You know what sucks? Writing a whole f$&%ing draft of an article in literally a day to follow up an article you published two days before and coming back to do the final revision only to discover that you never wrote a Long, Rambling Introduction™. I mean, I really enjoy these things, but sometimes they’re just a f$&%ing chore.

So…

Uh…

Oh! I know. Let me rant about something. This has got zero to do with the article below it, but that doesn’t matter does it. All that matters is that there’s 300 to 500 words of semi-coherent sweary rambling before the article actually starts.

So, I’ve been running games online for some of my most loyal and dedicated supporters. The ones who give me the most money on Patreon to keep doing what I’m doing so the rest of you can read these articles for free. I’ve got something like six different groups going in tandem right now. And I have had a certain exchange with at least one player at every f$&%ing one of those tables. No exceptions.

What with people having different real-life names, nicknames, online handles, names on Discord, names on Patreon, and fake names to avoid giving their real names to all the information-gathering corporations who I’m sure just want what’s best for us just like those pleasant companies in Shadowrun and Cyberpunk, I make it a point to ask everyone what they want to be called when they first come to my table. And that’s what I call them. Simple, right? And respectful. “What do you like to be called? I shall call you that.”

And I really do my best with it. I mean, I’ve got some folks from foreign countries whose languages include sounds that English just doesn’t do at all. Like, not just the letter is pronounced differently, but literally, there is no similar sound in my language to the sound in their language. Which is a common thing. And if you haven’t grown up making certain sounds by making certain mouth shapes, it’s kind of hard to master. But, nonetheless, I pride myself on doing my best to pronounce a name properly and even work on it a bit between sessions to get my pronunciation better.

Anyway, I have had a person — sometimes two — at each of my f$&%ing game tables who tries to make it my choice of what to call them. Like I said, “okay, so what do you want to be called?” And they say, “well, I’m Robert and some people call me that and some people call me Bob but some people just use my Twitter handle, LordArgyle.” So, I say, “okay, which one do you prefer?” And they say, “oh, I don’t care. Whichever one you want.”

NO! IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT! YOU tell ME what I should call YOU. If you don’t care, then just pick one at random yourself and give me that. I’m not going to assign you a name.* I will respect your choice of name, but I will not make the choice for you. And frankly, the whole stupid f$&%ing exchange wastes valuable minutes of game time compared to saying, “just call me Bob.”

And yes, I understand some English-speaking people have trouble mispronouncing your name. I’m going to be one of them. But, out of respect for you, I will do my best and try to catch myself when I get wrong and correct it. So it’s okay to ask me to use your given name as long as you respect my struggles. And if the struggles will bother you — also understandable — then give me the nickname you usually give English speakers when you don’t want to be bothered with the struggle. Don’t say to me, as one player did, “well, my correct name is “MetzliXochitl, but most Americans can’t say that, so I tell them to call me Matt. I don’t care; call me whichever.” Nope. It’s your choice, you can either instruct me in proper pronunciation and then respect the fact that’ll take me some time to get it down if you think that’s respectful or you can tell me to Americanize your name for my own ease of use, but don’t leave it me to decide between trying and failing to respect your heritage and just erasing it for my convenience.

Holy f$&%. This needs to stop.

Anyway, on with the article.

*Okay, yes, I have assigned people names in the past. But that’s different. That’s a sign of affection. Just ask Merman Roy. And Arkham. And Retweeter. And K Nine Ine. And The Warbo. And Zutech*mumble*. All right, maybe I should stop renaming people of my own accord.

**Wow, that was more than 600 words. But f$&% it. It stands. I’m not even revising it. It’s going up as is. I just want to get this s$&% published.

We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled AOWG Lesson Three

We left off in the middle of a lesson last… week? Session? Time?

Look, I have no idea when the f$&% you’re actually gonna be reading this. If you’re a Patreon supporter, you’re ready this early, but you’re also reading it just two days after you read the previous part early. Well, late. But early. If you’re not a supporter, it’s probably been a week. It’s all a mess and I can’t even keep track of my own release schedule anymore. What month is it even?

Since it might have been a week since your last read, let me recap this s$&% briefly for your benefit. We’re in the middle of How to Run an Angry’s Open World Game Lesson Three. I’m showing you how to present a world that your players will want to explore. At least, to present a world that invites exploration. Which is the best you can do. Because f$&%ing players, am I right?

In Lesson 3.1, I defined exploration as “the satisfaction of curiosity.” And I told you that there’s a thing that happens in peoples’ brains called the “the exploration cycle” and it’s best summarized thus:

Huh! What’s that? I’m gonna find out.

In Lesson 3.2, I said that it’s important to make sure your players are always in the middle of doing something. If they’re not on their way to something, they can’t walk off the road and check out something else instead. And to help you get that right, I told you — briefly — about the Player-Do List. Which will now definitely be its own article. Because there’s more to it than what I described and because people already started dancing for it.

All caught up? Good.

Wait. I almost forgot. Standard disclaimer: this article’s specifically for GMs who actually want to run good games. And who recognize that if they knew everything there was to know about running good games, they’d be writing for sites like this instead of reading them. If you’re not one of those GMs, just go on running your game however the f$&% you want to and leave me alone.

Now we’re ready. Let’s blow some smoke.

Lesson 3.3. Put Some Smoke on the Horizon

Imagine you’re a tired, weary adventurer. You’ve had a crappy travel day full of random encounters. You’ve used up almost all your spells, all your hit dice, your food’s running low, and you’re pretty much out of patience for this adventuring bulls$&%.

Just as you’re thinking about stopping for the night and grabbing a Long Rest, you crest a rise and see, below you, a tiny little goblin camp. There’s a dozen stinky, savage little humanoid boogers around a fire. They’ve got some tattered sleeping mats. No tents. No valuables. It’s just some ragtag goblins with flint equipment and probably just a few painted rocks in their pockets by way of money. Hell, it looks like they don’t have any more food than you do. And you’ve learned to stay the hell from goblin food away after the incident. Goblins aren’t worth many XP and your GM doesn’t give you any XP for random road encounters anyway.

What do you do?

Same scenario. You’re tired, weary, crappy day, blah blah blah, poor you. Except as you’re walking along the bottom of a ridge following a little stream, you glance up and see a thin tendril of smoke rising from behind the ridge into the sky. That’s it. Just some smoke. What do you do now?

And that, right there, is everything you need to know about inviting exploration. That’s smoke on the horizon. Literally in this case. But you can also put figurative smoke on the horizon.

Smoke on the horizon’s my name for some little detail in the world — a visual or auditory detail, an event, a turn of phrase, a weird smear on the map, whatever — a cue that implies there’s something that might be worth checking out without giving away what the payoff might be. Moreover, it requires deliberate action to even assess the value of the thing giving off the smoke. Action with a cost, even if it’s just an opportunity cost. Even if it’s just a temporary stop to what you’re doing and a detour off to the side.

I mean, that smoke in the second example? It could be coming from exactly the same goblins. But there’s no way to know without climbing up the hill and scouting it out. Which means, deviating from the path and making an effort. Sure, the players could still climb the hill, spot the goblins, and decide that s$&%’s not worth bothering with, but they’ve still done some exploring. They’ve still asked a question — “hey, where’s that smoke coming from” — and they’ve acted to answer it — “let’s find out!”

By the way, that’s why I call this s$&% smoke on the horizon. Smoke implies an unseen fire, reminding you the interesting part is currently invisible. The fact that it’s on the horizon implies it’s far away, reminding you there’s got to be some effort to get there.

Also, funnily enough, players are more inclined to interact with s$&% they’d just pass right on by if they had to spend some effort just to see it. That is, once they climb the ridge and scout the goblin camp, most players will try to come up with a plan to interact with the goblins at minimal risk. It’s a loss aversion thing. They’ve spent some effort to find out what’s there and now that they have, if they don’t get a payoff, the effort’s wasted.

Of course, accountants like me don’t fall for that s$&%. We know all about sunk cost.

Smoke on the horizon is pretty much the perfect way to trigger that whole “huh! What’s that? I’m gonna find out,” thing in people’s heads. Well, it definitely triggers “what’s that?” And it requires them to act if they want to find out. But the “huh!” part is important too. You want to trick your players into thinking they noticed something they weren’t supposed to.

Sometimes smoke on the horizon is thick, black, choking smoke rising from just behind that wall or hill or whatever. Super obvious and with a low-effort, low-cost investigation. Sometimes, though, it’s a thin little tendril of smoke way off in the distance that even an elven falcon with enchanted binoculars would overlook half the time.

In other words, sometimes the smoke’s so obvious that even your dumbest player — talk about racing to the bottom — that even your dumbest player will pick up on it. Other times, though, the players will be like, “wow, we almost missed that; it’s a damned good thing we pay such close attention.” Which they’ll never say. Because they don’t pay attention.

More than Meets the Eye. Or Ear. Or Brain

As noted, smoke on the horizon’s a cue. It alerts the players to something, somewhere that they can poke at without telling them anything about what there actually is to poke. Smoke on the horizon can emanate from anything: locations, encounters, plot elements, adventure hooks, characters, treasures, paths, bits of backstory, world lore details, anything.

It’s important to note, though, that not every piece of incomplete information counts as smoke on the horizon. I mean, GMs love to give incomplete information so as to force the players to interact with their brilliant worlds. Like, you know, putting a sign in the game that the PCs can see, but refusing to tell the players what it says until someone specifically examines it. Or requiring the players to ask what their characters know about specific creatures, locations, or events before rolling knowledge checks. Or just describing stuff as weird, strange, unidentifiable, or indescribable.

That s$%&’s not smoke on the horizon. It’s not even hidden information. It’s just crappy narration at work. Smoke on the horizon’s a complete sensory experience. The PCs can see it, hear it, and recognize it. It’s just that whatever they see and hear just isn’t enough to tell the whole story.

A Rainbow Array of Smokey Flavors

Smoke on the horizon takes lots of forms. There’s lots of colors and textures. Depends on the thing making the smoke.

From a distance, you might just be able to see an unusual location for what it is. A castle in the distance, for example. And that might raise questions like “who owns that castle” or “is there any good loot in there.” But the more information the smoke gives away — in this case, the smoke tells you there’s a castle and only the contents are concealed — the fewer questions there are to ask. The same castle hidden in the middle of a dense forest might only show up as a single tower glimpsed between the trees. Or even just a tattered pennant fluttering from a pole. Or, at night, a pale glow in the distance coming from one of the windows. A location might not even visible at all from a distance. Maybe there’s just a few half-buried cobblestones marking the start of a forgotten side road that wends through the underbrush. Don’t just tell the players there’s a castle or ruin or whatever. Think about what’d actually be visible to them from where they are. Tell them that and nothing else. Unless they investigate further. Like, if they climb to the top of a tree or a nearby hill, maybe they can see some more. Even that’s exploring.

From a distance, an encounter might be noticeable by visual or auditory cues or because it emanates light in the twilight hours or while underground. Or because it gives off smoke. Or it left a lingering smell behind. Or it left signs of its passage. You can fling a monster directly into the party’s path easy enough. But if the party instead just spots the signs of something that recently crashed through the underbrush or a trail of slime or moisture or scorch marks or acid burns or dead animals, then they’ve got to follow the trail to even find the encounter. It’s just as good as a random encounter, but if you get a TPK out of it, you can legitimately say that it’s totally on the players. They chose to follow the trail to the monster. It wasn’t in their way. And then you can laugh and laugh and feed their character sheets to the paper shredder. Good times. Good f$&%ing times.

Monuments, ruins, artifacts, and even the design of particular items might hint at lore and backstory elements for the finding. A distant statue of a strange god might entice the players to check it out and discover the story of an ancient draconic general carved into it. Hell, the text might even hide the location of the general’s tomb. Bits of dialogue might also suggest lore and backstory. Say, for instance, the PCs take some relic to the local temple to get it identified. The priest might identify it as a relic of Saint Theolus and then absently remark something like, “Theolus was quite the prominent figure; certainly the most important saint in this kingdom since Arachus was sainted after the Starfall.” “Starfall! Huh! What’s that? I’m gonna find out. I ask the priest about the Starfall.” That’s exploration.

You can imply side quests and adventures through similar NPC remarks, overheard partial rumors, or even through NPC behavior. Sure, there could be a bounty board in the middle of the village entreating any passing adventurer to help fight the Greenwood bandits. But it could just be that all the villagers are obviously alert and nervous. Kids are being kept under really close watch. Farmers are patrolling the perimeter with pitchforks instead of farming. Then, the players have to ask, “hey, Farmer MacGuffin, what’s your problem?”

The trick is that you’ve got to take all your little game elements — your lore, adventure hooks, characters, backstory, encounters, locations, and so on — and find ways to imply that they exist. That they’re out there somewhere. And then give the players a direction in which to start their search for the thing that exists.

Let’s say, for instance, you want to introduce a quest giver. A source of sidequests. Someone who’ll buy monster parts. And maybe he’ll reward the PCs with potions and s$%&. Pretty standard fare right? Well, while the players are wandering the city, they have no idea such an NPC might exist, right? How would they know? Well, he could be on a street corner handing out flyers, sure. Or he could just seek out the adventurers by their reputation. Or you could just handwave that s$&% and say, “okay, here’s your next adventure…” But you don’t want to do any of that. You want the players to find him themselves. Exploration-like.

So, maybe the heroes hear a rumor about some weird dude with stained hands and burns on his face and a terrible stench wandering the docks and the markets and buying weird s$&%. If the players get curious, one of the rumormongers might say, “my cousin the fisherman brought up some weird spiny fish creature in his nets and the stinky weirdo got really excited and bought it off him, muttering to himself about valuable oils.” Now, the party knows there’s a weird dude who’ll throw down money for weird animals. And they have a description. And they know he’s been seen around the docks.

See how it all works? Figure out a tiny cue that begs a question and offers some means of following up. When the players see the cue, they can come up with the question and then follow up. Or not. Maybe they’re not interested. Oh well. That’s agency for you. Of course, maybe they’re not interested right now because they’ve got more important s$&% on their minds. But maybe they’ll surprise you and follow up later. Or maybe they didn’t notice the cue at all. That’s also agency. If players can’t ever miss anything, they can’t feel clever about the things they do notice.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s More Smoke

Now, let’s take this smoke on the horizon s$&% and actually make an explorable world from it. Or, at least, add some explorableness to your next game session.

First, pick some elements you’d like the players to maybe discover on their own. Either pick them in advance during game prep or pull them from your a$& — or a slapdash list — during gameplay. Works the same either. Next, figure out a cue that’ll suggest the element’s existence and provide a way to follow up without giving the whole game away. Now, get out your Player-Do List and see which of the things on that list could carry the players past whatever smoke you want to blow up their skirts.

Take that alchemist. The stinky fish dude. So, I look over my Player-Do lost. End of last session, I distinctly heard the players talking about shopping for supplies. And one of them specifically said, “make sure you get a rope.” Thus, this is on my Player-Do list:

Buy supplies, esp. rope; probably Dragon’s Gate Market

When it comes time for that shopping trip, here’s what comes out of my GMing noise hole:

There’s a merchant in the market with coils of rope and folded nets splayed on the blanket in front of him. As you head over, you see he’s chattering away with the potter next to him. You overhear him say, “Heard about him? Scarred guy. Stinks of low tide. Running around the docks buyin’ up all manner of strange…” The merchant realizes you’re approaching, excuses himself from the potter, and grins. “Need a net? Rope? Have a look.”

Bingo. Smoke on the horizon that’s coming from a smelly, scarred alchemist. Or a creepy piscophile. Only one way to find out.

You can pull the same s$&% during play when you decide to fling a random element along the road. Either because you thought it’d be a fun thing to include or because your random encounter table told you to. Sure, you could smash the players right in the face with it. But you could also just show the players some smoke and make them get themselves in trouble.

Moreover, while the players are running off toward one plume of smoke, you can show them more smoke. You can use smoke on the horizon to draw their attention to a game element that reveals more smoke. You can mix and match obvious game elements and emanating smoke signals to create an intricate spider’s web of distractions to explore.

Hell, that’s what a high vantage point is. Or what it should be. If GMs would use that s$&% properly. A ruined tower rising up over the rugged hills and forests the heroes are trudging through? Yeah, it might have treasure in it. It might have monsters in it. It might have interesting lore in it. It might have nothing in it. Remember, it’s important sometimes for the players to find nothing. But the top of the tower might also be a vantage point from which the party can see half-a-dozen obvious game elements and smoke signals all around them.

And that leads me to a useful trick that’ll help you out when you’ve got some smoke, but you can’t find a good horizon for it.

The Runaround

Sometimes, you’ll have some cool-a$& game element you want your players to discover for themselves, right? And you’ll even have a cool idea for some smoke that’ll catch their eye. But when you look at the Player-Do list, you see there’s just no f$&%ing way they’re ever going to spot the smoke. There’s nowhere to put it.

And that’s when it’s time to complicate the Player-Do list by giving the players a runaround. This, by the way, is another really useful technique for session-planning in general and another reason why the Player-Do list needs a whole article of its own.

The trick I want to show you is easy enough that if I just give you an example, you’ll get the gist of it. So, let me give you an example from my own Angry’s Open World Game. And this refers back to the Player-Do list example I shared in the last article.

I had a few elements I wanted my players to go hunting for. One, for example, is this guy who calls himself the Plumcloak. He’s this treasure hunter who’d recently taken up residence in the area. As a rogue, he could provide training, masterwork tools, roguish supplies, and adventure leads for the party’s own rogue, Pel.

Second was a divine spellcaster living in the village. That’s a big deal in the Angryverse, especially in small-town the Angryverse. Spellcasting’s rare. Most priests, shamans, spiritualists, and wise guys aren’t divine magic users. Anyway, the divine spellcaster’s another new development for the village. The party’s cleric, Evendur, was the village priest’s apprentice before he went off to seminary in the big city to train. As far as he knew, the priest didn’t have any magical powers. Obviously, a divine spellcaster — especially one that shares Evendur’s religion — would be a useful boon.

Looking over my Party-Do list, I noticed both Evendur and Pel would end up hunting down the town’s blacksmith. Possibly together. Pel needed tools for a lockpicking job and Evendur wanted some armor de-spidered.

Sending smoke signals about the treasure hunter was easy enough. The blacksmith would probably know him. Treasure hunting rogues need tools made and repaired and usually have good stuff to sell. So, when Pel approached the blacksmith about the locksmithing job, the blacksmith was immediately suspicious.

“Did the Plumcloak send you? I told him I wasn’t doing any more work for him until he paid me for the last job.”

Pel, obviously, would say something like, “the who-cloak? No. Just make the damned skeleton key and I’ll pay you.” And then the blacksmith could say, “sorry, just felt like his work. He’s always meddling with odd locks and things like that.”

Meanwhile, Evendur’s lead was a little trickier. I could just have had the blacksmith also suddenly drop a line about getting healed or something, but that would have felt really contrived. Besides, I wanted the party to wander the village a bit and meet some other NPCs. So, following on the theme of unpaid work, the blacksmith offered the PCs both a discount on their little projects if they’d go collect on some unpaid debts.

See, the blacksmith was a dwarf. Another recent addition to the town — it’s a theme about how the village has changed after the PCs went off to their colleges and trade schools and s$&% — another new citizen, the dwarf’s not fitting in well. The little human village operates mostly on barter and favor-for-a-favor economics. Everyone shares everything. They don’t actually exchange coin much. The dwarf — being a dwarf — is a cash-for-services-rendered type guy. A neat little cultural friction thing that existed solely so that I could give Evendur and Pel a fetch quest to get them moving.

So, the debtors include the villages’ husband-and-wife team of woodcutters. When the party goes to collect, the husband half of the duo is on his way out. “I’m going to the market,” says he. “Stop by the shrine and drop off Wellyt’s gift. And thank him again,” says the wife. The husband pats his pouch and says, “already planning to. Love you.” Blah blah blah. Standard husband-and-wife exchange.

The story behind it? The wife hurt herself with her ax and, under the priest’s care, made a miraculous recovery.

Similarly, the weaver’s daughter had gotten cut while helping her mother out. While collecting from the weaver, Evendur revealed he was staying in the temple with the priest. So, the weaver asked him to drop off a prayer shawl she’d knitted in thanks for his help.

Meanwhile, other items on the Player-Do List led to other little side treks and favors which led to other puffs of smoke and thus the party spent the day running around, getting to know the villagers, and compiling a nice little list of s$&% to poke into later.

See how you this?

Hidden in Plain Text

I’m going to end this with some quick mentions of some advanced techniques for blowing smoke. Some methods that go beyond the “you see, on the horizon…” or “you interrupt the NPC but catch part of the conversation.” Partly because you need some f$&%ing variety. And partly because, well, sometimes you want your smoke to be a little harder to spot. Remember, if the players can’t miss it, then spotting it isn’t actually rewarding. That’s part of agency too. It goes back to the whole flashlight problem I mentioned last time. How the hell do you empower the players to steal the flashlight and shine it on things that catch their eye? Or at least, how the hell do you trick the players into thinking that’s what they’re doing?

There’s lots of ways to do it. Like, probably infinity ways. Obviously, I can’t list them all because my hosting service can’t actually provide me with infinite data storage space. Besides, it’d take me a long time to figure them all out. I mean, the only limit’s really a GM’s creativity and my creativity is boundless. But here’s a few fun tricks to try at your own table.

The Pronoun Game

I already showed you this one. I named it after a technique crappy screenwriters use to clumsily hide surprises from the audience that make no sense in the fictional universes they’re creating. But I use it way better in my game. Basically, the Pronoun Game is when an NPC leaves an important piece of information out of dialogue because it doesn’t need to be said. When you overhear a conversation between two people, they often omit proper names and places and events that represent shared knowledge. The woodcutters, above, are a perfect example. They both knew that they intended to give the priest a gift and they knew why. So, those details were left out of the exchange.

The pronoun game’s an easy way to pique a player’s curiosity. It’s also a great way to make your world feel more alive and more detailed than it really is. You can just pull stuff out of your a$& without having to fill in all the details and then figure out what it was about later. If and only if the players actually ask.

Signal-to-Noise

Remember when I told you to make sure that a third of the players’ exploratory endeavors should lead to jack-all? Well, here’s the thing about the pronoun game. And about every other technique below. And every other technique you invent. If they pay off absolutely every time, then they’re just too f$%&ing obvious. It’s important that sometimes, NPCs have perfectly normal boring conversations that sound interesting until a PC digs for details. Like, maybe the woodcutters were giving the priest a gift for his birthday or something. That’s background noise. The more background noise in your game world, the harder it is to spot the interesting-to-explore s$&%. And also, the more it feels like the world’s a real, living place.

Bad Narration

This one’s fun. It lets you blow a puff of smoke right in the players’ faces that they won’t even notice half the time. It’s a good way to hide really cool stuff. And also to train your players to put away their f$&%ing phones and stop stacking dice and pay attention.

So, if you want players to notice and act on something, you need to repeat it a couple of times, right? I’ve told you that. It’s Basic Narration for Dummies s$&%. Likewise, I’ve told you to put anything you want the players to act on at the end of your narrative flavor-text dump. Otherwise, you run the risk of it being forgotten in favor of whatever does come at the end. Well, check this s$&% out:

The hills flank the road like jagged teeth against the cloud-streaked sky; the tendril of smoke rising in the east is barely visible. The wind howls across the rocky landscape. Ahead, the road turns around a sharp bend, its course hidden by the base of a jagged limestone cliff face.

Now, I’m sure you noticed the smoke. I mean, you’re attentively reading an article about how to present information through game narration. You’re hanging on every word. But you’d be amazed how many players would actually totally miss the smoke there in that flavor text. I know. They miss it all the f$&%ing time. Which makes it really special when a player says, “wait, smoke? Huh! What’s that? Let’s find out.” And everyone else says, “what smoke? Did the GM mention smoke? Holy s$&% I didn’t even hear it.” Great moment for everyone. Especially the attentive player.

Inexplicable Dots

So, lots of these tricks have to do with narration, right? But not all of them. Visual aids — especially maps — can send lots of smoke signals. Consider this little map of a mountainside camp the players came upon in a recent game of mine. When they arrived at the camp, I gave them these limited descriptions of the camp’s features:

As they poked and prodded — as they got the lay of the land — I updated the map with new stickers.

But that’s not very subtle. And really, it’s one of those borderline cases between exploration and checklist-chore that I mentioned last week. But check this s$&% out:

That’s Redbridge. When the players hit Redbridge for the first time, I describe the town’s major features. How it sat atop a waterfall, how it had a big bridge with a pair of towers that were older than the rest of the town’s buildings, and a little about the people. Standard, “you enter the town, here’s the general flavor.” I also put the map down in the middle of the table just to help the players visualize it.

One of my players pointed at the map and said, “huh! What’s that? I’m gonna find out.” She was pointing at the little black waffle-shaped thingum in the lower-left corner. The ruins of an old watchtower. I didn’t intend for the players to visit it until later. There was a dungeon adventure in the basement. But they spotted the weird detail and so, I assumed that the characters, while wandering the town, had spotted it in the distance and went to check it out. The same thing happened with the shrine to the town’s guardian spirit hidden in the trees by the pond at the base of the waterfall.

And then there was the time I handed my players a kingdom map that included a little forest on it labeled ‘Ghostwood.’ I didn’t even say anything about the map, let alone that one tiny forest in one corner.

“Ghostwood? Huh! What’s that? I’m gonna find out.”

Broken Patterns

Human brains are really good at spotting patterns. In fact, that’s all they’re really good at. Apart from putting patterns together, they’re pretty stupid. Point is, nothing attracts attention like a broken pattern.

If all the buildings in town are old and broken down and wooden, the one new, brick building draws attention. Now, if that building’s obviously special — like if it’s a temple or fortress — then the broken pattern’s explained and the brain slides off it. But if the building is totally unremarkable — if it’s just another house in a residential district, just new and stone — then there’s a question. “Huh! Why is that house different? I’m gonna find out.”

Thing is most GMs describe the patterns themselves. Which you can do. Nothing wrong with that. You can describe the buildings on the street and then explicitly tell the players there’s one different house that catches their eye. But it’s much better if you describe the elements of the pattern themselves and let the players spot the difference. If they see it.

So, as the players explore, you repeatedly describe every building as old and broken and wooden. Every building they enter creaks and groans. Because remember, when you want players to notice something, you repeat it. Over and over. And once you’ve set the pattern, then you violate it. That one building they’re walking past isn’t old and broken and wooden. Just describe it. If the players spot the pattern, good for them. If not, well, they can’t spot everything.

And, for bonus points, you can hide the broken pattern inside bad narration to make a really super-secret and put something really awesome there that only the most attentive explorers deserve.

You make your way down the street. The dilapidated houses lean out over the road. It looks like they’re about to collapse. The wooden eaves provide plenty of shade for the dirty children playing a game of tag. They dash out of sight behind a stately brick house. In the communal fountain, wool-garbed peasants wash their dirty clothes and exchange gossip.

The Unfinished Set

This last one’s actually just another kind of broken pattern. But it deserves a mention all its own because of how well it works when you’re revealing a dungeon map one room at a time. People’s brains hate incomplete things. When there’s missing elements in a set, missing lines of text, strange white space in a floor plan that screams “search here for a secret room,” when the party’s met four of the five members of a town council at a party, they have to finish the set.

That’s why, as you’re revealing a dungeon, if there’s three closed doors leading out of a room and one hallway that trails off into the fog of war, most — not all, but most — players will feel compelled to at least scout down the hallway before they open any of the doors just so all the lines are filled in. I s$&% you not.

And it’s also why this map of Perrin’s Mill with its numbered key instantly made the town feel like it was hiding all sorts of secrets: