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The War of the Giants has begun!

Whether that’s a war against the giants, the war the giants are fighting against each other, or some form of draconic crusade will depend on how your campaign goes. But the core concept is that the campaign has escalated beyond dungeons crawls and simple raids: The PCs are no longer a simple fellowship, but are part of an alliance — likely an alliance they have helped forged themselves! — capable of resolving an international conflict.

There are several ways you can handle this, possibly all at the same time.

TRUE WAR

Armies have been gathered and mass combat is the order of the day!

A full-scale military operation is a thrilling option to consider, but vastly exceeds the resources available to us in Storm King’s Thunder. Not only are the giants and other faction threats scaled to tactical combat with a group of five PCs (not armies marching across the Sword Coast), but we also don’t have the mechanical support or scenario structures for running a war campaign in D&D 5^th Edition.

If you want to go big, therefore, you’re going to have to start basically from scratch and it’ll take a lot of work to pull it off. I can suggest a couple of options you might want to consider, however.

Option #1: Handle the macro-strategic elements of the war — the size of the armies, their movements, etc. — in a more or less ad hoc fashion. For the individual battles, adapt the fray system from Shadow of the Dragon Queen to put the PCs on the battlefield and in the thick of things.

The major shortcoming of the fray system is that the PCs’ actions don’t truly have an impact on the outcome of the battle. The old D&D 3^rd Edition module Red Hand of Doom used a similar system, but also had the PCs’ actions matter more in the grand course of things. You may find it useful to draw some inspiration from that.

Option #2: Implement a full-fledged system for war. MCDM’s Kingdoms & Warfare might be a good place to start, although its primary focus may not make it a perfect fit for what your Storm King’s Thunder campaign needs. Another project with Matt Colville as one of the lead developers you may find useful here is Fields of Blood: The Book of War, another 3^rd Edition-era supplement.

ALLIED ASSAULTS

Instead of full-scale war, we can evoke a similar thematic scope of allies gathering to fight titanic struggles while still keeping within a typical D&D-style tactical scale (i.e., individual combatants on a manageable tabletop battlefield). They key escalator here — what will make these fights feel larger-than-life and bigger than a typical D&D combat encounter — is simply the allies themselves: It won’t just be the PCs vs. the bad guys; it will be the PCs + their allies vs. a much larger and/or more  dangerous force of bad guys.

Storm King’s Thunder already includes an example of what these allied assaults might look like: In Chapter 12, a combined strike force of PCs and storm giants head to Iymrith’s lair for a gigantic showdown with the blue wyrm!

Whether these allied assaults are targeting giant strongholds or draconic lairs (or both) in your campaign’s final act, they’ll follow a similar structure:

1. The PCs will hit up their allies.
2. Their allies will provide a strike force.
3. The players will run both their PCs and their other members of their strike force.

Giving each player one additional character to play during the assault is probably ideal, and in practice I’d suggest that two additional characters per player is probably the maximum you’d want them to be juggling simultaneously. Fortunately, this is more than enough for the scale of the confrontation to feel epic in scope.

On the other side of the battlefield, if the PCs line up a bunch of allied support and then siege the giant strongholds, the problem you’ll immediately run into is that these strongholds were balanced on the assumption that the PCs — and only the PCs! — would be attacking them. If the PCs attack with a much larger and more powerful force, they’ll likely just roll over the opposition.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the first allied assault: It will be like a reward for the hard work the PCs have put into bringing that allied force together. But if the end of the campaign turns into a series of trivial mop-up actions, that likely won’t feel very satisfying.

Fortunately, there are a few options you can use here.

Reinforcements: Simply add more giants to the strongholds. Whether they’re mustering for their own military actions or bolstering their defenses in response to the PCs’ assaults, the giant lords are simply calling more giants home to defend their strongholds.

Allies vs. Allies: Along similar lines, if the PCs are forging alliances to take down the giants, it will likely force the giants into new alliances with each other. For example, the fire giants of Ironslag and the cloud giants of Lyn Armaal might join forces in a defensive pact. (This will also reduce the number of stronghold assaults you need to play out, which may be useful if your group is finding “fight yet another giant stronghold monotonous”.)

Alternatively, you can use the concept of enemy alliances to evoke “offscreen” giant factions — e.g., the cloud giants of Lyn Armaal ally with the cloud giant wizard who stole the Nightstone. This allows you to simply increase the number of giants (or their small-folk allies) present, in a fashion similar to reinforcements, while simultaneously raising the stakes and making the scale of the giant crisis seem vast.

Split the Assault. If the players adopt — or can be encouraged to adopt — a battle plan in which the strike teams split up and each assault a stronghold from a different direction, you may not need to rebalance the encounters at all. The encounters will be split across multiple groups, but since each group will have roughly the same strength as the PCs, each encounter will remain a balanced and challenging fight.

These split assault plans may also make it easier for the players to juggle multiple characters, since the strike teams can be arranged in such a way that each player has one character in each team.

In terms of actually running these encounters, I recommend checking out Spectacular Sidekicks for techniques to use while running multiple characters simultaneously. Remember that the Three Cities Proxies will have also given your group some basic training in running these types of encounters.

On your side of the screen, these assaults will run best if you can run them dynamically, having the defenders actively respond and adapt to the actions of the PCs and their allies. Don’t be afraid of letting this collapse towards a dramatic final stand in which the various assault teams join up for one final, epic assault on the final defenders. (See “Dynamic Encounter Design” in So You Want To Be a Game Master, p. 186.)

Tip: On a wider scale, you might also want to consider how, why, and when the PCs enemies — whether giants, dragons, or other factions — might choose to counterattack, forcing the PCs into a defensive scenario for a change of pace.

SPECIAL OPS

Along similar lines, you can evoke a larger battle or military campaign, but rather than focusing the gameplay on that military campaign, you can instead put the focus on the PCs performing essential special ops missions:

• Disabling supply lines.
• Assassinating a giant leader.
• Sneaking into a besieged fortress to lower the gate.
• Breaking through enemy lines to deliver a vital message or object.

And so forth. Instead of Aragorn leading the Army of the Dead at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the PCs are taking the role of Frodo and Sam sneaking into Mordor with the Ring.

The exact nature of these special ops will depend a lot on exactly how your campaign’s endgame is playing out, but I would certainly look for opportunities that leverage the existing resources in Storm King’s Thunder — e.g., the giant stronghold maps and keys. You’ll likely also discover that it’s easiest to frame and hook these special ops missions if the PCs are taking orders from someone else (who can give the a mission brief). That may be less desirable, of course, then having the players feel like they’re in the driver’s seat.

MIXED METHODS

In practice, none of these techniques need to be all-or-nothing. PCs who have conceived, coordinated, and executed an allied assault may report back and get assigned to a special ops, only to receive a promotion and lead the troops during a full-fledged wargame finale.

Or, alternatively, the players might be running a full-scale war, only to conclude — like Aragorn parting ways with King Theoden to recruit the Army of the Dead — that there’s a special op that requires their attention.

Or perhaps while some are holding back the armies of the fire giants, the PCs will need to lead allied assaults on dragon lairs in order to complete a draconic crusade and seal the deal for a new Ordning.

CONCLUSION

The common theme here, of course, is that the true conclusion of Storm King’s Thunder is uncharted territory: Neither I nor you nor your players will truly know the fate of Faerun until that fate is forged at your table.

With the right tools and techniques in your pocket, though, you should be able to confidently follow your players’ lead, actively play the huge cast of characters and factions at your disposal, and discover that thrilling tale together.

ADDENDUMS
Addendum: Kraken Society
Addendum: Faction Reference
Addendum: Three Cities Proxies

I can’t do a murder mystery because the PCs will just cast zone of truth!

Awhile back I shared Random GM Tip: Speak With Dead Mysteries, which looks at the particular challenges of designing a murder mystery scenario when the PCs have access to the speak with dead spell (or some similar magical or technological effect). A common follow-up question from people reading this article is, “But what about zone of truth?”

As I mentioned in the original article, you have to start by embracing the fundamental dynamic of a mystery: It’s not to withhold information from the detective(s); it’s about the detective(s) acquiring information.

Insofar as the zone of truth serves as one method that the PCs can use to acquire information, therefore, it won’t be a problem. It will only become a problem if (a) it trivializes all other methods of acquiring information and/or (b) short circuits a specific investigation.

Keeping that in mind, let’s take a closer look.

WHICH ZONE OF TRUTH?

There can be considerable differences in how zone of truth and similar effects work, and this will obviously have an impact on how it affects investigations.

First: Do spellcasters know when the targets of their spells — particularly enchantment spells — make their saving throws?

Personally, I prefer No. (And will often apply this as a house rule even in systems where the answer would be Yes under the rules-as-written or rules-as-intended.) I think pretending to go along with a caster’s domination spell, for example, is a classic genre trope.

This is how zone of truth worked in D&D 2^nd Edition and 3^rd Edition, and it obviously adds a layer of ambiguity to the spell. (If two people contradict each other, is that just a difference of opinion/belief? Or did one of them make their saving throw? Or both of them?) D&D 5^th Edition, on the other hand, adds specific language allowing the caster to know when the spell is in effect, stripping ambiguity.

Second: How often can a character resist the effects of the zone of truth? Do they make a single saving throw when entering the zone? Make a new saving throw every round? Make a saving throw each time they need to make a declarative statement or answer an explicit question?

Once again, D&D 5^th Edition’s version of the effect is the most troublesome for mysteries.

Third: Does the target know they’re in a zone of truth before they speak? If so, it allows them to account for the zone in what they say and how they choose to answer questions.

This has been true for every version of the D&D spell. Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, on the other hand, is usually depicted as surprising those bound by it.

Fourth: Does the effect compel the target to answer direct questions? This would obviously also make the spell a much more powerful tool in the detective’s arsenal, but it’s also not how the D&D spell works.

IDENTIFY THE QUESTION

To paraphrase something Margaret Frazer’s Dame Frevisse once said, the secret to solving a mystery is less about the answers you get to your questions than it is knowing what questions to ask and who to ask them of in the first place.

Often when talking about zone of truth mysteries in a hypothetical sense rather than a practical one, it seems people often default to thinking about an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery where there are eight specific suspects isolated on a country estate. In this scenario, with access to a zone of truth, it’s quite easy to identify both the question (Did you kill Bob?) and who you need to ask (the eight suspects).

But this type of scenario isn’t really common in RPGs to begin with: The plotting of these stories depends on the author having tight control over which questions are asked and when they’re asked in order to create a clever logic puzzle, the solution of which can only occur to the detective at the moment of the author’s choosing. Even if you want to prep a plot in an RPG — and you shouldn’t — it’s still basically impossible to force this kind of sequencing at the table.

As a result, RPG mystery scenarios tend to be built around other structures. For example, it’s not unusual for a mystery scenario to begin at a crime scene filled with physical evidence — e.g., the bloody carnage of a worg attack or the pale gray corpse of a vampire killing — and nary a suspect in sight. Before the PCs can start asking questions, they’ll first need to figure out — as Dame Frevisse said — what the questions are.

To put it another way: Zone of truth can’t short circuit the investigation if the investigation is about figuring who you need to question in the first place.

Next time you’re reading a well-made RPG mystery scenario — like Eternal Lies or Quantronic Heat — take note of how rarely NPCs actually lie to the PCs. Even NPCs who are just withholding information aren’t terribly common. In other words, even without a zone of truth, it’s not unusual for every NPC in these scenarios to say nothing but true things, and the scenario still works just fine.

There is one exploit, however, that clever players can use a zone of truth to unlock:

Can you think of anything that would help our investigation if we knew about it?

Given any kind of limited suspect pool, this question can be used as a quick shortcut for identifying the question(s) they need to ask to solve the mystery, so if you don’t want to get caught flat-footed at the table, it can be useful to prep the clever answer your bad guy(s) will use to evade it.

A good, one-size-fits-all solution here is the incomplete answer: They have to speak the truth, so they do, in fact, have to give the PCs something helpful. But it doesn’t have to be everything that they know would be helpful, nor does it need to be the most helpful thing. Stuff that wastes a ton of time while, technically, being useful is a great fit here.

Can you think of anything else that would be helpful?

Clever player.

The NPC can’t say, “No,” of course, but deflecting back to the first answer is usually possible.

Player: Can you think of anything that would help our investigation if we knew about it?

Bad Guy: I’d check the security cameras.

Player: Can you think of anything else that would be helpful?

Bad Guy: Hmm… I really think the security cameras are what you should check next.

GAIN ACCESS

The other crucial thing about deploying a zone of truth is that you need to (a) get the suspect in the zone and (b) get them to answer your questions.

Returning to our Christie-style manor mystery, if seven of the suspects all readily hop into your zone of truth and the eighth suspect refuses, then the jig is probably up. To avoid this problem, you need to have multiple suspects refuse. The PCs may still be able to use the spell (or the threat of the spell) to narrow the scope of their investigation, but not close it.

The reason for refusal might be specific to each character. The most likely explanation would be some dark secret unrelated (or at least not directly related) to the crime that they nevertheless do not want discovered.

Alternatively, it might be a society-wide condition that can be broadly applied. For example, it might be a cultural more that casting an enchantment spell on someone is unacceptably rude or unethical, such that even suggesting it will likely provoke an outraged response. It could even be a matter of explicit law, with the use of such spells being tightly regulated, limited, and controlled.

This touches on another issue, which is whether or not the PCs have the authority to question people. If they’re police detectives, then it will give them an advantage. (Although they’ll also probably have to abide more closely to the aforementioned laws, in which case they may need to do a bunch of legwork before they can deploy their spell.) If they’re just a bunch of random bozos who have wandered into town, it may be a lot easier for the suspect to dodge their calls.

Which leads us to another obstacle to gaining access, which is just literally finding them. Sure, you want to question Bob. But the door to his apartment has been kicked in, the place has been ransacked, and he’s either been kidnapped or is in the wind. In other words, the mystery — or a significant part of the mystery — can just literally be trying to track down the person you want to use your zone of truth spell on.

Of course, in order to find the person you want to question, you first have to identify them. The manor mystery, of course, still assumes that the list of suspects is immediately obvious, but in a lot of mysteries it’s anything but.

For example, you’ve found Bob: He’s been brutally murdered and his corpse dumped in an alley. You can’t question every single person in the city, so you’re going to have to figure out how to narrow down your suspect list first.

Even once you’ve gotten a suspect into the zone of truth, though, access can continue to be a problem if you enforce the time limit. The D&D 5^th Edition spell, for example, only lasts for ten minutes. That time can vanish surprisingly quickly, so set a timer.

This can be even more of a limitation in a manor house mystery: How many suspects can you rush through the circle before you run out of spells for the day?

If the PCs are trying to rush bunches of NPCs through their zones and you don’t want to play through every encounter, might rule that each witness requires 2d6 minutes or questioning; or perhaps 1d4+1 minutes if the PCs take disadvantage on their interrogation checks.

DESIGN THE CRIME

Imagine that it’s 1850 and you’re anachronistically GMing a roleplaying game. The science fiction game you’re running describes strange devices known as “security cameras” which record everything that takes place in a room.

“How am I supposed to design a mystery scenario when there are security cameras everywhere?!” you cry. “They can just see who did the crime!”

Modern criminals, of course, simply know that security cameras exist and they plan their crimes accordingly. In many cases, the evidence they leave behind while countering the security cameras will be the very clues detectives use to track them down!

An easy solution, of course, is to say something like, “I drank a potion of anti-enchantment that lasts for forty-eight hours,” thus negating the zone of truth entirely. (A clever criminal, of course, will make sure they have some perfectly reasonable pretext for having done so. An even cleverer criminal will have slipped it into the drinks last night and everyone at the manor house has immunity.)

This sort of stonewalling — where the PCs’ abilities are simply negated — is mostly just frustrating, however. It’s usually more fun to find ways that don’t just completely shut off the spell.

To put our suspect at their maximum disadvantage, let’s once again return to the manor house scenario that takes so many other options (access, identifications, etc.) off the table. This, however, is precisely the situation in which the murderer would anticipate a zone of truth. So how would they plan for that?

• They would anticipate the question, “Did you kill so-and-so?” and therefore have planned their crime so that they can honestly say, “No,” (e.g., they tricked them into suicide, arranged for a convenient accident, or hired someone else to kill them).
• They sent a dominated doppelganger disguised as themselves to enter the zone of truth. If the doppelganger’s identity is discovered, the PCs will find the NPC “knocked out” and tied up in their room. Who did this to them?! The mystery deepens. (Meanwhile, the zone of truth has expired.)
• They covertly trigger a dispel magic effect that destroys the zone of truth, possibly while someone else is being questioned. How many of those spells can you cast today, exactly?
• They arrange for a distraction. “Can you confirm that your name is Miguel Cavaste?” “Yes.” “Can you—” EXPLOSION. By the time of the chaos of the explosion is dealt with, the zone of truth has once again expired.

And so forth.

CONVERSATIONAL GAMBITS

Taking all of the above into consideration, there will nonetheless come the time when the suspect is in the zone of truth and faced with the PCs’ questions.

Maybe that’s all she wrote: Either they confess dramatically, surrender meekly, or initiate the final action scene by attacking the PCs, summoning reinforcements, or attempting to flee.

On the other hand, maybe not.

Instead, the zone of truth questioning can become a cat-and-mouse game: a final riddle for the players to unravel.

Let’s take a look at the conversational gambits an NPC (or PC!) might use when trapped, literally or metaphorically, in a zone of truth.

We’ve already mentioned giving incomplete answers. Just because you have to say true things, doesn’t mean you need to say EVERY true thing you know. Questions like, “Did you see anything suspicious last night?” gives the suspect a huge latitude in directing the interrogators’ attention towards any number of useful distractions.

They can also answer a question with a question. A question, technically, cannot be a lie. So if they can slip this past the interrogators, it can often create the illusion of a false answer: “Do you think Robert could have done this?” or “I had drinks with Marcia last night… what time was it? Around six?”

Another option is to simply refuse to answer. This, of course, looks suspicious. However, we’ve previously talked about cultural mores (“I plead the fifth!”) and simply feigning outrage (“How dare you ask me that?!”) can deflect or, at the very least, buy time.

On that note, simply rambling, delaying, feigning confusion, or otherwise running out the clock is also a perfectly viable strategy when you know the zone of truth has an unforgiving time limit.

SOLUTION IS A KEY, NOT A CONCLUSION

If you think in terms of node-based scenario design, the goal of any interrogation is to gain a lead that will point you to another node where you can continue your investigation.

As long as this remains true, the zone of truth only provides a key that you wanted the PCs to get in the first place. And therefore, of course, the zone of truth isn’t a problem at all.

So this can also bring us back to some basic first principles in RPG scenario design: Don’t prep the specific things that the PCs will do. Instead, prep a robust, dynamic situation for the PCs to interact with.

If you try to prep a specific thing for the PCs to do, the zone of truth can thwart you by giving them an alternative method of achieving their goal. But if you’ve prepped an interesting situation, then the zone of truth will often just be one more prompt for you to respond to with all the cool toys you’ve made for yourself.

FURTHER READING
Speak with Dead Mysteries
Three Clue Rule

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Looking over our options, it’s clear that there are A LOT of different directions the end of our campaign could go. Trying to come to grips with this myriad complexity — particularly if we tried to imagine doing so as a set of linear or branching paths — may feel like a daunting or even impossible task.

But we have a couple of advantages in our favor.

First, we don’t need to fully commit to anything specific until we know a lot more about what the specific group of PCs in our campaign is going to do: Are they going to ally with the Harpers and hunt giants? Ally with the storm giants and squash the many-headed giant rebellions? Lead a draconic crusade? We don’t need to worry about all the details of the stuff they don’t do; we just need to focus on the fallout from the actions they actually take.

Second, we don’t need to prep this stuff as linear plots. In fact, we definitely don’t want to do that. In a campaign as wide-open and far-flung as Storm King’s Thunder, that would lead us down a maddening and almost inconceivable rabbit hole of hopeless contingency-planning. On the other hand, we also don’t want to just leave the entire end of the campaign a blank tabula rasa with the hope that it will all magically work itself out.

Instead, what we want to do is prep the situation, creating a set of toys that will let us flexibly respond to whatever path the PCs choose to take (even if it’s a completely unexpected one that they forge for themselves). To do this, let’s step back and take a broad look at all the options we’ve considered for the final act of the campaign and identify the core mechanisms used in our imagined paths.

DESTROY THE THREAT

• The PCs will wage war against the giants, smashing their strongholds.
• To do this, they will need to form alliances that can help them defeat the giants.

PATH OF CONQUEST

• The PCs will form an alliance with a giant faction.
• The PCs will help them wage war against the other giant clans.

A DRACONIC CRUSADE

• The PCs will form an alliance with a giant faction.
• The PCs will help them wage war on the dragons.

LEAD THE FUTURE

• Likely after beginning to follow one of the paths above, the PCs will gather allies, forming a faction that will eventually rule the new Ordning.

Broken down like this, it’s immediately obvious that there’s a common structure here, and also what that structure needs:

• Details on the various factions in the campaign, along with a structure by which the PCs can forge alliances with the factions.
• A structure for waging war, allowing us to pit these factions against each other.

This is our toolkit, and if we set it up properly then these tools will allow us to easily and actively respond to whatever the PCs do, no matter what path they decide to take.

Go to Part 5D: Making Alliances

Most RPGs have a specialized combat system, and most of those have a formal method of transitioning into the combat system. This usually means triggering some form of initiative system:

• In D&D 5^th Edition, everyone makes an initiative check that determines the sequence in which they take turns declaring and resolving their actions.
• In older editions of D&D, side-based initiative determines whether the PCs go before or after the bad guys. (And, during their side’s initiative, the PCs and bad guys can take their turns in any order they want.)
• Infinity and other 2d20 Systems always have the PCs go first (in an order of their choosing), but the GM can spend Heat to have an NPC jump their initiative and take their turn before the PCs’ finish resolving their actions.
• Feng Shui features an initiative check which places each combatant on the shot clock. The clock is then counted down, with characters taking action each time their shot is reached. The action taken reduces their position by a specific number of shots, determining a new position on the shot clock where they’ll take their next action.
• Games like Technoir and Apocalypse World, on the other hand, don’t have a system for determining character order. But when a confrontation occurs (to use a term from Technoir), we enter a formal scene in which a character can’t take a second action until all other characters in the scene have taken an action.

And so forth. Regardless of the particular details, the simple “trigger initiative, start combat” procedure tends to very quickly run into a conundrum during actual play: What about an ambush?

Whether it’s the PCs wanting to ambush some bad guys or the GM wanting to have the bad guys ambush the PCs, this is both a pretty basic strategic consideration and a very common dramatic trope, so it’ll usually pop up pretty quick in the combat-drenched pulp adventures of a typical RPG campaign.

As a result, it’s pretty common for RPGs to also feature a system for surprise, which will determine (a) whether or not a group has achieved surprise and (b) what effect that surprise has.

Once again, there can be a lot of variation in the specific mechanics here, but a pretty typical combination is:

• Making a surprise check (e.g., an opposed Hiding vs. Spot Hidden check).
• Surprised characters being unable to take action during the first round and/or suffering a penalty to their actions or defense during the first round.

Depending on the system (and sometimes circumstance), surprise might be determined for either the individual or the side, but regardless, these two systems – initiative and surprise – are where most RPGs stop.

And, therefore, also where most GMs stop.

STANDOFFS

But it’s not where we’re going to stop.

Let’s consider the classic standoff from cinema: Everyone has drawn their guns. Everyone has their gun pointed at someone else. But no one’s pulling the trigger yet. Tension hangs thick in the air. Maybe there’s a hostage. Maybe one of them is trying to convince the other to join their side.

And then somebody decides enough is enough and they pull the trigger.

Chaos erupts.

But how should we resolve this in the game?

A couple bad solutions that I recommend you avoid:

• “Everybody can see everybody else, so no one is surprised. Therefore we just roll initiative normally.” …and somehow the guy who literally took the initiative by firing first ends up going last.
• “The guy who shot first took initiative, so we should ignore the mechanics and he just makes an attack roll.” Is that fair, though? Everyone was literally watching everybody else with a hair trigger.

The truth is that we already have the structure for resolving this action, because the person breaking the standoff trying to get the drop on everyone else: By taking the first shot they are trying to surprise them.

Therefore, we can use the surprise, then initiative structure that our chosen RPG has probably already given us. The only difference is the nature of the surprise: The shot-taker has already been seen by their opponents; they aren’t trying to physically sneak past them, but rather to surprise them in a different way, so we’ll probably want to use a different skill or ability or when making the surprise check.

In D&D 5^th Edition, for example, I’d recommend using Insight as the key detection skill (since you’re checking to see if they realize the shot-taker is about to pull the trigger), probably opposed by the shot-taker’s attack proficiency.

Similarly, in Call of Cthulhu, you might use a Psychology or Spot Hidden roll vs. the shot-taker’s weapon skill.

If you wanted to flesh this out a bit, you could also do stuff like:

• Encourage characters to get into standoff situations by giving characters who DON’T have a weapon drawn during a standoff disadvantage on their initiative check if hostilities break out.
• If one character has another character at weapon-point, the unarmed character can attempt to draw their weapon by making a Stealth or weapons-skill check. On a failure, the character who has them at weapon-point can initiate combat while automatically gaining surprise. On a success, they now both have their weapons drawn and the standoff continues.
• In a standoff with multiple characters, you must indicate which opponent you’re training your weapon on. You are at disadvantage for noticing anyone else trying to take the first shot. (This encourages the “swapping your gun from target to target” thing you see in the movies.)

But the core point is the simple shift in the known action resolution structure that allows us to accommodate a completely different situation.

Extra Tip: A common complaint about standoffs in D&D is that, unlike a gunshot in real life, a single attack usually doesn’t carry lethal implications. This is true, but is mostly a question of genre. There are films where a standoff has lethal implications, but also plenty of action films and superhero comics where no one in the audience thinks the direct outcome of “guns bared” will be instant death. (And then one step further to the point where the characters are aware themselves that no fight is likely to end in a single shot/blow.) Depending on edition and level, D&D tends to slide along this scale. And that’s OK.

THE LONG KNIVES

We can find another variant by considering a scene in which the PCs are engaged in tense negotiations… but the negotiations are a trap! In the middle of the scene, the NPCs suddenly draw their weapons and launch a surprise attack!

(Or vice versa. PCs can be a wily and untrustworthy bunch.)

Once again, everyone in the scene is aware of everyone else in the scene. They may even be aware that the other side is bearing arms. But they’re not necessarily aware of the imminent threat.

What I’d recommend here would be an Insight vs. Deception check.

If hidden weapons are involved, we could easily prelude this resolution with Spot Hidden vs. Conceal checks to notice that our scene partners are unexpectedly armed. (Perhaps allowing us to take preventative action and/or gaining advantage on our Insight checks.)

By altering the scene a little bit, we can also consider a situation in which we might use multiple action resolution structures simultaneously: For example, if the NPCs have agents sneaking into position on the shadowy balcony above the negotiations so that, when the moment to attack comes, they will draw their hidden weapons at the same time the archers attack from above, then we might test both Insight vs. Deception (against the negotiators) and Perception vs. Stealth (against the archers) to determine surprise.

DUEL

Yet another variation might be the classic duel: Two gunfighters facing off from opposite ends of a dusty road. A pair of fencers formally squaring off. Two aristocrats firing at ten paces.

Surprise, obviously, is not a factor here, so we can discard that structure.

But what about initiative?

We certainly could use a generic initiative check (e.g., opposed Dexterity checks), but is that the best fit for this specific situation?

For example, might it not make more sense for the gunfighters to make a Shooting vs. Shooting check to determine who gets to take the first shot (i.e., wins initiative)?

We could even use this variant in systems that don’t typically use initiative checks. For example, I mentioned that in Infinity the PCs always go first, although the GM can spend a point of Heat to seize initiative. That might not be satisfying in the case of a duel (since it largely boils down to GM fiat), but there’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t use a face-to-face Ballistics test for this.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The central GM tip here is the alternative structures for resolving:

• Standoffs
• Long Knives
• Duels

But there’s also a deeper truth to be explored here in the universal nature of this advice: That the tip isn’t the specific mechanics, but rather the structures for resolving these actions. These are more universal techniques and skills that allow you to apply your skills as a GM across many different systems.

Not every technique will be useful or applicable to every system, of course. But the reverse is also true: Every system gives you an opportunity to learn new mechanics, and then look for the opportunities to vary and leverage these mechanisms to accomplish even more. (Including, often, more in completely different games.)

Once you start thinking in these terms, you can take it one step further by creating a multitude of sub-variants that reflect the specific actions and intentions of the PCs. For example, I suggested that we could use Insight vs. weapons proficiency to determine surprise in a standoff. But:

• “I’m going to take my finger off the trigger and start putting my gun down, but as soon as they relax, I’ll take the shot!” That could be Insight vs. Deception instead.
• “I’m going to create a distraction so that Sasha can take the shot.” That could be Perception vs. weapons proficiency.
• “While everyone’s focused on the gun I have pointed at James, I’m going to pull my hidden pistol and shoot Jason!” Perception vs. Sleight of Hand.

This flexibility within the structure encourages creativity and specificity from the players as they engage with the game world; it makes the mechanics more accurately reflect the game state; and it creates fun variations in how different scenarios play out.

Are there other ways that combat could start? What ruling would you make? How would you resolve it?

FURTHER READING
Random GM Tip: Collecting Initiative
GM Don’t List: Not Writing Down Initiative
Miss-Initiative

On page 245 of the 5^th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, there’s a Conversation Reactions table. The basic concept is that, when the PCs propose a given course of action to an NPC (or group of NPCs):

1. The DM assigns an attitude to the NPC (based on their relationship or initial reaction).
2. The PC makes some form of social ability check.
3. The DM consults the appropriate table for the NPC’s attitude to determine their reaction to the PCs’ proposal.

The problem is that the tables are quite limited and prone to producing nonsensical results. (For example, Friendly characters will basically always drop everything they’re doing to help you out with minor tasks. On the other hand, it’s surprisingly easy to get hostile creatures who are “opposed to the adventurers and their goals” to nevertheless help the PCs out.)

This, of course, has led to a lot of DMs just abandoning the whole thing. But the core concept here isn’t a bad structure for making a ruling to resolve a social interaction. It’s just the implementation that cripples it.

REACTIONS & RELATIONSHIPS

The first thing the DM should do is determine the NPC’s attitude to the PCs. This is a spectrum, describing either the NPC’s immediate reaction to the PC or their long-term relationship with them:

• Intimate. Someone the PCs have a deep, meaningful friendship or romantic relationship with.
• Friendly. Someone who will generally be kind and welcoming. They might be casual friends of the PCs, or just someone who’s friendly with strangers. They are likely to help the PCs if they can.
• Indifferent. The NPC has no meaningful opinion about the PCs.
• Threatening. The NPC is actively opposed to the PCs or their goals. They won’t necessarily attack the PCs, but there’s a risk that they will.
• Hostile. Unless convinced otherwise, a hostile NPC will actively oppose the PCs’ goals. This still doesn’t necessarily mean that combat will break out, but if the NPCs have a violent disposition it’s very likely it will unless there’s an inhibiting factor.
• Nemesis. Someone the NPCs have a history of antagonistic interactions with.

What reaction or relationship an NPC has to the PCs is a creative decision made by the DM, based on their understanding of the game world. It might depend on what they know about the NPC and their goals. It might depend on the NPC’s past interactions with the PCs (or to the PCs’ faction).

On the other hand, if the PCs are meeting these NPCs for the first time and you’re looking for inspiration, you might use a random reaction check:

Note that some attitudes might be persistent: The bartender at the Golden Apple is always happy to see the PC. Nicholas has been their friend since childhood.

Other attitudes, however, may be situational: The NPC is only Hostile to the PCs in the context of this specific check. For example, the watchman would usually be Indifferent to the PCs, but they are currently trying to get into the vault that he’s guarding so he’s Threatening or Hostile.

Some NPCs might even be both, and you’ll need to figure out which attitude is most significant to the current scene! For an example of this, consider the relationship between Rick and Louis in Casablanca: They are generally Friendly with each other, but when the Nazi Strasser puts official pressure on Louis, he can become temporarily Hostile to Rick (by, for example, shutting down his casino). As this demonstrates, such conflicts in an NPC’s relationship with the PCs can be a great source of drama and adventure.

(Note that Intimate and Nemesis are only used to describe persistent relationships. They describe long-term trends in the interactions between characters which will bias them towards similar interactions in the future.)

OUTCOMES

When the PCs ask an NPC to do something specific, we’ll call this a proposal. This might be a formal proposal (e.g., the PCs gain an audience with a king to ask him for assistance with the goblin infestation of the Feybane Woods), but it’s just as likely to be something more informal and casual (e.g., “Have you heard anything about Robin?”; that’s asking for information, and if we’re uncertain whether or not the NPC would answer the question, we could resolve it as a proposal).

When we resolve a proposal, there’s a spectrum of possible outcomes:

• Attack or Hinder. The NPC not only won’t do what the PC asks, they will seek to actively stop them from achieving their goal. (This might be getting the immediate goal of the proposal, but it might also be whatever underlying goal was the reason for the proposal – e.g., the king doesn’t just refuse to provide help, he recruits the goblins or locks the PCs up so they can’t return to the Feybane.) In a dungeon scenario, raid scenario, or similar situation, it likely means rolling initiative and trying to murder each other.
• Hinder, if there’s little risk. The NPC will take action to hinder the PCs, but only if there is little risk to them doing so. (This means combat is very unlikely, since potentially lethal consequences are generally the opposite of “little risk.” Although, a necromancer who thinks he can shout, “Destroy them my skeletal minions!” and then leave unmolested while the interlopers are dealt with may feel there’s little risk to themselves.)
• No Help. The NPC will not agree to the PCs’ proposal, but they won’t work to hinder it, either.
• Help, if there’s no risk or cost. The NPC will agree to the NPC’s proposal as long as there is no cost or risk to themselves.
• Help, if there’s a minor risk or cost. The NPC will agree to the PC’s proposal as long as it wouldn’t pose more than a small inconvenience – i.e., if it requires no more than a minor cost or cost on their part.
• Help, if there’s a major risk or cost. The NPC will agree to the PC’s proposal even if there’s a major risk or cost to themselves.

The judgment of what constitutes a major or minor risk/cost should be made from the NPC’s point of view: Asking a king to make a 100 gp donation to help the local orphanage is, at worst, a minor cost to the monarch, but making the same request to a pauper would be a major ask.

MAKING THE CHECK

To resolve the social interaction, the PC making the proposal can attempt an appropriate ability check, most likely some form of Charisma check. The outcome will depend on the proposal, the NPC’s relationship, and, of course, the check result.

For an Indifferent NPC, use this results table:

For NPCs who aren’t Indifferent, adjust the DCs on this table by one step per shift in the relationship. There are two different ways to think about this, and you can use whichever works best for you.

First, you can adjust the skill check by the NPC’s attitude:

Alternatively, you can use a master DC table for all reactions/relationships:

(Note that this results table is calibrated so that it’s Easy to get a friend to help you if there’s no risk to them. It’s also Very Hard to get a Hostile enemy to help you at all, and Nearly Impossible to get them to help you if there’s any kind of risk or cost.)

GROUP CHECK

Instead of resolving a persuasion attempt as a single check, you (or the players) might choose to resolve it as a group check. This has the advantage of getting all the PCs involved in the roleplaying, and you can also space out the individual checks, roleplaying between them and allowing each check to reflect the back-and-forth of the negotiation.

Particularly when making group checks, you can also be more flexible in which skill checks each PC might make as part of the check. For example, a PC might make a Wisdom (Insight) check and whisper in their chief negotiator’s ear. Or make an Intelligence (History) check to provide a historical precedence for the king’s aid to the Feybane.

RETRIES

The PCs have tried to convince an NPC to do something for them and they’ve just failed the check, but now they want to continue the negotiations and retry the check.

What do we do?

What you don’t want to do is just allow the PCs to continue retrying the skill check until they’re happy with the result. So here are a few options.

Let It Ride. Assume the check was made under the principles of let it ride: The check determined the result. It doesn’t matter how much the PCs keep talking, they can’t change the outcome. In fact, more than that, the players should be encouraged to finish roleplaying the scene with their check result in mind.

Transition to Group Check. Alternatively, if the initial attempt was a single check, you can transition the failure to a group check. If proposed after the initial check, however, the group is trying to climb its way out of the hole dug by the initially failed check: Have them make their checks with disadvantage. (And, of course, they already have the initial failure.)

Alter the Deal. If the PCs rolled a result of Help, but the risk was too great for the NPC to actually help them — for example, they rolled “Help, if there’s no risk/cost,” but the NPC would be putting their life in great jeopardy — then the PCs might have an opportunity to still get what they want if they can alter the deal to change the risk vs. reward (see below). (“Okay, you won’t got into the dungeon for 50 gp… what about 200 gp and an equal share of the treasure?”)

Limited Shift: If the check was Attack or Hinder, you might give the PCs a single chance to shift the result. I would recommend, however, that the best possible result in this situation would be No Help, and you might also require them to offer some sort of additional incentive to even attempt the check. (“Here! Take the rubyweed! We’ll leave peacefully!”)

Offer an Alternative: You could also proactively have the NPC offer a compromise along the lines of an Altered Deal or Limited Shift. (“I won’t do it for 50gp, but I will do it for 200gp plus an equal share of the treasure.”) You may or may not let the PCs counter-offer (which would still need to be better than their original offer) with a successful check.

Risk the Relationship: When appropriate, you might allow the PC to push hard on a Friendly or Intimate NPC and retry the check. In doing so, however, they’re risking the relationship: If they fail the check on the retry (or if the request requires a large sacrifice), they permanently damage their relationship, and it drops by one step.

RUNNING THE SCENE

The mechanical resolution at the center of this scene structure is fairly simple. As the DM, however, you have a number of levers that you control in framing and running the scene beyond that mechanical resolution.

First, you determine the NPC’s relationship. Think about your vision for this character, the PCs’ history with them (if any), their current goals, and so forth.

Second, what does “hinder” or “help” mean to this NPC? A king, for example, is unlikely to personally ride out and help the PCs slay giant rats, but he might assign some of the King’s Guard to assist.

Third, explain the outcome. For example, why did the friendly character help last time even though the risk was great, but won’t help this time? Well, perhaps he’s nervous now because of what happened last time. Or he’s busy. The context provided by this explanation may end up being the real meat of the scene. It might even have repercussions far beyond this scene.

Fourth, you decide if a check is allowed in the first place. Just like any other check, if you judge that success is either guaranteed (“hey, could you hand me that box?”) or impossible (“please abdicate your throne and make me the queen”), there’s no need to make a check. (Similarly, you decide if retries are allowed, as described above.)

Alternatively, you can extend the table to handle even larger risks or costs. Some caution is recommended, though, as a thoughtless application of this principle can lead to nonsensical results (e.g., a king abdicating his throne for a charismatic bard).

In fact, if the PCs are asking for something with a truly astronomical cost, it may be more effective to make them pay for it by figuring out what the PCs could do for the NPC in exchange for their largesse (i.e., what adventure will they be asked to do).

THE PLAYER’S LEVERS

Like the DM, the players also have levers they can use to influence the negotiation instead of relying strictly on a bare mechanical resolution.

First, they can minimize the risk in their proposal. They might do this in a direct way by altering the proposal in order to reduce the risk or cost. Alternatively, they might take action to only make the target believe that the risk or cost is minimal, which you might resolve with a Charisma (Deception) check. (A failed deception might scuttle the negotiation entirely, or it might just inflict disadvantage on the negotiation check in addition to the target assessing the proposal in accord with its actual risk.)

Second, they can provide a reward or perform a favor to change the perceived balance between risk and reward for the NPC. (This is also something that the PCs could theoretically deceive the target about, convincing them that a reward exists when it doesn’t or that it’s more valuable than it is.)

The PCs might also try to change their relationship with the NPC. Generally speaking, this should not be something that the PCs can achieve with a single ability check. Relationships are developed over the long-term, evolving over the course of multiple scenes (and likely multiple sessions). Are the PCs consistently helping the NPC or people/things the NPC cares about? Then their relationship will likely improve. Are they taking advantage of the NPC, putting them in danger, or damaging the things and people they care about? Then their relationship is going to deteriorate or collapse. This is really a roleplaying decision for the DM to make. (One thing I would recommend, though, is that it’s probably easier to knock an NPC out of Indifferent than anything else.)

The one exception to this is changing first impressions. Whatever that initial relationship may be, the fact that it’s only existed for a few moments and is likely based on very little information will probably make it more susceptible to a rapid shift. A particularly effective technique here is to invoke a common ally, faction, or cause. Letters of recommendation can serve this function in formal negotiations. (This, too, could be a matter of deception. For example, if the PCs can convince the orcs they just met that they, too, work for the Golem Master, then we’re all on the same team and even a Hostile reaction could flip to Friendly.)

ROLEPLAYING THE SCENE

Something that we’ve emphasized throughout this article is that this is a scene structure which resolves a roleplayed negotiation. It does not, importantly, replace the roleplaying. The scene should be roleplayed to set up the check and then the outcome of the check should be roleplayed, too.

For a deeper look, and more tips and tricks for handling this during actual play, you might want to check out Rulings in Practice: Social Skills.