by W. Eric Martin

Featuring the co-operative game system used in Portal's award-winning Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, Dune: House Secrets delivers a deeply thematic experience that drops one-to-five players in the middle of the highest stakes unfolding on the harsh desert planet of Arrakis.

In this story-driven adventure game, players take on the roles of rebels who must solve a series of challenging missions with a finite amount of time and resources. Players cooperatively make decisions on how to progress the story as they decide to explore different regions of the world, follow leads, leverage allies, and overcome opposition of all kinds. During gameplay, players use a variety of physical and digital game components — a deck of cards with essential clues and plot twists, a dozen physical handouts, and a dedicated website with additional resources — to steer the narrative in fun and surprising directions for a truly immersive experience.

Beginning with an introductory prologue designed to get players acquainted with the massive Dune universe, the game then continues with three big adventures, each taking roughly two-to-three hours to play. During each episode, players can earn experience points to level up their characters in between missions and unlock new options in future gameplay. Each adventure can be played separately as standalone episodes, yet should players complete all three episodes, they will unravel a master game narrative with an epic climax and unforgettable resolution with lasting impact on the future two games in the trilogy.

by Candice Harris

Do you know that the flower fair in Aalsmeer (Netherlands) is the biggest cut flower fair in the world? Every day is a frantic workday of buying and shipping flowers all around the globe!

The four days prior to St. Valentine's Day are busy in the market, so go to buy — whether expensive but early, or cheap but too late — the flowers that will fulfill the contracts you've already taken. Manage your workers and don't send too many of them to the unemployment queue because they will go on strike! Be careful with your reputation as it will influence on your stock value!

In this worker placement and management game, you represent a flower businessman that will work with companies trying to raise their stock value the four days prior to St. Valentine's Day.

Banker of the Gods is a game about superstitious civilizations competing on a friendly stock-market set in an ancient Japanese-inspired world. It has a unique stock-market mechanism that allows for deduction of market trends before you invest for the next round. There are over a million different kinds of markets to be generated. The market may booming during one playing of this game, while other games will confront you with a depression to survive or thrive in.

In this alternate universe, China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome have been attracted to a lucrative stock-market on Oki island in ancient Japan. Besides stocks, you may also try to succeed at having other players honor your Gods and harnessing their powers, or dabbling with products like sake (linked to the price of rice), or helping islanders by giving them home-loans for the best locations, or even trying your luck with tea-leaves at the geisha house, among other things.

Traditionally stock market games have unfriendly take-that elements, but Banker of the Gods doesn't.

The Nation is in disarray, and a war is waging between the classes. The working class faces a dismantled welfare system, the capitalists are losing their hard-earned profits, the middle class is gradually fading, and the state is sinking into a deep deficit.

Amidst all this chaos, the only person who can provide guidance is...you. Will you take the side of the working class and fight for social reforms? Or will you stand with the corporations and the free market? Will you help the government try to keep it all together, or will you try to enforce your agenda no matter the cost to the country?

Hegemony is an asymmetric politico-economic card-driven board game for 2-4 players that puts you in the role of one of the socio-economic groups in a fictional state: The Working Class, the Middle Class, the Capitalist Class and the State itself.

The Working class controls the workers. They work in companies, earning money which they spend to cover their basic needs: Food, health, education and if possible, entertainment. They can apply a lot of political pressure, and they can also form unions to increase their influence.

The Capitalist class controls the companies. Workers work there, and the Capitalist sells the goods/services produced. Deals can also be made with foreign states, and pressure is also applied to the State when it comes to matters like taxation and tariffs. The goal of the Capitalist is very clear: Maximize the profit!

The Middle class combines elements from both the Working class and the Capitalist. It has workers who can work in the Capitalist's companies, but it can also build companies of its own, yet smaller. It also struggles to cover the basic needs like food, health and education, while trying to keep a balance between producing, selling and consuming.

Finally the State is trying to keep everyone happy, providing benefits and subsidies when needed but trying also to maintain a steady income through taxes to avoid going into debt. At the same time, it has to deal with a constant flux of events requiring immediate attention or face grave consequences.

While players have their own separate goals, they are all limited by a series of policies that affect most of their actions, like Taxation, Labor Market, Foreign Trade etc. Voting on those policies and using their influence to change them is also very important.

Through careful planning, strategic actions and political maneuvering, you will do your best to increase the power of your class and carry out your agenda. Will you be the one to lead your class to victory?

Hegemony is heavily based on actual academic principles such as Social-Democracy, Neoliberalism, Nationalism, and Globalism, and it allows players to see their real world applications through engaging gameplay. There are many ways to achieve hegemony: Which one will you take?

by W. Eric Martin

by W. Eric Martin

Your Roll Player characters have been called to adventure! In Monsters & Minions, you went to war against Dragul invaders. In Fiends & Familiars, you befriended wild beasts and dispelled cruel spirits. Now your fully formed, battle-hardened heroes must defend the kingdom of Nalos and uncover a mystery that lies at the heart of the Abandoned Lands.

Navigate your missions with care. It's up to you who to befriend and who to battle. Will you slay the giant troll or attempt to make peace? Will you do the vampire's bidding or defend the mysterious cultists he wants to destroy? Will you remain loyal to king and country — or side with the enemies of Nalos? Whatever choices you make, someone will remember and respond.

Roll Player Adventures is a co-operative storybook board game for 1-4 players set in the world of Roll Player. Players inhabit characters, face challenges, and make decisions that will change the story as they progress through eleven core adventures and a replayable side quest.

Adventures does not require the Roll Player base game or any of its expansions to play. Pick from one of six pre-generated characters, or import a favorite Roll Player character and take them on a heroic journey. If you do import a character you've built in Roll Player, any number of expansions and any number of promo cards/boards that were used may continue to be used in Roll Player Adventures.

A game of Theme Parks is played over five years. Each year players take turns placing workers on the game board to take actions like removing trees, building concessions and attractions, and buying more property in order to make their growing theme parks as attractive to visiting people (VP tokens) as possible.

At the end of each year, rewards are given to the player with the fairground that best exemplifies certain raw emotions, and after five years the player with the most VP tokens wins!

In Cape May, players traverse the city streets as entrepreneurs, developing property while building wealth over four seasons to earn prestige.

Build cottages, develop them into Victorian homes, and upgrade them into historic landmarks. Establish shops and grow them into profitable businesses. Carefully move around the city, and make strategic use of activity cards. Complete bonus goals, then take some time to relax and spot wildlife in the best place for birdwatching in the Northeastern United States.

Whoever best balances their income, development, movement, and personal goals will go down in history as the most successful developer of Cape May!

by W. Eric Martin

In Living Forest, you play as a nature spirit who will try to save the forest and its sacred tree from the flames of Onibi.

But you are not alone in your mission as the animal guardians have come together to lend a hand around the Circle of Spirits where you progress. Each turn, they bring you valuable elements, so try to combine your team of animal guardians as best as possible to carry out your actions, but be careful because some are lonely and do not like to be mixed with others...

Meadow is an engaging set collection game with over two hundred unique cards containing hand-painted watercolor illustrations from Karolina Kijak.

In the game, players take the role of explorers competing for the title of the most skilled nature observer. To win, they collect cards with the most valuable species, landscapes, and discoveries. Their journey is led by passion, a curiosity of the world, an inquiring mind, and a desire to discover the mysteries of nature. The competition continues at the bonfire where the players race to fulfill the goals of their adventures.

In this medium-weight board game, you take turns placing path tokens on one of the two boards. Placing a token on the main board allows the player to get cards, but playing them requires meeting certain requirements. Playing a token on the bonfire board activates special actions (which helps to implement a chosen strategy) and gives the opportunity to achieve goals that provide additional points. Throughout the game, players collect cards in their meadow and surroundings area. At the end, the player with the most points on cards and on the bonfire board wins.

Meadow also includes envelopes with additional cards to open at specific moments...

by W. Eric Martin

by W. Eric Martin

by W. Eric Martin

by W. Eric Martin

"The acquisition of Ghenos Games is the result of an intense year of work on a joint project. Thanks to the commitment of the entire team, today we are now a unique market player, with strong know-how, a structured corporate organization, and a highly ambitious growth plan," commented Roberto Corbelli, dV Giochi's CEO. "Therefore, we give our warm welcome to our new colleagues."

Alfredo Genovese, from Ghenos S.r.l., declared: "We were absolutely convinced to join the dV Giochi group, aiming to build a leading company in the board game industry. We will offer our contributions to this project, imbued with our history, our style, and our expertise. Ghenos and dV Giochi are perfectly complementary, like two pieces of a puzzle: one is focused on importation and it's 'geek-oriented', while the other is fully committed to exportation and it's aimed towards families. We also share vision, values, and attitudes. We just created a company with great potential, made up of people with remarkable skills."

Hobbies are ways to pass the time and pursue an activity or object that is a passion for the character. In deep space this can take on a slightly different angle, as the possibilities of alien worlds, cultures, and situations allow for an even greater diversity of possibility and opportunity. From enjoyable games to useful skills to fringe gigs, hobbies are open to almost everyone without the extreme skill that dedicated occupations require.

This list is intended for any deep space setting (like Star Wars, Traveler, Space Opera, Rifts, etc.) where people explore alien places and cultures as a common everyday activity. This little product gives you dozens of different ways to add a new dimension to nearly anyone in your campaign with just a dice roll. After all, who doesn’t need a hobby? If you want occupations, please see 200 Spacer Occupations (also by D10 Dimensions).

This Roll Percentile list has one hundred possible results in this format:

Roll result: The name of the Hobby (And a very brief description of what’s involved.)

Example 101: Gardening (Includes the details of planting, caring, and harvesting fruits, vegetables and herbs)

30 SIDER ROLLERS: CYBER CITY DROP IN SPOTS V3.0
Got a big map for a cyberpunk city that you need to detail? Got a thirty sided die in your dice bag that you never use? Put them both to work! This 30 Sider Roller gives you the dirt on thirty different locations to designate on that big map of yours. Each entry provides the name of business/location, a random roll for occupants (using either a 30 sided die or a 6 sider), and a descriptive that often gives clues about possible criminal activity, connections to other elements in your campaign, who owns the turf, etc. Don’t own a thirty sider but want to use this product still? Do this until you can get a thirty sider: Roll 1d6. If the roll is 1-3 then roll a 1d20 for the first twenty locations. If the 6 sider rolled 4 to 6 then roll 1d10 for locations 21 to 30. And then go buy you a thirty sider. You know you want one.

Sample Rolls:
1    20th Century Sound (Occupants: 1d30+4): Crowded, busy shop that sells last century's music in a variety of formats. You can get restored stereos and other players here- yes, even 8 track decks!

11    Evolution Kabob (Occupants: 2d6+1): Food vendor stall that sells lab grown "pork" kabobs. The porcine stem cell derived meat is paired up with tofu like cubes of sweet and sour flavored vegetable proteins. Though about as fake as meal you can get the stuff is amazingly tasty and nourishing.

24    Shrine of the 303 (Occupants: 1d30+5): Weird techno-cult meditation center that is focused around the sounds of the iconic Roland TB-303 bass line synthesizer. A real analog 303 provides continuous meditative patterns which are often accompanied by a Roland TR-808 drum machine.

The spacecraft in this PDF were originally designed for the Battlelords of the 23rd Century military sci-fi roleplaying game. In fact, all of these diagrams come straight out of the core rulebook for Battlelords. Being sci-fi gamers ourselves, we're always on the lookout for cool science-fictiony floor plans or deck plans. So, we thought we'd make our deck plans available to other sci-fi gamers. The ships include: 

• Bohemian Class Yacht
• Bane-Class Personal War Cruiser
• Freischarler Infiltrator War Scout
• Savior-Class rescue Cutter
• Nidar-Class "Crab" Salvage Vessel
• Turtle Freighter

This package includes: 

• 19 page PDF with details about the ships, exteriors views, variants, specs, and of course deckplans - all taken from the Battlelords of the 23rd Century RPG.
• PDF of the 6 sets of deck plans suitable for printing
• High res image files of the 6 sets of deck plans suitable for printing on poster-sized paper.

What is Battlelords of the 23rd Century? 

Curious about what it's like to play over-equipped, under-trained,
corporate mercs whose employer views them as expendable
resources in a galaxy being invaded by a horde of techno-organic
monstrosities? You can find out more about Battlelords below.

ABOUT BATTLELORDS

Battlelords of the 23rd Century is a military science-fiction roleplaying game where players can assume the role of mercenaries, misfits, soldiers, spies, pirates, and heroes adventuring in a war-torn universe.

“The soldier of the future will be more like a medieval knight in ultramodern armor than a soldier of the 21st century. Operating autonomously, they will be light years from their
commanders and support.”
-Military Scientist, Howard Dickenson. Earth, Year 2083.

By the year 2282 humanity has spread among the stars and joined The Alliance of Allied Species. The Alliance is composed of over a dozen species, who pool resources and technology, to expand across the galaxies and defend themselves against the threat of galactic war with the hostile Ak-Nar-Ryn. The Ak-Nar-Ryn, who are more commonly called the “Arachnids,” have destroyed worlds and decimated populations as they advance into Alliance territory.

More recently the Alliance has been faced with a new threat, that is even more insidious than even the Arachnids. The shapeshifting, nanite swarms of the Atlanteans, which are capable of devouring entire cities.

Many member species of the Alliance have longstanding rivalries, conflicting agendas, and a few have even gone to war with each other in the past. However, each species brings something unique to the coalition, but all must overcome their bias and speciesism if they are to cooperatively achieve their goal of survival. In the midst of it all, the mega-corporations run the show from behind the scenes and cash in every chance they get. If you’re not living
in a colony town on some backwater world on the frontier, you’re probably working for a mega-corp on a long-term contract. They own and run nearly everything, including you… for as long as you’re under contract.

Rick Hershey: Art Rates 2021

The following pages list my illustration and design rates for 2021. If there is ever a project you need help on and the rates are not listed in this document, feel free to contact me and discuss.

Available Services Include:

• Book Layout
• Cover Art
• Illustration
• Graphic Design
• Logo Design
• Cartography

I look forward to hearing from you about your next project.

Contact me with questions at fatgoblingames@gmail.com

Download Contains

• Home-printable, A4 .PDF of the gridded map at 300dpi, spread over several pages.
• 300dpi .JPEGs of the map for A0 poster printing or VTT.
• 72dpi .JPEGs of the map for VTTs.

Join me on Patreon for $1 and get over 20 battlemaps a month. Experience how good level design can make encounters MUCH more engaging! 

Want one free map a week instead? Become part of my community on Facebook.

The Force of Gravity

Get new options for playing around with gravity in Starfinder with new gravitic effects like inverted gravity, weightless vertigo, and orbital re-entry, plus over a dozen new character options like the Zero-G Training feat, the grav-warrior fighting style for soldiers, and a whole new stellar revelation for solarians, the gravitic master! Unleash abilities like inertial savant, meteor drop, gravitic thrust, and singularity strike! 

Sometimes you want awesome rules expansions for your Starfinder Roleplaying Game campaign, but sometimes what you need is a power-packed punch of tightly focused rules content that contains exactly what you need for your character, creature, or whatever it may be. New fighting styles and feats, thematically linked gear, archetypes and class features, and so on; that's where Stellar Options come in. Stellar Options are not about exposition, philosophy, and campaign-building; they are just flat-out fantastic ideas and great mechanics for GMs and players alike, written by many of the same designers that create official Starfinder rules content! Grab each one for just $1.99 and Make Your Game Legendary!

This stock art image by Dean Spencer depicts an anthropomorphic badger pouring a cup of tea.

In RGB colour, 4 inches on the longest side @ 300dpi.

This purchase includes one RPG PNG & CMYK TIF file. If you need this in any other format please feel free to contact me.

All art files are bundled in a ZIP file.

This stock art image by Dean Spencer depicts an anthropomorphic badger pouring a cup of tea.

In RGB colour, 4 x 4 inches @ 300dpi.

This purchase includes one RBG PNG & CMYK TIF. If you need this in any other format please feel free to contact me.

All art files are bundled in a ZIP file.

Join Ang, Jared, and J.T. for a discussion about new editions of games, both from designer and consumer perspectives. Can these gnomes stay current enough to avoid being thrown in the stew?

Any given game that you pick up off a shelf (or grab from itch.io) is an experience, geared toward creating a specific type of story: a fantasy skirmish simulator, a Jane-Austenesque adventure in manners, or living life as a cozy lesbian snake to name just a few. But sometimes you want to mix and match a little, adding part of what you love in one game to another game, which was the topic of Gnomecast 107.

Two things to keep in mind when adding parts of one game to another game:

1. Be sure you’re still giving your players what they signed up for. Just because you’re interested in devoting a lot of attention to the ways in which languages rise and die doesn’t mean your players necessarily are. Get everyone on board before including these (or any) additional mechanics into your game, rather than springing it on them like some sort of bait-and-switch turducken with dice.
2. Be willing to walk away if it doesn’t work. You’re not a professional game designer (probably), and no one expects you to thoroughly playtest every fevered idea that runs through your brain before you flop it onto the table, but the natural consequence of playing fast and loose with complex systems is that sometimes things fail. When failure happens, be prepared to walk away.

The examples in this article (and part 2 coming up) are geared toward the Fifth Edition of the Game That No One Names for Weird Contractual Reasons, simply because it’s the most popular game out there. However, game mechanics are ideas plus decisions plus uncertainty, and all of these ideas can work equally well in any game, using that game’s preferred mechanism for inserting excitement (die rolls, cards, paper rock scissors, leg wrestling).

Note that I name a bunch of other games in this list, all of which do a much, much better job of their core idea than anything you can simply shoehorn into another game. This is both because they’re written by actual game designers rather than a pretentious hobbyist, and because they’re whole freaking games devoted to an experience.

If you really, really want a mystery game, play GUMSHOE. But if you want to play [game name redacted] with some mystery elements, graft away. Also, because I want to be respectful of the brilliant intellectual property of all the games involved here (as well as the word count of this article), I use only the broadest brushes to include this stuff rather than reproducing specific mechanics. If any of this seems interesting, absolutely get the games I’m referencing here. I’m only including the best of the best in this list, and all of these games are amazing.

Idea 1: Tactical Relationships

When I say “tactical relationships,” I’m not talking about that person you dated for three months hoping your parents would finally approve. I mean relationships between PCs. Many, maybe most, games have these as a matter of course, but if you’re interested in having more “game” in your role-playing game, while still cramming in relationships with all the fervid devotion of a Chuck Tingle novel, this is the approach for you.

At its simplest, this is a matter of making the relationships between characters matter on a tactical level—trying to reproduce that moment when the hero flings themselves into the path of the attack that would have killed their friend.

Blue Rose does a great job of this with its use of relationship stunts, and the Cypher System incorporates snippets of world-building quirks into the ways powers or backgrounds work within a group. Finally, Fiasco has the brilliant idea of rolling dice and “buying” relationships between characters based on how the dice come up.

Note that many of these relationship abilities are relatively powerful (effectively imitating minor feats): that’s deliberate. The more your players use these abilities, the more they are reminded of the bonds that draw them together, which creates more roleplaying opportunities.

Step 1: Roll a number of ten-sided dice equal to the number of players you have +1.

Step 2: Going in order from quietest player to loudest player (or whatever order you want to use), have each player choose one a relationship corresponding with one of the remaining dice, as well as who that relationship applies to. Remove the result of that die roll from the “pool” so that the next player has one fewer relationship to choose from.

1. Make sure the other player is okay with this relationship. If no one is comfortable with the available options, reroll all the remaining dice until people are cool with the results.
2. Note that each of these relationships implies another “half” to the relationship. While both parts of the relationship are “true” from a story perspective, unless the other player chooses the corresponding relationship (e.g. “older sibling/younger sibling”), only the player who chose the relationship has access to the mechanical effect.

Idea 2: Mysteries.

Content Warning: these examples get a little grisly.

Mysteries are great, and many published RPG adventures include some element of whodunnit without any additional system work. That can work, but the GUMSHOE system is a masterclass in how to make a game focusing on this element of stories while still being fun. If you want to see one way of pulling all of this together into a single ready-to-go adventure, see my previous article, “Death in a Smoky Room”.

The first and easiest thing to pull in from GUMSHOE is also probably its most defining feature: the characters find clues. They don’t roll to find clues, and they don’t have to name specific objects in a crime scene to look for them if they name the proper skill. They just find stuff. The uncertainty (and plot!) comes in interpreting those clues.

First: during game prep, determine a set of clues that the characters can find, and the skills required to find them.

If the character has proficiency in the required skill, they find this clue, provided they name the skill (“I’d like to search with Investigation”). Generally three are enough, though coming up with a clue for additional skills is never a bad idea. The more detailed and atmospheric you can make these clues, the better. Again, GUMSHOE games are absolutely filled to the brim with examples (in particular, Double Tap for Night’s Black Agents). It’s not a bad idea to just keep a running list of clues you might want to use sometime. Examples:

1. [Investigation] Though the window in the room is broken, and previous investigators assumed it’s because the arrow that killed the victim came from outside the room, shards of glass and recent footprints you find in the rosebushes indicate that something inside the room was thrown outside to someone waiting nearby. Whoever did this was coming from inside the manor.
2. [Medicine]: there is a lot of blood in this room, but not enough for the victim to have died from blood loss. Closer inspection of the body reveals bruising around the neck with a clear imprint from a necklace (now missing). The body was clearly slashed after being strangled, but because the blood was no longer pumping, there was less than a discerning investigator would expect.
3. [Animal Handling]: The body has clearly been chewed on by some sort of animal, and previous investigators have taken this to be a cut-and-dried case of an animal attack. However, a player with experience with animal behavior will notice that while there are teeth and claw marks on the belly, the eyes and tongue appear to be plucked out without damage to the surrounding tissue. Further, while the body’s been picked over, there are large chunks of flesh remaining. This wasn’t the work of predators: this was scavengers working on a body that was already deceased.

Second: rolling the dice, because everything is more fun with dice.

Now that the players have determined what skills they are using to investigate, and have gotten the basic clues, a successful die roll can give additional details.

1. [Investigation] an imprint in the ground by the footprints indicates that whatever was thrown out of the window was initially dropped by the catcher. The item was surprisingly heavy, but small, and you can reproduce the broad shape of it based on the imprint, possibly even identifying what’s missing from the room based on that.
2. [Medicine]: The necklace used for strangulation was some kind of chain—verdigris on the bruising and the size of the imprint at the front indicates that whatever the necklace was, it wasn’t made of expensive materials, and whatever was on the front of it was heavy and awkwardly shaped—unusual for a victim this wealthy. Some kind of magical amulet, maybe?
3. [Animal Handling]: The teeth and claw marks on the victim’s belly weren’t, in fact, made by teeth or claws—the spacing and depth are too regular, and there isn’t enough blood surrounding the wound. Someone was trying hard to make this look like a bear attack. Except bears haven’t been seen in this area for decades. This was done by someone unfamiliar with the region.

If you like these game ideas, be sure to check back on February 3^rd for Bride of Gamenstein, part II of this series. Also, if you have any feedback or thoughts on any of these systems, please feel free to let us know in the comments, or on social media!

As I approached my winter break this year, I got the urge to engage with starfighter content. Do you know you can’t find Space, Above and Beyond anywhere streaming? No Wing Commander either. Thankfully, I found Battlestar Galactica streaming on the Peacock streaming network from NBC.

Speaking of Battlestar Galactica . . . what about an RPG that models the kind of political tensions, fights for survival, experiments in space sociology, and starfighter combat that you could find in that series?

Last year I backed Last Fleet on Kickstarter, in part because I was very happy with Bite Marks, another PbtA game from Black Armada. Let’s take a look at this offering.

Order of Battle

This review is based on the PDF of this game, which is 252 pages. The formatting is single column, with wide margins. Several of the section breaks include a full-page, full-color illustration, and there are full-body shots of example characters for various playbooks.

The book breaks down to a title page, a legal page, a credits page, a two-page table of contents, and five pages of index. The rest of the book is dedicated to presenting the rules, example settings, scenarios, and playbooks.

Overview of the Game, Key Rules

The Overview of the Game chapter begins with a quick sketch of the assumed setting for the game, a fleeing armada of ships trying to keep ahead of sapient alien fungus that lives in the hyperspace used to travel at FTL speeds. These aliens infect humans with spores to create sleeper agents, and often send biotechnological ships to assault the fleet.

In addition to framing the setting, this chapter takes great pains to explain how the game works, from touching on moves, mechanics, and stats, to how to teach the game and explain the concepts of the game itself. If you are familiar with PbtA games, the structure of the game will be familiar. There are several predefined moves that can be triggered by your actions in the narrative, and these moves are often resolved by rolling 2d6 + a stat, providing three tiers of resolution.

Key Rules moves on to discuss more in-depth applications of the rules, like framing scenes, triggering moves, pressure and breaking points, gaining XP, Doom Clocks, and Fleet Tracks.

Pressure is the primary track that individual characters use. When these fill up, there are several breaking point actions that a character can choose to take, which then resets the pressure track for that character.

The fleet tracks Attrition and Momentum. Attrition tracks how many supplies the fleet has, and when it fills up, something terrible happens. Momentum tracks how stable the fleet is, and when things get quiet, there is a chance that the fleet can seize an opportunity to do more than just run and survive.

Doom Tracks are a universal resolution measure any time something or someone is in danger of being destroyed or killed. This is just a four-tick clock, which fills in as consequences mount during various scenes. Even individual players don’t have a health mechanic, but rather they track Doom Tracks whenever they are in danger serious enough to potentially kill them.

The discussion of how a PbtA game works is very straightforward and conversational. This book ranks up there with my favorite “PbtA explanations for beginners” games. We haven’t got a close look at the playbooks yet, but while the astrological sign naming convention is definitely genre-appropriate, it’s hard to get a good read on what they do, in the same way that some playbooks communicate the playstyle of that playbook.

GMing the Game, GM Moves, Setting Up Your Game

This section expands on the way the GM operates in a PbtA game, with discussions on when to make a move, as well as the core and thematic moves specific to this game. In this case, the GM moves are tailored towards putting pressure on the characters, their relationships, and the fleet itself.

The Responding with a GM Move section is a great summary of how the conversation works in the game by breaking it down into four steps that can cycle through until a situation is resolved.

Like other PbtA games, there are GM principles, which, for those unfamiliar, basically define the mindset that the GM should be in when framing the narrative and making moves. The principles in this game are:

• No mercy
• Make space for interpersonal drama
• Make them care
• Everyone is up to something
• Make scarcity ubiquitous
• Make the fiction and the mechanics transparent
• Failure is not an option

These are some solid principles to keep in mind for a game that takes inspiration from Battlestar Galactica, but I wanted to touch on “make the fiction and the mechanics transparent.” Essentially, this is a principle that enjoins the GM to make sure everyone is clear on envisioning the scene the same way, and that the GM takes care to explain why the mechanics that the GM invokes are being invoked, by contextualizing them with the descriptions.

The GM moves explain what the moves entail, but an important part of the explanation that I appreciated is that there is a section that breaks down moves in context to parts of the story. For example, there are examples of how to frame threats regarding people, leadership, factions, the enemy fleet, infiltrators, and locations. This is a strong guideline to the contextual framing of moves as filtered by story elements.

The Setting Up Your Game chapter discusses setting options that will be presented later in the book and frames the mindset and starting situation for the fleet. This is followed by several questions to ask to provide more details and to grant inertia to different story elements in the game.

This section discusses setting up a game in multiple ways, either with the fleet in the middle of an active crisis, or recovering from a crisis that has just been resolved, and it explains how to start the game from either of these starting points.

Player Moves, Playbooks

The Player Moves section goes over what moves all players can trigger. These moves focus on combat, manipulation, covering up for shortcomings, and reaching out to others for comfort and support.

One of my favorite moves is the Wait Helplessly move, which is essentially a “help” move, but it requires the character to mark pressure on their track to give another player a bonus, at which point the character describes how and why they feel helpless to resolve the current situation.

Role Moves are present on each character sheet, so that various playbooks can be tailored to their position within the fleet. The role moves include the following:

• Tactician
• Engineer/Scientist
• Marine
• Pilot
• Influencer
• Investigator

The playbooks are all based on astrological signs. While you can get some idea about these if you know the astrology “tropes,” there are a few playbooks that have genre-specific quirks. For example, the Gemini is pushed to have shady connections, the Cancer is a natural leader, Pisces has some implied supernatural powers, and the Scorpio is a sleeper agent fighting to fix the damage that they do when they aren’t in control of their actions.

The Fleet, The Commonwealth and the Corax

There are different essays within this section, discussing military rank, example ships that might exist in the fleet, and the designations that different styles of ship might have. There is also a lengthy discussion of how to adjudicate damage, framing it contextually for different types of characters and ships in the game.

This section also moves on to discuss the default planets of the Commonwealth setting, the factions that exist, and the motivations of the individual characters in various positions.

Quick Start Scenarios: Cold War, Dictys and Danae

The Quick Start Scenarios in this section have pre-generated characters with built-in relationships, making these easy scenarios to run for convention games or one-shots. That said, the playbooks are in the “simplified” format that just explains what they have selected, not filled out versions of the playbooks.

Cold War involves pregens that are more “high level” characters in the fleet, including Admirals, Presidents, Chief Engineers, Military Advisors, and Flight Leaders. This is a scenario that is set up to model the “overview” of the game and provides some recognizable archetypes from the source material.

The second scenario is more focused, with pre-generated characters that represent the crew of a ship that is put in a bad position and must make decisions outside of the advice or orders of the wider fleet.

Promethia Damned

This section provides an alternate setting for the game, separate from the Commonwealth and the Corax conflict. Instead, this is envisioned as more of a high fantasy implementation of similar concepts. Instead of a fleet of starships, the setting is based around several flying cities with the ability to traverse alternate dimensions.

The cities are on the run from Hades’ forces, and instead of starfighters, pilots ride mythic beasts to fight in the skies against the furies that serve as one arm of Hades forces. The individual factions in this setting are the churches of various Olympian gods.

I appreciate novel alternative settings for a game, but I must admit, after getting calibrated to the Battlestar Galactica vibe, this is kind of a hard swerve, even if it is still about large conveyances with civilians on the run from a relentless pursuer.

Towards a Shining Planet

One of the best things I can say about any game that I review is that I start to picture what kind of game I would want to run while reading the rules. That definitely happened while I was reading through this book

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The discussion of standard PbtA procedures in this book is noticeably clear and direct. The Breaking Point actions are great built-in drama rules, and very thematic for the genre being emulated. The Role Moves are a succinct but effective way to model different narrative roles on a separate axis from the playbook personalities. The Doom Clock is a flexible mechanism for modeling building dread, and the standardized size retains the feel of an episodic drama.

Old Gods Die Hard

When reading all the playbooks, the theme of each becomes clear, but while the astrological references are appropriate for the source inspirations, the playbooks don’t really set expectations as well as they could with their names. Since Injuries and Shortages are narrative elements that get measured, I wish there were even a light system of established tags or conditions, instead of just knowing that those items can be narrative permission to start Doom Clocks with the right consequences.

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

One of the best things I can say about any game that I review is that I start to picture what kind of game I would want to run while reading the rules. That definitely happened while I was reading through this book. I think if you are a fan of PbtA games, and you are a fan of science fiction, you are going to be happy with this offering.

If this is your first PbtA game, I think you will enjoy this game, but despite the clear expression of ideas, the reliance on established facts working as a gateway to narrative positioning for other moves feels a little more decoupled than it should.

What are your feelings about campaigns with a constant, reinforced theme? Have you played games with one major villain pursuing the heroes through the entire campaign? Have you played in campaigns where the resolution of one major goal has been the driving narrative force? Let us know in the comments below.

During the pandemic and the stressful events of 2020/2021 version 1.6, video games and tabletop gaming have become two of my biggest salvations. When I get done with my work day and move from my basement home office to the couch upstairs, I usually pull up whatever old JRPG or game I have unplayed in my archives and get a little escapism going. It only makes sense that a lot of the tropes and techniques from those games get drifted in when I run my weekly and bi-weekly games with friends online. One of the techniques that I am realizing was much more common in the earliest days of gaming but I haven’t seen as much recently is what a video game would call a mini-map. It’s a pity too, because I’ve come to realize how great this tool is for cutting out some of the confusion that comes when trying to get on the same page online. So here’s a humble entreat to jump the meta-hurdle and start using mini-maps in the games we are running.

What do I mean by minimap?

Back in the earliest days of tabletop gaming, the GM drawing the map and presenting it wasn’t the common way to do things. The game master would describe things and one player would map on the grid paper, hopefully interpreting it right. Then, the GM would usually use their map to help compare things or show the players how they messed it up. This practice has thankfully fallen away in favor of the GM drawing the map before hand or using the map and then hiding or revealing it piece by piece. With online VTTs you can usually just remove the fog of war and show where the player tokens currently are. In video games, minimaps are incomplete or undetailed but accurate representations of the terrain. Displayed in a top or bottom corner, they act as compass and zoom out of what is around. They can usually be switched to by a simple button click and you get a full but undetailed view of what you have explored or what may be left to explore.

For my definition of minimap and its usage in tabletop role-playing games, I’m actually thinking of a mixture of the video game and older school style, with the work being on the game master rather than players. My minimap is the pirate’s treasure map that gives an idea of where to go and shows players where they exist in the broader world. It can break the meta-wall a bit and give players an overview of where they are going, but I’m in no way suggesting it reveals any secrets or things that should stay hidden. Instead it gives broad outlines, shows the rooms and walls, and helps players locate and plan out their actions.

Why I’m for using it, especially online

I can already hear the gnashing of teeth from the old school gamers (of which my aged bones and ancient dice tell me I’m one) about it revealing too much and coddling the players by giving things away. Absolutely, there are some genres and areas where it is certainly not appropriate and would break the tropes. There are many more, however, where the concept of a broad strokes map of the dungeon helps breed verisimilitude and bridges the gap between player knowledge and the perceived character experience. Imagine this scenario at your gaming table. You sit down and pick up where your group left off at the entrance to the temple of the dark deity. You’ve been prepping for this for your last arc. The Game Master hands you a minimap of the temple, laying out the 4 floors, some broad rooms, and some hallways. The first 3 floors are fairly detailed, the bottom has nothing drawn in. The whole thing is little more than the linear scratch of a pencil on notebook paper and there is no indication of what is in any of the rooms. The GM says you don’t actually know (in character) what is there, but you as players know and uncover these things as you go along.

If you are good as a player and can separate the player vs character knowledge just enough, you have a better idea of what is going on. As you penetrate the temple and see inside, you already know there is a long hallway after the foyer. You let the GM describe what the entrance looks like and you get caught by the trap, just as you might have without the map. Having learned your lesson, you point out on the map that you are moving from point A to point B (that you point to on the map) and checking for traps the whole way. You say you aren’t going to look into the rooms yet, just check the corridor. The GM calls for the rolls and you move back to the doors, the GM calls for more rolls… etc. They stop you at one point to narrate what you see when you get to a certain point. You continue forward until cultists break out of one of the doors ahead…

The whole process of play is sped up because you aren’t working to understand how the area is laid out. The players don’t have to guess if a giant chasm exists beyond or not (unless the GM decides to leave it off the map for the surprise, a totally valid thing to do) and the GM doesn’t have to pause things to move into revealing or setting up more of the map before you move forward. Revealing, to the players, enough knowledge to help engage with the skeleton of the adventure helps bring people onto the same page and allows for things to not be missed if they aren’t adequately described. It lets players fill in the gaps with their own details, build a framework of how this area is set up to paint their own ideas on to, and even maybe helps them with anticipation of what might light beyond that one particular area that caught their eye. It’s a closed door that they get to think about in the down moments as they move through the adventure.

The abstract nature even helps players fill in the details with their own concepts of a stone wall. It’s just enough to let them envision what that long corridor would look like, even if you haven’t taken the time to describe the slate grey sandy-to-the-touch stone. This helps with engagement, and in an online venue helps keep people thinking about the big picture. Maybe you’ve found or created a battlemap for every single room of the giant mansion… or maybe you’ve got a minimap in the top right corner with a small letter for each player and the players can reference that as you describe that area 5 is a kitchen suitable for 20 people to be comfortably inside, full of everything needed to host a giant feast. I know my players are always asking where we are on the giant maps I use online, and a minimap helps show where you are even if you aren’t actively pulling the tokens along in 30 foot increments.

Dealing with the meta curse?

A minimap wouldn’t be right for every style of game, and some tropes wouldn’t dovetail well with the immersion certain game styles preference, but then again it may help with more narrative-minded groups or even help more tactical groups feel confident in their ability to use their tactics rather than being completely surprised. So, meta is always going to be an interesting factor with minimaps and something that has to be dealt with based on play style and group. Maybe it’s just not right for your group, maybe it requires some narrative constraint to make it fit your game. Joval’s power to feel the bones of the earth lets them create a vague map, Emil is a cartographer and always collects maps of the areas they are likely to visit, a spell was found that pulls some information from the angelically controlled Akashic archives, or even sonar pings/hacking/mini drone mapping as part of every shadowrunner’s standard prep kit. When dealing with meta, there are three broad approaches I can envision.

• Don’t use it. It breaks some part of the game that is actually more fun without it.
• Find a reason in game for it to make sense that the characters have this vague knowledge.
• Use it and trust players to separate player vs character knowledge and not act in shady ways to try to one up the game or GM (a problem indicative of other issues).

Find your own fit within one of those three approaches and you can probably find a way to use it in your game.

I know this may not be a concept for every game, but it may be a missing brick in the foundation of a great experience. As I’ve been drifting more and more elements of the user experience from video games to tabletop rpgs, I’ve come to realize that there is a lot of room for overlap that can help the stories and adventures we have at the tables. The standard tropes for a lot of video games, especially jrpgs, came from early dungeons and dragons inspirations then got refined as the technology improved. Now, as our tabletop games move to more digital formats, there are many ui/ux elements we can port over with a little work and creative thinking. They help capture the old school feel with newer tools.

What do you think of providing that much detailed knowledge to players? Do you have other things you pull from video games to ttrpgs? Are there other ways to think of the meta concept of the map in game that I didn’t talk about?

Join Ang, Jared, and Senda for a discussion about playing solo games and other ways to enjoy gaming on your own. Can each of these gnomes on their own avoid being thrown in the stew one by one?

Random encounter lists have been around forever in a variety of games. Back in the earliest days of roleplaying, they were used to give different wilderness encounters as the party laboriously traveled over vast areas on foot. Encounter lists have refined and expanded as games have and are often used to provide a lot more information. My most recent use for Random Encounters has been to dish out setting information to players who are unfamiliar with the setting. It’s been an unexpected but super effective use of the format.
I’m currently running an Eberron campaign for many people who are new to the setting. While I’ve used other means to fill them in on the basics of the setting, they don’t have anywhere near complete knowledge of all the setting information, nor should they. Unless it is fun for them to memorize what is going on in the world, there is rarely any need for players to be experts in the knowledge of the world setting. What matters to them is what they interact with, and that is where the random encounter lists help in bringing the lore into the game being played at the table.

How To Use Random Encounter Lists for Lore

The first thing to do is to stop thinking about random encounter lists as being combat-oriented or being actually random. When using them to help convey information into your setting you are not often looking for the kind of random that you would get from an online generator that fills in generic details. Things like “the magic shop is filled with the smell of %name_of_incense% and has %generic_adornment% scattered around the shelves” are less useful to hooking the players into the setting. Instead, you want curated lists of interesting encounters that hook into bits of the lore or important/interesting things about the world. The lists work essentially as plot hooks that lead to deeper paths.

While a random list used for lore can have combat or action-oriented encounters, they should reflect more interesting glimpses at the life and happenings of the area you are building them for. A great example of this is the Random Encounters Sharn PDF from DM’s Guild. . I downloaded this to take out some of the prep work when my group was in the city. I began using it to fill in my version of Sharn and start to include some of the things that hadn’t really come into the plot of my campaign. It was phenomenal for making the game feel more fluid in the party’s home city and it lead to…

The Bridge Where It Happens

As my players have traversed my version of Sharn, The City of Towers, I’ve constantly re-used maps. One such map has been titled “The Bridge Where It Happens” and we’ve built a tradition of having to cross that bridge through ANY trip through Sharn, no matter where the group is going. Once they arrive, I roll or peruse a random encounter table and grab an interesting thing to riff off of. “An entourage from the Talenta Plains is making its way down the street on their dinosaur mounts, drawing much attention.”
I’ve never included the Talenta Plains in the campaign, nor the dinosaur mounts. It just hasn’t fit the theme so far, but suddenly the players are engaged trying to corral stampeding triceratops and deinonychuses as the handlers have lost control. With that little setting hook, I’ve suddenly gotten them interested in that part of the world and learning more about it.

Similar results have occurred while the group crosses the bridge and is approached by a peddler selling setting unique loot they had purchased from previous adventurers. I didn’t have a reason for them to come across byeshk weapons, but now the group is intrigued by them and likes having something unique in their armory.

Getting The Most Out of Setting Oriented Random Lists

Using random encounter lists with an eye towards hooking players into setting themes can make your game more fluid and feel less rigid. It helps you focus on different things you may not have thought about in relation to your plot and makes the world feel alive. Things are happening around the players, not just to them or because they acted on them. The airship that pulls up and sends a signal asking if they want to race down the canyon past the six kings doesn’t have anything to do with their adventure to the Demon Wastes, but when I pause the game to roll on the random table and pull up that encounter the group delights that they’ve “discovered” this thing in the world. It’s not related to their quest, it takes maybe 3 rolls per person to pull in riggings, control the elemental, and activate the burst engine to get across the finish line. They get to learn about the six kings statues, get a small bit of loot for winning the race, and feel like the world is more 3 dimensional. It isn’t all about their quest, it’s just something that happens on the way.

To get the most out of this technique, there are some things to keep in mind with lists and implementing them.

•  There are fewer combat or action encounters. Random encounters for travel are a different thing than random encounters for setting purposes. While it can be great to encounter different creatures JRPG style, they don’t say much about the world or lead to interesting insight… unless you make that happen. After defeating the chimera whose cave you stumbled across, you may find the remains of a house Tharashk group and their loot. Returning some of it to the house may provide a better reward or connection.
• Everything on the lists has a named, specific hook into something or could easily lead to one. For Eberron I take anything generic and pair it with a named element. If it says thieves guild, I replace it with the Daask or The Tyrants depending on where the group is or what is important.
• They are relatively short and grouped by some theme or specific area. You’ll never get through everything on a d100 list, but 10 d10s based on different types of areas or types of content in the city (mercantile, robbery, Upper Dura, etc.) help you hone in on the details of one specific trope.
• Don’t get lost in the details. A random list helps you pull things into your game you may not know intricate details about. Grab the book or an online article about it and garner the most important elements. Focus on those. With the Talenta dinosaur encounter, I didn’t worry about names for the tamers or types of dinosaurs until the group startled them and then had to apologize. I made those up on the fly and it fit the right niche for the encounter.
• If using for your own lore and setting, focus only on things that would be interesting in play. If the group encounters a bard spouting a song with the lore of the 13 branches of the current dynasty, it’s only interesting if it affects something currently. Focus on action. Maybe as the bard gets to a certain name, a cloaked figure is visibly startled and rushes out quickly. Now the players may become interested in why, track them down, and find a noble going secretly among the people or trying to escape some court plot on their life. Suddenly a connection to the lore of the noble house and the lore.

I’ve found random lists phenomenal for bringing in elements from the world and making it feel alive. Like in real life, we don’t know everything about every corporation, crime group, military, or creature that exists. It doesn’t matter greatly to us what to do to survive a bear attack until we encounter an angry bear in the wild. This holds true for many tabletop RPG settings. The details on the edges of our characters’ existences don’t truly matter until they come into focus. We may enjoy reading the lore, but in the game we enjoy encountering it, and not just as part of a prescribed plot-line.

Do you use random lists in your games? Do they focus on lore or setting elements or are they primarily to vary up combat encounters?

So, the D&D Dungeon Master’s Screen Wilderness Kit ended up in my holiday stocking. 

While I’m not a product reviewer — other gnomes are more talented and dedicated to such tasks — I thought I might share a few thoughts on it.

As a DM tool, it does several things really well. I know this because it replicates elements that I’ve long been utilizing with homemade supplements over the years. 

But, they’ve been nicely packaged together and presented in a single format, which is utilitarian. It’s held together in this paper folder, which I expect will have the lifespan of most paper folders. 

Still, it’s what’s inside that matters — and here it hits most beats for what a DM needs for running wilderness encounters.

First: Magnificent painting of a mountainous wilderness vista across four panels of the player-facing side of the screen. Display that at the table and you’ve sent an unmistakable message: We’re going on a wilderness trek! Credit for the illustration, by the way, goes to Grzegorz Rutkowski.

Second: Inclusion of three numerically keyed hex maps on letter-sized sheets that have been laminated for dry-erase markers. What better way to track your adventuring party’s hexploration than with these? While, it is true, the three hex maps do not interlock — that’s a pity — each one represents a 10 x 10 area — that should be sufficient for most roleplaying sessions. (And if you are the sort that uses a hex grid for miniature combat encounters, they are very close in size for that, as well).

Third: A set of cards for tracking initiative and references for conditions. They fit in a handy little box you construct out of the same paper as the folder. They are similar to the cards that came in the Encounters introductory set. I doubt I’ll use numbered cards for initiative, but numbered cards do have other uses — especially as round counters for spell effects.

Fourth: On the backs of the hex maps and on other sheets there are ready-references for relevant rules, such as Actions In Combat, Wilderness Chases, the sequence of a Wilderness Journey, and a dry-erase chart for tracking party member supplies of food and water. (More on this farther on down)

Five: The meat of a wilderness-focused screen is what is printed on the DM-facing side, and largely, it does not disappoint. There are rules references for weather and the effects of temperature extremes, travel pace, roadside services, encounter distance adjustments, wilderness navigation by terrain, how sound travels over distance, rules for cover, light, obscurity and visibility, the speed of air and water vessels, foraging DCs and the associated costs for food and drink at whatever inn or tavern you might stumble across, should your foraging be unsuccessful or you think the queen’s rangers are on to you for poaching. 

That’s a lot. There are also general rules printed for setting DCs, trap damage, object AC and hit points and the always useful skills and associated abilities list.

My only quibble is a repeated printing of the Conditions rules, which takes up a panel and a half. Given the inclusion of the ready-reference card deck, it seems unnecessary. If anything, maybe that should have been printed on the back of one of the hex sheets.

The Conditions are a quirky bit of the 5E rules set, one of those things that might not come up for several sessions, yet, then appear repeatedly in combat after combat. And in the Player’s Handbook, they are concisely presented on three pages in Appendix A, which is useful. And generally, I’d agree: including them on a DM screen is good sense, simply because it eliminates page-turning during combat. 

I think, for instance, the inclusion of Conditions was fitting for the D&D Dungeon Master’s Screen Reincarnated, which has proved itself as a useful screen for dungeon crawls and low-level adventures. That product is geared for new DMs or DMs becoming accustomed to 5E rules, and benefits from having them. 

I’d argue, however, that for a wilderness-themed screen, I’d much rather have rules specific to wilderness play in that space. (Besides, as we’ve established, the Conditions rules already appear in another form in the product). All the information contained on the Wilderness Journey sheet, including the sequence of wilderness play (which it calls Journey Circles), rules for becoming lost (and found, hopefully), wilderness encounters and discoveries and rules for supplies — would be a better choice for the DM-facing side of the screen. 

In fact, the Wilderness Journey information, will most certainly be the most referenced set of rules by those DMs taking their game out into the wild for the first time.

My own wilderness encounters

My own rule-of-thumb for wilderness encounters is a bit different. I also think when fixing random encounters, letting chance do its work on the “when” portion is also fun. So here it is.

Point-to-point travel on established roads. I figure on one encounter for the entire journey. Most likely, it will be with bipedal intelligent folk, who, like the players, are trying to get from place to place. Merchants, peddlers, soldiers, couriers, farmers on slow-moving vehicles — you get the point. That’s because, while roads in D&D realms aren’t the safest places, they are established trade networks. Plus, I try to make such an encounter work for the adventure — which is at the destination anyway. I’m more interested in salting the players’ landscape with information, rumor and mood than I am with a random band of bugbears (though, there’s nothing I love more than a roving band of bugbears, believe me).

Overland exploration. The current fashion for random wilderness encounters is a 10% chance per day. To me, that’s far too infrequent to be interesting. (I can go on an afternoon hike at a government-managed park or trail nearby my home and have more encounters, for goodness sake. The wildlife isn’t likely to eat me, but you get the idea). Overland exploration is that part of the game that as DM you drive home the fact that D&D is a heightened fantasy experience. This is why ordinary folk don’t venture far from their cities, and why their towns have palisades, and why it takes courage (or desperation) to be a guard on a merchant train. You step into a hex, there will be an encounter. That part isn’t random. Better to roll for “when” the encounter will occur and “what” it will be. Roll two d12s. The first is an odd-even for AM-PM, the second is for the hour. Now you know “when” (and your players don’t), go to your favorite random encounter chart and chuck that percentage dice. And, you can spice up the “where” of it all by rolling on the Monuments or Weird Locales charts on pages 108-109 of the DMG. 

“Following the mountain goat trail, you come upon the toppled statue to Istus, goddess of fate and destiny. It is mid-morning (about 9 a.m.), as you look into the sky, a winged creature appears silhouetted against the sun. What is it? It’s a wyvern, and it’s swooping down toward you!”

Yes, it’s time to roll for initiative. 

Guess I need those initiative cards after all.

As most of you fine folks out there in Gnome Stew lands know, I’m a fiction author in addition to being an avid role player and part of Gnome Stew. In the realm of getting fiction sold before you can actually sell it to readers, there are agents and editors to work with to get a book ready for publication. I’m not going to do a deep dive into their roles and how they work because entire books can be (and have been) written on these topics. That’s not the point of Gnome Stew or this article.

At a high level, an agent (which is optional, depending on the publication process you’re going through) represents you and your works to acquiring editors at publication houses. At the various publication houses, there can be a single editor (for the really small houses) to many layers of editors (for the really large houses). I’m going to focus in on the acquisition editors for the moment. One of the things that authors despise hearing is that an editor is looking for “the same, but different.” This means that agents are typically looking for “the same, but different” as well.

What this sound bite really means, is that the editors and agents are wanting something that evokes feels that they’ve had with past reads, but by way of a new roads, new characters, new approaches, and fresh perspectives. This is an incredibly hard target to hit because it’s outrageously intangible. An author has no idea what the specific feels of an agent/editor might be wanting in a story. The author basically has to create some emotional resonance with their story and hope that it echoes with the agents/editors of the world.

The Point

You, as a game master, have the same task ahead of you when creating a fresh storyline to share with your players. Experienced players want “the same, but different” when they sit down at the table with you. Fresh players to the RPG hobby also want “the same, but different.” Both categories of gamers are most likely reaching back into their past literary, movie, and TV consumption for finding that “same” thing. The experienced folks at your table will also be wanting something that echoes adventures of days gone by.

The Tricks and Tips

Leverage what exists within the zeitgeist of popular media for your table. The popular media you need to lean on should be recent enough that it’s possible to recall the feelings of witnessing the events, but not so new that the likelihood of your group having seen it is close to nil. Don’t go too far back (depending on the age of the folks you expect to have at the table) because you may get outside the experiences of the current crowd of gamers.

As an example, pick a few scenes from the Death Star Princess Rescue line of events from Star Wars: A New Hope.

• Getting to the cell block.
• Infiltrating the cell block.
• Getting past (or neutralizing) the guards.
• Opening the cell (emotional beat!) and finding the princess.
• Blasting out of the cell block.
• Uh oh. In the garbage compressor with the nasty critter.
• … And so on.

If you can cherry pick a few of those scenes, file off the serial numbers, and run with it, you’ll be pretty close to producing “the same, but different.”

Another way of going about this is to track down “classic” adventures from previous editions (or ages or eras) of the game you’re currently playing, and give them a more modern treatment and refreshed “window dressing” elements. This will be quite a bit of work. Stat blocks will require being updated/replaced/created. The story beats and elements brought to the table will have to be given a good, hard look to cleanse them of any socially negative items that tended to be common in the adventures of past decades. Lastly, if you change up location and key NPC names, and shift locations around a bit, you’ll have filed off the serial numbers and brought the game into the modern era. Even with all of these necessary changes, the similar notes will be hit.

Anyone that adventured through those slim campaigns of the days of yore when they were originally published will see the hints and remnants of what you have there. Hopefully, this will bring back a satisfying sense of nostalgia for the older players that will give them happy feels. This is also a chance to introduce great adventure concepts (without all the troubling racism, sexism, and bigotry) to the newer players and show them how much fun things from “back then” can be.

Home Games

If you have a regular home group you play with, then you have an advantage here (roll both those d20s on this skill check and take the highest roll). This is because you know these people. You know their tastes. You know their inclinations. Most importantly, you know (to some extent) the history of gaming they have under their belts. You can leverage this intimate knowledge into offshoots and junctures of storytelling to allow you to hit those high emotional points that the players will remember forever.

A great approach here is to take a campaign you’ve already played in a different genre (e.g.: fantasy) and transpose the events, storytelling beats, and emotional hits into the genre of the current campaign (e.g.: cyberpunk). This will create echoes of the old story in your current story, but with completely different wrappings and interfaces. This will accomplish “the same, but different.”

Conference Games

Games at cons are going to be much, much more difficult (roll both those d20s on this skill check and take the lowest roll). Where you know the people involved in your home game, the games you run at cons are (usually) for complete and utter strangers. This is where you have to fall back on tropes, general concepts of storytelling, and leveraging common media influences to get close to the emotions of your players.

Also, games at cons tend to be one-shots and very short adventures. It’s super difficult to try and hit some emotional resonance in a 4 hour slot unless the game you’re running is specifically designed to evoke feels. You can do this, but it does take some forethought and planning on the types of encounters you want to include in your game. This goes way beyond stat blocks and monster powers. Your line of thought here should be putting the PCs in situations that will feel familiar to most gamers, but with your own twist on the approach.

Wrapping Up

What story elements or stories in whole cloth would you like to see brought to the table in “the same, but different” manner?

As I’ve begun to move back to D&D online games run through various VTTs, I’ve begun to refine some of my game mastering techniques to accommodate some of the new challenges. One of the techniques I’ve pulled out of my old, tattered, black and white mead notebook is the concept of a default initiative for the group — a way to know in what order the group acts when things go from a free-form narrative sort of scene to a combat or other action / “order of operations matters” type of scene.

What is it?

Default initiative, in the simplest sense, is pretty much passive initiative. Much like Passive Insight or Passive Perception (Passive Check Explanation from Roll 20) it’s the default, baseline, middle of the line roll you might make. Default initiative as a passive check would just be the score you use for initiative without rolling for it every time. Jeremy Crawford has talked about a passive initiative houserule he uses for monsters in D&D, and this isn’t quite that. In a sense, it shares the same intent but for the party to use as a reaction.

When and how do you use it?

For my interpretation of a default initiative system, every member of the group is given a default initiative. If any interaction occurs that would jump from narrative to a more mechanical action, you throw the default initiatives in for the first round as their reaction ability. Once they’ve had a round to gather themselves and get prepared, the players can reroll their initiative and move into the flow of combat.

As a general score it has a lot more utility though. You can use it to determine the order that players go in when they are all attempting to pull off general actions in the same scene. Have an infiltration mission where one player is schmoozing a dignitary while another one is pickpocketing her at the same time that the third player is trying to sneak into the serving area and a fourth player is simultaneously creeping on rafters above the party that might break? Whew, that was a long and convoluted sentence. Default initiative would act like commas or hyphens — breaking up the action into smaller chunks that could be ordered and understood more clearly.

Default initiative would be a constant way to know if the character in the rafters fell before the character pickpocketing got their chance. Perhaps the order of operations would mean the pickpocketer got advantage or disadvantage on their roll, but that wouldn’t have happened without an initiative order. At the same time, rolling or assigning initiative to every NPC at the party would be tedious. Those characters are more like set pieces, being called into action when the players engage them and otherwise going on about their business as part of the background.
Another meta-benefit of default initiative is the ability to roll back to it in table discussions (especially in the online age of gaming). If you find people are talking over each other, you can call a pause and go in default initiative order, even if you don’t point out that is what you are doing. Sure Joe may talk before Bill does if everyone is trying to talk at once, but it reflects back on their characters abilities to act or influence the situation. This of course works when appropriate and is only fair in situations where it is about character actions. It also depends on how you calculate the default initiative.

So, how do you calculate it?

In a system like D&D you could rely on just the 10 + initiative bonus, but that doesn’t take into account the ability to react to a situation. My ideal calculation in D&D is:

• 10 – Base average result for the system, taking 10 as it were.
  PLUS
• Your initiative bonus / 2.
  PLUS
• Your perception bonus /2.

So, my default initiative formula for D&D 5e is 10 + (initiative bonus /2) +(perception /2).

Why? For me this accommodates the ability to realize something is going on and react to it with your normal alacrity. It doesn’t just factor your speed, but also your ability to go from 0 to go in a split second. Any special bonuses you might get to initiative from a power or ability would be factored into this, and dividing by two means you aren’t getting enormous boosts to initiative since you are factoring in two options. If you found it appropriate to do 3 options, cut in thirds, etc.

In other systems this would follow the same rule:

• Average Result
  Plus
• Speed ability (cut in half)
  Plus
• noticing / perceptive ability (cut in half)

If you’re familiar with letterkenny, you know why a default initiative is important…

Why should you consider it?

For the games where I’ve used this method, I’ve had an easy to rely on system that covered some gaps. If a group gets surprised, they get surprised. If a group is somewhat wary going into a situation, they get to act on the first round with a sense of structure. The speedy rogue usually goes first, which makes sense and validates the character choices. The bulky powerhouse barbarian goes later, but may go earlier because they notice something happening quicker. When everyone has ramped up to action time, they get to re-roll but they got to react with more structure and there was no pause to roll initiative in the narrative.

This sort of system also dovetails nicely with my very generous uses of inspiration or plot points. Group gets surprised and a bandit is about to take 6 HP off the top of the level one character because it goes first? The player may bribe me with an inspiration to use their default initiative in the surprise round even though they fell for the trap. Sure, they may or may not beat the speed of the bandit, but they have a mechanical strut to rest their narrative action on. I could just let them roll, but that slows down the action and response. With the default passive initiative, it represents their ability to react, go, but still only get about half their potential best.

At the core of the concept, Default or Passive initiative that incorporates some perceptive ability is like a coatrack that you can hang some narrative concepts on. It lets you move into action scenes from zero more quickly, it provides a structure when things are chaotic and you need something to rely on for order of operations, and it increases player knowledge of how things may play out. They know their bard is fast, but with that default initiative of 16 they know only the best of the best will get the drop on them, even when they aren’t fully engaged. It’s a fairly simple tweak to a system that lets you smooth over some potential rough edges. Necessary or useful in all situations, no, but when the concept lands it will change the flow of the game and make things run more smoothly.

Do you see yourself using a system like this? How would you change it for other systems you play, especially more narrative ones? Do you use any homebrew style hacks like this?

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Pointcrawls provide a valuable model for overland travel focusing on fantastic locations and the in-world paths connecting them.

A pointcrawl is a DM tool for handling overland travel in D&D. Much like building a dungeon from rooms and hallways, pointcrawls are built from meaningful locations connected by in-world pathways. Since they're built like dungeons, we can use good dungeon design characteristics (see the Alexandrian's Jaquaying the Dungeon) to make our pointcrawls interesting and give players meaningful options while traveling. These characteristics include multiple paths, loopbacks, shortcuts, and secret paths. Pointcrawls offer a flexible structure for overland, wilderness, and city-based adventures.

For a video on this topic, you can watch my Pointcrawls for Overland Travel in D&D Youtube video.

Here's an example of a pointcrawl for the Glass Plateau in Eberron.

Pointcrawls from the Dungeon Master's Guide

The Dungeon Master's Guide describes pointcrawls without actually defining them as such. Here's a quote from chapter 5 of the DMG when discussing overland travel:

One solution is to think of an outdoor setting in the same way you think about a dungeon. Even the most wide-open terrain presents clear pathways. Roads seldom run straight
 because they follow the contours of the land, finding
 the most level or otherwise easiest routes across uneven ground. Valleys and ridges channel travel in 
certain directions. Mountain ranges present forbidding barriers traversed only by remote passes. Even the most trackless desert reveals favored routes, where explorers and caravan drivers have discovered areas of wind-blasted rock that are easier to traverse than shifting sand.

Thinking about building overland travel the same way we build dungeons is a helpful model. It gives us a usable but flexible structure when thinking about above-ground areas.

The idea of pointcrawls grew from hexcrawls, the typical way D&D has handled overland travel for the past 40 years. Chris Kutalik described the original concept of pointcrawls in the article Crawling Without Hexes: the Pointcrawl back in 2012.

Quick Pointcrawl Construction

Here's one way to build a pointcrawl intended to support both improvisational play and lazy dungeon mastering.

1. Write down ten interesting locations and landmarks the characters might visit while traveling through the area.
2. Connect these locations with in-game routes such as rivers, paths, game trails, roads, portals, mountain passes or any other in-world pathway between two locations.
3. Build in multiple paths, loopbacks, shortcuts, and secret paths between locations.

Our goal is to make overland travel interesting, fun to explore, and offer meaningful choices to the characters along the way. We can drop encounters in at locations, the paths between locations, or both. Such encounters might involve meeting NPCs, exploring strange signs, learning something of the history of the area, getting into a fight, or all of the above.

Tools for Building Pointcrawl Charts

The easiest tools for documenting a pointcrawl are likely a pencil and a piece of paper. We can easily draw out a pointcrawl in a few minutes, take a picture with our phone, and we can take it wherever we need. Sticky notes might be a good way to document locations and reorganize them depending on the path. Mind mapping software can also do the trick if it's something you already use.

There's a digital solution I stumbled across called GraphViz.it. It takes in a particular text-based format for the pointcrawl (actually a network) and renders that network out.

Example: The City of Making

Here's another example pointcrawl using GraphViz.it for the city of Making in Eberron.

and here's the input generating this pointcrawl:

# http://graphviz.it/#/new
graph{
"Entry - Gates of Making" -- "The Impaled" [label="Road of Triumph"]
"The Impaled" -- "Fallen Colossus" [label="Massive Footsteps"]
"Fallen Colossus" -- "Fortress of Blades" [label="Road of Fallen Blades"]
"Fortress of Blades" -- "Skydancer Wreck" [label="Scorched Trench"]
"Skydancer Wreck" -- "Entry - The Runoff" [label="Blackwater Way"]
"Fortress of Blades" -- "Clawrift" [label="Road of Dead Machines"]
"The Impaled" -- "Clawrift" [label="Road of Triumph"]
"The Impaled" -- "Daughters' Earthmote" [label="The Slaughterfield"]
"Silver Flame Spire" -- "Clawrift" [label="Cracked Road"]
"Silver Flame Spire" -- "Shattered Laboratory" [label="Old Tunnel"]
"Shattered Laboratory" -- "Clawrift" [label="Teleporter"]
"The Impaled" -- "Living Weird" [label="Dreamwalk"]
"Living Weird" -- "Silver Flame Spire" [label="Twisting Black Thread"]
"Daughters' Earthmote" -- "Clawrift" [label="Trollhaunt Road"]
}

I tried to add some Jaquay-style designs to the map including multiple entrances, loops, and secret paths (like the path between the Shattered Laboratory and Clawrift). I also labeled the paths here to identify what connects these locations. The evocative names help me improvise what the characters might run into while going along that path.

This is an extensive pointcrawl for a big city, not exactly what one might call lazy, but it didn't take terribly long and it may be useful for many sessions so I don't see the effort wasted. Many of these locations may end up as their own dungeons to crawl, such as the Shattered Laboratory, the Daughters' Earthmote, the Fallen Colossus, the Skydancer Wreck, the Fortress of Blades, and, of course, Clawrift itself which ends up as a multi-level dungeon all on its own.

Another Tool for Lazy Dungeon Masters

Pointcrawls aren't the end-all-be-all of our D&D games but they're a good structure when planning out overland travel, one backed by decades of use. Build pointcrawls by outlining interesting locations, the paths between them, ad interesting encounters they might engage with while there. Such pointcrawls give us a nice model and yet help us build a world that feels open and exciting to the players.

Further Reading

In researching this topic, I found numerous helpful articles on the topic pointcrawls and their parent hex crawls. Here's a list of the ones I found most useful:

• Detect Magic: Pathcrawl
• Hill Cantons: Crawling Without Hexes: The Pointcrawl
• Hill Cantons: Pointcrawl Series Index
• Hill Cantons: Hexcrawls vs Pointcrawls
• Spriggan's Den: Wilderness Travel with a Pointcrawl System
• DIY & Dragons: Sub-Hex Crawling Mechanics - Part 1, Pointcrawling
• DIY & Dragons: Sub-Hex Crawling 1.5 - More Pointcrawl Maps
• The Alexandrian: Hexcrawl
• The Alexandrian: Thinking About Wilderness Travel
• The Alexandrian: Thinking About Wilderness Travel Part 2
• The Alexandrian: Remixing Avernus Part 5C: A Pointcrawl in Elturel
• Tribality: A Guide to Hexcrawling Part 1

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Instead of using the optional flanking rule, offer deals to players to trade ability checks using in-world features to gain advantage on their next attack.

Chapter 8 of the Dungeon Master's Guide offers an optional rule for flanking in which creatures gain advantage against an enemy if an ally is on the opposite side of the enemy. It's a popular rule, used by about half of nearly 1,200 DMs polled on Twitter. I'm not a fan of it. First, it only works when playing with a 5 foot per square grid. It's not easy to use in combat using the theater of the mind. It also offers a major bonus for little risk. It's not hard to get around the other side of an enemy. Previous versions of D&D used to offer a +2 bonus for flanking while advantage results in something closer to +4 or +5. It also removes the value of many other features offering advantage in certain circumstances such as hiding, pack tactics, and others.

Instead of offering flanking for positioning, why not offer advantage for big risky cinematic actions the characters take. Characters can get advantage for scaling a steep wall to gain the high ground. They can leap off of balconies, swing from chandeliers, or leap up onto a monster's back. There are so many cool cinematic ways we might offer advantage to a character beyond "I'm on the other side of it".

Offering Deals

Injecting cinematic advantage into your game is all about offering deals; trading in-world fiction and a skill check from players for advantage on their next attack. This helps draw players out of the mechanics of their characters and into the story of the situation itself.

Most of the time the transactions of cinematic advantage comes down to the following:

• While describing the situation, the DM describes interesting features in the area.
• The player describes how they want to use a feature to get a cinematic advantage.
• The DM determines what attribute and skill (or skills) might be used to accomplish the feat and how difficult it is on a scale of DC 10 to 20. Tell the player what the DC is and what penalty they face if they fail so they can make an informed choice.
• The player rolls the check as part of their move or action. On a success, they get advantage on their next attack. On a failure something bad happens depending on what they tried, often falling prone.

When you describe the situation during combat, clarify what features can be used. Write them down on a 3x5 card and stick them on the table if you want. This is an old trick from Fate in which we write down aspects of the scenes characters invoke to gain a bonus on their action. When each character is about to take their turn, remind them what options they have to gain a cinematic advantage. Offer them deals. Let them know what the DC is and what happens if they fail. Sometimes players riff off of these ideas and come up with something new — go for it!

The goal of cinematic advantage to draw the players into the fiction and get the characters to take fun risks to get a boost. Offer good deals. Work with your players, not against them, to take the deal.

Benefits of the Cinematic Advantage

Cinematic advantage trades the pure mechanical aspects of flanking with cool action-packed in-world storytelling. It doesn't require miniatures or a grid, you can do it with any type of combat you run whether it's deep tactical play or free-wheeling theater of the mind. It draws the players into the fiction but still offers a clear mechanical boost for their creative effort. It lets players show off the capabilities of their characters, grabbing cinematic advantages with skills their characters are clearly good at.

Don't set the DCs based on the characters, however. That chandelier doesn't get more awkward just because the character who wants to swing from it happens to be proficient in acrobatics and has a dexterity bonus of +5. Set the difficulty independently from the characters attempting the check. You want players to take these deals.

Twenty Examples of Cinematic Advantage

Here are twenty examples of ways characters might get advantage on an enemy. Most of these ways involve a succeeding on a skill check as part of their attack action to gain the advantage.

• Leaping off of a balcony
• Climbing onto the back of a larger foe
• Sliding underneath a big foe and slashing at its vitals
• Banking a shot off of a reflective wall
• Leaping over dangerous terrain
• Swinging from a chandelier or rope
• Smashing something an adversary is standing on
• Pocket sand!
• Climbing and leaping off a big statue
• Drawing arcane energy from a shattered crystal
• Climbing to get the high ground
• Drawing energy from a magical monument
• Letting the anger of a desecrated altar flow over you
• Drawing holy energy from an ancient elven fountain
• Vaulting off of a crumbling wall
• Pulling power from an unstable summoning circle
• Balancing on a precarious perch
• Smashing through a door to surprise your foes
• Leaping off of a moving vehicle
• Calling the troubled spirits of the fallen for aid

Trading Mechanics for Fiction

Take any opportunity you can to draw players into the fiction of the game. Instead of offering a purely mechanical benefit like flanking, consider offering cinematic opportunities for the characters to gain advantage. Work with them to tell action-packed stories of high adventure and take risks to gain the upper hand on their foes. Such techniques work across any combat style whether you play on a gridded battle map or using pure theater of the mind combat and can help your stories come alive at the table.

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Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

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This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

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Creatures with darkvision in darkness have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks and -5 to their passive perception. Light up those torches, dungeon explorers!

In many D&D games, any sort of light such as torches, lanterns, use of the light cantrip, or other forms of illumination are shunned in favor of character races possessing darkvision. Darkvision is treated as a perfect way to navigate the darkest corridors, tunnels, and dungeons in our D&D games.

Except it doesn't work that way.

This is actually the combination of three rules so it's easy for players and DMs to miss it. Here's the description of darkvision from chapter 8 of the Player's Handbook:

Darkvision. Many creatures in fantasy gaming worlds, especially those that dwell underground, have darkvision. Within a specified range, a creature with darkvision can see in darkness as if the darkness were dim light, so areas of darkness are only lightly obscured as far as that creature is concerned. However, the creature can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Here's what happens when you're in dim light also in chapter 8 of the Player's Handbook:

A given area might be lightly or heavily obscured. In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.

And finally under "Passive Checks" in chapter 7 of the Player's Handbook:

If the character has advantage on the check, add 5. For disadvantage, subtract 5.

Joining these three rules together we come to this:

A character with darkvision has -5 to passive Perception checks while within darkness.

Light Those Torches

Most of the time, characters in dangerous areas won't want -5 to their passive Perception checks or to have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks. They'll want to light the area up if they want to be careful. Darkvision is no longer Superman's see-everything vision. If the group decides they want to be sneaky, they're going to miss those traps. If they light up those torches, they might give themselves away to lurking enemies.

Of course, the same thing is true for our enemies. Monsters with darkvision are just as likely to miss that stealthy rogue if they don't have lights of their own. Will they risk it? Only creatures with blindsense have no need to worry.

Choosing whether to light up or not is one of those fun in-world decisions that makes D&D fun. Instead of having a cure-all to the problem ("I have darkvision, we're fine), the players have to make hard choices with consequences. Sure, you can rely on darkvision, but you may step into a spiked pit trap you might otherwise see.

The next time the characters enter an old crypt, best to remind them of the dangers of relying completely on darkvisioon.

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Note: This article has been updated since the original written in February 2015.

The following tools are intended to make it easier to improvise situations in your D&D games. These numbers are designed to be simple and straight forward enough to keep in your head. You can, of course, write them out on a 3x5 card or sticky note and paste it in the inside of your DM screen as well. These numbers help you create challenges, traps, encounters, environmental effects, and horde battles without needing to look anything up in a complicated chart.

Most of these numbers are based on a challenge rating for the sitiuation. This challenge rating is roughly equivalant to the average character level of a group of adventures between 1 (1st level characters) and 20 (20th level characters). This challenge rating is based on the situation, however, not the actual level of the characters in the game. The world does not conform to the level of the characters.

For more tools like these, check out the Lazy DM's Workbook.

Here's a summary of D&D numbers you can keep in your head:

• DC, AC, Saving Throw DC: 10 (easy) to 20 (hard)
• Attack Bonuses, Trained Skills, Primary Saves: +3 (easy) to +12 (hard)
• Single Target Damage: 5 (1d10) per challenge level.
• Multi-target Damage: 3 (1d6) per challenge level.
• Hit Points: 20 per challenge level.
• Deadly Encounter Benchmark: 1/2 or 1/4 of total character levels. An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than half the sum total of character levels, or one quarter if the characters are below 5th level.
• Fighting a Horde of Weaker Monsters. 1/4th succeed. About one quarter of the horde succeed on attacks or saving throws; adjust up or down depending on the situation.

Difficulty Check, Armor Class, Saving Throw DC: 10 to 20

When a situation comes up requiring a difficulty check, choose a number between 10 (easy) and 20 (hard) as the target. The harder the challenge, the higher the number. A 10 is considered relatively easy yet still challenging enough to warrant a roll. A 20 is considered nearly impossible for most common folk.

This number also works for an improvised armor class and saving throw DCs if needed. If you happen to improvise a trap or an effect of some sort, or the characters start attacking a stone statue, you can use this range to set the AC of the statue or the DC of the trap's saving throw.

Example: The Icebolt Trap

Say you've decided a particular room has an icebolt trap in it. How tough was the wizard who planted the trap? Was he an apprentice or an archmage? Choose a number between 10 and 20 to determine the difficulty of finding and disarming the trap. For this example, let's say this icebolt trap has a DC of 14 to detect and disarm.

Note, we're not setting the trap based on the level of the characters. The world is a dynamic place and the characters are just living there. The world does not change it's DCs based on the characters who face it.

Attack Bonus: +3 to +12

If we ever need to improvise an attack score, choose a number between +3 (not particularly accurate) and +12 (very accurate). Anything lower is going to be unlikely to hit and not worth rolling. There are some situations where the attack is lower or higher than this but this range is likely for most situations. When you have an improvised attack, choose a bonus based on the accuracy of the attack.

Example: The Icebolt's Attack

Going back to our example from before, let's look again our icebolt trap. If a character fails to detect it or disarm it, it fires an icebolt at the one who triggered the trap with a +6 to attack.

5 (1d10) Damage Per Challenge Level

If you need to inflict some improvised damage, 5 (1d10) damage per challenge level is a good rule of thumb. It's roughly the challenge faced by four characters so a challenge 6 is the equivalent of four level 6 characters. If this damage would affect more than one creature, reduce it to 3 (1d6) per challenge level. As mentioned before, this challenge rating isn't necessarily based on the level of the PCs but instead the level of the challenge they face.

Note, for the examples below I'm using the average of a die to determine the static damage, rounded down. Thus, 5 is the average of 1d10 but 11 is the average for 2d10 (5.5 x 2).

Example: The Icebolt's Damage

Returning to our icebolt trap example, we'll have to decide how dangerous this icebolt is and choose 6 damage per challenge level. Assuming the goblin wizard was a challenge rating of 3, the ice bolt inflicts 16 (3d10) cold damage. If this ice bolt had been placed by the lich Xathron, a challenge 16 monster, the bolt might inflict 90 (16d10) cold damage instead. The challenge rating of the villain setting up the trap gives you the idea how much damage to dish out.

20 Hit Points Per Level

If you need to improvise hit points for an object, use 20 hit points per challenge level. This doesn't match up perfectly to the hit points of monsters in the Monster Manual or the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating chart on page 274 of the Dungeon Master's Guide, but it's close enough.

Example: Xathron's Icy Automaton

Let's say the PCs have invaded the lich Xathron's treasure vault and inside is Xathron's Icy Automaton. This isn't Xathron's best guardian, but it's pretty solid. We'll consider it a level 5 challenge.

The PCs fail to notice the Automaton's danger (failed on a DC 15 perception) and it begins to fire icebolts at random PCs (two attacks, +7 to attack, 15 damage). The PCs can't seem to get it disarmed (failed on three potential DC 15 Arcana or Athletics checks) and now they want to bash it down (AC 15, 100 hps). After inflicting 100 damage to it, the automaton falls apart.

Not Intended for Monster Building

Looking at these number ranges, you may be tempted to use them to build a monster. Instead, consider reskinning existing monsters from the Monster Manual rather than building a monster from scratch with these numbers. While you might be able to build a reasonable monster with these scores, the asymmetrical nature of the stats in the Monster Manual makes creatures much more fun to fight than a static box of perfectly aligned scores.

Deadly Encounter Benchmark: 1/2 or 1/4 of total character levels

When building combat encounters, you can skip the complicated math outlined in the Dungeon Master's Guide and instead use this simple encounter building benchmark:

First, build encounters based on what makes sense for the story and the situation. Let the story drive the number and types of monsters.

Then, if needed, check to see if the encounter may be deadly. An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than one half the sum total of character levels, or one quarter of character levels if the characters are below 5th level.

This isn't perfect and lots of variable can change up how difficult a battle is but it's a good rough benchmark that, I'd argue, is as good as any of the fancier methods for benchmarking encounter difficultly found in the Dungeon Master's Guide, Xanathar's Guide, Kobold Fight Club, or any other encounter calculator.

Here's a Youtube video on the Deadly Encounter Benchmark.

Running Hordes of Monsters: One Quarter Succeed

Sometimes the stories of our games lead to the characters facing large hordes of monsters. Rolling tons of attacks and saving throws can suck the energy out of what would otherwise be a really exciting fight. The Dungeon Master's Guide includes rules for adjudicating a lot of attacks from a large number of monsters. So does the [Lazy DM's Workbook]Lazy DM's Workbook.

For an easier method requiring no table, we can start with a baseline assumption that when a large force of weaker monsters attacks the characters about one quarter of them hit. Likewise, when a character hits a large number of monsters with a big area-of-effect ability, about one quarter of them make their saving throw.

For example, our party of 8th level characters gets attacked by fifty skeletons. Many of the skeletons slash with swords or fire splintered recurve bows. Split the attacks evenly across the five characters so each character gets attacked ten times. Instead of doing a bunch of comparisons of attacks to AC, we can assume one quarter of them hit. If the character is particularly well armored we round down. If they're wearing lighter armor, we round up. Thus each character takes between 10 and 15 damage when attacked.

Now the cleric casts Turn Undead. We can likewise assume one quarter of the skeletons succeed on their saving throws and three quarters fail and are destroyed as a huge wave of radiant energy blasts them to dust. Now only twelve of the skeletons remain.

We can do a lot of math to figure all of this out but the result is essentially the same after we round it out.

Instead we can just remember a simple rule: when a large number of weaker monsters faces the characters, about one quarter of them succeed on attacks or saving throws..

A Quick Summary

In summary, here are some numbers to keep in your head:

• DC / AC / Save DC: 10 to 20
• Attacks, Trained Skills, Primary Saves: +3 to +12
• Single Target Damage: 6 (1d10) per Challenge Rating
• Multi-target Damage: 3 (1d6) per Challenge Rating
• Hit Points: 20 per Challenge Rating
• Building Encounters: 1/2 or 1/4 of total character levels. An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than half the sum total of character levels, or one quarter if they're below 5th level.
• Fighting a Horde of Weaker Monsters. 1/4 succeed. About one quarter of the horde succeed on attacks and saving throws.

With those numbers in mind, you have a simple toolbox for running all sorts of challenges for your D&D 5e group.

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Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

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This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

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A few of 5th edition D&D's rules aren't quite as simple and clear as we'd like. How surprise works is one of those. Today we're going to dig deep into surprise, how the rules are intended to work, and some ways we can make it easier to run at the table.

Rules As Written

The rules themselves describe surprise thusly:

The DM determines who might be surprised. If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the DM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side. Any character or monster that doesn't notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter.

If you're surprised, you can't move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can't take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren't.

Most of this is completely straight forward except for one part. It's that final sentence of the first paragraph. Where it says "doesn't notice a threat", is that "any" threat, or "all" threats?

Given the above description, we can almost consider "surprised" to be a condition. If you are surprised, you can't move or act on your turn and you can't take reactions until your first turn ends. But what happens if you are surprised by one creature and not another? The rules don't say but the official Sage Advice Compendium does. Here's the relevant passage from page 9.

You can be surprised even if your companions aren't, and you aren't surprised if even one of your foes fails to catch you unawares.

I take this to mean that a creature isn't surprised if it detects any potential threat.

When does surprise actually come into play? We'll look at two scenarios. In one, the characters attempt to surprise a bunch of monsters. In the second, a bunch of monsters try to surprise the characters. There are tricky bits to both.

Characters Surprising Monsters

Let's say the characters find a situation in which they can try to catch a group of gnolls off-guard in the caves of the underdark. The gnolls are coming down the cave and the characters know it. The characters spend a bit of time preparing. They each roll a stealth check. Stompy the paladin rolls a predictable 6 while Darkshadow the rogue rolls a 17. The gnolls have a passive perception of 10. When they come around the corner and the rogue pulls the trigger of their crossbow, time stops and we roll for initiative.

Remember, there is no surprise round. The shot doesn't go off and get resolved before initiative is rolled. The minute any creature begins a hostile action against another creature, time stops and we roll for initiative.

When rolling for initiative the rogue gets a 19, the gnolls get a 12, Stompy the paladin gets a 7. When we compare the original stealth checks to the passive Perceptions of the gnolls, the gnolls clearly hear Stompy and clearly do not see Darkshadow. They're not surprised by Stompy and therefore are not surprised. Darkshadow still gets a shot off with advantage because the gnolls totally missed them but when their turn comes around, they can move and act. They're not surprised.

This means that the group is nearly always going to fail attempting to get surprise on their enemies because Stompy is always dragging them down. Instead, if the situation is right, we DMs might rule that instead of individual stealth checks, the characters can roll a group stealth check. See "Group Checks" in chapter 7 of the Player's Handbook. While Stompy is still dragging the group down, they are likely offset by Darkshadow's high stealth check. If the majority of the group gets a stealth chech higher than the passive Perception of the gnolls, the gnolls are surprised by the whole group.

This interpretation highly favors the characters so we likely want to ensure it takes work to set it up. The characters should have a clear understanding of their enemy's position and intent, and the characters should have time to work together to hide. In the right circumstances, though, a group stealth check makes sense.

Monsters Surprising Characters

What if we switch sides, though? How does it work if the monsters are trying to ambush the characters? Let's say the gnolls know the characters are coming and they want to hide. Let's say there's sixteen gnolls. We're not about to roll 16 stealth checks. Some gnoll is going to screw it up for sure, and that makes sense. We're also not going to roll a group stealth check for 16 gnolls. Instead, we can use the passive Stealth of the gnolls. They have a passive Dexterity (Stealth) of 11. Not so great. The characters will see them if any of the characters have a passive Perception of 11 or better. However, each character has their own passive Perception. Let's say Broadchest the fighter has a passive Perception of 9; he's going to miss the gnolls and get surprised. And since Broadchest missed all of the gnolls, they're truly "surprised". They can't move or act on their turn and can't take reactions until that turn is over.

This is pretty harsh. Players hate losing actions. While it makes sense, we should use this sparingly; only when it really reinforces a key aspect of the game.

If you don't like the idea of a passive Dexterity (Stealth) check, you might roll a Dexterity (Stealth) check at disadvantage for the whole group and use that against the passive Perceptions of the characters to see who is surprised.

Your Own Rulings Apply

The above is my own interpretation of the rules as written. Many DMs have their own favorite rules they drop in for handling surprise in D&D. Some DMs use full "surprise rounds", a holdover from previous versions of D&D. Others simply let the story dictate how things go. For about five years I would give either characters or the enemies a free round of attacks if I decided one group surprised another. It was simple and worked just fine but I'd rather run the rules as written as much as I can unless I have a really good reason to avoid it.

Hopefully this article offered a better understanding of the intent of surprise in D&D. Take it and add it to your arsenal for sharing stories of high action and adventure with your friends and family.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

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What is the minimum preparation we need to run a great D&D game? In a previous article we've explored what we might do if we spend an entire day preparing for a D&D game and Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master already boils down game preparation so we can spend less time preparing for our D&D games, instead focusing on what we need to improvise the game when we run it.

Today we're going to start from the ground up, looking at what preparation we might put together to have enough to run a great game.

The D&D Essentials Kit is a great example of the minimum you need to play D&D. The kit includes fourteen adventure locations that take characters from 1st to 6th level. Many of these adventures are only two pages long. We can learn a lot from the Essentials Kit as a model of the pure simplicity of D&D.

How much do we really need to have ready for our D&D games so we and our players can have some fun?

A Strong Start

Second only to reviewing the characters, the strong start is a critical component of a D&D game. How does the game begin? What happens to draw the players into the game? What hooks the characters into the rest of the adventure? We often don't need more than a sentence to describe this but it's a critical sentence. Maybe it's big. Maybe it's small.

Here are some example strong starts:

• Two parents weep for their teenage child who has gone off to make a name for themselves by exploring Nightstone Cave and never came back.
• A bandit with the heads of three village elders from other villages rides into town demanding that the town turn over all of their food and wealth or their own elder's neck will fall under the bandits' knives.
• Miners return to town describing a collapsing cave revealing an ancient drow vault.
• A carnival has come to town operating out of an ancient amphitheater and villagers have begun to disappear after the performances.
• A comet appears in the sky that reveals a mysterious doorway on the nearby mountainside. The locals fear what may step through and ask the characters to investigate it.
• A recent rockslide has revealed an ancient dwarven crypt and skeletons have been seen nearby.

We can think of our strong starts under the same lens as the rest of our minimum viable D&D game. What is the minimum a strong start needs to hook the characters?

Discoveries

Combat, interaction, and exploration are the pillars that make up a D&D game and exploration is often about discovery. What are ten things the characters can learn in the next game? This is a core step from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master called secrets and clues. Here are ten example secrets and clues for that last strong start on the list above.

• The dwarves had an ancient burial site in the side of a nearby mountain. Erosion has recently revealed its entrance.
• Not all dwarven gods are good. Some were downright sinister.
• The uncovered dwarven crypt was in worship of Dumathoin, the god of buried secrets.
• The dwarven crypt is full of traps and hazards.
• One of the buried dwarven heroes is said to have once held a powerful mace capable of smashing stone.
• A band of grave robbers known as the Ghostbloods tried to loot the site. None returned.
• A drow necromancer was said to have taken over the site. Since then undead have been seen walking in the dead of night around the area.
• The dwarven burial site was maintained for centuries. There are crypts and sepulchers below the main halls.
• A monster-infested roaring river flows through the dwarven ruins.
• Rumors whisper of a dwarven ghost who still haunts the crypts.

After our strong start, writing out ten secrets and clues gives us the material we need to fill in the story as the characters engage in their adventure.

A Dungeon

Often adventures begin or lead to an interesting location to explore. Many times these adventure locations are dungeons, a core component of D&D. Whenever I need a location, I hit up Dysonlogo's maps and grab the first map that fits what I need. Here's a cool one we can use that should last for a session and fits the secrets we have above:

Locations are more than maps, though. You'll want to list out the interesting features the characters may run into in these locations. In Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master I recommended an evocative name and three features for each location. That may be more than we need for our minimum viable D&D game. An evocative name alone might be enough to fire up your imagination when you need it.

Here are some example location descriptions:

• Desecrated Hall of Dwarven Heroes
• Slippery Sinkhole
• Dark Altar of Myrkul
• The Pillars of Dumathoin History
• The Crawling Moat
• The Smuggler's Cove
• The Hall of Roaring Kings
• The Sunken Sepulchers

If we're feeling crafty, we can write these names right onto the map so we have a key.

Monsters

A good minimum viable D&D game is all about delving into dungeons and fighting monsters. Often, when we want to put a game together, we can start with the Monster Manual, find a monster we like, read about it's lair, and build our minimum viable adventure around that. The Monster Manual is a great place to start to get inspired for any adventure.

Here are some fun monsters around which you can build a fun adventure:

• Hibernating ankhegs
• Burrowing azers
• A hunting Behir
• Ravenous bugbears
• The solitary cyclops
• Expanding ettercaps
• A helpful hag
• The sequestered medusa
• A disguised lamia
• Terrorizing troglodytes

For our map above, we'll go with decrepit skeletons, murderous bandits, devouring carrion crawlers, and a raving specter. We can also drop in a sinister drow necromancer by reskinning a cult fanatic.

NPCs

Fighting monsters isn't the only fun to be had in D&D. In fact, many players prefer NPC interaction to combat or exploration. We should always drop in an NPC or two into our adventures so the characters have people to interact with. When in doubt, use Donjon's random NPC generator to pull up some NPCs and jot them down in your notes.

Here are some interesting NPCs I generated using the Donjon NPC generator:

• Harrey Gysby. Male Human Peasant. Harrey is fair in appearance, with short silver hair and narrow blue eyes. He wears sturdy clothing and a wide-brimmed hat. Harrey has red fox named Brose.
• Almar. Male Dwarf Monk, LG. Almar has a round face, with red hair and green eyes. He wears simple clothing and wields a bo (quarterstaff) and sai (dagger). Almar is loyal and gentle.
• Ancin. Male Half-elf Cleric, LN. Ancin has gray hair and blue eyes, and a straight moustache. He wears studded leather and wields a light hammer and sickle. Ancin seeks to save his family from financial ruin.
• Galaser. Female Elf Rogue, LN. Galaser has a round face, with messy auburn hair and gray eyes. She wears studded leather and wields a shortsword and darts. Galaser suffers an acute fear of death.
• George Pycey. Male Human Fighter, LE. George has golden hair and hazel eyes. He wears hide armor and wields a war pick and hand crossbow. George has an animal companion, a badger named Rende.

For our dwarven crypt adventure we'll go with the dwarven ghost Almar, a former dwarven monk who protects the crypt and hates the defilement of the drow necromancer.

Treasure

Much of the fun in D&D comes from the tangible rewards for adventure. For our minimum viable D&D game, a quick roll for some random treasure may be enough. Donjon.bin.sh has us covered again with an excellent random treasure generator built from the tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Run it a few times until you find a treasure hoard that excites you and paste that into your notes.

Here's a suitable hoard for our dwarven crypt adventure:

2100 cp, 1500 sp, 50 gp, Bolt of Fine Cloth (25 gp), Feathered Ribbon (25 gp), Pewter Hairpin (25 gp), Ceramic Urn (25 gp), Polished Stone Coffer (25 gp), Feathered Shoes (25 gp), Slippers of Spider Climbing (uncommon, dmg 200), +1 Weapon (shortbow) (uncommon, dmg 213)

The Minimum Outline

Our minimum viable outline comes very close to the eight steps fro Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, only omitting the steps "review the characters" and "outline scenes". Those two steps also have something to offer for our game and don't take a lot of extra time. It turns out the eight steps from Return are pretty close to our minimum viable D&D game already.

When you think of your own D&D games, what are the steps you find most vital? What's the minimum you need to run your own game? For the thought experiment in this article, I've come to the following:

• Develop a strong starting scene.
• Write out ten secrets and clues the characters may discover.
• Grab a map and jot down ten to twelve evocative location names.
• Pick some monsters to inhabit our location.
• Drop in one or more NPCs the characters can talk to.
• Add some interesting treasure.

That's often enough to get a game going. The rest will play itself out as the players get involved and the story starts running free at the table.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

D&D is designed to cover the stories of a small party of characters adventuring in a land of high fantasy. Sometimes the story of these characters goes into areas not covered well by the rules in the core books.

Here at Sly Flourish I try to offer guidelines to help run this wider range of stories and situations that can come up in our D&D games.

How can we run hordes of monsters in a battle without it getting bogged down? How can I quickly see if a battle may be deadly for the characters? How can we run combat without using a battle map and tokens? It's these sorts of questions I want to answer. I want these guidelines to be quick, easy, and to stay out of the way of the story that evolves at the table.

One of these common situational questions is "how do I run a big war in D&D?".

Today I'll offer guidelines for running big battles as background set pieces in D&D.

Often our DM instincts lead us to build complex new mechanics and systems for atypical situations like running a war in D&D. Just as we have mechanics to handle small-party combat, we figure it seems likely we can build another such system for massive combat. Back in 2017, Wizards put out an Unearthed Arcana playtest document for massive combat but it never made its way into a sourcebook. Instead, early in 2020, Wizards of the Coast published the following in the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount:

Since D&D is primarily a game about a small group of characters going on adventures alone, it can be difficult to simulate massive battles using D&D combat rules. Because of this, it's generally best to keep the characters away from mass battles. However, huge conflicts with thousands of combatants are a cornerstone of epic fantasy, and your players might be disappointed if your war campaign doesn't have at least one climactic battle.

To solve this problem, you can break down your mass combat into manageable chunks. Find a significant location that the characters can either defend or conquer with minimal reinforcements, like an overrun citadel. Then, have the major battle proceed in waves that guide the characters from one cinematic encounter to another. You can think of these encounters like rooms in a dungeon; some rooms have multiple doors that the characters can choose from, while others only have a single passage.

This is good advice and my main recommendation for running mass combat in D&D.

Instead of building a bunch of mechanics for running a big battle, keep the spotlight on the characters and their role in the battle. Let them hunt down lieutenants, plant explosives, uncover spies, protect negotiators, and engage in other such activities. Run big battles off screen. Describe larger battles (quickly) and give characters a first-hand view of the battle through the eyes of their characters, from the trenches to the war-room. Find quests and stories that put the characters in the middle of the war but continues to focus on the small party adventures at the core of D&D.

Here's a list of war-based adventure seeds to help inspire you to build your own war-based quests.

1. Sabotage enemy equipment
2. Hunt down opposing lieutenants
3. Assassinate opposing leaders
4. Protect negotiators
5. Root out saboteurs
6. Hunt down assassins
7. Protect the queen
8. Smuggle out prisoners
9. Find an ancient weapon
10. Steal the enemy's treasury
11. Deliver a message to the front
12. Forge an alliance with a questionable ally
13. Dismantle a capitalizing thieves guild
14. Capture someone vital to the enemy's war effort
15. Defend a chokepoint
16. Steal a ship
17. Sink a ship
18. Protect a ship
19. Rescue hostages
20. Relocate civilians caught between two armies

You can lay out a handful of such options so the players can pick the ones that sound like fun to them. Maybe they have to go spy on, infiltrate, or sabotage the enemy's stronghold. Maybe they have to sneak away and go on a diplomatic mission to recruit nearby reclusive elves. Maybe they have to defend a small watchtower about to be overrun while the bulk of the force defends a front line. Even in a big war we can still offer up the three pillars of play — combat, roleplaying, or exploration — and let the players choose which sound cool.

Not Everything Needs Mechanics

All DMs are game designers. We all tweak our game to fit our desires and the the drive to have fun at the table. Sometimes we grab on too heavily to the idea that everything needs mechanics; faction mechanics, political mechanics, travel mechanics, vehicle mechanics, and war mechanics.

Not every aspect of our game needs heavy mechanics. Sometimes we can just describe things. When it comes to running big battles in our D&D games, run them off screen and keep the spotlight on the characters and their impact in the larger war.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

Note: this article contains spoilers for Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus.

This article is one of a series of articles covering the D&D hardcover campaign adventure Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. These articles include:

• Running Descent into Avernus: The Fall of Elturel
• Running Chapter 1 of Descent into Avernus
• Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 2
• Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 3

For other takes on running Descent into Avernus, see the following:

• Merric's Musings on Descent into Avernus
• Descent into Avernus Alexandrian Remix
• Powerscore's Guide to Descent into Avernus
• Running Descent into Avernus One-on-One by the D&D Duet
• Eventyr's Running Avernus as a Sandbox

If you prefer this article in video form, take a look at my Running Avernus Chapter 3 Youtube Video.

Chapter 3 of Descent into Avernus is the big meat of this adventure and also takes the most work to wrangle into a great Avernus campaign. Lke the crawl through Chult in Tomb of Annihilation and the exploration of the Sword Coast in Storm King's Thunder, chapter 3 is what makes Descent into Avernus what my wife and I like to call a "yam-shaped adventure": narrow in the beginning and narrow at the end but wide in the middle.

Chapter 3 contains about 25 locations the characters might explore while traveling across the hellscape. As written, chapter 3 begins with the adventurers meeting Mad Maggie at Fort Knucklebone and then follows two potential paths towards the end of the adventure: the Path of Demons and the Path of Devils. This makes chapter 3 less flexible than the big exploration chapters in other published adventures. Some DMs, like Justin Alexander with his Avernus Alexandrian Remix, have worked to turn it into more of a pointcrawl exploration. In my own game, I've added a third path, one with some meaningful choices in it: the Path of the Hellriders. More on this in a minute.

Theme of Descent into Avernus

As mentioned in previous articles on Descent into Avernus, my number one recommendation for this adventure is to tie the characters to Elturel, Reya Mantlemourn, and the Hellriders. In the beginning of the adventure, let them witness the fall of Elturel and ensuring their characters care about its return to Toril. Without this, the characters can lose their motivation for much of the adventure. Why go into hell to save a city you don't really care about?

This shift in theme away from the one in the adventure — the brooding conscripted hunters of cultists in Baldur's Gate — can result in big changes to the adventure in chapter 3. With this change in theme, the characters may not want to follow the paths laid out in the book. It's up to you to make new ones.

The Morality of Soul Coins

This thematic shift becomes clear when the characters received soul coins and realize they'd have to burn soul coins to power their infernal war machine. Think about what it means to destroy a soul permanently. It's way worse than murdering someone. Even if the soul is evil, destroying it forever is not a good act. Souls in D&D have a path they take, good or bad, and pulling one out of that path and destroying them forever is perhaps the worst act a mortal can commit. And we're doing it to move a car a few miles down the road.

In my Youtube video on Soul Coins I recommend an alternative approach to fuel war machines — demon ichor or demon essence. Demons have no souls. They're not reincarnated mortal beings like devils are. They're manifestations of chaos from the primordial sludge of the abyss. Turning them into fuel has no moral complications.

Now perhaps you and your group enjoys the moral complications of soul coins. If so, go with the Gods. If, however, your players want to continue with the theme of light in darkness and good versus evil, you can give them another option for driving around those cool war machines other than the permanent destruction of a mortal soul. Let them run on demon ichor.

All Roads Lead to the Bleeding Citadel

As big as it is, chapter 3 of Descent into Avernus has one main path running through it. Chapter 3 takes the characters from Elturel to the Bleeding Citadel. How they get there and what steps they need to take are up to you and eventually up to them. The book lays out a bunch of locations and two main paths, the Path of Demons and the Path of Devils, but you're free to break away from these paths and choose your own, as I did.

To do so, read through all of the locations in chapter 3 and make a list of locations that sound cool to you; places you're excited to run. Then tie the story and threads together between these locations to connect them from Elturel to the Bleeding Citadel.

You can also fill in your path with an interesting random Averus monuments or extend the whole area with Abyssal Incursion and Encounters in Avernus written by some of the original writers of Descent into Avernus.

Fort Knucklebone

Fort Knucklebone, the first stop in chapter 3, works well as written. Mad Maggie is a fun character and the jobs she puts the characters through can be a good time. Watch some Mad Max Fury Road for inspiration here. The war boys are a great model for the redcaps and madcaps surrounding Mad Maggie.

Near the end of this part of the chapter is when we lay out the first steps in the characters' quest to recover the Sword of Zariel and save Elturel. You decide what they learn from Lulu's dream and which paths become available for them to follow as they hunt down the Sword of Zariel in the Bleeding Citadel.

Path of the Hellriders

For my own running of Descent into Avernus I stepped away from the Path of Demons and the Path of Devils and created a new path: the Path of the Hellriders. This path reinforced the initial themes of the adventure I laid out with Fall of Elturel. Because the characters had such a strong connection to Elturel and the Hellriders, keeping the story focused on the Hellriders helped tie the rest of the adventure together.

The Path of the Hellriders follows Zariel's generals. I rewrote some of the history of these generals to fit the theme I sought. These generals include:

• Jandar Sunspire. One of the original Hellrider generals, Jandar did not submit to Zariel when she turned. He is the only being who knows the location of the Bleeding Citadel where Yael hid Zariel's sword. Gideon Lightward turned Jandar into a vampire and impaled him on a silver-spired tree on Harumon's Hill to find the location of the Sword of Zariel.
• Harumon. Zariel's most loyal general who followed her into Avernus and stayed by her side when she bent the knee to Asmodeus. Harumon seeks the sword of Zariel and knows Jandar knows where it is, thus keeping him pinned up at Harumon's Hill.
• Gideon Lightward. One of Zariel's generals who charged into Avernus and returned to Elturel a vampire. The Companion protected him from Toril's sun. Now that Elturel has fallen into Avernus, Gideon acts as Zariel's spymaster. I'm not sure where he'll show up in my own campaign but he's a fun variable to have around.
• Olanthius. A fallen general of Zariel, Olanthius became a death knight but hates his new existence and seeks to redeem Zariel. His journals in the Crypt of the Hellriders exposes his true feelings and makes him a strong possible ally for the characters.
• Yael. A general of Zariel who took Zariel's sword from her before Zariel bent the knee to Asmodeus. Yael buried the blade in the fleshy earth that soon became the Bleeding Citadel. Only Jandar knows its location.

The following outlines the clues the characters follow along the path of the Hellriders.

• Yael the Hellrider general who broke away from Zariel after Zariel made her pact with Asmodeus took Zariel's sword deep into Avernus and stabbed it into the ground forming the Bleeding Citadel.
• Only Jandar Sunspire knows the location of the Bleeding Citadel. He was turned into a vampire and impaled upon a silver tree at Harumon's Hill by those generals still loyal to Zariel in hopes he would tell them the location of the Bleeding Citadel.
• Only the remaining Hellriders know where Jandar is held. These other Hellrider generals include Harumon, Olanthius, and Gideon Lightward. Harumon rides in service of Zariel. Gideon serves as Zariel's spymaster now that he has led Elturel into hell. Olanthius resides at the Crypt of the Hellriders.
• Olanthius hates what he has become and with some careful negotiation can tell the characters that Jandar is held at Harumon's Hill and can give them directions there.
• Atop Harumon's Hill the characters can save or destroy Jandar and learn the location of the Bleeding Citadel just before Harumon attacks them in order to learn the location himself.
• At this point the characters make their way to the Bleeding Citadel in chapter 4.

Releasing Tiamat

As the characters follow this path they may be drawn towards other alternatives as well. Krull, Arkhan's speaker, may tell the characters that Arkhan the Cruel wishes to talk to them. Arkhan offers to save Elturel if they recover a particular puzzlebox he cannot find. An ancient sibriex knows the location of the puzzlebox (choose a location for the characters to locate the puzzlebox) and the characters can recover it. Giving the puzzlebox to Arkhan lets him release Tiamat, trapped after her loss in Rise of Tiamat, back into Avernus at which point all hell breaks loose (pun intended). Tiamat, true to her word, breathes and destroy the chains binding Elturel, releasing it back into Toril.

Gargauth

Gargauth, the archdevil trapped in the Shield of the Hidden Lord, can play another important part in this adventure. Throughout their journeys the shield may influence the characters to seek Gargauth's release. Perhaps only two things could do this. First, it could be melted in Bel's Forge. If the characters traveled to that location for any given reason, the shield may either try to convince the character wielding the shield to throw it into Bel's molten fires or attempt to overtake the character and force them to. With Gargauth's release, more chaos ensues. Bel, subservient to Gargauth, would likely kneel to the being and join together to overthrow Zariel. The Sword of Zariel can also break the shield. Gargauth seeks an opportunity to force the wielder of the sword to smash against the shield, thus releasing the archdevil as well.

Filling Out the Crypt of the Hellriders

Unfortunately, one of the locations that works best for the path of the Hellrider, is also one of the most disappointing. The writeup for the Crypt of the Hellriders has fifteen keyed locations and only seven descriptions; offering repeated descriptions for many of the chambers. You'll want to fill out these rooms with your own details as the characters explore them. Here are a few suggested features of these otherwise empty or repeated room:

1. A former Hellrider general turned into a mummy lord and trapped in an iron sarcophagus.
2. The remains of an ancient gateway showing glimmers of Zariel's home plane.
3. A sinister black obelisk dripping blood into a pool on the floor.
4. A pit of charred ashes swirl together into specters.
5. A burning violet flame in a brazier speaking dark secrets.
6. A large ornate mirror showing Zariel's ship cutting across the Avernus skies.
7. A table with a large chess set. The black pieces move in response to the white pieces, moved by a remote player (Bel? Gideon Lightward? The Sibriex?)
8. A slashed painting of Zariel's ride into hell showing each of her generals.
9. A deep well leading down into the underground waterways of Styx.
10. One of Gideon Lightward's two sarcophagi.
11. A holy well hidden behind a cracked wall.
12. The sarcophagi of a half-dozen vampire spawn loyal to Gideon Lightward.

The Wandering Emporium

Adventuring in Avernus is almost all downward beats. It can be depressing, not just to the characters but to the players as well. How many festering blood-filled bogs, tasteless meals, and nightmare filled rests can the characters take? The Wandering Emporium offers an excellent opportunity to bring in an upward beat — a place protected from the horrors of Avernus where the characters can rest, recover, shop, and pick up rumors.

By this point, however, the characters may not trust it. So broken have they become by the horrors of Avernus that they won't trust a shining light in the darkness even when it does show up. They may want nothing to do with it. When Mahati drops a contract on them to eat and rest at the Infernal Rapture, they may decide not to sign it, ending their opportunity. Players hate contracts. They don't trust them, even when they're simple. Surely they're getting screwed.

If they choose to pass on the Emporium, be ready to drop another upward beat in the story for them. Remember, Avernus used to be a beautiful place filled with temptations. Some of these ruined places of beauty still exist; perhaps a ruined elven pavilion with a fountain of healing and respite beckon to them.

Traveling from Place to Place

As described, traveling through Avernus isn't like traveling through any real world. The world changes and shifts, elongates and contracts. For the characters to travel from place to place, they need some sort of guide — often a magical guide. Here are a few potential ways the characters can find direction in Avernus as they travel from place to place.

1. A leathery tattooed finger points then way when dangled from a string, perhaps when hanging from the rear view mirror of an infernal war machine.
2. A constellation of stars points the way while the rest of the stars shift and move.
3. Strange lines in rocks and sand seem to all point in one direction for those who can see it.
4. A huge stirge (a fiendish roc) flies in the sky towards the location the characters seek.
5. A hammer banged into the cracked earth causes cracks to form in a line towards their location.
6. A line of corpses, each with an ancient ring on one finger, points the way to one another, eventually ending at the destination.

Building Your Own Adventure

As written, Descent into Avernus is a bit of a mess. While some may read it and find it to be a fun adventure focused on descending into darkness, others, myself included, find the theme and structure difficult to manage. Instead of looking at Descent into Avernus as a cohesive adventure, it works best to think of the adventure as a loose outline around a central theme and a toolbox of NPCs, locations, and encounters you can tie together into an adventure all your own.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

If you're seeking a lightweight virtual tabletop, try out Owlbear Rodeo. It's awesome. You can also watch my Owlbear Rodeo walkthrough on Youtube.

Covid-19 forced many DMs to move games from in-person to online. For a lot of us, running games online is an entirely new experience. I moved all of my games, about three a week, online and lept into trying out all sorts of systems for online play. My favorite, and the one I've been using for eight months now, is to run D&D over Discord. By copying and pasting pieces of maps, usually grabbed from Dysonlogos, I can show the players where the characters are without using a full virtual tabletop like Roll 20. For combat, I use text-based combat tracker for rough zone-based combat more similar to theater of the mind than gridded combat.

There are times, however, where dropping down a map with tokens for monsters and characters can be useful. Many players and quite a few DMs prefer this style of play.

The big dogs among virtual tabletop tools are Roll 20 and Fantasty Grounds. There are other popular and well-loved tools as well like Foundry but these two typically come up when someone talks about virtual tabletops.

These other VTTs are fine all-in-one systems that integrate D&D's rules with the rest of the tabletop.

The problem is, I'm fine with running games mostly on Discord. I don't need a fully integrated D&D experience in my VTT. My players like using D&D Beyond and I'm not picky about how they roll dice, whether it's with Avrae in Discord or a plug-in like Beyond20.

Unleash the Owlbear Rodeo

When I want a VTT, I really just want a map and tokens. That's what Owlbear Rodeo provides. Owlbear Rodeo is a slimmed down virtual tabletop that focuses on maps and tokens. It has no integrated ruleset, although it does have a shared dice roller in it if you want one. Owlbear Rodeo makes it easy to drop in a map and includes a bunch of default tokens you can use if you don't feel like adding your own.

If you do want your own tokens, you can upload a bunch of them right into Owlbear Rodeo all at once, whether your tokens are from Printable Heroes (my personal favorite tokens; search for "vtt") or your own hand-made tokens using Token Stamp. Grabbing an image off the net, dropping it into Token Stamp, and uploading it to Owlbear is fast and easy.

Owlbear Rodeo requires no login or account from either you or your players. You can log in if you want to keep track of your previous maps and tokens, but it isn't necessary. Owlbear uses some sort of cookie to keep track so if you come back it will likely remember what you already uploaded but only if you're coming in from the same machine. Not requiring a login makes it easy for players to jump right in. No accounts means any player can move any token around since everyone's permissions are the same. I'm assuming your players aren't a bunch of 4 year olds (that's a big assumption, of course).

Owlbear Rodeo has two features that aren't the easiest to figure out at first: grid alignment when bringing in a map and using the fog of war. This three minute video by GoGoCamel camel shows how to use both the grid-alignment feature and fog of war. It's well worth the watch.

If you're used to a more full-featured VTT like Roll 20, you're likely to find features missing from Owlbear that you really want. If you dig more powerhouse tools, it probably isn't for you. I prefer to keep my D&D games as minimal as possible. I want tools that only do what I need them to do and keep the cruft out of the way. Owlbear Rodeo does just that. I can run the rest of my game in Discord and only drop into Owlbear when I need to use a VTT. When I'm done, we drop right back out again.

At this point I've used Owlbear Rodeo with dozens of players and have heard no complaints. Many have described it being the exact kind of VTT they want. If you're in need of a lightweight virtual tabletop, give Owlbear Rodeo a try.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.