Dungeon Master Tools – Exploration

Firstly, let’s talk about why exploration is difficult or often overlooked in a campaign by the Dungeon Master and the players. Exploration is often this idea of travel of getting from here to there. We think about Lord of the Rings, as an example. There is a lot of “exploration” going through Mordor, the part with Tom Bombadil that everyone loves so much. But with that, often times just walking isn’t going to be all that interesting, and we see that in Lord of the Rings as well.

So when the party of players leaves the town, what do they do? They start walking. And it might take some time to get somewhere. If the Dungeon Master is doing a good job it won’t be too long of a walk, but Tolkien made it a very long walk. And things happen along that walk. But I think that exploration is more than that.

Exploring on the Walk

But I think it’s important to talk about exploring along the walk. We see exploration happen along the walk in Lord of the Rings. Some of it pays off in interesting ways for the characters, and other parts, well, not so much. And I think a Dungeon Master can learn from this.

Example from Lord of the Rings

Let’s, for this example, say that all the players are the four hobbits in Lord of the Rings. When their NPC mentor seemingly dies fighting a giant monster they can’t defeat, that’s an interesting element along the way. Of course by this I mean Gandalf the Grey fighting the Balrog. But there are other elements, like the side quest to Tom Bombadil that don’t make that much sense.

So the point of the example is make it matter to the story. I want to go back and talk about story arcs again. Not to beat a dead horse, but story arc planning can help make the exploration more interesting. Why, because, that is the chance to start dropping breadcrumbs for arcs to come. In Lord of the Rings how much more epic is it when Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White?

Example with Story Arcs

Here’s our story planned out:

• Find treasure
• Fight Mid-level boss
• Learn about Big Bad
• Search for way to stop Big Bad
• Get information from wizard
• Find artifact
• Confront big bad

Let’s say we are on that first arc of finding the treasure. Before we head out of town the group is confronted by a gang of street toughs. They all have a crimson band tied around one arm as a notable feature that you call out as the Dungeon Master. When you finish up that arc, because it’s part of the walking out of town, you go onto that mid-level boss. And sure enough the boss’s henchmen have a band tied around their arm that is crimson.

So what did I do there? I tossed in seemingly a random encounter, gave it one piece of flare, an arm band, and paid that off later. Will the players remember it, possibly. But let’s also say the players maybe don’t kill all the street toughs because some run away, those street toughs will remember the players for sure.

Exploring in Other Ways

So we talked about that journey exploration, but sometimes exploration isn’t so much that traveling. Sometimes you might want to focus on exploration being a dungeon or something like that. If there is an old lost ruin of a dungeon, no one might know what is in there. And the NPC’s probably don’t have a good map of it. So this is another way to add in exploration in a more meaningful plot or character driven way.

Example from Lord of the Rings

So is there an example again from Lord of the Rings? There certainly is. The Mines of Moria are a pretty standard dungeon. While it does offer some of the bigger arc stuff like I talked about with Gandalf, there is another story that is progressed through this exploration. And that is of Gimli finding out what happened to the other dwarves. It’s a good character developing arc for a specific character.

Example with Story Arcs

So let’s keep this story going that we’re doing. The players are out of town after fighting those street toughs. They maybe need to deal with some more wildlife along their way, but they reach the crypt where the treasure it hidden away. You know, the one where they are going to need to fight the undead. Read up on that here with combat.

We know from talking about story arcs and planning sessions that the players know a little bit about this place. But the information they got was from a drunk who ran away from this place. So it isn’t likely that the person knows everything for the players to know. That is when you start to explore with the players and they explore this tomb/crypts to get down to that last hidden crypt. And that leads us to our next thing, creating a dungeon.

Creating a Location

So, I say it’s about creating a dungeon. It doesn’t need to be that, it can be any sort of explorable location. If the players need to find something in a woods, that is an explorable location. But it is called Dungeons and Dragons for one RPG, so I do think of Dungeons.

What do you do as a Dungeon Master to prep a location? I think there are a few ways that you could try and make this work. Let’s start with the easiest way, you can use an existing tool. This is one dungeon generator that I have found that I think is nice – https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/. And even if you don’t use the dungeon that is generated, I think it’s nice to look at to help shape up some ideas of how it can work.

The other way is to sketch out a dungeon. You don’t need to plan everything out, but if you want to create a dungeon, I think jotting down a few things can be useful. Firstly, draw out some shape of the dungeon. That is where the generator actually can help too, even if you don’t want to use everything they put in there, you have a specific monster(s) you want to use, for example, it can give you a shape.

Then jot down some notes about the dungeon. Are there traps, and what type of traps are they? Are there wondering monsters or specific monsters that could be in a room in rooms? And what types of monsters do you want to use. You don’t need to plan each combat, but you can create a list to make it feel a bit more living.

Example Dungeon Creation

Firstly, I whip up a map from the Don Jon site. I want to use a map of some sort. That is just my template for my dungeon. Or I draw up a map. Mainly I want to create as many rooms as I want and I want to know how it maps out. The reason for knowing that is I want to create some dead ends and other things to mess with the players.

Traps

Next I want to put in some traps. But I don’t need to put them into specific rooms. For our example of this undead crypt, I know I want the last door to be trapped, it’s the final room it makes sense, so I put a trap there. Otherwise I put one in the first few rooms, so the players know to look for it, and then I roll to see if there is a trap or not and what type of trap. In this case, I want a spike trap and a poison trap, so I grab stats for them and create a little table.

Monsters

Then I think about what monsters do I want? If you know what you want it makes it easy. But much like the traps, create a table to roll for monsters in rooms or not and what type of monsters. In this case I want a couple of ghosts, including one I place in specific side room who isn’t actually evil, but just wants to go to rest and the players can help with that. And then some different combats of varying difficulty. And I roll when players enter rooms and then roll for bad guys.

Items

Finally there are items. A good dungeon should have some things in there as well. And you need to decide how much you want the players to find or how little. Since this is really early game, I want it to be a little. What I think makes sense is that some of the tombs will have bodies with jewelry on them, so the players can get a few cheaper pieces of jewelry to sell and then buy other items with. Plus there is going to be the item somewhere that the friendly ghost wants, and I’d place that specifically. And last the item at the end that the players already know about.

Always For the Plot or Characters

Final thing is that exploration is always for the plot or characters. I think that random encounters can be okay, but it needs to make sense. A random encounter is generally not for the plot or the characters. It’s for some combat in a game, and generally it’s the type of combat where it’s just kill everything that attacked, which isn’t that interesting. But they can be used to set the tone of the world, how dangerous it is, and then you drop them.

There can be reasons to use random encounters, but generally your exploration and combat in exploration should be for the plot. Even the locations you encounter should be for the plot. It’s great to find a random ancient ruin, maybe there is some treasure there, but does it serve anything? If the answer is no, why did you stop there? Make it serve either the plot, or for those random side quest locations, make them serve the players backstory.

Final Thoughts

Exploration is more than just random encounters as you get from place A to B. If that is what you want to use for exploration, than skip this pillar as it won’t be that fun or exciting for anyone. Instead montage through it and get to the locations that matter. Sleeping out in the woods and a few rolls where nothing happens as players keep watch, not that exciting.

And, as a Dungeon Master, when you do exploration and flesh out the world, I want to reiterate my last point, make it matter to the plot or to the characters. Even if it’s a new NPC and the players help them, make it meaningful. It doesn’t need to be a major thing, but one final example, our crimson arm band street toughs, maybe they messed with a shop keeper so the players help that shop keeper get something to keep the business going. Yes it’s not directly tied to the main plot, but it uses characters who matter to story arcs, so keep it simple and keep it tied in.

Down to two more Dungeon Master Tools topics:

• NPCs/Social Interactions
• Meta Game and Players at the Table

And let me know if there are other things to cover as well that you want to know more about, or help with. I think that there are a ton of different things that new Dungeon Masters are curious about or that feel intimidating. So I hope that I can help make them clearer and simpler for you.

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Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s – I, J and K’s

L’s

Lazer Ryderz

We’re starting off with a light and silly one, this one is basically light bikes from Tron the board game, with all of the 80’s gloriousness. In fact, the box even looks like a VHS tape collection (though slightly too large for one). This game has you basically creating light trails, trying to knock other people out, but more so trying to get to objectives before everyone else does to claim them as points. It’s a bunch of silly madness but works well, and it’s one of those board games that gets you up and has you moving around the table as you try and strategize. Now, not all games need to do that, but I like simple games that do for a nice bit of filler.

Status: Played

Legacy of Dragonholt

This is an RPG as much as it is a board game, but Fantasy Flight created what is basically a simple RPG in a box. Oddly enough, not the only one that will be on this part of the list, that kind of has that choose your own adventure feel. This one caught my eye because of how simple it is to play, you aren’t rolling dice, you’re basically just making decisions, and if you have skills, you can use them to open up other paths that might have been closed off if you didn’t have them. The game tells an entertaining story from what I’ve gotten through, and I think there is plenty to explore, I really need to just sit down and knock this one out.

Status: Played

Legends of Andor (Journey to the North Expansion)

Legends of Andor caught my attention a while back as a simple fantasy adventure game. Now, it isn’t extremely simple, the game has good challenge to it, but it is a lot of fun to play. Legends of Andor is very much a puzzle game as compared to a normal fantasy dungeon crawl-esque game, you want to kill off all of the monsters, but here if you do that, it progresses the story too fast and you’ll end up losing. So it’s a balancing mechanic of keeping monsters out of areas that they can do damage, while also completing objectives but not rushing the story along too fast. I like it for a game that feels like it has a lot of traditional board game mechanics, but gives it a bit of a different feel with the puzzle like twist.

Status: Played

Letter Jam

Another GenCon game that I got to try there, I couldn’t pick it up because it was sold out. Let me say that the first experience I had with the game was questionable, this is a cooperative word game, and I don’t think that all the players knew it was cooperative because the gal giving a demo did a very bad job demoing the game. But I’ve gotten to play it since then, including a second demo of it at GenCon and that one was much better, and I have enjoyed the game every time that I’ve played this. This game borrows from Hanabi where your cards are facing away from you, but in this one, it’s a word game, you are trying to figure out what word you might have, but everything is all mixed up in front of you and only one letter of yours is up at a time. People are giving clues that use letters that they can see (so not their own), plus any additional letters that there might be or a wild letter so that people can narrow down what their letters are and figure them out before the end of the game so they can unscramble their word. Overall, a really fun and clever game, it also plays up to six which is awesome.

Status: Played

Lift Off! Get me of this Planet!

This was the first game that I ever backed on Kickstarter. Lift Off! is a cute little game with a million little meeples whom you are trying to get your color of meeple off the planet before it explodes and before your opponent does. To do this you have to prepare you launch sites by getting fuel, gear, etc. to them, and get meeples there ready to launch and wait for the right time of the day (or night) to launch. It makes a really interesting timing puzzle as you look to maximize how quickly you can get off the planet by what you can actually launch, and sometimes a spaceship, for example, might need a lot to launch so you’ll have to leave room on the ship for your opponent so that they can help you get it launched, while others, like a slingshot, might need basically nothing. It’s a fun family weight game or just a bit heavier that looks really cute and plays well.

Status: Played

The Lord of the Rings (Sauron Expansion)

This is an older Fantasy Flight game that they just reprinted with a fancy anniversary edition, and I think the older edition looks better. This game has you playing through the Lord of the Rings trilogy and it’s kind of a puzzle and push your luck game as you try and advance down the boards, playing through the major moments of Lord of the Rings, but you need to do the right combination of cards, and you need to keep your characters away from Sauron as well. This game is a bit like The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game, not in game play, but in how it handles the theme, where if you know the source material, that knowledge brings the theme more than the game play does. The Sauron expansion allows someone to play as Sauron against the group as well, which is a fun edition.

Status: Played

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

Another Lord of the Rings game, this one, while it has Lord of the Rings characters like Gimli and Aragorn, isn’t about the trilogy. Instead, you are playing through a campaign that comes before the trilogy as Bilbo is also a character you can play. The game is app assisted which allows it to do a lot of the house keeping for the monsters in the game. This feels like it’s based off of Mansions of Madness, and I know it uses the same base programming for the app as Mansions of Madness, but it gives you more exploration as well as then tactical combat. The game really plays in two types of scenarios, that exploration and then combat, which is fun, as you get something for all types of players. It also moves away from dice chucking like Mansions of Madness to a card system which works well.

Status: Played

Lords of Hellas (Dark Ages Expansion)

Another big and epic game, this one from Awaken Realms, it is an interesting game in that it does so many things in it. There is a drafting piece to the game, happens when you build temples, there is area control, there is fighting monsters, or fighting other players for control of the areas, you can build temples and statues, unlock new powers and go on quests. This game has a lot going on but really plays in a pretty straight forward way. I like all of what you can do because it feels like what you’re doing and what you can focus on is different than everyone else. I also like that it has four win conditions, controlling two regions and all of their sub regions on the map, controlling a number of temples, killing three monsters, or controlling a statue after it’s been built. This game is also really well balanced, we had a five player game and all of us were in a couple of turns of winning when the game ended and all of us had switched what our goal was for winning by the end as well. Really love the game.

Status: Played

The Lost Expedition (The Fountain of Youth & Other Adventures Expansion)

The Lost Expedition is one of my go to filler plus games. It feels like it’s just a bit more because it takes just a bit longer than some games, but definitely is straight forward enough to be considered a filler and it’s cooperative. You are creating paths in this game for your adventuring group to go down, during the day everyone plays down two cards (generally) and they go in numerical order, and you work together to traverse that path. In the evening, you go for another hike, this time it’s playing down the rest of the cards in your hand, but they don’t go in numerical order, but the order that you play them in. This creates some interesting game play, and for people who feel like there is an alpha gamer problem in cooperative game, The Lost Expedition counters that by not allowing that much sharing of information or really any during the card playing phase, and that’s the part that really sets up what you’re going to do.

Status: Played

Loup Garou

This is another choose your own adventure style game, more so than Legacy of Dragonholt. It has you playing through a graphic novel basically. Van Ryder games has put out a lot of them which have been quite popular. I grabbed this one at GenCon and I still need to get it played, but I like the concept and I’m very curious to try it to see if this is maybe something that I’d want to get more of. They really have about one play through per book per person, but it should be something you can then pass off to another person to play as well.

Status: To Be Played

Love Letter

Another early to my collection game because of seeing it Wil Wheaton’s Table Top, though, I think this was played on the first International Table Top Day if I remember correctly. This game is a little micro game where you are trying to get a Love Letter to the princess and you are doing that by trying to have the highest value card left in your hand when all is said and done, as long as it’s not the princess. But you can also knock other players out of the round, and if you do that, that can also cause you to win the round. It’s played over a series of rounds, but even playing up to 4 wins in a two player game, that goes extremely fast. It’s a nice tiny little game that has had a lot of versions of it put out.

Status: Played

I impressed myself there, out of all the games that start with the letter L that I own, I’ve only not played one of them. Granted, with another one I haven’t played my copy, Lazer Ryderz, but I want to once I can have more people over again. There is really such a wide variety of games in here, and I am going to go through at the end and do my favorite game for each letter, though for some that might be obvious.

What’s your favorite game that starts with the letter L? What game starting with L should I add to my collection?

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Let’s talk about how fairly often a trilogy happens, and we can delve into some of the issues based off of that. The creator of the story has an idea for one story, maybe more, but one that they know they can get published or produced. So they go to the publisher or producer and sell them on this story and they get it made. Now, it’s a huge success and the publisher or producer comes back to them and asks for more and not just one more, two more of the story or film or whatever it might be. So the creator creates another story picking a spot in the middle for a cliffhanger between both stories and then those are published or produced. However, the second and third don’t do as well. What went wrong?

Now, it could be that there just wasn’t anymore story to tell surrounding certain characters or ideas or even worlds. That can happen, but probably isn’t going to be the biggest issue. Probably as often it happens that the creator didn’t have any more stories to put in that setting and to get something a little bit more out there published or produced, they agree to a multi-thing deal which includes what they are actually interested in creating as well as two things that will be more successful for the company that they signed the deal with. Both of those examples, there really shouldn’t have been a second thing created at all, because there really wasn’t anywhere to go.

But, I think there’s another issue that often befalls trilogies, and that’s their ability to tell a complete story. Pirates of the Caribbean is a great example of this. In the first movie, we get a complete story, we get Jack going from being a pirate down on his luck, getting what he thought he wanted, realizing it wasn’t what he wanted, and overcoming everything in the end. Same with Star Wars: A New Hope, we get a complete story including third act metal ceremony. Then comes along the second film, in particular in Pirates of the Caribbean, less so in the original trilogy (Star Wars). You get the creators knowing that there will be a third film, so they tell part of a story. You get some build, maybe even some change, but in the end, the biggest issue still hasn’t be resolved. Instead, you have to wait for the third film. And that’s fine, if you can watch both films back to back, but most of the time if it’s something you’re really excited about, you’re seeing the film or reading the book when it comes out, not when both are out. So you get the second part which is the start of a story and ends with a small resolution, and the third part which is the continuation of the second part and then the final resolution. So combined you are telling a single story, but both parts are going to leave you feeling a little wanting, unless they are masterfully crafted.

So, how can you get around this in a trilogy? Sometimes you just plan on it being a trilogy. Lord of the Rings is a prime example of this, Fellowship of the Ring doesn’t tell a complete story, Frodo is still going to Mordor, the same with The Two Towers, Frodo is still going to Mordor, and that’s the end of the story (kind of, there are a lot of third acts) when he throws the ring into Mount Doom in Return of the King. However, in each of those, we know there’s the through story line going on with Frodo getting the ring to Mount Doom in Mordor, but we also have other characters getting a story as well and there’s story, especially in Return of the King and The Two Towers that gets told apart from Frodo’s journey that has groundwork laid in earlier books, but finishes up and tells a story there. We have the massive battle between the forces of good and evil in Return of the King which sees Aragorn become King. We have in The Two Towers multiple stories that are told and wrap with Merry, Pippin, and the Ents and the battle of Helms Deep.

Lord of the Rings does two things that should be pointed out. It has a through line so it doesn’t feel like the parts of the trilogy are disconnected. This is the Frodo and Sam story line that they need to get the ring to Mordor and Mount Doom. It’s the key piece of the story and in fact, if they fail, the whole thing fails and that runs throughout all of the books. At the same time with have Gandalf, Aragorn, Merry, Pippin, Gimli, and Legolas doing there own things, making a difference in another part of the world. And even though they aren’t carrying the end game thing, the ring, they still have an important part to play. So we get complete story arcs, from beginning to end, for them in the books and not across all the books, but in each book there is a beginning and ending point.

This varies from my Pirates of the Caribbean example because it has a through line throughout the whole thing, Pirates has characters who repeat but the first movie stands separate from the last two of the original Pirates trilogy. And Lord of the Rings has a beginning, middle and end to each book, versus Pirates 2 & 3 where you have a beginning and middle and a middle and end split respectively.

What does this mean as a creator?

First, a trilogy isn’t the end all for writing, you don’t need it to be a trilogy. The Dresden Files, a series that I love, is on book 17. So you can clearly go longer if you have more story to tell, so don’t let a trilogy limit you. And don’t let the idea of it needing to be a trilogy or anything like that force over complexity and bloat into your stories.

However, if you are going to write a trilogy, or even if you are writing something that you have a bigger idea for, but you just need to get one written and published first, think about through line and think about a complete story. Now, it’s hard if you think that you are only going to get a single shot at creating your idea, but give yourself room. Don’t bloat your idea to fit everything in to a single thing, instead, tell a nice complete story and leave room in the world for there to be even more story. Star Wars, the original trilogy, does this well. You have them blow up the Death Star, that by itself could end the story in A New Hope, however, Vader isn’t killed, so the villain is still out there. If nothing ever came after A New Hope, it wouldn’t feel like it’s missing anything, but it’s natural that we pick back up again with Darth Vader and the Empire. So create a first story, even if you don’t know that you’ll get more like that. Give the main characters a big win but leave a villain out there defeated but not destroyed. That way, you can come back and pick up with the same characters and continue a story.

Also leave plenty of your world unexplored after your first story, especially if you don’t know if there will be more. Lord of the Rings, we get through some mountains, but we know that Mordor is still out there, but we’re not there yet, and there are other lands to explore as well that we haven’t seen or gone to. Star Wars: A New Hope, they really aren’t that many locations and then they have a ton of other planets that they can create and use in future films because they didn’t have them hop from planet to planet all the time. This gives you room to create more mystery and more adventures in which to tell your complete adventure. Pirates of the Caribbean really feels like it hits up so many locations in the first film, even though it’s somewhat limited, so you don’t feel like there are a lot of players left to join the story in this small world they’ve created, as compare to Lord of the Rings and Star Wars where who knows what new enemies or allies might be out there.

Now, I’m sure there are more things out there that you can do when creating a trilogy. I do want to wrap up with that I’m not trying to bash on trilogies. I think fairly often they can work. The original Star Wars trilogy and Lord of the Rings are great examples of this. Even The Hunger Games, which I didn’t talk about much, does a good job of making the 1st and the 3rd stand separate as their own stories. But don’t limit yourself to that if you want to create an epic, and tell a complete story each time, those are just my rules for writing a series or trilogy.

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For this series, I’m going to be focusing on races from the PHB (Players Handbook) and not some of the extra places that might have more races like Volo’s Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, or Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Those are extra things that are cool to pick up and add into your game, but you don’t need them, having the PHB is needed.

Elves

Elves will be the first race that we talk about, for no other reason than they popped into my head, and as I was reading Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, t here was a nice section on them that I remember fairly well.

Dungeons and Dragons, like most fantasy, pulls from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings when it gets its idea for elves. The elves are long lived, generally lean towards being stand offish and aloof, because they see the world in a different way than your average human would.

An elven adventurer is probably a couple hundred to five hundred years old and has had more of a chance to hone their craft. For elves, the reason that they do go adventuring, often, is because they want to leave their mark on the world. They have hundreds of years to do that, but that also means that their mark on the world is going to be more permanent. It also means that something that might be bad for a human, because it affects their short life, might not seem as pressing for a elf. If, for example, a goblin horde was threatening an area, it might be easier for an elf to just leave that area for a little bit and let the natural infighting and breakdown of goblin society happen through a couple of generations before returning, because the elves live so long, they can simply outlast the issue. Needless to say, that view might annoy your other party members.

That long view and ability to see the larger picture are useful in dealing with some situations, but it also is going to cause issues in other situations. You aren’t going to be able to relate as well to your shorter lived companions, and you might not become attached as easily. This is another reason that elves tend to be aloof. So think about that as you play as well, as you want to have a balance and not just be the outsider who is observing everything. It might also mean that you are more apt to overlook a more pressing issue as you’re paying attention to the expected longer term outcome.

Another thing to consider, based off of the age of your elven adventurer, is how they are treated in both elven and non-elven society. In a human society, an elves knowledge when they are one hundred is going to be considered impressive. In elven society, an elf who goes adventuring at one hundred is going to be considered an impetuous youth. So even though human society might treat them differently, an elf who is one hundred is still probably going to show respect and defer to the human elders.

Let’s talk a bit about the other thing that is often taken from Lord of the Rings, and that is the elf and dwarf rivalry and mistrust. This is something that still shows up fairly often in games, and is something that you want to handle fairly carefully. What you’re trying to avoid is the racist elf and dwarf interactions where they hate each other and just pick at each other. In Lord of the Rings, Legolas and Gimli don’t trust each other at the start, and it comes out in rivalry in battle, because they have a central focus they can both get behind. In your game, you can certainly play to that, and you can certainly have the characters poke fun at each other as well. But try to avoid open hostility or combat with another PC or even with dwarves in general, as that’s not something you really want to bog down a game with.

Finally, let’s talk a bit about the mechanics of an elf. Obviously, we’ve talked about their age, but there are a few other components. First, elves start out by getting dex bump. That means your elves are going to always make good rogues, monks, and rangers who focus on the light or dexterity based weapons. They also have darkvision (most races do), but they have a couple other big things. Fey Ancestry means that they can’t be magically put to sleep and they are harder to charm, aka they have advantage to being charmed. They also don’t sleep, elves trance. In Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, they really go into what trance means for an elf, and why that happens, but what it means for mechanics in the game, it means that they only need four hours of rest to refresh each night, and are not as oblivious to their surroundings as someone who is asleep would be. They can’t be the lookout (or they’d be a bad one) while trancing, but it makes setting watch easier.

So let’s come up with some elven character concepts and backstories.

As a member of the royal household you thought that your position and life was going to be set and simple. You lived for a couple hundred years in the lap of luxury before your younger sibling decided that they wanted your spot. When your parents died, you prepared to take on added leadership and responsibility that was expected for you, however, you had missed that your sibling had been planting lies and distrust around you in the community. They decided that your sibling was more fit to rule and you were exiled from the tribe. After thirty years of living off of the land and plotting your revenge, you feel like you might have an idea, you just need a few things first.
Class: Ranger
Background: Noble
Alignment: Chaotic Good

You were sent away by your parents to the wizarding school in a neighboring nobles lands. It was a great school, and since you’ve always had aptitude for learning, you dove into your studying. After fifteen years, you started teaching introductory classes, but you mainly did that so you could stay around and continue your own studies and have access to the library. Your teacher, who has other responsibilities than just teaching you, eventually got fed up with you after another ten years and told you that you were going to be kicked out of the tower and your library card suspended until you got some practical experience in your life and maybe had an adventure or two. You took the opportunity to visit another wizarding school, but your teacher was one step ahead of you, and they knew to send you on your way. Now you’re looking for an adventuring party to give you some simple experiences, just enough so you can get back into the school and to the library to learn some more.
Class: Wizard
Background: Sage
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Your family was a lesser known one in your elven community. People didn’t look down on you, but it had been generations since anyone in your family had done something that people really appreciated and remembered. Otherwise you were just kind of there. Your parents weren’t content with that, however, and they sought more for you. Eventually reaching out to an Archfey to see if they could help your family. Knowing fey creatures, that wasn’t that great an idea, but it did help their standing to have that connection. For you, when you were born, there was already a claim on you, and your parents didn’t treat your like your sibling, but you were kept separate. When you were seventy-five, you were sent off to work for the archfey as they had agreed upon before you were born. The work there was interesting, and they sent you out adventuring. In your mind, though, you feel slighted, you feel like you haven’t head the real life you were supposed to have, and you are looking for a way, and trying to hide the fact you’re looking, to get out of the deal that your parents made.
Class: Warlock
Background: Urchin/Outlander
Alignment: Chaotic Good/Chaotic Neutral

Elves can really work for any class and background combination as they live such long lives they can study a lot of things and try a lot of different professions. I tried to come up with things that seemed particularly elf like for each of the backstories, but I think that, because of their long life, a lot of these stories also work for other races.

Have you played an elf before, do you lean into their age or their aloofness when you play them?

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Do I want to do another epic story like the first season of Dungeons and Flagons where things are going crazy in the world and there are plenty of plane hopping and epic travels around the world and seeing new places?

Or, do I want to do a tighter more defined story that takes place in a single location over a shorter period of time?

That’s somewhat what the second season of Dungeons and Flagons was going to be, though I was adding scope to it to tie it into the previous season.

Now, I’m not going to say that there are either of them better than the other in terms of gaming, but they are both two very different things. And I would say that you should check with your group or give some game ideas, but I’ve been liking the idea of running that tighter more defined single location or small area story.

Why might you want to do one or the other of them?

For the smaller story it’s easier for the DM and the players to keep track of what is going on. There are fewer crazy things happening, and fewer places to really track. There are also going to be fewer NPC’s. In a larger game you are going to have NPC’s from each city and town that they visit. With that though you are going to see a greater variety of characters for the players to interact with and are going to have to plan the story less, in my opinion, because you can always create a new location for what you need.

The advantage of a bigger game is that you can play the fantasy that people think of. People think of Lord of the Rings and Kingkiller Chronicles when they think Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy. They aren’t really thinking about a game that might be more similar to a Dresden Files book where it’s a more tightly contained story. However, if you think about it, Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mordor and getting rid of the ring would make a pretty boring D&D game, what Legolas and Gimli are up to would make a better game, so there’s a balancing aspect so you don’t have to rush through everything to make your characters the main story of the game.

So what do I want to do in my next game?

I think that I want to do a smaller scope game. I liked parts of what I was doing in Season 2 of Dungeons and Flagons, but parts I didn’t too well. The part that I didn’t love too well was the fact that I wasn’t always prepared enough for a small story game. I think that a small location game, I guess I should say over story, requires more planning and focus as I’ve mentioned above. And I was very used to winging it as I had some general beats through the first season I knew I wanted to hit, but beyond that, they could do whatever. The tighter game is a bit more focused and some might call it a bit more rail road, I would disagree with that assessment, but some people might say that. There’s a difference on limiting the location for the story and making the players doing certain things in certain order so the story progresses as expected.

What sort of game do you enjoy? Do you like the big epic game or the smaller game?

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