Crit Happens: When Bad Rolls Happen to Good Players

The critical fail. The natural 1.  The ultimate miss…

“Bummer.” “You miss.” “You stab your friend.” “Your sword breaks.”

Yeah, we’ve heard it all before.  That 20-sided die can be tricky.  But as a DM, honestly, I have to tell you that I hate when a player rolls a “natural 1“, probably more than the player does.  Yes, seriously.  I want my players to have fun.  Here’s something even my players don’t know: I want them to win.

Because there’s no story if the players fail.  It becomes a tragic tale of wasted youth and “woulda, shoulda, coulda”.

I set up the challenges and monsters and traps and dungeons so they cansurvive them, not so they can be killed in increasingly elaborate ways.

I’ve played in groups where the DM was the enemy (and the players knew it!) and I have learned that it’s not only a poor way of interpreting the rules, but it’s just not any damn fun.  And it’s a game, and games should be fun.  Remember when playing pretend was all you needed?

Yeah, so when players roll that natural 1, I grimace and grind my teeth and try to not kill the poor guy off.  Unless he didn’t bring me any Mountain Dew that day.

All kidding aside, though.  As a DM, if you jump for joy (inside) when one of your players rolls a natural 1, maybe you don’t really have the best interest of your party at heart.  And that boils down to being the DM’s fault. No, it’s not your fault he rolled a critical fail.  But it is your fault if that makes you happy.

A “natural 1″ should not make your day as a DM.  I wince just as hard as the players when they automatically fail, especially when it’s something that would have been cool to see in the game.  Because they know as well as I do that there’s very little that I can do to soften the effects of a 1.

When it becomes less about the story and more about seeing your players fail (or lose, or even die), maybe you ought to hang up your dice and let someone else DM for a while.

Steve

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Originally Posted: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 02:20 AM PST [Dungeons & Dragons]

Coming Out of the (Gaming) Closet

I was “outed” at a party recently.  Okay, technically, I outed myself.  But I don’t like to lie about what I’m doing or where I was and have found that being honest means there’s less to remember.

I am thirtysomething, and have loved D&D since the days of 2nd Edition when my friend Jefferson introduced me to the game.  His parents didn’t believe in television, so they didn’t own one.  But he had D&D and a tree house and every issue of Heavy Metal since 1984 instead.  Needless to say, I spent as much time at Jefferson’s as I could.

So, flash-forward 25 years to August 2009 and I’m a full-blown geek.  I play D&D.  I run D&D games.  I own dice.  I have all the books.  I refuse to play WoW for the lack of “roleplaying”.  But… I have friends and a social life, too.  Now I’m at a party with some friends in the comedy and film-making scene, and I’ve had a couple glasses of Jameson at this point and I’m realizing that it’s Saturday night — I have to get up early to get ready for “The Game” tomorrow.

“What game?” my friend asks.  Oh, man.  I said that out loud.

In these cases, you can do one of two things: lie your ass off or tell the truth.  All of these thoughts came suddenly into my head: What if he laughs at me? What if he calls me a nerd? What if he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore? I should make up a story about a baseball game.  Is it even baseball season?  Is it football season?

I chose to tell the truth.

“I’m playing in a D&D game tomorrow. Dungeons and Dragons,” I explain.

He looks at me for a long moment, and then says, “Wow. I’ve always wanted to play that.”

Long story short, I’m going to be running a game for him and 3 of his office buddies.

–

Now that I’m getting more comfortable with the 4th Edition rules, I’m okay with running multiple games.  I currently run an Eberron game in the Paragon tier (starting with The Escape from Dreadhold!) and may be running 2 others.

I guess the moral of the story is: don’t be afraid or embarrassed of your geek nature.  Embrace it.  You’re not the only one.

Steve

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Originally Posted: Monday, August 31, 2009, 02:09 PM PST