How to run games within games

This post on games within games is still in in draft form to make it accessible to my friend Joel, since it includes feedback/suggestions for his table. I will revisit later to clean it up and remove personal references.
Joel,
I wanted to address the general issue rather than make recommendations for your table specifically, since that’s your domain. Why? Because this comes up in one form or another in EVERY group eventually. But time is getting short, so at the risk of being somewhat blunt I’ll summarize. So this is kind of a mix of general concepts and table-specific thoughts/suggestions.
Before I begin: if using a drinking game or casino-style gambling at your table, consider alcohol and gambling can be real-life touchy subjects. There are a few potentially touchy subjects, for example, domestic abuse or kidnapping, but in Wisconsin you’re most likely to encounter alcohol or gambling. Now, then:
How to run games within games.
Given the tendency of PCs to frequent taverns, drinking games are an ever-popular game-within-a-game (GWAG). Other popular GWAGs are arm-wrestling contests, 3-dragon ante, wizard’s chess, duels by steel or magic, archery contests or festival tournaments. These are great fun when used sporadically. They are less fun when repeated week after week, and do not move the story forward. When you use the same GWAG repeatedly, you run the risk of making the GWAG an easy replacement for actual gaming activities.
The first thing is to consider how much time should be spent on the game.
If it’s basically a poker game that runs every session, then it doesn’t really move the plot forward. It’s a red herring- something that seems to move the plot forward, but is actually not relevant to the plot. This is not necessarily bad. Some good uses for a red herring game would be as a warmup activity while people are eating, or to refocus if people are losing it.
Sometimes the game is important to the plot. If it’s an important plot theme for 1 character, then it’s only moving the plot forward for 1 character. 4 of 5 characters = 20% useful time, 80% not useful. That is, if it’s the same thing week after week. And I don’t mean minor variations, like 1 week it’s whiskey instead of ale. Variations CAN make it more interesting, more on that later.
If it’s an important plot for everyone, then it’s worth the time spent.
BUT.
Spending a long time to repeat the same game week after week just to “determine the winner”, to have that set up an actual in-game result, is either A) a setup or B) ignored. Or C), a diversion.
A setup? If the winner is predetermined, even if only due to a large number of bonuses, then yes, a setup. A lot of time spent toward a predetermined result that could have been summarized in a 1-minute paragraph.
B ignored? If the winner is not predetermined but must be a specific  individual in order to move the plot, then yes, ignored.
C diversion? If the GWAG does not significantly impact the plot, then it is a diversion.

Remember that your group gathers to play D&D. Another game, although embedded in D&D, is not what attracted them to the table.
·         Games within games cover a wide range. Drinking games and Arm wrestling tend to be the most commonly used.
o   GWAGs can be a good way to start a session, as people catch up and/or eat.
o   All “games” are the same: set rules, generate randomness, determine result.
·         Not D&D
o   Players come together to play the D&D game, not a drinking game that uses D&D dice.
o   Adding random or enhanced features to a drinking game doesn't make it a better game.
o   Drinking games tend to encourage obnoxious ingame behavior. Such behavior usually doesn’t advance the plot, which leads to time issues.
·         Time issues
o   Sessions have limited time. Be careful not to dominate the D&D time with the drinking game. Set a goal for total duration, including time for the after-party sillies.
o   The time for the drinking game is additive when used for several sessions.
·         Results
o   If the winner of the drinking game is predetermined then the entire system of randomness, the entire drinking game, is false.
§  If the winner is predetermined, use a story instead of spending time at the table rolling dice that don’t matter.
o   On the other hand, if randomness is important, consider having one die roll decide the winner.
·         Group inclusion
o   If the game is not important to the story of everyone, consider having Evan be the only die roller.
§  If this is the case, you could do it away from the table.
§  Other players could be told what happened if they chose to have their characters participate.
o   Make participating in the game a choice, not a requirement.
§  A player sitting at a table where everyone else is participating counts as a requirement, even if the PC is not in the game.
§  Being stuck on a boat with nothing to do other than drink counts as a  requirement.
·         That’s tough when you ARE on a boat. Old school method was to use a world-based perspective, which… took… forever… to… get… anywhere. Roll up random encounters every X miles, it just sucked for long trips and everyone knew it but it was RAW so everyone followed it. More recent method is to include story-significant events, and briefly describe the rest.
·         Relevance to plot
o   If the game is not important to this week’s story, don’t use up the table time. Summarize it.
o   It seems to be leading up to an epic conclusion for Evan specifically. If it doesn’t include everyone, don’t make everyone participate.
o   Make the game relevant to the table in significant and important ways.
§  Have the ship be attacked by a sea monster during a game. The drinking chars suffer penalties.
§  Include different benefits or drawbacks depending whether the characters drink or not. Obviously the non-drinkers will have whatever kinds of pros and cons depending on the usual story elements.
·         Drinking Pros ideas
o   Meet someone new
o   Hear about some story element
·         Cons ideas
o   Don’t have time to prepare all their equipment,
o   Have a hangover for the rest of the day.
·         Someone doing something else is prepared with their gear when the boarding party hits the boat.
·         Check the effects of alcohol and drugs in the various Books of Vile Darkness. The Thieves’ World novels use a drug named K’rrf. Bonuses, Penalties, scaling use and cost, plus addiction and withdrawal are addressed. In mainstream published rulebooks it’s almost universal to have detrimental long-term effects. This is driven by cultural norms and the legal dept. You can find some alternative splatbooks that focus on benefits without drawbacks.

I love this!

http://lookrobot.co.uk/2013/06/20/11-ways-to-be-a-better-roleplayer/

Campaign design: handling failure

Inspired by discussion about the article "Make it BIG!", written by Chris Perkins and hosted by Wizards of the Coast at http://wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20130307

E:
"An interesting read! I think that is what I am missing right now in what I am working on is anything particularly "big", as I've mostly stuck with usual fantasy world tropes. Still, it's a bit harder to think big when you're planning for first level characters. I'll have to think more about this...."

Me:
Yeah, the "big" comes later. It's good to design carefully for the first 4-5 levels as the characters are fairly fragile and don't have many resources. Up to 10th, still somewhat limited. After 10th, take off the kid gloves. Pull out the really big stuff, let the party figure out the rest. If the wizard doesn't have teleport on a scroll to get out of a tight spot, it's their fault.

OH, one secret of campaign/game design that you don't see often: Always have a plan. Figure the party is either going to succeed, OR fail. Plan for both. Sure, you hope they succeed, and you design your main threads around the presumption of success. But what if they don't succeed? 

The secret is to have a general idea of what happens if they fail a quest. Not necessarily a detailed plan, as failures can be very unpredictable, but simply consider a general idea of where events may lead. Once in a while you can use a deus-ex-machina rescue as the cavalry charges in to save the PCs, but try to avoid overuse. The players should deal with the consequences of failure. PCs with a safety net are generally not as fun for the players. Some examples:

• A simple "The End". Roll up a new group of characters to begin anew, or continue where you left off.
• A Feaste of the Beastes, possibly with a Pirates-of-the-Carribean-esque escape before dinner.
• Negotiations for the party's release, conducted by an interested NPC (especially the one for whom they are performing a quest).
• A round of Raise Deads or Resurrections for everyone after they don't communicate with their home temple after a year (hopefully this was pre-arranged by the party). This could tie in with the loss of their main gear-- possibly spurring a quest to get their gear back from the hands of the NPCs that are now ravaging the wildlands with powerful new magicks...
• Failure need not involve the deaths of PCs; if they were trying to prevent the Mad Baroness' flight from town, well, now the Mad Baroness now roams free to the frustration of the party. I'm sure they'll encounter her in the future...

Eric Weberg

D&D Next & Past: History of targets knowing about spells

During a game of D&D Next, the question came up of what a spell's target knows about spells cast upon them. This is not a new question to D&D, and given the nature of D&D Next to admix the previous editions, I wanted to detail some subjective history as I can best recall.

I forget whether it was 3ED or 4ED that clarified that targets are aware of spells cast upon them, who cast the spell, and what the spell was. For SURE within 4ED, 3ED I'm not positive offhand, but I think it was first addressed in mid-3ED in a Sage Advice column. 2ED and 1ED and BECMI had no such clarification, so it was done by house rules. And as you can imagine, it did come up in most games eventually.

This is most troublesome when it's A) not obvious who's casting the spell, for example a silenced and stilled spell or an invisible caster. B) a spell with no noticeable effects upon a successful save, particularly charms and holds, especially when the party is trying to be sneaky. (e.g. Can you re-cast a failed charm on the guard at the door? When the spell wears off, does the guard realize she was charmed or does she simply remember being unusually happy to see you?)

What were popular table rules in the older versions?
1. Since it's quite possible for a target to simply not know about a caster being there at all, most tables ruled that the target does not automatically know who cast the spell that they're saving against.

2. To the question of whether targets notice spells that have no noticeable effect upon failure, there's more variation. If the save was made by a significant margin, or the target made a subsequent ability-based check, they could notice something. Other tables simply had nothing happen; like the spell fizzled.

3. The aspect that probably continues to generate the most debate is whether targets can identify the failed spell. Obviously, non-magic-focused characters are not even going to know the names of most of the spells available to high-level casters. Even if the target saw a spell name printed in bold letters they wouldn't know its effects, even more so in campaigns in which casters create their own custom spells. So it follows that the target wouldn't possibly automatically know what the spell was named. What the effects are, that's a different story.

I think it was 3rd edition that allowed a Spellcraft check to identify a spell- but even that is a little loose, because technically you identify the spell by watching it being cast, not by being the target. Regardless, that's pretty much the way it worked in most of the tables I played. You could use whatever the magical skill of the edition was to identify the spell.  If you had a high skill because you were that class or similar, well, yeah, you'd almost always identify any spell. This was generally based on spell level, so say, 2nd level spell Hold Person might have a particular feel to it that a 5th-level prison guard has probably felt a few times so it makes sense they'd maybe identify it, but 8th level spell Maze? What's that? So as a table rule, you might use the spell level versus target's character level to set a difficulty to determine what the spell effects would have been, or perhaps simply the magic school. (Enchantment/Charm, Evocation, Necromancy, Illusion, etc.)

A search for rules covering this question in D&D Next turned up no official rule as of yet.

Eric Weberg