The first gaming session on 2009 is getting closer. Yes, yes I know its already February but these things take time round our way.

I’ve been harping on at my players online for the last month or so to get character ideas to me asap and for various reasons have failed. Of course this isn’t all my fault. Oh no it’s my players fault. It’s their fault that one of them knows about the setting and so goes through all the classes he’s wanted to play over the last few years until he settles on one. It’s their fault because one of the players is completely new to roleplaying never mind the system and doesn’t automatically know all the character classes/vocations/whatever like he should. It’s their fault that one of them works long hours, work out a fair bit as well as having a new baby.

Ok, ok it’s really my fault but then it was to be expected but I’m pleased to say that on Friday night during a showing of End Of The Line I took along the rulebook and managed to get them to pick a class. Now to finish off the last few details of the adventure to cater for those classes and we’re good to go!

While I’m at it I’d just like to apologise for the lack of updates. The real world has managed to get in the way again and I’ve spent the last week staring at a blank application form for the latest round of posting in my work. Come 1st April my job won’t be mine any more so it’s all hands on deck when it comes to filling in those forms. Hope to be back properly very soon!

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I’ve talked in the past about trying out a wiki as a way of recording campaign info as well as keeping the players in the loop and informed about the game. I’ve done a fare amount of looking around other peoples wiki’s and while some work perfectly there are far more wiki’s out there that are very hard to get into and find anything your looking for in them. It’s certainly an art form.

One of the other ways in which some GM’s keep in touch with players is using a mailing list. I have had experience with using one of these before with an Airsoft group I used to be part of and help organise. The one thing mailing lists have over other forms of online communication is that your pushing it onto your readers rather than relying on them coming to your site and reading whatever it was you posted to your wiki/forum/blog. Not everyone is web savy so you can’t guarantee that telling them to sign up to your blog’s RSS feed will work. Bombard them with the info. Where ever you record your campaigns you should also post the meat of the mailing list emails. In fact you could probably go one better and post most of the information and have it link to your wiki where it expands in it. This way you encourage the players to utilise the library of information you’ve collated but at the same time give them what they need as well as the option to read up a little more on it.

So what kind of things can you put in your newsletter? Well yet again the airsoft newsletter that I sent out provides a very good framework from which to start.

• Brief round up of the last game.
• Highlighting any problems from previous games and suggestions for fixing them.
• Brief run down of any site news or rules changes.
• Start organising the next game day.

Now you can see that right from the off it fits almost perfectly into a campaign update newsletter. In addition to this we could add plenty of information that would be useful to the players.

• Profiles on prominent NPC’s.
• Gossip and rumours from about town which may lead to the occasional side campaign if players show enough interest.
• Myths and Legends from around the region.
• Information on famous magical items in the region.
• Player written fiction.

All these things add to the gaming experience and if you can get your players more involved then no one loses.

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Mapping.

That one word as a GM fills me with dread. Why create a maze of irrelevant intersections only to have your players deliberate over every decision when all you need them to do is get to the bottom?

And who in their right mind still thinks having their players map the dungeon/maze/where ever on squared paper is conducive to a good gaming experience? Of the many times we’ve tried that there has not been a single occasion where the player mapping hasn’t made a mistake at some point which has completely ruined the map. An intersection wrongly marked or a tunnel 5 squares long instead of 6. I’ve yet to see an aspect of gaming that wastes more time and cause more unnecessary arguments than mapping.

But how do you get around explaining the players locale without it? Bear in mind I very rarely use minatures and hate being limited by using pre-built dungeon cardboard cut-outs.

You could take the route of just giving/selling them a ‘complete’ without any of your encounters or items marked on it. At least that way there is no arguments over layouts but you can’t do that every time. It’s the equivalent of handing your players a bag of holding because they just happen to want to carry every item they have ever looted about with them at all times. It’s far to easy a trap to fall into at the best of times.

Going on past experiences the best way I’ve found to deal with this problem is to first of all stop designing huge dungeons. Unless you are just going to miss out most of the map and just tell the players they have found a way to the secret room you still get a decent level of exploration on small scale tunnels. The other method is to produce several copies of the same map. One with all your notes on it, a blank one without the notes and several copies of the blank one that has for example everything but the opening few rooms blanked out and then one with the next section showing. Use a blank bit of paper and sketch the initial tunnels/rooms until they have discovered most of what’s on the first sectioned map and then replace the scribble with the actual map section. Keep doing this until they end up with the almost completed map in their hands.

It may sound like an awful lot of work but if you limit it to a few map sections it’s the quickest and most accurate way I’ve found yet whilst not boring the players have to death.

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