Dungeon Master: Impossible Situations

I don't think I've played with a Dungeon Master that didn't at least consider putting their party up against an impossible to win situation. However, the large degree in variance I have seen got me thinking about the difficulties of doing so. In books, movies and video games we often see final blazes of glory and valiant last stands. Naturally, it makes sense that we would try to replicate such situations. However, as with all things, there are effective ways and ineffective ways to create such a situation.

Do I Really Want to Do This?

From my experience, if you are asking this question you probably should not put your players in an impossible situation. From my experience, it usually doesn't go smoothly from a role-playing game perspective. One of the most memorable campaigns I played in had an impossible situation in our very last session so it is possible to run effectively. However, I feel that if you are going to try to run an impossible situation you should be confident before trying to run it and fix elements you have doubts about. It doesn't guarantee success but from my experience things don't go smoothly if you aren't happy with the high level outline.

What Is an Impossible Situation?

Defining and being aware of what makes the situation impossible is extremely important. Even if the players immediate goal is not possible (the players are out matched and can't fight their way to the person they were trying to assassinate) the players should still have options. Sometimes the only option that makes sense is to run away. Sometimes they might be able to accomplish their goal through more clever means than an upfront assault.

Generally I define an impossible situation to be one where the players cannot accomplish something. In such a situation, for the short term it is perfectly fine for the players' goals to change to survival if needed. In this kind of situation they will not be able to save the princess, kill all of the bad guys and live to tell the tale but that is fine. The important part is that the chances of the situation going completely the players' way is very small so the best they can hope for is to avoid a complete loss.

The players should still have something to achieve. If they do not, the Dungeon Master is basically killing their party the long way around. The situation should be desperate but still have a purpose, even if it is for the players to escape the ambush with their lives. If there is nothing left to achieve, the Dungeon Master is just taking the long way to slaughter their party.

Context

When looking at any element of a role-playing game session it is extremely important to consider the context and the tone of the adventure that is taking place. If for the last 4 months the players have always put into situation where they can reasonably win (maybe by the slightest of hairs) and they never ran away, retreat may not even cross the players' minds. Not everyone likes tragedies and not every situation should be an “impossible situation”.

This kind of situation also shouldn't feel cheap or forced. It should make sense based on the decisions the players made, the decisions the non-player characters made and the world the Dungeon Master built. In the situation I mentioned earlier from my playing experience, my group was told from level 1 that we will probably not survive and our chances of succeeding on our quest were slightly better. We succeeded in the end, but we did not survive.

Conclusion

I hope that this discussion helps the get the creative juices flowing for running these kinds of impossible situations. They are not easy to run but they can still be used to great effect. Please feel free to share similar situations.

Examples

Sealing Hell

Due to failure on the part of the players, a demon army threatens to destroy the entire realm. The players must journey to hell and destroy the [Insert Thing Here] in order to close the demons' method of attack (most likely a portal).

If the players are a level 20 party and have only one spell-caster, they may need to use their one and only 9^th level spell to enter hell (either going through the demons' method of attack will be even worse odds or the portal is one way). Acting in this case would put the players in an impossible position. However, they still have options. They can fail or die as heroes. They can also make their way to hell and try to have smaller section of the party deliver the finishing blow on the item as well as hold back the horde for other members of the party to get away. They may also decide that such an approach is too risky and that they should all die together trying to close the portal.

Two Objectives but not Enough Resources

There are two generals that are opposing the army the players are a part of. They have the resources to stage an assassination attempt lead by the players. However, there is only enough resources for one operation and within a week the enemy will attack. Removing both would make the situation far easier for the players but instead they must decide on the best way to weaken their enemy. This is kind of an edge case since I can see it being an impossible situation (we are forcing the players to choose) or simply a more limiting situation.

The City Will Fall

The players have been helping in the defence of a city for a long stretch of time now. They know that sooner or later that the city will fall but are trying to do their best to weaken the enemy, hold for a little longer and are looking for a way to escape and fight another day (hopefully it goes better that time).  

Dungeon Master: Random Terrain

There are many different kinds of terrain that the Dungeon Master can place to make a location more dynamic than a flat stretch of land. Some of the terrain and hazards can be random in nature and it is this type that I wish to write about today.

Risk vs. Reward

Whenever making anything based on randomness, it is important to keep in mind the risks and rewards of using the feature of the location. If there is too much risk for too little reward, it simply won't be used. If there is too much reward for too little risk, you can be sure it will be used commonly. Unless the players use an ability check to try to get more information about the features, they will have to learn about them through trial and error. The context the terrain is in can also help the players guess its function. The previous terrain can also have a large impact. If the last terrain they encountered was high risk and low reward they may approach all other terrain in the same way.

Internal Consistency

You may have to reuse terrain you created for a different location. When you do, keeping it internally consistent with what you have shown in the world so far is important. They will expect it to act a certain way since they have already encountered it before. If this expectation is broken, it should be for a good reason and also make internal sense.

Examples

Short Range Portals

It is easy enough to add a few rifts or portals that allow creatures and players to jump around the area. When doing so, it is important to consider what happens to objects when they enter. Do they go to the other side (you will need to decide how to handle it, especially for spells)? There are also two major choices to make: how are they connected? Are the portals always linked the same way or will it randomly link to all of the other portals in range? Since I'm focusing on randomness, I will choose the random option. If you don't, you can think of the portals as inputs and outputs. This means that if the first portal takes you to the second, the second may not take you back to the first.

We can just make a table for mapping the portals to each-other to handle the decision (numbering the portals will help here). If desired, there can be a random chance that the portal won't take us anywhere if we enter it, forcing the player to leave and re-enter.

This kind of terrain can also be combined with cover to make all kinds of weird motions and attacks. It also gives melee characters a chance to quickly close the distance if the area is quite large.

Wind Squares

Enter the square and get thrown 30 feet into a random direction. We can also add damage if we hit an object (1d6 per 10 feet, minimum of 1d6 even if we hit no object). Putting these into an area with other hazards that enemies can be thrown into further enhance the randomness (this also gives the players a reason to grapple).

Concussion

There we have 2 random terrain features that can be added to your D&D games. As always I hope it helps and feel free to give feedback.

Dungeon Master: Players as Storytellers

Role-playing games are by their very nature different than other activities. However, at their heart is the idea of telling a story. Every story has at least one story teller and in this article, even though it may seem apparent, I am going talk about who the story tellers are in a role-playing game. I've also mentioned it briefly in other pieces I've written but wanted to get it down explicitly.

The entire point of me writing this comes down to simply stating that the players are also telling part of the story. It may seem straight forward (I've been saying that a lot lately) but it is easy to forget in the moment when Dungeon Mastering. It also has some implications.

Implications

If everyone at the table is technically a story teller there are certain. The players create their characters and try to tell their stories and the Dungeon Master writes the stories of the rest of the world. As a result the Dungeon Master opposes and supports the players and together a story is told.

 

Generally, my players don't like to be railroaded. At the same time, they don't want anything to be possible and want the world to be grounded. These factors usually mean that instead of trying to write a story for the players to live I end up writing my part of the story and let the players write theirs. I write situations and characters but leave the solution to the players when I can. Naturally, if you want to include a puzzle there is going to be only a few solutions. A solution that the Dungeon Master never thought of may also exist and it is part of their job to react to their players' actions. Finding the role the Dungeon Master plays is a tricky thing to do but the realization that the story doesn't only belong to the Dungeon Master is generally a good thing.

Summary in a Single Sentence

A role-playing game session is a collaborative element between all of the story tellers (Dungeon Master and players).

Dungeon Master: The World as Rules and Storytelling Together

Today's topic is more general and abstract than most I've covered until now. Still, I believe it is an important topic even if some of it may seem obvious. It is also an extremely simple concept but has far reaching implications. The topic I will cover today is that the world in a table top role-playing game such as D&D is created and shaped by its rules as well as the story telling abilities of the Dungeon Master.

Overview

For the purposes of this piece, I will focus on two different ideas on world building. The first is that the world is created by the descriptions the Dungeon Master uses to bring his world to life and the story that is being told. The second is that the world is created by the rules and rulings the Dungeon Master uses to run the game. In order to get my point across in its entirety, both parts need to be considered and defined.

The World as Storytelling

The Dungeon Master is responsible for describing the world and making it come to life through story telling skills. He may use elements such as props but the core of the story is still created by the story telling skills of the Dungeon Master. Without this communication between the Dungeon Master and the players, a game cannot be run smoothly.

The World as Rules

Sooner or later the Dungeon Master will need to make a ruling. These rulings are either based on a set of rules or are made up on the spot. Regardless, they serve to create the internal consistency and rules for the world the story teller is making. Even without the story teller saying a single word the rules will say certain things about the world as well as build a certain vision. They can also tell a story of their own (a very simple example is that if your players see a wizard casting a certain spell, they can determine the minimum level of the spell caster based on the spell cast).

Storytelling and Rules Together

The line between the two is blurry or non-existent. Rules describe the world. The description the Dungeon Master gives describes the world. However, each one tends to require a slightly different mindset.

I could probably go on for a long while about the importance of these two ideas and how they interact. However, I'm going to try to keep to the heart of the topic. For the best game, both schools of thought should be considered. They should support one another in order to create a richer experience and world for the players. It is something we instinctively do since just about any story follows its own internal consistency. The difference is that in table top role-playing games the actors are acting on their own accord and not purely written by the mind of the author.

Summary in a Single Sentence

World building in tabletop role-playing games can be thought of at least two ways (the description and story that builds the game is one way while the rules that run under the game and form the framework for the limits the players act within is another) and they should be considered.  

Dungeon Master: Villain Sator Ivertillion

I thought it was time I'd revisit the material I wrote for creating villains. In this case, I am going to outline one particular example in the hopes that someone somewhere will find it useful. Feel free to change any part as needed. The below rules will assume Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, though it should be reasonably easy to convert it over to any other system. 

Stats

Level 5 Wizard

Ability	Score
Strength	10
Dexterity	10
Constitution	9
Intelligence	11
Wisdom	10
Charisma	18

Hit points: 17 (using averages)

Skills: Arcana, Insight, Deception, Persuasion

Proficiency Bonus: +3

Armor Class: 10 without mage armor, 13 with mage armor

The above ensure though he is a level 5, the spell save DC for his spells is 11. This gives even a level 2 player a chance to survive a spell, though it is still an incredibly deadly situation to be in for the level 2 party. His low health also makes it possible to kill for a low level party, especially when surprise is gained as well.

In general he should be run as a diplomatic and scheming character.

Appearance

He is a handsome man of average height. Due to his background, he tends to wear high quality clothes. He is young with no gray in his hair. When tired he cannot hide it from his appearance.

Background

Unremarkable in basically every way except his appearance and silver tongue, the best way to describe Sator's abilities is average. Coming from money, magic was taught to him from a young. While he was able to learn a great deal to the hard work and time he put into learning magic, he was never considered talented. In general, he is not a perfectionist and prefers to complete what he started or achieve what he is after instead. This philosophy runs through all his actions from his study of magic (even as a young student, he preferred to learn a spell and move onto another one instead of mastering it) to his personal endeavors.

As a child he was frequently sick. Even though he grew stronger with age, he still gets sick more often than the average person and doesn't have the same physical endurance. He is painfully aware of this fact and has learned how to cover up this weakness.

Despite being born to a rich family, he is fairly good with money. This is mostly attributed to his ability to talk his way into more advantageous situations that others could not. He also understands failure is an option and is quite used to his plans failing, though when aggregating his endeavors he comes out ahead. When things aren't going his way or his plan is failing, he is not against making changes or abandoning the plan altogether.

Why Is He a Villain?

This kind of villain should be hostile to the players' intentions simply due to circumstance. For this reason I have left out some parts of his personality in order to allow the Dungeon Master to pick the opposite of the player characters (if the players are lawful, he can be chaotic in order to act against them). This also means he can be made into a potential ally if the players find a way that can benefit both parties.

Playing Him

When used against a lower level party, this kind of villain can still pose a major when played straight and predictable. Due to his resources and skills he will outmatch the players. He should also be played as charming and adaptive to the situation if needed. He should be able to cause serious grief to the players in the diplomatic arena with his ability to win the approval of those he speaks to (players included). Sator does not lie often though he is very good at it and prefers the half-truth method of lying.

His average intelligence and wisdom can be played one of major two ways. At times he can be painfully predictable but at the same time his ideas will not be a bad one (though it won't be genius either). He is also capable of extremes where he can have completely flawed ideas and other times where he can have genius ideas. His ability to consistently have the full range of quality ideas (even though there will be more painfully average ideas than genius ones) should help him be less predictable.

He does not like combat and tries to avoid conflict by using his speaking skills. However, he will defend himself if needed while looking for ways to preserve his own life and his goal. Deciding whether he values his own life or his goal more should be made on a case by case basis by the Dungeon Master.

Conclusion

There he is. Feel free to change him in any way to make him better fit into your game. If there is anything that needs clarification, feel free to leave a comment. As always, I hope this helps.

Dungeon Master: Achieving a Balanced Party

In the games I typically end up running, the classic fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard party tends to be the exception, not the rule. However, party composition plays an incredibly important role in determining what the characters are capable of facing. In this vein, I hope to share of the ideas I've accumulated. Some of these will seem like common sense, but I hope they will help. Most of the word count of this piece will focus on the situation where party composition is simply thrown to the wind.

Substituting Similar Classes

If you don't want the same old party every time, substituting similar classes is an easy way to go. Barbarians can replace the fighter fairly easily. A sorcerer can fill in for a wizard. The issue is that while this kind of substitution is easy to do and account for, it doesn't make for the most original party.

Substituting Classes Based on Ability

I've seen wizard focused on utility spells substitute for a rogue. Of course, there were some implications for this substitute that would not be present for a rogue such as spell slots, but at the same time it worked reasonably well. There are also some situations where multiple different characters can collectively substitute for a class. You could try to replace the wizard from the party with a combination of a cleric and an Eldritch Knight in order to fill in the utility portion of that role. Generally, while this kind of substitution works quite well, it isn't a perfect substitution. Instead, you try to cover the most important portions of the class (protection against magic and utility for the wizard example) and give up portions that you can afford to give up (damage spells can be substituted by the Eldritch Knight weapon damage).

Forget Balance

The last general approach for the balancing party problem is to simply not to worry about it. The best way to accomplish this is heavily dependent on the kind of game being run (more so than the above methods). If there are no magic creatures to face the wizard's protection spells end up being redundant. In this kind of case, it is up to the Dungeon Master to somehow let the player's know the kind of game being run so that they can make sure to form a party that won't get horribly decimated. At the same time, the problem can be thrown on the other side of the DM screen. In this case, if the players want to have no cleric then maybe they need to have some kind of house rules to increase the amount of healing they can do (as a quick aside, this can be easily done by increasing the amount of healing from the second wind feature or by making the healer feat useful past level 1).

The most common issues I have seen involves healing and curing effects. If a party has no cleric, a medusa is absolutely terrifying since there isn't a good way to un-petrify characters. To get around this we either need changes in lore (killing the medusa might undo the effects or smearing the medusa's blood might as well), potions or some other way of gaining the ability.

Example

One of the situations I encountered involved a game of the newest version of D&D (5^th edition, in case you are looking at this way in the future) where the entire 4 man party was composed of fighters. It was 1 champion and 3 battle masters, each with a different build. Since the world was very low magic, this actually managed to work just fine without any changes. The players would rotate the lines when the front line got hurt enough and as a result could spread out the damage. They also had their hit dice and second wind for healing. They could have more staying power by increasing the healing from second wind or by making the healer feat worth using (maybe 1d6 more per 2 levels).

Conclusion

There we have it. Like I said, most of this stuff is probably common sense but I hope writing it down like this helps at least one person out there. In particular, I want to stress how much the definition of a “balanced party” depends on the campaign itself. As usual, feel free to comment on anything related to this topic.

Dungeons & Dragons: Princes of the Apocalypse Early Review

Pros:

• 255 pages long (longest adventure yet)
• Grants the Dungeon Master a lot of freedom
• Quite a few nice dungeons
• Lots of full colour art (as we have come to expect of this edition)
• New, seemingly balanced spells
• New, seemingly balanced races

Cons:

• No combat grid resources included
• Requires significant Dungeon Master preparation
• No PDF*

* Denotes nitpicking.

Front cover of the new Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Princes of the Apocalypse .

Introduction

Princes of the Apocalypse is an epic scale adventure set to be released on April 7^th, 2015. This time, we see that elemental forces have been chosen over the dragons seen in the Tiamat focused adventure before it. As part of my review, I will go over the adventure itself as well as the general quality of the book, the free materials available as well as what I felt was missing (to help my fellow Dungeon Master's prepare). I've had a chance to run part of the adventure and will update this review after I finish it. 

The Adventure

New Spells and Classes

The first thing I noticed about this adventure was the new races and spells (partially because the free material was released before I got a hold of a copy). This is something completely different than the previous adventures and at first had me a little worried since there were already some spells in the core game that I had issues with. Surprisingly, there aren't any spells I have an issue with at first glance (you can be sure I will update if this changes). The races in general also seem to be in line with the rest currently published. If you are curious what they look like, they are on the Wizards of the Coast website for free.

New Monsters

There are a few new monsters in this adventure. In general they seem to fit quite well into the current collection of monsters we have from the basic rules and Monster Manual. They also cover a wide range of levels and tend to focus more on the lower levels, just like the current monsters (the distribution is a little more spread out then the Monster Manual, though).

What You Need to Play

If you don't have any of the core books there is a problem as the adventure references creatures that are only available in the Monster Manual. Personally, this is a bit of a disappointment after the previous adventures that didn't require other books to run.

Note: After the release of the supplement and using the basic rules it is still possible to run the adventure.

The Adventure Itself

The adventure is meant to take players from level 1 to level 15. To jump into the real meat of the adventure you will need at least a level 3 party but there are also introduction adventures that can be used to bring the players up to 3^rd level. Though I haven't run the entire adventure yet, I have run some of the side treks and introduction adventures and generally found them to be quite enjoyable (they also seem pretty easy to drop into other campaigns).

In general, the adventure takes the form of a series of Dungeon Crawls. Coloured maps for the areas are provided (though there are no battle maps) as expected. However, there is quite a bit of space devoted to characters. Out of the 255 pages only about 92 or so are dedicated to the dungeons that form the core of the adventure. The remaining chapters cover a bunch of different topics including new monsters, new races, new spells and new items. There are also quite a few pages dedicated to characters, factions and the general area (such as the town and country side) that the adventure takes place in. This gave me the impression that I was reading more than a simple Dungeon Crawl and is generally appreciated. Interestingly, there is also a small section with guidelines for converting the adventure over to settings such as Dragon Lance, Dark Sun and Grey Hawk (having spent time in these settings before, this is appreciated even if the section isn't very long).

The way the adventure is written does require some work on the part of the Dungeon Master to make this adventure work and to fill in some of the holes (these holes usually have to do with character interactions that aren't covered, but luckily characters are described in the adventure). My biggest complaint would have to come from the work needed to make it usable with grids as it is given (this seems to be a running pattern). In general I have my own tiles I can use, but it is more difficult for new players to run grid combat without giving them some kind of resources.

The locations and encounter design is fairly varied from what I saw (I guess the different elements allow this to happen quite easily). There are opportunities written in for different approaches to the same problem and lots of wiggle room for the Dungeon Master to add their own flourishes and touches. In general, I seem to recall being less confused reading this adventure than The Rise of Tiamat (though that may also be my selective memory kicking in, I'm pretty sure it isn't judging by the length of the “Other Stuff” section).

I don't generally like talking about the plot of an adventure since it comes down to personal taste. However, the overall plot of this adventure is fairly wide in scope and allows interaction with many different characters. If you liked the previous adventures in this editions run, you will probably like this one. I generally felt it was a solid adventure, though at the big picture level it wasn't the most original one I ever played through. Still, it had some neat flourishes in terms of certain characters and certain events that take place during the adventure that made it feel quite varied to me.

The Art and Book Build Quality

The art through the book is fairly decent. I personally prefer the art style used on the cover of The Rise of Tiamat, but this one isn't terrible either. There is also some art that plays more to my tastes (the more sketch/painting type of art on the cover of The Rise of Tiamat I mentioned previously).

The book itself is nicely bounded and pages are reasonable quality. The pages are the same type used in the Monster Manual and other core books instead of the thicker ones used in The Rise of Tiamat. They didn't ripple the same way my Dungeon Master's Guide did, though if slightly warped pages are a concern you should still look for them in the book before you buy it.

The overall layout of the book, from the name on the spine to the layout of pages, follows the rest of the books released so far (it lacks the early core book fake torn corners just like the “Dungeon Master's Guide”).

Price

This is the costliest adventure Wizards of the Coast has put out for this edition so far at $50 the States and $58 in Canada. However, as usual, most places have the book at a lower price. The cost is offset by this being the longest adventure released so far in this edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Doing a quick search, it is possible to find this book at around $33 ($37 at Chapters was the lowest I could find for the Canadians in the audience).

What I felt was Missing

I also have to give my customary lack of PDF complaint. I didn't really expect there to be one, but at the same time having a PDF copy makes searching and flipping easier.

If you plan to run the combat on a grid, you will have to figure it out yourself. There are no grids provided with the adventure or in the online materials (as of this piece being published).

Free Stuff

Wizards of the Coast were nice enough to provide some material for free through their website. You can check it out here (if you are interested in this adventure, I do recommend looking at the free material provided to help make your choice).

Summary

In general, I think this is a generally solid adventure. It seems to be at the consistent level of quality Wizards of the Coast has been at since the start of this edition. Unlike other adventures so far, this adventure includes new races and spells as well as the usual new magic items and monsters. However, this adventure is quite a bit bigger in terms of page count compared to the earlier adventures in this edition and the price tag tends to reflect this. It is still missing a PDF copy and doesn't include resources for grid combat, though this isn't any different from the previous adventures in this edition. If you liked the previous adventures in this edition, you will probably get enjoyment out of this one.

Other Stuff

• The free Player's Companion PDF is here. It contains the new races and spells.
• The “Whirlwind” spell wording confused me at first.

Update: The adventure played out as I expected. In general the design of the locations meant that there were good twists that kept the combat interesting. As expected, I also had to do quite a bit of preparation in regards to the character interaction. If you are the kind of Dungeon Master that is good at making things up on the fly, this won't be that big of an issue. My major complaint in terms of the adventure design comes from the ending which I generally felt wasn't as strong as  The Rise of Tiamat without my intervention. 

Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.