Simmering the Adventure

The last post notwithstanding, players are going to fail to invent an adventure of their own more than half the time.  After all, they don't generally get a lot of practice.  Therefore, though we haven't as much time, this is a burden that will befall us as DMs and if we want the world to run, we have to step up.

Let's say that we have an adventure in mind, of the standard kind.  I'll define that as a hook, a series of obstacles, some eventually difficult obstacle that's sure to produce a close call and inevitable, an ending that semi-resolves the original hook.  I've said a lot about hooks in the past, but it's worth reviewing a few basic points about them.

Back with the post, Hook, Tale and Sting, I called Dungeon Mastering a confidence game.  I discussed baiting the hook and getting the player to grab it, pointing out that they want to grab the hook because for them, getting started on the game is the point.  A hook has to be subtle; the players have to sense that the hook is there, but the less they actually understand about it, and the less they recognise where the hook is taking them, the better.

For an example of that, let's take a fairly common film that's withstood the test of time.  With 1982's Conan the Barbarian, the film begins with the following short speech:

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.  Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"  

From thence, we see the forging of a sword, step by step, as the credits run.  A man is shown making the sword, but we're told nothing about him or given any reason to think he's relevant to the story at hand.  As far as we know, if we haven't seen the film, this is Conan making the sword.  After all, while most of us knew who Conan was long before seeing the film, there are many who know nothing about him ... and the film strives to keep them in the dark as much as possible.

And this is a theme we ought to embrace as a DM.  There's plenty already to grab our attention, especially if we're tuned into this sort of swords and sandles concept (which was the name of the genre up to when Conan was released; "fantasy" was just getting started as a label).  As the film progresses, we see the swordmaker talking to a boy about the god Crom.  From the tone and the revealing that the boy's name is Conan, we understand this is Conan's father.  The story is brief; enigmatic, and similar to any story that tells about the beginning of things.  But we're introduced to this concept, "the secret of steel" ... while Conan is counselled not to trust anything except steel.

Consider all that it NOT said.  The hints about Conan's future said at the start never materialise in the film.  He doesn't become king of Aquilonia.  We're not told what the plotline is going to be, or why any of this about steel is important, except that we're in a film and we're pretty sure that the filmmaker has a reason for putting it here.  This is the sort of faith that your players need to have in us as we DM them.  Whatever we tell them, it ought to be relevant, even as it's concealed behind veil after veil of as yet hidden detail.  The story doesn't leap to Conan the boy, and then Conan the man asking everyone everywhere, "What's the secret of steel," like a goof from the Barbie movie.  This theme is revealed patiently.  In the fullness of time.

In the present, for the characters, there's no time right now to puzzle this out ... because in the very next cut, a group of ornately, ominously clad warriors are seen breasting the crest of a hill in the dead of winter.  From 5:37 to 9:40, four minutes, we see a marvelous slaughter fest set to the song "Anvil of Crom," where the villagers helplessly try to fight off this group of marauders, who burn their village and ultimately kill all the adults, including at the end, Conan's father.  There follows an absolutely brilliant, gut-wrenching scene immediately after, done without dialogue (most of the film's actors did not speak English and John Milius went with it).    With hardly anything moving on the screen, it takes the leading marauder more than two and a half minutes to kill Conan's mother ... gawd, what a scene ... and the film has reached 13:30 before we see the young children, including Conan, dragged away in chains.

By the time we see the young enslaved Conan chained to the mill, while we're told by the narrator that Conan's people are all dead, and the resulting transformation of young Conan into the adult male played by Schwarzeneggar, the film has reached 16:08.  We've forgotten entirely about the "riddle of steel," while we're deeply engaged in the scenes at hand.  We've been told that somehow this incredibly muscular young man is going to usurp a throne, but nothing whatsoever has been suggested about how he's going to get there, or what's going to happen for the rest of the film.

And this is the point I'm making here.  When "hooking" the player, start with the rule that you're going to say absolutely as little as possible about what this could mean for the future, or why any of the things you're saying are relevant and should be attended to.  This is going to go against all the advice we encounter elsewhere, who are going to tell us that "whetting the players' appetites" is absolutely necessary if they're going to care about any of this.  If we just throw out a bunch of information, we're told, the players are going to ignore it and not act upon it.  Good.  That is exactly what we want.  We don't want the players to act upon it!  We don't want them having a precise direction to follow!  What we want is to achieve is to make the information at least memorable, so that later, when the players stumble across the next part of the adventure we're going to set up, their eyes open up and they say out loud, "Oh, hey, this is like the time my father told me about the riddle of steel!  Who knew that was ever going to be important?"

I apologise here, but I'm going to have to talk about "story" and the reason why it doesn't work.  If our player character is Conan at the moment he's still pushing the mill around, all of the story so far is going to be told in the past.  And because it's already happened, it's going to lay there as dead as a coffin nail for want of something to apply it to.  The only reason why it "fleshes out" Conan's character for us, the audience, is because we were there while it happened.  We saw the village destroyed.  We lived the death of Conan's mother.  We're not being told a story; we're experiencing a series of events that are happening in real time.  None of this story actually works for a player character in D&D.  Conan the boy doesn't DO anything.  He flees, he hides behind his mother, he stumbles along as a slave and then he's shackled to a mill.  It's awful, but all the actual decision-making happens with the other characters.  Thulsa Doom, the lead marauder, could be a player character.  As him, we could decide to kill Conan's mother and sell the boy into slavery.  For us, then, we'd be making the decisions ourselves.  But as Conan the boy, and for the first 25 minutes of the film, Conan has no agency at all.

At the moment that Conan becomes a "player character," that is someone with agency, he's unarmed, still wearing the chains of his master after being freed, being chased by a pack of dogs on the open plain, by himself.  He's not fully clothed in adventurer's gear with a full kit, he's not in some comfortable town knocking on a door to ask what the "secret of steel" is ... hell, the events that surrounded that conversation with his father were 12-15 years ago.  He barely remembers his father.  Yet his father told him two things and the ensuing two scenes of the movie, with Conan as a little better than a 1st level character (he's won lots of battles), addresses those two things.

To escape the dogs, Conan climbs some rocks and falls down a concealed passage into a tomb.  There, from the skeleton of a warrior-king posed on his throne, Conan obtains a pretty decent two-handed sword.  Does the film have a voice over from Conan's father muttering with Spielbergian anvilism, "The secret of steel ..."?  No.  We are not told anything about this; only one word is spoken during the scene, and it happens when the king's skeleton collapses, the sword removed, changing from an aspect of might and glory to one of defeat and decrepitude.  The moment is stunning, the set design Oscar-worthy (though, obviously ignored) and the message for those paying attention is this: steel is strength, steel is power.  Even in death, the possession of steel is evidence of glory.  But when the hand is dead, and the steel taken away, there's nothing.

Forgive me for going down the garden path, but this moment is reflected later in the film when Thulsa Doom tells Conan, "Steel isn't strong, boy; flesh is stronger!  What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?  Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart."  When the dead skeleton's king's flesh declines, the steel sustains him only until Conan comes and takes it away.  But getting to the point here, and the Spielbergian crack.

As a DM, shut up.  When you set the scene, when you put the contents into it, when the players encounter the moment and live through it, don't explain it to them.  Don't be Spielberg, Gerwig, Scorsese or any of these hacks.  Shut the fuck up.  Let the players work out what it means for themselves.  And if they figure it out wrong, and you figure you need to sort them out so they'll actually understand what it's supposed to mean, clarifying the adventure for them and helping them understand ... Don't do it.  Just don't.  I catch myself doing this all the gawddamned time and it's a stupid, stubborn, bad habit of mine to explain things.  But it's really not what we should be doing.

The next scene is the witch.  What's the other thing that Conan's father told him?  I'm not going to remind you.  The witch lets him into her tent and does he ask about the secret of steel?  No, he asks about the two snakes coming together over the moon.  Having had 10 years to think while pushing a wheel, he's lost the sense of philosophy and what his father tried to teach him and has become lost in the revenge he has planned.  Which is perfectly fine.  Player characters are free to do what they think is necessary for gaming; if they want to go after their father's killer, let them.  But it doesn't keep us from re-inserting the deeper underlying theme again and again into the story.  Conan's story arc and glory does not result from the destruction of Thulsa Doom, though it's nice that it happens along the way (oh, spoilers!).  No, his arc is given by the positively awesome Sandahl Bergman at the moment she saves his life, until it happens, just prior to Conan putting it all together at the very end.  She asks him, "Do you want to live forever?"

There's Conan at the end, steel in hand, aware of his power, aware of Thulsa's emptiness, hearing Thulsa say, "For who now is your father if it is not me? I am the well spring, from which you flow.  When I am gone, you will have never been.  What would your world be, without me?  My son."

But he's not his father, is he?  He's not the one that understood the secret of steel.  Conan's father is his father, and has ever been his father, not Thulsa Doom.

Taking all this, then, let's return to the premise I made at the start.  We don't know any of this is going to happen at the start.  Each step along the path is revealed only as much as it needs to be revealed.  As a DM, presenting the adventure to the players, there's no need for them to learn what it's like around the temple of Thulsa Doom until they're actually there.  There's no need for them to know about the temple they're going to break into as thieves, until it actually presents itself when the party arrives in the town.  There's no need to tell them about the jewel ahead of time, or about the snake, or drop any hints whatsoever about any part of the journey UNTIL IT HAPPENS.  The party is always willing to take the tour; they're always willing to start along the road, and whatever happens along the way, or whomever they meet, that can provide it's own flavour and dimension to the overall proceedings.

Consider the usual complaint about random encounters:  "These don't have anything to do with the adventure," claims the player.  "They just waste time!  They're not needed!"  This speaks volumes about the way a DM runs the adventure.  The party knows way ahead of time where they're supposed to be and what they're supposed to do.  They know enough about the proceedings, even when they haven't happened yet, to feel justified in saying that extra encounters are stupid.  They know this, because the DM has told them this, before rolling a die and producing the random encounter.  But if the DM plays the game closer to the chest, how is the party to know whether or not this IS a wandering monster, hm?  How are they to know this isn't the start of the adventure they're sort of feeling their way towards, wondering what's going to happen next that proves itself relevant to what they know so far?  Obviously, they aren't.  Which ups the stakes for every encounter, doesn't it?

Don't slam the party into the quest, ease them into it, like frogs into cool, clear water.  Don't spin the heat up to high, raise the heat very, very gently;  don't let the frogs know the trouble they're in.  Let the various encounters seem to happen organically, as though unplanned, unforeseen, as though we're making it up on the spot.  Don't tell them what's relevant.  Don't explain how things come to be.  When the players insist on knowing, tell them to get comfortable being ignorant.  If they're meant to know, they'll know when the time is right, and not because they want it right now.

Remember, and this applies to both D&D and fishing ... the best hooks are the ones that don't look like hooks.