TRPBTNTWAs

Responding to Things Role Playing Bloggers Tend Not To Write About:

• Book binding. I love my Labyrinth Lord hardcover from Lulu, and I love digest-sized books (I know this is a prompt about physical book binding, but digest size also has the nice side effect of producing PDFs that fit nicely on my iPad). I don't like full-sized (8.5" x 11") perfect-bound books that are too thin; I would rather thinner books be printed as digest size. The otherwise excellent Anomalous Subsurface Environment suffers from this (and it really is excellent in content; it is one of my favorite OSR products to date; my only other complaint is that I want more of it). Also, I hate it when players see what module I am running (if I am running a module) so PDFs being included with hardcopy is appreciated so that I can easily print out maps or other details for my gaming binder. I find that the iPad is not fast enough to be able to switch between documents on the fly during gaming, but is great for reading offline.
• Doing a voice. I do them, inconsistently, and badly. Has anyone else noticed that (at least in North America) the default D&D character accent tends toward badly-done British?
• Breaks. Whenever people need to get up and deal with something, they do. I haven't had problems with distractions. During action everybody tends to be into it. I'm currently running a game after work on Mondays, and we only get to play from around 5 to 8, so sessions usually don't go on long enough for people to get bored or distracted.
• Description. I am very descriptive. I feel like I have to be, because I usually have a specific picture in my mind, and it is rarely generic Tolkienized fantasy.
• Where do you strike the balance between "doing what your character would do" and "acting like a dickhead"? I haven't had to deal with this in a long time. Basically, if I felt like it was making other players uncomfortable or angry, I would figure out some way to address the issue, probably by talking to the dickhead player offline.
• PC-on-PC violence. Currently disallowed by referee fiat. I would like to run a game where this was allowed, because I like the idea of PCs really having absolute freedom (though of course they will need to bear the consequences of their actions). I would need to be confident that the players could separate themselves sufficiently from their characters though. It would totally depend upon the people in question.  
• How do you explain what a role playing game is to a stranger who is also a non-player? Depending on the person in question:
• Open-ended World of Warcraft where you can do anything.
• Collaborative story-telling that uses dice to resolve uncertainties and conflicts.
• Alchohol at the table? Sure. Only with people I know well.
• What's acceptable to do to a PC whose player is absent from the session? Is whatever happens their fault for not being there, or are there some limits? My sessions are so short (only 3 hours right now) that it is unreasonable to expect the PCs to be able to return to home base every session. And, due to our schedules, it is also unreasonable to expect everyone to attend every session. Sometimes they spend the entire 3 hours in a single dungeon room. I don't have any problem with that, but it does make using a solution like the Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom or Where The Hell Have You Been, Flake? impossible. Currently we are just handwaving: if you are there, your PC is there. If not, not. No narrative explanation is given. This does, however, have a dramatic impact on the possibilities open to the PCs. For example, one character is an eladrin (high elf) assassin, and in 4E eladrin have the ability to teleport 30 feet once per encounter (or every 5 minutes when not in an encounter). As you can imagine, having a party member that can teleport 30 feet dramatically expands the dungeon exploratory powers of a party (particularly those of a low-level party that doesn't otherwise have access to powers like flight or teleportation). There have been several times when the assassin was gone where the PCs might have used his power to teleport over and affix a rope to gain access to another area, or use the teleportation power in a similar way. But, since the eladrin was not there to be exposed to risk (there is no way I would kill a player's character when the player is absent), he was also not there to add to the party's options. In this case, I am sacrificing narrative consistency for game consistency. I'm not totally happy with this solution, but it's the best I've got right now.