What’s shaking?

[Fortet]

Hey there, folks.

Feeling nostalgic at the end of the year, so I thought I’d hop in and see what you’ve all been up to these past several years.

I’ve recently earned my master’s degree in music education. My research was even published! I do band director stuff now, and hopefully in a few years I can start on a doctorate.

What about all of you?

[Archem]

Hi. Uh, not a whole lot has changed on my end. Started DMing my first game with my D&D group recently.

Yup, pretty exciting stuff.

[Fortet]

That is exciting! It implies that you have friends nearby! Which is something I am very much lacking at the moment.

[Momeka]

Mm, stopped running my own company and started working at Thunderful Games. Otherwise not much, just hanging around.

[Prpl_Mage]

Master degree huh? Good job, what was your paper about? No idea how it is over there but over here it takes a certain type of person to pull through with a doctorate based on all the bullshit I've heard from my friends who decided on that path.

Life here continues as normal, got my day job and family with the kid growing up. Warhammer addiction is getting worse and with the isolation the hobby room is getting messy with all the different projects I have started up and then gotten tired of.

Started DMing my first game with my D&D group recently.

Do you have any good advice? I plan to usurp the DM in my group, love the guy who's doing the thing right now but I feel an urge to be in more control of what's happening.

One thing especially is that I feel like creativity should be rewarded more, if I try to use the world in combat to make something smart or cool I feel like there should be something more than "alright, do a roll for an improvised attack without proficiency bonus and then roll a D4 + your STR modifier for damage".

[Archem]

That is exciting! It implies that you have friends nearby!

Kind of, but not really. Only half of the group is local, the other half is in Florida and Alabama, so we'd all have to take a drive for a few hours if we wanted to meet up in person. Well, maybe not the guy in 'Bama, but that's because he's in the geographical center, roughly. We play over Roll20, and it makes things nice and convenient.

Do you have any good advice? I plan to usurp the DM in my group, love the guy who's doing the thing right now but I feel an urge to be in more control of what's happening.

As a first time DM, I don't really have much wisdom to share. In my game, it's very light on combat (we just finished a year-and-a-half long dungeon crawl, so it's a breath of fresh air for everyone), so I don't really know how to design a good encounter yet. I tried to make every major event have multiple resolutions so that the players don't feel too railroaded, and I over-planned a few of my maps with areas that might never be seen just in case they come up with something fun.

For example:

This location is a drug den that the players will likely be visiting on our next session (ignore the white parts, it's a PNG with transparency, but it got converted to a JPG here). Their options for entry are to convince a door guard that they're supposed to be there through conversation (pretending to be new customers, stating that they're making a delivery of the raw materials, etc.), bribing him (drops the DC by a lot), or just failing and having him not let them in at all. There's the side-alley approach which can get them in through the back door, but a player told me he wanted to have some history with the setting, so I factored that in here. He's a criminal informant now, and has a rough history with the gang that runs this den, so naturally trying to break in will result in the party getting jumped here. I've set it up so that the odds are pretty unreasonable to try to get the party to just give up the member who the gang wants (I hope they do!), or they can try to fight their way through. Earlier, I had a pouch containing a whopping 100 gold present itself in a mansion they explored, so they could try to bribe their way out as well. I think the fight might be too much, as I told them to plan for a mostly RP game, so I have a plan for the bad guys to poison their blades at the start of combat to incapacitate everyone instead of just wiping the group. If they succeed, then entering won't be hard, and they will be able to shake down the people in there for information pretty easily. Otherwise, they'll recover an hour later with one person missing, dragged off to some torture den that I really, really want to have them play through.

But that's mostly just me talking about cool ideas I have that I can't share with my group. It does demonstrate my thoughts on having lots of alternatives for any significant encounter, though.

[Fortet]

what was your paper about?

The effects of rhythm-based music games on rhythmic achievement in music students. I had two groups - one group played Guitar Hero, another played Beat Saber. I hypothesized that the group playing Beat Saber would achieve greater post-test results than the group playing Guitar Hero due to BS being in virtual reality, potentially leading to higher states of “flow” (which is, like, a whole thing).
I was right but also wrong? Both groups showed improvements. The pre/post-test had two different phases. The BS group did better then the GH in one phase of the post-test, but the GH group did better than the BS group in the other phase.
Nothing statistically significant as far as overall improvement, BUT the data showed strong practical significance. If I redid the experiment with various changes to everything, I expect my results would reflect my original hypothesis.