Using the Table to Your Advantage

When designing an adventure for a role-playing game, it is sometimes useful to consider not only what is happening in the fictive milieu, but also what is happening at the table.  By this I mean that the adventure designer should not only consider what the player characters are likely to do, but also what the players themselves are likely to do.

This may seem counter-intuitive, but bear with me.

From the standpoint of the players, they are assembled not only to take on the roles of fictional persons in a fantasy milieu, but also to play (and win) a game.  And, make no mistake, even if role-playing games have no preset “win conditions”, each player at the table has some idea at the end of any session whether or not he has done well or done poorly.  Players in role-playing games set their own win conditions.

In order to meet these win conditions, players develop meta-strategies.  By this I mean that, in addition to the strategies employed by the characters themselves, based upon the fictive milieu, players employ strategies based upon the meta-knowledge that the fictive milieu is a game.  This is both expected and encouraged by every “player advice” section of every game book ever written.  As a Game Master, you should not actively discourage this.  However, you should play with it and make it part of the game.

Every example hereafter is going to contain SPOILERS for one or more published adventures, so if you are a player, do yourself a favour and quit reading now.

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Okay, still here?  Let’s take a look at some expectations that tabletop players have.  To wit:

(1) Players tend to expect that open communication amongst themselves is always possible.

(2) Players tend to expect that characters are interchangeable.

(3) Players tend to expect that they can accept or reject additions made by the GM to their backstories.

(4) Players tend to expect that seating arrangements at the table don’t matter.

(5) Players tend to expect that they are working together towards a common goal.

(6) Players tend to expect that they know the rules under which they are operating.

I am sure that you can think of more without trying all that hard.  In fact, if you examine the earliest adventure modules available from the hobby, you will see that adventure writers began confounding some of these expectations early on.

(1) Players tend to expect that open communication amongst themselves is always possible.

Gary Gygax’s excellent The Keep on the Borderlands suggested that the DM assume that the characters say anything said by the players, and to react accordingly.  That is not practical for many people’s tables.  But what if an adventure forces the characters to remain silent?  What if transmitting certain information is dangerous, as in James Raggi’s also excellent Death Frost Doom?  Limiting inter-player communication – and, as a result, inter-character communication – forces the players to sit up and take notice.

(2) Players tend to expect that characters are interchangeable.

There is an expectation that the character class and/or race chosen (or other criteria in other games) will not matter…the GM will simply make it work.  But what if a particular location adds undue hardships to some characters, but not to others?  What if it grants some characters bonuses?  What if a traditional power that a particular character class relies upon is all but useless?  What if an area exploits a character type’s weaknesses?

Note that you want to even this out; if you make combat less viable in one scenario, you should even it out by making combat more viable in another.  This is what some of the so-called “gotcha” monsters were all about – a fighter could not typically rely upon brute strength when facing a rust monster, and casting spells at some jellies is just asking for trouble.

For example, both The Arwich Grinder and Silent Nightfall make use of the Dungeon Crawl Classics elf’s vulnerability to iron.  The Folk of Osmon turns a dwarf’s ability to smell gold into a problem. 

Another way to deal with this assumption is to grant treasures that cannot be passed on; they become intrinsic to the character.  This idea is used in different ways in Prince Charming, Reanimator and The Seven Deadly Skills of Sir Amoral the Misbegotten. 

(3) Players tend to expect that they can accept or reject additions made by the GM to their backstories.

And they should be able to do so…but you, as the GM, should also consider what happens when they reject a backstory element.  The results should not always be so pleasant as accepting it.  An example of this occurs in The Arwich Grinder, which is a 0-level funnel for the Dungeon Crawl Classics game appearing in Crawl! Fanzine issue #9.  Especially in the initial portions of a campaign, it is important that the players have agency to disagree with the GM about their characters’ pasts…but this does not come without limitation. 

(4) Players tend to expect that seating arrangements at the table don’t matter.

James Raggi’s Death Frost Doom gives the best example of where seating arrangements matter.  Certain events in the module instruct the GM to go clockwise or counter-clockwise around the table from a triggering character’s player until a saving throw is failed.  Sit close enough to Johnny-Pulls-the-Levers and you might find yourself wanting to change seats.

(5) Players tend to expect that they are working together towards a common goal.

You can subvert this in a couple of obvious ways.  One is to set a win condition that not all the characters can meet.  In an adventure in the DCC core rulebook, a living being must be left in the dungeon when the others depart.  If you killed all of the monsters, it will have to be one of you.

Another way is to forcibly split the party, even for a single encounter.  A wall drops in the middle of the room as monsters come in from both sides – suddenly the party cannot use its usual tactics.  An example of another way to forcibly split the party appears in the addendum in Crawl! #9.

(6) Players tend to expect that they know the rules under which they are operating.

The 1^st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide gives advice on adventuring on other planes of existence.  The Dungeon Crawl Classics core rulebook suggests making magic work differently within the context of different locations.  Many classic modules include areas where some spells do not work, or the characters cannot act as they normally would…the floor is frictionless, gravity is reversed, etc.

The adventure designer should remember that, in addition to the PCs encountering a dungeon (or whatever), the players are encountering a game.  Just as the dungeon (or whatever) should afford unexpected elements, so too should the game.  By playing with what is occurring at the table, on the game level, the GM can make events far more memorable than yet another excursion to kill things and take their stuff.