Bolstering the Party

As dungeon masters, there's reason to appear unbiased.  We're pressed not to consider the party's advantage in things, and to appear as an unprejudiced judge when making game rulings.  However, it's easy for this visage to drift into an apparent lack of concern for the players' well-being ... even a couldn't-care-less attitude.  There's a danger here.  Detachment can encourage a party to fear what comes next, should they take an action ... but it can also persuade the party that the DM is "out to get them," and not in a good way.  While it's fun as a DM to chuckle while checking what's behind the door, as players reach for the handle, this sort of posturing has a down side.

When running games online, there was a considerable lack of trust on the players part for my DMing; and this despite all the things I'd written encouraging legitimacy and the responsibility a DM has towards producing a fair, proper game.  Where the rubber met the road, however, without my actual body language to indicate otherwise, with nothing but the words I wrote to convey feeling, the players couldn't rightly judge my intentions.  And since, as well, I happen to be a volatile snapping turtle besides, this produced a constant friction.  This was my fault.  Truth be told, I didn't compliment players often enough.  I still don't.  I have a tendency to be so fixed on the game, and making it run smoothly, while concentrating on the numerous details that must remain consistent, that once a moment is resolved, I'm rapidly moving to the next.

Allow an example; I'm told I don't tell enough war stories on this blog, so here goes.

Sorry about the quality of the image. Left click to isolate the image, then right-click to open the isolated image in a new window, then expand it by touching the plus-sign that appears.

This is the underground fortification my players have been fighting for two runnings.  The box on the upper left is the order of movement the players use, based on their dexterity (with ties broken by wisdom).  The dark tan indicates unexplored areas, assumed generally to be solid rock, except the space behind the double door on the upper right.  The detritus symbols on the tan areas are symbols I use during combats, to indicate whether a weapon is loaded (3 green circles for a heavy crossbow), if someone's stunned (red circle) or wounded (red star).  The goblin on the middle left is just there in case I needed another goblin ... as the map was revealed step by step, so goblin images were repurposed over and over throughout the battle.

The party entered through the chamber on the bottom right, were attacked by goblin bowmen at points A. (15 ft. above the chamber), then they had to go downslope through the middle, where minor goblins at points B. threw one-pound stones at them.  At point C., the goblins also threw molotov cocktails.  C. is located between two 10 ft. deep pits, which the mage (in blue, next to point C) created a tenser's floating disk (purple-yellow circle) to ship the players across the pits after the far side of each was secured.  Points D. are dead ends with spear traps, which one player took damage from.  The party then had to climb the stairs up from points D., fighting goblins as they went, clearing out the stone throwers.  Approaching point E., upon climbing the stair up (where all the players are jammed together) and opening the door, they were soaked with boiling oil.  E. was then used as a murder hole, so that while the party tried to climb the fixed ladder, they were shot full of holes and forced to retreat back to the stairs.  One player did reach the top of the ladder and nearly gained the ground before losing initiative and being knocked off.  That's where we ended it Friday night, with the two sides in a stalemate, while the party has chosen to regroup.

Much of this was made possible by a druid effectively using an obscurement spell, which followed her along as they worked their way down, then up.  Every player employed some clever technique or took a serious risk to survive the 35 goblins in their way.  Yet when the session ended, it didn't occur to me until after they were gone that I should have praised their work with more than the experience given (which was considerable and much appreciated, though no treasure has yet be secured).

And this brings me to the last post and this comment from Lance:

"I'm interested in your scary tunnel post. My players keep leaving dungeons/lairs half explored because of scary tunnels I didn't even try to make scary ha!"

I'm not saying this is the answer to Lance's troubles, but it's a beginning overall towards building a party's confidence and courage.  Not because we'll assure them that they'll succeed in every battle, but because we have to give them reason to try.  In essence, praise them.

We must choose our moment.  We know what's coming along as the session progresses and the players do not, plus we have time to make statements when the players arrive and are finding their places at the table.  We put it as lightheartedly as we can:  "Say, you guys have been doing pretty well lately.  That goblin lair was a tough nut to crack."

Of course, this praise must be sincere.  They must actually have been doing well.  Otherwise, it's hollow, and we risk being viewed as pandering and inauthentic.  It's not so much that we need to invent praise to give to the party, it's that we need to evaluate their play from time to time and recognise when individuals have excelled ... and then give them the praise they've earned.

We can also, respectfully, embolden them in situations where something appears much worse than it is.  Let's take the party moving through our dungeon.  They've fought off the mooks and moved into those areas affected by the thermal biome ... and here, they're attacked by a huge spider, which surprises them, takes a bit of meat out of the cleric's leg (3 damage), only to be effectively stomped by, of all people, the mage (who was the nearest person, rolled a critical with her quarterstaff and did 12 pts. of damage).  Unfortunately, the cleric fails the poison save—

—which in my game, causes 8 h.p. of damage per hit die of the venomous creature, at a rate of 1 h.p. per round, per hit die.  In other words, the cleric starts taking 2 damage each round, as the poison courses through his body.  As he's in pain, he can't concentrate on a spell; but the players have acquired four healing salves through their past efforts and rapidly apply them to counteract the poison.  As a result, the cleric is hurt, the players lose some capacity to heal, plus maybe the cleric's cure light wounds spell, but everyone is alive. 

Investigating, they find the spider has come through a small hole, from which warmth is exuding, about ten degrees more than the corridor.  Sending the thief through the hole, he discovers a winding vertical tunnel that's easily climbable, with surfaces covered with damp moss, about 4 to 6 ft in diameter.  The air within has tiny insects, and drifting pollen; and as the thief twists to work back to the party, he sees another huge spider squatting about twenty feet below, using its pincers to clean its forelegs.  The thief reports this.

We can't tell the party that the shaft is critical if they want to catch the lake hag below by surprise.  First of all, they don't even know there is a lake hag; and they're not blessed with knowledge of the future. They only know what they can see.  From their perspective, the strange shaft looks like a good way to be killed by spiders ... and that's the only thing it appears to be good for.  Now, the cleric in my game received 60 experience from the spider bite, and 320 experience from the poison damage ... and every player recieved 76 x.p. (before 10% bonus, if it applies) for just being there.  I treat "experience" as "practical contact with, and observation of, facts and events."  You know, like the actual definition of the word.  And it's awfully practical to know what it's like to almost die from poison, or to watch someone else nearly do so.

Oh, and the mage got another 110 x.p. for killing the thing.

Not every spider is worth 870 x.p.  If the spider hadn't hit the cleric at all, and the mage had then killed it, the total would only have been 110.  If the cleric had made his saving throw, it would only have been 230.  It's only high because the cleric would have been seriously depleted.  As a 2nd level, assuming no constitution bonus (and let's say that), suppose he had 15 hit points to start.  Minus 3, then minus 16, puts him at -4.  That'll kill him in a lot of people's games (and thus, less experience gained), but not mine, as I use negative hit points.  Still, those rules force the cleric to make a check to see if he's made unconscious at -4 h.p.; and if he is, that's quite the encumbrance burden if the party doesn't spend even more healing to make him conscious again.  This is how I justify one spider being worth a whole lot, and another spider being worth very little.

So, with lots of healing lost, does the party really want to tangle with another spider?

Okay, let me back up.  Remember when I said we could embolden the party, and I said we could take advantage of the session's initiation, since we know what's going to happen.  We're the DM.  We know all about the spider that's going to jump out ... and we're capable of guessing that someone's going to get bit (we rolled randomly to choose the cleric), and that they might blow their save (though the cleric has the best advantage there).  We know about the shaft and we can be pretty sure the players will wonder where the spider came from, and that someone will scout ahead.  We know they'll see the second spider.  None of this is a mystery to us.

We use this information to prime the party in their favour, and ours.  How?  They just fought a bunch of unknown minions and they all survived.  "Good job on those soggy humanoids," we say, as it's now the next running and they've all had time to get over that unexpected event.  We add, "I'd hoped it might cause you to think maybe you're in over your heads, here.  But you're good to go on, right?  Nobody here is afraid, right?"

If we can urge them, gently, to take a stance on how brave they are, then for a few hours you can fairly count on that declaration affecting their subconscious choices.  As the linked wikipedia suggests, the effect is rarely noticed by the players; they've consciously forgotten that they stated their bravery in the midst of the game ... but when the time comes to make a brave decision or not, most times they'll edge towards what they felt when they thought they were safe.

Priming works both ways.  If, as DMs, we're overcritical, or we demonstrate too much doubt in the players' abilities, that can also prime the players to lose confidence, doubting themselves and feeling a strong resistance against taking risks.  While priming is a powerful tool, it can also subvert the game if we're not careful what we choose to say, when making the game ready and spouting off.

As DM, our opinions carry enormous weight at the table ... much more weight than those opinions would carry if we were at a bar and talking over drinks.  This is because the players habitually strive to ascertain some clue about their success in every word we speak, and in the nuance of our voice tone and body language.  Our voice — strange as it may seem — has the potential to be both a positive and a negative influence on the player's willingness to take risks.

Myself, I think this factor had much less effect when we were playing as teenagers back in the day ... but only because we were less socially skilled at parsing out the words of other people, and ascribing to those words clues that would tell us whether or not we were succeeding within the relationship or with tasks in the work place.  As we grow older, and virtually nothing is said straightforwardly, we adapt to a social climate where everything a person says might contain a hidden meaning.  This is definitely true as a DM.  I notice the effect I have when I make an off-handed comment, or when I deliberately prime the players behaviour.  By merely mentioning something obscure about D&D at the beginning of a session — say, secret doors, which occur so rarely in my game that players don't search for them — I've caused a player to do something exactly at the time when I need them to do it, hours later.  It's a bit spooky sometimes.  And if I ask later, they'll claim they don't remember my ever mentioning secret doors.  They just "felt" like this was the time to search for one.  Even though they practically never do.

My answer to Lance, and anyone feeling their party is hesitant, is to suggest going over our own behaviour as DM.  What are we saying, or what are we not saying, that's adjusting their bravery in the face of a scary-looking tunnel.  Surely, we're not whetting their appetite enough with prospective experience or treasure; or we're giving them cause to feel they haven't the stuff to handle this tunnel; or we're making it too easy, socially, to turn hide and flee.

I don't know what that might be; I'm at my own table, and not that of others.  But I feel that if I sat in and listened, I might guess pretty quickly what's happening, based on the table's set-up, the distance between the DM and the players, the voice the DM uses, where focus is being placed, and how the dialogue is being handled.  Small things make big differences.

We must be careful about how remote we are ... because we're not on the hook, as the party is.  And if they sense that we're taunting them, or dismissing them, or feeling above them, they'll respond with distrust.  And that is something we cannot have when we run.  We need the players to believe that we're every bit as fair and honest as we appear ... else they'll think, consciously or unconsciously, that it's all an act.

Intel

This post talks about (b), the first wave of minions sent by the higher intelligence below, which is loosely based upon the monster shown.  Very loosely.  Any magical creature ought to have a higher intelligence, to start; a mage's intelligence.

And while I accept the three hit dice, I'd prefer to make the "lake hag" a 7th level mage besides, with commensurate spells and an additional 7-28 h.p.  I'll keep the fright and the glance, they add nuance.

I never have any troubles with remaking monsters in this manner.  Players aren't entitled to "familiar monsters" or the knowledge of their stats in any degree — they're entitled to exactly as much information as Frodo had about Shelob, or as Ahab had about the white whale, or for that matter as much as Luke had about Darth Vader.  Basically, it's a creature and by the rules of the game it's more or less killable ... but what it can do or how many blows it takes to kill it, NO, the players don't get to know that ahead of time.  Doesn't matter what the monster is.

In our scenario of the players venturing down through the dungeon, stumbling across warm pools of water and inexplicable clouds of moths, they've already announced their presence to the lake hag, or Witch ... and she, in turn, has dispatched her minions, as I've explained.

As the DM, consider how this is best played.  The minions are most likely stupid: they exist in a lifeless, soulless place, under the thrall of a creature so hideous that to look at her produces crippling fear.  Their origin is uncertain.  But they are certainly obedient ... and while stupid, the Witch knows what they are, and their limitations.  It's our part as DM to play out the forward going scenario as though we were her.  It is, in effect, like a military campaign.

One might argue that the former princess, as the Witch once was, was not a military commander; but this is also not her first rodeo, and she's had 25 years to consider what she'd do if her lair was ever invaded.  Plus, she possesses the mind and soul of the former nobleman who once ruled the area — and what was able to learn from him, or how she does it, is entirely up to us.  I've already stipulated that the Witch is intelligent.  She has mooks that she can use like soldiers, even if they are merely strange amphibious and jelly-like humanoid creatures.  She may possess clairvoyance, as a 7th level mage, enabling her to witness how the "first wave" of attacks goes.

The first wave is never her whole strength.  It's always a means to collect "intel," in the sense of how long does it take these strangers to waste 15 mooks?  What powers do they have?  Who takes the lead in the fight?  Who hangs back?  Does a crowd of mooks put them off, or whet their appetites?  This sort of thing.

Now, as DM, we already know all this.  We've watched the party fight a number of times now, and we know which character is which class.  So we're not actually learning anything about the party.  However, as DM, its important that much of the time we "play dumb" when running enemies against the party, since the enemies aren't supposed to know what we know.  So with the first fight, that's how we run it.  The mooks arrive in the party's company at some point during their descent, with the players hearing them coming, and there's a battle.  They rush in rather stupidly, without planning, because they're meant to die.  Presumably, the Witch can produce more.  Or at least, these are expendable.  They would probably be among her weakest forces.

The party knows none of this.  They wade through her minions with varying success, depending on the party and whether they're tactically capable.  Since the only thing they've fought in this campaign are a bunch of kobalds, it's probable the fighters and spellcasters are still 1st level.  Perhaps the cleric is 2nd, and probably the thief if there is one.  Still, it's reasonable to expect the players should win ... and they might gain enough experience from the fight for one or two of them to ascend a level.

[I don't use the dumbfuckery of studying for extra levels, because it adds nothing to the game ... it's a bogus arbitrary penalty for success of play, without meaningful opportunity for roleplay or player improvement — how exactly do you improve your "skill" at navigating the game mechanic of paying an NPC to push you up a level?  It has as much relevance to PLAY as being told that because you lost a piece in chess, you have to get out of your chair and kowtow once to your opponent to express your reverence for his or her skill]

So, the minions are dead, the Witch knows more about the party and the party ... well, what does the party know?

A., that creatures came out of the dark and attacked them without provocation.  This happens so often in D&D that it's doubtful the party will give it a moment's reflection.  I'd be very surprised if someone in the party remarked, "Why do you suppose they attacked us?"  The almost certain reply, not from the DM, would be, "They're probably evil."  Which conveniently solves all motivations, though in fact it's exactly the sort of in-game meta-thinking that gets parties killed.  More on this in a moment.

B., that it's probably safe to keep going.  The party doesn't know these are minions; they don't know anything!  As far as the party knows, or cares, these 15 repulsive creatures have been wandering mindlessly around the dungeon for 25 years, while just happening to remain together all this time and clearly lacking any connection whatsoever to anything.  I've been running fairly smart parties for more than 40 years and I have yet to have a party that gives any serious thought to the simple question, "What do these creatures do here when we're not around?"

Mostly, the only party concern is how much damage did they take and whether they can fight another battle — just like this one — with success.  It never seems to occur that the next fight may have 10 times as many creatures, because that's how armies work.  First, you stumble across a picket, then you're swamped by 150 soldiers.

But 40 years of mawkish D&D has trained any of those thoughts completely out of the players' heads.  Monsters exist for players to kill.  These 15 were right here because that's how the adventure's designed.  "It's not like the DM's just gonna kill us."

As a DM, however, we're bound to none of these assumptions, not by any rule.  As it happens, I'm not going to slaughter the party with 150 mooks in the next five minutes ... since, obviously, 150 make a lot more noise than 15.  But I could, and I'd be legitimately in my rights to play it that way.  I could easily say to the party, "You hear the sound of another group coming ... only this one is much, much louder" ... and see if they'd scatter or stupidly wait for the army to arrive.

MY responsibility in the "game," which isn't real life, is to ensure that the players have a reasonable chance of deciding ahead of time if this is a good time to fight or not.  A "reasonable chance" means providing them just enough intel to give them reason to question what would be the best action right now.  Such as,

DM: You hear a bunch of something shambling and squirgeling towards you from around the bend ahead.

Player: Squirgeling?

DM: Sounds like wet, fleshy masses slapping on stone.

Player: Oh.  How many masses are we talking about?

DM: You can't tell.  More than ten.  Probably not more than twenty.

There.  I've done my diligence.  It does not matter if the dungeon has been scripted out three months ago; it does not matter that the players haven't chosen a passage or a doorway.  The mooks are squirgeling towards the players because a higher intelligence has sent them, and they know every inch of these caverns.  Perhaps this is the third time the mooks have tried to find the players and attack them, only it just hasn't happened.  What matters is the players hear them coming.  This gives a chance for the players to run ... or ready themselves to fight.

This is moment at which the meaningful game choice is made.  Commit to what's coming or run.

'Course, players hate, hate, hate running from things they haven't seen.  And that is the sort of posturing pretense to heroism that gets parties killed.  Though of course, that's not our problem as DM.

We warned them.  We sent a simple reconnaissance mook-troop to test the party's strength.  And having revealed their strength to the Witch (without the slightest notion in their heads that she watched the whole thing), when we send the next group against the party, we don't have to "play dumb" about what player character does what in a fight.  The Witch can send a smarter, stronger, better prepared contingent, enriched with intel, to snuff out the party properly.

Which we'll come to.  First we have to discuss point (a) from the previous post, in which the players stumble across unintelligent creatures that just happen to live here.

Better

Okay, combat.

The party crosses the threshold into the dungeon and encounter a group of  six kobalds dwelling in the forward guard room of a kobald lair.  As described in Keep on the Borderlands:

"1. GUARD ROOM:  6 kobold guards (AC 7.  HD 1/2.  hp 3 each, #AT I, D 1-4, Save NM, ML 6).  They will throw their spears the first round if they have initiative.  Each carries d6 silver pieces. One will run to warn areas 4. and 6.. The guards will be alerted by loud noises or lights."

 

This is 43 years old so it begs the question, is this still interesting?

The answer is yes.  I can still make this work, because it advantages some tried-and-true tropes that are no easier for players of the same game than it was then.  The one that runs to warn the rest of the lair virtually assures that the party achieves no surprise going forward, while the possibility exists of them having to fight all the rest of the kobalds in the lair in one combat (though I knew no one in my youth with the nerve to run the Caves of Chaos that way).  The volley of spears is a good start, especially if the mage is one of the targets, though the chances are only one or two spears will hit and, being kobald spears, won't do much damage.  Still, the format is sound ... and if it's six ogres and they start the combat by all throwing rocks, that makes a strong encounter for a higher level party.

But we can obviously do better.  We don't need to send one kobald to warn other areas, because we don't stupidly build a lair where room (4) is 150 ft away in one direction, while room (6) is 110 ft in another:

If rooms 3 through 6 are a rational distance from room 1, where the guards are, then the one kobald can shout, or bang a cymbal, or ring a bloody bell, and then fight with the others.  And this means it only takes two or three rounds for another 20 kobalds to appear, plus maybe the big one in room 5.  In quick order, the party does well against the first six, finds themselves getting rushed come round 4, give ground and stumble outside, and then it's a running fight through the forests to the keep, unless the mage has something that can turn the tide.  Better combat.

Better still, we can put all the kobald rooms, including the guard room, in a more logical arrangement: we put the guard room around a blind corner, with the same pit trap.  Only now the situation is this: you see the end of the passage and the hall becomes a 10 ft. wide, 20 ft. long area of worked stone.  On the far left side of of this small rectangle is a 3 ft. high wall, which a player can easily jump over.  But when the player moves to jump over the wall, they set off the pit trap at the hall's end.  Now they can't jump straight over the pit, because straight over the pit is a wall.  And if they do somehow get over the 3 foot wall, well ... I'll give you a diagram:

See?  The guards don't have to SEE the party coming, they can hear them; and the guards can't be seen because they're around a 180-degree corner; in fact, the players have no idea there's anything around the corner but more hallway.  As the party comes within 15 feet of the pit, they're just as close to the guard room.  As they chat to each other, with their clanking metal armour and so on, the kobalds can hear everything.  And if the players won't set off the pit trap, the kobalds will.

Furthermore, from the hall beyond the guard room, we can add all that other help from rooms 4, 5 and 6.  Who are at least partially protected by a simple 3 ft. wall that the players will have difficult getting across faster than one at a time.  That's all the advantage the kobalds need.

Better combat still.

So your first task is to figure out a better arrangement for the combat based on the intelligence of the creatures being attacked.  Kobalds aren't that smart, but even a small child knows to put a gate in front of a house.  Imagine the kind of obstacle course a group of elves could invent with blind corners, three foot walls and pit traps.  And other things too, obviously.

You can go with the tried and true method of just throwing the bad guys willy nilly at the party.  I did it last week, sort of.  And the 2nd-4th level party had a good time slaughtering a gang of 22 goblins, though six of those were archers, who started targeting the 4th level, 52 hp fighter with every volley.  They drilled "Hof" down to 14 hp before the archers had to run away; they were a bit slow; Hof got one.  The targeting was logical: Hof wreaked absolute havoc on everything near him.  He has an 18 +1+3 strength and a +2 trident.  It's not pretty what that does to goblins, even when one is 3rd level with 25 hp.

But putting the players in a situation where they find themselves at the top of a hall going, "Huh?  This doesn't look right ..." is miles better.  I haven't done the blind corner bit above, not yet ... but my party is moving into a drow elf lair, so, it should get interesting.

The party's not high enough level, obviously.  But so long as this group beats a hasty retreat at the right time, it's a collection of the players' henchfolk they're running, so they have access to their own higher level characters.  To whom they'll bring valuable intel.

If you can design combat fields that belie the standard D&D models, you'll give the players a far better combat experience and increase the intensity of your game by quite a bit.  But to do so requires that you embrace an aspect of game combat that many, many dyed-in-the-wool D&Ders eschew with great bitterness.  You'll have to adopt a tactical model.

Now I ran combats like the set up shown for years using paper and pencil, sometimes making a notation for who was who but most of the time not needing to.  The distances were meaningless, it only mattered who you attacked last time and who was attacking you now.  This is rather easy and provides no valuable tactical intel.  The only value it adds to a combat is that you can see how many of the enemy is left, and enjoy a small dopamine thrill when one of the X's get scratched out.  Players are always O's.

I can run a non-tactical combat if I so desire.  For example, the players are coming through a forest and get attacked by a swarm of giant ticks.  The ticks attack and scurry off, disappearing into the undergrowth, so I can randomly attack a party with random ticks for a few rounds before they're "fought off" and the party can count their number.  I don't need a map for this.

But doing it with a map would be better.

I understand, however, why many DM's resent any notion of making combat tactical.  It takes an enormous amount of time, years, to (a) get used to a tactical system; (b) build a tactical system that can rationally handle anything you throw at it; (c) and learn how to educate new players and old into how your tactical system works.  This also requires patience and belief in a system and the ability to change as a person.  Most of these demands are quite beyond the sort of stale, lazy, fussbudgety DM heels who hate combat anyway, with a passion, because they believe D&D is not about combat.  Despite the fact that 160 pages of the original DMG's 200 are dedicated in some manner to combat and it's rewards.  

I'm not concerned that there are loads of DMs running around trashing tactical combat.  I'm concerned about you, reading this now.  Games are inventions that depend on hitting the right buttons with human persons.  Several centuries before the invention of RPGs, tactical combat board games proved their value to millions of persons ... far more than will every play RPGs, as those games remain wildly more popular by far.  Whatever our feelings about combat board games, we can't disparage their popularity.  Rather, we should maintain an open mind about how to steal some of that popularity for ourselves.

Non-tactical D&D combat is, to say the least, forgettable.  It doesn't lend itself much to story telling.  As a result, the "rule of cool" model that discards all logic in non-tactical combat modelling has become the guideline in many existing communities.  It isn't what your attack does, but how you describe your attack.  It's the same die, and the same metric of removing points, but your ability to graphically explain a profound set of expressible actions within a three foot space defines whether or not the DM's light shines upon you.  Call the "move" you make whatever you want; it's still just a die and a number.  To paraphrase a physicist talking about how many subparticles exist in the universe, "If I wanted to remember all the combat feats that are available in all the splatbooks related to D&D, pathfinder and other games, I'd have been a botonist."

The second path is to avoid combat like the plague ... or, when it happens, get it over with quickly and move on.

The third path is to build a tactical system.  Or adopt one.  And get so good at it that you can run your tactical system so fast the players won't give a damn.  Which is what I do.  What's rewarding about it is the way players use a tactical system to make amazing things happen.  In a session I was running a month ago, I had two players do tricks with light and fog during a combat so profound I'm still trying to figure out how to write it in a blog post.  It unfolded unexpectedly to me, and I guess you had to be there to see it.

Living Space

We may divide the possible monsters at the dungeon's entrance into two general groups: (1) social monsters, including those with intelligence enough to be self-aware and directed towards a cause; and (2) low-intelligence creatures whose primary motivation is the obtaining of food, interrupted by periods of procreation.

Non-intelligent creatures, in particular, must be where food is; the dungeonscape is, if we accept the Earth model of caves, stone tunnels and the absence of things that grow in pitch darkness, bereft of nutrients — except for very tiny creatures.  If we're dealing with the second type of monsters above, we might view the outer dungeon as a "naturalised" setting, a place where creatures from outside occasionally come in for protection from the elements or as a place to breed, or where they might potentially hibernate.  Depending on the species, bats retreat to a cave during the cycle they do not hunt.  These things would apply most to creatures of animal intelligence, especially mammals, though in very hot climates there are reptiles and amphibians that seek caves for the coolness or the presence of water.  Non-intelligent animals, like insects, see a cave entrance as a place to lay in wait, as larger creatures move past the entrance; this would be the best time for a giant monster spider to strike the party, just as they're approaching within 10 feet of the open entrance.  This is how many hunters obtain their food; they employ camouflage, lay waiting and not wasting energy, until a large enough creature moves within range of a quick dash forward and SNAP!  Dinner.

This tactic is so effective that guerilla soldiers use it — and obviously that could apply to an orc or kobald laying in such a hole for days before relieved.  But set that aside for the moment.

Other forms of non-intelligent creature, like undead, attach themselves to a place because its where they died, or were raised in an unholy fashion and then abandoned.  They have no understanding of place or what they're doing, but if something or someone approaches, they automatically attempt to kill it.  This is done without any sort of strategy or logic, because as I say, "non"-intelligent.  Still, we should have some conceived reason for why these things are here at this time, and in this place.  They may be purposefully intended to die; their death may trigger some magical device that tells an intelligent monster deep in the dungeon that the outer perimeter has been breached, because the zombies are dead.

I don't want this to devolve into example after example.  The sense is that if the dungeon is occupied by creatures of lower intelligence, then they're just doing what's natural to that species or type.  They're either retreating into the cave for protection, or using it as a means to obtain food, or acting mindlessly as some monsters do.  This may not seem like much logic for a dungeon, but then this may be only the outer cave of some elaborate, deep complex.

Taking in the first option above, the intelligent creature.  If a humanoid lair is only a few hundred feet from the outer entrance, it makes sense to fortify the entrance and post guards; it makes sense for some of those guards to participate in patrols, to see if anyone is roaming around outside or just showing up to randomly homestead too close — having no idea there are 40 orcs living and working in this cave just a quarter mile away.  If the party should stumble upon such a lair, they'd have a fight right off; they might find themselves facing just four outer guards at first, but then moments later a second team, having spotted the party hours ago, appears behind the party to trap them at the entrance.  Now the party cannot leave or easily get inside, while fighting on two facings.  It's a tough way to start a dungeon.

In either case, if the cave is infested with bats or ticks or spiders, or if it's a humanoid lair, this may only be the first upper part.  The humanoids may not even be aware that there are other beings living deeper down; the party may not learn it until following some "abandoned" tunnel to it's end, detecting a hollow sound from the rock and breaking through to an entirely different dungeon below.  By laying out the dungeon in pockets, players can experience different sorts of monsters logically divided from one another by long tunnels, sumps that must be swum through to reach the other side, very deep holes that must be descended with ropes and other climbing gear ... whatever we can dream up.  The separation of monster lairs by geologic formations produces a different wilderness that, like the outside world, still separates various entities logically.  The silliness of many modules can be corrected simply by putting greater distances, and more elaborate obstacles, between one part and another.

Thus, the players may start out by killing the humanoids, but then may find themselves on an seemingly purposeless quest roaming around in a dozen miles of caves fighting non-intelligent serpents, a giant worm, a termite-like colony with two many warriors, before discovering an unlikely race of "deep gnomes" who are in a continous war with the race that lives in warrens even further down, separated by half a mile of clefts, extrusions, torrential streams and mud bogs.  If the characters are searching for some McGuffin they must have, such an arrangement would demand tireless persistence ... especially as no one they've met or fought has even heard of the beholder they're looking for.

Intelligent races set out defenses; they organise themselves into rational arrangements that allow the obtaining of arms and the protection of the offspring.  They need some sort of food to eat, so we must imagine a host of fabricated fictional non-chlorophyll based plants that can be grown, or passive slugs or warm-blooded beasts that can be raised as food.  They must have some way to occupy themselves, either in tunnel-building, farming, gathering and purifying water, making art, making tools and arms, telling stories to one another, eating and whatever.  Fire is impractical because there's no wood; and if there is a substance that burns, smoke would gather and ultimately would reveal their location, even if some sort of chimney could be sustained.  Yet how do you make hard metal objects without fire, and how do you make tools without either wood or stone?  The very fact of underground creatures defies any sort of logic — so invention must create circumstances in which these things may be feasibly pursued.  Perhaps there are plants that can be grown upon a ceiling, that consume smoke and produce food as a consequence.  The game Oxygen not Included has creatures that automatically expel coal, slime, light, crude oil, gasses and so on.  Any of these might live in our D&D underground.

Keep in mind that a dungeon may have multiple exits; some might be naturalised, some not.  Those that are not actively defended will accumulate creatures from the wilderness, or from places deep within the caves.  Those actively defended will have characteristics that makes them good places to dwell ... natural water sources, protective outcroppings, large natural spaces that reflect light and so on.  Creatures do not settle randomly.  They find a place that suits them and then they make adapy that space to their needs.  Just as we do.

No one digs a 75 foot tunnel if no tunnel is needed at all.  It's incredibly hard to dig through rock; the rock must all be deposited somewhere, which is more work and produces a huge dump of obviously mined rock that can't be concealed easily.  It's 75 feet we have to walk and walk again just to get from A to B.  Just as we build homes as tightly as possible to make them convenient for use, monster lairs would also be built so that you don't spend all day walking down ludicrously long hallways to get a bite or let someone know they're needed elsewhere.  Closely-packed rooms benefit communication, distribution of labour, protection against outsiders and communal feeling.  None of the dungeon layouts I've ever seen of a monster lair makes any sense on this point.

I'll put this down.  As the players in our example are about to fight a bunch of goblins, we'll need to talk about combat.

Inside

Back to running the game.  We had last discussed players crossing the threshold into a dungeon, with emphasis on a distinction between what the players believe and what is so.  I haven't covered this fully, so let's pause and consider perception.

Having run a number of games and parties, and watched others run, there's no question that many players don't feel hesitation before committing their characters into a dungeon or other challenge.  This is most likely because no real danger has asserted itself.  If the characters are used to walking in and walking out, then the practice of entering the dungeon becomes a routine.  At best, we might get something akin to the Halloween House that's set up in October, to provide thrills to guests.

Of course, such places are used to visitors pooh-poohing the show, despite all the quick-scare design and atmosphere.  This has led to some places asking that you, before entering, sign a liability waiver to participate.  That idea originated with a place called McKamey Manor, an "extreme" haunted house located in San Diego.  The waiver is quite specific about things the Manor can do to you if you enter.  Other manors, less ludicrously staged, have adopted the waiver (but not McKamey's sadistic practices) because it builds the tension for the visitor.

As a people, knowing that safety laws and what else protects us in the public domain, blissfully subject ourselves to outrageous dangers while having a scoffing, frankly contemptuous manner.  I've seen many a D&D player respond like this to a dungeon, presuming that obviously it can't be that dark, or dangerous, otherwise "we'd all lose our characters and where's the fun in that?"

What, I ask, has "fun" to do with it?  "This is Omaha Beach, soldier!  Get your knickers up that hill or I'll kick your dick up your arsehole!"  Going into a dungeon ought to incorporate at least some of the experience of jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft with your chute and gear, or "going over the top."  Thinking that a dungeon won't kill you, because it oughtn't, is anathema to the game.  Adventure is meant to be dangerous.

Lewis & Clark took birch canoes down rivers no European had ever seen; even with guides to reassure them, imagine what it was like to find themselves pulled into strange rapids, when suddenly it was too late to paddle out.  Instead, they had to commit themselves, to life or death — the same commitment they made when they left St. Louis.  People died on that trip.  Everyone involved expected that they'd be the one to die next.  The reason people went, however, was that it was exhilirating to know they might die ... and the reason they were celebrated so highly was that they did something most stay-at-homes were too cowardly to do.

When a player carps that the dungeon isn't really dangerous, that's a coward talking.  That's someone who wants reassurances and legalese of some kind to prove that it only looks dangerous.  Not that it is.

As can be seen, belief vs. reality cuts both ways.  Players can drastically overestimate the danger of a dungeon and resist going inside ... they can also drastically underestimate it and all die.  Where's the solution?

There isn't one.  There absolutely shouldn't be one.  This is not a bug.  It's a condition of play.  Players need to correctly assess a danger and be completely prepared for it, as much as they can be, the same way that soldiers and explorers were prepared.  There is no way to be entirely prepared.  Sgt. Charles Floyd of the Lewis and Clark expedition was as prepared as anyone else, but three months after departure he contracted appendicitis and there was nothing to be done.  This is life.  No one gets out alive.

But, as I've said, the player characters have crossed and they're inside.  Now what?

As a DM building the dungeon, we have two general courses of action: have a monster of some kind at the start of the adventure, inside the door or nearly so, or don't have a monster.  The original Keep on the Borderlands favoured plenty of monsters inside and outside various entrances.  Many later dungeons considered this quite gauche and began to "build the tension" for players by having them enter into the underground space, to find clues and suggestions that something is somewhere up ahead, like wandering around in the game Myst, solving puzzles and shuffling, shuffling, shuffling.

The argument is, again, "less is more."  Supposedly, since the players know there must be something here, the longer we make them wait for it, the more impressive and exciting it will be.  This is an extension of the dungeon's threshold that we've discussed.  The players must find the nerve to enter the dungeon; then they must find the nerve to cross this room to the next room; where they must find the nerve to examine the pool that might potentially grab them and swallow them down.  And when it leads to the puzzle, the players must find the nerve to so solve it, and when the do, then must find the nerve to move through the door the puzzle protected, where they must find the NERVE to open the next door, and the next, and the next ...

Oh, for the love of crispy jeebus, fuck the fuck off.

It's quite possible to milk the players' nerve dry as a bone, as Death Frost Doom did to my players back in 2010.  They were used to facing an enemy, being personally, directly threatened, that the idea that their imaginations could produce enough "scare" to make them feel tension was a joke for them.  For example, I can think of a number of ex-military friends who could take McKamey's Mansion to heart and break a few bones of their own, as some of them spent time in really horrific places.  Once a party is tempered to the point where surviving monsters and near death are the stakes, "surviving" a room with squiggly lines, pools of water and random noises seems ... kinda childish.  It turned out to be quite easy to wade through Raggi's dungeon.  Don't touch anything.  Done.

This is why I'm not a fan of the "empty dungeon."  Or the megadungeon either, since it must be empty to justify the scale on which it occurs.  The wilderness is empty enough.  It's bigger and more threatening as well, for like I said, the farther one gets from civilisation, the larger problems like finding enough food or a new axe to replace a lost one becomes important.  Scale and emptiness fit the wilderness motif brilliantly.

Dungeons ought to be compressed experiential pockets in the game world.  If some group of creatures hasn't taken one over, then it's just a hole in the ground.  And what makes a hole scary?  The notion that there's something down there.  That if you stick your hand in, some unseen creature inside will bite it off.  This is demonstrably true.  In the last five years, I've seen Netflix steal this scene twice.

It matters in the plot that both characters are in the process of lying to each other.  It may also spoil the scene to mention that Audrey Hepburn didn't know that Gregory Peck was going to do the trick with the hand.  Her reaction is real.

So, take the route of putting a monster in the dungeon, right up front.  We'll need to talk about what kind of monster in the next post.

Bravery, Adventure, Method

Many eons ago I wrote two posts about how to tackle a dungeon, which I meant to be a series but which I never completed.  I got into some back-and-forth with Mujadaddy which I didn't handle well and I lost interest.

In part, this comes from having had a DM's perspective for so long.  I haven't run in any campaign consistently since the mid-1980s.  Experiences with 4th edition and 5th weren't especially pleasant and I found myself facing the same old tiresome tropes that had been there three decades before.  When I look at a dungeon today, I necessarily see it from the DM's perspective; my concern for the players is that they find it interesting, that there's a base level of uncertainty and tension, and that there's exactly enough treasure to whet their appetites but not so much that they progress levels too quickly.

Two sojourns into a dungeon should be sufficient to push a low-level character, less than 5th, up a level.  That assumes they dig in, get into a fight, hold their ground long enough to take and give damage, then beat a healthy retreat.  For me, it's about bravery, not chutzpah.  

I've never taken the position that "reason" — a methodical approach to playing D&D — kills adventure.  I grew up digesting tales of Robert Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic, Mungo Park and Livingston in Africa, Marco Polo and so on ... and found tales of these real people managing extreme difficulty and danger in a practical manner to be endlessly fascinating.  Jules Verne invented fantasy tales filled with mechanical and well ordered approaches to adventure themes that excited me as a child.  I read and re-red Robinson Crusoe and other tales of lost persons in the wild for the ways they solved problems and extricated themselves from death.

On the other hand, I found Gulliver's Travels and Baron Munchausen to be plodding and dull — and as I grew into adulthood, I recognized that these things were written as political allegories, and NOT as "adventures."  Somehow, they never captured my imagination.  Being very tiny in a very large world was handled much better in Asimov's The Fantastic Voyage, for my money, because it was about concrete science and not fairy tale.

Coming at D&D in 1979, there was no game community to argue most of the points that Mujadaddy made in that back-and-forth.  Ideas like "supernatural malevolence" dominating a landscape, "red shirts" as a metaphor, "tomb robbers," the players are "special," or that "games exist for the players" had no infringement on my DMing or on those who DM'd me.  Hard as it might be to believe, these things came along after D&D players began to form clubs and impose their philosophy on a growing community.

Ernest Shackleton went into the bowels of the worst place on earth and got stranded there with perfectly ordinary seamen, whose only chance to survive was the equipment they bought, their ability to sail and their sheer tenacity.  Generations of those same soldiers undertook battles where they would load and fire and sail amidst volleys of cannonballs fired point blank into the ships they manned.  Yet I'm to believe that men like this won't enter a forest because there might be an owlbear in it.  I'm to believe they won't defend their country because of unseen malignant spirits.  Or that person who are essentially underground thieves are definitively "braver" because meta-game D&D concepts remove honour, duty and resolve from anybody with less than 25 hit points.

I grant that player characters are "unusual."  In my game, they have more training, more equipment, more abilities ... and yes, they have more hit points.  But I also believe that, just as it was with the "British Grenadiers," ordinary folk also have little to lose, a love of money and a willingness to trade the former for the latter.  Otherwise, how is it that so many perfectly ordinary folk were willing to cross one or more continents for the sake of a gold strike?  Was that a lack of bravery?  Was that because they had so many hit points?

Anyway, this post tries to tackle too many themes.  I should come back another day and manage them better.

The Dungeon of Grond Thus Far

I haven't done much posting this month, so I believe I'll relax a little and do some.

The players of my game are now in their 7th combat since entering the dungeon: single goblin skeleton; dire wolf skeleton; room full of goblin skeletons; bats; jelly; unknown powerful skeleton thing; and now ghouls.  I'm remarking on it because this strikes me as legitimately "old school," though I don't feel any of the combats have been illogical in the old-school manner of arranging things.  Each monster has been carefully set up to match a particular place in the dungeon, enabling them to live cheek-and-jowl in a relatively tight space.  Here's the layout (the known dungeon) for the seven fights thus far:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the proportions seem unusually tight for a standard dungeon, at least those I've seen.  The players are fighting their third combat in the same room, which is littered with bones from killing earlier skeletons, and now two ghouls, one lately made dead.  Personally, this is what I really like about dungeon design — various creatures that are trapped in rooms, which when opened allow those creatures to spread out and fill space, so that the same ground is battled over many times.  And as the ground is battled over, detritus piles up ... such as there now being furniture left all over the "main hall" where the players are, because it was being used as a "plug" to block a room.  In the middle of clearing the furniture, the ghouls attacked.

I really dislike the notion of hundred foot hallways in dungeons.  Who would tunnel that much to make a hall between two rooms that could be adjacent instead?  Note that the longest hall is a natural tunnel —  presupposing that the whole complex was a natural cave of some kind, that was adapted rather than dug out of solid rock.  The second longest tunnel reaching to the right has a reason for being long; the black/grey rectangle on the left is an shaft for a hoist, suggesting some kind of mine that the players didn't want to explore because they could look down to the level below and see the ghouls there.  In any case, doesn't this second hall also look like it might have been a natural tunnel first?

In any case, the fighting has been steady ... and I know some people think that's a bad thing, because they view combat as "boring."  Rest assured, there's been mystery also, and things that haven't yet been explained.  And of course there's the nagging question of who or what "Grond" is, why he doesn't seem to care very much about obvious treasure that's been found lying around and how the apparent takeover of a goblin lair serves his purpose (beyond his getting a lot of rothe to eat).  The party's steadily making its way forward, to learn some of these things.

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.

Five Points on Displaying the Dungeon

The fundamental purpose of visual merchandising is to attract customers into the space, engage them, and motivate the customer towards purchasing items ... particularly those items which provide the store with the greatest profit.  The exterior display has, as its goal, to entice customers into the store ~ and therefore suggest that the store is a wonderful, phenomenal play space, where the customers can thrill themselves through shopping and the pursuit of materialism.

We'll talk about some mistakes that are made in setting up an exterior display, from a dungeon point of view.  The first room ~. and indeed, any room that must serve as a utility for beckoning the players forward with zeal and interest ~ IS the store's front window.  It is the first impression.  It falls on the DM to make that impression well.  And lest the reader think I'm speaking from bias, I offer this link, from people who know something about winning over customers.

1.  Too Much

"Displaying products in large quantities and without a defined priority, importance and layout makes the window “dumb”, unable to communicate.

"The truth is that the human eye seeks order, clarity of reading always, even when observing a window display. This doesn’t mean that appreciates monotony but that find it easier to be guided through lines and geometric paths."

As much as I respect the efforts being made to design a dungeon entryway with verve and excitement, right down to putting in the sounds of weapons being used nearby [which breaks the design framework that was set up initially, as we have no idea what's going on any next room], it's too much.  It is too many things.  Having read through a number, my eyes soon began to glaze over as complex descriptions followed one upon the next.  To state the problem bluntly ~ for which I apologize, but we must be clear ~ my thoughts become, "yeah yeah, dead bodies, what else?"  The detail, as a game design feature rather than the front paragraphs of a novel, is wasted.

This is not inviting the player into the dungeon.  Most of these descriptions leave me feeling immediately threatened; I don't feel in control.  Players want to feel like they've got this, so that the room tells them precisely what sort of lair they're in.  Empty vases, complex fountains, wet floors, gushed blood, vibrating hums ... these all say, go away.  A lit fireplace and a wicker basket may be welcoming at the inn, but down here, it says something very powerful lives here that doesn't need to lock the front door or post a guard.

2. Create Space

"Leave no space between the products creates a fast scan effect, very fast, in the minds of your customers who will compare your shop to a thousand others similar to ignore."

These descriptions are, in detail, very different and unique.  But as a body, read in sequence, they are all the same rhythm.  Noise, things, five doors, got it.  The descriptions simply meld into one another.  If you use this same technique to describe every room in your dungeon, the player's heads will quickly fill with non-descript, utterly unimportant details, leading you to say as DM at some point, "Remember?  I told you there were hexagonal tiles in the first room.  How could you miss that?"

There's only so much new, disconnected information that the brain will take in and remember.  As creatures, we're designed to look at a whole forest and miss all the trees, except the one with our dinner sitting on the lowest branch.

3.  Spotlight

"You must define which produces to prioritize time to time in the window.  Putting the window spotlight on a product that you don't sell a lot is the boost it needs."

In presentation and writing, there is a technique.  Pick one thing as the most important thing in the room.  Then relate everything else in the room to that one thing.   The large, faded rug in the center of the room is immediately below the open lantern hanging form the ceiling.  The rug is placed the same distance between the nearer left and right doors.  The weave of the rug includes the damaged image of a finch.  You see the same finch image on the back of the shelves.  A finch has been painted on each door.  The rug looks as though it has been used as a welcome mat.  The rug is brown, unlike the grey floor stones.  And so on.

One thing in this room is actually important.  One.  More than that, and you're over-reaching the player's attention span.

4. Not Dark, Dirty and Disordered

"I think the title says it all but to be clearer: dark, dirty or disordered are sad and useless displays.  In a display window [it] is not enough to take care only of the products; choose the right ones and make them look their best."

It is quite clear that many of you have tried to do this.  You've selected a specific door to draw attention to, or some item that might have potential; but these are not spotlighted and there is so much clutter and extraneous detail in the room that the point is missed.

I feel I should point out that I never said, "Present the room as though I, the player, were in the process of entering it."  I never said, "Run the room."  I said, "Fill it."  "Write your description."  In short, DESIGN the room.  The workshop is about worldbuilding, NOT presentation, and that message was utterly lost.  Forgive me for stressing it now, but I need to make this point now to address the disordered problem.

When designing a room, you should think of it in cold design terms, without the adjectives, the emotions, the extraneous effects of sound.  And without the mystery and "keeping us in the dark."  It would be perfectly acceptable for each of you, who tried to present something as weird and not fully understood, to just say what that thing is.  I presume you know it.  By "designing your game" from the standpoint of all this presentational clutter, you make it harder for you yourself to know precisely what's going on.  The players are not the only people here who will have trouble keeping track of all the darkness.


5.  Have a Plan

I might have said a lot of this Tuesday, but I'll be honest.  I hadn't identified the problem myself on Tuesday.  I said this would be a learning curve.  I was going along with what I was seeing, concentrating on the creativity.  The creativity is great!  But it needs to be washed clear of the sentiment and written out in clear, harsh terms.  If you will each go back and review your descriptions, I think you'll find that much of the fill you've added doesn't actually go anywhere.  It is just dressing.  And as the fellow who wrote the linked post would say, nothing in a well dressed window is put there casually.

Who here had a plan?  If so, let the rest of us know about it, since we will ALSO be designing the dungeon.  That way, we can decide on the best plan, rather than the best descriptive paragraph, and then hone and finesse that plan into a truly interesting dungeon.

Description is Easy

The Devil in the Details

When I went to bed last night, I feared that today I'd be writing a post encouraging readers to be brave about the workshop, and willing to put their ideas out into the world.  But several people essayed to create a description, so that post can go hang.

It falls upon me to examine the content that was proposed ~ and to say first that I have very little criticism to offer.  There is a small point to be made about Ozymandias' statement, "As you move through the room," that technically violates the player's agency; more correctly a description should read, "When someone moves," but this is a small point.

this post will be about what we have to consider.  Allow me to produce a list of the highlights, as I see them:

Ozymandias describes a series of impressions that appear upon four of the room's doors, that apparently change as the doors are approached.  The impressions are a large sword, an hourglass, a balance scales and a flask.

Kees describes a large fountain, with streams that run from the fountain across the floor and under each door.  The fountain has five demonic visages ~ thoughtful, wizened, zealous, aggressive and lewd.  The room includes two corroded bronze slabs.  As these are "hanging," as a player I want to know by what, how heavy the slabs are, how corroded, etc., because that's potentially value there.  In email, Kees confirmed with me that the fountain is more or less in the center of the room.

Haggis emphasizes emptiness, to potentially fine benches and barred holes that are bound to be taken for potential murder slots.  But it is deathly silent.

Danielle describes an inch of water, decaying barrels, and a moldy writing desk and a chair.  She presumes we have torches [likely these are attempts to predict the party, but do try to resist the compulsion].

Shelby places a stone block in the center of the room, similar to a font.  He changes up one of the doors from the others, to give it special value.  Again, as a player I'm looking at the bands, wanting to know if I can strip them, particularly if they're brass.  Shelby also assumes we have torches, and predicts that our hearts are thumping.

All of these are just fine.  The descriptions are promising and comprehensive.

I encourage the use of sound, smell, light, surfaces and the like in your descriptions, to create interest and draw the players in.  But you give your game away when you tell me my heart is thumping.  It is strictly panto, it foils the rule of show, don't tell, it's awfully cliched and it is bound to create an emotional break at your game table, as some players says mockingly, "Oooo, my heart, my poor heart," followed by laughter and other jocularity.  If they can feel any tension at the start of the dungeon, let them feel it; don't tell them they feel it.  Relax.  The description is working.  Don't pound the drum for it.

Beware of the dangers of overthinking here.  Oz could watch half an hour of game time vanish as the players uselessly draw out theories regarding each of the impressions.  Kees is less likely to get this with the faces, but that danger is still there.  Since I did say there were no monsters here, Haggis' bared holes in the ceiling, so long as they're large enough for an arrow, could tie up a distrustful party for a long time.

I'd want to know if Danielle's water is moving; what is, or was, in the barrels; the material of the writing desk, and the chair.  Since this is at the front of the dungeon, it's a strange place for it.  Did someone sit here and keep accounts of materials coming in or going out of the dungeon?  That would be my guess.

In each case of the above, the DM has given themselves a very definite problem.  What is this thing, or these things, doing here?  Sometimes, as in the case of Shelby's font or Haggis' benches, it can be very simple.  This was a waiting room.  People blessed themselves (or some religious equivalent) as they entered or left.  The water table rose, drowning the room.

I always want to know.  If a torch burns for only 20 minutes, who is
coming around three times an hour to make sure this crumbling,
smashed hallway is well lit?  Torches do cost money, you know.

Kees and Ozymandias, however, have given themselves more difficult troubles.  The fountain is working.  So is the magic behind the four doors.  We might manage the logical arrangement for either of these things, but I'm going to be rolling this dungeon randomly.  [*hah*].  That's going to make quite a challenge, when the sword door opens and I roll something behind it that makes no sense in that regard.

I did suggest water as an option, but as this is the top level of this dungeon, always remember that once you add water, you're stuck with it for awhile.  The water has to go somewhere.  And it has to come from somewhere.  It's easy enough to use magic to explain these things away ... but I have to tell you, I've never had players find it particularly intriguing when I've handwaved stuff like this.  I've been stuck having to do it now and then, but it never works out.

Even if we describe things as corroded, irregular, moldy, dull, sturdy, musty, hard-packed and rotted, those adjectives can make the difference between the thing's legitimacy in this place.  Before saying something is rotted or irregular, or whatever, know why you're describing it that way, ahead of time.  Trust me.  It matters.

This absolutely should sound positive.  I only want to stress that when the players do find out what this stuff means, and where it comes from, the response isn't a bland, "oh."  We want a long, profound, "Ahhh ... cool."