Changes Made to My Homebrew Setting by Players (and Why It Should Be that Way)

I've been arguing for some time that player actions should have meaningful consequences. Doing something in-game and having no meaningful consequence feels hollow and flimsy, like a cardboard cutout of a real adventure. That's why I've dedicated so much of my DMing career to providing meaningful consequences to player actions. Recently, I realized just how much of my world has changed, with no small part of that coming from my most recent campaign, Of Gods and Dragons. And the thought struck me that it may be worth considering all these changes at once to see the world at large and how (and perhaps why) these changes have happened. To do this, I'm going to review the five campaigns that have taken place in Evanoch since I started DMing in the setting more than fifteen years ago. 

Campaign One: Talon Gorge

I set out to run a "twists and turns" kind of story about assassination contracts leading up the royal family, but the party didn't trust the questgiver and turned on them, resulting in a party split that led to a civil war. This meant the fall of the last monarchy in Evanoch, already a remarkable moment in the world, but the conspirator who had planned the whole thing escaped (with a player character at that). To date, I've never brought back the conspirator for more shenanigans, but it's nice to know she's out there. As a result of the fall of the monarchy, a democratic council was appointed which focused more on the needs of citizens than the old regime had. 

At the time, this felt like a pretty appropriate consequence. They saw the city through the civil war, they helped install democratic leadership, they ensured that the new leaders would be more progressive--there was no reason to not grant them a newly prosperous city. I stand by this. The whole crux of the campaign had been the safety of the city and its leadership, and the party fought long and hard to achieve that (the part of the party that remained loyal to the city, anyway). Meanwhile, the rogue agents who opposed the city did succeed in killing the king and dismantling some of the royal government, and that led to the compromise that the monarchy fell but a new progressive government replaced it. So within the context of the campaign, the consequence was fitting--the party saved Talon Gorge, and so Talon Gorge thrived in its new identity. 

This was the first campaign I ran in Evanoch. I had no idea the scope of running years of campaigns would mean. Looking back, Talon Gorge's reinvention as a progressive democratic city changed the balance pretty meaningfully. I had created an array of cities that represented different extremes and variations of all manner of details including government. Talon Gorge was the last monarchy, a conservative holdout amongst the major cities of the world. Talon Gorge swinging from most repressive to essentially the most progressive was a big impact. The balance shifted. Evanoch leaned toward a more progressive future and away from a traditionalist past, and I learned at this point that you can establish a world as a playground, but that means surrendering that playground to be changed by the players. 

What I would soon realize was that the point of the playground was the players having fun in it. It was not about creating a perfect world and a perfect story, but giving the players a stage to tell their perfect story. Acknowledging this, I decided to move forward by striving to create situations for players but not guide them and to encourage them to change the world. 

Campaign Two: Listen Check

I set my sights on something so ambitious that it's a wonder I didn't fail miserably. For my second ever for real D&D campaign, I elected to run a live broadcast D&D game as a radio show and podcast. It was called Listen Check, a pun on 3.5's skill name, and it was my baby. I chose special music every episode for each character, wrote over a hundred pages of in-game documents, illustrated an in-game children's book, wrote the opening seven chapters of an in-game novel, and more hyper-commitment to the art. And oh yeah, the party brought about a change in political leadership and killed a god. 

This was something of a mistake. An unintentional outcome, anyway. I'd meticulously made a table of random events and quest hooks that were specific to the gameworld and meant to be explore as non-hierarchical--they're all equal quests. But the first one the party encountered involved a quest from a god, which they took to be the main quest, and I had to develop a campaign about the god. I never intended it to work out that way, but I'd say it went well enough. However, the tunnel vision of creating a campaign around fighting a god got the best of me, and I didn't realize that the end of the line was killing that god. I introduced a dragon character to help the party, and my dragon lore was born. Soon, the god was slain, and I had a rift in time and space as well as the implied existence of more dragons (one of the party assumed a dragon mantle as a reward for his role in defeating the god). I more or less left this untouched as a hook for later stories (and ended up using it for my most recent campaign).

With the ambition that had led me there--a sprawling campaign with new-to-me methods that used a new technology to tell a story over years--the ending was ambitious too. Using a homebrew magic system, one player character stripped the god of its immortality, setting a dangerous precedent of how powerful the magic system was. I would offer it again to future players anyway, always turned down until my most recent campaign. But now the consequence was killing a god and becoming a dragon--taking immortality and gaining it. I recognized that I was flying very close to the sun so to speak, and I realized something conceptual about campaigns. 

All campaigns either take place within a narrative vacuum or within a larger context. If the problem that the party is solving as the main campaign only exists within the world in order to be solved, that's a sign of a narrative vacuum. If the DM started with a story idea and created set dressing around it to place it in the world, that's possibly a narrative vacuum. This isn't a bad thing, but a vacuum generally limits how many consequences will reach the larger world beyond the campaign immediately. Talon Gorge began as a vacuum--kill these people, get this reward, for instance, and I designed the city so that the campaign could take place. But it became a broader thing--"how do the people in town feel about political leadership?" is not a direct consequence of "kill these people and get paid." Listen Check began as and stubbornly remained within a larger context. It was a true sandbox that the players treated as something bigger than individual quests. So I noted where things had succeeded and scaled back. 

Campaign Three: The Eastweald

Except that years passed, and I forgot the lesson of ambition. I wanted to follow what I believed was at the heart of tabletop roleplaying joy--having agency. I even asked my players to suggest concepts for the campaign itself, a process I've outlined. The result was hard to work with. I had hoped to get aesthetic notes, story fragments that could be chained together or used as mid-level quests; I got a main quest idea from every player. The ambition returned and struck, perhaps lethally. I insisted I would string four main quest-level ideas into one big story. I did my best. My players say it was a success. I remain dissatisfied, wishing more of it had come together in the final sessions. But in the end, each storyline was concluded: a terrorist strike had been made against New Dalton, goliaths had arrived on Evanoch, a plague had been cured, and a traitorous deal with Vecna was made. 

I'm sure my displeasure comes through here, and I think on reflection that it just felt like while I took big swings, these were all vacuum stories. I made the Eastweald, a large stretch of forest with a gorgeous map to give the player characters a sandbox, but to tend to the stories, they spend most of their time in a few bigger cities. The storylines individually were interested, but connecting them was hard because none was related to the larger world. The Eastweald had all this potential to be a huge success, but I think that I might have been a little shy of offering huge consequences. After Listen Check, killing a god and becoming a dragon was a very high threshold of consequence, and I had a player dealing with a god, and I had another player planning state violence, and another introducing a new species to my homebrew setting--the possible consequences were massive. I uncharacteristically did not provide an epilogue because I didn't really want to push further consequences of the campaign into the canon history of my world. I regret that. I wish I had done a lot differently. At the very least, I'm glad I got to run something better with the same group later on to vindicate myself. 

In terms of consequences, this one remains pretty minimized. It has small ripple effects--Vecna, the god dealt with in this campaign, was largely characterized for me during the god's conversations. I treat the goliaths taking up residence in my homebrew Underdark as canon and plan to handle any future excursions to the Underdark with a full account of this campaign. I treat Woodhearth, the largest city in the Eastweald, as more important than its relatively small size would merit given the important crossroads it lies on (and sentimentality). But by and large, I gave vacuum stories and minimized consequences, and that's both why there are few marks left on the world and why I regret not doing better. 

I do want to acknowledge here again, though--my players said it was a grand time. They got personalized main quests! They got multi-genre adventure! There were backstabbings! There were bombs! There were antics and dramatic moments and big fights! It was everything D&D is meant to be. But I had done radio theater for three years, telling a cohesive and beautiful and frightening and infuriating and intoxicating tale that pushed the boundaries of every format it used--I wanted more. The question now was how to bring the aspiration I had to reality despite challenges. Humbled, I went on. 

Campaign Four: The Mystery Campaign

I took nothing for granted. Every step in a process that felt natural had to be analyzed--anything could be a bad habit. Too much narrative suggestion before--edit the suggestions more. The requests involved a mystery premise, the appearance of a dragon, a class divide, chaos, and other details. I hatched a plan for a murder mystery that involved a class struggle and chaos storms powered by a tortured chaos dragon. The players investigated. They formed relationships. They improved the city. They incited a rebellion. They ended the chaos storms. They solved the mystery. It was a careful process--nothing makes you more careful as a DM than any given piece of information spoiling the whole session or more, and I often had to adjust to strange and curious player actions (like starting a real band as a cover to talk to someone)--but it all paid off. The mystery campaign was satisfying to me to DM, it was a favorite for the players involved, and I would say that it fulfilled the artistic drive in me to do something special. I'll tell you: D&D is not designed for mystery storytelling, but I'm happy with how it came out. (To the readers shouting "Then play CoC/TTRPG of your choice!"--my players wanted D&D mystery, and I felt up to the challenge.)

The consequences of this campaign are not unlike those in Talon Gorge--peace and prosperity are granted, the evildoers are driven out, and all is well. But the scale here is different. The Mystery Campaign took place in the small mountain town of Yamseth. Talon Gorge was a leviathan, a powerhouse of a city; Yamseth was a town made specifically for the campaign. That does regrettably mean this is a vacuum narrative--because my players wanted the chaos storms, which do not exist in any city I had already established, I had to make something for them anyway. That just necessarily meant that what happened in Yamseth would cause less ripples, and given how far outside the canon I was working (putting a non-canon dragon in the campaign for the chaos storms because it was requested), I didn't entirely mind keeping the Mystery Campaign as kind of a contained story. 

I haven't used this campaign much in terms of consequences to the larger world since it's fairly limited in scope--by far the most limited of any campaign I've run. Talon Gorge was about the overthrow of the last kingdom; Listen Check was about standing up to a god; the Eastweald was about a thousand massive things; the Mystery Campaign was about three people solving a murder. The Mystery Campaign is about this little story that has no real impact outside of Yamseth, and in a way, I think I was driven to do that by ambition too. I think I wanted to see if I could tell a small story--when so many D&D stories are so big--and still satisfy my players. I'm really proud that I did. This campaign made me unafraid to really play with the small moments, which would ironically help me in my next campaign. 

The thing that strikes me now about the Mystery Campaign is that it took me out of my element. I am a mushy emotional feelings roleplayer, and I tell stories about the way people feel--and I can feel all that out in the moment. On top of that, I'm an improviser. I've been improvising in one way or another for most of my life. I can't do any of that in a mystery campaign. I have to mind the script, the details, the plot. I have to make sure the expression of feelings matches the plan. It's tight and rigid and careful, and I'm a fast and loose DM. So it was a big challenge, and I always recommend doing creative work that's hard--it stretches you, and you learn what you're missing when you engage with it. 

Campaign Five: Of Gods and Dragons

Okay, this one is aaaaaaaaaalmost done, but basically wrapped up enough to discuss. I did my time being careful with the Mystery Campaign; it's time to be ambitious again. That hole in divine reality from Listen Check? We're bringing that back. All the implied dragons? Now major characters. So are the gods. The highest level I'd ever had players get to before this campaign was 12. This campaign started at level 12. I gave a powergamer access to the glyphs that made a god mortal. I let a player introduce Tanarukk into my homebrew setting. Custom classes for everyone! Utter chaos, and all because I have the final say: all the NPCs they had to deal with with gods and dragons, levels 30-80. Besides, they can only really progress by leaning into my strength--mushy emotional feelings roleplaying! This is in part in jest, but I did genuinely set out to build a campaign where roleplaying had to be the way forward, and this allowed me to connect so many dots I had been itching to connect for a long time. In the end, the party brought together all willing dragons, restored reality to stability, eliminated threatening dragons, and dealt a blow against oppression. That's where the epilogues begin. Over one hundred years, all three player characters use their powers, resources, and alliance to make the world a better place. This includes changing the governments of several major cities (Mishara, Finiel, Underhar, Torga, Ringsdale) to democratic councils as well as instituting public services including free food and medical attention (Torga, Curagon, Ringsdale, Mishara, Underhar, Talon Gorge). Other more minor but still notable achievements and justices were obtained, particularly in the realms of public safety, shared culture, and education. 

Obvious takeaway to start--massive and plentiful consequences. At the beginning of my DMing character, I was humbled by the weight of one major city being changed. Here, in the space of the epilogue, practically every major city was transformed into a happier, healthier, safer, more prosperous place. I want to really bear down on this point. Remember at the beginning, when I was discussing Talon Gorge and its shifting government throwing off the balance? At this point, Curagon (anarchists without a government), Kruush (too small to merit a meaningful government), and New Dalton (ideologically opposed to progressive values) are not democratic councils; the other seven all are. More than half the world's major cities have socialized medicine. Taken with the other achievements, this represents a golden age for Evanoch which is unmatched in its history. This is not only a very important consequence, this is a massive shift in the course of humanoid history. A few individuals with benevolent agendas managed to change the world they live in so thoroughly that I can't just run my next campaign in the world that resulted like any other campaign. 

We've spoken of narrative vacuums. Of Gods and Dragons is as much the opposite of a vacuum as can be. Evanoch was a place that had been designed and then refined for over a decade and a half. No place in the campaign aside from backstory homes for player characters, had to be created for the campaign. And the problem doesn't exist outside of or apart from the world--it is all over the world. Of Gods and Dragons feels like, by far, the biggest success I've ever had as a DM. And I think that's because I was ambitious with a plan, because I learned from my mistakes, because I took inspiration from my successes, and because I handed over the reins to my world entirely. It was scary! I backed off giving lots of control to players after Listen Check, and it took me a decade to take that risk again. But I'm glad I did. I gave them control, and they made the world a better place. 

Which presents DM problems. In a world were there is struggle, stories are everywhere. But in a world where everything is perfect, what drives the players on adventure? There are obviously fixes--some great evil rises, corruption rots the peace from within, etc. But that feels cheap. I have this world I had players fixing and helping in small ways for years. I took the people who knew my world most, cared about it the most, and gave them control of the world only to see a golden age fostered. To say it just leaks away dishonors my players. I will need something truly special to really pay my players the respect they deserve. But that is a tomorrow problem. I still have a finale session to lead, and I'm not discounting dramatic happenings. 

So what changes have happened? When I've restricted my players to narrative vacuums, they have dealt cleanly with those problems with gusto. When I've allowed my players to meaningfully impact the world, they have improved it. They ousted corrupt governments across campaigns spanning almost twenty years. The more power they had, the more good they did. When granted epilogues, my parties' characters became benefactors, mentors, protectors. They used wealth to make material improvements for the public. They fought for good. I feel foolish to realize it now. I resisted my players changing my world for years only to see I'd been afraid of them helping the little NPC people I'd made for them. 

I will say, I wouldn't trust every party this way. I wouldn't strive to make every campaign transform your whole world. This is a special case scenario, one I'm only striving at because I'm compelling to try and because I have willing friends. I fully intended to shift to a more conventional D&D story if the experiment failed. It was a gamble, but it worked, and I do think that with most good groups, the same potential for trust and the drive to improve the world exists. Trust your judgment, but be open to considering if you might give your players free rein to take big actions that will affect the world. 

I think at the end of the day, I'd estimate that Evanoch as a whole has been changed more by my players than the average DM would be able to say. I'll acknowledge that Of Gods and Dragons skews things, but city topplings, god and dragon antics, city hopping, terrorist striking, and mystery solving are not neglible contributions from the other campaigns. And now that I've seen how it can go when I trust my players to shape the world, I think my future campaigns will trend in that direction.

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to work well with other players, how to stop railroading, and how to "win" a tabletop game. Until next time, happy gaming!

How to React When Your Players Think of Something You Didn't

You've put in all the legwork. You made a campaign idea into a campaign; you might have developed a homebrew setting; you've worked on the setting for the campaign; you've populated the world with characters. You're playing, and your story ideas are going well. And then, suddenly, it all goes awry: the players come up with something you didn't anticipate, and now everything is threatened. What do you do?

I have faced this situation hundreds of times on a scale small to large. My favorite solution is to improvise. But it's a very specific kind of improvisation in these situations, and I want to devote a full guide to this exact situation. In order to show it in action, I'll share some times that I was foiled by players but refused to concede and kept the action going in fun ways. 

The first example is a modest one. It comes from my mystery campaign. In the very first session, my players were tasked with investigating a murder. They went to the murder scene and found the body there. Montana, a bard, immediately cast "Speak with Dead" on the body. I hadn't really anticipated this. But I had already decided that the murder victim was mute, and so I ruled that she couldn't respond because she couldn't speak. But then Montana had another idea. He cast "Speak with Plants" on a dandelion in the alleyway where the victim was found. Derek the Dandelion gave a perfect description of the murderer. It was only fair. But I improvised; testimony from a dandelion would not pass legal muster, and so they would need to get another witness. 

In this small moment, I had to juggle a few considerations. First, I had game balance to contend with. If the players solved the crime in the first scene, the whole campaign would be over before it began. I needed a way to change the situation (or our perspective of the situation) to allow the game to continue. My goal was to both reward the good idea and prevent the story from being compromised. 

But I also had to consider fairness. If a GM is unfair, the fun of the experience disappears quickly. So I needed a really good reason that things would not work exactly as intended. Holding that Derek wouldn't completely satisfy the witness requirement was lightened by the fact that the questgiver had explicitly asked for two witnesses to begin with. The important thing, though, was that my players feel that "Speak with Plants" had been a victory even if I couldn't give them the outcome they imagined would come from such a good idea. 

And finally, I needed something that was interesting. When I had decided that the dandelion tactic would work, I leaned into it. I had the dandelion be a colorful character, a young dandelion with little idea of his place in the world. The players loved him, and they named him Derek. Derek ended up being featured in our final session and epilogue as a beloved part of the campaign. 

Of course, this is the kind of speedbump that we often have to deal with as GMs. But sometimes a situation might have larger implications. Long ago now, I was running my first serious campaign as a DM. The campaign centered around the party completing various assassination contracts, eventually taking out the entire royal government including king, queen, and princess. The big twist was to be that the contracts came from the princess herself, who was committed enough to her plan to overthrow the kingdom to lose her own life in the process. As it turned out, the campaign didn't really go like that. 

My list of contracts was 20 targets. They completed one, kidnapped the second, and then turned on the questgiver before proceeding any further. The party split into pro-kingdom and anti-kingdom factions. Things got complicated, especially when one player on the anti-kingdom side broke into the palace late one night and assassinated the king. A pro-kingdom player procured a high healer, who cast "Resurrection" on the king. This created a huge issue: it placed the outcome of perhaps the entire campaign on a moment that only one player initiated. 

I solved it by thinking about the above considerations. I needed to think about balance. How would this affect the game? It either meant the anti-kingdom team had effectively won, or that their efforts to kill the king were so easily undone as to be meaningless. This is incredibly delicate. I needed something that would be a good compromise between the two extremes. 

I also had to consider fairness. The player who had assassinated the king had obtained an invisibility spell, passed dozens of armed guards, passed half a dozen stealth checks, and rolled a critical strike on the king. To deny success after all of this would be very unfair to that player. On the other hand, the player who got the cleric was using common sense to solve the problem, and of course the king would have a high healer around for just such occasions if he had already increased guard patrols. I couldn't deny any of this either. Again, I needed a compromise. 

The true solution came when I thought about the interesting angle. I needed some compromise that would be memorable and make sense. When I first realized the gravity of the situation, I asked my players for a minute to think things over. I highly recommend you do this any time you think prolonged thought would be necessary to determine a situation's outcome. In the minute or so that I took to respond, I ended up with this: "Resurrection" works, but only for a few days, and it can't be cast on the same person again. This allowed the pro-kingdom party time to stabilize new leadership under the king and to have meaningfully responded to the assassination, and it also gave the anti-kingdom group a big advantage, but one which wouldn't be complete or immediate. I asked the group if they all agreed that my ruling was fair, and they all agreed. This is another thing I recommend you do with big decisions. A simple "Does that seem fair to everyone?" goes a long way. 

But of course, these examples are specific to the situations in which they occurred. Someone with an almost identical problem could need to make entirely different calculations. I know from experience. 

About ten years after I had to deal with "Resurrection" as a surprise in the kingdom-toppling campaign, I was running the mystery campaign I referred to above. At one point, I had planned for a main character in the campaign to be murdered. This character, an inventor, would die before completing an invention which could solve a huge problem in the city and potentially solve the mystery. I had planned for the players to complete the invention themselves from puzzle-laden clues left behind by the inventor. That's not how it went, and for a familiar reason. 

Montana cast "Raise Dead" on the inventor. In my defense, most of my experience in D&D came from 3.5. In 3.5, you had to be a high level cleric if you wanted to resurrect someone. Those rules have since eased up a bit. In 5E, a 6th level bard can cast "Raise Dead." I thought I had accounted for this, but I hadn't. Once again, I had a dead NPC with a resurrection spell making narrative wrinkles. 

But this time, it was different. I wasn't dealing with a split party. This meant that the balance of the situation was measured differently. I'm okay with the party occasionally having a boon that wasn't as earned as others. I can accept letting the party, using a creative and meaningful solution to a big problem, make a step bigger than I planned without compromising the game. It is, after all, only cutting out a few puzzles. 

But there was an associated problem. In the act of finding the inventor dead, the party had encountered the one of the archvillains of the campaign: the murderer they had been seeking since session one. I had planned for the murderer to acrobatically escape the laboratory and have a real showdown later on. But the party used spells to bind the murderer in place. I rolled for her resistance, and it was pretty low. I had to either fudge the roll in the murderer's favor (which would take agency away from the players) or accept the roll and lose my dramatic showdown. For fairness' sake, I needed to lean towards accepting the roll. 

And I needed something interesting. I remember that as those moments unfolded and it became clear that Montana would raise the inventor, I was searching for something dramatic to add. Some flair that was missing from the situation. But then I remember surveying the faces of my players. They were riveted. They couldn't wait to know whether the inventor would be alright. And I realized that I didn't need to add anything. They had stopped a robbery, captured their antagonist, and found an ally dead. I didn't need to spice the situation up. Because it honored all three considerations, I had the inventor revive and complete the invention. It proved to be one of the more memorable moments in the campaign. 

So let's review the considerations and what they can do to help us come up with the best solution to unforeseen problems:

• Balance: Tabletop games are carefully calibrated for a specific distribution of powers and weaknesses to keep playing it rewarding and meaningfully predictable in terms of outcomes. When we try to resolve a situation that impacts the balance of the game, it's important to consider every consequence of a decision. This can require time to fully think about. Make use of time between sessions, and don't be afraid to ask your players for time to consider. 
• Fairness: Your players want and need to feel like there's a real fairness to the game. If things are too easy or too hard, the players suffer. Ask yourself about whether or not your decision will inordinately punish or reward a player for something, and avoid situations where players are pitted against each other. 
• Interest: The situations we're considering here tend to have a certain amount of contention around them. You are, after all, negotiating between the player's creativity and your own oversight in planning; to have them leave the situation happy, we need to include something enjoyable. But as noted above with the inventor/murderer situation, sometimes all a situation needs is already present. Strive for a satisfying feeling if you can. 

There you have it: my best advice (from experience) for dealing with the unforeseen player actions which inevitably pop up when you play for long enough. I hope that these examples serve to illustrate the ideas here, and I wish you the best of luck in responding to surprises. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to deal with DM mistakes, a branching-path mystery one-shot, and a free spell slot tracker. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Find the Right Group and Stick with It

Tabletop games are one of my very favorite things, if not my favorite things. It's been that way ever since I discovered the game in high school, and today, I have more thoughts and opinion about gaming that I ever knew I would be able to have. (That's probably apparent, given that this is my 196th article on this site.) But that hasn't been a product of simply playing the game for a given amount of time. I've had to carefully consider things at every turn and change how I've played. The following is both a chronicle of how I learned to play and how to to find the right group to play with (and stick with that group). 

As I said, I first played D&D when I was in high school. Though I didn't know it then (because I lacked the experience to know about different DMing styles), my DM was a pretty rules-crunchy gamer who used modules for essentially everything. But I didn't have a frame of reference to know this. All I knew was that pretending to be Algar, my elven monk, was a lot of fun, and I got a big kick out of getting to inhabit him for the adventure. 

Under that DM, I learned how to play according to the book. I memorized most of the 3.5 Players Handbook (and I still can refer to specific page numbers from the book if called upon). I learned about combat, from attack modifiers to attacks of opportunity. I turned Algar into the most effective character I could. But that campaign died and was replaced by an evil campaign. Good-hearted Algar needed to go. I created the evil wizard Loki and experienced all sorts of new things: capturing an abandoned castle, escaping an inevitable, becoming an urban legend. I had come to know and love D&D as a combat simulator. 

But then I graduated high school, and I headed off for college. I couldn't find a game, so I decided to try my hand at DMing. I gathered some friends and started a fairly improv-heavy campaign that was (because of my players' tastes) more about silly antics than combat (though that was still a big part of it--that was what I knew). Before the end of my freshman year, I had taught nearly 50 people to play D&D, and I had run countless hours of highly goofy campaigns. 

Something changed in me then. I don't know what it was, but I think I sensed that tabletop games could be something more. I began to develop a homebrew setting. The document for this setting, which stretched to nearly 30 pages of single-spaced information about the world. Sensing that this world was more serious, I set out to create my first real campaign that would be more than oddball shenanigans. The result was a campaign that lives on in my memory as the point at which my career as a DM truly began. 

In the sprawling campaign I'm describing, I ended up having a total of nine players at various points, all of whom either set out to defend a city's royals from assassins or to assassinate the royals themselves. In the end, the party split pretty much evenly, and the final battle pitted these warring factions against one another. Importantly, this campaign had silly moments, but it was mostly centered around a serious story about power, leadership, and government. This party was the one that allowed me to begin to see the real potential of tabletop games. 

When this campaign ended, I got very ambitious. I was working at a radio station at the time, and I proposed a show which would end up being perhaps the first serious D&D podcast of all time. The show, Listen Check, placed two players from the above campaign and one new player into a city filled with criminals fighting to survive. We ran the show for nearly three years, ending up recording 180 hours of gametime. It remains some of my proudest work as a GM, and I still stand by the work we did those years ago. 

Then I got to play as a player for the first time in over five years. I played as Amund "Zig" Zigor, a troubled cleric. One of the players from the radio show was the DM, and the other two players from the radio show were also players in this campaign (as well as a few other folks). I began to use the game as a way to process my own feelings of guilt and shame. My engagement with the game on this level was a product of the brilliant DMing that my friend provided, and I got to see from the player's perspective what a roleplaying-centric campaign looked like. 

Then I moved across the country. It took some time to meet the right people, but I began to run a smattering of campaigns. There was a brief attempt at a campaign that was ended when every romantic relationship in the party ended, causing us all to go our separate ways. But then I began to run another serious roleplaying campaign: the Eastweald. This involved a whole new group of players, three friends I had met at my first job after moving. Most of the group was new to tabletop games, and no one had played a deep roleplaying campaign before. 

As this campaign wrapped up, I returned to the world of silly campaigns with a group of friends from another job and from my time in college. This campaign, set on the desert island of Ramsey, which was essentially a "Wild West meets fantasy" setting, was a return to my earlier days of DMing. One thing that struck me as I ran this campaign in the wake of the Eastweald campaign was that the difference between a humorous campaign and a serious campaign were much greater than I had realized initially. I hadn't recognized the difference because my changes between styles had taken place over a relatively long period of time (several years), but since I was running the Eastweald and Ramsey at the same time at some points, I really noticed the difference. 

After the Eastweald wrapped up, I began a new campaign with the same exact group of players. This new campaign was based on requests from the players for a mystery, and so the mystery campaign was born. Like the Eastweald, the mystery campaign was a more serious campaign (although certainly with plenty of laughs). But unlike the Eastweald, which had been a mixture of roleplaying, combat, and shenanigans, the mystery campaign was a more pure roleplaying challenge. Readers of that campaign know that only two combats happened in the whole twenty-session campaign, and one of them was a friendly boxing match. It was a big step away from what I had started out as. 

Most recently, I have been running some shenanigans campaigns: one at the school where I teach as a part of D&D Club (12-year-olds love shenanigans) and one with a few of the players from Ramsey and a few new friends (all of whom love shenanigans). Both of these campaigns have required me to return to my origins as a DM, which has admittedly been difficult. I have written before about why giving players the fun they want is the most important part of the game, but I also have to acknowledge that my perspective on the give diverges from this idea; I've also written about how roleplaying is, in my opinion, the height of tabletop games. So it's been a complicated process navigating these ideas. 

But then there is my current foray into being a player: my dear con artist Asp. The game in which Asp plays is run by the player from my campaigns who played Carric (Eastweald) and Beor (mystery campaign), and he has decided to run a pretty serious roleplaying-centric campaign. This is perfect for Asp, who is not exactly a combat titan but does have lots of skills in interacting with people. Getting to be a player again after so long has allowed me to continue to refine my work as a DM. 

I've also managed to play and GM other systems, including but not limited to Don't Rest Your Head, Exalted, Call of Cthulhu, and several others. I highly recommend playing other systems occasionally to see the breadth of possibilities; doing so has allowed me to make changes to my homebrew rules that have really improved player experiences.  

So now that I've given you my history in groups, it's time to address how to find the right group. You'll notice from the above section that I've played in a fair number of groups. My high school group, my early college groups, my early roleplaying campaigns, my recent roleplaying campaigns, and my recent shenanigans campaigns have all been different iterations, even with shared people. I would estimate I've played D&D with over 100 people at this point, counting the public one-shots I've run in gaming stores as well. This is not intended as a brag or a reach for nerd cred--I'm simply saying that I've deliberately gamed with lots of people. And that's the first piece of advice: get out there are try new games, new parties, new game styles, and so on. You won't love all of them, but the only way to find out what you like to to try different things. 

This has a twofold benefit. You will get to know more about your opinions of different games and styles of playing by being in the game in the first place. But you'll also find out who you enjoy playing with. I'll be the first to admit that some of my predictions about what I like and don't like have been wrong. I tried playing with an ultra-serious Adventurer's League group and hated it. Turns out, it's not the seriousness I like, but the focus on roleplaying over combat. I've played games with people I like only to find out that they and I do not mix well in-game, and vice versa, have had a great time playing with people I wasn't a huge fan of. Really, truly, you don't know until you try. 

This was especially the case with my D&D Club games. Keep in mind, I mostly run the game for middle schoolers. I have taught several of the D&D Club kids as students and struggled to enjoy being around them, but found them to be absolute delights at the table. Conversely, I've looked forward to a student's contributions to the game only to discover that they only want to kill everything. On a similar note, a few of my closest friends have been in campaigns I've run, and I've found it exhausting to play with them. Again, you don't know until you give it a chance. 

Another detail that you may notice from this history is the fact that I've stuck with various members of certain groups. This is the benefit of playing with many people in action. When the Ramsey campaign ended, the group more or less fell apart. So later on, when I wanted to start a new campaign, I reached out to the players whose style had most matched mine and invited them to help me build a new party. This allowed me to not have to start from scratch and enjoy gametime with people I already knew I enjoyed playing with. 

This was even more the case with the Eastweald/mystery campaign group. Building a good party is a delicate art, and I am incredibly proud that I hit the mark so well with this group. A moment of bragging: the three players who began and finished these campaigns did not really know each other before I put them in a party together. Last week, I was able to hang out with a member of that party at another member's wedding--that's how close we have become. With a group like this, you hold onto it. I assembled them for the Eastweald campaign, kept them for the mystery campaign, and we have even switched DMs but kept the same group for the campaign where I play Asp. When you find a good group, you latch onto it. 

But how do you go about such a thing? People grow and change and drift apart. It's hard to get everyone on the same page even after years. There are a number of things I recommend. For starters, keep up communication with players and GMs you want to stick with. Tabletop games are incredibly social, and that bond goes a far way. It's also important that you keep the game fresh. The Eastweald and mystery campaigns were extremely different, and the campaign I'm playing in now is also very distinct from either of these. But the good news is this: if a party really works on all levels, everyone involved will want to stick around, so just maintaining a positive game goes a long way towards longevity. 

Another note about keeping a good party together: it used to be that having a player move away from the rest of the group was effectively the end of that player's involvement. But now, with online chat programs being the way they are, it's relatively easy to keep a group together. In both the shenanigans campaign I'm currently running and the roleplaying campaign in which I'm currently playing are entirely online, and we have players in different states in both campaigns. There is a certain magic to being around a table together, but it is often worth sacrificing that in order to keep a good group. 

I also want to call to attention the fact that I never would have realized how much I enjoy the roleplaying aspect of the game if I hadn't branched out. I started as a crunchy combat player--Algar and Loki were built to be interesting and fun presences in combat (though Loki certainly pushed me in the direction of roleplaying, however slightly). This gave me a solid foundation in how the game actually works. I moved to shenanigans and found that some good humor can really improve a game. I tried roleplaying and discovered that I really enjoyed the depth of being a real part of a world, and I saw that same excitement in my players as a GM. I quite literally would not be the gamer I am now if I had stuck to only what I knew to start. 

It's also worth noting that I learned things as both as GM and a player. It is probably no surprise coming from a GM like myself who has written so much in order to make GMing more approachable for beginners and intermediate GMs, but I really stress the importance of trying to run a game at least once. The perspective you will be granted by stepping outside your role as a player will help you to understand so many things that would otherwise seem insignificant. GMing has taught me about storytelling, public speaking, improvising, social connection, and what being a player really means in the scope of the game. I'm a better player for GMing, and a better GM for playing. 

But ultimately, this is about finding and keeping the right group. So what makes the right group? It may not be the things you assume are most important. You want a group that is fun to be around--social interaction should be rewarding and easy. You want a group that agrees with you on how the game should be played. And you want a group that you can depend on--a great group is good, but not if you can't ever get everybody together to play. When you find people who match this, keep them. 

Are other factors important? Sure. Having people agree on the theme of a main quest can matter (though this is something players can negotiate about). Having people who know each other can matter (though they will get to know each other through playing). Having people who know how to play can be nice (though they can learn to play as you go). Your needs for your party will be distinct depending on your group and your campaign. 

The bottom line, though, is this: tabletop games are an experience. That means that in order to understand how you really feel about something, you will have to experience it yourself. A good game is not all roleplaying or all combat or all comedy, but a mixture of them, and you can't determine the right mixture without experimenting a bit first. So if you want to know your style and to get the right group for you, keep trying until something fits just right. You'll be better for having experienced things. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to handle in-game romances, what to do when the players think of something you didn't, and what to do when you regret a decision as GM. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Deal with Player Character Deaths

It's a possibility that looms over every game: what if the players die? No matter what kind of game you're playing, there's a chance that the players will die. But how do you get there? And then what happens? Those questions can decide how a player feels about their entire experience as that character, so we need good answers for them. 

In short, I say don't let characters die unless it's deserved. That can mean different things, and I'll get into them in a moment. But for now, I want to repeat this: if someone has carefully made a character and made reasonable decisions, they shouldn't die. If you're playing a brutal variant of the game where character deaths are common, that's one thing; but for a full campaign, player characters should survive until they shouldn't. 

Let's dig into the details. The conditions under which we let a character die are all related to the idea of being deserved. One element of that is in making reasonable choices. If a character does something truly stupid, and it puts their life in danger, that is an acceptable death. Let's consider an example. A character is warned repeatedly to not enter the cage with the displacer beast in it. They enter the cage unarmed and with low health "to pet it." The displacer beast is of course going to attack the character. If that character is brought to death conditions—negative 10 hit points in D&D—then I wouldn't do much in the way of intervening. That player was deliberately reckless with their character, and so we let the conditions kill them. Note here that I'm not talking about "punishing" the character for being stupid by creating dangerous conditions. I'm not fudging all of the displacer beast's damage rolls for the higher. I'm only allowing existing dangerous conditions to do what they do. 

But that's a rare instance when players actually care about their characters. More often, you encounter a scenario where something unfortunate happened to the characters. Perhaps they were taken off-guard, or they just got bad dice rolls; what matters now is that the character is dying. Now we have to ask a difficult question: does the campaign improve (including the experience of the player with the dying character) if the character dies? This might mean, "Is this death dramatic and narratively satisfying?" or something more like "Does this wrap up loose ends and allow the player a new route?" It's context-specific, and you'll need to use your best judgment to decide whether a character death actually works. Remember that we are trying to avoid having players feel like they're not in control of their characters. We're trying to avoid taking a character away from a player before they're ready for it. There's always a way to save them (more on that below). But if the conditions are right, a player character death can be very meaningful. 

By way of example, the Eastweald campaign ended with Carric turning to join the evil Vecna against his former party members; when Gerald and Ell defeated Carric, it was a satisfying dramatic moment. The conditions for this character death were perfect. Firstly, it was good timing. This was our last session in the campaign, and the players knew it. This moment had big finale energy, and it made Carric's player willing to make a move like switching teams. There was to be no missing out in future sessions. Keep this in mind—deaths in finale sessions are more open game than earlier in campaigns. 

Secondly, Carric's death was earned. He had chosen to turn against his allies in a fight to the death. Speaking logically, either he would die, or they would. Since he pitted himself against the rest of the party, there was no avoiding dying. So when Ell and Gerald began to win the battle, I felt no need to intervene with DM assistance. I would like to say more broadly that it's a bad idea to mess with the outcomes of player versus player conflicts, though. For fairness sake, and for the sake of making everyone feel empowered, allow those fights to unfold by the numbers. 

And thirdly, this was a dramatic death. I had no idea going into that last session that Carric would turn to Vecna. Carric's player had given me indication that Carric was being corrupted, but I had no idea how that would unfold. I have to tell you, reader: the look on the other players' faces were incredible. I'm sure mine was too. Carric was part Paladin, after all! We reacted in a big way because it was a big action. And with a turn like that, there were only two things that could happen: Vecna and Carric win, leaving them to negotiate in the wreckage, or Ell and Gerald win like they did. The dice favored Ell and Gerald, and seeing Carric perish as a resolution to his turn was very satisfying—it may even have been the only satisfying way to end the campaign at that point. 

So now let's address the tools of hastening or preventing deaths, now that you know what you want to do. The first route, and the easiest to use, is fudging rolls. I've handled this topic in detail before; here’s the quick and easy guide. First off, in battles where you suspect that there’s a real chance of a player character getting close to dying, start rolling privately. Unless you have a policy of showing every roll for fairness’ sake, hide your rolls in combat. I would argue that hiding your rolls constantly is best. This is especially a good idea if your players will notice when you are and aren’t hiding your rolls.

Write down the Armor Class or similar information for all of the player characters. Saying, “What’s your Armor Class? Oh, it’s that minus one. They miss,” is not satisfying. Conversely, don’t let them get a bead on enemy armor classes if you can. I give identical enemies slightly different armor classes to keep them on their toes. And give them more information than they need when it comes to rolls. It distracts from whether or not the number is real. I’m talking about information about the attacks by way of description—specifically where attacks hit or how they miss. There’s a big difference between the above example of an unsatisfying description in combat and the following: “Wow, they rolled a sixteen; just missed you, Horace. Their axe head swipes through the air, but you lean out of the way, and you can feel it touch the whiskers on your chin.” A player who hears this is probably not thinking about what the DM actually rolled.

My favorite tool for fudging is a simple question to ask players with low health. If a character with low health gets hit, you should already have decided that they either are fair game for a death or you’re deliberately getting them close to death for a dramatic fight (but without killing them). If you want that player to stay on the verge of death, roll the damage against that player (hidden, of course) and then look at the dice. Then, ask them, “How many hitpoints do you have left?” Leave them with between one and three hitpoints. It’s very dramatic, and it works pretty much every time. You can of course strengthen this gambit by knowing how many hitpoint they had and skipping the question, but it’s difficult to always know that information. You can occasionally gather that information (and keep it recorded along with the Armor Classes) by asking for hitpoint checks every few rounds—this is a pretty innocuous question that won’t seem like a fudging tool to most players.

But then, maybe you’ve gone the other direction: you’ve decided to kill a character. As mentioned above, this isn’t a problem necessarily if it’s the end of the campaign. But if your campaign is ongoing, you've got a characterless player on your hands. There are two main solutions to the problem, and solving it means inspecting your gaming situation closely. You might want to seek a way to resurrect the dead character, or you may decide to go the route of creating a new character. 

Let's talk about resurrection. When I was first learning to play D&D as a teenager, I played an elven monk named Algar. Algar suffered a bit in combat; his 3.5 build meant his elven frame was less hardy (low constitution score), and being a monk means being in the thick of battles. He survived for a long time due to careful battle tactics, but then he went up against a vampire in a room by himself. Algar rolled very poorly, missing every strike in two consecutive Flurries of Blows. The vampire slashed him up viciously. At that point, a party member entered the room, summoned a massive fire ball, and walked out. The vampire was badly wounded; Algar was dead. 

I was pretty crushed. Algar was my first character. My DM could see that I didn't want anything except to have him back. When the party finished the dungeon, he set them on a path to a high cleric who could resurrect Algar. And though the party complained about the time and money wasted, they resurrected Algar, and he went on to live out a peaceful life tending to a monastery garden deep in the forest. It was more satisfying than Algar dying—he had been a bit reckless in fighting the vampire alone, but that had come from being abandoned by his allies. My DM saw that Algar didn't really deserve death, so he push the party (which included his daughter) to resurrect him. 

You can go the same route my DM did: have them seek out a powerful spellcaster who can bring back the character. Maybe they're at a beautiful temple; maybe they live alone in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by animals; maybe they run a healing and resurrection shop in a major city. The choice is up to you, and you should pick whatever best suits your world and your story. There's also the matter of payment. You might decide on a large sum of cash; you might have them pursue a magical item; you might make them complete a quest in payment. Again, it's about what suits your world and your story. 

Once you've decided on who's doing the resurrection and for what, it's time to decide the conditions of the resurrection. The official spells in various versions of D&D specify different types of resurrection. Let's look at the 5e versions up close. 

• Revivify: This spell only works on creatures that have died in the last minute, but it's lower level than other resurrection spells. Storywise, we can use this as the idea that resurrection costs more the longer it's been since death. 
• Raise Dead: This spell only works on creatures dead for less than ten days, but it takes a full hour to cast. Storywise, we can use the idea that a more powerful spell extends its usefulness, but also expands how long the process takes. This might not be an issue sometimes, but it couldn't be used in the middle of a battle. There is also an extended sickness which lowers skills, which we can interpret as the body struggling to return to its former self. 
• Reincarnate: This spell also allows for creatures dead up to ten days, and it also takes an hour. One significant side effect is that the character is randomly reassigned a race, which changes the game no matter your approach to it. 
• Resurrection: This spell extends the time limit to one hundred years, and it also takes an hour. As with Raise Dead, there is a significant penalty over time to rolls following the reincarnation. This spell also specifies that body parts can be regrown and diseases and poisons can be cured, adding the story detail that higher level magic actually makes the body healthier too. 
• True Resurrection: This spell again extends the time limit, this time to two hundred years, and it still takes one hour. The spell can do everything that Resurrection does, but without the penalties after being resurrected. It also lifts curses and doesn't require a physical body. Storywise, this shows us that the most powerful healing transcends physical nature. 
• Wish: Because Wish can duplicate any other spell, you could use it to cast any of these spells. 

But beyond these rules, let's talk about resurrecting a character. The moment the character returns, you're going to have to answer some things. What did the dying character feel? Did they experience an afterlife? Do you grant them an audience with their god? (I have any character who dies roll a d100 and have them speak with a random god before reaching any kind of afterlife; a roll with a "meaningful" number means an audience with their god--meaning however likely you think their god would want to speak to the character.) And as DM, you're going to want to stand back narratively. Let the players talk about their reactions to the character's death. There's going to be a lot going on, so let the players work it out. 

And then there's the final option: rolling a new character. If a player is truly finished with a character and they need to begin again, work with them privately to make the new one. Try to grant them privacy from the rest of the party to develop their new character. And let them guide their introduction to the group as much as possible. 

There are things to consider when rolling this new character—how will they relate to the party? What reason does the party have to take on this new character? How will the new party balance affect the story/combat/social dynamics? When you answer these questions, you're going to be affecting the path of the campaign, so be especially mindful. But also don't dismay—sometimes the changes that follow a new character can be for the better. 

By way of example, back when I was playing Algar, I created a second character, Morana, a frightening orc with a scythe who had carved the symbol of the god of death into her body. She slayed monsters and intimidated foes for one glorious session, and then the rest of the party abandoned her in an ambush. My DM—the same DM I mentioned above—couldn't get me out of it. Morana was tragically slain before she even began. 

But the campaign, my first evil campaign, carried on. I needed a new character. I devised a mischievous gnome spellcaster named Loki, and he entered the evil campaign with some fanfare. And Loki became the mastermind of the campaign. We captured castles, we slayed heroes, we even avoided death at the hands of an inevitable. The party had not wanted a big clunky slasher; they wanted a devious murderer with designs on owning the world. I didn't realize that when I first got invited into the evil campaign. But after seeing Morana fail like she did, I knew I needed something else. Loki was that something else. 

My DM had the wisdom to see that I had created the wrong character for the group. He also had the faith to let me try again. And I think it's fair to say that everyone at the table benefitted from having Loki around rather than Morana. I'm glad, in a way, that my DM let Morana die, because Loki is still a figure lurking in my homebrew setting—little gnomish kids in my world tell boogeyman stories about Loki the mage, who comes to steal your breath in your sleep or trick you into a terrible bargain. My DM is as much responsible for that legacy as I am, in some ways. So don't be afraid of rebuilding a party. If you're in doubt, follow this guide to getting a good party together so you can address any changes you might need to make. 

So there you have it. Now you can control and write around character deaths. Just don't forget that these decisions are more weighty than others, so when death starts to loom its head, just slow down and take your time. Your players want your best judgment, not your fastest judgment. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: stereotypes in my gameworld, how to balance plot and exploration, and how to use dreams and hallucinations for storytelling. Until next time, happy gaming!

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A Presentation on How to Easily Create a 5E Character (Great for Groups of New Players)

I recently wrote about the experience of simultaneously DMing 3 campaigns for an event at the school where I teach. It was a wild time, and I look forward to doing it again next year. But I faced a challenge in preparing for that event that I didn't mention in my guide to creating a murder mystery--I had 30 players who needed to develop characters as quickly as possible. I wanted my players to have as much time as possible to actually play, so creating characters quickly was vital. 

Another related issue was in making characters which I wouldn't need to constantly be double-checking their character sheets. Since many of these players were first time players, the guide for creating characters would need to cover most of the details without my having to help players individually very often. To this end, I wanted to create something which could essentially walk the players through the process with most things explained. 

So I ended up with this PowerPoint presentation. I'll walk us through each page below, but you can download the file at that link in order to use the presentation yourself. Read on for the full guide to this presentation, and good luck getting your players to create satisfying characters. 

An Argument for Convenient Storytelling

Almost a year ago, I wrote down an idea for an article: an argument for convenient storytelling. I knew I had something in mind, but it hadn't developed yet. For unrelated reasons (because I started full-time work as a teacher), I became too busy to continue posting regularly. Now, on summer break, I've returned and reconsidered that idea, and fortunately, I have new insight on it. 

The reason for this insight is related to the reason I had to stop writing: because of school. As part of my school's final week, the students pick between fun activities offered by teachers. Samples from this year included a variety of hikes, a murder mystery package, and a buffet of video games. I offered a D&D event: five days of adventures with characters we would create together, plus a set of roleplaying dice for every student to take home thanks to a small budget. I was excited to see how it would go, especially given one wrinkle of the event. 

I would need to take care of 30 students simultaneously. You can already see the issue--no one could satisfyingly run a campaign for 30 people at once. Combat alone would be a colossal mess. So I devised a solution: I would DM for a group of 10 students (a more manageable if still wild number of players) for 5 minutes, then advance to the next group of 10 for 5 minutes, then spend a last 5 minutes with the third 10 before repeating the cycle. 

For the players, this was not a terrible bargain. A lot of time at the table is planning and talking and joking, so some down time was okay. This allowed me to expect the players to have plans in mind when I was with them so that they could maximize their time. And only having 10 minutes between bursts of play meant either a quick break or just time at the table with friends getting ready to play. It was a good solution, except for one thing. 

I would need to be improvising three narratives simultaneously and trying to keep 30 different player characters in mind at once. To say it was a mental feat is an understatement; my brain was taxed for 5 days. We would play for 4 hours a day, so for 4 hours a day I was juggling multiple campaigns, all while my players had the advantage of being overprepared in response. It was a challenge.

 But it came out okay! After the players voted, I had a group of 6th and 7th graders playing a classic dungeon crawl seeking a powerful magical artifact which allowed the holder unlimited spells of any level; a group of 6th and 7th graders trying to solve a murder mystery at a dinner party they were attending; and a group of 9th graders handling a similar but distinct dungeon seeking the same artifact. Each story came out well, especially given my obstacles. 

My measurement of that success is in how the stories ebbed and flowed as a conversation between myself and the players, just as I have always said it should be. With the middle school dungeon, their decision to start at 1st level meant combat was hairy, so I compensated by fudging a lot of rolls to make combat exciting but manageable. With the murder mystery, the players would "need" to find a specific solution if the outline I'd made in preparation were to be followed, so I made a lot of their first guesses right and changed my plans. With the high school dungeon, they cleared their way to the artifact much more quickly than the middle schoolers, so I had to improvise a whole new extension to the story that stemmed from their getting the magical artifact on the beginning of day 4 (with 40% of the story time still to fill); that extension was largely seeing what they wanted to do and giving mild resistance to it. The common theme here is convenient storytelling. I made these players' lives considerably easier than I might have. Why?

You may be pointing out some details that complicate this. I was playing with children--of course the storytelling will be convenient at times because that's what the audience needs. Or perhaps you'd say that the convenient storytelling was just a way of escaping my own poor design for the mini-campaigns. You could make these arguments, but I feel as though something bigger is at play here. Yes, children need different stories than adults, and yes, I always knew I would adjust my outline, but consider this:

There are 211,568 possible games of tic-tac-toe. 9 squares, 2 players, almost no rules. 211,568 possibilities. There is an abstract book of poetry called Hundred Million Billion Poems by Raymond Queneau; it is 10 sonnets printed on paper that is cut into strips, and rearranging the strips creates poems. 10 poems of 14 lines can create 100 quadrillion unique poems. These numbers are possible to calculate because they are closed systems that have finite possibilities. We literally cannot calculate the different ways that a group of players may try to solve an abstract puzzle which is only described to them with words (without a visual or the possibility of tactile feedback). I can bet, though, that there are more than 100 quadrillion possible ways that a group of players might respond to any given clue.

And so, when I ask a group of players--of any age--to evaluate an idea of a situation that only exists so far as I can explain it and make a meaningful guess as to how to proceed, I am forced to make a choice. Either I can insist that they get it exactly right or else face the consequences, or I can allow good ideas to work too. And let's be honest, here: the DM is not the only person at the table entitled to creative thinking and good writing. I often feel that my players come up with better solutions and perceptions of situations than I was able to do in anticipation of their playing. It's simply D&D's nature that the product of a session is a collaboration, so why not extend that to your players?

I want to return to the examples of my D&D event and describe ways that a convenient story was more satisying than a carefully prepared one. The middle school dungeon: these boys were bloodthirsty maniacs. I put literally one puzzle in front of them before they fought the boss, and they stewed for several turns before really committing to trying to solve it. (There was a lot of talk of destroying the locked door instead of unlocking it via the puzzle.) I didn't relent on requiring them to solve a puzzle, but as soon as they offered a good idea that could conceivably solve it, I accepted the answer. This allowed them to feel as though they had really beaten the puzzle, and it allowed them to get back to their lives as murder hoboes more quickly.

The murder mystery group was lost in the decisions they had to make. I gave them control of the investigation but had to have the murdered man's right hand woman step in to make suggestions when they ran into trouble. But more importantly, I had planned from the start that the culprit was actually a ghost haunting the estate and not another guest. But my players were hell-bent on accusing the gnomish circus ringleader Pango, no matter what he had to say in his defense. So I mentioned a chill in the air and a glowing orb and the sound of moaning in the attic, leading them to investigate and find several clues pointing towards the ghost. From one perspective, I gave the crucial info about the ghost's existence away; from another, I allowed my players to feel as though they had cracked the case themselves by limiting my hint to a very slight suggestion rather than saying, "You hear a ghost upstairs." The self-satisfied looks on my players' faces told me that they appreciated their convenient storytelling.

The high school dungeon was convenient storytelling of another type altogether. My high school boys had, quite frankly, utterly destroyed every encounter I threw at them. They used the spell Shatter on the artifact--the Crown of Krantor--and I judged that it broke into three identical crowns when the spell worked, allowing each member of the party to wear their own. Keep in mind that this artifact's effect is unlimited spells of any level. Multiple wishes were cast, and things began to get out of hand. I could tell that the players wanted a real challenge. I was completely improvising at this point because getting the crown was the last thing I had written. So I had a worthy mage challenge them to a duel using glyphs. Now, I had taught several of these boys, so I knew what they really wanted. In the duel, I fudged a roll so that the mage banished them back to the dungeon without the crowns. Their delighted cries told me that convenient storytelling--your spell didn't stop him, you lose--was precisely what they needed.

In the end, I am not arguing that every story should be easily resolved on the first try. But time constraints are a real issue in tabletop games. Being mentally exhausted is a factor, as is imagination exhaustion, as is player distraction. The thing that makes players flock to roleplaying games is the feeling of agency that the games give them, which comes from being able to reliably do the things we set out to do. Narrative obstacles are good, but not every battle needs to be hard-won. Sometimes, it's not worth making what could have been a moment into a long lull in the game. Sometimes, you just have to make things a little easier.

That's all for this time. Coming soon: how to write a murder mystery party one-shot, a profile on politics in my homebrew setting, and a guide for creating 5E characters quickly and easily. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Use Character-Building Exercises for Development and Fun

Everyone at the table benefits from richly characterized characters. The player who describes their character in detail is the player who has the greatest potential to develop story moments into powerful narrative. This also inspires other players to develop their characters as well. And at the same time, posing character development questions to your players not only pushes them to get specific with their characterization, but also creates an atmosphere of fun as the players try to one-up each other with facts about their characters. All it takes is starting each session with a fact about each character. 

This idea comes from the fantastic D&D podcast Dungeons & Daddies. Each episode of their podcast begins with each player (and the DM) offering what they call "Dad Facts." Each of the party's characters--all dads--get the game started by sharing a specific piece of information about them. Oftentimes, these facts are funny; sometimes, they are meaningful; other times still, they are both. The folks who make the show have discussed on multiple occasions how helpful these "Dad Facts" are. They say that beginning the game by thinking in detail about their characters helps them get into the game. It also gets their creative juices flowing--they have to get in touch with the part of their brain that creates narrative details before the game has even begun. And for listeners, "Dad Facts" can be one of the most entertaining parts of the show. So why not adapt this idea to your game? 

Implementing this idea is simple. When your group sits down to play, explain that before you start the game proper, you'll be asking for each player to share a detail about their player. (Details on good things to share below.) It's a good idea to start this exercise for the first time with your strongest roleplayer so that the other players can get a sense of what a good answer looks like. If a player shares something that is vague, ask them a more specific question to have them clarify in a more precise fashion. Your goal is to unveil something that is either surprising (people would not have guessed this fact about the character) or so fitting that it's entertaining (people could have guessed it, but it's more extreme than imagined). Oftentimes, players will piggy-back on each others' facts, and you'll end up with everyone in the party's position on some minor issue. This works great. The more the facts bring the party together, the better. 

Let's talk about what makes a good fact to share. Specificity is key. We don't want a player to say something like, "I like killing monsters" or "I fight using spells." This is pretty obvious and doesn't make the character seem more unique. More specific versions of these would be "I enjoy killing gnolls" or "My favorite spell is Magic Missile." But these are still not very specific or unique. A better version of these would be "I was once mugged by a group of gnolls and now I don't trust them" or "I once used Magic Missile to knock a priest's hat off his head." These would work as good beginner facts--they tell us something about the character and are specific enough to be interesting. 

But these facts don't need to relate to the game in such direct ways. A strong fact to share is simply choosing what a favorite is for the character. Favorite food and drinks, favorite books and plays, favorite memories with friends and family, favorite physical objects (clothing, items, trinkets), and what things in our modern world (films, shows, video games, trends) would be the character's favorite if they lived here and not in a fantasy world--these are all good options. But just picking a favorite is not enough. Your player should describe why that thing is their favorite. A short anecdote about the character's connection to these favorites is the best way to handle these types of character facts. 

On that note, the best kind of character fact is normally a micro-story. Pick an idea/topic and think about how your character would feel about it. Then reverse-engineer a short story about that character and how they interacted with that idea/topic. For example, you have a cleric with guilt problems and a twisted sense of justice; choosing an idea/topic, I come up with "how does this character respond to miscarriages of justice?" So in the end, I tell a short story about how my cleric once saw someone get away with assaulting an old woman in the neighborhood; in response, he tracked the guilty party down in the middle of the night and administered a worse beating than the old woman got. This works well enough, but I can shine it up a little more. I can add that my cleric was found out for his attack on the guilty party, and the church the cleric worked for transferred him to a smaller town where he could cause less trouble. Now, everyone at the table has a clearer sense of who my cleric is--and I probably do too, even as the character's creator. 

It's important to note that even though some of these character facts are more colorful, specific, and interesting than others. And that's okay! It's not a competition. The players should feel when making these facts that they are collaborating on a joint portrait of the party as individual people, not that they have to outdo each other's efforts to characterize their characters. Once you've all shared a character fact, you can roll right into the game, secure in the knowledge that everyone is thinking in-character and creatively. 

For the GM of the game, you have a few options. In Dungeons & Daddies, the DM shares a fact about his real-life self, all of which are humorous. When in comparison to the players' facts, these funny anecdotes seem larger-than-life and suit the tone of the show. But I would suggest an alternative for most games: the GM should pick an NPC who has been particularly at the center of the campaign or session for a while, or someone who is about to become more notable in the story, and share a fact about them. This way, the GM can characterize NPCs (like most GMs want to but hesitate to do for sake of the progress of the campaign) at their discretion and without spending in-game time delivering information about that NPC. You might also as GM have your facts be about the gameworld, as though it is a character itself. Again, this provides an opportunity to fill in worldbuilding details in a way that doesn't slow the game. 

So, to review: by asking your players to deliver one fact about their character per session, you can get your players thinking in-game, set them into creativity mode, consistently develop characters over time, start sessions with a bit of in-game fun, and inspire some laughter or pondering in the rest of the group. For such a simple commitment (just one fact), the results are remarkable. I highly recommend adding this small idea to your campaign, as it will not only improve the game, but also bring the players closer together. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a one-shot based on the movie The Warriors, a profile on literature in my homebrew setting, and rules for commanding and sustaining armies. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Create Ripple Effects from Player Actions

In a tabletop game, players make decisions all the time. Good GMs follow up on these decisions and make the consequences of those actions meaningful. It can be simple to create effects for player actions--making an enemy of a particular NPC can lead to that NPC becoming an important nemesis, for instance. But the effects from player actions can be so much bigger than that. In this guide, I will illustrate how you can transform player actions into far-reaching consequences that will leave your players feeling like their actions have meaningful effects in your gameworld. 

The idea for this concept comes from a tabletop game I have recently created. It revolves around time travel; when players act in one setting, it affects later timelines. The goal of the game is to change history by affecting the world in specific ways to bring about change. So, as you can see, the game revolves around determining effects of player actions to tell a story. To apply this same concept to other tabletop games is relatively simple--you just need to be creative about the way that events unfold. Read on for the guide on how to develop consequences for player actions. 

The easiest way to describe this is to provide a series of examples. Because these ripple effects can be used in any style of game, I will present one example from both of the main approaches to tabletop games: combat and storytelling. Each one will include a player action, a gameworld ripple effect, and a story moment that can follow. 

Let's begin with combat. You're running a game and your players have recently had a showdown with a group of bandits. In fact, the bandits were so badly routed that the last few surviving bandits fled and escaped into the woods. In their attack, the players managed to kill the head of the bandit team, which disrupted the combat and sent the bandits packing. This victory was noteworthy because the bandits have been causing serious trouble for average people for a while now, and their retreating means a reprieve from their attacks. With this much context, we can move forward with our ripple effects. 

It's time to look at our player actions and identify actions that might have consequences. First, the players beat the bandits thoroughly, meaning that a bandit response must be in the works. Second, the players killed the bandit leader, which means that the bandits are without proper organization until they can find a new leader. This may mean infighting amongst the ranking bandits or the rise of a new leader with different goals and methods. Third, there is a pause in bandit attacks because of the players' victory, which means that the townspeople can spend their time rebuilding and preparing for another attack. Additionally, the townspeople may be so grateful for the gallant defense by the players that they do something to recognize the party as heroes. This could be in the form of gifts (perhaps special items), titles and privileges in town, or even just a banquet in their honor. The bandits may even attack again during this banquet for some extra drama. 

So now that we have identified our player actions and the consequences of them, it's time to determine the story moment that they lead to. Our first ripple effect is that the bandits are temporarily routed and are preparing to mount another attack. To make this an interesting story moment, we need to do something special with the bandit response. Some possibilities would include having the bandits attack the town at a surprising moment (during the celebratory banquet is a strong option, or perhaps just having them attack during a meaningful conversation with an NPC in town), to have the bandits attack in a surprising way (they have trained monsters now, or they've joined forces with other nearby brigands and highwaymen), or to reveal what the bandits' intentions in attacking are (maybe they want access to a tomb hidden under the town, or they're striking back against a former bandit leader now in hiding). Each of these possibilities creates narrative momentum and makes the simple attack much more interesting--plus, it's a direct consequence of your players' actions. 

Our second ripple effect is that the bandit leader has been killed. We have a variety of options here. We might let the bandits be directionless and marked by infighting for a time, allowing the party the chance to regroup and address the bandits in a more organized fashion. We could also have a promising bandit leader rise from the common ranks of the bandits. If we go this route, we can refocus the bandit agenda in whatever way we choose. The bandit leader might make the bandits more effective and organized in combat, may introduce a bloody old religion to the bandit ranks, or could even identify the party as the real enemy of the bandits, leading to attacks from bandits at unexpected times and in surprising ambushes. We might have the bandits split into two or more factions, with each bandit faction driven by different goals (one bent on conquering land, another on extorting money from nearby leaders, another still chasing down a deadly artifact). Any of these are possible because the players killed the former bandit leader. 

Our third ripple effect comes from the fact that the town is now temporarily safe from the bandits. Now the folks in the town have the ability to create their own story moments. The town can honor the players as described above with a banquet, with items, or titles and privileges. These moments should not just be simple exchanges of loot, however. When the humble townsfolk bestow these honors on the party, it should be either a solemn affair (the town takes the party's help very seriously) or a joyous occasion (the town is incredibly happy to have the party's help). But this scene is not limited to the official proceedings of the town. Average townsfolk should also approach the party and offer their own humble thanks. These thanks can take the form of hearty gratitude, small tokens of appreciation (a family heirloom perhaps, or a minor magic item), or an invitation to dine with a local family. 

So you can see that from even as simple an event as a bandit encounter, it's possible to create all manner of interrelated effects. Not only do they further the storyline, they also make it more colorful and realistic. Further ripple effects are possible too, reaching even further than is immediately apparent: the bandit loss might mean that an even more powerful rival clan of bandits moves in to take advantage of the shift in power, or that the town that the players defended grows and becomes a more important part of the countryside, or that the bandits disband altogether without effective leadership, which in turn causes a rise of individual crimes by the former bandits. Any of these effects creates their own stories, each of which are responses to player actions. 

Let's approach ripple effects from the context of storytelling as well. You're running a game that requires the players to learn certain secrets and progress the story by investigating them--not unlike my mystery campaign. For the sake of this example, let's say that in an effort to ingratiate themselves with a suspect, the party commits some minor crime in order to prove that they are willing to get dirty to work with the suspect. So the party mugs a random person in an alleyway in order to prove their commitment. As simple as this premise is, there is quite a lot that we can do to create ripple effects that will complicate this. 

Let's start with actions that will stem from this moment. A bystander witnesses the mugging, meaning that there is a witness to the party committing a crime. The mugged person might also respond by becoming more careful about defense of common people, or try to organize a response to the crime. The suspect who the party is trying to get close to may react to the mugging in a surprising way. Each of these consequences can lead to more story and surprising additions to the narrative of the campaign. 

We'll start with the bystander. Because there was a witness to the mugging, the party's identities as the muggers is information that this person can share. If the party wants to avoid facing legal repercussions, they will have to deal with this witness. This can unfold in several ways. The witness might be committed to revealing their identities, meaning the party must deal with the witness before they can be revealed. The witness might recognize the power of their situation and demand some kind of payment for keeping the party's secret. Or the party may have to deal with the bystander reporting them and the fallout that would result--the players may be run out of town, face jail time or a fee, or be placed before a court. Any of these consequences would transform the story and make the ripple effects from their actions seem more real. 

Then there's the mugged person. The identity of this person can tell us something about the ripple effect; if this person is poor or otherwise underprivileged, it may be that no one in town believes them or cares about the mugging. This could lead to the party striving to create more equitable treatment for people like the mugging victim. If the mugged person is an important person in town, they may use their power to investigate and prosecute the crime. (Think about how momentous this could be if the party accidentally mugged the leader of the town.) If the mugged person is just an average member of town, they may respond by gathering a crowd of vigilantes to deal with the party, and they may also advocate in public places for an increase in guard patrols and training for guards. Any of these changes affects the way that the town functions, which opens story options to further determine the fate of the town and the people in it. 

Finally, there's the suspect. The suspect may respond to the players' mugging the stranger by honoring their word and revealing what information they have to share. But they might just as easily double-cross the party, turning them over to the town authorities and not helping at all. They may decide for an option in between those extremes, such as accepting that the party wants to work with them but requiring further tests of the party, or providing mostly complete information to the party but leaving out key details or including some minor misinformation. The suspect could even have heard rumor of the party's attack on the mugged person and decide that the party is too rough for their liking, deciding instead to work against the party as the story develops. 

So from something as simple as a mugging, we have a wide ranges of story options, all of which illustrate the way that the party's actions have led to these moments. We can carry these ideas farther later in the campaign--long after the party has interacted with the mugging victim, we can have an outfit of guards or mercenaries at the mugging victim's command approach the party, for one. We might also have the increased guard patrols make this town a destination for common people, growing it to a bigger city with still more guards. The suspect might keep tabs on the party and turn more and more into the archvillain of the campaign, pulling strings from the shadows as the party tries to get solid evidence against them. Any of these and more are possible; it just takes a bit of looking forward, and you'll be able to craft story moments that extend your party's actions beyond simple quests. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a story-based dungeon, how to use characterizing exercises for story and fun, and a one-shot adapted from the movie The Warriors. Until next time, happy gaming!

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