There is a difference between "challenging" and "frustrating"

     I first ran into people not quite understanding how to properly challenge their charges while I was in elementary school.  There were two teachers who ran the program for gifted (in the good way, not in the Midvale School way) children, NOVA.  Aside from the issues with gender inequality – they believed that girls were disadvantaged by traditional education methods, so their solution was to actively and purposely disadvantage the boys in their classes – they really had one major screw up.  While making the material covered more challenging was the right thing to do, they also decided to be much harsher in their grading.
     Not that there is anything wrong with tougher standards.  It is not irresponsible to tell children that they shouldn't be aiming for the 70% mark to get by.  Never mind that a C average would get a student booted out of the program, and even flirting with a low B led to some encouragement to migrate back to an existence with the normals.  Those were the standards, and even though we didn't know what they were going in, they were pretty regular.
     The problem was what it took to get that solid B average.  Many of us are used to the soft and easy break down of 90/80/70/60 percent for the floors of A/B/C/D grades.  It allows for an easy concept of how one is expected to perform.  In NOVA, the break down was a little different.  The As ranged from 100-96, Bs from 95-88, Cs from 87-78, and Ds from 77-70.  Now those aren't equal spreads, but I guess there is nothing that says they have to be.
     So, NOVA had tougher material and higher expectations in terms of performance in regards to grading.  That just makes for a challenging experience; you can make your own decisions as to whether or not that is a good thing for 8 year olds.  But these teachers also decided that they needed to be hypercritical when it came to grading and testing.  The multiple choice tests had between 8 and 10 possible answers, and the students received credit only if they picked the answer that best fit the expectations of the teachers (usually 5 of the choices were correct to some degree).  The essay tests (starting in third grade) demanded that the imposed format of topic sentence, supporting sentences, conclusion be used in every paragraph.  If a sentence were deemed to not be on point within the paragraph, that was 5% off right there.  Same for every spelling or punctuation error.
     Throw in the fact that neither of these women liked me (and said so to both me as a child and to my mother while they were trying to get my brother and I kicked out of the program despite our good performance), and I never really felt like I was being challenged by NOVA.  It was challenging, but I was just frustrated.  I was punished for my inability to spell – something with which I still struggle – and not allowed any degree of creativity in building my written arguments.  I wasn't rewarded for having a better understanding – as I saw it – than the teachers when I selected the answers that didn't need unstated qualifications (that they thought were implied in the questions).  It was a fight, all the time, and it did much to ruin any fun I had in school.
     And that lasted until about 2001.  Well, if I am going to be honest it will endure in some degree forever.  I have a general mistrust of teachers because of these women – the worse of the two has been reduced to teaching computer savvy students how to use outdated school computers at St. Christina School (3333 W 110th Street, Chicago, IL) – and, I would guess, that my similar distrust of women in general springs from the same source.  (So, for those who were so eager to blame someone I didn't meet until the fall of 1991, I suggest that you may be wrong.  Ask her.  I'm sure she'd agree that she is blameless.)
     Anyway...
     One should never have a goal of frustrating people unless the desired result is to drive them away.  Challenging them is different.  In the endeavors we willingly take on, most of us like a challenge.  If it all comes too easy, we tend to get bored and move on to something else.  If it doesn't come at all, we'll just quit.  And we are right when we do so.
     I see a fair amount of RPG scenarios where the writers can't seem to make the distinction between frustrating players and challenging their characters.  Sometimes this is because they just don't understand the mechanics of the game.  Henry Lopez was a textbook offender of this when he put together a non-combat encounter  for his Living Arcanis mod "Sibling Rivalry" where every PC needed to be able to scale a 200 foot tall cliff.  Not in a, if we take a lot of time when can mitigate the difficulty for characters that don't do a great job of climbing.  No, it was a every character needs to make this check that needs to challenge good climbers.  Run as written, this encounter should kill PCs.  It should leave entire groups sitting at the base, unable to go on.  While that may be somewhat realistic, it isn't what players are looking for.
     More recently, I and my fellow players suffered through Kyle Baird's Pathfinder Society Organized Play scenario The Rats of Round Mountain—Part I: The Sundered Path (#3-20).  The author had a completely different understanding of the rules than those who have played the scenario; this is never a good sign.  The result in a combat encounter which essentially runs as all of the players can make some guesses and maybe not be able to hit while the NPCs can do lots of damage to the PCs.  Not fun.  Not even for the GM running it.
     This is not the first time that PFS has embraced the frustrating over challenging mindset.  Sometimes it is because the GM isn't running it correctly (those little creatures aren't supposed to be invisible throughout the encounter, DG), but more often it was because somebody couldn't tell the difference between challenging and frustrating.  Having to defeat a really tough bad guy?  Challenging.  Having to make more than 10 Fort saves in a scenario or pick up the plague?  Frustrating.  Needing to find a way to accomplish some tasks without resorting to combat?  Challenging?  Having all of the roleplaying elements of a sessions mean nothing because the investigation cannot reveal anything?  Frustrating.
     We want challenges.  But we expect to succeed in them.  We want to think that there is a chance of failure, a real chance, because it is that perceived risk that makes the success matter.  Now, I don't think any of us wanted failure to be an actual option in elementary school (and that is not something we really willingly enter).  And we would probably like for work to have a much greater chance of reward than real risk, since without it we may go hungry and be without shelter.
     When it comes to hobbies, we want our successes to mean something.  We want the frustrations to be minor, ones than can be overcome by a better understanding of the technique or situation at hand.  It is why we don't stick with playing miniature golf or wiffle ball as adult hobbies.  It is why – if we are being serious – we don't try to learn to play a musical instrument without some form of assistance or aid.
     I guess I am one of those people who frustrates far many more than I simply challenge.  I would apologize, but that seems like a lot of work; I'd have to track down people who I would just assume have forgotten about me.  So, I have something to work on.  But nobody is really adopting me as a hobby, so they all have the option of just walking away.  I like my time spent playing RPGs.  I just wish that the people who took the time to write the material had a better understanding of the difference between challenging and frustrating.

The Art of Character Progression: Planned vs. Evolution

     Do you know where your character is going to go in terms of development?  For an author, the answer should be yes – otherwise said character and story may find themselves progressing in quite different directions.  When it comes to table-top RPGs, however, the answer can be either yes or no.  The player is the author of his or her character's actions, but not of the story in general.  And there is something rewarding in having the character develop (via game mechanics) as the story dictates – or guides – rather than to have everything planned out as part of a surefire formula.
     I believe that character progression – advancing one through the levels with commensurate abilities – is an art.  It is more than a skill that can be exacted and mastered, in part due to the fact that the player must be satisfied that the end result meets character concept, character integrity, and the desired level of effectiveness.  True, many players – especially in OP campaigns – heavily favor effectiveness; being true to a character concept may not seem as impressive as doing the most damage or being the hardest to successfully hit, especially if the rest of the table will only see that character in action once.

The RPG Table Tent and Me

     So one of the items – other than character sheets and my own brands of issuable favors and equipment – that I have claimed a sort of ownership of is the table tent (or character tent, if you prefer).  The only real purpose of this is to let other players know the name of the character you are playing; in a sustained home campaign, the table tent is simply wasted effort and space.  It doesn't need to be complicated at all.  In fact, I would wager that most table-top RPG players have had a piece in front of them that looked something like this.

Khalem Kaletar – a name borrowed from RSI's PBM game Hyborian War – was played by Michael Pempek from 1991-93 in an AD&D 2nd Ed home campaign.  I'm pretty sure there never was an actual tent for that character.

And it works.  Sort of.  This is the kind of the last minute, write out your character's name and class on a piece of paper on hand.  Inevitably, the other players have to pick up this brand of tent and view it from about ten inches away in order to read it.  You could be a little more bold, but that has some risks as well.

My thanks to Trent (as Trask) for posting this image in his review (available here)of Dragonfire Signs products.

See, this can be seen and read from across the table.  Both the character and player are identified.  It also makes me think that Trent may be either sloppy in his handwriting or a little crazy; most likely the former, but he is playing an RPG so both are possibilities.  But it still suffers from the fundamental problem of being a type of last minute production that screams lack of commitment to the character and/or the game.
     Sometimes a company, convention, or OP campaign will create a table tent for the players to fill out.  These are still – or should be – last minute affairs.  They typically sit up at a local convention's HQ along with blank character sheets, campaign specific rules guidelines, and other things that responsible players bring with them..  Paradigm Concepts, Inc. produced one for their Living Arcanis campaign.

Perfectly suitable.  Character name, player name, advertising the very game you are playing at the table – where everybody has already bought into the campaign.  And it is double-sided, so you play two different characters without need of a new piece of paper (and having to resort to the scrap paper option).
     Some players decide to take a low level of ownership to their character tents.  There are a group of players from Wisconsin who made rather simple but effective tents that looked a little like this.

To be fair, the Wisconsin players may have also included player name and land of origin on their actual tents.

I'm not sure why they felt a need to list – and only list – Charisma on the tent, but I guess it is the easiest way in d20 games to declare attractiveness.  Again, this gets the job done, usually can be read from across the table (there are always players who will want to see it with their hands, though), and has the added benefit of giving a visual representation of the character.  Granted, sometimes these types of tents forgo the step of letting others know who the player is – and maybe that's important – but they do evince a deeper level of commitment to the character than just scribbling out something at the last minute.
     My early efforts were along the same lines as the above.  I usually made the name large enough for everyone to see clearly, but the rest of the text would occasionally be declared too small to be easily read.  One of the things I did start doing, however, was making sure I could include some image – other than the character picture – that identified what the character represented.

So this was made sometime between Joe Abboreno making the LLT symbol and correcting the spelling.

Yeah, not the easiest thing to read from six feet away.  I liked to think it got the job done, but it certainly didn't look as good as this.

Again, thanks to Trent (Trask) for posting this image.  This is a Dragonfire Signs table tent.  This screams commitment to the character and campaign.

     Dragonfire Signs table tents were big in Living Arcanis.  They had the character name as big as life, two symbols – often a holy symbol on one side and a nation or faction's symbol on the other – and any kind of quote you felt best fit your character.  You could even order them double-sided, so you could just flip it over to have the same high quality tent for a different character.  The players who invested in these often had them out even when with people who all knew and had played with the character before.  Who cared, these things just looked that good.  Actually, you can still order them.
      I went a different route.  I may have need to change things that I would want on my tent, and the Dragonfire Signs were forever.  They also didn't have any character pictures, and what is the purpose of stealing quality on-line artwork if not to put into something for personal use?  I made some modifications for my Living Arcanis characters and came up with these.

My primary Living Arcanis character.  Artwork by Timothy R. Haldane.  Most people could read the entirety of the text.

Mistocles and his cohort, Valencia.  They would be together, so doing just a single tent seemed like a good idea.  Text, other than their names, proved to be too small.

Yes, the picture is of a Bugbear – and there are people who don't know that Bugbears are just the largest breed of goblins – but it really fit my idea for an accidentally abrasive bodyguard whose primary skill was killing.

This is my least favorite tent of all time (at least from ones I've created).  It was as though I had no idea what this character was really about.

Becks was a character I created after seeing Melissa Metedy's picture of a female satyr.  I immediately knew a way to fashion a personality to fit both the image and Arcanis.

      When it came time for the end of the Living Arcanis campaign, I decided to step up my self-made tents a step.  And it wasn't just making them more complicated than they needed to be – something that would mean making the text too small to be easily read – I also went through the trouble of having them laminated.  Since I would only be playing Mistocles (or Valencia if Mistocles went and got himself killed), they are the characters I made tents for.  Well, tents isn't the right work.  These were really just cards that had to be held up with slotted stands.  I made two tents for each; below are the ones I prefer for each.

The symbols are, in order, the House Sardis crest (actually the Clan MacNeil badge), Milandir's national banner (as drawn by Joe Abboreno, then colored blue), the symbol of the Obsidian Owls (a special military unit planned for an unreleased Arcanis book), the holy symbol of Cadic, the holy symbol of Yarris (actually, this is an internet image that just looked really cool), and the Coryani falcon (another image computer colored).  Couldn't fit all of those on a Dragonfire Signs tent.

Symbols are the Legion of the Watchful Hunter symbol (as modified and colored by me), the holy symbol of Cadic, a picture representing Valencia (Katharine Isabelle from Ginger Snaps Back), and the House Sardis symbol (see above).

I miss these characters.  If I ever get around to it, I'll finish some of the short stories – in a different setting – starring them and post them here.
     So, Living Arcanis finished and I had to find another game to play; apparently OP players just can't get out of the hobby.  I moved onto Pathfinder Society OP, or PFS.  It took a while to get into some kind of regular level of play.  Once I did, I immediately set to work making table tents for the benefit of letting people know which character they were experiencing.  Most of these are not up to date – and that doesn't speak well for my commitment and ownership in regards to the campaign.

I think this was Daenaris at 10th level.  She does have a better Perception for traps and AC now.  I really need to redo this tent just to put the better, new Andoran symbol on it.

This is the much lesser seen image for Kiara – the other one is very recognizable as stolen and I don't want to put it up because of that.  When I redo this, I'm thinking of swapping out her faction for her homeland symbol.

One of my two male PFS characters – I hate the image on the other enough to not post it.  It took some serious searching to find an image of a blond paladin.

The yet to be played Jennisa is my attempt to make a Summoner.  Hadn't figured out the math on an AC when I put this together.

     I'm not alone in making personalized tents for PFS.  Mine all follow a pretty simple format, and I like to think they get the job done.  Brad Ruby uses a different approach to end up in the same (or better) place.  Below are examples of two of his tents (slightly modified so I can present them).

     See, Brad gets plugs in for his Yahoo! and convention group (COWS Gamers), the game he is playing (PFS), America (see the flag), adds dancing cows for levity, and has everything else he could possibly need – including who is playing the character.
     In the end, I guess a (foolishly?) take a player more seriously if I see them commit to the character tent as being more important than something to be hastily made moments before – or after – game play has begun.  It speaks for how important the character is to them (or it does to me).  It means that the player is serious about letting the others at the table have a reasonable idea as to who the character is.  And, when done well, the look cool as hell.
     When it comes to cool nothing has beaten the Dragonfire Signs tents, though.