Planning (and not Planning) for Dungeon23

What Is Going On Here

Early in December, Sean McCoy, creator of Mothership, proposed a challenge: 365 rooms and 12 levels of a megadungeon as a day-to-day journaling/creation project. 

I have a great affection for megadungeons. I have run them: a modified Caverns of Thracia sat at the heart of the beginning scenario in the five-year D&D game I ran, which ended earlier this year. And I have created some as well (although not finished them; more on this later).

Megadungeons trace a path straight back to the origins of the hobby. They tell strange, hidden, incomplete stories. They are surprisingly malleable and can facilitate different types of play, in place of (or in addition to) the classic crawl. They still loom large in popular culture beyond D&D; “Souls-like” and “Metroidvania” videogames are in many respects driven by the same principles (and tapping into the same excitement) that animated the first megadungeons 50 years ago.

Every fantasy RPG should have a megadungeon somewhere within it, and many games beyond D&D could benefit from a megadungeon or megadungeon-like space within their worlds. So we will create a Dungeon23 megadungeon, and we will start on January 1st. How will this work?

Dungeon Principles

A rough draft (until it isn’t). Other Dungeon23 participants have invested in fancy notebooks, written extensive background information, and created elaborate art for their project. This is great, and I salute their respective processes; but mine will be different. For me, a day-to-day project should be part rough draft, part sketching on a bar room napkin, part scrapbook, part Pepe Silvia diagram. I want to start with the humblest of possible beginnings. We’ll leave room for the loftiest of ambitions, but those ambitions aren’t helpful to getting started, and indeed are the most likely early stopping point.

Falling behind (and catching up). Rigid every-day schedules are the bane of new year’s resolutions and shared creative projects alike. We’ll endeavor to form a rhythm when possible, but we forgive ourselves in advance, understanding that the first lapse doesn’t kill the whole project, and a burst of energy that populates a week’s worth of rooms in an hour won’t be the norm.

Use the generator (then refuse it). Our random generator (see below) is a valuable tool, but it merely advises us. We can reject, invert, contest, and contort its advice at any time.

All misfit toys are welcome. No failed campaign notes, unused session prep, or aborted Itch.io publication is ever wasted so long as it could still rise again, animated by dark necromancy, to become part of a new project. One or more of my past projects will surely be absorbed into this process.

System and setting agnostic (until it isn't). I think this will be in some sort of D&D milieu, and I will  probably use (and advance) the stat block principles I've talked about previously, but this is also intentionally fuzzy at the outset. 

Grappling with Physical Media  

I normally create everything digitally. In the spirit of this project and in the interest of shaking the routine tree to see what comes loose, I’m going to do this by hand (to start… we’ll see…) After all, actually using a few of these notebooks that have been living in (colonizing?) my house for years is part of the appeal of doing the project. I’m going to start with this nice, concise 48-page graph paper memo book. We’ll reassess as we go if it's working or not.

I have terrible handwriting. I’ll consider if/how to address this issue as I go.

My one new expenditure is a tiny printer capable of producing really small adhesive images (think passport photo-sized). This should add some color and texture to the project that would otherwise be missing. We’ll revisit our physical tools as we get deeper into the process.

Mighty Generator, Guide Our Hands

A good generator or random table can express universal themes while also providing a reasonable amount of unpredictability. We’ll hit the generator to start most entries; some days will require banging our head against the enter button until something legible emerges. On other days, room after room will come into focus seemingly without our intervention. 

The generator can also be part of a positive feedback loop. When we find particularly resonant ideas within its output, some of those terms, words, and concepts will go back into the generator, further reinforcing our themes.

  

Sources and Inspiration 

Courtney Campbell’s Tricks, Empty Rooms, and Basic Trap Design, an update/commentary/expansion on Gygaxian AD&D 1E dungeon design, is a great resource, and informs some of the language in our generator.

We’ll be using the generator not (only) as a machine producing discrete dungeon rooms, but also as an abstract oracular tool. The generator can answer questions that go way beyond the contents of a room or the nature of a trap, if we read deeply enough into the meaning behind the results. The concept of universal tables and generators has no single originator, but this blog post is one of my favorite implementations.

In the same vein, the D6 universal resolution of yes/no questions in the generator comes from Dreaming Dragonslayer, although as they note in the post, the same idea has been created independently more than once.

Next week: Well Begun is 1/365 Done

One-and-Done Monsters

The Between Two Cairns podcast (this episode) recently discussed The Blackapple Brugh (available for free here). The hosts were reacting to an encounter with the Frog Prince, described thusly:

The frog is sentient and can speak, introducing himself as the prince of a faraway kingdom. He relates that he’s been enchanted by mischievous fairies, but if a fair maiden (or a plain maiden, or a man, as he is not that picky) will bestow a kiss upon his lips, the enchantment shall be broken. He promises that if freed from the spell and restored to his kingdom, his father the king will award the party with thousands of gold coins.

In fact, the frog is no prince at all and is only remarkable in that he can speak and has poisonous skin. Anyone kissing the frog must save vs. Poison or be wracked with pain for the next 12 hours. A person in this state is completely incapacitated and for the duration is useless for adventuring. The frog will apologize profusely for such a turn of events, claiming that the kiss must have required true love to be effective. The frog has 1 hit point and no means to attack or defend itself.

The frog prince is, of course, not so much a monster or even an NPC per se in likely function, but rather the sort of “trick” that characterizes classic old-school design. The interaction is weird and unexpected and basically all downside for the PCs (although surely at least a few parties playing through Blackapple found a way to weaponize the poor prince, perhaps by tying him to the end of a ten-foot pole and foisting him on enemies, or grabbing him while wearing prophylactic gloves and throwing him like a grenade).

The prince got me thinking about other glass cannon monsters – beasties designed to deliver their sting once, with no thought for their own well-being.

Gas Spores 

D&D’s monster manuals have featured one-shot monsters since early in the game’s history. They’re great for blurring the line between trap and monster. A few classic D&D monsters, like piercers, fit this template. The gas spore is a particularly famous example. 

Many have poked fun at the creature’s improbable lifecycle. But we can find plenty of interesting uses for it. Why not take advantage of its balloon-like properties and have kobolds or similarly light-weight monsters drift into battle hanging from gas spores? The PCs will get a kick out of shooting down the “balloons” with arrows, or summoning a gust of wind to drive the unfortunate fungalnauts into the side of a cliff. But the kobolds who make it through will have a nasty surprise for the players, intentionally popping their spores at close range.

Fungus-Zombie Parasite

Trying to reason out the frog prince’s behavior (is he lying, or self-deluded?) got me thinking. What if a creature acting in such a risky fashion is actually advancing the interest of a parasite? This is of course true of the real-world “zombie” fungus that infects ants and drives them to suicidal behavior to spread its spores. Perhaps the prince’s behavior is just a parasite pulling strings to spread itself through contact. 

To present the fungus zombie more literally, you could combine this idea with D&D’s myconid “zombies.” This engages with a classic D&D bait-and-switch, where the cleric attempts to turn “undead” that are actually something else. This can go too far if it becomes a gotcha to trick players into bad decisions. But with proper information and foreshadowing it can be a good encounter. 

The Bombull

It’s not all fungus and spores. Consider adventurers exploring an abandoned region peppered with ancient clockwork machines. Some are still functional, or at least malfunctional. These include the mechanical bombull, which looks like a bucking machine gone free-range.

When the bombull spots movement from living creatures person-sized or bigger, it lowers its head and charges. On impact, its horns depress into its metal skull, activating percussive primer charges that set off the bomb within its head.

The bombull should be a highly telegraphed, obviously lethal threat. That means it can also serve as a risky opportunity for adventurers who wish to bait it toward an obstacle, or matador it in the direction of their foes.

Homing Bee

This one is inspired in part by the vyderac from Hot Springs Island. Suppose the adventurers are attacked by a swarm of stinging insects; ordinary bees or similar, driven into an agitated state. The swarm is annoying, but not a serious combat threat. 

However, hidden amongst the mundane insects (and motivating their aggressive behavior) are one or more homing bees. These bees’ stings are no more painful than those of the other insects, and they die after stinging; but they also release their barbed stingers into their targets’ bodies. The stingers burrow into the target’s flesh, similar to a rot grub.

The longer the barb remains in the victim’s body, the worse they will feel. Their blood, when shed, will give off a honeysuckle smell. Their skin will take on a greenish hue. And progressively greater and greater numbers of homing bees from the original stingers’ hive will converge on the stung creatures. Whenever a creature dies with a stinger in their body, the “stinger” will transform into an egg containing a queen of a new homing bee hive, which will flourish in the grisly remains of the unfortunate adventurer.  

Draconic December: The Dungeonshell Dragon

Draconic December is the Alexandrian’s Discord channel community challenge for the month. Here is my entry.

The Dungeonshell Dragon

“For ten thousand years, a hill is a hill. Then one day it gets up and crushes your home!”
-Brill Grothbone, de-hoveled transient

The Draco Dormitabitesta (commonly known as the Dungeonshell Dragon) displays a unique and extreme version of draconic lair-making/hoard-building behavior. Before entering a centuries-long slumber, the dragon creates a “cocoon” from its melted hoard. A twisting maze of dungeon passages form a ventilated “shell” around this cocoon, and this structure is in turn surrounded by earth and stone, hidden from the outside world. Until one day, it all starts to wake up. 

The Moving Mountain

A hill, mountain, tor, plateau, or similar prominence of earth has separated itself from the surrounding terrain and is on the move. At first, its speed is no faster than an average person’s walking speed, but it doubles each day, topping out at 10 times its initial velocity.

Hooks

For low-level PCs, simply avoiding the moving mountain or dealing with its second order effects may be the source of many adventures. Mid-level PCs can adventure inside the Trembling Dungeon. High-level PCs may seek to stop the phenomena, up to and including facing the Awakening Dragon.

Complications and Hazards

Stampede! Mundane animals panic for miles ahead of the mountain, storming through villages and campsites even while the mountain itself is only a distant rumble over the horizon.

Landslides. Sections of the mountain slough off as it moves, crushing terrain to the left and right of its course, and inhibiting attempts to scale its sides.

Disinterred dead. The churning motion of the mountain has plowed up the long-slumbering warriors of the Great Skeleton Army, who will march in the ruined wake of the mountain, intent on plundering the rival city-state that fell into ruin a thousand years ago.

Gonna get some hop-ons. Opportunistic oxenfolk from the wilds have climbed aboard the moving mountain and now use it as a raiding platform. They have rigged ballistas with retractable lines to use to snare interesting loot or zipline down to unfortunate communities they can pillage.

Fumaroles. Sulphuric gas, long contained within the mountain, is now released in stanky jets from fissures in the slopes of the mountain. A keen sense of smell or an eye for sulfur crystals can spot these dangers before they blast the unwary.

Unlucky village. They built their homes at the top of the hill for the nice view, but now that hill is changing their perspective. They are too busy squabbling with each other to mount an efficient evacuation. 

Rolling stones. A scree of Galeb Duhr have (understandably) misinterpreted the mountain’s movement as the return of Storstein, the primordial boulder god. They will send animated boulders tumbling down the slopes at any meatbags who attempt to interfere with their god’s holy procession.

Kaiju battle. A tarrasque, titan, or other big boi interprets the moving mountain as a rival and attempts to fight it.

Investigating and Understanding the Phenomena

Destination. The mountain’s destination will not be inherently obvious, but PCs who track its progress over time may be able to figure it out. The mountain will move toward the nearest heavy concentration of powerful magic. This could be an archmage’s tower, an extraplanar portal, an arcane metropolis (in a sufficiently high-magic setting), or something else entirely. The destination may even be secret, hidden, and lost to time, attracting ambulance-chasing wizards, nothics, and even more unsavory sorts to the mountain’s passage.

Means of locomotion. The moving mountain acts similarly to a tectonic plate, riding on extremely hot magma. Differences in temperature, viscosity, and gas composition, intuitively controlled by the sleeping dragon within, control its course.

Interacting with the mountain. The mountain is not a creature for most rules purposes. Abilities like the ranger’s Primeval Awareness may reveal that a dragon is within the mountain. Spells like Commune with Nature may also reveal clues as to the source of the phenomena. The dragon cannot be seen, and cannot be directly targeted by most spells, but at the DM’s discretion, some forms of telepathic communication or divination magic may allow glimpses into its restless, dreaming mind. Creatures with tremorsense (like the aforementioned galeb duhr) can sense a “heartbeat” deep within the mountain. Venturing into the Trembling Dungeon and closer to the dragon itself will improve the effectiveness of these techniques.

Few things will stop the moving mountain, but it will not cross oceans or mountain ranges. Fresh spoor from another ancient dragon (not easy to get), usually used to mark territory, could motivate the mountain to circumvent a particular region. Adventurers may come up with other schemes; it should be difficult, but by no means impossible, to subvert the mountain’s path. 

Early awakening. Sufficiently powerful magic, such as the spell Earthquake, may cause the dragon to awake before reaching its destination, for better or worse.

The Trembling Dungeon

Twisting dungeon tunnels and ancient subterranean ruins separate the dragon from the surface. Accessible through openings created by landslides and fumaroles, the dungeon is home to both ancient and recent occupants. 

The DM could adapt an existing dungeon to serve this purpose, or randomly generate one. Because the dungeon serves primarily as an ecological/mystical purpose for the dragon, rather than an architectural/residential one for its denizens, it may have any number of dead-ends, illogically arranged rooms, or other “impractical” dungeon features.

Complications and Hazards

Restless slumber. The dungeon shakes and moves with the mountain’s movement and the dragon’s slow process of awakening. While it is not in danger of collapse until the dragon is fully awakened, chunks of stone and earth may fall free and land on the unwary.

Too greedily and too deep. Dwarven miners driven mad by gold fever refuse to leave the dungeon. They believe the dragon’s cocoon is a pure vein of treasure. Dangerous to themselves and others.

Disrupted parasites. An entire ecology of purple worms, bombardier beetles, and dire dermacentors has lived for hundreds of years within the mountain, depending on the dragon’s waste (and waste energy) to survive. They are now completely freaking out.

Pollyanna gnomes. These simple folk only wish to craft tall red felt hats and drink mushroom tea. They are self-deluded about what’s happening around them, but can be useful guides if convinced to help.

Doomsday cultists. They’ve been looking forward to the end of the world, and are hoping this regional disaster will turn into a global one.

Probing tongue. The dragon’s prehensile tongue is more than 120 feet long, and begins to instinctively explore the dungeon halls, even as the dragon itself still slumbers. For mechanical purposes, the tongue is more like a natural hazard than a monster, bowling over or grappling adventurers it encounters. But dealing more than 50 points of damage to it will cause it to rapidly retract toward the cocoon at the heart of the mountain. Dealing more than 100 points of damage will likely lead to the dragon’s early awakening. 

The Awakening Dragon

The final awakening process takes a full hour. The Trembling Dungeon begins to fall apart at this point, and the various denizens attempt to escape in a panic. During this time, the dragon is immune to all damage and any abilities or magic that would affect it short of Wish, divine intervention, or equally epic magic.

Use an Ancient Red Dragon stat block for the awakened dragon, with the changes and additions as noted below.

Lacquered in Gold. For the first three rounds of combat, the layers of metal coating the dragon give it +5 bonus to its AC, but limit its flying speed to 20’. Beginning on the fourth round, enough gold has sloughed off to allow it to fly freely, but the AC bonus also ends. 

Awakened Rage. The dragon is acting in a highly instinctual manner when it first awakens, and at best will be disoriented, aggressive, confused, and violent; but damage may serve as a shock to its system. As a general rule, the DC for any ability check to influence the dragon’s behavior (e.g., Charisma (Persuasion) or Charisma (Intimidation)) is equal to its current HP divided by 10 (minimum 12). The DM should give fair consideration to PCs’ non-violent proposals for reasoning with the dragon, but also be clear about the dragon’s agitated state and the difficulty of reasoning with it or diverting it from its purpose, at least at first.

Fixed Purpose. The dragon is immune to the Charmed and Frightened conditions. 

Immutable Form. The dragon is immune to any spell or effect that would alter its form.

Breath of Gold. The first time the dragon uses its breath weapon, it also expels the vast quantity of liquid gold that filled its throat and lungs during its long slumber. In addition to the normal effects of its breath weapon, those who fail their saving throws are coated in a thick layer of molten gold. They are restrained and take 7d8 damage on each of the dragon’s subsequent turns (as if affected by the spell Heat Metal cast with a seventh-level slot). Creatures restrained in this way may make a DC 21 Strength saving throw at the end of their turn to end the effect.

Still Groggy. Treat the dragon as if it had only a quarter as many hit points as it actually does for purposes of the Sleep spell. It has disadvantage on saving throws against spells such as Imprisonment that would put it in a sleeping or sleep-like state.

Unimpeded Awakening

If the dragon is not killed, subdued, reasoned with, or otherwise stopped from consuming the source of magic toward which the moving mountain moved, it will attempt to carry out the mythical impetus of its catastrophic slumber. This may take the form of opening a portal to the elemental plane of fire; spawning a new flight of red dragons; inciting all of the continent's volcanoes to erupt at once; or simply ending the world (hey, those cultists were right after all!)

The Free Kriegsspiel Wargame with Millions of YouTube Views

The Twitch streamer DougDoug and his viewers play video games in weird, amusing ways, either through mods of games like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto 5; or external limitations and restrictions on how they play, like controlling characters with voice commands only. They’re fun videos, but not typically germane to tabletop RPGs.

What is relevant is a recent series of YouTube videos edited down from longer Twitch streams. He and his chat (who choose their actions through polled consensus) battle for supremacy first in Europe, then the United States, and finally in outer space. The outcome of each turn's action is determined by AI text generation. The game continues until one side reaches 10 points by acquiring territories through either invasion or alliance.

What’s the antecedent to this style of game? The obvious point of reference is the venerable board game Diplomacy, which also functions through alliances and conquests. But I think a certain “looseness” in Doug’s adjudication of the game pushes it closer to the Free Kriegsspiel Revolution (FKR) philosophy, as thoroughly explained by Jim Parkin in a Board Game Geek post here.

For example, Doug is effectively the referee, interpreting whether each block of AI text does or does not achieve the desired goal and thus score points. As in FKR, faith in the judge is required. Of course, nominally, Twitch chat (being Twitch chat) does not trust Doug, spamming the word “rigged” whenever a decision goes against them. But that’s more expressive of partisan enthusiasm than true distrust, and I would argue the members of the chat are “voting with their feet” by staying and continuing to play the game.

As another example, Doug, in his capacity as referee, must also make common-sense rulings mid-game, for example deciding in the first video that once a neutral nation has formed an alliance with one or the other player, the opposing player must invade it to “flip” it; they can’t simply attempt to overwrite the alliance with one of their own.

Working through Jim’s bullet list from the BGG post, we can make a pretty strong case for Doug’s game as FKR:

• Numbers don't add up to a game. The assets (people, armies, and resources) the two sides control don’t have stats or rules constraining their use. They are purely qualitative objects in the fiction, open to whatever use makes sense. 
• If the fiction fits, try it. The AI is a wild card and certainly introduces issues in terms of preserving in-game consistency, but less so than you might think, because it frequently “calls back” to events already introduced in the narrative, preserving some degree of continuity. In his capacity as referee, Doug additionally contextualizes the AI’s wilder diversions (and in a few cases, deletes obviously fiction-breaking tangents).
• You play worlds, not rules. Certainly true here, as the chat, in particular, introduces different media into the game. The second of the videos prominently features television character Saul Goodman, surely the world’s first Breaking Bad- / Better Call Saul-themed wargame.

The AI is an interesting factor in the resolution of the game that sets it apart from its antecedents. On one hand, it’s more chaotic and wild than dice or cards, because it can introduce so many unexpected elements out of left field. On the other hand, the AI, relying on the language it was trained on, repeatedly bends the story back toward genre tropes, favoring betrayals and surprising reversals of fortune.

As far as I know, Doug is not a TTRPG person, nor do I see any evidence from skimming the comments of the videos that the game was inspired by other RPGs, matrix games, or FKR. I suspect this was just an instance of convergent evolution, where people independently land on similar ideas, concepts, and rules simply because they make sense as a natural form of group storytelling and gameplay, universal to humans everywhere.

High-Stakes Encounters in Practice

Previously: Why is the Dragon Frightening?

I have six simple rules for high-stakes encounters and fights that create tension.

• Use established rules when possible. If a monster swallows PCs, start with a bite-and-swallow creatures in the Monster Manual as a template. If a special ability is similar to a spell, use the spell description rather than creating something from scratch. Homebrewing is sturdier when it’s applied judiciously.
• There’s a logic to the monster that can be unlocked. A tough monster is a puzzle. It should be possible to observe what makes it dangerous, what it wants, how it acts, and to introduce an appropriate strategy. The DM should reward PCs who intelligently engage in this way, particularly if they “risk” deviating from their tried-and-true combat loop to try something clever.
• The monster is not precious. Building upon the previous point, the DM should not try to “save” the monster or worry about a PC “ruining” an encounter. Monsters are cheap; players engaging with the fiction are precious. Weight accordingly.
• A bad choice is much better than no choice at all. A monster that incapacitates a PC is not much fun. A monster that gives a PC a choice between incapacitation and serious damage is more interesting. Players are much more engaged in tough fights if they get to make choices, even (especially?) choices between two terrible options.
• Escape is usually an option, but with consequences. Be ready to shift out of tactical, square-by-square maneuvering if the PCs turn from fighting to fleeing. Reward clever escape plans, and be clear about the costs of conventional ones. A roll of the dice is usually appropriate, but it should typically be made to measure the magnitude of the cost of escape, rather than a pass/fail on escape itself.
• Break reality, but don’t break the game. You can have monsters that subvert, invert, attack, or transform the way fights work in the game… as long as the players trust that the DM is adjudicating the situation fairly.

What does this look like in practice? The following are examples of monsters from our 5E game that wrapped up earlier this year. These monsters attacked things beyond HP, and brought their own strange logic and challenge to the encounters.

The Fiction Manifester. The mischievous intruder in the mystical library is attuned to books buried in an enormous pile in the center of the room. For example, one book makes him so nimble that he has a +10 to his AC, for a total of 28, making him supremely difficult to hit by conventional means. Another gives him immunity to most conditions. The books briefly flash with light similar to Faerie Fire when he draws upon their magic.

It’s possible, but difficult, to beat him through conventional attacks and spells. Finding and destroying the books will cut off his power, but will draw the ire of the library guardian golems. Reshelving the books in their proper places will break the magic without incurring the guardians’ wrath. 

The Time Manipulator. Commit an anachronistic crime, and a Timekeeper will hunt you down in 12 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes, and 12 seconds to punish you for your crime against chronality. Every time the Timekeeper hits, its target must save, or their initiative drops by 1d12, and the Timekeeper’s initiative increases by an equal amount. For every interval of 12 by which the Timekeeper’s initiative exceeds the initiative of the next-highest enemy initiative in the encounter, it gains an extra turn per round.

The Fate Eater. This fate-spinning spider can steal whole vistas of possibility, literally devouring possible timelines stretching out before a character. On a failed saving throw, a character must roll on a prompt table; the DM then gives them a choice of two (very broadly outlined) paths in their future. One is gone forever, and the spider heals some amount of damage in the process. 

The Wish Granter. This demon prince first uses Dark Gift, a signature ability that allows a saving throw; those that fail learn the Wish spell and gain a 9th-level spell slot that can only be used to cast Wish, with various caveats, principally that it cannot be used to replicate lower level spells, but must instead be a true “wish” in the classic sense. The wish also cannot harm the prince. The prince then uses the spell Command – upcast to hit as many PCs as failed the first save – with the command word “wish.” The wishes follow the normal logic of the spell, but with a greater emphasis on the monkey’s paw downsides.

Why is the Dragon Frightening?

In Dungeon World, the dragon is frightening because its hard moves can ruin the PCs, and there are limited ways to fight back against it.

In Troika, the dragon is frightening because it acts deliberately. Consider one of the most beautifully written explanations of a game rule that I have ever seen, which has informed a lot of my own monster and encounter design: 

“The goblins have few [initiative] Tokens because they are cowardly, not because they are slow; the dragon has many because it knows exactly what it wants, not because it is fast.”

In D&D 5E the dragon is frightening because… it has a mechanic that says “save or you’re frightened.” Which the PCs will ignore, because they cast Heroes Feast that morning. Oh good, I was afraid something exciting might happen.

OK, that’s a little harsh. I’ve run perfectly good dragon fights in 5E. The first dragon our 5E group encountered was novel just because it was A Dragon. The last dragon they fought pulled out every trick in the book: casting spells, unleashing a Prismatic Spray breath weapon on the PCs, and nuking the battlefield when bloodied. And they could only fight it to a draw.

But what I’ve found from big 5E fights is that they don’t succeed on DPS and big HP totals or immunities. Damage acts like a clock on the fight, to ensure it doesn’t go on forever. But the really tense fights came from monsters that threatened the PCs in unusual ways, and objectives that differed from race-to-zero slugfests.

To whit, we’ve had multiple tough fights where the group healer looks around afterward and asks “who is injured?” And the PCs realized that despite the tension in the fight, they took very little damage. Because the encounter was attacking something besides their HP total.

Next: High-Stakes Encounters in Practice

Stranger Than Fiction: Ascetics

It’s taken as a platitude that truth is stranger than fiction, but we have to remind ourselves constantly, lest our games be more ordinary than everyday life.

Consider the historical example of Simeon Stylites. Was the strangest holy man in your game as strange as this real-world one? Certainly players would not soon forget such an NPC encounter. I would guess that most games have too few strange religious outcasts, and very few have too many.

In the interest of moving money to the mouth zone, a random table.

Why is the fervent ascetic you encounter on your journey locally famous?

1. A repentant former soldier. They have worked thousands of swords and other weapons into a massive modern art sculpture. Will evangelically attempt to convince armed PCs to donate their weapons to the project. A little too interested in swords for it to be healthy (possibly a Gladio worshiper?) 
2. A wizened pilgrim from a far-off land. They attribute their longevity to fasting, prayer, rigorous calisthenics, and a diet of salt scorpions (only available locally!) Searching their modest yurt will reveal pigments, dyes, and tinctures they use to fake this elderly appearance; in reality they’re not a day over 30.
3. A hairless farmer who has forsaken the plow. They now dwell inside a huge, hollow brass statue near the forgotten lord’s road. The statue amplifies their voice, and they can often be heard singing, crying, or proselytizing in the early morning hours. Local tax sheriffs pay them a grudging tithe to keep them from quiet during winter’s thaws, when their vocalizations could trigger dangerous avalanches. 
4. An impoverished fisherman who has found their true calling. Their shrine holds thousands of small clay statues, which they lovingly care for, cleaning them and making tiny sacrifices to “feed” them. For a modest donation, they can dedicate one such statue to you, as a temporary receptacle for your soul, in case of your untimely death. It will be safe in their care until such time as your relatives can retrieve it and return you to your homeland for burial.
5. A flockless sheep herder who was just sick of “the politics.” They can read the future in sacrificial entrails, but their prognostications are uniformly negative. The superstitious local towns pay them to not use this reputed ability, in a kind of backwards protection racket. The local hetmen would like nothing more than to get rid of this annoyance, but they’re worried the seer will see it coming.
6. A fearless young runaway, ready to usher in a new age. By some combination of dumb luck and divine providence, they single-handedly killed six soldiers from the King-in-Repose’s Army, and now a dangerously hangry mob of pitchfork-shaperners has gathered around their hilltop altar, ready to march on the capital at their divine leader’s sign. 

The Bag of Threads

One of my players – interested in DMing their own game – asked me about how backstories factor into session planning, and how they connect to other events that occur in a game. My answer was substantive enough that I wanted to revisit it, rework it for clarity, and share here.

***

I like to boil any backstory down to about one sentence. Then it goes into the bag of ideas that I pull from when I prep sessions. That same bag is where all the "loose ends" go after each session. NPCs, treasure, monsters, events, conflicts, debts, rivalries, complications, all sorts of one-sentence "loose ends" or "loose threads." For each thing the characters resolve, they leave multiple things unresolved; so this is a major source of ideas for preparation.

So for example, very early on, a character sold their shadow to a merchant. This went into the bag of ideas. At some point, selling the shadow was going to come up again, and probably complicate things for them. Either being shadowless would be an issue, or the shadow itself would appear in some compromising way. That idea gradually turned into "what if the merchant sells the shadow to a third party, and it's weaponized?"

But the great thing about those "loose threads" jostling around in the bag of ideas is that they get tangled together. So, what if the shadow thread was intertwined with another loose thread? What if "the character sold their shadow" gets tangled together with "the disappearance of that character’s sister was the inciting incident that led to their life of adventure"? 

So the party is attacked by a weaponized version of the sister’s shadow instead of the character’s shadow. Why is the sister’s shadow also detached? Because she sold hers too, of course. So that creates a parallel between the siblings. And provides a clue as to where she is, and what she's doing.

The characters eventually followed those clues to find the sister pragmatically working with a group of mindflayers. And those mindflayers provided a natural way to tangle together more loose threads. Different characters' stories were tangled together, and the mindflayers became a cluster of complications. So the sister is working with the mindflayers. Who are trying to bend the power of the paladin’s god to their own end. And they've also put a parasite in the rogue’s head. And so on.

And, of course, the players have to choose to pull on those threads. A lot of threads are dropped into games, and the players never grab them. And that's fine. They may go back in the bag, or I might discard them, if it seems like they're not really relevant anymore.

This is more art than science, but once you get used to it, it really makes session planning easier by centering it on the characters, their past actions, and the things they care about, as measured by what they focus on in the actual game.

Knave-ifying 5E Spells

D&D 5E advocates a rulings-not-rules philosophy, rejecting 3.5E’s and 4E’s attempts to capture as much of the game as possible in formal rules. 5E is better at sticking to this philosophy in some places than others. One of the weakest areas is the spell list in the Player’s Handbook.

The 5E spell list takes up a full quarter of the total page count of the Player’s Handbook. Some descriptions are admirably succinct. Jump is 14 words long. Others are beasts. Symbol takes up more than half a page on its own.

What if all the descriptions were like the former? More specifically, what if they followed the logic of Knave's spell descriptions? 

What does it mean, mechanically, for time to move 10 times faster, or gravity to triple? 5E would work these details out with a dozen paragraphs explaining saving throws, special conditions to end the effect, interactions with ability checks, and combat implications. Knave simply assumes that the DM could reasonably adjudicate the effect based on common sense and the shared logic of the game world. 

So could we do it? Can we Knave-ify 5E spells? Let's try the first dozen spells in alphabetical order.

For this exercise, we won’t cover level, school, casting time, range, components, duration. Note that Knave uses “nearby” for range and common sense measures like “the size of an apple.” We’ll assume that anything not outright stated would be adjudicated at the table. As with Knave, there is no effort to balance these, and they are treated as basically level-less, or having effects that scale with level (denoted by “L” below).

Acid Splash: Conjure a goblet’s worth of weak acid, dealing Ld6 damage to a creature or destroying a fragile object.

5E has an abundance of spells that deal damage and do little else. 5E’s system for upcasting spells keys to tier rather than directly to level, which has a balance logic, but isn’t intuitive or easy to condense to a formula. If it were up to me, cantrips would be out of the game entirely, but that’s an entire post of its own. 

Aid: Temporarily increase L friendly creatures maximum HP by 5.

Note that Aid temporarily raises maximum hit points, but is different from temporary hit points, and a character could benefit from both simultaneously. Have I mentioned that I do not enjoy explaining the moon logic of this game design to new players? This effect is not even particularly interesting, and would be on the shortlist of spells that I would consider cutting entirely for its non-diegetic “numbers go up” implementation.

Alarm: An audible or silent alarm (your choice) triggers when an unfamiliar creature enters a warded space no larger than a 10xL cube.

Alter Self: Adapt the physical means of locomotion, survival, or predation – such as wings, gills, or talons – of a beast or monster you have seen before.

The last part is an underrated trick. 5E occasionally uses this conceit – the druid’s Wild Shape ability is limited to “a beast that you have seen before.” If a player wants to Wild Shape into a particular animal, the DM can ask them to make the case for their past encounter with such a creature, or even briefly flash back to their pre-adventuring days. This also gives 5E players a strong incentive to go out into the world and see new and dangerous creatures. More 5E spells and abilities that do things like summon creatures or create illusions should be predicated on the caster’s direct observation and interaction with such things.

Animal Friendship: Target beast must make a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed.

Animal Messenger: Target tiny beast reliably delivers a short message to a recipient, within L days travel, based on a general description of the recipient.

Animal Shapes: Target creatures transform into beasts with CR no greater than L/4.

There may be a more elegant way to cap the size of the beasts involved. Considering that Animal Shapes is an 8th-level spell, I’m not sure why 5E is so stingy about the strength of the assumed form. Or why this spell doesn’t simply re-use the logic of the Polymorph spell.

CR is also annoying because it is mostly a DM-facing stat (essentially, a rule for encounter balance and experience calculation) -- but, rarely, character abilities key off of it. When I homebrew beasts in 5E, I have to reverse engineer a CR after the fact, because the druid will ask me if they can Wild Shape into the fantastic animal they just encountered.

D&D 5E’s various transformation spells all include extensive language about what happens to equipment, what effects or conditions would return the subject to their normal form, and so forth. If this can’t be left to DM discretion, 5E should just have a universal rule for how transformations work.

Animate Dead: Raise L-2 skeletons or zombies capable of obeying simple orders for as long as you exert conscious control over them.

Animate Objects: Imbue a collection of objects the size of a person or smaller with temporary life; use a swarm stat block for many tiny or small objects, or a bear stat block for one big object.

Antilife Shell: Living things may not enter the 10’ radius shimmering dome that surrounds you.

Antimagic Field: Magic is blocked or suppressed within this invisible 10’ radius sphere.

Antipathy/Sympathy: All nearby creatures of a type of your choice must make a Wisdom save or be attracted or repelled (your choice) in your presence.

Note that in 5E’s rules, antipathy applies the frightened condition, but sympathy does not apply the charmed condition. I cannot think of a reason why this would be. GAME DESIGN.

We could repeat this exercise for the rest of the alphabet, but as with so many hacks, you have to stop and ask yourself if it would not make more sense to just design from the ground up, rather than painstakingly fixing the things you don’t like about the existing system.

How Big Is Your World?

Most fantasy tabletop games eventually produce a map that details hundreds of miles of mountains, oceans, and illogically-diverging rivers, oftentimes far beyond actual in-game events and regions. Rarely do they convey the sense of scale obvious to us in a non-Mercator map of the real world. I’ve seen the map of Faerun, the Forgotten Realms setting, many times, but I have no idea how big that world is. 

A good exercise is to take your campaign region – whether that’s a city, country, continent, or world – and scale it against a roughly geographically equivalent part of the real world.

The D&D 5E campaign I have run for years takes place around an ocean dotted with volcanic islands and city-states. Without much consideration, I had been thinking of it as almost an entire hemisphere on a roughly earth-sized planet. But I did the math, and the whole area is roughly equivalent to the Gulf of Thailand plus the Java Sea. A big region in the real world by any measure, but much smaller than I was thinking.

This exercise can be useful for answering a number of questions, like how many nations might compete for control of a region; how far trading partners might reasonably travel; where populations would be heavily concentrated; and so on. 

How Rare is Magic Anyway?

How much magic should PCs expect to see in a medium-level magic setting? Thinking about this, and portraying it consistently in-play, supports the verisimilitude of a fantastic setting. 

A small village is unlikely to have any magic. A medium or large village might have one or two trade magicians associated with the dominant local industry. A mining town could have a trade magician capable of subtly reinforcing the structure of the excavations, or magically detecting gas leaks; while a trade magician at a crossroads town between distant cities would be able to magically influence and guide the carrier pigeons that stop there to rest.

About 1 out of every 1000 sapient creatures is born with some latent magic they can use instinctively. Mechanically, this would be similar to a weaker form of the Magic Initiate Feat, giving the person one random cantrip that they can use a few times per short rest. While tame by adventuring standards, this will make them quite unusual (and possibly dangerous) in the eyes of ordinary people. Latent magic is most frequently a weakened form of sorcery, but cantrips could come from any class (for example, a particularly devout believer might become a minor miracle worker just through the ability to cast Guidance or Spare the Dying).

A small city or equivalent community may have a handful of NPC spellcasters with class levels ranging from 2 to 4. Their spells would focus on divination; among the schools of magic, it scales the best to society-wide problems. Some may also serve as abjurers or conjurers. Evokers, enchanters, and necromancers would be the least common, although cultures vary wildly, and some societies may find a place for these casters. A civilization might also have a similar number of leveled NPCs in martial or skill-based classes, but those will be much less conspicuous for purposes of determining how a society in fantasy adventure world differs from a mundane historical society of similar size.

A kingdom or large city state might have one or two casters at levels 5 to 8. While these are mid-power casters by PC standards, their power would be the apex of known magic to ordinary people. Third-level spells are a breakpoint; a wizard casting fireball a few times a day can turn the tide of small- to medium-sized conflicts almost on their own. A cleric able to cast Revivify would be a priceless asset for an assassination-prone ruler (and never more than a minute away from them, day or night – the ruler’s bedchambers would have an adjoined room in which the cleric slept just for this purpose).

Casters at level 9 and above are mostly absent from society. These people are pursuing objectives far removed from the mundane world. They should almost exclusively be either PCs or antagonists; they should almost never be NPCs without strong, proactive agendas of their own. Even if they have no known rivals, antagonists will seek out casters at such levels simply because their treasure (whether actual or merely rumored) makes them a desirable target. 

Magic Itemization: Attuning to the Results

Previously: Streamlining 5E’s Designs

As much as I don’t care for the fiddliness of 5E’s charged and per-day use magic items, I recognize their purpose. They're meat to serve as a fine-tuning dial, allowing more nuance than the very broad sweep of attunement and expendables.

So some items may benefit from further constraints or complications, beyond just the three buckets of attunement, expendability, and once-per-day use. What else can we do?

Let’s return to Electric Bastionland’s principles for oddities:

1. One use only, disposable.
2. Limited number of charges. 
3. Random chance of depletion on each use. 
4. Large and clunky, or even immobile. 
5. A creature instead of an object. 
6. Requiring a very specific uncommon input, such as a fresh corpse.
7. Occupying a specific part of the body that can’t hold multiple things, like goggles, or gloves.

The middle three guidelines create some new space we can leverage. Below I've listed some thoughts on how we can use them, as well as a few more ideas inspired by the oddities.

Random Chance of Depletion

Similar to a usage die. Generally an improvement on charged items, because there’s no tracking – the chance of depletion always stays the same. Useful for items that have limited uses, but should feel unpredictable.

Large, Clunky, Immobile

Another good one. Think about the difference between finding a traditional crystal ball, as opposed to magical spring that simulates the same effect. The former is a useful magic item with few or no drawbacks. The latter is a resource that calls into question distance and time versus other priorities (“can we afford to visit the spring”?) invites resource trade-offs (“should we Teleport to visit the spring?”) and incentivizes downtime (“think of all the things we can scry if we spend a week at the spring”).

Creature (or Faction)

This can be useful too. Instead of a vial of Oil of Sharpness, how about a seed that grows into a Sword Palm, which produces a 1d2-2 fruit per month that can be drained for equivalent magic that must be used immediately? As with Large, Clunky, Immobile, by de-tool-ifying the magic item, we can incentivize downtime, base-building, and domain creation. Instead of a flying carpet, why not a whistle to signal aarakocra allies who can ferry characters from place to place – at the cost of faction intrigue? Or a temperamental flying mount? Removing the compactness and convenience of the inert item forces choices.

Fragile  

Building on the Electric Bastionland list, I’ll add a few more ideas of my own.

I’m still experimenting with fragility. Fragile objects are somewhat like Random Chance of Depletion, except their termination isn’t tied to their use, but rather exposure to other conditions. 

Consider again the classic crystal ball mentioned above. What if it was as fragile as a fine dining crystal? Even simple combats or environmental hazards become difficult for a PC carrying such an object. Keeping it safe at home – or bringing it into danger – is a legitimate choice. 

The main drawback is the memory load; there has to be a trigger to remind the DM and/or the PC to check if the object breaks in situations where its in danger, but not actively in use.

Attracts Unwanted Attention

Another personal favorite. 5E has a few items like this, but could have more. For example, the Orb of Dragonkind requires a Charisma check; on a failure, it charms its user and can cast Suggestion at will. What does it suggest? Probably to use another one of the orb’s features and call dragons within 40 miles to the PC’s location. Uh-oh.

Cumulative Penalty or Cost

One way to simplify the rules baggage of a charge system is to simply convert the charges into another game currency already in use. An item that imposes a level of exhaustion has a clear and finite number of “charges,” insofar as characters can only take on so much exhaustion before dying. The same is true for hit points, ability score drain, and a dozen other things PCs already care about. Attack the character sheet.

Unpredictable or Uncertain Drawback

If the drawback isn’t cumulative, we should make it uncertain or hard to predict. Why? A fiendish battle axe that grants +2 to Strength and -2 to Wisdom is predictable. It’s a no-brainer for the barbarian who already chose Wisdom as a dump stat. A fiendish battle axe that grants +2 to Strength – but also disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws when fiends are nearby – is a different matter. 

Should the PC use it all the time, or only selectively? What can the PCs learn about possible threats before raiding the dungeon -- how likely is it that demons dwell there? The PC has a risk/reward calculation to make, and an incentive to be careful and thoughtful about the in-game environment. 

I have also used items with cumulative risk built in. For example, in my Gravestone Deep adventure, I included a magic item with the following clause: “Using [the item] more than once per day will result in a cumulative X-in-6 chance that [the devil] escapes, where X is equal to the number of attempts beyond the first.”

I don’t love this design, as it requires tracking the number of uses; but it definitely provides the push-your-luck aspect of play that I love.

Magic Itemization: Streamlining 5E’s Designs

If your game uses inventory slots, like Knave, you’re good, because everything is a choice. Even a magic item that is stronger than anything you already have compels a decision: what to drop to make room?

If your game is level-less, like Electric Bastionland, you’re good, because the game’s “oddities” are one of the only forms of diegetic advancement in a game where characters don’t have an intrinsic class advancement track. The guidelines for oddities are helpful for thinking about magic items generally:

1. One use only, disposable.
2. Limited number of charges. 
3. Random chance of depletion on each use. 
4. Large and clunky, or even immobile. 
5. A creature instead of an object. 
6. Requiring a very specific uncommon input, such as a fresh corpse.
7. Occupying a specific part of the body that can’t hold multiple things, like goggles, or gloves.

The first two and the last two will be familiar to D&D players. The middle three are probably underutilized in most D&D games. We’ll come back to those.

Speaking of D&D, if your game is 5E, it’s… complicated. There is little or no encumbrance tracking at most tables, and the game orients character advancement through class abilities. Whereas 3.5E and 4E treated magic items as part of a leveling system, 5E is agnostic about what role magic items should play, and their widely varying mechanical implementation reflects that ambiguity.

For example, the Fochlucan Bandore, an uncommon magic item in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, allows the attuned user to cast eight (!!) spells once per day each, most of which are quite powerful and routinely useful. A bard in 5E gets something like 1.5 spell slots per level, so finding this item is the equivalent of a handful of levels in spellcasting advancement.

When a discussion of instances like this appears on Reddit or Twitter, people are mostly focused on “balance” and “power level.” My issue is different, as I don’t care (much) about balance. I dislike 5E magic items because of the added layer of complexity, the implicit tracking, the subsystems and non-universal rules, and the distraction from the game’s emphasis on class advancement. Not that class advancement needs to be central to gameplay, but once 5E has decided to center it in that way, it makes the business of complex magic items a problem.

Consequently, I’ve streamlined how 5E magic items work, and plan to streamline further. Here’s a review of the principles of magic items in 5E, and consideration for how we can make them leaner and meaner.

Attunement

The game’s central mechanic for limiting the use of magic items. It usually appears on items that grant passive, always-on buffs or advantages, although certain items that grant a broad swath of abilities (like the aforementioned Fochlucan Bandore) also require it. Note that magic weapons typically don’t require attunement, because their use is already implicitly bounded by the action economy of combat.

Attunement is… OK. Like a lot of 5E’s mechanics, it’s a non-diegetic compromise between different styles of play over the previous editions. But three is an easy number to remember, and it compels PCs to make choices, so it’s OK. We can keep attunement.

Slots

Slots were king in 3.5E, following something like the classic ‘90s CRPG model of a body diagram with spots for boots, cloaks, helms, and so forth. This form still works well in video games – Disco Elysium, for all of its strange qualities, has a pretty familiar slot system for equipment. Slots have an appealing toyetic quality, as they make characters feel like customizable dolls or action figures.

5E nominally retains slots, but is less concerned with balancing around them (from the DMG: “a character might be able to wear a circlet under a helmet, for example, or be able to layer two cloaks”).

We will mostly ignore slots, except as a common sense judgment call on the part of the DM; i.e., we’re not tracking slots specifically, but don’t try to wear two magic hats at once (unless of course you have two heads, a non-zero possibility for a veteran adventurer).

Expendable

This category includes potions, ammunition, scrolls, and similar items. Some games do struggle with “rainy day” syndrome, where characters hoard items they will never use, but my players have been good about avoiding this. 

My only issue with expendable items is that a player in a tight spot will sometimes browse through everything in the inventory, as if they were in a point-and-click adventure game, hoping to find a solution to their current problem. “The answer is not on your character sheet” applies here. But the eureka moments, when an expendable item is used in an unusual or unexpected way, are worth it.

Expendable items also are much less likely to break games. If an unrestricted magic item trivializes combat or exploration, it’s a problem the DM needs to deal with. If a magic item that can be used only once trivializes a challenge, the choice of one and how to use it becomes the challenge.

We will keep expendable items; if anything, we should probably use them more often. They’re diegetic, they’re easy to understand, and of course, they compel players to make choices.

Charges and Once-Per-Day Usage

This is where things get tricky. If a magic item isn’t naturally bounded by action economy in combat; or expendable; or limited by attunement/slots, then it usually works on charges. Some items in the 5E DMG can only be used once per day, which essentially means they have a single charge. In many previous editions, charges were non-renewable, so charged items were just a form of expendable item. But most 5E items with charges recharge each day.

Charges are bad because they require two tracking actions; subtracting the charges on use, and then adding them back the next day (usually after completing a rest). Each item rechanges at its own rate, which means the PC will have to check the item description every time they rest to remind themselves of if it recharges at a fixed rate or on a die roll. The variability of the recharge in theory creates a resource management game. In practice, at least in my experience, it rarely factors into the PC’s decision to expend the last few charges. 

For example, the 5E DMG’s Mace of Terror has three charges, and regains 1d3 charges at dawn. Is any player going to conserve a third and final charge on Tuesday, on the off chance they roll low, and then have a particularly acute need to frighten people on Wednesday? No. The spread between empty and full is just too small to worry about, for an effect they probably don’t use every session.

I prefer magic items that – however strange they may be – have a sort of “common sense” reasoning behind them, or are just intuitive, or folklorically logical in a way that the player’s essentially memorize how they work and internalize them into their character. Charges work against that.

We’ll start by ruling that tracking any kind of variable numbers is ruled out. We keep once-per-day, because a binary, used-or-unused state is easy to remember, particularly if each gaming session covers a different day (an advantage of tying in-game passage of time to out-of-game time). Players can almost always remember if a particular item was used that same session. 

Next: Attuning to the Results

Magic Itemization: Smoke Bombs and Sip Tests

In reviewing my entry in his Wavestone Keep contest, Bryce Lynch raised an interesting question.

“I note an interesting thing while going over this: the one time magic item. What do you do with these in your game? A longsword with a one time use smoke bomb in the hilt, or a bottle of whiskey thatinduces vomiting … the ensuing vomit instantly hardening like a web spell. These sem, to me, like things that are to use in game in practice. How do you figure out what to do without voiding the magic items usefulness or communicate the effect in such a way it can be leveraged? Otherwise you’re just moria-gulping potions at random when you’re out food and hoping something good happens.”

This is worth considering on a few levels.

First, it is an example of how writing an adventure (or any gaming “tool”) reveals all kinds of assumptions we can easily gloss over when preparing material only for our own use. I have always used a lot of single-use items, and I usually describe them in a way that gives the PCs a good idea of what to expect before they’re used. 

For the sword with the smoke bomb in the hilt, I would describe a glass sphere swirling with smoke. If the character had a relevant background (for example, they were a thief) I might say they recognize this sort of device from past experience. Likewise, with the whiskey, I might also link to a character’s past or background, or use the “sip” rule wherein imbibable magic can be intuited by taste, without consuming it. Admittedly, the weird effect of the whiskey is a bit of a stretch (a retch stretch?) to plausibly anticipate. I may have gone too far in a few places.

But that's all my own internalized adjudication techniques. None of it is on the page, available for the purchaser to use. Which means its a blind spot that needs to be accounted for when creating something for publication.

D&D Reduced to Just Three Mechanics

How weird does D&D 5E get if you strip it down to just three mechanics? 

I am talking about a Lasers and Feelings-style one-page RPG, with just three mechanics, all drawn from my grand list of D&D 5E mechanics. I rolled randomly, and these were my results.

• 28 Feats and Boons
• 15 Conditions and Exhaustion
• 49 Proficiencies (Armor, Tool, Weapon, Skill, Saving Throw)

OK, not as weird as I feared.

Proficiencies can be gained through advancement, but most of them are things characters get at character creation. I think of this as a loadout mechanic. 

Conditions and exhaustion are complications and drawbacks. Perhaps in this game there is no HP, wounds, or death system; characters simply acquire conditions until they are fully out of danger, or until those conditions pile up such that they are incapacitated and out of action.

Feats and boons are methods of advancement. Clearly we’re dealing with a classless system. Rather than more HP or spell slots, feats and boons tie into the proficiencies, improving or building upon them in some way.

This is a rogue-like dungeon-delver. You are a dungeon raid manager, who assembles teams of junior adventurers to raid a dungeon. You start with a pool of meeple adventurers. You get a bunch of hirelings with one random proficiency, a handful of henchmen with two random proficiencies, and a few heroes with three random proficiencies. 

You assess the dangers of the next dungeon in some structured fashion (maybe a "20 questions" game). You then pick a team based on the proficiencies you think will be most useful in meeting that challenge. This game would require some testing to ensure the player can anticipate what tools are right for the job. Proficiency in constitution saving throws is clear for tackling a dungeon full of monsters that cause the poisoned condition. Other proficiencies are less obvious in their application. 

The more accurate your assessments, the more successful your delve is, and the more feats and boons the adventurers earn after they come back. If your guesses were off the mark, they come back with various conditions or levels of exhaustion (if they come back at all). If this happens, they’re unavailable for one or more subsequent dungeon raids, and your pool of options is smaller for those explorations.

The Charmed Guard

Previously: Dealing with Evil Adventurers

A typical scenario in fantasy TTRPGs: low-level PCs need to gain entry to the palace. The guard will not let them in. The PCs use some minor enchantment magic to get past the guard. The guard is later confronted by their incredulous superior. The superior decides this is some kind of inexplicable lapse in judgment from the previously reliable guard, and punishes them accordingly. The PCs chortle at the chaos they've sown and move on.

DMs tend to treat NPCs as rubes unaware that magic exists. And some number of rube NPCs is probably a good idea. Commoners, tradesfolk, and castle guards are not going to be proficient in Arcana or know the ins and outs of specific spells. But with the exception of explicitly low-magic settings, regular people would be very aware that when something really weird happens, magic should be considered as a possible explanation. And organizations should respond in a way that demonstrates this awareness, so that the DM can create credible challenges for the PCs.

When something really bizarre happens, or someone does something completely out of character, NPCs should seek to gather as much information as they can. Outsiders will always be scrutinized because they have a short track record, especially if they are ostentatious or conspicuous adventuring PCs (heavily armed, magic-wielding groups usually including non-local non-humans should almost always be assumed to be conspicuous unless they are going to considerable lengths to be inconspicuous). PCs will be, at best, asked many questions and watched. At worst, they may face all kinds of harassment and scrutiny just for being people reasonably capable of disrupting normal life.

Dealing with Evil Adventurers

Adventurers are generally a positive force for society. But those who don't have society's best interest at heart pose a serious danger. 

A community threatened by adventurers reacts the same as a community threatened by monsters. It seeks to endure, survive, and prevent recurrence. Villagers will avoid confronting murder-hobo adventurers directly once they've demonstrated they're more powerful than ordinary bandits. The villagers will flee and disperse. But they will also remember everything they learned about the PCs; how they looked, what they said, where they came from. If they can grab a scrap of clothing or spent ammunition, it might be enough to  use later to clue a diviner into the person's identity and whereabouts.

Merchants, landowners, and others with sufficient wealth band together in mutual protection insurance groups. Everyone in the group pays a fixed amount yearly, and if one of them was robbed by adventurers, the group uses the fund to hire their own adventurers to find the criminals. The group publishes the names of fund participants in newspapers (or equivalent means of dissemination) to notify adventurers that it would be a bad idea to rob them. 

Charitable associations extend this protection to those who can't afford to form their own associations. These groups share information to improve divination and early identification efforts. In a high magic setting, particularly reckless adventurers would eventually find themselves the subject of repeated scry-and-die attempts, or even sleep deprivation attritional assassination by a warlock with the Dream spell.

Next: The Charmed Guard

The Pursuit of the Perfect Statblock

What’s the best way to stat a D&D monster? 

This was an easy question in early editions of the game. Monsters composed of HD, HP, AC, attack, and morale could fit on a single line of text – short enough to lurk in an inline parenthetical.

As with many aspects of the game, the rules detail increased with each edition, peaking with 3.5E’s multi-page stat blocks, where monsters had complex layers of damage resistance, skills, and spell-like abilities. These monsters mostly followed the same skill and feat tree progression as characters. Does that goblin really have the 8 ranks in Basket Weaving required to access the Marsh Master feat and perform that Reed Flurry attack? Please show your work, DM.

D&D 5E is… better, but not great. Eight years in, and the game is still trying to solve this issue, recently dropping spell lists from monster stat blocks in its official content. While I applaud a move toward simplification, the output is still far from what I would call a table-use-optimized game tool.

Various rules-light D&D games seek to return to the simplicity of the early D&D model. Many of them condense the stat block down to a B/X-equivalent parenthetical. An example that feels like a compelling blend of parsimony and evocation is the approach in the Ultraviolet Grasslands. Inline entries are presented as – for example – Hunting scorpion dogs (L3, venomous). These entries provide enough information to “arm” the creature for an encounter, without disrupting the diegetic language of the entry with excessive technical details.

Of course, it’s a little too good to be true. Ultraviolet Grasslands “Lx” notation refers to a table where the L number translates into five stat categories. Even rules-light games want more nuance than HD alone would create (where every 3HD monster would essentially be the same, plus whatever mechanical weight the adjectives can capture). 

I also admire the elegance of Prismatic Wasteland’s approach. This still requires an appeal to an outside statblock, but removes that issue from the system-selection screen. Obviously this can’t model something truly weird or bespoke, but it’s not supposed to. It’s great, possibly the best, for anything that isn’t too weird, and is working in some kind of grokkable vanilla fantasy vernacular. 

Neverland is another example that I quite like. This product is 5E-compatible, but its statblocks simply drop much of the bulky language and situational rules detail that WotC’s house style includes. For my 5E-compatible adventure Terrible Trouble at Rude River, I attempted to emulate the Neverland style in the entries. I plan to iterate on this further if I make more 5E-compatible products.

For my Tenfootpole contest entry, Gravestone Deep, I went with more of a B/X style, but wasn’t satisfied with the final form. Special abilities or tactics push against the brevity of the B/X format. I want to take another, more deliberate swing at B/X style stats for the next project I do.

My dream – possibly unattainable – is a statline that looks something like that Ultraviolet Grasslands line, but has some intuitive, natural extrapolation to a moderately complex statblock without requiring a table lookup or other elaboration. Some kind of greater information density that gives mechanical weight to the adjectives. Time will tell if we find it.

DM Stands for Diegesis Master

“I get all my best ideas from my players!” I’ve seen it many times as a success story or GMing tip. For example, a player asks if there is a secret door in the villain’s hideout. The DM thinks to themself “there wasn’t… but, that’s a great idea, there sure is now!”

Many games (for example, various PBtA systems) give players a specific ability to introduce fictional game elements. This can be anything from limited framing information, to facts at the very core of the fiction – in Brindlewood Bay, for example, the mechanics of the game allow the players to come up with the solution to the mystery (right or wrong).

Locked in the Dungeon 

But what about games where players have minimal or zero formal agency to shape the fictional environment, beyond their character’s ability to change the world in-fiction? This is where I wince when I see “use your players’ ideas” deployed as advice without qualification.

The danger of grabbing those great player ideas and immediately incorporating them in the game is that it interrupts the information exchange of the standard gameplay loop. The gameplay loop in D&D is as follows: the DM describes a scenario; players describe how their characters want to engage with that scenario; and the DM (plus the dice, as required) adjudicates and relates what happens next.

When a player asks what is in the treasure chest, and the DM says “I don’t know, why don’t YOU tell me what you think is in the treasure chest?” the loop has been disrupted. Many players (not all, but many) will immediately feel as if the shared investment in a consistent, understandable world has been broken. In a game where they are invited to posit that anything might happen, nothing that happens really matters.

There Are Two DMs Inside You

That sounds harsh. But this does not mean DMs should not use player ideas. I use them all the time. Players are a wonderful source of ideas. But I believe they should be saved for after the session, and used as fuel for the planning DM only. 

If players’ ideas are added to the game immediately, by fiat of the DM-as-adjudicator of the action, the DM is pulling back the curtain and spoiling the shared fiction. They are cheapening prep and erodeing verisimilitude.

Employing blorb principles or a similar information hierarchy is a good way of formalizing this approach and ensuring that you're scrupulous when it is time to patch, which is true even if you're best known for game systems that do formally incorporate player input. 

What It Means to Teach Something

I have many small problems with D&D 5E. But they are minor problems. I can fix these things through good DM techniques, or superior prep, or hacks. And I don’t begrudge a game minor problems. Maybe the things I don't like may be features, not bugs, for other players. 

I only have one big problem with 5E: It’s difficult to teach to new players. 

When you teach something, you endorse it. The act of teaching includes implicit statements like “this game is worth the learning curve” and “you should spend your time learning this game, instead of another game.” 

And those are endorsements I’m not really willing to make, relative to the many other TTRPGs that boast superior design, or a lower barrier to entry for new players. 

My quantum character sheet was my attempt to bend 5E toward a true pick-up-and-play game. And even that is really more of a vaguely 5E-compliant hack than a true compliment to 5E itself. 

Maybe I’ll get there someday. Until then, I just have to be honest with players that 5E is a compromise – a good game, and one I enjoy running, but not what I would reach for first if they just asked me “what should I really learn how to play?”