Michael E. Shea's Blog, page 26

Run Easy Battles

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Run easy battles.

Easy battles are a wonderful tool for D&D DMs. They add upward beats to your game when you need them. They open up interesting options for players who can now choose multiple ways to deal with easily defeated foes. They let players show off how their skills and powers have grown without much worry of the threat. They open up the story in ways no one can predict.

Easy battles are also a great way to inject some theater of the mind combat into a game that otherwise focuses on a gridded battle map and tokens or miniatures. Many DMs who rely exclusively on gridded map and tokens often complain that easy battles take up too much time. If you're going to bother setting up a battle map and tokens, why not make it a hard battle? If the battle is hard, it surely needs the minute tactics of a five foot grid, right? This feeds into a downward spiral. Every battle is hard because it's a waste of time to run easy battles on a battle map and people require a battle map because every battle is hard and tactical agency is important. Break the cycle with some easy theater of the mind fights.

Too many hard battles leads towards hopelessness and frustration. It's a continual string of downward beats, even when they win, because they only win by the skin of their teeth. Players don't get to show off their abilities to destroy easy foes because monsters keep going up in power at the same rate.

Here are a few tips to introduce some easy battles into your game:

Add zone-based, abstract, or theater of the mind combat as options in your game for easier battles.Let the story dictate what monsters lurk around in an area.Oscillate between easy and hard fights to maintain an exciting pace in your game. Maybe it's two sleepy orcs or twelve armored ogres depending on the circumstances.Worry less about draining the characters' resources. Let the story drive what challenges the characters face.Building Situations, Not Encounters

I've written before about building situations, not encounters and the importance of letting encounters occur organicaly when you're running the game. We can build encounters from two variables: what's happening in the world and what's fun at the game. We start by asking ourselves "what makes sense given the current situation" and then modify this by asking "what will be fun right now?". It might make sense for an entire army of hobgoblins to show up but if the characters have already faced large amounts of foes, maybe it's more fun for only two hobgoblins to show up; the two sent off on latrine duty.

Our goal isn't to burn down resources or run some ideal number of easy and hard encounters in an adventuring day. Our job is to set the stage for the world and let it react to the characters. We do this by starting with the story and then modifying it for the fun of the game.

Upward and Downward Beats

Excitement and energy in a game come from oscillating upward and downward beats; an idea described in Hamlet's Hit Points by Robin Laws. Easy battles are an easy way to inject an upward beat. Players don't get stressed out when their 11th level characters teleport into the garderobe of a fortress only to find a single troll sitting on the commode. That's an upward beat. Facing ten armored war trolls swinging weapons dripping in acid, that's stressful. That's a downward beat. It may turn into an upward beat if the characters succeed but with the resources drained it's still going to feel like a struggle. Too many battles like that in a row feels hopeless. It feels like a slog. Throw in a good share of easy fights and let the players have fun choosing how to kick them into orbit.

Play to See What Happens

Easy fights are great fun for DMs because we don't know how the players will choose to deal with them. Sometimes a fight against a troll sitting on a commode may be the most exciting one if that troll could yell and summon a whole ziggurat of war trolls on the party. Battles against weaker foes have many more options for the characters than battles against hard foes. Generally speaking, when facing a powerful force, your only option is to unload everything you have and kill them. When facing two sleepy orcs, however? Now the options open up.

Easy Battles: A Useful DM Tool

Add easy battles to your DM toolbox. Easy battles add upward beats to your game when you need them, give the players the chance to show off their power, and let the story of your game go in new and interesting directions.

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.

Ending Campaigns

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At some point our D&D campaigns come to an end, hopefully by a point in the story and not due to real-life events. Today we'll talk about how to run awesome endings for our D&D campaigns.

Kitchen Sink Final Battles

Often the best conclusion we can have in our D&D games is a nice big final fight. Whether it's Tiamat, Iymrith, Strahd, or Acererak; good final battles close campaigns in a strong way.

Building great final battles is hard. That's why Scott Fitzgerald Gray, James Introcaso, and I partnered up to write Fantastic Lairs which gives you twenty three big bad boss fights for your D&D games.

There are a few other things we can do to make our boss fights awesome:

Run waves of monsters. Monster waves are a great way to hit characters hard and is particularly useful when challenging high level characters. Throw waves of monsters before the boss shows up. This lets the boss show up at their own time and in their own way so the characters can't overprepare and kill them in one shot. The pace of the waves is also under your control.

Make the environment awesome. Split the battle across two sides of a portal to hell. Center it around a massive arcane gate about to explode. Set your battle on a huge crashing airship or in a room with a huge soul-eating machine hanging above a massive pool of lava. Make the environment of your final battle awesome. Give it some interesting mechanical effects that affect both characters and monsters alike.

Keep your hands on the dials. Balancing boss battles so you get perfect edge-of-the-seat excitement out of your players is hard to do. Luckily we DMs have some dials we can turn during combat to change things up. Adding waves of monsters or increasing their pace is one big dial. Adding or removing monsters is another. Increasing or decreasing hit points is a third. Adding or removing attacks or damage is another. We can tweak all of these things behind the screen, making sure that the threat keeps things exciting.

You can find more tips in our Collected Experiences Running Boss Fights.

Give Them What They Want

Fun stories surprise us with twists and turns but those twists and turns rarely serve well during the ending of a story. I wrote about this before in Breaking Endings where we looked at the ending of the TV show Breaking Bad. While the ending of that show broke many of the rules set by the rest of the show, it gave us what we wanted. A nice satisfying ending. Not all shows treat us so well.

While you might be inclined to add some crazy twists and turns to your campaign's conclusion, ask yourself if that's really what the players want. You can even ask them what they want and then give it to them. Make the ending memorable and satisfying.

One Year Later

I love time-jumps in stories. It's always awesome to fill in the blanks when time skips ahead and we don't know what happened in between.

One of my favorite tricks for ending a campaign is to ask the players where they see their characters one year after the final conclusion of the campaign. Often the stories I receive are the most interesting in the campaign. This is a way to fully hand the story over to the players. You have no new direction for the campaign at this point so you don't have to steer them at all. The characters can get married and settle down on a farm. They can become warlords in a far-away land or professors at a prestigious new arcane college. They can unite factions or start a warforged circus to soften the hardships between warforged and other humanoids.

I've asked for "one year later" stories from my players in a half-dozen campaigns now and I've never been disappointed. One-year-later stories are wonderful.

Teos Abadia takes this a step further by asking for stories 10 to 100 years later. Let the players take it as far as they want.

A Bookend to a Fantastic Tale

We want our campaign endings to be fun, memorable, and satisfying. Most often we're in danger of over-thinking it. Ask your players what they want, build in a fun climactic encounter, and ask them to talk about their characters one year after the ending. Sit back and listen to the end of a fantastic tale.

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.

Gems of the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide

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The Dungeon Master's Guide is an under-appreciated and undervalued tome of useful information and tools for D&D Dungeon Masters. Today we're going to look at some of the the Dungeon Master's Guide' hidden gems.

How to Read the Dungeon Master's Guide

The organization of the Dungeon Master's Guide is puzzling and, I'd argue, not the best way to parse the job of being a dungeon master. Instead of reading it front to back, I suggest starting with part 2, followed by part 3, and then part 1. This puts adventure building ahead of worldbuilding and content about the outer planes; useful information best left to the end of the book.

DM Advice

The DMG contains lots of useful advice for dungeon masters spread widely throughout the book. Here are some of its most useful gems:

Core Assumptions (Chapter 1, "The Big Picture", pg 9). Useful to understand what a default D&D world looks like. Your own world may vary from this but it's useful to understand what a default world looks like in D&D and how it works with the default mechanics, spells, and magic items of the rest of the game.

Start Small (Chapter 1, "Creating a Campaign", pg 25). Good advice buried in a worldbuilding section; this section helps DMs recognize that the most important parts of a campaign are the parts surrounding the characters.

Chapter 2: Creating a Multiverse (pg 43-68). While not directly practical in most D&D campaigns, the flavor of the multiverse can fill in the details of many ancient tombs or wizard towers. The imagery and iconography of the planes can teach the players a lot about what lurks outside of their known world.

Mapping a Wilderness (Chapter 5, pg 108). This section actually offers excellent advice for running pointcrawls without ever using the term.

Useful DM Tools and Inspiration

Starting at Higher Levels (Chapter 1, "Tiers of Play", pg 38). How much gold should characters have if they start at a higher level? How many magic items in a high-magic campaign? This table has you covered.

Dungeon Hazards (Chapter 5, "Mapping a Dungeon", pg 105). Brown molds, green slime, and webs all help fill dungeons with interesting terrain we might otherwise forget.

Airborne and Waterborne Vehicles (Chapter 5, "Unusual Environments", "The Sea", pg 118). Are the characters looking to buy a sailing ship or airship? This section has the basics covered.

Traps and damage (Chapter 5, "Traps", pg 121). The core rules for building your own traps. Mix it with the random trap generator on page 297.

Downtime Activities (Chapter 6, pg 127-131). Excellent additions to the downtime activities offered in the Player's Handbook. You can expand these further with the downtime activities in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

Epic boons (Chapter 7, 231-232). Looking to give your characters a nice powerful boost without a physical item? Epic boons are your answer.

Advantage and Disadvantage (Chapter 8, "Using Ability Scores", pg 239). A great section that goes beyond the basics of advantage and disadvantage. Instead it shows DMs how to use these powerful tools to improvise situations in any given scene.

Inspiration (Chapter 8, "Using Ability Scores", pg 240-241). I often hear complaints about inspiration. This section offers many different ways you can handle giving out inspiration, some of which you can use together.

Tracking Initiative (Chapter 8, "Combat", pg 247). Lots of options for tracking and recording initiative for new DMs.

Tracking Monster Hit Points (Chapter 8, "Combat", pg 247). Includes my favorite method of assigning an interesting in-world physical characteristic to monsters to help identify them.

Bloodied rule (Chapter 8, "Combat", "Tracking Monster Hit Points", pg 248). Yes, "bloodied" exists in 5e! While it isn't a mechanical condition anymore, you can still describe a creature being bloodied and this section tells you how.

Monsters and Critical Hits (Chapter 8, "Combat", pg 248). Describes how to handle a monster's critical hit when using average damage; a common question.

Improvising Damage (Chapter 8, "Combat", pg 249). An excellent set of tables to help you improvise damage from a falling bookcase to tumbling into a vortex into the elemental plane of fire.

Adjudicating Areas of Effect (Chapter 8, "Combat", pg 249). Guidelines for running areas of effect using the "theater of the mind". One of my favorite sections. See running Theater of the Mind combat for more.

Handling Mobs (Chapter 8, "Combat", pg 250). A table to determine how many monsters might successfully hit (or make a saving throw) given the monster's attack bonus (or save bonus) and the target's armor class (or save DC). It's missing a discussion on pooling damage across a large number of monsters but it still gets us close to being able to fight an unlimited number of monsters. See horde rules for more.

Ability Options (Chapter 9, pg 263-264). Looking to simplify D&D's skill system? This section has lots of options including background or class based proficiency bonuses. I doubt anyone uses these optional rules but they could make for a much simpler version of D&D in which you get your proficiency bonus to attribute checks based on your character's class or background.

Hero points (Chapter 9, "Ability Options", pg 264). A mechanic used in the Eberron Oracle of War campaign that stacks on top of inspiration. If you want another way to boost characters, here's an answer.

Initiative Variants (Chapter 9, "Combat Options", pg 270). Lots of alternative methods for running initiative.

Acton Options (Chapter 9, "Combat Options", pg 271). A favorite of many; this section describes optional combat actions characters might take including disarming, tumbling, or climbing up on monsters. Lots of neat options a DM might use given the circumstances of a battle.

Cleaving Through Creatures (Chapter 9, "Combat Options", pg 272). A great way to make a melee character feel like Conan, cleaving options let damage carry over from one slain enemy into another. A great circumstantial rule when fighting lots of monsters.

Monster Features (Chapter 9, "Creating a Monster", pg 280-281). A huge list of monster features you can apply to custom monsters of your choice. Goes hand-in-hand with the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table on page 274.

NPC Features (Chapter 9, "Creating a Monster", pg 282). An overlooked table that offers options to build variant NPCs of different races. The skeleton and zombie ones in particular give you a huge range of undead versions of existing monsters. Mix these with the race-less NPCs in the Monster Manual. A few more of them would have really helped.

Monsters with Classes (Chapter 9, "Creating a Monster", pg 283). Want to give a fire giant a few classes of barbarian? This section tells you how to add character class features to your monsters to shake things up.

Maps (Appendix C, pg 310-315). A wonderful selection of about ten maps including one I designed myself for Vault of the Dracolich! If you ever need a town, cave, or dungeon map, this section has what you need.

Awesome Random Tables to Inspire Your Game

The DMG is also packed with great tables to inspire your game. Easily overlooked, these tables can help you build truly fantastic adventures and campaigns. Next time you're starting to prep your game, give some of these tables a roll and see what comes up.

World-shaking Events (Chapter 1, "Campaign Events", pg 27-32)Dungeon and Wilderness Goals (Chapter 3, "Adventure Types", pg 73)All the adventure building tables in Chapter 3, "Adventure Types", page 74 and 75.Event-based Goals (Chapter 3, "Adventure Types", pg 76)Framing Events (Chapter 3, "Adventure Types", pg 79)Villain Schemes and Methods (Chapter 4, "Villains", pg 94-95)Dungeon & Exotic Locations (Chapter 5, "Dungeons", pg 99)Dungeon Origin Details (Chapter 5, "Dungeons", pg 100-101)Monuments & Weird Locales (Chapter 5, "Mapping a Wilderness", pg 108-109)Current Calamity (Chapter 5, "Settlement", pg 112)Tavern Name Generator (Chapter 5, "Settlement", pg 113)Carousing (Chapter 6, "Downtime Activities", pg 128)Magic item special features (Chapter 7, "Magic Items", pg 142-143)Magic Item Table B (rare consumables) and F (uncommon permanent magic items) (Chapter 7, "Magic Items", pg 144 and 146)Madness Effects (short term) (Chapter 8, "Madness", pg 259)Chamber Purpose (Appendix A, "Stocking a Dungeon", pg 292-295)Random traps (Appendix A, "Stocking a Dungeon", pg 297)Random tricks (Appendix A, "Stocking a Dungeon", pg 298)The DMG: Your D&D Toolbox

Easily overlooked, the Dungeon Master's Guide is a fantastic resource to help you fine tune your game and inspire your own games. Every six months or so, pull it out and skim it page by page to remind yourself what you can find within its pages. Inside you'll find limitless inspiration for your own fantastic adventures.

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.

Rime of the Frostmaiden Session Zero

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This article discusses how to run a session zero for the D&D hardcover adventure, Rime of the Frostmaiden and contains spoilers for the adventure.

For a video on this topic, watch my Frostmaiden Session Zero YouTube Video.

Clarifying the Theme of Rime of the Frostmaiden

Unlike other adventures, Rime of the Frostmaiden is designed as a book of related quests than a single cohesive storyline. While one might assume the drive of Rime of the Frostmaiden is to "end the eternal night", that drive isn't the best way to motivate the characters in the early parts of the adventure. Instead, we can motivate the characters to follow the wide range of quests in this adventure with the following theme:

"Help the people of Ten Towns survive the endless night."

This gives our characters a clear motivation to follow quests in the adventure wherever they may lead. A common complaint of Frostmaiden is that it lacks this single cohesive narrative that drives the characters through all of the material of the book. If, instead, we reinforce the theme that the characters are there to help the people of Ten Towns, just about every quest works well.

Frostmaiden Session Zero Checklist

When we run a session zero, it helps to clarify our goals in a checklist. Here's my own Frostmaiden session zero checklist:

Give out the Frostmaiden one-page Frostmaiden Campaign Handout and discuss it.Discuss Frostmaiden's themes and our group's safety tools.Work with the players to choose a group patron.Give players their character's secret.Work with the players to build characters together.Give the players the optional Icewind Dale backgrounds in the book's introduction.Give each character a trinket from Appendix A.Run a short introductory adventure.Beginning in Bryn Shander

Rime of the Frostmaiden gives you the option to start in any of the ten towns of Ten Towns. It recommends, if you cannot choose, to select Bryn Shander, which is what I did. I've seen many discussions online about which town to start in but this one worked well for me.

Frostmaiden One-Page Campaign Guide

For every campaign I run I like to give out a one-page campaign handout. Here's the PDF of my one-page Frostmaiden Campaign Handout. I usually give out these handouts a couple of days before the session zero so the players have enough of a chance to give it a read but not so much that their imaginations go wild and they come to the game with characters fully fleshed out. We want the players to build characters together so they fill in the right roles and build some inter-character relationships before we start.

The Importance of Safety Tools

Rime of the Frostmaiden is a rough adventure. Reading through the adventure, I came to the following potentially uncomfortable material:

DarknessDeadly ColdBetrayalParanoiaMurderIncestIsolationCannibalismMental assaultRitual sacrificeParasitic monsters Child endangermentViolence towards animals

It's worth discussing the content of this adventure before you choose to run it, even before a session zero, but its certainly worth discussing during your session zero as well.

Consider using the checklist from Monte Cook Games's Consent in Gaming to see if there are any issues players might have with the content in Icewind Dale.

Even after you've worked with your players to discuss the themes they're comfortable and uncomfortable with, you'll want some sort of safety tool in place during the game. Situations can come up quickly that may push a player out of their comfort zone and you want to ensure you can grab onto this quickly and move the story away from the subject at hand. This may seem overly cautious but it can happen to anyone, regardless of how long they've been gaming, and it's best to ensure you're steering the game towards enjoyment for all.

See this excellent safety tool reference by Tomer Gurantz for details on lines, veils, X cards, and so on.

In my own game I chose to use lines, veils, and a verbal X-card for our group in which anyone can say "pause for a second" over chat to break character and discuss whats going on out of character.

You can see more about how I use these in my safety tools video.

Group Patrons

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything describes options for adding group patrons to our game and Frostmaiden is a great place to do it. You can spend some time reading through the adventure and choosing your own group patrons. I chose the following four:

Vellynne Harpell. A neutral-aligned Member of the Arcane Brotherhood, Vellynne becomes more important in the later parts of the adventure but she'd make for a fun and somewhat sinister group patron early on. Vellynne can be inclined to aid the people of Ten Towns to restore the damage done by Vaelish Gant years before and to gather more information about the secrets locked under the ice of Icewind Dale. Potential Tasha's group patron benefits: Academy.

Sheriff Markham Southwell. A lawful good sheriff of Bryn Shander, Sheriff Markham makes for a very solid group patron with ties to Bryn Shander's speaker, Duvessa Shane, and knowledge of the other towns. The sheriff would bring on the characters to take care of the jobs that he and the town guard cannot do themselves, including building stronger relationships with the other towns and aiding in their problems. Potential Tasha's group patron benefits: Military Force.

Hlin Trollbane. The neutral good Hlin can make for a good group patron serving outside of the law but with the drive to serve as a bastion of good in the darkness surrounding Ten Towns. Her first drive to hunt down the cold hearted murderer is a great start. Potential Tasha's group patron benefits: Guild.

Dannika Graysteel. The chaotic good half-elf scholar who comes to Ten Towns to understand what strange phenomena brought the endless night to Ten Towns can make a strong group patron. Like the others, she desires to help the people of Ten Towns but in particular wants to understand what has changed the natural order of things in Icewind Dale. Potential Tasha's group patron benefits: Religious Order.

Alternative Character Secrets

If you're using the character secrets in Frostmaiden, it's better to let players choose them before they start building characters. In many cases the secrets have racial limitations and won't work if the players choose races outside of those tied to the secret.

I wasn't crazy about the secrets in the book. I found them too limiting and felt they took agency away from the player when building their characters. Instead, I offered randomly selected options from the list below which includes more open-ended secrets so the player has more room to fill it in with their own details. Use this list of alternative secrets if you prefer them:

You are a spy keeping an eye out for the Arcane Brotherhood.You are being hunted by a noble family for a crime or slight you committed.You are fleeing from gangsters of the city of Luskin.As a child you were left in the cold to die but an owl-shaped humanoid saved you.You were secretly raised by yetis.You were infected by an otherworldly parasite.You are the secret heir for royalty in hiding.You have hazy dreams of being kidnapped by an alien race and then crashing down in the ice.You seek an heirloom was stolen from you long ago.You covet a small amulet made of a strange black and silver metal. Sometimes you hear it speaking to you.You have dreams of a massive strange black structure, a city, buried under the ice.Someone you love was murdered by a ghost.You are actually an escaped clone, a construct, built by the Arcane Brotherhood for some unknown purpose.You were reincarnated into your current form by a mysterious druid.You are outcast for having documented forbidden text. It could be dark magic or a tell-all book.You are an escaped and hunted prisoner.You have a phobia of talking animals.You witnessed a terrible crime and fear the one who committed it.You escaped a mark for sacrifice to Auril.Your dreams are filled with tentacled nightmares.

One important tip for assigning secrets is to not let the players see the whole list so they can't guess what the secret is for another player. Instead, have them roll 1d20 and tell them privately what the secret is. If they like it, they keep it. If they hate it, they roll again for a new secret. They never, however, see the entire list of secrets so they can't guess what secrets another character has.

A Better Cold Open

Rime of the Frostmaiden offers 13 potential starter quests but gives us no idea which ones work well at any given level. Instead, we have to figure it out or we face the potential of our characters becoming overwhelmed by a deadly encounter. Most of the time, at 2nd level and above, the characters my get over their head but can probably escape. 1st level, however, is the deadliest level in D&D by far. It really should have its own rules for encounter building.

Thus, I recommend running a short adventure specifically designed for 1st level characters to get them to 2nd level quickly.

In my own game, I began with the characters making their way to the Northlook Inn to meet with their group patron when they saw a number of figures (one for every two characters) hunched over and chewing on a body. When the characters investigate, these creatures reveal themselves to be ghouls. When the characters dispatch the ghouls, they investigate the body and discover that the ghouls were eating it but they clearly didn't kill it. Instead it was killed with an frozen dagger, the icy blade still in the lethal wound.

When they take their findings to their patron, they get 2nd level and are now better prepared for the trials of Ten Towns.

This introduction leads the characters to the larger Cold Open quest and their hunt for Sephek Kaltro. Sephek is deadly for 1st level characters but can be defeated at higher levels. If the characters face him at 3rd or 4th level, you can have him summon some icy ghouls tied to his connection to Auril to make the encounter even more dangerous.

A Strong Introduction to an Icy Adventure

Session zeros are vital for running excellent cohesive campaigns in which the characters are tied to one another and to the theme and drive of the campaign's story.

There's more to come as we dig deeper into Rime of the Frostmaiden including grouping the chapter 1 quests into more manageable batches.

Hopefully this article gave you your own tools to run an awesome session zero and begin a fantastic adventure with your friends.

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.

Handling Rests in D&D

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The frequency of rests, both long rests and short rests, is critical to the pacing of our D&D games. Too many rests and the characters enter every situation armed with the full force of their character at their disposal. Too few and players feel helpless and frustrated as they watch their characters dwindle down to their last remaining hit point.

It behooves DMs to recognize how and when we offer rests to the characters. It helps when we pay conscious attention to it and arm ourselves with the tools to manage rests and maintain the right exciting pacing of our D&D games.

Reviewing the Core Books

On any topic like this, it always helps to go back to the core books and see what they have to say on the topic. Chapter 8 of the Player's Handbook includes the basic descriptions of short and long rests. An interesting note, the default rules state that a character only regains half their expended hit dice on a single long rest. That often gets omitted in play. The section is worth reviewing but offers no guidance for DMs on how best to offer or control such rests. Also worth noting is that a character can only benefit from one long rest in 24 hours.

Chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master's Guide describes the expectation that characters receive two short rests per adventuring day. Xanathar's Guide to Everything offers optional exhaustion rules should characters choose to forgo a long rest during a 24 hour period of time.

An oft-described and, in my opinion, misinterpreted description in the Dungeon Master's Guide states the following:

"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day."

This is often interpreted that characters should face six to eight encounters in an adventuring day. I disagree. Instead, characters should face as many encounters as makes sense given the situation and circumstances. More on this in a moment.

With all of their descriptions, the Dungeon Master's Guide and Xanathar's Guide don't offer much guidance on how best to handle rests in our D&D games to maintain the right pacing. Let's fix that now.

Rests and Combat Challenge

How well rested the characters are is a major factor in how challenging they find combat encounters. Well-rested characters, particularly at high levels, have many more resources at their disposal and can often succeed in very difficult battles, sometimes with ease. Characters that have faced a significant number of foes and expended many of their daily resources will have a much harder time when facing difficult encounters.

Ensuring the characters don't face a final battle fully prepared is one of the top suggested ways to ensure the characters don't destroy boss monsters too easily.

When designing a combat encounter intended to be challenging, it helps to burn down the characters' resources with previous battles and little chance to rest. This is why waves of monsters works particularly well in boss fights. Two waves of monsters before a final boss is a great way to ensure the boss doesn't face fully-rested characters ready to nuke them from orbit.

When to Offer Rests

The easiest way to manage rests is to let the story dictate when and where rests can take place. If the characters are on a long journey on a well-traveled road or exploring a safe city, it's likely they'll be able to take long rests without difficulty. If they're deep in a dungeon filled with terrible monsters and few safe rooms, it's unlikely the characters can stop in the middle of a four-way hallway and rest for eight hours undisturbed. Much of the time we can let the story dictate how often the characters can take short or long rests. Even then, we may need to be explicit in describing these opportunities to the players.

Explicitly Describe Opportunities for Rests or the Lack Thereof

Players don't understand what's going on about half the time. This is a common rule of mine to help me recognize that while the story and situation may be perfectly clear in my mind, it isn't necessarily as clear to my players. This is equally true with rests. It may not be clear to the players that their characters can take the opportunity for a short or long rest or what might happen if they do.

For this reason it's best to be explicit in describing the opportunities and risks for taking rests. If you know they've reached a chamber in a dungeon monsters likely to leave alone, you might mention to the players that they can take this opportunity for a short rest without risk. If they've cleared out a chamber likely safe for eight hours or more, you can mention that they have the opportunity for a long rest without risk.

Likewise, when they enter dangerous locations for the first time, mention to them that their opportunities for rests will be rare, or even non-existent, and that they should plan accordingly. Mention this up front so players know they must manage their resources accordingly. You may go a step further and mention that they may have only one or two opportunities for a short rest in such a place.

Managing Rests with Time Sensitive Quests

While dangerous locations ensure characters can't take a lot of rests, spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut can make even the most dangerous locations safe. The best way to threaten the characters here isn't with wandering monsters or random encounters but with time-sensitive quests. If the characters are trying to stop a villain from completing a ritual, you can mention that the villains will certainly be done with the ritual before the characters can complete a long rest. Likewise, if they're chasing a particular villain, that villain may escape or move on if the characters wait too long. As the DM you can keep your hand on this dial, informing the players that they do not have time for a long rest if they want to successfully complete their quest but may have time for a short rest.

Running time-sensitive quests is one of the most effective ways to manage rests in your D&D games.

Rest Interrupters

If rests come too quickly and easily, you may need to inject environmental effects or situations that prevent the characters from resting too often. Here are ten examples of effects or situations that prevent the characters from taking either a short or long rest (your choice).

Spectral wailingA character's disease will overtake themPlanar instabilityHostile environments (too cold, too hot)Psychic resonanceTectonic shiftsThe drive of an intelligent itemA lifedraining effectHorrible nightmaresContinual loud noises

Characters can only take rests in areas conducive to such rests. Many circumstances may continually interrupt the characters in ways they cannot control. Spells like Leomand's Tiny Hut, however, will likely bypass such difficulties.

If you need to better control the rests the characters can take, tailor one or more of the effects above to prevent the characters from taking short or long rests too easily.

Restful Opportunities

The flip side of this is dropping opportunities for rests, short or long, when it may not seem like such an opportunity would be available. Here are ten ways to drop opportunities to rest in the middle of hostile locations, like dungeons. Many of these can restore the characters as though they had taken a short or long rest without actually requiring the time. This helps offer rests even when time is tight.

A secret door leads to a lost healing fontThe characters find potions that offer the equivalent of a restThe villain's plans have been set back, offering time for a restA trapped celestial entity offers to restore the charactersA forgotten passage leads to a hidden room safe for restsThe characters find a magic item with a single use of Leomund's tiny hutThe characters enter a dream state that offers them a rest in shorter timeA divine caster's god or patron bestows a restful blessing upon the partyInfighting between hostile factions draws attention away from the charactersInvigorated by their recent victories, the characters earn the equivalent of a short restControl Rests and Control the Pacing of your Games

By taking an active hand in managing how and when short and long rests become available, you have a better hand in controlling the pacing of your game. Players feel powerful and optimistic when rested, and vulnerable and cautious when they haven't rested in some time. Most of the time you can let the story dictate when the characters can rest. Other times, however, you'll want to carefully plan how and when the characters can take rests, both short and long, and describe this to your players so they know how to manage their resources up front. Use rests as a dial to manage the upward beats, downward beats, and pacing of your D&D games.

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.

Building Villains Like Pro-Wrestlers

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I read a fantastic Reddit post called How to Create Pay-Per-View Worthy Adventures or How to Stop Worrying and Start DMing Like Vince McMahon I wanted to ponder and share with you. I recommend reading the whole post if you can. The premise of the article is that there's a big overlap between the storytelling of pro wrestling and how we run our D&D games.

Not being into pro wrestling, it took me some work to dissect the ideas in the article and turn them into ones I could understand and embrace.

Gross Storytelling

From my understanding, pro-wrestling is about gross storytelling. There's not much subtlety in the story. Not much nuance. It's about big bold moves, big actions, big events. Everything is over the top. Look how Vince McMahon walks. It's like Japanese theater where the warriors have to throw their knees out when they walk to show how big and powerful they are.

This same lack of subtlety can help us in our D&D games. Players aren't grasping half of what we DMs throw out during a game. Subtlety gets easily lost. Big gross moves get attention. Most of the specific ideas in the original post come from this idea. Big moves matter.

Give Villains Nicknames

Good villains are known many ways. It isn't just "Leto Skalle". It's Leto Skalle; the Scourge of Xen-drik, Slayer of Nartholex the Depraved, Platinum Hand of the Aurum, and the Black Blade of Sora Ketra. Good villains are known across the land for various deeds and the more of those deeds the characters hear about, the more they'll be intrigued by that villain. Give your villain lots of nicknames.

Give the Villains a Sidekick

Good villains have great sidekicks, the sidekicks players hate nearly as much as the villains. The sidekicks do their dirty work. The sidekicks announce their presence. The sidekicks are the annoying voices and worshipers of the villains. With a good sidekick, your players now have two villains to hate.

Give Villains a Gimmick

Maybe your villain always has a cup of tea in their hand, regardless of where they are or what they're doing. Maybe they have a pet flying snake. Give your villains a gimmick. Maybe they hide their identity with a toothpick. Think Blofeld and the white cat in James Bond. Players will dig this. They'll remember it. Give your villains a gimmick.

Leave Mysterious Blanks in Your Villain's Origin

No one knows where Leto Skalle came from. He seemed to be in the upper ranks of the Droaam for as long as anyone knew him. Suddenly he's a platinum ringer in the Aurum or off for a multi-year expedition in Xen'drik. He went into the tomb of Narthotex with forty soldiers and came out alone with one eye turned bright blue. He comes from "parts unknown". Leave mysterious gaps in your villain's history.

Recast Your Villains

If your villain dies early, bring them back. Give them a new origin, an new nickname. Leto Skalle may die early on but once resurrected by the Dreaming Dark, he now speaks with the voice of the Quori within him and has a stable of new powers. We DMs have an unlimited stable of villains but when the players are invested in one of them, we can recast them even when defeated; bringing them back as something worse than they were before. This works well with lichs and vampires in particular. Recast villains when defeated.

Build a Stable of Villains

Build a stable of villains. Leto Skalle is bad but not nearly as bad as Leto Skalle, his sister Cavellah, and the three Daughters of Sora Kell working together to build the new Weapon of Mourning. Build an evil Justice League working against the characters. Build your own Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. A stable of villains is much harder to defeat than one villain alone.

Villains Don't Fight Fair

Villains always fight when they have the upper hand. They cheat. They'll punch you in your injured shoulder. It's important, however, to watch those beats. While it's good fun for a villain to fight when the environment supports them, you don't want the battle to feel hopeless. Fight dirty until the characters get the upper hand. More on this in a moment.

Exploit the Villain's Weakness

Likely, in an evolving game, the characters themselves may find a way to exploit the villain's gimmick. Maybe we poison his tea. Maybe we steal the Xanathar's goldfish. Let the characters find a way to use a villain's own gimmick against them.

Stick it to the Metagamers

In the wrestling world you have "smarts", "marks", and "smarks". Smarts see the theater for what it is — theater. Marks like to believe every moment of it. They're in the story. Smarks known the story is theater but go with it anyway. In our game, metagamers are the smarts. They know how beholders work. They know how many hit points a dragon roughly has. Change things up. Give mages spells from Deep Magic that none of the players have heard of. Give the Lord of Blades a stable of warforged horrors from Arcana of the Ancients and Beasts of Flesh and Steel Change things up, shock them, surprise them.

Inject the "Swerve"

Let the story take unexpected twists and turns. Villains become bad guys. Good guys become villains. Villains try to ally with the characters against more dangerous foes. Often our games take strange turns all on their own but if things feel too straight, give them a shock. This is fine to do in the middle of a game but don't do it at the end of a game or you end up with Game of Thrones. Swerving is fine but at the end, give them what they want.

Let Players Get the Upper Hand

Vince McMahon may walk like a theatrical Japanese warrior but even he knows when it's time to get beat up with his own bedpan in his underwear. Your bosses may be complete dicks but your player almost certainly find ways to get the upper hand and, when they do, let them. Ham it up. Let the villain beg for forgiveness or scream about how unfair it all is. Let them fall into their own traps and burn in their own pyres.

Good Tips for an Evolving Game

One thing I love about these tips is that they don't assume what the characters will do. We can use all of these ideas without requiring that the characters go in one direction or another. When we focus on our villains, fill them out with gimmicks and sidekicks and stables of other villains, that work serves us whatever direction the game goes. This makes it a great tool for us lazy dungeon masters. Our effort is well spent because we know that, no matter what direction things go, our efforts will bear fruit.

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.

Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 4 and 5

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This article offers tips and tricks for running Chapters 4 and 5 of Descent into Avernus and includes my thoughts and recommendations for the adventure overall. Note that this article contains spoilers.

This article is one in a series of article covering Descent into Avernus including:

Running Descent into Avernus: The Fall of ElturelRunning Descent into Avernus Chapter 1Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 2Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 3Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 4 & 5

If you'd rather watch videos, you can watch my entire Descent into Avernus Youtube Playlist.

Chapter 4 of Descent into Avernus begins the conclusion of the adventure, drawing things in from the wide-open sandbox portion in chapter 3. Unlike Chapter 3, we don't have to do a lot of work to wrangle this chapter into something usable. It's a straight-forward story of the characters infiltrating the Bleeding Citadel, dropping into some dream sequences, and acquiring the Sword of Zariel.

We can, if we want, throw more gnolls around the outside of the Bleeding Citadel to turn it into more of a situation to navigate. An army of a few hundred gnolls, some Fangs of Yeenoghu, and maybe a couple of flind leaders can be fun. The characters have to figure out how to get into one of the rifts in the side of the giant hell-boil that surrounds the citadel.

Once they're inside, you can run Chapter 3 as a typical dungeon crawl. Drop in one or two gnolls the characters can interact with, squeezing them for information or trailing them to see what's going on in the cyst-tunnels.

When the characters make it inside the citadel, they're treated to a series of dream encounters that reveal the moment Zariel realized she'd have to ride into hell to stop the demonic hordes. This is the beginning of her eventual transformation to the arch devil of Avernus.

We can use these dreams to reveal the other Hellrider generals who rode beside her before they transformed into her twisted servants. These include Yael, Olanthius, Harumon, Jandar, and Gideon.

These dream sequences let us pour on the secrets and clues; revealing the full story of Zariel's fall from grace and the one thing that can bring her back — taking hold of the Sword of Zariel.

Advice from the Author

I had a chance to talk to one of the authors of Descent into Avernus, James Introcaso, who offered up his own advice for running this chapter. James's advice is included in the thoughts below.

Dial in the Gore

This chapter, with its huge hill-sized wound in the surface of hell, can be as gory as you want it to be. Know how much gore your players want and dial it in appropriately. You can simply describe it as caverns cut into the stone surface of Avernus or as a squirming organic material covered in slime and stuff if you and your players are into it. Know the level of comfort your players desire and have an X Card or other safety tool ready if it goes beyond someone's level of comfort.

Do More with the Crokek'toeck

James Introcaso wrote up a series of encounters for Descent into Avernus called Abyssal Incursions that includes a whole dungeon crawl through the insides of the enormous Crokek'toeck. You can use it as inspiration or take it as-is and drop it into the Crokek'toeck section of the Scab. Personally, I ran it as a Jonas and the Whale type situation with a gnoll who preferred not to be vomited up into war spending his days comfortably in the creature's gullet. Giving the Crokek'toeck a purple-worm-like swallow attack meant a swallowed character could meet this pacifist gnoll and learn more about what lay ahead.

Scale the Dreams

Not everyone digs dream sequences in D&D. They can feel like a waste of time since they rarely have an effect on the real world. There are seven events in the Idyllglen dream sequence and you don't need to run them all. A skirmish with a bunch of gnolls followed by a confrontation with Yeenoghu and Zariel's arrival can work just fine. Don't overdo it if it doesn't seem enjoyable.

Regarding Gargauth

Once the characters come back out of the dream, one of them can take hold of the Sword of Zariel. This may be Gargauth's chance for escape, either by manipulating the character holding the shield or simply asking them to shatter the shield with the sword. Doing so releases Gargauth, the arch-devil, who may offer to help dethrone Zariel for his own chance to take it. Gargauth may clear a path through any remaining gnolls so the characters can make their final ride back to Elturel where Zariel and her floating fortress reside before dragging Elturel through the River Styx and turning all of its remaining citizens into devils.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 largely deals with the wide range of endings this adventure can have but gives little guidance on how to run them. Before you get to this point you'll want to decide how things play out. In my own game, I assumed Zariel flew her flying fortress to Elturel as the characters got the sword and the characters would confront her there; convincing her to grasp the blade and breaking her pact with Asmodeus.

Give Them What They Want

Since we're closing in on the end of the adventure, now is a good time to give the players what they want. We may have an idea for a strange twist at the end but since we're here and the campaign is about to close, it's a good time to let the story end in the way most satisfying for the players. Hold back your temptation for a big twist on the end and give them what they want.

The Final Ride

With the sword in hand, the characters can use their infernal war machine to roar across Avernus once again, arriving at Elturel in time to see it being slowly submerged into the river Styx. Along the way they may run into Mahadi's Wandering Emporium for a final rest or face Zariel's remaining generals if they haven't already in what may be the big final encounter before facing Zariel herself.

In my own game, the characters faced Olanthus, Harumon, and Gideon all riding in on nightmares. One of Harumon's hellfire lances destroyed the characters' war machine but, when the characters defeated the generals, they received three figurines of wondrous power able to summon nightmares. These nightmares let the characters fly to Zariel's fortress disguised as her returning generals.

Confrontation with Zariel

When the characters confront Zariel we have a chance to bring Thavius Kreeg back into the picture. This is an example of a great D&D tip I heard: whenever possible, reintroduce NPCs the characters already know. It's far more meaningful to run into a villain they've already seen than to introduce a new villain right at the end. Kreeg may send in the final wave of devils after the characters before they can parlay with Zariel herself and convince her to take the blade.

Our instinct is to ask the characters to make a persuasion check for such convincing but while that might steer the nature of the conversation, in the end, we want Zariel to take the sword as much as the players do. Poor rolls may result in a tense conversation but don't let the whole balance of the game hang on a single die roll.

Return to Faerun

Assuming Zariel takes the blade, she returns to her angelic self. Her remaining devils flee and her flying fortress collapses. She teleports the characters back to Elturel where they can meet Reya Mantlemourn, Uldar Ravengard, and Grace Lyn; the young girl they rescued in The Fall of Elturel. Since we're at the end of the adventure, now is a great time to reintroduce all the NPCs we can.

With the characters back in Elturel, Zariel severs the chains and sends the city back to Faerun. The city is saved.

This is a great chance to jump forward one year and ask each of the players where they find their characters. What did they do after Elturel returned to Faerun? Did they become members of a new uncorrupted Hellriders? Did they return to Avernus to become one of Mahadi's prized musicians? Did they return to Candlekeep to become a sage? Ask the players and find out! These final stories can often be the best and most memorable stories in the campaign.

Final Overall Thoughts on Descent into Avernus

Here are some of my thoughts on Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus overall.

Running Descent into Avernus took more work than I like from a published adventure. The artwork, design, and editing is wonderful and the general idea of the story is cool and unique. The story as written, though, is a mess. If you're running the adventure, hopefully these articles helped you wrangle it into an epic tale of high adventure in the depths of hell.

I will leave you with my seven big tips for running Descent into Avernus.

Understand the theme you want for the campaign and steer your game towards that theme. Make sure your players are on board with that theme.In your session zero, tie the characters to the Hellriders, Reya Mantlemorn, and Elturel.Build your own path through chapter 3 by choosing the locations you want to run and tying them together with a network of quests that takes them from Elturel to the Bleeding Citadel.Let the characters fuel infernal war machines with demonic ichor instead of soul coins.Choose how gory you want the details of the adventure and make sure your players are comfortable with it.Choose which waves to run in the dream sequences in Idyllglen; you don't have to run them all.Give the players what they want in the end. Let them save Elturel and perhaps save Zariel if they played their cards right.

Hopefully these tips and guides have helped you run this adventure. When steered right, Descent into Avernus can be wrangled into a grand adventure of good and evil in the wastelands of hell.

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.

A DM's Reading List

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This article contains a reading list of some of my favorite books and articles DMs can use to better run D&D games. Obviously it would be crass of me to include my own book, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, so I omitted it from the list...

In a previous article I've talked about Paths of DM Expertise. A big part of getting better as a DM is digging into all of the knowledge other DMs and game creators can share with us. There's a lot of great material out there we can read, cull, and harvest to give us great ideas while running our games. This list represents some of this material.

The Core Books

Spend time reading and re-reading the core books. There's a lot of great stuff in them easily missed like monster environments in the Monster Manual and tons of stuff in the Dungeon Master's Guide easily forgotten. Review them all every few months to remind yourself what's in them.

Top Five

If I could only pick five books to help DMs get a better grip on D&D, these would be them.

Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design (2nd Edition)Hamlet's Hit PointsHow to Write Adventures that Don't Suck (original version)The Monster's Know What They're DoingDungeon WorldRPG Design Books

These are a handful of books I found very useful. Many of these ended up in the bibilography of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master as well. I'm particularly fond of the books capturing the ideas of many of the top RPG designers in the past few decades. Kobold Press's guides often include such essays. It's a rare thing to get into the minds of such titans in the industry.

Kobold Guide to GamemasteringHow to Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck (extended version)Anatomy of an AdventureAll of the Kobold GuidesOld School PrimerRobin's Laws of Good Game MasteringNever UnpreparedBooks on Writing

Stepping out to books on writing and creativity in general, here are three I've always enjoyed.

On Writing, a Memoir of the CraftThe War of ArtZen and the Art of WritingArticles

A full list of the best articles is impossible but here are a few articles I find myself returning to over and over again.

Crawling Without Hexes - The PointcrawlJaquaying the DungeonJaquays's TechniquesThe False HydraOther Game Systems

One of the best ways to improve as a dungeon master is to try out other systems. Here are some of my favorites. Even if you don't get a chance to run them, being able to read through them will give you lots of good ideas.

Dungeon WorldFate CondensedNumenera DiscoveryWeird Discoveries13th AgeShadow of the Demon LordIronswornMork Borg5e Hardcore ModeMT Black's Reading List

My friend MT Black, a prolific and popular DM Guild creator, wrote up an excellent list of books he recommended for adventure writers likely just as useful to dungeon masters. Here they are.

Tome of Adventure DesignCastle Oldskull - Classic Dungeon Design GuideThe Dungeon AlphabetEureka, 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game MastersThe Mother of All Treasure TablesWriting with Style, an Editor's Advice for RPG Writers650 Fantasy City Encounter Seeds and HooksMasks, 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying GameTricks, Empty Rooms, and Basic Trap Design100 Oddities for a Wizard's LibraryGM's Miscellany & Dungeon DressingGM GemsUltimate ToolboxThe Dungeon DozenStonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted HallsRuins of Undermountain 2eAdventure Models I Dig

When I think about the types of adventures I've enjoyed the most, they follow a common model I call the "yam-shaped design". These adventures have a narrow focus in the beginning, expand out into a sandbox adventure in the middle, and then focus back down again at the end. This makes adventures feel more like campaigns but still have a clear overall story thread.

Dragon of Icespire PeakLost Mine of PhandelverCurse of StrahdTomb of Annihilation

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.

Pointcrawls for Cities and Overland Travel in D&D

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A pointcrawl is a DM tool for handling overland travel in D&D. Much like building a dungeon from rooms and hallways, pointcrawls are built from meaningful locations connected by in-world pathways. Since they're built like dungeons, we can use good dungeon design characteristics (see the Alexandria's Jaquaying the Dungeon) to make our pointcrawls interesting and give players meaningful options while traveling. These characteristics include multiple paths, loopbacks, shortcuts, and secret paths. Pointcrawls offer a flexible structure for overland, wilderness, and city-based adventures.

For a video on this topic, you can watch my Pointcrawls for Overland Travel in D&D Youtube video.

Here's an example of a pointcrawl for the Glass Plateau in Eberron.

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Pointcrawls from the Dungeon Master's Guide

The Dungeon Master's Guide describes pointcrawls without actually defining them as such. Here's a quote from chapter 5 of the DMG when discussing overland travel:

One solution is to think of an outdoor setting in the same way you think about a dungeon. Even the most wide-open terrain presents clear pathways. Roads seldom run straight��� because they follow the contours of the land, finding��� the most level or otherwise easiest routes across uneven ground. Valleys and ridges channel travel in ���certain directions. Mountain ranges present forbidding barriers traversed only by remote passes. Even the most trackless desert reveals favored routes, where explorers and caravan drivers have discovered areas of wind-blasted rock that are easier to traverse than shifting sand.

Thinking about building overland travel the same way we build dungeons is a helpful model. It gives us a usable but flexible structure when thinking about above-ground areas.

The idea of pointcrawls grew from hexcrawls, the typical way D&D has handled overland travel for the past 40 years. Chris Kutalik described the original concept of pointcrawls in the article Crawling Without Hexes: the Pointcrawl back in 2012.

Quick Pointcrawl Construction

Here's one way to build a pointcrawl intended to support both improvisational play and lazy dungeon mastering.

Write down ten interesting locations and landmarks the characters might visit while traveling through the area.Connect these locations with in-game routes such as rivers, paths, game trails, roads, portals, mountain passes or any other in-world pathway between two locations.Build in multiple paths, loopbacks, shortcuts, and secret paths between locations.

Our goal is to make overland travel interesting, fun to explore, and offer meaningful choices to the characters along the way. We can drop encounters in at locations, the paths between locations, or both. Such encounters might involve meeting NPCs, exploring strange signs, learning something of the history of the area, getting into a fight, or all of the above.

Tools for Building Pointcrawl Charts

The easiest tools for documenting a pointcrawl are likely a pencil and a piece of paper. We can easily draw out a pointcrawl in a few minutes, take a picture with our phone, and we can take it wherever we need. Sticky notes might be a good way to document locations and reorganize them depending on the path. Mind mapping software can also do the trick if it's something you already use.

There's a digital solution I stumbled across called GraphViz.it. It takes in a particular text-based format for the pointcrawl (actually a network) and renders that network out.

Example: The City of Making

Here's another example pointcrawl using GraphViz.it for the city of Making in Eberron.

[image error]

and here's the input generating this pointcrawl:

# http://graphviz.it/#/new
graph{
"Entry - Gates of Making" -- "The Impaled" [label="Road of Triumph"]
"The Impaled" -- "Fallen Colossus" [label="Massive Footsteps"]
"Fallen Colossus" -- "Fortress of Blades" [label="Road of Fallen Blades"]
"Fortress of Blades" -- "Skydancer Wreck" [label="Scorched Trench"]
"Skydancer Wreck" -- "Entry - The Runoff" [label="Blackwater Way"]
"Fortress of Blades" -- "Clawrift" [label="Road of Dead Machines"]
"The Impaled" -- "Clawrift" [label="Road of Triumph"]
"The Impaled" -- "Daughters' Earthmote" [label="The Slaughterfield"]
"Silver Flame Spire" -- "Clawrift" [label="Cracked Road"]
"Silver Flame Spire" -- "Shattered Laboratory" [label="Old Tunnel"]
"Shattered Laboratory" -- "Clawrift" [label="Teleporter"]
"The Impaled" -- "Living Weird" [label="Dreamwalk"]
"Living Weird" -- "Silver Flame Spire" [label="Twisting Black Thread"]
"Daughters' Earthmote" -- "Clawrift" [label="Trollhaunt Road"]
}

I tried to add some Jaquay-style designs to the map including multiple entrances, loops, and secret paths (like the path between the Shattered Laboratory and Clawrift). I also labeled the paths here to identify what connects these locations. The evocative names help me improvise what the characters might run into while going along that path.

This is an extensive pointcrawl for a big city, not exactly what one might call lazy, but it didn't take terribly long and it may be useful for many sessions so I don't see the effort wasted. Many of these locations may end up as their own dungeons to crawl, such as the Shattered Laboratory, the Daughters' Earthmote, the Fallen Colossus, the Skydancer Wreck, the Fortress of Blades, and, of course, Clawrift itself which ends up as a multi-level dungeon all on its own.

Another Tool for Lazy Dungeon Masters

Pointcrawls aren't the end-all-be-all of our D&D games but they're a good structure when planning out overland travel, one backed by decades of use. Build pointcrawls by outlining interesting locations, the paths between them, ad interesting encounters they might engage with while there. Such pointcrawls give us a nice model and yet help us build a world that feels open and exciting to the players.

Further Reading

In researching this topic, I found numerous helpful articles on the topic pointcrawls and their parent hex crawls. Here's a list of the ones I found most useful:

http://detectmagic.blogspot.com/2014/04/pathcrawl.htmlhttp://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2012/01/crawling-without-hexes-pointcrawl.htmlhttp://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2014/11/pointcrawl-series-index.htmlhttp://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2016/02/hexcrawls-vs-pointcrawls.htmlhttp://spriggans-den.com/2016/08/15/wilderness-travel-with-a-pointcrawl-system/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2018/02/sub-hex-crawling-mechanics-part-1.htmlhttps://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2018/03/sub-hex-crawling-15-more-pointcrawl-maps.htmlhttps://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawlhttps://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43899/roleplaying-games/thinking-about-wilderness-travelhttps://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43901/roleplaying-games/thinking-about-wilderness-travel-part-2https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44868/roleplaying-games/remixing-avernus-part-5c-a-pointcrawl-in-elturelhttps://www.tribality.com/2019/10/15/a-guide-to-hexcrawling-part-1/

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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.

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

Replace Flanking with Cinematic Advantage

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Instead of using the optional flanking rule, offer deals to players to trade ability checks using in-world features to gain advantage on their next attack.

Chapter 8 of the Dungeon Master's Guide offers an optional rule for flanking in which creatures gain advantage against an enemy if an ally is on the opposite side of the enemy. It's a popular rule, used by about half of nearly 1,200 DMs polled on Twitter. I'm not a fan of it. First, it only works when playing with a 5 foot per square grid. It's not easy to use in combat using the theater of the mind. It also offers a major bonus for little risk. It's not hard to get around the other side of an enemy. Previous versions of D&D used to offer a +2 bonus for flanking while advantage results in something closer to +4 or +5. It also removes the value of many other features offering advantage in certain circumstances such as hiding, pack tactics, and others.

Instead of offering flanking for positioning, why not offer advantage for big risky cinematic actions the characters take. Characters can get advantage for scaling a steep wall to gain the high ground. They can leap off of balconies, swing from chandeliers, or leap up onto a monster's back. There are so many cool cinematic ways we might offer advantage to a character beyond "I'm on the other side of it".

Offering Deals

Injecting cinematic advantage into your game is all about offering deals; trading in-world fiction and a skill check from players for advantage on their next attack. This helps draw players out of the mechanics of their characters and into the story of the situation itself.

Most of the time the transactions of cinematic advantage comes down to the following:

While describing the situation, the DM describes interesting features in the area.
The player describes how they want to use a feature to get a cinematic advantage.
The DM determines what attribute and skill (or skills) might be used to accomplish the feat and how difficult it is on a scale of DC 10 to 20. Tell the player what the DC is and what penalty they face if they fail so they can make an informed choice.
The player rolls the check as part of their move or attack. On a success, they get advantage on their next attack. On a failure something bad happens depending on what they tried, often falling prone.

When you describe the situation during combat, clarify what features can be used. Write them down on a 3x5 card and stick them on the table if you want. This is an old trick from Fate in which we write down aspects of the scenes characters invoke to gain a bonus on their action. When each character is about to take their turn, remind them what options they have to gain a cinematic advantage. Offer them deals. Let them know what the DC is and what happens if they fail. Sometimes players riff off of these ideas and come up with something new — go for it!

The goal of cinematic advantage to draw the players into the fiction and get the characters to take fun risks to get a boost. Offer good deals. Work with your players, not against them, to take the deal.

Benefits of the Cinematic Advantage

Cinematic advantage trades the pure mechanical aspects of flanking with cool action-packed in-world storytelling. It doesn't require miniatures or a grid, you can do it with any type of combat you run whether it's deep tactical play or free-wheeling theater of the mind. It draws the players into the fiction but still offers a clear mechanical boost for their creative effort. It lets players show off the capabilities of their characters, grabbing cinematic advantages with skills their characters are clearly good at.

Don't set the DCs based on the characters, however. That chandelier doesn't get more awkward just because the character who wants to swing from it happens to be proficient in acrobatics and has a dexterity bonus of +5. Set the difficulty independently from the characters attempting the check. You want players to take these deals.

Twenty Examples of Cinematic Advantage

Here are twenty examples of ways characters might get advantage on an enemy. Most of these ways involve a succeeding on a skill check as part of their attack action to gain the advantage.

Leaping off of a balcony
Climbing onto the back of a larger foe
Sliding underneath a big foe and slashing at its vitals
Banking a shot off of a reflective wall
Leaping over dangerous terrain
Swinging from a chandelier or rope
Smashing something an adversary is standing on
Pocket sand!
Climbing and leaping off a big statue
Drawing arcane energy from a shattered crystal
Climbing to get the high ground
Drawing energy from a magical monument
Letting the anger of a desecrated altar flow over you
Drawing holy energy from an ancient elven fountain
Vaulting off of a crumbling wall
Pulling power from an unstable summoning circle
Balancing on a precarious perch
Smashing through a door to surprise your foes
Leaping off of a moving vehicle
Calling the troubled spirits of the fallen for aid

Trading Mechanics for Fiction

Take any opportunity you can to draw players into the fiction of the game. Instead of offering a purely mechanical benefit like flanking, consider offering cinematic opportunities for the characters to gain advantage. Work with them to tell action-packed stories of high adventure and take risks to gain the upper hand on their foes. Such techniques work across any combat style whether you play on a gridded battle map or using pure theater of the mind combat and can help your stories come alive at the table.

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.