GoblinStop

The Apple iPad debuted yesterday to mixed reactions.  While many championed its HD-ready touch screen, feather-weight sleek design, and decidedly reasonable price, much criticism was made claiming that the device is more of an iPhone than a Mac.  Regardless of what my overall opinion of the device is, I had to ask the important question: What can the iPad do for D&D players?

Some fantastic D&D iPhone apps already exist, and have been written about extensively on the web (check out this blog post at DorkandBeans.com for a few great suggestions).  However, most of these apps are designed for use by individuals at a gaming table, and rightfully so; character managing apps can only display one player’s character at a time, and it would be annoying to pass around something as small as an iPhone so everyone could roll their dice on it.  But I think that with the iPad, we will begin to see apps designed around communal use. 

With almost 10 inches of touch screen, so many different possibilities open up.  An app could be developed to use it as a miniatures surface, displaying pre-rendered dungeon tiles for smaller rooms.  DM’s would no longer have to print large poster-sized dungeon rooms, or waste time drawing details onto a dry-erase grid.  A prototype of a program like this was shown in the Microsoft Surface D&D video, but that setup and technology looked super expensive to replicate.  The iPad could make this technology accessible, practical, and somewhat economical.

An app could also be developed to manage the party’s collective inventory, so that items could be removed or added in real time, in front of everyone, instead of forcing one player to keep a micromanaged running tally of what’s in the Bag of Holding.  This would make it a lot easier to keep track of exactly how many potions of healing are left. 

There really is a huge realm of possibility surrounding the tabletop gaming uses of the new Apple iPad.  Do you think we will ever see apps like this developed for the device?  What other ways do you think the iPad could alter the way a group plays D&D?

In my many years as a DM, one of the biggest hurdles I have encountered is a lack of focus on the game, which can stem from any number of causes.  Players sometimes have to arrive at different times, they’ve just come from busy days at work or school, they all want to talk about their Dragon Age: Origins characters or something funny they saw on 4Chan (gag!).  Everybody is glad to be with their friends and understandably wants to chat it up.  There is nothing wrong with this.  However, at some point, everybody needs to reach a consensual focus and start playing the game.

I have seen a lack of focus kill many game sessions.  If you are unable to grab your players’ attention even before the game starts, you will notice your session failing pretty quickly.  Joe will start checking his email on his BlackBerry.  Amanda will text her boyfriend every 3 minutes…THE WHOLE NIGHT.  Robert will pull out his Nintendo DS for some Tetris even though he “swears he’s paying attention.”  Aaron will flip through his sourcebooks making level-up plans during an important encounter.  You will see your entire game session disintegrate in front of you.  So what’s a DM to do?

The key is to do something communication-heavy that everyone must take part in together.

Have dinner together.  Having the whole group share a meal around a table immediately prior to the game encourages everyone to engage each other face to face and focus on a single topic at a time.  Plus everyone likes to eat with their friends.

Play a short board/card game.  Anything under an hour and that requires fairly intense focus will do the trick.  I highly recommend Settlers of Catan, because similar to D&D it has the players cooperating for the greater good while at the same time serving their private motives, which will get them into the correct mindset for D&D.  Tsuro, a Japanese tile game, is also great, because it really forces you to look at both the immediate consequences of your actions, and their possible long term effects as well.

The point is to get everyone into the Game Night frame of mind, which can be difficult without some kind of primer activity.  Whatever you do to foster this focus, it needs to require a lot of attention, and put the players in close physical proximity to one another. 

What tricks do you use to get your gaming group focused on the game?

Social media has mixed with just about every possible hobby and business to some extent over the last few years.  There are Facebook groups for every possible niche interest, Twitter tags for any subject area, and blogs about everything under the sun (and some things beyond it).  Since Dungeons and Dragons players tend to be a rather tech-savvy lot, much information related to the game has been digitized and shared socially online. 

The most significant result of the crossing of D&D and social media has been the unlimited potential for player-generated content. 

Aspiring game designers can collaborate on detailed, professional-quality campaign settings the way that software developers collaborated on Firefox.  Players can tweet links to interesting Paragon Paths and magic items they run across.  Startup publishing companies can hook up with independent adventure authors to produce downloadable modules and source books that rival first-party content at a fraction of the price.  DM’s can podcast their game sessions, or even broadcast live video feeds via USTREAM in order to share their experiences playtesting new rules and game mechanics.  There is literally no ceiling for the amount of player-generated supplemental content. 

What does this mean for the future of D&D?  We will begin to see the D&D community really take charge of organizing all this information.  For example, I think we will see a few bookmarking sites similar to Reddit and Digg pop up that focus solely on tabletop RPG content and related articles.  I also believe we will see more social networking sites like Pen and Paper Games, which allows gamers to locate others in their area who share similar gaming styles and schedules. 

D&D has always been a game that encourages individual ownership.  Players and DM’s have always made their own house rules, created their own character classes, and developed their own playing styles.  I think the digital organization and sharing of these ideas is going to drive a revolutionary surge of interest in D&D specifically, and tabletop games in general.

What do you think is the biggest contribution social media has made to D&D?  Do you believe social media tools are actually having a negative impact on the game?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Every time I hear someone talking about Monopoly being a game that “teaches you about business,” I can’t help but disagree.  While Monopoly a great game with a long history and an instantly recognizable brand, I think Settlers of Catan is a more accurate board game representation of what running a business is really like.

For those of you unfamiliar with Settlers, you can read about it here.  While they are both a lot of fun, I tend to prefer Settlers, and here is the reason:

Settlers of Catan has a reduced, more realistic degree of randomness. 

In a game of Monopoly, everything you have built can be completely destroyed just by accidentally landing on someone’s triple-hotel properties twice in a row (or even once, in some cases).  While there is a fair amount of strategy involved in Monopoly, you accept from the beginning that there is a possibility you can be completely wiped out in 2-3 turns, and you might not be able to do a single thing about it. 

While die-rolling is present in Settlers to give it a little uncertainty, the ultimate result of the game is usually not completely changed by a player having a couple of bad turns.  You develop a general strategy at the beginning of the game, and hone it to a specific, long-term plan as you gain more resources and make more deals.  At most, a few unfortunate rolls will force you to reevaluate your resource-trading strategy in order to make sure you maintain your success.

Monopoly is not a business game.  It is a gambling game.  This is fun every once in awhile, but it’s just a little grating to hear Monopoly so widely heralded as the “game that teaches you about business.” 

I know Settlers of Catan has not proliferated anywhere close to the extent that a game like Monopoly has, but if you ever get the chance, play it with some friends, or on Xbox Live Arcade.  It’s a blast, and quite frankly, I think it’s far more realistic from a business point of view. 

I’d love to hear the thoughts of those of you who’ve played both.  Do you think Monopoly’s higher stakes more accurately portray your own experiences in the business world?

Since I initially started GoblinStop a few months ago, I’ve gotten a number of questions about the site, my topics, my motivation for starting the blog, etc.  However, the most common question I get asked is “Why D&D and social media?” 

I can see the cause for the blank stares.  To be completely honest, it was initially a test; a test of my writing skills, a test of my critical thinking abilities, and a test to see how well I could take two seemingly unrelated subjects and bring them together to create something of value.  You can read all about my adventures in starting and running GoblinStop right *here*. 

Regardless of how it was conceptualized, it quickly picked up more steam than I thought it would, and it became a project for me.  I ended up taking a hiatus from posting, and focused on investigating what GoblinStop could become.  And so now, when I get asked that same question, “Why D&D and social media,” I have an answer other than because “I felt like it.”

I continue blogging about the convergence of these two things because they are more meant for each other than most people are willing to look close enough to realize.  D&D is inherently an exercise in socialization, and not even just the in-game part.  D&D players form clubs, businesses, online forums, discussion groups, event leagues, conventions, campus activity groups, tournaments, and many types of social units, all focused around the game they love to play.  Social media can provide these players and businesses with countless ways to keep in contact, advertise, play in real time, build relationships, and find new group members. 

So after a couple of months away and some serious time at the drawing board, GoblinStop is back and ready for action!  Great plans are in store for the future, and some excellent posts will be coming your way.  If you are reading this, you are currently standing at the intersection of D&D and social media, and you won’t want to miss out on the construction taking place all around you.  In addition to reading posts and commenting here on the blog, remember that you can follow @GoblinStop on Twitter and join the conversation.  Thanks for stopping by!

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So you play in a regular D&D game, and you love it, and you’re also a bit web savvy.   So here’s the big thought you might be thinking: “Should I start a website for my D&D group/campaign setting?”  Your motivations and preparation will largely affect the success of your venture.  Without thinking too carefully about the who’s, what’s, and why’s of your site, you may find your traffic as low as a kobold’s bite mark.

If you’ve ever done a Google search for anything D&D-related, you’ve undoubtedly come across a website dedicated to someone’s D&D campaign setting.  Oftentimes, these are full of maps of overland terrain and dungeons, statistics sheets and biographies for any number of non-player characters, and pages of site descriptions and historical information for major locales in the world.  The things that separate a successful campaign site from a failure are a focused demographic, good presentation, and diligent marketing efforts.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself before deciding to spend your valuable time and energy (and even money) on a D&D-related website:

1.       What type(s) of content will I share?  Do you want to share geographic and flavor information specific to your campaign?  If so, make sure your materials are well organized and at least of decent quality.  Any world/dungeon maps should be clearly comprehensible, with features all labeled in legible, clean handwriting.  Color maps help, although not always necessary.  NPC descriptions should be free of statistics errors.  Or perhaps you want to provide a running blog of your party’s adventures, or even of your group’s experiences in a metagame context.  Remember that this requires regular updates and a bit of guerilla social marketing if you want to build traffic.  Consider offering a podcast of your game sessions available for free download.

2.       Who do I want to visit my site?  Figuring out your target demographic will help you decide how to present your content, as well as what level of depth and complexity to aim for.  15-22 year old boys who just found out about D&D 4^th Ed. from a guildmate on World of Warcraft are going to respond better to different diction, media forms, and setting styles than will 35-45 year old men who have been playing since the days of Advanced D&D 1^st Edition.

3.       What is the clear purpose of my site, and how will I market it?  If your site is just an information hub for your players to use internally, your job is easy; since you don’t care much if anyone outside the immediate group uses the site, you really don’t have to do any marketing at all.  However, if you are looking to build up an excited user base for your campaign world, and eventually publish and sell it, you will have to generate some buzz.  Join message boards, link to other D&D sites you enjoy, and some will return the favor with links to you (as long as your content is up to snuff).  Even join social bookmarking sites like Digg or Delicious, make sure you bookmark lots of interesting related-content, and occasionally bookmark something on your own site.  There is nothing wrong with this as long as you are participating in the dialogue in other ways as well.

What other tips would you give someone wanting to start a D&D or gaming website?  Disagree with any of these?

One of the biggest issues facing adventuring parties (among many others) is distribution of loot.  Who gets that shiny new thundering bastard sword +2?  Who has first dibs on the cloak of resistance (because ANYONE can use a cloak of resistance)?  Does the bag of holding really belong to any one person, or is it owned by all the characters collectively? 

Adventure sites (and the monsters that inhabit them) are absolutely dripping with loot in D&D.  Ancient monasteries, hobgoblin strongholds, and dragons’ lairs are full of gold coins, powerful weapons and armor, and curious magic items (not to mention the always-welcome healing potions).  So with all this awesome treasure, how is a group to decide who gets what?

Here are a few various methods of loot distribution that have worked for different groups:

• Gold Value Auction: The group totals up the gold piece value of all the loot at the end of an adventure, and splits it into equal shares.  Players can “bid” part or all of their share on an item, and whoever bids the highest gets the item.
  • Analysis: The big benefit here is that the player who clearly wants the item most is the one who gets it.  The negative is that a player who could use the item most effectively might not end up with it, and items could be misallocated because of this.  You could also have an aggressive player who is loaded down with magic items, but hasn’t a copper piece to his name when he needs one.
• Participation Point Auction: This is used by a lot of MMORPG guilds to divide loot after raids.  Devise a system under which players receive a certain amount of points for showing up on game night and actively participating.  Optionally, the DM could also award points for great deeds, deduct points for acting completely out of character, etc.  Then players bid participation points on magic items, and whoever is willing to pay the most points for an item receives it. 
  • Analysis: The pros here are similar to Gold Value Auction, in addition to the benefit that nobody has to spend actual gold on items.  The downsides are pretty much the same; the person who could use the item to the party’s greatest benefit might not have the points to bid on it, and items could be under-utilized.  Additionally, if you use the option I mentioned, this is subject to Dungeon Master favoritism or tampering.
• Draft: The party makes an initiative roll once each at the beginning of the campaign.  This determines the order in which magic items will be handed out.  Each time an item is found, it is immediately distributed to the next person on the list, whether they can use it or not.  It is then theirs to use, sell, trade, disenchant, destroy, etc. 
  • Analysis: This is arguably the most fair method of distribution, as it is almost completely random from the players’ perspective, and it could end up fostering some interesting choices over what to do with the loot.  However, this is the least effective method from an optimization standpoint.  The party will likely end up with greataxes carried by wizards who can’t use them, and other terrible matchups.
• Intraparty Socialism: All items first go into a “Party Treasury,” and the entire group decides (usually at the end of an adventure) who gets what items based on who can use them most effectively.  Everyone is given a small stipend of gold pieces from time to time, while the vast majority of the money stays in the Party Treasury, and is used to replace outdated gear for whomever needs it most.  My group has pretty much always used this method of distribution.
  • Analysis: The biggest benefit here is that every member of the party is as optimized as possible, and thus can take on bigger and tougher adventures, and gain bigger and better loot, and so forth.  Additionally, no one can complain about not getting a fair share of the loot, because everyone votes on every item, and it always goes to whoever can put the item to its most effective use.  The downside is that, without proper care, parties can end up as just one giant damage-dealing sheet full of statistics, and players might not inject as much personality into their characters. 

How has your party decided to share the wealth?  What methods have worked well for you?  Which ones haven’t?

Many people out there are using social media as an avenue to promote their businesses on a national, or even international, level. They are advertising on Facebook, building 1-on-1 customer relationships on Twitter, and blogging about their area of expertise in order to build credibility and rapport with potential clients and contacts. But can social media be used effectively to promote business on a local level? I think it can, if you combine it with an effective guerilla marketing campaign as well.

Here is an example of how I think it can be done, and I’d love feedback:

1. Start, and regularly update, a blog about your company’s industry. First of all, if you keep this frequently updated with relevant, insightful, and useful posts, it will go a very long way to establish you as an expert in your field.

2. Figure out which other social media tools your clients are using most, and develop a presence there. Different industries will have potential clients congregating in different places, so don’t just think that this means creating a Facebook or Twitter account will solve all your problems. Educate yourself on which applications and websites are most used by people in your industry, and build there. The rules from Step 1 still apply though: be relevant, insightful, and useful. This is not just an ad-fest.

3. Use face-to-face networking to bring web traffic, and eventually business. Make sure your social networking profiles and blog URL are on your business cards, and hand them out to anyone and everyone you meet. Oftentimes, if they can’t use your products/services, they will know someone who can.

4. Scratch other businesses’ backs, and hopefully they will scratch yours. Get local retailers of related products to hand out your promotional materials in exchange for endorsements and free ad copy on your blog/website. For example, “By the way, for anyone who lives in the Dallas area, check out MadeUpName Comics and Games. They carry all the latest D&D products, have a great miniatures selection, and they are super helpful, especially to newbies.”

These are all pretty basic things, and I am certain they have been done before, but I really think this is a great way for local businesses to work together to promote each other and fill everyone’s customer dance card. How have you used social media to promote your business? Do you see anything you would improve about this strategy? Do you think local, small-radius businesses can benefit from social media?

Even when you are running the most interesting of campaigns, it is still bound to occur at some point that one or more players will seem utterly disengaged from what is going on at the game table.  Whether their head is buried in their iPhone, they keep watching the TV screen, or they just seem aloof and inattentive, everyone’s experience is hurt by a player who is focused on everything but the game.

So how does a DM address this?  The trick is to ask questions to find out what the root of the problem is, and come up with a direct response to it.

The problem could be related to something in-game:

• Does the player dislike his/her character?  Campaigns can last for months and even years; sometimes playing the same character just gets old.  Maybe it is time to retire this one and let the player create something new and exciting.  Or perhaps they have made some poor or redundant choices of powers and feats.  If so, it might be time to make some “oops” adjustments to get them back in the game.
• Are you giving the character enough opportunities to shine?  Every character needs an opportunity to show off from time to time, because always being a “support” role can get boring if there is no variety.  If players don’t see that their character is important, they can begin to feel that their attention isn’t that important either.

The problem might also be something out of game:

• Does the player fit well into the group?  I believe every group should make an effort to accommodate its players, and likewise every player should make an effort to play well with the group.  However, occasionally personality types can be so different that a player just might not be a great fit.  If your group is made up of intense power players who pour over sourcebooks and dream up new characters in their free time, a player who just uses D&D for a bit of weekly stress relief might not gel very well with everyone else.  I think it’s better to address it honestly than let everyone have less fun because of it.
• Is there something going on in the player’s life?  D&D is a very cerebral game that requires a lot of focus and some dedication, and sometimes people just can’t devote that kind of attention to it.  That’s okay.  Maybe when things change a bit, the player may become an excellent group member.  But sometimes letting a player take a hiatus is in everyone’s best interest.  Just be prepared to welcome them back when they are ready.

As always, I firmly contend that the best method is to just ask the player in a friendly, but direct way.  Grab some lunch one day with the player, casually mention that you’ve noticed they seem a little disengaged, and ask what maybe the two of you could do to turn that around.  I find that in D&D, as in life, people appreciate open communication.

What do you find works well to keep your players interested?  How has your group solved problems like these before?

Of all the social media tools available, Twitter has been gaining the most attention for the last couple of years.  Powerhouse marketing teams use it to have open communication with tech-savvy customers, celebrities use it to build their online presence, and everyday people tweet daily play-by-plays to all their friends.  But how can D&D players benefit from this swelling social media tool?

There are a number of ways that Dungeoneering adventurers can enjoy the benefits of Twitter:

1. Keep Absent Players In the Loop: Inevitably, every player will have to miss a game session from time to time.  Having at least one present party member tweet any important happenings will give a running, bite-sized, written record of the major events of a session.  It’s simple: just start one Twitter account for your entire adventuring group, and each night assign one person Tweet Duty, and make sure anyone who’s absent is receiving mobile device updates.  This way, no player ever has to miss out on the important parts of a game session he unfortunately can’t make.
2. Find New Players: Need to find a new player or gaming group in your area?  Twitter is searchable, so you can seek out D&D-related tweets from the entire network of users.  Use this feature to find out who plays the game in your town, or even to network with other social media-savvy hobby gamers in other parts of the country.  If you do this, you could even host a Tweet-Up when the next GenCon or D&D Experience conventions roll around.
3. Run a Virtual Adventure: This one could prove to be tough to manage, and I don’t know of anyone who has tried it yet, but with the right structure and ground rules, Twitter could be a great place to run an ongoing virtual campaign.  Each player and the DM could all have separate accounts, and direct @ messages could be treated as private communications.  Like I said, I think it would be tough to make this work, but I don’t doubt that the right group of gamers could be successful with it.

What other ways have you used Twitter or other social media to enhance your Dungeons and Dragons experience?

P.S.: Here’s a little Easter egg for you.  Allgeektout.com has a post that translates Twitter into a 4Ed magic item!  Enjoy!