I’ve been working on a D&D adventure, War in the Deep. It’s an underwater adventure in which the players are transported to an undersea kingdom, where they have to rescue a princess consumed with bloodlust.

(Which, incidentally, you can buy at DriveThruRPG for $5!)

Anyway, here’s how I designed it:

I started with the reason for the adventure. This was originally part of a larger campaign, where the players are seeking seven different magical stones, and the king of this undersea kingdom has one of them. So, they were going to travel there to meet him. The question was, what would prevent the players from just requesting and taking the stone back from the merfolk?

I didn’t have a good answer for that, so I began flipping through the Monster Manual to get ideas for the creatures that might be in that area. That’s when I stumbled on the sahuagin.

The sahuagin are nasty brutes who mostly raid coastal towns. They’re basically underwater goblins: they sneak up out of nowhere, attack anyone they find, and steal supplies.

Sound like fun antagonists. So what if they’re the real antagonists? What if they’re attacking the undersea kingdom?

Okay, so how to get the players involved in a war between the merfolk and the sahuagin? Well, the players are traveling to see the king. What if his daughter is in danger? An easy reason would be kidnapping; let’s flip that around. What if she went off in search of danger, lusting after sahuagin blood?

And there was my plot.

So then it was a matter of designing the conflicts. I wanted to expand the time spent traveling to the merfolk’s central city, so I added an early encounter with a sahuagin raiding party. I then added an enclave of aquatic elves who would help the players get through that area if the sahuagin proved too powerful. I also conjured up a High Council of the aquatic elves, who could answer the players’ early questions about this area of the world, and the conflict between the merfolk and sahuagin.

After encountering the merfolk king, the players then had to find the princess. I figured the king would know at least roughly where the princess was, so I made that easy; the players just traveled north to a border town. On the way, they traveled above abandoned merfolk villages (as the merfolk prepared for war, they abandoned their easily-attacked villages).

Up to now, the players had been fighting sahuagin raiding parties, so I wanted to get across the feel of a large war. So I designed the next battle was a real battle, with dozens of sahuagin and several siege weapons assaulting this northern border town. The princess is in among the fray, giving it something of a Battle of Helm’s Deep feel.

Now what? How to finish this up with a satisfying ending? I’ll let you think about how you’d do it, and I’ll answer in part 2.

Much as I enjoy running tabletop RPGs, I don’t much enjoy playing a character.

This is partly because characters have relatively little to do at any given time. Consider combat: in a four-person party, I’ll spend at best four-fifths of the time twiddling my thumbs, watching everyone else fight. Even outside of combat, I’m just one of several adventurers.

Also, role-playing is social. As quoted in a recent post on Sin Aesthetics: “Enjoying roleplaying is rather like enjoying dancing: At some point you have to throw your inhibitions to the wind, admit you might look like a fool to passing spectators and enjoy the moment. Also like dancing, which at first may seem like a fairly limited activity, roleplaying has almost infinite depth and variety in the experiences it provides.”

While I can “throw my inhibitions to the wind” with good friends, that’s tough to do outside of intimate groups. And my role-playing friends don’t really reward good role-playing. They’re good guys; they’re just focused more on killing stuff and taking loot than on role-playing, at this stage.

And that’s one of the big limitations of role-playing: it requires a certain kind of mentality. Now, I think practically anyone can learn to role-play, just like anyone can play a game of charades. But it’s a mentality that I don’t get much of a charge out of.

Part of the trouble, too, is that I create worlds. I love thinking up cities and societies and people. If there’s going to be someone in the whole process doing that, why not me?

I love role-playing. This is odd, since I only started role-playing a few years ago. And yet I’ve loved it since I was a young boy.

My older brother was a role-player. He played D&D, and Car Wars, and others, I’m sure. After he died, I looked over his few remaining hand-written materials. I was amazed at his creativity, not thinking at the time about how much of his stuff may have been copied from published work. Either way, he definitely loved it. Even if it was all copied from published books, it was lovingly and carefully copied.

I was drawn to the idea of role-playing, of thinking up an adventure and living it in my mind. I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy at the time, so I was naturally attracted to the idea of collectively imagining an exciting adventure.

But I was also shy, so I never had anyone to role-play with. Not until I was in my 20’s, when a few co-workers involved me in a short game of Nobilis, then I found a few younger friends for whom I could run games. And when I did, we had an absolute ball. That’s when I realized what I love about role-playing.

I didn’t own any role-playing source books, so I found and printed the simple Sherpa rules. They’re brilliant; you can easily create a character and write up him or her in five minutes. They focus on simple conflict resolution, so we spent most of our time playing around instead of rolling dice.

We played a rip-roaring game of low-level mafia thugs in a science fiction setting, which culminated in a city-wide mafia war involving giant walking tanks. Then we moved to a short-lived heroic Greek fantasy game, then a D&D-inspired game before the group fizzled out.

Role-playing requires a huge imagination and a little guts (to yell “Och, y’not be wantin’ to double-cross a dwarf, laddie!” to your friends). The result is a collaboratively created story, which can have everything from pathos to action to comedy, and in which you are involved. You’re actually driving the story in whatever direction you want to take it. If it’s not fun, you can make it fun.

As a GM (Game Master), I present the world, situation, and antagonists facing the players. So I get to create a world—or at least simulate one—which I love to do anyway.

A fun, imaginative game where everyone is actively involved and collaboratively push each other to greater and greater heights of story and personal interaction? What’s not to like?

I spent Saturday at DC Game Day, a full-day tabletop roleplaying experience. I normally don\’t go out much, to be honest, and I knew nobody there. But I wanted to meet some local tabletop RPG players, and get a feel for games I haven\’t played before.

The first game involved 1936, Nazis on jetpacks, a temple in the jungle, lizard men, a mind-controlling wizard, and Excalibur. It used the Hollow Earth setting and system, which was pretty cool: You typically add together a few simple stats (points in some attribute plus points in some skill), and roll that number of special dice. If you meet or beat a small number, such as 4, you succeed; if not, you fail. Simple.

The DM clearly loved the adventure and the setting, and he understood pulp. I was playing the Pompous Professor archetype, and as soon as I yelled to the evil Nazi doctor, \”You\’ve befouled the name of science!\” he laughed and threw me a Fate Chip (which I could turn in later to force a better die roll). I had great fun.

The latter session was also fun, though I felt more tired and thus didn\’t enjoy myself as much. It was a space pulp adventure using I think a variant on the Fudge rules, in which a group of U.S. Rocket Corps fellows crash on Jupiter, and have to face the Iron Lords, Mole Men, Mind Spiders, and Living Mountains.

Character creation used the idea of your character\’s novel. The back of the character sheet had five spaces: in the first you described your character\’s childhood, and in the second his or her role in the Great War. In the third, you summarized the plot of a grand pulp adventure novel starring your character. You then randomly pick two other player-characters, who guest-star in your novel, while you fill in the fourth and fifth sections with how you guest-starred in other player-character\’s novels. And for each of these sections, you list a few aspects of your personality that were formed by these adventures.

And the system had a fascinating mechanic: when attempting to use a skill, you simply compare your skill value to your opponent\’s skill value (or a difficulty number), similarly to the Hollow Earth setting. However, you (and your opponent, if applicable) also roll \”Fudge dice,\” which simply have +1 on two sides, -1 on two sides, and 0 on two sides. You add the result to your total. If you\’re trying to hit something, then if your final result is over the opponent\’s final result, you subtract the difference from their health, armor, etc.

It\’s elegant. Your stats are directly equivalent to your enemy\’s, but the Fudge dice can, um, fudge the comparison in interesting ways.

I met a bunch of great guys (and some girls), many of whom I\’d enjoy playing with again. Even better, I won at the raffle (twice!) netting me a bunch of old roleplaying source books (Shadowrun, Dread, Colonial Gothic, Steal Away Jordan, and many others).

I\’m definitely going again in six months, if I can.