Things to Pay Attention to in Dungeon Presentation

At last, something new to say.  Let's settle in and have a long discussion.

I'm going to tread on the line of disclosing an email discussion, albeit a business one, through email.  The ethics here are dubious, since when we're approached by strangers on an email, how much responsibility do we have to keep that interchange private?  Frankly, by law, I'm free to say what I wish, but as a matter of decency, I don't think that's appropriate.  Additionally, I'm certain the party under discussion will read this post; it was clear they were familiar with my blog and I don't wish to disparage them for reaching out.

Instead, I'll give them a little free advertising.

I was approached last week by a group calling themselves "Adventure Bundles," asking if I'd review a game module they were making for 5th edition.  Naturally, I assumed this was spam.  I've received spam like this before, since being a D&D blog sometimes means I'll end on someone's list, somewhere.  Hell, I could build a 200-blog database just by going around and copying the blog rolls of as many popular game blogs as I needed.

It wasn't, however; the request was sincere and was targeted at me.  Which I admit is odd, since a) I dislike modules very much; b) I dislike 5e very much; and c) I haven't made a secret of it.  It takes nerve to approach someone like me and ask him to be open minded about something distinctly against his principles.  Well done.

After some back-and-forth, I explained that I didn't wish to help them.  I don't have any expectation that yet another module-producing company is going to make something new and profound that I haven't seen before, but it's more than that.  The bottom line is that by reviewing their product, I get nothing.  I don't want free content or have use for it.  If I hate the module, I've wasted my time and worse than that, I'll be accused of hating it on principle — even if I spend two thousand words explaining in detail WHY it's garbage.  If I'm taken at my word in that regard, my complaints would likely be the same as what my readers have heard before, so it wouldn't be new content for them — and obviously MY readers are more important to me than Adventure Bundles's readers.  If I like the module, I look like a shill.  I recently admitted that I've acquired a volunteer business manager, Mark; probably, I'd look like I was doing this because Mark told me to, which isn't our relationship but that's what would be assumed.

Finally, while Adventure Bundles probably needs a little credibility (otherwise, why look for anyone outside to write a review?), they're not going to get it here, since the people who come here are those who don't want to read yet one more Maliszewski fluff-piece about something published 37 years ago.  Those aren't my readers.

Point in fact, looking for a webpresence for Adventure Bundles, the only thing I can find is this: diebreaker.com.  I really hope this isn't who I was talking to.  Shudder.

This content so far wouldn't be worth writing about, except I was thinking — especially today, after a very steady running on the juvenis campaign — about what would a module need to be in order to meet my "standard"... which we can define as, "would be equal to my own game play."  And yes, sorry, I'm an egotistical jackass that's full of myself, but then again I'm faced with DMs out there who think that a game module meets their standards.  Those standards being obviously lower than mine.

I've induced my players to invest themselves in a traditional dungeon, which we started in earnest today.  The point-by-point details can be read here.  I'm building the dungeon from my mind palace, which I don't really consider how I'm doing it but fans of Sherlock Holmes can get all geeky now about it.  I first ran across the idea in a James Burke episode of Connections back around 1982, when I was all of 18, so I hardly had to wait for 2010's S.H. to introduce it to me.  Essentially, I think of it as "remembering things."  I have a lot of practice at remembering a lot of things; with artworks, I accomplish this by laying down for hours at a time, often in a bathtub, and "thinking."

As such, as play begins, I'm juggling a bunch of things in my head ... and that includes much more than what is going on behind this door.  I'm going to try to organize what kind of things from here forward.  If you've put up with my inflated ego, self-conceit and strutting pomposity (three things that mean the same), this is the payoff:  Things to pay attention to in dungeon presentation.

1. Minimize

Every time your players enter a room, or open a door, they will want every bit of information that's there given to them immediately and in toto.  Don't do it.  Deliberately skip details, even details which they think should be plainly obvious, such as a smell, or a brick out of place, or the ring on a skeleton's finger (nope, isn't one, but I could put one there still).  Plan to give those details, and before the players ask for them, but understand that we're under no obligation to describe everything in a room down to the last atom ... because the five senses don't work that way.

Enter any space and you won't see everything that's there the first time, or even the second or third time, though your eyes function perfectly.  We just don't "see" that way.  We glean immediate dangers first; and then our observation is compromised progressively by what we expect to see and what we hope to see.  You might visit your friend's apartment a dozen times before you realize their beige toilet is actually green.  You think you'd see that instantly, but this is not so; there have been dozens of times in the last few years that you've asked, "how long has that lamp been there?" — only to be told it's been three years.  Visually, and even more so audially and aromatically, we miss stuff all the time.  This is a reality that players have to get used to, and a privilege the DM enjoys in setting up tension.

For example, at one point in the linked game, Lexent the gnome says he goes around to each of the 11 other doors in the hall, trying to detect something special about each.  He doesn't.  But later I say that Marcule gets a whiff of something from one of the doors that Lexent checked.  Is this an example of me "cheating"?  Was I responsible as a DM to ensure that Lexent was "properly" told about the smell?  Nope, sorry.  That would have been the 7th door he checked, which means engaging in repetitive failure six times before the 7th; and the character has no special skill in sensing anything, being a cleric and not a person with heightened senses (an ability in my game).  Marcule doesn't actually possess heightened senses either, but he is an assassin, and he wasn't actually looking for the scent when he smelled it.  He just chanced to smell it.

The way our senses work, including sight, are inconsistent.  So when a player is in a space, give them some information about what they see (certainly, the important stuff, like moving creatures or treasure), but withold the minor, subtle, tiny details.  Not forever, obviously.  Withhold them until they say, "I search the skeleton," whereupon you reveal the ring.  Or they say, "I make everyone stand absolutely still and listen."  Which no one in today's game did.  The players have to act to get those tidbits ... otherwise, I'll just give them a little later on, when it suits me and my presentation.

2. Tempo

Once you understand that you can withhold subtle details, you can begin viewing the game experience in terms of tempo.  Tempo is the speed and pace with which the game proceeds, just as it describes a piece of music.  The dissemination of information to the players can be like a director playing visual tricks with a film, such as jump scares where a shadow moves across the screen behind an actor in a horror film.  As the DM, we decide when its best for the players to know something.

For example, the player enters a room, gets in a fight ... and then in the 3rd round of the fight, hears something else, some unknown thing, banging on a nearby door.  It is much, much more panicky to hear this during some other ongoing problem than to save it for when the players are standing around.  So as a DM, we wait.  We have that bit of information socked away, that we're going to give at some point, but we want to introduce it at the worst possible time for the players, or when it will distract them from their thoughts.

Again for example: the players have been struggling with some collection of details, trying to figure out how they go together ... and they've just started to make a breakthrough somewhere.  That's the moment to introduce some totally disconnected thing, something that has nothing to do with the player's thoughts, such as the moment when the assassin smells something sour coming from one of the doors.  This sort of derailment can happen as often as we wish: introducing an uncertain roar, or the sound of something falling and crashing; or a wave of cold air suddenly flowing through the room.  It's D&D's version of building Dr. Marvin Monroe's special isolation chamber, that delivers food, warmth, electric shocks and showers of icy cold water in order to raise maladjusted children.  Basically, the players are twisted lab rats struggling against their circumstances.

You would think they'd hate this; and many readers here will right now, be saying, "Damn straight, I'd hate this," but you'd be wrong.  This is what horror movies do blatantly, and what other movies and novels do delicately (and the more delicate the better).  As humans, we need our emotions manipulated because otherwise we can't invest ourselves; we've gotten so used to be manipulated hormonally, it's the default characteristic of everyday life.  Without the thrill of being unexpectedly turned this way or that, we don't feel alive ... and when the information is given too readily or too easily, we adopt an blithe attitude and lose interest.  Tempo, the introduction of new information over a period of time, enables us to keep surprising the players, giving them new and interesting things to think about, shifting their attention to what's next before they become bored with what was.  When everything is a patiently obvious set piece, the players feel like they're moving through one of those old-time historical panoramas, where none of the dummies move while we have all day to inspect the scene.  D&D is not like that.  Things happen.  Things move.  New things come into being.  New things are noticed.  If there's always something there to grab the players attention, they're stoked to ride the wave until they either crash or make it to shore.

3. Relevance

This is a case of Chekhov's gun ... and for the two people who haven't heard this phrase before, and have no idea how google works, I'll explain quickly.  Chekhov was a playright who argued that,

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

If it's not essential, it shouldn't be there.  Welcome to why virtually every movie and book made or written is junk and won't matter 40 years from now.

Of course, "essential" is a movable feast.  The walls must be there or else the roof falls down.  Some kind of sustenance must be there because the monsters must eat.  The presence of food is not, therefore, an intrinsic clue to the solution of THE mystery ... but it does solve one minor question in the setting: how many creatures were here and how much food did they eat?  Moreover, why was the food stored here and not there is also relevant.  The same must always be asked about the treasure we find constantly on traditional D&D humanoid bodies.  Why have these goblins, dwelling in this dungeon, acting as guards, while literally days from a market place where they couldn't buy anything if they went there, chosen to individually store randomly different amounts of coinage directly in pouches carried on their own bodies, all the time, given that these coins are of no practical value to them or to anyone else in this lair who might steal them?  Hm.  Could be, it's the DM's way of giving video game points to players, and has nothing to do with how goblins think or anything else relevant to the way they live.

If a player asks the question "Why?" regarding anything in the dungeon, the DM should (a) know exactly why; (b) be able to show it, not tell it, when the time comes; and (c) should recognize that if (a) or (b) cannot be explained or shown, then that thing in the dungeon SHOULDN'T BE THERE.  Finally, (d) the DM should have plans to deliberately ensure that the players eventually get an answer to every question, if they hang in there long enough and do the work.  There is nothing more annoying in a dungeon than useless window-dressing, the sort that Gygax indulged in endlessly, when it is possible to build mysteries and complex reveals out of broken swords and piles of manure that have a reason for being there.

Don't paint a room.  Design it.  Figure out where everything came from and why it's still here, perhaps years later.  If you can't do that, then get rid of it.  It's doing nothing for your game.

Now, some of my readers will argue, "Red herrings, red herrings!"  A red herring is a clue that leads the mystery-solver in the wrong direction.  Bad writers LOVE red herrings, because filling a book with them will ensure the protagonist will need many more pages to get to the end of what would otherwise be a very shitty, very simple pathetic story line, such as anything written by Agatha Christie.  Take away all the useless time-wasting that goes on in a typical mystery story and you're left with a detective who finds two right clues and solves the thing.  Usually, these two right clues are found in the last 20 pages, thereby oblivating the previous 280 pages the book has wasted of your time.  Often, the clues are not found at all, but are in fact introduced for the very first time by the detective in the last five pages, apparently out of thin air.

The very best mysteries are where every single detail is relevant and the puzzle takes the entire book to put together, with definite forward movements every step of the way.  There are no red herrings at all.  We will note there are no red herrings in Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Hemingway, Woolf or David Mamet for that matter, because red herrings are crap.  This will not stop bad writers from using them, which will not end the exhaustion of readers of having to read past them to get to "the good stuff."  Foolishly, I think most of D&D should be good stuff, rather than time-wasting crap; I know, I know.  Indecent of me.

And so ...

It would be very, very difficult for a game module to explain just when I should introduce information, since most of the time this depends on what the players are doing.  Tempo demands that I wait for the players to get invested in (1) before introducing (1b) and possibly (1c).  At the same time, what's happening in (2) shouldn't be limited to what the players are doing, since all events are happening simultaneously.  The creatures over there in that part of the dungeon are not frozen in time while the players are doing such and such over here.  The longer the players take to move through the various halls and rooms should matter.  Things need to be time sensitive; so the DM has to reason out what creatures where will get interested in barging into the area the players are, based on what the players have been doing, not upon pre-determined suppositions made by designers who are not now at the gaming table and can't properly TIME these events.  Which details are seen by the players and which aren't depends on how the players search, and what words they use when they search, and how careful they are, and how much time they waste doing it and turning up nothing.

If the players search everything down to the nap, that has consequences.  The dungeon that might have been a cakewalk if the players had moved briskly forward, has time to learn about their presence, organize, arrange themselves and bring to bear MAXIMUM force, because the players have been dithering.  At the same time, if the players move too briskly, they will miss things, which is how it ought to be; realistically, whatever the operation, you won't find every coin and every enemy if blitzkrieg is the goal ... yet blitzkrieg has its benefits; you won't easily get trapped either, and you will plunder something in the process.

The players who think they can dawdle along and collect every scrap, without repercussions, have been taught by DMs that there are no consequences: because all the monsters will wait in their rooms just as they've been told to do.  They're not really monsters, you see, or anything alive.  They're stuffed exhibits made of wax, there to be seen and to make a half-hearted attempt to provide players with amusement, but not fear.  Never fear.

I do not play D&D that way.