Thoughts on playing and running TTRPGs.
This comes from the OSR subreddit (via QuestingBeast’s newsletter) and I think it’s a great idea for adventure writing.
The original author was considering this for a table of contents, which I think would be a misstep. It is a really nice, evocative piece of work though.
“Did anyone remember to buy a healers kit?”
There are some situations where characters would behave smarter than their players. That’s why we have passive checks and other checks to see if the character thinks (or even remembers) something the player doesn’t.
One of those situations is remember to leave the house with their winter coat when in the middle of the darkest months. It’d be cruel for a DM to suggest that since the player didn’t specifically say, “I’m going to dress up warm,” that the character would be wandering around in a t-shirt and shorts.
Similarly, when you are on floor four of a mine, where the job was to collect a few diamonds, only to realise that no one noted down a pickaxe, the group should be given the benefit of the doubt. Obviously the character would have considered this and picked one up.
Full disclosure: I’ve not actually read Blades in the Dark, and only know it from the Adventure Zone, but it has a nice system for this kind of thing. Before setting off on an adventure, the players decide what loadout they’d like to take. I believe these are along the lines of light and heavy.
The items in those loadouts aren’t decided immediately, but are decided in the adventure as they’re needed. If you’re going in light you can get away with a small handgun or an iron file or some such. Small things. Too many small things will eventually add up to a heavy load, so at some point you can no longer add more things.
A heavy load means you can start pulling out great axes and whatnot. The downside here is that (even before you’ve decided on what items there are) people around you will know you’re packing. Suspicions are going to be raised pretty quickly.
These loadouts might cost an upfront payment, but making the group pay for the items at the end might be more fun, adding a push-your-luck mechanic. Shall we splash out on a Scroll of Detect Lies now? What if it reveals nothing? What if the dungeon is a bust and the PCs end up going into debt? Drama! Tension! Oooh!
The DM can of course have final ruling on what a loadout contains. Maybe it doesn’t make sense for the PC to be carrying a glass making kit. It’s important to remember rule one of being a good DM though: at the end of the day, your job is to make the players feel like their characters are heroes. If that means they pull the perfect macguffin out their ass and it makes for a cool scene, then why on earth not.
If you’re running a one shot, it’s more than okay to drop your PC’s at the entrance to a dungeon and forcibly push them in. On more long lived games though, you’ll want to make sure there’s a reason for the player characters to stick around (rather than returning to their family, their job, or just deciding to call the town guard to handle it). It’s important to the PC’s to know their motivation.
On the flip side, it’s important for players to remember that they’re there to play a game. In most RPGs, you should be building a Hero or at least an Adventurer At Heart who’s eager to throw themselves into a quest with very loose reasoning. “Of course I’ll help! I’m just that kind of half-elf.”
DM and player should meet in the middle here and come up with something fitting and fun. Often, “you were looking for a job – here’s one” is all it takes. But what if you want a little more ramp up to this?
Fortunately, there are some very easy ways for getting buy-in from even the most reluctant of characters and to find out something about them along the way.
Time to pay back that favour. This may be my favourite for a couple of reasons: a) the quest giver can be morally ambiguous, and yet still be owed a debt from the PCs, and b) it sets up a back story for the PC’s and helps them decide their flaw.
In my run of Maze of the Blue Medusa, the initial quest giver was Twisted Wrought Iron, a kenku and master forger. Session zero was a meeting where the party had been summoned and we went around the group with the question “what favour did Twisted do for you that means you own him one?” We kept going around the group and iterating on each others backstories until everyone had a good reason to need to do this job. And, many of the characters “realised” they knew each other too.
Duty calls. What ever the character’s backstory, they lived in a full world before. There’s certainly going to be some person in their lives which you as the DM can exploit. Nobles are often sent off on jobs by their higher ups, and there’s little they can do about it. Holy people are sent on missions.
Remember to ask them how that conversation went, and to describe the authority figure that sent them. That’s some meaty plot there!
Factions are a big deal across the Forgotten Realms, and outside of Faerun you’ll find plenty of allegiances and secret groups. Getting your PCs to join or align with one of these makes plot hooks very easy.
“You’re not the first party we’ve sent on this quest”. You can put this into any adventure with little modification. The buy in here is easy: your sister was in that first party! When the party eventually find the butchered remains of their loved ones, they have a sudden and equally powerful revenge or justice motive.
How did your last adventure go? This may be a brand new character, but this might not be there first adventure. This is a good way to have characters in the group already know each other too. Whatever they say, try to work in a hint towards this adventure. Maybe it was all leading to this, right now.
DMs, note: You don’t have to improvise everything. Get the players to help out.
Finding the character buy-in should be a process the entire group is taking part in. You don’t have to look like a master improvisor. Listen to what your players are hoping to play and lean into that. Let them create whole narratives that are happening outside of the story you’re hoping to tell. Feed off of that, and try to bring it into the adventure.
They’ll be surprised and excited when you ask them “can you tell me more about this god you worship? are they popular? are they the main god of the realm?”
Published adventure hooks. Most 5e adventures, certainly all the published ones, have an ‘adventure hooks’ and/or a ‘backgrounds’ section. These shouldn’t be shrugged at and there’s a lot to be learned in them. One in Elemental Evil picks a villain from the adventure and puts the PC specifically on a quest to hunt the villain down. (Since you’re here, you may as well finish what you started and carry on with the adventure!) Storm King’s Thunder describes how to get PC’s from their previous adventures to the story of the giants.
I like to make up spells. Take this one I just generated with some story cubes.
Banished Mimicry.
Level 2 Abjuration spell. Casting time: 1 action. Duration: 1 round. Range: Touch. Somatic.
Touch the target as you cast this spell. The target may make a Charisma saving throw. On success, the target is immune for 1d4 days. On a failure, they vanish into a pocket dimension. In their place stands an identical mimic, who can convincingly sound and act just like the target. The mimic will obey your command, acting as a Friend, and has 1 HP. The spell ends if it is reduced to 0 HP and the mimic disappears, replaced by the original target.
If cast at level 4, duration increases to 1 minute. If cast at level 6, the duration increases to 1 hour. If cast at level 8, the duration increases to 1 day and the mimic has 3d8 HP. If cast at level 9, the duration is “until dispelled” and the mimic has 12d8 HP.
I mean, that’s pretty epic, right? You can make a whole adventure around rescuing someone from that spell.
But it’s also really kind of powerful. A party of enough wizards and they’ll have a small army of non-necrotic thralls running around for them. (To that I say, does that really matter?) Some would be concerned about giving their players a tool like this.
There’s a way to curb how often it’s used though – without just banning it at your table!
See that required “Somatic” tag? Just tack on a “Material: 1 black lotus petal which is consumed by the spell.” Then who cares if this is even a level 1 spell? You control the market for black lotus petals!
Your wizard will be excitedly scouring the world for helpful flora. Hey, it works for Identify and Revivify.
For when players want to loot something, and you don’t have anything specific to give them. A mix of wonderful and mundane items.
“There’s some boring stuff in there, but also…”