Home brewing a "High-Level" "Dungeon"

So, one of the comments on my post on How I Homebrew a Dungeon, I was asked If I could do the same for a dungeon for characters 6-9th level. My short answer to the question is: No.

I have never been a fan of high-level play and neither were most of my friends. We loved those low-level campaigns and usually accomplished something earth shattering by 6th or 7th level. Indeed, I have only ever gotten one character from 1st to 9th level in my entire career as a player and have only ever seen one character survive to 9th level from 1st as a Referee. Both characters are retired.

In other words, by the time my players have advanced to 4-6th level, they have accumulated enough power and influence that the focus of the campaign shifts from that of dungeon exploration to politics, clearing out wilderness areas, and spending a bunch of money on building stuff (this is nicely encouraged by the Arneson rule where 1 xp = 1 gp spent).

So, I have never really had to homebrew a 6-9th level dungeon. As predicted by Cook’s Expert edition of D&D, by the time my players’ characters get to 4th level, I am usually designing wilderness areas, encounters, and lairs — not dungeons.

That doesn’t mean I can’t or I won’t, especially since folks seemed to find my last outing useful. This endeavor, however, does come with a major caveat. What I have in mind doesn’t really qualify as a dungeon…it is more of an elaborate lair. For me, the word “dungeon” is indicative of the Mystic Underground where no matter how deep you go, there is always something else deeper and more dangerous and the place itself is trying to kill you, not just the monsters.

There are two main reason I am choosing this particular path. First, without the previous 5 levels of a megadungeon and a campaign to riff off, doing the 6th level of such a place is both too daunting and too boring. Secondly, I’ll probably never see a day when I’d actually use it in play. By going the route I am, this will go into my folder of stuff I can pull out on a moments notice to fill a need in an ongoing campaign.

Since this is to be a type of lair, I need to figure out what monster lives there before I go to making or finding a map. So, I pulled out The Tome of Adventure Design and rolled up a person associated with the place, the last significant event that happened there, and the original purpose of the place.

As an aside, when I use random tables (especially one where a d100 is concerned), I freely read the dice in as many ways as I am allowed in order to give me more than one option when it comes to results. This allows me a bit a wiggle room and the ability to be inspired.

For example, I wanted to keep my options open on this one to see what kind of stories might emerge from the random rolls. The person in question was either going to be an Assassin or a Cleric and the place in question was either a place of guilt or a place of burial. Music was involved and it created something that would be dangerous to intruders about 10 years ago.

I then rolled an original purpose and who built it: that was when things began to crystalize. I rolled up a Scriptorium that was built by a unique type of Giant.

The Cleric no longer made much sense, so I went with the Assassin and I ended up using both a place of burial and a place of guilt.

This place was built by a blind giant who was a scribe and a scholar. He needed a way to record the research he had done and so came up with a writing method akin to Braile (note to self, Read Magic is necessary to interpret his writings). For this purpose, he needed someone to dictate various texts to him so that he could study and record his findings.

This role is taken up by an Annis Hag and the two end up falling in love with each other. Whether or not the Giant’s love was voluntary at first or not, the important part here is that the Annis Hag ended up in love with the Giant because he saw past the ugly exterior.

This love story, however, has an ugly underside because the Annis Hag still had an appetite for human flesh. When she made the mistake of lunching on a local prince, an assassin was hired to take her out. The killing blow, however, fell upon the Giant who sacrificed himself for his love.

Among the things and knowledge collected by the Giant was the True Name of a demon and a magical harp that would summon it. In a fit of anguished rage, the Annis Hag used the harp to summon the demon and commanded it to torture the assassin as long as she was alive. Unfortunately for her, summoning the demon destroyed the harp. Caught in the magical explosion, she suffered grievous wounds which have never fully recovered. In order to make sure the assassin suffers as long as possible and to guard her own life, she has since drawn a protective circle around the demon and its prey. At this point the demon is kept at bay virtually by will alone.

In the meantime, a group of hobgoblins have taken up residence. According to my own calculations, hobgoblins are eugenicists who love to experiment with breeding techniques.

Thus, they see value in the knowledge found in the Giant’s lair, the demon trapped there, and the hag that keeps it at bay. They have turned the lair into a house of horrors and feed the rejects of their experimentation to the hag to help keep her alive. For her part, she is grateful for every day the assassin is tortured.

So here is the challenge for the players: this is the location of a McGuffin. Whether a magic item in possession of the assassin, a particular piece of information on one of the Giant’s “scrolls,” or something else, it is inside the protective circle keeping the demon at bay.

Since this set-up is kinda mean, I want to reward the characters by providing a lair that could be converted into a stronghold if they so desire. As a consequence, I am looking for a map of a castle with a dungeon. I found that here. As I did with my 1st level dungeon, I proceeded to number each of the rooms:

Between the castle and the dungeon below there are 63 rooms. Using Moldvay’s “Stock the Dungeon Table” we get the following break down:

11 Monsters without Treasure (technically 10.5)
11 Monsters with Treasure (technically 10.5)
6 Traps
4 Trap with Treasure (technically 3.5)
10 Specials (technically 10.5)
18 Empty Rooms
3 Empty Room with Treasure (technically 3.5)

I rounded up on the number of monsters and traps with treasures and rounded down on Empty rooms to make the math work. I erred in the direction of more stuff.

Holmes suggests that it is possible to encounter wandering monsters within a range of two levels up and two levels down. Thus, at 6th level, it would be possible to encounter creatures anywhere from the 4th level through the 8th level. The math would look like this:

2 Level 4 Monsters
5 Level 5 Monsters
8 Level 6 Monsters
5 Level 7 Monsters
2 Level 8 Monsters

I can already sense some confusion because the main monster group I will be using are hobgoblins, which are Level 2 monsters according to Moldvay. This is where S&W becomes really useful. The Wandering Monster Tables found therein are organized according to Challenge Level. Hobgoblins are CL 1; however, Carnivorous Apes (which hobgoblins are known to associate with) are CL 4. The Wandering Monster Tables suggest combinations of different CL monsters and since hobgoblins are interested in genetic and breeding experiments, it opens up a lot of possibilities for higher level monsters:

• Ape-like creatures like Flying Apes (CL 6), Gorilla Bears (CL 4), and Girallons (CL 6)
• Thouls (CL 3)
• Creatures necessary for breeding the above such as Basilisks (CL 8), Cave Bears (CL 7), Ghouls (CL 3), Perytons (CL 6), and Trolls (CL 8) and Cave Trolls (CL 7)
• Experimental failures represented by Gibbering Mouthers (CL 6)

Following the suggestions from S&W we come to the following totals:

1 Annis Hag (1400 xp)
3 Basilisks (2400 xp)
26 Carnivorous Apes (3120 xp)
3 Cave Bears (1800 xp)
8 Cave Trolls (4800 xp)
1 Demon, Erinyes (1400 xp)
2 Flying Apes (800 xp)
28 Ghouls (1680)
7 Gibbering Mouthers (2800xp)
15 Girallons (6000 xp)
14 Gorilla Bears (1680 xp)
112 Hobgoblins (1680 xp)
3 Perytons (1200 xp)
42 Thouls (2520 xp)
4 Trolls (3200 xp)
Total xp = 34,800

In case anyone is wondering where I am going to fit 117 hobgoblins, remember that this place was built by a Giant. Thus, everything is twice the size a map normally would be — giving me plenty of room to stuff all these creatures wherever I want.

The average Treasure Roll is going to be 2.5, so the base treasure is going to be 87,000 gp. Going by math (because I don’t want to roll this many times), the 100 gp Trade Outs will result in 83 Minor Gems and Jewelry and 4 Minor Magic Items. The 1000 gp Trade Outs will result in 8 Medium Gems and Jewelry and 1 Medium Magic Item.The 5000 gp Trade Outs will result in 2 Major Gems and Jewelry and no Major Magic Items.

Thus, there will be 13,500gp in Minor Gems and Jewelry, 5,200 gp in Medium Gems and Jewelry, 6,500 gp in Major Gems and Jewelry, and 67,000 gp in Miscellaneous treasure for a grand total of 92,200 gp.

There are 18 rooms with treasure. If each has 5000 gp I will have 2200 gp left over to place where I deem fit in the moment (probably with the Annis Hag hidden inside the tomb of the Giant).

There is a total of 127,000 xp available, or 31,750 per character in a party of 4. This should be enough for most characters to go from 6th to 7th level easily.

Now to place all of this stuff in the dungeon:

The Annis Hag will be in Room 1.38, an appropriate place for a bedroom turned tomb.
The Erinyes will be trapped in Room 2.21, being the lowest part of the entire structure.

As for the rest of the monsters, they can be categorized into three types:

1. Hobgoblins and their allies
2. Prisoners used to do breeding experiments
3. Failures

The failures would be the Gibbering Mouthers, which are locked away in Room 2.20, since that is nice and isolated.

The prisoners could all be stored away in Rooms 2.3-2.10. These include the basilisks, cave bears, cave trolls, ghouls, perytons, and trolls.

To fill out the dungeon level, I would place Thouls in Rooms 2.12 and 2.18 as guards.

The rest of the monster populate the upper floor, with the hobgoblins, carnivorous apes and gorilla bears primarily occupying the towers — Rooms 1.35-1.37 and 1.39-1.43.
girallons and flying apes would occupy Rooms 1.1 and 1.9.

That’s 22 rooms with monsters. Also note: I’ll probably sprinkle hobgoblins, thouls, and carnivorous apes throughout the last 20 rooms to demonstrate the basic theme of its current use.

Now I need 10 Specials:

Room 1.3 is a magical hall of perfumes. The central section of the hall rains down clouds of the stuff from the ceiling when someone passes through. The stuff is so strong it reduces the chances of surprise to 1 in 6 for 24 hours.
Room 1.5 is a magical hot tub that automatically undresses anyone entering and drying and clothing anyone leaving (with a small percentage of some kind of screw-up)
Room 1.6 is a magical gallery; however, the “pictures” are designed for the blind.
Room 1.8 is a magical music room with various levers and buttons that create various sounds. The music is designed to play throughout the castle, alerting everyone of the player’s presence.
Room 1.21 is a magical kitchen and 1.22 is be a magical ice room for storing food.
Room 1.27 is a library with a device that fetches certain books, but only works if the commands are given in the language of giants.
Room 1.33 is the scriptorium, with a special device used to create the “Braile” scrolls created by the Giant.
Rooms 2.11 and 2.13 are incubating and birthing chambers for the breeding experiments.

Now for 4 rooms with treasure guarded by a trap:
Rooms 1.14, 1.16, 1.30, and 2.2 all suggest themselves because they are dead-ends.

The six remaining traps:

Rooms 1.15 and 1.17 are suggestive because of the portcullises indicated on the map.
Rooms 1.2 and 1.31 are good candidates to alert the hobgoblins in the towers.
Room 2.17 has access to the demon.
Room 2.19 keeps the Gibbering Mouthers at bay.

Finally, I need two Empty Rooms with treasure:

I like Rooms 1.25 and 2.16 for this for no real particular reason.

For the rest, I might note some things to indicate this was once the home to a scholar with servants. Servants quarters, storage rooms, guest rooms, supplies necessary for scholarly work, etc.

Done.

Note: I have sprinkled some cool features within this castle that might prove useful should the players ever want to claim this as their own. Consider it an incentive and a reward for putting up with my dark sense of humor.

Also note: The chances of me ever actually using this are not high. But who knows, it may one day prove useful...if not to me than someone out there who wants to take this and run with it.

Running the First Session with Only One Dungeon

Yesterday, I waxed poetic about how I run the first session of a sandbox campaign. In it I posited several site-based adventures in order to facilitate player choice; however, this is not always possible. Sometimes I have only had the opportunity to work on one dungeon, or there is a serious desire to run a particular module. Player choice and the use of rumors seems to be severely limited, but it doesn’t have to be.

If I really only have one adventure that I can/want to use, I will approach player choice from the “why are we going” rather than the “where are we going” perspective. To give this meat, I will map out at least five factions that have interest in what goes on at the adventure site. I plug these factions into the Wu XIng diagram:

Each faction is given a goal and a reason why they like to work with the faction they like and why they are working against the faction that is their enemy. This quick and dirty system easily sets up a complex web of relationships that enrich the campaign.

Once this diagram is set up and understood, I make rumors to connect the players to each of the factions. Since each faction has a specific goal when it comes to the site based adventure and those goals are at odds with other factions, it gives real weight to player choice when it comes to why they are going on the adventure.

So, as an example, let’s pretend that I have to run the first session of a campaign in short order and I won’t have time to create anything elaborate in terms of adventure sites. Let’s also pretend that the one adventure I do have prepared is the one I produced in the post How I Homebrew a Dungeon.

Since I am in a pinch, I will fall back on familiar territory when it comes to my starting village: I’ll pull out my copy of T1:The Village of Hommlet and extrapolate from there. First, I will leaf through and find five significant NPCs that represent larger powers or ideas:

1. Elmo the 4th level ranger is an agent of the Viscount of Verbobonc
2. The Canon Terjon the 6th level cleric is the priest of the Church of St. Cuthbert
3. Jaroo Ashstaff the 7th level druid is an agent of the Druids of Gnarley Wood and a follower of the Old Ways
4. Burne the 8th level magic-user and Rufus the 6th level fighter the semi-retired adventurers
5. Rannos Davi the 10th level thief and his partner Grmag the 7th level assassin are agents of the Temple of Elemental Evil

Now to translate these concepts into my campaign:

• Elmo represents the political aspect of a Christian/pseudo-Christian power that is vying for influence in the area.
• Terjon represents the religious aspect of the same Christian/pseudo-Christian power that is vying for influence in the area.
• Jaroo represents the religious and possibly political aspect of the native population of the area the Christian/pseudo- Christian power is trying to influence
• Burne and Rufus represent the local interests of the village
• Rannos and Grmag represent a secret society that is interested in re-awakening an ancient power

For purposes of keeping things simple I’ll label the five with the following monikers:

The Kingdom
The Church
The Old Way
The Village
The Cult

Now to plug these into a Wu Xing Diagram to see the relationships these factions have with each other:

• The Kingdom likes to work with The Old Way in order to secure political stability, but are opposed to the Cult because it is a destabilizing force.
• The Church likes to work with the Kingdom because they share the same religious values, but opposes the Old Way because their values and religious views clash.
• The Old Way likes to work with the Cult because the enemy of my enemy is a friend, but opposes the stability of the Village because it represents the encroaching power and influence of both the Kingdom and the Church.
• The Cult likes to work with the Village because the desire for safety is easily manipulated to their cause and they oppose the Church because it is the direct antithesis of the Cult.
• The Village likes to work with the Church because of how it cares for the sick and needy (especially in a crisis), but opposes the Kingdom because it challenges the autonomy the Village has earned through years of hard work and sacrifice.

See what I mean about interesting relationships?

So what could these five factions want from the dungeon? The dungeon offers three basic motivators:

1. The Kobolds
2. The Medusa
3. Treasure

Plugging these into the five factions could look like this:

• The Kingdom wants to investigate any rumors of ancient political powers in order to destroy them (Medusa)
• The Church has been taking in a number of refugees from various raids by the kobolds. They need supplies to help them and seek an end to the trouble (Kobolds/Treasure)
• The Old Way knows the story of the Medusa because it is part of their mythology. They want to find her but are reluctant to free her. Thus, they would want to find the keys to the prison, just in case (Medusa/Treasure)
• The Cult wants to investigate the rumors of ancient political powers to see if they can awaken them (Medusa)
• The Village wants the kobolds taken care of because they have been raiding in the area (Kobolds)

All of these goals point in exactly the same direction (the dungeon), but have varying reasons why the players would choose to go adventuring there. I would introduce each of the five factions through the NPCs found in T1:Village of Hommlet and reveal everyone's goal in terms of the dungeon. It would then be up to the players to determine the “why.” Which faction(s) will they support?

Of course, this choice is consequential due to the fact that various factions will now see the PCs as allies or enemies. Due to the larger goals of each faction, this will feed into further adventures.

As a final thought, this whole exercise in creating factions is certainly not limited to sessions that only have one adventure site. I tend to use them in most, if not all, of my campaigns; however, when it comes to empowering players when I only have one adventure site on offer, the Wu Xing diagram is one of my favorite tools.

How I Run the First Session of a Sandbox

Continuing with the theme of my last couple of posts, here is my process on running the first session of a sandbox campaign:

Character Creation

I am not a stickler for a particular method of rolling up characters, as long as everybody at the table agrees on what that method is. Personally, I like seeing where the dice rolls take me, but I appreciate the fact that my particular proclivities are far from universal.

Once everybody agrees and people start rolling dice, I begin to illicit information about each character at the table, with two critical goals:

1. Figure out how the various characters know each other prior to game play. I hate wasting time on role-playing this. It always makes more sense to hash out these details at character creation because some characters are just never realistically going to meet at a tavern to go adventuring together. Plus, the given stories about these relationships can have a much deeper effect on the campaign than the whole tavern scenario. Finally, it allows the campaign to hit the ground running. Instead of wasting time trying to justify adventuring together, the players just go on an adventure together.

This can be done in a number of ways. The simplest is just ask the players how their characters know each other and suggest some possibilities if they seem stumped. In my most recent campaign, I created a random table which players can roll on to see how their character knows one other character in the party. Everybody has to choose someone different so that all these relationships intertwine.

2. Figure out what relationships the characters have to various NPCs in the campaign world. For example, clerics can be at the beck and call of a bishop and magic-users can belong to the Mage Guild. This accomplishes a couple of things for me: it grounds each character within the world and it provides a source of information to the players about the world itself with the benefit of possible patronage. The cleric from above could have a specific task that they need to accomplish for the bishop and the magic-user could be delivering a scroll to the local representative of the Guild.

The First Adventure

Once these two things have been established for each character, I provide rumors and possible missions to each player through the various relationships that their characters have. I then allow the players to decide what rumors they want to investigate or what missions they want to undertake.

Note: it is very important that these rumors all tie in to adventure locations I am prepared to run. Usually, it is pretty easy to weight the choices in favor of the adventure location I am most interested in, but I never dissuade players who deviate from that particular plan. If I am not prepared to follow up on a rumor or mission, I don’t offer that choice.

What all of this does is place agency squarely in the hands of the players. If the whole character creation process has gone according to plan, every player has a character that has a background tying them to both the other characters at the table and to people and organizations that exist in the campaign world. Then these relationships inform the choices the players make as to which adventure they want to go on in their first session together.

In the end, all of these things invest the player in the campaign world. They have goals, not just for themselves, but for the various people and organization around them. The game becomes more than just the characters, it becomes a world that they have the power to shape through their own choices and actions.

On Being a Referee and a Christian

In my extended absence from writing anything on my blog, I recently got this comment from David B. and it deserves its own post:

Greetings Father. I don't know exactly where to post this but I had question for you regarding the cosmological portion of your universe. I'm running a West Marches game type since last year and, I'll be honest, I stole your three main divinity when I read about them (Frumos, Arta and Tizan). I think it's great.

I'm playing with friends used to D&D and such so it's all good. But I was wondering about the long-term: my wife and I will have children, and I want to use D&D as a game and an educational tool. What would be the thing to do regarding the world and the cosmology of it ?

Pseudo-historical RPG set in Christian kingdom/mpire ? Analogical/allegorical like yours ? Or straight up remote to create a form of mythopoesis like Tolkien ?

Which one do you think has more value ? The goal is not to teach the creed through the game, that I understand very well, but mostly to make sure that the background imagination landscape, so to speak, it cohesive with the whole of education. What do you think ?

Thank you.

First of all, thank you for letting me know that you have implemented one of my various attempts at a metaphorical trinitarian cosmology. Not only do I think it’s awesome, it makes me really happy that it’s being used in actual game play by someone not me. Again, thank you!

To get to your question, let’s compare the Bible, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. All three take different approaches to infusing God and Christianity into their stories. All three tell terrific yarns. All three plant the seeds of Christian values. So the answer really isn’t about which approach works best. Rather, in context of playing an RPG, what is going to be the most fun for you and your players, because fun games get played. The longer a game gets played, the more you and your players get to wrestle with God at the gaming table.

Personally, I find that players like the approach you and I generally use at the table — we use a metaphor for the Trinity and as a stand-in for the Christian Church. This makes the fantasy world approachable. Not only is it familiar (it feels a lot like institutions we already have in the real world), but it is alien enough that we aren’t obligated to engage in a real-world kind of way. Devout Christians can explore characters that make choices they would be reluctant to if we were actually invoking the name of Christ. Secularists and atheists can explore religious characters because they don’t feel obligated to reject Christ and His Church as they do in their own life.

Once players bypass their own real world prejudices, it gives everyone the freedom to explore the moral landscape of human experience with little of the real world consequences. To make this work, you as the Referee need to consistently offer your players the freedom to do what they want, but be firm with the consequences of those choices. The only time I Refereed an actual TPK was when the first level thief decided to try out his Pick Pocket skills and got caught. Then the rest of the party decided to try and fight their way out of the situation. That group of players was a lot more cautious about following the laws while in town after that.

The other thing that makes campaigns like this interesting is offering moral dilemmas — situations that have no right answer. Introduce NPCs like the Operative from Serenity — people who know they are monsters doing monstrous things for the greater good. Which is worse, allowing these NPCs to be monsters or allowing the greater evil they are keeping at bay to have one less obstacle to getting their tentacles into Civilization?

In this way, you allow players to embrace the image and likeness of God and to wrestle with God. Freedom and consequence, when done consistently and well, will go a long way to making your game fun and something people will want to come back to. Moral dilemmas will also not only be fun, but will be chewed on for years to come.

I hope that helps.

Prepping an Adventure vs. Writing an Adventure

Recently, I have gotten a couple of compliments for stuff I’ve done in the hobby. Firstly, one of my friends sent me an email thanking me for getting him back to the gaming table and for doing all the prep work necessary for running a game. Secondly, Ifryt, who writes Miasto ze Spizu, a Polish-language RPG blog, recently ran my adventure The Hermit Caves and wrote up a nice little review. I had to run it through Google Translate, but he liked the module for all the reasons I wrote it, which thrills me to no end.

While I am tooting my own horn here a little bit, I find the juxtaposition of these two comments actually really interesting because of the rather large difference between how I write an adventure to publish and how I prep to run an adventure. While my writing and layout style is quite different from the traditional module, I am nonetheless heavily influenced by the way modules have traditionally been presented. Part of me wonders if Referees, when prepping their own adventures, feel obligated to (at least in part) duplicate what has been published throughout the years.

Since I run a sandbox-style game and my schedule is filled with family, job, church, etc. I long ago realized that I cannot prep my adventures like a regular module. I don’t have time and my players may never actually go where I do all that hard work. Therefore, I have developed a shorthand of adventure prep and have a copious collection of random tables.

Here is an example of how I would come into a gaming session with Dyson Logos’ map The Liar’s Cave:

Note: I typed this out so you could read it (my handwriting is awful).

To explain: I take the back story presented by Dyson, added six monsters (stats on the side) and then rolled for each room using Moldvay’s table from his edition of Basic D&D:

• E= Empty
• ET = Empty with Treasure
• T = Trap
• TT = Trap with Treasure
• S = Special
• M = Monster
• MT = Monster with Treasure

One thing that I believe gets overlooked in Moldvay’s Basic is that he provides an average value to Treasure Types A-M. This gives me the freedom to arbitrarily assign treasure based on average value rather than rolling on the treasure table. It also allows me to use resources like The Mother of All Treasure Tables (MoaTT), originally published by Necromancer Games, which provides various treasure troves valued at 10 gp all the way to 50,000gp.

Thus, I have noted at each room with treasure a roll on the tables in MoaTT.

Now all I have to do is ask various questions on the day:

• Why are the monsters in this room?
• Why is the treasure in this room?
• What do they think of the party?
• Why a trap here? What trap is appropriate?
• What weird thing am I in the mood to have be a Special?
• Etc...

This is really all the information I need to run a successful dungeon delve that brings with it surprises for both my players and myself. In a way, I am exploring the dungeon with my players since much of the information that might have appeared in a grey box in a module of old, I am making up on the spot by answering questions either my players ask or I ask of myself.

In other words, the amount of work I put into prepping an adventure into The Liar’s Cave pales in comparison to the work I put into The Hermit Caves, yet both can (and have) produce(d) great gaming sessions.

So, to all those yet-to-be Referees (and maybe to those who already are): you don’t need to go to the lengths of a written module to produce great adventures of your own. You don’t need to feel intimidated by all that flavor text and all that background information and all the crunch. If you are willing to be creative, accept the surprises and seemingly nonsensical results that random tables can provide and be comfortable with the reality that if it makes sense to you in the moment, it will most likely make sense to your players, you can jump into the world of Refereeing with as little as a piece of paper with a rough map, a few monster stats and some random tables and still be just as effective as if you’d written everything from scratch.

Running a Sandbox Campaign: Explain Everything

Recently, the current campaign I am running achieved that quintessential D&D moment where every one is standing around the table, all eyes on a single die desperately trying to exert what little control they have on a situation they have no control over and waiting for that single die to drop revealing success or failure, life or death and the subsequent screams of joy or anguish.

Such moments don’t happen often, at least in my own experience and it got me thinking about what is necessary for such moments to occur. The underlying idea, to me, seems to be a simple axiom that I try to use as often as I can when playing the role of Referee: Explain Everything.

Now, by “Explain Everything” I do not mean telling the players that there is a giant trap door in the middle of the room they are about go in. Rather, I mean, explain to the players everything that they could reasonably know, then explain to them how I understand what they want their characters to do, especially if there are consequences for the various choices that they make and then explain to them exactly what each die roll actually means.

For example, in the campaign the players decided to ambush an ogre who had enslaved a neanderthal village. Next to his ad hoc throne was a cage full of children. When the characters came out of hiding to attack him, he grabbed one of the children and threatened to kill it should they continue their assault.

At this point I laid out the options of what could happen should the ogre win initiative, they win initiate, etc. and then asked each player what they wanted to do. Thus, that initiative roll had a meaning well beyond just determining who got to go first.

When the players decided to attack anyway, I explained each attack and their consequences: you need to roll ‘x’ in order to hit. If you hit, this is how much damage you could do. The ogre needs ‘x’ in order to make the saving throw. If he makes it, he will take ‘x’ amount of damage, etc.

Thus, as the situation builds, everyone knows exactly what every action and die roll means. Thus, when the last person takes their action and their success or failure means the life or death of an NPC, PC, etc. everyone is not only paying attention, but they know exactly which outcome means success or failure. Thus, when that die is cast and the number is revealed, everyone at the table is able to instantly know whether their hopes are dashed or wildly fulfilled.

I realize that there are times when keeping this kind of information hidden from the players can also bring its own kind of satisfaction, and I often use it in situations where PCs wouldn’t know certain kinds of information; however, I have found that this kind pleasure pails in comparison to the kind of wild celebrations or anguished screams of despair that result from pulling back the curtain to let players know exactly what they need in order to succeed or fail.

Imagine for a moment rolling a die. Which roll are you going to be more invested in: the one where you know that you need to roll high and then have to wait for a Referee’s adjudication or the roll where you know that you need a ’17’ to succeed? I dare say the experience of rolling the latter is far more palpably exciting/excruciating than the former.

Running a Sandbox Campaign: Why a Random Event Isn't Random

By its very nature, a sandbox campaign has a lot of randomness. For me, this is one of its charms. Not only do I get to be surprised as a Referee by what happens in the world, but I am challenged every time I allow a random table to determine what happens next. One of the key principles that I adhere to when running a sandbox campaign is that nothing is random despite my wide and varied use of random tables and events.

This may sound like a contradiction (or a statement of faith) but it actually isn’t. Though the origin of an event or an encounter or a treasure might be a random result, its actual existence in the world must have a rational explanation. In other words, I am always asking the question ‘Why?’ Why are there lizardmen in this part of the jungle? Why is there a dragon here when before there wasn’t? Why are neanderthals exploring a lost temple that never belonged to them?

By continuously asking the question ‘Why?’ I am forcing myself to accept the un-randomness of random events and seeing these things not as something that a die-roll told me, but as part of the larger story and framework of my campaign world.

This is why, in my prepping for a sandbox campaign, I use broad strokes and various nebulous factions and background noise: they all give me a framework in which to fill in details with my questions of ‘Why?’

For example: as I mentioned in my last post, a die roll led to the adventure seed of a portal suddenly showing up in Akhmed’s house when he rolled a ‘6’ on a d6. After such a long time, why wasn’t his house done? Something catastrophic must have happened. What event in the campaign world could have caused this? The players had just recently travelled to a major Illithid city where they managed to wreck havoc and shatter a giant machine which let them dial in various portals to various worlds. This, then, could result in various rips in time and space around my Lost Colonies map. Why not in Akhmed’s house?

This places what was a silly random event into a much larger story arc that affects the entire campaign world. Should players start exploring this rip in time and space, various hints and clues could then allow them to figure out that the origin of this rip was, in fact, there own doing. Unfortunately, that never happened with the players in question, but I do have a solid background for why this portal exists in the first place.

It also opens up a framework from which I can start explaining the un-randmoness of other random events in my campaign. Various factions in my Lost Colonies campaign are aware of these rips in time and space. Each has had a different reaction to them. As a consequence, I can start explaining the existence of certain random encounters as consequences of these factions interacting with portals. Again, this ties everything together and leads players to gain more information about this major event in the campaign world and all of its consequences.

Thus, random events actually make my sandbox campaigns better, because I am forced to ask a series of questions which seek to understand exactly why a random event isn’t random.

Running a Sandbox Campaign: Player Expectation

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of posts about Prepping a Sandbox Campaign. I have also mentioned that I am currently running a 5e campaign ostensibly set in my Lost Colonies campaign world; however, due to the various choices by the players, the bulk of the campaign is actually taking place on a brand new map that I have never run before. The experience has reminded me of some of the fundamental assumptions that I make when running a sandbox campaign and I thought I’d write some of these down and share them.

Player Expectation

As you may have noted in my series on Prepping a Sandbox Campaign, I don’t do a whole lot of detail. Most of the things I prepare are broad brush strokes so that I have enough information that I can wing it if necessary, but not so much that I have wasted a whole bunch of time on something my players have no interest in. This gives me a lot of freedom to shape the campaign to fit my players.

This reality and point of view became very important when I started my most recent campaign. My players are all young and have little or no experience with pencil & paper RPGs. If I imposed a bunch of my own expectations for how this campaign was going to be, I wasn’t likely to succeed in showing my players just how cool RPGs can be.

Therefore, I carefully listened to them when we created characters. I made sure I had an idea of what each person expected their characters to able to do. Some of these are far-off goals for when their characters are much higher level. As a consequence, I knew that some of these expectations were not going to be fulfilled in the short-term; however, I could tease them so that they knew that what they wanted was possible in the long run. Listening to my players and their expectations don’t stop at character creation, though.

One of the adventure locations that I had in place for my new campaign was Akhmed’s old house. For those who don’t know, Akhmed was a long-time PC in my last Lost Colonies campaign who played a central role in developing several key characteristics of the world: Bane Weapons, Lithic Elves and the fact that dwarves are neither male nor female.

At one point during the campaign, Akhmed had hired some Bronze Dwarves to build him an underground home in Headwaters. It was my standard practice to have long-term projects like this take one or more sessions. When a players asked, I would have them roll a d6. On a ‘1’ the project was finished. Each time a player rolled (each session that went by) I would subtract one or more from the roll (depending on the scale of the project). Akhmed had been rolling for several weeks on his project, but never seeing the end. When it was time for the project to be finished, I had him roll and it came out a ‘6.’ On a whim, I informed him that the dwarves had found something that scared them and they boarded up the house and refused to work anymore. It was an adventure seed, because it gave me the ability to place a rip it time and space in his almost completed home that could potentially be something the party explored. For a variety of reasons, that seed never played out in my last campaign. In this campaign, however, it has been the center of my player’s attention.

When I first conceived of the idea of a portal, I had in mind the Portals of Torsh by Rudy Kraft and published by Judges Guild. I had taken part of the provided map, and hashed out some of the broader ideas in much the same way I did in my series on Prepping a Sandbox Campaign. It didn’t go much farther than that, even when my players started poking around (literally).

When my players discovered the portal, I described that it looked like the Aurora Borealis. I also described that it changed color, doing so to let my players know that times was passing as they argued with each other about what to do next. The color change, however, caught their imaginations. They started poking the phenomena. So, I went with it and had the thing change color any time it was poked.

As the campaign progressed, the players started hypothesizing that each color represented a different destination. Since I wasn’t married to the idea that the portal led only to one place, I decided to go with it and began making up different end-points for each color. The players then decided to see if they could get more colors by poking more at the thing. I indulged the idea, and began rolling dice to see if they would get any other result. The dice said yes, and the number of colors and destinations went from one to three to five. Subsequently, this portal to many places has become a key factor in aiding the party on the quest they have all decided to undertake. In other words, I allowed their expectations for my campaign world to shape the world and the campaign itself.

One could quibble with how I allowed player expectation to enter into the game, but I believe it is important for two reasons:

1. It subtly invests the players in the campaign world and can give a sense of accomplishment even in the face of failure. Even if the party is driven away by a superior force of monsters, the object/place is out of reach, there is no treasure or a character dies, the players can still walk away knowing that their hypothesis was at least partially correct. Such success invites the players to make further guesses at how the world works and what is in it. When such guesses start to be at least partially correct more often than not, it encourages further exploration and further guesses. The players begin to talk about the game outside the game and the campaign begins to have a life of its own.
2. It provides a certain amount of surprise for me. One of the things I love most about a sandbox style of campaign is that it provides me with the unexpected. I never know which direction my players are going to go or what puzzle they become determined to solve or how they are going to go about doing just about anything. If I also allow player expectations to color how I respond to such choices, it forces me to be surprised by my own world. For example, I never expected the portal to go anywhere but to a lost temple on another world. I never expected it to be a key locale in a strategy to imprison an ancient dragon. Such are the wonders of allowing player expectation to color a campaign.

I would argue that the sandbox campaign is uniquely able to accomplish fulfilling player expectation because by its very nature it must be flexible and flexibility is key in allowing player expectation to shape a campaign.