...discuss

A few grab-bag ideas that have been rolling around in my head that I'd like to hear from any of you on...

-"Hey Chad, what's your cleric's name?" "Maurice." "What's his god's name?" "Chad." Chad has solved the cleric role-playing problem by declaring that he, Chad, is the god that his cleric follows. Is this Grant-Morrison-esque move interesting or repulsive to you as a DM, or both?

-1st level PCs suck at everything, except their armor class, which can be fairly decent. Have you noticed any implications of this in-game?

-When I run AD&D, the written rules make it hard to sort out how many spells a PC can know per level vs. how many they can cast in any given day. When I run 3.5, I have the same damn problem. I usually end up winging it, or feeling as though I just did. Am I just being lazy/forgetful and refusing to comb through the books or does everybody else have this problem?

-I've never run a large-scale hexcrawl. Those of you who do: do you just sort of write a few bits about each place and wing the details when the players get there, or what? (And yes, I've read those "how to build a hexcrawl" blog posts in Points of Light or Bat In The Attic or whichever.) Addendum: I am not asking you to tell me to go read something, I am asking YOU what YOU have done when you ran a hexcrawl.

-Post-apocalyptic sci-fi DMs--here's an idea: "anachro-anarcho-arachnids". Go!

-I assumed, in a dungeon I ran, that a group of 1st level PCs defeat a vampire and/or a medusa (both high-level monsters, run totally legit) (separately) on the condition that they expected to run into the monster and the monster didn't expect to run into them. And defeat them did. Am I being a soft-hearted monty-haul about this or is this pretty much what you'd expect?

-It occurs to me that the simple initiative system is a big culprit in these victories. If the PCs get initiative, they all get to go before the monster. So: if they win initiative, good for them. If they lose but then win initiative on the next round, then they essentially get to go twice before the monster's second action--still a pretty good deal for them. Essentially: if you outnumber the enemy, then simple initiative works in your favor, even if that enemy is more powerful than all of you put together. Knowing this, do you still like simple initiative?

-Golden rule for awesoming up your players: Fear of death is the mother of invention. Agree or disagree?

-It occurs to me that while the verb "to awesome (one's players)" is stolen from Jeff Rient's essay on the subject the actual approach he describes there emphasizes the carrot more than the stick. My opinion is: the carrot only works if the player's a hardcore gamer and will be back next week no-questions-asked. Casual players need the stick. Agree? Disagree?