If you’ve been unfortunate enough to suffer through one of my RPG campaigns for any length of time, you’ve heard me utter the phrase “generally when someone does that, I handle it like this.” Just to give you one totally random example that’s absolutely not related to anything I just got done writing and posting last week, consider this:

Generally, if you want to sell a bunch of treasure, it goes like this. One of you takes all the treasure and spends a game day of work selling it all off. You’ll visit all the different markets and shops and collectors and back-alley fences and everything and shop around for a good price for each item. We don’t play all that s&%$ out. You just say, “Bathar sells all the treasure” and then I say, “when Bathar returns to the inn at nightfall, he’s sold off all the treasure and gotten umpteen many gold pieces.”

As a GM, I’ve got a metric crap-ton of these general approach things. And I totally recommend them. I recommend them so much that most of the s$&% I tell you how to do on this site? It’s just me codifying my general approaches.

You might wonder why I bring this up. If you’re thick in the skull. Or you didn’t read last week’s article.

I bring it up because I’m going to codify some of my general approaches that are to do with treasure and the finding and selling thereof. Which I totally warned you I was going to do. Because I knew y’all were just going to hate the handwavey, vague, bulls$&% approach to treasure handling I described last week. I know. I’ve already got people in Angry’s Awesome Discord — support this site to get access — I’ve already got people in my Discord telling me I’m following my own rules wrong. I s$&% you not.

But — and this is a big, important, capital But that I haven’t really talked about before — But, codifying general approaches is dangerous. Because they’re not rules. And they shouldn’t be treated as rules. And the players shouldn’t see them. Not fully anyway. Like, they should never be written down and handed to the players.

So, before I share a bunch more codified general approaches disguised as rules hacks, I want to actually talk about the concept of general approaches. Why they’re powerful. And why they’re dangerous.

Approaching Things. Generally

Today’s topic is general approaches. Why you should use them. And how you shouldn’t. Consider this the warning label for the follow-up to last week’s article about treasure which is coming next week. Because that article’s going to have a bunch of s$&% that looks like game rules. But they’re actually general approaches. And I don’t want you misusing that s$&% and f$&%ing up your game.

Because you’ll blame me for it. You always do.

Anyway…

A general approach is just a method you use to handle some kind of in-game thing at your table. It’s not a rule. It’s a way of applying rules. Though there might be a few fuzzy, handwavey rulings in there that sort of look like rules if you squint at them. How I handle the selling of treasure, as I explained in my last article and in the Long, Rambling Introduction™? That’s a perfect example of a general approach.

Here’s the fully explicated general approach. Not just the part I told the players.

When the party is in a settlement, one or more party members can spend one day of downtime selling the party’s non-cash treasures. In that time, they can sell any reasonable amount of treasure. The characters spend the day visiting different markets, shops, and other locations, doing everything necessary to get a fair price for each item. The characters don’t need to make any checks and no interactions need be played out. At the end of the day, the GM narrates the day’s activities and describes the results. At the GM’s discretion, the characters might be unable to find buyers for unusual items or items that are too expensive for the settlement’s merchants to afford. Magical items cannot be sold this way except in the case where they are mistaken for mundane items, in which case they fetch an appropriate price as such.

That’s a general approach. It’s not rules. It’s just how I use the rules to resolve a specific action. In this case, selling a bunch of treasure. And, actually, it’s a general approach built on a general approach. Which is how I use the rules to resolve town activities. What you might call downtime.

Now, that general approach might read kind of clumsy. Hell, you might notice some weird, missing corner case. Or even some totally obvious oversight. Well, guess what? I don’t give a s$&%. Don’t comment. Because this general approach s$&%? It’s not s%&$ you normally write down. And when you do write it down, you might miss things. A general approach is mostly something you’ve got in your head.

Point is, all else being equal when the party wants to sell off some treasure, they just declare their intention, waste a day, and I exchange their treasure for money.

Note my use of a vitally important key phrase: all else being equal.

General approaches work best for s$&% that comes up often and for s$&% that pretty much works the same way every time it comes up. S&$% that’s not worth playing out. S$&% that would bog down the game if you did play it out.

Searching a room, for example? Players are always searching rooms. And it mostly goes the same every time. So…

When the party enters a room, first compare their passive Perception scores to the Perception DC of any hidden thing that would be perceived if it weren’t hidden. Describe everything the party perceives as part of the scene-setting narration. If a PC later decides to search the room, have them roll a single Wisdom (Perception) check and compare it to the Perception DC of each previously undiscovered thing in the room. Reveal each and every thing the Wisdom (Perception) check result is sufficient to reveal. Such a search is a time-consuming action requiring as much time as the GM deems appropriate for the size and clutter of the space.

Basically, with a single search and a good Wisdom (Perception) check, a character will turn up all the traps and all the hidden treasure and all the clues and all the hidden goblins waiting in ambush.

Actually, there’s a little more to it than that. Because I’ve got a general approach for what happens when the party enters a room. And it involves passive Perception scores, passive Investigation scores, passive Arcana, passive Nature, and passive every other f$&%ing proficiency necessary to determine what to describe to who. Which is how I decide what to say when I’m setting the scene.

But I’m not the only one who invents general approaches. Players do too. Well, I do on their behalf. I can invent a general approach to something based on s$&% the players do over and over again. The third time the players search a door for traps then listen through the door then peer through the keyhole and then test it to see if it’s locked, I designate that their general door-searching approach. I automate it. So the fourth time they approach a door, I pre-empt them and say, “so, you doing the whole search and listen and keyhole peep and test thing again? Great. Let me roll some dice and here’s the result…”

Basically, a general approach is just a macro. A whole sequence of gameplay actions and mechanical resolutions triggered by the press of a single button.

General approaches are a fantastic way to streamline common actions. Keep them from wasting huge wodges of gameplay time.

And they are very, very dangerous.

General Approaches Ruin Games

A long time ago, I literally revolutionized Dungeons & Dragons for tens of thousands of people by showing them how f$&%ing bad it was to hand players lists of skills. Or lists of combat actions. Any list of possible things that can be done in the game. Because, when you hand a human brain a list of options — unless it’s an extremely tiny, extremely limited list — the stupid human brain is wired to stop looking for options that aren’t on the list.

In other words, D&D players see that skill list on their character sheet as a list of all the buttons they can push to interact with the world. And they stop imagining there are any other buttons.

When you sell someone on RPGs, what is the first thing you always say? That’s right: “you can do anything you can imagine.” RPGs aren’t video games with their buttons for executing pre-programmed possibilities. They’re not like board games with their specific actions and turn orders. They’re not like Choose Your Own Adventure books or David Cage games with their list of predesigned story possibilities to choose from.

The last thing you want to do is sabotage the human brain’s ability to imagine anything that isn’t programmed in. And that’s precisely what skill lists and action lists do. Do you hear me all you idiots still trying to work out the perfect list of predesigned, mechanical, social combat actions?! No. Of course, you f$&%ing don’t.

Sorry…

Point is, general approaches streamline games. Especially when you combine them with those arbitrary game turns I described a few months ago. You’ve probably guessed at this point I’ve got a whole, robust downtime system based on general approaches and arbitrary game turns.

But if you don’t want to sabotage your players’ brains, you need a really gentle hand with this general approach s$&%. It’s okay to tell the players that you’ve got a general approach. But it’s not good to spell out the whole approach. Or to hand the players a list of approaches as if they’re actions to choose from. And it’s important to make it absolutely clear there’s better options.

For instance, despite what I said at the start of my Long, Rambling Introduction™, when I introduce players to my treasure-selling approach, it goes something like this.

When you want to sell a bunch of treasure for a reasonable price, just say ‘I go to the market and sell all these treasures.’ After one day of bargaining, wandering, and legwork, the stuff will be sold and I’ll give you the cash. You’ll always get a fair price and you’ll protect yourself from most scams and deceptions, but you might not get the best possible price every time and you might not be able to sell every weird, rare item you find. If there’s something rare or valuable or weird you want to sell, you might want to think about the best approach to selling that. And selling treasure like that takes a whole day. If you need some quick cash, you’ll need to think about the alternatives. And if you’re having trouble coming up with a plan, ask me. I’ll help you figure out an alternate approach.

General approaches are efficient. They’re not optimal. They’re balanced. Have you ever heard the old adage that goes:

You can get something quick, you can get something cheap, and you can get something good, but you can’t get all three.

General approaches should always lead to a nice, average outcome. For one in-game day and fifteen at-table minutes, you can get a nice average price for most normal treasures. Want a better price? Want faster cash? Want something unusual? You’ve got to do something special. And you’ve probably got to give something up.

And you need a plan. Which is why I call this article…

Specific Beats General

Remember all that crap I went through in that treasure article wherein Carol — playing Cassia the rogue — sold off a bunch of treasure? I started by applying my general approach. By assuming she spent one in-game day doing all the legwork needed to get reasonable prices. But Carol wanted more. She wanted optimal prices. The general approach wasn’t good enough for Carol. And so, she needed a plan. She needed to take specific actions.

Her first plan was just to haggle. To drive a hard bargain. And I agreed that was an okay plan. In fact, I have a general approach for haggling. All else being equal, you can haggle over the price of any single item. Roll a Charisma (Persuasion) check. GM’s discretion sets the DC, of course. On a success, you get a higher-than-reasonable price. Usually about 50% to 75% over the asking price. On a failure, you soured the deal with your piss-poor negotiating skills and you have to accept a lower price — usually 25% to 50% of the asking price — or keep the item or find another way to sell it.

That’s one way to break out of a general approach. Take a risk.

Another way’s to accept a tradeoff. If Carol needed money and didn’t have a whole day to burn in town, she could take an item to market and accept the first fair offer that came along. Which would usually net her between 50% and 75% of the item’s value.

Yeah, I have a general approach for that too.

The only reason I have general approaches for all this s$&% is that I’ve been doing this a long enough time that I’ve dealt with lots of hagglers and lots of rushed transactions. Enough that I’ve got some simple, streamlined rules in my head.

Of course, Carol didn’t like the haggling option I offered her, did she? No. She had a better idea. She wanted to run a scam. And she offered a nice, specific action declaration. “I would like to sell this statuette,” said Carol, “for more than it’s asking price by lying to a potential buyer about the object’s historical significance.”

What did I do then? I adjudicated the action. The way GMs are supposed to. I asked myself if that could succeed. I asked myself if it could fail. I asked myself if there was a risk or cost of consequence. And I asked myself what rules should be used to determine the outcome.

When you get down to it, a general approach is just a pre-adjudicated action. My treasure-selling s$&%? That’s just me remembering the last time someone wanted to sell a bunch of treasure, I said, “okay, if the player is careful and takes their time to check with multiple buyers, that can succeed, it can’t really fail for practical purposes, and it’ll eat up about a day.” General approaches just arise from adjudicating the same f$&%ing action a thousand times and being able to skip the brain part as a result.

When the players change the parameters — if they change them enough — they force me to actually think about what they’re doing. For example, if Carol said, “okay, I’d like to haggle. But we did that job for Guildmaster Artol last week. I’d like to drop his name as leverage,” then I’d have to modify my general approach. Because that’s worth advantage, right?

Which, by the way, is another way to shut off the GMing autopilot of general approaches in my brain. Show me you’re thinking about the game world. All else being equal when players use their knowledge of the game’s world — correctly — there should be a possibility of a better outcome. Or, at least, a different outcome. At least, a more interesting outcome.

Note the keywords. First, they have to use their knowledge correctly. If their plans are based on faulty assumptions, incorrect deductions, or ignorance of important facts, the plan won’t work. They can’t just make up any old s$&%. Cassia couldn’t claim the statuette was magical to get a better price. In the D&D 5E universe, magical items are always obvious about their magic. A casual examination tells you whether something’s magical or not.

Second, all the players earn for their trouble is the possibility of a better — or different or interesting — outcome. Action adjudication still applies. If the action can succeed and if it can fail and all that other crap? Die rolls and rules still apply. Carol didn’t automatically win just because she had a clever scam. She still had to pass a check. And she even sweetened the die roll by interacting with the curio dealer and needling him just the right way to throw him off his game. Carol’s a smart player. I wish she was a real person and really played at my table.

That whole better-or-different-or-interesting thing? That played out when Carol donated the cup to the temple. The temple rewarded her with a less-than-fair price in gold. But they did offer temple services. Might those be worth the discount? Sure. Might they not? Also sure. Better or different or interesting.

All this s$&% should apply to anything you’ve got a general approach for. Most parties will take the general approach to searching most rooms. But, in general, if a player’s clever enough to search for the right, specific thing in the right, specific place, I’ll give them a better, more specific adjudication. For example, if there’s a secret door hidden behind a bookshelf and Dameer figures a particular book on the shelf might trigger it, Dave might say:

Dameer searches the bookshelf for some way to open the secret door. You know, like a book or knickknack that’s a secret switch? Something like that?

I’d probably give him advantage on his Wisdom (Perception) check for that. Of course, the downside’s that he won’t find the trapped flagstone in front of the bookshelf. I mean, he will find it. But in the worst way possible.

Hell, with the right specific search, the players might not have to roll a die:

You said there’s two torch brackets on the wall? I try to move each, in turn, to see if either’s a switch for the secret door.

If the players ransacked the room, they might discover the moveable torch bracket. But they could also easily overlook it. The die will determine which. But with that specific action, there’s no way to miss that one of the two torch brackets is, in fact, a moveable switch. When an action can’t reasonably fail, it doesn’t need a die roll, does it?

General Approaches are the Worst Way to Play

A general approach is a streamlining tool. A way of handling an action by default. GMs use them to handle actions that come up frequently and whose outcomes are pretty predictable. Especially actions that involve a lot of unimportant details that don’t affect the outcome. Selling treasure? Buying equipment? In the fantasy world, that’s some involved s$&%. You don’t just go to the medieval Target and walk out with everything your adventurer needs. Different merchants have different stocks. Stocks are always changing. Markets are better than shops, but they’re even more variable. And most s$&% has to be prepared to order. It’s not like there’s a store that just sells packs of rations on the shelf in little sealed boxes. And the prices vary from one shop to the next and they’re not set in stone. You could make an entire, hour-long scene just out of stocking up on rations. But why would you want to?

So, if the players aren’t doing anything special — if they just want X day’s-worth of rations — handwave that s$&%. “You spend a day doing all the crap you need to do to efficiently buy the s$&% you need for your adventure; here’s the result, adjust your character sheet accordingly.”

General approaches are default actions. Mindless. The actions players take when they can’t think of anything better to do. And you need to treat them as such. Don’t make a big deal about them. Don’t advertise them too much. When you’re using one, you can let the players know, but do so in a way that implies there are better ways. When things aren’t big enough or meaningful enough or important enough and when there isn’t an obviously better, clever way to handle s$&%, they work. But when the action is big or meaningful or when the players have a cunning plan or crazy caper, general approaches are the wrong way to handle s$&%.

Keep this mindset in your head: “if I’m using general approaches, my players are playing wrong.” Don’t actually say that out loud. Players are sensitive, whiny little things and they don’t like it when you hurt their pwecious widdle feels. But keep that thought in the back of your head. And keep the secret hope in your heart that the players will break out of the general approach every time.

Why? Because what you keep in your head and what you hold in your heart affects what comes out of your mouth. Which is why you’ll say s$&% like this:

Really? You want to sell the pile of treasure off in the market? Even that jade idol with that symbol you have definitely seen before? In this very town? Yesterday? Don’t even want to think about it? Okay, fine, whatever. You throw that obviously important and rare piece with the symbol on it that won’t stop troubling your memory in with the rest of the treasure and run around the market trying to find someone to pawn it off on for whatever price they offer. Since you’re willing to settle. I mean, it’s your treasure. You do you.

I mean, hopefully, you won’t make it that obvious. Hopeful you won’t have to make it that obvious. But you can’t stop players from being dumb, can you?