#dm tip

Overhauling Exploration with the Illuminated Room System

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Despite playing D&D for over 20 years, every so often I'll encounter a bit of DM advice that completely changes the way I run my games. When it happens, it often feels like I've discovered a way we were always SUPPOSED to be playing, solving a problem that I'd had for years and sending me into a rage spiral about why no one seemed to figure this out back when I was first learning the game.

Lo and behold, two of my favourite online DM channels happen to hit upon the same idea mere months apart.

TLDR: To improve the efficiency and clarity of our exploration based gameplay, we should borrow from videogame UI design which makes it easy for players to know what to do by highlighting things players can interact with. From there, escape room design takes over, as interaction reveals new information, challenges, and puzzles. 

More ideas about how to use this system (and my own ideas about spicing it up) under the cut.

DM Tip: My Time, Threat, Tension Method

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Inspired by playing the new updates to Blades in the Dark and a recent discussion on the best way to use information gathering skills like perception and investigation, I wanted to share a technique that's quickly become a fundamental part of my DM toolbox when it comes to designing scenarios in D&D and other TTRPGS.

This technique is useful for building individual encounters, but can scaled up to provide structures for entire sessions or adventures. It's the closest I've come to formalizing the supposed "exploration" pillar of gameplay that WotC is so fond of mentioning but never provided any rules for.

Here's the rundown:

Figure out what your party is trying to accomplish (gather information, rescue a hostage, get through a door to the next area of the dungeon)

Establish at least one or more threats that would impede the party trying to accomplish their goal (raising an alarm, getting attacked by a deadly monster, letting their rival gain the upper hand)

By and large the thing that's going to separate your party from suffering the consequences of these threats is going to be time: a resource they have a limited amount of because you're going to arrange circumstances to maximize the drama. You don't need to keep track of individual minutes, more of an abstract sense of "everyone in the party gets to do two things before I mention they hear footsteps approaching the door."

Players are allowed any amount of surface information they'd like and a bit of faffing about on the side, but if they want to get closer to their goal they're going to need to spend time. Some actions are going to cost a flat amount of time, while others (especially those that are up to luck when time is of the essence) are going to require the party to roll. As an example: finding a secret door in a room by noticing the lack of dust on a hidden lever vs. spending ten minutes tossing the room and bruteforcing the solution.

Place a few diversions in their way, whether they be outright red herrings or time sinks that get them something but not the progress they want. (emptying the villain's safe doesn't uncover the secret diary the party is looking for, but it's rewarding in a way other than progress).

You can also be a bastard and put some traps in, not just the type that spring up and deal daamge, but the kind that make threats happen sooner (alarms, surprise guardians) but the kind that introduce new threats (curses, lurking poisonous animals, evidence left behind that alerts their foes)

It's also a good idea to scatter some hints amid the initial setup/diversions to generate those delicious "AHA!" moments and reward players who are paying attention. When someone acts off a hint or guesses the right course of action there's no time cost or roll required. They solved the puzzle, let them move on.

Depending on the scenario you might swap out time with safety, influence, or limited materials as the "resource" being consumed for the sake of the goal.

Alright, let me explain myself, but before I do, take a look at the elden ring story trailer...

Damn, that’s an excellent trailer, in just under four minutes we have: 

The inciting incident of Godwyn’s death

The setup that there’s a ruinous war between the demigods that’s reached a stalemate

Multiple mysteries we want to see answered including: What was the rune of death and how was it stolen and why? Who killed Godwyn the golden and set off the Shattering war? What the FUCK is happening to Godwyn? What was the elden ring, who shattered it, and why? Who’s this spooky doll lady And why do I want to kiss her?

The call to action: We live in an age of terrible conflict but you could put a stop to it if you become the elden lord. 

Hell yeah, that’s some excellent setup. None of which is in the game itself. Instead lets look at the intro cinematic..  

The opening narration is weirdly disjointed, with sentences seeming to cut off and jump around randomly. What’s more, We have no relationship to this narrator: in the story trailer the exposition was delivered directly to us the player by a specific character in the form of Ranni. Whereas the opening narration is delivered by an abstract narrator to… no one in particular? The piles of dead tarnished?   The stakes and call to action are likewise far clearer in the story trailer: “Become Elden lord to stop the ruinous war” is way more proactive than “ There was a war.. become elden lord”   Don’t even get me started on the fact that the war took place hundreds to thousands of years before our character even arrived and the setting has just been hanging about in limbo since.  

Whereas the story trailer gave us stakes and mysteries to solve, the opening cinematic leaves you with a general sense of “huh?” as most of the images in the slideshow only make sense once you already know what’s going on. It even goes as far to give you information you don’t need, introducing a bunch of characters that we might not meet for hours with no other context than “ Hey, remember these names for later”.  Fia suffers the worst for this, as the surprise that she’s actually a strangely intimate necromancer is spoiled by the fact that she’s shown canoodling a corpse in the intro. 

How do you fix this?  Have Hoarah Loux give the opening narration. He led the tarnished into exile and now he’s giving a rallying speech summoning them back. The tarnished have suffered during the (thousands of?) years of their banishment in the badlands and now they have a chance to return to the Lands Between, their home, if only they can follow the guidance of grace and complete their queen’s request.  Have the intro highlight how shitty the badlands are, and how glorious a place they left behind. 

This sets up a mystery because as soon as we get to the lands between as we’re faced with this bizarre broken landscape and Marika’s disappearance. We want to desperately find out HOW things got this way, and how/why the queen called us back. Finding Marika isn’t just incidental… her say so and authority  determines whether the Tarnished will be allowed to resettle in the lands between or be hunted as outlaws, giving our character a reason to pursue the plot other than the aimless push out the door we get in the vanilla cutscene. 

Along the way we’d find Ranni, who’d explain about the (preferably ongoing) Shattering war, and what we could do to amend it, whether that be finding the queen or stepping into a place of authority ourselves. 

So i had a question, or more acuratly wanted to ask for some advice. Ive more or less recently started dming, mostly in the form of one-shots for my main group. And ive stumbled across the following issue: while i love the lore building and describing and rp-ing i really struggle with combat. I tend to get overwhelmed and forget about effects and skills, and struggle with coming up with 'battle tactics' (which is what our campaign dm suggested) or make it way to easy because i worry about the players being dissappointed by 'loosing'(eventhough they've mentiones they would love harder combat and would even be okay with a tpk if it was earned)

So do you happen to have any suggestions or ideas on how to practice running and organizing combat and/or scalling or ways to not get so overwhelmed?

(Im sorry if this isnt quite what you do, i just didnt really know who else to ask)

This is ABSOLUTELY what I do friend, every part of the dungeon mastering experience is worth talking about because that's how we improve.

If you're having trouble learning your way around combat you're more than justified: it's a whole second game, and strategic skirmish tactics requires a very different skillset compared to the collabrative storytelling rules you're just now getting a handle on.

First, lets talk about what combat in d&d is even FOR: Fights in d&d are really no different than any other challenge, they're a hurdle you as a DM employ to introduce drama to a narrative and engage your players, not all that different from a locked door or an obstinate NPC that needs to be convinced. The difference is that when you call initiative, you are shining a spotlight on the moment to moment decisions your party makes when time is limited and greatly raising the stakes: Seconds matter in combat, quick thinking matters, mistakes matter.

To use a simple example, recently I ran a road encounter where the party came across a gnomish merchant who's wagon had been attacked by predatory flightless birds. The question wasn't "can the party defeat the birds", I knew they could, the question was " Can the party defeat the birds before they eat this poor gnome who will be a friend/ally to them later"

The reason you're having problem with tactics and being worried about killing your party is that you're thinking about combat as its own isolated thing rather than a dramatic beat as part of a larger story. Most fights in D&D are NOT about attacking the party directly: Instead the baddies have something they want to accomplish (Take, devour, defend, slay) and it's a question of whether the heroes can stop them before they accomplish their mission. Combat only takes 2-4 rounds generally, which is a limited time for your players to put their thumbs on the scale and try to alter the course of events. Tactics are emergent out of goals, so think about what your minions would want to happen and how they would've gone about achieving it before the party comes by to wreckingball through their carefully laid plans.

Another example: An enemy force is attacking a castle the party are guests at, looking to secure hostages in preparation for a coup attempt by a rival noble. While the villains' over all job is to capture pieces, the initial wave of badguys are primarily concerned with slowing the party down to prevent them from interfering with the other attackers around the castle, meaning they'll fight defensively, potshots from cover and barring exits.

When you refocus the badguys' goals away from killing the players and towards things that push the plot in a particular direction (especially one the party would generally like to stop) you’ll have a clearer idea of what the enemies want to be doing, which not only helps you decide how they act, but also pick what enemies go into a fight.

To me, one of the best marks of good DM advice (or for any creator) is not just sharing tips about what you COULD do, but WHY you should do it in the way the person is recommending; helping you build a methodology of better play.

Recently stumbled across this channel in some of my youtube deep dives and I have been solidly impressed since.

Specific anwser for you: You've set up a dynamic where a character is reliant an NPC for direction, that's great, it means you've got a basis that you as a storyteller can riff off of. Ideal scenario? Send them out on a mission, and have him come back to find his archfey gone. Use it to bait a questhook, and then start asking juicy questions about who they are without guidance. Connect the disapearance to the campaign in someway (someone we dislike is a suspect, someone we like might have an idea what happened) and boom, instant investment.

General awnser for everyone: I find that players come in one of three types when it comes to backstory, 1) Has no strong feelings towards backstory 2) Has a general idea, an outline at best 3) Backstory perverts.

Group 1 are happy for you to make up a soft backstory for them. They're likely getting a handle on the game so offloading that amount of work will likely be handy for them. Just choose something they can easily wrap their head around and start building out a real character personality around as they settle into things.

Group 2 are playing along, taking their first forrays into actually contributing to the collabrative storytelling. They're always amazed when you bring up their backstory AT ALL, especially if you can route campaign/adventure progression through some of the deatils they supplied. The idea here is to give them a pat on the back for getting invested.

To be honest, I don't? Motly in that I don't approach worldbuilding in such a way where I need to block off each individual ancestry/species into their own distinct thing. I also don't have a set world that my adventures take place in, and tend to create settings and assign them details on an at-need basis.

I tend to work from a "culture as story element" perspective, creating a tablau of different peoples based on what the drama needs at any particular moment, and then adding on details as needed.

Say my party is on the borderlands of a big wilderness region where one or more "settled" societies are butting up against eachother and the nomadic peoples who call the wilderness home. Each group gets a name and enough detail to give the players an idea who they're dealing with, and it's only after that where I start at all thinking about demographics.

Likewise I could say forinstance that "the Kal'Ghrine nomads are primarily of orcish decent" but if I express to my players that the defining features of the Kal'Ghrine are being tough as nails survivalists, canny traders, and highly protective of their sacred sites, then that image of what the Kal'Ghrine people are like is going to stick in my players heads, supplimenting their idea of what to expect from an orc. As a bonus it means I can throw in human, woodelf, even hafling or gnoll members of the Kal'Ghrine for texture and my players won't bat an eye

I like thinking about it in terms of the MTG colour pie, multiple groups/philosophies can band togeter for a common cause, and individuals within those groups can express different aspects of that larger union.