questing's Readings - 4/10/09

October is Halloween Month.

Although, this month's blog carnival has nothing to do with ghost stories or other horror themes, it does raise significant questions about what justifies our own and our PC's actions.

Bring any thoughts that you might have on morality in this month's blog carnival hosted by the Games of State.

This week is a great week if you are stumped for ideas. There are a couple of series to be looking out if your creative juices are running low to help you find inspirations or ways to overcome creative barriers.

For DMs, there's also a couple of post which talks a little about DM responsibility as a reminder. But the most must-read for this week is an interview with Robin Laws on a new investigative system that sounds really interesting.

abstract XP
Coming up with original adventure ideas (Part 2)
Original adventure ideas (Part 3)
Ideas for original adventures (Part 4)
Adventure ideas (Part 5)
Generating adventure ideas (Part 6)
Adventure ideas (Part 7)

A series on where to find sources of ideas for creating adventures. The series is still running on the idea gathering part but it should be interesting to see how to weave these ideas into an adventure.

Dungeon's Master
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
An outline of responsibilities of the DM that I agree with but might want to add on a few of my own.

Gaming Brouhaha
More from D&D Camp
A sharing of what happened in a D&D camp in 1982. Reading this makes me feel that I could experience something like this when I was a kid.

Jonathan Drain's D20 Source
When Things Go Wrong
When things goes wrong, it's time for the DM to step up. Here are some simple things to keep in mind when you are in the hot seat to solve a problem.

Musings of the Chatty DM
Creativity and the RPG Mind: Part 1, Introduction
The start of a new series based on a book on creativity and learning what sort of barriers gamers face. It is a very strong introduction and it would certainly be very interesting to see how this series develops.

Stargazer's World
Robin D. Laws interview
A very long interview with Robin Laws about the GUMSHOE system and some bits of his RPG writing career.