DnD and the Scenario Blues

DnD has a problem. It is supposed to be a game defined by the infinite possibilities. But it has become way too bogged down in being a miniature skirmish game. Way too often, the game boils down to a combat scenario, and worse yet, the most basic kind! You kill them before they kill you.

I have decided to start a series of posts called the DnD Scenario Blues. (DnD:SB.) In each post, I will explore another scenario that could be used in place of a standard bash n’ smash. I encourage people to use these, (even though I know only 2 people in the whole world read this blog.) Some will involve combat, some will not, some will be skill challenges, some will not.

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For my first offering. I give you, the breakthrough. There really is nothing revolutionary about this, but it’s the beginning for me, and so it is the beginning for this series. It started when I had my players face a different kind of challenge. They had to get through a horde of bad-guys to reach a point on the map. Really, it’s that simple. But it has revolutionized my game, and I knew it immediately.

The party was trying to find this oracle, who ran off without her wards for unknown purposes. They had to track her down through various means, but when they at last arrived, they saw hundreds of snake-like creatures attacking a huge warding sphere that was shielding the oracle. When I described the scene, it took a while for me to convince my players that I really meant what I said, "hundreds." I’ve thrown hordes at them, and with minions, and the all the new ways you can move in 4e, they have stopped quaking in their boots at the sight of all those glass beads. But 'hundreds' is a scale they had never imagined they would have to face. They were confused, trying to reason out how they could kill hundreds of monsters. And then one of them got it. "Look, guys, all we have to do is get to the sphere, she will let us in.*"

I saw the wave of revelation dawn over the players, and most of them started grinning and leaning forward, trying to get an idea of how to get through. They were engaged in a way I had only ever been able to achieve once or twice before. In short, it was awesome.

So, the breakthrough definitely fits in any DM's repertoire; but, what are the key points to making a good breakthrough scenario?

First and foremost, there has to be a lot of pressure. And I mean a lot, in most combat encounters; you end up with a 'fair' fight. Meaning it is, on it merits, 'beatable,' the breakthrough has to be a suicide mission if they stay and fight. Not because you are in any danger of players staying and fighting, but because you have to make each movement painful. The flip-side is that it cannot be impossible. Characters cannot pass through spaces that monsters occupy. Knowing this, it would be easy for the monsters to win, by positioning themselves into walls of monsters that would have to be defeated. This does, sometimes, present you a logic problem. If the monsters are smart enough, they would 'use the rules' and block players. There has to be some reason why they are less densely packed.

The second key point is summed up in one word. Minions, minions, minions. (Fine, one word, three times.) Monsters have to be able to be killed easily without entangling the characters for more than a round. Players will not risk attacks of opportunity at the beginning, and strategically, this makes sense; you’re not going to simply run the gauntlet, you would be cut down before you get there. But if the monsters are not minions, it turns into yet another slog fest.

The last key point is supply. Because monsters cannot bunch up too densely, and because they should be minions, you are going to find out that players are easily able to clear out large amounts of monsters, nullifying the difficulty if there is not a large (and I honestly recommend infinite,) supply of reinforcements. Working out how this work obviously depends on the encounter itself.

If you have used the breakthrough before, or have some really savvy players, you may want to throw some complications in there. The vast majority of monsters should be minions, but a few regular monsters, especially soldier-type monsters, make the encounter much more troublesome. Also, make use of the terrain, don’t be afraid to force the characters to deviate from a straight line. We have a house rule where we place pennies where monsters have died, one penny is difficult terrain, two is 'double-difficult' (taking 3 squares of movement to enter,) and three is impassible. This makes even the bodies of minions an impediment. Perhaps the most devious, add a time-limit, perhaps a door is closing or it takes time to open. Or, you could require the players to escort fragile NPCs through. (But remember, nothing should ever turn into something that is impossible, if the door closes, there should be a way to force it open again.)

In my game, the chose to move as a unit. So, I had them all roll initiative, and had them all move at the highest point (they had plenty of time to prepare before charging in, so it didn’t seem fair (or make sense,) to make them all go on the lowest initiative.) They were able to bust through about half the length of the field, but then they got hung up, because I had some non-minion monsters in there. But, they adapted well, eventually they broke off, and moved individually, but the fighter and paladin went first, to soak up the attacks of opportunity. Eventually, they broke through, and got their rewards.

The breakthrough is an excellent scenario for you to explore, but there are some concerns. First, expect to be rolling a lot of monster attacks, thankfully, the widespread use of minions mitigate that by having set damage. Also, a good breakthrough should probably take the place of a boss encounter, because the characters will be forced to expend a lot of healing surges and encounter and daily powers. The last concern is the reward. Experience should not be awarded for monsters slain, because the point of the scenario has nothing to do with killing, likewise, awarding experience for the number of monsters present would yield far too much. My suggestion is to award the same experience you would award for the most difficult encounter the group is capable of undertaking.

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The short version; breakthrough encounters are when the characters are required to get from point A to point B, and there are massive amounts of monsters in the way. In order for those monsters to provide the challenge, follow the guidelines below.

• Don’t skimp, the monsters should be able to tear the PCs apart if they stop.
• Use minions.
• Have many (infinite) reinforcements for the monsters.
• Make use of complications.



• A few regular monsters.
• Varied Terrain (bodies make difficult terrain.)
• Add a time limit, or maybe even a squishy to escort.

Have fun!

(* I have taken several liberties in explaining this story here, the real game was a little more complicated.)

The Rule of Cool, and I just cant do it.

LTF! Guys, Im going to get back to WoW, someday, but trying to blog about something you are unable to actively do is hard. I wish I could tell you how long I have spent trying to come up with something WoW related to say. My computer will be fixed before the 10th, until then, you will have to put up with whatever swill I put up here. (Incedentally, that is why there was no post yesterday, had nothing to do with new years.)

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So, the 'Rule of Cool.' I have not done my due dilligance, I am afraid, to find out who coined this phrase, but I first heard about it through Chatty's DnD Blog, the post is here. (I wasent even reading his blog when he posted it the first time, and thus, it is a re-run.) Now, Chatty got it from here, a site called TV Tropes.org, which discusses much of the same stuff I have been discussing when I talked about Chekhov's Gun and the Unreliable Narrator. Recently, he made another post about it here, I guess there are some people out there who think the Rule of Cool is uncool. (In case you were curious, as I was, what is a Trope? Well, according to Wikipedia, a Trope (in literature,) is a "...common pattern, theme, motif in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning.") I will be exploring TV Tropes.org in more detail in the future, I am sure Ill be posting my nerdgasms here. But back to the Rule of Cool. The Rule of Cool is easy to understand. According to TV Tropes, "The limit of the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its degree of coolness. Stated another way, all but the most pedantic of viewers will forgive liberties with reality so long as the result is wicked sweet and/or awesome. This applies to the audience in general, as there will naturally be a different threshold for each individual in the group. " In DnD, we use this rule all the time, anyone who says otherwise clearly does not understand our hobby. We sit around a table, and play make-belive with eachother! Without the Rule of Cool, we would all surely laugh at ourselves. As I said, there is some argument about the Rule of Cool. I belive that the people who are disagreeing with Chatty are doing so for the wrong reason. They arent against the Rule of Cool, they are against Chatty's implimentation of it. To them, gritty, hard, and rules-driven is cool, and thats cool! Im not joining the flame-fest, all I am interested in is; how do I use the Rule of Cool? For me, its all about being adaptable. I do not have any control over my players, (I want a cookie, it takes a man to admit that.) They will do whatever they want, and it will be different than what I expect. In order for my responses to be cool, I have to accept that they wont do what I want, and plan accordingly. How do you plan for the unplannable? Dont plan at all. The number one tool of a good DM is improvisation. You have to be able to improvise on the spot. Those improvisations have to be cool. If your upset that your super-cool-construct is unusable, your improvisations will suffer. So, when I make an adventure, I state to myself the goals, I limit myself to 3 or 4. These are the things that I want to achive. When I write, I would then plan a beginning, middle, and end, in whatever order I wish, and write. But when I DM, I dont plan that rigidly. Instead, I create or research the creatures and characters involved. For combat opponents, this means reveiwing and understanding their abilities, (and often, tweaking them.) For NPCs, this means an understanding of their goals, personality, and capabilities. Once I have that done, I imagine a few cool scenes or encounters. Sometimes, for more traditional adventures, this involves making a floor-plan, for a dungeon or something, but for less linear adventures, this means imagineing these scenes and encounters as sort of rooms, I create more than I need, and come up with a guideline for the rules I would need to run those scenes or encounters. (Often, there are none, Role-Play wins over Roll-Play with my group, every time.) After that, I write it down, and do not put them in order. I am a very structural guy, I tend to get caught up in the idea that things have to happen in certain ways. So, to force myself to be on my toes, I do not put these scenes and encounters into any order whatsoever, its up to the players to navigate, not me. Every time I DM, my players will hit on some of my pre-made scenes and encounters, avoid others, and go in entirely different directions. Here is where Chekhov's Gun meets the Rule of Cool. The players have taken a hostage, rather than fleeing the city, like I expected. It was a cunning plan, the hostage would logically hold back the town guard. Now, we are at an impasse. I had no plan for this. But, I did plan for the players to meet a recurring villain, Lord Kallinfruend. I cant let that not happen, he is the Gun! But, Rule of Cool dictates that the player's cool action (taking a hostage,) has to give them results. But, here is the cool part. As a DM, cool is not always equal to success. Failure can be cool too, so long as that failure imparts more cool into the story. "A bolt flies from a window in the corner of the warehouse, striking the princess in the breast with a sickening thud, she doesent even scream as she slumps, dead, in your bindings. Your eyes follow the bolt's path, and in the window, in black leather, is Lord Kallenfruend, smirking at you. The Lord-Knight is not nearly as honorable as he made you belive!" I planned Kallenfruend to be an implacible, but honorable enemy. Plans have to be malliable. Kallenfuend is not at all what he seems. And thats cool. The players are forced to flee the city after all, and they have a new villain. They may be upset, mad even, that their plan failed, but it is still very cool that their enemy has proven to be a true villain! (And before you ask, my players would so totally take a princess hostage, they are just those kinds of people.)

DnD and the unreliable narrator

There are a lot of literary devices that could be utilized in DnD, as I have discussed before when I spoke about Chekhov's Gun. Perhaps one of the easiest to understand would be the unreliable narrator. It is as simple as it sounds, the narrator of the story cannot be trusted, either he or she does it malevolently, or simply due to a lack of knowledge, either way, the result is much the same. In DnD terms, the closest analogue to a narrator is the DM. The DM fills out the scene, and it relied on completely to do so. Most DMs never even consider the power they have to shape a perception that differs from the in-game reality. As I mentioned above, there are two major types of unreliable narrators, both have an interesting place in the toolbox of the DM. The first type is the unreliable narrator that does not provide false information knowingly. In a literary work, this is a statement about the character that is the narrator. But in DnD, the DM, in and of himself, is not a character, and thus, this type of unreliable narrator, at first, seems out of the hands of the DM. But on further meditation, we realize that this method is not only often used by DMs, it is essential to the function of the game. The DM is the voice behind the eyes of the characters, his descriptions need meet only one criteria, that they are true to what the characters can observe. There is a classic DnD monster, the Mimic, which looks exactly like a treasure chest (usually.) The DM's responsibility when describing this chest is to be unreliable. If the DM tells his or her players that "there is a Mimic in the center of the room," he or she ruins that particular encounter. The DM in this case it required to be unreliable. But that is usually as far as DMs go, when using this method. Very rarely would DMs introduce incidental information that is also false, but this could be a powerful tool. Say, for example, that the players are searching for someone in a city. Most DMs would provide them with two types of information. False information, whereby they say something like, "No one is able to tell you anything." And true information, "You find someone who tells you he likes to drink at the Broken Door Tavern." However, depending on the situation, the DM should feel free to tell the characters knowingly false information. This could be informants who will say anything to provide information of any kind; perhaps because the players are paying, or this could be informants who provide false information to trap or ensnare the players. In a true investigation, the characters would not trust all the information they receive, the players should be therefore required to sift through the information they receive. DMs who hand their players the information they require on a silver platter should consider this. There is also the malevolent narrator. This, in DnD terms, cannot be, exactly, the DM. Again, the DM is not truly a character. But, lets take an example; the characters are going to hunt down a pack of worgs in the woods. Local lore and tradition is that worgs are evil spirits that are sent to punish the wicked. In a typical campaign, this would be false, nothing more than silly superstition, and the MM doesn't support this, either; in it, worgs are presented as nothing more than natural (albeit dangerous) beasts. However, as an unreliable narrator, you would like to mix it up even more. Allow whatever preconceived notions the players bring flourish. They either take the villagers at face value; these worgs are different, or they rely on their out of game experience. Whatever they believe, change it to be the opposite. If the characters start trying to root out wickedness in the village, the worgs are nothing more than beasts, if the characters seek to destroy the worgs, then they face true spirits, seeking to hoist some villages by their own petard. How you achieve that is part of the art of DMing. Perhaps the spirit worgs are actually perverting the local wolf population, possessing a new wolf each time they are destroyed. The characters, assuming these worgs are simply beasts, would eventually be worn down, as each night, the worgs seem to renew themselves, until they are given their prey, or exorcised somehow. As a DM, you should not be trusted entirely, when one thinks about DnD, the game relies on this tension, to a greater, or lesser degree. Good DMs use this tension to set up new and unique adventures.

Chekhov's Gun, and a follower?

Last things first... I have a follower? Lolwut? Turns out a Friend of mine has been blogging for longer than I have. The funny part is that we came up with this idea independently. Really, I'm not following you, X, I promise. Or, since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I am following you! Yay, mutually exclusive, but somehow true statements, FTW! I love your blog, did you read my self-contract post where I give myself achievements for good posting? You should take up the same system, then we can laugh at each other failing even our own expectations, ain't it grand?

Okay. So, I am more than a WoW head. I also play DnD. (That's, Dungeons and Dragons, you know, original role-playing? (Although, fun trivia, the late great Gygax originally envisioned more of a 'skirmish' version of a fantasy war-game. The role-playing thing was kinda a happy accident.))

Anyway, I follow several DnD blogs, you can check them out to the left with all the other blogs I follow. Two different DnD Blogs made reference to a literary technique; Chekhov's Gun. Go read about it on Wikipedia for a better-than-this explanation:

Basically, you cant describe or reference a gun without having that gun go off.

In DnD, acceptance of this adage has profound implications. It can also allow you to better understand your role as a DM. But first, an example of what NOT to do, and for this, I pick on an old friend of mine (who also has a blog! Maybe I should tell him about mine? (btw, beware visiting his blog, he has some auto-loading music thingy.))

My friend was DMing, and we were mid-adventure, and though I cannot for the life of me remember the adventure, I do remember we were traveling in the middle of the winter. We happened on a hole in the ground. As I recall, it sorta drew our attention due to the fact that is was a break in the pristine white landscape, oh, and the horrible monster sounds that were coming from it. When the adventuring group peered down into the hole, we saw a humanoid skeleton or two. We asked the DM about the noise, was there anyone in trouble, did it sound human? "No." He said, and proceeded to describe that though the sounds were horrible, and seemed to indicate that there was some monster down there, we COULD see a glint of something shiny down the hole.

Our group heard enough, we said, "We move on." And here is where the night devolved into bad. Our DM made some more attempts to lure us down into the hole, and then he sort of shrugged, and said, "well, that was the adventure, good to have ya, see ya next week." And our DnD game ended in record time, with record low gaming. He told us, as we were leaving, that there was a hydra down there, and that we missed a great thing, but we could neither turn back and go for it anyway ("No, no, your characters left, we cant go back now,") and there was no way to ever be able to face a hydra again.

I deeply regret the hydra incident, as it became known, and it haunts me to this day. Dude is a great DM, his adventures are always very gritty and real, and I always enjoyed them. But sometimes his approach doesn't take into account happy accidents.

DnD has a danger of being extremely formulaic, it has the most simply organized plot-lines. Group meets in tavern, group gets told of some ancient evil guarding some super treasure, group defeats great evil, gets super treasure. It is hard for a DM to get out of that, just like any author. But DMs have a wonderful living canvas, and tons of help, from the players.

How do we apply Chekhov's Gun? Well, you cant have a pit in the middle of a pristine white field (a wonderful symbol, a spot on an otherwise pristine plain? Like I said, it haunts me,) without using it. Dude could have easily had us move on and find a town, or even a lone traveler, limping back from the pit, or any number of other things to re-route the story back to the pit. Maybe the group comes on a group of townsfolk, pulling a sled with some buxom maiden tied to it, they were intent on sacrificing her to the beast in the pit.

Point is, as a DM, one has to focus both on the gun, and how to make sure that gun goes off in the best manner possible. But Chekhov's Gun can be dangerous, too, I think its a wonderful image, a gun. You see, your the DM, and your group opens a door in a dungeon, you describe the room, and one of two things happens, depending on your style. One, you describe sufficient detail as to hide the important bits in the noise. "You see a small chamber, sparsely furnished, perhaps for a monk or ascetic, before this holy place was sacked by the undead horde. The cot has no blanket or padding, there is a small writing desk, and at the foot of the cot is a small footlocker." To a player, it is hard to pick out the gun from the furniture. Indeed, when faced with many such rooms, it can be easy for the player to realize, there is no gun.

But if your a less descriptive DM, you might say, "You open the door to a monk's room. There is a cot, a writing desk, and a footlocker." Immediately, the players will seize on the footlocker (and woe be onto you if you call it a 'chest.') As a DM, this was always just an empty room, its a monastery, its going to have many such rooms! But because the players are looking for the gun, and the descriptions of the room are so small, well, you got trouble.

Last thing I want to mention. Sometimes, the gun is more figurative. For example, your group, which has fought its way through the undead horde, and descended into the catacombs, were the Lady of Pain attempts to awaken her long lost lover from his forced coma. The group faces the Lady, and is defeating her soundly. Whatever the reason may be, perhaps they rolled well, perhaps she is rolling poorly, or perhaps she is simply not powerful enough.

However, the Lady of Pain fight is the last in the adventure, if this gun goes off with a weak little 'pop,' then what was the point, really? As a DM, your just as concerned with the gun going off well as you are with the gun going off at all. Here are some solutions:

• Add minions! She raised a horde of undead, and is in a catacomb, surely she can raise a few more?
• Make her stronger! Perhaps you need to explain this (she rests her hands on her lover's sleeping form, whispering a sweet goodbye, and drains all of his power,) or perhaps not (add another 100 HP.)
• She gets away! Sometimes, the best recurring villains are ones you didn't intend to last, if the gun in this situation is going to be a dud, wait until you can reload!

There is a lot we can learn from good ol' Chekhov. And before you ask, yes, I know the picture is the wrong Chekhov, but even if I found a picture of the real Chekhov, no one would know who he is.