Change in preference for D&D edition

This was done as a check on survey responses for D&D Research Wizards to see which of two survey blocks was more representative. Gathered in September and November 2020, it seems odd that the editions preference should be so different.

Short answer - more recent block B is more representative. First block A had a strangely high group of 3.5e respondents within it compared to the understanding of the general player population. Using Roll20 player data as reported by Orr Reports we can see the shift in preference for different editions over time. This also happened during a large increase in players on Roll20 so we need to verify this.

Review: Thousand Thousand Islands

I went on a jag almost exactly a year ago, looking for RPG sources I would not normally pick up and followed the whisperings of something truly remarkable until I found the Thousand Thousand Islands. Then I ordered everything I could get my hands on.

Review: MÖRK BORG

To quote the site "Pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy OSR RPG about miserable bastards doing their best/worst in a bleak, dying world." Its arrival has made such a seismic clang it reached as far as the Guardian.

I backed the kickstarter because it looked cool and I got a snootful of loot, see below.

Hailed as "the most dangerous tabletop role playing game" I love the tear off pad for character sheets - it is a beautiful detail to emphasis 'do not get too attached to your character, life is cheap'. The system is a great, stripped down d20 based one. The summary of the rules on the inside back cover fill an A5 double spread - everything you need can be printed on a single A4.

But whats it actually like? Well for me, gorgeous, evocative art and a great set up for 'everything you need in one book'. I suggest it would be tricky if it was the first ever RPG product you picked up as there is no 'what do I do with this' but for anyone with a basic handle on the past-time I think there are good lessons here for paring back a game to be all muscle and sinew, nothing wasted. A fast, mean, predator of a game.

The blacker than the blackest black ethos is one I am down for but my current table likes things slightly more genteel and less gruesome, so we are waiting until the Corona-times pass. I think it will be excellent for one shot, high-kinetic games and look forward to giving it a shot.

Even without playing is though I adore the up-welling of content around it and some of the resources to help Game Masters and Players navigate MÖRK BORG are really useful no matte what you play. I particularly love DNGN Maker which is a great location creator when you want an evocative dungeon in a hurry.

Should you want more infor - another review of this "dark and bloody pinnacle" on Gaming Trend.

Results #1 from D&D Research Wizards

The Tabletop RPG Research Survey 2020 - 2021 Results Update #1 shows a first pass on results from their surveys - some interesting outputs and some verifications of things we might have expected.

The geographic balance of responses looks similar to other surveys - 96% from North America, Europe and Australia + New Zealand. It looks like a slightly stronger Europe response compared to other surveys seen and a lower response from the South America community (the Brazilian community appears abesent for whatever reason).

Looking at the European breakdown we see there is a lot of variation in the response from different countries between surveys. The UK is consistently the largest European presence in surveys but the variation between other countries shows an element of luck is involved in whether or not people respond - see the strong response from Germany and Ireland to this survey compared to others and lower response from Denmark. This suggests to me that the European scene is more atomised with pockets of the hobby existing with not so many interconnections.

The age profile of the respondents is in line with 'new generation' players - as confirmed by 92% playing 5e currently.

Very, very interesting to me is the response to the 3 pillars of TTRPG - combat remains flat across all age groups but the division between Roleplay vs Exploration is very strongly age dependent - this is super interesting - implying older gamers are in for the puzzles and the lore and younger ones are more interested in the chance to roleplay.

I am looking forward to seeing what outputs are gleaned from processing all the interviews.

NPC motivations to meet player role-play preference

tl:dr - popularity of RP suggest more easy NPC motivator/goal generators would be handy.

The various polls that say that for ~50% of people, their favourite pillar of TTRPGS is roleplaying, ~33% is exploration / problem-solving and ~17% is combat imply that the arguments we hear about systems and editions of games are overly focused on their combat systems.

From this great list of "Ten Challenges I Love in Games" only 2 of 10 options are combat - 1 is fighting, 1 is evading. 3 are variations on cold 'problem-solving' which the players not their character need to solve and 5 are role-playing - more or less matching to survey responses.

The question I would pull out of this is what sources can we lean on to meet this apparent large chunk of the game? D&D carries a great deal of combat system with it - it did grow out of wargames after all. While 5e DMG has NPC ideals, bonds and flaws (pp90-91) and schemes and methods for villains (pp94-95) these are a little light for people who do not want to conquer the world. I like the NPC motivations dice-drop sheet from Rolang or you get 'instincts' and 'obligations' from this NPC generator tool.

My personal approach is to quickly get RP hooks for NPCs is to tag them to their daily activities if there is no over-riding plot hook and then use a factional or 'fronts' style approach. So I will know what 'petty nobles of the Duchy' or 'major craft guilds' or 'good-aligned temples' are generally doing and what this front thinks of various things so these can be subbed in for any given NPC. The party goals table in 5e DMG pp72-73 can be used to generate faction goals though these may be far removed from the aims of an individual NPC. If the minor nobility has a goal of 'hunting a specific monster' then perhaps it will be the topic of conversation at a ball or the obsession over who killed the larges one last season rather than a thing they are all actively doing just now. Once you have that hook, pp244-245 of 5e DMG has a framework for Social interaction assuming everyone starts at indifferent unless there is reason to say otherwise.

Personally I like the 5 steps of the old 3.5e NPC attitudes (pp72 in the 3.5e PHB) which adds unfriendly (between hostile and indifferent) and helpful above friendly. Particularly where weight is being put on role-play and potentially achieving goals without combat, I think this is a helpful increase in granularity. The table has detail but generally DC 15 for Charisma/Diplomacy can bump attitude a step, DC 25 to bump it two steps. The actions that correspond to the attitudes are a neat cheat sheet to help manage face to face encounters without having to think too much on 'what would this NPC be willing to do at this point'.

The other two dials I tend to use is a) how informed the NPC is so whether what they know is close to reality or filtered through fourth-hand tavern talk and b) how much they care about what is going on which will manifest as how intensely they react to things; will they argue their factions point or just shrug and ignore if someone tries to needle them. I have not formalised this as a table, but I tend to block is as a d20 with 1-5 as 'low' 6-15 as 'medium' and 16-20 as 'high' whether that is information or engagement.

Going deeper on all this, I think sources from writing that discuss personality conflicts could be a useful addition to reading lists as sources to loot for NPC drivers and motivations.

7-step session prep in action

Have deliberately left using my '7-step single page prep' late to drive urgency:

Step 0 - open the toolkit - Excel sheet with all my tables and models, powerpoint with realm maps, powerpoint with the palace layout. Sources for all reference I will go into anon. Set out the papers - session sheets, blank, reference stack.

Step 1 - set the time - no problem; work out weather for the next day since we are starting in the evening. If in doubt I use the random weather generator here.

Step 2 - copy over all the events. While doing this a number of events will compress to just tags back to detailed notes on previous sheet. Any obvious extra ones in mind will be added now. Next is to review what happened in the part 5 & 6 of previous week - what happened and where the PCs plan to go. Each of these gets either a tag back to the relevant source or will be expanded on now, envisioning that the PCs will get to them. What did the players flag as the things they would likely go do this week. As I spot these gaps I do a quick fill out into block 4.

Step 3 - Look at the timeline and think how things may play out. What if the party zips through or skips certain activities; what is the next thing they are likely to end up at? In this case the curtain goes up on the immediate aftermath of a tournament where the players did well - lots of glory but zeroed out on resources.

Step 4 - in this case I ended up with some of the scantest notes I have done in a while - a list of additional guests at the feast, some thought in how to do the mechanics for a big tournament event, and a 'what everyone thought' of the main events from the last session. 45mins all told. Tools I actually used: my trusty family tree for the noble house we are playing ( a big excel table ), my calendar to check the names of days, Google (for names in relevant culture) and Ulraunts Guide to Acheron to fluff out a hook that did not get used. That was it, feel like I got away lightly.

Step 5 - Of 13 hooks that were on the list to start the game, 4 got used in a 4.5 hour session; 2 major sections were ad-libbed where the players pulled on hooks from major NPCs, 1 light combat encounter where a clutch 'calm emotions' from the bart pretty much won the day.

Step 6 - "at table" - after we called the end of session but still on the call we booked the next session and I got 7 things the players were planning to go after next. At this point I will also round out the notes I took at table; expanding the 'aide memoire' scribbles; adding names, noting down things I made up on the fly.

Step 7 - I will not try to work up implications immediately; usually I try to down tools for a while after a session. If I do not get the chance to do it until next sessions prep starts then this is the first things to do. Perhaps it ought to be step zero?

Swamping the DM-ing apprenticeship model with players

There was a twitter thread mentioning the passing of tribal knowledge within D&D players. The key point was that many assumptions are not made explicit in the guides as it is assumed that the players are embedded within play groups, learning to DM from other DMs with very few DMs starting from the books alone. This can no longer be sustained as the high growth following the release of D&D 5e has changed the paradigm.

From previous post on the rate of new joiners I thought to try and estimate how many new joiners might have been expected to join based on the long run trajectory from the past 30 years.

If the trend of the present day OSR players can be taken as broadly representative of the long-run trend extending through to today then we can make an estimate of what players would have joined if the long run trends had been sustained - approx 20% of the current population.

This suggests that the need to transmit the craft of dungeon mastering must be transmitted through different channels than the apprenticeship model. The original thread suggested this needs to be better DMs guides but I suspect we may see a more multi-channel approach such as watching actual plays such as Dimension 20 and Critical Role, DM guides such as Matt Colvilles Running the Game series or finding assistance in peer communities on Discord or forums such as Reddit or in wise writings on blogs.

I think calls for 'DMs to do more work' and accept more people to their tables are misplaced - DMs cannot do the work required even if they turned their tables into factory farms. Not every player wants to DM, not everone will be local to someone who could teach them even if they wanted. Far better if the conditions are created to allow tables to spontaneously generate. Let a thousand flowers bloom. It worked for me.

Sources are:
OSR Gateway Survey (2019, N=2764)
R/DnDNext 5e Survey (2019, N=745)
NB: link to PDF
Dungeons and Dragons and Data: The Demographics of Players and Their Impact on Character Creation and Game Play (2019, N=1130)