by W. Eric Martin

Tales of Myth & Legend is a paragraph book game set in the time of ancient Greece. Players each control a fledgling hero or heroine that has their sights set on power and glory. The players compete not only with each other, but also against the Alexander the Great himself.

In each round of the game, players simultaneously play a movement card that determines how far they will travel. Based on the results, the turn order will be adjusted, with players traveling farther distances going last, and those traveling shorter going first. In turn order, each player visits a city or location and has an encounter there, choosing a type — e.g., political, religion, or strength — based on the types available. The encounter is read aloud to the player, then they have to choose how to proceed.

Tales of Myth & Legend features many surprises and hidden components that are unlocked only based on certain events! With thousands of possible stories and encounters, this is a game you'll be playing for years to come!

In Tales of the Arthurian Knights, you are a hero or heroine in a story of adventure and awe! You and your fellows will travel the land at the behest of the renowned King Arthur. Through a series of quests, you will make impactful choices that will steer the course of your journey. Secure your place in history by achieving glorious feats, lest your efforts be doomed to obscurity. Gather your band of Knights around the table to enjoy your own epic tale as it unfolds!

Building on the mechanisms from the classic storytelling game Tales of the Arabian Nights, you now find yourself in the age of chivalry alongside Lancelot, Merlin, and many other characters from Arthurian lore. Quests will lead to glorious battles, daring rescues, and the discovery of such marvels as the Holy Grail.

As you navigate through this paragraph-driven experience, an updated victory point system will track your success. Tales of the Arthurian Knights eliminates matrixes and charts in favor of a streamlined method of dictating the paragraphs that will shape your adventure. After making your choices, a single roll plus skill bonuses will determine success or failure.

Choose your actions carefully, and you will be rewarded with skills, renown, and nobility. Choose poorly, and be scorned, cursed, or made a pariah. Bring the age of King Arthur to life in this incredibly replayable board game with a plethora of tales that are sure to challenge, amuse, surprise, and entertain!

by Wolfgang Kramer

by W. Eric Martin

White, white, nothing but white. You scan the snowy expanse of the Arctic, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inhabitants that live there. The more animals of a type that you see together, the better — yet you also want to diversify your sightings, while moving your totem animal toward the pack ice as far as possible.

In Arctic, you move across the landscape and spot animals, creating a pile of animal cards in front of you. The card on top of your personal pile is your "visible" animal card. Each animal card contains four pieces of information:

— A placement value
— The main animal depicted on the card
— A companion animal
— A draw value

At the start of your turn, place as many cards from your hand into your personal pile as the placement value of your visible animal card. (On your first turn, place one animal from your starting hand of three cards.) For each card you can't place, draw a card facedown from the deck and place it in a personal penalty pile. Next, using your new visible animal card, move the token of the main animal forward one space on the landscape and the companion animal backward one space or vice versa. Finally, draw as many animal cards from the "river" of six animal cards as the draw value of your visible animal card. (If you now have more than seven cards in hand, discard into your penalty pile until you have seven.)

Each time you place an animal on your pile, take the matching animal power card from the center of play or whoever currently has it. You can use the listed power each turn for as long as you hold this card, such as moving an animal token an additional space, drawing from your penalty pile, or refilling the river after each card you draw.

When the deck runs out, you finish the round, then place cards one more time, then score points. For each type of animal, you score points based on the largest set of consecutive cards of this type you have in your pile. You score a bonus based on the number of sets you've completed. Reveal the animal token you received at the start of the game, and score based on how far it advanced across the landscape. Lose 1 point for each card in your penalty pile. Whoever has the highest score wins.

Each player gets a a dry-erase pen and a board that has many random lines on it. At the start of each round, each player gets a card with a word on it and has to draw it on their board — but by drawing only on the lines. In effect, they have to find the image in the lines.

When everyone is done, as many cards as there are players are shuffled in with the cards originally dealt. These cards are spread openly on the table, then each player in turn picks a card with a word they think nobody drew on their board. Once everyone has had a turn, only the words that were originally dealt should remain on the table, so any face-up card that was not drawn by anyone is a mistake. After four rounds, the group wins if they have made fewer mistakes than there are players.

Sample round (image: Hilko Drude)
The cards feature words of two difficulty levels, and the group decides together which level to play.

by W. Eric Martin

A witch, a skeleton, a vampire, and a werewolf have taken a trip to the Moon, and now they want to make it their own.

Monsters on the Moon is a card-placement game in which every creature wants to expand their territory, collect moon crystals, and build walls, ideally spreading out over the surface in their quest for points.

You were part of a crew working on a moon base, but the other crew members were involved in a mysterious accident during an exploration mission, leaving you alone on the base. The mother ship is in a satellite orbit of the moon. You're completely isolated, alone — when a warning sound rings throughout the base: "There is not much oxygen left. The cause is unknown. Get out of the moon base quickly. To repeat, there's not much oxygen left."

Since the emergency power supply has been activated, it seems that most of the base functions are down due to electrical problems, which means soon the base won't be able to supply you oxygen, let alone communicate an SOS to whoever might be monitoring you.

There is not much time left for activities. Can you restore the rocket in time and return to the mother ship? The challenge to Escape from the Moon begins, with you constructing a deck and managing a hand of possible actions to get yourself to safety, with success or failure depending on the decisions you make and the difficulty of your chosen scenario.

In From the Moon, players are representatives of factions trying to complete missions departing from our Moon in order to help humankind survive elsewhere in the galaxy. Indeed, the fate of the Earth is sealed, and time is running out!

The plan is to launch three survival missions before all life on Earth ends. To do that, each faction will contribute by building parts of the ships and build their own lunar base to store the necessary resources.

In the end, which faction will be most suited to lead the future of our race out there, far away in space?

by W. Eric Martin

by Silvano Sorrentino

by W. Eric Martin

A diverse team of outlaws have assembled for the gold heist of the century. Leveraging your unique skills and abilities, send your gang out into the territories to complete side objectives to help your efforts and fight off the Sheriff and Deputy as you try to steal gold from the train. You must act quickly, though! When the train reaches its final destination, your time to steal the gold is over, and you'll fail your mission.

Iron horse, not Iron Horse (Image by BullDawg2021 on Wikipedia — own work, CC BY 4.0)
Iron Horse features six unique characters with their own special abilities and unlockable upgrades.

by Fabrice Puleo

by W. Eric Martin

SURVIVE
THE
PARADOX

THE BREACH is a science fiction roleplaying game by Matteo Sciutteri, and runs on the Breathless system by Fari RPGs.

In 1943, the Ministry of Culture and Science of The Enlightened Confederacy initiated an experiment to test Möbius-Higgs' theory of Space-Time Flows. However, something went terribly wrong: an explosion occurred in one of the laboratory's particle accelerators, creating a portal between our world and countless other dimensions known as the Breach.

THE BREACH is an intense sci-fi and horror game, set in a dystopian retro-future, that unfolds at a relentless pace.

Drawing inspiration from the iconic science fiction novels of the 1970s, this game will transport you through time and space, revealing a multitude of parallel worlds referred to as Paradoxes. As a Watcher, your role is to gather data and information, delving into these infinite universes in search of hidden secrets, all while attempting to survive and make it back to the Bastion in one piece... if that's even possible.

The physical book will be soon available and will include the PDF version.

Matteo Sciutteri (He / Him) is a veteran game designer in the video game industry. Throughout his career, he has published over 40 games on all platforms (PC, console, and mobile) and collaborated with major Italian companies. His experience includes working as a design consultant, teacher, and trainer for over ten years. In recent years, he has returned to his great passion for tabletop role-playing games, starting to write and publish games as an indie developer and collaborating with publishers as a translator, reviewer, graphic designer, and design consultant. His latest works are Bloodstone and The Breach.

Follow Matteo on Twitter for the most up to date information and his adventures ahead!

The Folk from Harrowthorpe is a pulp horror mystery adventure for Heroes & Hardships RPG, set in the town of Harrowthorpe where all is not as it seems. It's a perfect Halloween one-shot H&H game! During the adventure, the characters stop at the town for a night, and soon become embroiled in a curious tale of terrifying twists and turns during which they uncover a malicious plot of a strange individual who seeks to take control of the town.

If the characters are smart (or lucky) enough, they'll manage to discover the culprit of the construct coup before it takes place. If not, they'll have to face off against a small army of animated mannequins that try to overthrow the town guard and mayor on behalf of their treacherous creator.

The Folk from Harrowthorpe was written by JVC Parry. It is a PL 1 adventure, featuring amazing artwork from Jagoba Lekuona Huegun, cartography from Saga Mackenzie, and graphic design by Julia King. The adventure is 35 pages long, filled with custom artwork and maps, plus a uniquely petrifying mystery adventure. The Folk of Harrowthorpe includes 6 new adversaries for the Heroes & Hardships RPG.

The adventure is written in a generic fantasy setting, meaning it can be used in any campaign world, and dropped right into an ongoing narrative with ease. However, it's also a self-contained story, so would be perfect as a short campaign, covering three to five sessions of play. It requires the Heroes & Hardships RPG to run. Any additional content created for the adventure can be found in the appendixes to make running the game even easier.

Dragons exist in all of the realms and the fae realms are no exception. How the Fairy Dragons begat the Draga-Sídh remains a mystery, but one thing is clear. The Draga-Sídh and the Fairy Dragons share a strong connection, and often where you find one, you’ll find the other.

This packet has been designed specifically for the Black Flag Roleplaying system (Tales of the Valiant by Kobold Press) but is backwards compatible with Fifth Edition using the same extremely simple conversion rules.

The Draga-Sidh packet for the Black Flag Role-playing System includes:
• The Draga-Sidh Lineage, Fairy Dragonborn that are the smallfolk of the Dragonborn lineages.
• Draga-Sidh themed Heritages
• Two Talents one magical and one technical inspired by fairytales.
• 3 General Draga-Sidh NPC statblocks, The Luck Devourer which does exactly what it sounds like, and the Pseudo-Fairy Dragon, nasty little dragons that swarm and drain your life essence.

Get ready for the ultimate modern-day map pack. Created by artist Matt Francella, we've packaged 5 amazing maps for your use in print or on VTT. In this map pack you get:

Bank

Bio-Labs

Forest Clearing

Museum

Riverwalk Plaza

All the Monsters You Need for a Valiant Adventure!

The Monster Vault contains over 400 monsters for the Tales of the Valiant roleplaying game and all the guidance you need as a Game Master to run encounters with those monsters!

In this book, you’ll find:

• Classic fantasy monsters, such as ogres, dragons, water elementals, and giants.
• New monsters suitable for any fantasy or science fantasy world, such as ambush hags, virtuoso liches,
  fey guardians, mechadrons, and robots.
• New terrors from the ever-corrupting Void, such as voidlings, star crows, crimson jellies, and the mighty void dragon.

The Monster Vault also contains all the information a Game Master needs to create encounters with monsters, including monster roles and tactics, and it includes optional rules for Game Master Doom points and for characters wanting to harvest monsters for unique crafting and spell components.

Welcome to this expansive tome, a compendium designed to stir the embers of your imagination and kindle a firestorm of creativity within your Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. This book is not a stringent codex of rules but a tapestry of potential, a mosaic of backgrounds each waiting to imbue your characters with depth, history, and a touch of the extraordinary.

Within these pages, you will find 700 meticulously crafted backgrounds, each a springboard for your own fantastical narratives. These backgrounds are conceived to inspire, to serve as the foundation upon which you can build and shape the tales of your adventurers. They are the seeds from which the mighty oaks of your stories will grow.

As you delve deeper, you will discover a treasure trove at the end of this volume: a compilation of 100 ideals, 100 bonds, and 100 flaws. These elements are the spices in your storytelling stew, ingredients that can be mixed and matched, added or substituted, to refine the flavor of your character's background to your precise taste.

We encourage you, the weaver of tales, to wield these elements with freedom and flair. Feel empowered to modify, adapt, or completely reinvent any aspect of these backgrounds to align with your vision of your character. This book is your tool, your resource, and your muse—let it guide you, but never constrain you.

Embark on this journey with an open heart and an eager spirit. Let the stories you craft today become the legends that will echo in the halls of your imagination for years to come.

Welcome to a world of endless possibilities. Welcome to your adventure.

Join the Ranks of the Valiant!

Every adventure needs a beginning. Start your own tale in an infinite universe of high fantasy adventure with the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide! Within these pages, a trove of knowledge lies ready, waiting for the valiant to claim it!

• Make your own unique and legendary hero with the new Lineage and Heritage system.
• Select Talents and Backgrounds that make your hero truly stand apart.
• Master improved spellcasting and martial abilities to ensure every hero stands tall in a fight!
• Explore new downtime, exploration and social encounter rules to expand your game beyond the dungeon.
• Learn a streamlined, 5E-compatible ruleset with unique mechanics to increase both risk and reward.

Tales of the Valiant is a Black Flag Roleplaying Game from Kobold Press. Gather your friends and journey together across a labyrinth of worlds in search of adventure!

In the shadow of the mighty walls of Troy, where legends were born and destinies woven, a murmuring discontent swept through the streets like wildfire. The air crackled with anticipation, thick with the scent of defiance and the rumble of distant thunder. For generations, the people of Troy had bowed before the whims of gods and the edicts of kings, their voices drowned in the clamour of power and prestige. But now, a tempest brewed on the horizon, sparked by a rebellion unlike any before. At the heart of this uprising stood a figure whose name echoed through the ages: Apollo's Bane. A charismatic leader whose fiery words kindled the flames of dissent, he rallied thousands to his cause, calling for the overthrow of gods and kings alike. The rebellion, born from the ashes of oppression, bore witness to a coalition of souls united by a singular purpose: to shatter the chains of divine tyranny and reclaim their destinies as free men and women. As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows upon the ancient city, the drums of war sounded in the distance, their thunderous beat a harbinger of the tumultuous days to come. In the heart of Troy, where gods and mortals clashed amidst the tumult of history, the stage was set for a struggle that would echo through eternity.

__________________________________________

HOW TO PLAY

In this Solo Adventure you assume the role of an adventurer in an ancient Fantasy setting. You will  require the Ancients Of Gaia Core Rulebook (CRB), and any associated Expansions you wish to use to assist you, along with a pen and paper or word-processing document, to play.

The story is set up with an Introduction, a handful of location details and a few pertinent Story Points. The rest is down to you and your imagination.

The Actions you take should depend on who and what you see, and how you wish to interact. Keep a record of your story and adapt it as per the result of each Action. As you progress you will see that you are behaving as your own Storyteller, creating the interactive world in which you are playing.

Use the Character Creation section of the CRB to create your Character and use the Storyteller section of the CRB to assist with generating NPCs.

Once you have familiarised yourself with the  following few pages, you are ready to begin.

THE BONUS DIE

When allowed to roll a Bonus Die, roll two of the same required Dice and choose the most beneficial result.

Put a new spin on a classic game!

The Tales of the Valiant RPG builds on all the great features of D&D and takes them to new levels of fun. The ToV Conversion Guide is the roadmap to get you there.

ToV and 5E elements work perfectly well side by side in the same game session, but you can use this guide alongside your copies of Player’s Guide and Monster Vault to crank the experience up a notch.

Transform and upgrade your favorite third-party and homebrew characters, monsters, spells, magic items, and more!

Ang, Jared and Senda chat about how Imposter Syndrome has affected their relationship with running and playing RPGs along with some ideas on how to navigate through those feelings.

Links:

Trans Rights Readathon

Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern

Origins Game Fair

Gamehole Con

U-Con Gaming Convention

Back in 2015, a shadow began to creep across the RPG industry. Shadow of the Demon Lord was a game designed by one of the designers that worked on multiple editions of D&D, Robert J. Schwalb. This was a fantasy RPG that was designed for people whose gaming habits had moved toward shorter game sessions and more succinct campaigns.

You started at 0 level, ended at 10th level, and you gained a level at the end of each adventure. The adventures were short and mostly designed to be run in one session. The game allowed for the kind of multiclassing combinations that a lot of gamers wanted but built it into the game in a manner like D&D 4e’s Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies. Unlike 4e, it allowed for more mixing and matching instead of connecting the Paragon Paths to a particular class.

While those were some of the design concepts, the setting broke from the assumptions of games like D&D, Pathfinder, or 13th Age. You were playing in a world in decay, one that was likely to fall into an apocalypse by the end of the campaign. The game was built on the idea of a campaign template to show how the signs of the apocalypse were happening. Characters accumulated mental and spiritual damage. There was literally no such thing as good on a cosmic level.

The game seized a lot of imaginations, but the nihilistic overtones made it harder for some gamers to engage fully with the setting, and the built in consequences of some game options made it more difficult to port the system to a less morally devastating setting. That brings us to 2023, and the Kickstarter for Shadow of the Weird Wizard, a game that builds on the mechanical structures of Shadow of the Demon Lord, but with a smidge less nihilistic dread.

Disclaimer

I did not receive a review copy of Shadow of the Weird Wizard, and my copy comes from backing the Kickstarter. I have not had the opportunity to play or run Shadow of the Weird Wizard, but I have both played and run Shadow of the Demon Lord.

 Shadow of the Weird Wizard

Writing, Design, and Art Direction: Robert J. Schwalb
Foreword: Zeb Cook
Editing and Development: Kim Mohan
Additional Editing: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Jay Spight
Aid and Assistance: Daniel K. Heinrich, Danielle Casteel
Proofreading: David Satnik, Jay Spight
Cover Design, Graphic Design, and Layout: Kara Hamilton
Cover Illustrator: Matteo Spirito
Interior Illustrations: Yeysson Bellaiza, Andrew Clark, Biagio d’alessandro, Çağdaş Demiralp, Nim Dewhirst—Kasgovs Maps, Rick Hershey, Jack Kaiser, Katerina Ladon, Britt Martin, Maria Rosaria Monticelli, Victor Moreno, Mitch Mueller, Matthew Myslinski, Eduardo Nunes, Mirco Paganessi, Claudio Pozas, Phill Simpson, Kim Van Deun, Sergio Villa-Isaza, Cardin Yanis
Character Sheet Design: Daniel K. Heinrich and Kara Hamilton

The Weird Wizard’s Grimoire

This first impression is based on the PDF of the Shadow of the Weird Wizard core rulebook. I should be receiving the hardcover, but it hasn’t been released as of this writing. The PDF is 274 pages, and is broken down to the following:

• Cover and Back Cover–2 pages
• Credits–1 page
• Table of Contents–2 pages
• Index–6 pages
• Character Sheet–2 pages
• Setting Map–1 page
• Secrets of the Weird Wizard Ad–1 page

If you have seen any of the Shadow of the Demon Lord releases, it shouldn’t be a surprise to know that this is filled with quality artwork. Compared to the Shadow of the Demon Lord art, this art is still often shadowy and ominous, but less grimy and dark. Where the headers and font on Shadow of the Demon Lord were blood red and a little intentionally rough, the headers and fonts in Shadow of the Weird Wizard are purple with a more pleasantly flowing font.

Shadow of the Weird Wizard is less of the full core book, and more like the Player’s Handbook of the game, explaining the general rules, character creation, and player facing options. The sections of this book include:

• Introduction
• Creating a Character
• Game Rules
• Equipment
• Magic
• Expert Paths
• Master Paths

Because this is more of a player’s handbook, there isn’t a lot of discussion of best practices for running a game, and the only monster or NPC stat blocks are ones associated with elements like summoning monsters or hiring retainers. Now that we’ve established the basics, let’s take a deeper dive into what’s in all of those chapters.

Setting and Concept

While the setting isn’t marching towards oblivion the same way the world of Urth is in Shadow of the Demon Lord, it isn’t a bright high fantasy setting. Players portray characters fleeing from the collapse of the Old Country, into the lands once controlled by the Weird Wizard, a despotic spellcaster that dominated the land, warping, twisting, and summoning strange things into his domain.

Characters don’t start off at 0 level as they do in Shadow of the Demon Lord, so the story starts with the player characters in a position of more competence, but the general feeling is less that the PCs are mythic heroes confronting mythic threats, and more like the PCs are competent mortal beings trying to protect humans completely unprepared for a land dominated by dangerous folklore. PCs feel like they are acquiring more and more powers to give them more tools to engage with the supernatural spaces of the world, but until their Master Paths, the PCs feel much more like outsiders trying imperfectly to interact with a mysterious world than fantasy heroes integrated with the supernatural.

On its face, the setting and its tropes almost feel like they play into older concepts of “taming” a wild land for human habitation, regardless of the previous inhabitants, but the game is more aware of the story it’s telling. The humans pushing into the former lands of the Weird Wizard don’t have the option of staying in the Old Country. The exodus of the Weird Wizard has forced the inhabitants of the lands to come to terms with how oppressive their magical despot was. Campaigns are as likely to involve finding detente with fey creatures near their settlement as they are to destroy magical mutated beasts. At this phase of the human migration, it feels much more like the theme is learning how to integrate into the lands rather than dominating them and building new kingdoms.

The perspective of Shadow of the Weird Wizard is distinctly human, although later supplements will provide rules for playing other ancestries. The tropes of fantasy RPGs are remixed with folklore, meaning that some things on their surface appear to be callbacks to older gaming, but with some wicked twists. For example, orcs are a violent threat, but unlike orcs in a setting like D&D, they are the product of a magical disease that makes them more like rage zombies than what most people associate with the species in modern fantasy. Some conflicts with fey creatures may be unavoidable because of absolute interpretations of promises made, but there is also the possibility of finding a way of turning absolute alien understanding of agreements to the mortal’s favor. In some ways, this setting feels like the kind of setting where creepy Muppets from 80s fantasy movies would be at home.

Setting information isn’t presented in a gazetteer fashion. The description of the setting exists in the introduction, with additional elements revealed in discussion of different Paths, magical traditions, and deities. This isn’t radically different than how Shadow of the Demon Lord presents its setting, where even later products that drilled down into particular regions were rarely more than 10 pages, with a few emblematic NPCs, but not a deep dive into exact distances, populations, or heavily detailed timelines.

Rules and Resolutions

The core resolution of the game is to roll a d20, plus or minus an ability bonus, compared against a target number. The target number usually defaults to 10, unless it’s a roll against a character, whose defenses may be determined by their level or degree of threat. Advantageous circumstances grant you a boon, while detrimental circumstances assess you a bane. Boons allow you to roll a d6 and add it to your roll, while Banes have you roll a d6 and subtract it from your result. Boons and Banes cancel one another out, and if you have multiple Boons or Banes, you subtract or add only the highest die to your roll. Critical successes are results that are a 20 or higher, and critical failures are rolls that are 0 or lower. When someone is afflicted with an ongoing effect, sometimes a character may make an ability check to resist or remove an effect, but often, characters make a Luck roll to see if an effect ends, which is a d20 roll that is successful on a 10 or higher.

There are a number of afflictions that can affect your character. These are adjudicated with a variety of options, often by assigning banes that come into play under certain circumstances, or persistently. Some assess a boon to those acting against you, and some cause you to suffer damage at different intervals until they are removed.

Ongoing afflictions that cause damage bring us to another distinction in the rules. Characters have a Health score, but when you get injured, you don’t subtract from your Health, you total your damage and compare it to Health to see if you can still function. One of the reasons for this distinction is that some effects directly damage Health. For example, if you’re on fire, you take damage, but if you are poisoned or diseased, you may subtract numbers from your Health. Characters are injured when their damage equals half their Health, and when a character’s damage is equal to their Health, they are incapacitated. When you’re Health is 0, you die, and many times when you are incapacitated, you remove Health every round until you pass a Luck check.

There are no skills in the game, but a character’s profession either grants them narrative position to do something other characters cannot, or a boon if anyone could attempt the action, but a professional would have a greater chance to accomplish the task. There are some simple but structured rules for discerning information and interacting with NPCs. For example, a character can make an Intellect roll to know something useful to the situation, and there is a list of what is common knowledge in the setting and what can be added to that list of common knowledge based on professions.

Social challenges have different rules depending on what the challenge is. For example, the rules define the following social challenges:

• Transaction
• Appeal
• Argument
• Alliance
• Coercion

Each type of challenge explains the requirements for the interaction and what abilities are used, as well as any situations that would grant boons or banes. For example, an appeal is resolved with Will rolls, while an argument is resolved with Intellect. In some cases, some of these interactions have guidelines for what critical success or failure looks like in the interaction.

Combat assumes tactical positioning, in as much as it assumes actual ranges rather than conceptual ranges or zones. No one rolls for initiative. Instead, there is an order of operations:

• Combatants under the Sage’s control, in any order
  • Combatants under the player’s control can use reactions if applicable, when triggered
  • Roll to resolve any end of turn ongoing effects, in any order
• Combatants under the player’s control, in any order
  • Combatants under the Sage’s control can use reactions if applicable, when triggered
  • Roll to resolve any end of turn ongoing effects, in any order

Characters have one reaction per round, unless some other rule grants them additional reactions. In addition to the standard reactions a character can take, a character can burn their reaction to Take the Initiative and act before the Sage’s characters.

Characters pick their abilities from a standard array, and their Novice Path options are Fighter, Mage, Priest, or Rogue. Characters gain a natural defense score, health, language, and starting path ability from this choice. You gain additional benefits from this path at 2nd and 5th level. At 3rd level, you pick an Expert Path, which grants you additional features at 4th, 6th, and 9th level. At 7th level, you pick your Master Path, which grants you path abilities at 8th and 10th level. The progression looks something like this:

• 1st Level–Pick Novice Path
• 2nd Level–Novice Path Abilities
• 3rd Level–Pick Expert Path
• 4th Level–Expert Path Abilities
• 5th Level–Novice Path Abilities
• 6th Level–Expert Path Abilities
• 7th Level–Pick Master Path
• 8th Level–Master Path Abilities
• 9th Level–Expert Path Abilities
• 10th Level–Master Path Abilities

This means you may not have your full character concept locked in until you reach 7th level. The Expert Paths are grouped under Paths of Battle, Faith, Power, and Skill. The Master Paths are grouped under Paths of Arms, The Gods, Magic, and Prowess. These correspond to the initial four paths, but characters don’t have to pick a similar path at Expert or Master level. A Fighter that chooses a Path of Battle and a Path of Arms is likely to be very specifically a toe-to-toe combatant, but some paths synergize well across concepts. For example, depending on the type of weapon and tactics a fighter uses, Skill and Prowess paths often work well for various concepts.

Some paths are specifically about synergizing elements across paths. For example, the Spellfighter Expert Path of Skill is all about being a martial combatant that also uses spells in addition to weapons. Some character classes/archetypes that have become familiar from games like D&D, Pathfinder, or 13th Age don’t show up until the Expert Paths, which reminds me a bit of BECMI D&D. For example, Berserkers, Commanders, Martial Artists, Rangers, Paladins, Artificers, Druids, Psychics, Assassins, Bards, and Warlocks don’t show up until the Expert Paths.

Depending on the path, a character might pick up a special ability they can use a number of times per rest, a number of extra spells, a new magical tradition, or bonus damage on their attacks. Multiple dice of damage present an interesting tactical choice, because you can sacrifice 2d6 of damage to make another attack, but that attack must be against a different target. If you get additional spells, you pick them from the traditions you already know.

Since we’re talking about magic, spells, and magic traditions, let’s move on to talking about those things in their own section, because 90 pages of the 274 pages (about 33%) are devoted to magic traditions and spells.

The Many Faces of Magic

Spells in the game are all arranged into thematic traditions, which each feature several supernatural talents in addition to the spells grouped under that tradition. When a character discovers a tradition, they gain one of the talents from the tradition, which are separate supernatural abilities compared to spells. Some of these talents are like cantrips, where they are recurring minor supernatural abilities. Some are more powerful, and once they are used, they don’t come back until you make a Luck roll for them to recharge, or in some cases, until after you have a chance to rest. The traditions listed in the core book include:

• Aeromancy
• Alchemy
• Alteration
• Animism
• Astromancy
• Chaos
• Chronomancy
• Conjuration
• Cryomancy
• Dark Arts
• Destruction
• Divination
• Eldritch
• Enchantment
• Evocation
• Geomancy
• Illusion
• Invocation
• Necromancy
• Oneiromancy
• Order
• Primal
• Protection
• Psychomancy
• Pyromancy
• Shadowmancy
• Skullduggery
• Spiritualism
• Symbolism
• Technomancy
• Teleportation
• War

When you learn a spell, the entry tells you how many times you can cast the spell before you rest. You can pick the spell multiple times to gain the ability to cast the spell more times per rest. Spells under their individual traditions are also grouped by Novice, Expert, and Master spells, meaning if you are allowed to learn new spells when you gain a level, you must pick from a level that is equal to or less than your current character tier. In other words, you can’t pick Master level spells from your available traditions until you are at least 7th level.

Unlike Dungeons & Dragons magic schools, these aren’t cosmic absolutes. Two spells can do very similar things, but will be in two separate traditions, because of the narrative elements of how they create the effect of the spell. For example, Shadowmancy and Teleportation may both create a point from which someone can enter in one place, and exit in another, but Shadowmancy rips a hole through the void, and Teleportation bends space to make two points touch.

Shadow of the Demon Lord always had extremely evocative ways of explaining what could otherwise be perfunctory effects. While Shadow of the Weird Wizard is a little less gruesome in its descriptions, it’s no less evocative. For example, there is a spell that splits your opponent into two creatures exactly half the size of the original creature. An Astromancy spell flashes a foe with ultraviolet light, burns them, and impairs their agility, because they develop a rapid onset of severe sunburn. One of the spells of the Chronomancy tradition allows the caster to summon themself from the future to aid them. One of the Necromancy spells summons a psychopomp to swoop over the target, bringing them closer to death. A master level Technomancy spell lets you summon a huge moving fortress equipped with a massive cannon, which is both extremely hard to destroy and blows up spectacularly if you do manage to destroy it.

Because these traditions contain both talents and spells, many of these traditions play into the theme of different paths as well. For example, Technomancy or Alchemy both pair well with Artificer, to produce a “magical scientist/engineer” with a much different feel. While there isn’t a starting path that indicates that a character is psychic, taking the psychomancy tradition can help flavor a Mage as a psionicist before they make it to 3rd level and take the Psychic path.

Overlapping Shadows

Shadow of the Weird Wizard has a lot in common with Shadow of the Demon Lord. It’s very clearly an evolution of the same system. But I wanted to take a few moments to summarize some of the changes between the two. I know I’ll miss some, but let’s give this a go:

• Shadow of the Weird Wizard starts at 1st level instead of 0
• The scale for health and damage is higher for Shadow of the Weird Wizard
• Insanity and corruption are not tracked for player characters in Shadow of the Weird Wizard (although at least one path introduces corruption tracking for a character with that path)
• The round structure doesn’t use the Fast Turn/Slow Turn structure of Shadow of the Demon Lord
• Shadow of the Weird Wizard adds d6 damage progression to attacks
• Shadow of the Demon Lord paths occur at different levels, and Shadow of the Weird Wizard doesn’t have an option to take a second Expert Path instead of a Master Path
• Shadow of the Demon Lord spells always provided a number of castings based on a spell rank determined by paths taken
• Shadow of the Demon Lord traditions don’t provide talents based on tradition
• Shadow of the Demon Lord’s core rulebook includes GM/campaign advice and a bestiary

Both books are the same size, but Shadow of the Demon Lord had 16 Expert Paths and 64 Master Paths, as well as 30 magic traditions, and 5 additional ancestries in addition to humans. Shadow of the Weird Wizard has 42 Expert Paths, 122 Master Paths, and 33 magic traditions. Obviously the big expansion of player materials is in the Expert Paths and Master Paths, but the Magical Traditions take up more space as well, due to the inclusion of the talents associated with the tradition.

If you were hoping the two games would have compatible material, that’s unfortunately not the case. Health and damage scales differently, making Shadow of the Demon Lord monsters a bit underpowered in comparison. Traditions aren’t compatible because of assumptions about power levels and talents. Novice, Expert, and Master paths all key in their options at different levels between the two systems.

Final Thoughts

One of the reasons I wanted to write this as a first impression rather than a full review is that while the Shadow of the Weird Wizard book is available in final form in PDF, Secrets of the Weird Wizard, the “GM” book for the line, is still in beta. You can purchase the PDF, but it’s still in development. You can play other ancestries or use the monsters and NPCs from that book, but it’s still in the process of being finished.

I enjoyed the customization of Shadow of the Demon Lord when I first encountered it, and Shadow of the Weird Wizard is continuing this trend. While Shadow of the Demon Lord was working towards a very specific feel, and almost everything in that game does play towards the concept of the game, it’s definitely a wise move to remove things like Insanity and Corruption from a core high fantasy experience that doesn’t lean into horror.

When running my Shadow of the Demon Lord game, one of my friends observed that he wanted to make a character that was an effective fighter mage but had a hard time finding the right options to make it work. I feel like the options that are meant to allow for a “multi-classing” feel in Shadow of the Weird Wizard are a lot more transparent in how to mix and match concepts and make them work. As far as spellcasting goes, a lot of that transparency comes from not worrying about the power level and what traditions boost that rating to increase your castings.

While this is much less nihilistic and horror driven than Shadow of the Demon Lord, this isn’t a system that can seamlessly swap in or out for a setting that was written for D&D or Pathfinder. This is less dark than Shadow of the Demon Lord, but the game still has an edge to it, drawing from folklore and older versions of fairy tales. It’s still a game where heroes doing everything right may still see the consequences of evil that they can’t fully mitigate. They might be able to make the world better within a limited scope, and the world isn’t necessarily marching toward oblivion within the next generation, but the supernatural will always be dangerous and at least a little hostile, and life may become less challenging, but will never be easy.

Because this resembles 5e SRD fantasy superficially, I think some people may be unsatisfied or conflicted if they don’t realize that the game is pulling on a more specific subset of influences than a lot of modern fantasy utilizes. It’s easy to infer that a human centric game where PCs fight monsters in a land they are trying to tame, with tropes like “all orcs are evil” is playing in a less mature, older fantasy RPG paradigm. On the other hand, I think it’s intentionally playing in the same space as a game like Symbaroum, where it’s fully aware that people “taming a land” is a fraught narrative, and that the satisfying play space is to understand where to introduce hard decisions and moral choices.

I’ve seen one of the adventures for the system, and even without reading through more of the setting information and campaign advice in Secrets of the Weird Wizard, I’m pretty sure this is a game that wants you to know your heroes can be wrong, but that they also aren’t being relentlessly pushed into spaces where they can’t find a better way. With the number of rules about combat and the number of combat spells, I can see people losing the thread on options that don’t involve reducing enemies to ash. I think the game is deep enough to present more options, while still acknowledging that people want to kick butt once in a while.

Looking To the Future

I enjoyed Shadow of the Demon Lord, not only for the system, but also for the way in which the rules reinforced tone and theme. It was (and still is) a game that can be very satisfying if you know what kind of game it wants to deliver. Shadow of the Weird Wizard is going to be able to do the same thing, with even more clarity of design and transparency of intent with its player facing rules. I’m looking forward to seeing the final version of Secrets of the Weird Wizard, and the rest of the line.

I love a good front. Of all the tools to come out of Powered by the Apocalypse games, fronts are probably one of my favorites. (Second only to clocks, really.) Because fronts allow me to keep track of everything from the arrival of the catastrophic doomsday event to the minor rival NPC’s petty revenge plot, and they give me the tools I need to not only figure out what the bad guys are up to but also how they’re going about their nefarious deeds.

(Confession: Even though I’ve read a bunch of Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games, I’ve only ever run a single session of one (the original version of Dream Askew), and I’m pretty sure I ran it completely bass-ackwards. And yet my love of fronts endures.)

You know what else I love? Putting my PCs in positions of power. I love foisting eldritch artifacts or ancient magics onto their shoulders. I take glee in giving them influence within an important organization and seeing what they’ll do. It allows me to ask tough questions about how and when they use their great power responsibly (thanks, Uncle Ben). Plus, it gives my players the power to enact real change in the game – something all of us can sometimes feel powerless to do in our real lives. (My group’s go-to power fantasy is making the world a better place.)

These two loves, though – they are at odds with each other. At least, they are when it comes to my villains’ devious plotting because those fronts happen in the background. Yes, I can write down that Professor Bad Guy’s Ultimate Plan of Evil has six steps, and I can plant clues throughout the game’s narrative that could potentially lead my characters to put the pieces together and figure out his plan.

Still, I can be an anxious GM at times, worrying that my clues are too obtuse or that my players will reach the wrong conclusion. And if I fail to deliver, then they’ll fail to figure it out in time, and The Ultimate Plan will succeed without the players having had a chance to thwart it.

Now, I know some games have done a wonderful job of systematizing when fronts advance. Still, when you’re porting the concept into a game that doesn’t already have them baked into the mechanics, you’re basically running that background minigame on vibes. And on the one hand the GM can basically do whatever they want (as long as it serves the story and creates a good time for their players).

But on the other hand, the GM can basically do whatever they want, and oh gods, I was already working with themes of using power responsibly, so now I’m second-guessing my second guesses!

GIVE THEM A WAR ROOM

Fronts are meant to be a GM-facing tool — a little mini-game the GM plays with themself between sessions. When I run games, I like to flip it around and, instead, give the players a “war room.”

Maybe it’s an actual war room in the command center of their base. Maybe it’s an oracle-like NPC or familiar that keeps track of their enemies’ actions. Maybe it’s the murder board in their detectives’ office. Regardless, all of these war rooms have one thing in common – the threat map.

Just like fronts, the threat map is a big circle with all of the campaign’s (known) threats arranged around it like a clock. At the center of the circle are the PCs (or their town, their ship, their community, what-have-you). Each threat has it’s own number of steps, and as those steps are completed, they get filled in from the outer rim, moving towards the PCs in the center.

At the end of each session, I show my players the threat map, and together, we discuss what threats they addressed and those threats don’t advance (or get crossed off if they eliminated it).

The ones they didn’t deal with, though. Those tick down. Getting closer and closer to completion.

Of course, the threat map is fluid. As they discover more threats, they’re added to it. When they eliminate one of the threats, it’s removed.

A war room with a threat map gives your players several things – it gives the players a feeling of control (or at least the potential to feel in control), it gives them a way to prioritize the most immediate threats in the game world, and gives them a core list from which they can build out what they know about the villains’ schemes. It basically gives them a quest log.

Depending on the tone of the game and just how many enemies the players have made, I may also introduce a mitigation mechanic – some way for them to delay a threat without actually dealing with it in the session. Sometimes, it’s a die role at the end of the game. Other times, it’s a resource cost. (This is also a great place to use an NPC delegation system.)

Because while the threat map can keep your players focused on the main tasks at hand, it can sometimes make them too focused. Any mitigation mechanic you introduce will allow them to breathe and indulge in ancillary role-play that wanders a bit.   

IT’S NOT FOR EVERYONE

I don’t always use a player-facing threat map when I run games. It works best in games where your players have the means to not just react to dangers but also get out ahead of them. I wouldn’t use this tool in games like Shiver or Camp Murder Lake, for example, because those games are about not being in control.

That said, introducing the threat map at a point in the game where the characters have crossed a certain power threshold could be a great way of driving home the fact that they’ve got bigger responsibilities now.

THE LAST THING I LOVE

Besides my spouse, my dog, and my library of books and games, I love one other thing — a good template.

Here’s the threat map I used when I was running Starfinder. Feel free to download it and make it your own, and tell me how you think you might incorporate player-facing threat maps into your next campaign!

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

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?

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.

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.

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

Try all the options

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.

Here are two free resources to help you run your games online.

• Owlbear Rodeo
• Level Up A5e's Monster Tokens

Owlbear Rodeo

Owlbear Rodeo is my favorite virtual tabletop. It's lightweight, fast, easy to use, reasonably priced (including a free tier), and system agnostic. Players don't have to create accounts to join in. You can run it on a phone. It's quick to get a map up and running with a fog of war and some default tokens. It also works for any RPG, whether it's Shadowdark, Level Up Advanced 5e, Numenera, or Blades in the Dark.

Owlbear Rodeo switched from a more lightweight locally-hosted version 1 to a full cloud-based version 2. It can take some re-learning to make it just as fast and useful as it was in the old version but I believe it is just about as easy as it was once you get things wired right.

I recorded a YouTube tutorial on Owlbear Rodeo for Lazy GMs intended to help people get their hands around all the features and how to use them easily during play.

Owlbear Rodeo includes some awesome default tokens representing monsters and characters but you may want a better set of tokens to represent most monsters in fantasy roleplaying games. That's where this next resource comes in.

Level Up Advanced 5e's Free Monster Tokens

EN World publishing released a full set of monster tokens representing core 5e monsters from the A5e Monstrous Menagerie for free. It includes 178 tokens representing all the core monsters you're likely to find in the D&D Monster Manual or other 5e core monster books.

They work really well when imported into Owlbear Rodeo. In order to import them most effectively, however, you'll want to do a few things:

1. Create a new collection and import tokens into this collection so you don't flood your main collection with nearly 200 tokens. You can import the tokens all at once.
2. If desired, set the default text of the token set to "Copy Image Name". It automatically removes file extensions so you'll get a nice token name like "Troglodyte" or "Demon, Balor" under the token. If you'd rather add the names yourself, you can skip this step.
3. If you do decide to use token names, select the right font size. I like 36 so the name is easy to see.

This set gives you a huge collection of tokens for monsters in Owlbear Rodeo – a collection you can use in any game you plan to run.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Choosing the Right 5e Stat Block and Myre Castle Ruins - Shadowdark Gloaming Session 27 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:

• Roll20 and Discord Integration
• Alphastream on the Summit One Year Later
• Return of the Witch King Adventures for Shadow of the Demon Lord
• Kobold Press Offers Sourcebook Subscriptions on Shard
• Tales of the Valiant Monsters Hitting Too Hard?
• Forge of Foes Monster Stats Tool
• Use an Oracle Die

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Managing One Year Later Montages
• Sticking With the City of Arches
• Help Players Tap Into Their Emotions

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:

• Help every character shine.
• Lean into the characters’ BS.
• Focus on enjoying spending time with your friends.
• Run lots of monsters sub-optimally.
• Add flavor and story every turn in combat.
• Set up monsters to show off character abilities.
• Build awesome boss fights with a variety of monsters, waves of combatants, cool environmental effects, and wild terrain.

Related Articles

• Owlbear Rodeo: A Simple D&D Virtual Tabletop
• Seven Fantastic Tools to Play RPGs Online
• Crafting Lazy Monster Tokens for D&D

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Here's an easy house rule to streamline the integration of a new character into an existing group. When the new character shows up, state:

"Looking into their eyes, you see their heroic spark – noting them as a stalwart and trustworthy fellow adventurer."

This statement bypasses 20 minutes of narrowed-eyed suspicion, threats, and in-world paranoia as your current characters decide whether to trust this new adventurer to join their group. You, as players, all know exactly why this character suddenly showed up deep in the dungeon.

Player characters are special. They have an actual human being behind them – one seeking to make their character the central focus of their take on the story. They're not just some disposable NPC or monster the characters happened across.

We can clarify the heroic spark and get back into the action instead of wasting time building trust in a group when we all know how it's going to end – of course we trust them. They're the player character of Pat, whose former character got thrown off of a 150 foot deep cliff into a pool of boiling mud. We know why they're here. Let's skip the trust building. You look into this new character's eyes and can see them as a stalwart and trustworthy fellow adventurer.

Unless everyone agrees, your game shouldn't hinge on these sorts of inter-party trust questions. If this sort of trust-building is part of the game, discuss it with your players during your session zero.

Seeing the heroic spark also doesn't bypass the need for the character to introduce themselves, talk about their background and goals, and give the other players an understanding of who they are and what they want. That's important too.

But let's bypass the tedium of taught bowstrings and intimidation checks and get the new character into the group.

Show characters the heroic spark of new companions joining their group and get back to your adventures.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on What Is 5e and Marin's Hold Bloodbath – 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:

• PJ Coffey's Crafting Heritages and Cultures CC-Released Doc
• Campaign Builder - Dungeons and Ruins
• 13th Age 2e Preview
• Secret of Summervine Villa
• Cynthia Williams Leaves Hasbro
• Build Your Resilient TTRPG Hobby
• Matt Coleville on Long-form versus Short-Form Adventures
• The MtG Hobby Compared to the D&D Hobby
• Fantastic Short-Form Adventure Publishers

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Villains and NPCs Responding to High Level Characters
• Warlords Are in 5e
• Repeating Descriptions and Getting Players to Pay Attention

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:

• Skip scenes or locations if there’s no chance to learn something interesting or useful in them.
• Spend time building and planning your big boss encounters.
• Clarify choices.
• Use the opportunity at your game to step away from real life and enjoy tales of high fantasy with your friends.
• Drop in potions or concoctions that let characters receive the equivalent of a long rest.
• Challenge high level characters with waves of combatants — hordes of low challenge monsters, a few even-power monsters, and huge heavy hitters.
• Let players learn about changing circumstances through the dialog of their opponents.

Related Articles

• Build from the Characters Outwards
• Ask Players to Describe New Character Abilities
• Focus Extra Prep Time on the Characters

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.