Author Archives: David Hartlage

The Astral and Ethereal Went From Interchangable to Overcomplicated. How Can D&D Fix Them?

As introduced in the original Dungeons & Dragons supplements, the astral and the ethereal planes seemed like two names for the same place. D&D characters visited both planes for the same reason: to snoop undetected. Either way, travelers pass through walls. On both planes, travelers braved the psychic wind. Monsters with attacks extending to one dimension invariably touched the other as well. The two planes shared the same encounter tables.

Today, thanks to decades of new planar lore, the astral and ethereal now differ. Instead of psychic winds, ethereal travelers face ether cyclones. On both planes, travelers fly around at will, but on the ethereal, creatures have a sense of gravity. Planar diagrams show the astral plane touching outer planes like the Hells and Limbo, while the ethereal touches the elemental planes. (Nonetheless, characters will still use plane shift and portals to travel the planes.)

Despite these differences, when the fourth-edition designers simplified the lore in their Manual of the Planes (2008), they dropped the ethereal plane. No wonder fans felt incensed!

How did D&D wind up with the Coke and Pepsi of planes? Do their redundancies just add useless complication to the game’s cosmology as the fourth edition designers seemed to conclude?

Two magic items that appeared in Greyhawk (1975) introduced the ethereal to D&D. Both oil of etherealness and armor of etherealness put characters “out of phase,” letting them through solid objects and making them immune to attack except by other creatures that can also become out of phase. Only a mention of creatures that can see ethereal things reveals that ethereal travelers are invisible rather than merely intangible.

One spell that debuted in Greyhawk introduced the astral to D&D. The astral spell let casters send their astral form out of their body. The form can fly at the speed of 100 miles per hour or more “and nothing but other astral creatures could detect it.” so the spell offered a superb way to find the best treasures and the worst traps in the dungeon.

The astral spell offers no more detail about astral travel, but fantasy gamers in the early 70s likely understood the concept. In Doctor Strange’s comic book appearances of the time, the Sorcerer Supreme frequently traveled in ethereal, astral, or ectoplasmic form; the superhero’s writers used the terms interchangeably. Gary Gygax included every idea he found in fantasy and folklore in his game, and gamers in his circle knew Doctor Strange. Brian Blume, the co-owner of D&D publisher TSR, was a fan. The teenage artist Gary recruited to draw the original D&D cover patterned the image after a panel in a Doctor Strange comic. Gamers could also consult books like the Art and Practice of Astral Projection (1975). Back then, astral projection attracted popular attention and even the U.S. Army took the paranormal seriously enough to launch a research effort that included astral projection.

The Eldritch Wizardry supplement (1976) frequently mentions ethereal and astral travel together, making the two dimensions interchangeable except for the magic item or spell required to reach them. The distinction between oil of etherealness and astral spell created one big difference in play. The oil made the body ethereal, so when the effect wore off, the user gained substance wherever they had traveled. With the astral spell, the caster’s astral form left their body behind and then returned to their body when the spell wore off or when something destroyed their astral form. This let someone scout while nearly immune to harm, but they could not physically travel to another place.

Until the plane shift spell debuted in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (1978), characters could not bring their bodies to the astral plane. Plane shift enabled travel to and from the astral and ethereal, making visiting either plane equally simple.

In the AD&D Player’s Handbook, Gary’s urge to gather ideas from other sources led him to complicate the astral spell with more lore from astral projection. Some real-world investigators into astral projection claimed that during their out-of-body experiences, they saw an elastic, silver cord that linked their astral form to their physical body. Based on this, the astral spell added cords that tether astral travelers to their flesh and blood. Breaking the cord kills the traveler, so the cords potentially add some risk and tension to astral projection, even though “only a few rare effects can break the cord.” When Charles Stross created the astral-dwelling githyanki for the “Fiend Factory” column in White Dwarf issue 12 (1979), he wisely gave them swords capable of cutting the silver cords, adding some real peril to astral travel.

In the July 1977 issue of Dragon magazine, Gary Gygax printed a diagram that showed a difference between the astral and ethereal planes. The astral stretched to the outer planes like Olympus and the Hells, while the ethereal reached the inner, elemental planes. This proximity hardly made a difference in gameplay, since Gary never explains how astral travelers can navigate to Olympus, or why someone might care in a game with plane shift on page 50 of the Player’s Handbook. Besides, with Queen of the Demonweb Pits still years away, a DM who allowed players to travel the planes lacked any example to follow.

As far as players cared, the astral and ethereal just offered ways to snoop while undetectable and unblocked by walls. The choice of plane depended on the available magic. In 1977, D&D co-creator Gary Gygax would write about how astral and ethereal travel “posed a headache for DM’s.” In Tomb of Horrors (1978), he writes “Characters who become astral or ethereal in the Tomb will attract a type I-IV demon 1 in 6, with a check made each round.”

The Manual of Planes (1987) finally created differences between the astral and ethereal that factored into game play.

The astral no longer overlapped the material plane, so astral travelers lost the power to scout and spy. At best, astral travelers could find a portal called a color pool leading to the material plane and use it as a window to scry. Instead, the astral became a crossroad of connections to other planes. The astral gained those color pools and also conduits that work like portals but looked different. Years later, the fourth-edition designers fully realized this idea of the astral connecting to the outer planes when it made the Heavens, Hells, and other outer planes domains floating in the astral sea.

The ethereal still allowed invisible, intangible scouting, but it now extended into the deep ethereal, a place that connected to the elemental planes and various demi planes. The deep ethereal seems like a useless complication that stems from a diagram Gary printed in that 1977 issue of Dragon, because it resembles the astral plane, and besides players travel by plane shift and portal.

By the 90s, as D&D settings started proliferating, D&D designers started looking for ways to connect them. The Spelljammer setting gave characters a way to pilot their fantasy spaceships between Faerûn, Krynn, Oerth, and so on. The Planescape setting uses the deep ethereal to create similar connections between D&D worlds.

The astral and deep ethereal are different thanks to Coke versus Pepsi nuances of flavor and because each plane led to different places. (Does that feel like too much complexity for few gameplay rewards?) In practice, plane shift and portals mean that few visit the astral except to fight githyanki and no one visits the deep ethereal ever. In today’s game, the new Spelljammer setting uses the astral sea to connect D&D worlds, leaving the deep ethereal with no reason to exist. (Update: The Radiant Citadel of Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel exists in the deep ethereal, which provides the feel of a magical place disconnected from the ordinary, but without the problems created by locating a city in the astral where nothing ages.)

If I were king of D&D, I would adjust the astral and ethereal with some changes:

Drop the deep ethereal, keeping the ethereal as the sole, overlapping plane of creatures out of phase. The deep ethereal rates a description in the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide, but I suspect no fifth-edition character has ever visited it.
Drop the astral projection spell and the silver cords. The ability to spy from the astral plane disappeared in 1987, so the astral spell just rates as a pointless nod to a passing interest in the paranormal.
Make the astral sea the plane of portals and conduits that serves as the crossroads of worlds and planes.

The Neglected Secret to Making Dungeons Fun to Explore

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The best dungeons build on the three Dungeons & Dragons pillars of combat, roleplaying interaction, and exploration—a pillar that depends on discovery. Dungeon creators rarely slight two of the pillars: Monsters engage characters in combat. Non-player characters and factions lead to roleplaying interaction. But for the last pillar of exploration and discovery, dungeon designers often stop at the map, and that counts as neglect. Interacting with a floor plan gets tiresome fast.

To engage players in exploration and discovery, dungeons need more than listings of rooms and inhabitants where characters open a door and discover their next opponent.

Typically, dungeons also feature a history as a tomb, wizard’s tower, cursed underground city, or the like. But while such themes add flavor, this mere color rarely includes enough discoveries to capture hours of attention. Dungeons need interactive features that give players the underrated pleasure of figuring things out, of trying things and discovering how the dungeon and its contents work.

The fun of exploring a tomb comes from interacting with the traps, puzzling inscriptions, and blessed shrines inside. The fun of a wizard’s tower comes from playing with the magical whimsy and the experiments gone wrong. The fun of lost city comes from the magic fountains, secret ways, and so on.

Whatever the location, dungeons need interactive features that characters can play with like toys, things that fire the player’s curiosity, and then invite the players to touch and experiment. Sometimes the toys might prove dangerous, other times they can reward with treasure, blessings, or useful information, but players who discover how something operates always feel rewarded for their brains and ingenuity. Good exploration leads to the powerful reward of such discoveries.

Adventure designer M.T. Black writes, “Adventures thrive on interactivity. Without it games become uninteresting. This is a big part of the exploration pillar of play, and I think it is neglected. Pick up the diary and it grows legs. Touch the holy orb in the chapel and a glass knight steps out of the window. The treasury looks empty but actually has an invisible treasure chest.”

When I first started creating dungeons, I aimed to pack my locations with the sort of lavish, interactive rooms in adventures like the Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain. Preparing for a single session took me hours of dreaming up elaborate locations that could confound and impress my players. I soon learned that I lacked the time to invest in so many detailed designs. Later, I found that I didn’t need to, because smaller, simpler toys can work as well. Every parent has unpacked and assembled an extravagent toy, only to see their kids become captivated by the box. Many players like me also become captivated by the boxes—or pools, orbs, runes, statues, and so on. All those things prove fun as long as playing rewards us with discoveries.

Now when I design dungeons, I focus on including things that both invite interaction and lead to discoveries. So, the pool might include and underwater passage that leads to another room. Or it might contain acid and a glass vial containing a map to a secret treasure room. Or it might bubble with fumes that make characters lightheaded enough to see a vision of a similar room elsewhere. The best toys often mix danger and reward, so those fumes might make characters fall unconscious, and then see visions as they start to drown. Surely someone in the party will save their dreaming friend.

Dungeons packed with such features feel like more than maps with monsters, they feel like toys that reward play with discovery.

Whether You Call Them Rumors, Secrets, Clues, Hooks, or Leads, These Nuggets of Information Power Adventures and Campaigns

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As soon as roleplaying game adventures left the dungeon, games needed rumors.

Traveller (1977) included rumors in the game’s encounter tables, and then developed rumors as a tool for game masters in its first adventure, The Kinunir (1979). “The term Rumor actually applies to a wide variety of information, including such concepts as leads, clues, and hints. Rumors have three basic purposes: to direct characters toward profitable endeavor, to misdirect them away from such endeavor, and to assist them after they have established a goal for themselves.” Without dungeons to structure play, Traveller designer Marc Miller pioneered new ways to drive adventures; Dungeons & Dragons took years to catch up. (See Why Dungeons & Dragons (and Role Playing) Took Years to Leave the Dungeon.)

In roleplaying adventures and campaigns, rumors and similar bits of information prove so useful that they earn several names. When rumors show a “profitable endeavor,” we call them hooks. When they point players closer to a goal, we call them clues or leads. And when they reveal unknown lore or uncover some of a villain’s covert plan, we call them secrets. “Secrets and clues are the anchors of our games,” writes Mike “Sly Flourish” Shea. “They’re a simple way to build out an adventure, create meaning and story for the players, and connect people, places, and things. Secrets and clues are the connective tissue of an adventure—and, more often than not, a whole campaign”

The term “rumor” suggests gossip from the local tavern (or Traveller’s Aid Society hostel), but bits of useful lore can come from endless sources: from the wags at the inn to dungeon frescoes, a captured letter, or a footprint in the snow. Often, I plan ways for characters to discover clues and accept that a party might miss some discoveries. Other times I take a looser approach advocated by Mike Shea. He prepares for each game by listing 10 secrets or clues that the session could reveal, and then improvises ways for players to discover some of these secrets. Some of his secrets reveal the game world, but others serve as leads for players.

Hooks

Most adventures start with a hook that (1) entices the characters to follow some goal and (2) reveals ways to reach that goal. If a hook lacks any clues the characters can follow to the goal, then the hook fails.

A good adventure hook appeals to both the party’s rogues and paladins. More than popular classes, rogues and paladins represent two ways players often imagine their characters’ outlooks. Steve Winter, a Dungeons & Dragons designer since second edition, writes, “Hooks aren’t about characters; they’re about players.” Rogues and paladins make popular character perspectives because they bring players escapes from either the restrictions or the unfairness of modern life.

In our world, we often feel bound by rules and obligations. Playing a rogue who’s free from ethical burdens and who boasts the power to ignore rules feels exhilarating. Much of the vicarious joy of playing a rogue comes from gaining wealth. Certainly, most players of rogue types would say their character is in it for the money.

In our world, we see misdeeds rewarded, good people suffer, and too often we feel helpless to act. Playing a paladin with the strength to punish wrongdoers, help the deserving, and right wrongs feels rejuvenating. Paladins seek chances to act heroic.

Hooks that only appeal to one type can leave other characters just following along because their players came to play D&D, so a good hook offers both a chance to help the deserving and to gain treasure.

The very best hooks also engage players by including a mysterious, third ingredient, which I will reveal later in this post.

Leads

Leads give players a sense of direction. They lure players through an arc that, looking back, will resemble a plot. In a sandbox campaign, leads can guide characters to the locations that both offer profits and offer fun challenges.

Blogger and game designer Justin Alexander has a rule for giving leads:

For any conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

“Why three? Because the PCs will probably miss the first; ignore the second; and misinterpret the third before making some incredible leap of logic that gets them where you wanted them to go all along.”

By Justin’s three-clue rule, every step in the scenario needs three clues that lead to another step. The surplus clues make the scenario robust. In game, players never wind up so clueless that they lack direction. In life, they’re on their own.

The clues can lead in different directions. Such diversity gives options, breaks linear adventures, and sometimes creates tough choices for players. To keep plots outside the dungeon moving, clues are the engine.

Beyond Hooks and Leads

Hooks and leads spur characters to act, but not every revelation should invite action. Enigmas engage players by teasing them with the unexplained, motivate them to seek new discoveries in the game world, and then reward them with the satisfaction of learning answers. They keep everyone playing, even if everyone feels certain the heroes will win in the end.

The most tantalizing secrets make players ask themselves, “How can this be so?” Call these enigmas.

Why have drinks served at the inn suddenly started sliding to the floor?
Why does a humble commoner’s name appear listed among the names of adventurers sought by a githyanki raiders?
Who ransacked a party member’s room and why did they ignore everything of value?

All these questions inspire curiosity because they need more explanation to reveal the satisfying order that we crave. Filmmaker J.J. Abrams calls enigmas mystery boxes and he champions them as a way to grab an audience’s attention by creating something mysterious, and then withholding an explanation. Mystery boxes sustained television shows such as Twin Peaks and Abrams’ production Lost. Both shows kept viewers tuning in by spawning unexplained events that teased curiosity. The puzzles propelled the shows for years, even though neither shows’ writers proved interested in delivering satisfying answers.

Those writers understood that a mystery box loses its power to captivate the moment an audience learns its secret. But the most pleasing secrets reward players by revealing the explanation to an enigma, giving a satisfying sense of order. So, when characters discover the newly dug tunnels under the town that caused the inn to tilt, the players gain the satisfaction of an answer and become confident that chasing other mysteries will lead to rewarding revelations. Relish the moments when players learn the answer that explains an enigma, and then dream up more teasers.

The absolute best hooks create enigmas that captivate characters and promise satisfying answers. Why did a child hand the party a note that includes his confession to a terrible crime?

Where do Enigmas and Clues Come From?

The best source of enigmas and clues come from the villains in your games and from the signs that show their evil plots advancing toward some goal.

Every villain must have a goal. For bad guys, the usual aims include wealth, vengeance, and ultimate power. To reach that goal, every villain needs a plan. In D&D, villains make plans to conquer kingdoms, bring worshipers to dark gods, and so on. Those plans shape the adventures of the heroes who aim to thwart evil and take evil’s loot.

In a typical D&D game, players must learn of the villain’s plans from rumors of disappearances, clues like the list captured from githyanki, enigmas like the suddenly spilling drinks, and so on. “One of the key components to creating tension is the slow burn,” Courtney Kraft of Geek and Sundry writes. “Don’t show your villain fully right from the start. Perhaps there are mysterious things happening around your heroes. The mystery is fun, so take your time.”

As your villains work their plans, ask how the plan will show in the world around the characters. Give the players enough leads to give them direction, but also create enigmas that tease the players without offering all the answers.

Such enigmas and clues foreshadow coming events, making the game world seem active and giving players a sample of where the game could go next, while keeping the players seeking answers. These hints show movement beyond the party’s view and give a sense of the larger world. When you’re ready for players to act, they become leads or hooks.

Event-driven D&D Adventures Aren’t About Events; They’re About Villains

The D&D Adventures That Stumble by Missing the Hook

How the Flawed Hooks in Descent Into Avernus Might Make D&D Players Feel Railroaded

Why Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Is Utterly Different From the Fantastic Films of the Past

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Through most of my life, I learned to expect movie producers and their creative teams to show contempt for the science-fiction, fantasy, or comic book stories I loved.

Once, not too long ago, movie producers would license a genre character or work of fantastic fiction, say Asimov’s robot stories, Dungeons & Dragons, or any video game, just looking for a familiar name to put butts in seats on opening weekend and to give marketing a head start.

If it was sci-fi, fantasy, or a game, then the producer and almost certainly the creative team didn’t know or care about the story and characters behind the brand. So, in the 80s, when Cannon Films licensed Spider-Man, the producers planned a film by then-hot horror director Tobe Hooper where Peter Parker turns into hairy, 8-limbed spider hybrid more like Cronenberg’s fly then Lee and Ditko’s character.

Then, the writers and directors hired for genre projects usually showed contempt for the original creations. They came from an era when popular fiction featured detectives and cowboys, where science fiction and fantasy meant drive-in creature features and bedtime tales, and where comics were for tots. So, when they adapted for the screen, they kept the title and the bits my parents knew—that D&D included dragons, that Superman liked Lois Lane, and that Spider-Man climbed walls. Sometimes, we still hear big shot writers and directors boast that they avoided the books or comics in favor of a new direction. Such creators see a property’s original writers and artists with a certain arrogance, as hacks who lacked the capacity for serious creative works. Surely a serious filmmaker can do better than whatsisname.

To win at the box office, a movie needed to reach far past the comparatively tiny audience of fans for a character like Spider-Man. You would lose your house just selling to 10-year-old Superman readers; you had to reach golfers, bikers, bridge groups, and so on. To free grownups from the embarrassment of buying tickets to something as infantile as a comic book character, the Superman (1978) producers gave a fortune to Important Actor Marlon Brando. For 15 minutes of screen time, Brando received $3.7 million up front, plus 11.75% of the film’s take, right off the top. In that environment, producers made no attempt to please fans by staying true to a source. They never even bothered to learn what made the property resonate. Besides, nerds will see the movie anyway.

Since that Superman movie reached theaters, Hollywood’s approach to sci-fi, fantasy, games, and comics changed completely, and the D&D movie shows just how much.

Now, someone can make a big-budget movie about a game that those golfer and bridge players once considered a cultish pastime for misfits who can’t handle reality. (Adults make-believe as wizards! Can you imagine?) Rather than keeping the brand and dumping the rest in favor of a fresh direction, the filmmakers invested enormous creative energy in mining D&D lore for its wealth of evocative ideas, and then put them on the screen. The filmmakers went on to create vivid characters, give them growth arcs, and then cast stars in the roles. The story even matches the unpredictable turns of a D&D game. “What we really tried to capture was the spirit of gameplay, where nothing goes the way you expect it to,” co-writer John Frances Daley says. “So we would set something up in our story that the DM would have very painstakingly created for the players, and with one wrong roll of the die, it all goes to crap, and they have to figure out a way out of it. It’s unconventional.” And for the biggest twist, the filmmakers created humor from the characters and the situations rather than metaphorically winking at the camera and making fun of the property, as if to say we made this movie for a buck, but we’re too important to take this seriously. The 60s Batman series shows how that goes.

Things have changed, but when we learned of a new D&D movie, we still braced for a disappointing goof on D&D that mocked the game and its fans. The movie steers clear of that sort of insult.

Still, seeking to make a good D&D movie that will please both fans and a wider audience is far, far easier than sticking the landing. I’m old enough to remember how filmmakers reacted to Star Wars by trying to copy its elements. All the knock offs disappointed—despite the presence of both robots and spaceships. Making good movies always proves hard.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves sticks the landing.

How Shadowdark Delivers Old-School D&D Intensity With Modern Game Mechanics

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The Shadowdark game by Kelsey Dionne of The Arcane Library bills itself as delivering old school gaming with modernized mechanics. Shadowdark hardly rates as the first game with this approach. Into the Unknown (2019) boasts 5E compatibility combined with old-school mechanisms such as “morale, reaction rolls, random encounters, gold for XP, and henchmen.” Still, with a Kickstarter closing in on a million dollars, Shadowdark stands as an unprecedented success.

I played Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, an adventure from the Shadowdark free quickstart set, and marveled at how well the game duplicated so much of the charm of D&D in 1974—except with zero confusion over inches, initiative, and what Gary Gygax meant by writing that elves could “freely switch class whenever they choose.” Make that year 1975; Shadowdark has thieves.How does Shadowdark create the experience of early fantasy gaming with rules that echo fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, from the ability score bonuses, to advantage, disadvantage, and inspiration?

Death always seems near

In my Shadowdark party, two characters started with 1 hp and one had 2. Sixty percent of the group would likely drop from a single hit! Those rock bottom numbers come from the game’s randomly rolled hit points and from the lowly stats that result from rolling 3d6 in order. My character suffered a -2 Constitution adjustment. To be fair, Shadowdark offers PCs one advantage over brown box D&D. Characters who drop to 0 can be revived. But stabilizing a character takes a DC 15 check and spells often fail, so forget the popular fifth-edition strategy of just letting characters drop to 0 before healing because damage beyond 0 heals for free.

This risk of sudden death gives Shadowdark a sense of peril that I’ve never felt in a fifth-edition game. That makes for a tense, exciting game.

Treasure is the goal

Shadowdark awards experience points for treasure gained and not for monsters slain. This mirrors the original D&D game, which awarded characters much more experience for winning gold than for killing monsters.

D&D players could take their characters anyplace they chose, but the XP-for-gold mechanic rewarded them for risking the dungeon crawls that made the original game irresistible fun. The lure of gold joined priests and rogues, law and chaos, together with a common goal. Plus the quest for treasure resonated with players. Gary wrote, “If you, the real you, were an adventurer, what would motivate you more than the lure of riches?” (See The fun and realism of unrealistically awarding experience points for gold.

Battle becomes a last resort

In addition to rewarding players for seeking fun, the XP-for-gold system offers another benefit: It creates a simple way to award experience points for succeeding at non-combat challenges. As a new character, potentially with 1 hit point, you stand little chance of leveling through combat. Players joke that D&D is about killing things and taking their stuff, but in the original game and in Shadowdark, you are better off using your wits to take stuff. So long as your cunning leads to gold, you get experience.

In modern D&D games, fights routinely drag on until one side is wiped out, often because monsters that surrender or run can spoil the fun unless dungeon masters cope with the hassles of broken morale. To most D&D players, an escape feels like a loss, and nobody likes to lose. But when battle is a dangerous setback in a quest for treasure, monsters who break and run give players a quick and welcome victory. Shadowdark offers morale rolls that make fights quick and unpredictable.

Wandering monsters quicken the pace

Wandering monsters can improve D&D play, mainly by giving players a sense of urgency. Gary recommended “frequent checking for wandering monsters” as a method to speed play. In a perilous game like Shadowdark, players can slow the game with meticulous play, searching everything, checking everything, accomplishing nothing. But the game’s wandering monsters turn time into danger. Every passing minute gives foes more chances to find the party. Wandering monsters rarely carry loot and the XP reward that it brings, so idle characters just face danger with scant reward. Players keep moving, risking the next room in search for treasure.

Players choose their difficulty

In the early D&D game, players chose the amount of difficulty they wanted. Every level of the dungeon corresponded to a level of character, so the first level offered challenges suitable for first-level characters. Players could seek greater challenges—and greater rewards—as they went deeper. This system gives players a choice they rarely get in today’s D&D, and it adds a element of strategy. To lure characters to danger, the 1974 game doubled the number of experience points needed to advance to each level, then matched the increase with similar increases in treasure. (See The Story of the Impossible Luck that Leads D&D Parties to Keep Facing Threats They Can Beat.)

The Shadowdark quick start game doesn’t explain this approach, but the structure is there. Treasure and XP rewards escalate as characters rise in level, coaxing players to delve as far down as they dare.

This design frees DMs from the burden of designing encounters that make players feel challenged without killing characters. Instead, players decide on the risks they dare to face, and if an encounter proves unbeatable, players can run. After all, skilled players avoid fights.

Success requires conserving resources and planning for escape

In the 1975 Greyhawk supplement to D&D, the 6th-level cleric spell find the path focused on escaping dungeons. “By means of this spell the fastest and safest way out of a trap, maze, or wilderness can be found.” In the original books, the sample tricks and traps aimed to get PCs lost in the dungeon where wandering monsters and dwindling resources might finish a party. When Gary’s shifting rooms and unnoticed slopes made the PCs hopelessly lost, find the path offered a way out. (See Spells that let players skip the dungeons in Dungeons & Dragons.)

Shadowdark includes rules that make dungeons as risky as the underworlds that made find the path merit a 6th-level spell. All characters need light to see, so the guide explains, “In this game, a torch only holds back the pressing darkness for one hour of real-world time. There isn’t a moment to waste when the flames are burning low.” In darkness, the characters suffer disadvantage and wandering monsters rush to prey on the vulnerable.

A supply of torches and other light sources become essential, and the tracking the supply becomes more than bookkeeping. The game boasts a simple encumbrance system that matches the one Runequest offered as an old-school innovation in 1978. Characters can carry one item per point of strength. Torches and other light sources fill those precious inventory slots.

Shadowdark also lifts the burden of totaling time in the dungeon by dropping 10-minute turns in favor of the simple method of making 1 hour of play equal 1 hour in the dungeon. This speeds play by spurring players to act with the same urgency as their characters.

In the game I played, as we lit our last torches, we knew we only had an hour to escape the dungeon with our loot. And the wandering monsters made that escape no sure thing. This made our run to the exit as tense as our descent into the underworld.

Ability checks become unusual

Some gamers say that ability checks make modern D&D less fun. These fans of an older style prefer a game where instead of rolling perception to spot a trap door, characters tap the floor with their 10-foot pole.

Shadowdark includes D&D’s modern rules for d20 ability checks, but the game favors an old-school reluctance to make checks. The Game Master Guide recommends “giving players the opportunity to make decisions that rely on their creativity and wits, not on their dice rolls or stat bonuses.”

Faced with a challenge, players must observe and interact with the game world. Instead of scanning their character sheet for solutions, players rely on their wits and ingenuity. Ideally, the game tests player skill more than character stats.

Characters develop through play.

Before starting my Shadowdark game with my 1 hp character, I joked that I’d just finished writing his 8-page backstory. For modern D&D games, I appreciate players who invest in backstories; for a 1 hp character, such a document is pure folly. Instead, the story of a Shadowdark character evolves from playing the game and from the random luck of the die. Starting with characters rolled using 3d6 in order, Shadowdark asks players and GMs alike to surrender control to the dice. Forget planning a story and nudging characters along. Things like wandering monsters and morale rolls take the game into into an unknowable future. Even when characters advance, they roll their hit points and new talents. This trades the fun of building characters in favor of the challenge of playing a character that fate and the dice delivered. Characters stories begin and end as part in the shared story everyone experienced at the game table. (See D&D and the Role of the Die Roll, a Love Letter.)

Modern mechanics

With so many nods to the D&D of 1975, why play Shadowdark instead? The game gains from a foundation built on the fifth edition rules and the nearly 50 years of innovation in the modern game.

So Shadowdark includes cyclical initiative instead of a reference to a system that only appeared in the Chainmail rules.

In the original D&D game, ability scores hardly mattered. Characters with a high score in the most important ability for their class might get at 10% bonus to XP, but otherwise the scores meant little more than a +1 on certain attacks.

In the Blackmoor campaign that led to D&D, Dave Arneson used ability scores as the basis of tests that resemble modern saving throws or ability checks. “Players would roll against a trait, Strength for example, to see if they were successful at an attempt,” writes Blackmoor scholar D. H. Boggs. However, when Gary penned the D&D rules, he lost that effect. Gary favored estimating the odds and improvising a roll to fit. Now, GMs and player alike prefer a clearer system for deciding whether a character succeeds. The d20 mechanic delivers that transparency. (See How Dungeons & Dragons Got Its Ability Scores and Ability Checks—From the Worst Mechanic in Role-Playing Game History to a Foundation Of D&D.)

Rather than the system of ranges and movement in inches that made sense to a tiny audience of miniature wargamers fluent in inches on a sand table, Shadowdark puts distances into close (5 feet), near (up to 30 feet), and far (within sight during an encounter or scene). You can still play on a grid, but narrative battles play fine too.

Gary’s early games would sometimes put as many as 20 players into a party. The 1975 D&D tournament at Origins gathered parties of 12 for a trip into the Tomb of Horrors. Such large parties designated a caller to speak for the group. Nowadays, gamers speak for themselves. In Shadowdark, everyone takes turns, even outside of combat. No one feels like a spectator. Disciplined parties avoid scattering and becoming easy prey for wandering monsters.

As for elves switching classes, Shadowdark opts for the the 1979 innovation of separating race and class, and the 2020-something innovation of calling “race” something else (ancestry).

As a mix of old and new, Shadowdark lands in a good place.

Simple Builds That Make Multi-Level Battles Extraordinary

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Multi-level dungeon rooms suggest a grand scale that adds a touch of wonder. They reveal options to go higher or descend deeper, and those paths create an exciting sense of possibility. Just add monsters for dynamic battles where combatants leap, fly, and misty step between levels aiming for advantage.

So this map for the climactic encounter of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist promises a thrilling showdown.

Multi-level map from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

The Dragon Heist map on the table

At least that’s the goal, but I know from experience that drawing two levels side-by-side on a flat battle map typically leads to players choosing the least confusing tactic of standing still. Even when character’s do move, the extra explanation needed for everyone to understand their positions in the dynamic scene drags the game’s pace and can make everyone wish for a plain 20×20 room.So for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I stood a Lucite sheet from the home store on a few blocks from the toy box, cut some holes in the paper maps I would have drawn anyway, and created a 3D battlemap with almost no extra effort. Clarity replaced confusion. Plus the extra real-world dimension added drama and excitement that made the battle feel extraordinary.

The Icespire Peak map on the table

Curse of Vecna battle at Winter Fantasy

The trick’s success led me to repeat it for a battle in Dragon of Icespire Peak. This time, the same setup proved a little unstable, with players jarring the support blocks. Nonetheless, for my one-shot adventure Curse of Vecna, I decided to improve the setup and stage the climactic encounter on two levels.For stability, my new setup uses a pair of transparent display risers to support the upper tier. Setting the risers on their sides in a c shape rather than the usual n shape meant I could place the lower map between the pair. These stands make reaching the lower level a bit harder, but they stay in place.

For portability, I skipped the window-sized sheet from the building store that I used for Dragon Heist. Instead, I used a pair of letter-sized transparent tiles clipped together with binder clips. My tiles came from a Gaming Paper Kickstarter, but you can get similar tiles from other sources.

Stages of collapse

The top-level maps include holes cut to show openings in the upper-level floor. For another special effect, I stacked a series of maps with growing holes. This let me remove the top map to have the floor collapse in stages as the battle progressed.

Fourth Edition Improved D&D Design For Good, But One of Its Innovations Still Leads to Bad Adventures

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Some gamers say that ability checks make D&D less fun. These fans of an older style of Dungeons & Dragons prefer a game where instead of rolling perception to spot a trap door, characters tap the floor with their 10-foot pole. I like that style of play just fine, but I like ability checks too. Making a successful check gives me fleeting satisfaction. Checks give a clearer way of deciding success than the method Gary Gygax used in 1974. (He estimated the odds and improvised a roll.) Plus, rolled checks add a random element that can bring surprises, especially to DMs who call for a check despite being unprepared for failure.

Still, ability checks lack enough entertainment value to carry a D&D game. I know because lately I’ve played too many published and organized play adventures that leaned hard on ability checks for any amusement. I would share examples, but I’ve forgotten them.

Adventure designers hoping to plan fun D&D sessions sometimes string ability checks together into encounters, travel sequences, and even adventures, but those batches of ability checks just turn into forgettable games. I understand the temptation that leads to a reliance on ability checks. Dreaming up obstacles that characters can overcome with checks seems effortless. Traveling through the woods? How about a survival check. Talking to the innkeeper? Give me a diplomacy check. I could do this all day, and my game session only lasts a few hours. Inventing challenges that players need to overcome with their own ingenuity proves much more work. Besides, we DMs would all rather focus on the story behind challenges.

The fun of D&D comes from immersing in the role of a character, and from making decisions and seeing the results in the game world. But ability checks tend to eliminate the players’ decisions from the game. So one of the dungeon’s diabolical challenges just becomes a Wisdom (Perception) check followed by an Dexterity check. The Dungeon Master’s Guide explains, “Roleplaying can diminish if players feel that their die rolls, rather than their decisions and characterizations, always determine success.” Ability checks challenge characters while leaving players idle. “Today we’re playing White Plume Mountain. Everyone roll an ability check and tell me how your success helped the party win one of the three magic weapons.”

Some roleplaying games feature rules that make checks reveal character. Such mechanics allow talented experts to flaunt their skills, but in D&D, the d20 tends to make skilled, talented characters seem inconsistent or inept. A single d20 yields numbers like 1 and 20 as frequently as middle numbers, so D&D tests rolled on a d20 often result in the extreme numbers that cause experts to botch checks and the untrained and untalented to luck into success. In D&D worlds, the mighty barbarian fails to open a pickle jar, and then hands it to the pencil-necked wizard who easily opens the lid. (For help making the most of swingy d20 tests, see
How to Turn D&D’s Swingy d20 Checks Into a Feature That Can Improve Your Game.)

The joy of the d20 comes from how the die delivers extreme swings that can add surprising twists to a game session. This merit also means that game challenges built around bunches of skill checks play like a series of coin flips.

The most engaging adventures challenge players to

Adventure designers don’t deserve the blame for thinking ability checks can sustain a fun adventure. The fault lies with fourth edition and its skill challenges.

Ability checks entered Dungeons & Dragons 6 years after the game’s debut, and then checks took twenty more years to become a core mechanic. See (Ability Checks—From the Worst Mechanic in Role-Playing Game History to a Foundation Of D&D.) Even when third edition settled on a core d20 check mechanic, adventures rarely made batches of checks into a focus until fourth edition and its skill challenges reached gamers.

Skill challenges satisfied three design goals.

To give the non-combat parts of the game the same mechanical rigor as the fights. This helped refute the notion that all the rules for combat proved D&D was just a game about fighting. Plus the designers felt that if they “made things as procedural as possible, people would just follow the rules and have fun regardless of who they played with.” (See How Years of Trying to Fix Obnoxious People Shrank D&D’s Appeal.)
To make the DM’s role undemanding. Casual DMs could simply buy an adventure, read the boxed text, and then run a sequence of skill challenges and combat encounters. In a skill challenge, the DM just had to decide if a skill helped the players—but only when the challenge’s description neglected to list a skill in advance.
To avoid frustrating players who struggled to overcome an obstacle. Without checks, D&D challenges could sometimes lead to players becoming stuck, especially if a DM focused on one “correct” action required to overcome an obstacle. Fourth edition attempted to eliminate such frustrations by emphasizing skill checks and skill challenges over concrete obstacles and over players’ problem solving skills.

None of these goals aimed to add fun for the players, although players who dislike puzzles may approve of the third benefit. Tip: If players dislike brain teasers, skip those challenges or let stuck players make Intelligence rolls for hints. If everyone rolls, someone virtually always succeeds.

Ability checks aren’t much fun. I enjoyed fourth and as the designers say without fourth there would never be a fifth, but its skill challenges created the myth that a series of ability checks offer enough fun to sustain a game, and that myth has led to some dull games.

When the game emphasizes character skill, the players never need to make meaningful decisions or engage the game world. They just look at their character sheet for the best applicable skill. I suppose this improves on playing guess-the-solution-I-thought-of with an inflexible DM, but picking a skill and rolling is much less fun than D&D can be.

Related: My account of the story of fourth edition starts with The Threat that Nearly Killed Dungeons & Dragons—Twice.

D&D and the Role of the Die Roll, a Love Letter

The skill challenge: good intentions, half baked

Player skill without player frustration

Drop Everything and Play in My Winter Fantasy 2023 Game!

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Since 2010 when I made a new year’s resolution to play more Dungeons & Dragons, I’ve run hundreds of D&D games at game stores and gaming conventions. Virtually all those games featured adventures published for D&D Encounters, Living Forgotten Realms, Adventurers League, and the D&D hardcovers. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of those modules, learned from the rest, and written about much of it here.

Still, like every DM, I’ve wanted to run some of my own creations at conventions for friends and for strangers who will soon become friends. So this year at Winter Fantasy 2023, I’ve added two sessions where I’ll be running my own adventure, titled House of Vecna—or Curse of Vecna. (Please help me choose a title before I put it up for sale.) One slot has sold out and I’m delighted, but the 2pm Friday game still has tickets, so you should drop all your plans in favor of joining my game.

House of Vecna started when a kid who practically grew up playing my D&D Encounters games came back from college and asked to revisit the fun. I dreamed up a scenario for two hours on a Wednesday night—just enough time for a strong start and a senses-shattering conclusion. Friends, I am so proud of the adventure’s irresistible hook: A child who can’t read approaches the party and hands them a note that says, “I poisoned my parents. They’re in my house. I am very wicked and should hang.” When my players read that note, a shock wave of surprise and curiosity passed their faces, and I still relish the memory. Things turned out fine.

I revisited the adventure for a second group, but this time a 4-hour session required a middle, stronger motives for the villains, a more developed mystery, and a small dungeon because I like that sort of thing. I turned to my notebook of D&D ideas waiting for the right game and tried to match ideas to my adventure. For each bit of inspiration, I asked myself how each could work with the adventure. I landed on a delightfully creepy marriage of ideas that gives players the fun of figuring things out.

So drop everything and play. And even if you can’t, please say hi. Winter Fantasy is small; you’ll see me.

For House of Vecna, I’ll have pre-generated characters. Alternately, bring a level 9 or 10 Adventurer’s League character to play. You can’t gain AL rewards, but you can add its story to your character’s imaginary history.

The Legal Fight Over Happy Birthday and What It May Tell Us About D&D’s Rumored OGL 1.1

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Remember when chain restaurants celebrated birthdays by sending a parade of servers to your table performing a clapping birthday chant only heard in chain restaurants. The staff never sang “Happy Birthday to You” because until 2016 the media giant Warner claimed to own a copyright to the song. Anyone who wanted to perform “Happy Birthday” in public needed to pay for a license or risk the attention of Warner’s lawyers. Before 2016, Warner collected about two million dollars a year licensing the song.

The story behind those license fees may reveal insights about the rumored plans of Wizards of the Coast to take a cut from publishers selling D&D-compatible products.

Both the words and tune to “Happy Birthday” date to the 19th century, and they appeared in print together in 1911, so their copyright probably expired long ago. In 2010, a law professor researched the song and concluded that it almost certainly had already left copyright. Meanwhile, Warner made sketchy claims that their copyright held and collected $5,000 a day, year after year. Those paying for a license surely knew that Warner’s copyright claims might die in court, but why suffer the expense battling a media giant with $2 million a year at stake just to save something like the $5,000 license fee the movie Hoop Dreams paid to include the song. Paying for a license proved safer. Warner’s plans would have kept them collecting license fees until 2030 if not for a meddling documentary filmmaker who raised money to take Goliath to court.

How does this story parallel Wizards of the Coast’s rumored bid to use a new Open Gaming License to collect license fees from those creating D&D-compatible content?

Most people using the OGL probably don’t need it to sell their creations.

In the 80s, Mayfair Games published a line of generic adventures and supplements compatible with AD&D. When the cover of Dwarves (1982) boasted a product “suitable for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,” TSR sued. In Designers & Dragons, Shannon Appelcline writes, “Intellectual property law as related to games is an unsettled subject. The general understanding is that you can’t protect game mechanics, except with a patent. As a result, a game manufacturer’s primary protection against other people using its IP is a trademark. Other publishers can’t use trademarks—like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—in a way that would cause ‘confusion’…but that didn’t limit their use entirely.” The suit ended in a lopsided settlement for Mayfair where the company gained a perpetual, royalty-free license to use the AD&D trademark with certain restrictions. Insiders say that TSR feared the legal precedent that would be set if Mayfair won.

Could a modern publisher sell a D&D-compatible product touted as “Suitable for use with Dungeons & Dragons?” The courts would have to decide, but signs point to yes. For a final answer, a publisher would need to risk a potentially ruinous legal entanglement with Hasbro.

Surely, much of the popularity of the 20-year-old OGL stems from a possibly misplaced sense that it offered D&D-compatible products free protection from any legal issues. The question of whether products needed the license or not seemed moot.

Still, most publishers of products suitable for D&D could probably skip any license. During the fourth-edition era, when most publishers avoided fourth edition and its restrictive Game System License, Goodman Games produced a line of “4E Compatible” adventures that omitted both the OGL and GSL.

For years, movie producers opted to pay for “Happy Birthday” despite dodgy copyright claims because a license fee offered a safe and predictable option. Although a 25% royalty on revenue over $750,000 may seem unaffordable, this would simply represent Wizards’ opening offer. The company has likely approached the big OGL publishers to negotiate better terms that won’t force anyone to court. Today, the rumored OGL 1.1 suggests that Wizards of the Coast may bet that publishers opt for the safer and perhaps cheaper option of simply paying for a license.

How to Turn D&D’s Swingy d20 Checks Into a Feature That Can Improve Your Game

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Dungeons & Dragons uses d20 rolls to randomly determine success and failure. A single d20 yields extreme numbers like 1 and 20 as frequently as middle numbers, and this shapes the game. In the real world, experts attempting routine tasks rarely fail and novices making a first try rarely succeed. But D&D tests rolled on a d20 often lead experts to botch checks and the untrained and untalented to luck into success. The d20 often makes experts look inept, defying everyday experience.

Seeking a better match with reality, some roleplaying game designers create games with core mechanics that total the results of multiple dice. This creates a bell-shaped curve of probabilities that makes the highest and lowest numbers rare, and lets players build heroes that show the sort of reliable competence we see in fiction.

Meanwhile, in D&D worlds, the mighty barbarian fails to open a pickle jar, and then hands it to the pencil-necked wizard who easily opens the lid. Such outcomes feel wrong, but with the right mindset, that swingy d20 can become a storytelling feature rather than a bug.

To start, as a DM, don’t ask the barbarian for a check to open the damn jar. “Remember that dice don’t run your game—you do,” explains the Dungeon Master’s Guide. “At any time, you can decide that a player’s action is automatically successful.” This means skipping rolls on tasks “so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure.” For best results, rate “easy” generously. Let talented or skilled characters skip the rolls where only a comical fumble would explain failure.

For knowledge and information checks, drop the roll and tell players what their characters should know. I often reveal lore based on characters’ proficiencies and background. For instance, the druid knows of the cursed trees surrounding the grove, while the dwarf knows about the flooded mine. This technique works especially well for the information players must learn to continue. Essential backstory feels like a reward for a character’s choices. Players won’t know what knowledge comes from their characters’ aptitude and what you had to reveal to advance the plot.

If everyone at the table rolls a check with the swingy d20, someone usually rolls high. In D&D, letting everyone roll certain checks practically guarantees success. The one wizard proficient in, say, the Arcana skill will seldom roll a better success than every one of the other 4 know-nothings in the party.

For a real test that acknowledges the skilled and talented characters, allow fewer characters to roll. Limit the check to characters with proficiency. This rewards the cleric proficient in religion even if their knowledge is hampered by low Intelligence.

Granting an expert character advantage reduces the chance of an unlikely fumble, and improves the chance that talent will lead to success.

Limit a check to the active character, possibly just the person who asked, and then grant advantage based on the party’s advice and assistance. This encourages groups to have the character most suited to a challenge to lead the way.
Limit a check to the skilled characters and then grant advantage based on the party’s help. I love when this enables a quiet player to gain the spotlight based on their character’s aptitude.

When someone fumbles a roll, instead of describing the failure in a way that makes the hero or monster seem inept or comical, describe the stumble so the fault comes from tough opposition or an impossible situation. DMs feel tempted to narrate bad rolls for laughs. We can narrate a 1 with a description of how someone’s hat tilted to cover their eyes and gain an easy laugh that feels fun in the moment. But too many descriptions like that turn characters into clowns and their opponents into jokes. Instead, use a 1 to describe a foe’s superhuman speed or the swirling hot ash clogging the air and stinging the heroes’ eyes. When you describe outcomes, even the fumbles, flatter your heroes and monsters.

Despite all these techniques, the d20 brings extreme numbers that create shocking failures and inexplicable successes. To cope, treat the swings as a storytelling challenge to embrace. The dice make us surrender some control, adding the risk that the story won’t go as we plan. Events beyond our control make the game unpredictable and exciting. Savor that.

“As often as possible, I like to stick with whatever the dice tell me, partly because as a DM I love to be surprised,” explains D&D lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford. “I love that sense whenever I sit down at any table where I’m DMing. I don’t actually know what’s going to happen because I don’t know what the dice are going to say. The dice can turn something I thought was going to be a cakewalk into a life or death struggle.”

The dice nudge, and sometimes shove, D&D games out of their expected course. They give D&D games a way to surprise us, and to challenge us to become more creative—to invent storytelling twists we would not have imagined without the random nudge.

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Author Archives: David Hartlage

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