Sean Does Games

I was relaxing in my little walled courtyard, reading Hotel Berlin 1943 and partaking in this year’s harvest of Sam Adams Oktoberfest, when my phone began to frantically inform me of an astonishing turn of events. People were tweeting on Twitter. Tweets! Twitter! On! Utterly baffled by this bizarre news (who would ever use Twitter to tweet), I dutifully opened the app. Among the hundreds of wonderful tweets in my feed, I found a simple question that caught my attention. "How did you get started in role-playing games?” I was about to fire off a short reply when I realized that this was something I could blog about instead. What follows, then, is a tedious brief scene of young Pyramus, and his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth. No. Wait. That’s a different story by a far better writer. Let's try again. What follows, then, is wonderfully brilliant monologue of my life-long love of games, much dice-rolling goodness. Someone had to write it. That someone might as well b...

In Dungeons and Dragons, a natural 20 occurs when a  20 is rolled on a d20 for an ability check, attack roll, or a saving throw. It is generally treated as a success no matter what the actual difficulty class (DC) happened to be. If you score this on an attack roll, you get to double your damage dice. That's awesome, but there are a host of other activities characters participate in that don't get the same sort of helpful boost. Because of that, and because as a DM I like to see my players succeed as much as I like to see them suffer, I use natural 20s as an opportunity to inject some positive vibes into a story that is literally created for the sole purpose of making the characters' lives difficult. The intent of these windfalls is never to transform a character into a superhero or de-fang an enemy. They are always meant to give the PC (or NPC because they too can score a natural 20) a chance to shine with an heroic moment of their own. The following describes a f...

In Dungeons and Dragons, a natural 1 occurs when a 1 is rolled on a d20 for an ability check, attack roll, or a saving throw. It is generally treated as a failure no matter the bonuses that can be applied to the score. It's a pretty straight forward concept that guarantees no matter how skilled a character might be they can still make a mistake--sort of like real life. That's all well and good, but a little dull because many times mistakes have both short term and long term consequences that go beyond simple failure. Because of that, and because as a DM I'm a bit of a sadist, I like to use natural 1s as an opportunity to inject a little chaos into the story. The goal in doing so is never to kill or punish the characters but instead to heighten the stakes, ratchet up the tension, and have a little fun. This, of course, applies to NPCs and creatures as well. No one or no thing is immune to the evil whims of a natural 1. The following describes a few kinds of consequen...