Someone from the internet once told me that Gary Gygax said nobody would buy adventure modules, and I believe them. Gygax’ objected that “nobody wants someone else to do their imagining for them”. Today I am your someone from the internet, and you can believe me when I say there’s a lot more that can go into GMing than needs to go into GMing. It’s a hobby with a lot of hats, even if you’ve never painted a miniature, done a single funny voice or written a blog post (which has become a growing necessity, if the internet is to be believed). Best not to wear hats which don’t fit right.

The majority of adventurers stop before they begin. They talk excitedly for a night or two about what they’ll do in the dungeon, then tell themselves ’later’, and return to their regular work. And in terms of pay-off, these people sit well above the average.

In the towns, people only hear about those that entered a dungeon and returned. Travel out, closer to an entrance, and the locals tell tales of the recent dead, or one meets maimed beggars, some still so full of fervour that they beg you to look at their map and listen to their plans for re-entry. Most people don’t understand the allure of a dungeon. It’s not about the chests of gold or volatile weapons. There are easier ways of acquiring gold than delving into monstrous pits.

Action Points let people use any initiative system, while fixing the problems.

Just Go!

Some tables don’t like rolling initiative. They want to just declare an action and go; they want a fast-paced game. That’s great, but will always lead to disagreements about who’s going first, as players will always want to start the round, and leads to players shouting over each other.

Using Action Points lets people ‘just go’, while putting a limit on the total actions taken. Whoever has the most Action Points can ‘butt in’ (but they don’t have to).

I’ve learnt to stop writing RPG material that’s not fun to write. Grammar? Formatting? Websites? Boring as hell, and one just has to get on with it anyway. But if the writing feels like a chore then reading will too. Mostly.

World-building makes demands. If you have a hierarchical organization then it must have ranks and ways to select who gets those ranks. The books must explain this because players will ask.

What is the back cover of a book for? Once upon a time, in a land long ago, people would see the front of many books, and pick one. The front of the books enticed people to pick them up, turn the book around, and view the back. Then the writing on the back would convince the shopper to buy the thing by saying ‘quality’, and ‘recommended by the Guardian’.

Sometimes an NPC needs more personhood, because they’re talkative, or the players need to negotiate and have an idea of whom they’re dealing with. And the little notes I put under statblocks saying ‘Wants: cakes’, or ‘Mannerism: suspicious eyebrow’, just doesn’t cut it. So I’m thinking of resorting to interviews.

On the Trail of the Snail Lords had something similar. A few more important character had long example conversations, showing how they interrupt people, their little bigotries, and how they speak about their interests. But that module (or ‘campaign’?) babbled too much. It hides its structure among a mess of details, like those conversation snippets. I want to make modules which remain short, in essence.

Random encounters are never the meat. They make for worse events than pre-written events. But they have their advantages around the edges of any module, because they take up less space on the page and demand less memory from the GM. So why stop at random encounters? Other random tables have been relegated to ‘spark tables’ and ‘D100 tavern’ lists, but they might make a reliable and useful Appendix, or even the last section of every location in any module. Like a Sierpiński triangle, modules with a snowflake structure could fake a complete world by detailing the centre-stage and hand-waving the rest with more and more tables and players veer from that central triangle.

Not a lot of stories use the second person singular perspective. Fewer use the second person plural. But this is the primary perspective of dungeon-delving modules, Cthulhian investigations, and space-faring adventures.

Few adventures within Dungeon Magazine’s comes with boxtext, and most of this boxtext comes at the start in a block of a dozen paragraphs, spread across multiple pages. Here’s one such introduction:

As you enter through the large doors, you are suddenly confronted by a massive, 8’-tall humanoid with long yellow fangs protruding from his upper jaw. He stares down at you with great black eyes and empty white pupils. After an empty silence, during which thoughts of or drawing your sword have crossed your mind a dozen times or more, he suddenly breaks into a wide grin and begins to chuckle deeply.

Read More…

People like basic rules, so BIND should have basic rules (I thought). It didn’t quite work out that way. ‘Basic isn’t easy to define’, and not worth the time arguing about. But the game has developed a better split: necessary, and requested rules.

‘Necessary rules’ mean the rules the game has to give you for things the player characters have to do. In BIND, these are:

1. Generic actions
2. Combat
3. Travel
4. Weight
5. Magic

Everyone does the first four. Any witch in the troupe will inevitably do the last.

Chaotician Writer of Mastodon asked, if zany encounter tables are boring, what makes a good encounter table? ‘Return to White Plume Mountain’ makes a good encounter table, because:

• It’s fast,
• grounded,
• repeatable, and
• it develops.

White Plume Wandering Monster Table

The first set is rolled Outside the mountain. The second column shows encounters Inside. The last shows the mountain’s Nucleus.

I’m going roll for encounters, just to see what comes up.