Accounting Sessions

Running D&D last night, I caught myself doing something naturally that's built up over a lot of years; and I might never have noticed it, except that I'm running regularly for the first time in some years and different things are coming consciously to me.

The players, having enriched their main characters, had returned to their home in southern Transylvania, Kronstadt, with the last running.  They began sorting out where they wanted to spend their money, how they wanted to build up their holdings, and over the interim some decisions were made.  More importantly, they decided to take a group of their "tertiary" characters, or henchfolk, and set off to adventure with them instead.  Specifically, they agreed to pick a hench that was no higher than 5th level, who might in turn have one sub-hench (because one gains a hench at 5th, and henches can have henches).

This meant bringing a bunch of characters up to speed with regards to various rules I've made in the last seven years, including sage abilities and backgrounds.  This meant another night of "accounting," which I don't mind and the players don't mind.  They love their characters, even the tertiary ones; they're able to identify characteristics that please, and they're anxious to explore what they can do with the different classes.  The high level druid play a mage this time around; the high level fighter, a cleric; the high-level mage, an assassin.  We know the drill.  The difference is that the other characters, the ones they played under the sea, aren't retired.  They're building the game world around them, and are ready if the players want to restore their involvement.  This isn't up to me.  I don't start a game by saying, "I've built an adventure for 5th levels, so all of you have to play your lesser characters."  That'd be ridiculous.

I have no adventure planned, as yet, and I'm fine with that.  I don't even know where the players will go.  I know that wherever they go, my world is deep, complex and massively filled with inspiration ... for me and the players.  When I need to think of something, I will.

So, back to the accounting.  To DM is to be interrupted.  Answer a question about horses, about this sage ability, about how knowledge points work in this situation, about this or that spell, about the weapons, about results from die rolls made against the background generator, etcetera, etcetera.  I rather enjoy it.  I get to explain the different parts of my system, though I have before online and sometimes to these same people; I get to propose ideas and possibilities for the future.  We had the conversation about favourite foods and what sort of bonuses there'd be, that I had on the blog here, and the players gave the same responses that the readers did.  [very rarely do my players read this blog].

I unhesitatingly suggest where a character should put a newly rolled up stat (there were two henchfolk that needed creation last night), or what spell a character should take, or what weapon, or even which race or class.  I like to offer two or three viable choices, utterly certain the players ARE able to think for themselves.  For me, these are philosophical arguments: if this, then that, but if that, then this.  I've started hundreds of characters in my world with all sorts of stats.

Let's say you want a druid and you have two decent scores, a 15 and an 18 (which the player rolled).  Now, if you put the 15 under wisdom, you get 3 bonus spells, two 1st and a 2nd, but you get the 18 charisma which has ongoing effects to your appearance, background and your status in life, before you start the game.  And the responses to charisma the game setting produces.  On the other hand, a 15 charisma is still pretty high, and an 18 wisdom gives six bonus spells, an extra 2nd, a 3rd and a 4th above those named.  Those spells are going to come in handy.

And yet, from a different viewpoint, let's say, as the character did last night, you also have a 14, two 10s and a 9.  You only need a 12 wisdom to be a druid, so suppose you put the 14 under wisdom, the 15 under charisma and the 18 under, oh, say, strength.  Or constitution.  Or dexterity.  This cuts your spell bonus to just two 1st level spells, but the strength bonus gives your character a whole different balance.  This is AD&D-based, so there's no percentage roll for druids, but you're still +1 to hit and +2 damage.  Add a +1 spear and you're going to rock the house in battle, even with your average 1 less hit point per level.  That means more experience that's earned from combat, meaning you go up faster.  And you get the pleasure of dropping the killing blow more often.

People don't think about that.  They tend to think about the whole benefit; they forget those six bonus spells take six levels to materialise (for druids; longer for clerics).  The strength bonus, or the high charisma, those things are here today.  Truth is, however, there's no right answer.  The player went with the 15 charisma, 18 wisdom, and put the 14 under constitution.

I like these conversations ... and accounting runnings are full of them.  All the players are listening, and free to dive in with comments, so the practical discussion feeds around the table and everyone feels involved.  I'm not sure why accounting runnings fail in so many campaigns.  Is it that there's always one player whose so self involved they have zero interest in what other players want or are trying to do?  Is it that the DM polices the players so hard, demanding that no one's allowed to comment on what other players do?

I ran across some thread last month that argued a player, during play, wasn't allowed to give instructions to another player in a strategic way.  In other words, I'm not allowed to say, "You stand on that side of the door while I stand on this side, then we'll both holler loud."  Because that would be me running your character.

Can you imagine this applying to hockey?  Or doubles tennis?  What you do with your character when we're in a party together affects my character's survival.  Hell, it affects your character's survival.  A team communicates as a team, that's why teaming up is vastly superior to individual achievement.

I can imagine that a table where the social rule was, "You're not allowed to give advice about someone else's character," that accounting runnings would be death.  You'd have to sit there, grinding your tongue between your teeth, while the 1st level druid chose the spells purify water, detect poison and invisibility to animals, before starting whatever adventure was to come.  The party may not even see an animal, or encounter poison ... but you're not allowed to say so.  That would be "running the druid's character."

Gah.

Anyway, getting to the thing.  People do talk to me at the same time, about different things.  And I have to pick someone to answer.  I try to pick the person who has said the least up to that time, in this session.  I try to give as complete an answer I can, in the shortest amount of time.  And while I'm doing that, I'm not forgetting the others.  Everyone gets automatically ranked in my head for who gets answered next ... and I remember to turn to them and say, "yes, you had a question."  I find myself automatically managing that ranking in my head for long periods, adding new people to the line as answers are given ... because person #4 is certain to ask something while I'm still answering person #1, but person #2 and #3 are still in the queue in my head.

This habit didn't come naturally.  It came after years of running.  It's the two-fold skill of not getting lost in giving an answer, and not forgetting there were other questions.  Not getting lost answering a question means not going too deep into it, right now.  I'm thinking, hitting the main points over two or three minutes, then moving onto #2 and doing the same.  Then, if there was still something to add to #1's question, it can be added later, when there's a lull, when I've got more time.

This keeps everything moving even during accounting runnings.  As a player, you've got a book open, or the wiki, or just the internet, and you've got a question.  You know you can interrupt me while I'm talking to #3, because I'll remember you did.  You just say, "I've got a question," so I can answer, "I'll be right with you," while going on with the point to #3.  Then you're on deck and so it goes, all night long.  Everyone has enough to keep working on their personal puzzle, there's other players to ask about some detail like how sage knowledge points accumulate, and I'm keeping the information flowing.

What's more, I've built tools the players can use.  A player whose been running a halfling now has a big burly human.  With regards to encumbrance, the halfling had to nitpick equipment, since even 15 lbs. was a burden.  Now the human can carry the halfling and the 15 lbs. without breaking a sweat.  How does it work?  Well, I have this slick excel table the player can play with ... that eats up ten minutes of the player's time, plus organising their gear.  That's 40 minutes I don't have to worry about that player.  Gives me time for others.

I would say that the real problem with accounting runnings in other campaigns is that there so little to account for.  Or rather, there's so little power the characters have over their world when they are accounting.  With so many possible choices of knowledge, spells and equipment in my game; and so many levels on which the "smart" game is played; and the freedom to talk among themselves and group think their way through future problems they might face, an accounting running is anything but dull.  In fact, it's a sort of slow burn, where the tension builds up as the characters take stock of what they have, what they can actually carry, what limitations they possess with regards to a lack of spells or character classes, in the face of an adventure they haven't even started yet.

It's a very different kind of campaign that I run.