Quick note: this article was supposed to come out a few days ago. But there was a disaster here at Angry Games Corporate HQ. The Angry Master Computer locked up and required a complete reset and O/S reinstall. Sorry about the delay. Enjoy the article.
Welcome to Rulesaholics Anonymous. My name is Angry and I’m a rulesaholic.
Except I’m not. I just said that to make you feel better. Like I said last time, I don’t have the problem. You do. And if you didn’t read what I said last time, go do that now. Because I’m picking up where I left off. Which means I don’t need a Long, Rambling Introduction™. I’m going to skip it.
And if you’re one of those people who gets pissed off at me every time I skip a Long, Rambling Introduction™, here’s some filler you can read that’s just as relevant as any Long, Rambling Introduction™ I’ve ever written.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Amet justo donec enim diam vulputate. Interdum varius sit amet mattis vulputate. In aliquam sem fringilla ut morbi. Et pharetra pharetra massa massa ultricies mi. Lectus nulla at volutpat diam ut venenatis tellus in. Tortor aliquam nulla facilisi cras fermentum odio. Porta non pulvinar neque laoreet suspendisse interdum consectetur libero id. Placerat duis ultricies lacus sed. Nunc sed blandit libero volutpat sed cras ornare arcu. Don’t look into the death star or you will die. Semper risus in hendrerit gravida rutrum quisque non. Consectetur adipiscing elit ut aliquam purus sit. Accumsan in nisl nisi scelerisque eu. Vitae congue mauris rhoncus aenean. Erat imperdiet sed euismod nisi porta lorem mollis aliquam ut. Vestibulum rhoncus est pellentesque elit ullamcorper dignissim cras.
Accumsan lacus vel facilisis volutpat est velit. Mollis aliquam ut porttitor leo a diam sollicitudin tempor id. Eleifend donec pretium vulputate sapien nec sagittis aliquam malesuada. What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets. Et egestas quis ipsum suspendisse ultrices gravida dictum fusce ut. Eastmost peninsula is the secret. Aliquet lectus proin nibh nisl condimentum id. Pretium lectus quam id leo in vitae turpis massa sed. Augue interdum velit euismod in. Egestas purus viverra accumsan in nisl. Sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit pellentesque habitant. Dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit ut aliquam purus. Ac tortor dignissim convallis aenean. Feugiat nibh sed pulvinar proin. When the demon wriggles, that is when the world will begin to perish. Netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas maecenas pharetra convallis. Neque aliquam vestibulum morbi blandit cursus. Vitae auctor eu augue ut lectus arcu bibendum. Quam pellentesque nec nam aliquam sem et. This guy are sick. Lobortis feugiat vivamus at augue eget arcu. Porttitor leo a diam sollicitudin tempor id. Eget arcu dictum varius duis at consectetur lorem donec. Mi eget mauris pharetra et ultrices neque ornare aenean euismod. Now go and rest our heroes.
Missing Pieces
In my last article, I made you admit you have a problem. You’re addicted to rules and mechanics. You overdesign the hell out of your encounters and you don’t think you can run a deep, meaningful encounter without a bunch of extra rules and systems. You probably got hooked on some gateway drug like D&D 4E’s ‘skill challenges’ or the ‘encounter traps’ from D&D 3.5’s Dungeonscape or ‘hauntings’ from Pathfinder. And they probably worked for you. At least in the beginning. They weren’t great, but they had promise. So you kept using them. And tweaking them. And revising them. And whenever you had a bad trip, whenever they did you wrong, you assumed you just had a bad batch or mixed the wrong stuff. They were good ideas. They just needed some extra work.
But they weren’t good ideas. They didn’t need work because they don’t work. They don’t fix anything. They just mask problems. Oh sure, a little hit now and again won’t kill you. And if you’ve already got a good encounter going, they’ll make it better. But if you’re struggling under a crap encounter, that s$&% just dulls the pain. You don’t feel the problems and so you don’t see the problems.
But I explained all of this already. What you need now is someone who can tell you how to really fix your problems. What’s wrong with the way you design encounters? What are you missing?
The good news is the problem isn’t with how you design encounters. It’s that you don’t know how to run encounters. You’re missing two specific tools. They’re called visualization and dynamic conflict. But before I can explain them, we have to talk about how it is that your problems running encounters have f$&%ed up the way you design encounters.
Running on a Need to Know Basis
When I talked about my adventure design philosophy, I explained that the person who designs adventures is a totally separate person from the one who runs adventures. Even if they’re the same person and they share the same body and the same brain and they are both you. And I’ve got two reasons for saying that. First, adventure-designer-you and game-master-you have very different goals. Second, adventure-designer-you and game-master-you have very different jobs.
As an adventure designer, your job is to design a complete and perfect game. One that has everything it needs to be a complete game and one that provides both a satisfying play experience and a satisfying narrative experience. One that has a goal, a resolution, highs and lows, a climax, encounters, challenge curves, pacing, and all that crap. And your job is to take that complete and perfect game experience and pass the GM everything they need to do their job with it. And pass along absolutely nothing else.
As a game master, your job is to present your players with a situation and point them toward a goal and then ask them what they do about the situation and how they pursue the goal. And whatever their answers are, your job is to determine how that s$&% works out for them. Your job is to run the game the players are playing. To react to the players. To determine how their actions work out. And to determine whether they win or lose.
You use the adventure the adventure designer designed to guide you. It gives you context and direction for the game. And, by extension, it gives the players context and direction for their actions. But all you do is present the players with that context and direction and then get the hell out of their way. Let them do what they will with that s$&%. And let them win or lose on their own.
Imagine your game like a race. You get the players arranged on the starting line. You stand in front of them and point at the distant finish line. You raise the starter pistol. You fire. And then you jump the hell out of the way because the players are running right toward you. After they run past you, you fall in behind them and match their pace. Whatever course they actually take, you follow them. You can’t steer them. You can’t control their speed. The best you can do is shout suggestions at them. Beyond that, you just keep following them until they either cross the finish line or pass out from exhaustion or run the wrong way and fall off a cliff. And then you either give them medals and high fives or you call the paramedics and get them airlifted to the hospital.
But imagine that there’s someone else with you. When you fire the pistol and jump out of the way, that a$&hole is standing right behind you so you crash into him. You both fall and now the players have to dodge around you or jump over you or change course or stop and wait for you to clear the road. And when they finally get running and you start pacing them, that a$&hole is running along with you, yelling at you and yanking on your arm. Or he’s trying to get ahead of the players, which trips them up. Or, when the players think they’ve found a shortcut and run off the road into the weeds, he shoves you in front of them so they’ll have to run back on the path.
The adventure designer’s job is to design the racecourse, hand the GM a map, and get the hell off the course. He’s not supposed to run the race with the GM and try to keep the players on his perfectly designed path. And that’s why the adventure designer should pass the minimum amount of information necessary to the GM. And not one jot or tittle more.
I’ll give you a solid example. There’s this belief among adventure-designer-GMs who don’t know how to separate the two jobs that it’s the adventure-designer-GM’s job to come up with solutions for the problems they create in their adventure. Just in case, you know, the players get stuck. In case the players can’t figure out a solution. There’s even people who spout rules about this horses$&%. Like they demand people always come up with three solutions for every problem they invent.
F&$% that. It’s not the GM’s job to solve the players’ problems. That’s what the players are supposed to do. And note that I’m distinguishing between puzzles and problems here. Someday, I’ll write about the huge-a$& difference between the two. A puzzle is a thing that has a correct answer that the players have to identify. Like a riddle or a murder mystery. A problem is an obstacle the players have to circumvent or a conflict they have to resolve any way they can. Like a combat or a cliff or a locked door or a hostile witness.
If the players can’t solve a problem, they have to find a way to get around it. If they can’t get around it, they lose. Whatever’s at stake in the encounter or scene or adventure, they lost it. And the GM’s job is NOT to provide clues or help or propose solutions or nudge the players in the right direction. The GM’s job is only to provide information about the world and the situation. To be the players’ eyes, ears, and knowledge. And the adventure designer’s job is to make sure the GM is equipped to provide that information.
Now, imagine what would happen if a GM who didn’t understand their proper role in the game – point out the finish line and then run along behind the players, clapping for them or calling ambulances as needed – imagine if a GM who didn’t know how to do his job tried to design an adventure. He’d probably become that idiot who’s constantly in the way of the GM on the racecourse.
Let’s talk about how you’re that idiot because of your missing skills.
Come With Me; And You’ll Be; In a Land of Pure Imagination
Click the Goblin’s Jar to Leave a Tip
So, a GM’s basic job is to describe the situation to the players, wait for them to declare their actions, and then resolve those actions and describe the outcomes, right? WRONG!
I know, I know. I’m the one who told you that that’s what the GM does. Narrate and adjudicate. I’ve been telling you that for years. But I missed a step. It’s a step I’ve always done without realizing it. At least, I think I’ve always done it. Truth is, I’ve caught myself NOT doing it lately. And I don’t know how long I’ve been occasionally NOT doing it. But I do know that NOT doing it can f$&% things up pretty badly. And I’ve noticed a lot of GMs don’t do it a lot. Either because they don’t know it’s a thing or because they’ve forgotten it’s important.
It’s called visualization.
Do me a favor. Close your eyes. But not yet. Because I need to tell you what to do after you close your eyes and you’re going to need your eyes open to read the rest of the instructions. And the instructions will also tell you when you should open your eyes again. Without them, you’ll keep your eyes closed forever. Sorry if you’ve already closed your eyes forever because you didn’t see me say, “but not yet.” My bad.
When I tell you to start, I want you to close your eyes. Then, I want you to take three deep breaths. Breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth. And make sure your exhalations are longer than your inhalations. Breathe in for five counts, for example, and then breathe out for eight counts.
After you take your three deep breaths and with your eyes still closed, I want you to imagine that you’re standing atop a hill. Below you, there’s a small, medieval fantasy village. Keep that idea in your head. You’re on a hill and you’re looking down on the small, medieval fantasy village. Keep thinking about it until you can see the village clearly in your mind. Once it’s really firmly fixed in there, I want you to examine it. Get to know it. Notice the details. Take a good two minutes to really study that village. If your mind starts to wander or you get distracted, just think to yourself, “that’s just thinking happening over there; I need to look at this village here.” Nudge your mind back to the village whenever it wanders. And once you think you’ve got a good, firm picture of the village in your mind and you think you can remember what it looks like, open your eyes.
Got all that? Good. So, go. Close your eyes. Visualize the small, medieval fantasy village. And then open your eyes and keep reading.
Back from the village? Good. I want to ask you some questions about it. Don’t move on from one question until you have an answer. And if you can’t answer immediately, just close your eyes and look at the village again. It’ll still be there.
- How many buildings – roughly – were there in the village?
- How was the village laid out? What shape?
- What were the buildings made of? What about their rooves?
- Could you see any people in the village? How were they dressed?
- What time of day was it?
- What kind of landscape and terrain surrounded the village?
- Did you notice any unique features in the village? Notable structures? Defensive fortifications?
What you just did – or tried to do – is called visualization. Visualization isn’t just imagining something. It’s different. Visualization is the act of constructing something in your mind that you can examine and manipulate. It’s not something that everyone can do naturally, but it’s a skill anyone can learn. And anyone can get good at it with practice. If you had trouble with that exercise, you need to practice. Because it’s a vital GMing skill. Let me show you why.
Suppose the players in your game have a small army under their command and they want to invade the village. Sounds like something your players would do, right? Let’s say one of your players gets the bright idea to order their archers to launch a volley of flaming arrows into the village? How will that work, do you think? Well, if the buildings are all covered with thatch, it’s a pretty hot idea. But if the buildings are covered with terracotta tiled rooves, the idea will crash and burn because the buildings mostly won’t.
There’s obviously a lot of details about the village that’ll affect how the players’ clever plans and crazy capers might pay off. Are there palisades, ditches, or barricades around the village perimeter? Is there a stronghold or keep that has to be taken? How big is the village, anyway? How many able-bodied defenders will the players and their forces have to contend with? Those are all questions you can answer just by closing your eyes and checking out the visual village in your brain. And that means you can pretty much run the battle at the table based on whatever plans the players propose. Extra rules and mechanics might help, but you don’t NEED them. The game won’t stop dead without them.
Visualization is the vital first step to running any encounter. A GM’s job is to visualize, THEN narrate, THEN adjudicate.
Lots of GMs THINK they visualize things. But they don’t. Because they don’t understand the difference between visualizing something and merely picturing it. And, to be honest, most GMs don’t even really picture things either. They think picturing things is automatic. They think that if they describe something, they MUST be picturing it. If you can tell the players what the savage, brutal orc looks like, that means you must have a picture of the orc in your head, right? Wrong. Because your brain doesn’t store and process visuals the same way it processes and stores language. It’s like they’re in different file formats. It’s entirely possible – easy even – to provide a detailed, linguistic description of a thing without it ever visually popping onto your mental canvas.
And that’s bad because visualization is like a GMing superpower. It lets you answer questions about things you don’t even realize you know. If someone asks you, for example, how tall an orc is and you don’t remember what the Monster Manual says and you’re just giving a verbal description, you’ll be stumped. You’ll say, “I don’t know, as tall as a person, I guess,” or you’ll say, “let me look that up.” But if you’re visualizing the orc, you’ll know how tall and how bulky it is. And you won’t just know it’s green, you’ll know what shade of green it is.
Now, you might think it’s the adventure designer’s job to provide you with all the information you need about a scene or a location or a creature. And it is. For a given definition of need, anyway. And that’s the problem. If the adventure includes a scene in which the heroes have to defend a town from an invading army of primitive, brutish orcs, then the adventure designer does need to make sure the GM knows about the town’s defensive fortifications. That’s relevant. It’ll affect how the scene plays out.
The problem is – going back to the stupid race analogy – the problem is that the adventure designer can only plan the best racecourse to get from start to finish. Or the best collection of paths. The adventure designer can’t plan everything or take every possibility into account. If the players run off the course and decide to take a ‘shortcut’ through the weeds, the GM has to keep up even if it’s way off the adventure designer’s course map. And that’s why visualization is a powerful tool. It allows the GM to answer questions and assess actions based on nonexistent details no one invented or wrote down because no one thought they’d need to write them down.
And since I’m on the subject of what the adventure designer can and can’t provide, I need to mention flavor text. You know, the little descriptive blurbs at the start of every encounter that GMs are supposed to read or paraphrase to start the encounter?
As a GM, you’ve probably been conditioned to expect flavor text in the adventures you’re running. And as an adventure designer, you probably think it’s your job to write that s$&% down. Well, flavor text can streamline things. It can be very helpful for GMs who aren’t master wordsmiths. But flavor text ain’t visualization. It’s description. And it isn’t a substitute for visualization. As an adventure designer, you need to give the GM enough information to visualize the scene BEFORE you ask them to read some prewritten flavor text. You have to tell them enough about the scene or encounter or thing to construct a strong visualization in their mind’s eye. One that contains any details that are going to be important or relevant later. If the adventure you’re designing doesn’t include a military invasion, you can get away with just describing Flea’s Undercarriage as “a small village” and leaving it at that. But if there’s an important structure in town, make sure the GM knows about it. And if there is an invasion coming, make sure the GM understands exactly how flammable the village is and whether or not it’s got a wall around it.
Whatever the adventure designer provides, as a GM, it’s your job to visualize everything before you describe it. Even if you have flavor text, you still need to make sure it exists as a thing in your head. A thing you can answer questions about. A thing you can walk through or fly through or walk around or flip over and look at from any angle. If you’re new to visualization, practice. Practice away from the table to start. Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and then conjure a thing in your mindscape and study it. Then open your eyes. Then close your eyes again and make sure it’s still there. Ask yourself questions about it. Eventually, you won’t need the three deep breaths – but they ARE important when you’re getting started – and eventually, you won’t even need to close your eyes. But you can. It’s easier if you do. Hell, it’s actually a good idea to make it habit of closing your eyes and visualizing at the start of every encounter and delivering the narration with your eyes closed. Then you can just describe what you see.
A GM who provides scene-setting narration with his eyes closed will probably never, ever railroad you. Because he’s a visualizer and he can handle anything.
And, by the way, a map is not visualization either. It’s just a diagram. It’s just very detailed flavor text.
What if Boards Hit Back?
Now, let’s talk about the other thing that your encounters are missing. And let me start with a question:
What’s the difference between a cliff and a combat?
Yes, it’s me, The Angry GM, master of the RPG koan. Remember when I asked everyone what the difference was between one snake and two snakes?
But, seriously, what IS the difference between a cliff and a combat? Apart from the obvious difference, I mean. Yes, I know one is a form of violent conflict resolution and the other is a steep, exposed, natural rockface. Obviously, when I ask a question that way, I’m implying that those two things actually have something in common and the difference I’m thinking of is only interesting when juxtaposed against that common feature, right?
Okay, I’ll cut the philosophical wordplay and get to the f$%&ing point.
You can make a D&D encounter out of a combat or a cliff. And both can be interesting and tense and potentially deadly. But one of them has a lot more depth than the other. And consequently, one is a lot more interesting than the other. And the question is why. And the answer is not rules. It’s dynamic conflict.
In a combat, there’s bad guys and they act against the heroes. They do things they think will push the heroes toward defeat and failure. It’s not just that they are trying to keep the heroes from winning, it’s that they are trying to make the heroes not win. The players can’t just worry about forging a path to victory, they have to prevent themselves from being defeated. And as the heroes and bad guys go back and forth, the situation changes. It evolves. The players can’t just come up with a plan and execute it because there’s something in the scene working to thwart their plans.
Now compare that to the encounter where the players have to climb down a cliff. Do I even have to explain the difference?
Lots of us play video games and so we’re used to static conflicts. For example, we’re used to having to navigate a series of deadly spiked pits by jumping from platform to platform. And that sort of s$&% works in video games. Why? Because, in video games, you can have an execution challenge. You, the player, have to time your jumps properly and control your character’s momentum. You have to jump at the right moment and hold the jump button down long enough and you have to make sure you aren’t hitting the directional button when you land or else you’ll skid off the edge into the pit. In tabletop games, though, there’s no execution challenges. There’s just decisions and random outcomes. You can’t time the jump properly. All you can do is roll a Strength (Athletics) check.
In a TTRPG, climbing down a cliff can be exciting for a few minutes. Specifically, it can be exciting for the length of time it takes the players to assess their chances, formulate a plan, and then roll a die or three to see who lives and dies. But after about the third die roll, it stops being interesting. Rolling dice to win or lose doesn’t stay interesting for long.
That’s why I talked about decision points something like eight f$&%ing years ago. And I won’t link to that article because I was wrong and stupid. Decision points are static by their nature. They are just static branches instead of a static linear path. They provide choices, but they don’t fight back.
Dynamic conflict, on the other hand, assumes that the source of the conflict in the encounter is fighting back. It assumes that whatever is providing the conflict is trying to make the players lose. It isn’t just an obstacle. And that means you have to identify the source of conflict. And it also means you have to know what it means to lose. That’s why I focus so much on conflicts and stakes when I design adventures these days. At least, why I should. But I keep forgetting. Some time, I’ll tell you about this really s$&%y garbage encounter I ran a few weeks ago that involved an angry ox and a broken cart.
Anyway…
Let’s look at that cliff encounter again. In the cliff encounter, the conflict comes from the fact that nature is a hostile b$&%. She wants to punish anyone who ventures out from civilization. And the stakes are…
Look, we’re going to need a whole separate thing about stakes when we start building scenes and encounters. For now, I’m just going to pull some stakes out of my a$& so I can explain dynamic conflict. Okay?
Obviously, the character’s lives are at stake to some extent. But the fall isn’t really likely to kill anyone. At least, it’s not likely to kill everyone. It could kill one unlucky PC. But those aren’t good stakes. And neither is the inability to continue. After all, the problem with a downward climb is not whether you get to the bottom, it’s whether you get to the bottom on your own terms on gravity’s terms. The players will get to the bottom one way or the other. Unless they retreat, of course.
So let’s just assume that what’s actually at stake is whether any of the PCs fall and whether they end up damaging or destroying some of their equipment in the fall. Or whether someone ends up with a lingering injury like a twisted ankle or cracked ribs or a concussion.
Now comes the weird part. As a GM, you have to ask yourself what the source of conflict could do to push the players toward defeat? What actions can nature take against the players to thwart their plans or hurt them or break their stuff or kill them?
I know that we, as GMs, don’t really think of nature as an active foe. We really don’t give agency to anything except actual creatures with actual stat blocks. And that really is the biggest issue when it comes to non-combat encounters. Because you can’t build dynamic conflicts without active foes. Fortunately, thanks to visualization and adjudication, you can resolve any action any creature or thing or force of the universe might take. You just have to learn to personify your world.
Could nature dislodge a loose rock from the cliff when a hero grabs it thinking it’s a secure handhold? Sure. Of course, you might not think of it that way. You might think of it as the character accidentally grabbing a loose rock. But that would lead you to think of it as a way a Strength (Athletics) check might fail. Not as something nature might do on its ‘turn’. But you should.
Could nature unleash a cauldron of startled bats from an unnoticed cleft in the rock to swarm a hero who climbed past the entrance to their den? Absolutely. And, by the way, that’s the correct collective noun for a group of bats. Cauldron.
Could the same cauldron of bats leave a streak of foul-smelling, slippery bat guano on the rockface after they go that would make the other characters’ climbs more difficult? Yep.
Might a character notice such a concealed bat cave with their passive Perception? Sure. No different from spotting a goblin hiding in ambush. Or a trap. Might a clever player actively scan the rockface before making the climb to look out for such things and therefore make a Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) check? Definitely.
Might there be a bloodhawk nest on one of the ledges where a climber wants to rest? And might mama bloodhawk take offense at the intrusion and attack, forcing the player to fight off the hawk or move on while precariously balanced on three inches of sloped rock?
Might a thorny vine hidden in the rock face snag a climber and entangle his clothes, forcing him to hang one-handed while getting free? Might the vine be venomous? Might the poisoned character have to desperately climb down as quickly as possible before the poison knocks them out?
Might it start to rain?
The key here is to personify everything. View everything in the scene as an extension of the conflict and treat it as something that might act against the players. Not just block the players. Not just force saving throws; saving throws aren’t actions or decisions. The various conflicting forces have to take actions against the players. Actions that change the situation and force the players to make new choices. When the rock comes loose from the cliff, the climber is now stuck dangling by one arm. And they can’t hang like that for long. Every second they hang requires another Strength saving throw they might fail. Meanwhile, they have to figure out what to do. Swing their arm up and try to find a good handhold? Drop, tuck, and roll and hope for the best? Swing over to that safe ledge? You were climbing, now you’re hanging, the situation has changed, what do you do?
You might wonder why I say that dynamic conflict is a thing for the GM to worry about and not a thing for the adventure designer to handle. It certainly seems like it’s something an adventure designer should plan for. And the adventure designer definitely CAN help. But it’s the GM’s job to provide the dynamic conflict because it’s the GM who decides what the world and all the creatures and things do from one moment to the next.
Look, when an adventure designer designs a combat, he provides a stat block for the monster, right? And that stat block spells out the attacks and special actions that the monster can take in combat. But it’s the GM who decides what attacks to make when. And what actions to take. And how and where to move. And the GM isn’t just limited to the options on the stat block. Monsters can do anything the heroes can do. They can grapple and climb and plead and hide and flee and swing from chandeliers. That all comes from the GM.
It’s the same with the cliff. The adventure designer can – and should – provide a couple of actions that nature can take in the scene and stat them up. And the adventure designer should provide some guidance about how many times nature should act against the party. That’s part of setting the difficulty of the encounter. But if the GM running the game doesn’t understand dynamic conflict and can’t personify nature, none of that will matter.
Look, I know this is a really f$&%ing weird way to run a game. It’s probably a new idea for a lot of you. And it’s easier to teach by example. So I’m going to address it as I actually build the adventure I outlined a couple weeks ago. I will actually build the cliff encounter for reals. Right now, I’m still just talking hypothetically about it. And there’ll be other encounters too. It’ll help you see how to think about this dynamic conflict thing. And don’t underestimate this s$&%. It IS a game-changer. It WILL help you build more interesting encounters without needing weird mechanical crutches and single-use subsystems that take forever to design and don’t work. And once you start thinking in terms of dynamic conflict, you’ll start to realize that even encounters with living things often lack dynamic conflict. I mean, how many social encounters boil down to “convince the guy to do what you want before he gets tired of you.”
All of them. It’s all of them. But not for you. Not anymore. Because you’re a recovering rulesaholic and I’m here for you.
Professional modules are written the way they are because of “lonely fun.” In order to “feel” like a product worth paying money for, the module needs to be readable by someone who doesn’t have a game ready. Or even a game group. Your company will go broke otherwise, because everyone reading this has a shelf full of unplayed stuff that will never get played. So there’s a lot of adventure-designer stuff which gets in the way of actually running the thing. Long ago, this was because nobody knew what they were doing, but a direction quickly emerged (influenced too by TSR’s habit of publishing railroady “competition” adventures in a desperate quest for product).
So when an amateur tries to create something, this is the default model. I mean, Tomb of the Reptile Lich Pixie is a good module, right? So this must be how you’re supposed to write them.
In a little twist of fate, I was just thinking the reverse of this! I’ve been running an old-ish module, and during one section where the city is rioting, there’s a list of fleshed out encounters the characters can have on the streets. Reading through them all was pretty boring, so I wasn’t sure if my players would care, but I decided to do it anyway. Lo and behold, the players considered the streets dangerous and took measures to avoid them. It sounds pretty obvious that threatening the character’s wellbeing and resources would make them feel threatened, but compared to everything else in the module, this section was really, really boring. In the future, I’ll have to consider the module more carefully.
Was it Veiled Society? I just ran that last month and the PCs avoided every riot they could. They also found the secret hideout before the big chase scene, so when the bad guys ducked into the rioting crowd, they were just like “we know where those guys are headed, so we take the long way through peaceful streets.” It was great, even though they didn’t do any of the “interesting” set piece encounters in that scene.
The elephant in the room here is user experience, which Angry is sort of inventing from the outside. He does his own thing, so I’m not going to be part of that.
But what I will say, is that a lot of bad adventure design presupposes player actions. In other words, the designer needs to make the adventure tangible to him/her/theirself before they can write it, and so they spend a lot of time inventing those dangerous, rioting scenes. Result: a vivid environment with lots of little touches of realism. But this isn’t a crappy YA book, players have agency, and so players are really likely to avoid those scenes…especially since, deep down, jillions of parties have tactical planning and focus that would impress a SEAL team. –In other words, they’ll ignore bullshit and go for the throat. Which is often about avoiding riots (Christ) and doing stuff you can do something about.
Because, and I think this is an underobserved problem, your bullshit is way too obvious for your players. They really don’t care, because you don’t understand how to build a game that would make them care. When you provide “interesting set pieces” that don’t emerge out of player concerns and actions–even murderhobo actions!–you’ve already lost.
I’m leaning towards giving my current campaign a theme of natural disasters, so the idea of making natural obstacles have “actions” like a creature is quite interesting to me.
I’m also thinking of a series of natural disaster themed adventures so have had similar thoughts.
However I think treating these disasters as having “actions” along the lines of those open to creatures is precisely the sort of reification Angry is warning against.
It might be safer to take a step back a little and think of the environment having its own turn (and a Whatever stat or two) rather than figuring out what a “full round disaster action” looks like.
I’m so surprised to realize I have almost never sat down since I started DMing.
When I started DMing i would always do it. The player would ask me something and I’d close my eyes and answer. Sometime along the way however, I started doing away with it and relying on maps and description. Since I’ve picked up some more of those skills over the years I never realized that whenever players stray off the path I just start making things up on the fly. Improv is great but it can only get you as far as you can throw the bull@#$% you invent if you can’t really “see” yourself or the players in the situation.
Saving throws as Tension builders and timers rather than “Gotcha” mechanics. I love it.
This is pure genius! I was struggling for long time with the problem of noncombat encounters, with the sensation that I needed to make them more dynamic, but I didn’t know how. This idea of “personification” is just brilliant!
A question: do you feel that this approach may be used for traps too?
Traps are another field where I would be interested in improving. I have read with interest your past articles on the topic. Now I am wondering if it is possible to “personify” traps. But I expect that most of them will have just one “action” or “attack” available… any ideas?
A trap was created by someone for a specific purpose. If whoever made the trap is still around, you could use their actions to force or lure someone into triggering the trap. The same could be done by the environment if the trapper is already gone. For example, if you have a tripwire that will send arrows shooting from the walls, a rat can steal someone’s weapon and run past the tripwire, spurring an unsuspecting PC into a chase and straight into the trap.
I’ve never really though of using the whole environment as a hostile unit. It may seem a bit too coincidental for us, knowing they were put together to make the players’ lives hard, but I suppose for the players these events will mostly appear unrelated.
Yeah, dungeon as a hostile force is a beautiful idea. What is all this treasure but a lure?
And really, the cliff is just a gambit by nature, isn’t it? Could she wash a sack of ropes away earlier when the players road the swift river for faster progress into the rapids? On its own, “A bag washes away. It had a few rations and a rope” is a bland failed skilled check. But as a step in a conniving nature’s plan…
I’ve been considering this, and first of all, I would say that any of the “actions” that Angry describes nature taking on the cliff are, essentially, traps. Players could state that they are avoiding vines and thus remain safe from the vine “trap.” They might use a spell to collapse the hole in the side of the cliff, disarming the bat “trap.” I think your question is whether a trap could be used like the cliff, but I think you should be asking about using a trapped room like the cliff.
That said, I have some immediate concerns about player expectations when applying this to a trapped room. If that room is on a grid, players will expect that any traps have predefined locations. Anything else feels unfair, as the player is no longer choosing a safe or dangerous action. They’re just choosing an action, and you’re deciding after the fact whether or not to spring a trap based on that action. I can’t see myself ever using this technique with a space on a grid for that reason. When I think of a trapped room, I expect that there will be hints indicating where traps are located, and I expect to be able to move carefully to detect them.
I think this “dynamic” technique requires a situation in which everyone at the table understands that the space is full of potential dangers that appear innocuous, (Vines, holes, and rocks on the cliff face) and unless they specifically take actions to avoid one of those seemingly-innocuous things, they run the risk of them being dangerous. I can imagine some kinds of trapped rooms that might work that way, but I can’t see how you could map them on a grid without ruining it. The moment players are choosing an exact path on the grid, rather then choosing what kind of path they’re looking for in an imagined space, I think this stops being effective and starts feeling unfair. (I’m not saying that’s what you had in mind – these are just my thoughts based on your question)
But how would the players know which square you’d assigned a trap to?
If a player moves along square A and you say there’s a pressure plate or whatever, that’s where it is even if you originally planned for it to be on square B.
If you don’t map traps accurately and just have one approximately in such and such area the players can’t tell the difference.
The problem for me comes in how that trap is planned. One of the things Angry has pointed out in other articles is how great it is to hint at a trap – give indications of where it is or teach the players a pattern of trap placement that they can use to figure out how to avoid the traps. Essentially, a fun trap is one the players either work out how to avoid or look back on and think “I should have seen that coming.” If you plan out locations in advance, then you can do that sort of thing. You can have scorch marks near the fire trap or a thin gap around the edge of a tile that’s actually a pressure plate. If, on the other hand, you want to be able to “move” them to wherever you need them to activate, you’re going to plan a trap that’s totally undetectable so that you don’t have to worry about having not described the “hints” that would have nailed it down to a single location. Then it’s nothing more than a perception check and a saving throw. I think that’s more of a “screw you” to the player than it is a fun trap they can feel smart about avoiding or dumb about missing.
I guess what I’m getting at is that if the players have no way to tell where the trap was before they trip it, (other than a roll of the die and the GM saying “there it is”) and can’t look back on it after the fact and spot their mistake, (other than rolling badly) then it’s not a trap I’d put in my game. (Unless it was meant to make the players feel helpless)
I agree there, but do you simply tell them about the burn marks and the gaps in the floor in a particular square straight away? Because then you’re just skipping the perception check.
If the fire traps tend to be hidden in statues accurate planning makes total sense. If they are hidden in large heaps of rubble you can easily be a bit more flexible.
Angry also wrote that he tells people they activated a pressure plate for example and gives them a quick chance to make a specific response (dive, step sideways, etc) and that can influence whether the trap hits or misses. There’s still a choice even though at that point you’re mostly guessing.
I don’t think giving hints as to the presence, location or effect of traps is mutually exclusive with this dynamic conflict tool.
Say the party is wandering through a dungeon. They come across scorch marks, indicating a fire trap is nearby. But while they are investigating the area, an owlbear shows up and charges toward the party. What do they do?
Or say the party is fleeing from an owlbear through a dungeon. They come across scorch marks, but they don’t have the luxury of investigating where the fire trap is or what triggers it. What do they do?
Your players won’t know whether you planned the fire trap or the owlbear, but they will be facing important decisions to deal with them. And that’s what I find promising about the dynamic tension: after devising a plan, it’s not that interesting to simply execute the plan unless something changes, either by failed die rolls or something actively screwing up the party’s plans.
I don’t think there’s any inherent tension between the two. Personified Nature is using her resources to thwart the players. Dislodging any particular rock seems reasonably within nature’s control.
Moving a trap is not within the dungeon’s control, so if it’s under the rug and the players don’t cross the rug, the dungeon can’t activate it.
The dungeon could lure the players, though (something shines in the fireplace by the rug). Or cause a scary noise that might encourage the players to cross the rug in taking better defensive position. Or maybe, if the moment isn’t right, the players don’t trip the trap this time. The dungeon is saving it for when they come fleeing this way from that boulder trap at the end of the hall. I think that latter is really where dynamics can come into play: it’s not just a set of mindless traps to avoid one at a time. There’s a malevolence trying to use what limited control it does have over the world as effectively as possible: reacting to the players choices and dice rolls.
That’s quite far down that path, coming close to a near sentient dungeon. I don’t think that’ll be my default approach any time soon.
What’s being overlooked in this discussion is the importance of first identifying the actual source of conflict in the encounter. And, second, in not moving this beyond the scope of a single encounter. When the party encounters a trap, the trap is the source of the conflict. Personification is a useful tool for building dynamic conflict within a single encounter with an already-established conflict, but it can be taken too far and it shouldn’t conjure new encounters out of thin air.
Pushing ideas too far is like the one hammer in my intellectual tool-belt. Any chance you could expound on why we should pull it back?
A trap just seems like a lousy conflict? Nature, I can get behind. Man vs. Nature. Man vs. Kobold Warren, another classic. Archeologist vs. Elaborately trapped temple filled with riches. But man doesn’t want to fall in pit of spikes, but pit of spikes likes impaling? It feels much closer to an attack then an encounter. I don’t see the depth to create much dynamic within that framework. There can be interesting decisions: disarm versus avoid versus break, but not dynamics.
Where I thought you were pointing us is towards something a little more cinematic: keeping the larger conflict in mind (hostile trapped temple), giving it limited tools (so things stay winnable and believable) but giving the conflict agency, so the encounter itself, and then the arc of encounters, creates engaging action and tension and checkov’s gun style ‘life isn’t chaos, little details now have greater meaning later’. That nature isn’t going to bother blowing up a storm if that’s not an effective strategy (or at least the narrative won’t dwell on that storm). That if the party is going to trivially heal up after this trap and continue on the way, then why waste that attack? Maybe they never come back this way and the opportunity is lost, but maybe they do come back and it’s actually useful later.
Angry, I agree with you: I feel that adding creatures to the trap or making the whole dungeon “personified” is not a satisfactory answer to my question.
Do you have any idea on how we can use personification to make a single trap encounter more dynamic, while staying within its boundaries?
For example, let’s suppose that the source of conflict is that the PCs want to enter a room but the trapped door is designed to prevent this. Any ideas?
Yes. That’s why I finished at the end by saying it’s easier to teach this stuff through examples and as I continued to build an entire adventure on this philosophy, I’d be going into a lot more detail.
Well
…
But
…
How about
…
Wow, I like where this is going.
Are you going to publish a recording of the live stream you did for Angreons? Or is that going to stay an Angreon-only special?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this visualization thing recently. I’ve been noticing I’m not giving good descriptions in game lately, and hadn’t quite nailed down why. (lack of visualization) Visualization had always come naturally to me, but at some point that stopped being the case. Now I need to make a conscious effort. I’ll be working on it, for sure.
I’d love to see more about the dynamic social interactions teased at the end of this article. The same-y until-they-get-tired-of-you stuff is something I’ve been fighting to get beyond recently.
Good stuff. I know you don’t like Fate, but its instructions try to address this. The bronze rule is all about turning everything into a character in order to create dynamic opposition. It could be written much better, though, and I want to see how you explain it.
“Does looking into the Death Star through a mirror increases your survival chances, you ask?”
… me closes my eyes once more, visualizing the dynamic perils of the Force …
“When you stare long into the mirror, the mirror eventually stares back at you. And in your mind’s eye, it has a black, breathing mask… this guy are sick… and your neck tingles. What do you do?”
Thanks for this article. You seem lately to disavow a lot of your old content.
I was considering binge reading the blog because i often stumble on very good old articles (like thematic conflict, really helped create a one shot). I also read your books but like for example, the scene definition of your book isn’t the same you are using nowadays. So what should i avoid reading ?
Hi there Najah. I don’t think you’re ever going to see an organized document detailing “what’s Angry canon”. As with us all, his opinions shift over time; you just have to stay on for the ride. If you’re just getting started with his stuff, I’d actually recommend starting from the end and go backwards. Any time you see a linked article, go read that before continuing with the current one.
My other recommendation, make the investment to join the Discord server. Either Angry can clarify for you personally what is meant (and trust me, I’ve seen him extemporaneously type entire articles’ worth of material out of a simple question), OR, you can ask one of his moderators questions, who are well-versed in Angry lore. Especially a guy named Wilkolak, sharp as a tack that one.
It’s a fun place, you should really consider it.
I stand by everything I’ve ever said. Everything I’ve said is true. It is just that the truth gets more and more refined as time goes on. That said, terminology and jargon isn’t truth or wisdom. I use the word “scene” differently these days because I found a better use for it, but it doesn’t discount the importance of recognizing that encounters need dramatic questions and sources of conflict. Dynamic conflict and visualization are better ways to create choices than preplanned decision points, but the importance of creating situations in which the players have to make ongoing choices if you want an encounter to have depth is still the same.
Look, I have been writing and analyzing game mastering and experimenting actively for the last ten years – not mention running games for over thirty years. My views and ideas SHOULD be changing. If you spend that amount of time analyzing the hell out of something, you sure as hell had better learn something new from all of that. If anyone is giving the same advice about something they gave ten years ago, I’d say you should totally distrust their advice. They are neither thinking nor growing.
I’ve subconsciously been noticing the whole thing around visualization and you just spelled it out for me in words. Also the bit about the flavor text is bang on! I always get into the flavor text first. Recently I went down to the descriptive paragraphs underneath most flavor text and I thought to myself, that seems like some really good information to have before diving into the flavor text. I often find after reading through that to myself in a published module I can expand the flavor text or even come up with something better. This is especially true if I take the time to visualize. I catch myself doing it every once in a while and I definitely notice the difference in my delivery.
Also finding I hate reading aloud any flavor text. You know when you can tell somebody is reading off a teleprompter. The style is off and the delivery feels so rough as you swap between what somebody else wrote and your own communication style. Really going to be leaning on this visualization stuff from now on with a conscious effort. You always have solid content but this has really hit the nail on the head for how I’ve been feeling lately and couldn’t quite pin down.
Thank you!
I too hate flavor text for the same reason. But somehow I can’t manage to make good descriptions. I remember an old article where Angry said something like “Don’t try to be Tolkien if you’re not, use simple words” but that’s just me, I’m an idiot who think if it’s not pitch perfect it’s not good. Working on that hard.
Thank you for your replies guys. I’ve been considering contributing to Angry because this blog brought me soooooo much. I just need to fit this in my budget (and yeah my washing machine and other stuff decided to quit on me during this very specific period in human history, great).
I’m not a native speaker so sorry if my question wasn’t well put out Angry. I totally understand that you have to grow and change, I just wanted to make sure that things weren’t contradictory (is that the word?). Like i 100% agree with you, we shouldn’t trust someone who doesn’t change his views or doesn’t improve. I didn’t realize though that this blog was 10 years old for real so there’s that. So far I never encountered stuff that would contradict (fuck i really hope it’s the word) your new articles and your book is still relevant as all of the other articles i’ve read so far.
Anyway, thanks you for the input and I hope to become a supporter in the very near future 🙂
Did you just learn what a group of bats are referred to as a result of writing this?
Nope. GMs end up learning some really weird stuff after they do it for a few decades.
As someone who has aphantasia – that is,the inability to form images in my mind – the first half of the article is kind of useless. And I say “kind of” bc you DO NOT need to visualize the scene to understand what’s going on, specially from a narrative standpoint. But I do agree that, if you CAN do that, it’s a powerful tool to have. And I think you nail the issue by addressing the fact that the GMs job is to propose an obstacle, not a solution, but I’m not sure if I agree with it as a Game-designer
This seems like one of the key bits of wisdom in Apocalypse World translated over for D&D. Probably from the same source as the Bakers, hard won experience. Anything can be personified with a general motivation and a couple of moves and (unsaid in AW) if you do this by visualizing the personification and writing down the results you’re more able to wing it from there. So thanks for specifically bringing up visualization doing a quick walk through on that. Any hope for an Angry GM visualization guided meditation/ritual magic track in the future?
Would it be fair to say that the optional job of an adventure designer is provide seeds for visualization and point at things that need more of it than others?
Not sure how much was on purpose, but you joke about a lengthy recap, then included like 20paragraphs of filler. I could probably provide more pointed feedback, but the short of it, I didn’t even make it to any meat before I left.
Do you realize how short my articles would be if I just go to the point? And I definitely could never have filled an entire book.
Probably only 3000 words?
I’m just impressed this guy ploughed through that much lipsum to be honest, even with the Easter eggs, if he’s really that impatient..
“You put up all those joke signs saying ‘Road Closed’ and ‘Keep Out: Severe Tire Damage,’ but the road was still totally trashed and it wrecked my car! What the hell!?”
Maybe he’ll sue next..
Isn’t the situation with the loose rock a case of “do you continue to do what you already said you want to do”? You say “You were climbing, now you’re hanging, the situation has changed, what do you do?”. But has the situation changed? Wouldn’t virtually all players say something like “well, I still want to get to the top/bottom of this cliff, so I continue to climb.”
You can’t continue to climb is you’re dangling by one hand on a rock face and your grip is going to fail. You have to
solve that problem first. And then you can continue to climb.
I fail to see how it’s different at the table. If you’ve mapped out the entire cliff face and do the climb step by step then sure. But if this is a “do a Strength check to see if you can climb the cliff” situation, which I assume most tables do, I don’t see how the player can do anything, apart from “I let go”, that wouldn’t cause the GM to say “ok, do a Strength check. … You climb the rest of the way up.” (If the check succeeded). To me, the gameplay is exactly like a lock requiring several attempts to solve.
I agree that hanging on by one hand after a rock fell out while climbing is a problem that requires solving, I just don’t see the gameplay value. A tumbler falling down while picking a lock is also a problem (I guess; I know nothing about lock picking), but we don’t stop a lock picking attempt for it. It’s baked into the initial roll/attempt.
And I know that someone will think that a tumbler falling down isn’t urgent, but while hanging on with one hand you might lose your grip. I agree with that in the real world, but how do you address it as a game? Require a strength check to hang on? That’s just forcing yet another roll for the same action.
Om not trying to be argumentative here, I honestly want to understand.
My understanding is that solving the problem of being hanging on one hand should be something different from simply going on climbing. But I agree that having this difference clearly expressed might be a non-trivial issue.
It probably has different stakes: a failure by the PC on this problem might have much worse effects than a failure in standard conditions.
It might have a different difficulty level: for example, even if you still ask for a Strength check, the DC might be higher than normal.
It might allow the player to mitigate the increased risk at a price, for example by dropping part of his equipment.
It might be an occasion for the player to switch to a different approach, like… ok, I don’t have an example in mind here.
Other PCs might be willing to help the first PC, like by throwing a rope to him, or by reaching him quickly to pull him up. This might be interesting, because the PC in troubles would need to decide if he tries to solve the problem by himself or if he simply tries to endure until help arrives.
Certainly, giving players a specific problem let’s them come up with specific solutions. A generic die roll for climbing takes away the resolution they need to be creative. Dropping equipment is a perfect example. A single roll is fine if the climbing is just a small part of a larger encounter but if it’s the main issue this seems like a good approach. As far as I can tell that is, I’d like to try it for myself before judging it.
Let’s also not get too hung up on this particular scenario. It is meant to illustrate a design approach, not be the perfect cliff encounter. We may see many of these questions dealt with when he writes up the example.
“You have been disarmed. The kobold took your hammer and ran with it while his friends knocked you prone and you see that they are planning to tie you up. The situation has changed, what do you do?”
“Well, I still want to win so I continue to kill the kobolds just like before…”
See how it doesn’t make sense?
I see your point, but I don’t think it’s a fair comparison at most tables. In my experience, climbing a cliff is a matter of succeeding a Strength (Athletics) check. Winning a combat is much more complex. If you either use a single roll to determine the result of a combat or if you’ve mapped out the entire cliff face and to a step-by-step climb requiring several actions to climb it I would call it a fair comparison. But neither of those have come up at any table I’ve played at.
Except the entire point of the article is about how to make it a fair comparison. So this whole thing has now gone in a complete circle.
It seems like we’re all circling around the idea of making crits and fumbles on skill checks interesting, only making them more frequent and less calamitous than a fumble, so it’s like… “how well do Degrees of Success and Failure work when applied to d20 rolls”?
I have not used visualization in the way you’re describing, and it sounds like a powerful tool – I look forward to gaining some experience with that technique.
I’m already completely on board with an adversarial approach to *running* encounters, but I’m a bit puzzled that you now seem to completely reject static *design* strategies like your decisions points approach and the iterative process of considering possible player approaches and augmenting accordingly (which you implicitly advocate in both How to Build F$&%ing Awesome Encounters! and The Angry Guide to Kickass Combats (Part 3)). These still seem like valid and useful strategies when wearing the “designer hat” — especially since conflict cannot by its nature be dynamic during the design process.
I would have instead thought you’d say that those static approaches should be scoped to the initial design phase, and retired in favor of an adversarial approach once you put on your “GM” hat. Thinking about conflict and stakes seems orthogonal to iterative design and decision analysis – but perhaps your follow-up article will clarify your position on this.
“There’s even people who spout rules about this horses$&%. Like they demand people always come up with three solutions for every problem they invent.”
For our newer or less frequent readers, this is a reference to an article angry wrote about how if you don’t know three ways your players could solve an obstacle, they obstacle wasn’t fully designed yet.
Another thought about personification, I think it ties in well with that article about building a pantheon for your world a while back. A personification of nature would be a god or goddess after all.
Players who have pleased said god through their actions may have an easier time in the wilderness while players who burned a forest because there were spiders in it would find descending the cliff considerably harder.
I’m trying to implement something along those lines in my current campaign. The trick is in making explicit the connection between players’ previous actions and the difficulties they’re facing.
I went with a kind of seer-type npc warning them that taking potions of healing deposited in a shrine pissed off that particular goddess and now they’ll have to atone for it. It’s a kind of trap in itself because who’d leave those potions at level 1? I’ll make sure the atonement is inconvenient off course, it’s too early to tell whether it works well though..
Don’t look into the what now you will what? I’m looking into it right now and I’m fiahnfgonweui0ogaw
On visualization. As a designer, perhaps I need to modify the Angry encounter/scene template item “setting” to include key things for the DM to visualize. The tradeoff there is the “setting” text will no longer be as concise.
I’m a little surprised Angry didn’t mention to add SMELLS in the visualization.
We don’t need a new rule to personify/give an action to an obstacle. Legendary Actions has this covered, but it requires an initiative roll for it’s turn (when it does nothing). They are always AFTER a player’s turn (reactive) and are controlled by the DM. Example for cliff encounter:
The cliff can take two legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The cliff regains spent legendary actions at the start of it’s turn.
Spooky wind. The wind makes a disturbing sound but has no other effect.
Change Weather. The sky changes to a more menacing look. Rain begins on the third time this action is undertaken, making the descent even more difficult.
Bat Cave (costs 2 actions). Player disturbs a cauldron of bats. See statblock.
Blood Hawk nest (costs 2 actions) Player disturbs a blood hawk nest. The blood hawks attack. See statblock.
(At the risk of me being labeled a kafir and hunted down and executed) Reading Angry is a lot like reading the Koran. Later verses trump earlier verses. (Note the word of Allah is unchanging…grovel.)
Are you suggesting we invent a little mechanic for this..?
Are you suggesting that the GM rolls initiative for a climb down a cliff? Because that sounds pretty limiting. Initiative exists for resolving the situation of two roughly equal forces fighting each other. You shouldn’t use it for rock-climbing.
Rijst: Nope. Angry says and I agree that making mechanics is over done. That’s why I try to tie concepts to the existing rules. In this case, statblocks and initiative.
Johannes: This is a conflict between the personified source of the conflict for the encounter. Where did you read that initiative is ONLY used in fights? In what game system?
I recognise the initiative comment johannes made from elsewhere on this site, but in a different context. I believe it was about fights against solo opponents.
I’m talking about DnD 5e.
https://theangrygm.com/three-shocking-things-you-wont-believe-about-dd-combat/ under “avoid using combat rules whenever necessary”, Angry says that thing about two equal forces. I also believe he’s talked about people using initiative in social interactions, and how you shouldn’t do that, but I can’t find the link.
But the point is, there’s no real reason for the rigid structure of initiative when climbing a cliff face, and you lose out on the possibility of teamwork. If Alice losses her grip and starts to fall, Bob might want to cast feather fall on her. You wouldn’t want to wait until Bob’s turn. And even if you say “well, that’s just Bob using a reaction”, the use of initiative might imply to the players that they have to wait.
The way I see it, you have very little to gain from initiative, and a lot of stuff to lose. Just shotgun around the table and ask what people do.
I feel like the inflammatory comments on Islam(or religions in general) are uncalled for in a gaming site and have nothing to add to your comment.
This thread stops here and now.
Yeah it’s me again, the annoying guy with the badly written comments.
The personnification thing is really great, I remember when you said that everything is a NPC (if you’re brave enough ?). I really like that idea but somehow, reading this article I realize I understand it way more with inanimate thing than with actual traditional NPCs. Meaning, I can really picture how you could do that with a cliff or nature or whatever, but struggle to see how it can turn a social encounter better. By better I mean how it can escape the boring “convince this person until he gets bored or gives in”. How would one do that ? I feel stupid asking that but oh well, not the first or the last time so here it goes.
Maybe that would be a good topic for a future article.
Shall i begin the dance?
Holy carp. This could actually make disease worth using.
You know, Angry, it’s bad. You spin this beautiful visual of a semidynamic nature challenge and my first thought is: oh, this is great, i could set the number of skill checks that need to be made by the length of the climb or trip through the wilderness or at sea or whatever and then create xyz complications like “rock comes lose, character is hanging precariously and may fall, make a strength check/save to hang on +1DC per consecutive save, the player may make one action or receive a simple, one sentence answer to a question in between each save; Designer’s Note, this exchange should move fast, verbally” and write them down on cards, you can make a bunch of fortune cards too like “you find a wide ledge the character can rest on” or whatever, and create a hand, deck, or go-fish-pile of mystery cards. Players can make those perception or knowledge checks or whatever and pick a random card, hazards get discarded and fortunes can be used by the party when they want or whatever. The GM can play a hazard card when a character fails a skill check to navigate the encounter, when they roll really high or whatever, you can hand them a fortune card, if you have any left.
Am I overcompmicating the idea or is it just a neat organisational tool for those of us who have a hard time holding “nature’s stat block” in our heads?
Oh no….
I’m sorry, I think your condition is incurable.
I haven’t got a decent comeback for that, you get the point.
While you didn’t explicitly mention visualization in your steps for adjudication, it was heavily implied as something that is necessary in order to complete steps 3a, and 3b.
Also you actually talked about the personification thing a few years ago when you mentioned treating a spreading fire sort of like a creature. It was sort of an aside, but I remember it because it felt like an extremely powerful tool for basically any situation. It just makes sense right? The GM often plays as the forces of nature, so why shouldn’t the GM PLAY as the forces of nature, rather than just executing some poor physics/weather simulation program.
I do not mean to devalue the rest of the article, but the visualization part hit me the most. It is what I haven’t been doing properly. Thanks.
OK, an Important Disclosure: I’ve never played a roll playing game in my life, except the actual life I’m experiencing which, (IMHO), beats D&D/(etc) games all to hell and gone. And the stakes are higher.
However, to add my completely and totally unqualified opinion:
What I think Angry is trying to talk about isn’t “visualization” as a Magic Bullet that will turn an inept GM into Solomon, but a necessary *TOOL* in the GM’s repertoire of things he/she can do. And like any other tool, it can be overused. (i.e. Hammer thinks everything is a nail.)
As I see it, Angry is telling us that visualization has a place in any well run game, along side saving throws, hit points, or any of a thousand other things.
My passion, aside from being a techno-geek, is writing, and for any kind of successful writing task you need to stop and visualize what you want to say – just like Angry’s village.
What say ye?
P.S.
I forgot to thank Angry GM for a very interesting series of articles I just randomly stumbled upon trying to understand things like Window.requestAnimationFrame() for a robot I’m trying to program.
As much as I enjoy writing, most blogs – and their authors – aren’t worth the effort of hitting the “reply” button. This one as piqued my interest and I will surely be returning.
Thanks Angry for “one F&*^ing great article!”