Michael E. Shea's Blog, page 25

Running Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden Chapter 1

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With an open-ended style, piles of potential quests, and little guidance to help DMs; chapter 1 of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden can be challenging to run. Today we're going to look at some tips and tricks for getting the most from Rime of the Frostmaiden's first massive chapter.

This chapter assumes you have already run a session zero for Rime of the Frostmaiden to ensure your players and their characters are aimed in the right direction for this adventure. It also contains many spoilers for the book.

Here's a quick summary of the tips in this article:

Begin in Bryn Shander and start with the Foaming Mugs quest. This gets the characters quickly to 2nd level.Choose six or seven of the main quests to put in front of the characters. Expect they will complete four or five of them of them before reaching 4th or 5th level and heading into chapter 2.Clear out quests the characters skip when they choose a different path. Keep two to three quests in front of the characters at any given time.Move the drivers of the sacrifices to Auril from the speakers of Ten Towns to the Children of Auril, a cult growing in popularity throughout Ten Towns.Begin in Bryn Shander and run Foaming Mugs

Bryn Shander is an excellent starting city for this adventure and the Foaming Mugs quest is one of the few quests that works well for 1st level characters. While you can choose any of the ten towns to begin, many of the quests are deadly to 1st level characters. Foaming Mugs, however, pits the characters against a bunch of goblins trying to steal dwarven iron ingots. As long as the goblin boss and polar bears don't get involved, they shouldn't have trouble completing the quest and getting to 2nd level.

Choose Which Quests to Expose

Let your own interests drive which quests you choose to reveal when running chapter 1. Don't expect to reveal them all. Chapter 1 has about three times more quests than the characters should accomplish before heading into chapter 2 and many sub-plots your characters could get involved in. It's easy to get bogged down in chapter 1.

Before you start, decide which quests you want to put in front of the characters and which you cut. Plan on roughly five to seven quests and pull quests out of the list when the characters choose another path.

Here's a potential list of quests you may want to run after Foaming Mugs:

A Beautiful MineThe White MooseThe Mead Must FlowToil and TroubleThe Unseen

Add new quests as the characters complete them and pull off quests the characters have skipped twice. You want no more than two or three active quests at a time.

The starter quest, Cold-Hearted Killer, can be a mystery the characters unravel as they travel throughout the towns and complete other quests. I'd skip the Nature Spirits quest.

You can move some of these quests if it works better. The White Moose quest, for example, may take place in the woods between Bryn Shander, Good Mead, and Dougan's Hole instead of Lonelywood. The Unseen quest can take place in Easthaven instead of Caer Konig. Move the quests closer to the characters if you want to save time traveling all over Ten Towns.

Add the Children of Auril

If the idea that the speakers of Ten Towns send their own citizens to die in the cold doesn't sit right with you, as it didn't with me, add a new antagonist called the Children of Auril. This cult, led by the cult fanatic, Father Lake, built a following across Ten Towns and it is they who demand the sacrifices. Given their popularity, the speakers are powerless to stop the cult, but the characters may not be. The Children may have built a new and mysterious temple in the old House of the Triad in Bryn Shander where they conduct terrible rituals in the chambers beneath the exposure of which would shatter the faith of their followers across the towns. This is a good way to redirect the concept of the sacrifices away from the city's government and to an entity the characters are free to hate.

Foreshadow the Duergar

Most of the quests in chapter 1 consist of helping the people of Ten Towns survive the endless night. There's always room to add secrets and clues that foreshadow later stories in the adventure but one quest has a strong connection holding more importance than the others: The Unseen. This quest reveals the weapon being built by Xardarok Sunblight that comes to play in chapters 3 and 4 of the adventure. It's important that the characters expose the duergar, learn of the plot, and get a lead on the location of Sunblight Fortress to head into those chapters.

The good news is that you can move this quest's location to just about any city, including Easthaven, a much easier reach from Bryn Shander than Caer Konig.

Remove the Duergar?

You can also choose to remove the entire Sunblight threat completely. As a storyline it has little connection to the rest of the adventure and some later parts of, such as the dragon's attack on Ten Towns, may not run the way we want as written.

Instead we can remove the duergar threat completely, skipping these quests in chapter 1 and focusing the adventure on Auril and the Netherese power beneath the ice. It's a big cut to make but it might better focus the adventure if that whole arc is something you don't dig.

Running Cold Hearted Killer

Early in the chapter, the characters learn of the murders taking place in Ten Towns. Instead of immediately being handed the identity of the killer, run this quest as a mystery in which the characters slowly put together a timeline of murders coinciding with Torgs traveling merchant caravan. Then, at the right time, the characters can face Sephek Kaltro and bring him to justice. This also helps ensure the characters don't face Sephek at 1st level which can be very deadly. Instead, if the characters are higher level by the time they face Sephek, consider giving him some icy ghouls who follow him around hidden in the shadows.

Individual Quest Tips

Here are a few quick tips for some of the quests in chapter 1. I haven't run them all so you'll find some quests missing.

Foaming MugsKeep the goblin boss and polar bears out of the fight. Let the boss send in her minions while she flees.The UnseenGive the duergar outpost a history, perhaps a fortress for dragonborn mercenaries in league with Akar Kessel over a century ago.Holed UpChange the winter wolves to dire wolves so they don't wipe out low level characters. Add some regular wolves to spice things up.Make the mammoth less violent towards the characters. Let them see the despair of the awakened mammoth in mourning for its frost giant companion who may have been killed by a heart attack (all that cholesterol from the whale blubber) instead of adventurers.Seal off the passageway leading from area L1 to L3 so the characters have to travel through the lodge to reach the children instead of skipping all of it. Put a hole in the wall between areas L8 and L3 so the characters can reach it that way. Make the remorhaz hole impossible to find from the outside but a good way to escape from the inside.Avoid the whole incest angle going on here. What was WOTC thinking?Toil and TroubleIf the characters are powerful enough, use buehr hag stats for Maud Chiselbone, removing her more powerful spells if needed.Let Maud reveal secrets about Auril, Grimskalle, and other secrets for later chapters. She's old enought to know many of Auril's secrets.Town Hall CapersReplace this quest with The Unseen to save the characters the trip to Caer Konig.The Mead Must FlowIf needed, have the verbeegs use only single attacks instead of double attacks so they don't wipe out the characters.The White MooseAdd an awakened small bunny herald (named Thuumper in my game) who loves to talk shit about how the white moose loves to disembowel adventurers. Let it lead the characters into traps and cause other mischief. Revel in its inevitable death.Tie Ravasin to the Frost Maiden. Let her reveal secrets about Auril's presence in Icewind Dale and her desire to destroy ten towns and make Icewind Dale her silent throne.A Beautiful MineMake Janth Alwar a member of the Arcane Brotherhood or replace him with Nass Lantomir. Whichever ghost you choose remains a ghost due to their obsession to find the "power under the ice" which leads to the Netheril City, Ythryn.Add another grell if one would be too easy. Let them float around in the central shaft to attack the characters when it will be the most fun.

I have no useful feedback on the remaining quests, which I feel you can safely skip. Check out Bob Worldbuilder's Frostmaiden videos for details on these and other quests if you need.

Let Your Own Stories Run Free

Rime of the Frostmaiden's wide open structure gives you lots of room to add your own stories and stories connected to the backgrounds and drives of the characters. Feel free to add in these stories and tie the NPCs found throughout Ten Towns to the characters themselves. Be careful not to run too wild. It's easy to get stuck in this chapter for a long time with the characters stuck at 3rd or 4th level far longer than they should be.

Onward to Chapter 2

With their quests completed and safely at 4th level, it's time to begin chapter 2!

Related ArticlesRime of the Frostmaiden Session ZeroThree of Five Keys: A Quest Design PatternRunning Dragon of Icespire Peak from the D&D Essentials KitA Guide to Official D&D 5th Edition Published AdventuresAdding Depth to Storm King's Thunder

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Spread Boss Damage to the Minions

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Players love to focus fire on bosses. It's a strong instinct that, unfortunately, tends to break the drama, excitement, and sense of danger of the fight. What fun is it if your lich boss dies in the first round?

Here's a quick trick to protect your boss and push the players to change up their tactics: Let the boss shift the damage it takes to its minions.

Let's say we have a cult fanatic guarding a portal to the realm of Xoriat along with a bunch of cultist minions. When the charaters kick in the door, they'll certainly focus their fire on the fanatic and, if you're not careful, they'll take him out in a single round.

What if, every time the fanatic takes damage, he can route that damage to one of his cultist minions? Now if he gets blasted for 18 points with a guiding bolt, one of his cultists bursts apart in a blast of radiant energy and falls dead to the ground. This both protects the boss and shows the players that they may be better off carving through the minions which have a lower AC and are easier to hit and kill.

Some monsters have this protection built in. A boss with a shield guardian can route half the damage they take to the guardian.

We can make this even more effective by making it all damage instead of just half.

This trick also scales well from 1st to 20th level. At lower levels it might be a bandit captain throwing damage off to her blood-sibling bandits through a dark ritual she had performed ahead of time. At 20th level it might be a lich transferring all damage to her four iron golems.

Sometimes it works best with a large number of weak minions, like cultists. Other times it works better with big meaty lieutenants like armored ogres, flesh golems, fire giant thralls, or other big brutes.

We might even add targeted spells to this ability. If a character targets the boss with a spell, the boss can redirect the target to one of it's minions.

We have to be careful that this doesn't railroad the battle too much. Too much of this and it can seem like the battle can only go one way. Consider carefully when you inject an ability like this. Use it sparingly.

This damage transfer ability is an excellent and powerful tool to help steer boss battles away from a one-round murder festival. You may not want to use it all of the time but it's a handy tool to keep in your bag of tricks when you think it suits the situation.

Related ArticlesCollected Experiences Running D&D 5e Boss FightsThe Best D&D 4e Encounter TricksThe Deadly LichSly Flourish's Running Epic Tier D&D GamesD&D's Nastier Specials

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Run Meaningful Random Encounters

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In previous articles on Sly Flourish we've discussed the value of randomness and creativity in D&D and breaking conventional thought with random tables. Randomness is obviously a big part of the gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons. We're rolling dice all the time while the story unfolds at the table. We can even think of the die, and randomness in general, as an additional player at the table, one who steers the direction of the game in ways we could not have expected.

We take it for granted that randomness is a core component of the game with ability checks, attack rolls, and the like, but don't always consider how randomness can affect larger parts of the story as well, like the scenes that take place.

Nearly all D&D hardback adventures include robust random encounter tables with encounters for many environments and detailed descriptions of what the characters might find in the encounter. Xanathar's Guide to Everything includes random encounter tables broken down by environment. The Lazy DM's Workbook includes a random monster table by dungeon level based on the tables from the original Dungeon Master's Guide.

For more on the idea of building entire adventures randomly, even at the table, see this article on the Casual and Improvisatory Nature of Early Traveller Play.

Criticism of Random Encounters

While many DMs enjoy random encounters, some DMs don't like them at all. Criticisms include random encounters taking away from the main story of an adventure and taking up valuable game time. These criticisms aren't wrong but there are ways we can incorporate random encounters that become part of the story rather than a distraction. We can steer how we use random encounters to stay true to the story, expand the world, and liven up the game for both our players and ourselves by introducing the unexpected.

Cook At The Table

Why use random encounters? Why not plan out every encounter the characters face so we can carefully tune them around the story? As we talked about in the article Randomness and Creativity, sometimes random elements make us more creative. We avoid stereotypes. We break out of our creative ruts. We push our minds towards new ideas we might not have seen otherwise. Just as attack rolls and saving throws change the outcome of a story, so can the dice help us generate entire scenes.

Rolling for random encounters is like cooking at the table instead of in the kitchen. We have the ingredients set up for us but a couple of die rolls change things up in ways we didn't expect.

For some DMs, this is scary. We like to have control over the game and might even feel like that control is critical to ensure the game will be fun. Sometimes, though, we have to just let go. For others, though, it can be a great way to sharpen our ability to improvise right at the table. We don't roll random encounters to divert the story of the game. We roll random encounters to find new and interesting ways to expand that story.

Add a Backdrop

When rolling for a random encounter, add an interesting backdrop to the encounter. Add a monument fitting the theme of your adventure. Come up with your own or roll randomly from a table of your own creation or the monuments tables in the Lazy DM's Workbook. Think of this like the background set of a play. What makes the location cool?

Use Theater of the Mind

Random combat encounters take time but they need not take a lot of time. When running a random combat encounter, skip the battle map and use theater of the mind or use a fast and loose abstract map with some generic monster tokens. Random encounters might not lead to combat anyway. The characters might sneak past, bluff past, or threaten their way through without drawing blood. If the swords do get drawn, stay in the narrative and keep it quick.

What's Coming or What Came Before

Instead of assuming the random encounter occurs right now, the roll might have revealed what was here before or what's coming afterwards. The characters might arrive at a location after a big creature or group of villains crossed the path. The characters can decide to follow them or leave them be and stay on their journey. Likewise, the characters might realize that something is stalking them and need to either set up an ambush of their own or shake the tail they've acquired.

Drop in Secrets and Clues

Random encounters are a great vehicle for secrets and clues. These discoveries tie the random encounter to the story of the game rather than making it a distraction. When this works well it feels like magic. Suddenly something we couldn't anticipate came true at the table and tied directly into the story.

Don't be a Slave to the Dice

Sometimes when you roll for a random encounter, the encounter that comes up doesn't make sense at all. Think about it for a moment but if you're stuck, roll again. Randomness and your creative brain work together, not separately. The dice help us break out of our current groove and think differently. If it really doesn't work out, roll again or let your eyes wander up and down the list of random encounters and pick one that makes sense.

Play to See What Happens

Running random encounters gives us a fun way to watch the game go in directions we never anticipated. By tying them to secrets and clues, running them as situations instead of forcing combat, and adding interesting backdrops; we create scenes never having been done before and all see where they go together. Add random encounters to your toolbox and play to see what happens.

Related ArticlesRandom Creativity in Dungeons & DragonsExploring ChultBreaking Conventional Thought with Random TablesThree Things to Do While TravelingRandom Tables of the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide

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Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Run Simple Adventures

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As DMs, our drive and creativity often lead us to build big, complex adventures. Yet often the best stories come from simple adventures bursting with unique results as we play them at our table. Don't shy away from simple adventures with straight forward hooks and typical fantasy locations. Let the characters' actions complicate the situation.

For more on this topic, see my three-minute YouTube video on Running Simple Adventures.

Dragon of Icespire Peak, the adventure in the D&D Essentials Boxed Set, is noteworthy in many ways. It may be my favorite D&D adventure, up there with Curse of Strahd and Lost Mine of Phandelver. One of its great strengths is it's simplicity. Characters pick up jobs from a local job board, go on quests, complete them, and return home for a new one. It seems almost too simple, and for some groups it may be, but many enjoy this adventure not because of what it has in it but how it plays out at the table.

The most interesting events in our game occur at the table, not when we plan our adventure. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is built on this idea. We prepare what we need to let the game travel in interesting directions at the table. This is why we don't tie secrets and clues to specific locations, NPCs, or objects. We improvise their discovery during the game.

We can plan deep and rich adventures with lots of details, intrigue, and complications; or we can run a simple classic adventure and let the complications happen at the table.

Examples of Simple Adventures

What do simple adventures look like? Here are ten example straight-forward quests you might use or that might inspire your own:

Collect the holy bell at the fallen monastery.Rescue the old cobbler lost in forgotten sewers.Defeat the elven warlord camping out at the ruined keep.Route the bandits threatening the village from the old dwarven mines.End the Black Sun cultist's ritual at the unhallowed megaliths.Find the sword of Kavan buried in the decrepit crypts outside of town.Root out the rat queen infesting the local inn with giant rats in the old cellars.Hunt down the murderous beast lairing in the caves along the southern foothills.Put the spirit of the red king to rest in the catacombs beneath the old church.Slay the Lord of Pigs in the infested warrens deep in the western forest.

Grab a Dyson Logos map, write down ten secrets and clues the characters might uncover in the location, throw in some monsters and treasure, and you have yourself a D&D game.

Shaking Up the Cliche

Sometimes a straight forward quest and adventure are all we need. Other times its worth shaking things up a little bit to make it unique. Here are ten ways we might shake up our otherwise common adventure:

Why are the villains right to do what they do?Shake up the ancestries and origins of the quest givers and the enemies.Add fantastic features: something huge, something old, something otherworldly.A villain or henchman is related to one of the characters.The antagonists are righteous to a fault.Add a new theme to the monsters: fiery, cold, acidic, necrotic, radiant, electric, poisonous, etc.Mix monster types: undead hellhounds, shadowy orcs, celestial werewolves.Add factions to the monsters and villains. Can the characters pit one side against another?Layer threats. Perhaps the villains are trying to escape something even worse.Escalation. The whole event was far worse than it seems.

Many times, however, we need not shake things up like this. A straight forward adventure will shake itself up as our mind runs off during the game.

Hanging On to Classic D&D

"Classic" D&D had adventurers delving deep into dungeons to find lost treasure and face terrible monsters. There's no reason we can't keep that purity in heart. While many have taken the game into tremendous depths of character and story, sometimes we just want to stab a giant rat with a sword. Run simple adventures.

Related ArticlesWest Marches Campaigns in GrendlerootA Guide to Official D&D 5th Edition Published AdventuresRunning Dragon of Icespire Peak from the D&D Essentials KitCombining the D&D Starter Set and Essentials KitDungeons & Dragons Starter Set: Running Phandelver

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Types of Secrets

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Secrets and clues are the powerhouse step in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. They're the glue that ties our games together. They're the reward for exploration and discovery. They're the interface between the characters and the world.

Secrets can be tricky, though, when you're just starting out. It's easy to over-think them. It may be easier to think about the types of secrets we can write up and go through these types when we're writing up the ten secrets for our next session. Some of these secret types include:

Character secretsLocation secretsHistorical secretsNPC or villain secretsPlot-revealing secretsAdventure hooks

Let's take a look.

Character Secrets

Review the characters is the first step from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master for a few reasons. Most importantly, it helps us remember that the characters are the center of the game and thus the rest of our prep circles around them. Secrets are no different. Character-driven secrets are a powerful way to draw the character (and the player) into the game. Here are a few character-driven secrets:

Atrabe's cousin became a high-ranking member of the Cult of the Dragon.Arwin's medallion secretly contains the soul of her father.Shift's brother, Lord Krash, became a prominent leader of the Emerald Claw.Banner's swordsiblings from the Last War have become members of the Lord of Blades.The illithid parasite within Shadow Hawk grows stronger and only the illithids can remove it.

Character-driven secrets can tie characters to historical facts, NPCs, villains, items, or be self-contained.

Location Secrets

What information might the characters learn about the locations around them? These secrets can capture and reveal the history of the world by the physical locations the characters explore. Here are some example location-based secrets.

The Mournland is a twisted hellscape formed at the end of the Last War when a weapon of terrible power destroyed the entire nation of Cyre.Clawrift once served as a vast artificers' laboratory in the city of Making until a terrible explosion bored a hole through its center.Myre's End once served as retreat for the fey prince Blackhorn but now serves as his mausoleum.The once mighty citadel of the Besilmer dwarves, Harrowholme has become a twisted temple to the demon prince Zuggtmoy.The academy of Eberron, a magical academy of Cyre, now serves as the headquarters to the Night's Kiss assassins.

Use secrets to give the characters and players insight into the locations in which they delve.

Historical Secrets

Vast histories of our campaign worlds usually don't stick in the minds of our players and no one wants to hear us read a history book for two hours. Secrets and clues help the characters (and players) learn the history of the world around them while they engage in their adventures. History and location-based secrets often overlap.

The Reghed tribes sometimes warred with and sometimes allied with the people of Ten Towns. One can never say how the tribes will react to their neighbors in Icewind Dale.The goblin empire of the Dhakaani once wielded arcane power surpassing even the modern day magic of Khorvaire.Once the Cult of the Dragon served ancient dragons by aiding their transformation into powerful dracolichs. Now the Cult of the Dragon seeks to draw Tiamat from Avernus.Lord Degault Neverember once served as the Open Lord of Waterdeep but left Waterdeep in disgrace after failing to deal with the Dragon Cult threat and returned to his home city of Neverwinter.Centuries ago, four heroes of the Desserin Valley built four citadels atop the dungeons they had explored, intending to defend against the evil that lay below.

Add historical secrets to expose the world of the campaign to your players one sentence at a time.

NPC and Villain Secrets

In our dynamic D&D games, our NPCs and villains are living and (sometimes) breathing beings. They're doing things. They came from somewhere. NPC and villain secrets show their movement in the world otherwise invisible to the players. Here are some examples.

The Daughters of Sora Kell never leave their ziggurats in the depths of Droaam and yet they've been sighted in the city of Making within the Mournland.Iymrith protects herself with a tribe of desert dwellers who worshiped her as a god for centuries.The Xanathar sent his best hunters and assassins into the streets of Waterdeep seeking an artifact said to be the key to a half-million gold dragons (the coin, not the beasts).Acererak the archlich found the dead husk of an unborn god in the darkest reaches of the astral sea and now hopes to bring it back to live with the sacrifice of million souls.House Xorlarrin never forgets a slight. They have sent the Night's Kiss assassins to Ten Towns to hunt down Shadow Hawk and bring his head back to Menzorberranzan.

Use NPC and villain secrets to show players the history and movement of the NPCs in the world.

Adventure Hooks

The eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master don't include adventure hooks. Secrets and clues are one great place to add adventure hooks into our prep notes. These might take the place of rumors the characters hear or plots driven by their enemies. Here are some examples.

Within the ruined city of Eston lies a half-machine half-god able to make the journey across the Mournland to the city of Making.The Daughters of Sora Kell, the armies of the Lord of Blades, and a powerful wizard of the Aurum all seek the weapon lost and buried in the center of Making.An old woman is the lone survivor of a village atop a bluff in eastern Chult. This wise woman is one of the few in Chult who know the location of the lost city of Omu.Two adventurers went to the mansion outside of Saltmarsh, the body of one of them washed ashore, her hands bound and armaments removed.Only Madame Eva of the Vistani knows how the devil Strahd might one day be destroyed.

Use secrets and clues to drop adventure hooks in front of the characters.

And Many More

These are but a few of the most popular types of secrets and clues. Above all, remember that secrets and clues serve you. Use them however you will to give you the lore you need when the opportunity arises in your next game.

Related ArticlesSecrets and Clues, the Secret Weapon of the Lazy Dungeon MasterRevealing SecretsThrowing Away SecretsThinking Two Horizons OutAdventure Hooks

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Talking To Your Players

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In the Edition Wars podcast covering the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide, the hosts and guests of the show discussed the importance of talking to your players, and how hard that can be sometimes. Saying "just talk to your players" puts a lot of weight on the word "just", stated Brandes Stoddard.

How do we talk to our players? How do we get feedback for our game? How do we make sure the game we're running is the kind of game our players want to play?

Running a Session Zero

Session zeros, now mentioned in many books and articles, including my own book, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and Wizards of the Coast's Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, help ensure you and your players are on the same page about the campaign you're about to run. Any campaign can benefit from running a session zero. Here's my article on session zeros for details.

Adding New Members to the Group

When adding new members to our group, take the time to really talk to them about what they want from a game and what sort of game you plan to run. You're goal isn't to sell your game but to make sure it's a good fit for them and that they will be a good fit for the group. What type of game do you run? What sorts of things do you do in your games that some players may not like? For me, I make it clear that I run lots of battles in the theater of the mind, with less of a focus on tactical combat than the evolving story. That's not for all players. Read more in my article in finding and maintaining a D&D group for more.

Incorporating Safety Tools

Before your game begins and during the game itself, it's important to have safety tools in place. I prefer a mix of "lines and veils" and some sort of verbal X card. These tools help ensure that the content you and your players bring to the game has clear boundaries up front but also has a way to pause the game and take stock out of character to make sure everyone's having fun. Read more in my article on safety tools.

Getting Feedback on your Game

It can be particularly hard to get direct feedback on your game once you're in the middle of a campaign. If you ask players general questions like "how do you like the game?" you're likely to get shrugs and "great!" or the like. Most of the time players are happy playing and aren't thinking about it too hard. That's fine, but it doesn't give us much for feedback.

If we want good feedback we have to ask specific questions.

Stars and Wishes

Stars and wishes comes from Lu Quade and is described in this article on the Gauntlet. Stars and wishes are designed to draw out positive feedback on a session, adventure, or campaign by asking each player two questions:

Stars. What are the things you liked best in our adventures so far? What did you love?

Wishes. What are you looking forward to in our future games?

Because you're asking each player these questions, you'll get insights into what they loved and likely what they did not, at least by omission if they don't bring it up themselves. You'll also hear what they want to see in future sessions, very valuable information for planning things out in the future.

What Happened in the Last Game?

I always like to start off the beginning of the session by asking the players to describe what happened in our last game. Often it takes them a bit to re-sync with what happened but I get good insight into what parts of the game they remember, what mattered to them, and what might safely fade into the shadows. This technique isn't for everyone. You may be more comfortable with your own recap or perhaps start the recap and let them fill in the blanks.

What Does Your Character Think About This?

In Your Best Game Ever, Monte Cook brings up another question we might add to the mix to learn more about the characters in our games. After a significant milestone in our game we can ask each player to describe how their character feels about the current situation. How does their character feel in the world right now? Like stars and wishes, this gives us a great deal of information we can file away for future sessions and gives us a peek into the mind of the player driving that character, showing us what they're paying attention to.

What Does Your Character Want?

Another good question to ask is what the players want for their characters. This probably works best one-on-one and isn't so critical that it can't be done over email or in Discord. Ask for just a few sentences in case the player wants to come back with six pages of backstory and ideas unless you're not bothered by that. Take note of what they want and try to give it to them if you can.

Be Specific

Whatever questions you use to get feedback from your players, be specific about it and focus it on them and their experiences. Here are some example questions you might ask:

How do you feel about the whole storyline with the cult of Auril?How do you feel about the balance of combat to roleplaying in our last session?What's your hope and dream for the storylineHow do you feel about the mysterious affliction that lets you read minds?Do you like easier battles? Hard battles? A mix?How did you feel about the challenge of that big fight with the demon? Too easy? Too hard?Where would you like to see your character's relationship with your estranged parents end up?What's your ideal outcome dealing with the Xanathar assassins who are hunting you?Where do you want to see your character's business end up and how can you keep that going while still going on adventures with the rest of the group?How do you like the Temple of the Moon that you guys acquired? What else do you want to do with it?

Specific questions are a key to great feedback.

The Magic Item Wish List

An easy question to ask, one reinforced in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, is the loose magic item wish list. Ask your players to describe the kinds of items their characters are interested in rather than specific magic items. You can mix in loot from this wish list along with randomly generated loot sure to surprise them as they adventure.

A Continuing Effort

Getting good feedback from our players is critical to running a great game and it isn't easy. You're more likely to get a shrug and a nod than a good detailed analysis of your game. That's ok. Asking the right questions can help you get useful feedback to help drive the game continually towards the enjoyment of everyone at the table.

Related ArticlesRunning Session Zeros2016 D&D 5th Edition Dungeon Master QuestionnaireSafety ToolsAsking the Wrong QuestionsFinding and Maintaining a D&D Group

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Choose Monsters Based on the Story

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Here's a one-line encounter building rule for you:

Choose the number and type of monsters that make sense for the story, the situation, and the world.

Many DMs build encounters by looking at the characters, their levels, and their overall power and then select monsters to challenge those characters. I argue this takes things backwards. The world doesn't conform to the level of the characters. The world is the world and it has exactly as many monsters of various types as it is supposed to, including monsters far weaker than the characters and a few far stronger.

This idea joins two other topics together: building situations and the lazy encounter benchmark. If you haven't read those articles, you may want to when you're done with this one.

Instead of balancing combat encounters around the characters, focus instead on running adventures appropriate for the station and power of those characters. We've talked about this before in tier-appropriate adventure locations. 1st level characters shouldn't likely be knocking on the door of a fire giant citadel and 18th level characters aren't likely hired to clean out a warren of kobolds. The quests fit the characters. The world does not.

Once the characters choose a quest appropriate to their capabilities, let go of worrying about encounter balance and instead focus on what makes sense for the location.

What would that location look like if the characters never showed up?

There's some diametrical thinking with D&D around this idea. When we're preparing our games we put the characters first in our mind. This is step one of the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master — intended to put the characters into our minds as we build out the rest of our adventure.

However, we also want to let go of the characters when we're filling out a location full of monsters. The lair is the lair regardless of the characters. How does it work on its own?

Too often DMs focus on how powerful the characters are and ignore everything else. When we review the characters, we're looking for backstories, hooks, plots, and desires we can tie into our adventure — not whether a character is level 8 with great weapon master. Many DMs ignore the backstory and focus on developing carefully calculated encounters for each room in a dungeon intended to challenge the party. Instead, focus on the story for both the characters and the monsters they might face.

Upward and Downward Beats with a Loose List of Inhabitants

In step seven of the eight steps (Chapter 9 in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master), we list the monsters that might show up in our session. There's a reason we don't tie monsters to locations most of the time. The situation is dynamic. It can change based on what's happening in the world and how the pacing of our game feels. Have the characters had a lot of great luck sneaking around the hobgoblin fortress? Maybe the next room is filled with veterans practicing their phalanx maneuvers. Have the characters been having a hard go of it with a lot of bad rolls? Maybe they find two hobgoblins passed out over a table full of cards. The situation is dynamic in these locations and we can decide during the game what sort of pacing will be the most fun for the moment.

Is it Deadly?

The only time we need to worry about the difficulty of an encounter is if it might be inadvertently deadly. We can check this quickly with the following guideline:

An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge levels is greater than one quarter of the sum total of character levels, or half of character levels if the characters are above 4th level.

This is close enough to the standard encounter building guidelines to serve us without needing an online tool or a bunch of reference tables. Of course, many factors change the difficulty of a battle beyond just level and challenge rating including the situation of the fight, environmental effects, magic items, player skill, character synergy, and others; but the benchmark is still a handy gauge to let you know if things are edging towards deadly. This is a loose guideline, not a hard rule, intended to be used after you've already built the encounter from the situation in the world. No encounter building system is accurate anyway so this is as good as any.

If they are walking into a deadly encounter, warn them. Their characters can probably tell things are dire even if the players can't. Give them a fair warning that "this foe is beyond you" so they can make an informed choice.

Always Consider the Story

The urge to focus on mechanics is strong but it's the story that matters. Just as our D&D games start and end in the fiction, so should our prep. What's happening in the world? What makes sense? What creatures would be lurking around here? Think about things from inside the world first and then examine the mechanics to bring it alive at the table.

Related ArticlesThe Lazy Encounter Benchmark, a Simple Measure for D&D Encounter DeadlinessA New Dungeon Master's Guide For Building EncountersBuilding Encounters in Fifth Edition Dungeons & DragonsD&D 5e Numbers to Keep In Your HeadThoughts on Unearthed Arcana's Encounter Building Guidelines

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Video Collaboration with Johnn Four

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Johnn Four from Roleplaying Tips and I partnered up to do a series of four YouTube videos to help GMs run awesome RPGs! You can get the first video on "Situations and the Five Room Dungeon", no strings attached, at the following URL:

https://youtu.be/L0xYZZoxVY0

You can get the next video in the series on the topic of "RPG Map Designs" by signing up on the following page:

https://www.roleplayingtips.com/lazy-gms/

This subscribes you to both my weekly newsletter and Johnn Four's weekly newsletter. Don't worry if you've already subscribed to one or both, you will still get the video and won't be subscribed twice.

The third video in the series is on "Running Heists and Capers" and is available to patrons of Sly Flourish's Patreon page which you can find here:

https://www.patreon.com/slyflourish

And the four video on "Running Mysteries" is available to patrons of Johnn Four's Patreon which you can find at:

https://www.patreon.com/johnnfour/

Johnn and I hope you love these videos as much as we loved putting them together! Thanks for checking them out!

Related ArticlesReturn of the Lazy Dungeon Master Video SeriesWhat D&D Looks LikeA Year with D&D 5e VideoReturn of the Lazy Dungeon MasterRime of the Frostmaiden Session Zero

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Stay in the Fiction

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I had a wonderful chat with Johnn Four of Roleplaying Tips recently and he said something that crystalized a thought swimming around my head for a while.

The world is the game.

More and more, when I look at various aspects of D&D, I come back to the same general advice: stay in the fiction. Instead, of asking how the game mechanics work for something, ask how that thing works in the world and then let the mechanics represent that. What monsters should you use in a given scene? What monsters make sense for the situation.

We sometimes forget that the mechanics represent what's happening in the world. They don't stand alone. When a DM is asked to judge a given situation, they can start by trying to understand what makes sense in the game world first and then judging the situation based on that understanding.

When you're thinking about an NPC, ask yourself how that NPC would act in the world. What do they want? Where did they come from? Do that before you start assigning DCs.

When you're trying to figure out how to fill up a dungeon, ask yourself what the dungeon used to be and what monsters or traps make sense. Think about the ecology.

When you pick up the monster manual, read the story of a monster before reading the stat block. Before you choose a monster of a given challenge rating because it fits the level of the characters, first look for monsters that make sense for the environment.

Want to keep combat interseting? Start and end with the fiction. Describe the situation based on what the characters see, ask for their actions, and then describe what happens. Did they get a killing blow? Ask them to describe what it looks like in the world.

Afraid every ogre looks or runs like every other ogre? Change up their in-world details before worrying about changing their mechanics. Maybe one has tattoos all up one half of his body while the other carries a club made out of the femur of a dragon.

Do you want a big complicated set of ability checks in a final battle? First, think about the ritual taking place in that final battle and how it works in the world. Let the choices of the players drive which mechanics you need to arbitrate the situation.

When it's time to wrap a situation in the world with mechanics, most of the time we can do so by assigning a DC and choosing an appropriate ability score and skill to attempt it. The simple ability check answers most of what we need most of the time.

Stay in the fiction. Bathe in the world. Think about what's happening in the story before choosing the mechanics to represent it.

The world is the game.

Related ArticlesThe Story Focus of D&DOur Ability Check ToolboxInstant NPCs for Fifth Edition D&DA New Dungeon Master's Guide For Building Encounters13 Tips to Speed Up D&D Combat

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Demogorgon Must Die: A Twenty Level D&D Campaign Outline

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This article outlines a twenty level campaign centering around the sinister plots of the demon prince Demorgorgon. Like The Hunger and Harvester of Worlds, this outline describes location-based adventures for each tier of play following a central arc. It's intended to inspire your own campaign outlines, offer subplots you can weave into your own campaigns, or even inspire your own Demogorgon-based campaign. Enjoy!

Campaign Elevator Pitch

Demogorgon begins a war...against themselves! Aameul, the charismatic and calculating head of the twin-headed demon prince plants the seed of a plot to finally split from their brutal chaotic other half, Hethradiah. All that must be done is to die. Unfortunately, such a feat will destroy much of the world along with it and birth a new chaotic demon prince in the process. The characters must untangle this thread, protect the world from the demon prince's war, and perhaps destroy the demon prince forever.

The Six Truths of Demogorgon Must DieCults are on the rise in the region.Mutated livestock have been born with two heads.Twisted nightmares pushed orc and goblinoid raiders back deep into their caves.Strange shadows and ghouls rise from fetid swamps attacking local villages.Strange symbols appear in ancient swampy caves, black myres, and forgotten grottos.Local lords and regional kings began conscripting and mobilizing armies for a coming war.1st Level: A Missing Mind

The campaign begins with the characters conscripted by an elderly mother whose son has gone missing in the nearby woods. Nightmares told the old woman that something unfathomable and sinister grips her son's body, lifts him, and pierces into his skull with a black tentacle.

The characters find the poor lad, comatose, with no visible wounds. A strange glyph has been burned into the grass surrounding the young man. Shadows (one for every two characters) slide out of the woods speaking in the abyssal tongue of the Deep Father as the lad rises up as a ghoul. The characters return to the woman with their grim news and reach 2nd level.

2nd to 4th Level: Rise of the Sibilant Beast

The characters uncover signs of not one but two cults vying for power in the region, each seeking to draw their own demon prince into the world and build it's throne.

Ruins of the Hungering Maw. The characters follow the signs of a nearby cult to ancient ruins of a dark keep. There they discover cultists pulling a demon out of the Gaping Maw.

Monastery of the Still Mind. Following the leads of those whose minds have been shattered, the characters travel to a nearby monastery supposedly helping those victims. Instead they discover an entirely different cult devouring the consciousness of their victims.

Altar of Spiraling Depths. Following clues from both cults, the characters travel to an underground temple where the Cult of Aameul and the Cult of Hethradiah wage war against one another only to find that both cults follow the same being — Demogorgon!

5th to 10th Level: The War of Spiraling Depths

The cults of Aameul and Hethradiah wage war across the land, corrupting kings and murdering hundreds as they crash together. The characters begin to unweave the plot of the twin-headed demon prince.

The Sundered Village. The characters travel to a village overtaken by festering ghouls and cultists of Hethradiah.

Pits of the Black Mire. The characters learn of a festering pit hidden away in the Black Mire where the Cult of Hethradiah spawns terrible psionic-empowered ghouls attacking neighboring villages.

Library of the Imprisoned One. In order to understand the true depths of the twin cults and the horror they worship, the characters travel to the library of Helm. There in the forbidden stacks, they discover that a sect of Helm's priests and paladins have supported Aameul for centuries.

Horror from the Gaping Maw. Vithriax, a two-headed troll priest, uses the power of both cults to call horrible demons out of the ancient gateway of Ix. The characters must travel to the gateway, face its demonic hordes, and close the portal to end the infestation.

Palace of Shattered Minds. The characters learn that the Cult of Aameul have dominated the minds of the rulers of Wyndgard palace, the city surrounding it, and the armies that protect it. The characters must make their way into the palace and break the Sphere of Aameul dominating the lords.

Warlocks of the Twisting Serpents. The characters travel to the spire of Twisted Serpents to face the yuan-ti warlocks of Demogorgon; the only followers who understand Demogorgon's duality. Only they know the true drive of both Aameul and Hethradiah.

11th to 16th Level: Discordia

The character learn that in order to save the world they must slay the avatar of Demogorgon in the world, acquire the only weapon capable of killing Demogorgon in their home world of the Gaping Maw, and travel to that accursed world to end Demogorgon's reign of destruction.

Return to Darklake. Years ago the kuo-toa summoned Demogorgon to the underdark through sheer force of will. How they did so remains a mystery sunken in the depths of Darklake. The characters must make their way to the ruined kuo-toa city and face the horrors they have manifested through their own mad callings before reaching the ruins beneath the black water and discovering the prophecy speaking secrets of the twin-headed demon prince.

The Bloodfields. Twisted by the influence of both Aameul and Hethradiah, war rages in the land. Deformed giants and demons led by the twin-headed ancient black dragon Selivis Twintongue fight the mind-twisted armies of the city of Wyndgard in league with Aamuel. The characters must find a way to stop both armies before they destroy every town and village stuck between them.

Hall of Secrets. Far in the frozen north lives a lich sage trapped in his own unhallowed halls. Having long-since given his soul to extend his life, the lich, Xorrus, is the only being who has discovered the true secret of Aameul's plot, the location of the weapon capable of destroying Demogorgon, and the yawning gateway that leads from this world to Demogorgon's own world, the Gaping Maw.

City of Shattered Mines. The avatar of Demogorgon destroys the city of Wyndgard, shredding bodies with its twisted tentacles and minds with its psionic attacks. The characters must return to the broken city, face, and defeat the avatar before it continues its reign of destruction.

Castle Discordia. The characters track back the trail of the avatar of Demogorgon to the legendary Castle Discordia, an ancient keep once thought to be pure myth. In its twisted halls and endless chambers the characters must find the portal to the Gaping Maw and the weapon capable of slaying the demon prince forever, guarded by Demogorgon's most powerful cultists and guardians.

The Gaping Maw. In the depths beneath Castle Discordia, beings of pure nightmare lurk in the darkness, never having seen the sun of the world above. The most loyal cultists, priests, and archmages in service to the cult of the Deep Father guard the portal between the world and the Gaping Maw. If the characters wish to save the world above they must enter the portal and close it from the other side.

17th to 20th Level: Death and Birth in the Gaping Maw

The characters step into the Gaping Maw, the abyssal layer of Demogorgon where the demon prince's war has shattered the plane. There they must make their choice to follow through with Aameul's plot, betray Aameul to Hethradiah, attempt to kill Demogorgon, or slay the resulting new demon prince rising from Aaemul's treachery.

The Brine Flats. The characters traverse an endless shore of white bones along the acidic oceans of the Gaping Maw. They come across the ruins of cities and temples fallen from other worlds and torn apart by the rampages of twisted undead and mutated demons before making their way to the gates of the Endless Jungle.

The Endless Jungle. The characters navigate the swamps and jungle stretching from the Brine Flats to the tower of Abysm. They find themselves hunted by the broken fomorian hunters of the jungle who serve the twin dracolichs who sired Selivis Twintongue.

The Towers of Abysm. The characters crawl through the catacombs beneath the twin twisted towers of Abysm seeking an entrance through the maddening labyrinth. Climbing within they face their own worst memories, torn from their minds and manifested. Along the way the final plots and seeds of both Aamuel and Hethradiah slide through the minds of the characters, offering them eternal glory should they side the right way.

Death and Rebirth. In the highest reaches of the Towers of Abysm the characters face Demogorgon's final guardians and uncover Aameul's sarcophagus containing their new body. In the final chamber the characters must defeat Demogorgon and their protectors before siding with one head over the other or choosing to destroy both and create a vacuum for something new. The decisions they choose change the face of the multiverse forever.

An Outline for Inspiration

The goal for an outline like this is to inspire your own campaign ideas and show one approach for outlining an entire campaign without writing a novel's worth of situations that may never come to pass. Campaign outlines give us the freedom to fill out an entire 1st to 20th level campaign arc without creating material that never hit the table. Hopefully this arc inspires your own campaign seeds and the adventures you share around the table with your friends and family.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, watch Sly Flourish videos on Youtube, join the Sly Flourish Discord server, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.