The Weirdest Idea in D&D 5E's DMG

I’ve often heard people joke (or lament) that no one actually reads the DMG. While the Player’s Handbook contains most of the moment-to-moment rules of the game, and the Monster Manual is the obvious source for populating sessions with antagonists, the Dungeon Master’s Guide is a weird jumble of adjudication advice, worldbuilding, optional rules, and miscellaneous tools. I’ll admit that I myself rarely referenced the book (beyond the magic item section) in my early years with the game. Digging deeper revealed some strange material that I certainly did not investigate back when 5E was fresh.

Consider the Dungeon Master’s Workshop, the section of the 2014 5E DMG that endeavors to introduce readers to hacking and modifying the game. It provides sample rules from the useful (variant rules for initiative and resting) to the superfluous (alien technology) to the undercooked (morale and sanity rules).

One of the most intriguing optional rules is buried in the “Plot Points” section on page 269. Plot points are a currency that allows players to alter the game world in ways that would typically be limited to the DM’s purview. This is interesting as it goes, but not especially novel; various other systems use similar mechanics, like Fate’s fate points.

The part that I found specifically interesting was “Option 3: The Gods Must Be Crazy”: 

“With this approach, there is no permanent DM. Everyone makes a character, and one person starts as the DM and runs the game as normal. That person's character becomes an NPC who can tag along with the group or remain on the sidelines, as the group wishes. 

At any time, a player can spend a plot point to become the DM. That player's character becomes an NPC, and play continues. It's probably not a good idea to swap roles in the middle of combat, but it can happen if your group allows time for the new DM to settle into his or her role and pick up where the previous DM left off. 

Using plot points in this way can make for an exciting campaign as each new DM steers the game in unexpected directions. This approach is also a great way for would-be DMs to try running a game in small, controlled doses. 

In a campaign that uses plot points this way, everyone should come to the table with a bit of material prepared or specific encounters in mind. A player who isn't prepared or who doesn't feel like DMing can choose to not spend a plot point that session.”

 

 

Uh… What?

This is quite possibly the weirdest rule in the D&D 5E.14 books; insofar as we define “weird” as furthest from the baseline experience of playing D&D. When I asked on Discord if anyone knew where the idea came from, Justin Alexander suggested that it might have originated in the 2001 RPG Rune by Robin D. Laws, which includes such a rule; even the game’s very brief Wikipedia page mentions the GM-switching feature.

It sounds reasonable to me that one of the D&D writers remembered Rune when working on 5E and used it as inspiration. I haven't played Rune, so I can't say how well this feature is executed there; but I have some qualms with its presentation as an alternative rule in D&D. For example, I doubt that this is actually a “great way for would-be DMs to try running a game in small, controlled doses.” I’ve played in a game where the DM role switched at predetermined junctures, and even that was quite complex, without accounting for a mechanic that could fundamentally change the game's trajectory at any time. The implicit expectation that the active DM both honor the prior gameplay and set the stage for subsequent actions by other DMs is a whole other dimension of complexity to consider. Would-be DMs are better supported through running one-shots or other low-stakes games where they can feel more comfortable making mistakes.

The idea that people should come to the table with “specific encounters in mind” is also a landmine. Modern D&D struggles enough with inflexible encounter building even when a single, traditional DM is running the game on the straight and narrow.

It makes no damn sense. Compels me though.

I think this idea would have a better shot in a lighter ruleset. Both of the issues I note above are at least partially ameliorated in a rules-light game with a low-prep or no-prep baseline. So where does that take us?

Next week: Now I Am the Master

The Descent of Man

Last week: About Those Evil Humanoids... 

“The Underworld is not just a basement or a cave. The Underworld is a place that hates you. It is hostile architecture. It hates you in a way that only the blind tonnage of stone and cold air can have. It hates your lively blood. It hates the sunshine warmth still lingering on your skin.

Live there long enough, and the Underworld can learn to tolerate you. You will grow pale and cold and strange, like the other inhabitants of that place. The long years will render you smooth and inoffensive, like a pearl held in the mouth. The Underworld's irritation fades and scabs over.”

-Arnold K, Goblin Punch

Foster’s Rule

The simplest change is a change in size, usually as a reaction to claustrophobia and entrapment.

The dungeon is a world of sumps and shafts, narrow crevasses and collapsed tunnels. Like early industrial age children drafted into mines and factories, smaller adventurers could wiggle through the narrowest spaces. Those who spent too long in the dungeon became twisted, double-jointed, slippery, smaller. Their smallness of size became a smallness of spirit, craven cruelty, meager meanness. The first goblin was a man wedged under a boulder choke, ignoring their comrades’ cries for help as they were slaughtered, deep within the dungeon. The first kobold was a woman trapped under a landslide of gold coins as their fellows were roasted alive by dragon’s breath.

At the other end of the size spectrum are humans who exaggerated their size – who acted bigger and louder than they really were. But within the logic of the dungeon, that display of aggression was not merely figurative or temporary. It could be made real. The first ogre was a human warrior, swollen to nearly fill a small dungeon chamber deep under the earth, bellowing in blind rage at threats, real or imagined, in every direction.

Dungeon Extremophiles

Size is only a crude response. Some adaptations are more fine-tuned.

Remember that if we operate from the assumption that humans are the oldest ancestry, many of the strange humanoids of D&D make a lot more sense. Bullywugs, kuo-toa, lizardfolk, and merfolk are all primordial adaptations to their environment. 

Dungeons are frequently wet places, from the damp entrance in the swamp to the fully submerged lower levels. This is an alien and dangerous place for surface folk who should have just stayed home. But the adventurers who went back too many times found that the dampness no longer bothered them so much. Instead, it was the blindingly bright, abradingly dry world of the surface that felt wrong to them. Returning to the dungeon was slipping into a cool bath on a hot day. Retracing in reverse the ancient footprints of the first fish who walked on land, the first lizardfolk and fishmen found comfort in the cold, slow simplicity of a wetter world.

Internal Made External

These changes are still little more than skin-deep. Venturing into the deeper levels of the dungeon can alter human beings in much deeper ways. Like the Shimmer in Annihilation, or the titular home in House of Leaves, the dungeon can take the internal and subconscious and make it concrete and real.

Ivan seemed like a cheerful fellow back in town. Pensive in camp. A bit on edge in dungeon level one. On a hair trigger by level three. Barely able to restrain the urge to violence by level six. Did the dungeon make him an orc, or merely reveal the monster beneath the surface? His companions will never be able to tell us, because they never made it back to town.

Mishka did what they had to survive in the dungeon depths. When there was no food left and the choice was to die or to survive, Mishka did what civilized humans forbid. No one would blame them; no one who had ever ventured into the dungeon depths would blame them, anyway. But once that door had been opened, it never closed completely. The unthinkable became the possible; the possible became the likely; the likely became the routine. The hunger turned from a terrible curse to a constant companion, and thus a gnoll was born.

“Aberration” Is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

Some adventurers – wizards and clerics, usually – believe that the dungeon cannot change them if they confront it with reason and logic. Seeing dungeon denizens twisted by instinct and bestial regression, they gird themselves with theories and theorems, spells and scriptures. This simply leaves them vulnerable to a different kind of dungeon corruption.

Laodice the priestess swore a sacred vow to delve into the darkest and most remote places in the world, shining light on the mysteries there. She didn’t understand that those mysteries were the white blood cells of the dungeon. She didn’t expect the mysteries to fight back. By the time her companions realized what was happening, she was far too gone. Secrets had become the only testament worth following; Vecna the only god worth worshiping.

Gremblesplice Grothengruel was a wizard par excellence. His formidable mind, enhanced by ioun stones and a headband of intellect, was famous for its unslakable thirst for knowledge; a hunger for learning that could not be sated. This was never a problem until the dungeon made that hunger literal. He cursed the decades spent poring over dusty tomes, once he knew the incredible rush of siphoning knowledge directly from one mind to another. What wonders he could share with the centers of knowledge of the human world… if only he were still human. But even his oldest friends don’t recognize the man they once knew in the alien eyes of the mindflayer they see now.

You’ll Never Make a Monkey Out of Me

We’re using the scientific language of evolution to inform several of these categories. But for a couple reasons, we should avoid the instinct to explain too thoroughly or work out the logic too neatly. At least for the large majority of fantasy games, there should be more magic than science on offer here; some folklore, an “unknown” to be in search of. Consider the evolutionary stuff just as a taxonomic jumping-off point. 

About Those Evil Humanoids...

Modern D&D has a well-publicized problem with orcs, drow, and various other conventionally “dark” or traditionally “evil” humanoids. The standard response to this problem has been to modify the lore or change the perspective to present these creatures in a better light, or at least remove the details that raise troublesome questions about historical or current treatment of real-world groups of humans.

I don’t think this is a bad approach, if the system supports it. The RPG Spire inverts and interrogates the traditional portrayal of the drow, positioning them as an oppressed underclass fighting the imperious high elves. I can’t personally vouch for it (I own the book, but haven’t yet run it), but it was well-reviewed, generally and on this criteria in particular.

I’m less convinced by the efforts of D&D 5E and its cousins to recontextualize the baggage of their “dark” ancestries. Their solutions seem to struggle with creating coherent identities for different sapient creatures, because there isn’t a consistent worldbuilding premise underpinning those relationships. And they’ve continued to catch heat for subsequent content they’ve released, well after acknowledging the problem.

D&D is built on a complex foundation of influences stretching far back into the pulp fiction of Appendix N, and the game has dabbled in many different styles across various settings. So it’s probably not realistic for D&D to do a script-flipping reset of the core premise in the manner that Spire could (because Spire was created as an independent, original game, but at the same time could benefit from being in dialogue with D&D itself).

But there is an alternate path for D&D to resolve these issues more elegantly. Instead of wading into the messy and imprecise process of trying to give every humanoid the same thoughtful and fair treatment one would give a real-life group of humans, the game could pivot in the other direction. Categorically reject the idea that orcs, dark elves, or the other creatures in question are at all comparable to real world ethnic groups or human cultures. What would this look like? There are examples within D&D already.

Consider undead or lycanthropes. I won’t say that these creature types have never caught flak for allegedly negative portrayals of real-world issues. I’m sure there are instances where they have. But generally, zombies and werewolves cause far less friction than orcs and drow, because we recognize them as mockeries or distortions of humanity. They are humans altered by outside forces, rather than exogenous fellow sapients.

All of that is to say we can treat D&D fantasy humanoids as subversions, perversions, or dark reflections of humanity. How? Play up the idea that the dungeon, as mythic underworld, changes people. It changes them into something else.

Next Week: The Descent of Man

Puzzle Escalation (Not Obstruction)

Last week: Solving the Problem of Puzzles in RPGs

In far too many games, when players get a puzzle wrong, the GM’s answer is “you make no progress.” This creates a frustrating dead-end, or invites uninteresting brute-force solutions. Taking damage is slightly better, but isn’t much of a deterrent in new-school games where PCs have piles of HP and ample healing, and also may not work well for games where physical violence is rare or frequently fatal.

Puzzles should instead escalate the current situation. Downsides of failing a move in a PBTA game are good for ideas; phrases like “you leave something behind,” “you owe someone a debt,” or “you lose face with a faction.” In a dungeon or other dangerous or hostile space, it can be as simple as asking what other forces are at work here, and how the overall situation worsens for the PCs when they beef a puzzle.

Puzzles that were created intentionally and follow some kind of functional design should have safeguards. Puzzles that are natural, or unintentional, or represent the degraded or decayed version of a previously functional system, should present hazards.

You Cannot Have a Meaningful Puzzle if Strict Time Records are Not Kept

As with exploration and trapfinding, most puzzles depend on external time pressure. A tight clock applied to a puzzle can solve most of the problems I identified at the outset of this post. In a dungeon scenario, this can simply be part of the overall tracking of time within the dungeon, with the built-in penalty for dwelling too long in one space.

Cooldowns can also help. The computer terminal locks for an hour after three incorrect password entries. The temple inscription can only be read during a 15 minute period when the sun is directly overhead and shines through an aperture. If the PCs are going down the wrong path with their questions, the NPC who is the “voice” for the puzzle simply refuses to talk to them further until the next day.

Mister Police, I Gave You All the Clues

Any puzzle can be solved if the PCs find enough clues. The GM can give them more and more over time, up to and including giving them the whole answer… with two caveats.

The first caveat is that the answer should come piecemeal, broken up into many small bits. If the party solves it early, with fewer clues, they are essentially rewarded with time saved (again reinforcing the importance of time). If they don't solve it early, but stick with it, they will eventually get enough clues that the solution will become obvious.

The second caveat is that clues should be diegetic objects. They should not be the results of ability checks or similar mechanical output from the character sheets. Making them diegetic objects is a great way to take otherwise-irrelevant background information about the game and work it into the  actual execution of the session.