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Building a Dungeon Crawl

There are three keys to building an effective dungeon crawl: Believability, variety, and non-linearity.

Believability

The first key is believability. Dungeons are sometimes laid out essentially (or even literally) at random, with the first room containing a pack of goblins, the second room containing an ogre, and the third a displacer moose. If the players attack the goblins, the ogre won’t hear and come to investigate. If they kill the goblins, retreat, rest up, and return, the first room will still be full of dead goblins and the ogre will still be waiting around in room two. The dungeon will have no notes for what the ogre and goblins and displacer moose are even doing there. They’re just the dungeon, a bunch of monsters camping on a bunch of treasure for players to kill. This problem is getting more and more rare as published modules and adventure paths are getting more and more popular, and they almost never make the mistake of having a dungeon whose inhabitants don’t even have any reason to be there, but in the interests of being thorough: Your dungeon should have a reason for existing. The monsters should live there for a reason. They should have treasure for a reason. Preferably they should pose some kind of actual threat to the surroundings rather than just being murderhobo targets.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Building a Believable Dungeon” →

Adventure Frameworks

Just like with encounters, having a framework to help guide the construction of an adventure is helpful. There are, however, a much smaller number of types of adventure than you might think. In fact, the overwhelming majority of adventures are one of three types, and one of them isn’t very good.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Continuing to Introduce Adventures” →

Art of Adventures

What is an adventure? An adventure is a series of encounters that all add up to and ultimately resolve some overarching conflict. Every adventure should be significant enough to make a difference to the overall arc of your campaign. No adventure should be so trivial that no matter the outcome the rest of the campaign won’t be affected, and no adventure should have such a massive impact that it obviates the results of one or more earlier adventures. As with all rules, this one has exceptions – maybe you want to spend a few adventures patrolling idyllic forests for petty bandits before that setting is completely obviated mid-arc by an extraplanar invasion and the rest of the campaign is about resisting your new Baatorian overlords – but stray from the general rule at your own risk: Every adventure should make a difference to the rest of the campaign, and no adventure should be so important that the outcome of earlier adventures don’t matter by comparison.

That’s not to say you can’t increase the stakes and scope as time goes on, nor that you can’t threaten everything players have done so far, just that what they’ve done so far should impact the adventure that threatens to end everything. For example, if players spend low levels defending a specific town from a goblin king and the arc ends with the goblin king attacking the town, the town’s ability to defend itself from the goblin king should be informed by the players’ success (or failure) earlier. NPCs they helped should contribute their skills to defense rather than fleeing town, lieutenants of the goblin king they failed to defeat should show up again with additional forces (and not merely replacing similar generic enemies, although replacing defeated lieutenants with significantly weaker enemies is fine if that helps maintain the pace of the climactic adventure), and so on. If one adventure threatens every adventure they’ve had so far, then every adventure they’ve had so far should have some impact on their odds of success.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Introduction to Adventures” →

Running Chase Encounters

There’s three ranges a chase can take place at. A close range chase is probably what you think of as soon as the word “chase” is brought up. The pursuer and the quarry are both within sight of one another. The quarry can attempt some daring feat of Athletics or Acrobatics to try and get away, and the pursuer must either match pace or do better. The quarry gets to set their own DC for the check, because they’re choosing what fence to jump or rooftop to leap from or river to dive into. If the quarry fails their check, they stumble and fail and the pursuer catches them automatically. If the quarry succeeds, then the pursuer must either attempt the same stunt at the same DC or else must attempt an even more spectacular stunt with a DC 5 points higher. If the pursuer fails the check, then regardless of what DC they chose the chase moves to long range. If the pursuer passes the check and picked the same DC as the quarry, the chase continues at short range. If the pursuer passes the check and picked the higher DC, they’ve out-stunted the quarry and caught them. Note that this isn’t an opposed check. If the quarry picks a fairly modest DC 15 but then rolls a natural 20 and gets a total result of 27, the pursuer is still picking between a DC 15 stunt to keep up or a DC 20 stunt to catch the quarry immediately.

In a long range chase, the pursuer catches only occasional glimpses of the quarry as they sprint through tangled underbrush or narrow alleyways. At this stage the quarry must attempt to disappear before the pursuer rounds the corner and catches another glimpse. The quarry can roll either Athletics, Acrobatics, or Stealth, in the former two cases to pour on some extra speed and round a corner before their pursuer catches a glimpse, so that the pursuer has no idea which corner they turned or what way they went, and in the latter case the quarry attempts to hide before the pursuer catches up and sees where they’ve gone. Either way, this is an opposed check, with the pursuer rolling their choice of Athletics or Acrobatics against a quarry’s Athletics or Acrobatics and rolling Perception if the quarry rolled Stealth. If the quarry succeeds, they are out of sight and the chase moves to extreme range. If they fail, the pursuer is gaining ground (either because they’re moving faster or because the quarry stopped to hide and was then spotted) and the chase moves to close range.

In an extreme range chase the pursuer can’t see the quarry at all and is instead following tracks. The pursuer first makes a Survival check to find tracks at all, and must beat the navigation DC for whatever terrain the chase is taking place in. If the quarry likes, they can roll their own Survival check to set the DC, but they must accept the results of their Survival check even if it is worse than the navigation DC of the terrain. If the pursuer succeeds on their Survival check, the quarry sets the DC for an Athletics check, and just like at close range, the chase moves to long range if the quarry fails their Athletics check, and if they succeed, the pursuer can either make an Athletics check against the same DC to maintain pace or raise the DC by 5 to move to long range. If they fail either check, the quarry has escaped completely. If they maintain pace, the pursuer must make another Survival check before making the next Athletics check.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Chase and Social Encounters” →

If a single PC is scouting out ahead, they should be making a stealth check, not having an entire encounter all to themselves. Encounters can easily take 20+ minutes to resolve. That’s not to say that a PC who decides to sneak alone should magically be able to resolve entire encounters with one die roll. Rather, lone stealth PCs should be scouting only a little bit ahead of the rest of the party, while solving entire encounters by just stealthing past them should generally be discouraged unless the entire party can participate.

A stealth encounter revolves around two basic types of enemy: Guards and sentries. A guard is someone who can plausibly kill a stealthed party (and especially a lone sneaker), whether by themselves or as part of a group that can easily alert one another. For example, a single orc may not pose a challenge to a level 5 party, but if thirty of them are all patrolling in one giant pack, they’re dangerous, and they’re guards. Guards are usually near-blind, with no Perception training and unexceptional Wisdom. PCS with Stealth training and who are at least level 5 have good odds of sneaking past a guard.

A sentry is someone who can plausibly detect a stealthed party. This means they need to have enough Perception to keep up with the Stealth of at least a Ranger (trained in Stealth, high DEX build), and sometimes even a Rogue (expertise in Stealth, high DEX build). A sentry isn’t necessarily strong enough to pose any kind of serious threat to the party members they detect, and in fact a pure sentry should be very weak, weak enough that a party can assassinate them without having a long drawn out fight. This is the Rogue’s forte, between their sneak attack and their Stealth expertise, and especially if they’re the Assassin archetype and auto-crit in addition. The Rogue is the most able to sneak past a sentry long enough to assassinate them so that the rest of the party can pass safely.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Stealth Encounters” →

Running Combat Encounters

“I rolled a sixteen to hit, an eight for damage, and I don’t want to hear how he died.”
“Is it my turn yet? I want to shoot another one in the eye!”

The most important thing to know about running combat encounters is that you shouldn’t do it as much as most GMs do. It’s understandable why GMs tend to guide encounters towards violence. The combat rules in almost any major RPG (certainly in every edition of D&D) are more fleshed out than any one other field of activity, and that makes it easy to run. It’s important not to try and nudge players towards specific approaches towards encounters, though. For the same reason GMs tend to fall back on them, players will fall back on combat regularly as well. They’ll also want not to do that sometimes, however, and you should let them explore alternative options to resolving an encounter besides stabbing it to death. Don’t think of any encounter as a “combat encounter.” Players get to decide what kind of encounter it is. Don’t fall into the trap of feeling like you’re doing something wrong if your players end up talking their way through most or all of the encounters.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Combat Encounters” →

Art of Encounters

What is an encounter? An encounter is a series of actions (resolved with rules and rulings) strung together around overcoming the opposition a specific goal. It’s one scene of the story. It begins with a question and it ends with an answer. If there’s no significant opposition to the goal, there’s no obstacle to overcome, no actions to take to overcome it, and the player can just say “I do a thing” and you say “the thing is done” and it’s over. On the other hand, if there’s no goal, it’s not worth spending time on. Players may fight monsters for no other reason except that they’re there, but they will get bored with that about as quickly as they will get bored with being forced to describe their unopposed hike from one town to another in excruciating detail. This is why Monte Cook’s shortest possible adventure has both an orc and a pie. You need at least one complete encounter for an adventure, so the world’s smallest adventure is exactly one encounter with only the absolutely necessary elements, a goal (the pie) and opposition (the orc). As a corollary to this, whenever players face opposition to their goals, they should have an encounter.

The question that begins an encounter might be something like “will the party get past these marauding orcs alive?” Or it might be something like “which members of the Lord’s Alliance, if any, are willing to commit forces to combatting this month’s apocalypse?” The former is a wilderness encounter, the latter is a council meeting, but both of them begin with a question. Likewise, both of them end as soon as possible, as soon as the question is answered. In screenwriting they call this principle “in late, out early,” and it applies to most kinds of fiction, including role playing. Pace is greatly improved when you start a scene at the moment it becomes interesting, and end it at the moment the conclusion is obvious. If it’s become clear that the orcs are going to lose, or if it’s become clear which members of the Alliance are going to help the party’s cause, it’s time to wrap up, even if the orcs have some hit points left or there’s still some formalities to go through before the Alliance’s support is official.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Introduction to Encounters” →

CHA: Deception

Deception is often rolled against an Insight check, but sometimes a fixed DC makes more sense, particularly if talking to a random villager or town guard or someone else whose stats you might not have readily available. For all of these DCs, the assumption is that the target in question is some random schmoe. If they’re any kind of named character, have them roll Insight (possibly with advantage or disadvantage).

DC 5: Trick someone into believing something they already believe, like convincing a peasant that the king, whose death they have not yet heard about, is still alive.
DC 10: Trick someone into believing something they’d like to believe already, like convincing a peasant that an army of orcs has been defeated.
DC 15: Trick someone into believing something when they have no particular reason to believe you one way or another, like convincing a peasant farmer that it’s illegal to run a ferry after sunset.
DC 20: Trick someone into believing something inconvenient for them, like convincing a peasant that his farm is built on cursed lands, or unlikely, like convincing a local merchant that you’ve got a bridge to sell him.
DC 25: Trick someone into believing something that is both inconvenient for them and harmful to their sense of identity, like convincing a happily married peasant that his wife has been cannibalizing children in secret.
DC 30: Trick someone into believing something that is bizarre to the point of immediate incredulity, like convincing a happily married peasant that his wife is five kobolds standing on each other’s shoulders and wearing a coat.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Ruling Guidelines for CHA” →

INT: Arcana

Casters are going to have an easy time recognizing spells they personally know, so any caster can automatically identify spells on their list. Spells they don’t know, either because they aren’t high enough level or because they have a limited number of spells learned per level (or because they aren’t a caster at all), are the realm of Arcana checks.

DC 5: Recall the existence of the outer planes and that arcane and divine magic are different.
DC 10: Recall the names and basic natures of each of the planes, know the difference between demons and devils, recall the eight different schools of arcane magic and the eight major domains of divine magic (don’t forget the Death domain from the DMG!), recognize a specific cantrip, 1st, or 2nd level spell.
DC 15: Recall major landmarks of a specific otherworldly plane, like the City of Brass in the Plane of Fire, identify a specific type of outsider like an ice devil or a famous individual outsider like Orcus, recognize a 3rd or 4th level spell.
DC 20: Recall specific details about major landmarks of a specific otherworldly plane, like the street layout of the City of Brass, identify a high-ranking individual outsider like a specific balor or marilith, recognize a 5th or 6th level spell.
DC 25: Create a complete map of an otherworldly plane including all major landmarks and most minor ones such that it could be used to navigate the plane, recognize a 7th or 8th level spell.
DC 30: Create a complete and detailed map of an otherworldly plane including all major and local landmarks, including many secret ones, recognize a 9th level spell.
DC 35: Intimate familiarity with an otherworldly plane’s structure (or lack thereof) such that even very local and obscure customs and secrets are known to you.

A DC 15 Arcana check to recognize an outsider works as though it were a successful History check to identify the capabilities of any celestial, construct, elemental, fiend, or undead (not all of these are outsiders, but they are made of or run on magic and have the same DC).

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Ruling Guidelines For INT and WIS” →

In order to run any RPG, it’s important to calibrate your expectation to the system’s rules. A lot of arguments, including edition wars, stem from people expecting a game to be good at one thing when it isn’t, or not noticing when a game transitions from one tier to another. There are many valid complaints about 3.X, but several of the complaints to do with the system stem from a misunderstanding of its tiers. Legendary blacksmiths from the real world are not level 20 experts, they are level 5. The greatest heroes of many fantasy worlds are between levels 5 and 10. Higher levels are the domain of demigods. This is one reason why epic level rules for 3.X often fail. They assume that level 20 is the pinnacle of heroic potence, but not near the realm of the gods. In truth, level 20 3.X characters are firmly in the realm of the gods, with the gods of most fantasy settings being in the neighborhood of levels 15-25. The Alexandrian has an excellent article on exactly this subject, so I will let that speak for itself.

We aren’t talking about 3.X, of course, so all of this is just to present an extreme example of how far off expectations can be from experience, and the harm that can do to the play experience. Later editions, including 5e, have sought to more closely model the expectation that the average fantasy world will go from level 1 to level 20, whereas in D&D 3.X most fantasy worlds went from level 1 to about level 8. In other words, 5e made 20th level characters much less powerful so that Aragorn and Conan can be level 20 characters instead of level 8.

To calibrate expectations for 5e, here is a chart showing various DCs and at what level characters can be expected to meet them. This gives us a much more solid grasp of what it really means to be level 5, 10, or 20 in 5e. Before we dive into the chart, though, let’s define some terms. Non-specialists are assumed to have either a good attribute bonus or proficiency, but not both. Specialists are assumed to have both a proficiency and a good attribute for their level.  Experts have, in addition to the bonuses of a specialist, a double proficiency bonus from a race feature, class feature, or (particularly rarely) a feat. Generally speaking, only Rogues and Bards get expertise, but it’s reasonable to assume that an NPC blacksmith or the like would have this class feature without the rest of the Rogue or Bard class. 5e doesn’t have NPC classes like Expert, but if it did, Expertise would probably be one of the only class features that Experts got.

Continue reading “GM’s Guide: Ruling Guidelines for STR, DEX, and CON” →