GoblinStop

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?

Does a Dungeon Master need a personal brand?

Well, usually no.  If you are perfectly happy playing your weekly game with your buddies, hardly ever bringing in new players (or losing current ones), and running adventures that get tucked away in a forgotten binder or thrown away after use, you absolutely have no need to establish a personal brand (D&D-wise, anyway).  But not all DMs are like this. 

Believe it or not, there are some Dungeon Masters who would benefit tremendously from consciously building their personal brands.  These are the people who want to DM professionally at conventions, play-test published adventures, or even write their own content for Dungeon Magazine/D&D Insider.  These who want to turn their hobby into some semblance of a profession need to set themselves apart from other DMs in the industry, and purposefully building a reputation for producing a specific type of high-quality adventure content is a great way to do that.

Here are a few suggestions for DM’s who want to distinguish themselves from their contemporaries:

• Decide what you are great at doing: Are your custom monsters consistently exciting yet level-appropriate?  Do your adventures seem to shine most at 1^st-5^th level, or 17^th to 20^th?  Would your long-time players tell you that you are better at running site-based or event-based adventures?  Figure out where your strengths lie, and you’ll often find they closely align with your preferred DMing style.
• DM for many different people, and do it often: You don’t necessarily need to have 7 game groups for 7 nights a week, but take advantage of your network of D&D playing friends.  Be a guest-DM for friends of friends, and exchange contact info with all of them.  Offer to DM adventures that fit your profile at conventions or store events for free just to get the exposure.  Get business cards printed up that clearly communicate what you discovered about your personal dungeon mastering style.
• Get your material in front of people: The people who can get your modules and content published need to know that you exist.  So don’t be shy.  Don’t be a pesky, needy leech either, but be confident and persistent.  When you submit your material to publishers, send them testimonials and play-test results.  Show them that your content will fill a specific need they have, and show them you are the best for that niche.

What other suggestions do you have for DM’s looking to build a personal brand?  Do you think DM’s looking for a career in hobby games even need to worry about a personal brand?

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?