Tabletop Design Musings

My Goal: Create a campaign framework that embodies “hurry up and wait,” periods of extended downtime punctuated by frantic action for my upcoming Lancer game.

There’s too many of them!

One of the core ways I want to increase the tension in the campaign is by making the players feel like they’re being stretched thin, that there’s always slightly more for them to deal with than they can handle.

My solution is to present them with 3 missions at a time, then allow them to attempt only 2 of them.

Each mission will grant a reward, and an additional priority award if it is chosen first.

Each mission will also have a minor and major cost, the penalty for choosing the mission second or not choosing it at all respectively.

Downtime Sandwich

Downtime activities are a great way to flesh out the characters in a campaign so I intend to give the players the chance to use them often. The general structure of the game will be:

Downtime – Mission 1 – Mission 2 – Downtime – Repeat

Long periods of relative peace punctuated by frantic action!

It’s a Big Universe Out There

Another thing I want to include is many different factions with opposing interests, avoiding a simple “us vs them” narrative. Unlikely alliances, double-crossing, uneasy truces, yes please! But how do we do that without our brains melting out of our ears?

The (Dice) Oracle Chorus

We’re going to let the dice decide.

Assign each faction a die (a plain d6 will do just fine) and roll the dice together into a tray.

If a faction rolls a 1, they make progress towards their goal.

If two factions roll the same number, they have an interaction. If the dice fall close together (this is pretty arbitrary) then the interaction is positive, if the dice fall far apart the interaction is negative.

I always include a die that represents the players, and have been using 6 other dice for a total of 7 during each of my oracle rolls.

The first roll on the Oracle will generate interactions that will become our 3 missions (that the players will be able to choose 2 of) and our second roll will generate our complications. The complications are going to inject some randomness into the Downtime Sandwich to prevent the structure from becoming predicable and formulaic.

Tip: You don’t need to use the same factions in each Oracle! I always include a die for the players because I want things to happen to them, but you could include different factions in the second roll to ensure they’re more likely to see play in the campaign. If a major faction doesn’t roll any interactions in the first Oracle you can carry them over to the second, or choose an entirely different set of factions for the second roll, up to you!

These first 2 rolls on the Oracle are going to do a lot of heavy lifting telling us about the factions in the game, who are they allied with (for now) and who are their enemies (for now.)

Complications in Time and Space

The first roll should generate our 3 missions, the players will choose 2, then its back to downtime. But where and when do our complications go?

I’ve made a table to describe the location within the campaign structure that a complication can be placed.

If it’s during Mission 1 or Mission 2 it’s a Complication, the situation on the ground is a lot messier than intel let on.

If it’s between the two missions it’s an Interruption, it might affect how ready the players are to deal with Mission 2.

If it’s immediately after a mission, sharing a location but not overlapping in time, its an Encore. The players have the option to disengage, they did the thing they came here to do already. These encounters should offer good rewards to entice the players to push just a little bit further, secure in the knowledge that they will get a chance to repair right after.

If it’s between the two downtime activities it’s a Side Quest, these make for good opportunities to mix things up during rests, maybe even being narrative only and not involving mech combat.

And lastly, if a complications occurs during a mission, after the players have customized their mechs but before they have actually arrived at the mission, it’s a Nasty Surprise. The dropship goes down short of the target, the players are ambushed while moving to intercept their real target, etc. This is the least fair and should be weighted accordingly. The Nasty Surprise isn’t like the Encore where the players can simply disengage, they have to fight through it and then still complete the mission they came here for.

Do your combat encounters need to be balanced?

If you are running a campaign spanning many levels you might assume they have to be. If the encounters are much to easy for the PCs won't they all get killed? Won't it end the campaign?

Combat As Sport or Combat as War

I'm treading familiar ground here, watch the WebDM video on the subject for a more in depth look but I'll hit the highlights here.

On one end of the spectrum you have combat as sport: the PCs show up, fight the encounters you have readied just for them, and go on their way. They will be confident in the knowledge that the difficulty is being carefully managed to provide a challenge but with a low risk of a TPK.

On the other end of the spectrum you have combat as war: the enemy wants to win, and will leverage all resources at its disposal to do so. Encounters are made taking the world into consideration, but not necessarily the PCs level. If the PCs walk into a dragon lair at level 2, they are going to die, badly.

How does that work?

If there are lots of deadly combat encounters how can the PCs survive? How can you run an entire campaign?

Mechanics

If the goal is to run combat as war encounters then the PCs need to be given multiple overlapping mechanics to avoid combat.

It may seem odd to put in mechanics to avoid combat when combat is the focus of a campaign, but both the PCs and their enemies should be seeking engagements on terms favorable to them. Running in and seeing how things play out is well within the realm of combat as sport.

How I Do It

Awareness

The first chance for PCs to avoid a combat is to notice the other side first. This could be listening at a door inside a dungeon and hearing the orcs on the other side, or detecting enemies with their high passive perception while traveling over land. Whoever becomes aware of their enemy first has a large advantage.

If the party notices the enemy and is avoiding a fight they might be able to slip away without the enemy ever noticing them.

The Reaction Roll

The next layer in the combat avoiding mechanics is the Reaction Roll of the enemy. They might detect the PCs first, but not consider them to be their enemy, and not attack. There are shades of grey, they might wish to fight the PCs but assess that they are too dangerous to fight without high casualties.

The Morale Roll

If hostilities do commence and each side is engaged in combat, the PCs may force the enemy to make, and then fail, morale checks.

I use 4 different thresholds for morale checks:

First Blood (anyone one their side takes damage)

First Bloodied (anyone on their side dropped to half their total HP)

First KO (anyone on their side killed or incapacitated)

Half KO (half the enemies killed or incapacitated)

The PCs may find themselves in a fight where it initially appears they are greatly outnumbered, only to find that after a few AoE spells many of their foes are no longer interested in fighting.

This incentivizes PCs to drop their big damage dealing spells early, to maximize the effect of shattering the enemies morale.

Evasion

So the PCs have failed to slip away before a fight starts, the enemy rolled low on the reaction table and are prepared to fight, and the first round of combat didn't dissuade them, now what? Normally this is where the TPK happens, or some of the party attempt to retreat leaving slower or lower initiative players to the wolves (or trolls or dragons.)

Individual initiative order makes any kind of orderly retreat very difficult, even before you factor in PCs who may be knocked unconscious and be unable to escape. There is no place in the initiative order where even when all the Players decide to flee it is actually viable for all their Characters.

When I used Individual Initiative I would poll the Players (not their Characters) about their morale. Partly I did this so that they would remind me to check Morale for the monsters, but also because it serves as a break point. If during that pause between rounds all the Players decided it was time to flee, all the Characters could do so simultaneously.

I use Side Based Initiative now which makes this essentially the default.

The Party can then collectively attempt Evasion from the enemy, escaping combat on a success.

Avoiding Combat (Balance)

With this collection of mechanics many things have to go wrong in a row to result in a TPK death spiral where the party is locked into a losing combat with no way out.

They have to fail to notice the enemy first and sneak away.

The enemy has to actually be hostile.

The enemy has to have strong enough morale to weather the first round of combat without routing.

The party has to fail their Evasion rolls.

A lot has to go wrong.

The biggest advantage of this system isn't even for the players, but for the GM. You can throw combat balance out the window and focus on making encounters that are interesting trusting that your players, equipped with a handful of mechanics to help avoid fights they can't win, will be more or less ready for whatever you cook up.

I think Advantage / Disadvantage is probably the best mechanic added in 5e. It’s simple, easy to explain to new players, and doesn’t require any extra math. It’s a core mechanic to a few classes, namely Rogue, and because of Conditions and Spells it’s going to see use at every table.

Inspiration grants a character advantage on a roll, it interfaces with that existing mechanic by granting the players a source of Advantage outside of Conditions or Spells. But some tables use it often while others use it barely at all, why?

The issue is not in spending the inspiration, that’s very straightforward, it’s how players acquire inspiration that varies. This varies for the same reasons lots of tables playing 5e vary, the game designers punted on their job by adopting “Rulings not Rules” as their “design philosophy.”

In classic fashion the rules are not very specific and different gaming groups will naturally interpret them differently.

How I Do It

I rule that if a player can name drop the Ideal, Bond, Flaw, etc. that is influencing the character in the moment I give them inspiration.

It may come off a little artificial and stilted (“I attack them because of my flaw”) but it actually gets those parts of the character sheet off the page and into play. It works because it reminds players of what the other characters motivations are. It’s easy to get fixated on just your own character sheet, having other players verbalize their features as reminder is never a bad thing.

I also don’t limit how many “inspirations” a character can have (my combat encounters are difficult enough that players tend to use them as soon as they have them.)

The Opposite of Inspiration?

Because characters get inspiration often in my game I’ve been thinking of the “catch” or the drawback. Inspiration is mechanically similar to a +5 modifier, it’s really good.

A direct mechanical opposite would be un-fun: giving characters disadvantage or npcs advantage on their saves against the PCs abilities would be a wet blanket. So lets think of the thematic opposite, Despair.

Despair

If Inspiration is a burst of light, Despair is the deepening shadows around the party. It is a creeping intangible thing you cannot kill with flame or steel. Inspiration is a brief bright flash, a magnesium flair into the night sky. Despair is the blackness that remains when the flare burns out.

Gaining Despair Dice

Every time a character spends an Inspiration die the GM rolls a d6. On a result of 1 to 5 nothing happens. On a 6 the GM gains a Despair Die. The GM can bank a total number of Despair Dice equal to the total number of players. In a single session the GM may only spend a number of dice equal to the number of Players present at the session. No single option may be used more than once a session.

Using Despair Dice

Force all PCs to make a saving throw vs Fear condition

Force all PCs to make a saving throw vs Exhaustion condition

Dark clouds block out the sun, enemies with sunlight sensitivity are emboldened

Give a character an additional Flaw (talk to your players first)

Reroll an NPCs Reaction roll and choose the lower result

Downsize one die on Reaction rolls from a d6 to a d4 for the rest of the session

Reroll an enemies Morale Check and choose the better result

Lower the countdown on the Pursuit timer by 1

Make a player reroll a Random Encounter check and choose the higher result

Extinguish all light, mundane or magical, within 100 feet of the party

Party becomes lost

The sun sets 1 hour early

The sun rises 1 hour late

An NPC must makes a WIS Save and rolls on the Madness Table on a failure

NPC gains an additional Flaw

Deepening Shadows

Some of these would be good in combat, but I wanted a few choices that relate to each of the pillars of Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction, rather than just hitting the PCs with a lightning bolt because they talked about their backstory too much.

I wanted these to be largely outside the immediate control of the party, more a part of the setting than a specific ability to be countered.

My Battle Against GM Fiat

“Couldn’t you, as GM, just do all these things whenever you wanted without a mechanic for it?”

Yes, of course. But I’m a big fan of mechanics that limit decisions being made entirely due to the whim of the GM. I like Morale and Reaction tables because how the NPCs behave is not entirely up to me, there are defined mechanics behind them.

This helps with player trust, the reason that things happen is because they are the result of game mechanical processes, not entirely the GM winging it. As a GM you still have so much control over the narrative and setting that these things don’t feel constraining to me, if anything they alleviate some of the brainpower required to run the game.

I roll the d6 at the table in the open, and there’s always a little bit of tension when I do. Just because it’s limited by a game mechanic doesn’t mean there’s no tension!

The classic metric for progression in ttrpgs is exp and levels. You get exp by doing things, and when you get enough, you cross a threshold and gain another level, with all the mechanical benefits that it provides.

In 5e these mechanical benefits are the ability to fight monsters better. There’s other stuff, skills, proficiency bonuses, but by and large the thing you get for leveling up is the ability to fight monsters better. This makes sense, this is a game about fighting monsters (whatever pretensions about three pillars of play may have been marketed to people). You fight monsters to gain exp to gain levels to fight more and bigger monsters.

And in running the game since 2017 I have had 2 long term campaigns approach, but not actually reach, 10th level. I’ve looked at the player options for levels 11 through 20, made some hypothetical 20th level PC builds as I think most GMs do. And I’ve looked at monsters with challenge ratings of higher than 15. But none of that has ever actually come up in nearly a decade of play.

My first real post on this blog is about kitbashing, taking the game you run, the thing that happens at the table, and giving it a coat of paint and a name. I think it’s a good idea (I wrote a blog post about it) but I never actually gave my game, the thing that happens at my table, a name. Until now. It’s not a mind-blowing name, but its simple and gets the point across: The Cass Hack. My own idiosyncratic hack of D&D. Not a specific version of D&D because I like to take whatever suits me from any edition I like. But naming it, giving it that spray of primer to tie things together, made me think about some of the most core assumptions and systems in the game.

Progression

Progression in 5e has the same issue as much of 5e, it’s a monster fighting game that promises that it also does other things. And like a lot of 5e I don’t tend to have big problems with the stuff that the game actually does. It’s the unkept promises, the pillars of play we were told were solid and just...aren’t.

Progression for player characters is a perfect example. It’s all combat, through and through. And I think about half of it is wasted. I mean for me I know it is. Cass Hack goes to level 10. What about all that stuff in 11-20? What about it? It’s literally never come up. Well that frees up a lot of metaphorical pages now doesn’t it. Which is good because Cass Hack is interested in making all three of the promised pillars (Combat, Exploration, Social Interaction) present in all parts of the game.

Social Progression

Social progression is the simplest, simply take the Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica organizations and customize them to your setting. Done. They’re easy to understand, flavorful, and they give the PCs a parallel progression path beside their character level.

Exploration Progression

Exploration, always the hardest of the three pillars to pin down? I tend to run hex-based games, where overland travel is a big feature. I think progression in exploration is pretty straightforward: how much of the map has the party filled in?

Metaphysical Progression?

I’ve also taken the Piety system from Mythic Odysseys of Theros, filed off the serial numbers, and slapped it into Cass Hack. In a system where the levels only go to 10 a second source of spells for PCs is pretty important. Having the gods as more present and interested parties to the PCs exploits can also make up for the lack of plane-hopping available to higher level parties in 5e. Sure the adventurers might not be able to change dimensions, but their patron powers can shunt them wherever they want.

Parallel Paths

The main thing about character progression I wanted in Cass Hack, especially given my experience with levels 11-20, was progression that was more dense and less long. If a player puts off factions or gods until they reach level 10 there are still paths for them to explore from that point. But more likely the players will increase their faction reputation, piety to their chosen god, and their character level in parallel.

This is a follow up to 2 previous posts; “Random” Encounters in TTRPGs and The Dungeon is Alive (And trying to kill you).

The first is about how adding a few more tables (you could even say a System of Tables) can turn random combat encounters into interesting and flexible encounters. With a few extra die rolls you can make something that will work regardless of how the players choose to engage with it.

The second is about the Dungeon as a dynamic entity, reactive, responsive but also active and reaching; a living and malevolent thing that forces the adventurers to perform acts of heroism.

In this post I’m going to smash those two ideas together.

Constructing a Dungeon

Step 1 is pick a theme for the dungeon. Step 2 is to chart the physical environs (an upcoming post). Step 3 is to populate that space (you are here.)

How I Do It

I use the encounter building guidelines from Flee Mortals! by MCDM. For those of you without a copy handy I’ll go over the basics.

A single “adventuring day” has between 6 and 8 “points” and encounters of different difficulties have different point costs. An easy is 1, standard 2, hard 4, etc.

I size up a dungeon (or individual floor) and decide how many “days” of encounters it is going to have. The question I’m asking myself is “how many long rests do I think is appropriate for the party to spend here?” Then I build the encounters, filling the chosen number of days with encounters that add up to 6-8 points.

These encounters can then act as the Scouts/Guards/Patrols/Boss as described in the Dungeon post.

Lets make this more concrete with an example:

I want a Dungeon that is “2 days” of encounters.

Day 1 (8 points)

Hard Encounter: the boss of the dungeon – 4 pts.

Easy Encounter: lackeys – 1 pt.

Easy Encounter: lackeys – 1 pt.

Easy Encounter: lackeys – 1 pt.

Easy Encounter: lackeys – 1 pt.

Day 2 (6 points)

Standard Encounter: guards – 2 pts.

Standard Encounter: scouts – 2 pts.

Standard Encounter: patrol – 2 pts.

Encounters are easier to steer around a map than crowds of individual enemies so tracking their position relative to the party is simplified. However up to this point all the monsters have been viewed through the lens of a combat encounter, and we can do better.

The Social Landscape

This is where those tables from our random encounters come in. Not every single enemy in the dungeon will need a fleshed out personality, it would be brain-meltingly difficult to try and remember even half of them.

Give the leader of each encounter the personal details. Ideals, bonds, flaws, secrets, a morale score for the group, a roll on the Activity table to see what they’re up to, a Reaction roll for when they encounter the party.

What we’re looking for is mismatches. Guards that rolled “Sleeping” on the Activity table, Scouts that rolled “Friendly” for their reaction roll, random minions that rolled exceedingly high on their morale rolls. Take all these weird incongruities and figure out how they make sense. You already have the theme for the area, and the physical layout, after making the encounters you know what is in the dungeon. This step is where you find out who they are. Lazy guards, treacherous underlings, factions and mercenaries only in it for themselves. How does the dungeon’s boss keep them all in line? Or maybe it’s all unraveling at the seams as the adventurers approach!

Patterns from the Noise

This last step is my favorite part of building a dungeon, more than mapping the corridors or fitting the dungeon into the lore of the setting. Turning a collection of monsters standing around in rooms into a dynamic and personal mess is a joy. Tiny stories write themselves, collections of die rolls across the process slowly unveiling what’s been going on with the monsters. How do they work together, what’s their deal!?

The dice stop things from becoming wrote. You chose the big beefy monsters to be “guards” when you built the encounter, but the dice decided that they’re sleeping, or easily bribed, or treacherous!

The randomness keeps us, as GMs, from getting too comfortable when we think we have all the answers. Yes the players are going to inject some chaos into things, but the dice can add a little from our side of the GM screen!

The Point, The Push, The Offered Hand, and The Grab.

The Point

This is Rumor Tables, things the character's overhear in the tavern or talking to other travelers.

"There's something odd about the Old Mill."

"Some travelers came through, they didn't stay long before heading north."

The Point gives players a direction.

The Push

"You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

The party has gotten themselves into trouble and have become uninvited from their current location.

This gives the players movement, but not a direction.

If the party doesn't have anything giving them a direction when they are Pushed they may become disoriented and not know where to turn. For each Push give the party 3 Points, either to the same location or to 3 different ones.

The Offered Hand

This is your standard fantasy quest, the baron is hiring adventurers to clear the haunted castle. They mark the castle on your map and show you the chest of gold waiting for you when you get back. The Offered Hand is friendly, optional, and gives both direction and incentive for movement.

It may be cliche but there's a reason this has endured, it's straightforward.

The Grab

The villain has kidnapped a friendly NPC and taken them to the Evil Lair. Or maybe they have captured the party and are dragging them there in chains. The Grab is different than the Offered Hand because it's not optional, things are happening to the adventurers.

This is not subtle, but it is very direct.

If the Grab isn't forceful enough it can seem like an Offered Hand, if the adventurers don't care about the NPC who was taken they will view the rescue as an optional thing to pursue if they feel like it.

The Grab is best employed later in a campaign after players have worked their characters into the campaign and the setting.

Two Hands

These methods can be combined of course, Pushing the party while Pointing to a specific location for example.

Or a Pushed party being Offered a Hand when they have no idea where to go next.

These can get even less subtle: Burn the town to the ground and drag the party to the Necromancer's Dungeon, Push them then Grab them.

The king may Offer a Hand to rescue the princess from the dragon, but if the party blows it off they might find themselves Pushed from the kingdom entirely.

When I talk about a “System of Tables” for ttrpgs I imagine lots of people assume it’s a complicated and unwieldy system. A system that has depth, but is probably too arduous to actually use at their gaming table.

Not so! (I hope)

Yes, a System of Tables does require multiple tables, but most games already provide GMs with multiple tables.

The hardest point of designing a system is intent. What are the tables actually trying to accomplish, what do they communicate to your players about your game world?

Random Encounters

Lets start here because it’s the easiest case to come up with examples.

When rolling a random encounter we have a few factors to consider: How often do we roll to see if we have an encounter, how likely are we to roll an encounter when we check, and finally, what’s on the encounter table itself.

Theme

To get the most out of a system of tables we need to pick a variable with thematic importance to our campaign, preferably one with 2 states.

I’m using day or night in my current campaign because I want to make being out in the darkness more dangerous for the adventurers.

You might choose if the party is moving or stationary or if the party is in a settled or wilderness area.

Ideally the two states are both ones in which the party is likely to be, and have encounters in. My choice of day/night would be a poor one in a game set entirely underground for example. The choice of settled/wilderness would be a poor on in a game set entirely within a city etc. The choice of settled/wilderness would also be poor if the party is not likely to ever have encounters in the settled areas.

Once we have our variable we can pull our random encounter levers differently in the two different states.

Frequency

How often do we check for encounters, once a day vs once every 4 hours for example.

How likely are we to roll an encounter, is it a 1-in-20 chance or is it a 1-in-6?

A campaign in which encounters are checked once a day, and have a 1-in-20 chance is very different than one where there’s a check every 4 hours and the odds of getting an encounter are 1-in-6. Even if the actually random encounter table is identical between the two systems, the second is many times more difficult for the PCs.

Encounters on the Table

The other, most obvious variable is to change what the entries on the random encounter table are depending on our chosen variable. In my campaign with day/night as the primary variable I have separate day and night encounter tables.

The most common version of this would be different tables for different biomes, forest vs plains vs mountains etc. In a game where physical location is very thematically important having different tables for different landscapes makes sense.

Example

So lets make our day/night system.

During the day I want to roll to check for encounters twice, I want a 1-in-12 chance of an encounter when I check, and I want the table to include non-hostile and non combat encounters.

During the night I want to check every 2-hour watch, or 4 times during a night’s rest, I want a 1-in-6 chance of an encounter, and I want the table to be entirely filled with nasty combat encounters.

Why? Because the day/night distinction is thematically important to my campaign. If the party was made up entirely of characters with night vision or the setting was one without the connotation of light being good and darkness being bad, this would be a bad variable to choose.

In the case of something set in Middle Earth, as my campaign is, this is a good variable for reinforcing theme and tone. The wilderness is dangerous, even more so at night.

Dichotomy Vs Gradations

It might be tempting to pick a variable with more states and then selectively increase the rate of encounter checks, the chance for encounters, and the contents of the tables in a gradual way. While this sort of gentle blending from one state to another may feel more “complete” it starts to embody the idea that having a system of tables is a complicated and hard to use thing.

You get more bang for your buck by picking 2 states, and making those as different from one another as possible. This communicates to your players that the 2 states are important and have a large effect on the game.

A more gradual approach may muddy the waters and communicate theme and tone less clearly to your players.

For example I could have dawn or dusk change the encounter chance or encounter table, but I would lose some of the clarity of “day more safe, night more dangerous” that the example provides to the party.

Intent

The hardest part of making a system of tables is making one on purpose. Ideally what tables, how often you roll on them, etc is all related to delivering information to your players about your campaign world.

This is the first post in a series (hopefully) where I want to talk about the GM screen.

Rather than talk about a specific layout I want to focus on what I actually want on a screen. Different GMs with different needs will have different preferences based on what they need routinely.

The PC's Stats

The first thing I want is a quick reference for my players most commonly used stats. The PCs are going to be the most omnipresent characters in the campaign, the GM screen should reflect that.

2 Index Cards

I make the first index card with the following:

Character name

Armor Class

Passive Perception

Spell/Ability Save DC, crucially this is the save that monsters and NPCs will need to make against the PCs abilities. If you're wizard is going to be casting tons of spells it speeds things up to have the save number that the monsters need to roll handy without having to ask.

This first index card, taped or clipped to the screen is a life saver. You no longer need to ask for PCs armor class, you just tell them if you hit or miss. No more asking for the PCs spell save DC, you already have it.

On the second index card I have the following:

PCs saves and proficient skills

This one has more information on it but it's a life saver. I rule that to use the Help Action a character needs proficiency in the skill and, again, this skips past the step of asking if they have the proficiency or not.

The Main Takeaways

Your GM screen should have information about your Player Characters! This seems obvious, they're going to be in every single session, of course any kind of quick reference should have information about them!

And because a good screen is going to have information on PCs which will advance and change, any screen should be modular and editable. You could use dry erase, card sleeves, replaceable panels, you name it.

If you've found out-of-the-box GM screens lacking this is likely why, I cannot think of a screen with dedicated space for tracking information about the PCs, likely because this would require some way of editing and updating that information.

I’ve made it a point in the games I run to flesh out the parts of the game that are not combat. I use tables to find out what NPCs or monsters were doing before they encountered the party, I use Reaction rolls to determine how they feel about the party, and I use Morale to gauge their willingness to fight, and how far they’re willing to go before fleeing. I have tables to generate ideals, bonds, and flaws, secrets and trinkets and goals.

Most of these come into play outside of combat, in roleplaying encounters with the NPCs. They can also bridge the gap between the pillars of play, providing a reason to shift from talking to fighting or the reverse. They provide a mechanical scaffold for these things that I found lacking in the original rules of 5e.

I was sitting down and typing out a post for GMs about planning for your NPCs plans. It was primarily about the difference in information between you as the GM and the NPCs inhabiting your game.

I was writing about morale, how you could make a perfect plan for your NPCs then allow the mechanics of the morale check system to cause the plan to fail, even though you as the GM have perfect information. And that was good and I’ll finish that and post it.

But I did get sidetracked.

I was talking about grouping up your enemies by statblock, having groups of enemies pass or fail their checks “in bulk” to ease the cognitive load of running combat.

What happens when they all fail? What happens when the enemy have all decided not to fight?

Using our scaffolding metaphor we could say this is a mechanic that moves us from Combat to Roleplay as the NPCs surrender.

But then they’ve surrendered. The party of adventurers was winning, and now they don’t even have to expend any more resources in this fight. They still have the momentum. What do they do about the surrendered enemies?

Moral Dilemmas

There are internet discussions about moral dilemmas in ttrpgs. The idea of handling prisoners and non-combatants is often handwaved.

“Players don’t want that.”

“It gets old if you make them deal with prisoners after fights.”

“Players just want to unwind and play a game, not everything needs to be a moral dilemma.”

Because what was happening right up to that point, just killing everyone, wasn’t a moral dilemma.

Dealing with prisoners, with restraints, “who’s going to watch them to make sure they don’t try anything.” That’s extra work. It’s unwanted overhead. It’s simpler if there are no non-combatants.

The logistical conclusion, the one made in the name of efficiency, is to just kill them all.

This was the point where the little voice in my head countered with “well maybe it’s just not that deep.”

And that little voice is almost always a sign that it is, in fact, that deep. I’m also aware that this isn’t a new conclusion, not a new train of thought. Other people have stood here before.

I love these games. Hell I love the tactical combat part of these games. But sometimes the implications, the built in assumptions in the very DNA of the hobby come bubbling to the surface.

Going to a place, killing all the people who live there, and stealing everything they own. That’s not a moral dilemma, that’s the game.

And I look at my tables that generate personalities for the NPCs, hopes and secrets, the special object in their pocket and I feel sick. I don’t know what to do with this. I’m writing this as a way of sitting in the discomfort. I don’t have solutions but I know that smarter people than me have been here.

I don’t think there’s a game mechanics solution here. I don’t know how there even could be. This is a social, a societal level problem. It infuses the games and books and films we enjoy, the art that we make. I am sitting in a house built on stolen land, in a country built by stolen people. And I can’t just not create ever again, I can’t throw out all the things I’ve ever enjoyed because they’re tainted. But I can’t look away.

We can build new things. We can choose new paths. There are bones buried under the foundations of everything, and they will still be there whatever we choose to do next.

In my current campaign my group is in a position where they have some time to plan how they’d like to fight a group of baddies.

I’ve been thinking about the common planning pitfalls of groups I’ve run in the past and how to avoid them.

The Dialogue

The structure of ttrpgs is one of a dialogue. The GM describes the situation, then asks the players what their characters do. Players inquire about things for additional information, then tell the GM their plan. The GM then adjudicates the execution of the plan. There’s usually dice involved somewhere in there.

Fundamentally planning is a huge part of what you actually do as a player in a ttrpg. Here are some common pitfalls I’ve noticed when players make plans.

Number 0. Why are we here?

If your players ever ask “why are we even here again?” there hasn’t been a failure in planning, there’s been a failure to plan. Having an actual objective in mind is step 0.

Solution: Have an objective.

Number 1. Being too specific

“We’re going to use ability A, then attack B, then spell C”

If everyone is fixated on a very specific plan then when it goes awry (and it will) it will be back to the drawing board, probably at an inopportune time.

Solution: Paint with broader strokes when planning, focus on intent over mechanics. Rather than “ability A” think “prevent them from escaping.” Ability A might be one way of achieving that but there are probably others, consider them. Then when an enemy resists ability A the entire plan doesn’t go out the window, it might just require a little more creative on-your-feet thinking to pull off.

Number 2. Failing to account for uncertainty

When that enemy resists ability A with a freak critical save, or when there were more enemies present than you thought, you’ve failed to account for uncertainty.

Solution: The backup plan isn’t optional. Change “We’ll do A.” to “We’ll try A, if that doesn’t work we’ll try B.” Whatever “B” is it should work even if the rest of plan A is falling apart, otherwise you wouldn’t be switching to plan B! A good backup plan is one that is simple, if the complicated plan fails, you have something simpler ready to go.

Number 3. Not remembering that the enemy gets a vote

“We’ll try A, if that doesn’t work we’ll try B.” is all well and good, but what are the enemies doing?

Think about the likely responses of the adversary to your plan.

Solution: “We’ll try A, they’re likely to do X or Y in response. If they do X, we’ll try B, if they try Y, we’ll try C.”

This can turn things into a branching nightmare fairly quickly but remember, keep things broad. By stepping back from the level of individual abilities or spells and focusing on what the intent of those abilities and spells are, you can do a little bit of branching without completely overwhelming yourself.

Number 4. Micromanagement

A detailed plan can often look like one or two players building a plan then instructing everyone else to follow it. When the plan inevitably falls apart, the players who made the plan might put the blame on the players following (or trying to follow) it.

Solution: see numbers 1-3. By keeping things broad, intent based rather than mechanics based, allowing for chance and uncertainty, and taking the adversaries responses into account, you build a plan that is much more practical. Players won’t feel like they’re messing up the plan because they rolled badly, because a good plan accounts for that possibility. Players won’t feel micromanaged because actions are kept broad enough to allow for individual creativity and problem solving to achieve them. The players who like planning will be more satisfied because a more robust plan doesn’t collapse in on itself at the first die roll when the party loses initiative and the enemies move “where they weren’t supposed to.”

Scaling Up and Down

Generally the smaller scale a plan is the more uncertainty (such as dice results) matters. The larger scale a plan is the more the enemy’s action matters, the individual roll results melt away into the average results.

Something a little different for the blog today, a Space Station Zero battle report!

I’ve put together a 40k Inquisitorial team for delving into the station, lead by an OC Malleus Inquisitor Auralia Leroux. I’m running the game in roll20 until I get find the time, space, and mood to get the models built.

I ran them through the first Challenge in the books “campaign” with a twist, I forgot to scale down the number of enemies. Our Inquisitorial kill team faces off against 12 bloodthirsty robots instead of the intended 6. I realized this only after finishing the challenge, and felt it was going to be be pretty representative of any battle reports I post.

Challenge 1: Docking Bay Access Port

The first Challenge has you roll randomly to determine the threats present and I rolled Collapsing Floors and Ancient Sentries. Moving requires a check to see if the model falls through the floor, and there’s a swarm of killer robots in the darkness. Some welcoming committee.

Turn 1

Sporadic bolter fire into the dark mass advancing on the team

Arend Han, Inquisitorial Stormtrooper drops a sentry with their bolter, using their Combat Specialist ability to re-roll 2 dice to ensure a kill.

In SSZ you must roll to retain the Initiative, first rolling a 6+, then a 10+ then a 12+ on a d12 on successive turns. Eventually you’ll lose the initiative and the enemy will go.

Initiative is retained this time!

Velten Rall, a Scion commander opens up with his hellgun and damages, but doesn’t kill another sentry

Initiative retained again!

Joist Tobel, Stormtrooper number 3, re-positions across the creaking floor and blasts another sentry apart with his bolter

Initiative retained again!! (This is very lucky, getting 3 turns back-to-back is rare!)

Inquisitor Auralia Leroux moves up to shore up the left flank, thunder hammer in hand.

Initiative lost!

Sentry number 9 clambers over crates toward the right flank of the party

Isadora Urswic, a Sister Hospitaller, seizes the initiative and re-positions behind the front line to provide medical aid when needed

Themis, a Mechanicus Enginseer, moves up behind Auralia

Another sentry from the northern host creeps forward

Helena Von Mast, Imperial Pilot, steps cautiously to a place with clear lines of fire aiming her bolter

In the darkness 8 sentries close in

Turn 2

Auralia takes a single step forward and goes crashing through the floor!

Initiative is lost!

Sentries surge forward out of the dark, Velten blasts and kills one, Arend cuts another down.

A sea of robots clank toward the party, they open fire with bolters building a wall of bodies in front of the firing line.

The wave from the north comes bounding over the barrels and crates

Joist mists another with his bolter, Helena clips one but it keeps shuffling, talons flexing

Isadora fells the sentry out front with her bolter

Themis lunges to help Auralia and gets dragged into the widening hole for his trouble, a muffled exclamation of surprise escapes as he slips from view

Two casualties and the shuddering horde isn’t even on them yet

Turn 3

Velten blows a servitor apart with their hellgun

Arend gets clawed in melee, first blood

He blows the creature to bits with his bolter as reprisal

The horde is here now, Joist narrowly avoids the scything claws before blowing his assailant away

Helena clips another sentry that just won’t die

Isadora patches Arend while trying not to shift her weight, casting them both into the darkness below

3 sentries pound forward across the deck plates toward the firing line

Turn 4

Arend breathes deep, squeezes the trigger, another sentry falls sparking to the deck

Helena is rattled, her next burst goes wide

Sentry 4 closes in and narrowly misses Joist

Sentry 1 tries to capitalize but can’t land a talon on Joist either

Slapping a fresh magazine into his bolter Joist can’t miss, they’re practically on top of him

Sentry 1 collapses, riddled with holes

Isadora steadies him from behind

Turn 5

Joist blows the last servitor apart

Post-Game

Auralia and Themis aren’t dead, just trapped beneath the floor, they are pulled free after the last of the robots is dispatched.

5e D&D loves throwing more abilities and spells at the players than they can manage. The low levels pass by relatively quickly as well, with maybe only a session or two spent at level 1 and not many more for level 2. Soon after the campaign has started the players are level 3, and have more abilities then they know what to do with.

Or know at all.

This isn't even an issue limited to new players, or players new to the edition, 5e just heaps on the stuff a character can do from the jump.

So by 3rd level you get "how does this spell work" and "how does this class feature work" and often these aren't their new 3rd level abilities, they're 1st and 2nd level abilities.

Well if the players would just...

Players will not just. People do not just.

If this issue was isolated to specific players or types of players you could maybe make the case that this is a player specific issue. But I've run enough games for enough people to know that this is an issue with the design of 5e.

The Diagnosis

This is a systemic issue with the design of 5e, but not one that is limited to it.

It is possible to give the players too much, too fast. There simply isn't enough time spent at 1st and 2nd level to get players up to speed on their many abilities before hitting them with subclasses and additional spell levels at level 3. Players end up out of depth on their own character sheets. This has happened in every single game I've run in 5e to some extent.

A Potential Solution

There's no one right way to fix the issue but I've come up with one that is working wonderfully in my current campaign.

Class Mastery EXP

I give each player a sheet with EXP rewards for using their class abilities.

Lets look at an example.

Druid Level 1

Cantrips.

Use all of your cantrips at least once. +30 EXP

Spell Slots.

End a day with no spell slots remaining. +30 EXP

Druid Level 2

Wild Shape.

End a day with no uses of Wild Shape remaining. +40 EXP

Land the killing blow on an enemy while in Wild Shape. +40 EXP

Spell Slots.

End a day with no spell slots remaining. +40 EXP

The amount of EXP given for completing all the objectives for a level is 1/5th the requirement to level up. I picked it because I wanted an amount of EXP that felt worthwhile, but not so much that it felt like they had to prioritize checking the boxes or be left behind.

Not Neutral

It's worth noting here that the things I'm giving EXP for, the things i am incentivizing, are not neutral. In the case of Druid, and full casters in general I am setting objectives specifically to combat a play style I've seen and don't care for: The Spellcaster Who Doesn't Cast Spells.

Time and time again I have seen players pick a caster class and then...not cast spells. So I gated a chunk of free EXP behind "End a day with no spell slots remaining."

The goal of this system, of class mastery EXP, is to get players to learn what their character can do. The best way to learn is by doing. It is completely possible that they use all their abilities to get the EXP and then go back to not using them. But once they've gotten used to actually using their abilities, going back to not doing that is going to be boring!

Steering the Party

I've found this system has great utility in guiding the behavior of the entire party, not just individual players. It has been incredibly useful at combating the "15 Minute Adventuring Day" where parties get into a single fight then take a Long Rest to replenish all of their resources.

But what happens when the level 3 Druid has a reward for using Wild Shape 6 times in a single day?

The Druid only gets 2 uses of Wild Shape, but they regain them on a Short Rest. So the only way to use 6 in a single day is to use it twice, Short Rest, use it twice, Short Rest, then use it a final 2 times.

Normally a Druid, a character class who's spells all come back on a Long Rest, would be agitating for the 15 minute day, now they'll want the opposite.

This system, if you choose the objectives carefully can guide the party toward a play style of your choosing. If each individual player has incentives that push in a direction then group decisions tend to go that way.

Communicate With Your Players

I include the fact that the choices of objectives are not neutral, and that you can guide the play style of the entire party as a demonstration of the power of this tool.

Talk to your players about this.

I told my players what I was doing and why, I did not try and hide the power of the system by telling them "this is just a system to help you learn and remember your abilities."

When you explain that "using your spells is more fun than not using them" your players are probably going to agree with you. A big part of casters not casting is them not wanting to be caught out, flat footed in the face of danger. Being open and honest and communicating with your players will help calm the anxiety that leads to never casting any spells.

Your players should trust you, earn that trust.

When people think of the kinds of encounters in D&D they probably think of combat, social, or skill based encounters.

I posit that those aren’t really the types, there are two “families” of encounters: Wilderness and Dungeon.

What Is a Wilderness

I don’t mean literally that the location of the encounter is the only thing that matters, and that there are only two possible locations. I use Wilderness and Dungeon to describe how a given encounter relates to other encounters.

A Wilderness encounter is one that is disconnected from others, the classic overland travel random encounter. The results of this encounter, be it combat, social, or skill based, aren’t likely to tie directly into other encounters. A Dungeon encounter is one that is fundamentally linked to other encounters, usually by proximity.

A party of adventurers encountering the same monster in a one-off overland encounter is fundamentally different to the exact same encounter in the middle of a dungeon.

Dungeon Ecology

The Dungeon is dangerous because it is alive, it is reactive. Monsters within it communicate and coordinate with one another, they respond to the players, they learn.

The danger of the dungeon isn’t necessarily what’s in the room with the party right now. It’s what could walk through the door any moment, it’s who the monster you are currently fighting might run off to talk to if it gets away.

The dungeon is a web of encounters, a complicated hanging mobile that reacts when you pull on any part too hard.

Three Body Problem

The issue of course with a complicated web of encounters is that it’s complicated. How do you actually run something as dynamic as a reactive dungeon at the table as the GM without going insane? First we have to split the encounters in the Dungeon into parts, then we can put them back together as a whole. I’ve divided the exploration of a Dungeon into Phases that help you as the GM figure out what the Dungeon should be doing at any given moment.

Types of Encounters

I’ve taken the types of encounters here from Matt Colville.

Scouts: Range far and wide around the Dungeon looking for enemies (they should be an entry on your Random Encounter table for the region). Scouts make contact then report back to the Dungeon, they aren’t inclined to stick around and fight to the death.

Patrols: Follow a circuit around the outer perimeter of the Dungeon, or even through and inside it (these are your Wandering Monster Encounters within the Dungeon). Patrols will alert enemies in nearby rooms when they detect intruders.

Guards: Stand at entry/exit points into and within the Dungeon. They alert enemies in adjoining rooms and prevent the PCs from freely passing through.

Boss Fight: The nucleus of the Dungeon, a monster or set of enemies that embody the place. They may sally forth from their secluded vaults to drive off the adventurers or they may lie in wait, letting their lackeys attrit the PCs before the real fight.

If any of the “sets” of encounters are a deadly challenge for the PCs the Dungeon will be very lethal. Dungeon encounters have a capacity to snowball with other nearby encounters. The cramped confines means the next potential encounter is never very far way, it could be in the next room, or in the next 6 seconds.

Scouts may return and pinch the party between themselves and the Guards.

A Patrol might stumble upon the PCs attempting to bypass Guards by stealth or guile.

Guards might alert the enemies in the next room, and that might happen to be the Boss Fight!

Some Dungeons should be dangerous, lethally so, but not every single one. When the PCs are surrounded on all sides, it should be a result of multiple failures and not simple bad luck.

The Dungeon is Alive

(And it wants to kill you)

There are a number of ways that Dungeon Encounters can easily fuse together, fleeing enemies from one room may trigger the next, etc. These are encounters within the Dungeon. What about the Dungeon as a whole?

This section is going to divide the exploration of a Dungeon into phases. These phases describe the relation between the entire Dungeon and the adventurers. The party and the Dungeon personified take turns being the Active or Reactive parties.

Phase 1: Scouts

The Players are Active / The Dungeon is Reactive

The Scouts recon the area around the Dungeon and it is the party that is moving into their area, slipping past, or neutralizing, the Scouts.

Phase 2: Search Party

The Dungeon is Active / The Players are Reactive

The PCs fail to silence the Scouts, or maybe the Dungeon becomes suspicious when the Scouts fail to check in. The Dungeon musters up more Scouts and sends them to look for the intruders.

Phase 3: The Siege

The Players are Active / The Dungeon is Reactive

The adventurers prove too much for the Search Party, the Dungeon raises its defenses and hunkers down awaiting the PCs to attack it on more favorable ground.

Phase 4: Sally Forth

The Dungeon is Active / The Players are Reactive

If the PCs are content to snipe at Patrols, or simply wait the Dungeon out, it's a tense stalemate. The Dungeon decides to make a push, maybe the PCs have let their guard down and aren’t expecting it! The Dungeon seeks to destroy the party or at least drive them off their territory. The sally forth should be stronger than the Search Party, the Boss Fight might lead the remaining enemies out of the Dungeon to find and attack the adventurers.

Phase 5: Call for Aid

The Players are Active / The Dungeon is Reactive

The sally has failed, or maybe the PCs have withdrawn but they come back rested and recuperated later, the Dungeon knows it can’t defeat them in direct combat. At least, not alone! They send messengers to their allies calling for aid (let your PCs intercept some of these!) Now it’s up to the PCs, do they try to blitz the Dungeon before the reinforcements arrive, or do they lie in ambush for them?

How Long Per Phase?

You could use a timer (in in-game days, or based on encounters) or you can move to the next when the game feels like it's dragging. This system is intended to make the Dungeon less of a passive location and more of a dynamic enemy that responds to outside threats.

Out of Phase

The interaction between the PCs and a Dungeon might not advance through all 5 phases in order.

The PCs could destroy the Scouts and set upon the Dungeon before the alarm is ever raised.

If the PCs destroy a Search Party but leave the area for a while the situation might start back up at Phase 2: Search Party if the PCs are detected again, or maybe the Dungeon goes straight to Phase 4: Sally Forth! Better to crush the adventurers utterly than feed their own Scouts to the PCs piecemeal!

Scouts or even Dungeon Reinforcements may be added to the Encounter Tables of the surrounding region, or act as Pursuers, acting like a ticking clock to the PCs as they close in searching for them.

Seeping into the Land Itself

I present Wilderness and Dungeon encounters as two distinct things. But Scouts or Dungeon Reinforcements blur the line between them. The presence of a Dungeon should spill out into the Random Encounter Table of the region. Encounters that seem at first to be completely isolated should resurface, tied back to the Dungeon and it’s inhabitants. The Dungeon isn’t a place, its a living thing, and it’s reaching out to strangle you.

Random Encounters in ttrpgs have the reputation of being boring.

I ran a short 5e D&D campaign a while back consisting almost entirely of random encounters in order to practice doing them better. In this post I’ll go over what changes I made to my encounter tables to get more useful results.

Why Do We Bother?

What’s the point of these random encounters anyway?

Random Encounters are Exploration.

Exploration is one of the pillars of play that’s the most difficult to pin down, you know when you’re stabbing someone or when you’re talking to them. But when are you exploring? Is traveling from one town to another on a good road exploration? I’d say no. 5e is a monster fighting game, exploration should be related to fighting monsters. Random Encounters tell us What kind of monsters are Where. If you roll on different tables depending on if it’s day or night they can even tell you When those monsters are active. Encounters in the wilderness during travel convey information about the world and it’s inhabitants you players. Or rather, they should.

This method of creating encounters ties abstract entries on a table into the setting of your world, and your players will learn things about it while trying to sneak past, or bluff, or fireball them.

Prepping Random Encounters

If you create encounters this way you’ll want to roll them up ahead of time as part of your game prep. Are those still “random” you may ask? Sure. Kinda. Don’t worry about it.

Just kidding of course, they’re still random because you should have your players roll to see if there is an encounter whenever you check for one. So when you roll up a few encounters as part of prep you can either roll on a table of the encounters you generated or simply pick one that is fitting in the moment at the table.

How often to Roll?

I rolled twice during the day, 4 times at night (one for each Watch). I wanted to drive home how dangerous the wilds were, and specifically how dangerous it is at night. Again this is the When and What of the encounter, it’s Exploration.

How likely to Roll an Encounter?

I chose 1 in 6. This means on average there’s an encounter once a day, but with the potential to have many more than that. I wanted the players to never feel like they could fully let their guard down while in the wilds.

Table Entries

What you put here will depend on your game but I’m going to use a very standard entry to show how even a “boring” entry can yield interesting results.

1d6 Goblins. This is pretty vanilla as far as low level D&D is concerned. Lets spice it up a little just because we can.

1 Goblin Boss + 1d6 Goblins. This is better, the group now has a focal point in both combat and social interactions.

The Tables In Our Heads

A standard table would have us stop here, and that’s why random encounters get the reputation of being boring. When you see the entry of 1d6 goblins you fill in the rest, you have tables in your head. But these tables often aren’t that good. They’re usually derivative and obvious, because you’re coming up with something in the moment.

Actually having tables, written out, helps to see what options you have. One of the benefits to prepping the encounters ahead of time as part of prep is it lets you tinker with your tables, and with your preconceptions about what should be on them. Put the tables in your head down on paper, then change things and add things.

Here are some tables I use:

1D8 Activity

1 Lost (afraid and on edge)

2 Hunting or Pursuing a Quest (may seek aid in this)

3 Diplomacy/Trade/Social Call (carrying treasure. To where?)

4 Hiding/Fleeing (encountered something, what?)

5 Scouting (will try to stay hidden, report back findings)

6 Patrolling territory (armed, -2 Reaction roll)

7 Solving problem or playing (distracted)

8 Resting (exhausted)

I got this activity table somewhere on the internet and cannot remember where or I'd credit them here.

2D6 Morale

2 Abjectly Cowardly (Always Flee)

3-5 Easily Frightened / Very Cautious

6 Unmotivated

7 Disinterested

8 Normal / Unknown

9-11 Brave, Determined, or Stubborn

12 Suicidally Brave, Berserk, or Undead

2D6 Reaction

2 Hostile, attacks

3-5 Unfriendly, may attack

6-8 Neutral, uncertain

9-11 Indifferent, uninterested

12 Friendly, helpful

Tables All The Way Down

The Activity, Morale, and Reaction tables will serve you well in almost any situation with intelligent monsters. For my particular campaign I knew there would be LOTS of goblins so I used a few extra including:

Names for goblins, names for goblin groups, shared physical features, status symbols, notable tactics, group goals, as well as Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws tables with entries suitable for my goblins. I also repurposed the trinkets tables to give each goblin a unique random item.

Flexibility At The Table

Our tables give us enough information to run whatever kind of encounter our players turn this into. I’ll restate that because it’s important: we aren’t rolling this as a combat encounter, or a social encounter. What kind of encounter this turns out to be is up to our players. If we rolled that the goblins are hostile and will attack, the PC’s might attempt to charm them, or use non-lethal damage to subdue them, or try and outrun them. These tables help prepare you for any contingency, certainly a wider range of possibilities than “1d6 goblins” would.

Curated Randomness

Once you have the tables rolling up many different encounters is relatively easy and fast. One of the benefits of the depth of tables is that even if we get the entry 1 Goblin Boss + 1d6 Goblins multiple times those encounters are likely to be quite different from one another.

When generating many encounters in prep you can add them to a table to be rolled during the session. So 6 encounters turns into a 1d6 table to keep things more random during play if you’d like.

But I’m going to suggest something here: roll up a few and pick the good ones. If any stand out as more interesting, more fun to run, easier to tie into the wider campaign, just run those next time your players roll an encounter.

Could it still be considered a “random” encounter? Who cares. If it’s an encounter you want to run it will be more fun for everyone at the table, regardless of how random it is.

Incentive structures in your game drive players in a direction, ideally you have a game system ready to receive them. If players are driven by an incentive structure and there isn’t a system to catch them they will feel disoriented and that something is missing from your game.

The opposite phenomenon is having a game system you are very proud of, but that players won’t seek out and use because there aren’t incentives to.

How (very broadly) do we deal with this?

Your game will likely have the players doing Activities in Locations.

For simplicity lets assume there are 3 of each.

Our ttrpg activities might be: Fighting, Exploring, Talking

Our ttrpg locations might be: The Dungeon, The Wilderness, The Town

Think about what incentives there are for players to go to each Location, and to perform each Activity.

In an OSR style game players will usually begin in a Town and need to travel through Wilderness to arrive at the Dungeon (where all the treasure is). There are reasons to go to the Dungeon (treasure) and the Town (spending their treasure) and they must travel through the Wilderness to do it.

What and Where?

While players may primarily Talk in the Town, Explore the Wilderness, and Fight in the Dungeon; they will do every Activity in every Location eventually.

Laying out the Activities and Locations in a table is helpful to see how things differ based on the specific combination.

Systems

We need game systems for each Activity e.g. how does Combat work?

Some of these systems will be Location agnostic, making an attack is likely going to work the same way in the Dungeon as it does in the Wilderness.

However some systems, like Exploration, may be different based on the scale of the Location. It might not make sense to track time in 10 minute turns and have players listening at each door in The Town, whereas that might make perfect sense in The Dungeon. The table above is helpful in determining if the system used should be different based on the Location, or if a single system will suffice.

For example; in the Town players will talk to NPCs and a robust system may not be necessary. In a dungeon potentially hostile monsters may need to be convinced not to attack before a deal can be struck, there might need to be a system there.

Tidal Forces

The incentives in your game will often ebb and flow between different places on the table.

Adventurers may have initially been drawn into the Dungeon for loot, but now their packs are full, and they’re low on torches, it’s time to return to the town.

Think about which places on the chart push and pull players of your game, when they might switch, and where the next location is likely to be. If you find that there are lots of things pushing players to an area, there need to be more robust systems around that part of play. If Locations like the Wilderness are usually a space that players are moving through on the way to something else, it’s worth considering how in depth those systems are compared to the destinations on either side, and how time consuming they are to use at the table.

Play Testing

While spending time thinking about the incentive systems in your game is good, and you should do it, you cannot perfectly predict how players will react to the complicated tangle of interacting systems. Differing play styles and group compositions will have sway over what gets the spotlight during a given session of play. The Activities and Locations table can be a useful tool during play testing to see if the Activities and Locations you identified are in fact, the things and places players are interested in and drawn to. If lots of things that come up in play don’t slot nicely into that table it might be time to consider entirely new Activities or Locations.

I invite you to think about your ttrpg of choice like a model kit.

When you read through a ttrpg’s rules they represent a kind of model kit sprue.

Optional rules and personal choices mirror kits that come with alternative heads, arms or accessories for the final model. Two people assembling the same kit may end up with different models depending on the choices that they make when building.

Sometimes the assembly is messy; there are mold lines and pooling glue that masks intricate details. Even with the intent to assemble the model as per the instructions things can go awry. In a ttrpg this would be misremembering the rules, forgetting to track something important, skipping over a text box that should have been read aloud.

Other times the divergence from the given instructions isn’t by accident. Fur cloaks sculpted from modeling putty, icons and accessories sanded flat, these are deliberate choices.

This is homebrew, systems for your ttrpg that you came up with yourself, sculpted or pinned into place on the model from the kit that you’re building.

The next step is truly kitbashing, combining things from entirely separate model kits, potentially from entirely different games not even made by the same people.

A model assembled this way will look...well I think they are very interesting. It is a sort of amalgam of differently colored grey plastic draped with green and blue putty. At this stage the model is very obviously a composite thing. The lines between what is from one kit and another are clear, the hand sculpting obvious. I really like models at this stage because they wear their components on their sleeve (probably made with modeling putty) and the creative vision of the modeler, the choices and the intention behind them, is clear.

This is where I think most ttrpgs at actual game tables are. They’re a combination of house rules, misremembering and interpretations of rules, sculpting putty and grey plastic. And just like models in this stage of assembly I enjoy them immensely. But I think, as a hobby community, we can push just a tiny bit farther.

Let’s hit this model with some primer (and a quick zenithal highlight for kicks). The hodgepodge assortment is now uniform, the lines between kits and sculpture hidden. We’ve lost a bit of that DIY charm but we’ve gained a more holistic aesthetic that ties each component together into a single unified thing.

One more step: name the model. Not a name from the proprietary universe of the designers of the kits, a name of your own choosing. When someone asks what the model is, tell them this name. When they ask what it’s from tell them you made it. You did.

When they ask about the specific parts, which kits did they came in, what putty you used for that cool fabric effect, tell them. They’re probably also kitbashers, on the lookout for cool sprues to add to their collection. But before you talk about the faceless corporation that made the kits, talk about your model that you made.

Your game, the thing that happens at the table, is completely unique. The books and published supplements may have the same text everywhere, but the map is not the territory. On a shelf, or in a folder full of PDFs, that’s not where the game is. The game exists when it’s happening, it’s yours, when people ask what game you’re playing tell them the name of Your Game, not the model kit you used to get started.