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My players complain that it’s unfair to include traps in an adventure because none of them are playing thieves. Are they right?

When you look at adventure stories on TV or in fiction, you’ll note that the obstacles are crafted to reveal and explore the heroes’ capabilities. Sometimes you’ll see a change of pace episode in which the hero is forced to succeed, stripped of his usual abilities. But that’s a deliberate contrast to the standard M.O.

Look at your players’ character sheets as an order specifying the kinds of challenges they want to face. Tailor obstacles to these specifications and you’ll be paying off the expectation they established when they created their PCs.

Failure is often not as interesting as roleplaying tradition says it is. It’s especially a drag when the party has to fail for a reason that makes sense logically (no thieves means they ought to suffer whenever they run into a trap) but doesn’t add interesting choices or the prospect of entertaining scenes.

That said, you can still have traps in the dungeons bashed by your rogue-free crew. Just change the deactivation conditions to riff off the skills they do have. Is one of the characters a paladin with a high Religion score? Then have him run into ghostly traps that can be deactivated by performing an exorcism. (If you’re playing 4E and worried about messing with the rules too much, this exact example already appears in Open Grave.) Does the party include another PC whose biggest skill is Nature? Have the group run into natural hazards he can think his way out of on a successful skill check.

The gaming guest track consists of me and robheinsoo. We weren’t sure what to expect as guests at a full-on comic con. For example, we didn’t realize until we hit the floor that there would be tables waiting for us in guest alley. Given the comics focus of the show I was entertaining visions of a lonely sit but in fact we had a steady stream of folks popping by to say hello. Even more gobsmacking was the packed seminar room we had for our State Of the Hobby Gaming Industry panel. The sub-tribe was out in force. After some opening pontifications, we opened the floor to questions. Fifty minutes went by way too fast as we discussed the impact of electronic gaming on classic wargames, the ongoing future of story-focused games, and hobby gaming as the vanguard of e-publishing. Rob handled some Qs in his capacity as 4E lead designer, from the reasoning behind the sharp break from 3E to the behind-the-scenes on the multi-classing/hybrid class rules.

He’s also been demoing the heck out of his latest project, Emperor’s Gambit, the new version of Three Dragon Ante. It came out on Monday—if only someone had a bunch to sell at the show they’d be cleaning up. Meanwhile I’ve been talking to folks about Hamlet’s Hit Points, GUMSHOE and more.

The con organizers have been taking care of us and overall the show gives off the mellow vibe of a smoothly run event. If you’re in the area and considering coming by tomorrow to wave the gamer flag, by all means do so.

After some prolonged adventures in FedExery, contributor’s copies of the new Dungeons & Dragons supplement The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea are now in hand. I bask in the accomplishment along with lead designer Rob Heinsoo and the usual vast team, including fellow contribs Ari Marmell, Eric Scott de Bie, Matthew Sernett, and Rodney Thompson.

• Traverse the astral waters!
• Hang out in cloud castles with couatl!
• Contest with exalted souls in the rugged Game of Mountains!
• Guard your magical gear from the implacable quom!
• Also, githyanki pirates.

Now available at your favorite hobby game outlet. Excerpts and details here.

But let’s say, to weave a scenario, that it will achieve a penetration similar to the iPhone/iTouch. What does that do for tabletop game design?

A page-sized screen that you can pass around the table makes possible a number of accessory-style apps. We’re used to a D&D tactical map being an inch a square, but it could go page-sized for an app that allows you to drag virtual counters through a battle space, allow the map to scroll with the combatants, figure blast radii and so forth. Like the virtual game table we’ve seen in proof of concept form, but smaller, and not so far in the future.

For GUMSHOE and other investigative games, scenario hand-outs could come as an app package, in gorgeous color. Some documents might be sound files or videos.

For HeroQuest, you could plot a pass/fail map in real time to see your narrative and get appropriate Resistances.

The real paradigm shift comes, however, when the game book becomes, through its transformation into an app, the game itself. I’m not just talking robust hyperlinks within and between rule books, although those alone could be worth the price of the port.

Instead of a rules book telling you what the resolution system is, the app is the resolution system. The app version of Time & Temp would present Epi’s brilliant Sudoku-like paradox grid as a touchable form. Instead of giving you a description of how it works, it just works and gives you the results. 3:16 would, instead of showing you how to arrange figures on the range diagram, include a range diagram you’d move your virtual figures on.

For D&D you’d go to the monster screen, punch in your search parameters, and drag the desired stat blocks onto the battle grid. The app would keep track of power recharges, hits and misses, lost hit points, ad infinitum. It becomes your co-DM, doing all the grunt work for you.

Resolution mechanics, handled by the app, would become invisible, freeing designers from concerns of complexity or the limitations of polyhedral dice. Wickedly involved math could underlie a 21st century answer to The Morrow Project, so long as the app was required to do all of it.

The demon of busy scheduling has struck again, leaving me regretting the departure of a recent but much appreciated addition to my Thursday night gaming group. As a result I am putting out an open call for one new recruit. In the past I’ve kept a waiting list, but it’s been many years since I’ve done a call and want to start from scratch. Apologies if you’ve contacted me in the past; please bear with me by getting in touch again.

To join the group, you’ll need to be reliably free on Thursday nights and able to get to the Bloor-Bathurst area in downtown Toronto. We meet from 7 pm to 10 pm.

You will also need a saintly tolerance for my playtesting needs. I run games I’m either designing or need to familiarize myself in order to do freelance work for. Lately we’ve had an unusually long run with a single campaign, which happens to be D&D4. Soon we’ll be switching to the as-yet-unnamed GUMSHOE space game. Often I’ll have to suddenly abandon a successful series in midstream to go on to the next thing. We usually play RPGs but there’s always the chance you may be asked to test-drive a card or board game along the way.

In the past I’ve accepted players on a first-come, first-served basis. This time, I’m looking to cast the new candidate a little more, with an eye to keeping our group dynamic fresh.

If you’re interested, leave a comment or private LJ message with a way of contacting me back. Or if you’re seeing this on the Facebook, leave a message in my inbox. Give me a quick sense of your gaming tastes.

Roleplaying characters tend more than their counterparts in other narrative media to make choices that seem abrupt, arbitrary, or just plain crazy. Part of this can be chalked up to the fun of playing unhinged or impulsive characters. They shake things up, make things happen, and in general appeal to the player type referred to in the 4E DMG as the instigator.

That said, the extreme actions of otherwise sane or justified characters often come off as jarring in a roleplaying context due to a lack of adequate groundwork. GMs find it easier to lay pipe for coming events than players do. It’s hard for players to find opportunities to execute the slowly escalating stages of a dramatic character turn.

A GM might encourage this by allowing players to incorporate character transformations into the game. The player tells the GM how the character might slowly evolve over the course of many sessions, laying out the chain of motivating events required to get her there. Depending on where the dials are set on the game’s balance of narrative power between players and GMs, the GM might facilitate this as written, or attempt to surprise the player by getting her character where she wants to go in an unexpected way.