What Is Failing Forward?

Failing forward comes from players having to do skill checks. A skill check is something that you use as a Dungeon Master when you want to see if the players notice or know something or can complete an action that they are trying to do. An example of this would be the rogue doing a stealth check or something like that.

The idea of failing forward is that the players roll their skill check and they fail it. But instead of them not getting the information or completing they action, they still do that. However, it is going to add in some sort of complication for them. So they succeed but there is a cost instead of them getting it without that cost.

Why Use It?

So why use something like this? The big reason as a Dungeon Master that you want to use failing forward is some things need to happen. Let’s say the players don’t remember a bit of information about the Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal (BBEG). And it is something that their characters need to know to be able to eventually find the BBEG. So you have the players roll history checks for their characters, what happens if they fail? Now they are soft locked out of knowing that information.

So let me define what I mean by soft locked. They aren’t completely locked out of that knowledge, but you need to feed it to them another way. But the idea of failing forward is that they get that information, they pull it up in from their memory, you don’t need to create a new role playing situation or create a reason why they would learn it again. They just know it. But, as I said, there should be a cost to it. And I wills how you what I mean by that when I give some examples later on.

When Not To Use It

So there are times not to use it as well. I think that failing forward is a very useful tool for a Dungeon Master, but sometimes it doesn’t make that much sense to do it. If they fail to disarm a trap, okay, don’t fail them forward. Let them be creative to figure out another way to avoid the trap, or to set it off and just make a run for it.

But the other big time is when it doesn’t matter that much. If the player wants to search a room for gold and they role a one, who cares. They toss the place and the three gold they might have found they don’t find. Or the barbarian wants to throw something a long ways, they roll a strength and roll low, that’s fine as long as it’s not part of the plot that they need to do it.

So, just to recap, use failing forward when you need them to succeed to progress the story. Don’t use it when it is for flavor, the players doing something that doesn’t matter, or there are other ways around the problem.

Examples of Failing Forward

So let’s talk examples, and I want to do a couple of different ones here. But just to demonstrate how you can use it well. And this is something that I’d plan on in the moment. Don’t try and pre-plan for your session checks that your player characters will have to do as the Dungeon Master, it just adds work that might not happen.

Example 1: The Deity’s Hidden Past

The characters are coming to realize that there is something off about this deity who has reached out to them for help. They know some general knowledge on the deity but how much do they actually know. If they roll well they are going to know that the deity was actually killed years ago and now someone has taken it’s place and that matters because they would then know not to trust them.

So all the players roll religion checks, and because this is ancient history it’s a harder check. The best role is an 8 and now they players really didn’t succeed on this check.

What is failing forward going to look like here?

You give the characters the knowledge but you give them more knowledge than is actually right. You explain it to them in the way of a long forgotten myth that is passed down still in some tribes, but was passed down verbally for years. The general details of the deity’s death are there, but specifics are wrong, and who killed the deity is wrong and you give them a lot to sort through that is right or not.

Example 2: The Chase

The other example I want to give is of something a bit more physical. The players were supposed to have snuck up on a criminal and knocked them out. Instead they talk to them. And they tell them exactly what is going on. So the criminal is running through the market now throwing things down behind them.

The players need that item to progress the storyline. So you give them some challenges to complete with athletics and acrobatics. They roll really poorly on their checks while on the chase.

How do you keep the guy from getting away? Well, you already know the answer, you fail forwards.

In this case, that is going to look like issues with the market in the future. The barbarian is in pursuit and runs through a cabbage cart instead of pushing it of their way. The rogue leaps over a stall with an acrobatics but instead just jumps onto it and runs through all the tomatoes. Now the people in the town won’t like them. Yes, they get their criminal in the end, but there is a consequence to their action.

Final Thoughts on Failing Forward

This is an important tool for the dungeon master. And in the examples I gave, I want to just say one thing. The issue that can arise can be something the players know or the players don’t. In the second example the people working in the market are going to be raising a big stink and shouting after the characters so they will know. In the first example, the players might suspect but they won’t know for sure and they won’t know what is right and what isn’t.

And then use it as a tool for the future as well. There are examples I could give where the character is undercover and fails a check to blend in. Now the boss knows that they aren’t who they say they are, but instead of acting on it, the crime boss just holds onto that for later. The players might know that they failed and be surprised, but now it’s something that they are worried about coming back to bite them later.

How do you use failing forward? Is it something that is part of your campaign, or do you not even make the players do a check when they need to know the information?

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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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Dungeon Master Tools – Combat

We all know what combat is, so we’ll kind of skip over that detail, right? Well I think we generally know what it is there is a mindset that it means “beat the bad guys”. Combat certainly has that in it, but I think it is better defined as taking actions in conflict with an aggressively hostile party to end the hostile situation.

Now that is a bit of a mouthful. But the reason for that is that often “beat the bad guys” but it might be, escape through a group of hostile enemies, or run away from the combat. Or it might be protect an NPC who is trying to get to an objective or needs time to complete an objective, so you need to defend them. And it is even the situations where you beat someone down enough that they beg for mercy or a truce when they k now they are defeated.

How To Do Combat

So let’s start out with some basics again here. We now know what combat is, so how do you do combat. And I want to talk about two ways and suggest you do the second one.

The first way is to have a battle map. This is going to require minis, things on the map to denote enemies or terrain and things like that. It’s going to be a bit more complex because as the Dungeon Master you need to plan this out ahead of time to have everything ready.

The second way is theater of the mind. This is where you know what the battle is like in your head. Everyone imagines what it looks like and you work through it that way. Now there is a drawback of this is that it is a skill to be learned. It’s not always the easiest to do right off the bat, but it is simpler than always creating a combat.

Theater of the Mind

So we know what theater of the mind is. So you want to do that, how do you keep track of everything?

The first way is to simply add it into your notes as you go. When players and enemies roll for initiative I write that down and as combat goes, I might draw a line between player characters and enemies who are adjacent to each other. That way I can keep track of who is who. The more you run theater of the mind, the easier that is going to be to keep track of who is where just in your head.

That is going to be the simplest way of keeping track by drawing lines. Another way, if you want to help with that theater of the mind element is to create your own battle map. If you are fairly confident a battle will happen in a session, or you do this on the fly, you draw up where the player characters and enemies are. Then you just erase and move them as they move and attack and die. This is more work, but might be a decent first step.

When To Use Battle Maps

Now the answer for you might be never. I rarely use battle maps because I plan my combats on the fly. But if I know there is a big set piece, I am more apt to use a battle map. And I understand the desire to use a battle map. A big map and set-up is fun for players as the Dungeon Master alike.

So I believe in using them sparingly. I use them for a bit boss combat. If you return to the story arc article, each arc maybe has a final fight. Let’s look at this example again.

Example Arcs

• 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

Find a treasure doesn’t seem like it has a combat. Well, it can. And this is a great time to talk about another element of combat that I already talked about some.

Vary Combat Objectives

What do I mean by vary combat? I mean create the escort or protect someone combats. Create a combat where the players are overwhelmed and they need to get something and get out. Now, I lean towards combat where you beat the enemy more often than not. Whether that ends in knocking out the enemy or killing them or getting the fight to end through violence or spells, whatever that might be. But throw in other combats as well where players need to think through what they are doing.

So let’s talk about that “find treasure” scenario as an example.

Example – Find Treasure

This might seem like it doesn’t have that combat element to it. Or it might not be a set piece. But I think that it can be a very good set piece scenario. So let’s talk about building out that scenario and it might not all be known to the players at the start all of this, but I want to make it simple if I can for a new Dungeon Master, that’s the whole point.

The Objective: Get in and out as fast as you can with the treasure.
The Set-up/Description: You open the door to a hidden room in the crypt, unfortunately it’s guarded by undead. As you watch for a second, you see there are hallways and other crypts off to the side with more undead.
The Complication: There is no limit to the undead. Every round 1D4 undead are added into the mix. So even if they take them all out more will keep coming.

Now this is great because it can work well either as theater of the mid or in a set piece with a battle map. If you do a battle map create some terrain and bottle necks in there. The bottle necks can be where the undead come from off to the side. So players, theoretically could block one of them up by placing a tanky player character in front of it. But to win it is really get in and get out.

Enemy Actions

This is the second to last thing that I want to talk about before I wrap up combat. And this is where you really can develop, I think as a Dungeon Master. It is an area that I want to develop in more as a Dungeon Master as well. But give your enemies different flavors as you work.

Let’s use our undead as an example. And you might want to add this to your notes as the Dungeon Master as you think about the combat. But how does an undead fight? And are these undead mainly just reanimated corpses or zombies with an objective, or intelligent undead?

In my example, I see them as unintelligent undead. They are the corpses from the crypts who are awakened via magic. So I want them to attack whomever is closest to them. If players aren’t careful that means that one player might get surrounded which is bad at low levels. And I expect this to be an encounter for low level characters that they can’t win, again because there are always more undead. But that does mean that they aren’t going to target a healer or caster off the bat since they likely won’t be the closest.

Adding In Theme

Once we get past the differences between theater of the mind versus a battle map, the big thing that I’m trying to do by varying combat objectives and enemy actions or behaviors is to create fun thematic combat experiences. And I know I want to get better at this as well.

Why, I think that it makes combat more fun for both the players and the Dungeon Master. If I know something about how the enemies are going to act that the players need to figure out, that is fun for me. And for the players, it’s fun to have enemies that do varied things, to varied characters but are doing it for a reason. It isn’t fun when the enemies always ignore the tank and rush past to get to the healer and caster.

So, to wrap it up, come up with one element to add in theme to your combat. Whether that be hordes of undead who keep coming no matter what or an intelligent rogue who is always trying to drop into hiding and move their position around a crowded warehouse, give the players something to remember the combat by. And if you just happen to have group of street toughs who are just straight forward basic combat, that might standout too.

Final Thoughts on Combat

Combat is going to be a part of your game. I didn’t mention it yet, but I’ll say it here quickly and then again in the last topic, the meta game, but how much combat you have might vary a lot. I know in the Dungeon Master Guide and other D&D books they say 4-6 small combats a day. The idea is to use up player resources. That might work, or it might not, for your group. You need to figure that out, and we’ll talk about how in that meta game article coming out soon.

What I didn’t cover was encounter creation in terms of enemy power. The easiest way, I find is to use a tool like: https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/. It let’s you punch in details and see how hard your combat is going to be. Especially for combats where players need to beat the enemies by force.

So what is coming next for Dungeon Master Tools?

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

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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