Category Archives: Role-playing game design

If you want to write games for everyone, game with everyone

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In the 80s into the 90s, I would see convention panels or magazine interviews where game professionals said that their game writing left them no time for game playing. Those writers might admit to an occasional session of Call of Cthulhu—that was the role-playing game the pros played once they felt too mature for bashing monsters in dungeons. But writers of the era’s countless setting books rarely seemed to play their own games much anymore.

fameFor many of the game products of the time, play experience mattered less. People bought game books to read. RPG writers could succeed by satisfying game readers more than players. See “How the end of lonely fun leads to today’s trickle of D&D books.”

After D&D’s headquarters moved West from Lake Geneva, more designers played, but with a small cadre of friends and co-workers.

Speaking in an episode of the Misdirected Mark podcast, veteran RPG freelancer Shawn Merwin said, “One of the criticisms I’ve had in the past of [D&D] staff, especially through 3rd and 4th edition, was that they would sit in Renton, Washington and create this game, but they never really got out and saw how the game was played by the different kinds of fans, or the fans that may play a little bit differently than their own home games or their games within their company.”

At the 2016 Dungeons & Dragons Open, D&D designers served as celebrity dungeon masters. The star power added excitement for players, but it also should benefit the designers. Speaking in the podcast, prolific adventure author Teos “Alphastream” Abadia said, “This is a really important thing for Wizards to do. To meet with players and see how players play [the designer’s] game in this kind of environment.”

If you want to write games and adventures for strangers to play, then you benefit from playing with strangers.

In a convention game, you will join players who may play differently. “You’re just randomly dipping into the pond to see who ends up at your table and to see how they play the game that you create. And I think that’s very important,” Teos said. “For me as a fan, I want to see Wizards involved with fans in this kind of way as much as possible.”

How does a private game among RPG professionals and their friends differ from the convention games I frequent? I can think of two likely differences: The players in the designers’ private groups act more predictably and they favor more role playing.

Play style and predictability

Every regular group settles into a play style. Do they play recklessly or cautiously? Heroically or ruthlessly? How do they settle conflict between PCs that pull in opposite directions? Regular groups seek activities they all enjoy. A group’s style makes them predictable. When we play long enough in one style, we tend to forget other ways.

DMs who operate in public eventually see groups that defy even the most common customs of D&D. New players love to split the party.

Organized play adventures tend to come from veteran convention dungeon masters who branched into writing. I think these authors do better at anticipating what random players might do, and do better at accounting for players who veer off the path.

The foibles of full-time designers

In general, full-time professionals do worse at predicting how players will act, and they seem less interested in helping DMs account for unexpected actions.

The pros play their own material. They enjoy a deeper understanding of their scenarios than anyone can gain from the text. This mastery makes improvising changes and additions easy. If their players go off book, a designer has no fear of inventing some detail that wrecks the plot printed in the adventure’s next 5 chapters. So pros underestimate the difficulty other DMs face when ad-libbing changes to a published adventure.

Organized play authors understand the challenges of running an adventure from a text. Their adventures sometimes even include troubleshooting sidebars that help DMs account for actions that threaten to break an adventure.

What do the pros do better? In general, their adventures feature more polish and a greater mastery of the game’s rules, history, and lore. When the designers add new monsters and magic, the additions work without upsetting game balance.

The joy of role playing

Remember the first time you sat down and played? How you had such a blast rolling dice and killing monsters? Remember the time you stayed up all night doing it? Every day, new players discover D&D and find just as much fun in monster slaying. On the other hand, many new players find speaking in funny voices odd and potentially embarrassing.

Meanwhile the pros have faced every monster countless times. Routine combat scenes lack their former excitement. Between those past battles, the pros learned to love playing make-believe in the guise of a fairie-tale creature. They relish a chance to role play. They play with folks who share this passion.

In my post on preparing to run adventures, I grumbled about how the authors of Hoard of the Dragon Queen assume that PCs will spend weeks traveling with cultists and wagons loaded with treasure instead of just attacking the cultists and taking their gold like every D&D player ever.

But obviously not like every D&D player. The authors’ groups saw a chance to travel with the cultists, uncover their secrets, and savor a session full of role playing and intrigue. Authors Steve Winter and Wolfgang Baur read their groups’ tastes and catered to them. I rarely get to play with groups with the same patience for intrigue, so a strategy that seemed inevitable to Steve and Wolfgang struck me as far-fetched.

Every group is different. You can’t play with everyone, but if you want to write for everyone, you benefit from reaching out to game with random strangers.

Spells that let players skip the dungeons in Dungeons & Dragons

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In today’s Dungeons & Dragons game, player characters gain experience by overcoming obstacles and defeating monsters. In the original game, PCs got most of their experience for claiming treasure. (For more, see “The fun and realism of unrealistically awarding experience points for gold.”) Back then, if you skipped monsters and traps on your way to the loot, all the better.

dungeon miniatures dragon statueOf course, Gary Gygax never let players cart away gold without a challenge. His game included a few spells that allowed clever players to skip obstacles, but none that let players skip the dungeons or the dragons.

As the play style of D&D grew beyond the dungeon and focused on story, designers introduced spells that let players skip past dungeons to treasure vaults or dragon hoards. More than any other class of spell, these tend to vary with edition, revealing the changing fashions of play. When designers focus on setting books and novels, they overlook the potential of Find the Path. When they seek D&D’s roots, they notice the power of walking through walls.

Fly

(introduced in the original game, 1974)

Gary’s original game included rules for wilderness encounters, but his players preferred to explore under Castle Greyhawk. Underground, the 3rd-level spell Fly never rates above another fireball.

As soon as D&D left the dungeon, Fly shaped play. Every dungeon designer toys with the idea of turning a ruined city into a sort of open-air dungeon. Then they remember that the wizard can cast Fly. Every dungeon master eventually sees flying PCs turn a carefully-prepared challenge into a joke. The PCs soar over obstacles or strafe helpless foes. Players relish their prowess; DMs never overlook Fly again.

As soon as players gain access to Fly, the spell frees players from challenges they can fly past. But Fly carries a key limit: it only works on one character. This makes a spell that can both leap obstacles and create interesting complications. When just one person can scout ahead, they can fly into a heap of trouble with no help—a memorable game moment. When a spell takes an entire party, obstacles disappear.

Find the Path

(introduced in the original game, 1974)

Once, the 6th-level cleric spell Find the Path focused on escape. “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 focus on getting PCs lost in the dungeon. When Gary’s shifting rooms and unnoticed slopes made the PCs hopelessly lost, Find the Path offered a way out.

As means of escape, Find the Path just keeps PCs alive, so in AD&D, Gary felt safe creating a spell that told players the “actions to take” on a path. Second edition explained, “For example, with concentration the spell enables the subject to bypass tripwires or the proper word to bypass a glyph.”

Some players had the bright idea of finding a path to something like “a hoard of platinum pieces.” Second edition specifically banned looking for objects or creatures.

When players stopped looting megadungeons and DMs introduced stories into their games, Find the Path gained game-breaking potential. If players aimed to capture the master of the thieves guild, the spell could take them safely to his hideout. If they needed to find the Gate of the Hidden Ways, the spell guided past any wards. By third edition, DMs were visiting message boards, pleading for ways to cope.

The fifth-edition designers realized that Find the Path offered more than escape from Castle Greyhawk. The latest version no longer reveals actions to take. It promises the shortest path, but not the safest.

Teleport

(introduced in the original game, 1974)

Gary combed fantasy stories for spells to include in his game. He even added odd spells like Sticks to Snakes and Magic jar. Of course his wizards had to get Teleport. But a 5th-level ticket past every trap and monster would spoil the game, so wizards teleporting into unfamiliar locations suffered a chance to miss, perhaps fatally.

As long as PCs could not safely spy on locations from a distance, Teleport’s limitations worked. Teleport seemed too hazardous for anything but going home to rest.

Astral Spell

(introduced in Greyhawk, 1975)

Astral Spell serves as the ultimate spying spell. An astral wizard can move at will to anywhere on the prime material plane and observe undetected. They can’t bring their body, but after getting a good look, they can return to their body and teleport themselves and their pals. In the original game, magic users and clerics gained Astral Spell at 17th-level, beyond the levels that Gary expected for PCs. (See “The Dungeons & Dragons spells Gary Gygax never meant for players.”) We know better now. In today’s game, players with access to Astral Spell move out of the tier of dungeons and into the league of foes with True Seeing and Planer travel. (See “The obvious innovation in fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons that no designer saw before.”)

Scrying

(introduced in 3rd edition, 2000)

Third edition’s designers forgot the risks of giving PCs both Teleport and a safe way to spy. They added the 5th-level Scrying spell. Unlike Clairvoyance and Clairaudience, which targeted a familiar location, Scrying could target a creature. It worked with Teleport to make villains vulnerable to the scry-buff-teleport system of ambush, also known as scry and fry.

The target of the Scrying spell gets a save, but even if the spell fails, the caster can make another attempt—or just scry Igor or minion #3. The best defense against Scrying used to be a DM with the chutzpah to fudge an improbable number of saves.

Fifth edition still includes both Scrying and Teleport, but the new game changes Teleport enough to spoil the combination. First, Teleport jumps from 5th level to 7th. The error-proof Greater Teleport used to be a 7th-level spell. Now it’s gone. Second, the risk of missing a carefully-studied target jumps from 6% to 24%. With those odds, infiltrating the villain’s fortress through the sewers seems like a valid strategy.

Plane Shift

(introduced in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1978)

Ethereal travel can threaten to take dungeons right of the game. In 1st-edition AD&D, any cleric with the 5th-level Plane Shift spell could take seven friends ethereal, allowing them to waft through the dangerous dungeon stuff and go straight for the treasure. AD&D attempted to limit the problem by populating the ethereal with tough wandering monsters and the random Ether Cyclone. Apparently that failed to deter enough adventurers because Tomb of Horrors includes this note: “Character who become astral or ethereal in the Tomb will attract a type I-IV demon 1 in 6, with a check made each round.” Second edition closed Plane Shift’s game-breaking potential by ruling that the spell “rarely works with pinpoint accuracy.” In 5E, you appear 5 to 500 miles from your intended destination.

Now that Plane Shift drops PCs wherever the DM fancies, it becomes useless except as a save-or-goodbye attack. If the game requires the PCs to go to Hades, fate (the DM) will provide a way.

Etherealness

(introduced as a spell in Planescape – A Guide to the Ethereal Plane, 1998)

Etherealness began as a feature of magical armor or oil, items the DM could limit. Then it became a psionic power. When DMs allowed psionics, etherealness ranked as the least of their troubles.

A Guide to the Ethereal Plane opened the plane to a pair of spells. The 5th-level spell Lesser Etherealness took the caster and 3 friends ethereal for at least 4 hours. The 7th-level spell Greater Etherealness worked on 1000 pounds. Three strong, skinny friends could probably carry off more loot with the lesser spell.

A party with such easy access to the ethereal could loot half the dungeons on the prime material. But as long DMs kept Planescape to planer adventures, Lesser Etherealness stayed balanced. The third-edition designers recognized these spells’ power. When they brought the renamed versions Ethereal Jaunt and Etherealness into the Players Handbook, they raised each spell by 2 levels.

In fifth edition, the 7th-level spell Etherealness takes the caster to the ethereal plane, where they can waft alone into a heap of trouble. To take 2 friends, cast the spell at 8th level. At 9th, take the whole party.

The 6th-level spell Forbiddance protects an area from planer travelers and teleporters. When cast 30 days in a row, Forbiddance becomes permanent. In practice, most tombs, vaults, or fortresses that interest 13th-level characters will be guarded by Forbiddance.

Ghostform

(introduced in Tome and Blood, 2001)

By the time third edition came around, some designers had become so immersed in the story slant of D&D that they forgot how broken insubstantial travel could be. How else can we explain Ghostform, a spell that makes the target insubstantial? Just add invisibility to Ghostform and you can phase through any dungeon. Ghostform appeared at 5th level and rose to 8th in errata! The 3-level revision stands as a record. Fifth edition drops the spell.

The fifth-edition designers studied D&D’s history, playing every edition of the game. They managed to look beyond a single play style and address the problems with a category of spells that sometimes bedeviled dungeon masters.

Divination in D&D: Spells that fish for spoilers

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The Tomb of Horrors begins with Gary Gygax boasting of a “thinking person’s module.” This description makes players suppose that the tomb rewards puzzle solving and ingenuity. But the tomb never plays fair. The poem in the entry hall promises clues, but it’s a trap as much as an guide. The tomb rewards painstaking caution, and then reckless haste, and often just lucky guesses.

So why did Gary consider his capricious deathtrap a thinking persons module?

The Wish - Theodore von HolstInstead of working as a puzzle, the tomb operates as resource management challenge. Early on, the lives of hirelings or 15-member parties served as the resource. By the time the Tomb reached print, the divination spells in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gave players resources. Just a 2nd-level Augury told which door leads to death. A 5th-level Commune answered at least 9 yes-or-no question. Even so, the tomb served enough dilemmas to test the most patient divine power.

Unlike the tomb, modern adventures never fill rooms with life-or-death guesses. They favor stories with just a few mysteries to unravel. But when players can get some divine power on the line, can any mystery last?

How does fifth-edition D&D deal with the classic spells that call for spoilers?

Augury (2nd level) tells whether a specific action will be beneficial or harmful. The 5E version penalizes repeat castings by adding a chance of a wrong answer. Augury gives wary players hints without ruining surprises.

In earlier editions, Commune (5th level) answered one question per caster level. A minimum of 9 answers could cut through most secrets, especially since early versions placed no hard limits on the number of castings. The description of Commune says, “It is probably that the referee will limit the use of Commune to one per adventure, one per week, or even one per month, for the gods dislike frequent interruption.”

The 5E Commune only answers 3 questions and it imposes real limits on the number of castings per day. At 5th level, few players will burn a Commune spell until they become stuck. The spell gets the game moving, replaces frustration with fun, and gives the cleric a chance to shine.

In 1st edition, Divination (4th level) gathered information on an area. Essentially, it told players how much treasure and danger they could expect in a dungeon level. Second edition changed Divination into an improved Augury, which answers questions with specific advice. Crucially, the dungeon master answers with “a short phrase, cryptic rhyme, or omen,” so the response can add fun by giving new clues to unravel.

The Contact other Plane (5th level) spell could potentially gather lies or drive the caster insane. How bad do you want to know? I’ve never seen a Wizard cast this spell.

Gary Gygax wrote D&D’s divination spells to hint without revealing all the game’s secrets. Fifth edition limits how often players can rely on divination, preventing Commune from turning D&D into 20 questions. These spells give DMs a way to aid to stuck players, to give thinking players more clues to consider. They enhance the game.

Spells that ruin mystery and treachery

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In my last post, I explained how Dungeons & Dragons includes a variety of spells that can ruin adventures. Confined to the original megadungeons, spells like Know alignment and Commune caused no trouble. But as D&D grew to embrace more types of stories, such spells caused problems.

Which spells prove troublesome, and how does fifth edition deal with them?

Spells that unmask villains

In the second-edition era, many issues of Dungeon magazine included an adventure that asked players to identify some secret villain who inevitably possessed a Ring of Mind Shielding—inevitable because none of these adventures could have worked without it. In the implied D&D universe, such rings were as common as window curtains.

Spells that reveal lies and evil can be foiled, but they either make adventures with deception impossible or they force dungeon masters to nullify the players’ abilities.  Players who prepare spells like Detect Thoughts will feel cheated if every mystery thwarts them.

Alignment detection spells

Third edition dropped the Know Alignment (2nd level) spell, but the loss did nothing to help adventure designers because Detect Evil, Detect Chaos, and so on filled the same niche. At least 3E kept Know Alignment’s reverse, Unknowable Alignment, on the spell list. Paladins could cast it, because they enjoy deception, I suppose.

Detect Evil (1st level) used to reveal any creature of evil alignment, which told players exactly who to trust. Now, Detect Evil and Good detects any abberation, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead of any alignment, making the name a meaningless nod to tradition. The redesign keeps the spell useful and makes it trouble free.

As written, Glyph of Warding (3rd level) can still detect alignment, serving as both judge and executioner. In a magic-as-technology world, you would have to pass a glyph before boarding your airship flight.

Lie detection spells

Detect Lie (4th level) entered the game with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, at a time when Gary Gygax should have known better. The original spell didn’t even grant a saving throw. Second edition added one, and then 3E changed the name to Discern Lies. Fifth edition removes the spell from the game. It offered no play value to offset all the adventures it spoiled.

Zone of Truth (2nd level) grants a saving throw, allowing schemers who save to lie freely. Dungeon masters determined to save their adventures can fudge saves. But I eschew fudging die rolls, so I would rather strike the spell from the game.

Mind reading

The-Demolished-ManOf all the troublesome spells still in the game, the mind-reading spell Detect Thoughts (2nd level) ranks as the worst. With just a 2nd-level spell, you can read a creature’s surface thoughts before they even gain a save. If you probe deeper, the target senses the scan and resists with saves and contested intelligence checks. “Questions verbally directed at the target creature naturally shape the course of its thoughts.” Presumably, you could shape a suspect’s thoughts with idle gossip about a murder or traitor. In a D&D world, every schemer needs an earworm on continuous loop in their head. I suggest, “Tenser, said the Tensor.”

At least Detect Thoughts can cut tedious interrogation scenes where the murder hobo threatens a captive while the paladin visits the little boys’ room.

The spell’s description fails to say how long you can read surface thoughts before the victim gains a save. The spell comes from an AD&D spell called ESP, which let scans continue for the spell’s duration without a save. To remove the scientific flavor of extra-sensory perception, 3E renamed the spell. The 3E version adds a save to any attempt to read surface thoughts.

In 5E, I suggest only allowing a 6-second round to scan before the target becomes aware of the probe and gains a save. This will allow casters to gain clues and insights without laying every mystery bare.

In play, Detect Thoughts existence means that if a plot requires someone to keep a secret, then they either need that Ring of Mind Shielding or to be so dangerous that noticeable mind reading creates complications. (Denizens of a D&D world would consider mind reading as rudely provocative as burglarizing someone’s bedroom.) Imagine a scene where the target thinks at the mind reader. So you know my secret, but who will believe the word of a hired sword over the archbishop? Now the party faces proving their case before the archbishop’s inquisitors reach them.

Of course, D&D rarely pits players against schemers too powerful to confront, so the spell’s ongoing existence limits the sort of stories our game can tell.

Next: Spells that fish for spoilers (or perhaps a side trek to Origins)

3 benefits of letting die rolls shape your game world’s reality

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The other day, I read a playtest version of a Dungeons & Dragons Adventurers League Excursion. Instead of the usual linear series of encounters, this adventure introduced an unprecedented element of chance. From the start, random encounters lead players onto different courses. The final showdown can occur in a randomly-determined location. Much of the combat comes from random confrontations with 1d4 of this or 1d6+1 of that.

dice_oldThis unusual element of chance led me to consider the benefits of giving the dice control over much of a role-playing game characters’ fate.

Random chance increases replay value. From the seeded worlds in Minecraft to the random dungeons in Diablo, replay value concerns video games more than tabletop games. In D&D, only the most devoted organized-play participants replay adventures. For those folks, letting the dice shape the game yields variety from a single adventure.

Random chance creates surprises for the game master. The dice can add unexpected ingredients to the game master’s plan for a session. This can add to the fun. Plus, adding the unexpected—or just working to make sense of it—leads GMs to inspiration. For example, during a session where my players traveled by boat, the random combination of a waterfall and drowned ghouls forged a memorable encounter.

Nonetheless, when I serve as game master, my players’ choices create enough surprises for me. If your players never surprise you, then you probably haven’t given them enough freedom.

In role-playing games, much of the players’ fun comes from weighing choices. Before you let a die roll plot an adventure, ask whether the players’ decisions could provide the same spin. For example, rather than having the players randomly meet a faction in the dungeon, let them uncover enough clues to choose which faction to pursue. Or on a small scale, if a charging demon faces many ripe targets, ask if anyone wants to taunt the creature. Arrange choices so that even you cannot imagine which the players will select. Practice by splitting slices of cake to share, and then giving your kid brother first pick.

Random chance separates the players’ success or failure from the game master’s fiat. In a role-playing game, no one wants the GM to control the characters’ fate. When player characters succeed, the players want credit for the victory; when PCs fail, the game master wants the dice to take the blame. To assure my players that I don’t meddle with their characters’ fortunes, I roll dice in plain sight. A good GM acts as a facilitator and impartial referee, not as a Fate who controls destiny.

As a game master, do you ever roll a die to check which player character a monster will target? Years ago, as I plotted my monster’s tactics, I left the players to figure out the creatures’ motivations. If I rolled a die to choose a target, I did it secretly.

My secret approach led players to complain that I singled out their characters for attack. Apparently, all the players felt singled out, and they were especially singled out when they rushed into a crowd of monsters. (I never single out players. Unless they boast that they never take damage. Then maybe a little.) So I switched my approach. Now I help players understand why they get targeted. Sometimes the clues come in character. The monsters say, “You hurt Grog, so now you die,” or “Slay that accursed priest first, so he cannot heal the others.” This peek into the monsters’ choices gradually improved the players’ tactics.

When monsters lacked an obvious target, I started rolling in plain sight to decide. The die roll may cost a bit of immersion, but players cannot accuse the die of playing favorites.

To impartially settle questions about the game world, many GMs use die rolls. For instance, when the player of a drow asked whether burning wreckage on the battlefield made enough smoke to shroud his PC from the sun. I rolled. “On a 1 to 3, then yes.”

Random rolls reduce the GM’s power to control the game. In a sense, these rolls unite game master and players in a shared enterprise. Everyone watches the roll of the dice together and shares the surprise when the result shows where fate will take them.

Next: Random encounters

The obvious innovation in fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons that no designer saw before

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Stirrups. Zero. Shipping containers. Luggage with wheels. All these innovations seem obvious in hindsight. But they went undiscovered for millennia, until someone’s bright idea changed the world—or at least put airport porters out of work. Even those hotel shower rods that curve out made someone rich.

Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons includes one obvious-in-hindsight innovation that Gary and the game’s other past designers failed to spot. Alas, it won’t make anyone rich.

Way back in my analysis of bounded accuracy, I explained how attackers in D&D Next tended to hit harder as they leveled up, rather than hitting more often. In “Changing the balance of power,” I wrote that fighters suffered from this new design. “The accuracy-for-damage trade matters most to fighters. Fireball and Blade Barrier work as well as ever. The rogue remains content to sneak up on the goblin king.” But if the Queen of Battle confronts a goblin horde, and she only makes one attack per turn, no amount of extra damage matters, because she can only fell one goblin per turn. “Fighter-types should hew through the rabble like grass until, bloodied and battle worn, they stand triumphant. Instead, they wind up muffing to-hit rolls against one mook.

Sverrir by Arbo“Earlier editions of the game offer a solution, a solution so odious that I hesitate to mention it. If fighters gain multiple attacks per round, the misses matter less because there’s more where that came from!”

Multiple attacks seemed bad because they always brought awkward memory demands and calculation. “D&D’s designers have struggled to parcel out extra attacks as fighters gain levels. Jumping from one attack directly to two results in a rather sudden leap in power. Instead, AD&D gave fighters extra half attacks, and a need to remember half attacks. Third edition traded half attacks and the memory issue for weaker attacks and fiddly attack penalties. Yuck.

“If D&D Next’s designers can find a good way to allow fighters to gain multiple attacks against weaker opponents, then a key piece of the Next design puzzle falls into place.”

Late in D&D Next’s creation, the designers compared the benefits each class gained as they leveled and noticed that wizards leap in power at 5th and at 11th levels. These jumps come from quirks of a spell list that dates to the beginning of the game. At 5th level, wizards gain potent attack spells like Fireball, plus unbalancing buffs like Haste. At 11th level, wizards gain 6th-level spells, which bring save-or-die effects like Disintegrate. At the 9th spell level, Gary Gygax felt comfortable stashing world-altering spells like Wish and Time Stop, because his players never reached 17th level and never gained free access to them.

Earlier editions of D&D aimed to parcel out benefits smoothly as characters leveled up. Those edition’s designers ignored the leaps in power certain spells brought; the fifth-edition designers embraced the leaps.

This brought the obvious-in-hindsight innovation: Rather than offering fighters half attacks or fiddly attack penalties, 5E matches the leaps in power brought by additional attacks to the leaps brought by 3rd, 6th, and 9th-level spells. Fighters gain extra attacks as wizards gain these spells. At the same levels, other classes make similar leaps, such as the rogue’s Uncanny Dodge ability.

Third and fourth editions arbitrarily aligned the game’s tiers with 10th and 20th levels, because of round numbers. Fifth edition aligns the game’s tiers with the leaps in power brought by 3rd, 6th, and 9th-level wizard spells. The designers finessed the other classes so they gain benefits to match the wizards’ gains.

It seems obvious now. Designer Mike Mearls says that a lot of innovations in game design work that way.

Dungeons & Dragons stopped giving XP for gold, but the insane economy remains

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In “Why D&D characters get tons of gold and nowhere to spend it,” I showed why Dungeons & Dragons player characters get tons of gold through their career:

  1. Originally, D&D awarded experience points for gold to motivate players to act like Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and the other picaresque heroes of Appendix N.
  2. D&D lured players to more challenging dungeon levels by roughly doubling the treasure and experience available for each level deeper.
  3. The riches of the dungeon gave PCs enough wealth to become leaders who raise armies, launch fleets, and build castles.

Swords Against WizardryThis plan unraveled when nobody chose to abandon the dungeon-crawling fun of their D&D game to put their characters in a different, miniature-battle game. Characters never spent their wealth on armies, fleets, and castles.

In the pulp-fantasy adventures that inspired Gary Gygax, heroes who came upon a windfall tended to spend it on debauchery or lose it to “The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar.” This put the heroes back on the road to adventure, chasing their next score.

When Gary saw no players retire to stronghold building, he sought to restore D&D worlds to match Appendix N—and to economic sense. In the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979), he wrote, “It is important in most campaigns to take excess monies away from player characters,” AD&D’s XP-for-gold system meant Gary couldn’t just impose the obvious solution: Stop giving characters so much loot.

Stronghold Builders GuidebookSo Gary found ways to take gold away. For characters ready to level, AD&D requires weeks for training accompanied by massive expenses. A master thief must spend 2,000 gold per level per week on training, just for tools and equipment. Master thieves demand pearl-encrusted crowbars. If these expenses fail to take enough, Gary suggests taxes. Remember that Conan yarn where the Cimmerian paid taxes? Nope. Few dungeon masters levied taxes because the punishing tedium of tax payments sucks the fun out of the game more quickly than it drains PCs of excess monies. Gary spent a page arguing that taxes add realism, forgetting that no sensible tax collector targets a powerful band of killers, especially if they sometimes prove useful finding missing heirs, thwarting attempts to summon demon gods, and whatnot.

Ultimately, none of the revenue-draining schemes lasted, because D&D players hate losing cash with nearly as much venom as they hate losing magical gear.

Richie Rich DiamondsBy third edition, the game had lost all the original reasons for awarding PCs tons of gold. Nonetheless, the designers followed tradition, so the game still awarded players enough loot to pile Richie Rich-style mountains of diamonds. The Stronghold Builder’s Guidebook tried to raise enthusiasm for the end game, but even the authors write, “Lounging about the stronghold day and night, engaging in the domestic dramas of daily life isn’t the sort of thing that stirs the blood of great heroes.” At least the heroes enjoy pampered luxury; players just experience hiring, expenses, and building management. A few players liked it, but I prefer not to work that hard without a dental benefit plan.

The fourth edition designers decided to deal with the problem of wealth by letting characters spend freely on magic items. Instead of hiring caravans of armored wagons, epic-level players could spend gold on a +6 sword. In this new spirit of player empowerment, magical gear appeared in the Player’s Handbook. Now when an epic-level adventurer wanted to upgrade from a +5 weapon to a +6, she could trade in her old blade and an extra 125 tons of gold for the new item. Call ahead. Ye Olde Magick Shoppe might need to special order some less popular weapons. In fourth edition, a single level-30 weapon matches the value of a fleet of 312 ships or 41,660 horses, a quantity typically referred to as “all of them.” And epic-level characters need more than a single weapon; they require protective gear and other magic with a value comparable to 1,000 ships.

The prices may seem silly, but they worked in play. Epic-level items are best described as priceless, because no one in a game world could pay cash for them. The prices just exist as a game measure for exchange.

Most players ignored the mind-bending economics, but a magic-item trade creates other problems:

Loss of wonder. In the original D&D, Gary meant to restrict descriptions of magic items to dungeon masters so their players could enjoy the thrill of discovery as they found items and learned their powers. Of course, players read all the rules, making this plan untenable. As magic items moved from being secret, to items awarded by the DM, to commodities in the Player’s Handbook, magic items changed from sources of wonder to appliances.

Power creep. When more and more fourth-edition books saw print and PCs gained options and access to more combinations, the game’s balance of power tilted to the players. When one appliance—or combination—proves best, everyone buys it. Soon, dungeon masters yearned for the days when they could limit characters by limiting the magic that entered their game.

Design limitations. In an Escapist interview, Mike Mearls explained D&D Essentials’ magic-item rarities. “If players can buy anything, it really limits the design space you can put out there.” Fourth-edition designers avoided creating magic items that would change the style of the game by, for example, allowing every character to fly or teleport. “If the entire party can fly, it’s much easier to dominate encounters or dungeons or adventures.” Players empowered to buy any item can transform the game. “It turns the game into almost a superhero game. Which is fine, if that’s your style, but it’s not necessarily the default.”

Mike notes that limiting items can put PCs in more interesting predicaments. “If one character can fly, you’re more likely to get in more trouble that you can’t get out of when you can fly ahead of the rest of the party and get surrounded by ogres or something.”

In light of these problems, fifth edition abandoned the magic-item trade. The rules explain, “Aside from a few common magic items, you won’t normally come across magic items or spells to purchase. The value of magic is far beyond simple gold and should always be treated as such.”

Still, D&D’s tradition led players to expect mountains of gold. These riches originally lured players deeper into multi-level dungeons that few ran anymore. These riches built to an end game that no one ever played.

The fifth-edition game holds to the tradition of making PCs rich, so DMs running campaigns and organizers of public play face the challenge of making gold good for something—or breaking tradition.

Next: What is the typical amount of treasure awarded in a fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign?

How fifth edition keeps familiar spells and a Vancian feel without breaking D&D

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In my last post, I described the how Dungeons & Dragons tended to break once players gathered too many magic items or certain combinations of items. Earlier editions included several rules that worked to prevent the problem, but fifth edition’s attunement rule and rarity system provide the best measures yet.

Of course not all game-breaking magic comes from magic items. Spells can create problems too. Gary Gygax invented virtually all of D&D’s familiar spells when folks played in a much narrower style: Player characters kept to the dungeon. Non-player characters attacked on sight. Plots never developed. Characters died or retired (mostly died) before they could cast spells above sixth level. As the game blossomed, many spells that seemed fun, or that only appeared on scrolls, started spoiling games.

In “Spells that ruin adventures,” I wrote about individual spells that tended to disrupt play. In “Scry and fry,” I explained how a climactic battle can become a quick ambush. And in “Designing for spells that spoil adventures,” I told D&D Next’s designers how to design around problem spells. In a future post, I will look back at my advice.

Spell combos

Not every problem comes from an individual spell, play can suffer when players stack spells. In third edition, higher-level parties might enter a fight blanketed with spells like Haste, Invisibility, Fly, Blur, Polymorph Self, Resist Elements, and on and on. These parties would fly to the dungeon’s treasure vault, invisible and in ghostform. Parties traveled optimized by maximized ability buffs. Players needed spreadsheets to track their bonuses, while the DM struggled to create any challenge.

Combined spells did more than allow character to float past adventures, spell combos could also buy a cheap victory. Just lock down a battlefield with Evard’s Black Tentacles, and the clear it with Cloudkill. Used in one fight, this strategy makes a memorable story; repeated, the other players wonder why they showed up.

Of course, third edition could remain playable at high levels, but only when players chose not to use strategies that strained the system’s limits.

Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme Annual Vol 1 2Some players argue that a dungeon master can counter these measures by pitting players against villains able to use dispel magic and a suite of magical countermeasures. While true, this approach suffers drawbacks:

  • DMs can no longer challenge parties with published adventures, or really any monsters other than spellcasters.
  • DMs will know the players’ magical tricks, so the villains’ countermeasures will invite the players to suspect that the DM used privileged information to thwart them.
  • Mainly though, D&D stops feeling like D&D and starts to resemble a superhero game, with characters flying around, ignoring walls, untouched by mundane threats. Most folks who want the feel of a superhero game, play a superhero game.

To avoid the problem, fourth edition either rewrote or dropped the spells that caused problems. This worked. Even at epic levels, the game never mutates into a chess match between the Sinister Spellcasters and the Legion of Fantasy Heroes. However, 4E’s lack of familiar spells fueled the accusations that 4E no longer resembled D&D.

When fifth edition’s designers faced the problem of overlapping magical effects, they knew that earlier solutions had proven flawed. They returned familiar spells and they adopted an ingenious new fix: concentration.

Concentration

Many spells now require their caster to maintain concentration to keep their magic going. Critically, a spellcaster can only concentrate on one spell at a time. Now rather than layering Haste, Invisibility, Fly, Blur, Resistance, and a few others, a caster must pick one. Wizards who really want to be blurry and invisible, need a second spellcaster’s help. To combine black tentacles and a poison cloud, parties need two spellcasters, and neither will cast while flying invisible over the battle. To the design team, this counts as teamwork rather than, “I beat another encounter for you. You’re welcome!”

Concentration limits the power of high-level spellcasters. In earlier editions of the game, the Vancian magic system awarded advancing wizards far more power than characters in other classes. They gained more spells per day, of greater power, plus even their lower-level spells increased in power. Concentration stands as one way fifth edition keeps wizards in line with their peers.

Too much magic kept breaking Dungeons & Dragons—how fifth edition fixes it

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Part of the fun of Dungeons & Dragons comes from increasing your character’s power. Some of that added power comes from magic: spellcasters gain more and more powerful spells and everyone gains magic items.

He's just my characters henchman

He is just my character’s henchman

From the beginning, the game’s designers struggled to grant players magical powers without making them so powerful that the game lost its challenge. In the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gary Gygax mocked PCs who gained too much magic. “These god-like characters boast and strut about with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments.” Still today, gamers compare over-equipped characters to Christmas trees.

As a remedy, Dungeons & Dragons imposed a few limits on what magic items could combine effects. For example, rings of protection did not stack with magical armor. Mostly though, Gary asked dungeon masters to award fewer magic items. In practice, DMs rarely noticed that their players had gained too much magic until the game broke.

Even shrewd DMs might overlook problems caused by the right combination of items. In second edition, a girdle of giant strength could add its strength bonus to another bonus from gauntlets of ogre power. (Note to new players: A girdle is a belt, and 5E now includes a belt of giant strength, depriving new players of the obvious, juvenile gags that we old-timers relished.) The combination turned dart-throwing fighters into living Maxim guns. A dart just inflicted 1-3 damage, so even though characters could throw three darts in an attack, darts seemed weak. However, a fighter could use their multiple attacks to throw a lot of darts, and they added their strength bonus to each dart’s damage. If a fighter gained a few strength enhancements, every encounter became the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. The Dungeon Master’s Guide even hinted at the combo. “Gauntlets [of ogre power] are particularly desirable when combined with a girdle of giant strength and a hurled weapon.” The exploit just required DMs as careless as the game’s designers and fighters able to tolerate the embarrassment of relying on darts.

In third edition, the designers added a fix: they cut the rate of fire for darts. Plus, they worked for wider improvements.

Typed bonuses

Combinations like the girdle and gauntlets showed how stacking bonuses could break the game’s math. The old fix would add the girdle—now belt—and gauntlets to a list of items that did not combine, right after rings of protection. The designers recognized that such a case-by-case treatment would create problems as the game grew. Instead, third edition introduced a system of typed bonuses. Bonuses of the same type never added, so an enhancement bonus would add to a morale bonus, but not another enhancement bonus. Now the belt and gauntlets both added enhancement bonuses, which did not add.

Players needed vigilance to notice that, say, a bonus from a spell overlapped with a bonus from a magic item. Even well-meaning players occasionally made mistakes when they applied bonuses. Few players liked to keep track of it all.

In 3E, the scheme could have worked better if the designers had managed to settle on a small set of bonus types, and then stick to them. But as the game expanded, the number of bonus types grew too. Each new type opened another opportunity for min-maxers.

Despite the flaws of typed bonuses, the system worked well enough to reappear in the fourth edition. Presumably, the designers pledged to hold to a short list of types.

Item slots

One limitation reduced the decorations on Christmas-tree PCs by limiting magic items to one per body part. This restriction relied on common sense until third edition’s Magic Item Compendium quantified body parts as item slots.

Fourth edition reduced the number of item slots and linked types of enhancements to specific slots. For example, any enhancement to armor class had to come from armor, while items in the neck slot improved other defenses. The ring of protection became the neck slot’s amulet of protection, but amulets could no longer enhance AC. The game added cloth armor so Wizards could gain an AC bonus.

Item slots worked perfectly, but once players added boons from powers and abilities, the game allowed extreme optimizations. I once ran a convention game for a paragon-tier table that included a defender optimized for maximum defense. Monsters could only hit him on a roll of 20. Even their lucky blows dealt negligible damage. The battles all started with the defender using a power to lock down all the monsters, forcing them to thrash uselessly at his invincible defenses. The rest of the party could attack with impunity. As the adventure continued, I added enemies to the battles, but utterly failed to challenge the party. Did anyone have fun? A few players enjoy D&D games that fail to challenge them. They relish the chance to step into a character able to steamroll any opposition. Certainly the defender’s player felt he had triumphed over D&D. I could only hope that the other players enjoyed a chance to romp through combat encounters, but I doubt they all did. Does a player deserve any blame for bringing a character that makes the game less fun for other party members?

Scarcity

In 1979, Gary told dungeon masters to limit the magic items players gained, but he offered nothing more than tough love. The game needed a simple way for DMs to assess the power of the items they gained.

“Third Edition replaced loosey-goosey guidelines with very clear ones—clear almost to the point of being rules,” James Wyatt wrote. “There was an expected progression of treasure for characters, expressed as gold piece value but translating directly to magic item value.”

DMs tracked the cash value of the treasure they awarded. In principle, DMs never had to worry about which magic items players owned, just their total value.

Fourth edition was optimized for players who enjoyed customizing characters and then showing off their abilities on the battlefield. For maximum customization, players had to control every aspect of character building, including magical equipment. Magic items moved to the Player’s Handbook and became easy to buy and trade. The designers supposed that if players held to the item budgets, gameplay would remain balanced. Eventually, the burgeoning 4E game broke the budget system. As new magical catalogs reached stores, PCs gained options and access to more combinations. Soon, dungeon masters missed the days when they could limit characters by limiting the magic that entered their game.

D&D Essentials added a rarity system to 4E’s original scheme. Players still picked common items, but the DM controlled rare items. In organized play, the rarity system offered a simple way to limit the number of powerful, rare items owned by a single PC.

Fifth edition’s solutions

When fifth edition’s designers faced the old problem of saving the game from too much magic, they knew that earlier solutions had proven flawed. So they scrapped typed bonuses and item slots. Instead, they revisited item rarities and adopted an ingenious new fix: attunement.

Attunement

Powerful magic items require characters to create a magical bond called attunement with the item. Without becoming attuned, characters only gain an item’s mundane benefits, so that ring of invisibility just dresses up your finger. A item can be attuned to only one character at a time and the character can be attuned to more than three magic items at once.

Attuning an item takes as long as a short rest, reducing any temptation to carry golf bags of magic swords or staffs.

The three-item limit deters combinations of magic items from breaking the game. For example, rings require attunement, so even if you dress all 10 fingers in Rings of Protection, you can only benefit from three, yielding a +3 bonus to armor class. Three items may allow some combinations, but the designers learned from past mistakes. You can attune both gauntlets of ogre power and a belt of giant strength, but each pegs your Strength at a fixed number. And darts no longer have a rate of fire.

The attunement system eliminates a need for strict item slots. Instead the Dungeon Master’s Guide says, “Use common sense to determine more than one of a given kind of magic item can be worn.” See page 141.

The attunement system prevents the game from breaking under the weight of too many magic items. As long as designers avoid putting game-breaking combinations of items into the game, it works.

Rarity

In fifth edition, attunement limits the number of powerful magical items that benefit a character, but many items work without attunement. A player who stacks enough items can strain the game’s math. To help dungeon masters avoid problems, the game adopts a version of fourth edition’s rarity system. In a game with a typical amount of magic, the rules suggest that players not gain any very rare items until they reach level 11.

How does this work in play? With unlimited access to magic, and three items attuned, a character could gain a 29 armor class from equipment: +3 plate (very rare), +3 shield (very rare), +1 ring of protection (rare, attunement), +3 defender weapon (legendary, attunement), +1 ioun stone (rare, attunement).

The 5E Dungeon Master’s Guide never spells out how much magic characters should get, but on page 38, the Starting Equipment table offers a suggestion.

In a game with a standard amount of magic, a new, 17th-level PC will own one rare magic item. Even in a high-magic game, that PC gets two rare items and one very rare +3 item. The legendary defender weapon ranks above very rare—an extraordinary find in a high-level, high-magic game. If any DMs allow a player to gain the five items needed for a 29 AC, their game has mutated into the gonzo of Neutronium Golems and the Dread Vampusa. (Can I sit in on that game?)

The Dungeon Master’s Guide provides few guidelines for how much magic to award. On page 135, a table suggest the levels PCs should reach before they gain items of a particular rarity. The book never tells how many items PCs should be getting as they level. Perhaps the authors felt any suggestions would be received as rules, and preferred to leave quantities to a DM’s taste. Perhaps the authors just ran out of time. Either way, I hope the designers move to fill the gap.

Next: Another way magic breaks D&D

The fifth-edition Dungeon Master’s Guide joins the battle against excessive backstory

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When I got my copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, I first looked at topics that overlap with posts I plan for this blog. If the DMG already said it, I will work on something else. Turns out, as good as the book is, I still have things to add.

In chapter 3, “Creating Adventures,” the book lists “Elements of a Great Adventure.” The list covers familiar ground, but one entry surprised me. Great adventures should put a clear focus of the present. “Instead of dealing with what happened in the past, an adventure should focus on describing the present situation.” The author wisely lists positive elements to aim toward, rather than negatives to avoid, but I see the negative: backstory. Avoid weighing your adventure with history and background that players either cannot see or don’t care about. This surprised me because Dungeon magazine once ranked as the number one perpetrator of excessive backstory.

Dungeon magazine 25For a paragon of superfluous backstory, see this room description from Dungeon 25. “Trophy Room. This room once contained trophies of war. Swords, spears, and armor of all kinds were dedicated here to the everlasting glory of the fallen orc leaders. Centuries ago, the walls were draped with elven banners, dwarves sigils, gnome heraldry, and the flags and standards of men, goblins, and various orc tribes. The moonorc leaders have stripped the room of anything useful in order to outfit the tribe. The weapons and armor were quickly divided among the warriors, while the flags and banners were torn down and used for blankets or ripped apart and resewn into bags, sacks, and clothing. The room now contains only refuse and rusty, unusable equipment.” The description could just list “refuse and rusty, unusable equipment,” but adds 100 words of fluff that cannot possibly come into play.

The quote comes via Bryce Lynch’s crabby, entertaining reviews of Dungeon magazine adventures on tenfootpole.org.

Of course, most backstory appears in the front of adventures under the heading “Adventure Background,” and starting with the words, “A century ago…,” followed by three more pages of background. For anything more complicated than goblin raiders, authors feel obligated to start their background a millennium ago.

Some backstory improves a game. Anyone building a world—or just a dungeon—must imagine the history of the place to make it consistent. Creating a backstory can inspire ideas. When players notice a little history, the game world feels more connected and vibrant.

But adventures never arrive light on backstory. I feel annoyed when an adventure makes me trudge through pages of phony history to run a game session. Judging by Bryce Lynch’s reviews of Dungeon magazine adventures, I feel pretty sure backstory killed his parents.

Why do authors weigh down adventures with superfluous backstory? I count three reasons:

  • Forgetting that adventures exist to be played. Unnecessary backstory seemed to peak in the era of the campaign setting, what James Maliszewski calls D&D’s Bronze Age (1990-1995). During this era, TSR seemed to produce products to be read more than played. They published seven campaign settings supported by mountains of supporting material and novels. Nobody could play a fraction of it all. If an adventure exists more to be read than played, then backstory adds as much as playable content.
    I have the theory that the folks who write role-playing adventures do it because they like to write. I know, crazy. You would think they would do it for the cash and girls. Some writers seem to discover that simply writing RPG products scratches the same creative itch that once led them to play role-playing games. Over time, the writing assignments pile up, their gaming buddies move on, and these writers find themselves writing for role-playing games, but not playing them. During this same bronze age, I seem to recall a lot of designers admitting that they no longer played the games they wrote for.
  • An obligation to justify the elements of the adventure. Dungeons have changed from the original monster hotels peppered with rooms plucked from a lethal funhouse. Even in a fantasy world, players and DMs expect things to make sense. In Backstory and Adventure Design, Gus L writes, “One of the best parts of wonder, strangeness and exploration is figuring out why and how something is in the game world and how it connects to the rest of that world. Without context, a dungeon is just a series of puzzles, rewards and enemies.” In this spirit, I offered “5 reasons someone might build a dungeon filled with clues and tests.”
     
    Remember when your math teacher insisted that you show your work? I’m a DM. I just want answers—just the history that enhances play. I appreciate if you can justify every detail of an adventure with some torturous back story, but you can keep most of it to yourself. I don’t need the history of Krypton to enjoy a Superman tale.
     

     
    When your creative process leads you to create an elaborate history that the players will never learn, the game will still benefit. An unseen backstory will inspire telling details that make the game world more vivid. That history will lend the setting and characters a consistency that they would otherwise lack. 
  • A desire to share the creative work that led to the adventure. Most authors who create a detailed history as part of their creative process cannot bear to leave it untold. So they write thousands of words under “Adventure Background” and force me to sift the nuggets that will enter play. Like every writer, adventure authors must murder their darlings. (Or at least put them in colored insets as I do.)

Next: When and how to introduce backstory