by W. Eric Martin

For several years, U.S. publisher Stonemaier Games has announced games, then shipped them to direct buyers shortly afterward, with the title then hitting retail outlets shortly after that. In short, the publisher has stock of the game in hand before even announcing it, which means Stonemaier can't fail to deliver the game on time.

For Vantage, though, Stonemaier is taking a different approach. In the Stonemaier newsletter, designer Jamey Stegmaier writes, "Vantage is nearing the end of the playtest process and will start production later [in 2024], but the journey to bring this game to life is too big to cram into our standard 10-day pre-launch reveal."


Maybe when you read this description, you'll understand why Stonemaier is taking a different approach for this 2025 release:

Vantage is an open-world, co-operative, roguelike adventure game for 1-6 players that features an entire planet to explore, with players communicating while scattered across the world. With nearly eight hundred interconnected locations on cards and over nine hundred other discoverable cards, the world is your sandbox.

You begin each game of Vantage on an intergalactic vessel heading towards an uncharted planet. After crashing far from your companions, you have complete freedom as to how you explore, discover, and interact with the planet. You view your location from a first-person perspective, and you can communicate with and support other players, but you are separated by vast distances, so you can see only your current location.

Vantage is not a campaign game, and it is completely self-contained with no expansions — just a few accessories like metal coins.

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by W. Eric Martin

U.S. publisher Unexpected Games has announced its next game release: The Mandalorian: Adventures, a co-operative design by Corey Konieczka for 1-4 players.


Here's an overview of this Q3 2024 release, followed by a trailer that shows off bits of gameplay:

When offered a lucrative job, a lone bounty hunter begins a journey that will put his skills to the test and redefine his world.

The Mandalorian: Adventures allows players to experience a new part of the Star Wars universe on their tabletops. Navigating unique maps and missions, players must co-operate to accomplish their goals and avoid defeat. Play as one of eight unique characters, each with their own deck of cards and strategies that will help you fight enemies and solve dilemmas to complete mission objectives. All of the action takes place in an illustrated map book as players recreate iconic moments from season 1 of the hit Disney+ series. With an intuitive system that's easy to teach, the game grows with new rules, components, and mission types added over time – some even featuring a hidden traitor mechanism...

Youtube Video Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

• Throughout April 2024, German publisher KOSMOS has been teasing its late 2024 game releases on Instagram, and in addition to what I covered in mid-April 2024, KOSMOS has announced five more titles, starting with Australis, a 2-4 player game from Leo Colovini and Alessandro Zucchini that bears this short description:

Stand your ground in the East Australian Current where you have to make your way as a sea turtle!

You have a chance of winning Australis only if you have a wide range of strategies. Choose the right dice cleverly to form growing schools of fish and settle corals on different coral reefs. At the end of each phase, you will compete with your dice in an exciting contest.

Which of you will be the best in this ecosystem of incredible diversity?

• Inka and Markus Brand's EXIT: Das Spiel series of escape room games will expand by three titles, the first two of which are co-designed with daughter Emely Brand:

— EXIT: Das Spiel Family – Schloss Gemeinstein/Mission Candyland, in which 2-4 players aged 8+ represent "a cool team of animal superheroes" that forms a secret club to solve riddles.

— EXIT: Das Puzzle – Die Bibliothek der Träume ("The Library of Dreams"), in which any number of players first construct a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, then use the details in the image and the included story to solve seven riddles.

— EXIT: Das Spiel – Adventskalender: Das Intergalaktische Wettrennen ("The Intergalactic Race"), in which you help "Team Santa Claus" in a race across space.


• Finally(?), we have Adventure Games Family: Dimension Fünf-Sieben ("Dimension 5-7"), the newest title in the narrative-based, co-operative Adventure Games series from Matthew Dunstan and Phil Walker-Harding, with Jan Cronauer being co-designer on this title that's aimed at players aged 8+ instead of the usual 12+.

• In March 2023, I wrote about Luthier, the second title from Paverson Games following its 2023 debut with Dave Beck's Distilled.

More than a year later, in preparation for a July 2024 crowdfunding campaign, Beck revealed the final cover of Luthier, and artist Vincent Dutrait has outdone himself:


• In a January 2024 post, I mentioned that Rio Grande Games had an upcoming title from Tom Lehmann and Matt Leacock titled "Meep Crisis". RGG's February 2024 newsletter had a new, far more geeky title for this release: The Trouble with Purrballs.

• Speaking of Tom Lehmann, he says that the next Res Arcana expansion is due out in Q4 2024, with online development work for Res Arcana: Perlae Imperii being underway for playing on Board Game Arena.

• U.S. publisher Fort Circle Games hosted its first gaming event, Circle DC, in early April 2024. I followed pics of gaming and prototypes from afar, and the one that caught my eye most was Mar Hepto's The Devil's Advocates, mostly because of the theme...although I'm hoping that the treatment is mocking rather than serious given how ludicrous the "Satanic panic" was and how foolish its spinoff moral panics still are today.

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• At GAMA Expo 2024, I spoke briefly with designer Bennett Payne of new publisher B Field Games, and he gave me an overview of Magneterra, which he plans to bring to Kickstarter.

Magneterra mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024
The short take on the game is that you move figures around the board to battle monsters as well as other players, with the long-term goal of claiming the magnet from the tallest pillar on the game board (which sits in the middle front of the image above). As you can see in the video below, your figures are magnetic, and when you move next to a pillar, the magnet on top of it will jump onto your head(!) — but you are not tall enough initially to claim the magnet atop the tallest pillar. You must travel the board to claim other magnets, possibly stealing them from others, until your magnetic strength is strong enough (and tall enough) to yank the winning magnet down onto you.

Youtube Video
• In May 2024, info will be spilled about the item named below. Will it consist of more than a scented plastic playmat? We'll see...

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by W. Eric Martin

We have a late entry for my April 22 post about giant collector's editions with new material, with German publisher dlp games announcing a tenth anniversary edition of Reiner Stockhausen's Orléans.

The appropriately named Orléans Jubiläumsbox includes the Orléans base game, the three large exapnsions — Invasion, Trade & Intrigue, and The Plague — all eight Ortskarten expansions (Neue #1-5 and Promo #1-3), and three new Ortskarten tiles, along with the dice to make use of them.

Unlike most of the items included in that earlier post, Orléans Jubiläumsbox will not be crowdfunded. Instead dlp games is taking pre-orders on its website for delivery late in 2024, with a note that this item will not be available through retailers, but might show up at SPIEL Essen 24 should the publisher still have copies available.

Anyone wanting a more on-brand "Hundred Years" edition of Orléans must wait until 2114...

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by W. Eric Martin

• U.S. publisher Capstone Games will release Pagan: Fate of Roanoke at Gen Con 2024 in August, marking the North American debut of this two-player asymmetric game from Kasper Kjær Christiansen and Kåre Storgaard that German publisher Wyrmgold released in 2022 following a crowdfunding campaign in 2021.


Here's an overview of this design:

The essence of this game is a witch's struggle against a witch hunter. As the witch strives to complete a ritual of renaturation, the hunter tries to discover her true identity among nine villagers. Each turn, the two players use their action pawns on active villagers to draw cards, play cards, and gain influence. Each player has their own variable card deck of fifty cards; with these cards, the witch can brew powerful potions, improve their familiar, and cast enchantments and charms, while the witch hunter enlists allies, claim strategic locations, and ruthlessly investigates the villagers.

As the witch, your objective is to collect enough secrets to perform a ritual so potent that the entire region will fall under your spell and Mother Nature will reclaim the island. As the hunter, you gather all the allies and support you can muster to bring the witch to justice before her fatal ritual comes to fruition.

Wyrmgold has released a handful of expansions for Pagan: Fate of Roanoke that introduce new scenarios, introduce new villagers, and allow for deck customization, and Capstone notes that it will release Pagan expansions in the second half of 2024.

• Capstone Games has partnered with German publisher Spiolworxx to release new releases from that German publisher in North America, with the first three titles to appear being Raising Chicago by Matt Wolfe, EPOS: A Gentes Game by Stefan Risthaus, and Dolcissima Vita by Giansimone Migoni.


• What's more, Capstone Games will release Uwe Rosenberg's Tangram City in North America in April 2024, with Pirates of Maracaibo from Ralph Bienert, Ryan Hendrickson, and Alexander Pfister debuting at Gen Con 2024 ahead of a Q3 2024 retail release.

• U.S. publisher Barrel Aged Games debuted in 2017 with the golf-style card game Stool Pigeon that it's now licensed in five countries, and at Gen Con 2024, it will debut two games in the U.S. that it has licensed: the trick-taking game Fruitoplay from Romaric Galonnier, Luc Rémond, and Explor8 (covered here in September 2023), and the tableau-building, card-comboing game Plantopia from Daryl Chow of Origame.


• In January 2024, I covered two upcoming titles from Spanish publisher Ludonova — Flatiron, a SPIEL Essen 24 release from designers Isra C. and Shei S., and a new edition of Junk Art from Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim — but Ludonova has another game hitting the market earlier than those two: Toni López' Chandigarh, which was released in Spain in early April 2024 and which Asmodee will release in North America on May 24, 2024. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game:

In 1951, the Indian government commissioned the renowned architect Le Corbusier to design a new capital for the state of Punjab. Thus, Chandigarh was born.

In the game Chandigarh, players in the role of urban planners are in charge of building this modern city from scratch. They will construct buildings, try to take advantage of buildings constructed by others, use the abilities of the different municipal employees, and try to position themselves in the key locations of the city, all with the aim of achieving the patterns of the plans they have chosen. Whoever scores the most prestige points wins.

In more detail, the city of Chandigarh is represented by a 4x4 grid of sector tiles, with each sector having multiple plots. These sectors intersect at junctions, with the edges of these tiles creating streets between the sectors. You each start with a project card that shows an arrangement of buildings, along with two different colored buildings from the four colors available; your architect starts on a junction in the city.

On a turn, you can move your architect up to the total numbers of footprints on your active project cards, stopping at each junction (if you wish) to place a building from your reserve on an empty plot next to a street that's adjacent to the junction you occupy. If you occupy the final plot of a sector, place one of your supervisors on this tile. Alternatively, on a turn you can choose a new project card from the display, placing it on the left or right side of your row of active project cards and taking buildings from the reserve based on the card you just placed and the card adjacent to it. If you now have four cards in a row, you immediately score the card at the opposite end of the row from the card you just placed. Score the points listed on this card each time the pattern on it occurs in the city.

Four specialist tokens start in the corners of the city, and if you construct a building of the specialist's color in the sector where they are located, you gain the power of that specialist for the remainder of the game and move them to a different sector. Each specialist has six different abilities, some that score you bonus points and others that give you special powers during play.

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by W. Eric Martin

• U.S. publisher WizKids is bringing Star Trek to game tables once again, but instead of a design that focuses solely on combat, as with Star Trek: Attack Wing, the game attempts to cover more aspects of the Star Trek universe.

Here's an overview of the 2-6 player game Star Trek: Into The Unknown – Federation vs. Dominion Core Set, which is designed by Max Brooke and Michael Gernes and due out in July 2024:

Teleport to the bridge of the most legendary starships from Star Trek as you launch an epic adventure across the galaxy!

Star Trek: Into the Unknown features the most detailed Star Trek ship models in tabletop gaming, all designed to scale. Large ships like the U.S.S. Enterprise or the Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser will tower over the smaller ships, and all come pre-painted to an incredible amount of detail.

Miniature on display at GAMA Expo 2024
Traverse headlong into the unknown where you'll negotiate and fight alongside iconic characters using your quick wit and tactical maneuvering to overcome complications and challenges. True to Star Trek, research and diplomatic actions and not just combat have lasting impacts on the game, causing missions to evolve in surprising ways.

Choose your officer, deploy your crew, explore the galaxy, navigate anomalies, position your ships to strike, or negotiate terms with the enemy. Players will instantly immerse themselves as the egalitarian Starfleet or as the oppressive Vorta and Jem'Hadar as they decide how to handle tense mission objectives and unexpected complications.

Preview kit on the table at GAMA Expo 2024
Embark on a journey to remember through an extensive campaign narrative. Your decisions matter, and they affect the outcomes of your unique story. With upcoming expansion featuring new missions and new ships to command, Star Trek: Into the Unknown is dedicated to delivering an expansive universe to your doorstep.

• Warlord Games and Osprey Games have announced a third edition of Bolt Action from designers Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestley for release in September 2024. Here's an overview of this miniature game system, which has more than three dozen expansions to date:

Bring the great battles of World War II to your tabletop with Bolt Action. Strike out from the beaches of Normandy towards Germany. Sweep across the deserts of North Africa in lightning raids. Battle the enemy and the sweltering heat in the jungles of Asia and on the islands of the Pacific. Fight doggedly from street to street in Arnhem, Stalingrad, and Berlin.

Whatever your preferred style of play or your historical interests, the diverse army and scenario options will allow you to build a force that fits. Field everything from standard rifle platoons to heavily armored tank forces, fast-moving reconnaissance patrols, and even artillery units.

This third edition features refined and updated rules and starter army lists to get new players straight into the action. Seasoned veterans, meanwhile, will find new tactical depth in the detailed force composition mechanics and a wide variety of fresh challenges in the scenario generation system. Rally your forces, study the terrain, and prepare for battle — the fight continues!

• French publisher Monolith Board Games — which has released several miniature-heavy games since its founding in 2016, such as Conan, Mythic Battles: Pantheon, and Batman: Gotham City Chronicles — has acquired all of defunct publisher Rackham's assets, announcing this development as follows:

2024 is a year of rebirth for many universes, from the forces of Light, Fate and Darkness readying their forces anew in the seething kingdom of Arklash, to the struggles at the galactic fringes of another universe, warring in Ava and Damocles.

We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have acquired all the universes developed by the late Rackham. These universes have been by our sides for a long time — and will now be with us for many years to come, complete with new adventures!

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by Jérémy Ducret

1. The General Idea

February 2021: My game Daimyo: Rebirth of the Empire comes out in stores, which paradoxically leaves me with a big gap in my schedule. I need to quickly find a project that excites me to occupy my free time. Unfortunately, no old prototype seems worthy of interest to me now.

Starting from a blank sheet, I'm going to try to make the game I want to play:

Idea 1: Deck-building with alternating activation.

I want to offer confrontational deck-building (Star Realms-style) but more strategic in the way of playing the cards. I don't want to "empty" my hand every turn, but the order of play of the cards has great importance and is strongly influenced by the actions of my opponent. This naturally results in the idea of creating an alternating action system in which after drawing five cards, each player plays one card alternately until their hand is exhausted before drawing again and starting a turn again. This should bring about the desired action/reaction feeling.

Idea 2: A very tactical game in which each action is a strong dilemma.

I want to get closer to the feeling of the Legend of the Five Rings-style confrontation TCGs, one of my best gaming memories. I try to remember what I liked so much about this game: a constant tension that came from managing timing and priorities. I want a game in which timing is essential, in which we will delay an action in order not to be countered, a game in which we will try to offer a target to an opponent to make them play actions that could counter us in order to be able to play our showpiece quietly. Also, I would like us to be able to use the cards in different ways to offer choice and dilemma. The card will necessarily be of interest for its power, but it must be able to be used in other ways at the same time. I don't know yet how...

Idea 3: Not a deck-building game, but bag-building.

One day, I ordered some coin capsules, thinking it would make interesting hardware for a game. I wondered whether this hardware would be relevant for this new prototype. What is initially a material desire quickly influences the game design because using round 2cm tokens allows me to quickly consider having a board and different locations that take up little space. I wrap this concept up quite quickly with the previous idea: these locations could offer an action or a bonus, a bit like a worker-placement game. I am therefore going with the idea of having several colors of tokens (in place the cards), colors that will mainly be used to define on which location they can be played. It’s taking shape...

Well, I don't have a game, but I know precisely where I want to go and the main idea is very clear:
confrontational bag-building with alternate activation, timing management, and priority management.

2. From the Idea to the First Tests

I gave birth to a first prototype quite quickly. I'm going with a space opera atmosphere. (Who knows why? It's not at all a theme that fascinates me.) The goal will be to conquer planets (plateaus) to dominate the galaxy. The planets will have to be conquered over several turns to create the feeling of "I lost the battle but not the war", while allowing players to abandon positions for a while, then return to them later. To take the planets, I will use a tug-of-war mechanism. Whoever has the most strength at the end of the turn wins the effect of the planet, then advances the conquest marker, and at a certain level, the planet is definitively mine and a new planet opens. There must always be several battlefields simultaneously.

I'm going on the principle of having three types of ships (tokens/cards). Each color has a specialization: combat, technology, and purchase. That's good as it comes full circle with the idea of locations that allow effects to be triggered, and it allows strategies to be combined.

I grind it all out and get a first prototype:

First test at the end of May 2021
I am excited about the test! The feeling I want is already quite present...

...but everything is heavy/complex, there are lots of useless powers, the development part is poorly integrated into the game, and the balance is obviously very random. Also, my partner hates the theme — a bit like me in the end! I do a huge cleansing and switch to a classic medium/fan theme, which is important to be able to put the design through the dozens of tests to come.

Second test on June 1, 2021
The test is super conclusive. There are obviously plenty of flaws, but what I'm trying to check at this moment is the overall feeling, the feeling of how it plays and the interest in the game — and on these points, I am more than satisfied. If only all my prototypes were like that...

At this level, we will say that 80% of the game's mechanisms are present: The bag-building, the four different locations, the tug of war, and the deploy/activate/recruit action triptych. The game now needs to have better balancing to start seeing the flaws more deeply. In any case, we're already having a lot of fun playing it.

3. The "Improbable" Signature and the Final Edition

It turns out that at the end of June 2021 I have to see Benoit from La Boîte de Jeu, publisher of Daimyo. I'm curious to show him this work-in-progress to get his feelings, to know whether I'm imagining things or I actually have something promising. As a Magic player, his advice will be invaluable. At this moment, I'm not thinking about publishing; I'm just happy to have a project that motivates me.

Anyway, at the time, I knew almost no one else in the gaming world. The fact is that the day before seeing Benoit, after a few balancing tweaks and a pretty cool last game, my brain said: "And if he likes it?"

The presentation to Benoit at the end of June 2021
We test the game, and as it progresses, I think I can see interest in Benoit's attitude. We don't finish the game for some reason, so we play it again the next day. Quite a good sign to want to play again...

After the second playing, Benoit shows a real interest in the game, editorially speaking. We talk a lot about the design, how it could be published, the possible artistic directions, and (obviously) the points to work on. There is no commitment, but we still went very far in the discussion.

A few weeks later, La Boîte de Jeu comes back to me to validate this interest and offer me a contract. I am very satisfied to be setting out again on an editorial adventure with a team for whom I have a lot of respect, both personally and professionally.

We found the artistic direction of the game early after deciding to reverse the roles. We will play the "bad guy", and our goal will be to terrorize human villages, with a little quirky side. It takes around three months of intensive work to complete the game's development. During this period, I was able to benefit from the expertise of the publisher to remove all the blocking points in the game. Changes will mainly occur on three major points:

• The beginnings of turns are too often identical => We add the chests to loot and the power stone. This allows for more varied openings and adds tension and rhythm between the players.

• Magic poses a lot of balancing problems => Its management was personal, so we implant the demons to stabilize the balancing and once again bring tension thanks to a "race" effect on their activation.

• The game's increase in power is too slow => We go to eight monsters in the bag (instead of ten), and we reduce the purchase cost of all the monsters to make the game more explosive from turn one.

Most problems are therefore resolved within three months. Game balancing and micro adjustments will then be made throughout the edition, which will last more than a year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank La Boîte de Jeu, who did some crazy editorial work — and a big thank you to Djib and Olivier Derouetteau, who brought the game to life with superb graphic work!

A very striking anecdote: Evil Corp. was the strict opposite of Daimyo on all points. Daimyo took seven years between the idea and its release, whereas Evil Corp. was signed three months after the idea in a version quite close to what the game is today. In short, day and night...


Now It's up to You!

I hope you like the game. From now on, the game is in your hands; it no longer belongs to me. How will you welcome it? In which configuration will you play it the most?

In any case, for my part, it is a satisfying feeling to be able to offer you a game which is the exact feeling of what I had in mind on the first day.

Jérémy Ducret Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

Given all that happened today — Asmodee becoming (sort of) independent again, Goliath buying Lucky Duck, me gushing about a game that's both new and nearly thirty years old — I almost forgot to publish BGG's Origins Game Fair 2024 Preview.

Thankfully, I caught that oversight in time to meet my self-imposed publication deadline. Go, me!

The preview has only sixty titles at the moment, with more than a dozen of those titles available solely for demo. The Origins 2023 Preview ended up with "only" 124 titles, so maybe I'm halfway done at this point, roughly two months before Origins Game Fair 2024 opens. If so, that would be odd — but also normal, given that the not-yet-live Gen Con 2024 Preview already has more than one hundred listings. That show is the centerpiece of U.S. tabletop gaming events, so everyone's already looking ahead to that show in August. If you're looking to look ahead, too, look for that preview to go live on Monday, June 3...assuming that I remember in time.

Some of the titles you can lay your hands on at Origins Game Fair 2024 Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

Asmodee's parent company, Embracer Group, has announced — and I quote — "a transformative step for value creation through a separation of the group into three market-leading games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, 'Coffee Stain & Friends' and 'Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends'". (The official names of the final two groups will be announced later, which makes me wonder why Embracer was so rushed as to make this announcement before it knew precisely what it was announcing, but I'm not a business owner who must make such decisions, so what do I know?)

Currently, Embracer Group consists of eleven operative groups:

• PC/console games: THQ Nordic, PLAION, Coffee Stain, Amplifier, Gearbox Entertainment, Crystal Dynamics / Eidos-Montréal
• Mobile games: DECA Games, Easybrain
• Entertainment and services: Dark Horse Media, Freemode (with PLAION also being listed here)
• Tabletop games: Asmodee

But Embracer made a deal in late March 2024 to sell Gearbox Entertainment for US$460 million so that group will soon be leaving, similar to how Embracer sold Saber Interactive for US$247 million in mid-March 2024.

What's left will be reorganized into three groups:

• "Coffee Stain & Friends", described as "a diverse gaming entity with a dual focus on indie and A/AA premium and free-to-play games for PC/console and mobile, with a high degree of recurring revenues", with net sales for the parts of this group over the previous twelve months being SEK 10.9 billion (approx. US$1 billion).

• "Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends", described as "a creative powerhouse in AAA game development and publishing for PC and console, as well as the stewards of The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider intellectual properties, among many others", with net sales of SEK 14.1 billion (approx. US$1.3 billion).

• Asmodee, "a global leading tabletop games publisher and distributor with an extensive studio network and IP catalogue", with net sales of SEK 14.8 billion (approx. US$1.35 billion).

The parent companies of these three groups will be headquartered in Karlstad, Sweden, while Asmodee's operational headquarters will remain in Paris.

Embracer Group is currently listed on stock exchanges as EBCRY, but under this reorganization into three groups, the listing for Embracer Group will be changed to whatever "Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends" will finally be named, and shares of Asmodee and "Coffee Stain & Friends" will be distributed as a dividend to the shareholders of Embracer Group, with the distribution of Asmodee shares taking place within the next twelve months and the distribution of "Coffee Stain" taking place in 2025.

Why is Embracer doing this? The short answer: "it is the assessment of the Board of Directors that the current Group structure does not create optimal conditions for future value creation both for Embracer Group's shareholders and other stakeholders". From the press release:

"The Board of Directors, together with executive management, propose to transform Embracer Group into three separate, listed companies. This transformation is an important step in unlocking shareholder value. With this new structure, the three entities will be able to focus on executing their core strategies and leveraging their own strengths, providing more differentiated and distinct equity stories to both existing and new shareholders. After careful evaluation of various strategic alternatives, we strongly believe that this decision will benefit all stakeholders and position us for continued success in the future", says Kicki Wallje-Lund, Chair of the Board of Embracer Group.

"This move has been made with the intention to unleash the full potential of each team and provide them with their own leadership and strategic direction. This is the start of a new chapter, a chapter that I intend to remain part of as an active, committed, and supportive shareholder of all three new entities, with an evergreen horizon. This move towards three independent companies reinforces Embracer's vision of backing entrepreneurs and creators with a long-term mindset, allowing them to continue to deliver unforgettable experiences for gamers and fans across the globe", says Lars Wingefors, co-founder and Group CEO of Embracer Group...

The Board of Directors have concluded the following:

• The entities will have sufficient scale, coupled with clearer operational strategies and financial profiles that enable simplified equity stories to attract a larger pool of investors. Current shareholders can freely decide on their capital allocation between the three entities.

• Each entity will be able to fully utilize its own balance sheet, its own set of financial targets and optimal financing structure and capital allocation strategy that enable their growth ambitions.

• The new structure enables the best possible greenlighting models, portfolios and go-to-market strategies for indie games as well as AAA games through two separate, more focused entities.

• Ongoing and future collaboration around IPs, companies and people will still be enabled and encouraged across the entities on market terms.

What will Asmodee consist of as a standalone company? Here's how Embracer describes it:

Asmodee is a leading international publisher and distributor of board games, trading cards and digital board games with 23 fully owned studios and 300+ IPs and constitutes the Tabletop Games operating segment of Embracer Group. As per LTM December 2023, Asmodee generated net sales of SEK 14.8 billion, with Adjusted EBITDA of approximately SEK 2.3 billion, EBITDAC of approximately SEK 2.0 billion, Adjusted EBIT of approximately SEK 1.9 billion, and free cash flow after working capital of approximately SEK 2.1 billion.

After FY24/25 Asmodee has an ambition to grow organically in line with the market, which translates into a mid-single digit organic growth in addition to any acquisitive growth. Asmodee's ambition is also to expand its margins from current levels as a result of an improved revenue mix and continued cost management while maintaining a high cash conversion.

The spinoff of Asmodee with a listing on Nasdaq Stockholm is expected to have value-enhancing benefits through greater focus on its core strategy, portfolio and markets. The ongoing transmedia collaboration around Middle-earth and many other IPs is expected to continue after the completion of the spinoff. As a global leader in board and trading card games, with a proven track-record of profitable growth, Asmodee is well-positioned to build on its strategy and continue to prosper as a standalone entity. The spinoff is also expected to enable Asmodee to quicker resume its value accretive M&A strategy.

23 in-house studios develop tabletop games for all types of players across Social, Tabletop and Lifestyle, including a steady addition of new content to key brands. The catalog of 300+ owned IPs include the beloved board games Ticket to Ride®, 7 Wonders, Azul, CATAN, Dobble, Exploding Kittens, and an extensive number of distributed games and IPs. Asmodee is also developing a wide range of licensed tabletop games based on The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Game of Thrones, Netflix, Lego® and Star Wars™, including the recent successful trading card game release of Star Wars: Unlimited...

Ahead of the initiation of the separation process of Asmodee and in line with already planned governance evolutions, Stéphane Carville, current [Asmodee] CEO, and Marc Nunes, current COO and founder, will join and play active roles in the Board of Directors of Asmodee. Thomas Koegler, a longstanding operational and executive leader at Asmodee and current deputy COO, will in the coming months become Asmodee CEO supported by key leaders within Asmodee.

However, as part of this restructuring Asmodee has entered a financing agreement with JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, SEB, Societe Generale, and Swedbank for a loan of €900 million (US$958 million) that must be repaid in eighteen months, with Embracer noting that this loan "is an important part of the debt refinancing of Embracer Group following its restructuring program, which was finalized 31 March, 2024." Embracer currently has a loan for SEK 8 billion that matures in February 2025, and this new loan will help it refinance the current one.

Importantly, from the perspective of someone who cares about tabletop games over video games, the press release for this agreement notes that "[t]he loan is ringfenced with no recourse to Embracer Group, separating Asmodee's assets and funds from those of Embracer Group, and it is only secured by Asmodee assets." To quote more from this press release:

The intention is to continue to deleverage, through both the expected significantly improved Free Cash Flow in the remaining Embracer Group (excluding Asmodee), as well as the proceeds from the divested assets of Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment in the course of FY24/25.

On a pro forma basis as per LTM [last twelve months] December 2023, Embracer Group, including the expected sales proceeds from the divestment of assets from Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment, but excluding Asmodee, will have a Net Debt-to-Adjusted EBIT of around 0.6x. On a pro forma basis as per LTM December 2023, Asmodee will have a Net Debt to Adjusted EBITDA of approximately 3.9x. As part of the transformation and ahead of each separation the full capital structure, including both equity and debt, will be reviewed in Asmodee and "Coffee Stain & Friends" to create the best possible long-term foundation for each entity as a separately listed company.

Hmm, so Asmodee is taking on debt to lessen the burden on the non-Asmodee parts of Embracer? That's my takeaway as a non-finance person who is likely reading all of this material at a surface level. I welcome comments on what I might be missing or misunderstanding... Read more »

Publisher: Bridlewise

Trilogy is a tabletop RPG designed for epic fantasy campaigns. Build your world at the table, create characters to explore it and let the adventure commence.

Trilogy is designed specifically for players who want to discover their world in play rather than having to consult settings guides and books of existing lore. A world that lives and grows around you, shared by everyone at the table.

• Worldbuilding built into the game
  During the first session of your game you will build the world together at the table.
•  Characters play their role in the story
  Instead of a traditional RPG character class you have a narrative arc that helps guide your character and provides their special abilities. 
• A game for epic fantasy campaigns
  Trilogy is designed to let you play out longer campaigns as your characters grow and move between arcs. 
• Simple, familiar, dice system
  Built on the widely-used Powered by the Apocalypse system, you only need a couple of six-sided dice to play Trilogy. 
• Clear divisions between in and out-of-character play
  Trilogy is designed for both “writers room” and in character play – how you choose to balance those is entirely down to what you enjoy as a group. 
• GM Support
  Trilogy is packed with examples and advice for running the game. Even if it takes some time to put a group together, the ideas in the book will be useful for any other games you play.

Downloads

• Trilogy
  A 385 page PDF, readable and cleanly laid out
• Playbooks and Printouts
  The core moves, playbooks, and GM cheatsheets.

Game Contents
Trilogy consists of the following sections:

The Appendices constitute a system for creating your world at the table - these are designed for collaborative worldbuilding, but you can also use them as a guide to adapt an existing setting.

The Characters section includes the common moves all characters can do, the 21 character arcs that act as playbooks, and sections on equipment and the vehicle and mount playbooks.

The Game Process section documents the process of play in sessions and scenes.

The final section Running The Game guides you through the game from the GM's perspective, helping you to create maximum adventure for minimum homework. It also guides you through creating custom moves and arcs so you can extend the game if you are so inclined.

Trilogy includes an epistolatory worldbuilding game as an epilogue, in which you play as horrible academics searching for wildlife. This can be used as a fun way to build your world out further and introduce mysterious and dangerous new creatures.

Character arcs
Character arcs are Trilogy's solution to the challenge of creating playbooks that can operate in the world you create regardless of setting. Instead of playing a traditional class, your characters have a narrative arc that represents their role in the story. Some of these (such as the Fighter, the Magus, and the Healer) look very like traditional character classes, others (the Defeated, the Volunteer, the Mentor) are quite different. You advance along your arc by leaning into your character and hitting pre-defined beats as you go, gaining new moves and new opportunities as you do.

And more...
Trilogy features many other mechanics such as: mounts and vehicles with their own moves and playbooks, lightweight companion characters for when you want to split the party but still give everyone a chance to play, a scene system designed to create a boundary between in-character and out-of-character play, and more. The book is full of examples of play to help you understand how its moves and mechanics can be used to tell a fun, epic story with your friends.

Price: $21.18 Read more »

Publisher: Catscratcher Studio

Showtime! is lyric, solo-RPG about hunting monsters, being glorious and earning coins! 

Players take the role of a magnificent Bard, accompanying a Monster Hunter through wondrous adventures!

Here's the catch: hunting monsters is a very competitive business... And your job is to weave the catchiest of tunes about your Hunter's feats, in order to convince audiences to donate some gold to support such noble work! Your stories need not be faithful to how the events actually transpired - as long as they're remarkable and entertaining and leave the people wanting more!

Build up your companion's legend and coffers with each new song - while building up your legend and coffers as well (after all, you are the true star of the show, no matter what the haters say)! 

#

To play Showtime! you will need this rule book; at least one six-sided die (1d6) and one twenty-sided die (1d20); a way to write down your glorious songs and keep track of your journey; and the confidence, style, grace and magnetism of the rockstar we already know you are!! 

This book contains rules for one-shots and for campaign play, as well as optional rule variants for multiplayer sessions!

#

Are you ready to make history?!

# Showtime! was initially published as part of the Solo But Not Alone bundle initiative towards mental health awareness. #

Price: $8.00 Read more »

Publisher: Jackdaw Roleplaying Games

Welcome to Raiders of the Misty Marches, the first supplement for Fear the Reivers, a mythical roleplaying game set in the tumultuous 16th-century Anglo-Scottish borders. Within these pages, you’ll discover seven distinct adventure ideas that can be undertaken individually, each offering its own intrigue and challenges. Alternatively, weave them together to forge an epic campaign that spans the mist-shrouded lands. But that’s not all—a singular Nemesis awaits, a mysterious figure whose presence can thread these adventures into a cohesive narrative. Alongside this enigmatic foe, you’ll encounter nine new minions, ready to clash or parley as the winds of fate dictate.

Price: $6.22 Read more »

Publisher: J. Yamil

While roaming the wilds, your group of adventurers encounter a crazy cat lady who begs for your aid. You climb down a well that leads you to facing corrupted creatures and terrible traps all for the promise of treasure!

Maiden, Mother & Crone is a brochure-sized adventure compatible with any fantasy RPG.

Cover art by Brad McDevitt

Words and map by J. Yamil

Special thanks to Shyloh Wideman

Price: $4.00 Read more »

Publisher: Far Distant Future Publishing

Have you played your fair share of humans? Halflings not doing it for you anymore? Never fear! Awesome Ancestries are here to provide new, intriguing possibilities for your game.

In this installment, we present a character species that is truly larger than life, as you take on the role of an actual, entire PLANET. To actually move around and explore the multiverse, of course, you need to form a normal-sized, roughly humanoid-shaped body -- but you still retain a lot of your planet-sized power and personality.

The living planet avatar comes with:

• A fully-detailed new 15 RP native outsider
• 9 alternate species traits to customize your character
• Favored class bonus options for 18 classes

Price: $1.99 Read more »

Publisher: Catscratcher Studio

Fate comes for all, even for legendary Heroes...

You are a demi-god, using your powers to make a difference in the world - but your death has been prophesied by The Fates, and each breath moves you closer to the end of your journey.

How will you spend your last days? Will your legend be remembered?

TERMINUS - The Final Journey Of A Legendary Hero is a solo journaling RPG about performing heroic deeds and making peace with one's death.

This game is inspired by Greek Mythology, epics and tragedies (and Disney’s Hercules).

Content Warning: Enclosed inside, you will find themes that relate to fear, isolation, despair, violence, the inevitability of death, and facing one’s regrets and mistakes.

_____________ 

This game was created for the “Wretched & Alone Jam”, and was directly inspired by “The Wretched”, by Chris Bissette, by “The Wretched & Alone SRD”, and by Litza’s “Make a Wretched Game”

_____________

Also check out our previous #WretchedJam entries: 

• Operation Swordbreak - A sci fi espionage thriller about trying to stop an evil galactic Regime!

• Murder! - A murder mystery in which you are the only one capable of catching a killer before you become one of their victims!

Price: $8.00 Read more »

Publisher: Catscratcher Studio

Embark on an exciting journey through a world of dramatic competition, where the stakes have never been higher; find a balance between your relationships, your performance and your dreams; and push your luck to see how far you are able to go - or how hard you are able to fall… 

But don’t worry - you’ll get a chance to try again, because you know it is your destiny to PUSH TO THE TOP!

This game was made for the #RPGLATAMJAM, and uses Cezar Capacle's PUSH! System to emulate the high-stakes of sports anime and teenage drama! 

Here, you will find content to guide you through the entire arc of your competitive journey - from world bulding to your first days as a rookie, the progress of your practice sessions, many exciting matches, obligatory beach episodes, all the way to your retirement leaving an impact on the world - in a campaign that can be played solo or as a group!

Price: $5.00 Read more »

Publisher: Blackout Games, LLC

This expansion introduces Amorph monsters to the world of Monster Wrangler.

Included in this PDF are eight new Amorph monsters, the dangerous Chemist Class, and the amazing new Acid Type, which debuffs and damages enemies with the new Dissolved Condition.

This PDF also includes the new Monster Wrangler adventure "Chemical Spill," in which the players investigate how a simple beach party became ground zero for an ecological disaster!

Price: $10.00 Read more »

Publisher: Xapur_RPG

The Hilltop Last Stand is a fantasy battle map for use in any VTT program or for print.

It is part of my Fantasy Places, a collection of maps for TTRPG. Check them all!

In this set, you’ll find 6 maps, with or without grid, day and night and fog variants.

The maps are high quality (3280 x 3280 pixels at 72 DPI) for use in VTT software (Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Foundry VTT…) or print.

The size is 42 x 42 squares.

Price: $1.00 Read more »

Ang gets JT and Walt on the mics to learn more about what the OSR (Old School… Renaissance? Revival? Retro? The R varies) actually is. Join us and learn more about this style of roleplaying game.

 

Links:

JT’s Amazon Book Page

Origins Game Fair

Renegade Game Studios

Read more »

One of my gaming groups plays a mashed up game with three genres: Highschool, Swashbuckling, and Urban Fantasy. We call it Children of the Shroud. In the game we play high school kids in a hidden magic world. As part of our magical learning we are part of the Junior Guardians club. It’s a club for magical students at our high school in Buffalo NY. Due to reasons, we got ourselves involved in trying to stop a magic prosperity cult who are using the in-game currency of a video game called Call of Violence to try and manifest a new primal elemental of prosperity. This in-game currency can be bought with real world money. Prosperity magic is outlawed by the magic cops because it can destroy the magical veil which helps hide the magical world from the normals out there. If those normals found out about the magical world they’d get really torch and pitchforky on the magic folks. 

Our characters are…interesting. My character, Silas, had his girlfriend’s essence bound to his soul when the campaign started and has been trying to make her whole again. Ti is a medusa in a really nice middle class family of medusas. Gunny just figured out he was a wind elemental and his dad isn’t dead, but some big bad criminal, or spy, or both. On top of that we can all manifest magical weapons that let us cast stronger and stronger spells the longer we fight, and two of us are also on the academic decathlon team at school, or the Knowledge Bowl team, as our friend Ti likes to say.

It’s a mashup. So let’s talk about how you can do something similar.

Pick Genres

First, pick three genres. Need a list? You can try TV tropes or here’s a bunch of genre’s to pick from: 

Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Espionage, Fairy Tale, Hard SciFi, High Fantasy, High School, Historical, Horror, Low Fantasy, Martial Arts or Wuxia (It’s Woo-Shhaaa, say it with me, Woo. Shhaaa.) Mecha, Medical, Medieval, Modern, Mystery, Politics, Post-Apocalypse, Prehistoric (who doesn’t love a big old dinosaur), Psionics, your favorite version of the punk genre, Pulp, Science Fantasy, Soft SciFi, Space Opera, Sports (we need more sports RPGs), Suburbia, Super Heroes, Sword & Sorcery, Urban Fantasy, Western, Zombies AKA Hordes of shambling dead people where the shambling dead are the least dangerous thing.

Understand Your Genres

Second, understand what your genres are about. Let’s look at the Children of the Shroud game I mentioned. I’ll be quoting the Cortex Prime rule book for their take on the first two genres:

High School: Teenagers are complicated, and so are the adults that share their worlds, especially when the drama is dialed all the way up because of exams, proms, drugs, and bullies.

Swashbuckler: Icons of this genre are pirates, musketeers, and scoundrels, but it really extends to anything where the characters engage in flashy exploits, daring escapes, over the top swordfights, and perilous relationships.

There isn’t an Urban Fantasy genre in the Cortex book but here’s my best take on it.

Urban Fantasy: often deals with a world of magic in a modern setting. Most Urban Fantasy has a mystery at the center of these stories, leaning on its roots in noir fiction, but the genre is primarily about mixing the magical with a mundane world and seeing how they interact. The PCs should also have one foot in both the magical and mundane worlds.

Fit Those Genres Together – Largest Step

Third, try and look at how the genres can fit together. This examination also lets you take a genre to a different sub genre or lets you add a sub genre. Once again, here’s how we did it with Children of the Shroud.

In our Children of the Shroud game we decided everyone would have a magical weapon of some sort that they manifested, and the weapon would generate mana as it was wielded through different forms for combat magic. That was the intersection of Swashbuckling and Urban Fantasy. It also let me push a bit of the high school magic animes I enjoy into the game.

We decided we wanted ritual magic that took longer to use but was more flexible than combat magic and could produce a variety of effects. This strictly fits the Urban Fantasy genre.

Our GM, and fellow Gnome, Phil, created something called the Shroud, which hid the magical world from the mundane world but it could be strained if magic was used too blatantly. This also meant there was a governing body over magic in the world (the Veil), who helped maintain the Shroud and investigated and prosecuted those who sought to expose the Shroud or use magic in a way that would harm it. This pushed us to a hidden magical world as part of our urban fantasy genre. 

To help make this hidden world, urban fantasy, and high school genre even more poignant and overlapped, we placed the parents of our characters as part of this magical society in some way. On top of that, Gunny’s player decided his mother doesn’t know anything about the magical world, creating some hidden world genre tension.

Next we crafted mechanics that pulled in school cliques to highlight the high school school side of play. We called them Roles. This is a feature of Cortex Prime. Our Roles trait set includes Emo, Geek, Jock, Popular, and Performer. They provided attributes, but also our social standing in different school cliques. This is predominantly a highschool thing, but the mechanics also played into the action parts of our swashbuckling since Jock and Geek were used in our dueling rules.

We also decided our high school would be mostly mundane, but there would be a special club called the Junior Guardians that was a cover for the magical teens attending the school. This club would be where they got their magical education. This hits the high school and urban fantasy genres along with that hidden world sub genre.

Lastly, we have our important relationships. We started with two in the magical world and two in the mundane world to keep up the idea of being in both worlds from Urban Fantasy. Also, because one of the genres is Swashbuckling our GM decided to also do their best to make some of those relationships dangerous in a variety of ways.

There’s actually more to it than that, I just threw a bunch of examples of what we did at you. If you break it down there’s really just three things the group needs to consider and one extra the GM should keep in mind. Time for a sub list.

Setting

Your setting should do its best to find these overlaps. As human beings we’re pretty good at finding the patterns and intersections where these different genres and their setting elements can intersect. Just ask yourself a few questions such as:

• Where are the predominant locations the game will take place?
• Who are the important NPCs and how do they fit into the setting?
• Why are people or organizations doing what they’re doing? What’s their motivation?
• Where is the tension and conflict in the setting and how can it be related to the genres being used?

That’s just off the top of my head. Add questions that work best for your group and creative style.

Situation

An addendum to the setting would be situation. What is the initial situation the characters find themselves in or what is the overall situation the game assumes the characters will be involved in? Some folks think of this as a scenario or plot but it’s a little higher level than that. It’s more of a guideline for the players so they more easily craft characters inside the campaign. It also gives starting tensions, problems, and ways for the GM to provide meaningful hooks for the PCs.

In our Children of the Shroud game we were all a part of the Junior Guardians, which meant we had Junior Guardian missions we had to take part in. On top of that we had personal goals the GM ok’ed as part of the initial situation. Silas had his girlfriend Meseme’s essence bound to his soul and was dealing with the fallout from that. Gunny had just discovered he was magical, and that his dead father wasn’t dead and was also magical.

Mechanics

Your mechanics need to find ways to fit the overlaps. Cortex Prime made this easier because we built a game using the Cortex Legos. It was a little more upfront work but made for a very fun experience.The relationships, the roles, our dueling rules, how magic affected the Shroud, and our magic ritual rules all touched on the genres we chose in some way.

You can look around for a game that just does what you’re looking for. If you want a pulpy weird west with a dash of horror game, you can play Deadlands. But if you’re trying something where it’s not quite as obvious, or there’s not a game that fits what you’re looking for, it’s time to break out some house rules, hacks, and drifts. It’s a whole discussion on it’s own, but here’s a couple ideas for how to go about it:

• Utilize the core mechanisms of the game to build the things you believe you need to make the game fit the genre.
• Adapt mechanics and ideas from other games to the game you prefer.
• Combine the above two ideas.

What I would advise against is excluding rules for things that would be important to the genre and just leaving it up to interactions at the table. Of course, if your table is ok with GM fiat as a final arbiter for important decisions and moments in the game, then you should do that. Every table is different in what they enjoy.

Characters

Your characters should be crafted with the genres in mind, along with the above mentioned situation. Genres have character tropes that fit inside of them and story tropes which help drive character action. Here’s a solid way to come up with an interesting character for a genre mash game. Let’s do an original from Children of the Shroud:

• Start with a character archetype from one of the genres or pick two and mash them together
  • Manic Pixie Girl with sleep magic (High School / Urban Fantasy) She’s very pro Veil (Hidden World)
• Put a spin on it
  • She’s really pretty anxious about talking to people about things that matter unless it’s in her dream space. (High School / Urban Fantasy)
• Pick some kind of story arc you’d like your character to go on
  • Will she still see the Veil as the bastion of order, law, and good she believes it to be after working inside of it? (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy)
• Then play to the motivations of the character, the ideas of the trope, the idea of the story arc, and the spin.

The above example isn’t really an original, it’s a character named Bo who’s a much more prominent NPC in our game these days. She’s part of the Junior Guardians which is how our PCs know her, and she went to the Prom with Ti. This is just the story I would envision for her if I was playing her.

Together these steps will give a way to make a character that fits into the game you’ve mashed together.

Scenarios

Lastly, let’s talk about Scenarios. It’s actually the easiest part because you just look at the plots and tropes those kinds of genre stories have and build scenarios utilizing them as foundations. Then you can add some interesting bits from your characters, setting, and situation, utilizing your genre tropes where appropriate, and you have yourself a genre mashed scenario.

Phil did this quite expertly in our 3rd Children of the Shroud story, Smarty Pants. We started with an academic decathlon against a rival school (High School). Silas spied a student on the opposing team, Lowell Thornton, using a magical Altoid to give himself a temporary intellect boost during their one-on-one trivia battle. Thing is, Lowell isn’t magical (Urban Fantasy). On top of that, before we started the story Phil asked us about how we knew our friend Morris who died at a party at Lowell’s house this past summer, drowning in Lowell’s pool (Swashbuckling – Perilous Relationship). I told Phil my character was really tight with Morris, who was the one who introduced Silas to Meseme, my girlfriend whose soul is cohabiting my body (Highschool / Urban Fantasy). We come to find out that the Altoids were imbued with the essence of Morris, who had his soul sucked out of him in a magical ritual (Urban Fantasy). So now our characters are running down who sold the Altoids to Lowell which leads to who tried to kill Meseme in the same way (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy). During the entire story Silas is having emotional anger issues. His friends are doing what they can to deal with it, but tensions are high (High School). There’s a running battle in the park with one of the essence dealers, but she gets away (Swashbuckling). Hard conversations are had but eventually Silas’s friends, Ti and Gunny, help Silas commune with Meseme within his soul, which helps calm him down, and three are able to track down and bring some of the people involved with taking people’s essence to justice(High School / Urban Fantasy). This was, of course, in a huge sword fight in an abandoned asylum for the mentally ill in the city of Buffalo, NY (Swashbuckling). Yes, we have one of those here. It’s real.

Now that you have the list, here’s the most important thing to keep in mind. These items aren’t necessarily done in order. You’ll most likely need to bounce around to each of them, getting little bits of information, making choices, asking questions, and filling things out until you have a clear enough picture to proceed with whatever might be the next logical step in your genre mashup.

Session 0 or Session -1

To help this process you might want to gather your game group for this genre mash. Session 0’s are great for this, or even session -1 where you’re just hashing out the above items. There’s a lot to talk about, but here’s a starting list of things to think about when having this discussion.

Genre

• Which genres are we going to use?
• What do the genres mean to each person? 
• Where do the genres overlap?

Setting

• What do the genre overlaps mean for the setting? 
• Is the setting original or something created whole cloth? 
• Who’s building or deciding on the setting? Is it a group effort? Is the GM going to take point and get input from the rest of the group, or will you use some other methodology? 
• What’s the initial situation for the characters going to look like?

Mechanics

• What mechanics are you going to use? 
• How do they fit your genre mashup? 
• How don’t they fit your genre mashup? 
• Are you planning on hacking them to make them fit better? 

It can feel like a lot, but I find this kind of effort to be a fun creative exercise, regardless of whether you’re doing most of it alone or with your group. In my experience, if you just follow the flow of answers and questions as they come up, and refer to the above questions as you find yourself getting stuck, you’ll have a pretty easy time with this.

I will provide one more bit of advice. If you’re the GM and are doing this exercise with your group, I would suggest facilitating this part just like you run the game. Ask a question, get some answers, take some notes. Always do your best to provide and get clarifications on things that are said. Also, don’t be afraid to say no to things that don’t fit together, or ask the group how those pieces that don’t look like they fit together actually do fit together. You should do your best to control the pace and when things bog down, utilize the people in your group to get unstuck.

I just want to say thanks if you’ve read this far. Let me recap the steps I think about when putting together a genre mash game.

Recap

First, pick three genres.

Second, understand what your genres are about.

Third, try and look at how the genre’s can fit together and if you need to take a genre to a slightly different sub genre. When doing this you should think about these things:

• Setting. The people, places, important history, and current events of the game. These should all reinforce one or more of the genres.
• Situation. This is the initial set of circumstances the characters will find themselves in.
• Characters. Player characters that fit inside the genre and can be protagonists in the game.
• Mechanics. Mechanisms and procedures that make sense with and enhance the genres of the game you’re playing.
• Scenario. Build scenarios using the aforementioned elements along with the plots and story beats used in the genres you’re mashing up.

Once you’ve done that you have yourself a genre mashed game.

Now let me ask you. What kind of Genre Mashups have you put together? How did you do it? How would you enhance what I’ve presented?

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When starting to design an adventure for your home group, the first things I always consider are the mood, tone, and theme of the adventure. This will dictate all design decisions, descriptions, monsters included, sometimes the treasure gained, and the general aesthetics of everything I create for the adventure.

Before I jump in, you’ll note that I’m leaving genre out of this list because I’m assuming you already have an established genre for the game you’re running for your group. If you’re working with a “clean slate” (meaning no campaign in flight for this adventure), then you really should determine the genre(s) you’re going to take into account for this adventure. Picking the genre first will drive many of the tropes, assumptions, styles, and approaches for storytelling within the adventure.

Having said all of that, I’m going to delve into mood, tone, and theme, in that order. I truly feel that one leads to the next that leads to the next. I always do them in this order.

Mood

This is the emotional resonance of the adventure. This encompasses the presentation of the material and the feels you want to evoke in your players by way of their characters’ experiences. I highly encourage you to head over to David Hodder’s web site and look at the top “emotion wheel” he has posted there. You’ll start with the innermost level of the wheel and pick an emotion. Then drill toward the outer edges to find more precise emotions.

I recommend having several moods/emotions chosen for your adventure, but make sure they’ll mesh together or have one lead to another. Sometimes, an adventure can present different moods at different stages of the adventure. Perhaps the adventure starts with a village celebration (jubilation) that gets invaded by nearby ravagers (panic) until the party of adventurers restores calm (content). However, during the invasion, the beloved mayor of the village is slain (rage/hate), so the adventurers take it upon themselves to venture into the nearby wilderness to put an end to the ravagers once and for all (stimulated). When they successfully return from their mission (satisfied), the villagers heap glory and accolades upon them (relieved/passion).

Tone

The tone of the adventure is how things are presented to the GM and the players. I’m assuming the GM is you, so you’ll want to make sure your notes, ideas, writings, and concepts reflect the tone you want to present to the players. By approaching your writing of notes with a specific tone in mind, you’ll be more consistent in your presentation of that tone to the players.

Some examples of tones for adventures are:

• Optimistic
• Pessimistic
• Joyful
• Sadness
• Fearful
• Hopeful
• Humorous
• Serious
• Horrific
• Mundane
• Warmongering
• Peaceful
• Weird
• Normal

Theme

The theme of your adventure can, I would argue should, borrow from literary themes. They are well-established, well-researched, and in many places are thoughtfully presented for your education. There are numerous lists of themes on the Internet. A quick search for “story themes” will produce gobs of results. Set a timer for 20-30 minutes before doing any research like this to avoid wasting hours down “the Internet rabbit hole.”

The lists of literary themes are so numerous and lengthy, I’m not going to try and reproduce them here. Instead, I’m giving you the above homework of doing your own research. I just don’t have the space or word count here to even sum up themes that can be applied to adventure creation.

Most of the themes are going to reflect how your PCs interact with the events and situations in your adventure. If you come up with your theme and then design an encounter that doesn’t support or mirror that theme, then the encounter might feel like a waste of time to the PCs. If you can tie every setting, every encounter, most NPCs, and the story arcs to your theme, the adventure will feel more like a cohesive whole rather than random bits tied together with string.

Taking my above example of the ravagers attacking the village during a celebration followed by the PCs tracking down the ravagers in the wilderness and putting an end to them, I would propose that my theme should be something along the lines of “righteous justice.” However, if I shift things around a bit and have the ravagers motivated by their leader’s love for the mayor’s daughter, the theme can change to “unrequited love.” If the daughter loves the leader back, it changes again to “fated love.” If there is no love element in the story arc, but the ravagers are going through a famine and just needed some food the villagers wouldn’t (or couldn’t) sell to the men and women in the wilderness, then you have a “survival” theme. This can be especially true if the famine of the wilderness is creeping toward the village and its farmlands.

The key is to pick a theme to run with, so that it can properly inform and color your story as you put the pieces together.

Changes Over Arcs

I’m also going to add on here that if you have multiple “acts” or “story arcs” within your adventure, you can have a different theme (or mood or tone) for each act of the adventure. I’m mainly working off the assumption that your adventure is a single act, but if it’s longer, then you can definitely have multiple choices going on here. The longer your adventure, the more opportunity you have to explore different aspects of storytelling within your plans.

Stay Tuned!

Next month, I’m going to tackle a concept that I came up with (though it’s probably not unique) called “designing back to front.” I hope you liked this article and stick with me for the next one.

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Licensed games usually take the approach of presenting material that can happen far away from the canon events of the setting. This works especially well in settings like Star Trek or Star Wars, where there is a literal galaxy of locations available for storytelling. Player characters may hear about canon events, and there may be a butterfly effect on some of their options, but the assumption of the game is that the player characters aren’t going to be directly confronting and potentially contradicting the fictitious history of the setting.

Despite this, there are some fans who want exactly that. If they are playing in a game about a given setting, they want to be present for the events they have read about or seen on screen. They may or may not want to step into the shoes of an existing character, either by playing that character, or by playing a character that replaces the canon character in the game table’s narrative. If you want to play through a campaign where it’s possible for Luke Skywalker to miss the shot that destroys the Death Star because a PC failed to keep a TIE Fighter off his tail, that’s largely on the game facilitator to navigate.

Modiphius has taken an interesting approach to this with their Dune: Adventures in the Imperium RPG. While it largely assumes that player characters will be engaging in house politics in other corners of the galaxy or touching upon Arrakis in moments between galaxy shaking events, it has also introduced products that directly engage the canon narrative. The primary example of this has been the Agents of Dune boxed set, which places the player characters and their house in the place of House Atreides, inheriting Dune from the Harkonnens by decree of the emperor.

The adventure we’re looking at today also places player characters directly in the path of galactic history, presenting a campaign that takes place just before, during, and in the aftermath of Paul Atreides’ takeover of the imperial throne.

 Dune: Fall of the Imperium

Creative Lead Andrew Peregrine
Line Editor/Canon Editor Rachel J. Wilkinson
Writing Richard August, Simon Berman, Jason Brick, Jason Durall, Keith Garrett, Jack Norris, Andrew Peregrine, Dave Semark, Hilary Sklar, Devinder Thiara, Mari Tokuda, Rachel J. Wilkinson
Graphic Design Chris Webb, Leigh Woosey, Jen Mccleary
Art Direction Rocío Martín Pérez
Cover Artist David Benzal
Interior Artwork Artists Amir Zand, Joel Chaim Holtzman, János Tokity, Simone Rizzo, Jakub Kozlowski, Carmen Cornet, Eren Arik, Hans Park, Mikhail Palamarchuk, Mihail Spil-Haufter, Lixin Yin, Susanah Grace, Alexander Guillen Brox, Imad Awan, Louie Maryon, Justin Usher, Jonny Sun, Olivier Hennart, Pat Fix, Avishek Banerjee, Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme, Simone Rizzo
Proofreading Stuart Gorman
Project Management Daniel Lade
Brand Management Joe Lefavi for Genuine Entertainment

Disclaimer

I am not working from a review copy of this product and did not receive a review copy to work from. I have received review copies from Modiphius Entertainment in the past. I have not had the opportunity to play or run this adventure. I do have a familiarity with the 2d20 system, having run and played multiple iterations of the rules.

Layout and Design

I am working from a PDF of the adventure. The adventure is available as a PDF or a physical book. Additionally, there is a Roll20 version of the adventure for sale. The PDF is 146 pages long. The content of those pages breaks down to this:

• Covers–2 pages
• Inside Front Cover Art–1 page
• Company Title Page–1 page
• Product Title Page–1 page
• Credits Page–1 page
• Table of Contents–1 page
• Shuttle Map–1 page
• Map of Arrakeen–1 page
• Modiphius Product Ads–3 pages

There is some glorious artwork in this book, and the design of most of the outfits, vehicles, architecture, etc. match the recent movies. While this book assumes the continuity of the original novels, the licensing is all bound together, meaning they don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to producing artwork. The pages are in a light parchment color, with geometric flourishes under the text. There is artwork throughout, especially depicting notable characters. Each of the chapters starts with a two-page spread of full color art.

The layout varies depending on the purpose of the text. Most of the adventure is in a two-column layout, but background material and overviews are formatted in centered text boxes or single columns that run down the middle of the page. Sidebars are often in the lower right- or left-hand side of the page.

The Judge of the Change

This adventure is the framework for an entire campaign, if you couldn’t glean that from the introduction. The book itself is broken into the following sections:

• Introduction
• Act I: The Gathering Storm
• Act II: Muad’Dib
• Act III: Fall of the Imperium
• Act IV: War Across a Million Worlds
• Adventures in the Era of Muad’Dib

Adventures in the Era of Muad’Dib is a section that details the kind of setting assumptions that should be considered for playing the RPG during the establishment of Paul’s reign. This includes the differences between the chaos and violence of that era, contrasted against the political maneuvering and quick betrayals of the previous era.

Each act of the campaign has its own set of acts, which are the primary adventures that characters will engage with as that leg of the campaign progresses. This means that within all four acts, there are three adventures, each with their own three acts.

While I mentioned the Agents of Dune campaign boxed set above, unlike that product, these adventures assume that the events of the novels happen when and how they are detailed in the source material. There are a few notes on what might happen if the GM and the players want to deviate from the story, but most sections assume that the path of history rolls forward unabated.

Who Are You?

The PCs are playing agents of their own house, managing their interests in light of emerging events. For several parts of the campaign, this means you’ll be dealing with the cascading effects of galactic history, rather than being right next to it. However, there are several places where the adventure narrows back down to canon events so the PCs can be present as witnesses.

There is an interesting sidebar at the beginning of the adventure which I both agree with and think oversimplifies the situation, especially when it’s applied to the players and the decisions they are making. The sidebar mentions that both Paul and the Harkonnens are nobles whose people toil for the profit of their rulers, and that while the Harkonnens are vicious and violent in their tactics, Paul starts a war that kills billions of people. All on board with “Paul isn’t the Good Guy.” But it also frames this as “there are no villains,” which, no, that’s harder to take. Paul isn’t the good guy because of the repercussions of his actions, but it is hard to say that the Harkonnens aren’t villains. I think it’s pretty easy to conceive of a story where there are no heroes, only villains, rather than saying there are no heroes or villains.

Part of why this sidebar exists, however, is to reinforce the concept that making decisions for a House in the Landsraad often means choosing between multiple bad options. If the PCs ally with the Harkonnens for a time, they aren’t suddenly the villains of the story, they may just be doing something very distasteful for them in order to help their house survive. There are several places in the narrative where characters have the option of throwing in with different houses against other houses, which means being allied doesn’t always mean being long term friends or business partners.

As agents of a Landsraad House, there are a combination of missions you can undertake for the betterment of your house, which also happens to give you insight into the greater events unfolding. For example, trying to secure a hidden smuggler’s cache of spice after the Atreides take over Arrakis lets you stumble upon some Harkonnen records that may lead you to the hidden base of operations of a Sardukar agent, and so on.

While the adventure has several places where events unfold at a distance from the events of the novels, there are a few key places where the PCs are funneled back into the main narrative. These include:

• The night House Atreides falls
• The Death of Rabban
• The Death of Leto II
• The sequence of Paul’s ascension to the throne and all the events surrounding it

If you read “The Death of Leto II,” and thought, wait, I don’t want to be there for that, I completely understand. That particular aspect of the adventure kind of underscores some of the problems the adventure has whenever it funnels the PCs back to major canon events. It’s very clear you are pushed into those events to witness them. If you play the adventure as written, you are sent with the Sardukar on their raid of the sietch, and you arrive at the scene just after Leto II has been killed.

In many of the “up close to history” scenes, your characters are rolling to avoid getting in anyone’s way and hoping to pick up some things beneficial to your house on the periphery of bigger events. One exception to this is the death of Rabban. The PCs have several paths to this point, but almost all of them involve someone wanting them to kill Rabban in the lead up to the most tumultuous events preceding Paul’s ascension.

This would be a really neat, “that was your characters!” moment, except there are still some heavy handed sections where his location is a bait and switch, so you must encounter Feyd, and you can’t kill Rabban all by yourselves, Gurney Halleck will show up and either try to do it before you, or help you out.

The Wide-Open Galaxy

Act II is especially open compared to the rest of the adventure. Your characters are negotiating for spice as Harkonnen production slows. You chase spies on a ski resort planet. You skulk around backwaters looking for blackmail information and encrypted documents. In one of my favorite moments in the adventure, your characters navigate a night of betrayal that is both thematically calling back to the attack on House Atreides, but both more subtle and distinct. It’s one of those places where it really feels like the adventure delivers you a very “Dune” experience without just using canon Dune events.

Act IV is strange. While it deals with events we know happened, broadly, i.e. Paul’s crusade ravaging worlds that failed to show their loyalty, the places where these adventures take place generally don’t have a lot of canon surrounding them, meaning that the PCs actions can have greater effect. The downside is that in many cases, the reason they are in the path of these events is very thin. In several cases, Paul issues an imperial decree for the PCs to go to a place, where they may work against his agents, and the next time they see Paul, “he sees something in their future that keeps him from acting against them,” and then they can go somewhere else and either discreetly or overtly defy him.

The culmination of the entire adventure/campaign is that a House that has long been associated with the PCs’ House is accused of treason. The PCs can find out what is going on, disassociate themselves from their allies or exonerate them, and determine who to screw over and who to align themselves with to keep one of Paul’s lieutenants from declaring their House as an enemy of the throne.

Mechanical Resolution

An aspect of the adventure that I really enjoy is that it leans into the 2d20 concept of creating traits. If you aren’t familiar with traits in a 2d20 game (which have slightly different names depending on the 2d20 game in question), they function in a manner similar to Fate aspects. They are a broad description of something that is true. Depending on the narrative, traits either grant narrative permission to do something that wouldn’t be possible if the trait weren’t active, or it adds or subtracts from the difficulty of a task if it is relevant to that task.

Depending on how the PCs resolve different scenes in the adventure, they may acquire different traits, which will be available for use either by the PCs or the GM if they are still active. For example, in many cases, PCs that ally with a house will gain a trait that denotes that they are “Ally of House X,” and any time that’s relevant, it might make a check either more or less difficult. They may also gain traits that reflect their reputation; for example, if they resolve a scene by hiding, they may get a “Cowardice” trait, which might come into play whenever dealing with characters that are proud of their martial accomplishments.

There are also events that remove traits. For example, early in the adventure, it’s a lot easier for the PCs to pick up the “Ally to House Harkonnen” trait, which they may end up shedding if, later in the adventure, they advocate for the emperor to strip them of their rights to Arrakis.

Like Star Trek Adventures, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium makes provisions for a player running characters other than their primary character, usually in circumstances where the PCs wouldn’t want to personally be involved in the activities they are directing. This is separate from, but adjacent to, Architect play, where PCs can say they are using resources from a distance to manipulate events, making checks for broad actions they are taking, to influence events.

For example, if a character has troops as one of their resources, and there have been smugglers raiding their holdings, they could use Architect mode to send troops to take care of the smugglers without ever going to that location, rolling to see how well their orders are carried out versus the difficulty of the outcome they want. The downside to Architect play being that it’s hard to get specific granular results. In the example above, you might be able to get rid of the smugglers, but the GM may tell you that unless you show up yourself, you can’t expect your troops to capture a smuggler alive for interrogation.

There are a few places in the adventure where broader goals are mentioned as something the PCs might attempt with Architect mode, usually in the periphery of events that surround the political maneuvering in Act II. There are also a few brief mentions of using supporting characters during certain events, especially if the player character in question isn’t a particularly martial specimen, and they tackle a mission like killing Rabban.

Because these are excellent tools, I wish the adventure had spent more time expanding how they could be used to greater effect in various scenes. While I don’t think any scene where the PCs have most of their agency removed is going to be fun to sit through, I could see several of the “you must go this direction” encounters being easier to swallow if those scenes were expressly meant to be carried out by secondary character operatives. I suspect that this wasn’t done in part because the adventure wants your primary PCs to be present at these major events, not just a character you are playing.

Having a few lines referencing, “they could get X, likely through Architect play,” isn’t nearly as satisfying as a more detailed list of resources or events that the PCs could undertake that had a direct effect on the narrative and the position of their house in each act.

Aftermath

When I first saw there was a section on Adventures in the Era of Muad’Dib, I was thinking something along the lines of the one-page mission briefs from Star Trek Adventures. This is, more precisely, tools and mechanics available to reflect the differences in the galaxy after Paul’s ascension to the throne and the spread of his religion. It introduces the faction template for the Qizarate, as well as six new talents that are either tied to that faction or involve interaction with Paul directly.

While there aren’t “mission brief” style adventures, there are sections on what resistance to the throne looks like in this era, some of the espionage that might be going on, and a few adventure seeds surrounding interacting with Paul, the adherents of his faith, and the changing allegiances in the Imperium. These are generally short, one paragraph long descriptions.

 I feel like you’re either going to have some frustrating moments as written, or you’re going to be reworking some key scenes so that the PCs have actual agency in those moments 

The Mystery of Life Isn’t a Problem to Solve, But A Reality to Experience

I really appreciate the ambition of this adventure. It really shines in Act II, and a bit in Act IV, where the PCs have lots of options available to them, and the main thing that is determined by canon are the stakes they are navigating. I absolutely love the Night of Slow blades section of the adventure, because it hits that sweet spot of “this is tailored for your PCs” and “this feels like exactly what would happen in the novels.” There are also some other scenes across various acts that shine. While not everyone may take the road that leads to this, I really liked the details of negotiating with Baron Harkonnen, as well as the scenes where the PCs can debate with other agents of the Landsraad houses in court with the emperor.

An Animal Caught in A Trap Will Gnaw Off Its Own Leg to Escape. What Will You Do?

I wish that when the adventure pushes the PCs into “witness” mode, there was more for them to do than observe and make a few checks to see if they pick up a new trait or asset for themselves or their house. There are some brushes with canon events early on that feel especially frustrating. You may get into a fight with Rabban the night of the Atreides attack, but he’s got plot armor. You might see Jessica and Paul being herded onto an ornithopter in the distance, but you’re too far away to do anything about it. The absolute worse example of this is being present for Leto II’s death. I don’t expect the adventure to give you the opportunity to stop this from happening–it’s a pretty pivotal story beat. But I don’t know that my desire to witness the noteworthy events of Dune included helplessly traveling with the people that murder Paul’s infant son.

Tenuous Recommendation–The product has positive aspects, but buyers may want to make sure the positive aspects align with their tastes before moving this up their list of what to purchase next.

I don’t want to be too brutal. I think that if you are a fan of Dune (and I’m not sure why you would be buying Dune RPG material if you weren’t) you will find some use for this adventure. On the other hand, I feel like you’re either going to have some frustrating moments as written, or you’re going to be reworking some key scenes so that the PCs have actual agency in those moments. That’s a shame, because there are some wonderful moments in the adventure that tie the PCs and their house to events with a little more room to breathe, that would be great to see attached to an adventure that didn’t funnel you back into your front row seats for a show you can’t really affect.

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Ang, Chris and Josh chat about mixing up genres in our RPGs and as a result touch on what genre is, and why we can and should mash it all up together!

Links:

D&D Lego!

The Nebula Awards

Daggerheart Playtest

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We are all familiar with the trope of a regular gaming group. You know, the one who meets on regular days in the regular gaming location. And while the particularities of the imagined group differ, the factors of time and space stay constant, but so too does the cast. Although we all know how wonderful a regular gaming group can be, I am here to suggest that there’s several benefits of regularly shifting up the cast around your gaming table as well. I will discuss the pros of this, and of course mention some of the cons while suggesting how they can be remedied or at least reduced. I might even suggest that shifting up your regular gaming group will just mean you’ll have a regular gaming circle, but that’s getting ahead of myself. I’ll discuss the benefits of not having a regular group first.

Scheduling

People’s lives change, along with their calendars, interests and priorities, and unfortunately also health and postal codes. Having a steady group is all well and good, but sometimes scheduling games will take a lot of effort. For a lot of us that’s where the real issue of burnout comes from, with a tedious and complicated scheduling matrix, and the accompanying cancellations. I find that it’s much easier to fit people to dates I’m available instead of finding people first and then looking at the calendars. I’d rather play shorter campaigns for six months or so, than risk having campaigns end in scheduling limbo, due to peoples changing lives and priorities. It’s much easier to find a date that works for all if the group is brought together on the same premise and not just out of habit. If everyone assembled for your Weird Western-game is really wanting to play weird western and have all cleared the same date in the week, you are more certain that they will attend game nights than if they’re just your friends, have other hobbies and are really just wanting you all to go back to playing a Fantasy or a Cyberpunk game again. Sure, people will still have emergencies, or just family or work commitments, but if you have a robust group bound together on a mission, you might at least get to finish the campaign together, at the very least experience a somewhat satisfactory ending, even if things keep happening. Oh, and as a bonus, you also have at least one friend who is eagerly awaiting the start of the next Fantasy or Cyberpunk campaign!

Different Experiences

While monogamy has its virtues, I find that gaming with a richer and more varied crowd brings a lot of benefits to myself, the other individuals and the group as a whole, while also benefiting a larger circle of people. We avoid the rut that a steady group will sometimes attain, and variations in cast give different players the chance to try out different roles/functions/classes that some players tend to monopolize. Like the players who will “always” play “The Face” character, but the GM knows that one of the shyer players has talked about playing one for a long time. This might also include the one who will always play the lone magical talent or the baddest of the baddest combatant as well. Also, I believe new blood opens up for new perspectives, ideas and challenges, and that the table dynamics won’t get stale. New players also mean new approaches, new words and maybe something different that people can add to their repertoire. This goes double if your gaming table carousel includes different GMs as well as players, and I’ll add that your great tricks will reach more roleplayers as well.

Polygamery

Not all players will play all types of games and genres, and my experience is that some groups tend to be quite selective in what they enjoy to play. Not only can you finally play that heart-(and other body parts-)wrenching game of Monsterhearts, but you can do it without the sighs of those who would rather rob the Megacorps of Night City or kill the inhabitants of the Caverns of Chaos and take their stuff. Changing up your groups opens up for bringing your Sun Tzus and butt-kickers to one game and your Elisabeth Bennets to another; for optimization of enjoyment. A wrong player might weaken the right game, but the synergies of players who truly “sing” together is a beautiful experience. Playing lots of different games means that you might even get your non-roleplaying friends to attend, because they’re so into the Russian Women’s Piloting World War II efforts or Dinosaur Princesses, bringing more people into our lovely hobby and maybe having even more intimate friendships?

Network

If you treat your table or living room as a carousel, I believe it will in time give you access to more players, multiple GMs for those burnout periods, and, as mentioned, a roster for different play experiences. A larger pool also means that your games will be less vulnerable to people relocating or otherwise becoming unavailable for play, and if you game online you might meet those friends at conventions and maybe even get to do some couch surfing? I recently had a friend lend me a proper bed and feline company for a faraway convention. Since we had experience gaming online together, I was also certain their games would give me some good gaming experiences. While I believe the benefits to yourself are clear, I also believe you’ll be doing other people a favor, introducing them both to other people and other games, and perhaps even other playstyles than they’re used to. Maybe you can help spawn new groups as well as new friendships?

Note: Friendships will endure even if a game is paused! Playing with someone else doesn’t mean you can’t do other stuff or even play one-shots with friends, and I also believe that you don’t need to game with all your gaming friends, especially if your playstyles and game interests don’t really match up that well.

Cons

Changing up the group all the time means regularly (re)establishing group lingo, forming-storming-and-norming-before-performing (optimally) and the flip-side of the new perspectives and shaking up the dynamics-coin. Safety? Not everyone will be comfortable meeting new people at their places or even bringing them home, and just needing to go to another neighbourhood or taking another bus route might be an issue, even if the group is safe itself. There’s also the dreaded FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), which I myself consider an old friend. I can honestly say that not only will it get better, but you’ll learn to be happy when your friends get to play, even when it’s without you. I understand that it can be difficult, especially if you’re not actively gaming yourself at the time. Sometimes it’s really easy to think that you’re being excluded, even though your friends have a full gaming table of people who are much more interested in the particular genre/game than you, but you’ll recognize that the sting of perception isn’t real. If you regularly change up the makeup of your own gaming table, it’s easier to understand that this is the case when you yourself aren’t asked first to that genre you don’t really like. In time you’ll learn to be happy when your friends get to play, even if you yourself are devoid of game time; because you know that soon your big roster of gaming buddies will invite you. Sometimes you and your best friend play parallel games that aren’t for each other, but that doesn’t mean you can’t meet up and talk about the different games and revel in your friend’s happiness of being in a game you wouldn’t have liked anyway.

Conclusion

I truly believe that treating your gaming table as a carousel that regulates its cast to the different experiences, both in number of players and temperament suited to different gaming experiences, will benefit both you and the other players. Maybe someone will even take up the GM mantle, since they can’t rely on you always bringing them along for the ride? Yes, it’s easier to enforce this idea if you’re always the GM, but it’s not like you couldn’t invite different GMs to GM different games either. I guess a lot of GMs would be happy to not have to deal with scheduling, and to be assured of enthusiastic and consenting players for that particular game. I also believe that if it is known that you regularly change up the cast around your table people will make more of an effort when they’re there, and others might even want to pursue a chair around your table, by inviting you to their game first.

Even though I advocate changing the cast around everyone’s gaming tables, I’ll gladly admit that my three current groups are all talking about doing another campaign after our current one ends. So am I hypocritical? Well, probably, but in this case I find it a natural development of having played with a lot of different people. You get the aforementioned roster, and you will naturally gravitate to players who like games you like and want to play more with them, and vice versa. Not only that, but you’ll also get to learn player skills, table habits and GM techniques from a lot of people, enabling yourself to become a really popular and crafty GM or player. Every now and then someone’s other life elements will leave them out of a campaign or two, or their interest just isn’t there for a project, and that’s when you’ll be happy for your big roster.

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Face to face, out in the heat, hanging tough, staying hungry…

                                                                                                                                             — Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”

In a proud GM Dad moment, my eldest daughter just ran her first RPG session as a Game Master! I let her be, but stayed close enough to answer the occasional question, and by all accounts and an enthusiastic reception from her players she did a great job!

While preparing for her first session, she asked me a lot of questions. I answered them as best I could and thought that incorporating that advice into a single primer might help. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to finish this before she started running, but I thought I’d finish it anyway and put it here in the hopes that someone reading this might find it useful.

In terms of background, I’m coming at this from the POV of a Call of Cthulhu Keeper (GM), as that is what my daughter was running. Thus, my headspace was focused on investigative adventures, but I’ve tried to make the advice universally applicable.

So, without further ado…

Trust your group.

This is a big one and I think should be stated first. Unless you are running a convention game, you are probably playing with your friends, friends who understand that this is your first time taking the chair. They know that it’s a big responsibility and they’ll be willing to cut you a lot of slack. They’re happy that you’re willing to run a game for them. So, relax and don’t worry about being judged!

Note that this holds true for convention games, too. Believe it or not, many attendees who join convention games are home GMs who are happy to be players for a while. In any event, most of your players are getting used to playing with each other as much as you, so don’t think that a quiet table is an unhappy table. Everyone needs a little time to feel things out.

Expect to make mistakes.

You’re going to make mistakes, probably lots of them. But that’s okay. As a new GM, you’ve got a lot to keep track of and a responsibility to guide the session. You’re going to get tripped up here and there. Your players know that, and they’ll be fine with it. Again, they’re happy that you’re trying your hand at running!

And here’s a dirty little secret (or not so secret): we veteran GMs make mistakes too! The best advice I can give is not to hide it when you mess up. Nothing eases the stress on you like admitting that you made a mistake. If it’s something that didn’t derail the adventure, then just note the mistake and keep going. If it adversely affected the players, then compensate them and move on.

Be fair in your rulings.

While your players are going to give you their trust, it is up to you to keep it. A good way to do that is to be fair in your rulings. Note that “rulings” aren’t “rules,” they are how you run the game and apply the rules. As long as your decisions feel rational and you apply your rulings fairly, you should maintain the trust of your group.

It’s okay to take advice from your players regarding rules or rulings, but don’t let things get bogged down if a quick ruling keeps things moving. Ultimately, the rules are simply there to help you make decisions. Just make a decision for now and look up the rule after the session. You can apply the rule in the future.

Only appeal to chance when it matters.

Players generally want their characters to be competent. They don’t want to create a martial arts expert that gets easily clubbed unconscious by a purse-wielding senior or a scientist that doesn’t know basic chemistry. An easy way to do this is to simply assume competence when the act ultimately doesn’t matter or when the task seems too easy to fail. On the flip side, you can also say “no” when a character tries to do something that is obviously beyond their capabilities.

This is especially important if you’re running an investigative adventure. If your characters are investigating a crime scene, then they should be able to find any obvious clues as well as clues that they would know to look for. Nothing kills an adventure dead like the players not being able to follow leads because their character missed a skill roll to find a necessary piece of evidence!

There may be times when you’ll want the players to roll but you also need them to succeed. Keep in mind that you don’t have to make the roll a pass-fail test. It may be that if they fail, then they still succeed but draw some sort of complication. For example, if a character fails a roll on an internet search, then you may rule that they found the information only after wasting all night surfing and now they’re exhausted the next day.

Roll in the open.

This one isn’t truly necessary, as there is a long tradition of GMs rolling dice behind screens, but rolling in the open does two things. First, it fosters trust between you and your players that you are keeping things fair. Second, if you know that you’ll be rolling in the open, then you’ll also make sure that you’re only calling for rolls when you can accept the result. If you can’t, then why are you leaving it to chance?

Know the basic beats of your adventure.

Hopefully, you’ve done your prep work on your adventure. If you designed it yourself, then you’ve already internalized it. If you are using an adventure that you didn’t create, then you’ll want to read it at least twice (three is better!).

After reading the adventure, make a quick flowchart that follows the basic beats of the adventure and note where player choice matters. This flowchart doesn’t have to be very detailed, just enough to remind you of where the adventure is heading and how to guide the players back if they take their characters too far afield.

If the players need to meet a key NPC, find a crucial clue, or otherwise need a McGuffin to get to the next part of the adventure, then you’ll want to note that on the flowchart as well. That way, the flowchart will remind you of the important things you need to introduce along the way.

Keep things moving…

One of the worst things that you can do as a GM, new or veteran, is to allow the players to be stumped for too long. Sometimes what is obvious to you isn’t obvious to them, or they’ve simply discarded a clue that’s important because it doesn’t fit their theories. This can lead to unnecessary frustration.

Don’t be afraid to offer guidance. Sometimes, you can simply remind them of what they’ve found or offer suggestions to follow leads. A gentle reminder that they never visited the business on the matchbook they found, or they never thought to check the hills for the goblin encampment may be enough to get them moving without feeling like you handed it to them.

Also, don’t be afraid to end an encounter early if the conclusion is obvious. If the player characters are wiping the floor with kobolds, then you can simply say that they’ve finished them off without having to waste another 15 minutes. If an NPC isn’t going to give the players the information they want, then you don’t need to wait 10 minutes while the players keep asking questions.

…But don’t railroad.

If you’ve played RPGs for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard about the dreaded “railroad.” Simply put, railroading is whenever you take agency away from the players in situations where they believe that they should have agency. If the players are going to follow the adventure, it should be because it feels logical, or at least rational, for them to do so.

A good way to counter this is to always offer an open-ended option whenever you offer suggestions. “So, do you want to go to the business on the matchbook, follow up on Mr. Tanner’s interrogation, or do something else?” reminds the players of leads they haven’t followed but also tells them that you’re willing to go with whatever they decide.

Simplify the rules and internalize them.

Note that while I think most GMs get intimidated by the rules, I’ve made rules the lowest on the list of priorities. That’s because rules are the responsibility of everyone around the table, especially given that most out-of-game arguments during play tend to be about rules.

You don’t need to commit an entire rulebook to memory, but you should internalize the basic mechanic. Don’t worry about side cases. You can always make rulings until you’re more familiar with those rules. Just remember that point above about being fair!

In Dungeons & Dragons, for example, most tests involve rolling a d20 and adding modifiers to meet or exceed a target number. That, along with granting advantage or disadvantage, is enough for you to run a session with little trouble.

You’re supposed to be having fun, too!

This is not so much a guideline but a reminder. As a GM, you aren’t supposed to sacrifice fun; you are simply trading one type of fun for another. You get to see all the behind-the-scenes plotting, enjoy having the players interact with your adventure and make creative (and sometimes bone-headed!) decisions, play a bunch of NPCs, and overall control the flow of the adventure. It can be a blast!

Your players have a responsibility to ensure that you’re having fun, too. While there will certainly be times that a player doesn’t agree with you, they should respect your ultimate decisions. If things become too aggravating or frustrating, then it’s better to take a break or even shut down a campaign until those issues are resolved.

Wrapping Up

While taking the GM Chair can seem intimidating and even overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Hopefully, the advice above is helpful in showing you that it’s possible to ease into GMing and, hopefully, lead to your guiding friends through many new adventures!

And as a final (and most important) reminder, GMing is not something to be tolerated, it is meant to be enjoyed!

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I’ve reviewed so many other things, and I feel like I’ve been missing a fundamental item in all of this. It’s key to understanding all of my other reviews. Today, I’m going to review the process of reviewing.

I’ve literally been reviewing things from the time I was born. I remember my siblings showing me Land of the Lost, and when I saw the Sleestak for the first time, I said nope. My very first review, and a lot more succinct than I would become once I had a better vocabulary.

Disclaimer

I was not given permission to discuss the process of reviewing the review process. I have had many opinions over the years. I have not had the opportunity to see if all of my opinions are correct, although I strongly suspect they are.

Credits

Current Human Beings Varies
Popularized Reviews as Entertainment in and of Themselves Siskel and Ebert
The Internet Al Gore
The QWERTY Keyboard Christopher Latham Sholes
Modern Internet Culture Satan, probably

Popular Review Formats

Human beings review things all the time. One of the newest trends popularized by the internet is Extreme Vibes. In this technique, when you see something you like, especially if someone else doesn’t like it, you can classify it as the Best Thing Ever. Literally, it can’t be the Best Thing Ever if anything else is the Best Thing Ever, but this technique doesn’t really hinge on nuance.

There is an additional aspect to Extreme Vibes, and that is The Absolute Worst. The process goes like this:

• You dislike something
• Someone else likes it
• You realize they are wrong
• You rate it the The Absolute Worst

As with The Best Thing Ever, it is not literally possible to be The Absolute Worst. In addition to the reasons listed for The Best Thing Ever, i.e. if there is another Absolute Worst, there cannot be another Absolute Worst, so previous reviews are immediately invalidated, the Absolute Worst has another reason it remains an imprecise measure. Human beings are extremely talented at coming up with additional things that are worse than the last thing they did.

While this form of review started in the simple format of message board posts and social media responses, it has matured much like more traditional forms of review. In a move reminiscent of the sudden placement of television reviews on every news program in the 1980s, various forms of new media blossom with Extreme Vibes in video format, either in long form, as the most venerable YouTubers work with, or the more succinct micro Extreme Vibes videos that can be seen on Tik Tok.

Shooting Stars

This technique only works within the framework of another review process, specifically sites that allow you to rate a product by using symbols, often stars, but sometimes more esoteric symbols, like cupcakes, circles, or rhombuses. This is an extremely impressionist technique, even when compared to the Extreme Vibes method. The key isn’t that you need to express even your slightest tendencies as extreme antipathy or sympathy.

The real key to the Shooting Stars technique is that you put people in mind of what a review should look like, then you challenge them to engage with the review and it’s connection to the product in question in a process not unlike art appreciation. The product isn’t what’s making you feel something, the review is!

You may want an example of this. Some of the most masterful of these reviews include the following:

• Rating a product with one star, because you love it, but UPS destroyed the box, leaving you to contemplate if an author should have a star rating that incorporates frustration with a shopping company.
• Using absolute language while not engaging with either side of a scale that can measure extremes. Examples include a two star rating that cites a product as the worst thing the reviewer has encountered, or a four out of five star review that is “the best.” This leaves you contemplating the nature of extremes, and the connection between objective math and creativity.
• Writing a review that contains a long anecdote from the reviewer’s personal life, which only near the end tangentially touches on the actual merits of the item in question, or its lack of merits. This is a lesson in understanding that things need to be taken as a whole, rather than in discrete parts.

None of this should be confused with the Transcendent Narrative Review, which utilizes the review space to tell an epic story for which movie rights should be secured. The secret of the Transcendent Narrative Review is that it isn’t actually a review, but a separate artform that uses the review as its form.

Aggressive Aggregating

Probably the easiest genre of reviewing for anyone to get into. This involves logging in to a review aggregation site and clicking on a number. This is technically an advanced version of Extreme Vibes, and some reviewologists, instead of categorizing this as its own type of review, actually consider this Advanced Extreme Vibes.

I would still maintain this is a separate form of review, because in addition to the above, there is an added element of watching the aggregation percentage trending toward the direction you indicated. There is a certain anonymity to this form of reviewing that can really let someone free their inner monster. Because the key is to see the communal percentage go up or down, often reviewers in this genre will multitask by creating multiple logins for the same aggregate site, in order to express their opinions with creative resonance.

Positives

Honestly, reviewing is probably a necessary function of human beings. Without being able to express that we really do or don’t like something, reviewologists have posited that our heads would explode. They even point to some medieval tapestries that indicate peasants with exploding heads, watching the king’s favorite puppet show. It’s easy to extrapolate that their ability to provide reviews was impeded. So the big benefit to various review techniques is to keep our heads from exploding.

Negatives

Long term review work results in an effect similar to the effects that can be observed when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays. Not the cool cosmic rays that grant superpowers, but the cosmic rays that start to melt flesh. Participating in Extreme Vibes for too long, for example, sometimes allows the reviewer’s head to explode anyway, because their opinion is forming faster than the reviewer can form words. There is also the problem of extreme isolation and listlessness for reviewers that operate in these environments and don’t use a more extreme medium like Extreme Vibes or Aggressive Aggregating, because all of the oxygen tends to be sucked out of the conversation as both extreme ends of the spectrum garner all attention.

Not Recommended–There isn’t much in this product gods forsaken process that convinces me to tell others to pick it up.

This quote doesn’t exist anywhere in the article you are reading. On one hand, that may be kind of confusing, but if you look at it this way, you’re getting new content rather than just seeing part of the article again, but bigger.

Never, ever start reviewing things. It slowly, or not so slowly, eats away at your mental health. I was normal before I started this job. Okay, that’s a lie. I never used to lie before I got this job. I’m lying about that. But it definitely changed me.

Every time you read through a product and see the love and care that went into it, and you recognize the craft employed in its creation, and you see someone say, “it’s junk,” you start to wonder if you were reading text that was only visible to you. Then you start to think, maybe it was only visible to me.

Every time you attempt to make a joke about some form of RPG that no one would ever attempt to create, some actual game arrives on the scene, either spectacularly daring the world to deny it’s genius or astounding you with the audacity to string together a mass of concepts, themes, and procedures in some simulationist echo of Frankenstein’s monster, threatening to hunt down and kill your family if you don’t make the perfect review mate for the game.

I watched SEO glitter in the dark near the Google Search Bar. All those reviews will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to join a new social media platform.

End of Line.

Editor’s Note: Jared, our review gnome, was asked to find a way to write a parody of an RPG without referencing any existing RPG properties or citing any similarities with them. Instead of that article, this was sent to us via a burner e-mail account. Jared has not been seen for the last two weeks, although the authorities believe they have a strong lead to his whereabouts.

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Planning in RPGs has always been a problem. On one hand, it’s often necessary for a group of players to plan out something their characters are trying to accomplish. On the other, most groups are not adept at planning, and even if they were, the activity is never that exciting at the table – worse if you are the GM who is more of a spectator. All of this is worse if you are under any kind of time constraint, like running a one-shot. 

That is the problem I was having. In a few weeks, my high school gaming group is having a reunion, and we wanted to play some games. One of our group’s main games was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rather than run TMNT, I offered Mutants in the Now, which I think is a better overall game. It will be a one-shot, and likely time bound to 4-6 hours. The scenario I wanted was a raid on an island of the evil genius Dr. Feral. But planning…

Other games have done a good job of designing around planning, but Mutants in the Now does not have any direct planning rules. So I started to think, what if we didn’t plan everything but the group just made some choices? That is when I got the idea for Plan by Mad Libs. So let’s talk about it. 

What are Mad Libs?

A Mad Lib is a word game where one player asks for certain words – a noun, a verb, etc – with little or no context. The words are plugged into pre-written text. After all the words have been collected, the person reads the text, which often results in a silly, but entertaining narrative. For more info see:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs
• https://www.madlibs.com/

What is a Plan?

A plan is defined as a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something. There is an objective, and there are the steps to achieve that objective. Typically when this is done in RPGs the group knows or decides the objective, and then works to figure out the steps. This often results in iterative discussions as details that are discussed prompt a new discussion about older details. It can be time-consuming, frustrating, and boring. 

Plan By Mad Libs

The idea is to use the Mad Lib format to streamline planning so that we can quickly define the plan and move on to its execution, where the characters are taking action. 

To do this, I needed to take some of the agency from the players, for the sake of time. That is, I needed to come up with the pre-written text – the plan for how the characters would raid the island. I did this using a simple story framework for a typical raid kind of story. The plan would need info on infiltration, a diversion, achieving the objective, and exfiltration from the island. 

The blanks could then be the WHO and in some cases the HOW. Those choices could be left to the players so that they could customize the framework and make the plan theirs. 

Here is an example of how I used the WHO to define the infiltration to the island:

We first have to get onto Dr. Feral’s island. NAME will smuggle themselves aboard Kris Pierce’s yacht in Miami, and arrive on the island at the docks. At the same time, NAME and NAME will take a private flight out of Ft. Lauderdale and will parachute onto the southeast grasslands with our backup gear. NAME got a job as a bodyguard for Linda Davenport and will arrive on the island as part of her entourage, and will be at the arena. 

Here is an example of how I used the HOW for the diversion:

While that is going on, WHO will go to the CHOOSE (DOCKS, AIRSTRIP, POWER STATION) to cause a diversion by BLANK (ACTION or METHOD). 

Implementing the Plan By Mad Libs

The full plan is written as if one of the characters is going over the plan with the rest of the group (this was highly inspired by a scene from the A-Team movie). The players will fill out the Mad Lib plan and then one of them will read it back to the group. As soon as it’s read, we can jump right into playing.

Advantages of Planning by Mad Libs

There are a few advantages to this. The first is that it should be quick. Filling in the blanks won’t take long and we should be up and running quickly. Second, the plan is written out and on the table while we play. There is little chance people will forget the plan with it there on the table. Third, I can prep for the plan, which means that I can add some nice mechanical details that I might miss if I was ad-libbing based on a plan made at the table. Fourth, I can roughly manage the duration of the game based on the size of the plan I write.

Kind of Sounds Like A Railroad

Not really. Of course, there will be twists in the plan – some from me and others through the actions of the characters – and that I will manage while we play. The players can abandon the plan as soon as we start, or they can follow it all the way through. Both work.

The goal of the Mad Lib plan wasn’t to control the whole adventure, it was to minimize planning and get into the execution of the plan. The Mad Lib plan accomplishes that goal. 

One-Shots vs. Campaigns

For sure, this idea works great for one-shots, but could it work for a campaign? I think so, if the players were to buy into the concept. Hijacking a bit of agency in a one-shot is not that big of a deal, but in a campaign it could be more of a complex topic. 

I think it would work in a campaign where planning was not the norm, where the core loop of the game is something other than planning and for a specific story there needs to be a plan, and you use the Mad Libs format to streamline things so that the story goes smoothly. For instance, I would not use this for a Night’s Black Agents op, but I might use it for a one-off supers heist in the Marvel Multiverse game. 

Anything But Planning

Planning is not a fun activity in most RPGs. There are a lot of ways modern designers are trying to reduce or remove planning from games, all for the better. That said, there are plenty of games out there that need a design for minimizing planning. For those games, something like a Mad Lib plan can help.

I hope that this Mad Lib plan will help my table come up with an interesting and entertaining plan that unfolds into an exciting session. 

How do you manage planning at your table? Would you try a Mad Lib plan?

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Over the past couple of months I've written articles defining adventure types – how we prep them, how we run them, what pitfalls we might run into, and how to mitigate those pitfalls. These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Know the Rules then Break the Rules

Now that we've defined adventure types, it's time to throw them away.

You see, these adventure types often don't line up with the actual adventures we run at our table. Our adventures might span across multiple types, or they might not be defined by any adventure type at all.

Our romp through Ironfang Keep might feel like a dungeon crawl, a heist, or an investigation. Our traversal across the ghoul city of Vandekhul might feel like travel or intrigue. Our battle against Camazotz might start as a major combat session but turn into roleplaying.

Adventures just don't fit cleanly into any given adventure type.

So why did you bother to read all those articles? Why did I bother to write them?

Because understanding adventure types can still help us run awesome games.

Actual adventures and sessions might not fit perfectly into one specific adventure type, but when we break down the elements of these adventure types, they give us a possible framework to build off of. They help us identify pitfalls and mitigation strategies for the elements of our game that do fit.

Which Adventure Type Best Fits?

When preparing or running our game, try to identify which adventure type or types best fit our game and use the preparation, execution framework, and tips for pitfall mitigations that make sense for the adventure you're running. Dungeon crawls, heists, defense, roleplaying, and combat situations can all come up during our campaigns or even in the middle of a session. The type tell us how we might switch modes and run that style of game.

If we're not sure what we need when prepping our game, we can ask ourselves which adventure type best fits what we're looking at and aim our prep around that type. Sometimes finding a suitable adventure type means taking a fuzzy concept and defining it within the bounds of the adventure type. "This situation at the castle feels like both defense and intrigue – let me look at those adventure types."

Absorb Adventure Types, Then Let Them Go

The more proficient we are running adventures, the more we can absorb the concepts for these adventure types and then set them aside when we're running adventures outside the bounds of any one adventure type.

Adventure types help identify different modes of play in our fantasy tabletop roleplaying games. Like many generalities, they often break down when you apply them to the actual games we run at our table.

Yet we don't have to throw away the underlying adventure type concepts in how we prep, how we run, the pitfalls we might face, and how to mitigate those pitfalls. Those concepts hold up even if the defined shapes of an adventure type doesn't perfectly fit the adventure we run.

Build Your Own Frameworks

These articles offer one perspective on adventure types. Through your own experiences you might find other adventure types or choose to redefine them yourself. Your own steps for preparing, running, identifying pitfalls, and mitigating pitfalls might be far more useful to you than the advice in this series of articles. That's fine. That's awesome. Define your own adventure types. Ask yourself what you need to prep, what you need to run them, what pitfalls you often run into, and how you can mitigate those pitfalls.

Find the adventure types that best fit your actual adventures and use the tools within to run awesome games.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Using the 8 Lazy DM Steps at the Table and Swamp King Fronk – Lazy RPG Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Robert Schwalb on La Taberna de Rol
• DM David Compares MCDM, Daggerheart, and 5e
• Wandering Tavern by Homie and the Dude
• Infestation at Devil's Glade by Jeff Stevens
• Restless Encounters by Inkwell Ideas
• 13th Age Megabundle on Bundle of Holding
• Dyson Logos Commercial Map Packs
• Cairn 2 Character Builder Open Sourced
• Readings and Reflections with Sly Flourish Podcast
• JP Coovert's video on Indie RPGs
• Split Up Your Prep

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• How Often to Level Characters?
• What to Prep When You Have a Long Time
• Accounting for High Power Characters with the Lazy Encounter Benchmark

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Give characters and players a warning when they’re facing a foe beyond their capabilities.
• Use rolls for distance and motivation to change up random encounters.
• Improvise connections between random encounters and the larger story through secrets and clues.
• Build your own 5e from the sources that bring you the coolest options for your game.
• Clarify options and choices.
• Print maps and write down one- or two-word descriptions right on the map.
• Build encounters, secrets, NPCs, monsters, and treasure from the characters outward.

Related Articles

• Running Dungeon Crawls
• Running Defense Adventures
• Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

• how we prepare them.
• how we run them.
• what pitfalls we might run into.
• how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

For a far more in-depth look at running monsters in combat encounters, please check out Forge of Foes, our book on building and running fantastic monsters for your 5e games.

Understanding Combat Adventures

Good fantasy RPG sessions most often include mixtures of exploration, roleplay, and combat. Adventures or sessions focusing on only one pillar of play may bypass players' preferences for the other elements.

But, on occasion, we find ourselves with a session focused almost exclusively on combat.

Completely combat-focused sessions may occur when characters face a big battle at the beginning of the session and we know this battle is going to take up most of the session. Other combat-focused sessions might happen when the characters face a gauntlet of battles, one right after the other, whether they're exploring a dangerous dungeon, defending a location, or otherwise find themselves with a series of battles staged in sequence.

Combat-focused sessions should be rare. The best sessions include scenes and situations with opportunities for roleplaying, exploration, and combat. We want situations where the characters make meaningful decisions to move the story forward.

But combat-focused sessions do happen and thus are worth examining.

Preparing Combat Sessions

During prep, GMs can prepare combat sessions by

• understanding how these combat encounters begin and where they occur.
• deciding on a style for combat. Are you going to run it in the theater of the mind, on a combat battle mat, or run abstract combat?
• choosing a goal for the combat encounter. Sometimes the battle isn't all about killing the monsters but achieving another outcome.
• selecting monsters for each combat encounter. Rich combat encounters often include two or more different monster types with some synergies between them – big brutes up front and nasty ranged attackers in the back for example.
• choosing the environment surrounding the encounter. What larger environmental effects might be in play in the combat arena?
• selecting interesting terrain features the characters and monsters might use (see Anatomy of an Environmental Effect – Chernobog's Well)
• planning potential shifts in the encounter. What events might change the course of the battle?
• outlining the transitions between each combat encounter. What takes the characters from battle A to battle B to battle C?
• building out, drawing, or preparing your battle map – either digital or physical.
• gathering miniatures, tokens, or digital assets if you're playing online.

Running Combat Sessions

For 5e games and other fantasy d20 games, combat tends to be the most well-articulated and refined style of gameplay. For combat-focused sessions, GMs need only start the session and get into the first battle. Between combat encounters ensure the sinew is there to connect one battle to the next. The rest falls on the rules of combat for our chosen system.

Depending on the complexity of the encounters, the number of characters, and their level, combat encounters may be easy or difficult to run. The higher level the characters – the more power and capability they bring to the battlefield – the trickier it can be to maintain a consistent challenge. The dials of monster difficulty can help balance such a challenge.

When running combat, continue to draw the players into the fiction of the world. Describe the situation from the point of view of the characters. Describe what attacks and hits look like. Ask players to do the same. Reveal secrets and clues when appropriate. Include opportunities for roleplaying with NPCs and enemies before, during, and after the battle. Avoid getting lost in the mechanics of combat and remember the story going on in the world.

Pitfalls of Combat Sessions

Here are several potential pitfalls when running combat-focused adventures and sessions:

• Too many hard combat encounters becomes repetitive and tiresome.
• Combat goals aren't clear. Players don't know why they're fighting.
• Combat focuses exclusively on the mechanics with little focus on the story or fiction.
• Combat encounters are tactically boring.
• Players resent encounters built to contradict their characters' capabilities.
• Battles take too long. Players who enjoy roleplaying and exploration miss out.
• It's easy to forget important monster mechanical details when running lots of monsters, more complicated monsters, or both.

Mitigating Pitfalls

GMs can help mitigate these pitfalls by

• mixing up easy and hard encounters or waves within a single encounter. Let the characters shine while fighting weaker foes as stronger ones come on later.
• clarifying encounter goals. Tell players how things work in the encounter so they know what they need to do.
• continually describe what's happening in the fiction of the game. Ask players to describe their actions including attacks and killing blows.
• include different monster types and terrain features to keep encounter tactics interesting.
• include lightning rods – monsters intended to show off the powerful capabilities of the characters.
• include elements of roleplaying and exploration during combat. What do the villains say? What do the characters discover about the world and situation as they fight for their lives?
• read over monster stat blocks before play and run simpler monsters for those who don't really matter, saving mechanically crunchy monsters for bosses and lieutenants.

An Uncommon Adventure Type

Combat-focused sessions are best held for big battles against boss monsters. Other session types in this series of articles offer a better balance of exploration, roleplaying, and combat. Combat-focused sessions are prevalent enough, however, for us to internalize what makes them fun and what we can do to avoid common pitfalls.

Build fantastic and intricate combat encounters and let the characters shine.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos including Build Your Own 5e and Add Black Flag's Luck to your 5e Games.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Offer opportunities for roleplaying even in the depths of the darkest dungeons.
• Mix up battles with several smaller foes and fewer large foes.
• Build encounters first from the fiction. What makes sense?
• Add motivation and distance rolls to random encounters for unique experiences.
• Include interactive monuments in bigger battles.
• Write down connections between the characters and the next session you’re running.
• Single monsters are at a significant disadvantage against a group of characters. This disadvantage gets worse the higher level the characters are.

Related Articles

• Running Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures
• The Story Focus of D&D
• Running Dungeon Crawls

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

• how we prepare them.
• how we run them.
• what pitfalls we might run into.
• how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

In adventures focused on roleplaying and intrigue, the characters primarily talk to NPCs to accomplish goals or learn information. Intrigue adventures often overlap with Investigations and Mysteries with less of a focus on location-based clues and expanding the goals beyond uncovering mysteries.

Example goals in roleplay and intrigue adventures might include

• convincing royalty to commit military forces in a war.
• exposing treachery in a royal court.
• saving the life of a condemned prisoner.
• pitting two enemies against one another.
• learning the location of a secret treasure vault.
• getting permission to enter a closed city.
• asking priests to hand over a powerful artifact.

Roleplay and intrigue adventures are often built around a set of linear or networked scenes. In these scenes, the characters talk to one or more NPCs learning something or attaining a goal that leads them to the next scene.

Preparing Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

During preparation for roleplay and intrigue adventures, GMs can focus on

• clarifying the goal of the adventure.
• fleshing out the backgrounds of notable NPCs.
• finding artwork they can show to players for each notable NPC.
• writing down what NPCs know and what they want.
• defining secrets and clues the characters might uncover when talking to NPCs.
• adding other adventure elements as needed from the eight steps.

Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Roleplay and intrigue adventures can begin with a strong start to bring the players into the game, clarify the goals of the adventure, set the stage, and let the players begin interacting with NPCs.

During play, the GM thinks as the NPCs would think given their backgrounds and goals as they interact with the players. As the conversation goes on, the GM may decide how NPCs react based on what the players say or they may have players roll ability checks if there's a meaningful chance for failure that doesn't end the adventure in a brick wall.

GMs can use ability checks to determine how easily or how difficult it is to acquire information from an NPC or shift the NPCs attitude without shutting off entire paths if the adventure on a single bad check.

Other elements from typical adventures may come up in these sessions including exploring locations or getting into a fight, even if the overall focus is on talking to NPCs.

Pitfalls of Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Roleplay and intrigue adventures might suffer from the following pitfalls:

• Players don't understand what they're doing or why.
• Too many roleplay scenes in a row can bore action-focused players.
• The characters blow important rolls or engage in the wrong approach and shut off critical paths for the story.
• Players don't understand how best to engage the NPCs.
• Characters have better social skills than their players have or vice versa.

Avoiding Pitfalls

GMs can avoid or mitigate these pitfalls by

• Clarifying the characters' goals regularly.
• Including other action-focused scenes in the adventure such as combat encounters or location exploration.
• Ensuring the whole story doesn't get shut down on bad rolls or poor approaches and instead leads the story down a different, potentially harder, but still interesting path.
• Use the result of a roll as a scale of how well or poorly something went instead of a hard success or failure. See 1d20 Shades of Gray.
• Offer suggestions to players who have a hard time understanding how to engage with characters. Don't let them make foolish mistakes their characters would know better than to make. Show them opportunities their characters would recognize.
• Use a high-charisma character's charisma as a baseline, recognizing that their character might be better at negotiating than the player is.
• Use a charismatic player's approach as a baseline even if their character has a lousy charisma. Don't always call for a roll.

A Common Sub-Adventure Type

Roleplay and intrigue adventures might often slide into or be shuffled into other larger adventures. As one of the core pillars of roleplaying games, roleplay and intrigue scenes appear often throughout campaigns and can drive the story forward as much, or more so, than other adventure types.

Clarifying the goal, building rich reactive NPCs, creating interesting paths forward regardless of the outcome, and delivering the other elements of gameplay can make roleplay and intrigue adventures as exciting as the most explosive combat encounters.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Running Evil Cities and 175 Free Tokens for Owlbear Rodeo.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Dungeoncraft on Getting Cheap Miniatures
• Monsters of Drakkenheim
• Cairn 2e Boxed Set
• Tales of the Valiant Wight
• Why CR3 is the best CR
• New Search Engine for Sly Flourish!
• The Two Different Games at the Table

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Lazy DM Steps in an Online VTT World
• Handling Failure at the End of Campaigns
• Handling Flying Characters
• Feeling Bad After a Big Battle
• When to Give Out Magic Items

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Challenge high level characters by attacking several points — AC, saves, death saves, exhaustion, hit points, cumulative -1 penalties, and so on.
• Build big arenas for big boss battles with interesting terrain and layers of monsters.
• Offer weapon enchantment gemstones any character can affix to a weapon or armor to make it magical.
• Let the characters glimpse their final villains. Make villains and boss monsters ever present.
• With six regular players and two on-call players, five people have to cancel before you can’t get four to the table for a game.
• Print maps, pen in one- or two-word room descriptions, and make a list of potential inhabitants.
• Roll up treasure horde parcels and jot them down in your notes. Distribute them when it makes sense.

Related Articles

• Running Dungeon Crawls
• Running Defense Adventures
• Running Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

• how we prepare them.
• how we run them.
• what pitfalls we might run into.
• how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Defense Adventures

In defense adventures, the characters defend a location and its inhabitants from invaders, bandits, or monsters. This adventure type is structured similar to infiltrations and heists in that players spend significant time planning for the attack before the attack itself. I often refer to defense adventures as Seven Samurai adventures because of how well the model of Akira Kurosawa's classic samurai movie fits as a fantasy RPG adventure.

The typical scenario for a defense adventure includes:

• The characters are recruited by townsfolk (or someone similar) to defend a location.
• The characters plan and prepare the location and inhabitants for the coming attack.
• The attack begins with the invasion of a large enemy force.
• The characters focus on their part of the attack while NPCs defend their locations off-camera. Things might change, forcing the characters to move around.
• There's an aftermath.

Defense adventures don't have to follow this model perfectly but this scenario is a common approach.

Preparing a Defense Adventure

GMs can prepare for a defense-style adventure by

• defining the theme. Who are the attackers? Who are the defenders? What's the location like? What themes or flavor can we wrap around the adventure?
• finding or creating a suitable location for the defense and ensuring it has the right characteristics for a good defensible position.
• further defining the "villagers". Who asks the characters to defend them? What's their secret?
• preparing a menu of options the characters can choose to prepare the defense including training NPCs, fortifying defenses, spying on the attackers, preparing weapons or spells, or engaging in other activities to aid in the defense.
• outlining the villains. Who are they? Who leads them? Where do they come from? Where are they located before the attack? How many are there? How will they attack?
• preparing the remaining eight steps as needed.

Running a Defense Adventure

Like a heist adventure, the players plan their defense during the first half of the adventure. Give players time to plan their defense, talk to NPCs, scout the villains, and engage in other activities to prepare for the attack. Improvise ability checks to see how well their defenses hold up.

When the attack begins, focus the spotlight on the characters and their part of the battle. Describe the results of the larger battle based on the defenses the characters put up and how well they did on their checks but keep the spotlight focused on the characters.

Pitfalls of Defense Adventures

Defense adventures might suffer one or more of the following pitfalls.

• The characters' defenses don't come into play – they wasted their time.
• The characters' defenses are so good there's no threat from the villains.
• The players don't know how to prepare the location. They don't understand how they should defend the location.
• The location is too hard to defend. It's too wide open with no good choke points or defensible positions.
• The characters split up instead of staying together making it harder to run the whole adventure.

Avoiding Pitfalls

GMs can avoid or mitigate these pitfalls by

• ensuring the characters' defenses come into play by improvising the descriptions of the villains' attacks.
• ensure there's enough variance to the attack of the villains to still make it a threat even with a very solid defense.
• ensuring there's a clear list of options the characters can choose from to build up the location's defenses.
• during prep, ensuring the location has clear defensible positions and choke points like ravines, rivers, swamplands, walls, towers, and other defensible positions.
• Push players to keep their characters together during the fight so you don't have to run split battles all over the location.

A Fantastic Situation for Heroic Tales

Defense-based adventures stand as an excellent adventure style to give the players agency to shape their own story. It's a perfect example of situation-based adventures in which the GM sets up the situation and the characters navigate it. GMs and players play the situation out together, building a story at the table neither side could have guessed before it began.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos including a Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands Deep Dive and 5e Travel Systems.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Jim Ward Passes Away
• Bob World Builder's Survey of D&D and WOTC Popularity
• Legos and Sneakers and Hawaiian Shirts
• Tome of Beasts 2023 on D&D Beyond
• The SF Patreon Q&A Database
• Larian says No BG3 Expansions or BG4
• Reach and Run Awesome Campaign Endings

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Too Much Comedy and Joking at our Serious D&D Game
• How Much is Gold Worth? Function Economies in our D&D Games
• Lazy Encounter Benchmark for Multiple Battles in a Day

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Give players the option to avoid monsters if desired.
• Test future boss fights with similar but reskinned interim battles.
• Think about the hooks between each character and elements from the next session.
• Give big monsters a way to threaten back-line characters.
• Give characters a painful option to break out of effects that take away their actions.
• Mix and match 5e elements from several published sourcebooks.
• Bathe your dungeon crawl in interesting lore.

Related Articles

• Running Dungeon Crawls
• Running Infiltration and Heist Adventures
• Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

• how we prepare them.
• how we run them.
• what pitfalls we might run into.
• how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Missions and Quest Chains

In mission-based adventures the characters accomplish several goals across a series of scenes. The scenes may be linear or run in a network where players choose different paths leading to different future missions.

Often mission-based adventures take several sessions, perhaps an entire campaign, to complete. Each leg of the mission might be its own adventure.

Each mission or quest of the quest chain might be small – like killing a fire giant boss at a burned out watchtower, acquiring one of several needed items, or getting information from the shady vendor in the Lower Reaches. In a series of wartime missions, the characters accomplish specific missions while war rages around them.

Missions might also be built so the characters attempt to accomplish tasks before the bad guys, or the characters face a rival group attempting to complete the same or parallel quests. This competition results in an ever-changing situation as both groups follow their chains of quests.

Some example missions include:

• Collecting three keys (out of 5) to open the vault of Ibraxus.
• Destroying the four sub-lieutenants of King Lucan the vampire lord.
• Disabling the four obelisks to prevent the opening of the doorway of the Black Cathedral.
• Conducting four missions to thwart the hobgoblin armies of Lord Krash.
• Recovering four powerful artifacts required to defeat Orcus, Lord of Undeath.

Preparing Mission-based Adventures

GMs may prepare for mission-based adventures by

• determining the overall goal of the mission or quest chain.
• building an outline or tree for the quests in the chain.
• filling out the adventure details of the next quest or mission in the chain with the eight steps such as locations, NPCs, monsters, and treasure.
• outlining which quests might follow the next one.
• determine the path and progress of rival groups following these same quests if any.

Running Missions

When running mission-based adventures or campaigns, the GM should

• clarify the goals of the overall quest chain.
• clarify the paths the characters can take and choices they can make when conducting their missions.
• run the current mission or quest as its own typical RPG scene or adventure.
• offer the choices for the next possible quests in the chain.

Mission or Quest Chain Pitfalls

When running mission-based or quest-chain adventures, GMs might encounter the following pitfalls:

• The choices aren't clear. Players don't know which mission to follow next.
• Players forget why they're following these quests.
• The mission paths don't offer meaningful choices. Characters just follow the steps in a predetermined order.
• Large chains of missions can be thwarted when only one mission is accomplished (see all or nothing collection quests).

Avoiding Pitfalls

GMs can avoid these pitfalls by

• regularly clarifying the goal of the mission or quest chain.
• clarifying the options the characters can take and ensuring each option is meaningful.
• not running too many missions.
• ensuring each leg of the quest chain shows clear progress towards the goal.
• ensuring the success of a single mission doesn't thwart the large plans of the villains or characters by using the three of five keys quest model.

A Common Adventure Style

Mission-based adventures are one of the most common styles of adventures. Hopefully these guidelines help you keep your mission-based adventures on track with meaningful choices, clear options, and dynamic situations.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Roll Twice and the Elven Orb – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 24 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Dungeon Crawl Classics Humble Bundle
• Worlds Without Number SRD in CC0
• WOTC's "Do You Like Me" Survey
• Hasbro's Chris Cocks on D&D and AI
• WOTC Partners with StartPlaying.Games
• Daggerheart Open Beta Available
• Lazy DM's Companion On Sale!
• Dungeon Chambers
• Challenging High-Level Characters

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Getting Players to Speak Up During (Online) Games
• Staying Excited about Long Campaigns

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Show players the results in the world of the choices they made.
• Show players how powerful their characters have become.
• Throw in lots of low CR monsters to fireball or turn or otherwise blow away.
• Always lean towards putting meaningful choices in front of the players.
• Clarify goals selected by the characters often -- at least once per session.
• Bring old NPCs back and show how they’ve changed.
• Mix your adventure types. Dungeon crawls, heists, and intrigue all work together into a unique mashup of an adventure.

Related Articles

• Running Dungeon Crawls
• Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures
• Running Defense Adventures

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

• how we prepare them.
• how we run them.
• what pitfalls we might run into.
• how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Travel Adventures

For the sake of this article, overland exploration and travel adventures follow the characters as they travel from one place to another, usually over significant distances across the surface of the world.

Sometimes the characters know clearly where they're headed. Other times they might only be following vague rumors. The paths they follow might be well known or something they discover as they go.

Travel adventures might be run as hex crawls, pointcrawls, or linear paths of connected locations. They could be a quick journey during a single game or run over several sessions.

Resources for Travel

Your chosen RPG might include material for running travel scenes. Two books offer excellent guidance and systems for running travel adventures for 5e games: Uncharted Journeys by Cubicle 7 and Trials and Treasure for Level Up Advanced 5e by EN World publishing. Uncharted Journeys offers a solid system for travel and a huge range of potential encounters. Trials and Treasure includes excellent random encounter tables, character roles, weather options for various climates, and more. If you choose only one book, start with Trials and Treasure.

Preparing Travel Adventures

Preparing for an overland exploration or travel adventure might include

• defining the starting point, the destination, the distance, and the path.
• understanding how you plan on running the journey – point crawls, hex crawls, a linear series of encounters, or a single encounter during the journey.
• defining potential paths.
• preparing a list of roles and activities the characters engage in during travel.
• preparing a random weather table.
• writing down potential encounter locations along the journey for each node in the pointcrawl or within one or more of the hexes along the journey.
• preparing a list of encounters – random, fixed, or a mix of both.
• writing down secrets and clues, NPCs, or treasure the characters might discover along the journey.

Running Travel Adventures

Like dungeon crawls, travel adventures can follow a particular model of gameplay. This procedure includes

• clarifying the starting point and destination for the journey.
• asking each player to select a role for the journey – scout, pathfinder, quartermaster, etc. Characters might instead choose to aid someone else.
• roll on a weather table each day to determine what weather the characters deal with that day.
• expend daily resources such as food and water.
• have the characters roll ability checks based on their role. A scout may notice creatures before the creatures notice the characters. A pathfinder may stay on course or get lost. A quartermaster may give the characters temporary hit points or lose resources.
• roll for monuments or other notable features as they travel or use one of your predetermined locations.
• roll for random encounters. Even if they don't encounter something, you might roll to see what came by recently or what might be coming. You might roll twice and mix two encounters together.
• move on to the next day.

Pitfalls for Travel Adventures

Here are some common pitfalls for travel adventures:

• Too much time is spent on travel when the real story is happening at the destination.
• Too many downward beats or hard encounters – it feels like a slog.
• Travel feels like a needless chore or time-wasting filler.
• Travel doesn't offer meaningful choices or actions.

Avoiding Travel Pitfalls

Here are some ways to keep travel on track.

• Drop in relevant secrets and clues the characters discover during their journey to tell them about the world, its inhabitants, and elements of the larger story.
• Include interesting monuments to solidify specific locations and encounters and act as catalysts for secrets and clues.
• Include roleplay and exploration scenes, not just combat encounters.
• Run some easy encounters the characters can resolve many different ways.
• Let characters get the drop on monsters and give them the choice to fight them or not.
• If travel isn't interesting or challenging, shorten it or skip it completely and get to the more important scenes the players care about.

A Bridge Between Other Adventures

Travel adventures are often a bridge between one part of the story and the next part. With careful planning and execution, travel can offer stories just as interesting as other types of adventures.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted YouTube videos with Thoughts on Obsidian for TTRPG Prep and the Lazy DM's Companion Sale.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Last Week's Sly Flourish RPG Newsletter
• Planestrider
• Surviving Strangehollow
• Lazy DM's Companion On Sale
• NASA Releases a 5e Adventure
• Chaosium RPG Design Contest
• Taking Notes During and After the Game

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Running City of Arches as an Open Table Game
• Villainous Plans and the Three of Five Keys Model
• Introducing New Players to RPGs
• Secrets and Lore as Character Knowledge
• Secrets and Clues in Dark Sun

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Challenge high-level characters by attacking several vectors: AC, various saves, area attacks, advantageous terrain, flippable environmental effects, and so on.
• Benchmark encounters with the Lazy Encounter Benchmark: A battle may be deadly if the sum total of monster CRs is 1/4 the total of character levels; or half of character levels if they're 5th level or above.
• Tweak the Lazy Encounter Benchmark based on what you know of the characters. Really powerful? Pretend there is one additional character of the party's level.
• Warn players when they're going to enter a long fight. Change the fight midway and keep up the story to make long battles interesting.
• Include switchable terrain that works against the characters at first and for them later on. For example, an unholy effigy gives evil creatures advantage but gives characters advantage when turned into a holy effigy.
• Level characters after significant accomplishments in the story.
• Damage is the biggest threat a monster offers that doesn't take agency away from the characters. Want a bigger threat? Do more damage.

Related Articles

• Running Dungeon Crawls
• Running Travel Scenes in 5e
• Running Defense Adventures

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

• how we prepare them.
• how we run them.
• what pitfalls we might run into.
• how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Investigations and Mysteries

In investigation and mysteries, one or more previous events have occurred which have led to the current situation. The characters spend their time in the adventure learning what happened and potentially changing the course of future events based on what they find. During investigations, the characters talk to people, explore locations, uncover clues, and face those foes who seek to thwart them.

Mysteries are difficult to run because, unlike narrative fiction, we don't know where the characters are going to go, what they're going to investigate, or what clues they might pick up. They could identify the key villain in the first scene or pursue tangents away from the clues you expect them to follow. Both of these situations need to be accounted for in your prep and play.

Preparing Investigations and Mysteries

These steps can help you prepare to run an investigation or mystery:

• Develop the starting situation. What happened? Who did what? What is the timeline of previous events?
• Develop your strong start. How and when do the characters get involved in the situation? What hooks them into the mystery?
• Develop a list of NPCs the characters can talk to. Who are they? What was their involvement in the situation? What do they want? What are their goals? Avoid introducing the main villain too early if you're trying to keep them a secret.
• Develop locations the characters can investigate. Where can they go? How can they uncover the clues they eventually need? What happened at these locations?
• Develop a list of secrets and clues. Keep them abstract from their place of discovery so you can drop in these clues when it makes sense based on the investigation undertaken by the characters. In investigations and mysteries, you may need more than ten.
• Write down monsters and treasure for the more traditional adventure elements.

Running an Investigation or Mystery

The following list provides a structure around running investigations and mysteries:

• Use your strong start and sink in the hook so the characters, and their players, want to dig in and figure out what's going on.
• Introduce NPCs helpful to the characters who can give them a push in the right direction.
• As the characters investigate, drop in clues that lead the characters to other locations, meeting other NPCs, and discovering more clues and so on.
• Throughout the adventure, expose clues until the players can piece together the whole scenario.
• Add henchmen or other hostiles to add some combat as desired.
• When the time is right, drop in your villain and have a big confrontation.

Common Pitfalls for Investigations and Mysteries

Investigation and mysteries may sometimes include the following pitfalls. During prep and play, keep these pitfalls in mind so you can avoid them and run a fun evolving game.

• There's only one way to find the right clues and the characters don't follow it.
• The characters discover the villain or source of the mystery too early.
• The characters never discover the villain or figure out the mystery.
• The GM leads the players on too much – making it clear the players didn't figure it out but had the results spoon-fed to them.
• The pacing gets tiresome. Players who want to crack some skulls end up bored.
• The mystery is too complex. Players can't figure out all the important details.

Avoiding Pitfalls

Consider the following ways to avoid the pitfalls listed above.

• Keep the clues needed to uncover the mystery abstract from their location of discovery. Drop in clues along the path the characters take during the investigation.
• Don't introduce the villain too early. Keep them a blank spot in the story until it's time for their revelation.
• Provide the right amount of information for the players to be able to piece together the puzzle themselves. Don't spell it out for them.
• Clarify that the characters are the ones discovering information and piecing it together – not you the GM.
• Have multiple ways to uncover the truth. Don't let discovery of the mystery hinge on a single element the characters might miss.
• Include combat and skirmishes to keep combat-focused players interested.
• Keep in mind that players only grasp about half of what you reveal. Keep mysteries simple enough that players can actually piece them together.

Build Situations, Not Mystery Novels

A key to running a good investigation and mystery is not to assume you know how the players will discover the truth. Build and set up the situation during prep and let the characters follow their own path to their ultimate discovery.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

The Lazy DM's Companion is currently on sale for 50% off the PDF and 20% off the PDF and softcover version! If you don't have this book, now is a fantastic time to pick it up! The Lazy DM's Companion includes tools, tables, and tips for running awesome fantasy D20 games. Grab it today!

Last Week's Lazy RPG Newsletter

I had a cold last week and didn't record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast). Instead, I wrote a text-version of the talk show in the Lazy RPG Newsletter for 3 March 2024 with news, tips, and Patreon questions and answers.

I did post a YouTube video on Using Paper Character Sheets.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Name villains and sentient opponents. Make each one unique.
• Have players identify monsters with interesting physical characteristics.
• Add an interesting usable environmental object or effect into significant combat encounters.
• Tie clues, treasure, and MacGuffins to the backgrounds, knowledge, and history of the characters.
• Reveal the world through the eyes of the characters.
• Ask each character what they think about from their past and their current larger goals during short or long rests.
• Show the characters the results of their actions in the world.

Related Articles

• Managing Mysteries and Plot Twists
• Running Dungeon Crawls
• Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

• how we prepare them.
• how we run them.
• what pitfalls we might run into.
• how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

• Dungeon Crawls
• Infiltrations and Heists
• Investigations and Mysteries
• Overland Exploration and Travel
• Missions and Quest Chains
• Defense
• Roleplay and Intrigue
• Combat
• Mashups or the Undefined

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Infiltration Adventures

In infiltration adventures, the characters often have significant information about their goal, the location in which they must accomplish the goal, and knowledge of the inhabitants of the location. Heists are a common form of infiltration adventure but many infiltrations involve doing something other than stealing something.

Infiltration adventures differ from dungeon crawls because the characters often know more about the location they're infiltrating and spend more time planning their approach. Goals for infiltration adventures can vary, even if how we prepare and run them remains mostly the same. These goals include:

• Stealing something
• Kidnapping someone
• Rescuing someone
• Hunting down a bad guy
• Performing a magic ritual
• Disrupting a magic ritual
• Uncovering war plans
• Recovering blackmail evidence
• Uncovering evidence of a plot
• Planting evidence

Preparing Infiltration Adventures

Preparing infiltration adventures focuses on the following activities:

• Clarifying the goal and ensuring it's something important enough that the characters are willing to risk their lives for it.
• Choosing a map. Unlike dungeon crawls, there's a good chance we'll give a copy of this map to the players.
• Filling in the location with details. I like printing out a Dyson map and writing a couple of words per room or area right on the page.
• Listing out inhabitants and understanding their behaviors. What are they doing when the characters aren't there? Unlike dungeon crawls, inhabitants of a location in an infiltration adventure are often more mobile.
• Listing potential complications. What unknown events might shake things up? Make a list of a handful to either choose from or roll on during the infiltration.
• Ensuring there are multiple paths to achieve the goal. Do they sneak in an upper window? Pretend to be servants? Delve in through the sewers below?

With that material in hand, we're ready to run our infiltration adventure.

Running Infiltration Adventures

Infiltration adventures often break down into the following phases:

• Planning. Unlike other adventures, players spend a lot of time planning their infiltration.
• Choosing roles. What jobs are each of the characters taking on the infiltration? Is someone acting as the "face" character? Is someone the muscle? Is someone sneaking around and spying on things from a higher floor?
• Execution. This is where the real adventure begins. The characters start doing the things they planned.
• Flashbacks. A concept taken from Blades in the Dark gives players an opportunity to flash back earlier in the story to set something up or acquire something they need. Inspiration or luck may be a good mechanic to allow for adjustments or additions to the party's plan.
• Complications. Things never go according to plan. What changes? What complications do you throw in from your list of potential complications? Or do you roll it? Complications don't always have to go against the characters.
• The climax. What happens when the characters achieve their goal? What happens if they fail or partially succeed?
• The escape. How do the characters get out afterwards?

Infiltration Adventure Pitfalls

Infiltration adventures might go wrong for the following reasons:

• Players spend too long planning.
• The plans go out the window too early.
• The characters aggro the entire location, making the job impossible to complete.
• A single bad check affects too much of the outcome.
• Too many complications disrupt the whole plan.
• The changing situation makes it too hard to adjudicate.

Pitfall Mitigation

What can we do to help ensure these pitfalls don't crud up our fun session?

• Arbitrate conversations and get the players to a consensus so the game can move forward. Ensure the players you're not pushing them down one path or leading them to utter destruction.
• Keep a balance on consistency and chaos. Some things should go to plan, some things should go haywire. Don't disrupt or destroy the whole plan too early.
• Use Blades-style "clocks" to escalate tension based on failed checks rather than everything going bad all at once.
• Give leeway in choosing when adversaries become aware of the characters. It should take multiple failed attempts before the characters are discovered and it shouldn't chain out to every adversary in the whole location.

A Framework for Countless Adventures

The infiltration style adventure is a popular and flexible model we can use for many different adventures. Change the goal, the location, and the situation and you have something fresh every time yet still have a consistent framework around which to build your adventure.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on High Value Prep and The Marrow Fiend – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 23 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Rascal.News for TTRPG News
• Ginny Di on D&D with ADHD
• Shadow of the Weird Wizard Released
• The Benefits of Character Factions
• The Many Right Answers of TTRPGs

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• WOTC and Table-Usable Maps
• Selling Magic Items -- Info and Inventories
• Tying Backgrounds to Curse of Strahd
• How do I Feel about AI in TTRPGs?

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Write your own map key on a printed map.
• For dungeons, focus on one or two word descriptions for each chamber. Save longer descriptions for complicated set-piece chambers.
• Build your own binder with your favorite reference pages in it.
• Stuck for an idea? Write down ten and pick the best one.
• Need inspiration? Take a walk and let your mind wander.
• Find a suite of tools for your prep that you love and you'll be drawn to use it.
• Put dialog-friendly NPCs in the deepest dungeons – talking statues, paintings, magic items, or ghosts. Everyone wants a friend!

Related Articles

• Running Dungeon Crawls
• Running Defense Adventures
• Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

A nasty cold knocked me on my ass so instead of a YouTube and Podcast recording of the Lazy RPG Talk Show, I'm going to deliver the same info to you in beloved HTML!

New Maps Features on D&D Beyond

Wizards of the Coast released a video of new D&D Beyond Maps features. They've updated a lot since the last time I played around with it – token naming and re-naming, a spectator view, a drawing tool, and a pointer. I spent some time on Twitch mucking around with the new features and I like it a lot. WOTC is definitely taking a lighter-weight Owlbear Rodeo approach which I appreciate. I'd love to see them let people upload custom tokens and add text-based notes to the map. It's far more functional now than it was a couple of months ago.

For those running WOTC adventures with WOTC character options, it's a great tool.

It's interesting that WOTC / Hasbro chose to hedge their bets by investing in both a lightweight 2d map-based VTT and a heavy-weight expensive 3d VTT. I'll bet the former is more popular than the latter.

Marilith Preview for the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault

Kobold Press released a preview of the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault Marilith and I think it looks awesome. It hits hard, has a simple stat block, and still has interesting crunchy features befitting this high-power demon. I'm eager to see the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault. It's going to be wild to have four different core monster books by this time next year: the 2014 D&D Monster Manual, the 2024 D&D Monster Manual, the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault, and the Level Up Advanced 5e Monstrous Menagerie. We have lots of core monsters to choose from and no limitation on which monsters we decide to use at our tables.

Bob World Builder on GM Regrets

Bob World Builder has an awesome YouTube Video on GM Regrets. I don't think it's useful to fixate on our regrets but we can learn a lot by listening to the regrets of others. I don't have many GM regrets. I'm happy with how things turned out in my TTRPG life. I do regret not playing OD&D in the early 80s with my oldest friend Scott – a friend I've had for almost half a century. I talked to him yesterday about it and we both had a laugh. We both barely remember the time anyways.

Dread Laironomicon

Raging Swan released the Dread Laironomicon, a tome standing side-by-side with the Dread Thingonomicon to fill in the details of one hundred lairs from the Cultists' Hidden Fane to a Roper's Cave. Each lair includes seven lists of ten details to fill in such lairs. This book is an excellent source of inspiration for filling in the details of a location during prep – making such places come alive. If you're a fan of the excellent works of Raging Swan Press, you will not be disappointed. My only complaint is a lack of higher-focus lists of chambers in such lairs but the major and minor features lists largely fill in that need. I received a review copy of the Dread Laironomicon for this spotlight.

Dune on Humble Bundle

Humble Bundle currently offers a 17 book digital package for Modiphius's Dune RPG for $18. Such bundles are a great way to dive into an RPG for a low cost. I don't intend to run it but after awaiting Dune part 2 and re-reading the original Dune books, it's great fun to delve into the artwork and read the lore behind the RPG. If you love Dune and want a taste of the RPG, this is a great deal.

Being Good Stewards of the Hobby

Based on an excellent conversation with Graham Ward on Mastering Dungeons, I was inspired to consider what we can do to be good stewards of the TTRPG hobby. I asked folks across several platforms and got many excellent responses which I'll put together into a longer article. For a quick preview, here are some things I think we can all do to be great stewards of the TTRPG hobby:

• Embrace the diversity of our hobby, both in the games we play and the people playing them.
• Learn from everyone, whether they are new to the hobby or a grizzled veteran.
• Welcome new players. Teach them how to play and learn from their experiences.
• Focus on the fun we can have at the table with our friends.
• Support peoples' love for their chosen systems, even if those systems aren't for you.
• Avoid gatekeeping with jargon, how one came to the hobby, the games one chooses to play, or how long one has played games.
• Share our love of the hobby openly.

Simple Online Combat Tracking with a Text Editor

I've been playing a mix of online and in-person games recently and return to the simple text editor as a great way to track combat when playing online. Using Notepad or whatever text editor you prefer you can track initiative, positioning in theater of the mind combat, damage done to creatures, and more.

Here's a quick example of the text I had for a battle I ran last night:

    23 Chartreuse
    12 Crimson Lotus 71 > Chartreuse 
    12 Blackguard Wight 10 > Voxi
    12 Blackguard Wight 49 > Helm
    7 Voxi
    7 Zaffre In the Back
    6 Helm 
    5 Radon
    3 Eldrox

The above has the characters and creatures in initiative order. The left-hand numbers are their initiative roll. The right-hand numbers are the damage done to the creature. The angle brackets indicate that a monster is adjacent to a particular character. You can type status effects, multiple adjacent characters, or any other notes next to a creature's name to keep track.

Using text editors for combat tracking is fast, easy, cheap, and independent of RPG system or digital tools. I love it.

Page 12 of the Lazy DM's Companion has more tricks for tracking theater of the mind combat in a text editor that differs from the above but both can give you ideas how to easily track combat in a text editor.

Patreon Questions

Every month, Patrons of Sly Flourish can ask any question in a special monthly Q&A. I answer every RPG-related question each Friday morning. Here are some highlights for this week. Please note these questions have been edited for length.

Announcing a Villain's Plans and Progress

From Jason. I was curious how you balance multiple story arcs throughout a campaign. The villain in our campaign, who is progressing his own plans, is coming to a point where some of those plans will come to fruition. I'm struggling with "announcing" those plans when the PC's are in the middle of another story arc. I'm worried that may seem railroad-like if I throw a hook out there that they will feel inclined to investigate and move off of what they are currently on. My goal with the villain's plans was to keep him going in the background, and thus in the PC's consciousness, instead of having everything happen at the very end.

Sometimes we get stuck between revealing interesting information and such information ending up as an adventure hook. It's important to clarify to the players that not all information is actionable. Such information isn't something they can or should feel pressure to do something about right now.

Secrets and clues can help characters learn about the escalation of villainous quests without immediately changing their current direction to chase them down. If characters choose to chase down such a situation, and have the opportunity to do so, perhaps that's the way the story should go. Otherwise, make it clear to players when they receive information about an escalating villainous quest that they can't necessarily do anything about it right now. Tell, don't show.

Published Adventures Don't Require Less Work

From William J. What do you think of the amount of work published adventures expect the DM to do? I'm normally a homebrew campaign kind of guy, but recently picked up a Wotc published adventure (shattered obelisk). The idea being that I was paying a professional writer to do most of the "prep" for me so with very little notice, I could almost just pick the book up and play. However I have been left rather disappointed. Am I being unrealistic with my "pay to prep less" expectation?

It's a misconception that published adventures require less work. That's certainly not the case and, sometimes, they take more work than a homebrewed adventure because you have to internalize a published adventure in a way a homebrew adventure is already internalized. Almost always, they require different kind of work – more of a focus on reading, absorption, and modification instead of thinking things up from scratch.

We shouldn't buy published adventures expecting them to be easier to run. Instead, we should buy them for the depth and quality of material we can't create ourselves. Stories, backgrounds, artwork, maps – these are components of good adventures we simply can't create at the same quality of a published adventure.

I think it actually works better to build homebrew adventures in published settings for the best of both worlds. A published setting gives you a great depth of lore and quality of materials along with the flexibility of building the adventure you want in that world.

Letting Non-Magic Users Use Relics

From Robert. Any house rules for letting non magic users use magic items/relics? If one of my non spell casting PCs picks up a relic, I’d like them to have a solid chance of it actually working (at least the same chance a magic user would have) and the existing rules for say, scrolls, don’t really cut it.

I don't expect a single-use magical relic to be limited to magic users. Relics should be identifiable and usable by anyone who picks them up. That's what makes them fun. Let players know what a relic does and let any character use them.

Adding CR to Published Adventures

From Ryan. I find for me one of the minor speed bumps that prevent me from improvising a monster is if I’m adapting a published module. If it says “4 skeletons”, I have to look up the skeleton stat block to see what the CR is to figure out what I’d replace it with or what the FoF baseline is that I’d swap in for an easier time stat line to run with just some flavour or a single monster power. I think for me the missing piece would be if an adventure said “4 skeletons (CR 1/4)”. Thoughts? Maybe when I first read an adventure I should just mark up all the CRs.

That's a great idea and something I'll consider for future adventures of my own. You can use the "monster stats by CR table" in Forge of Foes to benchmark any monster in any adventure against the "example 5e monsters". The intention of that column is to help you identify a monster's CR by comparing it to those examples. Is it less or more powerful than an elemental? What about a frost giant? Understanding what sorts of monsters have which CRs is a great way to use that table to build monsters you need as you use them.

Introducing Cursed Magic Items Without Removing Player Agency

From Garry. One of the players has just picked up a magic item which while useful, is cursed. If he attunes to it, it will slowly turn him evil and lure him towards the BBEG and his cult of monstrous followers. While this is good, the original text explicitly explains that the previous user (high level cleric) went mad and killed all his followers with everyone turning to wraiths. That player tends to dominate the direction play by force of personality from time to time, but he is usually very fair minded. I'm reluctant to have the whole curse thing in case he runs wild with it to the detriment of the game. Should I just change the properties of the item? Any advice?

Yeah, change the properties. My absolute favorite "cursed" magic items are intelligent items that continually make offers to the characters in exchange for information or power. The best cursed items are those the players know are cursed and still use them anyway.

You're right to be concerned about taking agency away from the player. Don't do it. Instead, let them know the sword is cursed and have it steer them with continual offers, dancing that dangerous line. It's great fun. A smart magic weapon knows how to manipulate its user and the whole thing is much more fun when everyone is in on it. Of course, "pause for a minute" to make sure everyone's still having a good time.

Introducing Rivals Who Aren't Instantly Killed

From R. Scott W. I want to introduce a rival team into the mix since my PCs are so competitive. How do I keep the party from killing off the rivals so that they can have a long term impact on the game?

Let the characters, and the players, know about these rivals without having them get within sword-swinging distance. If you put the rivals and the characters in the same room together, swords and spells may fly. Instead, what if the characters hear about and see the results of these rivals without getting close to them. Maybe they meet them in a bar sometime if you think it isn't going to end up in bloodshed. Eventually things might come to blows but even more fun is when those rivals end up becoming allies instead.

Another Great Week for TTRPGs!

Thank you for digging into this week's tabletop RPG news! Sorry I couldn't do it on a video but hopefully this newsletter gave you the taste you desire. See you next week and keep on rolling those 20s!

Related Articles

• The Case For Published Adventures
• 2016 D&D 5th Edition Dungeon Master Questionnaire
• Run Homebrew Adventures in a Published Setting

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »