Cyclopeatron wrote an interesting post t’other day regarding the fact that blog posts which are the equivalent of op-ed commentary tend to attract more comments than blog posts containing creative content.
To a large extent this makes sense: Commentary posts inherently serve as the opening salvo in a potential conversation, inviting responses which either disagree with that commentary or extrapolate upon it. Creative content, on the other hand, doesn’t have an easy response: If you liked it, there’s not much to be said beyond “nice” (and that seems pointless enough you’ll probably skip it). If you didn’t like it, you’ll probably feel no particular compulsion to be a jerk by saying “you suck”. (A critique might be useful, but if it wasn’t invited you’re probably wasting your time and likely coming across as a jerk again.)
But the point Cyclopeatron makes is that this has a real effect on what bloggers write: The only real payment we get is the social validation from seeing people talk about what we wrote. When commentary posts see so much more activity than creative posts, we’re being strongly encouraged to write commentary posts instead of creative posts.
Despite this predilection, I agree with Cyclopeatron that the RPG blogosphere is a happier and healthier place when it’s filled up with awesome creative ideas. Towards that end, I propose Alexander’s Rule:
If you use something awesome from a blog in your game, go back and tell the creator about it.
That might mean taking fifteen seconds to write a comment. (“Hey. I ran the Dungeon Crawl of Ultimate Doom last night and it killed three PCs. Nice work.”) It might mean writing up a full session report, posting it to your own blog, and sending the original creator a trackback or link. Or anything inbetween.
Lemme take a second to practice what I’m preaching. Let me just stick a little spoiler protection for my players (who should read no further here)…
MY PLAYERS SHOULD STOP READING
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been keying a hexcrawl. This was supposed to take a couple of days, but due to some poor decision-making on my part I quickly discovered I had bitten off more than I could chew. (Pro Tip: 16 hexes x 16 hexes = 256 hexes. 256 hexes = A lot of bloody hexes.)
When my creativity ran dry, I turned to the random tables of OD&D, AD&D, and Judges Guild to spur it. And when those random tables had been reduced to beating a dead horse, three particular resources helped me reach the finish line: First, the maps and adventures of Dyson Logos. Second, similarly great stuff from A Rust Monster Ate My Sword. And, finally, the collected annals of the One Page Dungeon Contest.
I’ve got a lengthy tale from the table scheduled to be posted in a couple of days that will delve into one of the scenarios I used from Dyson Logos in more detail, but for the sake of this post let me share some details on what happened when I used the Crypt of Luan Phien a couple of hours ago.
CRYPT OF LUAN PHIEN
This one-page dungeon features multiple sections which rotate independently, constantly re-arranging themselves into baffling new configurations. Take a second to look at the original map:
And now take a peek at the maps my players drew this evening:
You can click on the images to view them at a larger size.
To help you orient yourself, the letters on my player’s map are essentially the sequence in which they explored the tomb. The letters correspond to the numbered key of the original adventure as follows: A = 1, B = 2, C = 8, D = the trap counter-clockwise from 13, E = 7, F = 12, G = the midpoint of the tunnel through the center section, H = 13, I = empty room clockwise from 13, J = 6.
A few notes from my implementation of the module:
- I placed the crypt into a cairn hill (of which there are many scattered throughout this particular region).
- I used the random wilderness encounter tables from OD&D to determine the exact guardians of this cairn, which turned out to be 12 ghouls. I placed these in area 3 (“–and monsters!”) and split them into two squads. One of the squads remained with the treasure, the other exited this section of the crypt once the hallways started rotating (and, thus, gave them a path of egress).
- The design of the crypt lended itself well to this: When the hallways moved, the ghouls would move into the section. (I kept track of their location by placing little mini-d6’s on the map so that the ghouls could just spin around as I turned the paper. The d6’s, tangentially, were table favors from my brother’s wedding.)
- The first several times the corridors rotated, the timing coincidentally worked out so that a PC named Marrow happened to be touching the stone wall of a dead end each time. For quite a while they were convinced that the crypt was cursed so that the touch of an elf would have no effect (since the elf in the party would touch the wall and nothing would happen), with theories alternating between “it’s a trap for elves” and “elves are meant to be here”.
- The ghouls eventually encountered the party because they rotated right to them: The corridor had started rotating while the PCs were split across sections, and the party member taking up the rear only barely managed to jump through. With his heart beating fast, he turned to the others to mention that they might want to tighten up their formation… and thus missed the half dozen ghouls who rotated into view a couple seconds later.
- I also randomly generated the treasure. Much of this remains in area 3, but one piece of jewelry (a silver necklace with finely-wrought elven runes and studded with green alexandrites worth 5,000 gp) was placed upon a mumified dragon’s head in the trophy room (area 13).
- The trophy room was dominated by the heads of orcs which had been mounted on the wall. There was also a curious wicker man in the corner. This opened to reveal a construction similar to an iron maiden, with thick, piercing thorns pointing inward.
- Within the wicker man there was a strange figure which seemed sculpted from twigs. The players hypothesized that it was a demonstration (“this is what you put in here … and then it will hurt … a lot”).
- It’s actually a full-grown (albeit dead) twig blight from The Sunless Citadel. Although influenced by the norska cairn traditions of the region, I’ve decided that this particular tomb is actually elvish and ties into the doomed dragon cult which was once based out of the Citadel. (At some point my players may notice the complete absence of any elves in this region of the world.)
Damn it Justin, *not* reading is not a particular skill of mine. (I managed, but I’ll be twitchy for a good 20 minutes now…)
That is really all I ask from people who use any of my contrubutions.
Alexandrian Rule is a great idea of course, and only common courtesy. I think there are deeper problems and better solutions, however, concerning how the OSR can take full advantage of its constituents’ creativity in the blogoverse. Useful methods for reference, access, and credit are all basically undeveloped.
Well, that’s just awesome. I’m not running any home games right now (and my online PbP game is the Kingmaker Adventure path from Paizo), but otherwise, I’d comment on how much Id be using your stuff. That spells post from yesterday is just plain awesome.
Courtesy is a missing factor in today’s society, on and off the internet. This is evident not just in how the RPG blog network reacts differently to creativity and op-ed content, but also to how such commentary is received.
In many cases, the blogs themselves are just shout-outs for their own work, hoping to engage conversation with their own sychophantic fans, whereas even raising a question or criticism that there might be a flaw or error in the article or opinion will have such people ostracised as a troll, however constructive it may be.
This opinion will then be carried across to other comments, regardless of their actual content – as the sycophantic fans will either percieve you as being for or against their “God” – that is, the person who’s blog you are reading.
With this sort of atmosphere, what is the point in commenting on any sort of creative post? As you state, there is little point in just saying nice – although comments on how you are using the material are often desirable. Any perception of adapting or adding too said content are often deemed to be criticism of the original creative effort, and often treated just as bad as criticising an idea, whether it’s raising concerns, acknowledging merits but realising it’s not complete, or pointing out that the work does not do what it is being claimed to do.
For example, Chimera RPG recently announced a change from using absolute XP to an advancement check in the following article: http://www.welshpiper.com/chimera-number-five/ While I had a few concerns about this, one in particular stood out in Erin’s post – he claimed the change solved the conundrum of when to dole out XP. What he had actually done, however, was put a definite answer – and answer that already existed under the rules for XP – and then claimed that it was the change that provided the solution, rather than the definitive answer. I commented, and proved otherwise – after all, a lot of what was being considered for the Achievement check was equally applicable for absolute XP – and all I got for my efforts was condemnation and disrespect for criticising Erin.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had trouble on there though – Erin even went so far as to write about being heckled by trolls on his forum, as seen here: http://www.welshpiper.com/limitations-met/ The thing is there weren’t trolls – there was just a single “troll” – me. My crime: I dared to question and criticise Erin over the Initiative rules in Chimera RPG, after something was brought up by my group I said I’d ask him about. I made the mistake of mentioning other games, including D20, and having him going off on an anti-D20 rant at me. I mentioned other games, a variety of systems, but apparently I was being disrespectful because I questioned him and criticised him, when “nobody else” was having any issues. Add in his sychophantic fans who do literally treat him like God, who also labelled me as a troll, simply for questioning and criticising elements of the system rather than believing it was perfect because Erin designed it.
Not all blogs are like this – but quite a few are, and with that in mind, is it really worth commenting on anything creative? It can be just as bad even when the designer themselves aren’t involved – and it’s just the fans taking part in the discussion. Most reasoned discourse is long gone when people go into these things assuming you don’t have any respect, and therefore treat you without any respect.
That said, I try to comment when I use anything creative from someone else’s blog, but I don’t use much these days. Instead I just comment so that I can absorb and develop my skills, and hope that maybe my comments help others develop theirs. I don’t do it on everything – I don’t have the time, which is a damn shame.
I approve thoroughly of this rule.
I like it.
As it happens, I used your “Halls of the Mad Mage” in a game a while back. The after action report for the two sessions in the Halls can be read here, in the form of a list of PCs and NPCs from the game with notes describing events that happened in the sessions.
I placed the Halls below a wizard’s manse in “the rainy city,” where my home campaign is set. I tailored the trappings of the dungeon to the wizard’s vainglorious personality, but otherwise ran it with little modification beyond the usual improvisation of details and NPC actions.
The players turned some items from the halls to profitably clever use in follow up sessions. One thing they did was remove one of the Moebius portraits and use it as an escape route/ad hoc “bag of holding” in a convoluted heist. The after action report for the heist is in a following post, “Personalities of the Rainy City — Part X.”
When I read this:
“If you didn’t like it, you’ll probably feel no particular compulsion to be a jerk by saying ‘you suck.’ (A critique might be useful, but if it wasn’t invited you’re probably wasting your time and likely coming across as a jerk again.)”
I wonder if that means that reflecting on the content here is coming across as a jerk if it includes anything besides praise, no matter how many caveats and qualifiers surround it. One of the things I like about this site is thought-provoking content, and reflecting on it can either clarify my understanding or possibly trigger further content. I figured that’s valuable. Or, maybe, not. Hm.
@Rich: Thanks! Awesome stuff! I’m really digging the Rainy City.
@Andrew: Nah. I welcome critique. Somewhere in the archives around here you’ll find me saying that upon occasion. But I’ve certainly had my head bit off enough times (even when critique has been welcomed) that I can believe people think twice before commenting on something.
Thanks, Justin. I’m nice to hear that you like the setting!
After reading the bit about “catch” instead of a baseball league, I contacted a bunch of people who play my home grown system and built a list of 12 who are interested in ad hoc dungeon crawls. This is much expanded from the 5 players I allow to play in the “league.” Combining that with the mega dungeon reframe and the role of wandering monsters, I have a whole new play style in many regards.
I think I’ve noted similar in comments in the past, but that’s the most direct benefit I’ve gotten. My players appreciate the break from byzantine plots and dastardly long-term foes with brilliant schemes–they can get bite sized violence filled gleeful sprees with minimal long-term investment. And I get to play with my settings in new ways. It’s great to reverse from building my plots around player goals to building settings that players explore that don’t care about them at all…
[…] on Facebook about 4th Edition or preserving gaming information on wikipedia, the advocation of Alexander’s Rule, or simple commenting on the state of the industry that will result in is some of the greatest […]
I regularly use your three clue rule, definately helps with gamers who get distracted easily. Other than that, for the most part pretty much everything you say is what I would say, except better expressed than I can manage.
I think there is a definate meme right now going through the gaming community that I don’t particularly agree with that has been making RPG’s unfun for me, and it’s nice to know there are a few others that don’t agree with it either.
Looking at the Crypt map, I’m quite sure that, as printed, the passage that got labeled “G” will never connect rooms 12 and 13. If the central disc never rotated, it would work, but as it is, with the central disc rotating 1/8 turn CCW and the middle disc rotating 1/8 turn CW, they move right past each other.
If the central disc is made fixed, though, that fixes the problem entirely. Also, it is convenient for Luan Phien, whose central resting place is now undisturbed.
According to this rule: I will be using house rule “Shields shall be splintered” that i read on your blog. And I am probably sometime in future planning to run “E(X)” system. also as written here.
Hi all,
First off–great idea! I can’t wait to run this adventure for my players. X-D
To the creator/anyone who’s run this adventure, how did you pull it off? Did you only roleplay it (i.e. only describe the rooms/what’s happening, never drawing maps)? Did you only draw one room at a time, never showing adjoining hallways?
I imagine you can’t just put a blown up version of the map down on the table… they’ll immediately know that the dungeon is a series of rotating circles (and I’m guessing half the fun is getting them to figure out that’s what’s going on).
Any help would be appreciated!
-Bryan
PS–I printed out the map, cut out each section, glued them down to separate cardboard circles, and attached them in the middle with a brass pull apart push pin so I can keep accurate track of the rotations behind my DM screen. Seems like it will do the trick!
I relied on verbal descriptions. If you use a battle map for combat, I recommend only drawing the immediate area of conflict (for exactly the reasons you site).
I also recommend the push pin diorama behind your screen. It’s the only way you won’t mess up the rotations. 😉
Well, I’ve been lurking here for the past month and the reasons I don’t comment are basically because sometimes I don’t think I have anything meaningful to add other than “that’s nice/great/awesome” and because I never thought it was important for the author. But I do find a lot on the Gamemastery 101 incredibly useful and insipiring, preparing a game session has been so burdensome for me that I stopped playing for 8 years, and the reason I had such a bad time is because I was prepping plots and a lot of useless and unnecesary background only to find them completely derailed once the players touch them. After reading this series, I can’t wait to create a scenario because now I have tools and specific enough guidance on how to do it. So your blog has been priceless!
Now that I know it’s important, I will write back once I have used any those tools and report how they went on the gaming table.
Wow, a rotating dungeon. It has so much potential, but I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner!
Alexander’s Rule: Want to thank you for everything in Gamemastery’s 101. Between the three clue rule, don’t prep plot, and the node design, it has made writing adventures so much easier for my games. Currently doing urban fantasy, and prep time has substantially decreased from the past using the advice and tools outlined in all your articles. It doesn’t feel like a huge burden to come up with a game anymore, I can take a simple idea and convert it into various locations and people, clues, and the adventure tends to write itself. So thank you!
Thank you, Marcus! That’s very sweet!
Well I’ll follow the rule and comment then !
I put my player through that exact dungeon not so long ago, only it was at the bottom of an old keep belonging to one of the PC’s clan that had been taken over by a green Slaad trying to ascent to a grey one.
The walls were covered in colorful oozes (things like the yellow one makes you age super fast, the blue one makes you grow sentient deformed limbs, so on. They had met a crazy Druid who sang them a song about most of those effects long before knowing what it referred to) and they drew somewhat similar maps than yours, before deciding they were totally lost and we then went full theater of the mind. They seemed to have a blast running through that and getting betrayed at the last moment by their surprise guest friend playing a covert green Slaad trying to use the adventurers to steal the other slaad’s work and ascend himself.
Thank you for your content, I’ll soon run your tales from the loop mystery, would love to read more about the mysteries presented in the book as well as yours.
Following Alexander’s Rule: thanks so much for all the cool content and theory! I ended up starting out by using your Dragon Heist remix and got hooked (especially since with the node-based and 3-clue techniques, prepping wasn’t nearly as time-consuming as it was in the past).
In the spirit of the Rule, I’ve enjoyed a lot of this blog and found it useful in my games but in particular I was inspired to start an open table megadungeon campaign that’s been trucking along for the past several months now.
Hey there !
Just to say : I use most of your GM tips. Node based design and hexcrawl saved my games.
Thank you for your hard work and your creativity.
Justin,
I like a lot of your work, even the stuff I don’t like. (What? Let me explain…)
I like a lot of your work in world building and GMing tips because they align with my own 40+ years in RPGs and most of that GMing.
I prefer sandboxes and player agency over railroads. I prefer NPCs, leaders, groups, enemies, etc. to have their own viewpoint, resources, knowledge, strategies and tactics, and long term goals. The confluence of these groups with player encounters leads to the players or the NPCs engaging in some respect to one another. I can often have probabalistic notions in my head about what the likely outcomes are, but players are the wrecking ball of all set piece plots and 3 act railroads. The KODT cartoons about the party fighting the ‘Dread Gazebo’ aren’t so far from reality at one point or another for most GMs.
I like to sketch out what the major actors (or the actors likely to be in the area the players are in) will be looking to accomplish and what resources and I then imagine a few possible events players could become aware of and/or take part in (unwittingly in some cases at the start).
From that, we see what the players do. Sometimes they head right off on a mission they have come up with, sometimes they engage the hooks but in novel and imaginative (or blazingly obtuse) ways, and sometimes they fall within the standard predictive model I have having known the humans running the characters for decades.
It is a process of throwing up some barrage balloons and see if they want to have a go at them and see how that all unfolds.
i also appreciate greatly the conversations about nations, about currency, about encumberance, about XP tracking or money tracking, about how governments and nobilities are constructed etc. because although they don’t provide me with ‘drop in content’ (which for me is usually too tied to a particular set of mechanics and setting that doesn’t match mine), instead they contribute a lot of grist for my own world building.
My game world started from a map I got from a friend who had bought it at a garage sale. The original author was ?? and his art style (for back in the 1980s) was great – he duplicated Greyhawk original map iconography and added (not complete) 6 more pages to the Greyhawk map. It was so beautiful, I knew it needed a campaign to go with it.
So I’ve been world building different continents and settings (I think we’re onto about the 7th or 9th campaign setting in the world now). Taking the fascinating thoughts about how to think about and create messy, untidy and very thus realistic parts of my world is a treasure to me.
As to when to speak or what to speak:
I try to point out counterpoints or different degrees of complexity with respect for contributions from others including the original creator. I try to point out the parts I like too. That’s harder for me not because I don’t want to do that, but because I sort of assume the positive.
It’s a legacy of me being a computer software guy who worked on too many legacy systems – arrive at the new client, immediately ignore everything working well and beautiful, spot the horrific bits that are broken, understand those guts out so you can fix them or change them without screwing new stuff up, and know how many ways your fix can go all pear shaped. I didn’t even know I did it for years then eventually friends had the kindness or frustration enough to say they felt I was negative. I never felt like I was, but when they traced the pattern for me, I acknowledged it. It was my work method of looking at any great parts, mentally saying ‘that’s all good’ and then ‘this other part has some concerns though’ and moving into ‘identify, analyze, craft repair or suggest a scrapping in favour of an entire new thing’.
Now I’m aware of it, I try more often to lead with compliments and the positive I see and value so anything else I say is in the vein of ‘for consideration’ and with the intention of providing options and aspects I see that others may not yet. It’s really just me trying to help improve anything a creator does because that’s what I like to do – try to help.
I also be sure to show gratitude for the efforts I agree with and will enjoy, but also the things I disagree with or even the things that just aren’t of interest to me… because the creator (Justin in this case) took the time to produce something and put it out there and somebody will like it and use it or get something out of it. And if not every article hits my areas of interest, many do, so the others are maybe good for other readers so I thank Justin for all his contributions (and the contributing commenters who add good thoughts and useful additional grist for the mental mill).
@Da’Vane:
Sorry you’ve felt picked at and victimized. I can only say two things: The anonimity aspect of the net makes for less social care in how people speak and any sense of a bunch of folks of similar thoughts leads to an anti-conformal animosity.
I also know sometimes what I say from the best intentions read differently for others because of how I say them. That’s something we all ought to guard against. If you come off strongly against something without first offering sufficient praise for the parts you liked, then you might come off as hostile and a harmful griefer more than a constructive commenter. I find myself having to watch to champion the positive and to cache my counterpoints in a goodly amount of respectful language because if you are someone who has strong thoughs on something and a desire to talk about them can make you seem pushy (I mean the proverbial you, not you particularly but I know I have been like that at times).
My best advice is be lavish with praise, considered and sparing with criticism. Most people here creating aren’t making money directly and they have had the courage to try something new and to share it. That effort, however it turns out, deserves some respect and kindness.
It’s okay to have counterpoints, just make sure gratitude and kindess come in equal measure if you want to come across well. I know it helps me to do that.
After all, ideally, none of us want to upset others or be ourselves upset. And it is too easy when you don’t have face to face information about the intents, body language, tones of voice, etc. that we lack in writing.
@ Justin and others: Keep up the contributions and creations. Even if every one isn’t stellar, enough are pretty good and that’s the path to making a worthy contribution.
This is an old article, but I’ve been semi-systematically reading through a LOT of this blog and it feels like a great place to appreciate it!
I first read the 3 clues rules a long time ago, before I’d ever played or even been really interested in playing an RPG. Your writing was still engaging enough that I think I spent a few hours clicking through to different articles.
Recently, I’ve started playing, and I was sort of discussing doing a campaign, maybe a mystery scenario with my fellow PCs. I vaguely remembered reading about the 3 clue rule when people told me “mysteries are hard”, tracked it down and then I’ve spent like a week just reading this whenever I have a free moment, between reading the rules for the system I’m learning and drawing maps and things 😛
You’re not only really knowledgeable and incisive in your advice, you’re just a good writer also — it’s *fun* to see the breakdown of why it’s a good idea to prep situations rather than plots, even when I didn’t really have context for that.
But I’ve really, really appreciated all the advice as well. It’s kind of hard to say “what I’m bringing to the game from you”, actually, because realistically *most* of my planning has been influenced by your articles! Having a basis with which to riff off and try out some things is so useful to me — I think if I hadn’t rediscovered this site I wouldn’t be nearly as excited about the campaign I’m putting together, nor as confident, and it would’ve taken me much longer to plan and figure out what I even needed to plan.
I’m sure I’ll make mistakes and develop my own ways of doing things, but this has launched me about a thousand feet forward and helped me skip over at least a few of those stumbling blocks. Particularly, I can point out the advice of running a oneshot in a new system before launching into a campaign. And then there’s all of advice about skipping to the interesting choice, about rulings, talking about Technoir’s story maps (I am not playing Technoir and I may be misunderstanding some of how that works, but I made a conspiracy map of how different jobs may be connected in order to start generating clues and foreshadowing and connections and it was really fun), mapping, five rooms/five nodes, using metagaming to enhance the story, universal NPC template and the concepts for how to get into an NPC’s head — I’m taking a whole lot away from your writing, and I really appreciate that you have spent the time and the energy to put all this expertly-reasoned expertise out there.
Also, I appreciate that generally your approach is very kind. By this I mean, you do not indict people on the basis of not doing things the way you do them, or the way you like. You explain why you think a given action is not good for the game, or simply something you disagree with or don’t like, but you don’t ever do personal attacks or assume someone is wrong without checking your evidence. Which makes your writing much more fun to read!
I need to make a cheat sheet of the rules before I can set a session zero for my campaign, but it’s going to be SO COOL, and I’m really excited to get into all the mad scientists and space stations I can handle. You’ve not only helped me and given me a lot of fun reading, I think my entire table is going to benefit a lot from all of your advice. Thank you for this blog; I truly consider it a gift.
I’ve been meaning to come back and write something commensurate with the (frankly enormous) value I’ve gained from your posts – but that value seems to continue growing and in reading Alexander’s Rule I realised it’s better to express my gratitude and admiration for your work briefly and inadequately now rather than never doing a perfect job of it (Perfect is the enemy of good as they say).
So thank you Justin, now and always.
Hi Justin, this might be a really old post that I only found because of recent comments, but I think it’s an appropriate place to thank you for this blog. After 2 rather poorly-made HB campaigns (didn’t even finish them), I had took a pause from DMing despite being basically the origin of D&D in my friend circles (some of them who then became DMs for other people, creating a cool sort-of-ripple effect). But the posts here helped me to revamp one of my campaigns and fairly successfully run it for a new group even while I’m in national service. It revived my motivation as a DM when I had somewhat gotten tired of it. So, thanks again!
Invoking Alexander’s Rule, thank you for this amazing website. I am sitting down to rework an adventure right now I had been planning, to incorporate the Three Clue Rule and Node Structure (as best as I can!). Thank you, Mr. Alexander!
There are two things I especially appreciate about this blog. One, of course, is the wealth of intelligent and usable suggestions. For all those companies currently in the midst of redesigning 5e, I could wish that they would read all the posts on this site and be guided by them.
The other thing I really appreciate is the measured, irenic tone of the writing. I like being treated as someone who, though perhaps not as creative as the author, is at least intelligent enough to understand and interact with the ideas.