Traps

The first area to cover is traps. Traps are generally not too complex a thing in Dungeons and Dragons or in your RPG. In a fantasy setting you have physical and magical traps that players can go into, and since I write these from the point of Dungeons and Dragons, we’ll work with that system.

When using a trap there are a few steps for creating something interesting. Though not every trap needs to be that interesting. It, instead, is able to be used to set expectations if you want. I create a trap in a room at the start of the dungeon, every player is going to check every room for traps. And I think there are good uses for that. But let’s talk about those steps.

• Type of Trap
• Finding Trap
• Disarming Trap
• Setting Off Trap

Type of Trap

Each of these is simple in it’s own right. But you need each of them to be there. Firstly, what type of trap is it goin to be. Physical, magical, and if it’s physical, pit trap, spike trap, poison trap. Or if it is magical, fire, water, changes room, teleport? There are a lot of fun things that you can do. But pick that and that is going to determine some other things as you go down.

Finding Trap

Next is how can the players find the trap. Even if it is arrows being shot off of a floor trigger when they step in a spot, there are signs. Or a magical trap, there might be a glyph that is triggered. But I think there are two worthwhile numbers coming up with. First, what is the difficulty for just passively perceiving the trap? If someone is very good with their passive perception can they just spot it? Or what is the perception check to see it. And then, what is an investigation if they are looking for a specific type of trap.

The second one shows up more if it’s a known trap. If in room one there is a pit trap, in room two they might look for a pit trap again. That is investigating to find something specific. So use both.

Disarming Trap

Next up is disarming a trap. Know kind of how this is going to work. Let players maybe brute force it, if you don’t have a rogue in the party. The Barbarian rips up the pressure plate on the floor, sure. But generally, rogue with thieves tools. Or if it’s a magical trap, do they need to dispel magic?

But this is again about creating that difficulty for the check. It might be a 12 for a rogue with thieves tools and slight of hand to be able to disarm it. It isn’t that complex a trap. But if you don’t have the rogue that day, or the barbarian gets there first, it might be a 18 strength/athletics check to rip it out of the ground. So know what numbers you want. But more so, know the ballpark. If you think they may come up with an alternative way know if you want that to be as easy as a normal way or harder.

Setting Off Trap

Finally, they might just set off the trap. Now, traps can be their own mini little puzzle in a game. What is going to happen if the whole party falls into a pit traps. Now they need to get out. Or maybe it is going to be timed event now for them to get through clouds of poison while taking damage?

Sometimes it is as simple as, a volley of arrows shoot and that is it. Or the player literally gets their foot stuck in a trap (or hand if they were disarming it). But think about how you want to use the trap and the trap affect to advance story or create interesting interactions if you want.

Bonus Dungeon Master Tool – Traps and Expecations

I talked about this a little but I knew I wanted to come back to it. What is the expectation when you create a trap in the first room of a dungeon? Well, the simple answer is, there are going to be more traps. In fact, there are going to be lots of traps. The player is going to check every room for traps.

Change Them Up

Now that the players are checking for traps there are a few things that you can do. Firstly, change up the traps. Not every room should have a trap, but when you set the expectation that there can be traps don’t waste your and the players time by only having one in the first room. But change up the traps, magical and non-magical in nature.

Only One

Or, do only have a single one. But make it so difficult and terrifying that most groups would immediately run in fear. Since a good adventuring party doesn’t have enough fear or brains to know to be afraid, they will just keep checking for traps. If you do that, though, make the rest of the dungeon a cake walk. All the energy was on the start of it, the rest is just empty hallways because no one ever gets through.

Develop History

Another thing, and last one I’ll talk about, is you can develop history. The history of the dungeon could be new traps are being created so it means that someone is still down there taking care of it. Or you might find adventurers who were killed before and the players gather pieces of history from them. Nothing like the first room and the adventurers see someone dead in a sprung trap. Now you immediately plant concern and can give them some history with the adventurers journal as to what they knew of this dungeon.

Puzzles

That is more on traps than I had expected. But I think that doing a great job with traps can make for an interesting campaign. And it is going to give the rogue something to do besides trying to steal everything that isn’t bolted to the ground.

But now we are onto puzzles. And puzzles, I think, offer three different routes to go. Though, the routes can overlap in some ways. But I want to firstly talk about who the puzzle is for, that is two of the routes. And then finally, what if there isn’t an answer.

Determining Who the Puzzle is For

This might sound odd. But there are two groups that the puzzle could be for. When you create a puzzle it is either for the characters in the game. Or it is for the players out of the game. Neither is a wrong way to create a puzzle and doing both can offer a lot of fun in the game for the players. But this is the first thing you want to determine when you create a puzzle, who it is for. Because that is going to change what you do.

Puzzles for the Characters

Puzzles for characters are going to be less of the cryptograms, jumbles, patterns, things like that. Instead, for the characters, a brain teaser or pieces of history and knowledge needed are the type of puzzle that you are going to create.

You go to the temple of the god of death, for example. Well, what is it that your characters know about the god of death? You create a puzzle where they need to know something about it. The players outside of the game don’t know this god of death unless you gave them a document with it all in there (don’t do this it’s a waste of your time). But the characters in the game sure do because it’s the god of death, they’d have heard of it at least.

So think about the checks that you want them to make. It might be an investigation to see if they can tell how someone beat the puzzle before. Or it might be a religion check to determine what they remember about the god of death. Again, it’s the god of death, the characters know of it for sure, but do they know the right detail.

So a puzzle for the characters is all about the checks that they do. And you decide how hard or easy you want it to be. But if you make it too hard, also have a way around it.

Example – The God of Death

So let’s run with this god of death example. There is a dungeon where they need to get down to the lowest level. They know that there is a secret passage called the River Styx that they can use to get down to the bottom. But they get there and it’s locked away behind a riddle.

“Bestow they worship upon me, pay the tolls once, twice, and three. Coins of death marked for their fate. Hours gone don’t tarry late.”

Solution

So, what is the answer to that riddle? The players need to provide the total value of the cost to cross the River Styx either three times or six times. Once, Twice, and Three could be 1+1+1 paying it three times. Or it could be 1+2+3, paying the set each time. I think I’d set this as an intelligence check of 10, pretty simple if they want both options.

But it is also a specific coin. What is a coin marked for death. Well that might be a soul coin from the hells. A soul given up to a devil would be interesting payment to get across the River Styx. This one is more of a religion check, and I think while people know of the god of death, it is taboo to worship them, so it’s less common. Make it a difficulty check of 15 for religion, so tougher.

What If They Fail

So what if in this case they all fail their religion rolls. They don’t know about the soul coins. But after feeding in a bunch of coins and nothing happening are they locked out of the dungeon? No, there is a longer path that is more dangerous for them. But if you need a roll to succeed to progress the story, always gives a different, harder way for them to go forward. If it is just a case of finding some treasure that would be nice. Sure, it is possible that they never figure it out. But if it is for anything related to story, give them that other option.

Puzzles for the Players

Next up, a puzzle can be for the players. This one I think is a bit simpler. Yes, you still might incorporate checks that the characters can do to give the players hints. But it is all about the players for this one. A cryptogram is a great example of this. You give them a little bit of a key and then let them get going on breaking the whole thing. It is something that all the players can take part in, but it isn’t part of the game and it isn’t meant for them to roleplay it out.

I am going to skip an example on this, but it can be a lot of different things. I made a room with gouts of flames that were being shot out. As I describe what the players watch, I kind of expect the players to take notes and solve the path. It isn’t something you do by trial and error but in that case, I also make it simple. And if the players aren’t solving it, I give them an intelligence roll and give some more details that make the puzzle simpler.

Puzzles with no Answer

The final thing is something that I think more Dungeon Masters should do. This is going to be the best Dungeon Master tip overall for traps and puzzles. It is simply, don’t create a solution. This is something that you can do with puzzles but also just with issues that arise. Throw the players a problem and see what happens.

Why wouldn’t you have a solution, though? The simple answer is, the players can come up with one. And this is something that can be done in character as well. You just wait until they try something that you think makes enough sense or is cool enough to work. When they suggest it or they try it, it can work as simple as that. And let’s face it, there is one of you and probably two to eight players, so more brains, more creative solutions.

This also can let you set a time for it. If you think, I want them to sweat a bit on this trap, give them ten minutes to discuss it and try different things, or maybe even longer if it’s supposed to be key and important. Or if it is supposed to be pretty trivial, make it that way, let the first cool or fun idea work.

Example from My Game

This came to be because I actually created one of these, kind of, last night in my game. The players were on a labyrinthian type floor of a tower, the main dungeon in the campaign. Every room was the same except for a few had plaques on the wall. The big thing is that they needed to get to the stairs for the next level. To do that they needed to go into rooms and figure out where to go.

In the rooms, and only a few of them, did I leave clues for the players. But the clues were fairly general. In the first room it said the following.

First Puzzle

“Beware – Zombies
Go this way.”

That was next to one of the four doors in the square room (one per wall). The players had to decide what that meant. But little did they know, and they messed this up in an interesting way, was that every room a character went into had more and stronger zombies. So if they fought, each time the zombies would get tougher and tougher and more and more.

Second Puzzle

So the player went the right direction, eventually, after one had done a loop to see how it would work and ramping up their difficulty. Eventually they got to another room with another plaque and a dead adventurer.

“Two Far
[down arrow]”

This meant head back two rooms and go south. Now going back is going to cause more zombies and harder zombies to appear. At this point, by the way, the zombies had +23 to hit and were dealing 1D6+21 damage.

The Real Puzzle

So the new puzzle was simpler but harder. How do we get through rooms without getting hit by the zombies. They had already spent a fair number of resources on a battle or two with the zombies. And I didn’t give them a solution. If they had gone the ideal route, it wouldn’t have been a major deal. But because they went further and created more zombies, it was way harder for them.

So two flight spells later and the Warforged character being disguised as a zombie the players got to the right room. But they needed to do it in a way where they weren’t taking 3-4 attacks of opportunity each, Because say it was three, all likely hit with a +23 to hit, and that’s a minimum of 66 damage, a lot for even a level 16 bard.

Final Dungeon Master Tools for Traps and Puzzles

This is the reminder that I give at the end of all of these Dungeon Master tools. Or if not at the end, sometime in there. But the point of everything is to create a great experience at the table. And that means progressing characters and stories as you go along. When you create a trap and a puzzle that should be in your mind as well. Because when you do that the most fu n is going to be had at the table for both you and your players.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

Thrain and Barrai spooked by the noise decided to book it towards the direction of the mess hall. There they run into a stone wall and Barrai thinks it’s a dead end but Thrain, with his dwarven eyes study it and see that there appears to be a single stone, large, that looks like it’s loose that he could push out of the way. It takes some effort and Barrai’s help but they push the door out of the way and they see that they are in the cellar where they were supposed to have gone for shelter during the dragon attack.

Bokken thinking that everything is good leaves Sanphire up in the tower after their dagger throwing competition and heads back into the mess hall through the kitchen. In the kitchen he is caught by Narius. But Narius, after having gotten beaten up by their group once decides not to fight him and just finishes drinking his water. Bokken settles down watching the door for the night.

Thrain and Barrai thinking that they are being smart decide to loop back around, sneaking outside to see whom they can see who was following them down the tunnel. They make it to a corner and they see Sanphire, out of the tower where he had been keeping watch, going to pick up the two daggers. One of the daggers is lying by the trapdoor which is propped ever so slightly open by a piton. Barrai, thinking quickly, decides to try and cast sleep on Sanphire. However, the spell doesn’t seem to have an affect on him, instead there is a thump from down inside the tunnel and Sanphire notices the trapdoor and the piton. He throws open the trapdoor and messages Tormin. Tormin sees the trapdoor and looks surprised by it. He wakes up the other teachers and they all come out. Barrai, watching the proceedings notices that neither the teachers Dadellous or Linken seem surprised or as surprised as they should be by the trapdoor. Or at least as surprised as Assendial and Tormin did. Barrai and Thrain sneak back inside.

Inside they go back to sleep and are awakened early in the morning by Assendial and Tormin who wake up all the students. Tormin tells them about the secret tunnel and that something was found underneath the barracks where the dragon had attacked and where Castillia had gotten her leg broken. They then tell the students that they are going to question them one by one and start on that process while Linken and Dadellous continue to study the tunnels.

Bokken is the first to go in to be questioned. He steps in and realizes that the room has had some spell cast on it, a zone of truth, and that he has to tell the truth, not Liar Liar style but he cannot right out lie. Assendial is sitting there and she asks him if he knew about the tunnel or any secret passage prior to Tormin telling them about it. He answers truthfully that he did. She asks him what entrance to it he knew of, he answers truthfully. She pulls out four items, a necklace, a scarab, an amulet, and rock with runes etched into it, she asks him if he knows which was found down in the tunnel underneath the barracks. He answers truthfully that he doesn’t.

Barrai is next, and he also fails his saving throw against the zone of truth. Realizing this he hems and haws a bit about it. Assendial asks him to clarify if he knew about it, and he hems and haws some more. She next asks him where an entrance is, he gives a vague answer but not a lie about how a place as old as this there are probably several entrances. Finally she asks him which of the items was under the barracks. He guesses that a dragon would probably want the items that have the most value and that the necklace, amulet and scarab are all golden. Or maybe it’s the rune covered rock because that’s different.

Parrag goes in next followed by Thrain. Thrain who has a very high charisma doesn’t fail the saving throw and he and Assendial know it. She asks him if he knows about the tunnel, he answers truthfully that he does. She asks him if he knows where they are or if he’s been down in there. He successfully deceives her that he knows less about the tunnels and where they go then he actually does. She pulls out the items and asks him about them, about their origins, which was found under ground, what he knows about their magical properties. Thrain is 100% truthful with her that he really doesn’t know much about them. She believes him.

Everyone else is sent back into a large group except for Narius, Addrus, Barrai and two second year students. They are all brought into one room together with all the teachers and are asked a couple of questions, the first that they had to write down was how many different directions the tunnel splits at it’s single junction point. Narius says outloud 4, but had written down 2. Addrus says 4 and has written down 4, Barrai says 4 and has written down 4, one second year has said 4 and written down 4, the last one has written down “?” and says 4. Next they are asked where the four directions of the tunnel go. The first 2nd year just writes down “I don’t know” and says “I don’t know”, the next one says “Moody’s Bar, the field, the cellar, and the tower” and has written that down. Barrai has written down “Not not the field, not not the cellar, not not somewhere fun, and not not somewhere awesome” and says that. Addrus gives the same answer the second year who knew all the directions. Narius, on the other hand, gives all the right answers but only had written down “the field, the food, and the drink”.

The two second years are let out of the room as is Barrai while Narius and Addrus are kept in the room to answer more questions.

The group decides to go to Moody’s bar, since they assume that the trapdoor and the hidden door into the cellar will be blocked off for good now, and they should try and find another way in. Moody’s Bar is the one where the fighting circle that Barrai and Thrain had made some money before, and they had seen Sanphire and Esmelda fight. Bokken decides to give them a good cover as they search around. Barrai and Thrain spot Zaphir, an older student from another school whom they’d swindled before in a fixed fight. They go up to him and see if he wants to bet with them on the Bokken fight. He recognizes them and knowing that they had taken his money before, he orders two beers, plus he has one in front of him. When the beers arrive, he takes one in each hand and smashes them into the faces of Barrai and Thrain. A bar fight ensues and Thrain unleashes an eldritch blast on him, plus hex damage and takes him down. The bartender kicks them out of the bar so that they don’t get in more trouble since technically Zaphir started it, and they head out just until Zaphir is gone. Then they sneak back in wearing fake moustaches (a Dwarf and a Tiefling) and join the crowds who are getting ready for the first fight. They get their program which has the betting odds and see they can get 5 for one on Bokken, slightly worse than normal first time fighters. So Thrain puts down two gold and Barrai puts down 10 gold, that he’d stolen off of Zaphir. And the announcer came out….

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the week night fights…. Let’s get ready to rumble………”

Behind the DM’s screen:

Most of this session was ad libbed. I had some plans for them down in the tunnels, but because of choices that were made, mainly Bokken heading back when he did and not picking up the daggers things changed. Had he picked up the daggers even, they could have gone through the cellar, come back around, and repeated the process. I’m assuming they would have been the ones to find the odd object in the tunnel under the barracks, instead of the teachers. And that was going to be my main plan, things clearly went differently.

One thing that was a lot of fun was the Zone of Truth just to see the different tacts and different successes for passing. I like how Zone of Truth works where you know as the person who is in it what is happening so you can talk around the truth, but the caster also knows if you pass or fail. It makes for some interesting moments in gaming.

And Zaphir being at the bar was totally something the players asked about. So the fact there was a bar fight is on them, Zaphir survived to fight another day.

We’ll have a few weeks off now from any more Tower of the Gods. I’m in the midst of moving and seeing as this is remote, I’m not sure when I’ll have my computer and full set-up ready to go again.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

A dungeon in Dungeons and Dragons is normally seen as a festering hole in the ground, like you’d end up with in classic games. Instead it really is anything where there is an entry point and a goal where you go in and get something or defeat some boss, or to get to a certain location that only the exit can lead you to. Then there are challenges along the way.

You can see how this looser definition makes it much more useful for your game. Your “dungeon” could be going through a section of the underdark in search for another entrance to a “dungeon” on the surface that then the players will still have to go through. So your dungeon could literally be leading to another dungeon and that works well.

Your dungeon could be the gauntlet of challenges at the end of a campaign that lead up to the big bad monster who your party has been going after the whole time. Or it could be two rooms leading up to that big bad, but it’s a point of entry. I think something even as simple as a foyer in a manor and then two paths leading to two waiting rooms and then a waiting room to the main hall where the big bad Emperor of the Frozen Realm sits works for a dungeon. You’ve given yourself a chance for some combat, you’ve possibly, if you want one direction to be better, added in a riddle or a puzzle for the players to figure out.

I’ve given some examples of what different dungeons are, but that only shows what some dungeons might be, but not why you’d want to use a dungeon.

A dungeon is nice for the DM, because it gives you a fairly straight forward session or sessions to plan. Your players are always going to do something that you wouldn’t expect, always, but in a dungeon, because you’ve already planned it a fair amount, it’s not going to be as difficult to deal with those random things. This means that you’ll have less on your plate to come up with things on the fly, and have planned encounters in more detail than you normally would have. It also means, that if you’re partly in and the session comes to the end, you already have some plans for the next session.

Also, because of the planning you can do ahead of time, this is something that you can tweak slightly and move to another game at a later time. There are plenty of monsters in the monster manual that you can reskin it to. If the first game is more classic fighting goblins, looting treasure, kicking down doors, you can create a dungeon to put them in to get to the big bad. Maybe, now you are running an elemental campaign. Now you can swap out the goblins with elemental creatures, raise the challenge level of your game and raise the difficulty of your traps and use the exact same dungeon set-up. Just with reflavoring how you describe things and what monsters are in the dungeon, you now have a very different dungeon.

Beyond making things easier on the DM, they also offer a chance for variety and world building in your world. If you need to drop bits of history to the players and don’t want to just run a session where they are in the library getting talked at by the librarian, a dungeon is a great way to go. Now they are going to kick out some goblins, or so they think, but it’s going to be a chance for you as the DM to sprinkle in some knowledge of the ancient world that will matter for the players later, while they are still getting to do something.

It also allows for making really unique pieces for the players to play through. And I don’t mean setting up some big map with minis that the players get to look at and ooh and ah over, unless you can do that (I can’t). But it allows you to create the mad wizards tower that the players have to fight their way up. It allows you to do a crazy underdark/Mind Flayer story or the maze of a Beholder. These places are going to be places that will be remembered by players and a chance for cool and crazy moments to happen that players will talk about for a long time afterwards. For me, creating those moments is something that I want to get better at, and a dungeon and planning on dungeon are a good way to do that.

Finally, I think it’s a good time to use dungeons as benchmarks in your story. So, if you’re a player, you might suspect this, but most DM’s don’t have the whole story planned out before they get started. We have a beginning, maybe, and an end, most likely. If nothing else, we have a concept for the game and an idea of who the big bad is for the game. But sometimes we have ideas where we know we want, around level five, this thing to happen to move the story forward, and at level ten, this other thing. Making those benchmark spots into dungeons really lets you move the story from one spot to the next arc of your story as it leads up to your big bad. And when you don’t think of a dungeon as a festering hole in the ground, now all of a sudden you have a lot more options.

So what do you think? Do you think that there are good reasons to use dungeons? Do dungeons feel too focused for you or too much like a railroad for you?

This wraps up the Welcome to the Dungeon! series. Let me know what you thought about the series as a whole?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

So instead you have to plan out your dungeon to make sense. Though, there is an easy way to make an old school dungeon, and that’s with four simple words: “A wizard did it.”. That will get you out of jail free when your dungeon doesn’t make sense. But that only works in some situations. A lot of the time you’re going to be building a dungeon for a specific reason. Maybe it’s an old abandoned temple that is hidden away in the jungle. Having ice monsters in there isn’t going to make sense. You’re going to want to have something like Yuan-ti in there, and they can be bossing around another race. Or maybe it’s in a volcano, well, then fire elementals are probably going to play a big roll in the dungeon.

But it could be boring to just have one type of monster in the dungeon, and I agree with that. If I was playing in a dungeon, I wouldn’t want to run into a fire elemental in one room, then two in the next room, and one after that, then an empty room, and so on and so forth until I reached my goal.

Instead, start by thinking about if there is a big bad in your dungeon? Is there a boss monster that your players are going to have to fight? If there is, who is that guy, is it a demon? Is it a Mind Flayer? Is it a mad wizard? All of those are going to have a different group of monsters working for them. You might, for example, run into lesser demons or even weaker creatures like goblins that the demon has conscripted to guard the upper levels. Then maybe the further in you go, you run across a demon who is in charge of the goblins and imps who is a mid point battle. From there on, you face a mixture of demons of various powers and a few goblins thrown in until you finally face the big boss demon at the end of the dungeon who is most likely doing some evil plot when you get there so you have to stop them from being able to do it.

Another example with the mind flayer, you’d be looking at Underdark creatures, such as Duegar and Drow who would be being controlled by the mind flayer. You might even run into a band of Githyanki or Githzerai who might want to stop the mind flayer as well, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be an encounter, just might not be combat. Eventually you’ll probably have a situation where you have to sneak around a bunch of mind flayers to get to the elder brain or the main mind flayer leading the charge to disband the other group. But since this is the underdark, which is almost a dungeon onto itself, you can also use natural monsters down there. Various oozes and slimes might be clinging to the wall. A cloaker might be off in the shadows waiting for the next unsuspecting drow or adventuring party to come by.

You can start to see how you can build out a dungeon that really has a theme and feel to it. In fact, that’s one good way to start with a mad wizard dungeon, what sort of theme would they have put in it. Maybe they have it elemental themed and each floor has a different type of elemental in it and the traps are built so that they aren’t an issue to the elemental type on that floor.

But there are also some dungeons that don’t have a big boss in them, or if they do, it isn’t because someone has set this up. The examples above, all of them are probably something that’s been tailored to the group in them. But what happens in the example of the abandoned temple? There isn’t some big bad Yuan-ti in there who set this up to be great for snake people? It was most likely a human or Elven temple from a long time ago. So you have to start to think about how they are going to be using the place. Maybe they’ve only cleared the first few levels of the dungeons because the traps later on are just too nasty. So you’re going to have to deal with them early, but eventually the dungeon will be “safer” or less monster filled, until maybe you get past those really bad traps.

In the example above, it’s possible that the ecology even changes part way through. Maybe the original owners of the temple left some construct monsters further down. Or maybe something is also coming up from the bottom (or down from the top) of the dungeon. Or maybe instead of constructs, there are a group of Drow who are using it for some dark ritual, but it’s easier for you to get to them by going down through the temple, through the Yuan-ti, through the traps, as compared to searching the underdark with it’s dangers and maybe finding what you’re looking for in time.

Hopefully it’s starting to make sense how you can use a dungeon in your game and have it be a part of a bigger story of the world and of your game. By having a more tightly built dungeon you don’t have to have it be a random wizard, but you can tailor it specifically to the spot in your world that you want the dungeon to be and build it to a specific theme, monster, or boss, whatever your game needs.

Have you made a dungeon with a really cool theme or some really cool monsters? Tell us about them in the comments below.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

So now you are starting your campaign, how do you run a game that has good balance, good flow, and doesn’t end up with you accidentally getting your big bad guy killed quickly or killing off your whole adventuring party?

There are two different grooves that we are going to talk about here, your story groove and your session groove.

The story groove is probably the easier of the two. You just have to come up with the little bits of information that the players are going to be getting and keeping them motivated. But you also need to be putting into your mind the story that is happening around what your characters are doing. What’s going on in their home town while they are gone? It’s very possible that the answer is nothing, it’s been a boring time at their home time. But the bigger question is what is the bad guy doing? Your players shouldn’t be chasing around the BBG (Big Bad Guy) the whole time, it won’t allow them to really level up naturally. So what do your players need to do while they are waiting to be strong enough to face the bad guy, and what is the BBG doing to taunt, cause trouble, or increase the need for the players to go after him, while the players aren’t able to?

The harder of the two with the session, how do you keep your players involved in each session. It is made more interesting by the fact that your players will want different things. Some players are going to be really interested in roleplaying, talking to the tavern keeper and expect every character to have information on what they are looking for. Some players are going to be a bit more of a murder hobo and they are going to want to think about combat and will want to fight something every session. Some players are going to want it to spend the whole time creating a story.

So how do you balance out all of those things?

Try and get some of all of those things into your game is the first thing. Use your roleplaying and combat to help tell the story is fairly important. And another big thing is to keep the tension on in the game. Now, that doesn’t mean that their aren’t down moments, they can have a peaceful night and an easy combat, but more often than not, you need to remind your players that their characters might die. The world that you are in should be dangerous, and there should be people who are scheming and doing things. If their characters fall into unconsciousness, it’s something that the players remember. They remember the sessions where the stress is higher, especially if it is something that is related to the story.

You also don’t have to just have a monster that is really tough for them to try and kill. Plan various other types of conflicts as well, maybe an NPC doesn’t want to do what your players characters want them to do. Or maybe there is a situation where they are getting hit over and over again, but there is some puzzle that they have to figure out to survive. Or maybe, like early on in Dungeons and Flagons, they have to try and stop something from happening. Killing the bad guys is important, but you want to stop them from getting away with what really matters, and that’s why you are trying to kill them.

So, try and have some balance in your sessions. But try and keep everything progressing forward somehow and you can try and teach your players a little bit on what to expect or not expect. For example, in Dungeons and Flagons, they go up a tree and find themselves in the Fey Wild. Now, there was nothing up there for them. I knew I could do a little bit with Nimrose’s backstory in the Fey Wild, but there wasn’t going to be anything there to help them in the main quest that they were after. Was it bad that they explored there? Nope, not at all. But was it needed for them to go there? Nope, not at all. I gave them a bit of a story there, but not the story that they were hoping for.

So now, get your story running, get your game flowing, and finally, be willing to change what you were thinking a lot. You don’t need to change the big part of your story, it can still be the game BBG, but if your players come up with a better idea or are going in a different direction, adjust what your BBG is doing, adjust where they are going to find what they need to defeat him. Adjust how they are going to get there. Be willing to create the adventure that your players are interested in. Now, that can be really tough to do if you really love some piece of your story, but you can run another game, another time, and use it when your players are ready for it, or when you find players who want to get to that. Create a notebook, document, or something with the stories that you haven’t been able to use, and then adjust your adventure that you are playing now, and everyone will have more fun.