CoD 1: Session Pre-Zero

Even before session zero of any DND campaign, we should discuss tools of the trade. I had no plans to discuss in-depth how the basics of each works during my posts, as there were enough media online on those, and my focus would be on the actual campaign and storytelling. Saying that, even if you were not familiar with any tool I mentioned, I would think the posts themselves served as a great example of how it worked in a practical sense. If there were enough post on the lack of explanation was hindering readers’ understanding of the campaign, I might post separately to explain.

Dungeons and Dragon, 5th Edition

DND had been a household name since whenever wikipedia said and had undergone many changes since its inception. I tried to start a campaign in an older edition with friends, but 5e was the edition I had most knowledge in and I considered one of the most popular. This was likely thanked to Stranger Things, rise of Geek culture, and popularity of Critical Role during similar time periods. I currently had no plans to change the gaming system even if a new version of DND was released midway. This might not be the best gaming system for SoloRP, but I was familiar with it, and that was more important for a first play through.

From a novelization or author’s point of view, worlds around DND campaign came with enormous amounts of lore through the decades outside of homebrew worlds. I personally only knew a sliver of Faerûn lore but actually, just by having this base information, it had done all the heavy lifting of world-building for me already. I could pilfer and rebrand any aspects that were practically a stable for the fantasy genre (eg elves), and ignore those that are useless to the story, bypassing the tedium and trap of world-building too much. Through actual plays, I might even put placeholder in the name of the familiar DND counterpart. This to me was not only a shortcut, but also sent the creative juices flowing in how to make it different from its original. 

Mythic Game Master Emulator (Mythic)

SoloRP’ing was basically running a table-top (TTRPG) using an ‘oracle’ to decide the fortunes of your playing characters (PCs).  One of the most popular ‘oracle’ system used was the Mythic GM Emulator.  There seemed to be many versions or addendum or community editions for this system, but I planned to use what I considered the vanilla version. As authors liked to say, I would take some creative licenses if needs be. I think it was from Me, Myself, and Die, but I agree with the saying to be strict with the game system rules, but loose on the storytelling in order to make the best of an adventure. After all, if the dice gods told the party to do a fetch quest for tenth time instead of saving the world, the party would likely become god-slayers. 

From an author’s POV, using a system would sound very elaborate for just introducing random elements, but at least I had found using an oracle framework does indeed make the story a lot more interesting and surprising. Especially the interrupted scenes. As any planner novelists knew, plot structure, beats of a story, and pacing were imperative to a novel. I had initially tried to constrain scenes to some sort of structured format, but could tell pretty quickly it would not fly. I therefore plan to treat the actual play as more akin to writing a newspaper serial back in the day, with the Chaos Factor being a great tell on the climax and dips of the story. I could also foresee recording this would eventually be invaluable for editing. But editing would be the key word to remember when another fetch quest got rolled.

Roll20

The platform was free, and allowed online access to DND and many other TTRPGs globally. Some people complained about the site being bugged and slow in updates, but for the purposes of dice rolls, visualisation, ambience, and a bit of an info dump, I found using this was more useful than not. In addition, this served the core function of running combat spatially. Theatre of the mind was fine, but having done pen and paper RPG, DND combat without a grid was painful. 

From an author’s POV, I was taken aback on how much easier it was to write a battle scene having the full power of DND’s battle system behind me and the battlefield map in front of me. For the proposes of logic, and sometimes drama, I might not include all combat actions in my posts. No point in writing a round where most characters missed - unless it was a Nat1. 

SmartEditWriter (SEW)

I knew professionals use Scrivener but I still could not part with Word 2010, so SMW was a big step for me. And it was free. The main requirements of something more than a word-processing software was to make editing easier, such as switching scene orders, integrating project notes, or easier finding of information. I was a spreadsheet man, but so far, SMW had been a pretty good help. 

From a game master POV, there were tools like GMBinder or WorldAnvil. I had used the later but to be honest, I had felt these were just providing a more sophisticated, but also more complex, interface to manage your information. Some functionality were also locked behind a paywall. SMW allowed me to file my information how I saw fit relatively easily with all its inherit features. I do have a folder of maps and tokens etc, but again my keyword was ‘Free’.

MS Excel

I prefer to still use one spreadsheet outside SEW to keep track of Mythic-related things like character list, threads, ideas etc. Eg, the character list Mythic asked users to keep for rolling can be referenced onto another sheet, and with an extra axis and conditional formatting, there you have a relationship table between all key characters. Have an idea for a dungeon? Add it to a rolling table list and the next time you have to roll for randomness.  

Inkarnate 

This was my primary concern for GM’ing - getting the visuals. I can get maps that was close to situations I had wanted somewhere online, eg Reddit/Pintrest, but mostly for battlemaps or medium sized locations. To have specifics for a homebrew campaign, I would need a customisable map for things such as the world/region/particular base village. It would not make sense if I told you the Governor’s mansion was up a cliff, if I could not find a map that matched that description well. 

In my search for a map drawing tool that I did not need to spend much time learning or was too expensive, I purchased one of the RPGMakers on Steam in hopes of fulfilling that need, but the functionality was lacking. I eventually gave Inkarnate a try and for its free membership, it was still lacking a lot of the functionality I required to make a basic map (not even a cave). But then, combined with layering from Roll20 web assets, I was able to make the campaign work. It gave me just enough of a buzz to get my SoloRP going with the visual aid, but I would think professional GM’ing may require something more.  

Internet

There were websites that I visited frequently, whether it was for game system help, pictorial inspirations, pre-made maps/assets, or just random generators. The list is massive and I would comment through the posts. As a casual player, and running a campaign for my own amusement, I did not have to worry about copyright, eg most DND players I knew just googles their character portrait and make a token with it. I would try and put references in where I would use pictures on this blog if I knew the source. 

Altogether, this makes up the vehicle of our journey. Saying that, this post is already too long. Please see Session 0 on world and campaign set up, and skip to Session 1 for the first actual play post!