Go to Part 1

One of the great things about a well-executed location-based scenario is that each keyed area is effectively “firewalled” from the other areas: The GM generally only needs to process and manage a single chunk of material (the current area) until the PCs move on to the next area (at which point the GM can simply look at the new chunk of material). This makes a location-based scenario very easy to run, particularly if the key is well-organized, because everything you need is right there at your fingertips.

The drawback of this approach, however, is that it results in static scenarios. The firewall works both ways: It limits the amount of information the GM needs to process at any given time, but it also isolates each chunk of content. Furthermore, because the PCs generally control when they decide to move into a new area, this approach also grants the players near-perfect control over the pace of the scenario (which not only results in monotony, but can also create all kinds of tack-on problems like the fifteen minute adventuring day).

What’s needed is a dynamic element. Sometimes you can accomplish that with some sort of gimmick (moving chambers or the like). Random encounters, particularly those on a regular and aggressive schedule, also work. Ideally, though, we’d like to have the location come alive in an organic way that can allow for strategic depth. We want the ogre in Area 20 to call out for help and have the goblins in Area 21 to hear it and come running.

That seems easy enough. You can just slide your eyes down from Area 20 and notice that there are goblins in Area 21. It gets complicated, though, when you’ve got, say, seven or eight locations within earshot. And it gets even more complicated if you hit those sections of the map where non-sequential numbers bump up against each other:

This area from the Temple of Elemental Evil, for example, would involve flipping back and forth between 8 different pages in the published module. At this point you’re trying to juggle a lot of different information, and you’ve probably lost almost all of the advantages normally offered by the “firewall” of the location key.

And this is still a relatively simple example: What happens when the alarm goes up and the entire compound begins mobilizing to hunt the PCs down?

For example, here’s the map from Secret of the Slavers Stockade:

(click for larger version)

This is a fortified facility with a well-trained guard and a clear chain of command. If someone mounted an assault on the stockade, you would expect a well-coordinated response. But in order to run that response, a GM would need to smoothly manage information from basically all thirty-five keyed locations. It’s impossible.

ADVERSARY ROSTERS

The solution is to separate the occupants of a location from the location key: If they can move from one area to another, then they don’t belong in the key for any specific area.

This can be achieved through the use of an adversary roster (with a map from Dyson Logos for reference):

2 Orc Guards	Area 1	(disguised as humans)
4 Common Orcs	Area 2	(playing dice at well)
4 Orc Guards	Area 3
6 Orc Guards	Area 4*
2 Goblin Stableboys	Area 8
4 Common Orcs + 4 Orc Guards	Area 9	(drunk)
Captain Gnarltooth	Area 9 or Area 16
Lieutenant Uggtusk	Area 11 (day) or Area 15 (night)
2 Orc Guards + 8 Common Orcs	Area 14
Eyegrasper (Orc Wizard)	Area 19 (80%) or Area 6 (20%)
Eyegrasper's Coterie: 3 orc apprentices	(with Eyegrasper)
Fingerwaggler (Orc Wizard)	Area 20*
4 Caravanserai Guards	Area 21
Lady Starhuo	Area 23
Brother Jameston	Area 25
4 Caravanserai Guards	Area 25	(injured)

(click for larger version)

This does increase the complexity of running the scenario, but it’s not an exponential increase like the one seen in trying to run the Slavers Stockade. The GM is no longer looking strictly at the current location key, but rather than trying to cross-reference thirty-five location keys all at once they can generally limit themselves to looking at just the current location key and the adversary roster. Two discrete chunks of organized information instead of a multitude.

The fundamental building block of the adversary roster is the ACTION GROUP. Generally speaking, you don’t want to track every single goblin individually, so you group them together for easy management. (Although some of your action groups will probably consist of a single individual.) Most of the time, an action group will consist of all the adversaries in a single location. In some cases, however, you may want to split a large group up into smaller units. You can think about this purely in utilitarian terms: Do you think that the group is likely to split up and take independent action? Then it should be two action groups. (For example, if you’ve got twenty orcs bunking in a barracks, you might split them up into four action groups with five orcs each so that they can split up or be sent as guards to different areas of the compound.)

For ease of use and reference, you can also LABEL and/or NUMBER each group. A label is mostly useful as a keyword and reminder: If you see a “Death Squad” and a “Perimeter Guard” on your adversary roster, it’ll be a helpful reminder of how each group will behave and respond. You might also find it useful to prep a Death Squad stat sheet and a Perimeter Guard stat sheet: When the PCs run into one of these action groups, simply grab the matching stat sheet.

Numbering the action groups can make it easier to keep track of where they’re at during play:

1. Lay the adventure map out as a tablemat in front of you.
2. Take numbered counters and place them on the map in the “starting location” for each action group.

You are now ready to manage your adversaries in real time. Just move them around the map as the situation demands.

Note: Numbered counters are easy to find on the cheap. It’s also pretty easy to make your own by printing out the numbers and then affixing them to washers or quarters or something of the like.

ADVANCED ROSTER OPTIONS

In addition to that basic functionality of the adversary roster, there are a few additional embellishments you can use to enhance it.

VARIABLE AREAS: Characters on the roster don’t need to be limited to a single area. The club owner might be in his office, or he might be out on the floor. A wizard might be studying in the library or working in his laboratory. An orc sergeant might rotate through the barracks of his minions. There are a few different ways to handle this:

• Area 21 or Area 40: This approach simply states the options and lets the GM interpolate the result. (Or maybe they’ll just be in whichever area the PCs affect or explore first.)
• Area 21 (40%) or Area 40 (60%): Percentile chances can be used to randomize the group’s location.
• Area 21 (day) or Area 40 (night): The group’s location may be dependent on the present circumstances (and those conditions can be listed in parentheses). A night/day division is one I’ll commonly use.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can often simulate the activities of a compound without complicating the roster. For example, if the bouncers at a club might work eight hour shifts and then get relieved you probably don’t need to include all three shifts of bouncers on your roster. Functionally speaking, the club has one bouncer (although the name of that bouncer might be different depending on what time of day the PCs show up).

ACTION GROUP TYPES: I’ve found that there are four different categories of action groups, defined by their behavior.

• Patrols: Patrols make regular circuits through a location. They’re indicated by keying their route (Patrol Areas 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 2, 1). In some cases I find it useful to create a separate “Patrol Roster” (if there are multiple patrols or if their routes are particularly complicated for some reason).
• Mobile: The default action group type. These are keyed to a specific location, but are generally willing and able to respond to the activities of the PCs.
• Mostly Stationary: Some action groups are unlikely to leave the area they’re keyed to. This might be a choice on their part (they won’t respond when the alarm is raised for whatever reason) or it may not (they’re dire wolves locked in a cell). Adversaries waiting in an ambush are another common variety. However, there is a possibility that these action groups might become active (most commonly because someone has gone to specifically fetch them). Therefore I include them on the adversary roster, but indent their entries to clearly distinguish them from the more active elements.
• Stationary: These adversaries will never leave the location they’re in. As a result, these adversaries are NOT included on the roster and instead appear in the location key. (Because they will only be encountered in that location, there’s no reason to clutter up the roster with them.) This might include literally immobile creatures, those simply uninterested in the rest of the complex, or creatures who are sealed away until the PCs disturb them (at which point, if they aren’t immediately destroyed, you might add them to the roster).

These distinctions – particularly those between Mostly Stationary and Stationary – are entirely utilitarian in nature. They don’t represent some deep or universal truth about the game world. Think about how you want to use a particular group of adversaries during actual play and then classify them appropriately. (If it turns out you were wrong, it’s easy enough to simply ignore the indentation, right?)

NOTES / FOOTNOTES: You can include notes as a third column on the roster and/or you can use footnotes to include additional information or cross-referencing. This can include:

• Adversaries carrying a specific item or piece of equipment. (This is useful when you’ve got a bunch of different bad guys all using the same stat block but only some of them – or one of them – is carrying X, Y, or Z. Otherwise, of course, you’d just list the item(s) in their stat block.)
• Brief tactical notes. (Stuff like “can be telepathically summoned by the mind flayer” or “will generally wait to launch prepared ambush” or “can see through walls”.)
• If they’ve been classified as Mostly Stationary, why they’ve been classified that way (sleeping, in ambush, indifferent, etc.).
• Other notes regarding their activities (polymorphed to look like prisoners, playing poker, torturing Sebastian, etc.)

I generally use a notes column if the notes are brief enough to fit on one line. I use footnotes for longer stuff.

MULTIPLE ROSTERS

It’s also possible to prep multiple rosters for a single location. I often find having one roster for Day and another for Night is useful. Normal and Alert statuses are also common, but any similar division that’s logical for the location can be used.

Multiple rosters are usually only worth the effort if the location radically shifts. If the differences are minor or isolated to a handful of characters, then you can use conditionals for individual action groups. It’s only once the conditionals get sufficiently complex that you need to switch to multiple rosters.

ROSTER UPDATES

Another great advantage of using an adversary roster is that you can trivially update a location as bad guys are killed, replaced, or retasked without needing to revisit the entire key. (This separation of NPC from location is why I’ll use a roster even if there are only a handful of characters present.)

This can also be massively useful in an open table campaign (or any other campaign) where you want to be able to revisit locations: With little or no change to a location’s key, you can completely restock it with new adversaries. For examples of this in play, see (Re-)Running the Megadungeon, Juggling Scenario Hooks in a Sandbox, and Prepping Scenario Timelines. (Reading along with the adversary roster technique in mind, you should be able to immediately see how simple the updates become.)

SIMPLE ROSTER

Sometimes you don’t need a roster with all the bells and whistles. For small, highly active complexes with a limited number of inhabitants (a half dozen or so) you may be able to just list the inhabitants and then improvise where they are and what they’re doing when the PCs show up.

(I label this simple, but it actually requires slightly more skill with improvisation when you’re running it.)

I most often use this technique if there’s a mansion (or similar living space) occupied by a number of different people. Trying to program out their ordinary, day-to-day living usually means a lot of complexity for a result that still isn’t realistic.

A hybrid approach can also work here: For example, each character might have a default location where they’re often found (their bedroom? office?) and then a percentage chance that they’re instead just “somewhere else in the house” (and you can figure that out in the moment).

ADAPTING PUBLISHED MODULES

It’s incredibly easy to use the adversary roster technique with published scenarios: Simply skim through the module and list where each occupant is keyed. Ta-da! You’re done. Simply ignore the rostered adversaries when you see them in the key.

Tip: Since ALL monsters will appear in the published key, you may find it useful to include a separate list of Stationary monsters on the same sheet as your adversary roster in order to quickly discern when you should still be using the monster listed in the encounter.

FOG OF WAR

One pitfall that a GM can easily fall into when using an adversary roster is having everybody in the dungeon immediately swarm the PCs. Sometimes that’s the logical outcome of the PCs’ actions and that’s fine (they’ll quickly learn to take approaches that don’t result in that outcome and to retreat and regroup if it does happen). But you should bear the fog of war in mind: Even if the PCs attack one action group, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone in the location will immediately know it’s happening. And even if the alarm does go up, some action groups may be assigned to guard other areas or simply have no idea exactly where the crisis is happening.

The adversary roster gives you the opportunity to roleplay the entire compound. So take advantage of it.

Since we’re discussing adversaries swarming the PCs, however, you may also want to take a moment to review Revisiting Encounter Design: If you’re using an active adversary roster, you need to keep in mind that multiple action groups can end up joining a single encounter.  If you’ve been building your encounters to exist on a razor’s edge of survival-or-death, then you’ll need to revise that approach. (How To Use Published 3^rd Edition Modules may also be useful.)

ROSTER LIMITS

There is, however, a practical limit to an adversary roster: Once you get a sufficiently large enough number of action groups, it becomes difficult to manage them. Generally, I find that number to be around 15-20 (and by the time I’m pushing it to 25, I’ve reached my limit). Your mileage may vary.

Larger complexes can sometimes be broken down into smaller sections to make them manageable. (The different levels of a dungeon are an obvious example of this if there’s limited movement between them by the denizens. You might also choose to model that limited inter-level traffic as a random encounter check.) But if that doesn’t work, then that’s the point where I’ll swap from a “living complex” (with an adversary roster where I’m managing the actions of the NPCs in real time) and start using random encounter tables to simulate the compound’s life.

It should also be noted that the adversary roster is a technique for locations with active bad guys. Not every dungeon needs a roster. Sometimes you really are cracking open dusty tombs which have lain undisturbed for centuries and you have only yourself to blame when you awaken the eldritch horrors which lie within. Variety is the spice of life.

(Another example from my own table was the Bloodpool Labyrinth: There were a limited number of monstrous patrols in the labyrinth, but the focus of the scenario was on navigating the labyrinth and its many non-mobile hazards. As a result, I chose to run the patrols using a random encounter table instead of trying to track them in real time.)

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

I consider adversary rosters to be my greatest “secret weapon” as a GM. They allow me to run dynamic scenarios of considerable complexity on battlefields that can easily sprawl across a dozen areas with a relative simplicity which still leaves me with enough brainpower to manage varied stat blocks and clever tactics.

You’ll also find that, as the players warm up to the greater depth offered by these scenarios, they’ll rise to the challenge and respond with remarkable strategic creativity both in combat and outside of it.

And all of this will feed back on itself, permanently disrupting the staid rhythms of “kick in the door” dungeoncrawling in your campaign. Adversary rosters are also a great way for running stealth missions, heists, and covert ops.

The life and motion of a living compound will unlock a rich variety of new gameplay, keep your players on their toes, and invest them deeply into the fabric of the campaign world.

FURTHER READING
The Art of Rulings
The Art of Pacing
Xandering the Dungeon
Gamemastery 101
Design Notes: Adversary Rosters

Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels are absolutely delightful and frequently brilliant fantasy series which starts as a simply marvelous urban fantasy and then remarkably transforms itself into something completely different and utterly thrilling. I’ve previously reviewed the first eight volumes in the series:

• Jhereg
• Yendi
• Teckla
• Taltos
• Phoenix
• Athyra
• Orca
• Dragon

This is the first installment of our kitchen sinking series, where I’ll be using Brust’s stories as an inspiration for brainstorming for a variety of unique magic items.

RUBYGAZER: A rubygazer takes the form of a tube that can fit snugly into one hand. Each end of the tube is fitted with a lens crafted from ruby crystal. If one places the tube against a wall no more than 10 feet in width, they can look through the tube as if their eye were placed upon the opposite side of the wall. The properties of the rubygazer distort both depth perception and, for reasons of complicated arcane geometry, a sense of proper scale. This imposes a -5 penalty to Perception checks while using the rubygazer and prevents the use of magically or supernaturally enhanced senses, although the view is still generally clear enough to teleport safely.

Moderate divination; CL 5^th; Craft Wondrous Item, clairvoyance; Price 7,500 gp

GAZELENS: A gazelens can be fitted to a pair of spectacles or designed to be set directly into the user’s eye. In either case, the gazelens can be used in concert with a rubygazer that is within 600 feet, allowing the wearer of the gazelens to look through the rubygazer as if it were in their possession. A gazelens is essentially useless (although very pretty) without a gazer to use it with.

Moderate divination; CL 5^th; Craft Wondrous Item, clairvoyance; Price 7,500 gp

FLASHSTONES: A flashstone can be thrown as a ranged attack with a range increment of 20 feet. (Since you don’t need to hit a specific target, you can simply aim at a particular 5-foot square.) When the flashstone strikes a hard surface (or is struck hard) it triggers the spell effect stored within it.

Creation: Flashstones are created by alchemically infusing them with brewed potions. As such they require the Brew Potion feat. Unlike a potion, there is no limit to the level of spell which can be infused into a flashstone, but only spells which affect an area can be usefully triggered. Flashstones have a base price of the spell level x caster level x 50 gp.

CANTRIP STICKS: The name “cantrip stick” is something of a misnomer because these items are not limited to containing merely cantrips. A cantrip stick is essentially a cheap, single-use wand (except that they use a command word activation and can be used even by non-spellcasters). Their cheap, easy construction makes cantrip sticks somewhat unreliable, however, and there is a 1 in 20 chance when they’re used that they will simply fail to trigger. (If this happens, there is an additional 1 in 20 chance that the cantrip stick will suffer a backlash: The cantrip stick explodes causing 1d6 points of damage per spell level to the character holding it (Reflex save, DC 15 + spell level, for half damage) and expending the stick’s charge to no effect.)

Cantrip sticks are often used by armies. In the military, it is customary to snap a cantrip stick in half once it has been expelled (because otherwise someone else might assume that there was still a charge in it).

Creation: A cantrip stick requires the Craft Wand feat and can contain any spell of 4^th level or lower. Cantrip sticks have a base price of the spell level x caster level x 25 gp.

LEYRIPPER: These spiral, fluted, hollow tubes – often carved from ebony – are designed to latch onto the ley signatures in magical items and disrupt them (literally ripping them out of the item). As an attack action, leyrippers can be targeted at any potion, wand, staff, or other item which has charges within 120 feet. On a successful ranged touch attack, the targeted item (or its wielder) must succeed on a Will save (DC 18) or lose 1d6 charges. In addition, these charges are unstable and cause a micro-explosion inflicting 1d6 points of damage per charge lost to the item’s wielder. An item cannot lose more charges than it currently has. Potions are considered to have a single charge.

Strong abjuration; CL 12^th; Craft Wondrous Item, greater dispel magic; Price 72,000 gp

LIGHTROPE: A lightrope is a six-inch length of cord which, when twirled slowly in the hand, illuminates. The amount of illumination provided by the lightrope can be very carefully controlled by the speed of the twirling. During combat, the amount of effort required to twirl the lightrope at varying speeds is represented by the type of action used to twirl it (see table.

As a full action, the lightrope can create an intense burst of light which will slowly fade over the course of five rounds (as shown on the table).

Faint Evocation [light]; CL 6^th; Craft Wondrous Item, daylight; Price 8,000 gp

Action	Bright	Shadowy
Free (Burst 5th Round)	n/a	5 ft.
Free (Burst 4th Round)	15 ft.	30 ft.
Move (Burst 3rd Round)	30 ft.	60 ft.
Standard (Burst 2nd Round)	60 ft.	120 ft.
Full (Burst)	120 ft.	240 ft.

LIGHTROPE, BLACKLIGHT: A blacklight lightrope operates in a fashion similar to a lightrope (requiring a free action to twirl each round), but instead of casting illumination it creates an emanation of blacklight in a 20 ft. radius. The area is filled with total darkness which is impenetrable to normal vision and darkvision, but which the person twirling the blacklight lightrope can see through normally.

Faint Evocation [darkness]; CL 6^th, Craft Wondrous Item, blacklight; Price 36,000 gp

WEB ROPE: Crafted from the thick strands of giant spider web and alchemically stabilized for durability and long-lasting use, web rope is tacky to the touch and possesses an uncanny grip. It grants a +4 circumstance bonus to Use Rope checks and a +2 circumstance bonus to Climb checks. It can also be used as a grappling hook (with the sticky end of the rope attaching itself securely to exposed surfaces). This requires greater skill (DC 15, +2 feet per 10 feet of distance thrown), but has the benefit of weighing less and creating less noise in its use.

Cost: 50 gp (50 ft.); Weight: 2 lbs. (50 ft.)

FORM-FITTING BOOTS: Footwear modified to become form-fitting magically adjusts its size and fit to the wearer’s foot. (This is a physical process which can be felt by the wearer, often with the first boot adjusting itself even as they don the second.) This is mostly a matter of comfort and styling, but such footwear does make things a little easier on the feet, reducing the damage from forced marches by 1 point (minimum 1).

Cost: This minor effect can be placed on any footwear for 25 gp.

TELEPORTATION KEYSTONES: A teleportation keystone allows its carrier to teleport into the area affected by a teleport block spell. (If multiple characters are teleporting at the same time, only one of them needs to carry a teleportation keystone in order for the entire group to successfully penetrate the block.)

Each keystone is linked to a specific casting of the teleport block spell and has no effect on other teleport block spells. Before the teleport block spell is cast, the keystone (or keystones) that are going to be associated with it must be prepared. This requires ten minutes of work per keystone and a Spellcraft check (DC 15, preparer can Take 10). When the teleport block spell is cast, the caster can make a Spellcraft check (DC 10 + 2 per additional keystone) to associate a teleportation keystone to the teleport block. If the check fails, the teleportation keystone doesn’t function.

A single teleportation keystone can be associated with multiple teleport block spells. It only needs to be prepared once, but a separate Spellcraft check must be during each casting of teleport block.

If a teleport block is made permanent, the teleportation keystones associated with it can be simultaneously made permanent by expending an additional 50 XP per keystone.

The physical form of a keystone can be almost anything (although small, smooth, oval stones marked with runes are common).

TELEPORT BLOCK
Abjuration
Level: Sorcerer/Wizard 5
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 full round
Range: 0 ft.
Area: One 10-ft. cube/level
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

You create an area in which no teleportation spell will work, either coming in or going out.

Material Component: 10 gp worth of gold dust.

This material is covered under the Open Game License.

Go to Kitchen Sinking

One of the things I find notable about roughly the first decade of Dungeons & Dragons is that it was truly a kitchen sink of fantasy tropes. And, most importantly, it was an active kitchen sink: Anybody and everybody could dump stuff into it and it never really felt like it would make anyone blink an eye. Some of this was new and original content, but a lot of it was being drawn from whatever the author’s favorite fantasy novel of the moment was. And the resulting mythic goulash was pretty awesome with a lot of unexpected synergies

Then, at some point along the line, the D&D kitchen sink slowly coagulated into an immutable canon and it became increasingly unacceptable to add new elements to the milieu. Even when new items and the like were created, they often seemed to exist within the existing parameters of the game instead of pushing the boundaries of D&D’s fantasy palette.

One place where this is really obvious is the planar cosmology of the game: If you look at the early years of TSR modules, it’s pretty clear that whenever somebody wanted to include a new plane of existence they would just toss it on the pile and roll with it. Then, at some point, the Great Wheel was codified and that particular kitchen sink was sealed.

4th Edition kind of shook things up with new PC races and an all-new planar cosmology… but it quickly became apparent that they they’d replaced one sealed canon with a different sealed canon.

To make a long story short: Recently I’ve resolved to rip the lid back off the kitchen sink and start pouring stuff into it. I may not be able to shift the core approach of the D&D or Pathfinder supplements, but I can make it so that my personal campaigns aren’t quite so strongly defined by the “official canon” of the core rulebooks. I can infuse my game with all the cool stuff from whatever fantasy novel I’m currently reading. And I can make a point of including cool stuff in my adventure modules without feeling artificially shackled to the “known facts” of what the D&D multiverse is supposed to look like.

I’m going to be starting with some of the nifty keen stuff from Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels, because (a) there’s a lot of awesome stuff that’s easily transplantable in there and (b) it’s what I happened to be reading when I decided that this was a thing that I would be doing.

If you want to do some similar kitchen-sinking featuring your favorite fantasy authors (or films or television shows or heavy metal albums), throw it up on your blog or post it to a messageboard and then throw a link in the comments below.

(I’ll also be adding links to this post as my own kitchen-sinking efforts go live.)

As a general disclaimer, I will note that my goal with kitchen sinking is not necessarily to faithfully replicate the material from which I’m drawing inspiration. (Similarly, rangers in AD&D are gifted in the use of using crystal balls because Aragorn was gifted in the use of a palantir. But AD&D’s crystal balls aren’t palantirs.) I’m also going to frequently take the seed of an idea from the source material and freely riff upon it in order to create entirely new things.

KITCHEN SINKS
Kitchen Sink Brust

Go to Part 1

I’ve previously dismissed the dogmatization of the old delve adventure format due to the limitations of its one-size-fits-all approach. (Both in Part 1 of this series and, at greater length, in Are We Really This Stupid?) But the delve format does have one really good idea:

Everything you need is on the page.

When you’re using the delve format, you don’t have to open your Monster Manual to find a creature’s stat block and then open the Player’s Handbook to figure out how one of their spell-like abilities works: It’s all right there on the page.

This is great from a utility standpoint, and can really smooth out the experience of running things at the table (because the GM can focus on running the encounter instead of flipping pages). It’s also a good rule for layout. (Whenever possible, try to arrange your layout so that information that needs to be referenced at the same time doesn’t require a page turn. For my keys I’ll frequently use page breaks to place the entire description for a room entirely on one page even if it means leaving a ton of unused white space on the previous page.)

When you’re working on a project destined for publication and a general audience, figuring out what needs to be referenced and what doesn’t can be a tricky balancing act. When implementing a similar method of simulating system mastery for the sidebar reference system used in Legends & Labyrinths, I dealt with this issue by defining a very small set of “core concepts” that didn’t need to be referenced because it was assumed that players would be familiar with them, and then including a single page explaining those core concepts that new players could reference when they needed to. You can achieve a similar effect at your game table by using system cheat sheets.

When prepping material for your own use, however, you should be able to very precisely calibrate your personal level of system mastery. For example, I know how the magic missile and fireball spells work in D&D, so I can just jot down their names. But if I’ve plucked an obscure spell I’ve never used before, I’m going to include a reference for it.

I’ve actually spent more than 15 years now prepping material for the 3^rd Edition of D&D, and when I look back over that material I can clearly track my growing mastery of the system. For example, my earliest scenarios feature monster stat blocks with text like this frequently appended to them:

SPRING ATTACK Can move both before and after attacking without AoO. (PHB, pg. 85)

It didn’t take long before I no longer had to remind myself how the Spring Attack feat works. But when I recently ran an adventure with monsters which extensively used new feats from Monte Cook’s Book of Experimental Might, I was still using the same technique:

Elude Blows: Subtract number from melee damage rolls and add it to AC vs. melee attacks (up to BAB). (Book of Experimental Might, pg. 36.)

And these references can be terribly esoteric and entirely personal in nature. For example, even after 15 years for some reason I constantly forget to take advantage of the Point Blank Shot feat for my NPCs. For some reason my eye skips right past it in a list of feats. So I’ll frequently drop it into the special abilities reference section I include after stat blocks even thought I know what it does.

THE HIERARCHY OF REFERENCE

In general, there’s a hierarchy of reference:

• Include the full text.
• Include a brief summary of the most important factors (and probably a page reference if you end up needing specific clarifications).
• Include just a page reference.
• List the keyword, spell name, feat, etc.

Basically, you move down the hierarchy as you gain more and more mastery over the system you’re running. It’s like the vocab cards you use for learning a new language (except you never need to spend time memorizing them; playing the game does that for you organically) – as you master each concept you cycle them out of rotation.

Including the full text for something has become really easy in an era of copy-and-paste. But having such a large bulk of text is not always the best option for quickly referencing something during play. And if you’re dealing with lots of different abilities or effects, including the full text for every single thing will often bloat your content to the point where it becomes more difficult to use (because, for example, you’re having to flip between multiple pages in order to run an encounter).

UTILITY OF REFERENCE

In addition to streamlining your reference material, you can also manage this bloat by keeping in mind how you’ll actually use your scenario notes (and the references within it) and then organizing it accordingly.

We’ve already broached this subject by talking about using page breaks to keep entire key entries on a single sheet. But you can accomplish a similar effect by “outsourcing” blocks of information onto separate sheets that you can reference simultaneously at the game table.

When I’m GMing, I’ll frequently have my end of the table organized so that I can lay out multiple sheets of paper out in front of me. I’ll also use folding tray tables set up to my left, right, or both sides to hold additional reference material (including rulebooks and the like). I’ll occasionally be asked how I manage to keep the game running so smoothly when I’m juggling all these different pieces of paper, but the reality is that the game is running smoothly because I’m using all of those sheets: My eyes can skip rapidly from one reference to another, making it trivial to (for example) run an encounter featuring a half dozen different complicated stat blocks which would become a massive headache if I was instead trying to flip back and forth between six different pages in a Monster Manual.

Monsters are, in fact, one of the easiest things to outsource onto their own sheets. (Often, of course, you can fit multiple such stat blocks onto a single sheet.) I’ll even include a quick visual reference when I can, which is both useful for describing the creature and also makes it really easy to quickly find the stat block I need to reference. Here’s a typical one:

 

Outsourcing monsters like this is also an essential component of using the advanced technique of adversary rosters, which is what we’ll be discussing next.

Go to Part 4: Adversary Rosters