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.

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Dungeon Master Tools – Players at the Table

Let’s actually start out by saying, this topic isn’t all bad. Yes, I am going to have a little section to kick it off on how to handle poor players at the table. But there are a lot of good topics and positive things that you can do. So I want to spend more time on those because cultivating the good behavior is as important as dealing with poor behavior.

Poor Behavior

So let’s talk about poor behavior to start. This can take a lot of different forms, and the next topic is going to let you handle some of it. If you have a group you know well, you probably know how people are going to act. If you need to add in new players from outside a group, everyone has a different dynamic. And there are some people who are not going to handle the game you run well.

This can be for a lot of reasons. It might be a min/max player who sulks if they miss an attack or someone else gets to do something that “they are better at”. Or it might be the alpha who tries to explain how everyone should run their character and what you as the Dungeon Master should be doing instead. Or it might be outside of game behavior that just makes people uncomfortable, like bringing politics to the table, saying inappropriate things, or general rude and disrespectful behavior.

For me, this is a three strike situation. The first time I see it or it is mentioned to me, I talk to the player. They maybe don’t realize what their behavior is doing or that it is causing issues at the table. Second time it happens, let them know that they’ll be gone if it continues. And then third time, they are gone. Now there are some things that are just completely inappropriate and it might be zero tolerance there. But know what that is for you and your players.

Setting Expectations

That nicely leads into this element of the game. And this can be done at a session zero, or before even. But let people know what the expectations are. A lot of them are simple, but let’s throw together a list.

• Show up to Sessions and let us know if you need to miss
• Pay attention in sessions, aka, don’t use your phone or laptop for anything beyond not taking
• Engage
• Be respectful of others
• Keep others engaged
• Don’t hog the spotlight
• If something is uncomfortable, speak up
• Play to the style of the campaign

So all but the top points are really about what The RPG Academy has as a golden rule. That is, “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.” It is something important for the whole table to know and understand. You want everyone to have a great time gaming.

The last one is probably a little bit different than you often see. And that is why I think it could be useful to talk about. Play to the style of the campaign. And we’ll talk some about what that means in more detail in the next section. For setting expectation this also refers to, know the setting. If I, as the Dungeon Master, send out an idea to get you hooked in and it’s a low magic, components are hard to find, grim setting, don’t come in with a wizard. Or if you do play a wizard know that it is going to be hard. Come with ideas and intentions to play into the setting.

The Right Mix

The right mix is a big one for the Dungeon Master. And I think it is something that people often don’t understand. I write about the three pillars of Dungeons and Dragons. And I think that they can be true for all RPG settings. But know your players and know how to mix them the right way.

Firstly, if you know that a campaign is going to be very heavy on combat, let the players know. You don’t want them to build the squishiest druid who doesn’t have a single attack of defensive spell. At the same time, if this is a low combat campaign, let them know as well so they don’t make a fighter with only combat skills.

But I think more importantly is to learn as you go at the table. See what your players gravitate towards. A group might prefer combat and exploration to social interactions. If that is the case, make those two elements the larger parts of the your campaign. On the flip side if they love to interact with NPC’s, give them chances to do so and put combat on the backburner.

I want to stress that there isn’t a perfect way to do this. There is no combination that is going to be ideal all the time. Some sessions might be all combat even for a group who prefers social interactions. General rule of thumb is make it lean into the players preferred style. And when you go towards what they like least, make it matter for the story.

Engaging Everybody

Finally, this one is about the group and players, but often times is about a specific player. And this is something that you can get help from players for, but as the Dungeon Master, it falls on you as well. In an RPG group you likely have the more and less talkative players. So don’t let the more talkative players steamroll the less talkative players. That goes back to keeping everyone engaged.

Tips

As the Dungeon Master a few simple tips. When the players are discussing options, ask the quieter player, “What do you think?”. Put the ball in their court for them to answer. Or if the players are in town shopping and everyone is talking about what they want, ask the quieter player what their character would want. It’s not singling them out, it’s bringing them into the events that are currently happening and getting their input.

What you want to avoid, though, is singling them out. Things like suggesting they be the one to decide on what the players do might feel like too much pressure. And it might cause them anxiety in which case they won’t be having fun. So the goal is always to bring them into what is happening.

This is where you can also recruit another player to help. Maybe not the most talkative player, but someone who can hold their own and is empathetic. Let them help you with this. That way the engagement is coming from beyond just the Dungeon Master. And a player can more easily suggest that another players character comes along with them.

Example

Let’s say the party is getting split (don’t do this too often) and two player characters go one way and two go another way. Instead of them just splitting up and whomever is by themselves gets the quieter person, let the other person ask them to come along with them. That is a positive interaction to get that player involved.

Final Thoughts

So that is it, for now, for Dungeon Master tools. I know I put a lot out there for it. I hope that a lot of it just stacks up nicely for you as a Dungeon Master. The goal from this whole series has been to make being a Dungeon Master seem less daunting.

The Steps

Now, I know that this all feels like a lot when I write it all down. But let’s break it down one last time into smaller chunks that you can do. And don’t start the next one until the previous one is done completely.

Step 1: Come up with your idea. Read up on the campaign tools. And reach out to some people for your group.

Step 2: Do a Session 0, and make an agreement about some standards and expectations for the game. The latter part is in this article, and then read up on Session 0 here. And you’ll help facilitate character creation.

Step 3: Break down your first arc and first session. But really focus on that first arc here. This is step one of your planning.

Step 4: Plan that first session and do the world building needed for it. This is a quick follow-on to what you did in step 3, but more in depth and focused. And this is also when you look at combat, social interactions, and exploration, depending on what is in that session.

Step 5: Play

Step 6: Repeat Steps 4 and 5 until you hit a new arc, then back up to 3.

Hopefully that is simple enough. And as I said, do each one separately, don’t do too much at once. I want to continue some and I want to talk to the players next. So look to start next week for Dungeon and Dragons and RPG’s for players.

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Over the past year, I’ve had to do both of them. In my Tower of the Gods campaign we just had a player leave and a half a year ago, or so, we had a new player join. So it’s something that I’ve done recently, and I think it’s something that for a Dungeon Master it’s good think about how you want to do.

Dropping a Player

Dropping a player can be tricky to do because of how involved the player might be in the story line. If it focuses on that player, you now need to shift the focus or figure a way to wrap up that part of the story. But even that is doable.

You have a few ways to deal with a player focused storyline. You can either let it sit there, if that player comes back or another player takes over that character. Or you can shift how the story goes, you can make something happen to that character that takes them out of the picture, maybe permanently. That is a better idea if you are completely sure if that character will not return to the story.

If they aren’t involved in the story, just fade them into the background. For example, Thrain, while part of the main story, it wasn’t that he was the main player in it. All of the characters were playing levels of importance at different times. When it just became too tricky for the Thrain player to schedule and he was missing sessions he decided to drop. I could send Thrain off somewhere, if he wanted to guest play again, but it was easy enough to drop him from the story.

Adding a Player

Adding a player is a little bit different because it requires less on the Dungeon Masters behalf. When adding a player it more comes down to the other players at the table. They need to be willing to come up with a reason why this new party member immediately fits into the group.

Yes, the Dungeon Master still needs to do some work. You need to work with the player before they come in. They need to know a number of things about your game before they can really settle into the game thus far. I like to give the backstory blurb, and then work with the player on how their character would work with that.

One trick is that they don’t need to know everything when they get started. They need to know about the world. The story of what is going on in the campaign, with the exception of a few big moments, maybe, the players should be filling in for the new player. There are several reasons, one in character, that character wouldn’t know all the details. So they should get it from the people most invested in it.

The other reason is it gives you a chance as the Dungeon Master to see what the players remember, and what story points they are really highlighting. Adding a new character really gives you a chance to adjust your story in a way to lean into what the players are really liking.

Is It Beneficial For Either To Happen?

Yeah, there can be reasons why adding a player or losing a player from your Dungeons and Dragons story is useful. The more glaring would be if you have a toxic player at the table. Lose them if they aren’t willing to try to improve. My rule is give someone a chance if you can, but don’t feel like you need to keep that player or character around.

But I do think that there are times it makes sense to add players. I’ve been very fortunate with a bye-weekly Thursday night schedule. It works well for me and all the players. But with three players, if one person can’t make it, we’re now down a fairly large percentage of the group. With four players, there’s still more people for the players to play off of.

If you’ve been a Dungeon Master, have you had to add or remove players from a game before? And as a player have you come in part way through a game? Let me know in the comments below?

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Unknown To The Players

Introduce the big bad guy to the players not as the big bad guy. The saying goes something like, the villain is the hero of their own story or in their own mind. So rarely do you get a moustache twirling villain who just exudes evil. The bad guy thinks they are doing something good, not something bad. And what they do might look like it is good, especially early on in the story. Create this go getter character who is forward thinking and out to do great things to the players. Give them some quests from that player, and then start to drop hints slowly over time that this person isn’t as good as they seem. But introduce someone to the players who ends up being the bad guy.

Looking Down On The Players

Another way to do it is to introduce the characters to the bad guy just to show them how far they have to go. The bad guy can come in being known as the bad guy and not even bother fighting the players. They are just seeing who is being tasked to be a pest to them. And because the players aren’t a high enough level, the bad guy can just leave, probably leaving a henchmen behind. It shouldn’t be until the players are at a higher level when they will actually be a concern to the bad guy. If your players are a quite low level, have the bad guy one hit knock out one of them and leave. It’ll create that impact and push the players towards the end goal of stopping the villain.

Through Their Henchmen

If your bad guy is part of a crime ring, or controls some sort of gang, runs a cult, anything like that, you have other characters that can introduce them. In this way bombard the players with villains, low level and then up the food chain of the group. Make it obvious they are all part of the same group. The players will know that there has to be someone at the top that they’ll deal with eventually. You can even build up the legend of the person over time for the players. Talk about how cruel or crazy the person is, or how sneaky and cunning they are. Build up the mystique around the big bad guy for even if the players don’t meet them right away, they know them.

At The Early Stages

The early stages is going to be different than the unknown to the players, though it will cross over. When the players don’t know that the big bad guy is going to be the big bad guy. In this case, the big bad guy doesn’t even know that they are the big bad guy either. They are some small level bad guy who is down on their luck and sells the players a sob story of some sort. Ideally, you do this in town where killing someone would get you in trouble with the town guard. But give this person a down on their luck, stealing because they need the food, try and get the players to feel sympathy for the bad guy. Then, in the background have the bad guy slowly become a big bad guy for a big reveal at the end. Almost think Count of Monte Cristo style where the Count is actually known as someone else as well. It’ll make for a fun reveal when this bad guy who goes by some odd name turns out to be the bad guy they helped at the beginning.

Final Thoughts

Now, with that said, you can not introduce the big bad as long as you want. If your ultimate big bad guy is going to be a beholder, that makes sense that you wouldn’t just stumble across a beholder. But, it can be fun to try and introduce the big bad guy early, give the players some target or some surprise later on. It is a twist on a lot of stories where the big bad guy is revealed towards the end. But it can be just as good to introduce them early and make them sympathetic or untouchable so that the world develops more.

What is your most memorable bad guy you’ve encountered or ran in a Dungeons and Dragons game? How do you make them stand out from other bad guys?

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Fun

The first thing that everyone needs to bring to the table is fun. Dungeons and Dragons is meant to be a fun experience. Even if the game is serious and the stakes are high, it shouldn’t feel like work playing it. You should leave still having a memorable experience, and a memorable experience should be something that you want to tell others about and should be fun. Now, I want to say, fun doesn’t mean it needs to be goofy, silly, light-hearted, while all of those can be fun, so can a serious or darker game. But everyone at the table needs to help everyone else have fun while having fun themselves. As The RPG Academy says: “If you’re having fun you’re doing it right.”

Flexibility

Now, flexibility isn’t something that people might think about. And everything, really, ties into having fun. What I mean with flexibility is that as the Dungeon Master when the players find and almost kill the big bad guy or banish them somehow to another plane before you’re ready, you can adapt and change. When the Dungeon Master adds something to a player character’s backstory or a debt or obligation, the player can adapt to that.

Now, a Dungeon Master shouldn’t make a character do something that is out of character, and players shouldn’t be intentionally trying to punch holes into the story the Dungeon Master is helping the players weave. Those things, however, happen from time to time. Even when players and the Dungeon Master keep an eye out so it doesn’t happen, it will happen. So be flexible so when it does happen you are ready to adjust and adapt and keep having fun.

Preparation

Preparation matters most to the Dungeon Master, and most to some Dungeon Master. I bullet point out a few keys for a session, and that is my preparation. For other Dungeon Masters preparation means that they spend hours planning out set piece encounters and building those set pieces, NPCs, and whatever else it might be. This also includes the campaign preparation of where the Dungeon Master wants to direct the whole of the game.

For the players, preparation means they know their characters. Also, when characters need to be leveled up, that is done by the start of the next session, if they don’t do it in the session. Knowing ones character entails the skills and bonuses that you have to stats, having an understanding or your spells or where to find what they do, knowing what new spells you have, how many spell slots you have, what various attacks do, and what your default is going to be on an attack.

Preparation isn’t fun always. I like figuring out the highlights for my next session, personally, but it seems like work at times as well. The reason we prepare goes back to having fun. Down time is not that much fun, a meandering story with little focus or changing focus is not as much fun. I put fun at the top for that reason, because having fun in the most important and everything else leads into it.

Final Thoughts

The RPG Academy really has it right here. Playing a game should always be about having fun. Getting rules perfectly right is less important than having fun. And attitude at the table should always be leading into having fun. As the Dungeon Master, you help people stay engaged by preparing and following the queues of the players. As players, you grab onto storylines and see where they go and give clear signs and directions to the Dungeon Master. You also don’t hog the spotlight from other players at the table.

What is the most important attitude at the Dungeons and Dragons gaming table for you?

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In our case we have our city of “paradise”, Zenefil, and there’s a deity in the world who has created this for the adventurers to find. Now, that sounds great for our adventuring party, but the world otherwise really sucks. There are powerful chromatic dragons that are ruling the lands with fear.

So this is clearly going to basically be the whole thing getting to the paradise of Zenefil, but generally if something sounds too good to be true, it probably will be. And the deity should definitely have put a limit on how many people can actually get in. So while I said adventurers, everyone and their mother is going to consider themselves adventurers and probably be willing to kill to try and get there. Plus, then you’d have the dragons who would be trying to stop the people from leaving because they need subjects to torture or it’s just dull.

Beyond the dangers of the other people going and the dragons, I’d make it sort of a puzzle/mystery sort of thing where players need to figure out clues and decipher things that the deity is giving them in order to eventually make their way to Zenefil. This will do two things, it’ll weed out some of the weaker NPC’s that they might run into for a while so it becomes less chaotic, it also kind of gives you points of timing for other NPC’s. Beyond that, it allows you, the further they get away from the dragon kingdoms towards Zenefil, they should start seeing more monsters and natural things like that.

You can also add in less natural things as well, depending on what you want to do with Zenefil. Do you want it to be an amazing sanctuary and refuge against the dragons, or do you want it to be a equally as bad, if not worse place. Now, you can have the players need to fight at this point and try and defeat the deity or the deities monsters/henchmen.

This is going to be more exploration focused in some ways as your clues can lead them to various landmarks along the way and put them into unique situations. Also it’ll be an exploration into what the player characters are deciding to do with the other NPC’s that are running about as well. I think that there’s going to be a lot of interesting stories to tell with that, will the PC’s help some less fortunate NPC’s, will they leave an NPC that is injured out there who can be brought back as a nemesis? Is there another group that is their arch rivals? Play around with those emotions and groups of people, heck, even family members.

So, would you run a game like this? Would this be something that you’d do for a whole campaign? For me, this is a higher level campaign, or the second arc of a campaign. If you can set-up the dragons as rulers in the first one somehow, then you could create the paradise/Zenefil part as the second arc at a higher level. It would give the players less competition and more reason to not just worry about their own survival.

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So what are Social Encounters?

It can be talking with the shop keeper to learn about her in order to figure out ways to get a better deals on things. It can be searching for clues to solve a mystery or trying to seduce a dragon, because you’re a bard and in way over your head.

While combat is more “roll play” the Social Encounter aspect is more role play. Like in combat, most social interactions are going to have some point to what the characters are doing. While they might end up talking to the wrong person in the bar for a little bit, give them some interesting information about what’s happening or maybe a new quest. There is a bit of a temptation to make everyone into a quest giver or everyone have something useful, but that isn’t always needed, give yourself leeway to make Social Encounters, like we talked about with Combat, something interesting.

So, like I did with Combat, here are some things to help keep Social Encounters interesting.

1. Make it Part of the Story
2. Balance Characters Being Truthful With Characters Who Are Liars
3. Give Players What the NPC Thinks Is The Answer (Unreliable Narrator)
4. If The NPC Doesn’t Know The Answer, Give The Players Another Option
5. Characters Who Know Nothing Should Still Know Something
6. Find The NPC’s Your Players Like And Reuse Them

1 – Make It Part Of The Story
First is pretty simple, even a random interaction with someone on the street can progress the story. Now, it doesn’t need to always, you can have the moment where the players realize that a character doesn’t know anything, but even that should progress the story. If the Archmage Deniphil sent the PC’s to talk to Lord Zuzu and Zuzu knows nothing and doesn’t even like Deniphil, well, maybe Deniphil sent the players away for a reason. Another example of this would be the Towers of Gods Session 2 that I just wrote about here. They are looking for two spies out of twelve different students, which include themselves, so two out of nine most likely. That means that they are having a lot of conversations that won’t reveal a spy to them, but it’s setting up a dynamic, friendships, enemies (?), that they’ll have to deal with in the story. It isn’t some big dramatic plot moment happening in each of those conversations, but it’s going to inform story going forward.

2 – Balance Truthful and Lying Characters
To me, this is one of the biggest issues that DM’s can run into with NPC’s. And that’s striking the right balance of the truth and the lies that the NPC’s are telling. More to come on the truth in point three, but here we’re talking about balancing the two against each other. The pitfall is that DM’s can have too many NPC’s lie, that’s the issue where it’s a bigger direction. That will mean that you’re PC’s/Players are going to start to treat each social interaction as an interrogation. Which, if you then throw a truthful NPC in front of that, now the PC’s are going to create enemies of NPC’s that maybe should have been their friends. So balance out the two, and by that I don’t mean an even 50/50 split, that’s lying too much. Use lying sparingly with NPC’s who have something to hide, even if it isn’t what the players might think it is. And using lying is even better when it seems like it could be a betrayal as well.

3 – Unreliable Narration
So, we just talked about lying, but I want to talk about the perceived truth at this point. And that’s talking about the unreliable narration of NPC’s. Much like in real life if you were to show people a scene and then ask them questions about it, separately, you’d get a wide variety of answers about things that might seem obvious. Two people who see a robbery happen might give very different description of a thief. Heck, a Gnome is going to see someone as much taller than a 6′ Dragonborn would. So let them get the general details right but get some specifics wrong here and there, and have them be inconsistent with others if it makes sense. This, unlike lying, isn’t being used to trick the PC’s. This is being used because NPC’s shouldn’t have photographic memories and remember every detail every time. There should always be something in there that can help point the PC’s to the right person that they are looking for, or the actual events of what happened.

4 – The NPC Knows Someone
So, sometimes it just makes sense that a NPC wouldn’t know anything. Maybe the players are talking to the wrong person in the bar. Or maybe the person, Lord Zuzu is clueless about where all the money in his land is going. That’s fine that those characters don’t give any story information to the PC’s. But they should be able to point the PC’s forward somehow. Get them closer to the person that they need to get the information from. Lord Zuzu might not know where the money in the land is going, but he’d have a treasurer that would be doing that for him, and he’d know who the treasurer is. The patron at the bar might not know anything, but if the PC’s are at the right bar, the NPC or bartender overhearing everything, will be able to point the PC’s in the right direction. I’d use this sparingly, unless you’re meaning to walk the players through several social encounters to eventually end up with the right person.

5 – No One Knows Nothing
To tie into the previous one, no one knows nothing. Aka, everyone knows something. I just got done talking about how the NPC should be able to point the players to the next person until they get to the information they want. But that isn’t always going to happen. In those cases, if the NPC doesn’t know who they should go to next or anything about what they are looking for, they should still know something interesting. This can be a side quest thing, this can be a contact that they know, it can be that they know about building ships or what mushrooms are edible. No one is going to just be a generic grunt who is able to lift things and punch things and know or care about anything else. Every NPC should have their one thing. This gives the players NPC’s to talk to in the future so that when they find a grove with thousands of mushrooms growing in it, they will remember that the one random NPC they talked in the bar and didn’t know anything useful then was an expert on which mushrooms are edible. Use this sparingly, it’s less interesting, and should maybe be in a situation where the players are going to be talking to a lot of NPC’s in a session to find the one they are looking for because they don’t know enough to narrow their search.

6 – Reuse the Popular NPC’s
Finally, but maybe as important as keeping it tied into the story somehow is keep track of who the players are attaching themselves to as a favorite NPC. Is there someone that they are trusting? Is there an interaction that people seemed to be having the most fun with? Reuse those NPC’s, even if they were just a one off NPC that you didn’t think was ever going to matter and you made up on the fly, if the players and PC’s love them, use them again. If the PC’s are tormenting them, use them again. Whomever the PC’s and players have a strong reaction to whatever way it might be, use them again. This can also give you future plot hooks if something happens to a favorite NPC or maybe a least favorite, but somehow beloved for how bad they are NPC is being framed for something. It’s going to give you leverage to get buy in on story hooks if the players care about the NPC’s that they are after or helping with.

I said that I was going to give some examples of this, and I think that Social Encounters are hard to give examples of because they should be closely tied into your game, so instead of an Encounter, here are some interesting NPC’s.

Marathe
– Shopkeeper
– She Likes to Smoke
– Doesn’t Like to Haggle
– Claims to have the best priced potions in town
– Was a fairly well known adventurer before something happened to her adventuring party

Golden Farb
– Investor
– Loves Money
– Very Shrewd with money
– Always on the lookout to make more money
– Will invest in questionable things but would never admit to it

Mic Taloc
– Barkeeper
– Warlock
– Bar Looks Normal But Actually is a Haven for Warlocks
– Willing to help Warlocks in Trouble
– Can Put You In Contact with Someone To Make a Deal

What I was trying to do creating those NPC’s is that they are all going to have something that they know. Marathe might be able to tell the players where a lost temple is, but also might have a bit of a history and some baggage if the players snoop around what happened to her party. Golden is going to always being try to show off his best side, so anything on a subject that’s questionable, he probably won’t answer. Mic is going to be able to help in a very specific situation when asking about Warlocks, but only if he thinks that you won’t be hurting or are targeting Warlocks.

Just by doing something as simple as that, you are going to have more interesting NPC’s, five simple things that are going to make them unique and hopefully more memorable. And, hopefully, even out of those three NPC’s, one of them will stick and be someone that the players are interested in dealing with or will consistently deal with in the future.

What are some memorable Social Encounters that you’ve had in your games?

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Combat is often just looked at as swinging your sword, shooting an arrow, a spell or two and you beat the bad guy. It’s a chance to roll dice and use most of your character sheet that’s focused towards combat. And that’s certainly some of what you’ll be doing. It does give you a chance to show off your character and what everything on the sheet says that they can do. But when it’s just that, even though it’s the generally the pillar supporting the most weight, it can be a fairly uninteresting pillar, unless you’re just there to be the best fighter that you can be.

Instead, combat should be part of the story, not a break from the story. Though, there may be times with random encounters that a combat doesn’t have a big story element to it, it should always be informing something going forward. Even a random encounter should be used to highlight how dangerous an area is, if there’s a chance of an encounter popping up. It should be a reminder to the players that the world isn’t safe, and while it might not progress the story, not getting in a long rest is going to stress out the players.

So, to build up Combat as a pillar you can do several things to keep it from just being the same thing over and over again, or from feeling like combat for combat’s sake.

1. Make the Combat Encounter Important To The Story
2. Use Alternate Combat Objectives
3. Use Smart/Engaging Monsters
4. Don’t Over Use Random Encounters

1 – Make The Combat Encounter Important To The Story
Already started talking about that a bit, but this is one of the biggest things that you can do to make combat interesting. I ran a one-shot recently where the players had to fight a group of bandits. Now, that wasn’t all that interesting in and of itself, they were just level 1 characters, the bandits didn’t put them in that much danger. However, they found, in the merchants wagon that had been stolen, some interesting documents. Combat was simple, but the documents are now something to lead them further into a story if we decide to continue that game. It’s nothing massive in terms of changing up the combat, but it makes the combat feel like there was a reason for it greater than just killing the bandits. And that bandit fight, since there was a new player to D&D, was mainly to give them a bit of all three pillars not because it was going to be super exciting, but because it was a combat. Only because there was a payoff at the end did it make it all that interesting.

2 – Use Alternate Combat Objectives
This one is one of the biggest, possibly as big as it being important to the story, things that you can do to improve your combat pillar. Not all combat has to be about killing everything. And most of the time you don’t want to kill everyone is because of some story reason. An example of this that you see in Video Games as well as RPG’s is the escort mission. Technically your goal is to get Ms. X from point A to point B without her dying. Now, you can do that by killing everyone you encounter, or you can do that by sneaking herself and your self around. That’s easier to avoid most of the combat in an RPG that way, but you still may have to fight to create a path for Ms. X to get through to complete the mission. Or it could be that someone might escape with something you want if you don’t get through their goons in a certain number of rounds. Or you may need to kill the High Priestess in a certain number of rounds before she can complete the ritual and summon a monster, end the world, whatever it might be. While the players are still using their combat skills throughout, it is going to feel like it’s different than just a hack and slash until everyone is dead.

3 – Use Smart/Engaging Monsters
You can always just do combat as mob of goblins attacking and then mob of bandits rushing in and attacking, and then mob of hobgoblins and so on as the players go up in levels, but that’s going to cause the combats to feel similar. It is kind of a blank canvas fight where you have two sides meeting in an arena or an open field, rushing at each other, fighting, and then one side wins when the other is dead. But goblins, bandits, and hobgoblins should all be smarter than that. In fact, even animals will often attack more intelligently than that. If they are facing off against an Owlbear and it takes down one of the PC’s (player characters), that Owlbear is probably going to try and take that body somewhere safe so it can eat it, not attack the players. So allow the monsters to do smart and interesting things, like run away. Now, maybe the players will shoot the fleeing goblins in the back and none will make it away, but what happens in your story if the goblin escapes? Do they come back with more goblins, do they try and set a trap after a straight forward assault doesn’t work, do they move on somewhere else and now the players are responsible for goblin infestation somewhere else? You can do a lot of interesting things, not just in combat, but after combat with smart combatants. Even in combat, the PC’s are in a bar fight, have whom ever they are fighting hide behind tables after flipping them over, swing from the chandelier (there’s always a chandelier), take a drink in the middle of combat or spit alcohol into a PC’s face. Basically no intelligent combatant is going to just rush straight in to their demise, so don’t run them like that, make the players have to get creative in their combat to beat them.

4 – Don’t Over Use Random Encounters
I already talked about this some, but random encounters generally have more of that animal stalking you while you sleep, rushes in for a kill, and then gets slaughtered, or dragon shows up randomly now PC’s need to run away or turn into ash. However, there are reasons to use them, and that’s because you want to show off what the players might be coming up against on the mission that they’re on currently. Or that the players might need to run or be worried about going through a certain area. I, in the Dungeons and Flagons campaign, used a few giant random encounters, they were meant less as combat but to show the players that they were taking a very dangerous route, shorter but more dangerous, to get to where they wanted to go. But if you’re making the players set-up traps, guards, and anything else they can do to protect themselves each night and it’s more about survival of the night than progressing the story, that might be too many random encounters, unless they are very meaningful.

So, I said I was going to give some examples to steal. Things you can do in your campaign, or interesting combats that you can possibly work in. And I’ll admit it, combat isn’t my specialty so these are going to be a little bit vague. That’s also so you can adapt it to your own game as well.

Combat Encounter 1 – Death of a Salesman

Set-up: The shop owner the players always go to has had something important stolen from his shop, in fact something that was very important to an important client that they’d ordered in especially for that client, the PC’s need to get it back. If not the client will have the shop owner killed.

Combat:
I’d set this in a thieve’s guild or some sort of organized crime set-up, give the players a house to explore and kill the bad guys in the rooms. But since the shop owners life is on the line, they can’t just kick the door down. This is a sneak from room to room and kill as quickly and quietly as possible so that the MacGuffin isn’t moved somewhere else.

This is a chance to do a longer combat where the players never really drop out of combat because it’s such a contained space. They might never be fighting more than two or three thieves or guards or whomever at the same time, but it would ratchet up the stress. Also, with there being a MacGuffin for them to get at the end, there is also an alternate objective. And they are fighting on the mob or thieve’s guild’s home turf, so their combatants would be smart in what they do.

Outcome: Either they get the MacGuffin or they don’t and the shop owner dies or is seriously injured. I’d also use this moment to let them find, no matter what, some information that helps them on their main quest.

Combat Encounter 2 – The Witches Circle

Set-up: There is a coven of witches (hags) who the players need to deal with, mainly because they’ve kidnapped someone for a sacrifice or an animal. This works well for a one shot, stop this thing or something bad happens.

Combat:
I’m throwing undead in here, I think that the witches have raised zombies or skeletons and the players need to fight through those to get to the circle of witches to stop the spell that they are trying to cast.

The witches themselves are in a circle, and killing a witch just makes the circle smaller and the spell have less of a chance of going off. But the main goal for the players is to stop the spell and rescue the person, let’s say not animal in this situation. So the players are going to need to fight through the undead, kill some witches, and all of this should be timed. Give them a certain number of rounds, and after that the spell happens.

Outcome: Either the players save the person, or if they don’t and they haven’t killed any witches, the spell goes off without a hitch. But for each witch from the circle that they’ve killed, say there are ten to start, there is a chance, and an increasing chance that the spell doesn’t go off. So I’d set the target number as rolling at or under a 20 to start, every witch that’s killed, subtract 2, and if all are killed, that means you’d be rolling to get under a zero, but if there are five of the ten left, that means if the witches roll over a 10, the spell fails, though the person still dies.

Combat Encounter 3 – The Beasts

Set-up: Players are out exploring on their way to some mission and they start to notice a presence stalking them. But not just one presence and not just once, several over several times.

Combat: This is an animal ambush, I’m thinking use something like Dire Wolves if that’s an appropriate level for your PC’s, and make them a little bit smarter. Have the wolves run in and out of the shadows and of the woods biting at players, make it so that most of the players clear shots at the wolves are going to be reaction attacks, so pretty mundane attacks. And have the Dire Wolves, beasts, focus on the smallest character first. Not the weakest, it might be that you have a gnome fighter so they can handle it better, but whatever looks like the smallest prey to the beasts, once the beasts have taken their prey down, the smallest prey, they’re going to try and leave with it.

Outcome: Players defeat the beasts who are clearly hungry or the players lose one PC to the wolves.

You can see how in none of these are the players just fighting for the life of their party. Yes, in the first encounter, they might very well all die, but that’s not the only losing condition. For both the Death of a Salesman and Witches Circle, the bad outcome isn’t death of the player characters, it’s death of someone else. In the last one, it’s about losing one player character. So even though they’ll be fighting, we have all sorts of different styles of whom their fighting, the end goal of the fights, and how they should go about fighting.

And that’s what good combat can really be in a game, instead of just hacking and slashing. Now, I don’t think that hacking and slashing is always a bad idea, but it can be lacking and it more so can get old. So be creative as the DM and create interesting combat encounters for the story that aren’t always just about killing everything.

What are some of the best combat encounters you’ve taken part in, either as a player or a DM?

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So let’s get into some backstory. Out there between the planes there exists two factions of the Gith race, Githyanki and Githzerai. For a long time, they were both under the control of Mind Flayers, but they managed to buck that control and now both war against the Mind Flayers, but the Githyanki, an evil race, don’t really care who get in their way and will pillage and kill as they go tracking down Mind Flayers. The Githzerai are similar in their feelings about Mind Flayers, but tend to keep to themselves.

In our game, there will have been a massive mind flayer infestation that has cropped up in the underdark. Though, as the players, you don’t know that yet. But things on the surface are starting to get interesting.

Duergar and Drow are coming up from the underdark to attack Dwarven clans whenever they can and seem to be making a concerted effort and push to take over some Dwarven strongholds. This amount of coordination seems higher than what Duergar normally are doing, so the players will be sent to investigate the underdark, investigate, but not engage. Down there, they will run across a party of Githzerai, and knowing the players, they will engage them, and be knocked out. That will probably have them going back to the surface to report, where they’ll get sent back down again to confirm that there are mind flayers.

On the surface, there will be changes going on to the lands as a Githzerai tower will have appeared. This beacon is going to bring in Githyanki and their red dragon companions as well as their air ships. The players, when not in the underdark are going to have to try and stop some of the incursions from the Githyanki as well as figure out what the Githzerai tower is and what is going on there.

The interesting part of this game for the players will be the troubles developing on two fronts. If they focus only on keeping the Githyanki away, and the Githyanki/Githzerai hate the Mind Flayers with the burning passion of a million suns so they aren’t leaving, the Mind Flayers are going to continue building up power in the underdark. If they go after the Mind Flayers, the Githyanki and Githzerai are both going to stick around the surface and delve into the underdark as well. So what happens to the surface while the PC’s are gone? The Githyanki are going to do a lot of damage. And it also opens up the question, do the PC’s know enough eventually about the Gith and the two factions to know that the Githzerai could be used as allies without everything ending up being destroyed?

Eventually this game is going to have the players taking on the Mind Flayers, possibly with allies. But then there might be another act where the Githyanki are now seeing what is worthwhile from the material plane and the players are going to have to come back to the surface and deal with the Githyanki or the red dragons who are their allies.

What are your thoughts on this game idea? Would you be interested in a game where there are two battlefronts and you have to choose between the two.

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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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