Comfort Levels at the Table

Dungeons and Dragons at its core is a game of pretend. Anything can happen at the DM's discretion. Players are removed from themselves and placed into that of a fictional character. That is what makes D&D such a beautiful game. However, sometimes something can happen in the game that shocks the player at an emotional level, offends them, or otherwise causes them to feel uncomfortable.

This was especially present during the game's early days, when it was dominated by men in a time where women really weren't seen as equal. While it isn't nearly as much as an issue now, it still prevails in a hobby that is still a majority male. In this article, I will talk about some strategies a DM and players can employ to make sure everyone at the table has a fun and comfortable time.

The Digital Tabletop

D&D and other TTRPGs (tabletop roleplaying games) have had an immense popularity resurgence this past decade, and because of this the genre is melding with modern technology for the first time in its history. But is this change good for the game? Or does it take away from the gameplay and companionship the creators originally intended?

Enhancing the Experience - How to up your gaming experience

As you get into D&D and play in more and more groups over the years, you tend to learn some of the commonalities or patterns that DMs fall into every time. Games can start to meld together, and you may start to feel like you're losing the spark of energy your table once had. How can you save it? Well, two little things called ambiance and player immersion can really save a game and make it stand out to players for years to come.

Combat Options - The Pros and Cons

D&D 5e has really two ways to go about dealing with combat: on a tactical grid map with miniatures, or "theater of the mind." There are other options now thanks to the age of the internet, but I want the focus of my blog to remain on groups who can meet up in person. Both really have their pros and cons, and in today's post I'm going to be briefly going over them and what both of them have to offer a DM. 

Session Zero: What to Cover

As mentioned in my previous post about table etiquette, session zero is a very important meeting that I feel many DMs don't take advantage of. There's a few things that can be done during a session zero that make your life as a DM and your friends' lives as players much easier throughout the campaign.

In this post, I'll describe the different steps I'd recommend taking during a session zero to get your campaign rolling in a great way.

Etiquette at the Table - What's OK?

Groups can be very different in how they approach table etiquette during the game, and many factors can affect it. Some groups say no food at the table, some people have pizzas as centerpieces. A DM might say absolutely no phones where another couldn't care less.

How does one establish table etiquette? Well, that's usually something to be talked about during Session Zero. For those unfamiliar, Session Zero is the term used for the meeting between DM and players before a campaign starts, where everyone can lay down expectations, house rules, preferences, and the like for the campaign. Other common topics during a Session Zero include character creation and backstory development, topics players might want to avoid in the game, and any other things that will make a player more comfortable. I'll get more into Session Zeros in a later post.

Typically, the DM has final say on table etiquette, though it is good to have a democratic process with your players in determining what is acceptable. Do you want food and drink at the table? Is alcohol allowed during play? Are players allowed to stand and leave the table mid-game, or will the DM have intermission or break periods at specific moments of the night?

Establishing what you expect from your players from the get-go is a very important piece of preparing for a campaign. Mutually agreed upon rules will help prevent conflict and confusion when you're actually playing, making your life as a DM a whole lot smoother.

The Case for Cardboard

Miniatures can really make a game stand out in the eyes of the players, but amassing a collection big enough to be able to use them in every situation is daunting for any DM. A set of three official D&D miniatures is around $20, and they are a random selection in each box, meaning you may need to buy multiple before you get the mini you want. Individuals can resell their own minis, but they're always exorbitantly priced unless you find an extremely kind seller somewhere.

However, I believe I have finally found the light at the end of the tunnel. The perfect solution for me as a poor college student with next to no storage space. And that solution is: Pathfinder Pawns.

Pathfinder Pawns are box sets of hundreds of cardboard miniatures and plastic bases made by Paizo Publishing, creators of rival TTRP Pathfinder. Each box set is themed around one of their many monster manuals, with examples including Bestiary, which contains animal and feral monsters, Monster Codex, giving you access to hordes of sapient monsters like orcs and goblins, and NPC Codex, which gives you a city's worth of civilized folk to work with. Each box, containing hundreds of miniature pawns, only costs around $60 each.

Each pawn is a relatively flat piece of cardboard with an image printed onto it that can slide into one of the plastic bases to keep it upright. The simple assembly and disassembly, combined with the easy transporting and storage, makes them the perfect miniatures for the college DM.

While not as visually exciting as a fully sculpted three-dimensional plastic miniature, buying a box set or two gives you all the miniatures you will ever need.

The Most Dreaded BBEG: Scheduling

Scheduling. It is as infamous as it is necessary. You can't play if you don't set a time to, but finding a specific time in the week for you and all your players to meet for multiple consecutive hours is difficult. This can be said at any point in life, but it is exceptionally more challenging to find a time to play when everyone involved is a college student.

Everyone who attends college is going to have a unique schedule tailored to their classes, extracurricular activities, and social life. No two calendars are ever the same. "So how, Matthew, do you propose we find time to sit down and play?" Well, that question is not an easy one to answer, so instead I'll tell you a story about the early days of my current campaign, back in August of last year.

My close friends and I had always wanted to sit down and start a real campaign, but every attempt usually fizzled out after a session or two due to conflicts in each others' (you guessed it) schedules. There just wasn't ever a good time to play for every one of us. So, during our last summer vacation, we decided that when we reunited on campus we would hunker down and figure out a time and stick to it.

After much debate, it was decided that we would meet Sundays at 11AM at her apartment. That doesn't sound like a great time, and to be fair, it wasn't the best. We were often tired from the previous night's festivities and/or had homework due the following day, but it was the only time for our busiest friend, who worked full-time alongside her academic and sorority commitments, to join us.

Now, some people out there may not be playing with their best friends and won't want to compromise on a weekend morning, and that's okay. Every situation is different. I know I certainly wouldn't want to set my alarm on one of my two days off for some Joe Schmo from my local hobby store or campus club. Unfortunately, if a compromise is unable to be made, it is perfectly fine to kindly inform a person that their schedule just doesn't match up with everyone else's. If the entire party agrees to it, it would be a good idea to make sure said person knows they are always invited to hop in if their schedule settles down later on.

At the beginning of the current semester, our group did just that. Despite enjoying having her at the table, the rest of us decided that Sunday mornings really weren't the best time to play and that we wanted to play Friday evenings. All of us but her were available, but she knows that she can hop in whenever she pleases. It adds a bit of a challenge for my to have the narrative explain her character leaving and returning seemingly at random, but hey, if Matt Mercer can do it with Pike/Yasha, so can I for Telrasi.

In summary, it is great if everyone in your group finds a good time to play, though that is a rare occurrence. If scheduling conflicts really affect your game, it may be time to think about having a player be a drop-in/drop-out guest, as you really don't want one person to take away a regular source of fun and entertainment for the entire group.

Welcome to the Blog!

Welcome to Dungeons and Dragons and Diplomas, where I hope to help you learn how to better balance D&D with the rest of your college life.

My name is Matthew, a third-year college student who has been playing (mostly DMing) tabletop roleplaying games for many years now. I started off with 5e and Pathfinder, and I have also dipped my toes into FFG's Star Wars: Edge of the Empire and End of the World games as well as Evil Hat's Fate. I am also a very active college student, studying media design with a minor in writing. On top of my studies, I am the president of my school's chapter of Beta Theta Pi, a national social fraternity, and the Dungeons and Dragons club.

Being in charge of a fraternity and a club while also keeping up with my studies and social life makes for a busy calendar as is, but I have also been DMing a weekly 5e campaign for myself and 3-5 friends (depending on the semester), for over a year. All of these factors together makes for a hectic schedule, but I love what I do, so its entirely worth it.

But anyway, enough about me. On to the blog!