Let me tell you about my awesome campaign…

If there’s one phrase that scares the f$&% out of any experienced gamer, it’s that one. Well, that one or “let me tell you about my awesome character.” You know you’re in for an agonizing hour or three when some stranger GM says, “let me tell you about my awesome campaign.” Because everyone thinks their game is as interesting from the outside as it is to play. And it’s not. Sure, sometimes, you meet a gamer who knows how to actually tell an engaging story and who can actually separate the interesting anecdotes from the background crap that fills most games, but that’s not most gamers.

Fortunately, I ain’t most gamers.

Thing is, I don’t really want to tell you about my game or anything that happened at it. I mean, I do, but not today. Instead, I want to show you how I failed to do something so that maybe you won’t make the same mistake. But you probably will. Because I had already identified exactly the mistake I made as a mistake GMs and module writers and professional f$&%ing game designers are always making. I figured out weeks ago that lots of game systems fail to do this very minor but nonetheless important little thing I like to call “just telling people how to f$&%ing play the game.” Because RPGs not only suck at “just telling GMs how to f$&%ing run games,” it turns out they also suck at “just telling players how to f$&%ing play games.”

But this is just an appetizer to that. Because I will have a lot more to say about that in the very near future. Right now, I’m not even making the argument. I’m just making the statement and letting it lie. And I know some of y’all will miss the point completely. Some of you won’t grasp the subtle distinction between telling people the rules and telling them how to play. And some of you will even come with all sorts of counterarguments to an argument I haven’t even made yet. Because this is the internet after all. You don’t need to understand — or even hear — someone else’s argument to prove them wrong. Right?

This article’s not an argument, though. It doesn’t even have a point, really. It’s just an anecdote. It’s basically just:

Once upon a time, the smartest GM in the world tried to come up with a different spin on open-world adventuring. But he forgot to tell his players what he was doing. So things stalled out. But then he fixed it by thinking about how the game would look from the players’ side of the screen and what the players would need to know to enjoy the game he wrote. Then he wrote them all down and handed them to his players. And they all lived happily ever after. At least, for a session or two. The campaign could fail in three weeks. Who knows. Meanwhile, the smartest GM in the world also took that same document and tried to pass it off as actual content on his website. And he charged his supporters for it too. What a f$&%ing scam artist, eh?

Breaking News: Angry Screwed Up His Game, Proving He Sucks

Today’s story is about how I f$&%ed up my game. Just the other day — last Saturday night if you must know — I had to bring my awesome, personal, for-fun game of D&D to a dead f$&%ing stop partway through its sixth session. Because I broke it.

Now, if you’re one of the people who support my work on Patreon — thanks for making sure I can actually write this s$&% every week — if you support me on Patreon and you either showed up for my monthly live chat last Wednesday, April 21 or you listened to the recording later, you already know some of this story. But don’t worry, the real meat of this article’s not the story. It’s the thing I wrote as a result of the story. You know what I mean. The document I had to give my players to fix the f$&% up.

Yeah, document. After I had to bring my game to a dead stop, I had put a few hours into writing an instructional document for my players. Because while I was designing my most awesome and ambitious campaign about nothing ever, I forgot to do something really important. And the real f$&%ing kick in the teeth is it’s something that I — and I alone — should have known to do. Because a couple of weeks ago, I had an epiphany.

Don’t worry, my doctor gave me a special cream for it.

Go ahead and play the audio. It’s just a drum sting. I earned it for that piece of comedic low-hanging fruit.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I had this epiphany. I realized that very, very few RPGs tell their players how to play them. Oh, they provide all sorts of rules. Rules and systems for everything. Every player knows how to build a character and roll dice to resolve actions and all that s$&%. But they don’t actually know to play the game. And that problem’s been taking up a lot of real estate in the old Angry noggin’ these days. I’m trying to figure out how to address it. Stay tuned for that.

But despite having recognized that RPGs are really good at telling people the rules and really bad at telling people how to play them and other people how to run them, I built an amazingly brilliant campaign for my players that was a totally new way for them to play and then totally forgot to tell them how to play it.

Look, I never claimed to be perfect. I only claimed to be brilliant. And to be the best GM in the entire f$&%ing world. Well, you don’t have to be perfect to be brilliant. And being the best GM in the entire world doesn’t mean I can’t ever make a mistake. It just means I make fewer mistakes than you. And trust me, you all aren’t setting that bar very high. It also means I never make the same mistake twice. I learn from my mistakes.

Now, I know some of you read these articles just looking for the chinks in my armor. Just looking for proof that I’m not as great as I say am. Well, now you’ve got another point to add to your little pile. Just remember this:

If you spend your whole life looking for other people’s mistakes, you can make yourself believe you’re better. But if you spend your life looking for your own mistakes, you can make yourself better.

In other words, I’m not only smarter and better than you are, but I also always will be.

Anyway, the point is, I wrote a brilliant campaign and started running it without telling the players how to play it. And that eventually brought the game to a dead stop. And I realized what I did wrong and wrote a nifty set of instructions to tell the players how to play my awesome game. And I wanted to share both the lesson — sometimes, you just gotta tell the players how to play the game — and the document itself. But before I can do that, I’ve got to explain why my campaign needs instructions.

Creating an Angry Open World in a Day

If you’re an avid reader of mine — and why wouldn’t you be? I’m brilliant — if you’re an avid reader of mine, you probably remember that I start most of my campaigns with a Session Zero. This is what most GMs call the preliminary meeting they have with their players to figure out what the hell kind of game they’re going to run. And you might also remember that the personal game I started a couple of months ago — the one I’m blasphemously running using the D&D 3.5 rules — had barely any session zero at all. We just had a short discussion and then made characters and started playing. And that’s because we decided as result of the minimal pre-game discussion that we all just wanted to, you know, play a game of D&D.

“Well, no shit Angry,” you’re probably saying. “That’s what everyone who plays D&D wants. They just want to play a game of D&D.” First, you need to watch your f$&%ing mouth. In this house, we use grawlix when we swear. Second, you’re missing the f$&%ing point.

The point is we wanted a nice, simple, adventure-of-the-week style game. And remember I said that I said simple. Because in a few paragraphs, when you see what I’m calling simple, you’ll need to schedule emergency gluteal reattachment surgery because you will have laughed your a$& completely off.

Now, I wanted to keep it simple because, frankly, I do enough game design work as it is keeping you all in articles every week. I just wanted to relax and have some fun with a game. So I never wanted to have to prep more than one session in advance. If I even did that much. And no, the correct solution isn’t to run published modules in a published setting. I said I wanted to have fun. And that means running an actual, good f$&%ing game.

Meanwhile, the players wanted to keep it simple because, frankly, I’d broken their fragile spirits. See, with the chaos of the last couple of years and trying to balance being a full-time professional a$&hole on the internet, publish a book, publish a module, and design the greatest role-playing game system ever in the background, I’d become a little unreliable. We’d started several awesomely epic campaigns with super cool stories, intriguing worlds, and lots of mysteries to solve. And every one of them ended up prematurely dead. Which is kind of unsatisfying.

In short, the goal was a game that required zero work from me and zero commitment from my players. A game as substantial as a fart in the wind. But one that was still the greatest game I’d ever run. Because that’s how I have fun.

But — and this is the kicker — they — the players — also wanted a game of open-world adventure, exploration, and discovery. Of my four players, one’s a die-hard explorer who just wants to see everything a world has to offer, one’s an ardent investigator who wants to know everything about everything, one’s an old-school adventurer who wants to go on quests and kill things and gather loot and level up and just have a fun time, and one’s also a player in my game. Which isn’t to dismiss him, her, or it. It’s just to say that the fourth player’s new to my group and I haven’t had time to come up with a glib way to describe their player motivations. Or even figure out what they really are. All I can tell right now is that the fourth player just seems really happy to be there. And that’s nice. Players who are easy to please are the best.

Now, there’s some of you looking at that list of player motivations and you’re thinking “that’s not so hard to figure out at all.” You’re thinking the answer’s obviously a Hex Crawl. Or a West Marches game. Or an overarching quest like “map that whole continent” or “find the seventeen pieces of the broken magical artifact scattered across the world but don’t rush it because it’s not a big emergency and there’s no time bomb or anything, we just really want to put the thing back together because it’ll look nice in the Warthogs Magical Academy Student Union so feel free to do whatever side quests you trip over on the way and get back to us when you can.”

But none of those, for various reasons which I won’t go into right now, are the right answers. Instead, I envisioned something else.

What I really wanted was a game about a group of peasant nobodies who rose to… whatever. Glory. Power. Wealth. Fame. Virtue. Whatever they wanted to rise to. I wanted to drop a bunch of 1st-level nothings into a world full of adventure and let them become whatever they wanted to become. To decide, from week to week, what they wanted to do that week. What they wanted to accomplish. If the players wanted to go out and explore the Skirlin Wood just to see what was in there? Fine. If they wanted to spend the week currying the favor of the local lord because they decided that would be useful? Also fine. If they wanted to recover a stolen MacGuffin for the local temple? Also also fine. Whatever.

I didn’t just want them to go out and stumble over crap, see? And I didn’t want them just bouncing from adventure to adventure. I didn’t want them to do things because I — as the voice of the Game itself — told them to. I wanted them to do what they wanted to do. What their characters wanted to do. And I wanted what they chose to do — and what they chose to not do — to matter. They didn’t have to curry the local lord’s favor, but if they did, that’d have repercussions. And if they tried and failed, that’d have repercussions. If they blew off the local temple’s request to recover the stolen thing, that’d have repercussions too. Not “end the world” repercussions. Not “you failed” repercussions. Just that the world now had a temple in it whose holy relic had been stolen by bad guys and the relic hadn’t been recovered.

And I wanted to do that without ever having to prepare more than one session ahead of the players. I mean, I could prep more if I wanted to. For funsies. Or because I had a cool idea. But I never had to. Honestly, I wanted to do that while also being able to show up at the game table totally unprepared. Because, sometimes, I don’t have a lot of time to get ready. And sometimes I’m a lazy f$&%er and don’t feel like getting ready.

I also, like I said, wanted the game to be good. I wanted well-structured narratives and satisfying-to-play adventures. You know, ones with goals, motivations, pacing, climaxes, proper challenges, telegraphing, foreshadowing, tutorializing, and all that other crap that I’m always going on about. I didn’t just want a bunch of random encounters. When the players decided to do something — whatever it was they decided to do — I wanted it to feel like a D&D adventure. A good one. Not one WotC crapped out.

Meanwhile, I didn’t want the open-world freedom of it all to ever leave the players feeling lost. I didn’t want them feeling overwhelmed. I didn’t want them to have to “go find the fun.” I didn’t want them to have to “make their own fun.” It’s not the players’ jobs to actually do the game design. It’s not their job to make the game fun. That’s what I’m for. And I’m way better at it than my players. Than any players. That’s why I’m a GM and not a player. I mean, sure, they COULD invent their own fun if they wanted to. But I wanted them to see plenty of signs that clearly said “Exit 152: Something Fun, ½ Mile Exit on the Right.”

And if they did get a hankering for some fun they didn’t see — fun exploring, fun interacting, fun dungeon delving, fun murderhoboing — I wanted them to have the tools to go out and find that specific kind of fun. None of this “well, just start wandering and see what fun you trip over in three hexes.” I wanted them to be able to say s$&% like, “we’ve been cooped up in this city running errands and currying favor, I need a monster-filled hole to cut a bloody swath through.”

But — and this is the biggest, most important f$&%ing part — but, I wanted it all to feel organic. I wanted the characters in the world to be able to do this s$&%. Not just the players. I didn’t want to hand the players a list and say “okay, which adventure do you want me to have you trip over next?” Nor did I want to cram it into the world in an obviously contrived way. I didn’t want some dumb-a$& quest board in my game that the players had to visit over and over again. I didn’t want to offer them the same f$&%ing list through some in-game adventurer’s guild. In short, I never wanted to have to sit down and say, “okay, kids, here’s the list of quests; pick which one to flag as your active quest.”

In short — he says after 2,000 words of dancing around the f$%&ing issue — in short, I wanted the players to experience the world through the eyes of their characters. To see the game not as a series of quests to play, but as a chance to build themselves from nothing to whatever they wanted to be. To see a world full of opportunities and mysteries and possibilities and risks and threats and resources. I wanted the players to think about the characters’ needs and wants. And then seize on opportunities to meet them. Or create their own opportunities. But without ever feeling like they had to work at making the game happen.

And I’m pretty sure I have a solid foundation all laid down now. A half-dozen sessions in. It’s just a foundation at this point. A work in progress. It’s going to take tinkering and experimentation to get it right. But it’s going in the right direction.

But forget that. This ain’t about how I’m building that game. That’s not the interesting thing. I’m sure you’ll all agree that’s not the sort of thing you want to hear about.

See, the problem was — as I said — that I never shared my grand vision with my players. I just expected the right kind of gameplay to emerge. And that was dumb as hell. And because of that, the game started to stall. And at the end of the sixth session, I had to say, “okay, kids, here’s a list of hooks; pick one to flag as your active quests so I know what to run next week.”

To make sure that never had to happen again, I had to sit my a$& down and work out just what the players had to know to actually play the game I was running. From their side of the screen, what would playing in that game actually look like? And how the hell would they do it?

And that’s why I wrote this:

How to Play in Angry’s Open World

This campaign is about a group of heroes coming into their own in a world of adventure. Unlike traditional D&D campaigns, there won’t be a single, overarching plot or campaign goal. Just the characters and the adventures they have on their rise to greatness. As a player, you’ll create a character and decide what motivates them. As a party, you’ll decide where to go, what to seek, what to explore, and what goals to pursue. Don’t worry, though. The world’s not just a blank map you have to fill in. It’s filled with interesting dungeons to delve and ruins to explore, sure, but’s also got all sorts of characters to meet, conflicts to resolve, quests to undertake, threats to confront, allies to gain, and mysteries to solve. You never have to strike out into the wilderness in the hopes of finding something interesting to do. But you can if that’s what you want to do.

Having the onus to drive the game dropped in your lap can be difficult. It might feel confusing or overwhelming. You might not know how or where to start. Just keep these five things in mind as you play and you’ll figure out the rest as the game goes on.

1. Know Your Needs, Know Your Wants, Know Your Motivations
2. Be Curious, Be Attentive, Make Note or Take Notes
3. Find a Need – Or Want – And Fill It
4. Seek and Ye Shall Find
5. Choose Carefully, But Not Too Carefully

1. Know Your Needs, Know Your Wants, Know Your Motivations

There’s adventure in every direction, so how do you know which direction’s best? Let your character’s needs, wants, and motivations be your guide.

Your character’s needs are most important. And the most important need is survival. You’ll always need safety, shelter, food, and water at the very least. In town, you can buy those things or rent them, but that means you need money. In the wilderness, you have to bring those things along or find them where you go. So, you’ll need supplies, survival skills, or magic. If you don’t have them, you can buy them. Or hire them. But you’ll need money for that too.

You might have other survival needs, too, depending on what happens to you during the game. You might need treatment for major injuries, diseases, or poisons, for example. You might need to protect yourself from specific hazards or conditions during specific adventures. Or you might need to have a curse lifted or a demon exorcised.

As an adventurer, you also have needs beyond simple survival. For example, you need tools and equipment so you can do whatever it is you do. Weapons, armor, spell components, lockpicks, and so on. And you need to keep your equipment in good order. Equipment can get damaged. It can wear out. It can get lost or stolen.

As you get stronger, you’ll be facing greater challenges. And soon enough, you’ll find your equipment just isn’t good enough for the task at hand. This is why you’ll need to upgrade your equipment periodically. Or replace it with better equipment.

Speaking of getting stronger, you’ll be gaining experience during your adventures. But you’ll need to spend time training to hone your skills. To practice what you’ve learned. At the very least, you’ll need access to some training or study resources between adventures. Space to practice, maybe a sparring partner or a dummy, a library, a shrine and a priest to tend it. If you can train with others — even if they aren’t more powerful than you — you’ll benefit more than you would alone. And if you want to start pursuing a new talent or ability — gain a new skill, learn a completely new spell, gain a feat, adopt a sub-class or class build, or start on the path to multiclassing — you will need a trainer to help you. And some trainers will even be able to teach you things outside your normal class and level progression.

You won’t be able to fill every need all the time. Sometimes, you’ll have to prioritize. Or go with a need unmet for a while. In the wilderness, you’ll probably have to provide your own security, for instance. But eventually, you’ll have access to spells to protect your camp. Or you’ll be able to buy guard animals or hire guard people. Your equipment can go without maintenance for a little while. But wait too long and it might fail at a crucial moment. You don’t need to upgrade your equipment constantly, but if you go too long without, you might find you’re no longer equal to the dangers you’re facing.

Apart from needs, your character’s got at least one motivation. Probably several. Your motivations ensure that your adventures aren’t just about survival, that there’s something in it for your character. Maybe your character’s in it for wealth. Or glory. Or power. Maybe your character wants to help people. To do the right thing. Maybe your character wants to explore the world. Whenever you’re not struggling to survive, your motivations will tell you what you should be doing.

Finally, remember that it’s always good to be prepared for the future. And that means building a stock of resources. It’s a lot easier to deal with a problem if you already have access to the tool you need, whether that tool’s an actual tool or a trained professional or a magical item or friend with some political influence. Remember that anything can be a resource.

Always know what you need, what you want, and what might be useful later. That’ll help you make smart choices.

2. Be Curious, Be Attentive, Make Note or Take Notes

Remember as you adventure that you’re not walking a road, you’re wandering through a field. And that field is full of opportunities. Opportunities to meet your needs. Opportunities to fulfill your motivations. Opportunities to acquire resources. And opportunities to discover more opportunities.

Opportunities take many forms. Obviously, you’ll come across plenty of posted notices and people in need of help. Those are obvious calls to adventure. But every character you meet is a potential opportunity as well. The merchant can sell you supplies. The herbalist can heal your wounds. The sage can provide valuable information. The urchin can deliver messages or spy on your adversaries. The guard captain can help you get out of trouble. The minstrel can sing your praises and help your reputation. The noble can provide influence and political clout. A whispered rumor overheard in the market or bought with a tankard of ale from the sot at the inn can lead to an ancient treasure or give you leverage over a rival. Some opportunities are as easy to spot as job posting, as loud as a shout from a town crier, as obvious as a sign hung over the herbalist’s door. Others are as subtle as a strange turn of phrase in an otherwise innocuous conversation or the casual drop of a name in passing.

Pay attention to the world. Take note of anything that seems like it might help you meet your needs or fulfill your motivations. Take note too of anything that piques your curiosity. And if something does catch your eye, don’t hesitate to check it out. Visit odd locations. Poke around the neighborhoods in the city. Sit in a public space, watch, and listen. And strike up conversations with characters in the world. Especially the ones who might help you meet your needs or wants or provide access to a useful resource. Most characters will talk freely to a stranger, but some might require a bit of effort. You might have to build a rapport with someone before they’ll open up. You might have to gain their trust. That might be an adventure in itself.

Not everything represents an opportunity. The world also contains threats. Some threats can hurt or even kill your character, but most threats are less overt. Less direct. In the civilized parts of the world, most threats won’t attack you directly. But they can deprive you of your needs, rob you of resources or potential resources, and prevent you from fulfilling your motivations. Like opportunities, threats might be obvious, or they might be subtle. Even hidden. Unlike opportunities, though, treats can be costly or dangerous to ignore. In those cases, you’ll either need to confront the threat or accept the cost of letting it be.

And then there are mysteries. Mysteries are things that pique your curiosity. They might represent opportunities, they might represent hidden threats, they might carry risks or dangers, or they might just be fun discoveries. The only way to be sure is to investigate them. There’s not always a payoff to pursuing a mystery, but when there is, it’s usually pretty unique.

Because the world is full of opportunities, threats, and mysteries, it’s worth taking time now and then to wander around just to see what’s around you. Like when you first visit a new place or after you finish a major pursuit. Take some time to take stock of the opportunities around that will let you meet your needs, fulfill your motivations, or build your resource pool. Take note of potential threats too. And any mysteries that draw your eye. Just don’t let wandering and noticing be all you do. Window shopping won’t get you anywhere in the end. It’s just a great way to find something you want to buy.

You can easily find out what’s around you by Getting the Lay of the Land (see below).

Once you’re pursuing something, though, don’t get tunnel vision. During your adventures, you’ll probably spot other opportunities, mysteries, and threats worth pursuing. Sometimes, it’ll be worth putting your current pursuit on hold to check them out. Otherwise, they’re worth filing away for future investigation.

Getting the Lay of the Land

As a time-consuming action, you can wander the local area and get a sense of what’s around you. The GM will describe the area and note interesting features that might represent opportunities, threats, and mysteries. You might be asked to make skill or ability checks to discover non-obvious features.

In a village, stronghold, or enclave, you can explore the entire locale and its outskirts in one go. You can explore either a town proper or its outskirts. Or you can explore a single neighborhood, district, ward, or complex in a city. In civilized locales, you might also hear about local rumors or happenings in passing (but see Gathering Information below).

In the wilderness, the size of the area you can explore depends on the terrain, visibility, and other factors. You can improve your odds of turning things up by taking advantage of high vantage points, spyglasses, familiars, spells, magical items, and other tools and resources. Because exploring involves crisscrossing a small area, you cannot cover any traveling distance while exploring.

3. Find a Need – Or Want – And Fill It

Once you’ve got a good list of potential opportunities, threats, and mysteries, you – as a party – must decide what to pursue. Do any of you have any unmet needs? Are there motivations you can fulfill? Useful resources to access? Threats to confront? Mysteries to investigate? Such things as these are adventures made of. Or at least, such things are adventures filled with.

Start by prioritizing your immediate needs. Food, water, shelter, security, and health. In settlements, meeting those is usually a matter of renting a room, securing a palette in a temple or a lord’s keep, or finding a farmer who’s willing to let you sleep in their barn. If you need treatment, you might need to seek out a healer, herbalist, hedgewitch, priest, or chiurgeon. In the wilderness, if you’re going to be in one place for a few days — say while you plunder a dungeon — it’s worth setting up a base camp so you have a place to which you can retreat each day and where you can store your supplies and your plunder. Things can’t get spoiled, broken, stolen, or ruined in a dungeon if you don’t bring them with you. And they don’t weigh you down. At first, you might have to resort to hiding them at your camp — say in a buried chest — but you can use spells and traps to secure your camp and later buy guard animals or hire guards. In general, a good camp is more likely to be disturbed by a lone wild animal looking for food than by an intelligent, powerful monster that just happens upon it. Of course, this varies by the terrain and the precautions you take.

Next, consider your near-term future needs. Can you acquire, upgrade, and repair equipment? Buy supplies? Class tools? Who might buy any exotic treasure you turn up? Do you have access to the facilities you need to use your skills? To train for your next level? In the wilderness, you’ll have to wait until you get back to town. In town, take note of such resources soon after you arrive and investigate them. You don’t want to discover the local priest won’t give you access to the shrine until you gain their trust when you’ve already got enough XP to gain a level.

Once your basic needs are sorted, you can tackle your wants and start stockpiling resources. This is where it’s useful to have a list of the opportunities, threats, and mysteries you’ve identified. As a party, consider your options and pick whatever seems like the best opportunity, the most dangerous threat, or the most intriguing mystery. At this point, the game will probably start to feel more like a normal D&D campaign. You’re just pursuing a goal you chose. But don’t get too wrapped up in the quest mindset. Sometimes, you’ll have to do some investigating before you can define the goal. Sometimes, you’ll have to figure out how best to pursue the goal. Sometimes, you’ll want to change goals based on something you discover. Sometimes, you’ll want to abandon a goal partway through. Sometimes, you’ll discover a goal is just beyond you and you’ll have to give up on it. For now or forever. That’s all fine. You won’t always succeed, but you’ll never run short of opportunities.

Don’t assume you have to do anything a certain way. Don’t assume that you have to fulfill a goal just because someone’s offering it. If a criminal offers you a job you object to, you don’t have to take the job. But you also don’t have to reject the job. You could turn the criminal in to collect a bounty or you could do the right thing by protecting the criminal’s victims. And just because you’re asked to kill all the goblin raiders in the hills, that doesn’t mean the townsfolk won’t be equally happy if you just drive the goblins off or even broker peace with them.

It’s fine for the party to split up and pursue their own needs and wants. Sometimes, that’s the most efficient way to do things. But adventuring is risky. When it comes to major pursuits, especially those that involve traveling beyond the boundaries of civilization, the party will have to work together. And that means you’ll have to pick your goals as a party. Because you’ll each have your own needs, motivations, and perspectives, you won’t always agree on which opportunity’s best. Which means you’ll have to compromise. Sometimes, that means putting your own needs and wants aside to help your allies pursue their own. And sometimes, that means they’ll do the same for you. That’s how it is with groups. Remember, the world’s dungeon floors are littered with the bones of the lone wolves. And your allies have skills you need. That’s why you’re a team. But that has a price. You have to be willing to help your team even when there’s no profit for you once in a while. And hopefully, after a little while, you’ll see your teammates as allies. Comrades-in-arms. Friends even.

4. Seek and Ye Shall Find

Sometimes, you’ll find that you don’t have everything you need to pursue an opportunity. That you’re missing a tool, skill, or another resource. And sometimes, you’ll find that there’s just nothing on your list of opportunities, threats, and mysteries to meet your needs and wants. Sometimes, there just won’t be anything you want to do. And that’s when you need to take a more active role in your explorations.

You can seek anything you can imagine. Information, skills, resources, they’re all available. Somewhere. You just have to find them. The key to finding what you want is specificity. The more specific you are, the more likely you’ll find what you want. Tell your GM, specifically, what you’re looking for. And, if you can, tell your GM, specifically, where and how you’re looking.

First, be specific about what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for healing potions, don’t tell the GM you want to find a magic item shop. If you’re looking for a chance to help someone in need or a way to protect your camp while you’re in a dungeon, say so.

Second, be specific about how and where you want to start your search. Think about what’s around you. What locations have you seen? What characters have you met? Are there any that are more likely to provide a lead? That’s where you should start your search. Want to do a good deed? It’s probably best to visit the local temple. That’s where people go to pray for help. Are you looking to buy something? Start in the market. Are you looking to buy rare spell components? Talk to local magic users first.

Once you’ve figured it out, tell your GM what you’re looking for, where, and how. Just say, “I want to find a work opportunity. I want to help people in need. I’ll start at the Temple of Mercy.” And if you don’t know what you need or where to start, you can always ask your GM. Say, “I have this crafting feat, but I don’t know what tools I need to use it.” Or say, “I’d like to find a magic weapon, but I don’t know how to start looking.” The GM will give you an answer. Or at least give you a place to start. Or at least tell you that there’s no way to do that right now.

Sometimes, you won’t have a good starting place. Sometimes, you won’t know exactly what you need. That’s when it’s time to Gather Information.

Gathering Information

As a time-consuming action, you can seek information from the locals in a village, stronghold, enclave, town, neighborhood, or complex or a specific location therein such as an inn, market, guildhall, or academy. The more specific you are about the information you are seeking, the more likely you are to find what you are looking for. Or find out that it’s not available. Smaller locations are easier to canvas but the information you’re seeking may not be available at all types of locations. You might be asked to make a skill or ability check to determine whether your efforts are successful, and you might be asked to pay bribes, finders fees, buy drinks, or otherwise sacrifice some money before you can roll or to improve your odds. If you’re successful, the GM will either provide you with the information you’re seeking or provide you with a lead that you can pursue to acquire the information.

Instead of seeking specific information, you can also eavesdrop, gossip, and chatter with the locals. The GM will provide you with several rumors and happenings that might represent opportunities, threats, and mysteries to pursue. This is similar to Getting the Lay of Land, but reveals informational leads rather than locations (see Getting the Lay of the Lay above).

5. Choose Carefully, But Not Too Carefully

While playing this game, you might feel overwhelmed from time to time. At any moment, you’ll probably be aware of several opportunities, threats, and mysteries and you’ll be finding more all the time. You might wonder how you’ll ever know when you’ve found them all. And you might wonder how you’ll ever deal with them all.

You won’t. You can’t. You will never be aware of every opportunity. And you will never be able to pursue every last one of them. It’s impossible. You won’t have the time. You won’t have the resources. And everything you do will change the list of things you can do. So, it’s important to think carefully about what you do. But not too carefully.

You’ll never find all the opportunities, so don’t try. And don’t convince yourself that there’s a perfect opportunity out there to find. Because there isn’t. There’s no perfect choices. Every choice you make has costs, risks, and consequences. By all means, avoid the ones where the risks and costs seem too high and the rewards seem too low, but you can’t avoid any risks or consequences. You can’t avoid taking sides. And whatever you do, you’ll always be losing out on something.

Every choice has consequences because the game’s about consequences. It’s about the choices you make and what happens as a result. It’s about what happens to the heroes on their rise to power. It’s about the heroes becoming whoever they become and what happens along the way.

This isn’t a game you can complete and it’s not a puzzle in optimization. So don’t treat it as such. Treat it as a playground. Treat it as a world full of adventure. And remember that adventure isn’t about endings, it’s about what happens on the way.