Delvers in Dàrkmesa - Campaign Rules 2.0

First post in over a year, and it is an updated version of the ruleset I posted as my magnum opus in February of 2019.

I can't say precisely what drives me to forever re-write these rules, though part of it is certainly a lack of play. This is a problem I hope to amend soon, if only virtually. Given that my play group has spread itself over much of the state now, that would appear to be our only viable option even without Covid-19 running amok.

Despite the dearth of play, I have, in the past year and change, had ample time to contemplate what makes a robust and flexible ruleset. I have not been posting my ideas here, mostly for lack of time or motivation, but I also find some guiding priciple in what Stephen King has said on several occassions about writing notebooks and journals, "They're a great way to immortalize bad ideas."

Now that these ideas have stewed for a while, I feel imbued with just enough confidence to put them on here.

Some of the things you may find interesting in these new rules:

• No ability modifiers. I want treasure that provides bonuses to be the most important modifier.
• Two "defenses" cover everything: Armor Class, and 4th Edition-style "save-on-10+" d20 rolls.
• The most available healing has a kind of "cap" mediated by a 4th Edition-style "bloodied" status.
• Four classes available, one per "pillar" of fantasy dungeoneering: Outlanders (wilderness travel), Sages (literacy and healing), Thieves (getting into places you aren't supposed to be), and Warriors (killin' sh*t). No race-classes so that the rules don't require changes if elves, dwarves, or halflings aren't featured in your game.
• The rules don't include a rigid magic system. Rather, they provide examples of how to make magic self-limiting. GM discretion is paramount. Sages can be the de facto "magic user" if that is a player's aim.
• Monsters have very simple stats, and are not meant to be "balanced" for groups of any particular level or size. Like spells and magic, example monsters are provided in a wandering monster table.
• 1d6 weapon damage. 1 damage for unarmed strikes or hits with torches. 2d6 (or 2) for critical hits.

Delvers of Dàrkmesa - Campaign Rules

Forward: Delvers of Dàrkmesa

The Delvers of Dàrkmesa campaign rules represent the culmination of my ten years exploring the theory and spirit of tabletop roleplaying games in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons.

This project began in 2008 in the wake of D&D 4th Edition. But that inflection point needs some context.

I had been playing D&D since 2003, when a new friend gave me a copy of the 3rd Edition D&D Player's Handbook, having recently upgraded to 3.5 himself. I read every word in that handbook one thousand times over. I was running games of 3.5 for my friends soon after, and quickly settled into a nice groove: each campaign I tried to run would last three to four sessions, only to spiral out of control due to my lack of experience.

In my heart, I usually blamed the players for how things would fall apart. I had played the epic campaigns through in my head, and tried to run them all to that end. Didn't they know that Tolkien-level excitement and wonder awaited them, if they could just go along with the story? They never seemed to march to the tune, despite their best efforts. Luckily, we were young, and all still in school in our home town. Starting a new game every month was never an issue. I had a million tired fantasy tropes that I yearned to emulate at the table, and a good handful of friends more than willing to indulge me.

I never admitted that I blamed them, and that was good, because it was my fault and I didn't know it. I didn't know that the stories I liked to read and write were not the ones I liked to play in or run. I couldn't see that my campaigns as conceived were little more than setting and stage direction. It was truly the bliss (or perhaps, frustration) of ignorance.

You see, the friend that introduced me to D&D was the first person I ever met who played. That made me the second person I ever knew who played. Each of my other friends who I invited to play then became the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. We were making it up as we went. Sure, we were using the rules. But the rules don't tell you how to play. Not really. And back then, it was faster to walk to the library and check-out a Dragonlance novel than to look up anything online. How other people played was a complete mystery to all of us.

Around 2007, the older cousin of a friend of mine came to town. His name was (is) Nick, and besides being a math genius, he was also an avid player of 2nd edition D&D. Once he found out his little cousin and co were all playing D&D on the weekends, he offered to run a (3.5 converted) game of Ravenloft for seven or eight of us.

That was good D&D. I played a monk, which was a terrible class in 3.5. But the D&D was good, so I had fun.

Then we went back to playing our own games (which I ran), and they sucked again. I would often pine away in my memory for the details of that game, searching for its secret sauce.

In 2008, 4th edition D&D is released, and for the first time, the veil of design is peeled back for me. The deliberate ways that the game was laid out and organized, the brutal crackdown on the numbers, the every inch regulated and standardized.

D&D it was not. My friends all lamented the something that was lost in translation. I maintained always that I loved 4th edition, but found it rather hard to express precisely why in the language of fun. In my eyes, 4th edition was designed to a very specific end: tactical combat play. In that, it succeeded. It was designed to be learned quickly. Again, it succeeded there. It was designed to look modern and aesthetically consistent. A+ again. It was the right product, but for the wrong market.

So my theory crafting and homebrewing began. "There must be a way," I thought, "to bring the principles of design from 4th edition into 3.5 such that we can play a superior hybrid game."

It should be said: 3.5 was universally regarded as broken by 2008. How broken exactly was up for debate, but the sheer lack of direction for the design of the game and its splat books was becoming a malignant issue. There was too much game, and no central idea to measure each component's worth and validity against. One of the primary draws to a new game from the player's perspective was the chance to try out new classes and options. But from the other side of the table, every new feature was a chance to break the game.

Notebook after notebook did I fill with my Frankenstein D&D hacks. If I recall correctly, the first things I ever scribbled house rules about were skills and feats. Did we really need over 36 skills? And who knows how many hundred feats? Do those options really enrich play, or do they just tickle the fancy of min/maxers?

By 2009, my family had DSL and I had my own laptop for school. So I decided to start Googling these questions and delving for answers in the dark halls of the interweb.

What I discovered was called the Old School Renaissance. It had begun around 2006 or 2007, as best I can tell, with some bloggers connecting on various forums and posts. They shared ideas from their history with the game, which stretched back to its very beginnings, and even before. They knew the old rulesets weren't perfect, and offered their solutions to the age-old problems. There was debate and proselytism among great grognard philosophers, and countless quiet members of the community, like me, just trying to absorb it all.

These champions of the old school tore my fragile conceptions about D&D apart, like the Twelve prophets of the Hebrew Bible chastising Israel. What was this game I had been playing all these years? Where had it come from, and what great pillars of its history had been lost to its many transmutations? Had we taken the wisdom of its forefathers for granted? Nowhere else have I seen such thoughtful effort by people to justify their ideas about a hobby and its function. While everyone else spent three years learning Pathfinder, I was mesmerized by the mysteries of OSR games.

If this era (c. 2006-2011) was indeed the Old School "Renaissance," then what happened in 2012 was the Old School "Industrial Revolution." In January, Wizards of the Coast announced that the short-lived 4th edition would soon be replaced by a new D&D, "D&D Next." In May, they began a massive open playtest of the rules they were working on.

The forums that existed on the old WotC website containing all of the playtest feedback and discussion were truly a treasure of knowledge and design theory. I was well into my obsession with writing a better ruleset by 2012, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the chance to explore those million musings before they were archived later that year.

For two years, there seemed to be no word of the next D&D, but my mind never stopped swirling around the problems the OSR had illuminated. As I got further into college, time for playing the game became scarce, but my interest in thinking about it only grew. The homebrews I made became smaller and simpler. There were fewer and fewer rules each time I would revise or start again. I was getting better at the design, but deep down I still didn't understand what I wanted. I was designing for better design's sake, but not for the sake of better play. Indeed, most of my homebrews never saw the light of day. The ones I did test largely felt like playing any other ruleset.

It doesn't matter much what font you write the stage directions in, turns out.

In 2014, D&D 5 came out, and my friends loved it. It was the greatest thing since sliced bread, fixing all the problems with 3.5, but still holding onto that something that 4 had abandoned.

But when I looked at it, I was disappointed. Sure, advantage/disadvantage is a great mechanic. And yeah, the monk is way better now. And oh hey, they are consciously keeping the official splat books and feats and skills and classes under control. All good things, no doubt, for those of us content with the quality of play we had achieved throughout the years. But D&D 5 didn't do what I desperately wanted it to do.

It didn't show me how to design toward something. D&D 5 is the everyman's game. It's a story game, it's a tactical combat game, it's epic high fantasy, it's gritty low fantasy. It's everything, and nothing. At the table, it feels just like 3.5 did when my friends and I couldn't yet afford the extra books.

Fast-forward another year, and Critical Role is D&D's technological revolution. D&D is sexy now, and it rivals the best TV shows for hours of content and number of dedicated fans. Like all instances of celebrity art, Critical Role is at first inspiring, and then soul crushing. Inspiring because it shows you what tabletop RPGs can deliver, and soul crushing because I am not friends with a cadre of professional voice actors who want nothing more than to practice their acting around my narrative, with some combat thrown in to spice things up. It isn't just an unattainable ideal, it may actually be an un-approachable ideal depending on the friends you have.

A cursory scan of D&D subreddits these days will show you the Critical Role heartbreak phenomenon writ large. DMs are afraid to let their players fail. They're afraid to change the plans they have for their narrative in response to what the players do. They hand their players stage directions, and instead of amazing voice actors and improv artists, it turns out their players are just regular people. The story-based D&D facade all comes crashing down when you try to fit it into the real context that the game has in our lives. A weekly hobby for a handful of non-writers and non-actors with shifting schedules and more important things to remember than the evil motivations of the Demon Vicar of Nowheresville in your tabletop soap opera guest-starring the player characters.

But even a few years into playing and DMing 5e, I still maintained that top-down DM fiat narrative was a viable play strategy. And it wasn't until a little later, when one of my close friends ran a short-lived game in which I played, that the final trigger for my OSR metamorphosis would occur.

The setup was this: the party (which had several new members) were asked to convene at an inn to receive a quest from an NPC. We did, and the NPC told us how to get to a mythic dungeon full of (literally) civilizations worth of treasure. If we do it, the NPC gets to keep whatever scrolls and spellbooks we find in the loot. My guy is a fighter, so that is fine with me.

The party leaves for the dungeon, which is in the center of a crazy necrotic swamp that has emerged around it because the dungeon is the fossilized remains of an ancient dragon god (cool) which is causing the land to transform as it decays (super cool). When we arrive, there is a crew of evil dudes camping around the dungeon entrance, which we battle and defeat in a fight (sweet). Then, upon entering the dungeon, we find out that all of the treasure has already been looted and thrown through a portal into the plane of Limbo (...what?).

Now, from my friend's perspective, he was offering the potential for a sweet adventure on a rarely-explored plane of existence. And had that been the hook for the adventure from the beginning, I would have been more than excited.

But from my perspective, my character's motivation to adventure had been flushed down the drain. That might not be so bad (hey, things don't always turn out the way your character wants), but my poor dwarf was also trapped by the swamp. I tried to make a choice about what adventure my character would pursue, and then when that was turned on its head, I was denied a second choice. Not only was the original intent of the adventure no longer an option, but if my character jumped through that portal, there was literally no way for me to control whether I could turn back. No way for me to make an actual choice.

I was outraged after the fact, and it surprised me! This was no different than a hundred other times that one of my friends or I had weaved a D&D web around our players to get them to do what we wanted. The difference this time was how obvious it was to me given the mindset that I was in. I didn't blame my friend, I blamed our collective understanding of the game.

The swamp was not an obstacle to the treasure, because the treasure wasn't there anymore. The swamp was an obstacle to beginning the adventure, or any other adventure for that matter, if the party had changed its mind. The dungeon was the single source of player-DM agreement ahead of time, and it was thrown out. The foundational structure of the game, that there was a treasure to be had if some obstacles were overcome, was abandoned for the sake of an unsure reward (the treasure was in Limbo, after all) after an indeterminate amount of time and obstacles.

The contract of the game was broken, I was mad, and that was the answer I had always been looking for. What was the contract that my games should make between the DM and the players? Whatever that contract, design the game toward it.

D&D 5 makes no contracts. All forms of play are equally valid, and therefore there can be no measure of what games succeed or fail except on the scale of fun. This makes DMing, and DM prep especially, a nightmare of guesswork no matter how many books or tips or tools you have. What type of game will be fulfilling? What type of game will last? How do I get the players to ask about my availability to play rather than trying to chase them?

Well what if, given the wealth of OSR knowledge that I had absorbed, I made the contract of my campaign specific in the way that is time tested:

In this campaign, the player characters will explore a megadungeon for treasure. They will frequently return to the outlying town or towns to restock and rest, and may occasionally pursue non-dungeon adventures when the desire strikes them. New players and characters can come in or be swapped in at any point while the party is in town. No individual player needs to attend every session because no individual character needs to be on any given delve.

I, the DM, promise to prepare for that. The players promise to bring characters that will eagerly pursue that cadence of play. It doesn't create any unspoken requirements to attend every session for the sake of keeping in the loop of the plot. It doesn't mislead players as to what they will be doing. And most importantly, it takes a hard line on the boundaries of the play area, but within that play area, there is real choice with real consequence. No Quantum Ogre, no DM fiat.

And so, if I designed a ruleset around that contract, and DMed the game around that contract, I would be able to actually improve the game from session to session because I and the players would be pursuing the same goal. Which finally brings me to Delvers of Dàrkmesa.

Once I landed on the idea of the megadungeon as a distillation of the time-tested campaign promise, I thought about making my own take on Dwimmermount (if only for the supremely euphonic nature of the name), but decided instead to go completely homebrew. That's how Dàrkmesa came to be. I was struck by the double meaning of mesa (a huge rock formation that could easily fit a megadungeon inside, as well as the Spanish/Latin root for table), and what would a dungeon be without darkness? The Delvers part is just to drive the point home. Both in the sense that the characters will be primarily engaged in exploring a dungeon, and in the sense that the game is about them and about their exploration, not some arbitrary story I have concocted.

The rules and classes and example spells to include all fell into place now that I had a gameplay goal in mind other than "have fun." Many of the strangest parts of old school games that I could never understand before started to make sense and became incredibly attractive aspects of the experience for me.

Of course the game should be deadly, because that is a large part of what creates drama in a campaign with no forced plot. Of course random encounters were necessary, to keep the players and the DM honest as they all pursued the campaign goal: random chance is what keeps a non-narrative game alive. Of course two hundred pig-faced orcs appearing in a dungeon cavern is a good encounter, because it forces the players to bring to the table what makes them good players, not well-statted characters. And finally, of course the dungeon is the primordial soup from which all good games emerge, because it is the most apt compromise between what the DM needs to do, and what the players need to do. It creates strict boundaries that allow the DM to prepare more of the right thing, but when done right it forces no specific action on the players other than to engage. They want the treasure, and however they get it is by definition a fine way to play. That's why we all play this game, to get the treasure that exists hidden in the forgotten halls of our collective imagination and good company. So why hide the ball? Why not be clear about how agency works in the game right from the beginning? Why not embrace the canvas that was originally conceived for the game, and was so important that it became the first word in its name?

Luckily, it only took me ten years of searching to figure that out. Now I have the rest of my time to play.

Gehenna & Harrowheim - Session 3

Before the party leaves Hammersted with the shipment of liquors, Grant distributes some "leftovers" along with a very terse mention of how he appreciates their help. The items he gives out are as follows:

• Gaudith's Gauge: An intricately carved wooden spoon which, when set afloat in drinkable water, will act like a compass toward the thing (purposefully vague) that the bearer focuses on. The idea is that the bearer must be personally familiar with the thing, and they must succeed on a DC 18 Insight check or the attempt fails and they cannot use the item for a long rest.
  
• Ranulph's Runcible: An ivory spoon, so clear and smooth that it appears to be carved of pure pearl. When used to stir a poisonous or toxic beverage or soup, it becomes pitch black.
  
• Long-Shadow Shield: This was a shield that belonged to one of the dwarves who was lost (read: went out like a bad-ass) when the goblins first attacked. It is made of ironwood, which is a famous Faewild crafting material that is stronger than steel but a third the weight. The wielder has an additional 60ft of darkvision at night (60 if they had none before, 120+ if they did).

The party eagerly accept the items and learn approximately of their abilities with some Arcana checks. Then they set off back to the Stone's Throw. Niobe's panther, Frida, and Derek (wild-shaped into a donkey) pull the cart. Derek is asked later why he didn't become a camel or some other desert-acclimated creature, and he just shrugs. It seems that the dwarf druid isn't actually that familiar with mammals and such.

Halfway back, as they approach the ruined tower where they had battled the automaton, they spot a massive sandstorm (think this) speeding toward them from the southwest. At the forward apex of the storm is a massive black bird shape that only a couple members of the party even spot.

The party decides to speed toward the tower, which turns into a series of Constitution checks to maintain the full sprint. Mykos casts fly on himself and is able to carry Navo and Niobe to the cover of the tower just before the sandstorm hits.

Derek, Frida, and Calphire are all still on the cart a couple dozen yards from the tower when it is up-ended by the winds and sand, burying them. Navo and Mykos succeed in taking cover behind the tower wall and avoid the brunt of the damage. Niobe looks back out of fear for Frida and her hesitation plays out well as she fails her saving throw and is thrown away from the wall by the storm.

During the storm, Navo and Mykos spot stone men walking amidst the sands like zombies. They can't make out any specific details in the flurry.

After a few minutes, the storm passes to the northeast and the stone men have left no traces of themselves. Mykos and Navo begin frantically trying to dig out their companions, which was aided by the use of Gaudith's Gauge. Other than some bludgeoning damage (and a failed attempt to burn oneself free with a firebolt) everyone made it out unscathed.

One of the cart's wheels, however, was wrecked. Luckily, none of the casks were compromised. The party stashed the casks in the ruined tower under some sand, made their way back to the Stone's Throw, explained what happened, showed proof that they had completed the job and that the casks were awaiting pick-up, collected their 2000 gold pieces, and went to bed.

Gehenna & Harrowheim - Session 2

Session 2 begins right outside the open gate of the Hammersted brewery, where the party peers in to see an armless corpse smeared with shit hanging behind the doors by a foot. Niobi's panther, Frida, begins to get wild eyes at the smell of goblins (and goblin excrement) in the air, and the party decides to kick in the door and take the fort by force.

A battle ensues where the majority of the party holds off several waves of goblins using the gate as a choke point, while a couple other PCs sneak around the back and discover a group of dwarves locked in the privy on the second floor of the main distilling building.

The dwarves are certainly happy to be free (and drinking) again, but their boss, Grant, is a rather prickly personality, and the party decide they'd rather sleep off their wounds and take a shipment of liquor back to the Stone's Throw than work out any further deal, especially after grant requests that the party train some of his new recruits in the martial arts...but doesn't offer any payment in exchange.

The party go to sleep, and that's where we end it for the night.

In retrospect, the battle took pretty much exactly as long as I had hoped, but the way that the party used the gate as a choke caught me off guard. The goblins were obviously not meant to be a tactical force, but I had designed the encounter and the goblin's layout within the brewery to encourage a stealth mission. The way I had envisioned it playing out was that they would take out 4-8 goblins without alerting any, and then some failed stealth or goblins that survive to take an action would alert the rest. Then, the party would have to take a defensive position while 12-16 other goblins charged their position.

Also in retrospect, I didn't like how little loot I had prepped for these goblins. I know there is a $2k reward once they get back to the tavern, but the end of the battle fell a little flat compared to the cool gem they were able to take from the golem last session.

I also wonder about Grant, the dwarf NPC and how "unlikeable" I made him. I definitely have his personality down, but the PCs didn't seem to want to engage him at all. His other dwarf employees: Talcum (the young, shy one), Mondr (the big silent type), Skol (the raspy-voiced intelligent one), and the new twins for security Herod and Kivki, didn't really get any screen time.

The plan is to have Grant slip the party some goodies before they leave to sweeten the deal and try to get on their good side a little. Also, the consequences of not training Herod and Kivki will probably come up a while later.

Gehenna & Harrowheim - Session 1

Session 1 begins with the last PC, Mykos, walking into the tavern after they have closed it up to keep in the warmth during the desert night. Mykos is a tiefling hexblade. He begins chatting with the bartender when he's approached by a human man in faded purple scale mail.

The man says his name is Bertrand, and he is a Dog of Yaangugar, the elite "police" of the sorcerer king Yaangugar, who rules a city closer to the easter coast of a continent. This city, Tannjerou, is where this man is interested in taking some well-equipped and capable adventurers to investigate the murder of a famous thespian ("Beorhtio"), allegedly by a radical group called the Black Flame Zealots. Finding the killers without raising suspicions from the group would guarantee a lot of money as a reward, in addition to Yaangugar's favor.

The PCs eventually all sync up and decide to help out Grouse with his lack of liquor first, and then meet Bertrand back at the Stone's Throw tavern to make their way east.

Before everyone goes to sleep, Navo's player reveals in a solo moment that his character's right arm has been badly crippled, and he is learning to throw daggers again with his left arm instead.

The party sets out for Hammersted along "Old Mill Road" and comes across what is presumably the ruins of the old mill. However, Derek the dwarf immediately recognizes that this is likely not a windmill, but the top of some corner tower of a giant castle or palace that is buried and very old.

The party goes to investigate when a giant scorpion comes around the bend. Before the scorpion can close with the party, a pile of what looked like sandstone erupts from the ground and takes the shape of a giant earth golem with clockwork mechanisms holding it together.

A battle ensues in which the golem throws the scorpion corpse at the party, almost killing Navo (who has very very very few maximum hit points somehow). Mykos ends up doing some great damage to the construct thanks to hexblade's curse, and Derek hits it with a lightning bolt. Notably, the creature is able to "slow time" before it is hit by a projectile using some gemstone in its hands, which Calphire pries out after the beast is defeated.

The party notes this location as a potential place of adventure in the future, but carries on into the desert. After a few more leagues they find the brewery. They begin discussing strategy for proving they are here on official business, but when they round the corner, they see the gate ajar.

And that is where we left it for the night.

Gehenna & Harrowheim - Session 0

This series is going to be a very simple log of a 5e homebrew campaign that I am now running on Fridays. I don't have much time to write these, so they will be summaries and highlights.

This is the setting pitch for the campaign:

The world has no name, but the destruction of the world has a name, and it is Gehenna. This is what the people call the ever spreading desert at the center of the large continent. The marching sands bring with them demons and dark magics that have minds of their own. As civilization has retreated, treasures, gold, and magics from another age were lost or abandoned, buried in now sunken ruins and caverns that await visits by curious adventurers.

Harrowheim is an ancient stronghold in eastern Gehenna. Where it stands was once a wooded cliff, lorded over by a vampire that had sewn powerful wards into the walls and grounds. Now, a hostile desert surrounds the oasis of dark wood and stone, but fails to penetrate the old dweomers of the place. As Gehenna has pushed past the fortress, the unfinished road from Harrowheim to the coast has gradually fallen into disrepair. What once was a guarded thoroughfare is becoming a highway of terrors, and frequent monster attacks, particularly at night, keep travelers at bay. Harrowheim houses a syndicate of worldly elves (drow) of varied aims, and abbutting the fortress is a shantytown of restless refugees. The political situation is... tenuous, to say the least.

The coast to the east, the Fertile Coast, hangs on to the luxuries of the past. Things are much the same as they were years ago, before the desert began to engulf the world. But every place on the continent dances on the edge of a knife, and on the coast that knife is fought over by two powers.

One force descending upon the coast are the waves of refugees fleeing from the desert. What might otherwise be just a large nuisance to local lords has marshalled into an insurgency. A group calling themselves the Black Flame Zealots has emerged from the refugees and recruited starving young men and women into their ranks. Wearing the image of the infamous black phoenix, the zealots have assassinated prominent figures on the Fertile Coast, burned down government buildings and stoked revolutionary ideas in the major cities.

Sorcerer Kings are rising among civilized lands that have become desperate to keep the Zealots at bay. These beings run the gamut of morality, but they are all willing to crush rebellion and treason with an iron fist and burn the will of the insurgents to ash with arcane fire.

Meanwhile, the old gods are being abandoned daily as the world becomes a husk, and a new faith, the Burning Erudition, is taking root among refugees and settled peoples alike. The cults of this new religion are varied and fractured, but prominent figures are beginning to emerge and seize power.

Adventurers who stray deep into the woods and swamps of the world may find themselves stumbling into the Fae, a place and a peoples of singular purpose: to toy with outsiders and belittle their mortal machinations. The faces of the Fae can range from benevolent elves to the murderous Wild Hunt.

Stretching vast around the other planes of existence is the Astral Sea, a mythical starfield that houses whole continents suspended in its aether. Only great civilizations have achieved the magic necessary to send their peoples into the astral plane. Some, such as the high elves (eladrin), used it as a new home. Others, like the giants, use it as a cosmic prison for the worst of their kind.

And we haven’t even mentioned the Spirit World or the Underdark...

Session 0

After character creation, we begin in a tavern called The Stone's Throw, a few leagues out from the edge of the spreading desert. It is run by a human man names Grouse, and his half-drow half-human daughter Minna.

Already in the tavern were two player characters: Calphire, a halfling wild sorcerer with hair like blown glass, and somewhere else in the tavern Niobi, a half-elf ranger (homebrew version of the class that I'll post some time) and her panther companion Frida.

The first of the players to enter the tavern after play had started was Derek, a dwarf druid. He came in, asked for a glass, cast create water into it, and started to drink. The bartender asked him for some money for renting the glass, and Derek promptly threw the water into Grouse's face and walks out. He runs into Hob, the Goblin merchant sleeping in a barrel outside, but doesn't buy any of his magic wares. He goes to sleep in the stables.

Next in was Navo, a half-elf arcane archer who uses daggers instead of a bow and arrow. He tried chatting up the ranger and her panther pet, but was unsuccessful.

The last PC is delayed because his player can't make session 0.

Calphire goes over to the edge of the bar where various jobs are posted and finds one put there by the barkeep himself. His shipments of rare desert liquors from the Hammersted brewery stopped a month ago and he needs someone to go check out why. The brewery is further into the actual desert a few leagues. He's promising a fair amount of money. Calphire accepts, then goes to the two half-elves to talk teaming up for the job.

I end the session there, because we're already well past three hours due to character creation.

5 Goals Your NPC Organizations Shouldn't Have

There are three types of NPC groups in fantasy RPG worlds:

1. Groups the PCs can fight. Example: the cult of an evil demon lord.
2. Groups the PCs can receive service from. Example: a merchant guild.
3. Groups the PCs can join. Example: giant-slayer mercenaries. 

No DM has trouble with the first group. They are the easiest to think-up and use in the game.

The second group is easier than the first, in that their motivations need not be world-shaking or nuanced. They can just be a trading band, after all. But they are also more difficult than the first group, because it is much less natural to roleplay a merchant than an evil cultist, considering how scant merchants are in most fantasy novels and D&D plot-lines. It's very similar to writing: the mundane stuff is the hardest to make believable because you haven't ever given much though to it.

Where many D&D worlds fail, however, is with the third group. I'll give you some examples.

Black-Flame Zealots: If these aren't the coolest divine group ever, I don't know what is. They are Assassin's Creed meets ninja meets Nepalese holy-warrior. If there was a novel or video game about these guys, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, they are a clandestine order of monks who work primarily out of city hideouts and only battle with the enemies of their god. They are like a thieves guild, but with more smiting and less casual sex.

How in the world do you DM a PC that is a member of this group? How do you convince the PC that going off to a random dungeon and looking for treasure is a reasonable quest given his profession? If an old lady says she has ROUSs in her basement, why on earth would a member of the BFZs offer to help her? Don't they have a dark god to keep at bay?

How about the Cavaliers? Mounted soldiers? Really? That's the kind of character you are going to play in this dungeon-crawling game? One who needs a horse at all times to have any fun?

The deeper you dig into all these supplemental classes and groups, the more you realize that over half of them cannot be played.

Sure, you can take the Purple Dragon Knight prestige class from 3.5's Complete Warrior, but take a look at their description, and the paragraph-long disclaimer about player-character members...

D&D 3.5, Complete Warrior, p. 70, Wizards of the Coast

In the end, a PC Purple Dragon Knight has no rank, no authority, no experience, no service record, no commitment to future service, nothing. They have nothing but an honorary title and a slew of class abilities that seemingly appear out of nowhere, given how little the PC actually has contact with their affiliate group...

These disclaimers are included because the designers know that players want the cool features and titles, but none of the responsibility. The PCs still plan to explore and search for treasure and kill monsters as their primary lifestyle, so being a full-time (or even reserve) member of some army is not on their to-do list.

And why should it be? This is Dungeons & Dragons, not Soldiers & Sergeants. If you want to play a medieval warfare simulator, play one. D&D is not that.

This is a reality that DMs and PCs need to accept: limit yourself so you can focus your game and do it well. Players don't need access to infinite character concepts to have fun, they need access to a handful of character concepts that fit the world and the tone the game is going for. DMs don't need infinite NPC groups from every walk of life, they need a couple dozen groups, the majority of which should be adventuring groups that PCs could easily join while still maintaining their normal day job.

There are a million reasons why an NPC group would be invested in dungeon-crawling and monster-slaying. I'll put a bunch into a blog post sometime. But until then, here are five goals your joinable NPC groups shouldn't have, because they create direct contradictions with the adventuring lifestyle:

1. Operate in a particular area, e.g. a specific city, forest, or even country.

If the PCs ever want to leave, either the PC members have to quit, get some sort of negotiated leave time, or create a convoluted reason for why it is relevant to the Elvish Defenders of Leafwood that Joe the Ranger go off into a desert and dig up some magic scrolls about turning lead into gold.... These groups are type one or type two: enemies or service providers.

2. Research a particular thing unrelated to dungeons, e.g. feywild specialists, divination experts, very specific monster-hunters, etc.

This shouldn't be confused with something like a weapon-specialist group. I'm talking about any group where actively adventuring would cut into their study time, rather than be study time. Sword masters-in-training can hone their skills anywhere, but students of Fey lore have nothing to learn while infiltrating the underground city of the Derro. These kind of academic groups are also type two.

3. Serve a particular (non-deity) leader or country, e.g. a king or empire.

Unless he is the king of dungeon exploration, I don't want to hear about any PCs being in the kingsguard.... These are type one and/or two.

4. Pursue sedentary or mundane professions, e.g. blacksmiting, fishing, etc.

You don't have time to smith while you are slaying dragons and stealing their treasure, so smiths don't do that stuff. They stay home and smith. If you are a smith, you aren't a PC. If you are a PC, you aren't a smith. No ifs, ands, or buts. Type two again.

5. Enact a modern moral or ethical sensibility.

I'm not saying every group should be made up of assholes, but if your PCs come across the Loving Sisters of Peaceful Coexistence, do NOT let them join. Peace and non-violence are for farmers, not adventurers. Sad but true. The players can agree with their message in spirit, but they have to realize that their entire lifestyle (i.e. the entire game) is premised on violence and stealing, whether it is against other sentient races, monstrous races, or just plain ol' monsters. Evil in D&D is real, and it is out to get you. Monsters exist, and they don't only attack when threatened by oil spills or aggressive human expansion. And since the monsters are evil, might as well take their stuff when their dead. Right? Peace can be an ideal in your world, but it cannot be the mainstream. This could be type one or two.

Now go make some NPC groups that love spelunking and looting. I'd join that shit...

How to Escape the Railroad D&D Game: Get off at a station

Quick announcement: Haven't posted in a while (got a full-time job), but plan to keep posting as often as possible. Will most likely shift my focus from game system design to adventure design, as that is where my head is right now.
____________________________________________________________

"Some players, Mr. DM, just want to watch the world burn." 
 - Someone afraid of sandbox games

"Players don't panic when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying."
- Someone afraid of railroad games
____________________________________________________________

Oh that unanswerable question: railroad, or sandbox? So short, and so mystifying. Within its seemingly binary choice are paradoxes and contradictions enough to fill entire college courses. See: Free Will vs. Determinism.

But let's boil the idea down to this: every DM wants their players to feel as though they are making choices that impact the world, but how do you do that without needing to literally create an entire world spontaneously?

Some will argue that you make a little "sandbox" and let the players do whatever they want in that little area. Easy. My response is this: even generating a tiny area that is a "free-roam" zone for the players is an unimaginably huge task. The idea doesn't ever scale down. PCs can cover a lot of ground in one session. You can't pre-generate all those possible paths, even in a very limited sandbox. And if you're thinking, "you don't generate everything the PCs can do, just the things they are likely to do" I say, welcome to a railroad game....

Meanwhile, if your argument is that you create some basic details and improvise the rest, you've entered into a similar paradox. If you magically incorporate your details into any path the PCs take, then you are running something VERY close to a railroad game. Best described as the "Quantum Ogre" effect. On the other hand, if you are willing to entirely abandon what you have prepared for the sake of maintaining player agency, then why prep at all? What are the odds that your players will choose exactly what you have prepared for them without railroading them at all?

To further confuse things: For every player that will purposefully avoid a pre-built story for something they think will be more exciting, there is a player who will do the opposite: ignore any hook or moment of inspired DM roleplaying for the never-ending slog through what they see as the "story."

The only way to appease both of these player types is to give the entire decision process over to the players, and then hold them to their choices. Your game must have cause and effect relationships, or the "watch the world burn" types will have no boundaries. Just so, the game needs to have very regular moments of choice, or the "go with the plan no matter what" types will quash everyone's creativity.

Okay, enough theory. Let's talk about putting this into practice.

Step 1: Prepare shit. There are no two-ways around it. You have to prepare sessions if you are going to give them any substance. Dynamic combats with interesting monsters, unique NPCs with believable spots in your world, competent antagonists, and many other parts of great D&D only thrive in the pre-game creative process. Maybe your random tables, acting, and improv are so good you don't really need to prep. If that's the case, I hate you.

Step 2: Accept that session 1 is railroad-y. Every D&D party has to suspend disbelief for long enough to accept that they are together, that they are at least allies in some respect, and that they will continue to work together until further notice. This is not an easy narrative step when your players are supposed to be brimming with "free will" and "agency." As the DM, you have to put your foot down and tell the PCs, "Welcome to session 1. Your characters are are all gathered in ______ for _______ and are planning to do _________. Go." Get the game going, regardless of whether every player is 100% into the mini-plot you have for the first session.

Step 3: Everything in the world has space for a hook. You have to bake hooks right into the body of your game world. Every corner should conceal another hook. But you need to expand your definition of what a hook is. Magic items are hooks. (What is it? Who can tell us? Where are they?) Information is a hook. Overheard conversations. Letters. Gossip. Everything. (The baron's raising an army? Why? Where? Someone mentioned the God of Socks. Who is that? Where can we learn about such a deity?) People are hooks. The dark spells cultists use are hooks. Statues are hooks. Paintings are hooks. EVERYTHING CAN BE A HOOK. Write a sentence for each good one you think up, and remind your players that these hidden treasures of adventure are everywhere if they pay attention and ask questions.

Step 4: Pace your sessions correctly. This will end up being a whole other blog post, but the short version is this: be smart about how long to spend on things around the table, and when to initiate them. Big combat after 4 hours of roleplaying session? Probably a poor idea, especially if it's getting late. Remember: you can always stretch things out with good roleplaying and description. You cannot, however, speed things up arbitrarily. When players focus on something, the time management is under their control. Prepare enough content to fill 50-75% of your session, then stretch it as needed.

Step 5: Finish your sessions at a choice, and have the players make it before ending. This makes #4 doubly important, because step 5 depends of successfully executing step 4. Each session should contain minimal "choice" points at the beginning and middle, because the more your players can veer off the path mid-session, the harder it is to make that session tight and satisfying. BUT, a major choice about what to do next that is placed at the end of a session allow players to tell you exactly what to prepare for next time. This choice point doesn't have to be "multiple choice" either. It can be "open response." So long as you have a week to prep what the PCs choose to do, they can do anything they want. Now THAT is agency.

Hooks are not choice points unless the players have nothing more urgent to do. Hooks can be kept in the back pocket of the party until some adventure time is freed up. This maximizes player agency, because it allows the players to choose the next part of their story organically, based on what most interests them about your game world. Free yourself from the trap of the escalating railroad campaign! You are better than that!

But let's be real: at the end of the day, even this style looks like a railroad. Pre-planned sessions that the PCs can't really change much once they are prepped by the DM.

But railroads can take you anywhere. Railroads (in the sense of pre-prepared sessions and stories) only become constricting when the players get an urge to jump off mid-way between stations. Solution: put in more stations. One at the end of every session. Keep the sessions focused and let them flourish into more depth instead of more plot if you have extra time in the moment. Your players will naturally want to follow mini-stories and plots to their immediate ends. Keeping players focused on a plot for one session is not an impossible task. 

Trying to milk that one major player choice for three or four sessions of material is asking for trouble.

Help! My Players Don't Know What To Do

So your players aren't biting at those hooks you set.

Or perhaps they are biting...just too easily. They don't bother to do any oblique thinking. They willingly railroad themselves into a plot. They wait for you (the DM) to hand deliver them a quest, but you want them to explore with some self-direction.

Your problem is that your world has no detail.

Dedicated players cannot help but be intrigued by world details. But the details that DMs usually put in don't spark action, or generate questions.

For example: "You walk into the next room in the dungeon, a forty foot by thirty foot by ten foot chamber with more dark stone walls and carved floors. It isn't as musty as the previous rooms. There is a wooden table with matching chair in the center of the room, a goblin body is sprawled across the table with a roughly crafted dagger sticking out of its back. There are six silver pieces in the goblin's pockets. On the other side of the room is another wooden door."

You can probably pictures that room well, and you would be confidently interacting with it if you were a player. But you wouldn't get anything from it except "you should probably continue into the next room, and there are other things alive down here, if you didn't already know that."

But that isn't enough. Where are the things that the players will hold onto when they leave the dungeon? Where are the tiny hooks into future adventure?

The answer is: on a half dozen random tables that you need to generate now. Like, right now. d100s.

Table 1: Random names. Each entry should have one humanoid name and one monstrous one.
Table 2: Motives. A big list of things this creature or NPC could be doing/involved with.
Table 3: LOOT. A list of stuff that enemy or NPC might have on them.
Table 4: Details. Roll with the LOOT table to get unique treasure every time. Ex: "Has an elvish rune on it."
Table 5: Dungeon Motifs. Yeah, it's dwarvish. But maybe it was built by dwarves that had giants as slaves...
Table 6: PLOT TWIST. A list of random things that an NPC or monster could do to mix things up.

The point of these tables is that, without them, the DM rarely fills in these blanks, even though they would always be filled in if this were real. That dagger in the goblin's back will just be a shitty dagger if not for these tables. But a shitty dagger with an elvish inscriptions? (Hell, make a random inscription table...) Now that's interesting and worth questing about.

Every time you, as the DM, put a goblin in the dungeon that doesn't have any reason to be there other than as an encounter for the PCs, you've wasted time and energy. But giving each goblin a story while you prep for the session would be ridiculous. That's what the tables are for. If the PCs are in too much of a rush to loot and examine that dead goblin, then that's that. Other things are more interesting right now, and you can leave that goblin as "just a goblin." But start encouraging your PCs to explore the details.

You'd be surprised at the level of storytelling that emerges from stupid details.

Think about it. Those six silver pieces in the goblins pocket? Why are they there? Money doesn't just appear in people's pockets (unfortunately). That goblin did something to earn those silver pieces. Maybe he found them on the ground while heading back to the dungeon after being kicked out of his goblin group. Maybe he killed someone for pay. Maybe he cheated in a card game, and his opponents let him keep the silver, but put a blade between his shoulder blades as a parting gift. That could be another table: How did this guy get this money, d100. You get the drift.

Just be ready to fill in the details when the PCs want you to, but don't do random details off the top of your head. Put them together earlier, and craft them to be sure every single detail is a stepping stone for more adventure.

2 Things to Use in your Campaign

1: Sea Monsters

For the love of gods, why aren't sea serpents used more in games like D&D? I don't own the 5e Monster Manual, but I am pretty sure there is roughly one kind of giant sea monster: the kraken.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some krakens. I've used them. I've had them attack ships. I've had them attack subterranean Aboleth cadres in Pacific Rim-type cave-lake encounters. Super fun.

But there is SO MUCH MORE sea monster mythology out there to be used. Hell, you can throw anything underwater and make it cooler.

How about aquatic hobgoblins? No, not sahuagin (or whatever they are called). As soon as you put a fish face on something, it looks stupid. Big dumb eyes and wide toothless mouths. That is not scary. Why not more aquatic mammals or reptiles that need to breath air, but not very often.

Like a crocodile. Sweet mother of Thor crocodiles are scary. Stealth killers that get you at the watering hole?

Terrifying.

Also: water. No need to add all those ridiculous terrain changes and traps and whatnot. Deep water is scary enough as is.

2: Battle Formations

Smart enemies fight in formation. Maybe not a straight line, or a tortuga, or whatever that roman thing was with all the shields and spears and such, but they know where they are supposed to be to make things as bad as possible for the PCs.

This means you can't just sprinkle the hobgoblins on the random forest map and expect it to end up like a real fight. And I don't mean "real" as in "like the real world," I mean real as in "dramatic and requiring strategy."

Let's see some regrouping and battle chants and (for the bigger battles) war drums and horns and such. Opportunity attacks make this needlessly difficult, which is why I hate them.

But at least consider allowing the monsters or PCs to pull back and reestablish positions on higher ground or better terms.