Tag Archives: Shawn Merwin

From B1 to Pinebrook: Every D&D Adventure That Includes DM Advice and What They Taught

Over the 50-year history of Dungeons & Dragons, the game has changed enough that some gamers prefer the early versions of the rules to duplicate the play style of 1974. Have the qualities of good dungeon master changed too? For a tour of DM advice over D&D history, I sought the D&D adventures that included advice, from In Search of the Unknown (1979), to Peril in Pinebrook (2023), and pulled the best, worst, and most dated guidance. Most advice remains timeless, revisited in print over the decades, so this post only mentions guidance when it first appears.

B1 In Search of the Unknown (1979) by Dave Carr

Most adventures that include advice aim to help new DMs through their first session. Later printings of the 1977 Basic Set packaged In Search of the Unknown as a start. Originally, this Basic Set just included unkeyed dungeon maps that DMs could cut apart and rearrange into different configurations. Following the original dungeon design standards, new DMs could just roll for monsters and treasure to stock the map. B1 keeps some of this learn-by-doing approach. The adventure included vacant locations along with separate lists of monsters and treasures to pair with the open locations.

Designate a caller

One player in the group should be designated as the leader, or ‘caller’ for the party, while another one or two players can be selected as mappers (at least one is a must!).

Early on, DMs proved much scarcer than players so groups often included 8-12 players and D&D co-creator Gary Gygax ran sessions for as many as 20. Designating a caller to speak for the group helped speed play. For more on the lost role of mapper, see The Dungeon Mapper: From Half of D&D to a Forgotten Role.

Make the game enjoyable and challenging

The DM’s foremost concern should be to provide an enjoyable game which is challenging to the players. A good DM does not attempt to influence player actions or channel the activity in a particular direction. Although you may set up situations to challenge players, you must understand that you are not their adversary, nor are you necessarily out to defeat them. However, if your players abandon caution or make stupid mistakes, let them pay the price—but be fair.

As Dungeon Master, you are the game moderator. This means you set the tempo of the game and are responsible for keeping it moving. If players are unusually slow or dilly-dally unnecessarily, remind them that time is wasting. If they persist, allow additional chances for wandering monsters to appear—or at least start rolling the dice to make the players think that you are doing so.

In the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gary Gygax suggests speeding characters by rolling dice behind the screen, mainly to hint at the threat of wandering monsters. As random encounters fell out of favor, I figured this advice became outdated, but a recent adventure discussed in this post, The Hidden Halls of Hazacor (2018), recommends the same trick. For some of my advice on the subject, see Getting Players Moving, Especially When No One Wants to Drive.

Lastly, it is important to remember that the Dungeon Master is the final arbiter in his or her game. If players disagree with you, hear them out and reasonably consider their complaint. With human nature as it is, players will undoubtedly attempt to try to talk you into (or out of) all sorts of things; part of the fun of being a DM is this verbal interplay. But in the end, what you say is what goes.

T1 Village of Hommlet (1979) by Gary Gygax

By 1979, D&D publisher TSR had split Advanced Dungeons & Dragons from the original game. As an introduction to AD&D, Gygax penned Village of Hommlet, a module that added a village as a home base complete with non-player characters the players might not kill. For more on creating NPCs that players might not kill, see How to Create Loveable Non-Player Characters While You Supercharge Your Sex Appeal. (That title is not pure click bait; the post really does explain how to supercharge your sex appeal.)

Roleplaying NPCs

The persons met at the inn, along the road, and so forth, are you; for the Dungeon Master is all-monsters, NPCs, the gods, everything. Play it to the hilt. Do it with flair and wit. Be fair both to the characters and to yourself. Be deceitful, clever, and thoroughly dishonest when acting the part of a thief. Be cunning but just when in the role of a warding ranger. Actually think of it as if the part you are taking is that of a character you are playing, and act accordingly, but temper actions with disinterest in the eventual outcome and only from the viewpoint of that particular role. Wearing two, three, or a half dozen or more different hats is challenging, but that is part of being an outstanding DM.

For more on roleplaying NPCs and modelling good roleplaying for players, see Most Advice for Encouraging Role-playing Stinks, But I Found the Good Stuff.

B2 Keep on the Borderlands (1979) by Gary Gygax

In 1981, Keep on the Borderlands replaced B1 in the Basic Set. The adventure reprises the familiar advice, but Gygax adds a lofty pep talk for novice DMs.

As DM you are to become the Shaper of the Cosmos. It is you who will give form and content to all the universe. You will breathe life into the stillness, giving meaning and purpose to all the actions which are to follow. The others in your group will assume the roles of individuals and play their parts, but each can only perform within the bounds you will set. It is now up to you to create a magical realm filled with danger, mystery, and excitement, complete with countless challenges. Though your role is the greatest, it is also the most difficult. You must now prepare to become all things to all people.

If all of this seems too difficult, never fear! Just as your players are learning and gaining experience at D&D play, so too will you be improving your ability as a DM. The work necessary to become a master at the art is great, far greater than that necessary to be a top player, but the rewards are even greater. You will bring untold enjoyment to many players in your role as DM, and all the while you will have the opportunity to exercise your imagination and creative ability to the fullest. May each of your dungeon adventure episodes always be a wondrous experience!

Roleplaying monsters

When the players experience their first encounter with a monster, you must be ready to play the part fully. If the monster is basically unintelligent, you must have it act accordingly. Make the encounter exciting with the proper dramatics of the animal sort – including noises! If the encounter is with an intelligent monster, it is up to the DM to not only provide an exciting description but also to correctly act the part of the monster.

B10 Night’s Dark Terror (1986) by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris and Phil Gallagher

In the 80s, the D&D line sold in a series of boxed sets. The Basic Set started players with dungeon adventures, and then the Expert Set expanded the game to the wilderness. Night’s Dark Terror helped introduce players to the great outdoors. This adventure rates as one of the best ever.

Fudging rolls

Adventuring is, above all, about enjoying yourself, and sometimes in order to do so it is necessary to overrule some dice throws. It is your job as DM to give your players an exciting and fun time, relying entirely on the dice is not always the best way to do so—they are an aid, not a means in themselves. But be discrete—you don ‘t want your players to get the idea that you are pulling any punches!

No other adventure suggests fudging die rolls, but when Peril in Pinebrook (2023) suggested that DMs play to avoid killing player characters, the recommendation took heavy criticism from some gamers. That adventure appears later in this post.

B11 King’s Festival (1989) by Carl Sargent

By 1989, most of the earlier introductory adventures lapsed out of print, so TSR started a new set with B11 King’s Festival.

Description and the senses

Never forget that you are the eyes and ears of the player characters during the game. Players are wholly dependent on you to tell them what their PCs see, hear, and so on. Good DMs are able to convey the feel and atmosphere of an adventure, the thrills and scares, by using good descriptions of what actions are taking place and what the PC can see around them.

A good DM details more than simply what PCs see. Don’t forget noises (scurrying vermin, voices, whistling wind, owl hoots, the scraping of something on stone-is it metal, chitinous claws, or something even more horrid?), smells (food, garbage, the reek of a filthy ogre aiming a club at a PC), and tactile senses (“you feel hair rising at the nape of your neck,” or “the stone feels cold and slimy as you touch it”).

For more, see Narrating Your D&D Game: The Essentials and How To Make Descriptions Vivid and Evocative.

DDA2 Legions of Thyatis (1990) by John Nephew

Legions of Thyatis continued the line of B-series adventures that started with B1, but TSR feared the high module numbers hurt sales, so they restarted the series with DDA1 and DDA2.

Characterizing NPCs

One quick way to characterize an NPC is to visualize him as an animal, and picture that animal as you describe and play him. Another way to create stock characters is to use foils, or opposites. One example is the wimpy, fast-talking thief teamed up with a hulking mountain of a thug.

Winging it

“Winging it” means running an adventure without a detailed script or area key. Like all skills, doing it will be easier after you’ve tried it a few times. When winging a plotted adventure, just identify the main turning points of the plot; how the players get there is less important than the fun they have doing it.

Don’t worry at first if the encounter sends the party away from the main plot—you can practice steering them back to it! Players depend on you dropping clues to guide them, and they can easily get lost if they miss something vital. Don’t panic; keep giving them chances to get on the right track until they connect, if your first clues were too subtle. If they don’t connect, you can decide after the session whether you want to get them back on track or modify the adventure to go in their direction.

If the player characters scatter, think ahead to the next point in your plot at which you can bring them all back together. Try to do this as soon as possible; it’s most important to have all the players in the game, for player boredom is certain death for an evening’s fun.

Finally, you may have a situation where things have gone out of control. In such cases, stopping the game for a few minutes to sort things out is perfectly okay.

WGA4 Vecna Lives! (1990) by David Cook

Unlike all the prior adventures on this list, Vecna Lives! targeted experienced DMs. However, this module aimed to create a more structured story and a more horrific mood than a typical D&D romp.

Story beats

Allowing the player characters to succeed against a seemingly major villain, deadly trap, or a puzzle increases their confidence. This victory may be followed by a stinging defeat or the discovery that their accomplishment was only a small part of something greater and more powerful.

This technique must be used sparingly, however. You don’t want to take away all your player’s accomplishments or they will get discouraged. Wait until they are overconfident and cocky, then give them a reverse and it will remind them that things are not as easy as they seem.

Building tension

To make your players sweat, you must let them know they are in danger before anything actually happens.

Which creates more tension—the player characters open the door and discover the monsters, or the player characters hear a strange noise on the other side before they open the door? In the second case, the players suddenly stop and have to judge the amount of risk. They know something is there, but don’t know what.

The trick is to give your players hints that they are in danger without revealing enough for them to avoid that danger. In movies, this can be done by showing the audience the threat (the monsters lurking behind the door) but not showing it to the hero (about to open the door). This is a little harder in a role-playing game, since players are both audience and heroes.

You can use foreshadowing techniques to some extent. Fleeting, incomplete, and inaccurate glimpses of the major villains will put characters on their toes. The characters can discover Vecna’s grim handiwork just moments after the fact. Ancient manuscripts suggest the full extent of Vecna’s power. Even his Hand and his Eye, as powerful artifacts, only suggest the full extent of Vecna’s power.

Eye of the Wyvern (1999) by Jeff Grubb

Eye of the Wyvern and its twin adventure Wrath of the Minotaur both teach the game using sections with titles like “Funky Dice,” “The Physics of a Gaming Session,” and “The Fine Art of Winging It.”

The adventures even include scripted text for the DM to read to new players who apparently have no idea what activity awaits them.

“What we’re going to do here is tell a story, a story that you’re going to help create. Each of you has a character: a fighter, a wizard, or a rogue. The story takes place in a world filled with monsters, treasure, and adventure. I’m going to be the Dungeon Master, or DM. I’ll describe what your characters see, and you’re going to tell me what your characters do in response.“

Dead characters

The adventure gives advice for character deaths that I’ve never seen before or since. “Just replay.” in video games gamers routinely replay bad outcomes often, but on the tabletop the suggestion feels like a violation of the social contract. Perhaps replaying should not feel like a transgression, especially with a table of new players.

With some lucky dice rolls for the ghoul and some unlucky ones for the characters, the ghoul might be able to paralyze and defeat all the characters if it decides to stay around and fight. This might be a cruel thing to do to the characters (and their players), but it would be a good way to show the players how dangerous a monster like the ghoul can be. (And you can always back up and start the adventure over, or just replay the scene in the library, if you want to give the characters another chance.)

Sock puppets

Eye of the Wyvern includes ravenous little lizard-gremlins called wyverlings, and Grubb gives DMs fun advice for playing them while using your hands as puppets.

One easy prop to use to show wyvernling action is to hold up your hand, thumb in front of the palm. Touch the ring and middle fingers to your thumb and extend the whole outward. You now have a rough approximation of a wyvernling head, which you can use to demonstrate all types of wyvernling activity. Sock puppets work, too, but this is good on the fly.

Crypt of the Smoke Dragon (1999) by Jeff Grubb

Despite already publishing two starter adventures in the same year, TSR later printed a third, free intoduction also by Jeff Grubb. Crypt of the Smoke Dragon uses a “demo version” of D&D that only requires d6s. It includes 3d6 rolls to hit and for ability checks. Plus, none of the foes have parents, so it meets another of my starter adventure rules. (See 6 Things to Include in a 1st-Level D&D Adventure.) It even includes a (smoke) dragon boss battle.

Make the adventure your own

When the heroes try something that isn’t covered in the text, just make it up! Even better, make something up in each scene so that the adventure is uniquely your own. That’s the fun of the D&D game.

Call to adventure

Crypt of the Smoke Dragon gives each pregenerated PC a motivation to go adventure even though the players will proceed just because they sat for a D&D game. One seeks the destruction of evil, one treasure, one knowledge, and one just feels loyal to the other PCs. For more on motivating adventurers, see The D&D Adventures That Stumble by Missing the Hook.

H1 Keep on the Shadowfell (2008) by Bruce Cordell and Mike Mearls

The fourth edition’s introductory adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, makes subtle change that marks a big improvement. The 1999 introductory modules included four characters, three male and one female. This adventure leaves the names and genders of the pregenerated character blank so players set a gender. Too bad all the PCs’ illustrations appear male.

Way back in 1987, I embarrassed myself by creating a batch of male pregenerated for my event at Gen Con. A woman sat down and asked if any of the characters were female.

Hint: If you ever create characters for other players, always leave the gender unspecified. The (hopefully) ambiguous names I used for my last batch of PCs include Doc (cleric), Lucky (rogue), Sparky (wizard), Sprig (druid), Moxie (fighter), Roamy (Ranger). I could have left the names blank, but making names proved too much fun.

Make the adventure your own, part 2

You want to create a seamless world that seems both deep and exciting. You can accomplish this by adding story elements to the game when the opportunity arises.

Perhaps you think Wrafton’s Inn needs a bard stroking a lyre by the fire as he sings of Sir Keegan’s tragedy. Or perhaps you want to add flavor to a mundane object, such as the wyrmpriest’s necklace from the Kobold Ambush encounter.

Anything you can do to add your personal touch to an adventure makes it that much more distinctive and memorable to your players. Immerse them in the story, and you’ll all be rewarded with a unique experience.

The adventure recommends making NPCs distinct by giving them an accent or favorite saying, showing them with a favorite thing like a lucky coin or pet cat, or adding a personality-related adjective like “greedy, bored, suspicious, tired, enthusiastic, sly, nervous, dumb, zealous, and so on.”

Helping indecisive players

Sometimes when you ask players what they want to do next, they won’t know. If this happens, try to move them in a certain direction by asking a leading question. For example, if players spend a long time after the kobold fight considering what to do next, you can ask, “Are you ready to continue toward Winterhaven?”

This advice works for novice DMs running their first adventure, but if the players have already decided to travel to Winterhaven, you can typically let their decision stand without revisiting whether they want to continue. To break through indecision while giving players a better sense of autonomy, list their most promising three options, and then remind them that they can chose an entirely different action. See The Best DM Tricks for Helping a Party Make Choices.

Lost Mine of Phandelver (2014) by Richard Baker and Chris Perkins

Fifth edition’s introductory adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, still rates as one of the best for the game’s current version.

Don’t let rules questions stall the game

When in doubt, make it up! It’s better to keep the game moving than to get bogged down in the rules.

Be consistent. If you decide that a rule works a certain way in one session, make sure it works that way the next time it comes into play.

For advice on delegating rules questions, see Delegate to run better role-playing game sessions by doing less.

Share the narrative

It’s a shared story. It’s the group’s story, so let the players contribute to the outcome through the actions of their characters. Dungeons & Dragons is about imagination and coming together to tell a story as a group. Let the players participate in the storytelling.

Make sure everyone is involved. Ensure every character has a chance to shine. If some players are reluctant to speak up, remember to ask them what their characters are doing.

This reverses the early advice to designate a caller to speak for the party.

Read the table

Pay attention. Make sure you look around the table occasionally to see if the game is going well. If everyone seems to be having fun, relax and keep going. If the fun is waning, it might be time for a break, or you can try to liven things up.

Cloud Giant’s Bargain (2016) by Teos Abadia

When an Acquisitions Incorporated game streamed live to theaters, audiences received Cloud Giant’s Bargain as a perk. Although the adventure works for character levels 5-7, it also seeks to encourage fans of live play to run their first game.

If you are a new DM, it is perfectly normal to feel a bit apprehensive before your first session. Just remember: players need DMs to play. What you are doing is valuable and coveted. You don’t need a perfect understanding of the rules or to have Chris Perkins’ improvisational skills for players to have a great time. When in doubt, make decisions that you think the players will enjoy. The more often you run games as a DM, the easier it gets!

See Why Faking Confidence Makes You a Better Dungeon Master.

Name tents

Create a name tent by taking a note card or similar piece of cardstock and folding it in half. Open the fold to a right angle, so that it forms a display tent when the edges are placed on the table. Give one to each player and have them write their character’s name, race, and class on each outer side of the tent. This will allow you and the other players to remember character names and important details.

For advice on name tents and more, see 11 Great Dungeon Master Tips Revealed at Winter Fantasy 2020.

Going off script

If players lose sight of their goals or start chasing red herrings, the adventure recommends luring them back. “One thing to remember is that players often respond to something exciting, interesting, or profitable.”

An old school approach to failure

Unlucky dice can always turn against characters, however, allowing them to be overwhelmed. Defeat is always a possibility in Dungeons & Dragons-but that’s what makes victory so sweet.

The Hidden Halls of Hazacor (2018) by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Most introductory D&D adventures come directly from the TSR or Wizards of the Coast. After all, D&D’s publisher stands to reach virtually all new DMs first. Nonetheless this independent adventure, The Hidden Halls of Hazacor, gives first-time DMs an adventure stocked with guidance. And the adventure stands out for being the first and only adventure to give advice for some situations that have vexed DMs since 1974. The adventure targets kids and the writing aims for youngsters, but the advice works for any age.

Dealing with murderous treasure hunters

When some new players start playing a game that allows any choice of action, they relish the chance to shatter society’s rules of behavior, often in ways that disrupt the game for players who want to work together without making war with villagers.

Characters can be arrested in the stronghold for getting into fights, stealing from NPCs, climbing the stronghold walls, or trying to break into shops or apartments. So if any players talk about their characters wanting to do such things, it’s up to you to convince them it’s a bad idea.

Describe how there are guards everywhere in Purdey’s Rest, patrolling the streets and the market court. But also, characters will see guards eating in the taverns and visiting people at the inn. Purdey’s Rest is a safe place for its people, and the guards will keep it that way by kicking troublemakers out of the stronghold. If you need to, remind the players that they’ll have lots of chances to fight things in the dungeon.

For more on players who feel tempted to attack townsfolk, see Two weird D&D questions no one asks anymore, answered by the City State of the Invincible Overlord.

Helping distressed players

If you see that a player is uncomfortable with your descriptions, change what you say so it doesn’t seem as real. A player will feel better about monsters and scary descriptions after they play for a while. One way to help with that is to give the player a chance to feel like a hero. During combat, describe how a successful hit by a character makes a monster stagger or fall back. This lets the player know they are in control, and that they don’t need to worry.

For a time my scary descriptions may have wrecked the fun, see My 5 Biggest Game Mastering Blunders Ever and What I Learned.

Running for empathetic players

When you run adventures as a GM, you might see that some players don’t like the idea of killing intelligent creatures, or monsters they feel sorry for. Some players might be upset if they feel as though the game is making them kill other creatures. So it’s important for you to remind the players that they always get to decide what their characters do. Instead of killing intelligent creatures like orcs, goblins, and kobolds, the characters can defeat them in combat, then threaten them into leaving.

The crates, barrels, and boxes of loot that the orcs and the goblins have collected are all stolen from merchants and travelers. It’s okay for the characters to take the stolen loot and sell it if that’s what they want to do. If any players are worried about taking things that were stolen, they can return the stolen goods to the guards in Purdey’s rest instead of selling them.

Arguments among players

Sometimes arguments are more serious. But you can still solve many serious arguments by talking to the players. If two of them want their characters to kill goblin bandits but the other players want to let the goblins go, ask all the players why they feel the way they do. The players who want to kill the goblins might just be worried that the sneaky goblins will come back and attack the party again. So ask for Wisdom (Insight) checks if you want the characters to know that the goblins are too scared to come back, and that the players don’t need to worry.

Sometimes you might have a different situation. Most of the players don’t want to kill the goblins because they feel sorry for them. But one player says they’re going to kill the goblins just to make the other players feel bad. You might have a player who ignores other players when they want to talk to monsters, and who always attacks instead. Or a player might say that since their character killed most of the monsters in an encounter, they deserve more treasure than anyone else. Fixing those kinds of arguments is harder. Because when a player tries to wreck the fun for other players on purpose, that’s a kind of bullying.

Just like with other arguments and problems in the game, you should try to fix bullying first by talking. Remind everyone that characters do best in the game when they work together. Tell the player that as the GM, you want everyone to have fun, and what they’re doing is hurting the fun for the other players. But sometimes a player who’s being a bully won’t stop. And if that happens, that’s the one time when you get to use your power as the GM to tell the player that their character can’t do what they want. You might even need to tell the player that if they don’t stop, they won’t be allowed to play in your game.

For more on player cooperation, see A Roleplaying Game Player’s Obligation.

Summarize the boring parts

When you decide things aren’t important, you can give the players a short summary instead. Traveling is often best summarized. If the characters leave the dungeon to rest up, then come back, you don’t need to play out having them move through every room like you did when they first explored. You can just tell them that the dungeon is dark and quiet as they go back to where they left off.

See Just Because a Dungeon Numbers Every Room Doesn’t Mean Players Have To Explore Room-by-Room and What Choose-Your-Adventure Books Can Teach Game Masters About Pacing and Decisions.

Peril in Pinebrook (2023) by Shawn Merwin

Peril in Pinebrook is a free, introductory adventure designed for new and young Dungeons & Dragons players and inspired by The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons. For a more accessible experience, it includes a simplified version of fifth edition’s rules and premade character sheets.

Let players succeed

Use “Yes, and …” or “No, but …” Allow the players to succeed as much as possible, and let them participate in the telling of the story. If they want to try something unexpected, try to say “yes” and then work their ideas into the story. If you have to say “no” to a player’s idea, suggest options that let them do something similar.

Allow Alternatives. D&D is a game of fantasy, where heroes use wits, skill, and determination to overcome obstacles. Sometimes those obstacles are defeated with weapons and spells. But characters can succeed in other ways. Communicating with monsters, tricking them or frightening them away, or avoiding a fight while cleverly sneaking past a challenge can be just as much fun. Such options are ideal if anyone playing the game wants to avoid violence.

The advice to let players succeed reminds DMs to allow player ingenuity rather than looking for whatever solution we have in mind, but still acknowledges that not every idea works. See Challenging Your Players’ Skill Without Risking Frustration and Sometimes I Tell Players No, but “Say Yes” Made Me a Better Dungeon Master.

Listening as a safety tool

Encourage your players to speak to you, publicly or privately, if something in the game upsets them. Then respond appropriately. For instance, you can move past upsetting topics by quickly narrating a resolution to a scene, then quickly move to the next part of the story.

Avoid character deaths

Peril in Pinebrook started a controversy by suggesting ways for DMs to avoid killing new player’s characters. “You can intervene if the characters seem to be losing the battle. For instance, you can give the characters advantage on attack rolls or give the monsters disadvantage on attack rolls.” The adventure also advises DMs to avoid focusing fire on a single PC. For more on sparing characters, see How To Adjust Combat Difficulty on the Fly Using the Magic of Roleplaying.

Before scorning the advice, consider that even Gary Gygax recommended occasional mercy for characters. In the original Dungeon Master’s Guide (p.110), he wrote, “Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonable severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player character when they have played well.

How Playing on Streams and at Conventions Sharpens D&D’s Designers

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 Dungeons & Dragons setting books rarely seemed to play the game much anymore.

Prolific adventure author Teos “Alphastream” Abadia writes, “Especially in the third-edition era, some Wizards staff seemed not to play their own game and seldom saw it played. In the Living Greyhawk community (a 3E organized play campaign) there was the sense that a large portion of new rules needed errata solely because the designers weren’t familiar enough with the game to see (obvious) exploits and problems.”

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.”

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 third and fourth 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 the designers’ own home games or their games within their company.”

The designers of fifth edition play more with the D&D community, and the edition benefits. “We know that D&D is a big tent,” explains lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford. “Not only do people of many sorts play in the D&D, but also people of many tastes play D&D. We know some people really love heavy improvisational role-playing and other D&D players, for them, that’s all about the tactical nuances of D&D combat, and everything in between.”

Over the past few years, I‘ve seen D&D designers at conventions run games for random tables of Adventurers League players lucky enough to draw the celebrity DM. Speaking in the podcast, Teos 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.”

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.”

The D&D designers play with non-designers even more on liveplay streams. “One of my favorite parts of the rise of RPG celebrities running liveplay games is that they have to then play their games with other people,“ Teos writes. “I really think it is fantastic that so many at WotC have run and played in the games.” Of course, streamed play intends to entertain an audience, making these performances different from most D&D sessions—the ones at basements, kitchen tables, or game stores‘ back rooms.

People who think about D&D’s future wonder how livestreams will influence designers to change the rules, and whether streaming should shape the rules. Jeremey Crawford says, “We’re concerned about supporting traditional tabletop play well, but also the types of D&D experiences people have in streams.”

Streaming certainly affects the interests of new players discovering D&D. Traditionally, new D&D players tended to focus on the joy of bashing monsters and developing more powerful characters. Those same new players found acting in character off putting. Before steaming, virtually nobody new to D&D spoke in character. The prospect of adopting a funny voice seemed odd and potentially embarrassing. Now, new players typically want to play the sort of personalities and scenes they see in streams. (In my experience, new players act in character, but they still hesitate to use a funny voices. Perhaps the vocal talents of actors seem unreachable.)

Based on experience running games at conventions, the people guiding D&D’s Adventurers League organized play campaign work harder than ever to accommodate different play styles. The recent League seasons have encouraged authors to welcome the three D&D pillars of exploration, roleplaying interaction, and combat when designing adventures, and to especially consider non-combat answers to encounters. The league’s Ravenloft: Mist Hunters campaign aims to “focus on story, atmosphere, and immersive interaction.”

If you want to write games and adventures for strangers to play, then you benefit from playing with strangers. 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. Authors with experience as dungeon masters for strangers become better at anticipating what random players might do, and do better at writing scenarios that account for players who veer off the path.

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.

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

This post revists a topic from 2016.

8 Thoughts About D&D From Winter Fantasy

At the convention center in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the entire Winter Fantasy convention fits into one hall. Despite the event’s compact size, it delivers as much Dungeons & Dragons as the biggest table-top gaming cons. Imagine the D&D track from Origins or Gen Con, complete with the Adventurers League brain trust, and the game’s most passionate players, concentrated in a convention of its own. Plus, the con offers plenty of inexpensive hotel rooms. Sure, Fort Wayne suffers an icy February, but you come to game.

This year’s convention inspired 8 thoughts about D&D.

1. Winter Fantasy 2019 marks my first convention under the Season 8 Adventurers League rules, which meant lots of jokes about the system’s abstractions. Based on descriptions at my tables, treasure chests now contain vouchers allowing the purchase of magic items, coins disappear into trusts payable upon leveling, and hardened mercenaries now tackle deadly missions for the promise of gratitude. (These adventurers took Intelligence as a dump stat and think “gratitude” is a gemstone.) For a summary of the season 8 league rules, see My Dungeons & Dragons Adventurers League Quick Reference Sheet.

Despite all the jokes, players seemed fine with the practice of unlocking magic items. Other aspects deserve changes. I plan a deeper look in a future post.

2. The convention’s organizer, Baldman Games, creates Adventurers League scenarios set in the Moonshae islands. With Shawn Merwin and Eric Menge shepherding the writing, these adventures boast an otherworldly flavor of Celtic myth and faerie. In Moonshae, the good fey are dangerous, the bad fey are creepy and dangerous, and the story ends when the witch eats the children. Those brats had it coming.

Everyone but the dog

3. My first game gathered James Introcaso, Mike Shea, Teos Abadia, and other D&D enthusiasts to play MOON4-1 Precious Cargo by Cindy Moore. Through our adventures, we befriended goblins, a svirfneblin, and a dog, adding all to our party. Credit our dungeon master, Garrett Crowe, for silly goblin voices and a knack for playing along. Just when Garrett seemed like a pushover, the svirfneblin betrayed us. Good move.

Whenever I run a D&D game for kids, their party seems to gather an entourage of pets, companions, and friends. The kids love it. So what does it say when a party of “mature,” “sophisticated” D&D players gathers a similar zoo? Don’t answer that question. And if my editor puts quotes around any words, ignore them.

4. Speaking of strategic mastery, our party started befriending monsters because Cindy penned a challenging adventure that made combat seem risky. I love difficult adventures because they can either bring tense battles that push characters to their limits or—in our case—alliances with one-armed goblins who fancy themselves emperor. Because Cindy’s adventures once carried a reputation for being cupcakes, this scenario’s difficulty surprised me. Later in the con, I asked her if this reputation led to a change in style. “Yes, I said eff you all.” Well played, Cindy.

5. As for challenges, a highlight of my games came when a kraken tentacle hurled my unconscious character to another game table. The incident came during the D&D multi-table special adventure MOON ES-1 A Drop in the Ocean. The DMs invented a process where tentacle attacks could fling characters from table to table. Falling characters landed in the quipper-infested waters controlled by another DM. Players loved it.

Many multi-table adventures feature a way for characters to jump between tables, but they typically move in response to a call for help. Players never ask for help, so nobody moves. The tentacle rule sparked concerns that too many people might temporarily land at a single table, leading to a party size that exceeded league regulations.

Luckily, someone read the part of league guidelines that grants DMs authority to make rulings that make things fun. Dave and Gary did not give D&D to us just to see a game where kraken tentacles can’t hurl unconscious characters from table to table.

6. Another highlight came when I played Invasion from the Planet of Tarrasques run by the adventure’s author, James Introcaso. This stands as my first game with top-level characters. Despite our superhero-like power, James pressed us to our limits and we had a blast. This adventure serves “over-the-top, gonzo action” without becoming silly. I’ve already committed to running it for friends.

7. The play of the convention came during the adventure MOON6-2 Troubled Visions, run by Eric Menge. The adventure pits the party against a fey prince named Uznezzir, who revels in everything repulsive and unclean. Our party found the prince’s captive and unrequited love, an Eladrin woman named Aodh. Uznezzir offered her freedom as the stake in a challenge. He suggested a riddle contest. D&D players know how that goes: The players try to solve a riddle and the adventure moves on a well-trod path.

Instead, a party member played by Jason Pearson challenged Uznezzir to a compliment contest. Is that even a thing? Whoever lavished Aodh with the best compliment would win her freedom or her eternal imprisonment. She swore on her honor to judge fairly. While the party struggled to craft praise, Eric as Uznezzir found quick inspiration.

At last the party finished and we read our work. “Aodh, Your hair shines like the sun yadda yadda yadda.” Surely Uznezzir’s honeyed words would best our platitudes.

Then the fey prince spoke. “Aodh, You are as beautiful as a heap of rotting fresh turned green under a yellow sky of dripping acid that reeks to the highest heaven and brings all the flies.”

We won the contest. In the tradition of fables, Jason had realized the fey prince’s weakness and used it to outsmart him, while Eric had been quick enough to see the twist in the story and play it out. This may rank as the best moment of collaborative storytelling I’ve seen in a D&D game.

8. The authors of D&D’s creature statistics missed an opportunity when they failed to give owls an 18 Wisdom.

“I Assist” Isn’t an Improved Guidance Cantrip that Anyone Can Cast

In episode 124 of the Down with D&D podcast, hosts Shawn Merwin and Chris Sniezak discussed a scene that reoccurs at my tables too. “In a lot of games that I’ve run, everyone is always assisting every check they possibly can,” Shawn explains. “Someone tries to do something, and someone will just pipe up, ‘I assist.’”

This pattern brings advantage to every check, trivializing the game’s challenges. Because no one needs to engage with the game world to gain an edge, routine assistance discourages ingenuity.

Chris Sniezak offers a potential remedy: “When someone says that they want to help, the first question that the dungeon master should ask is, ‘How do you help?’”

Ask players to describe how they assist, and then grant—or deny—advantage based on whether the assistance could help. The Dungeon Master’s Guide explains, “You decide whether a circumstance influences a roll in one direction or another, and you grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result.” Rather than making “I assist” a real-world incantation that grants advantage, judge assistance as a circumstance that might merit advantage.

Photo by Mykola Swarnyk

If a character tries to climb from a frozen river onto the ice, a hand up will probably help. Encouragement shouted from the shore probably won’t.

Describing the assistance immerses players in the game world and helps the story come alive.

Specific actions to assist might expose a helper to danger. Offering a hand out of that river would mean crawling onto the cracking ice. Often, assistance means coming in range of a potential trap.

Unlike past Dungeons & Dragons rules, fifth edition lets characters assist without a required check. Nonetheless, the actions made to assist might require a check. Suppose a helper chooses not to risk the thin ice and opts to throw a rope instead. Casting a rope to a sinking character’s flailing hands might require a dexterity check.

In an ideal game, players describe their actions and DMs respond by calling for ability checks. This protocol extends to assisting. The player describes how they help, and then the DM grants advantage. Typically, I don’t insist on this order, so I happily ask players how they help. But during role-playing interaction, I stick to the protocol.

After a player acts in character to persuade a non-player character, I don’t let bystanders volunteer to assist the check. Only characters with speaking parts—the characters who contributed to a scene—get to assist. When two or more characters contribute to an interaction, I typically grant advantage without a player request. Sometimes I accept a reminder.

The D&D rules offer two alternatives to assistance.

Group checks come when everyone might need to make at a check. The rule assumes skilled characters assist the rest, so only half the group needs to succeed.

The second alternative is letting everyone make an attempt. After all, helping someone search a room amounts to two separate searches. Rolling two separate lockpicking attempts makes more sense than letting one character assist by encircling the rogue from behind to guide her hand like a creepy golf instructor.

Unless time, skill, or other circumstances limit an attempt to a couple of party members, separate roles usually offer better odds. But consider this: If everyone in the party enjoys time to make a check in safety, why even bother making the check? Do you just want to give everyone a chance to roll?

Sometimes I do that. Everyone likes to roll. I wonder how many players liked the old assistance rules better just because the helper gets to roll?

Three Traits that Good Dungeon Masters Need to Shine in Convention Games

At game conventions, I like to wander the Dungeons & Dragons game tables, watching dungeon masters in action. I see plenty of skills worth copying. Nearly all DMs bring enough from their home games to run a fun session. But sometimes I see weaknesses too. All of us have areas to improve. By far, the most common flaws stem from traits seldom practiced at a kitchen table or at a friendly little game store. Convention games demand extra skills.

Project your voice. At home, you can look down at your papers while speaking like a golf announcer. At a convention, the din of 50 tables means conversational speaking gets lost. Players feel reluctant to stall the game, so they rarely ask you to repeat. Tim Kask, the first editor of The Dragon, played his first D&D game at Gen Con in 1974. He only heard half what the DM said, so he felt “completely bewildered.” Today’s players react the same way. They sit politely, lost and hoping to catch up. At a convention, look at the players as you speak, and then project your voice to the next table over. When I DM, I like to take the seat nearest to the wall so players facing me don’t hear extra noise from a table behind me. It can’t hurt.

Own the adventure. At a convention, most DMs work from an adventure written by another author. We probably don’t even get to choose which adventures we run.

A few dungeon masters muddle through such adventures with the enthusiasm they would bring to reading assembly instructions to someone with a screwdriver. Perhaps they apologize for aspects they don’t like, or share a monologue on their interpretation of the text, or meditate aloud on a non-player character’s motives. Stop that. When you run another author’s work, adopt it and find a way to love it as your own. If you need to make a few tweaks, then make them, but keep the adventure’s essentials intact. Some of the fun of organized play comes from sharing a common experience with folks who played the same adventures as you.

For an example of how I tweaked an adventure to suit me, see Running Shackles of Blood: Making the good adventure into a great session.

Fill the available time with a beginning, a middle, and an end. When I DM convention games, I often check my watch. I worry that players might suspect I have somewhere I would rather be, but really I’m tracking our progress. When folks sit down for a convention game, they want to experience a beginning, a middle, and an end. Also, they paid about $10 for the slot, so they want the game to fill most of the time.

To pace a convention adventure, you must estimate how long the finale will take. As you play through the middle, if scenes run long, plan short cuts that can take the characters to the end. Perhaps this means the players reach the final scene without meeting every challenge in the adventure. Or maybe the monsters in a drawn-out combat suddenly have 1 hit point. See How to end combat encounters before they become a grind.

In episode 3 of the DM’s Deep Dive podcast,  Shawn Merwin gives more advice on pacing D&D under time constraints. For the story of my struggle stretching a 2-hour adventure into a 4-hour slot, see What Murder in Balur’s Gate Taught Me About Engaging Players in Role Playing.

If you ever DM in public, mind your volume, enthusiasm, and the clock. All three skills come more from attention than from special expertise. These three small additions to your game will let your players see the talent you bring to your home game.

Origins 2017: Choose Your Own Dungeons & Dragons Adventure

This year at Origins, I split my time between serving as a dungeon master, and playing in Dungeons & Dragons games. Remember the disappearing McFly family photo from Back to the Future? It gave Marty McFly a look at his progress toward setting his future right. This year at Origins Game Fair, I ran an epic adventure that made me think of that photo. More on that later.

For many gamers, the Origins Game Fair feels just the right size. Unlike Winter Fantasy, the convention offers diversions beyond non-stop D&D. Unlike Gen Con, you don’t face a city and a convention center crowded to the limit. In 2015, Gen Con brought 61,423 unique visitors to Indianapolis. Origins 2016 brought 15,479 unique visitors to the similarly-sized city of Columbus. At Origins, you can reserve a hotel room without winning a lottery and you can pay for it without winning a lottery.

Goblins and scenery from Tomb of Annihilation

Elmwood adventures

I arrived with two convention-created adventures on my DM schedule. ELMW 2-1 Tendrils in the Fog and ELMW 2-2 Mists of the Moonsea read well. They land characters in vibrant scenes that promise to excite players. Both adventures feature a good mix of role-playing, investigation, and combat challenges. ELMW 2-1 takes players to villages and hideouts along the Moonsea, before ending in a small dungeon. ELMW 2-2 features battles on and under the sea, and ends with an ambush spanning a series of rope bridges. Both adventures pit the players against a group of adventurers cursed by evil. The foes resemble any number of morally questionable parties, perhaps dialed one notch darker. I loved these villains. ELMW 2-2 proved as fun as I anticipated.

An introduction to Tomb of Annihilation

I never ran ELMW 2-1 because the marshals needed an extra hand to run the introductory adventures for Tomb of Annihilation. I ran these adventures cold, reading one step ahead of the players. Each of this set of 5 missions plays in hour and a half or so. These adventures take characters to the jungle of Chult and the exotic Port Nyranzaru. Chult substitutes dinosaurs for shining knights and blood-sucking vines for wizards in pointy hats. Players feel like Indiana Jones in a lost world.

Most of the folks who come to play D&D at Origins rank as passionate players who bring a quiver of characters and who may play adventures more than once. The introductory adventures draw a different mix of players. First-timers and gamers who haven’t played since THAC0 join the D&D enthusiasts. The new and returning players bring a fresh enthusiasm that I savor. In the past, I haven’t volunteered for these introductory adventures, but next year, I plan to.

At conventions like Origins, where the dungeon masters belong to the Heralds Guild, we get scored based on players’ feedback. Running the introductory adventures cold lead to a dip in my score for preparation. I can’t argue with the accuracy, but seeing a drop in my overall judge scores disappointed me.

Hecatomb

This year, Origins hosted all three of the epic adventures that accompany Tales from the Yawning Portal. I played in Hecatomb, an epic for tiers 3 and 4.

Hecatomb’s author ramped up the difficulty of this adventure, even for tier 4. I love a challenge, so I welcomed the threat. I heard tales of tables practically wiped out. Meanwhile, at my table, two characters died, rose as undead, and attacked surviving players at other tables. One of the DMs administering the event went from table to table with a group of players running their now-undead PCs. The dead took revenge on the living. This “interaction” beats just having some evil champion roaming from table to table.

Hecatomb landed all the players on massive battlefield, scrambling to destroy arcane obelisks while fighting monsters. Presumably, our comrades in arms fought on battlemaps next to ours, facing other battles for other obelisks. By social convention, everyone agrees not to seek out the folks at the next table to form a party of 12.

Our party featured a crossbow expert/sharpshooter character—number 1 on my list of character types absurdly good at one thing. Even folks who play the combination find it overpowered. After taking casualties, our table changed strategy. We realized that the sharpshooter could safely destroy the obelisks and the monsters lurking two maps over, without ever letting threats come close enough to strike back. In this optimal strategy, my magic user’s best contribution was to cast Haste on the sharpshooter. Our melee characters could only “ooh” and “ahh” like an audience for Annie Oakley. Encounter designers need to consider sharpshooting just as they might consider something like flying. If you design an encounter where characters can engage foes from 500-yards away, then for parties with sharpshooters, the monsters resemble infantry crossing no-man’s land.

Return to White Plume Mountain

I ran Return to White Plume Mountain as a dungeon master. This epic accommodated both tier-2 and 3 characters. The tier-3 PCs fought to thwart a sacrificial ritual, while the tier-2 PCs attempted to distract the monsters, drawing them away from the main assault.

Return to White Plume Mountain worked hard to foster interaction. Some of its methods fascinated me.

A twist that required communication. Return gave each party a sending stone linked with another table. In many epics, such stones enable communication, but Return also included a clever trick that could foil groups who failed to communicate. In my session, some tables treated messages as a distraction and failed to notice the essential information. If more solutions come from messages between tables, the design would work even better.

Scoring that affected encounters for both tiers. Return featured a push-pull dynamic where each tier’s efforts drew monsters away from the other tier. Potentially, this could force tables to agree on a strategy that raises enough of a distraction to ensure success without drawing all the monsters into a deadly encounter. In practice, tier-2 tables just saw a distraction score that they could raise. Like any good gamers, they put all their energy to reaching a high score. Tables marched through the dungeon making more noise than a parade, without seeing the danger. In the end, tier 2 faced all the monsters.

The push-pull feature would work better if, instead of a rising score, the players saw the additional monsters in their future. Suppose some divination magic gives the PCs visions of their near future. This idea made me think of the McFly family photo—a vision of the future that results from the players’ current actions. I wanted a line of miniature figures that showed the monsters to come, but a scorecard handout would work as well. Back in How to forge the most epic multi-table role-playing event ever, I recommended letting players choose their own difficulty. In Return, a more visual push-pull mechanic would help.

Every table joined in the same battle. In the finale, all the tier-2 parties enter a massive dungeon room where they spot the ritual at the far side. An army of tier-3 monsters defend the ritual. As intended, the tier-2 parties stay on their side of the room and work to rescue sacrificial victims until tier 3 arrives near the heavy hitters to thwart the ritual. This works so long as the Tier-2 groups stay in their lane and avoid any bold ideas that might interfere with the ritual.

Step aside, pipsqueaks. I’ll finish this.

When I ran, my tier-2 group had little reason to stay in their lane. Before entering the final room, tier-2 table captains gather to share resources. Somehow, my table’s captain returned from the meeting with an allied planetar summoned by a tier-3 table. So a party clustered around level 7 added a challenge-rating-16 powerhouse with a fly speed of 120. I spent days wondering what part of the adventure let tier-3 tables share such resources with tier 2. What did I miss? The event’s one administrator was doing a job intended for three people, and I think he overlooked this extra interaction. But at the time, I figured the planetar came approved by the boss.

When my group entered battle arena and saw the ritual on the far side, they wondered whether to send their planetar to intervene. In one round, the celestial could have flown across the entire room, engaged the villain, and dealt lethal damage, while using innate Truesight to foil the Contingency intended to keep the villain alive. Before 6 tables even reached the final encounter, the event administrator could have stood and announced the abrupt victory to all 12 tables. “Now everybody has an extra hour for lunch. You can thank table 3 on the way out.”

Dungeon masters, choose your own adventure. In this situation, do you…

  • Tell the players you don’t care what anyone says. They can’t bring a planetar. (But the planetar came from the boss, and I can’t believe you’re saying “no” to your players.)
  • Let the planetar cross the room, then invent reasons that it fails to thwart the ritual. (You’re just abusing your power as a DM just to make the players fail.)
  • Pass the planetar back to the overextended event administrator and let him figure out what to do with it. (Just say, “Excuse me. I know that you’re already doing 3 jobs, but I can’t handle a little trouble at my own table.”)
  • Let the planetar solve the epic for all 12 tables. (Everybody, you’re welcome!)
  • Suggest that the players stay in their lane and use the planetar to help themselves. (Why should players have to meekly follow the author’s intent?)

My players stayed in their lane. I’m not particularly happy with the way I handled the situation. How would you do it?

D&D Open

In eight hours, the D&D Open aims to combine the fun and community of a battle interactive, with a measure of the competition of the old tournaments. The Open’s all-star team of authors, Teos Abadia, Shawn Merwin, and Sean Molley, capture all the challenge that made the original event such a blast. This year, I played as groups ventured to the jungle land of Chult to rob the tombs of dead gods. Monsters native to this lost world provided a unique flavor.

The event added a room of physical and mental challenges for Players—something like dungeon carnival games. Everyone seemed to enjoy this short break from the table.

The adventure also added the shtick of having a wandering monster roam from table to table to trade attacks. I only like this trick when the wandering menace comes from now-undead PCs. In a quasi-competitive event where players race against time, I disliked the gimmick more than usual. Fortunately, the interruption only takes a few minutes.

The event’s finale featured clever twist and a thrilling race to escape. The escape encouraged even faster play and set an objective other than kill everything. Once again, the D&D Open delivered the year’s best D&D game.

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

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.

Dungeons & Dragons at the 2016 Origins Game Fair

For many gamers, the Origins Game Fair feels just the right size. Unlike Winter Fantasy, the convention offers diversions beyond non-stop Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Unlike Gen Con, you don’t face a city and a convention center crowded to the limit. In 2015, Gen Con brought 61,423 unique visitors to Indianapolis. Origins 2016 brought 15,479 unique visitors to the similarly-sized city of Columbus. At Origins, you can reserve a hotel room without winning a lottery and you can pay for it without winning a lottery.

I photographed this multi-table megadungeon at Origins 2015

Multi-table megadungeon photographed at Origins 2015

Origins features reasonably priced options in a connected food court. Gamers can also walk to downtown restaurants or cross the street to the North Market. This pavilion features vendors selling Mexican, Indian, Polish, barbecue, Italian, sushi, and many other types of food.

Origins started in 1975 as a convention sponsored by wargaming-giant Avalon Hill in its home town of Baltimore. In tribute to Avalon Hill and its town’s role in the birth of hobby gaming, the convention took the name Origins.

In Origins’ early years, it became the convention where the board- and miniature-gaming enthusiasts could find refuge from the the role-playing gamers who infested their hobby and who took over Gen Con. In 1988, when Origins and Gen Con combined into a single event for a year, those old wargamers grumbled.

Compared to Gen Con, Origins still tilts more toward board and miniature games. It shows fewer signs of fan culture like anime screenings, celebrity guests, and costumes.

In a recap, Andrew Smith writes, “If you’ve been at Gen Con when the Hall opens, you may be envisioning crowds of thousands of people waiting by the doors. Origins is quite different. We got in line a few minutes before opening and were probably behind 20-30 people in a single file line. It’s a completely different atmosphere.” Unlike Gen Con, board game demos spill out into a patchwork of territories outside the exhibit hall. This offers more hours to sample games, more space, and more affordable space for the manufacturers. “Demo lines are shorter and publishers just seem less busy and able to really sit and discuss their games.

This year, Wizards of the Coast made a strategic move to avoid Gen Con and feature Origins. Members of D&D team, including Mike Mearls, Chris Perkins, Chris Lindsay, and Trevor Kidd visited the con, while none will reach Gen Con.

As with Winter Fantasy and Gen Con, the folks at Baldman Games operated D&D organized play. The con launched a new program where conventions can commission Adventurers League adventures for their events. The organizers gain exclusive access to their content for six months before releasing it to the world at the Dungeon Masters Guild. Adventures in this new program will center on the Forgotten Realms Moonsea region.

The new Baldman Games adventures included a trilogy of adventures set in Melvaunt and four adventures set in Hillsfar, which were were reserved for D&D Experience players. On the Down with D&D podcast, the Bald Man, Dave Christ, talked about commissioning top authors to launch his exclusives. “With this being the first one, I wanted to set the bar really high. I wanted to kind of knock it out of the park.

CORE1-2 A Cog in the Wheel

CORE1-2 A Cog in the Wheel

The D&D experience pairs tables of six players with the same, top-rated DM for all four adventures. My table’s judge, Krishna Simonse, did an outstanding job accommodating our taste for combat challenges harder than the adventure’s strong level and our love of grids.

D&D play at Origins 2016 with the D&D Experience in the balcony

D&D play at Origins 2016 with the D&D Experience in the balcony

In addition to the exclusive content, the convention premiered the final, season 4 Curse of Strahd adventures and the kickoff for the season 5 Storm King’s Thunder story.

For me, the con’s best moments came with the return of the D&D Open. I explained what made this classic so great in, “Why the awesome Dungeons & Dragons Championship should return.”

The new Open’s all-star team of authors, Teos Abadia, Shawn Merwin, and Sean Molley captured all the challenge that made the old event such a blast.

In eight hours, the new Open aimed to combine the fun and community of a battle interactive, with a measure of the competition of the old tournaments.

Me in black at the D&D Open—despite our game face, we're having fun

My D&D Open team, with me in black, listening intently to the DM’s description of our next challenge.

Most of the event pitted players against an old-school funhouse adventure set in the megadungeon of Undermountain. Here the challenges proved as fun as any tournament I’ve played. I loved how so many locations wrapped combat encounters with puzzles to be solved. In a maze, PCs raced to gather clues while fleeing minotaurs and mind flayers. In castle ruins, PCs needed to find a way to turn catapults against a Death Tyrant. Best of all, the authors made the new Open hard—none of the namby-pamby, say-yes, everybody-is-a-star D&D in fashion now. Characters died. Our table saw one character Plane Shifted to certain doom and a second slain by a death ray. Save or die! Gary would be pleased.

For a climax, the tables joined forces against a diabolic machine constructed by Halaster, the mad architect of Undermountain.  Sean Molley showed astonishing ability to speak loudly enough to be heard from the far side of the ballroom while still taunting us in the Doofenshmirtz-like voice of Halaster.

I still wish for a more rigorous tournament with pregenerated characters, multiple rounds, and elite dungeon masters striving for consistent rulings and style. The D&D team sees that style of tournament as history. For most players, the new Open probably offers more fun. For an old grump like me, the Open still ranked as my best game of the year.

Wizards is already hatching plans for next year’s Open. Based on the event’s success, I suspect they will offer this year’s adventure to other conventions, but that remains undecided.

In all, Origins 2016 ran twice as many Adventurers League tables as in 2015.

The Origins Game Fair returns to Columbus on June 14-18th of 2017. See you there.

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