The Daily Dungeon Master Blog

Hello everyone! In this week’s installment of How To DM, I’d like to talk about everyone’s favorite controversial subject – roleplaying.

You have one player who likes to roleplay his half-drow assassin’s abiding – but ultimately doomed – love interest with a dwarf paladin. Another considers his gruesome coup de grace descriptions the only roleplay that matters. The idea of what is or isn’t good roleplay is so subjective as to be nearly impossible to quantify, and we probably have widely different definitions even within our own group.

Then we have those players who are shy, or worried that they’ll do something “wrong”, or just simply don’t know what “roleplaying” means? The last two points I find very common in players who are new to the hobby.

So how do we handle all this as a DM? How do we promote this integral part of our cooperative hobby in a way so everyone is having fun without forcing them?

So, let’s talk about roleplaying in this week’s How To DM!

Set Boundaries Early: If you ask 100 gamers, I’m sure you’ll get 100 different answers on what “good” roleplay is, but I think we can all agree on some common examples of “bad” roleplay:

• Roleplay that makes other players uncomfortable or forces them to participate in something they don’t want to be involved in. I call this syndrome “D&D After Dark”, and it certainly isn’t appropriate unless everyone in the group is on board.
• Roleplay that causes strife or hard feelings within the group. Not necessarily between characters – that can sometimes lead to some really interesting and fun things – but hard feelings between players. In-party theft, PvP combat that isn’t mutually agreed upon…these are fine examples of ways to swiftly bring ruin to a group.
• Roleplay that hogs all the spotlight, demands all the DM’s attention, and never lets anyone else get a word in edgeways. This type of roleplay reduces the rest of the players to mere witnesses to one player’s story, and who wants to essentially watch one guy play D&D?

The utterance of “It’s what my character would do” can be the voice of doom to your group. In simplest terms, no player gets to ruin everyone else’s fun – yours included.

A strong Session 0 can help set expectations and establish clear boundaries of those things that simply won’t be tolerated. Establishing these boundaries early, and letting everyone voice their opinions, can save everyone a lot of trouble later on.

Let Them Lead You: Sometimes we don’t have the benefit of knowing our players beforehand. Take some time in the first few sessions to test the waters a bit. You’ll soon know what type of roleplay they’re interested in, and how experienced they are.

And absolutely do not – I can’t possibly stress this enough – do not impose your own subjective ideas of what “good” is roleplay on your players. Do not demand they roleplay at all. As I mentioned in last week’s post about Session 0’s, this is not your game. The game – the story – belongs to the entire group. Mess with that at your peril.

Encourage Good Roleplay By Giving Inspiration: I think the Inspiration mechanic is an excellent way to encourage and reward players for acting more “in character”. Most players enjoy mechanical advantages. If a player just wants to roll Persuasion to convince the guard to allow the group to pass, then I certainly allow it. Like I said earlier, some players need time to “warm up”. However, I always give them an opportunity to tell me exactly “how” they are going to convince that guard. A plausible argument or action might earn them an Inspiration die to help out – particularly if it’s a skill their character isn’t particularly good at. I find this helps fight the “A Team Syndrome” where one player is the Face, another is the Smart Guy etc… And, quite often, once the more shy or inexperienced players see how this works in my games, they start to open up and give it a try.

Ground Their Characters in Your World: How many roving bands of The Magnificent Seven are there in the world ready to cause mayhem? Not every player (again particularly new players) is going to come to our tables with a four page backstory. I’ve found doing the following really helps:

• Give them a place. Perhaps their family has a farm, or a business in town? Certainly they have family and friends. Clerics and Paladins have a temple, or at least belong to some kind of hierarchy. Barbarians have the tribe or clan. If the player hasn’t given it much thought, design something for them, and then ask if that’s ok. You don’t want to dictate a character’s backstory, but sometimes a little nudge gets their creative juices flowing. Not only does this fight the stereotypical “I’m-a-lone-wolf-whose-family-was-murdered-by-[insert monster type here]” character, providing a framework for their characters’ lives also gives you more material to work with!
• Let them tell you. I’m bad about having an NPC walk up to a character and start talking. “This guy has known you for a long time. Who is he?” Now you have to be careful not to put someone on the spot who might be made uncomfortable, but, again, I’ve found that allowing players to have some influence over the game in this way can really lead to some interesting places. We as DM’s though have to be prepared to be flexible over whatever answer we get!
• Give them downtime. Consider spreading out your adventures a bit more to give the characters time to handle their “normal” lives. Dealing with a downturn in the family business, or a bad harvest can also lead to interesting places. If it goes well, you might want to consider adding in a resource management element as a sort of mini-game. And let it impact the characters in a meaningful way. Perhaps they earn some extra money. Maybe their reputation improves with a group.

The more we build, design, and support the characters’ personal worlds just like we do our larger worlds, the more likely the players are to become invested.

Let Them Retcon: Sometimes a player will ask to change something about their backstory because a really cool idea just occurred to them. If it’s just a cool cosmetic change, or if it’s something I can use to make things interesting, I always allow it. Why not? Such a change either really has no impact (other than to make the player happy – which we want, right?), or I have more material to work with. It’s a win-win either way.

What tips, tricks, and advice do you folks have? Put them in the comments below, so we can all share in the info. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week for another installment on How To DM!

Hello everyone! In this week’s installment of How To DM, I’d like to talk about the importance of Session 0.

Frankly, once I started running them, I never looked back. I think they are absolutely critical to running a fun and successful campaign,  

But I’ve seen a lot of questions online recently about what is a Session 0 exactly? Beyond rolling up characters, what do you talk about? How do you run one?

So, let’s talk about Session 0’s on in this week’s How To DM!

It’s Not Just Your Game: I see this comment all the time – “Hey, man, it’s you’re game. Do whatever you want, and they’ll deal”. I think this is absolutely the wrong attitude to have. Roleplaying games are an exercise in cooperative storytelling; they’re not designed for DM’s to live out their novel-writing fantasies. We can design whatever game we want, but – if your group doesn’t find it fun – you’ll soon be playing with yourself (pun intended).

I think having player input from the very beginning might be even more important now that so many games have moved online. Online play has made it even easier to find pickup games where no one really knows anyone in the beginning. I DM regularly for Adventurer’s League at my local, and I only knew one player previously before we all sat down.

A good Session 0 gives everyone a chance to meet one another and have some input as to what type of game they want to play. There are a lot of new players out there that are going to look to their DM for advice on how to build characters. A Session 0 gives everyone a chance to set expectations, and it will keep you from having someone show up with something that doesn’t fit your world.

Tell Them About Your World: Most of us don’t play “stock” D&D. Take them time to explain to your players how your homebrewed world, or even your version of the Forgotten Realms, is different. The more information they have up front, the less headache you’ll have as a DM later. For example, if you’re old school and have your drow and duergar tucked away in the Underdark and unknown to the surface world, they need to know that…because I can guarantee someone is going to want to play one.

Tell Them About Your Game: If you’re going to change or modify existing rules – or add homebrewed rules of your own – you owe it to your players to tell them up front. Don’t spring things on them. You never know; they may surprise you with some feedback that makes your changes even better. Some of the worst arguments I’ve seen in game are when the DM makes a ruling on the fly that fundamentally changes a rule. Your players will start to lose confidence in your game if you do that too many times. Session 0 is a great time to hash all of those issues out so that everyone is on the same page.

Listen to Their Feedback: If given the opportunity, your players will tell you what kind of game they are interested in playing. Why spend hours designing intricate puzzles if your group hates them? Why waste time writing intricate backstories for each of your NPC’s when your group wants a more “beer and pretzels/monster of the week” experience? Are they Lord of the Rings, or are they Game of Thrones?

Like I said earlier, this is not our game as DM’s; this is our game as participants in a cooperative story game. Don’t run this risk of half of your players dropping out because the game isn’t what they expected and isn’t fun for them.

Another added bonus to doing it this way is that it will help you enormously when designing your campaign, and a good campaign is so much effort, anything that makes it easier on us as DM’s is a good thing!

Keep It Relaxed: A Session 0 shouldn’t be like the quarterly numbers meeting at an Applebees’. Once you’ve clued them in on your world and game, sit back and moderate the discussion. Don’t feel like you have to have all the answers and make spot rulings. Take notes; give it some thought. I’ve never had a bad response to “You know what? I’ve never thought about that. Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you”.

What tips, tricks and advice do you folks have? Put them in the comments below, so we can all share in the info. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week for another installment on How To DM!

Hello everyone! In this week’s installment of How To DM, I’d like to talk about villains.

You spend a lot of time designing a super-cool bad guy to challenge your players, and he gets creamed in the very first encounter, or you have to resort to some shady shenanigans to save him. So, your players either don’t respect your villains, or now they’re frustrated because you’re essentially cheating “for story purposes”.

How do we avoid both of these things and make our villains memorable? I’d like to use an example from my Icewind Dale game. Specifically, a minor character named Yselm who is a Frost Druid worshipper of Auril. Don’t worry; I’ll be careful with the spoilers.

So, let’s talk about bad guys on in this week’s How To DM!

Don’t Fight to the Death: It is a rare person who will simply keep swinging when they’re in serious danger of dying. Just as your players use caution and strategy in their approach to combat (the ones that survive for any length of time anyway J), the bad guys can certainly do the same.

Auril has commanded Yselm to kill the PCs for their interference, and she certainly doesn’t want to fail. Suicide would be the ultimate failure, no? The PC’s deaths are what matters; no one said they all had to die in a single encounter…

So here is what I did for the initial attack.

Yselm upcast Conjure Animals to summon four Dire Wolves to send in first. This was done from cover while the PCs were busy fighting something else. As soon as the PCs finish that fight, the wolves come charging in.

The wolves are just a distraction though. They’re there to divert attention away from Yselm’s winter wolf ally who is sneaking around to hit the PC’s from behind. As the wolves get killed, she started casting Ice Storms on the party; the damage to the winter wolf would be minimal since it’s immune to cold damage anyway.

However, as usual, I rolled terribly and the party rolled like savants. They put down all the dire wolves and the winter wolf without anyone being killed. So, instead of her charging in with her (pitiful) sickle attack, or wild shaping into an equally pitiful beast form to get chopped into bird food, I had her escape. In the dim light of the full moon, she cast Pass Without Trace, wild shaped into a snowy owl, and flew away into the night.

Some of the players weren’t really sure what had attacked them or what happened to her!

Speak Softly and Bring More Friends: Why wouldn’t your villains seek out allies to fight against your PCs? “Gondor calls for aid!” is a basic trope of fantasy literature. If your villain is defeated and is forced to flee, they’re going to come back with whomever and whatever they can find to even out the odds.

Villains Are Sneaky…So Be Sneaky: Don’t have them stand in the road like the Black Knight (Have at you!). Don’t have them take over the village to “set a trap”…because now the PCs know exactly where they are, and your bad guy is hemmed in and under siege.

Let them pick the most advantageous time and location to strike!

A week or so after the PCs first encounter with Yselm, they set out as part of a fairly large expedition to the Spine of the World Mountains to locate a lost artifact. Yselm knows all their plans; she can wild shape into any number of forms that would be good for spying. What she lacks is help; at this point it’s more important to slow the expedition down while she drums up some allies. She can make some good use out of her Awaken spell…but not just any old creature will do.

So, I had her attack their camp in the middle of the night. But she didn’t attack the PC’s…she attacked the picket line where all their mounts and pack beasts were. She sneaks in under Pass Without Trace and cuts the picket line. She then withdraws and uses conjured dire wolves to scatter the axe beaks to the four winds.

A few Ice Storms on the camp itself coupled with a water elemental, and she withdrew, mission accomplished. The camp is in utter chaos. The PCs are running around trying to figure out what is going on; it added to the confusion that they weren’t the sole target of the assault. The expedition is effectively stalled as they try to recover the axe beaks, and they lost a good bit of provisions to boot.

I’m not sure what Yselm will do next (basically because some of my players read this blog J), but I know she has time now to come up with something truly diabolical.

This minor character has now become a major force of antagonism for the PCs. They hate her – which will make it all the better if they finally defeat her. Right now though, they’re at a loss as to how to even begin to take her on.

And all because she ran.

What tips, tricks and advice do you folks have? Put them in the comments below, so we can all share in the info. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week for another installment on How To DM!

Hello everyone! We’ve spent a good bit of time talking about it, so today I’d like to post up an actual encounter I designed and ran following these principles.

Our group consists of a Goblin Totem Barbarian, a Halfling Moon Druid, A Human Fighter Archer, a Human TWF Hunter Ranger, and a Tabaxi Archer Gloomstalker Ranger. Tons of HP up front with some pretty squishy folks in the back with absolutely no real magical support.

By the way, I’m running Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden for them, but this encounter is entirely my own design, so you don’t have to worry about spoilers.

So, let’s talk about tips on designing encounters in this week’s How To DM!

First, I wanted to add a little horror and inspire some fearsome creepiness. I picked Dougan’s Hole because it already had a solid “Lovecraftian” feel to it. If I got one good WTF! Moment out of this thing, I’d be satisfied.

With a party composition like that, my players were steamrolling through most of my encounters. They don’t negotiate; they certainly don’t run.

With no magic of their own, I just felt like loading up the enemy with spells was deliberately designing against them.

So, I rewrote Dougan’s Hole and brought in some monsters that I knew they wouldn’t recognize no matter how long they’d been playing – the Wendigo.

I pulled the monster’s stat block from Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos which is a fantastic book that I highly recommend. This book is set up for 5e with great rules for putting some horror into your D&D campaign.

The premise was – the poor town of Dougan’s Hole has resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. They have all succumbed to the influence of the Wendigo spirits.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t design encounters with a “I’ll get you my pretties for walking through my monsters!” mentality. I don’t need them to die; I just need them to believe they’re going to die. The PC’s were in Dougan’s Hole to intercept a bounty target. The innkeeper was super-friendly. Gave them great prices on rooms and bowls “of the brown” (and yes…it was Chef Boyardee with extra chef included). After a good old time, the PC’s set out to look for good ambush spots.

All they had to do was figure out a way to survive the incoming blizzard until daybreak. The encounter didn’t start until they stepped outside Dougan’s Hole’s tiny little tavern.

The tavern door will be bolted behind them. Just at the edge of the lamp light, the entire population of Dougan’s Hole – men, women, and children – will be standing silently in the frigid cold, armed with whatever they have…just watching.

I didn’t even bother to assign these people hit points. Their purpose was to rush in in a maddened frenzy and distract the PC’s (there were some jokes about how easy this was going to be). Just so I could bring the Wendigo in after 2-3 of combat.

I didn’t even bother to decide how many Wendigo there were. I brought them in slowly in small groups, had them attack and them fly off into the darkness.

However, Wendigo fly. I introduced them by having one just barely fail a check to grapple a PC and carry them off. That was a nice WTF moment, and my one warning that the PC’s were not going to be able to stand there and fight it out. They’re fighting in the dark, snow swirling with only the two whale oil lamps outside the tavern to provide weak light.

So, now they’re going to have enemies on the ground that they recognize, and enemies above that they don’t know.

The villagers will attack and then suddenly rush off to the north. The Wendigo swoop in trying to carry PC’s off. One will land and attack in melee, but Wendigo only attack targets that are farthest away from the lamps as a hint that Wendigo are vulnerable to fire.

I want to guide the encounter so the PC’s end up running through the blizzard-choked streets. If they stop, they’re attacked. If they try to duck into a building the villagers start chopping at the doors, or a Wendigo crashes through the ceiling.

I want to drive them into the Speaker’s House which is the largest and best-constructed structure in the village. Of course, there is a suitably horrible tableaux inside, and – after some super-creepy dialogue – the Speaker will commit suicide in front of them by smashing lamps on the oil-soaked floor. This releases the final Big Bad Wendigo, but the fires will negate its regeneration ability, so they’ll have a fighting chance.

At this point, I want them desperate and confused. I switch targets as needed to not focus-fire a particular PC. I will leave this Wendigo locked in melee so they can kill it.

In the morning, the village is half-burned down, the entire population lies dead in the snow, there’s no loot, and they’ll all be barely alive.

Now. Here’s a beautiful thing that happened when we actually got to the table. A fellow DM’s table had most of his players no-show, so I invited them to mine. So instead of having 5 players…I had 9. But…because I had a purpose in mind…it was very easy to elevate this encounter to accommodate such a large group on the fly.

I got my share of WTF moments. My PC’s told me after how confused they were; some were already thinking of what character they would roll up next. All told…a success!

What tips, tricks and advice do you folks have? Put them in the comments below, so we can all share in the info. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week for another installment on How To DM!