Dungeon Master: Ending Campaigns

Beginnings are hard, but so are endings. As a Dungeon Master, you want the campaign to end well, your players to be happy and for campaign stories to be told for years to come. However, they can be extremely tricky. Will you ever come back to those characters again? What do the players want their characters to do after? Do they want a slow ending with a wind-down and time to look back on their campaign fondly, or end on the high of an epic situation? With that in mind, I hope to share some of my experience and hope it helps someone out there.

Slow or Quick Burn Ending?

An important choice to make is between a slow or quick burn ending. A slow burn allows reflection, to think about where things started from and where they are now, and maybe tie up some loose threads. Some people really like this kind of thing. If you do, it really helps to show the direct results of player's actions. Maybe show a city that was destroyed at the start of your campaign now rebuilt, though not yet achieving the same grandeur. It can also be a time to show the results of some less than good actions and the lasting consequences. Not everything that happens immediately after will be because of the players, but having a good portion of it helps. I also find that it tends to be what players want in their ending. If you go too far away from that, it starts feeling more like setup for another campaign instead of closure for this one. You also don't want to turn it into a lecture and instead keep your players acting through the ending. Even for people who like a slower ending, there is such a thing as too slow and too long. You want to address the important details but not to waste time.

There is also the far rougher approach of ending things almost right after the climax. Leave the details of recovery and what the player characters do up to the imaginations of the players. Instead, you might do some minor thread tying but very little. If the climax happened this session, the rest of the campaign is finished this session as well. The good thing about this is that it wraps things up on a high. This, of course, also depends on how well received the climax of the campaign was. If the response was lukewarm or worse, it might be a good idea to go for a slower burn, particularly if your players have no strong opinion one way or the other. I say might because it could also just make things worse. The idea is to not do too much more than you have to when ending quickly. Let the story told until now speak for itself. Being in the dark can be a good thing.

Beware Unmet Player Ideas

Chances are that your players have ideas of where they want things to go after they stop playing. Neatly summarizing that kind of stuff without their involvement often ends badly because it's about their characters. They don't want you to tell them about what their characters did. They want to tell you what they would try to do and you to put obstacles in their way. However, I find that this kind of collaborative storytelling is harder at the end of a campaign because of the scale involved. A campaign's path is composed of many checks, events and decisions. Trying to work with this at a higher level has a way of summarizing details. However, your players care about details, particularly where their characters are concerned. They know them better than anyone. Something that might sound fine to you might go completely against what their character would do in their hands. It might also seem insignificant in scale, but to a player that spent months or years in their character's head, it can be jarring to say the least. Campaign epilogues are not an easy thing on the Dungeon Master side.

The Next One

Will the same characters ever come back? It can be quite awkward to backtrack on previous epilogue explanations of what happens next because you didn't expect that there would be another campaign. It can also be an unintentional shot in the foot to your next campaign if you have to start plotting around your epilogue, particularly if you didn't give it too much thought ahead of time. If you feel that there might be more or aren't sure, it might be a good idea to just wrap things up quicker and not to focus too deeply into specifics that occur after. That way, players can imagine where things go from there if there is never another session, and the Dungeon Master has a far easier time if the characters ever return. Of course, the players will go after what they wanted for their ideal ending but in this way collaborative storytelling is maintained instead of the Dungeon Master deciding the ending. You may also decide to make your next campaign take place in the same world and those old player characters may make appearances (this is also a matter of taste as some players love it and some completely hate it). Best to ask permission first to avoid difficulties if you decide to do so. You can, and in fact I prefer to when using player characters, ask your player about what their player would have done and said in that situation.

Dungeon Master: Weird Narratives

Sometimes, we Dungeon Masters like to shake things up a little bit. You know, do something we haven't done before. Unleash some chaos. Subvert rules and expectations we usually adhere to. These kinds of desires can lead to very entertaining and fresh sessions. However, there are also some difficulties with this approach. I hope to address some of them and hopefully make things a little easier for someone out there in the process.

What's a Weird Narrative?

For my purposes and for this article (blog post, whatever you want to call it), what I mean is a type of narrative that does not follow the typical rules (could be mechanical or could be thematic, such as good always wins), methods, ideas, or take place in a typical setting (a setting is influenced by the previous things I mentioned but might not be thought of the same way) that the players are used to. Based on that definition, the real meaning could vary largely from group to group. Since expectations also change over time, the same kind of narrative could be "weird" if enough time has passed. If you haven't seen it for a 5 years, it could be weird to you and a pleasant surprise.

The Start

When your players are first thrown into a weird narrative, a couple of things can happen. New players tend to be cautious from my experience because they don't know what to expect. They often don't even have a firm grasp on the rules so are often willing to go along with whatever comes. However, more experienced players have an idea in their heads of what the session will be like. This can be a factor when you have experienced players join your in-progress campaign, but it can be far worse when the basic assumptions they have are invalid and they don't know it.

It might be a good idea to warn your players coming into it that things will be different. You can also do this in less direct ways through the game itself. Having an assumption shown to be false right away makes it just as obvious but sometimes doing it in-game can really enhance the experience. On the narrative side though, your players might end up freezing if they don't know what to do. If you have some players that will just make a decision and roll with it, it's not a problem. Otherwise, the players will need at least a little bit of knowledge. I'd also argue that giving your players some knowledge tends to work better. This is because often times the characters your players will be playing will be familiar with the weirdness even though your players won't be (unless your players got pulled into the world D&D cartoon style).

Grasping the Rules

When you play around with non-standard narratives, either through rules/world reasons or through story telling itself, your players end up being in the dark on a large variety of subjects. This is good. Some fumbling around in the dark can make for a fun experience. However, I'd say you can't keep that state going on forever. To do so would be to try to violate cause and effect. As your players take actions and see their results, they will get a sense of how things work and start to figure things out. This won't give them 100% clarity, but it does make it no longer completely unknown.

Discovery

I find that a large part of the fun in these kinds of cases is the discovery. How do things work? What is the relationship between those 2 characters? Why are things as they are? What makes the narrative weird is that they probably don't know what to expect. It's not just a subversion, where they expect one thing and get another. It's different from normal so they don't quite know what to expect. However, the discovery has to come. The goal is not to try and hold of the players understanding of the rules or to keep the players away from the discovery. It's to make it impactful and earned when it does come. It also doesn't have to be, and usually isn't, a single discovery. A weird narrative tends to have many different twists and turns.

Don't Hold Things Back for the Sake of Holding Them Back and Don't Let It Become Pure Randomness

Always a Dash

Most campaigns I've played in have at least one part where the players can't be sure about which option leads to the best outcome. This is a good thing. Being completely predictable isn't a good thing. Likewise, being completely unpredictable isn't a good thing either since it leads to a feeling that choices don't matter. It's still not to enough of an extent to make it a weird narrative, since weird narratives rely on the weirdness and on the players being in the dark (it's almost a mild confusion). However, it is a somewhat similar idea. It's based on what the players are used to and novelty is part of the reason for them.

An Example

The story of Planescape: Torment takes place in a rather odd setting (most Planescape fans would agree) and features a story I'd argue is quite different from the norm. However, it is governed by rules and as you go through the story, you discover things. The rules aren't continuously broken. There is a consistent narrative. Of course, if you've been playing in that setting for a while, it will no longer feel weird to you.

Dungeon Master: Ambushes

There are many tactical situations players can find themselves in. An iconic classic is the ambush. It mixes things up and provides the opportunity to safely remove a threat, to have a chance to win in a situation where otherwise there'd be no hope, or to put real fear into your players. However, it's a careful balancing act that is easy to mess up. A challenging ambush against your players could end up as an embarrassing defeat for the players. Having been on every end of an ambush I can think of, I hope my insights will provide some use to someone out there.

A Player Ambush

A Weak Enemy

An ambush against a weak enemy, either due to numbers or the monsters themselves, only makes things even easier. This typically results in an even less climactic game and in many cases makes players wonder why they even bothered. The more cinematic your campaign is, the more that this is probably true. However, there are exceptions. The most common one is if your players like dungeon delving. A weak and easy encounter can still provide tension in this case because your players are expecting a long war of attrition. The tension then doesn't come from the encounter itself but from the possibility of being starved of valuable resources that they'll need later. I've also seen it used for great effect for the story. Wait, this is the big bad's elite force? Something seems wrong. And then the trap is sprung or the complication is found. It can also be used to say something about the enemy and for the players to say something about themselves.

A Well Matched Enemy

Players look for opportunities for their characters to succeed. They typically want to do what they can to avoid the death of their character. Naturally, ambushes against a well matched enemy are one way to increase odds of survival. There is still room for things to go sideways, but if the players earned their advantage there is nothing wrong with giving it to them. Like the previous example, there is the attrition angle to add tension. However, things could also change from being a situation where the entire party is at risk of death to where one or two players might die. However, for a player that doesn't want to be one of the “lucky” ones, that could be more than enough to make things tense.

Overwhelming Odds

One of the coolest situation an ambush can bring is the part where overwhelming odds become conquerable. However, it is difficult to get right. The encounter can be tough but not hard enough to really give the massive feeling of accomplishment at the end. It can also be truly overwhelming but remain so even with an ambush in place. This may not necessarily be a problem, if the objective is specific and not to simply kill the entire enemy force. However, this still provides a similar problem. How do you make the objective super difficult to complete normally, but possible with an ambush? There is also a criticism that I think is quite fair. Isn't this a bit railroad-y? I mean, I may be assuming the correct way to approach the encounter.

If the only way to get past the encounter is an ambush, I would agree. However, if an ambush is one of many possible routes, each with their own dangers, things look far better. Of course, some ideas may need to be hinted and seeded to give your players somewhere to start. And if they arrive somewhere other than you envisioned from those seeds, even better. No railroad there.

A classic situation is a large group of enemies. These enemies can be dropped in a single not lucky hit. However, their sheer number makes them difficult to fight. In the case of an ambush and a surprise round (assuming 5^th edition D&D rules), you can reasonably estimate how much will be left afterwards. This essentially means that the encounter we are designing is the one after the surprise round, but the free hits can make thing seem more impressive when not overused. This might not be enough to make things even. Only by using the environment or some other factor do things finally fall in line. The issue is that unlucky rolls leaving more enemies than expected after the surprise round will mean the encounter remains impossible. 

A Monster Ambush

Weak Monsters Strike

Surprise is a powerful tool. A weak enemy could be made formidably or at least worrying for a party through this technique. Imagine a party of level ones going through a forest. One wolf isn't much of a threat. However, if it has the chance to dart out of the trees and strike a target of its choice before being noticed, it becomes a threat. Not to the party, but to an unlucky PC who doesn't want to die. This can be further expanded by using non-standard tactics.

The most classic encounter to mix things up is the stealth attack encounter. Some creature coming out of the unseen shadows and attacking a player before retreating back to where it can plot its next move. With this advantage of stealth to return to, it can continue being difficult to fight. However, some creativity (readying an action for when it flies into the light of the torches or to light torches and throw them into the darkness to leave no room to hide) makes things no longer a challenge.

Formidable Enemies Strike

Giving a surprise round to a group of well-matched enemies has the potential to go very badly for the PCs. Some might die or be dropped before even having time to react. We DMs just live with this fact for our NPCs, but players often don't like it. After that, they then need to find some way to pull a win or at the very least avoid a loss. It isn't a good situation to be in.

Having said that, it is manageable. The party just needs some way to bring things back in line. It could be the use of an item, it could be clever terrain use, it could even be the assassination of the leader. It could also be the not very honorable but practical retreat. However, throwing them into a situation like this without a way to get out can rub players the wrong way. The exception is if players did something dumb. If it's their fault and a stupid decision in the beginning, or they knew what they were possibly getting into, it tends to go over better. However, it probably shouldn't be an instant total party kill if we want things to be fun. There should be a risky escape possibility or at the very least grant them one if they think of something clever.

Ambushed by Overwhelming Odds

I can't remember the last time I've seen this situation. Maybe this could work if your players did something stupid and they are in a campaign where death doesn't mean as much (revenant campaigns rock). It might also work in very specific cases. If killing the necromancer makes all their skeletons crumble, it could work. However, this situation's difficulty is already changed due to this condition so I'd argue it isn't overwhelming odds. However, generally I'd say avoid this kind of thing. If you are even thinking of this one, you should have a good reason and be cautious. The already overwhelming odds just become more so  when they also have the element of surprise. 

Player: Be Ready for Death

If you play tabletop role-playing games for long enough, you'll eventually have a character die. It could be that the rule system has character death as a feature, the Dungeon Master is out for blood, or your dice decided to hate you that day. Regardless, as players we still have choices on how to deal with it. I've talked about this topic on the Dungeon Master side so I thought I should be thorough and look at the player side too.

Be Ready

This is really more advice for newer players, but it still stands. Be prepared going into the game that your character could die. As a player, you are there to experience a story through your character. Even if you are there for the dungeon crawling, you will probably come back with at least one story you like to tell people. Part of that experience is having the world, or at least part of it, against you. Risk is part of the game but also part of the fun. It makes those close calls meaningful. However, when death does strike, you have to accept it and get on with the game. Your Dungeon Master might let you come back or be revived or something. Even if your character doesn't come back, there is still a story to experience and you don't want to make things less fun for your fellow players. Your death could very well add something to the experience.

Investment

Part of what makes a character death painful is the investment. We put time into coming up with our characters, their mannerisms, their motivations, their actions and everything else we need over the course of the game. However, if you know going into a game that death will be extremely common, you might want to think twice about investing a couple of hours coming up with a backstory. Many of the games I played like that, the Dungeon Master specifically warned us a head of time not to get too attached to our characters and not to bother writing short stories about them. These kinds of expectations often happen. How can you expect your players to spend hours making their backstory if they won't last 30 minutes? If your Dungeon Master makes it hard to die permanently though, don't be too surprised if they also expect you to take more care in your character's background. This might not be the case though, so you might need to ask them point blank (though they might like it if you do, they might not expect it). Instead, you might come up with a large part of it as the game goes along or other things might be more important.

Think Ahead

Kind of like the earlier “Be Ready” section, a piece of advice that I think is quite good is to think about your next character a little bit. One of the issues that come up due to character death is that the story can get muddled on the player's side of the screen. If this bothers you, you can tie your next character to either your previous character's history/death or even to another character's (this can be quite fun, though you might want to ask the other player for permission so you don't step on their toes). Since the new characters are related, it ends up building on the story of the previous character.

You don't want to do this every time, though. Sometimes, the campaign could really use that one character death that brings home the costs of what's going on or just some fresh blood. It also can seem way too convenient if characters die very frequently and you use the same technique every time. People only have so many cousins and brothers who want revenge. Think of this idea more like a consideration or a possibility and less like a general piece of advice.

Wanting a Change

Sometimes players plan out their character deaths. It's that classic situation of a player who doesn't like their character anymore and wants a new one. In that case, it's often great all around. There gets to be a character death that makes things seem more dangerous and the player gets a new character. Just like the earlier case, you probably don't want to overuse this. There is the occasional person who likes playing the redshirt and has fun with a character that rarely lasts the whole session. If that's not what you or your Dungeon Master wants though, remember it's not the only option. It could also make player death feel too scripted and odd in a campaign where player death isn't very common, and resurrection magic is a trip to your local abbey away.

All That Starts

Some stories run longer than others. Some characters have stories that are shorter than others. But if you have a story you remember fondly or makes you want to go play D&D or whatever system you like, you are doing it right. Sometimes character deaths are one of them.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tales from the Yawning Portal Late Review

Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.

A bit late to the party, as usual, but without much further ado, here is my Tales of the Yawning Portal review. At the time of writing this, I've read through the book and have run The Sunless Citadel.

Pros:

• Lots of maps for dungeon delving
• Production values we've come to expect for this edition (including art)
• 7 adventures/dungeons with a nice spread of levels

Could Go Either Way:

• It's all reprints and no new material (bonus if you like the originals, like the new version of D&D and don't want to convert them yourself)
• Very dungeon delve heavy (if you like that it's great, if you like more narrative based stuff you won't be happy)
• No new player creation stuff. It's all about the dungeons and adventure (anyone who read my previous reviews knows that's how I like it)!
• Bundle of older D&D adventures updated to newer version (for new players who are interested in some of the older stuff this could be great but it makes it a far harder sell to the veterans)
• Adventures are kind of release date clustered (if you just want good dungeons, you won't care)
• Maps can shift styles from adventure to adventure due to the massive year gaps between them (if you like consistency, it's a con but if you like seeing different styles, it's a pro)

Cons:

• The adventures included are quite disconnected. Connecting them together requires some serious work and creativity and still will probably end up feeling episodic. Not sure I'd end a campaign with Tomb of Horrors either.
• No PDF*

* Denotes nitpicking.

Introduction

It's obvious D&D has a history. It's been around a while and from modern role-playing games to some of the strange criticisms modern games sometimes receive, D&D has left its mark. Part of that history is the large pile of D&D modules created over the years. It's not so surprising then, at least to me, that sooner or later we'd get re-releases of some old adventures for the new version of D&D. Tales from the Yawning Portal is a collection of 7 previously released adventures, converted to the 5^th edition rules, that explores some of that history.

The Adventure

New Old Monsters

Well, I guess they aren't really new monsters since they are from adventures previously released. Still, there are a few new ones for this edition. My favourite is probably the vampiric mist. However, the list isn't as big as it would first appear. Some of them, such as the spell casters, are copied exactly from Volo's Guide to Monsters. They also only take up about 18 pages so it's clearly not the main draw. On one hand it's convenient and nice not to need to buy Volo's Guide as well but it does bring down the useful page count down a little bit.

What You Need to Play

You'll need the core books. They are still making no effort to reference the SRD or the basic rules. Still, it looks like you can mostly get away with them if you really need to and if you know what you are doing when creating your own monsters. Still a bit disappointing though. Would've been a nice feature to keep in this edition.

The Adventures Themselves

Well, it's not just one adventure this time. We've got 7 of them. Naturally, since the adventures included aren't originally from the same edition or time period it makes things a bit difficult to talk about. Still, let's give it a shot.

There is a lot of dungeon delving here. Dead in Thay, in particular, is a massive monster dungeon. The structure of the adventures is to give some background and then define the dungeon for the adventure. If you love dungeon delving, and a lot of adventures seemed to be dungeon delves back in the day, you'll probably like this. There are also a lot of maps and encounters that naturally come with a lot of dungeon delving. Such things make for good inspiration. However, if you wanted some variety you might be disappointed. If you are a veteran player and you like the idea of running these adventures for D&D 5^th edition without having to do a conversion yourself, this might be exactly what the doctor ordered. Likewise, if you are new Dungeon Master and wanted to see/run some adventures from D&D history, it'll be right up your alley. If the idea of re-released adventures is one you outright hate, there isn't much I can say or can be done to change your mind.

The adventures cover a wide range of levels and can flow from one to another if needed. That is in theory, at least. I would be hesitant in running such dungeon delving heavy adventures back to back unless your players really like that kind of thing. I'd also be hesitant in ending a campaign with Tomb of Horrors. Whenever I saw it played, it was usually reworked to allow some kind of respawn mechanic (players were avatars of gods, there was some kind of cloning machine, the players weren't interested in role-playing their characters and just wanted to have the badge of finishing the tomb, etc.).

All of that said, it would be pretty easy to take a hand full of adventures from here and use them to create a campaign. 2-3 adventures could be combined into a sort of mini-campaign and padded out with more story elements and origin work. I like quite a few things from the dungeons presented here. Some of them are plot hooks, some of them are traps, some of them are encounters, but in general there is quite a lot here that can be used, retooled, or just plain lifted if you don't plan to run it. The number of maps makes it quite easy to retool for your own person use. Some are easier than others, though. Dead in Thay has such a large dungeon that parts can be recycled quite easily, but others would need to be sectioned off. This kind of sectioning off often makes it difficult to show your players a map, if you like doing it that way. If you make your players sketch their own maps, it isn't a problem. 

The selection of adventures is interesting. It's quite dungeon delve heavy, as I mentioned earlier, but there are 2 other potential problems. Dead in Thay came out quite recently so a newer player might have already tried to run it using the now outdated D&D Next playtest rules. Around that time there was also a D&D Next conversion in an issue of Dungeon Magazine for Tomb of Horrors (I want to say #213). If you've already got those recently, it's even harder to give a good argument for a newer version. This is compounded by the closeness of D&D Next compared to D&D 5e, especially in the case of later versions of D&D Next, making conversions pretty easy. The balance might be slightly different, but it does affect the value of the book when 2 of the adventures are less appealing.

What I've said so far may have come out more negative than I intended. I like classic adventures and I enjoyed getting the chance to read some old adventures updated to the rules system I'm more familiar with. However, the heavy dungeon delving and disconnect makes it one of those things that you'll either love or hate. If you like shorter games that can be finished in a few sessions, these kinds of smaller adventures may be exactly what you needed as well. All of this makes it hard to point at something and say “this is great”. I almost need to do 7 reviews. Instead it's a bunch of things that can go either way.

The Art and Book Build Quality

The build quality is more of the same we have come to expect. Some wavy pages may still be found but the binding seemed good and the page layout and design is inline with the rest. I like the cover art, though it still doesn't dethrone Rise of Tiamat as my favourite cover art. Luckily you can see some examples of the art and make a call yourself on the Wizards of the Coast website.

Price

It's the same list price we've gotten used to at 49.95 USD. If you are Canadian it's still 63.95 CAD. As always, you can find it for cheaper if you look online at the right places. Obviously this won't support your local games store. Make the choice that works for you.

What I felt was Missing

Besides what I already mentioned, there is the PDF thing I keep mentioning every time and have to continue to do so. These adventures are provided as PDFs already by Wizards of the Coast so a compilation of them would've been nice. It would have been really nice for completion's sake and for historical curiosity to include the original versions of the adventures too. Sure, they'd be unplayable using 5^th edition rules but there were some conversion notes given earlier in the edition. It would also help the value for some people. Not too surprised they didn't do it though since it would probably appeal to only a small part of the community, and be unusable without getting the old rules for most.

The publishing date spread is interesting. We have 4 adventures between 1978 and 1981 and then 2 from 2000 and an odd man out published in 2014. That's a pretty interesting 20 year gap. I would have been curious to see how they would have done with a 4^th edition adventure. The rules and economy of actions for players were so different it might have been more like a rewrite than a conversion. For those you liked that edition, it could also serve as an example of how to convert them over, assuming it turned out well.

With the page count being 248, I think they could have stuffed another short adventure or two from D&D history in here. Just a little more value would have helped make the book more appealing I think and closer to a must-buy.

Free Stuff

Some material is provided for free on the Wizards of the Coast website and can be found here. Compared to previous releases, it's not much. I don't think that's so unexpected since the book is conversions of modules they still sell on D&D Classics.

Summary

This is a hard one to talk about for me. The disconnected nature of the adventures makes it, for me, a book I'd far more likely use for parts and to pick and choose a small subset. Running all of them in a row would be tough unless your group really likes dungeon delving. Tomb of Horrors also has a risk of not going over well as a campaign finisher. On the other hand, if you are a newer player to D&D and want to see some of the older adventures from before your time, it could look tempting. It's a similar situation if you fondly remember these adventures and don't want to have to convert them yourself. However, it's hard for me to recommend it ahead of some of the other stuff we've already had in this edition. It's not a bad book, especially if a bunch of smaller adventures from D&D history appeal to you, but I don't think the value is as good as some other adventures we've had. It's also very dependent on the kind of game you like. Still, I liked the chance to get an updated look at these adventures since I had no prior experience with 4 out of 7 of them. If anyone reading this has questions, feel free to ask.

Dungeon Master: Owning Property

There are many different kinds of rewards at the disposal of the Dungeon Master. Money and items are the ones typically thought of. However, player owned property is another way to reward players. They are also something players could spend their rewards on. Expanding and repairing costs money. This kind of versatility gives them the potential to be very interesting for players. However, it also makes it harder on the Dungeon Master, can end up less effective than desired or cause unforeseen problems. 

Purpose

I've found property works best if there is a reason behind its inclusion. Try giving your party that love nothing else but raiding tombs ownership over a tavern and see how often they'll use it. Like all rewards, property really only work if your players actually want it.

Of course, there are other reasons to give your players property. At the start of the game, a property can be a great source of resources. If your players start off as nobles who each have lands, collect taxes, and have castles, the scope and kinds of issues they'll engage in will be different. Even the simple inn can be a great source of resources. Any business that earns money helps provide a way for players to finance some of their more complicated adventures.

As a Resource

I've lightly already touched upon the idea of property as a resource. Typically, it generates money. Money can be spent on things such as ladders, chisels, and enough gunpowder (or similar substance that goes boom) to blow open a tomb. However, there are often other things that come along with them. If you have a castle, you'll probably have guards too. Those guards present an incredibly potent resource when used in the right way.

Beyond their game mechanics as well, they provide a resource for role-playing. Having something that anchors your character to the world generally helps with role-playing. It provides a motivation, and also somewhere to return to when everything is over. Sometimes, that “beyond the end of the adventure” can be one of the hardest things to role-play. Thinking about where the property is located also helps. Some will have employees, suppliers or similarly related people. All of these are potential story ideas or elements for a character's background. You also can't underestimate the usefulness of connections, such as a supplier of wine and food.

Liabilities

Coming along with property are responsibilities. These add a liability side of things. You don't want to make the property nothing but a liability or the players will just try to pawn it off. You can't really blame them for that either. However, castles generally need castle guards to prevent them from being attacked or looted. They also need staff to keep it in decent repair and to keep it clean. This means a player could start off with an amazing amount of financial wealth for a level 1 character, but be able spend very little of it because it's almost all tied up. As well, buildings are typically hard to move. This means that if there is some kind of war drawing closer to their property, a player may feel far more of a personal connection to the conflict. There may be times where a property is not doing very well and need to be supported by the player. However, there needs to be promise of good times as well or it just won't be worth it. Likewise, the liability and repair costs of larger properties should generally increase and the potential (best case) and general (likely case) returns should increase as well. Otherwise why even expand?

The Math

I don't like a lot of the math involved with properties, and running businesses. D&D 5^th edition has this problem as well. The thing is, the odds should be in such a way that they make sense. It's one thing to start off as the owner of a piece of property. However, it's another if you have to buy it first. Quite a few of the rules I remember reading will have your players die before they ever see a profit from a business they built.

I think it's generally a good idea to keep both sides of the equation in mind. You can increase the costs of a building or the potential costs if they have a bad period of business, but the earnings should increase as well. The average case, the best case and worst case are all important in this regard. The average case is particularly important to make sure things are viable in the long term. It's also affected by the prices in your campaign. Though I don't see it done too often, some Dungeon Masters like to price things their way. This, of course, includes property.

Focus

One of the issues with something like player property is that it can shift the focus. Something that big, profitable and important to the players naturally would. Unfortunately, I don't have much advice in this case. If everyone starts with a castle, you might want to think about if they will all ever get used. Some players are perfectly fine with a castle that is being run in the background by their advisers and they get to spend the money generated. Some will want to see it and have it take part in the action. If the plan isn't to have the action shift between the castles (it can happen with other properties but castles are what I've seen used most often), it may be a good idea to think of a way to have everything centered on a shared piece of property. Everyone being a relative of the real owner and currently no heir being named generally works fine the few times I saw it employed (though it depends on the inheritance structure of your world). You can also locate them all fairly close by and have them be part of the same tight network of defense.  

Dungeon Master: Precedent

When you are a Dungeon Master, you make rulings. However, one of the things that makes things difficult is that rulings often end up setting a precedent. You don't want to live with a bad decision for the entire game, but inconsistent decisions make can make things harder for the player. After all, how can they decide what they want to do when they aren't sure about how things work?

What Kind of Precedent?

Precedent is quite a broad concept encompassing everything from rules interpretation to campaign specific things. The most common ones are the rareness of magic items, death, and rules. Unlike consistency, which you want your campaign to usually be, precedent is often implicit (sometimes I've seen Dungeon Masters making an announcement that this is how things will be from now on) and as such allows for more accidents.

So You've Made a Big Mistake

If you realize you've made a serious mistake, I found that it's generally better not to stick to the precedent. It can be annoying in the short term, but a bad precedent is annoying in the long term. All that said, it's still worse than not needing to in the first place. Keeping in mind the idea of precedent when making a ruling helps catch some of the obvious issues ahead of time.

Recently I played a game where a player tried to push someone into a fireplace. This did a lot of damage and killed the enemy. However, from then on everyone tried to throw everyone into the fireplace. If you do the same thing for combining oil and fire, for example, expect that your players may make it a staple of their combat style. You could also make exceptions in special situations, but you'd need to have some way for your players to know. Otherwise they won't realize it was a one-time thing and try it again, or since it never worked before they won't try this time.

Death

The first death of your campaign tends to be a trend setter. Going forward, they are going to expect more of the same. However, if you go easier sometimes you might run into issues. You don't want to play favourites or look like you are playing favourites in most cases. It just goes over badly.

Magic Items

Magic items are the easiest to fool around with. Even in a low magic world, you could have some bad guys who have been hording magic items for centuries. This means that even though the world is low magic, your players might still run across and use many. It also means that as your players level up and face bigger threats, they can get into a position where magic items are no longer a rare sight for them. For the result of the world, it still is. Where issues tend to come up is with the usefulness of magic items and how they are allocated. If the only item the party comes across is a bow for the ranger, there may be problems. I say “may” because if you rolled stats and use the bow to even thing up, it could be fine. However, players tend to expect magic items if someone else in the party got one.

Changing Precedent

It can be perfectly fine to change the precedent of the game in the middle of a campaign. Magic items might have started out very rare but now that they are at a higher level, they might be more common. If you are starting out with new players you could start the first few levels being very merciful when it comes to death, but after they reach a certain threshold remove the training wheels (this can be a good way of helping players get used to the game but I'd advice to make sure the players know this will happen or it may blindside them).

A lot of this comes back to the idea of having some level of internal consistency. In order for your players to be able to make satisfying decisions, there needs to be some level of understanding and consistency. Precedent change in favour of players will probably go over better than something that comes out of nowhere and blindsides them. If there is a reason for it that they know ahead of time, it tends to go over better.