The Flow of Play - Game Master’s Perspective
The general flow of play is conversational. You describe the world (what it is like to be in and what is happening in the player’s surroundings). They players say what they want to do. Depending on what it is that they wanted to do, you may tell them to make some kind of skill check. Repeat from there. To be good at this is to be comfortable making things up, and extending your pre-made material to deal with changing circumstances.
The moment to moment goal of the game master should be to fill the player’s lives with adventure, and portray a fantastic world. When the players have a plan of action that’s going to substantially change the state of their adventure, whether it be getting from point A to point B, warning the king about assassins, or retrieving a rare book from a library, throw some sort of dramatic obstacle in their way. Perhaps they are attacked by bandits or beset by a blizzard en route, their entry to the castle is barred by the chancellor who wants them arrested, or the book has been checked out by a reclusive hermit before they can get to it. Make the world conspire to fill the players’ lives with excitement. This isn’t to say that the players should never be allowed to accomplish anything, but rather that the accomplishment is all the sweeter when they’ve had to struggle for it.
When playing in the game, remember that what you (the game master) say goes. You may want to follow the rules laid out in this book to the best of your ability in the name of fairness, but bending or breaking those rules for the sake of coolness, fun, or drama, should never be thought of as a problem so long as you and your players are enjoying the experience.
Taking Notes
It is hard to keep the world you’re building all in your head. In addition to the notes you have prepared ahead of time on your adventure fronts, VIPs, secrets, and etc, you may want to write down certain things as they come up for the sake of consistency. Add new locations you invent to your node map, as appropriate, and when the players ask for the name of an NPC, write down some information about them so the players can encounter them again in the future. When the players meet NPCs who they have encountered previously, it makes the world feel alive and consistent.
Here is what to write down when you are jotting down a note on the NPC:
NAME/ALLEGIANCE: Allegiance is the person’s primary affiliation/loyalty. Often this will just be the name of the town they live in, or to the VIP they are associated with if they are a grunt. There is no need to think too hard about this.
PROFESSION/DESCRIPTION: Description is two adjectives: one to describe their appearance, and one to describe their temperament or personality, to help you role-play them consistently.
When You Or The Players Don’t Know What To Do
In spite of your best efforts there will come a time when the action has stalled. This will happen for one of two reasons. First, the players are not sure what their goal is. Maybe they have completed some minor quest and are thinking “now what?” In this case remind them about the looming threat that the adventure front represents and what they can do about it, or find a way to get the fiction to remind them about that.
Second, the players are stumped. They just don’t know what to do about the situation they are in. In this case, you should remind them that they can see if their characters can figure out what to do with a skill check. If they succeed, they should get some very helpful information about how to achieve their goal. If they fail, then there is trouble, and that will change their situation.
Sometimes you might run into a situation where the main front just doesn’t interest the players, and if that happens, its time to make new fronts! Don’t get too attached or plan too far into the future, because the players are in control of a huge part of the action, and the game is about everyone having fun.
Setting Skill Check/Skill Challenge DCs
Setting the DCs for skill checks and challenges is more of an art than a science, and it becomes very easy once you get used to it. There are many heuristics you can use to determine what the DC should be. Here is the place I recommend you start: the “anchor DC” for the player’s level:
Level 0 - DC 6 - Tasks that are challenging for people without the skills or knowhow to do them.
Level 1&2 - DC 9 - Tasks challenging for fledgling adventurers.
Level 3&4 - DC 11 - Tasks challenging for established and capable adventurers.
Level 5&6 - DC 12 - Tasks challenging for hardened veterans of many adventures
Level 7&8 - DC 14 - Tasks challenging for masters of the adventuring craft
Level 9&10 - DC 15 - Tasks challenging for heroes of great renown
Level 11+ - DC 18 - Tasks so difficult that even heroes of great renown are unlikely to succeed
These DCs are calibrated such that players are likely to succeed at skill checks about 60% of the time, and such that with a party of 3, the party is likely to succeed at skill challenges about 75% of the time. This is what the DC should be for a “level commensurate” challenge. If the players are doing something that would be an appropriate challenge for higher level characters, then use the higher level DC, and likewise for tasks that their skill-level renders them more than capable of accomplishing. When assigning a DC, start with the anchor-DC for the players in mind, and then adjust it based on how much easier or more difficult it is than what you, as the GM, think of as the median appropriate task for their level.
Choosing Trouble - Failing Forward
When players fail a skill check or a skill challenge, there is trouble, which means you either change the situation so repeating the check is impossible, or you expend some of their resources. Bellow are suggestions for how to accomplish that. When choosing trouble, keep in mind that players should “fail forward” - often it will mean that they succeed in a way they weren’t expecting which creates new problems for them, but even when not it always should change the situation they are in such that they don’t immediately face the same problem again. Facing the same problem with diminished resources is substantially a different situation - it changes how risky the course of action is from the players’ perspective.
Making repetition impossible
Choosing to make repetition impossible invites the players to come up with a new kind of solution to the problem they are facing. If you can’t see another way for them to deal with their problem other than succeeding on this check, you’ll want to use “expending resources” instead”. Here are some ways to make repetition impossible.
They attract unwanted attention to themselves (they are spotted by someone or something that wants to impede them in some way). This is useful as it gives the players a new and more immediate problem to deal with. When the players fail in a way that is noisy or conspicuous or wastes a bunch of time, this is a good choice.
They reveal an unwelcome truth (they learn something about their situation which makes things more difficult or at least different than expected). This should change their understanding of the problem they are dealing with. This usually makes the problem more serious or pressing but gives the players a new idea about how to stop it. If the players fail to pick a lock to open a door or chest, maybe the door or chest springs to life and attacks them. If they fail to persuade someone to do something, reveal that they are offended by the offer and are storming off in a huff.
They make their path impassable. They could start a rockslide, or break a door such that it cannot be opened in the way they were just attempting to, or offend the person they are trying to get help from. This makes it so the players have to come up with a new plan about how to achieve their goals. In making the current path impassible, you should almost always make sure they have another possible path to the same objective. Perhaps the rockslide has also revealed a secret chamber that was inaccessible to them before!
Expending Resources
When you choose to expend resources, often times this will be a more direct case of failing forward. For example, when the players spring a trap and it explodes in their face, now there is no trap left. But you’ll want to impose some cost on them to make the failure meaningful.
The player loses or breaks some item of theirs in the attempt. Usually an item they were using in the skill check. When a magic artifact is broken in this way, it repairs itself when the player next refreshes, and you should make this clear to them when their item breaks.
Precious time passes. This will often be better expressed by one of the three “make repetition impossible” troubles, but some times the opportunity cost associated with the time it took to try what they did will be enough of a resource cost for the failure.
Mortal Peril. A very common consequence for failure in physically dangerous situations, and in the context of combat one that changes the situation quite a bit - the players might need to flee to heal their endangered comrades, or decide to press on with the risks involved raised. See the rules for mortal peril.
Optional Rule: Climactic Skill Challenges
In dramatic and tense moments, such as a fight against an imposing dragon, or an escape from a sinking ship, a single skill challenge to cover what happens. You might want the climactic action of your adventure to be spread over multiple skill challenges.
You can simply split what happens into multiple skill challenges that happen in quick succession. For example, in a fight against a dragon, the players first might have to overcome the wave of Kobold bodyguards which the dragon orders to kill them, then they might have to bring the dragon to the ground as it flies above them and spits fire, before finally fighting it hand to hand as it bites and claws at them. Having each of the skill challenges be mechanically unconnected might feel unstructured or unsatisfying. As an alternative, consider linking such skill challenges together into a climactic skill challenge.
A climactic skill challenge is a kind of meta-skill-challenge that binds several ordinary skill challenges together. In a climactic skill challenge, the rolls players make in each skill challenge affect the overall result of the climactic challenge which these skill challenges are component parts of.
To make a skill challenge, you must make these decisions:
Design the skill challenges that are to be bundled together into your climactic challenge. For example, players who are trying to escape form a ship being attacked by a Kraken might have to (1) dodge its tentacles as the clamber from below deck to the surface, (2) lower a lifeboat into the water as the beast flails and the sea churns beneath them, and (3) row to safety.
Set the DC for the component skill challenges as you would do so ordinarily, and set a higher “critical DC” (+2 or +3 higher than the ordinary DC. A good rule is that for 3 or fewer players, +2, and for 3 or more players, +3)
Decide on two different successful outcomes for the climactic skill challenge: success, and critical success. The critical success should be a better outcome, from the players’ perspective, than the normal success result. In a fight against a dragon, A normal success might be that it flees its lair badly injured, or that it immolates itself and explodes as it dies, or that it simply dies. A critical might be that it simply dies (if the ordinary success was it escaping), or that it reveals critical information to the players with its dying breath, or that the players manage to kill it without destroying an important object that was in the room with the dragon as they fought.
Decide how many critical success rolls (meeting or exceeding the critical DC) the players need to get, over the course of the climactic skill challenge, in order to critically succeed at the climactic skill challenge. (Normally, one critical success for every component skill challenge - so if the climactic skill challenge has three skill challenges in it, then three critical successes to critically succeed at the climactic skill challenge is appropriate)
When you run a climactic skill challenge for the players, announce that you are doing so (as you would with an ordinary skill challenge) and explain the rules of a critical skill challenge to them if they are unfamiliar. Whenever a player’s roll in one of the skill challenges beats the critical DC, let them know, and keep a tally of how many times the players critically succeed over the course of a skill challenge.
Importantly, you should not let them know how many critical successes they need to get the triumphant outcome - that would lower the tension and it is better to leave them in suspense.
If they succeed at all of the skill challenges that are components of the climactic skill challenge, let them know they’ve overcome the climactic challenge and tell them the narrative results of their actions (the success outcome or the critical success outcome). If the result is the critical success outcome, let them know!
GM Decisions and Hireling Jobs
When the players reach an adventure transition point, they may have a job or jobs in mind for their hirelings and specialists. Generally speaking, players should be assigning all of their hirelings and specialists to one big job per transition point rather than many small ones - as long as all of the tasks assigned to them are driving towards the same goal, it is a good idea to lump them all together - although if you or your players wish large tasks can be broken up into multiple smaller jobs.
As described in the rules on jobs, the players describe a job, the GM sets the difficulty of the job in three categories represented by a number of “difficulty dice”. Then the players assign hirelings and specialists to the job, and the GM rolls the difficulty dice. Whether or not the players succeed at the job depends on whether the dice rolls exceed the combined stats of the hirelings and specialists which the players assigned to the job - but critically, these dice rolls are hidden from the players! Unlike the results of a skill check, the job’s success or failure does not play out instantaneously - rather, it unfolds over time as the players do other things in the story.
The players can of course go off on adventures and do other things while they wait to see whether the job succeeds or fails. Sometimes though, they will want to contribute to the effort. Given that the success or failure of the job is pre-determined by the dice rolls however, how can the players make a difference? Imagine for example, that the players have ordered their guard hirelings and their commander specialist to form into a battalion, and meet a raiding party of 100 orcs in battle. They’ve done so because defeating 100 orcs on their own seems impossible, but they plan to be right there alongside their hirelings in battle.
In cases like this, you should allow the player’s actions to retroactively alter the number of difficulty dice. Perhaps they perform very well in the fight, lowering the number of force difficulty dice. Or perhaps one of them uses a class ability or a great deed to scout out the area where the battle is to take place, lowering the number of admin difficulty dice.
If the players are successful such that a difficulty 5d6 task is reduced, in your estimation, to a 4d6 task, let a player roll a d6, and subtract that from the total roll that you made before. This might turn what would have been a failure into a success.
Setting the Difficulty for Hiring Jobs
As a guide to the difficulty of jobs, and the scope of things players can have NPCs do as jobs, see the examples below. Normally, what the players want to do will be somewhat similar to one of these examples, and so you can use the difficulty dice associated with the example as a starting point, adjusting the difficulty upwards or downwards depending upon the peculiar circumstances in which the job is to be attempted. If players seem to want to do more than one of the jobs below, and you’ve combined them into a single job, just add the the difficulty dice of both jobs together to get your starting point.
Note that none of the activities below have to be done as a job, instead of something the players take a direct hand in. But many of them are better done as a job, because (for example) roleplaying acquiring stone or wood might be tedious, or because (for example) the players might not want to meet an orcish horde in pitched battle without a large number of NPC warriors to back them up.
Note also that this would seem to require you to roll large numbers of dice. I would recommend that, for the sake of not slowing down the game, you use an online dice roller for this purpose. Or, if you like, roll some of the dice (5-10), and take the average value for the rest (the average value of 1d6 is 3.5).
Example - Patrolling the road between Candlekeep and Thistleton
Thistleton, as of late, has experienced a great deal raiding from a horde of orcs. The town has become an unsafe place to live, and many there wish to seek refuge in Candlekeep. The players’ club can ensure that the road is safe to travel on.
[the difficulty here will depend greatly on how long the route patrolled is, and what sorts of dangers the guards will face. Assuming a 10km road with organized orcish raiders looking to attack travelers:]
14d6 force, 1d6 admin
Example - Acquire and move timber and stone to Thistleton
The players want to fortify Thistleton to make it safe for the townsfolk to return, but in order to do so, they must acquire building materials and get them to Thistleton. Through a combination of importing wood and stone form Candlekeep, and harvesting trees and stone near to thistleton, the players’ club can help.
[The difficulty here will depend greatly on how much material is needed, and how quickly it must be moved. Assuming they want enough material to fix a dilapidated castle and build a palisade around a small town in about a month:]
14d6 labour, 1d6 admin
Example - Repairing the old Castle on the outskirts of Thistleton
Thistleton Castle is in a state of disrepair, having been unused as a defensive fortification for centuries. The players’ club has a specialist in castle construction who is sure that with the right materials and enough workers, the castle can be made useful in short order.
[The difficulty here will depend greatly on how quickly these things must be built. Assuming they want it repaired in a week]
19d6 labour.
Example - constructing wooden palisade around Thistleton
The castle is useful for protecting Thistleton, but orcish raiders can be stealthy, sneaking into the town at night and making off with captives. A wooden wall around town could make it easier to raise the alarm before they can enter. The players’ club can construct one.
[The difficulty here will depend greatly on how quickly these things must be built. Assuming they want it built in a week]
14d6 labour
Example - Garrisoning Castle Thistleton, to protect the town from incursions against raiding orcs
Defensive fortifications are only useful when they are manned. The people of Thistleton are not trained in how to perform this function. Until they are, the players’ club can step in to take up guard duty.
[The difficulty here will depend greatly on how large the castle is and how large the town it protects is. For thistleton:]
14d6 labour
Example - Guarding a caravan of refugees from Candlekeep to Thistleton
The refugees that fled from Thistleton to Candlekeep wish to return, now that the town is much safer. However, they fear that the orcish chieftain Bloodclot the Unscrupulous knows of their plan and aims to ambush the caravan. The players’ club will escort them.
[The difficulty here will depend greatly on the length of the journey and the nature and intensity of the threats that the caravan will face. For a 10km journey, with a party of rading orcs planning ambushes:]
14d6 force
Example - Meet the orcish horde raiding Thistleton in open battle
The ranks of guards in the players’ club have swelled with story hirelings (see above) thanks to the help they’ve given to the people of Thistleton, and the council of Thistleton wishes to drive Bloodclot away once and for all. The town’s guard will meet Bloodclot and his orcish raiders on the battlefield.
[The difficulty here will depend greatly on the nature of the fighting force the players oppose. For an army of 100 orcs, under a skilled commander:]
66d6 force, 1d6 admin
Example - transport the famous ruby the ‘Lost Eye of Gruumsh safely from candlekeep to Baldur’s gate, on a ship under arms
The players have acquired the Lost Eye of Gruumsh from Bloodclot and plan to take it to Baldur’s gate for sale. But they are very wary of thieves and pirates. They have purchased a Galleon with cannons. Their club can crew the ship and protect the jewel.
[The difficulty here will depend greatly on the size of the ship. For an ordinary galleon:
5d6 labour, 5d6 force
Example - enhance the notoriety of the party in Baldur’s gate
The players are hoping to secure a good price for their jewel, but they are outsiders in Baldur’s gate. They need to rub elbows with the right people, and their club can help them to enhance their notoriety and respectability in Baldur’s gate.
[The difficulty here will depend on the pre-existing notoriety and reputation of the party in Baldur’s gate, and how enhanced the players want their notoriety to be. For a party with no reputation trying to hobnob with fancy merchants:]
8d6 admin
Example - Gather a big crowd to attend the Balder’s gate rare jewels exposition
The players have convinced many important merchants in Baldur’s gate to put on a special auction featuring many rare jewels, which will draw in wealthy collectors from far and wide. The players’ club can help the party pull their weight in drawing in attendees.
[The difficult here will depend on how big of a crowd, and of what type of people, the players aim to attract]
8d6 admin
Example - prepare a fabulous party for the players guests who have come to view the jewel
Once the special guests of the players arrive who have expressed interest in the jewel, the players wish to impress them. The players’ club will prepare an extravagant feast and festive entertainment for those interested in the jewel.
10d6 admin
Example - Search Baldur’s gate for the fugitive, Yorik the jewel thief
Tragedy! The famous thief Yorik the Shadow has made off with the eye of Gruumsh! The players wish to conduct a city wide sweep, to flush the thief out of hiding. The players’ club can help with this.
[The difficulty here will depend upon how large of an area the players are searching, and how well hidden the thing that they are searching for is. For a notorious jewel thief hiding in Baldur’s gate:]
4d6 admin, 8d6 force
Example - Secure an invitation for the players to address the Baldur’s gate senate
Their sweep of the city has revealed that Yorik has sold the jewel to a cult loyal to Gruumsh, that plans to use the jewel to open a portal to Acheron, which will pour armies of orcs into the heart of the city. The senate must be convinced of the threat that this poses to Baldur’s gate, and the players need an invitation to speak before them at their next meeting. The players’ club can help convince the many senators to hear the players out.
[The difficulty here will depend on how many people the player’s need to change the mind of in order to accomplish their goal, and how receptive they will be to the change. If they are unreceptive, changing their minds by this means may be impossible. For a body of 100 senators who are indifferent to the idea of hearing the party out:]
10d6 admin
Example - Excavate the temple of Gruumsh buried under Baldur’s Gate
The clut’s portal can only be opened thanks to a magical artifact buried under Baldur’s gate. The easiest way to get to it is to dig. Without knowing where the cult is hiding the jewel, the players are prepared to hire as many workers as they can to excavate the old temple before it is too late.
[The difficulty here depends on how much earth the players need to excavate, how easy the terrain is to excavate, and how quickly they need the job done. For attempting to excavate down 100m in 3 days, in the middle of a city street:]
50d6 labour, 2d6 admin.
Miscellaneous Rules & Advice
Time
Remember to keep track of time in the game. When a day passes, tell the players they need to make camp and eat. This adds a sense of and realism and can add tension, as the players might be forced to sleep in an unsafe place where they could be ambushed as night (your discretion), or their rations might run low. To keep track of time, just think about how much time the player’s actions are taking (no time at all, a few hours, half a day). There is no need to do the math or be precise about how long things are taking. You should be fine as long as you don’t lose sight of the fact that time is passing.
Relating to the passage of time, when the players return to a place they’ve been to before, think about how it has changed. They don’t always have to change, and you shouldn’t introduce change that doesn’t somehow interct with your adventure fronts, but towns should usually have some update for the players. Maybe a new rumour has circulated, or disaster has struck, or they’ve met some unexpected good fortune. Remember that almost exclusively the people who change the world (besides the players) are VIPs. Players returning to a town is a good opportunity to think about what those VIPs have been up to and how the adventure fronts have progressed.
Optional Rule - Player Reputation: When the players enter a settlement they’ve been to before after an adventure, think about what the villagers have heard about their adventure and let the players know. Usually it will be some warped understanding of the truth, for good or ill to the players. If you like, you can have one of the players roll a charisma check, and on success add a detail to the rumour you have made up. This helps the world feel more alive. I’d encourage every GM to try using it, but if you find it tedious there is no need to stick to the practice, or limit it only to major recurring locations in your world.
Optional Rule - Long Rest: In the fiction of the world, players need to sleep & eat, although it can prove rather annoying to worry about game mechanics enforcing this. If you would like there to be consequences for failing to get a good meal and a good night’s sleep, use these rules. Failing to take a long rest (8 hours in which they sleep and have a hearty meal) in a 24 hour period gives the player in question 1 point of exhaustion. Successfully taking a long rest removes all points of exhaustion. A player with exhaustion takes a penalty to all skill checks equal to the number of exhaustion points they have, and when they gain their fourth exhaustion point they are dying, as though they had rolled a 6 when facing mortal peril.
Resolving Luck - The Fate Table
Sometimes, important goings on in the world will be partially influenced by the players but for the most part influenced by chance. For example, a large-scale battle in which the players participate. It makes sense to have their skill affect their personal performance in the battle but not the overall outcome. Another example is one in which the players have helped a town protect itself from a coming flood by putting up a dam. The players have given them a chance of not being flooded, but whether the dam collapses is mostly down to luck. When matters of chance happen normally in the game the game master should just decide what happens, or if they like flip a coin. However, when something very plot important comes down to fate a game master might feel uncomfortable simply deciding the outcome. For that, we have the fate table.
When you find yourself in such a situation, draw a card from your deck and receive one of these thirteen omens. Interpret what happens exactly based on what is written here. If you think the omen it gives you is totally inapplicable to the situation, then draw again.
A. The threat was much less severe than was expected.
2. A great triumph!
3. A near miss with disaster.
4. A complete tragedy.
5. The threat was much more severe than expected.
6. A minor tragedy that will be recovered from.
7. A pyrrhic victory.
8. Something no one could have expected happens.
9. A villain has a change of heart.
10. An ally’s resolve falters.
J. The status quo is protected.
Q. Almost no one is harmed.
K. Its over in mere minutes.
Player Picks
After a session, ask the players what they’d like to be a recurring part of the campaign. For example, a particular NPC, or a particular kind of monster. Communicating with them in this way can be a very helpful way to shape the world into something that is a lot of fun for everyone. Recurring elements in the world help it to feel more cohesive and less generic, and basing which things occur on the player’s preferences only enhances this. If you feel like you’ve already got enough unresolved recurring elements, there is no need to prompt the players to give you more, but when those resolve (the NPC is killed or otherwise made irrelevant; the source of the monsters is stoppered) ask for more.