I is for Iceberg...as in, “Tip of the”.

As you may know, Gentle Reader, I am somewhat active over at EN World.  Recently, I have read a number of posts there that, taken together, make my head spin.  Specifically, once again, the idea that in earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons, any treasure included in a scenario was “meant to be found”, and how this belief skews understanding of classic game play.

On top of this, I am finding more and more that people simply don’t “get” the game as it was originally intended.  In this post (http://www.enworld.org/forum/5579186-post70.html) Bullgrit writes,

The problem is that *everything* is a feature.

Treasure was “devilishly” hidden in classic D&D. You had to search everything to find it.

Traps were everywhere in classic D&D. You had to leave stuff alone to avoid them.

Every conversation around here about classic D&D becomes a daisy chain of “it’s your fault.” Didn’t search the random bags: you missed the treasure. Did search the random bags: you fell for the trap. Either way, it’s because you just weren’t a “skilled player.”

Nothing was wonky back in classic D&D – “you” just don’t/didn’t understand the brilliance.

This is not to say that everything was wonky with classic D&D. Classic D&D had truly wonderful stuff as well as really wonky stuff. I just find it problematic for conversations and discussions to have *everything* presented as wonderful and brilliant. I also find it insulting to the truly great stuff of classic D&D.

And in this post (http://www.enworld.org/forum/5591748-post56.html), Keefe the Thief writes,

All modules should contain the following disclaimer:
"Warning: if your PCs discover most if not all the treasure in this module, you were Doing it Wrong (Doing it Wrong is (TM) by TSR, Inc. 1984). Please cf. DMG pg. 84 (heading "Bullgritting treasure and your campaign"). Many treasure items are only included so that the DM may cackle maniacally into his Horned Helmet when his players don't find them. These boots are made for walking, but these treasures are NOT ALL made for finding". 

Now, maybe I shouldn’t let this sort of thing get to me, but it seems strange to me to imagine that, in a game, all victory conditions are “intended” to be met.  I dislike the 4^th Edition concept of, effectively, “wandering treasures” that not only follow the PCs around until they are located, but also happen to consist of whatever the PCs/players are attempting to find.

This is inimical to game play as it was first conceived, and may be inimical to “game play” overall.  Victory conditions that you cannot avoid are, in fact, not really victory conditions at all.  When the choices that you are allowed to make determine not the outcome, but the route to the predetermined outcome, you are indeed playing something akin to Candyland with your sister….just a more complicated Candyland with multiple tracks. 

In this post (http://www.enworld.org/forum/5587811-post83.html), which is one of the better posts on EN World, Ariosto writes,

Roll d20 and add to it for "high enough" for just about everything if you like, or don't. That is about as irrelevant as you can get, unless you get into the ideological baggage that has come along with the "core mechanic" puffery and clobbered common sense in some quarters.

It's the layout of the board, the victory conditions, the way that players interact, that makes Monopoly what it is. "We roll a pair of dice" is trivial, no different from Backgammon, and you could get the same spread -- which is what matters most, not the cubes as artifacts -- in other ways.

Ever play Monopoly with a bunch of cock-eyed house rules? "How come the game takes so long?" Well, that's what happens when you don't put properties up for auction. "How come a couple of lucky rolls gave Andy such a lead?" Well, that's a consequence of your "free money for landing on Free Parking" variant.

"While it is possible to play a single game, unrelated to any other game events past or future, it is the campaign for which these rules are designed." That's the facts, Jack, about the original D&D game, and some particulars of what "the campaign" meant in Blackmoor and Greyhawk practice were pretty essential parts of the whole. They were not slapped on "play styles" with trivial effects; they were the game that had been playtested and developed and demanded and in 1974 offered.

It was a "massively multiplayer" game, in which "the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts". Two referees handling 50 players would be fine. In Blackmoor, there was

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Arneson ... a great deal of emphasis being placed on the players themselves setting up new Dungeons, with my original Dungeonmaster role evolving more into the job of coordinating the various operations that were underway at any given moment. At the height of my participation as chief co-ordinator there were six Dungeons and over 100 detailed player characters to be kept track of at any one time."

It was a game in which risk of character mortality, along with other probabilistic factors, played a key role:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Men & Magic Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long, hard road to the top, and to begin with they are weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up.

One powerful way to get fighters for protection was as henchmen (or "hirelings of unusual nature", to use the original phrase). Drop that aspect from the game, and there you have the notion of charisma as a "dump stat".

Of course, there was no rule limiting a player to but one character at a time in a campaign. Gary Gygax (with Rob Kuntz as DM) eventually had his Circle of Eight, including at least one character (Bigby) who I gather had gone from monster to henchman to PC.

Magic users and fighters, clerics and dwarves and elves -- the options had a different character, a different balance, in that strategic context. Remove them from it, and it's like removing various pieces from their design context of a World War Two game.

Now, start whacking away at what's left in seemingly random fashion:

-- No more 1 attack/level for fighters vs. normal men & equivalent, and no more armies of such troops for them to command or conquer, and no more baronies to develop and defend.

-- No really notable limits on demi-humans to offset their advantages.

-- Preservation of the formerly endangered species of m-us, even if only by a general protection of PCs from having done unto them as they do unto others.

-- More easing of life for m-us with a "nerfed" spell here, a dropped rule there, much more frequent use of spells (especially those of higher levels).

-- Much easier manufacture of magic items.

-- Instead of it getting, at higher levels, ever easier to land a hit and harder to land a spell, swap in a different scheme.

-- Drop XP for treasure (scoring a goal), awarding points instead for getting into fights and having to deal with traps.

And so on.

It occurs to me that a good metaphor for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign milieu, as it was originally envisioned, is an iceberg.  You might spot it while sailing on the high seas, but you are really only seeing the top 10%.  The vast majority of the iceberg remains submerged.

In the campaign model where multiple groups of adventurers might scour the same areas in search of adventure, it makes sense to include treasures that might not be found.  First off, it gives the latecomers something to look for.  Moreover, though, it allows for an experience of a “lucky find”.  If there are 100 treasures hidden around, and any given group will only find around 20 of them (and I am making those numbers up out of whole cloth), it stands to reason that, if you only place the 20 treasures you expect to be found, the players will instead only discover 4.

This has nothing to do with the GM cackling maniacally into his horned helmet, and everything to do with good campaign management.

Likewise, if Tactic X is always the “right” tactic, then the game quickly becomes boring.  To maintain interest, sometimes X is the “right” tactic; sometimes you are better trying Y.  If X is often the right way to go, making X a poor choice prevents complaisance.  It also indicates the mass of the iceberg floating below the waves – things are not set up simply to reward a particular set of choices.  There is more going on; the world is bigger than the portion you are currently exploring.

Folkways, by William Graham Sumner, 1906, p. 20:

There was an element in the most elementary experience which was irrational and defied all expedient methods. One might use the best known means with the greatest care, yet fail of the result. On the other hand, one might get a great result with no effort at all. One might also incur a calamity without any fault of his own. This was the aleatory element in life, the element of risk and loss, good or bad fortune. This element is never absent from the affairs of men.

I not only expect this aleatory element in a fantasy rpg, I have no interest in a fantasy rpg that fails to evoke it.  Like an iceberg, much is below the surface.  The closer you get to danger, the harder it is to predict exactly what will happen.  IMHO, fantasy (novels, films, short stories, or games) is interesting specifically because it can evoke the more primitive, fundamental aspects of our minds....what lies below rationality....and then give it meaning within a framework that our rational minds can comprehend.

I expect a fantasy game to allow me to step outside modern modes of thinking, at least to some degree, and gain a wider appreciation not only of the rational process that created the game, but of the "mythic universe" as well. Likewise, I don't want a game that treats magic like technology; I want a game that treats magic like an extension of a universe that is rife with consciousness and will.

Anything less seems sterile to me.

(And note, that I am talking about fantasy rpgs here. I have different criteria for science fiction and superhero games. But, whatever the game, "Don't whine at the table" is always among my list of criteria.)

When trying to explain classic campaign models to others, consider the iceberg as a metaphor. There is more than the 10% you get from an "adventure path" -- the setting is richer, more detailed, more dangerous, and more fun.


(This post was originally going to be “I is for Illusions”, but, well, this seemed to be the better topic.  I’ve reproduced what was to be my opening paragraph below.  I had intended to bring up the Robert E. Howard story, The People of the Black Circle, and especially the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel, Thuvia, Maid of Mars , which I think are key to understanding how illusions worked in classic D&D.)

There are certain topics that have had more written about them than others, and, in the case of Dungeons & Dragons, adjudicating illusions is one of them.  In the heyday of the game, the authors understood illusions largely through the works of those authors listed in Appendix N of the 1^st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide.   Illusions were the stuff of imagination.  They were to be used as creatively as the players and Game Master could devise.  They were not intended to be hemmed in….or, at least, not hemmed in to the degree later editions have done.

H is for Hook Horror

When the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fiend Folio (1^st Edition) came out in 1981, I was captivated.  The art was interesting, the creatures – some I loved, and some which left me cold – were unknowns.  I was ready to throw some of these at my players, working them into wilderness, dungeon, and even towns.  I might not yet have realized that the osquip was a reworked Barsoomian rat ala Edgar Rice Burroughs, but at least I recognized that the Horta from Janus IV had found its counterpart in the Denzelian.

Among those creatures was the hook horror, a low-intelligence monster which roamed the depths in groups of 2 to 12.  The 1e Fiend Folio described the creature as communicating with others of its kind by “making clacking noises with the exoskeleton – an eerie sound which can alarm the unwary as it echoes around dungeon corridors.”  That was an image that stayed with me through years of gaming.  Many a cave system and dungeon complex was haunted by that eerie clacking, even when no hook horrors were actually encountered by the party.

Like many, I migrated to the 2^nd Edition of AD&D when it came out, but my hook horrors were largely their 1^st Edition version.  I liked the art better, and I disliked making those noises come from the horrors’ throats.  I liked that the hooks could help them climb, and the idea that hook horrors used their bony claws to scrape fungus from cave walls.  Well, they didn’t say that last part explicitly, but…

The original hook horror is credited to Ian Livingstone in the Fiend Folio.  Mr. Livingstone is also credited with (take a deep breath) the assassin bug, blood hawk, giant bloodworm, bonesnapper, crabman, Styx devil, dune stalker, eye killer, forlarren, grell, mite, phantom stalker, throat leech, and giant troll.  In my book, this makes him one of the unsung heroes of early gaming, for I certainly got good value out of at least half his creations.

Many of the Fiend Folio’s creatures were translated to 3^rd Edition extremely well in Necromancer Games’ Tome of Horrors.  Sadly, though, the hook horror was not among them.  As far as I am aware, there is no Open Gaming Content version of this iconic monster.  And that is a very sad thing.  I would be very happy to learn that I am wrong.  As I am working on my own “fantasy heartbreaker”, I would dearly love to include statistics for the hook horror. 

But, even if I cannot, I am finding conversion – even on-the-fly conversion – to be a relatively simple matter.  You may rest assured that eerie, far-off clacking noises will echo around my dungeons for a long, long time to come.

G is for Gods

To the pre-modern mind, the existence of gods and goddess, of supernatural powers of all types, is not in doubt.   The exact nature of deities is unknown to mortals.  Although arguably immortal from a human standpoint, gods have been known to die in battle with other gods – some sages claim that these slain gods were only quasi-deities.  Other sages point out that death to a god is not the same thing as death to mortals.  Dead gods have been known to return.

The denizens of d20 System worlds often supposed that deities are Outsiders, in the same way that their servitors on the non-material planes are.  Within my own campaigns, however, deities are actually extra-dimensional entities that exist not only on more than one plane at any given time, but also in more than one cosmology as well.  Their presence on any given plane is felt most often as a disembodied awareness, which can not only communicate with beings on that plane, but can impart spells and spell-like powers to beings, items, and locations.  The divine essence can be focused through the chosen to turn or control the undead, impart divine location and item feats, and counter the affects of other divine energies.

The official d20 System word on the divine appears in Wizard of the Coast’s Deities & Demi-Gods tome (2002).  This book envisions the gods more like super-characters than divinities.  To me, this represents a step back from the way that the 2^nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game dealt with both gods and priests. 

When I began work on the Mêdterra campaign, I wanted the world to be one in which the players felt that their characters constantly interacted with the gods.  I wanted the gods to be important – in fact, central to the world – but I also wanted their interaction with the world to be very different from that of player characters or monsters.  Rather than having the gods being simply more powerful, I wanted them to feel like something different from anything else.  In short, I wanted the characters in Mêdterra to have an experience of the numinous.

The following is the initial information given to my players in the Lakelands region of Mêdterra.  Astute readers will undoubtedly recognize the sources for most, if not all, of these deities.

Religions in Mêdterra

Many people in the Lakelands follow the High Church of the Seven Good Gods:  Mardan, Mellador, Aedor, Belanus, Uarthos, Amaethon, and Brigit.  Others follow the druidic faith.  The Lakashi and a few others worship the Beast Lords or their own ancestors.  It should be remembered that, in the Lakelands, deities are real.  They can reward their devout followers, and punish those who displease them.

These are some of the more common deities/faiths a character can worship: 

• Aedor:  Aedor, God of Blacksmiths, Artisans, Craftsmen, and Mechanics, is lawful good.  He appears as a majestically bearded dwarf of heroic proportions.  He is said to work the Godforge, creating the thunderbolts of Mardan.  He is worshipped by dwarves, as well as by smiths and artificers of all types.  The domains he is associated with are Earth, Fire, Strength, and War.  His favoured weapon is the hammer.  He is one of the Seven Good Gods.

• Amaethon:  Amaethon, Lord of the Harvest, is neutral good.  Vine leaves entangle his short hair and fall about his shoulders like a mantle.  He cradles a large sheaf of grain in his arms.  Amaethon is often depicted dressed as a peasant farmer, with a stylized tree upon his tunic.  Farmers, vintners, and those who cultivate the land worship him.  The domains he is associated with are Animal, Earth, and Plant.  His favoured weapon is the scythe.  He is one of the Seven Good Gods.

 

• Ancestral Worship:  Ancestor worship is common among the Lakashi, the Alderhald, and the goblinoid races.  Even some civilized human and dwarven families worship their illustrious ancestors.  Shamans and clerics of ancestors can be any alignment, so long as they are not more than one step removed from the alignments of the ancestors they worship.  For clerics, ancestors are generally associated with the Death, Knowledge, Protection, and Trickery domains.  Favoured weapons may be assigned based upon historical precedent.

 

• Artemis:  The Goddess of the Hunt, Artemis is chaotic neutral.  She is depicted as an incredibly beautiful young girl armed with a bow.  She is often shown riding a doe with stag’s horns, or is depicted with stag’s horns herself.  Although many hunters, foresters, and rangers worship (or placate) her, she only allows human, elven, or half-elven females into her priesthood.  The domains associated with Artemis are Animal, Travel, and Trickery.  Her favoured weapon is the longbow.

 

• Badur:  Badur, the Judge of the Dead, is neutral.  He is depicted as a dark, faceless man wearing dark robes, and bearing a greatsword made of dark stone.  He is sometimes called the Bonewarden.  Few worship him, save undertakers and those who pray for the dead, though many pay him heed. It is Badur whose task it is to assign the dead to the heavens or hells, or to gray limbo.  His priests often seek out the undead, to deliver them to their Grim Lord’s judgement.  They may also “borrow the dead” from Badur to perform tasks in the world of the living.  The domains he is associated with are Death, Knowledge, and Protection.  His favoured weapon is the greatsword.

 

• Baerbeth:  Goddess of Cats, Pleasure, and the Night, Baerbeth is chaotic neutral.  She is depicted sometimes as a female humanoid with cat-like qualities, and sometimes as a great cat.  The domains she is associated with are Animal, Luck, Magic, and Trickery.  Her favoured weapon is the kukri.

 

• Beast Lords:  In the Lakelands, every animal type has a Beast Lord, a creature that is a perfect representative of its species type.  Many Beast Lords are also depicted in human, or semi-human, form.  The Beast Lords are worshipped mainly by intelligent and/or awakened animals, faerie animals, shapechangers, and humanoids whose forms mirror the Beast Lord they worship.  Some Beast Lords have cults with human followings, however, and some Beast Lords have created “elevated” humanoid animals to worship them.  In general, Beast Lords are neutral.  All are associated with the Animal domain.  Most have one other associated domain related to their nature (i.e., the Bear Lord and Ox Lords are associated with the Strength domain, while the Turtle Lord is associated with Protection and the Otter Lord with Water).  Beast Lords have no favoured weapons.

 

• Belanus:  Lithe Belanus, beloved of the elves, is chaotic good.  He is often depicted as a young human, elf, or half-elf, with a lyre.  An olive wreath crowns his head, holding long hair away from his laughing face.  Belanus is the God of the Sun, Music, Healing, and Prophesy, known also as the Ward Against Undead.  The domains he is associated with are Healing, Knowledge, and Sun.  His favoured weapon is the longbow.  He is one of the Seven Good Gods.

 

• Brigit:  Fair Brigit is the Goddess of Hearth, Fire, Poetry, and Community.  She is lawful good.  She is depicted as a young girl, clean of limb and bare of breast, unadorned save for a circlet of gold inlaid upon her brow.  She is also known as the Virgin Goddess, for the priestesses who keep her communal hearths are sworn to remain virginal throughout the length of their service.  Clerics dedicated to Brigit do not have to be female, only her hearthwards do.  The domains she is associated with are Fire, Luck, and Protection.  Her favoured weapon is the longsword.  She is one of the Seven Good Gods.

 

• Druidic Faith:  Druids are as described in the Player’s Handbook, and gain spells accordingly.  In the Lakelands, druids recognize Celene (represented by the moon) as the female principle of nature, and Herne (represented by a stag-horned man) as the male.  To the druids, all living things have an animus, life-energy that drives the world of the living, as well as providing the divine energy for druidic spells.  Death is also part of the cycle of life, where the animus loses its differentiated form and goes back into the breath of the world.  Still, druids gain power from the living world, and most shun the world of the dead.

 

• Julius Invincible:  Julius Invincible, Lord of Victory By Any Means, is lawful evil.  He began as a warlord among the Parthelonians, who came to power by slaughtering his own father.  He is depicted as a cruel-faced man wearing blood-soaked armour.  Barbarians, fighters, evil rangers, and monks may all worship Julius Invincible.  His cult appeals to the ruthless.  The domains he is associated with are Destruction, Strength, and War.  His favoured weapon is the longsword.

 

• Mardan:  Mardan, the Bringer of the Law and chief of the Seven Good Gods, is lawful good.  He is worshipped by paladins, fighters, monks and those who prefer civilized order to chaos.  Mardan is depicted as a jet-black man with four arms and green eyes.  He is said to hurl thunderbolts in judgement, and is often depicted with two thunderbolts, a morningstar, and the Book of Law.  The domains he is associated with are Air, Law, Protection, and War.  His favoured weapon is the morningstar.  He is one of the Seven Good Gods.

 

• Mellador:  Mellador is neutral good.  The Goddess of Mercy, Shipwrecked Sailors, and Fertility, she is often depicted with a serpent-staff, her right hand raised in benediction, as though to heal the wounded onlooker.  Mothers, sailors, fishermen, and healers worship her, though many others come to her for aid.  The domains she is associated with are Healing, Good, and Protection.  She has no favoured weapon.  She is one of the Seven Good Gods.

 

• Mellythese:  The Great Spider is the Goddess of Spiders, Treachery, Venom, and Deceit.  She is chaotic evil.  Mellythese is depicted as a gigantic black and red spider with cunning, evil eyes.  She is worshipped by the treacherous, by those bent to evil in their quest for vengeance, and by magicians who are seduced by the false lure of easy power.  The domains she is associated with are Death, Evil, Knowledge, and Trickery.  Her favoured weapon is the net.

 

• The Seven Good Gods:  Although clerics may worship them separately, many clerics in the High Church of the Seven Good Gods worship all of the gods together.  In this case, the cleric may be of any non-evil alignment (though most are good).  The domains they have access to are Fire, Good, Healing, Law (unless they have a chaotic alignment), Protection, and Sun.  They do not gain the benefits of a favoured weapon.

 

• Uarthos:  Called the Sleeping God, Uarthos is the chaotic good God of Sleep, Dreams, Healing, and Inspiration.  He is worshipped by poets, lovers, and dreamers of all sorts.  He is often depicted as a well-formed giant, with serene features, meditating or asleep.  The domains he is associated with are Chaos, Healing, Knowledge, and Travel.  He has no favoured weapon.  Uarthos is one of the Seven Good Gods.

Trying To Do Better

In the case of the Lakelands/Mêdterra mythos, creating a sense of the numinous was a mixed success.  On one hand, I had various priesthoods and clerics active in the milieu.  At one point, the (relatively low-level) PCs even encountered a bound Elder God called Baloraz of the Baleful Eye, or Baloraz, the Seated One.

Baloraz appeared as a seated humanoid creature, and would be nearly 80 feet tall if it stood.  It’s body was manlike, and handsomely build, except its head, which was dominated by a gigantic lidless eye like that of a cat.  Its leering face was transparent, showing bone and blobs of soft yellow fat beneath, as well as the pulsing ichor which fed its massive brain.  Slime drooled from between its pointed teeth, but only its eye moved, free to perceive within its trapped body.  Baloraz could speak via telepathy to any it could see; its voice oozing into the mind like a high-pitched whisper.

Because Baloraz was seated and unmoving, the PCs could interact with the bound god – although this was a fearful prospect indeed.  Should the gaze of Baloraz actually fall upon one, it could use a powerful telekinesis effect, either to draw one closer….or to flay one alive.

On the other hand, because I was using a modified version of the 3^rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, I missed the level of customization afforded by the preceding edition.  This affected my design for clerics in Raven Crowking’s Fantasy Game (RCFG), my ongoing project.  I included this optional rule:

Optional Rule: SPECIALITY PRIESTS:  The cleric is a generic form of priest, suitable for the “average priest” in the average campaign world.  However, GMs (or players, with the GM’s approval) are encouraged to create specialty priests for specific Powers.

Some examples of specialty priests appear in The Big Book of Monsters and the Encyclopaedia of Powers & Avatars – these can be used for inspiration.

The easiest way to create specialty priests is to change the abilities granted by Focus Divine Power and Aura of Faith. Another method is to create unique spell lists for a given priesthood. Finally, if the Power is associated with a particular slashing or piercing weapon, the speciality priest should not be limited in using that weapon.
  

A speciality priest may have the same level of overall power as a cleric, or it may have slightly more power in exchange for a much narrower focus. The GM is cautioned to avoid creating a specialty priest that is obviously a better choice than a standard cleric.

Conclusion

Deities and Powers of all sorts are an important part to the feel of a fantasy world.  I’ve worked hard to include these beings as an integral part of the setting, but I feel that my attempts have always fallen somewhat short of the mark.

How about you, Gentle Readers?  What have you done to make the gods “live and breath” in your campaign milieus?

F is for....

Nanoc paused just outside the chamber.  He peered into the space, rough-hewn from some ancient system of caverns.  Although the space was only dimly lit, and that only within the radius of light Nanoc’s flickering torch, the barbarian could sense that it was vast, extending both far upward, and far into the distance.  He could smell it in the stale air.  Gripping his sword firmly with his right hand, pine torch outthrust with his left, Nanoc stepped within.  His boots were soft-soled, and his step as light as a cat.

From high overhead, something round and pale reflected the torch’s ruddy light.  As Nanoc paused to consider the thing, the flames of his torch ignited a pocket of resin with a loud pop.  The pale thing – like a great disc or saucer of bone, darted upward with a hiss of air.  At the same time, a stream of foul-smelling liquid, black and sticky as tar, squirted from the thing.  Nanoc dodged away with the reflexes of a great cat.  He could smell the thing’s foul ichor.  The reek made him almost nauseous.

Nanoc caught a glimpse of white tentacles, writhing like long strings of sinew, and a cluster of dozens of thin, bony needles as the creature floated upward, out of the torchlight.  That thing was up above him somewhere now.  Considering the possibility of it dropping on his head, encasing him with piercing spines and clinging tendrils of flesh, made the barbarian’s skin crawl.  He beat a hasy retreat down the already explored tunnel. 

Where he had cursed the tunnel’s low height before, he now ducked his head thankfully.   Somewhere within this ruin, long abandoned by its original makers, he would find the treasure he sought.  Nanoc was as brave as any man, but he preferred to face foes he knew would fall beneath his sword.  Let eldritch monstrosities await other victims if they must.  It was in his mind to return to the fortifications of the hobgoblins.  Aye, hobgoblins he knew would fall to his blade.

Two weeks later, Nanoc met a cowled wizard in the taproom of the Hook & Horror, and told the learned one of his encounter.

“It is well that you left when you did,” the magic-user said.  He paused to draw smoke from a long-stemmed pipe with a curiously carved bowl.  “Such creatures know well how to defend themselves.  Their needle-like spines can inject acid into their victims – mild for other work, but strong enough to eat away muscle and bone.  Moreover, they are not inimical to man, and have even been known to aid human explorers against more alien foes.”

The barbarian drained his cup, banging the leather tankard onto the table.  He called loudly for another cup of wine, displaying one of the gold coins he had recovered from the ancient dungeons beneath Dagoth’s Hill.  No sooner had Nanoc turned toward the bar than one of the wizard’s hands darted out, sprinkled some powder within the cup, and withdrew again.

“Be that as it may,” Nanoc said grimly as he turned back, “such creatures can stay far from me.  I need no help against vermin like goblinkind.”  Noting the wizard’s smile, the barbarian added, “I have slain my share of sorcerers as well.”

“I am sure you have, my friend,” the wizard said calmly.  He waited while a plump serving girl brought the pitcher, and poured another measure into Nanoc’s cup.  The powder dissolved into the liquid, odorless and colourless within the Hook & Horror’s sour wine.  “Just as I am sure that such exploits have been noticed.”

“Noticed?  What do I care of that?”  Nanoc the barbarian laughed, and drained his third cup. 

“It may interest you to know that powdered flumph is poisonous, if taken in sufficient quantity,” the cowled wizard said.  “Let me by you another drink before I go.”

E is for Epic Endgame

There is a bit of famous advice from the great Ray Winninger about setting up a campaign milieu; to wit, never force yourself to create more than you need to.  The question then naturally, what do I need to create?

I am going to suggest that, very early on – perhaps so early that not a single PC foot has trod the dirt of your masterpiece – you consider what might become a proper, epic, finale to an adventurer’s career.  You want to be able to drop hints about these possibilities early on.  Perhaps as early as the first session.

Please note that I am not saying that you should craft your  adventures to be “about” some particular epic endgame.  Nor am I saying that you should choose the final goals for the Player Characters soon to be entrusted to your tender care.  Nor, finally, am I saying that the campaign milieu ceases to be used after such an epic endgame is concluded.  I am not advocating an “adventure path” type design.

First off, you shouldn’t be thinking about a single epic endgame.  You should consider at least 3 possible endgames, and perhaps up to 10 of more.  A single epic endgame forces the players along the path you set for them.  Multiple potential endgames allow the players to choose what interests them.  They then get to set their own path.

Possible epic endgames include (but are not limited to):

•  Legendary Challenge:  Become the greatest chessmaster in the world.  Beat the Devil in a game of poker.  Reach the top of Mount EverestWasEasier.
• Legendary Hoard:  Uncover some great hoard of treasure, and get it home. 
• Legendary Location:  Find Atlantis, the Garden of Eden, or the lowest level of Castle Greyhawk.  Then get out to tell the tale.
• Legendary Monster:  Defeat a unique, named monster, feared for its power.  The original AD&D 1e Tarrasque was a challenge of this kind.
• Artifact:  Gain possession and control over some great artifact or relic.  Alternatively, destroy the same.
• Great Love:  Win the love of some paragon of beauty or virtue, of whom the bards sing, and who is won only at great cost.
• Overcome a God:  Pretty self-explanatory.  Note that this need not be in combat.
• Overthrow Evil Regime:  Also pretty self-explanatory, and may lead directly into….
• Gain a Kingdom:  Rip the crown of the bloody head of the previous ruler, whom you strangled on his throne.
• Become Immortal:  Always worthwhile, and it’s nice to be a permanent fixture in the campaign milieu.
• Ascend to Godhood:  Work things out so that you are a permanent fixture in the cosmology of the game milieu.  Later PCs can worship you!

Note that these epic endgames are not mutually exclusive.  A character might need to seek out an artifact, within the hoard of a legendary creature, in order to defeat a god, and hence become immortal.

What makes an endgame epic?

When a PC is 1^st level, he encounters and slays an orc.  When he is 3^rd level, he encounters and slays a tougher orc.  When he is 10^th level, the orc, although now a giant of some sort, is still really nothing more than a bigger orc.  When devising an epic endgame, it is imperative that the matter cannot be resolved simply by slaying an epic-level orc.

No.

What you want to do is create a situation where wading into combat simply will not work.  The character must seek eldritch lore, deal with demons and/or demigods, field armies, and bend the campaign milieu to his will.  Thousands or millions of beings are affected, for good or for ill.  Succeed or fail, the campaign milieu will permanently affected by the PC’s quest.  It becomes a major point of the world’s history, remembered for many generations to come.

To be truly epic, an endgame must demand that the player character gamble.  Way back at 1^st level, the PC had scant guarantee of survival, and even less of success.  As the character grows, his chances of success grow with him, and his survival becomes far less doubtful.  An epic endgame reverses this.  Once more, the character must gamble everything, with a good chance of losing.  It is this real chance of losing that makes victory taste sweet….and the consequences of loss must be dire.

There must be real and obvious reasons why no one has tried this before….or, if they have (and that is a great campaign backstory!) why they failed. 

If the players have a chance to learn about these potential endgames right from the start, they have something epic to compare themselves to.  We can liken a person’s strength to “a modern-day Hercules”.  The prepared epic endgame allows your PCs and NPCs to refer to someone as “Tougher than the tarrasque itself” in the same sort of exaggerated way.

Imagine the campaign where a great Iron Colossus stands vigil over the city harbor, issuing commands on behalf of its Red Priesthood, and threatening destruction if those commands are not heeded.  The PCs are affected by those commands early on in the campaign, and eventually decide to gamble everything in ending the Red Priesthood’s power forever – even if it means finding some way to destroy the Iron Colossus! 

The wise GM doesn’t allow the Colossus to be defeated in mere combat, however.  The thing is invincible.  No, instead, she has the players seek out the home plane of the spirit that animates the great monster, where they must field an army to reach its iron fortress.  And then, and only then, can they challenge its Red Priest master to a contest that will wrest control of the Colossus from the Priesthood and into the PCs’ hands.  And, if they win, one of their number must remain behind to be the animus of the indestructible thing…..

Increases of power do not make a game epic.  Rather, risk must be increased, and the fates of nations or worlds must hang in the balance.  Just make sure that, whatever the consequences of failure, you are ready to allow the PCs to fail, and the consequences to occur. 

After the epic endgame….

If the world is still there, the players make some new adventurers, and play on.  The landscape is changed by the events of the endgame.  Old PCs are lords of the realm, or gods, or lost.  They have truly affected the campaign milieu.  The new PCs are moving in their shadows.  And, perhaps, those shadows will suggest some new potential endgames…..

Whether the players immediately realize it or not, really affecting the campaign milieu through the agency of your own choices, taken at risk, and with full acceptance and understanding of the potential consequences, is the best thing about playing these games.  And it is one of the things that tabletop games do infinitely better than computer games….because those changes can be persistent.

You owe it to your players to craft those opportunities.

You owe it to yourself to watch them unfold.

Good Gaming!

D is for Dinosaurs

This was a tough letter to pick a theme for…Dungeons are obvious.  Dragons are cool.  Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG beta release is well worth a post or more.  I am a huge fan of Doctor Who, which also has several RPG incarnations that I could wax polemic upon.  I could dump on the Delve Format all day! 

But, I decided to go with something slightly less obvious, and something that is (perhaps) used less than it could be.

I grew up on the great Ray Harryhausen films, like One Million BC and Valley of Gwangi, where humans and dinosaurs coexist.  Both Conan and Tarzan ran into dinosaurs (of a sort), and these are characters near and dear to my pulp-fiction-loving heart.  I am a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar stories.  I was among those who rushed to the theatre to see the first Jurassic Park movie.  Dinosaurs, like bow ties, fezzes, and Stetsons, are cool.

So, how does one use dinosaurs within the context of a role-playing game?

The first question is, Are there living dinosaurs?

This is more of a question than it might seem, and saying “No” doesn’t mean that you cannot use dinosaurs within a gaming context.  There are no living dinosaurs in our own world, but that has hardly dampened our enthusiasm for them!  As in the real world, knowledge that dinosaurs once existed in the campaign milieu may cause some player characters to believe that a “Lost World” is hidden somewhere in the milieu.  Looking for that “Lost World” can provide an impetus for many play sessions and dozens of adventures….even if it doesn’t exist.

Consider the dinosaur hunters of our own world, and it becomes clear that in a fantasy RPG world the skeletons of the ancient saurian might fetch a pretty penny.  Not only that, but some arcane diabolist might even manage to animate the petrified bones of some antediluvian behemoth.  Consider the image of Our Humble Adventurers faced with a bony triceratops in the private museum of the College of Necromancy.  Who knows which exhibit might come to life next….?  And, even if none does, the PCs might constrain their movements on the battlefield, afraid to get too close to some ankylosaur’s club-like tail.

Within the context of a fantasy game, being extinct is not necessarily a complete barrier to encountering a living specimen, either.  Not only are there spells that stop time, preserving a creature throughout countless eons, but there is always the possibility of time travel.  A remote portal might throw the characters deep into the past.  Likewise, some effect might bring dinosaurs to the present, as occurred in the Doctor Who story, Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

If you decide that the dinosaurs are not extinct within the campaign milieu, you have a few options.  They can exist in scattered pockets, a single “Lost World”, or be considered normal animals.  Each one of these options has its own unique features.

In worlds where dinosaurs exist in isolated, scattered pockets, it is relatively likely that the PCs will eventually encounter them.  It is also probable that at least some NPCs are well aware of their existence.   In this sense, dinosaurs are treated rather like many types of monsters – there are manticores in the Tallorn Hills, and velociraptors in the Jungle of Hool.

The “scattered pockets” set-up is like that of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels…there are dinosaurs in parts of Africa, the hollow inner earth of Pellucidar, and the mysterious island-continent of Caprona.  Likewise, Robert E. Howard populated his stories not with pockets of surviving dinosaurs (and other prehistoric creatures), but single individuals here and there, some of which were worshipped as gods...or as the manifestation of gods.

In milieu’s where there is a single “Lost World”, characters can only encounter dinosaurs if they travel to that location.  And, most often, that location is largely unknown (and hence, “Lost”) to the world at large.  In a game with scattered pockets of surviving dinosaurs, the milieu might seem to have only a single “Lost World” if only one location is found.

The prototypical example of this type is Maple White Land in Sir Conan Arthur Doyle’s novel, The Lost World.  Another is Skull Island in any version of the film, King Kong.  The Ray Harryhausen opus, The Valley of Gwangi, provides yet a third example.  The biggest advantage of this set-up is that, when you find it, you know you have stumbled upon something special. 

Both the “scattered pockets” and the “Lost World” model suggest a world that is, at least to some degree, more primeval than that of a milieu where the dinosaurs are extinct.  To get a truly primeval feel, though, the Game Master can treat dinosaurs as normal animals.  Indeed, if the GM uses only currently extinct species (Pleistocene species with a few surviving saurian types, perhaps, or even using various types of dinosaurs as the predominant type of animal), the world will feel very primeval.  A GM using this sort of set-up could even use Pangaea as the campaign milieu.  The dinosaurs in such a setting might even be intelligent, as in Goodman Games’ Broncosaurus Rex setting.

In such a setting, humans might be cave dwellers (as in One Million BC), or as civilized as in any later-era setting.  Perhaps they are colonists from ancient Mu or Atlantis, or any other fabulous lost civilization.

Dinosaurs are fun.  They play a special part in our collective imagination, and when they are made special within a campaign setting, it just feels “right”.   If you have a copy…or can get a hold of one…pull out the old TSR module X1:  The Isle of Dread.  Fire it up, and throw it at your players.  Update it to your current favorite game system of choice, if you must, but try to remember that, sometimes, running from a dinosaur is part of the fun.

C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part III)

So, this is the third (and last) blog post looking specifically at the interplay between choices, context, and consequences.  As previously discussed, a choice is a decision and context is the information that informs a choice.  There is a third important element, consequences, that deserves a posting of its own, because the idea of consequence has changed the most in role-playing games.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that, in mitigating consequences, role-playing games have also limited choice, and limited the meaning of context.

More on this below.

Again, Gentle Reader, I’m going to dispense with the “IMHO”s and “IME”s, and assume that you are smart enough to know that I am talking about my own opinions and experiences. 

Consequence is whatever happens as a result of choice.  For example, if Frodo & Co. stick to the road, they might be overtaken by a Black Rider, but if they cut through the Woody End, they might get lost or worse.  Destroying valuable artwork because it is of a necromantic nature means that you will not have the gold selling it might produce.  Not finding the treasure means that you don’t have it.  Giving the Arkenstone of Thrain to Bard means that Thorin is going to be upset at you.  Jumping into lava means you will die, and losing in a pitched combat is likely to mean the same. 

Without consequences that flow naturally from the choices made, those choices themselves become meaningless.  If Frodo & Co. have the same chances of meeting the Black Riders no matter what they do, and can become as lost on the road as in the open countryside, what value does the decision have?  If you can destroy the necromantic art objects, or fail to locate the treasure in a monster’s lair, and the gold finds its way to you anyhow, what does do those decisions matter?  In a word, nothing.

Likewise, if failing in combat, falling into lava, etc., never results in death (or death without the player’s permission), then failing in combat or falling into lava means less than it otherwise would.  There is a safety net built into the system.  To paraphrase a great man, you might as well be playing Candyland with your baby sister.

In the case of Dungeons & Dragons, this mitigation against consequence first reared its head (in a strong sense) in the DragonLance modules, where the GM is admonished to keep a certain NPC ambiguously alive no matter what happens.  In a weaker sense, mitigation against consequence can be seen as early as White Plume Mountain, where there is an encounter that “scales” to the PCs’ condition at the end of the module (or is omitted altogether!). 

It should be easy to see how mitigating against consequences lessens the impact of choice with a single example.  In White Plume Mountain, scaling or removing the final encounter based on PC strength would seem to punish players who did well in the module, while rewarding those who did poorly.  If all parties have the same final encounter instead, it is clear that the “good play” choices leading to a party that still retains greater resources at the module’s end are rewarded by having an easier time in the final encounter, while a severely depleted party might face a TPK (Total Party Killed).

Likewise, if losing in combat always means that you are taken prisoner or left for dead, and given another chance to succeed, losing in combat loses much of its sting.  The result is that the choices leading up to, and within, that combat matter less.

Some GMs work hard to include other consequences to keep choices meaningful.  “If you lose, your baby sister is enslaved!”  Even so, having your baby sister enslaved is simply not as meaningful as having your baby sister enslaved, and also being dead.  Obviously, if it is too easy to restore a dead comrade to life, and if there are few consequences for so doing, even death may lose its sting.

So, it is important for the GM not to mitigate against consequences.  Whatever the natural consequences of a choice are, those are the consequences that will occur.  Sometimes that means an enemy will capture fallen PCs to hold them ransom, and sometimes it means that the PCs are the main course in an orcish feast. 

Yet, not every consequence should be horrendous to endure!

In the last blog, I mentioned that “decision paralysis” is sometimes the fault of consequence.  This occurs when all the choices seem bad, and the player(s) have no expectation of being able to achieve a good outcome.

Game Masters naturally want their players to win, and to succeed despite the odds.  Because of this natural tendency, and because of the importance of consequences for making choices meaningful, much Old School GM advice is based upon fighting this tendency and allowing the dice to fall where they may.  There is a certain encouragement to be a Rat-Bastard Game Master (BRGM).

And that is all well and good, so long as the consequences are natural to the choices made….but sometimes (perhaps too often, depending upon who you ask), all of the choices lead to bad ends.  Or, worse yet, all of the choices but one lead to unnaturally bad consequences, meant to funnel the PCs into a single set of choices of the GM’s choosing.  And one can see where this is learned – if the GM is admonished to keep certain NPCs alive to fuel the story within official adventure products, why would the GM not conclude that the continuity of his expected storyline is more important than ensuring that the choices the players make is meaningful?  There are some GMs who refer to this as an “illusion of choice” – I believe it is an illusion of an illusion.  Most players see through it pretty quickly, and some will do increasingly foolish things to test the walls of their cage.

 Just how much plot protection is built into the game milieu?  Enquiring players want to know!

In order to avoid decision paralysis, it behooves the prospective Game Master to ensure that there are many chances for good consequences as well as ill.  Good consequences don’t have to mean treasure.  They can be people who try to help the PCs in some limited way (I’ve used farmers putting PCs up for the night for free to good effect), alliances, potential romances, even inspiring sights.  Knowledge is always good, and most players appreciate having learned things through play rather than through blocks of GM-provided text.

Whenever possible, consequences should lead naturally into new choices, and/or provide additional context to choices the PCs are already facing.  In this way, the players never run out of things to do, or leads to follow up on.  The game milieu becomes a dynamic place, where descriptions are paid attention to for the context they provide, context is used to make choices, and the consequences of those choices are dealt with while leading naturally into new choices.

And, if you can master this interplay, no matter what else you fail in, you will always be able to attract and hold players.  “Context à  Choice à Consequence” is probably the most important thing a Game Master can bring to the table.

NOTES

The proliferation of mitigation against consequence is probably due, at least in part, to the extended time it requires to create a character in certain game systems.  In many older games, a character death meant that the player was out of action for only 5-15 minutes of real world time.  This is not so for all games.

Likewise, if it takes 45 or more minutes to resolve even a simple combat within a game system, even having another character ready beforehand doesn’t necessarily mitigate against long real world wait times until the new PC can be introduced.

I have met many GMs over the years, and “spoken” to even more online, who believe that they can mitigate against consequence by fudging dice in such a way that their players do not know it.  This may be true in some cases, but I have honestly never encountered it.  Gambling that your players won’t catch onto your clever tricks is a one-way ticket to wondering why you have no players, depending upon just how clever you think you are, and just how tricky.

If you are playing a game of this nature, it is best to use a system (such as Action Points or Fate Points) that allow the player to decide when to mitigate consequences.  This way, because the players are still choosing when to use such resources, the importance of player choice is maintained.  It is important that there be limitations on this resource, or there is no actual “choice” in using it! 

This is true even in games that mimic narratives where important characters seldom die (Star Trek, Doctor Who, or comic books, for instance).  In fact, it may be more true, because part of the conceit of these franchises/genres is that the heroes themselves believe that they are at risk!

It is also possible to set up an in-game situation where death (or some other consequence) simply cannot naturally occur.  The condition of “Captain Jack Harkness” in Torchwood is an example – the character is simply incapable of dying. 

As a final note, I have recently come across the argument that enforcing undesired consequences is a form of railroading.

Well, it can be, if the undesired consequences do not arise naturally from the choices made and the game milieu context they occur in.  I once had a fellow run TSR’s Module A1, where whenever I made a choice the GM didn’t like my characters began aging rapidly until they did what the GM decided they were supposed to do.  Needless to say, I agree that this is railroading, and railroading of such an egregious type that I walked from the table.

On the other hand, dying because you engaged 10,000 maniacs in combat as a 1^st level 1^st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons thief?  There might have been railroading leading you to the situation where you made that choice, but the consequence of that choice is not railroading! 

Likewise “People don’t like my character because he is a murdering sociopath” and “I don’t have the treasure because I destroyed it” are not examples of railroading.  Nor are they examples of the GM making moral/ethical choices for the characters.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, role-playing games are about making meaningful choices.  If you enable your players to do so, even if you have difficulties mastering other parts of the game, you can be a good Game Master.

Context allows for meaningful decisions, because the context is the relevant information that the players have in order to make choices.  Never be afraid of giving the players too much context!  If the players seem stuck, you can always throw them more context!

Choice is what the players do.  They make choices for their characters.  As a Game Master, your job includes providing context for those choices, and ensuring that natural consequences follow those choices.  You job most emphatically is not to make choices for player characters.  It is fine to ask, “Are you sure you want to do that?” but you should not say “Your character would not do that”.  Master the art of keeping your nose out of PC choices!

Even when NPCs interject comments in PC decision making, make sure that you are flowing from the NPC’s knowledge and motives.  There must be a clear divide between NPC suggestions and the DM suggesting through an NPC.  It is worth your while to state clearly, and more than once, that no NPC suggestion should ever be seen as “coming from” the GM!

Most simply described, consequence is outcome.  Consequences should arise naturally from choices made, and from the context of those choices (the game setting, or milieu).  Consequences should also, whenever possible reveal more context and/or open up more choices.  Some game systems and/or playstyles encourage mitigating against consequences more than others, but you should resist the urge to do so.  When the Game Master mitigates against consequences, he reduces the impact of player choice.  An” illusion of choice” is rarely sustainable….if it is sustainable at all.

I have followed these principles for many years, and I have never been at a loss for players.  While no system can guarantee you the same success, mastering “Context à Choice à Consequence” should improve anyone’s Game Mastering.  As I said in Part I, in my experience, anyone who understands this interplay will be at least an adequate GM…and no one who does not, no matter what their other fine qualities, is ever really satisfying.

C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part II)

“Decision Paralysis” occurs in a role-playing game when a player (or group thereof) simply cannot decide what to do.  The character may have many available choices, but the player cannot seem to make any of them meaningful within the context of the game.  The problem is almost always rooted in context or consequence.

If the problem is rooted within context, there are two potential problems.  The first is that the player(s) involved lack enough context to make a meaningful choice.  The second is that the player(s) have context, but there is no clear advantage to any choice that can be made. 

Both problems can be resolved by giving the player(s) additional information.  However,  we also want our players to make their own decisions, so we need to be careful not to add information in such a way as to bias their choices.  Usurping player choices – or, worse yet, getting the players to rely upon you to tell them what choices they should make – is one of the worst things you can do as a Game Master. 

So, how does the GM go about creating additional context without usurping player choices?

Let’s take an example:  A party is exploring the Gloomy Megadungeon of Huge Hallways when they come to a Y-shaped intersection, allowing the group to go either left or right.  The GM knows that the left passage leads to the lair of a troll, while the right passage leads to a hidden treasure, then more passages that end up in an area controlled by goblins.  The group, faced by the choice of going left or right (they have stated that they do not wish to turn back!) end up facing a moment of decision paralysis.

What should the GM do?

First off, wait.  We have been told so often in recent years that the GM is in charge of pacing, that some of us have forgotten that this is untrue.  Pacing is created through an amalgam of player decisions and GM-enforced consequences to those decisions.  If the players decide to spend their time wondering what to do, or discussing their options, that is a valid decision.  The GM must accept that not deciding – or not deciding right away – is also a choice, and should be treated like any other.  I cannot stress that enough.  The natural consequences of bickering over a decision in a dungeon hallway may be unpleasant, but if so, they should occur because they are natural consequences of the players’ choices – not because the GM wishes to control the pace.

If you enforce natural consequences, sooner or later (and most often, sooner), the players themselves will take control over pacing.  That is one of the important functions of wandering monsters in old school rpgs.  They act as a spur to keep the characters moving….but they are not an arbitrary spur.  They do not usurp player choices.

Now, perhaps one of the players will have his character look down both hallways, to see if there is anything he can see.  The wise GM knows that what the player is really looking for is more context, with which to make a decision.  And the wise GM also supplies that context, but not in a way that makes the decision for the player(s).

“The left passage has a bad smell, as though of rotting meat, and you can just see what might be a gobbet of flesh, dropped and left to rot by some creature.  The right passage has cleaner air, but seems to be infrequently used….there is some minor detritus where the passage’s walls meet the floor – a broken boot heel, a  gnawed and dried apple core, a few dried bones, scraps of torn cloth, and the like.”

This adds to the context available to the players – if you want a fight, go left; if you want to go in a less frequented direction, go right – without taking the choice away.  The contextual information arises naturally from how the area is used in the game milieu.  It might even lead to other contextual information – did the heel come from a goblin boot?  Does the apple indicate a (somewhat) close entrance to the surface?  When the GM provides relevant contextual information, that can be used to help make meaningful decisions, the players begin to pay attention to that information.  They might even start seeking it out on their own.

But, let us say that our party still doesn’t know what to do.  They can’t decide between left and right.  Now what does the Game Master do?

Well, the obvious consequence of standing there unresolved is that, sooner or later, the troll comes by.  Either it’s bringing back dinner, or it’s going out to find something to eat.  Or maybe it’s trying to get quickly to its nearby latrine.  The GM is fully within his rights to spring the troll on the unsuspecting party….or, they might hear it coming (from behind them, or from the left way) and hide.  Either way, more context is added….a troll lives down the left tunnel.

Again, this should not be instantaneous, but should arise naturally from the fictional milieu.  The goal is not to prevent the players from making a decision, but rather to enforce the natural consequences of a decision they did make….the decision to stand there and wait while deciding.  In a relatively safe open field, the party could take far longer to safely make a decision.  Although it might eventually rain on them.

Not every detail is context.  Context is detail that is relevant to making meaningful decisions.  As you develop your dungeons, populate your strongholds, and devise your wilderness areas, never be afraid to include too much context.  Instead, you should be thinking, “How can I telegraph this encounter?”  “What footprint should this creature be leaving in the area?”  “What clues can I give to hint at this secret?”

On the other hand, be wary of having NPCs that usurp player choices.  NPCs should always act from their own motives, and from their own limited information.  Rather than have a Council of Elrond that tells the players what must be done, have NPCs who urge the players in this direction and that….some offering good suggestions, others offering less good, all from the basis of their own goals and understanding.  Just because an NPC wants to hire adventurers to perform some task, it does not follow that the PCs should be perfectly suited to that task….or suited to it at all. 

Players get used to the idea that, if an NPC wants to hire them, this is “the plot hook”, and it should be taken.  If you want a living game, based on player choices, you need to break that cycle.  In minor ways at first, and then more strongly, have NPCs offer jobs that are not suited to the PCs.  They might be boring, and so glossed over, or they might be jobs that the PCs are outmatched or undermatched.  You must make certain that the players come to understand that NPCs are not the GM.  What they want is not what the GM wants.  They must be taken on their own terms.

When the players understand that you are not going to tell them what to do, that you are going to offer them many choices, and that the pacing of the game is going to be largely based on their decisions, you have set the stage for truly satisfying play.  This is what a role-playing game can do….what it is best at.  You cannot get that experience from a novel or a movie, or from a computer game.  This is where the medium shines.

Some people will tell you that it is hard to feel involved in a game where character death is common, or where choices are limited.  They site early role-playing games, with high character turn-over, level limits for demi-humans, or non-sword-wielding wizards as examples of these “flaws”. 

As always, play what you enjoy.  Life is too short for bad gaming.  But for my money, the only limitation to getting players involved occurs in the number of meaningful decisions they get to make.  And the important meaningful decisions are not in character generation, or in builds, but in actual play.  You can provide that excellence of play in any system – just remember that the important choices belong to the players, and it is your job to provide context to make those choices, and enforce the consequences thereof. 

You might have to disregard some of the GMing advice your game of choice provides in order to do this.   We’ll discuss this more in Part III, where we’ll be taking a closer look at consequences.