D&D is a fun game, in fact in my opinion it’s the funnest game ever. With that said, there are some common pitfalls I’ve noticed when traditional games occur.
- DMs Leave
- DMs aren’t specific and/or truthful with their rules:
- Players Leave
- Difficulty in attending / organizing games
- Recruiting Difficulties
- Complications from the above
Campaigns that end early result in great campaigns wasted. Weeks and months of planning go to waste in an ultimately unfulfilling cancellation. When players leave and they do, regardless of whether it had to do the game or not, it can be difficult to find new players to replace the old ones. Furthermore the longer a campaign goes on the harder it is to have a consistent playtime: players move away, get new jobs, get new school courses and schedules and a plethora of other reasons, only adds to the above. Next, many DMs don’t specify their expectations well or are untruthful about them leading to accusations of powergaming, unfairness, appropriateness and all sorts of avoidable conflicts. Lastly, all of the above result in complications such as players getting annoyed at having to constantly remake characters, and having to relearn each DM’s houserules.
The Black Marches campaign endeavored to alleviate as many of these problems as possible
The Black Marches campaign was run online on a program called OpenRPG which included a chat system with logs, a diceroller and macro system, as well as a visual 2D tabletop to display an alterable grid with pictures and miniature position. Lastly, all games are held in a publicly visible and available custom named room within OpenRPG.
Black Marches Distinguished itself from traditional tabletop games in the following ways:
1. Publicly and Explicit Rules and Expectations
Unlike many games where a player has to find out the hard way what the DM expects or exactly what material is allowed, Black Marches lays it out directly in Black Marches Rules .
2. Publicly available history of the world, developments, and adventure dtails
In traditional games, the only knowledge (aside from the DM) from previous adventures lies within the memories of the players that happened to be there. Because of this, newer players can often miss important plot details and not understand what’s going on.
Because Black Marches is a wiki, all NPCs met, all areas visited, and all adventures are detailed with a summary. All adventures have a chatlog of the OpenRPG game that took place so that others can know exactly what happened there.
3. Adventure Calendar
In traditional games, adventures are announced generally by word of mouth with a regular set time. The adventure calendar allows games to be advertised ahead of time in an easily visible location. Adventure times can be updated quickly, extra adventures at odd times can be scheduled conveniently. No more calling, texting, or emailing everyone; it’s up there to see for those who are interested.
4. Impromptu Games
Because Black Marches is online, anyone with the time available can go to OpenRpg and join or create a Black Marches room. If a game is desired, then a game can be hosted and run right then and there. This is generally difficult for traditional games, as one would need to email or call up additional persons at a nonstandard time and then all would need to make arrangements to travel to a central location and then play.
5. Quick-Starting Games
Because Black Marches is online, it’s easy for people to show up just a few minutes before game time and join in. In face to face games, one has to travel to the central location and then begin, and then have to travel back home before it’s too late. This means that because Black Marches avoids travel times to and from games, that it can both start earlier and end later than traditional games, making it more likely that games can both take place and finish appropriately compared to traditional face-to-face games.
6. No Standard Party
Whereas traditional face-to-face games often assume a consistent party going from adventure to adventure, Black Marches insists on the opposite. That is to say, that no PC is explicitly tied to any group of people, they are free to wander about and join whatever adventures they please. This allows players to drop in and out of games as their schedule allows and allows gaming to be flexible with the altercations of real life.
7. Shared Campaign Setting with Multiple DMs
Campaigns have been “shared” or had “rotating DMs” back to the days of the founders of D&D with Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. However, for tabletop RPGs this is generally rare. Most often, it’s one DM that conducts the adventures with 1 set of players (in a few cases more). When the DM is unavailable, the game stops, no progress is made, and momentum halts. When the DM quits the players may not be able to get back together, the game may have been hosted in the DM’s home, the DM may hold all the contacts for the players whereas the players don’t have all of them, and the players themselves may have a limited knowledge to work off of to continue to campaign and not the least of which is the issue that if such an option was never presented from the beginning the players may find it hard to make the mental leap to conclude that one of them can become a new DM, and indeed such thoughts are always conflicted by the notion of what happens if the original DM were to return?
Black Marches avoids much of these problems. DMs explicitly don’t own the characters; they don’t even own the locations the characters visit or the NPCs they present during adventures. Other DMs are free to use anything visited in previous adventures in their own. And, any member of Black Marches can be a DM. What this means is that even as DMs leave and come back, take vacations and whatnot, the adventures continue on. Players and characters continue to get to play and advance and a higher level of relative happiness is maintained.
Now, DMs get to collaborate on their stories, using or alluding to NPCs and organizations created by other DMs in their adventures. As such the world and campaign becomes richer and more enjoyable for everyone.
8. Shared Campaign Governance: The Black Marches Council
The Black Marches campaign, rules, and everything is ultimately decided by the Black Marches Council. This ensures that the game rules can be amended by the players themselves through a democratic method even if the campaign’s founder disagrees. This ensures greater campaign participation and ownership and ultimately longevity.
Statistics
1. Length of Bill Bisco’s Campaign: October 18th 2011 to August 18th 2012 . 10 months and 1 day.
2. Number of DMs providing at least one game during Bill Bisco’s tenure: 22
3. Number of Games Ran during Bill Bisco’s tenure: 340
4. Number of Registered Users during Bill Bisco’s tenure: 110
5. Number of Users that have played in at least one game during Bill Bisco’s tenure: 71
6. Number of Active players around time of Bill Bisco’s final game (before and after 5 days) : 14
7. Number of Active DMs around time of Bill Bisco’s final game (before and after 5 days) : 6
8. Number of games DMed by Bill Bisco: 62
Results
So much discussion about the theory of benefits is listed above and the problems it purports to solve, but the important question is “What were the results?” These are listed below.
1. Players choosing to be DMs: Ok
In the beginning of the experiment, fewer regular players chose to DM games for others. However, towards the middle and end, a higher percentage were willing to take the mantle. Overall quite promising. This means that given an opportunity, roughly more than ¼ of players that in Black Marches will willingly choose to be a DM at some point
2. Number of Games Offered: Excellent
In a 10 month period, 340 games were offered. so in 300 or so days 340 games were offered. This means that there was more than 1 game a day on average. Since the founder of Black Marches, Bill Bisco, only offered 62 games, this means that less than ⅕ of games ever came from him. This is a very big indicator of the strength of shared campaign settings. Also bear in mind that these kinds of numbers would be impossible for traditional games.
3. Wiki Updating: Poor-Ok
A few users tried to adhere to standards, many others had to be coaxed/reminded/etc. even Bill Bisco fell away at times. It takes a strong and active force of effort to ensure that not only oneself follows all the wiki guidelines of properly updated and linking adventures but taking the time to make sure others do the same.
THis is probably one of the weaker points of Black Marches. It was difficult to get new DMs to really follow the templates, guidelines, and create the necessary NPCs and locations as they were created. Some more explicit training, automation, and development of culture of updating properly would have been useful.
4. Voting Participation: Fair
This segment swings from poor to good depending on the time period, but overall a significant portion of the player base voted for the next Black Marches Council.
5. Game Balance: Poor
Although Black Marches was advertised as a high-powered campaign and even if Bill Bisco’s individual adventures were advertised as high-powered, many players felt left behind for a number of reasons
What was acceptable optimization differed between individuals. Some were willing to get cheap items from a PC Artificer; others felt it went over the line. Some were willing to use encounter ending powers; others felt that using it was too much. Players might join a few games only to find that their characters were continually being overshadowed and leave the campaign. Others stayed on despite being overshadowed even while feeling somewhat annoyed.
Unfortunately as Black Marches used the 3.5 D&D and Pathfinder system as its base it was subject to the flaws and imbalances of those systems.
6. Cooperative Storytelling Ok - Good
There was significant storytelling overlap between Bill Bisco, Soft Insanity, and Duralan. These DMs while presenting their own visions and ideas referred to the others and built ideas, lore, and adventures that built and supported each other. A couple of other DMs made some connections at times to the stories of the three above. Many new DMs did not. And, the opposite was true.
7. Proper Changing of Rules - Poor - Ok
Many players would properly ask for content in the forum. However, there were a couple situations where other systems were allowed by rogue DMs and were accepted by the players. However, other than that more or less people followed the rules for new content.
8. Length of Combat - Poor
Unfortunately as adventurers progressed in level most of the combats tended to drag on longer. This is a direct consequence of using the 3.5 D&D / Pathfinder game system and allowing the issue that Black Marches is an online tabletop with no voice or video chat as opposed to other methods which require players to be active. This is an area which requires more DM and Player effort to keep the combat moving quicker.
Campaign Commentary
Overall Black Marches was a great success. The campaign lasted a long time and we had several players sticking it through since the beginning or near the beginning. With over 340 games offered over a 10 month period, it demonstrates the Raw power of the online tabletop format and its inevitable dominance in the future of RPG gaming.
Black Marches did have its problems, the most notable being its struggle with balance in adventures against monsters and between player characters. This flaw is directly attributably to the inherent imbalances of D&D 3.5 /Pathfinder, yet it shows that despite such imbalances that people want to play D&D / Pathfinder and that they’re willing to stick around for a story-driven game despite playing in a flawed system. Much of the players that played for awhile and drifted away can be attributed to the dissatisfaction of the system as well as the desire to have more relevant spotlight time. There is a certain limit of other players that participants are willing to endure; the only cure for this is for more dedicated DMs. And, although there were multiple DMs, there were still many a day and night when players were hungry for DMs to run adventures for them.
On another note, I’m happy to say that this campaign proved a couple of thoughts on various RPG forums false.
1. No DM would allow all the books: This campaign did. In fact 22 DMs during Bill Bisco’s tenure did. The campaign didn’t fall apart or cease to function. The only thing explicitly banned were infinite loops
2. Optimizers can’t roleplay / Roleplayers can’t optimize: Quite the opposite. I’d say our best Roleplayers were also our best optimizers
3. D&D / PF is unplayable at high levels: We played past level 21 and the game didn’t break down.
The Future
Although I won’t be returning to create the next iteration of Black Marches , the results of Black Marches point to several strategies a future company could use to learn from it and build a great business
1. Integrated Game Table, Wiki, and Character Sheet
Whatever software the future online game table would be run on , it needs to have an integrated playing experience. So for instance, the token of my character that I put on the map should be linked to my wiki page, so that other players can click on the token and learn about him as well as his character sheet so that his Hitpoints, Armor Class, and other Vital Statistics are easily viewable and tracked. The DM should be able to automatically see on the token all the vital statistics automatically pulled from the character sheet onto the token, and then altering them as necessary. When the Character takes damage, the Token displays fewer hitpoints.
Whenever a character token is brought onto the Table, it should automatically make an entry in the appearances section of the wiki for the name of the adventure.
The DM should be able to grab monster tokens which have the exact linked stats from the wiki rules. The wiki should be so malleable that templates can be added to monsters easily and auto-calculate the final stats and abilities.
2. Testing the game with the online game table
Given that other online businesses have trial periods in order to give feedback. There’s no reason that future RPG games shouldn’t use an online game table to solicit feedback and in fact it would be superior. Too many aftergame reports completely lack the necessary detail and context for the problems they describe. However, if the RPG designers have access to the game logs and can see exactly how the combats and situations were described, they can see if the game was being run properly or not, where people got confused, and ascertain the legitimacy of the feedback.
3. Paying for Adventures from Company DMs
It’s obvious when playing D&D that there is a high demand for good DMs: far more participants wish to be players than DMs and most DMs want to get a chance to play in games as well.
A game company can advantage of this by offering a kind of subscription package. That is to say, say paying a certain fixed amount per adventure to be run by a dedicated “company DM” or sets of company DMs. Say that the game company makes the rules for the online RPG and creates its own set of internal modules. Each DM can be trained to run that same or similar module and each campaign involving the company DM gets its own Wiki Space and becomes a “World” . These worlds could be categorized as World 1, 2, 3, etc. and so forth so each time the adventure is offered, the summary, log, and results are posted up for everyone to see after its completion. People can compete trying to get it done fast, people can have fun trying to complete the adventure in crazy things and celebrate their victories (and even TPKs).
If the same account or accounts continue to go through modules, then the wiki for World 1, 2, 3, etc. will be expanded, and continue to document the future adventures. Company DMs will have the freedom to build upon previous adventures and tweak the modules. If an enemy in one world got away, then s/he can show up in a future adventure or perhaps another module opens. Modules can be scalable such that the monsters can automatically be levelled appropriately so that players can go in a sequence of adventures at their own leisure. DMs and players can request changes and updates to modules after feedback and stories from the same modules multiple times.
The key here is that the advantage of RPGs is that they’re non-computerized; the DM is free to adjudicate and adjust on the fly to situations not considered by a computer program. This flexibility is what makes RPGs potentially infinitely more fun than any other gaming medium. This is what the company DMs would have the ability to do.
Players might have to pay a fixed fee (say $5 to join a single session), perhaps $100 to complete a small arc, or perhaps the company DM himself/herself has a fixed fee (say $40 / hour) that must be paid and each player can have game credits or dollars that they can contribute toward paying the DM’s fee. As such it’s cheaper to adventure with others, but not required. If one wanted a solo campaign, they’d simply pay for it.
This idea is still in the works to be tested by the company. Rates, and availability for Company DMs would have to be worked out. Still, if there’s no friends hosting a game, and one really wants to play there very well may be a demand that subscribers are willing to pay for. Perhaps a premium membership grants a single session that people are free to join in with to entice new subscribers to try the premium campaign further or perhaps it simply opens up the avenue to future business later when the premium member is hungry for a campaign.
4. Updating the game via the wiki
All the game rules would be available over the wiki. Or, perhaps if there were different pricing models. All base game rules would be available, and if someone had a premium membership they would always get all the new game updates and content or if they used to have a premium membership they might retain access to certain game rules they used to have.
Like other online computerized games, this one could update its game rules directly to incorporate errata in order to tweak it for better balance and whatnot. This avoids designer hesitance to fix the core rules and try to patch with accessories. Because this game medium purposely avoids the idea of books, it avoids the need for such compromises. This means that updates such as 3.5 D&D or D&D Essentials from 4E are unnecessary.
5. Integrated Tabletop and Game Rules
The Game Rules will be built extensively into the tabletop to make automation of combat and other tasks as easy and simple as possible.
Players will be able to have an automated initiative count where players and monster tokens can be visible across the board with a number next to their name. The room can be set up to automatically reroll initiative whenever the DM declares combat. Monster tokens could be grabbed and placed in the initiative bucket and so forth. Or Team Monster could be given a general number for the DM to use, or the DM could just use placeholders to automatically roll initiative. Whenever it came turn for a certain token, it would be highlighted in Gold or Some other custom color. Optionally, a turn timer could be set and a Red Number would be displayed and the player or monster (DMs could optionally exclude themselves from a timer) giving them so much time to complete an action before it automatically switches to the next in order.
A player or DM could mouse over their character or monster token and get a list of their stats and abilities. From this they could select one of their tasks and abilities, and from there be prompted to select their targets and then given the appropriate other options or area templates or whatever and then a graphic appears and the damage to other token(s) is indicated on the board. Tokens that have lost all hp become greyed and display 0 HP and can be set to be removed from the board after fading out or the token remains there but removed from combat.
The DM is always free to pull from a token library, substitute custom graphics and change the name if desired. Each monster in the token library is pregenerated with abilities and options directly from the rules wiki which allow it’s actions and strategies to be implemented easily in the field.
Powers that require a saving throw will have a saving throw automatically rolled by the recipient. If a status effect happens because of the failed throw, the status effect will appear on the token automatically and adjust its stats accordingly. Blindess effects could actually restrict the view of the game map to the appropriate length for the player controlling the token and whatnot.
The main thrust is this that the game is designed to be as simple as feasible so that it can successfully interact with the game table in as easy a way as possible, and automate the routine aspects of combat. All automation could be turned off or on in whole or part as desired by the DMs and players. And all effects could be re-recalculated or adjusted in case the program didn’t account for all the correct variables.
As these automation and pregenerated monster and techniques get perfected, this only adds to the ease of running and creating adventures on the fly, leaving the creative aspects to the DM to perfect with minimal mechanical worries.
6. Module Focus
For a future company, the focus would go beyond just providing a good consistent set of game rules, it would focus on new modules, adventures, and content.
So, this company would publish a set of modules available to all premium subscribers. These modules would be designed to run directly in the virtual tabletop. The maps would be preloaded with maps with the monster tokens in the appropriate rooms, with the traps visible to the DM and notes for everything automatically coming up via mouseover. Every progression would be sequenced in chapters above the virtual tabletop easily selectable and viewable and transferable as appropriate. There would be pre-defined entry and exit points for each map to the other points in sequence. So that the character game tokens would load in the appropriate area. In situations where there are multiple points of entry to the next map, the room simply defines which points to go to by hitting a button with the tokens and the DM can provide a manual transfer as well.
Specific Notes can be highlighted on each map as well as suggested dialogue from the enemies. If the DM likes it s/he can submit it directly or place the text in his own chatbox for him/her to edit before sending it to the players.
In essence modules are designed to be as easy as possible to pick up and play, ignoring unnecessary detail and fluff and providing everything else automatically to aid gameplay. Modules will also be editable. If the DM wants to change it, s/he can and save it under a different name with adjustments if desired.
Similarly, the management will take feedback on module quality and ideas. Modules will be edited, improved and whatnot. Sometimes modules will gain additional content or be expanded as necessary after real-world feedback for them is given.
Premium subscribers will be given the same tools to create, edit, and publish modules just like the official game ones for others to play in.
Additionally, modules can have settings or tags to go along with them. Such as Premium Campaign, Custom Campaign, Hardcore, Progressive World, or Static World and whatnot
Premium Campaign: Basically this is an official campaign run by a paid company DM.
User Campaign: A Campaign run by anyone wth a paid membership
Custom Campaign: A Campaign with different rules and/or wildly different setting than the main game
Hardcore: Default monsters are harder to defeat, perhaps dealing 2x as much damage and having 2x as much HP
Progressive World: The Monsters in this world adjust to the size of the party and of their levels (on by default)
Static World: The monsters in each adventure are at the level the module was intended at and the number of opposition for the default party size (4, 5, or whatever number). Very hard and/or very easy encounters are explicitly allowed here
7. Achievements
In order to increase replayability and satiating several peoples’ “gotta catch’em all mentality, achievements can exend the life of enjoyment of the game for a minimal cost. Below are some sample ideas:
Goblin Slayer: Kill 100 Goblins
Goblin King: Take Command of the Goblin King Cave
And so forth. Basically there’d be achievements for things autogenerated during the game. The standard fare of kill 100 or 1000 of X, but as well as story achievements. For instance in one module there may be three branches paths depending on the alignment choice (Good, Neutral, or Evil) and thus there’d be 3 achievements, encouraging replayablility. There’d be story achievements for completing module in peaceful ways or taking control of strategic locations and becoming the new warlord. There’d similar be achievements like crazed which involves killing every enemy named NPC and whatnot.
In order to make the pay model there’d be Premium campaign achievements possible to encourage people to use the Company DMs.
8. Putting it all together
All this together allows a vibrant community with dedicated content building both from the creators and from the users themselves. With content, stories, and information from each Game World and wiki being able to be shared and with the game rules being subject to updates and improvements and with a dedicated virtual game table for records, balance testing, and game automation we have a killer ability to support the creation of a number of fun and interesting games.
This provides an opportunity for people to join in each others’ games and build stories and worlds together as well as an opportunity to easily share game content within the same system.
It’s possible that this RPG could have a print run and be distributed the old fashioned way. There’d be nothing to prevent that from happening, it would simply take a lot of resources in a shrinking market.
9. Engineered Design
All the above won’t work unless the fundamental game is fun, scalable, and relatively balanced. There have been games that have sought and achieved this more or less, Starcraft II and Monster’s Den: Chronicles come to mind, and certainly there are more. Unfortunately, none of the currently produced tabletop RPG companies have the will, the vision, or the people to achieve so important a feat. See this post for a great example: Unfortunately James Jacobs needs to have his soul numbed. Only a humble designer who is willing to take the time and dedication to make a balanced game will make it. In the past RPG designers have largely come from liberal arts majors who, while very creative, lack the mathematical and design precision needed to make a good game. What we all really need is a proper game designed by mathematicians, engineers, and/or statisticians. When the base game is well thought out and tweaked by them, this gives the creative storytelling folks the ability to create modules, adventures and supplements (what they’re ultimately best at) while being confident that what they’re putting out actually holds up to balance scrutiny which ultimately makes these adventures and stories more compelling.
Parting Farewell
Anyway, thanks for listening to my ideas. I hope you all enjoy Black Marches for some time. The road ahead should be fun but difficult. You all need to ensure standards are maintained from DM to DM so that the happenings of the world are well documented. Another recruitment effort is overdue and should not be neglected.
Perhaps one of you has the means to take the idea of Black Marches to the next step.
At any rate thank you all very much for helping me achieve this life goal of mine. Now I’m off to start my next project.
Sincerely,
Bill