The 3 Rules of a Great D&D Game

Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat, but all of my best games have followed this model.

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Some unnecessary philosophy

One thing I used to do a lot is describe the lay of the land, give the PCs some context, and than ask them what they do. This is a very videogame approach to roleplaying: dropped in a virtual landscape, the player starts to interact with stuff just because it's there, and perhaps more or less at random. It's like playing Skyrim.

When playing with a strong willed and adventurous bunch, the players will quickly go off and get themselves in trouble. But I've often seen players blank-faced and at a loss for what to do, especially if I have newbies.

Which is on me, because D&D is not just a video game. The story telling techniques that work in that medium do not inherently translate into roleplaying. Same as railroading: you don't run a game the same way you write a book.

The actual bloody rules.

So here's my magic formula. Secret bonus: run games like this and they're usually one shots. God I love one shots.

Rule 1: Present the players with a time sensitive mission.

Examples: Orcs are going to invade the village in three days. There's some dudes over there and it looks like they're setting up some kind of race with gambling. A rival adventuring party is going to raid the dungeon.

This accomplishes two things. First, it forces the players to be proactive. The problem is imminent: you must either engage now or ignore it. Second, it provides a clear and obvious goal. All the best stories have strong beginning.

Rule 2: Multiple ways can help solve the problem.

Good example: Combat. Smack a bad guy. Trip somewhere. Retreat to the room with the traps. Cast a spell. Talk your way out of it. Heal a friend. Set everything on fire.

Bad example: Vast Hitpoint Boss Monsters. They're immune to a lot of interesting spells. They're geographically limited. All you can do is deal enough damage to kill it. 

This keeps things interesting. If you're planning a heist, someone can distract the guards, someone else is making a beeline for the the diamonds, and the third group is digging the escape tunnel. Which means EVERYONE can contribute: if a character can't climb a cliff or deal a lot of damage, that's fine: they can help in other ways. It keeps everyone engaged.

It also avoids pixel bitching. The standard mandatory secret door is infuriating because there's only one way to spot the damn thing. Giving the players options means they're less likely to get stuck and sink into frustration and despair.

Rule 3: Provide resources, some with no obvious use. 

The player's character sheets can do a lot of the work for you. Inventories are full of weird items, the wizard has some funky spells, and the ranger has a pet bear. Sometimes this is more than enough: the players can stand on their own two feet. But adding environmental features only expands the range of cool shit. Maybe the dungeon has a 200 foot shaft. Maybe it has thirty feet of steel chain, and three locks to go with it. Maybe it has incredibly narrow corridors that the minotaur can't fit into. Give the players a chance to get creative and surprise you.

Anecdote time: I once ran the 'Your village will be invaded by orcs in three days' game. While drawing the map, I added a river, some standing stones, and a door in the middle of a hil. I just wanted to make the map a little more interesting: I didn't have anything special in mind. In the course of the game, the players voraciously explored EVERYTHING.

They allied with the dwarves who lived in the hill and got them to build a series of tunnels and foxholes, so they would have better mobility on the battlefield. At the standing stones they made a deal with Satan. And best of all, at the river they built a bridge, so the the orcs wouldn't have to ford it. Then they lined the bridge with dynamite.

I played the 1812 Overture when they blew it up, taking half the orcish horde with it. It was a beautiful finale to an evening of orc killing.

Wizard Wednesday: The Wizard Wednesday

Or: yes, I do think I'm very clever.

Albert Arbiea ("just call me Al") was a mage experimenting with time. He was meeting with some success: he had mastered a powerful spell, which could send things up to a day into the future, and sometimes into the past.

And then everything went to shit. Hey, sometimes you mess with the timestream, and sometimes the timestream messes with you.

Now he's stuck in Wednesday. 11:59 PM he'll spend in February 3rd, but at 12:01 AM he's jumped to February 10th. It's very annoying, and he can't stop it. Since the locals only see him around on Wednesdays, they've taken him to calling him the Wizard Wednesday. He's grown to accept it.

It's tough only being around for 52 days a year. His clothes and accent grow ever older, and he has a hard time keeping up with current events. Too much happens in his friend's lives. Sometimes his birthday lands on a Wednesday and that makes him very happy.

In addition to his other magic, Al Aribea can literally punch you into next week. Indeed, he can send anything into next week. He's fairly certain he's somehow casting the spell onto himself every midnight: maybe it's burrowed into his head. To test his theory he's looking for an exorcist or an anti-magic circle, no order of preference.

Adventure Hooks

1. Al Aribea knows who did this to him: Vrydag, a colleague of his now known as Mr. Friday. It's *very* difficult to catch a man who is never around when you are. So he's hired you: he has very good intel that the two faced incompetent is sleeping in the Rat & Barrel, two days ride from here. Al won't make it there in time, but you can. He wants you to take Mr. Friday alive. And on his very careful instruction, he wants you to interrogate him. Fun fact: Mr. Friday has, on his person, a spell that can send you back in time one full year. You can fix a lot of mistakes in a year, make a lot of smart moves. If you do manage to trap him, it's his first bargaining chip.

2. Or maybe the Wizard Wednesday and Mr. Friday have always been good friends, working together to solve their plight. They're working in the woods right now, mostly through very well written notes. The entire area is getting slowly saturated with time magic: some animals are permanently hasted, others permanently slowed. Some start and stop in strange fits. The ogre has fallen apart: his body is in one place, the howls come from somewhere else, and the club and claws strikes in a third place. Everything but the wizards seems to be caught in a loop: everyone does the same thing everyday, as if a giant clock keeps resetting itself.

And all the cats are dead. Fun fact: a cat is the temporal equivalent of a canary. Near a bit of time magic they start yowling, and near a lot they just drop dead.

3. The Wednesday Wizard lives in town. He has a nice house, and it's filled with all kinds of experiments. He's hiring you to house sit: he's gone six days a week, after all. Water the plants, keep the potions from bubbling over, feed the thing in the basement once every three days. Buy this list of groceries. And please deal with all the weirdoes who inevitably show up between Wednesdays.

4. Al Aribea's old castle is time-fucked. Sections of it only appear on particular days; dungeon is only here on a Friday, the moat shows up on Mondays. Most pertinently, the top of the east tower only appears on Wednesdays, floating in mid air: it's connecting bottom half only appears on Tuesdays. Getting from one to the other is... tricky. And Al Aribea left his wand, the one he thinks can stop all of this foolishness, up in the east tower. It's not his fault: he fell out when the floor disappeared.

Like this, but with more missing.

Beware: time moves six times faster in the castle. Al didn't tell you this because he doesn't know. But the other adventuring party he sent in? They know. And they know that when the castle pieces disappear, they go somewhere outside of time. Somewhere filled with horrible things that are currently killing them.

5. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT. He's done with trying to stop this thing. Hey you! Here's a magic wand. Whatever you zap with it only appears on a Wednesday. I WANT YOU TO ZAP EVERYTHING HERE YOU GO TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

5.5. You know it's the oddest thing, there's an entire town that only appears on Wednesdays now. What's up with that?

6. His birthday is next Wednesday! He wants you to get him a party. Get some tables out here, a cake, and invite all of these people. He'll gladly teach the wizard a little time magic in return. Things like haste, slow, time stop: the trivial, easy to learn stuff.

Wizard Wednesday: Abrax the Terrible

Like this, but with the spikes facing out, and the face is a scarier.

A metal sarcophagus floats towards you. Whatever is inside screams and gibbers in it's madness, and all around magic erupts, incinerating anything that stands in it's way. THIS is Abraxas the Terrible.

But his real name is Carl.

Carl Ingsbell was an adventuring wizard, up until an ogre threw him across the room. When he woke up two days later, he was paralyzed from the neck down. For one sad, bitter hour he cried, cursing his friends for pulling him out of the dungeon at all.

It is surprisingly hard to find pictures of levitating doom coffins. I can't understand why.

And then he got over it. Carl is an optimist, you see, and that means quite a bit when you're a wizard. He would 't let something as trivial as being unable to move his limbs stop him from adventuring. He spent most of his adventurer's loot on an enormous metal coffin, tougher then any armor, and locked himself inside. Tenser's Floating disk moves him around. Prestidigitation keeps the coffin clean. A tight metal grate in front if his mouth lets him cast spells, and unlocks come meal time. He's got a few apprentices now who feed and buy shit for him. He delights in dressing them as deranged cultists.

Because Carl knows he's freaky, and he figures he might as well use it. He screams, he howls, he speaks in a strange and terrible voice. He's bolted on an entire mess of spikes to his sarcophagus, casted the head to look like a demon, and liberally decorated everything with skulls. He loves how stupid the name 'Abrax' sounds.



When he's not striking fear in the hearts of his enemies, Carl likes to talk politics and play chess. He loves intelligent conversation and adventurers; they remind him of the good old days. His current plan is to find someway to fix his back. He hasn't met with a lot of luck, but remains hopeful. If he does, he'll give away the sarcophagus to the first asker: he's sick of the bloody thing.

Abrax's motto is "I WILL EAT YOUR SOULS." 

Carl's motto is "THIS WON'T STOP ME I'M A WIZARD."

A note on his armor: Normal weapons can't pierce Abrax's metal coffin. They can pound his mouth grate in, which has 10 HP, but you need to roll 15+ to hit. While Abrax can float, he moves a measly 10ft per round, and turns pretty damn slow: it takes him a whole turn to spin 90 degrees.

Adventure Hooks

1. The Party encounters Abrax in the dungeon. He's fighting a bunch of orcs. The orcs see the party and cry for help. 
2. The Party encounters Abrax in the dungeon. He's currently sleeping and his apprentices are out. His sarcophagus is creepy but still. 
3. The Party encounters Abrax on the road. He interrogates your cleric, asking if they have a spell that can fix his back and let him leave his coffin. 
4. The Party encounters Abrax in his Sarcophagus, lying on the floor. He's yelling for help: he's in an antimagic field and every monster in the dungeon has been banging on his coffin. The thing will take at least ten men to move, but Abrax can tell you a lot about the dungeon. 
5. In someone else's evil lair, you find Abrax. The guy who owns this place is a douche: he cured Abrax of his broken back but locked him in his coffin. Abrax begs you to find the key and let him out. Or at least get that fucker in front of him: Abrax still has a fireball ready for that son of a bitch. 
6. Some dudes in bloodstained robes approach you. They ask if you'd be willing to talk their boss about current events. It's not weird I swear.

What Would My God Do?

Or: How to Randomly Generate my Shiny New Cleric's Religion

Sometimes you just need to know how your god feels about something. In those cases, roll a D6. Or grab a blank D6 and write these words on it. That's even more convenient.

1. Sacred! This is an object of reverence! Make sure it is respected and protected.
2. Acquire! Such a thing is good fortune! Try to obtain it, or things made from it.
3. Praise! Your god saw what they had made and it was good. You should probably compliment it.
4. Pity! Your heart goes out, it really does. Truly is this object low, and worthy of your sympathy and/or spite. Play it by ear.
5. Unclean! Avoid this! To touch it is to degrade yourself before your lord.
6. Destroy! Your god does not tolerate such evil. Cut this cancer from the world!

The more you roll this dice, the more convoluted your cleric's faith becomes!

Why stop at just ten? I'd go for at least twenty; it's a much better D&D number.

On Pulling a Delphi

Next time the party stumbles across a witch, prophet, or soothsayer, offer one, and only one, character this proposition:

"I can tell you how you die."

Maybe you'll let the player decide: that's ripe for tragic reversal. Maybe you'll roll on a random table; I've thoughtfully prepared one for you.  But if anyone's brave enough to take you up on the offer, you've hit the motherlode. The player will think, 'I'm bloody immortal as long as I avoid my doom'. And you, as the DM, are in the perfect position to be an actively malicious universe. It's a wonderful game of cat and mouse, with the player trying their damndest to dodge their fate and the DM gleefully trying to shoehorn it in.

The best thing about this is that by being unable to kill a character 99% of the time, you are thus excused to pile on them a heap of suffering and sorrows. Sure, your character can't die to these orcs, but you can pass-out, lose your arm, be dangled on a rope and used as monster bait, end up in a stew pot, etc*.

For the truly industrious GM, such trials and tribulations can be used to break a character, who will then plead for their fate to finish them. Or maybe, in the process of trying to avoid their doom, they will enable it. Or find a clever loophole. There's a lot of classic options here.

YOU WILL DIE BY

1. Turtle
2. Flail
3. Siege Weapon
4. Whore
5. Gold Coin
6. Splinter
7. Fire
8. The Sea
9. Villain in your game.
10. PC in your game.
11. The weapon you are currently using.
12. Crane
13. Dog
14. Your Father's Hand
15. Giants (Plural!)**
16. Grass
17. Goblin
18. Greed
19. Steve
20. Macho Man Randy Savage
21. A nine-fingered man.
22. Under moonlight
23. Child
24. Falling
25. Poison
26. Wood
27. Rats
28. Royalty
29. Witch
30. Angel

Feel free to come up with more. Hound the player. Allude to their doom frequently, get them freaked out. Always give them either fair warning or time to respond. Make attempts at them, and embrace failure: the story of the PC constantly dodging their inevitable death is FANTASTIC.

* I believe that's called the "It Gets Worse" rule, and I'm cribbing it from Wampus Country.

** The plural thing is great for anything really.

Wizard Wednesday: Ur of the Iron Fist

UR IS REALLY MAD

Ur is from Carcosa. Ur got something wrong and now Ur is stuck here. Ur is not particularly troubled by this.

Ur is a yellow man. Ur, like all yellow men, does not sleep, but instead can enter a state of torpor for 1d10 hours, during which he cannot die. Ur can talk to men in their dreams if Ur knows the man's name.

Ur has a metal hand. Ur likes to hit people with it. Ur loves the sound it makes when it smacks against a skull. Ur made his hand better and now it can shoot a laser; it deals 1d20 damage! Ur can't find any batteries here so it only has three shots left.

Ur is a sorcerer. Ur sacrifices men, women, and children to control horrible things from beyond time and sanity. Ur is okay with this. Ur messed it up once and lost something important. Ur can't remember what it was.

Ur has one minion left called Fred. Fred has thirty hit points because Fred is very big. Fred is invisible and silent. Fred eats people and they become invisible and silent too; Ur likes how they just disappear. Fred is acidic on the inside so people who Fred eats take 1d8 points of damage every turn. Ur has a powder that will make Fred not invisible, but Ur forgot where he put it.

Ur talks to Fred a lot, but isn't sure if Fred can understand. Ur is scared of Fred, but Fred cannot hurt Ur. Ur does not always remember this.

Ur would like to summon more monsters and open a portal back to Carcosa, but Ur needs red and green and orange men for that. Ur is rather peeved that there only seems to be jale men around here. Ur laughs at them; they think Ur is stupid but the jale men do not even know what color jale is.

Ur thinks that maybe dyeing people will work well enough. Ur will pay a lot for red and green and orange dye, and for people to dye. Ur likes that the people he will dye are people that will die. Ur thinks this a fantastic joke. Ur wants to shoot his laser at people who don't laugh at it, but that's why Ur's batteries are almost empty.

UR WROTE THIS HIMSELF!

Adventure Hooks

1. The PCs have found a fantastical technological item. Ur can fix it, but he's going to charge in slaves.
2. Ur wanders into town and starts trying to buy slaves and dye. He doesn't understand why all the jale men are screaming. It's very rude.
3. The sky burns with letters made of fire, 200 feet tall. They spell out 'UR WILL PAY A FORTUNE FOR A TWINKIE'. Pretty soon the entire continent will erupt in people trying to find Ur and trying to figure out what a twinkie is.
4. A band of barbarians have started dressing like Ur, complete with his stupid helmet. They go around punching people with metal gauntlets. Ur thinks they are pretty cool. Maybe these guys find and punch the PCs, or maybe they are paid by someone to find out what the heck is going on.
5. People have started growing tiny holes in their bodies, through which the darkness and cold of space seeps through; without help they slowly freeze to death. The disease seems to have started when the yellow stranger came through town, riding on an enormous centipede. Ask Ur and he can tell you it's actually incredibly common on Carcosa, and the cure is drinking onion juice. Ur drinks a glass every day, but not to keep away the disease; he just likes the taste.
6. The PCs find that gold is suddenly worthless; every peasant seems to have pocketfuls of the stuff. The economy is crashing and everywhere men set their brothers in shackles and march them to a terrible metal mountain, where Ur has finally fixed his matter transfigurer.

Fun fact: I have never seen Heavy Metal, but this guy looks pretty cool regardless.

On Orcs

An army is a terrible thing. Wherever it goes, an army needs to eat, and what it eats is everything. The soldiers will ride out to pillage and plunder. They take food, water, fodder, women, money, stealing what they can and killing if they want. The grass is trampled, the trees are chopped down for firewood, the ground is polluted with latrines. When moving the medieval army would leave a wasteland of ten or more miles in it's wake. This process was necessary, but it was also intentional; this was the damaged inflicted upon the enemy. The misery thus caused vastly exceeded the horrors of the battlefield. 

But one day the army will return home. The soldier will find his family waiting for him with open arms, eager to see his wealth and his scars. The man will put down his sword and pick up his scythe. He can stop being a soldier.

But some armies don't come home. Some march for long days under strange skies. Each day their hearts grow more and more callous. Each day the sun dries and blisters their skin, until it turns a dull, leathery grey. Each day they forget a little more about their home, and one day they will forget it all. These wretches, who burn and kill and don't remember why, these men have become Orcs.