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Evening Knights, Today's post I wanna focus more on the player end of things specifically role play. Now, I come from an interesting place in that before I started to actively write and hold a passion for the craft I obtained some valuable skills just playing table top games. By this I mean when I ran games, I went in with a basic plan of how the a session would go, I would normally have at least 2-3 maps of different locations to give them room to roam and on special days even more, however, and any Dungeon Master would agree with me on this: Players are unpredictable. More specifically characters are unpredictable. If one has a decent group in which the players role play their characters, from a Dungeon Masters perspective this can teach a lot about how characters react and feel about the environment their placed in. For example, I was once a player in a game of Call of Cthulhu (CoC for short, I know right?) now the basic premise for this game is a group of people of various backgrounds and occupations investigating strange mysteries and lifting the veil on conspiracies, secret cults, and ancient knowledge all set in H.P. Lovecraft's literary universe. So during the session it was me, a journalist, a lawyer, and a thief and in the game we had to break into someones house to look for this journal of a man we suspected was apart of a local cult to Dagon. We we're role playing of course, so it played out something like this: Thief: Alrighty, so we just gotta get inside, take the journal and scram before he gets home. Lawyer: You know I can't be apart of this Thief: Why not? Lawyer: Well besides my license, the charge of breaking and entering would change that. Me: We really just need a photo of it and I can handle that. Lawyer: Look I'll keep watch and run interference if someone comes along, but I can't be seen in there. This was a very distilled version but the point is, shortly after the game the player who played the lawyer even apologized because he felt he held up the game when this wasn't the case at all. In fact, this gave good realism to the game and introduced a pretty intense scene where the owner of the house did come home early and it created a fun espionage sort of session. This change would never of happened if he had just gone with the flow of the game and continued on the predicted path the Dungeon Master had made. The characters our players make can teach us a lot about choices, and perspective, which of course is what we as writers strive to do constantly in our craft, to achieve great, balanced, and beloved characters and I feel table top is a great way to emphasize this. So for your consideration, maybe look into the hobby or at the very least heed the emphasis of characters and what makes us fall in love with them: The realistic and rational thinking that makes them so real and dear that they become moreso, they become apart us and change the way we feel and see from the moment we close that book and say goodbye to them. Thank you for reading, you guys have a great day!

Hello Knights, This is my first blog post, so I figured I'd cover something along the lines of ethics, but of course not really. Ethics being in short the guiding compass of ones morals, however, in this case I figured I'd cover unofficial social contract between a dungeon master and his players. Now, what I mean by this is the symbiosis between these two roles that allow these sort of games to function, the two ends of the staff that each hold up. Without both ends holding up, the staff falls. To delve deeper into this, lets say I call my friend John ask him and a couple others if they're up for a game of D&D this Saturday. The moment they say yes is when this metaphorical contract is forged. A contract that can be summed up as 1.) The Dungeon Master promises to build the game, flesh it out, and make it as good as he possibly can. 2.) The player(s) agree to take the game as serious as the game allows and to give in as much as the Dungeon Master puts in himself. The reasoning behind this contract can be applied to anything social really, hence the name, it's no different then lets say, same example as before except it's a party. There is still going to be a gathering for a number of hours on a Saturday, with the host making all the necessary preparations, and on the other end, the guests being respectful and attempting to have a great time. Both examples rely on both parties giving it their all. Really in such a niche hobby that is table-top gaming this is important because a Dungeon Master can create a kick-ass adventure, have the maps, monsters, and antagonist to back it, but this falls flat if the players just decide to rob the local shoppe, or start killing any NPCs without a regard for the world. This works two ways of course, if the Dungeon Master barely worked on his adventure, and didn't prepare the entire week before the game that Saturday. Well, simply put your players (more often then not, your friends) are gonna get bored and try to make the game fun on their own terms or even just leave. In short, both sides of the coin cleared their schedule in order to enjoy a game that, at least in my experience, they were looking forward to playing. In conclusion, I'd take the idea of this contract for your consideration if you decide to run or join a game, or even just planning a social outing in general. Both sides need to have fun and have their heart in whatever they're doing, because the other end of the staff can get heavy when being dragged along. That's all for tonight, thank you for reading, and have a great day Knights! I took heavy inspiration from one of my idols in the table top community, and he posts his own video about the social contract and elaborates more then I did, the link is below.