Progress Continues on TS&R

The revision/editing of my Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Game Master Guide is going well. I'm about 2/3 through the draft. Last Friday, I made a copy of the file in order to pare it down to a table reference book. That will include all the useful charts and procedures (how to manage an exploration turn, combat round, etc.) and that includes stuff from the players books and monster books, too. 

The GMG is targeted at GMs who are new to RPGs or at least new to OSR style game play. It's got lots of explanations of how to run things, why to run them that way, and examples. Honestly, it could probably use more examples, but I've been working on it long enough. It's not perfect, but it should be good enough. 

The companion book, which I think will be called Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Rules and Procedures, will be for the experienced GM. I plan to make it as short as possible, but a useful reference while preparing dungeons/adventures, and also while running things at the table. Experienced DMs don't need to leaf through pages of explanations and examples at the table. They need just the facts, Ma'am. 

I'm around 2/3 through the GMG draft, so if things keep up, I should be done with it soon, and ready to format the book for release. The R&P book should be a pretty quick thing to slap together, since it's just a collection of the useful charts, tables, and rules for play. 

I've been putting off a few blog post ideas I've got the past two weeks. For one thing, my mother is in the hospital and it was pretty serious, but she's recovering, so that's one load off. There's been a bit of work-related frustration as well. Not quite drama, but just annoying bureaucratic BS that we need to deal with. But I think that's mostly blown over as well. And we're rolling up on the end of the semester, so that's just generally busy. Oh, and despite all of the above, I've actually been gaming a bit too much. We played CoC last Friday evening, and I just ran my Jade campaign this afternoon. S&S board gaming on this upcoming Thursday holiday or possibly delayed until next Sunday, which is also when Dustie wants to resume her Monster of the Week (a PbtA X-Files/Stranger Things type game). And a friend of a friend has a brand new home-brew game they want to play test in two weeks. 

I also still haven't play tested my mass combat rules for TS&R with actual other people yet, so I should probably do that soon. I'd like to give them a run through with some other people. Even though they're just modifications to Mentzer's Companion Set War Machine rules, I want to make sure I haven't screwed anything up with them in my tinkering. 

Plus, it might be fun to just stage a little war game scenario for the group. I just need to find the time!

First Draft Complete

I've finished the first draft of my Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Game Master Guidebook. Well, not technically the first draft, but the first completed draft. I made three or four abandoned starts at it before I got the book I wanted. And I've still got to write the Afterword. But pedantics (yeah, I know that's not a word) aside, the first complete draft is done. I've got all the explanations of game play, advice to the new (or new to OS game style) GM, game systems for dungeons, wilderness exploration, town adventures, domain administration including warfare, planar exploration, and high level epic quests. I've also got a fairly lengthy section on alternate or optional rules and suggestions for limitations or allowances to make the game fit the GM's campaign world and preferred style of exploration-focused play. 

I've got to get my notes organized for the next Star Wars game coming up in a week and a half, but after that's done, my game time will be devoted to reading carefully through this whole 128 page document and revising/editing. Then I'll format it, and I should have it up on DriveThru some time this summer. 

Once it's up, I'll also make a condensed Rules Reference book, with just the rules and system guidelines that can be easily used at the table, without all the explanations for new GMs. Experienced DMs who aren't curious about my gaming philosophy and don't want to bother with yet another explanation of how to play the game, but just want something to use to check the rules, this will be the book for you.

 I also want to do a few updates to both the Ruby and Jade players' books, based on play at my game table and also a few mistakes I've found here and there. And that will make TS&R complete...until I decide to add a Middle Eastern/African fantasy supplement, or a pulp sci-fantasy supplement, or a Pre-Columbian Americas supplement, or an Australian/Oceanian supplement. Potentially. I'm not as well versed in the myths, legends, or history of some of these other areas as I am with European and Easter/Southeastern/Central Asian myths, legends, and history. 

Anyway, it will be a complete fantasy heartbreaker soon.

OD&D As a DM Instruction Manual

I've never really read through the OD&D books thoroughly. I only have them in PDF, and I've mostly just looked at sections here or there as a reference. I've referenced Men & Magic and Monsters & Treasure a lot more than I have The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. So today, I went through that fabled 3rd volume and took some notes on what it covers, and how. This is in regard to my previous post, suggesting that I take a look at how well each edition acts as an instructional guide for new DMs. 

Organization: 

Dungeon Design -- notes on how to create your megadungeon, including lots of examples of ways to screw over players and make it a true labyrinth. 

Distributing Monsters & Treasure -- fairly similar to later editions, with notes on how to restock/expand/modify your megadungeon to keep things fresh.

Movement -- The exploration rules: movement and resting, finding secret doors, dealing with regular doors, traps, listening, and vision/light. 

Underworld Monsters -- rules for encounters: distance, surprise, wandering monsters, avoiding encounters (most monsters usually attack, but reaction rolls for intelligent ones).

Example of Dungeon Play

Wilderness -- the map needs castles, ruins, the Dungeon, a home town. Town adventures briefly mentioned.

Outdoor Survival -- explanation of how to use that map for unplanned/impromptu wilderness adventures, Castle Encounters explained in much more detail than in BX/BECMI/RC.

Referee's Map -- explanation that you can make your own map (but no advice on how), which can be useful for domain game play, and rules for hex-crawling and filling in a blank player map while exploring.

Movement -- all movement rates by hex (later listed as assumed 5 miles vertex to vertex!) per day, terrain penalties from Outdoor Survival. 

Wilderness Monsters -- rules for encounter distance, surprise, getting lost (a bit out of place), wandering monsters. Name level NPC wandering monsters are given more detail than in BX/BECMI. 

Evasion -- pretty similar to what's in BX/BECMI

Castle Construction -- not so different from BX/BECMI, but there is a note suggesting adventures defending a stronghold from incursions by monsters/enemies. 

Specialist NPCs -- what you'd expect, types, job descriptions, prices

Rumors, Information, Legends -- suggestions for developing rumors, and rules for players paying to find more information

PC Upkeep -- 1% of XP (per month I assume) needs to be spent on daily living. 

Baronies -- No more upkeep, now you get income. It suggests 2-8 villages within 20 mile radius of stronghold. There are notes on making improvements that may bring in more income/population, but no rules on how to manage that. 

Angry Villagers Rule -- because torches and pitchforks are fun!

Other Worlds -- go crazy with the campaign world

Land Combat -- AKA mass combat, use Chainmail

Aerial Combat -- use counters/minis on map, modified Chainmail rules, pretty extensive!

Naval Combat -- while this also has Chainmail suggested for man-to-man action, the ship combat rules in BX/BECMI derived from this, but this is more extensive. Includes swimming/drowning rules, water monsters, etc.

Healing Wounds -- natural healing at 1 hp per day, but not on the 1st day of rest!

Time -- keeping time for the campaign: assume 1 week per dungeon delve (including prep/recovery time), 1 day per turn wilderness exploring, 1 week real time is 1 week game time for 'downtime activities' or inactive PCs. 

Instructional Value: 

While I did learn a few things, and get some ideas for incorporating a bit more complexity to TS&R by reading through this (something I should have done years ago!), I don't know how well this booklet does at explaining how to run a game. It does give plenty of details for preparing the dungeon (less so for preparing the wilderness or town/city adventures, and even less for high level domain play). It explains some systems in detail, others are just glossed over or hinted as possible. 

There isn't much philosophy or explanation of the Why of game play, just a focus on the How. There is also zero guidance on actually putting together a group to play, dealing with problem players, etc. Maybe Gygax assumed experienced wargamers didn't need this sort of advice. 

My take is that if I had been given this box set as a kid, with the preparation to game I'd gotten from things like Choose Your Own Adventure books and things like the D&D cartoon, I could have made some decent dungeon adventures. But without Chainmail and Outdoor Survival, much of the rest would have been fairly useless to me. 

Still, it's not as obtuse as many people claim it to be. Most of the rules confusion I think comes from various vagaries in Men & Magic, or incomplete notes in Monsters & Treasure that again assume you have Chainmail. I found The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures to cover most of what's needed, if explanation is a bit short in many areas, and the organization is pretty good overall. 

I can definitely see why TSR thought that the various Classic D&D box sets and AD&D were needed to help explain the game better, though. The rules as written assume experienced wargamers, not newbies. As such, it's a decent rule reference but not a great instructional text.

Game Mastering: Theory and Practice

I am back from my trip to the U.S. My son is really happy to be attending an American high school rather than a Korean one. I had a good visit with my parents and got to meet some old family friends, and just get a little refresher of Midwest life. But I'm happy to be back in Korea. And without further ado, on to gaming discussion. 

Recently, discussion on BX Blackrazor and The Tao of D&D has focused on how to teach someone to be a good Dungeon Master. I've been to busy with non-gaming stuff to get in on the conversation, but I'm definitely interested, since I'm nearing completion of the first draft of my TS&R GM book. 

Before I left for the states, I was thinking that it might be a good idea to do a comparison of several different editions/games, including what I'm doing with my TS&R book. I had started to look through the advice in the 5E book, and in my opinion, it may be fine for experienced DMs moving to 5E from another edition or other RPG, but for a novice, it's got the organization of the information all wrong. It starts off with all of these big picture campaign setting discussions, like what sorts of deities exist in the world. Definitely NOT where a new DM should begin. 

The writers obviously expect that the "game play mechanics" should be obvious from the PHB, so all the DM needs to do is create a campaign world. But even then, I wouldn't start with that sort of stuff. I think it's better to teach the new DM about how to run the game, why certain things are done the way they are, and how to manage the group. 

Back in grad school, one of my professors titled every single class she taught as [Insert Course Content Here]: Theory into Practice. While I found it amusing at the time, it's not a bad strategy for teaching. Start by explaining the basic theory of how the game (ideally) works and why certain mechanics are the way they are. Then move on to the concrete details of how to craft interesting encounters, dungeons, game worlds, multiverses, etc. and solid advice about how to run the table and manage the game group. After that, if necessary, deeper theory could be discussed. 

If I have some free time, I'll maybe take a closer look at how different DMGs are organized and the information presented, from the lens of an instructional manual for the game. I expect Mentzer and 2E AD&D likely are better at this than others, but that's just my gut instinct.

TS&R GM Guidebook Progress

In the past week or so, I've made some good progress on my TS&R Game Master Guidebook.

I finished up rules for naval mass combat (modified and simplified from those in the module M1 Immortal Storm), wrote some general guidelines for high level epic quests, and revised the section on artifacts. I still need to write up some more sample artifacts. I had an example of creating an artifact from an earlier draft, so that got a touch-up, and I have a list of legendary items from various myths and legends that I plan to give the 1E AD&D treatment, describing the item and its purpose, but leaving the specific powers and drawbacks to the individual GM. 

Oh, and now I'm working on describing the Planes of Existence. 

Once I get the artifacts and planar stuff done, all I have left to do is outline some optional or alternate rules (like suggestions for different ways to do energy drain attacks, or using X in d6 for Thief Skills instead of percentages, or optional rules for multiclassing, or using BX/BECMI style race-as-class). I do have 1st drafts for some parts of this last section done already, as the ideas come to me. 

Once that's done, I was planning to put in a section with quick reference charts from around the book, but I realized that I already intend to release a simple rules reference book for more experience GMs, so this might not be necessary. It would be roughly the same thing, and since the majority of people will own these as PDFs, it might be easier to have quick reference stuff in one document window and more detailed rules explanations in another. 

Once all that's done, I'll give everything an editing pass, and see if I can get someone else to read through it as well. Sometimes I get to rambling and over-explain things, or make an assumption that some point is obvious and don't explain it well enough. When I'm teaching in class, I can tell from student reactions that this is happening and correct myself. When I'm writing, I don't have that luxury. So a pair of fresh eyes or two will help me to improve and clarify things a bit. 

The book chapters are: 

The Basics: what is an RPG, how do you use these funny dice, what is the reward-feedback loop, player-centered play, etc.

Running the Game: How to manage character creation, how to manage a game session, procedures for dungeon/wilderness/town-social exploration, rules for combat, advice on adjudicating rules.

Preparing the Campaign: How to set up a campaign, create a home town, create dungeons, wilderness, NPCs and factions, and how to bring it all together into a campaign world.

High Level Games: Running domains, mass combat, magical research, epic quests, planar adventures, artifacts. 

Modifying the Game: Advice on limiting races/classes/spells to fit the campaign, optional rules, alternate rules systems. 

If I can keep up the pace over the next week (the final week of winter break for my university), I may be able to knock out the first drafts of the sections I still have to write. Then, if I can find a few people to give me some feedback, I will hopefully get this thing ready to release sometime over the summer or fall of this year, along with the Rules Reference book. And then I can consider compiling everything I've put out for TS&R into a print-on-demand volume, and also work on player and monster books for other genres besides Euro-fantasy and Asian fantasy.

TS&R Dungeon Design

I finished up the first draft of my dungeon design advice for new DMs (or those new to old school style gaming) today. I'll work on the Wilderness design section next, and let this section sit for a while before I read over it and make some edits. For now, though, I'm pretty happy with what I've got down. 

While I was writing up the chapter, I did take a break and re-read the advice Mentzer gave in his Basic Set, which is how I learned to do it. My section isn't as concise as his, but it explains about more dungeon types and gives more of the rationale behind dungeons both as game elements and as part of the fictional fantasy world. I don't give as many specific examples of traps and specials, but in the age of the internet, I'm not to worried  about needing to do that. I was more focused on the how and the why of these types of encounters, along with monster and treasure stocking, and general dungeon design for different purposes. 

It's six pages long (A4 size). The section headings are: 

Dungeon Creation

I. Types of Dungeon

II. Megadungeons

  A. Dungeon Levels

  B. The Megadungeon as a Setting

   C. The Mythic Underworld

III. Scenario Dungeons

IV. Lair Dungeons

V. The Purpose of the Dungeon

VI. Drawing Dungeon Maps

VII. Stocking Dungeons

  A. Wandering Monsters

VIII. Traps

  A. Types

  B. Triggers

  C. Effects

  D. Hazards

IX. Specials

  A. Secret Doors

X. Unguarded Treasures

XI. Dungeon Dressing and Sensory Information

 

Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Game Master Guidebook

I've gone back to work on the GM Guidebook for my house rules of D&D. I figure I'll go ahead and keep what I've got written so far, which is mostly how I run things explained in a way that hopefully inexperienced GMs will find useful. After I'm done writing this, I'll condense just the rules bits into a shorter booklet as a reference for more experienced GMs to use at the table. 

The past few nights, I've been reading over what I wrote before, and I added a "secrets of running a great game" section for those new to RPGs, or new to old school style play. I've decided rather than try to cater to all tastes, I'm just going to write this thing to show the way I run my game. I'm not trying to tell a story with my campaign. I'm not trying to lead the party through a series of staged and micromanaged encounters for an evening's entertainment. I'm trying to present a world to them that is full of challenges and problems, and allow them to seek out what they will. That's my authorial voice. That's the way the rules tell you to play. Feel free to disagree, but I'm not going to waste time telling people how to run D&D as a narrative game or a balanced challenge game. There are other games for that. The teacher side of me wants to do that, but I'm resisting the urge.

That said, I am realizing there are quite a few things in Classic D&D that I don't really use (like the Caller or the Declaration phase of the combat round) so I'm ditching any references to those. I'll go back and edit my player (and monster/treasure) books later to match. There are a few mistakes here and there in those booklets that need to be corrected, as well. 

It's not a revolutionary game. I don't intend it to be. But it will be nice to share it with the world. 

Don't expect it to be done any time soon. I've still got a lot of things left to write, like all the rules for crafting dungeons/wilderness/settings and those for high level campaigns (domain formation and management, planar adventures, artifacts, etc.). I will probably include a few rules variants that I've toyed with or at least considered (XP for magic items found, alternate character creation methods, etc.) near the end.

But I've got some steam built up for writing this thing, and I'm going to try and capitalize on it. Some day, this may actually be a complete game system that others can use.

Planting Seeds of Adventure

Sorry I haven't been posting about the War Machine revisions I've been working on. I did check out the version in Dark Dungeons X, which was recommended to me. It's simplified many aspects (including making it opposed d20 rolls instead of d% rolls, so smaller numbers to work with overall), but has some layers of complexity that I've gotten rid of in my current version. Anyway, I've been too busy with grading assignments and other real world stuff to bother much with it this week. Probably not this coming week, either, but who knows. 

Today (my final day at the ripe young age of 49), we had a really fun session of my TS&R Jade campaign, and I think it illustrates some of the things I'm doing to enrich my campaign world and plant seeds of future adventures, including setting up potential for "end game" domain/war game/planar adventures type things in the future. 

Before I talk about today's session, readers will need a bit of background on the campaign. 

So it's an Asian goulash fantasy setting, and I've started it from a home town area with a 1 mile per hex scale (although there's a local region map at 6 miles per hex, and the PCs have ventured off the initial map once to visit the daimyo, more on that below). The home town is called Pine Bridge Town because it sits at the confluence of two small rivers into a lake, and has a large bridge across one of those rivers. Near the home town are some smaller villages, and plenty of ruins and monster lairs, including The Pits of Lao, the local "megadungeon" although it's only 3 levels deep and I don't plan to increase that. 

Early in the campaign, there was a group of martial artist bullies who came to town. They were disciples of Coiled Serpent Bao, a martial arts master warlord (BBEG type). The PCs managed to kill or capture all but the leader of this group, who fled back to Coiled Serpent Fortress (on the regional map, not that close to Pine Bridge). Because of another early adventure hook in which the constable of Pine Bridge was neglecting her duties (actually an Asian doppelganger called an aswang), the party decided to visit the daimyo, tell of defeating the ruffians, and get some support to protect the town. This succeeded, and the daimyo sent a troop of soldiers to guard things while the PCs sorted out the aswang menace (eventually). 

Meanwhile, they did make a few light forays into the Pits of Lao. They also explored some other local adventuring sites, like protecting the Holy Tree from yasha (small annoying demons), battling bandits and finding out that the local Imperial garrison doesn't care about the bandits or the bakemono menace, and visiting the local Yokai Village and making some friends there. 

Oh, another rumor that they initially started to follow up on but dropped was that the local Temple of Morning needed money, and would provide sohei to support they group if they would eliminate a lair of nasty bakemono that were causing trouble. 

Most recently (the previous three sessions) they were following up on a rumor. The nearby Nabeoka Village had a plague, but the local wu jen (magic-user) Seung had read of healing waters in the abandoned Nishino Iron Mine. They also encountered some ninja who also were seeking a plague cure (a potential seed for later) He sent the party to get the waters so he could make medicines. In the process, the party made an alliance with some bakemono (goblins), found out that koropokuru (dwarves) had set up shop in the upper levels of the mine [bakemono and koropokuru don't get along], and that various dangerous giant bugs lived below. Well, long story short, after three sessions and several slain henchmen, they recovered the waters, along with a magical spear, a spellbook, and a foreman's tally book. 

I'd originally put the tally book in just as a bit of color. But one of the players kept asking questions about it, hinting that possession of it might lead to information on who has claim on the mines, wondering if the PCs might take it over. Well, I wasn't going to let that go to waste. Over the break, I gave them a rumor that says the Nishino family served the Hasegawa family, so any deed to the mine is probably in Ghost Castle Hasegawa (long time readers may remember that name from my Chanbara playtesting--yes, I'm reusing it). The name has kept them away from that dungeon despite other rumors trying to draw them there. 

Additionally, the magic spear, I decided on the spot during the previous session, was forged by the legendary Huang the Swordsmith (a special encounter in the Pits of Lao), as was the magic blade of the koropokuru leader. More seeds. I gave the party a rumor that Master Xu, the Lotus Fist, might know more about Huang. The 18 Chambers of Lotus Fist is a location on the local map that they were curious about, but hadn't visited before.

Finally, now that Seung the Wu Jen has made medicine and the residents of Nabeoka are recovering, the 12 yangban (aristocrat) families of the town invited the PCs for a celebratory feast. But Uncle Chiu, who runs a noodle stand in Pine Bridge and always has lots of rumors and inside information, warned them that the yangban families probably just want to give them some bothersome mission or other. That was the third rumor I gave them. 

OK, lots of long set up done, but it is necessary to demonstrate how all of these seeds, interconnections, and rumors can play into each other. Sometimes I have these things planned in advance, other times I make the connections on the fly, as demonstrated above. But you can't make any connections if you don't have more of the world planned out than just enough for the next dungeon delve. 

Today's session in brief. After discussing rumors the party (level 5 vanara thief/ninja with level 1 dog hengeyokai sohei retainer; level 4 crane hengeyokai kensei with level 1 human mudang retainer; level 4 human wu jen with level 1 raccoon dog hengeyokai retainer; level 4 human blade mage with level 1 human fighter retainer; plus one man-at-arms that they more or less forgot about and dismissed after the first day) set out to the feast at Nabeoka. Arriving at night, they learned a little about the village (12 aristocrat families, other lower class families serve them, mostly rice farming going on), and the feast would be the next day. 

With plenty of time on their hands, they set out to the 18 Chambers of Lotus Fist, which was only 9 miles away. They met Master Xu, and found out that the temple was overrun by monsters. He had cleared out the main hall, but in order to train others, the 18 Chambers (training halls) would need to be cleared. The party set out to clear the Hall of the Foot (Dex related), fighting ethereal marauders in the Chamber of Balance (harder than expected fight, they lost the wu jen retainer), and quicklings in the Chamber of Reflex (hard but manageable). 

They decided not to press their luck, and headed back to Nabeoka for the feast. They found out that yes, the yangban want them to get some bakemono who have been kidnapping children (the same as the Temple of Morning rumor mentioned above), and they would like the PCs to investigate. 

The next morning, the PCs, refreshed with new spells, and having recruited a new 1st level wu jen henchman, decided to return to the Lotus Fist temple and finish the job on the Hall of the Foot. They fought two flailsnails in the final chamber to clear it out, and collected some loot. Master Xu told them that Huang the Swordsmith can be found on the third level of the Pits of Lao (they've explored about a quarter of the 1st level, but have a map bought from a thief with some vague indications of areas they haven't explored).

But on the way, they had a  random encounter with "martial artists" which presented me with a nice opportunity. I decided on the spot that if reactions were unfavorable, they were Coiled Serpent martial artists coming for some payback. If they had positive reactions, they were looking to become students of Master Xu. They ended up being Coiled Serpent lackeys. The party avoided them (they managed to surprise them), but considered returning to take them out after battling the flailsnails. 

In the end, they decided not to go after them at this time, but they had another random encounter with bakemono. They first tried to fast talk the goblins, but that didn't work and a fight broke out. After slaying the bakemono, they went through their belongings looking for evidence of kidnappings. There were none, but now they seem hooked on that. 

On the return trip to Pine Bridge, there was one more random encounter. I rolled for 2 duelists. Well, of course they were not a friendly pair, it was a stand-off! I've been waiting for this result to come up for a while now. The party stopped to watch. My 9 year old, Steven, wanted to interfere, but everyone stopped him. Then the players started taking bets. Denis (who plays the kensei and mudang) bet on the samurai, everyone else bet on the ronin. Then I gave control of the duelists to Denis and Steven. They played out the duel, and the ronin won. Everyone had a lot of fun with that encounter. 

Nate (playing the thief and sohei) commented that they shouldn't try to ally with a disgraced ronin, and I commented, maybe he just earned his honor back. Anyway, the ronin waved to the party then headed on his way. But that's another potential seed for adventure in the future. 

So after this one adventure, we have all sorts of potential for future adventures. 

• There are bakemono kidnapping children. 
• There are 15 more chambers of Lotus Fist to be cleared out, and potentially training with Master Xu some time in the future. 
• There are more areas to explore in the Pits of Lao, and they have yet another rumor to follow up (there are several outstanding rumors about the Pits), one which could result in custom made magical weapons. 
• There is the tally book, pointing to Ghost Castle Hasegawa. 
• There are Coiled Serpent martial artists in the area, apparently looking for revenge. 
• And there's this mysterious ronin duelist. What's up with him? I have no idea yet. But he may well return some time in the future.

Experienced old school DMs probably don't need to hear this, but if you're new to DMing, or you've just been playing the WotC way, this is how you start building up that campaign world. Make connections. Tie this to that. Think of ways to turn random encounters into adventure seeds. Give the players rumors and hooks. If they don't follow them, maybe let the laps. Or maybe, find a new way to get them interested. 

My players weren't interested in fighting bakemono with help from the local temple, if they had to split the profits. But rescuing kidnapped kids? They're all about that. 

The players have ambitions about making their place in the world (using the mine operation as funding, for example), and I've given them hooks to follow to make that happen. 

One player has his wagon currently undergoing renovations to become a battle wagon. There is a tanuki armorsmith who can make mastercraft armor, who is doing the work. Another session or two and the battle wagon will be ready. 

Another player wants to head down to the coast on the regional map to buy a junk (Chinese ship, not garbage) and maybe become a pirate captain. 

If the players can end the curse of Ghost Castle Hasegawa, the Hasegawa clan can reclaim it. Daimyo Isenoumi would like to send his army to check the growing power of renegade warlord Han Ji Shen (haven't mentioned him yet to you guys, but I've dropped rumors to the players -- another potential BBEG). Having the Hasegawa clan restored would help that effort. 

Exploring the Pits of Lao, the PCs may encounter all sorts of other encounters which can lead to further adventure (dragons, planar portals, treant gardeners, evil cultists, allies and enemies...)

Some of these things I've had in the works since I made the regional map (Warlord Han Ji Shen, Coiled Serpent Bao, a few other potential BBEG types). Some since I made the local map (The Pits of Lao, Ghost Castle Hasegawa, the 18 Chambers of Lotus Fist). Some I've thought up based on previous PC actions. Some I just make up on the fly. No matter where they come from, they can all make the world richer, and more lived-in. And they get the players into a situation where they have more goals and ambitions than they can handle at one time. And my campaign is just transitioning to the mid-level sweet spot zone. 

When we get to high levels, I plan to continue to put as many irons in the fire as possible for the players, to keep the campaign fresh.

Why People Are Upset with the MCU (And how that relates to high level gaming)

In 2008, the same year we moved to Korea and my first son was born, Iron Man debuted in theaters, and The Hulk (Ed Norton...remember that?) not long after. And the MCU was born. This led to an eventually more and more interconnected series of films based on the Marvel comics, culminating in Avengers Infinity War in 2018 and Endgame in 2019. 

Right before Covid19. 

And since Endgame, we've not only had covid delaying projects, we had the release of Disney+ streaming with more MCU content in the forms of limited series and one shot special presentations along with the movies. And in this post-Endgame MCU, lots of fans have been underwhelmed. I've been enjoying most of it, but it's hard to follow something as cathartic as Endgame. Say what you will about the quality of the movie itself as a film, as a culmination of 11 years of interconnected storytelling, it was a satisfying way to wrap up that story arch. 

And then Marvel had to keep putting out more content. 

I think they've been making the right moves. They've diversified the types of content they're putting out, both as types of media properties, and with regard to the types of stories they're telling and the characters they're bringing in to the MCU. We've got intense character-driven drama (WandaVision), typical action adventure fare (Shang-Chi, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Hawkeye), horror-tinged superheroics (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Werewolf by Night), comic action (Loki, Ms. Marvel), 4th wall breaking comedy (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law), along with continuing some of the previous popular franchises (Guardians of the Galaxy [done well], Thor: Love and Thunder [not done very well]), and even working in previous Marvel movie properties (Spider-Man No Way Home, The Marvels) within the MCU's new Multiverse phase. 

None of these projects really come close to the feeling of culmination that Endgame brought the long-time fans, although GotG3 and Spider-Man No Way Home come close. And that's upset a lot of fans. And then there are the chuds who think every project with a female or POC lead is pandering to the "Woke Mob" or some garbage. But they'd be upset no matter what Marvel does, since outrage leads to social media engagement. Let's ignore them and focus on the fans who are just feeling a bit let down because the drama isn't cranked up to 11 on these projects. 

How does this relate to high level D&D? Isn't it obvious? 

Look at Marvel Comics. I don't know any comic fans that try to follow every single book Marvel (or DC or Image or whichever comics company you follow) puts out. Not every book suits everyone's tastes, and it's okay to follow those you like and not those you don't. 

The current state of the MCU is pretty much the same. Before Infinity War/Endgame, everyone was pretty much on the same page. You had to watch the movies. All of them. The TV shows were optional (I still haven't seen Agent Carter, The Inhumans, Cloak and Dagger...I did watch Agents of SHIELD and all the Daredevil Netflix related shows). Now, though, not every movie is for the entire audience. Not every show or special is for the entire audience. It's OK to pick and choose. There is variety. 

Your campaign should be similar to the comics or the current MCU. There should be all sorts of things going on in your campaign. Different types of things. Sometimes, every player will be interested in something going on. Sometimes, some players will and others won't. Sometimes, no one will be interested. And that's all good. 

If you're playing a high level game, as I've mentioned before, not every player needs to be involved in every game session. Each player should be able to follow their own interests. Maybe a subset of PCs will be interested in a common thing, and they can game together. Sometimes, everyone gets together to forward some common goal. But the campaign should cease to be built around the idea of all the players getting together each week or fortnight to game as a unit. 

If you've built your game up to basically focus on this small group of heroes and their antics, and then you suddenly try to diversify the campaign now that you're at high levels and the typical dungeon raid is losing it's appeal, you're going to run into some of the bumpiness that the MCU fandom has been going through the past three years or so. But you can get through it, if you stick with it. If you're not at that climax moment of the campaign yet, start diversifying it now (ideas for adventure/challenge diversity in that link). 

Trust me, if you do start diversifying the campaign now, then after the PCs have finally toppled Drol Krad the Dark Lord, they will still have many irons in the fire for them to pursue after the campaign's "endgame" and they can start the real endgame of the campaign: Domains. Political Intrigue. Leadership. Quests. Personal Ambitions. Planar Exploration. Epic Challenges. Building Legacies.

Necessary Build-Up: Running High Level 5E

So you're a 5E DM, and you've been suffering many of the problems that that edition suffers at high level? Are combats a hit point slog? Do they take too long? Are players spending more time designing alternate PCs because they're bored with the ones they have? Is it too hard to balance combat encounters or design challenging adventures because of oodles of hit points and so many spells/powers? 

What to do?

Well, sit back and let me try to share some advice. It may not all be good advice, and some of it will definitely not be easy, but don't give up hope!

If you're a 5E (or probably any other more recent edition) D&D DM who isn't yet at the high level of your campaign but want to keep it going at that level, this will be much easier for you. 

The trick to building a long-lasting campaign that can handle high level play is to build up complexity into your game world as you go. Don't just focus on the "story" of this group of heroes. Also don't assume they're by default heroes, but that's a post for another day. You need to world build.

It's fairly easy to grab a map you like off the internet, or even to make your own. You could also use a published adventure setting like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Golarion. Now, you need to start filling in ideas about what is, could, or will be going on in those towns and kingdoms and monster-infested waters when the PCs aren't there. 

No, you don't need to keep track of everything. You don't need to play out the whole world. Take a breath. It's OK. We're gonna get through this. 

You do need to have ideas about who's in charge of what, and what the cultures are like in at least a general sense, and what wars might be brewing, and where powerful monsters lair, and where to find mysterious artifacts. And on the smaller scale, who are the power players in the local area? What are their beefs? How can they help or hinder the PCs? 

If you have a fleshed out game world, even if it's not completely fleshed out yet, and especially if it's sometimes inconsistent (the real world is after all!), you can leverage those elements to provide challenges for your players besides yet another quest to yet another dungeon to slay yet another set of 3-4 balanced encounters of monsters/traps, then a boss fight. 

Here's the trick though, and why it's easier if you're not yet at high level. You don't need all of this to start. You build it up little by little, and layer complexity and detail onto the game world as you play. 

I mentioned in the comments of my last post that I haven't actually run a high level game since I was in high school. And mostly that is because of two things: living the expat life where gamers to play with come and go often, and my own gamer ADHD due to having too many game systems or campaign styles that I'd like to run. With my current game, I'm committed to running it as long as I can, and getting it up into the high levels. I think I'll go into detail in a future post (or posts) on what I remember doing back in high school (lots of PCs were in the level 20s/attack ranks, a few made it into the 30s), as well as what I'm doing now to lay the foundations of long term play in my current campaign (highest PC currently is 4th level).

 For now, though, I'll say this. Pay attention to the game world. Have recurring NPCs and villains. Have at least some idea of the region's politics, even if it's all background and never effects play at low levels. Work on multiple factions/power centers/sides that the PCs may join or oppose (or even ignore), rather than focusing a grand narrative around defeating some Voldemort style baddie. Take notes on what the PCs have been doing, and how it may affect these powers that be. Every now and then, throw in agents of those powers. Have them notice what is happening with the PCs. When they get enough fame and fortune (upper mid levels is a good place for this), have them start getting recruitment offers or else people sent to actively oppose the PCs' efforts. Have townspeople recognize them when they introduce themselves by name, or even have them known by their appearance. If the PCs are antagonizing some power center, have wanted posters or bounty hunters show up. If the PCs are aiding a power source, have offers of aid arrive occasionally. 

Build up some detail in your game world over time. It doesn't have to be fully fleshed out yet. But it should be reactive to what the PCs are doing. Don't just have "town" be like in a video game, where every NPC has one line of dialogue, and the town simply exists as a place to buy/sell, heal, and rest up. Make the setting a character. Build it up as you go. Keep taking notes. Use those notes to make the game world richer in future sessions. 

If you build it up enough, by the time the PCs are high level, the offers of guild memberships, knighthoods, offers to be kept on retainer as a court wizard, etc. will help give them goals and make the players want to invest in the setting as well. And once they're invested, there will be more to do at high level than rinse-and-repeat dungeon raids and hit point slog combats.

Why you're doing high level adventures wrong

 I just watched this video on high level 5E play from The DM's Lair. 

Now, as you all know, I do play 5E as a player, but will not run it as a DM. But if I were to run it as a DM, I think a lot of the "problems" mentioned in this video wouldn't actually be a problem, because they often are not problems in high level old school D&D. This doesn't mean these things don't happen, it means that these things happening doesn't become a problem. 

 And yes, I will probably be referencing my recent thoughts on high level play from other recent posts like this and this.  Maybe this one too.

Luke's video linked above can really be summed up with one comment. Why is high level 5E hard to run/play? Because you're still trying to run/play high level D&D the same as a low level game. 

But that's not much of a blog post. So let's go through Luke's 10 points and I'll address them one by one.

1. It's hard to create balanced encounters/adventures.

I agree with this statement, and I never even actually got to run high level 5E (I quit while I was ahead and switched to TS&R). I could see where the rules were headed. 

Partly, this has to do with the structure of 5E. The easy short rest/long rest recovery rules make it so that it's hard to wear down PCs over time. It's pretty easy to be at or near top level form for most encounters if the DM allows for frequent resting. Now, sometimes this could also be the case in old school D&D. Wilderness adventures take place over game days, and there might not be encounters every single day. This allows spellcasters, at least, to nearly always have a full compliment of spells when they have an encounter. Even non-spellcasters will likely be able to rely on a fair amount of hit point recovery between encounters, if the party's clerics are using excess spells at the end of the day to heal, or the group decides to take a rest day, prepare only healing spells, and use them up before moving on. 

But running through a group of balanced encounters during a short dungeon shouldn't be the primary type of adventure that high level PCs take on. You don't often see Superman taking on the sorts of street level thugs that Daredevil fights in the comics. And you rarely see Daredevil going up against weird cosmic threats the way Superman often does. 

High level games, whether old or new school, shouldn't be focused on the dungeon delve or the monster combat as the primary challenge of the game. Different sorts of challenges need to be involved. That way, it doesn't really matter if the monsters in the PCs' way are too easy, or too tough. If they're too easy, then focus on the other problems that can't be solved by swinging a sword or casting fireball. If they're too tough, then players need to get ingenious with their spells/abilities/items, and come up with a way around the encounter besides a hit point slog combat (I'll be mentioning hit point slogs a lot in this post, so I'll abbreviate it HPS from now on). 

2. High level spells and abilities ruin the fun.

This is assuming, as I've often mentioned in the past, that WotC seems to think the fun part of D&D is the HPS. The claim (this was also part of Luke's discussion of point 1) is that high level spells can make encounters or even whole adventures a cake walk. Save or die spells (I don't think 5E has any of these anymore) in old school games often did this. And the same powerful spells like wish or time stop, disintegrate, teleport, etc. can render many challenges very easy. 

Have you even been in a situation where you cast a finger of death or some other save or die spell on a powerful monster like a dragon, and it works? Let me tell you from experience, it feels awesome! And not just the first time, either! Of course, in old school D&D, the monsters' saves get much better, so these spells didn't work all the time. But when they did, it was always something to cheer about. 

Luke argues that this sort of encounter hijacking ruins the fun, but just wait until we get to his point about length of combat/high hit points later on... 

If the focus of the game is not on continual missions to a dungeon of the week, scaled to your level, but instead on developing the campaign world, the characters' place in it, and how they want to affect that world, this won't be a problem. That monster was a roadblock. Did it slow them down? Great. Did it not? Doesn't matter, there are other challenges in the game besides monsters.

This isn't "allowing players to win without playing the game." It's playing the game smartly. And does it invalidate DM prep work? I guess it would if you've got some storyline you're planning to run like a readers' theater, or you've got what Justin Alexander calls My Precious Encounter syndrome. But if you're running a world, not a storyline, it's not breaking or invalidating anything. 

Finally, on this point, should the DM use these powerful spells (or powerful monster abilities) on the PCs? Sure, why not? It's part of the game. It retains the risk of the game at high levels. If the monsters/NPCs are just there to be knocked over by the PCs, how is that fun? I get the occasional power trip encounter that allows high level PCs to just tear through some monsters. It helps make you feel like you are a powerful character. But if that's every encounter (3-4 "balanced" encounters and a boss style play), that's gotta get old. There's no challenge. 

And again, even if the combats are threats, a game of endless "enter the dungeon, fight the monsters, take their stuff" should not be how high level games are run.

3. High level play is easy for players, hard for DMs.

When is the game ever not hard for the DM? And if you're throwing more than just combat encounters at the players, you will find plenty of ways to challenge them. And I'm not just talking about kaiju style monsters like the Tarrasque. Although those are great! The thing is, though, you shouldn't be beating the Tarrasque by the HPS method, or even the Save or Die spell method. Go read the Labors of Hercules or some Superman comics and come up with some ideas besides "beat the monster" for a challenge. 

4. Not enough published content for high levels.

If you've run a campaign from level 1 up to level whatever, and you still don't know how to make your own content, or run the world, and need WotC (or TSR, or Paizo, or some other company) to spoon feed you content, the problem is not with the game itself. You need to learn how to run a campaign world. 

Again, stop thinking of D&D as just "Hey, here's the dungeon for the next few sessions! Once you beat it, you'll go to a higher level dungeon!" and think of it as a world. There are politics, natural disasters, resource management, and all sorts of other challenges in the world besides monster slaying. And that's not even getting into the planar adventuring stuff. 

If you can't make your own content, maybe you should stick to the low level stuff until you feel confident enough to make the game your own. 

But don't blame that on a lack of high level adventures. There are plenty out there, if you convert older edition or 3rd party stuff, IF you still need that crutch after years of DMing. 

5. Low chances of death take the fun out of combat.

If the monsters don't have a chance of killing the PCs, yeah, that's gonna make combats less fun. But again, why are we focusing on the HPS? There are plenty of ways for PCs to die. And yes, there are lots of high level spells that reverse death. That doesn't remove the sting of dying from the game, though. Or at least, it didn't in older editions, where there were limits and drawbacks to raising the dead. But even in BX/BECMI, with lower penalties/drawbacks for raising the dead than AD&D had, it still sucks to lose a character, even if it's only temporarily.

But even if the high hit points and good saving throws and easy resurrection takes some of the risk out of combats, there are still risks. And again, if the only time we're engaging in risks is when fighting monsters, the game has more problems than PCs that are hard to kill. 

Also, it's been often noted -- and claimed by fans as one reason they prefer new school games -- that there is a reduced risk of death at ALL levels in 5E (and 4E before it). And yet, combat is supposed to be the only fun part of the game. Someone square that circle for me, please? 

6. Combats are a slog.

Ah, here we are. The HPS point. 

And if we want to get around the 4 hour long HPS? Let the PCs use save-or-die magic to end it quickly. That's not a bad thing! 

7. Characters get more complex.

This is true in any edition, but 5E characters start out a good deal more complex than PCs in old school D&D. So yeah, it's gonna happen, and I can see why it's worse in 5E (one of the reasons I quit running that edition). 

I don't think there's any way to mitigate this aspect of high level play. High level PCs in any edition have more to keep track of. Abilities, spells, magic items, henchmen/hirelings/followers, domains, etc. 

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts linked above, it's OK to slow down the pace of the high level game. It doesn't need to be constant cliffhangers and races against time. It's not an episode of 24. 

Also, again, if combats are not all HPS, then we don't need to worry so much about players taking their time to plan out their actions. If those actions will lead to swift resolution of the encounter rather than the HPS, you're saving time in the long run.

8. Math gets too complex.

Um, too complex? I understand that you don't need to be a math nerd to have fun playing D&D, but he's complaining that you need to add up too many d6s for high level spell damage or backstabs. 

I have sympathy for people for whom math is not a strong suit, but Luke claims sometimes it takes 2 minutes to total up all the damage dice. I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. Here's some advice. If it takes you that long to total the dice, don't add them one by one. Group them into pairs or sets of three that total 10 each set. Makes the math much easier, and faster. There, no more 2 minutes wasted on basic 3rd grade level math problems. 

Now if you're playing Pathfinder 2E (from what I've heard), or Rolemaster or Palladium or something, the math does sometimes get a bit complicated. But D&D 5E doesn't have hard math, really. 

9. Players get bored with their characters. 

I can understand this. Ever since 3E came out, and even before that with games like various Palladium offerings with tons of options and customization for characters, or skill defined systems like CoC, all the options available can make you curious about how they work in play. Or if you could craft a character in this way, or model a PC off of a favorite fictional character, and so on. Character building in these games can and often is fun (though time consuming). 

As a DM, you get to scratch that itch by running lots of NPC. But not so much as a player, especially if you're in a game like 5E in which character death is hard to come by (see point 5 above). 

At the same time, if your player is getting bored with the character they are currently playing, it's probably because you're only giving them one type of challenge (another monster fight), and they've already figured out how to best manage that challenge with that character. They want a new character to have some variety in the game. They're tired of being the front-line warrior and want to try the skirmisher. Or the heavy damage dealer. Or the spell-slinger. They crave variety in their PCs because there's no variety in the challenges set forth in the game. 

Play high level games properly, with more immersion in the game world, problems besides the dungeon/monster of the week, and multiple threads going at the same time, and suddenly they don't want to just switch characters. If they have ties to the game world (not necessarily domain play, but that helps), there is an incentive to stick with this established character, rather than keep switching PCs every month or two. 

10. The story arch is completed. 

Hmm, not much to say about this one. If you've set your game up as a limited campaign, with a "story" to follow -- even if it's an open-ended one with no railroad -- and now it's complete, I completely understand not wanting to continue it. 

The trick for continued high level play, as I've mentioned above, is to have a living campaign world that revolves around more than just one quest or BBEG. There should be a plethora of potential BBEGs and artifacts to quest for, lands to conquer, far away lands/continents/planets/planes of existence to explore, human drama, political rivalries, and so on in the game if you want to keep it going. 

This is one of the reasons I dropped my West Marches campaign. It was a one-trick pony of a game, and as the PCs started to get up into the lower mid-level range (4 to 7), I was seeing that there just wasn't a lot of opportunity for growth and expansion in the game, without completely abandoning the West Marches premise. I could have done that, but started a new game instead, with a setting rich in potential for dungeon delving, getting involved in political rivalries, growth, and eventual settlement/conquest by the PCs, if that's what they choose. I think it will be a much longer lasting campaign. 

So if you don't want your campaign to end, don't hinge the entire premise on one story line.

Tricks of Successful Domain Level Play

Justin Alexander at the Alexandrian blog has had a similar line of thought to myself in reaction to the news that WotC is planning to drop some domain-level play rules for 5E (or One D&D, or whatever). 

And it seems from the comments of Justin's blog that a lot of people don't really conceive of how to run that stage of the game. Justin himself seems to get it, but the focus of his post isn't on how to manage that tier of play, so he doesn't really get into it. 

I haven't run a domain level game for a long time, but I still remember the things my friends and I did that made it work for us. Even as kids, with little real experience or expertise about politics or war or project management, we were able to understand the rules and make them work for us. 

So first of all, my advice to anyone wanting to run a domain level game, or transition their normal game to domain level play when the PCs get more powerful, would be to get the Mentzer Companion Set, or a game like Adventurer Conquerer King that goes into actual rules and systems for this sort of thing. I'm not that familiar with ACKS, but I am with Mentzer's Companion rules (with some extra useful bits in the Masters Set, also most of it is compiled in the Rules Cyclopedia). 

Or, pick up Chanbara. I've got a version of domain management rules in there! 

I'm sure there are other games with rules for setting up domains and managing them. Find one you like. It doesn't really matter which one. Or make up your own. It's just useful to have some solid rules for determining the size of a barony, its population, resources, etc. And then rules for how well you're managing it over time. This is one of the areas where I find BECMI superior to AD&D, as AD&D seems to default to just giving you some passive income and the DM figures out the rest on their own. 

Next, several commenters over at the Alexandrian seemed mystified about how to have the party remain a party at high level. 

Here's the trick. They mostly don't. 

Sometimes, there's a quest or a threat that requires them to band together. That's a typical session or adventure, only scaled to high level PCs. But they're rare at this level. That doesn't mean you have to slow down the schedule of actual sessions of play. It just means that more time passes between quests or adventures. You are keeping STRICT TIME RECORDS aren't you? This is exactly the sort of thing those time records are for. How long will it take the Lord to train up the new recruits? How long will the Wizard be out of the action crafting a new staff of power? What resources does the thieves' guild have on hand to assist the Master Thief? 

Most of the time, the DM will be meeting with players separately to manage domains, or else devoting a segment of each session to domain upkeep and management with each player before getting to the adventures. Sometimes, an entire game session may just be this domain management. That's OK. Handle the management this session, then have some epic quest or killer dungeon to tackle the next. 

In fact, these days, with easy shared internet resources like a wiki or Discord server, it should be pretty easy to manage each player's domain online between meetup sessions, saving the weekly get-together for more action packed adventuring.

Also, again, read the Companion Set rules carefully (hopefully other rules systems will suggest the same). The PCs don't all have to set up independent strongholds. High level Fighters can become lords with their own castles, but one could be the "landholder" while the others are "wandering" and become the Knights in service to the Baron, and the Paladins and Avengers could serve the Baron and/or the party's Patriarch (if alignments match). Each of these wandering Fighters may have an estate (small castle/tower/outpost) that supports the main landholder Fighter's castle. The Patriarch's stronghold could be part of the Baron's castle, or another satellite stronghold within the barony. Maybe the walled town within the barony is ruled over by one of these other PCs already mentioned, or by the Master Thief of the party. Or the Thieves' Guild may be based in the main barony castle's dungeons. And the Wizard may set up a tower within the barony, or may be the baron's Magist with a tower in the main castle to do their research from. 

This way, the players are all invested in the fate of that one barony, and are working together to grow it into a County or Duchy (with the other PCs as barons, earls, knights, etc. under the "leader" PC), maybe eventually a kingdom or even empire. 

And of course, if the players each want to have their own independent fiefdoms, that's fine, too. It will just involve more solo or small group play to manage each one of these areas, as mentioned above. And when a threat arises in one of the domains, like a dragon awakening from centuries of slumber or a necromancer's undead army invasion, it's only natural that the ruler of that particular domain calls in their old friends to help manage it.

Finally, as DM, you need to shift your focus for running the game. There needs to be less of an emphasis on dungeon crawling for the sake of dungeon crawling -- although that will still happen, because in my experience, the income from taxes won't cover expenses, and PCs will want to supplement their domain's treasury from their adventuring earnings. 

There needs to be a focus on the politics of the land. Dealing with the despot king, or land-grabs by hostile neighboring rulers. Monsters or humanoid hordes invading. Peasant revolts. Diplomacy. Finding NPC specialists to hire (the Companion Set again has a great list of retainers needed by a fief, including salaries they typically require, in addition to those in the Expert Set). Dealing with natural and unnatural disasters (which the Companion Set suggests how to deal with, although this isn't as fleshed out as it could be).

But it's not all defensive actions. Players will most likely want to use their own armies (again, the mercenary costs aren't just there for a way to drain funds from PCs) to expand their territory. The Companion Set has the War Machine mass combat rules, but AD&D's Battlesystem or Chainmail can also be used, or some other set of mass combat rules. 

My friends and I had a great time with all of this stuff. It didn't supplant more typical adventures. We still had plenty of those. But as I mentioned above, there was more down time between adventures, and we found ways to mix in the domain management with the adventures for that tier of play. And we also would often roll up new, low level characters to get some dungeoneering or hex-ploration gaming in.

Also, remember, the Domain Game can be the end game, but it doesn't have to be. Again, the Companion Set suggests ways for PCs to continue to be murderhobos wandering adventurers at high level. It's just that instead of focusing on Dungeons of the Week or hex crawl exploration, you're more likely to be enticing the players into epic quests for artifacts or planar exploration, or whatever. But that's a topic for another post. 

If you want to play the Domain Game, it can be really fun and rewarding, but both the players and the DM need to shift their conception of what the game is for it to work.

Don't let the limits of tournament play limit your campaign

Riffing off of my last post, I was thinking of how the "module" as presented by TSR, Judges Guild, and others back in the day has had an overall negative influence on the game. This is not a new observation, by any means, but it's what's on my mind. 

As mentioned in the last post, most modules focus on dungeon delves (at all levels of play), with some wilderness exploration/sandbox modules and a fair number of epic quests for artifacts for higher level play, but very few dedicated to city/social adventures, domain level play, or planar excursions. The rules suggest that the development of players' skill should develop from dungeoneering out to wilderness exploration, then to domain management/war gaming mixed with RPGing, then on to the epic quests and planar exploration. But the examples of play provided by the vast majority of modules are maybe a bit of town play or wilderness exploration as a prelude to the dungeon, if it's not just the dungeon itself. 

There's a good reason for tournament play to focus on the dungeon. If you're going to have many groups of players competing, it makes a lot of sense to just run everyone through the same dungeon. Other types of play are much harder to compare. And scoring is easy. How many monsters were defeated? How much treasure was found? How many traps avoided? 

It's a lot like in teaching. Often, the most effective ways to teach students are the hardest to fairly measure with a test. So we get teachers teaching to the test, rather than trying to inspire and motivate their students to become independent learners. We focus on grammar and memorizing facts and formulaic mathematical calculations rather than inspiring the minds of our students. Well, I try to inspire my students as much as possible. I think I do a pretty good job of it. But many teachers don't. 

Many DMs are similar. They look at the rules, and read over the ideas of what the game could be. Then they look at modules produced by TSR or WotC (or others) and see it's just dungeons all the way down. Not that there's anything wrong with dungeoneering (and I totally read that in a Seinfeld voice as I typed it, although that wasn't my intention when I started writing it). But it does limit the game, and the appeal of the game, if it's only ever dungeon of the week play. 

I tried all sorts of odd adventures when I was young. I'd get a crazy idea from a book, movie, TV show (especially Saturday morning cartoons), Nintendo game, or whatever, and modify it into a gameable situation. And the only modules I  had back then were Isle of Dread and Crash on Volturnus for Star Frontiers. I had alternate realities, dream worlds, other planar pocket dimension dungeons, weird quests for not overly high level adventurers, etc. And we all dove into the domain game once we had enough high level characters and the Companion Set to guide us.

Was it consistent world-building? Hell no. There was often no rhyme or reason. But I did explore many facets of game play. But as I got older, and was exposed to more modules, my play design did shift. It wasn't something I consciously decided to do, it just sort of happened. My designs for adventures shifted. Even my current campaign has a relatively realistic area map, with relatively mundane (by fantasy adventure standards) dungeons. There is a room in my micro-megadungeon that has portals to odd places, but the party hasn't found it yet. 

I need to start adding some more things like that into the game. Get back the vibe of freedom and creativity I had when I was younger. Shake off the yolk of "module" design and just have some fun with things. Get a bit more wild and wahoo with the game. And encourage others to do the same. And that doesn't mean to throw out consistency in the world, or realism to balance out the fantasy. It's just that my designs for many years now have been a bit too "realism" based rather than just letting my imagination run wild. I need a bit more of that creative chaos in my games.

Rewards of Social Encounters: A TS&R GMG Excerpt

 I finally finished my chapter of the TS&R Game Master Guidebook dealing with social exploration (whether in towns/cities, or in dungeons). This is the final bit, on giving rewards for this sort of play. I used to think (maybe I still do?) that the in-game rewards were adequate for this, but since XP drives the type of play that players engage in, it helps to have some guidelines for awarding XP for talking through the monster encounters. 

I say 'maybe' above because I do award full monster XP for creatures encountered that the players engage with but pacify, scare off, or talk their way out of an encounter with where no combat dice get rolled. In the past, I only gave XP for creatures defeated in combat. I'm still not giving the goal-oriented awards to my group, but I may give it a try. Anyway, here's the excerpt. If anyone has feedback or suggestions for improvement, I'm all ears! 

Rewards of Social Exploration: Traditionally, the rewards of social exploration are in-character rewards such as new information about the setting, alliances with NPCs or monsters, or avoiding hazards (such as combat). Experience points were not considered necessary, as the rewards listed above are intangible but significant, at least in long term campaign play. However, the GM can easily award XP for social encounters in which the PCs achieve their goals if they wish to encourage more of this sort of play.

For encounters with monsters or NPCs that could easily have become combat encounters, the GM may award the monsters’ XP value for successfully talking, bargaining, or deceiving their way out of the encounter. In order to avoid abuse, it is suggested that the reward only be applied once per adventure for each group of opponents “defeated” in this way. Continuing to deceive, intimidate, or negotiate with the same monsters or NPCs over and over again in short order does not provide much experience.

For encounters where the PCs gained useful information, made new friends, fulfilled duties, got a feel for a new city, or similar types of social exploration, the GM may wish to provide individual bonuses of 100xp multiplied by the level of each PC for that game play. This bonus XP should be rewarded for the entire session’s play, not for each individual encounter. If the PCs somehow made a profit or managed to gain some treasure from their social exploration, they should earn 1 XP per 1gp of value, as with loot from dungeons.

Self-taught

JB put up an excellent post recently asking the question: why aren't there any good guides for beginning DMs? It's a lot easier to be a novice player and get into RPGs. Alexis at Tao of D&D has taken the challenge and has made some excellent posts about the poor writing in the old TSR books, and how their need to market the game, as well as inexperience as writers, gets in the way of actually teaching. He has an ongoing series of posts, three and counting at the moment (start here). Check them out.

While I could give it my own try (I will eventually when I start releasing TS&R books), here I'm just going to reminisce a bit about my own experiences, as best I remember them, of trying to figure out the game from the books. 

I got the Mentzer Basic set for my 11th birthday, back in 1984. I'd seen the D&D cartoon, had a few Endless Quest books (plus Choose Your Own Adventure and similar 2nd person fiction game-books), and was into fantasy and mythology. I was a pretty avid reader. As the son of a librarian, I spent a lot of time at the local library as a kid. So I wasn't a complete newbie to some of the concepts around D&D. And of course I'd done plenty of make-believe play. But I was completely new to the rules and procedures of RPG play. I hadn't done any war gaming. I hadn't played any really complex board games. Video game options were limited to my friends' Atari 2600s and Colecos. I'd had one acquaintance who had the BX books sort of explain a bit about it, but he was a bit of a condescending jerk and thought I was too immature to get it (as a 10 year old when he was 12). 

Anyway, that birthday gift changed my life. 

I remember reading the Mentzer set's player introduction. There's the little tutorial where you meet Aleena the Cleric and Bargle. It gives you a bit of railroady interactive fiction and makes you roll some dice here and there. Explains some terms as they come up. 

Then there's the "choose your own adventure" tutorial. Numbered paragraphs or sections of text with CYOA type choices of section to go to lead you through a solo game. It's possible to fail. Since it's just you and the book, it's VERY easy to cheat. But again, it helps guide you through some of the game mechanics and introduces not just game terms and systems (in a watered down fashion), but also the sorts of situations you could expect as a player. 

And it worked pretty well. I got it. I think I cheated on the CYOA adventure the first time I did it, but I played it a few more times until I was able to beat it fair and square. 

So for a potential player, so far so good!

Now, after reading through the rest of the players' book, I had some better idea of the game. But I still hadn't played it, and some things didn't make sense yet. 

I moved on to the DM's book. At the beginning, there's another CYOA adventure, except this time you're supposed to lead the players through the castle dungeon as their DM. It holds your hand, and explains some of the concepts and helps get your feet wet. Again, I read through it, and the rest of the book. Not everything made sense. But I got the gyst of it. 

I ran the Castle Mistamere dungeon for my two best friends that Christmas break (2 weeks after I'd gotten the books -- I'm a December baby). I explained the basics. We rolled up characters. Todd was a fighter and Ben was an elf. We played. They should have been eaten by the first encounter, a carrion crawler. Both were paralyzed, but I misunderstood turns and rounds, so Ben's elf was only paralyzed for 3 rounds, and managed to finish off the crawler which Todd's fighter had wounded before he was also paralyzed. They loved it. 

They took on the kobolds at the ruined gate next, and as suggested, the sleep spell did the trick. I think they explored a bit more, getting to the magic beds and being stumped by the cursed one. I was inexperienced, and to be honest the tutorial didn't make it clear that I should give hints that the other bed will cure a cursed sleeping PC. 

So it wasn't perfect. But it was great fun! We kept playing. Todd and Ben both soon had their own Basic Sets. In fact, Ben also later started collecting the AD&D books (Todd and I stuck to BECMI). We ran a sort of shared campaign among the three of us...although I was most often the DM. It went on until sometime when I was in college. I ran a few games while back on break, but me going to college in a city a 6 hour drive away pretty much ended the campaign. 

So I managed to figure it out on my own (and then with help from my friends). But I didn't know many other people who played. One of my other cousins played, but other than one summer when I spent a month at my aunt & uncle's house, we didn't play together much. I don't remember if he was also self-taught, or if he'd been inducted by other more experienced gamers. I only learned recently that another cousin-once-removed (grandson of my mom's & the above uncle's second oldest brother) played. He was the age of my younger sister, but if I'd known he played I would have invited him to our games! 

My school was pretty small. I think there was only one other person I knew at our school who owned D&D besides myself and Todd, a guy named Greg. He was a few years older than us. This guy's younger brother Brian played with us a few times since Todd and Brian were good friends. But Brian never really got into it, and I never approached Greg about playing together. I had tried to get a few other classmates and friends to play. My brother played often and younger sister played sometimes. Ben's brothers (one older, two younger) also played from time to time. A few other kids would give it a try, but none stuck around. 

I hate to speculate too much about other kids. Most were just not into geeky stuff. There was a stigma. There was the Satanic Panic (which also slowed but couldn't stoop my getting into hard rock/metal music). But I'm the only person I know of from those days who I can 100% say was self-taught by the books. Maybe Greg was, too? I'm not even sure how often he played or who he played with. They were kids 3-4 years older than me, so not really in my circle. Maybe Charlie and Adam (my cousins), maybe not. I can ask Adam, but Charlie was killed in a car accident years ago. Maybe I could as his sibling Kay-Cee, but I don't know if they would remember. Kay-Cee was familiar with D&D when Charlie and I were playing it that one summer, but I don't remember if they joined in our games or not.

The old TSR books were definitely written in such a way that the game could be figured out on your own, if you stuck with it. But we did have a lot of misconceptions that took time to overcome which might not have happened if we'd been tutored by more experienced gamers. 

And even though I was in a pretty rural area, considering the popularity of the game and supposed huge volume of sales for the various Basic sets, I suspect there were other kids in my area who had the game but were never able to figure it out.