Back in 2012, I was chatting with a guy online who claimed that, by the year 2017, computer games would exist which would allow GMs to create off-the-cuff in real-time just like they can currently improvise at the gaming table.

And I said, “Bullshit,” for what is probably obvious reasons to most of you, but nevertheless baffle people who seem to think that the special effects in MCU movies are created by someone saying, “Show Captain America punching Thanos with Thor’s hammer” and then thirty seconds later having a fully rendered shot pop out of the computer.

(Short version: That’s not how that works. And the difficulty of generating a fully interactive version of the scene properly rigged and optimized for a computer game engine would be at least an order of magnitude higher, probably more.)

In the process of calling bullshit, however, I ended up creating an example of off-the-cuff design in a tabletop RPG that would be virtually impossible to replicate in a computer game engine even with procedural content generators vastly superior to anything we have available to us today. (And even moreso in 2012 or 2017.)

It was nothing particularly spectacular, but there were a few touches of the fantastical that I think are rather evocative and worth sharing, and so I did that here on the Alexandrian back in 2014.

But here’s the thing: We’re definitely closer to that future now than we were in 2012 or 2014.

(I mean, that’s tautological. But you know what I mean.)

So I thought it might be fun to take the descriptions from the Valley of the Sapphire Waves and see what images are conjured forth by Midjourney.

My methodology here is relatively simple: I input a prompt using more or less the words from the original write-up of the Valley. Midjourney will then generate four images, and I’ll select whichever one I think is best. (“Best,” of course, is subjective, but it will be some combination of accurate, evocative, beautiful, and useful. Basically, it will be the image I would select if I was looking for a visual handout to use while GMing.)

I don’t know what the results will be. (I suspect “surprisingly good, but not great,” but we’ll see.) And, of course, no matter how immaculate the result is, we’ll still be miles away from running a game for my friends in a computer game engine and getting the computer to pop out this entire valley (or even just these specific locations) in a seamlessly playable form in the less than five minutes it took me to originally improvise for table use.

VALLEY OF THE SAPPHIRE WAVES

The Valley of the Sapphire Waves is filled with rolling fields of vibrant blue grass. Anyone standing in the waters of the valley will perceive the sun as eclipsed because Helios mourns the loss of his first wife (the Ur-Goddess of the Rivers, see hex 1).

HEX 1

The Falls of the Ur-Goddess. The 300 foot tall waterfall at the end of the valley flows up because it is the place where the Ur-Goddess of the Rivers was slain millennia ago.

HEX 2

Obelisk of Moonstone. Raised as a holy site by the Heresy Cult of the Ur-Goddess. The moonstone will heal anyone touching it at night, but under the rays of the sun it is cursed. (Anyone touching it suffers as per a bestow curse spell.)

HEX 3

The Stirge Mires. 1 in 3 chance of encounteing 1-6 stirges.

HEX 4

Goblin Moonstone Scavengers. Small tribe of goblins scavenging the moonstones scattered in rocky crevasses here.

HEX 5

Vale of the Dryad. This forestland is protected by a dryad whose spirit is bound to a treant. All the squirrels here can talk, many spontaneously forming acting troupes performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

HEX 6

Graveyard of the Moonstone Cults. 1 in 3 chance per turn of encountering 1-3 wights.

HEX 7

Medusa’s Vale. A medusa makes her home in the Sinkhole of Statuary.

HEX 8

Sphinx Guardians. Once a great tribe of sphinxes guarded the entrance to the valley (they were placed there by Helios), but their numbers are depleted. 1 in 3 chance of encountering a sphinx, which 75% of the time will be an undead skeleton. Remaining sphinxes will ask sun-oriented riddles before attacking.

POST MORTEM

I’m not entirely certain Midjourney knows what a sphinx is. (Or, at the very least, “sphinx skeleton” leaves it in a tizzy.)

The most accurate image is probably of the squirrels performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (The Falls of the Ur-Goddess aren’t bad, but they’re definitely not flowing upwards.)

I like Helios rising to eclipse the sun, but for me the most compelling image is probably of the Medusa’s sinkhole. Ironically, this is also (with the possible exception of the undead sphinxes) the most inaccurate of the images. But I am deeply intrigued by the creatures crawling around her.

From a practical standpoint, the whole process of generating images took me forty-five minutes to complete. So we’ve obviously still got a long way to go here.

It’ll be interesting to see what things look like if we check back in on this in another decade. (Or three.)

As we all know, RPGs are not movies and the Principle of Using Linear Mediums as RPG Examples reminds us that there are crucial differences between the books, movies, TV shows, and graphic novels we love and the fundamentally interactive medium of the roleplaying game.

(Or, at least, there should be.)

Nonetheless, who among us hasn’t dreamed of playing through our favorite stories? Of actually experiencing an adventure that we’ve seen or read? Or maybe we’re just GMs with a session to prep and a desperate need to find some quick and easy inspiration. Either way, what would it mean to take a traditional, linear story and adapt it to your gaming table?

ADAPTING CHARACTERS

Let’s start with the relatively easy proposition of bringing your favorite character to the gaming table: Luke Skywalker. Lara Croft. Sherlock Holmes. Sister Frevisse. Oedipus. Whoever has captured your imagination.

To start, you’ll want to identify the precise version of the character you want to play: The Luke Skywalker who was living with his aunt and uncle on a moisture farm is a very different character from the one who confronted the Emperor on the second Death Star. Other characters will literally exist in multiple versions, drawn from different myths or continuities.

(Actually, upon reflection, that’s also true of Luke Skywalker.)

On a similar note, rather than capturing an existing vision of a character, you might actually set out to create your own variation of the character: Out of all the Batgirls which have existed, you’re creating your own unique gestalt Batgirl.

(You can do this even with characters who currently exist in only one canonical form.)

In practice, this will quickly become true in any case, because it’s of vital importance to recognize that your character’s destiny from the medium you’re adapting them from does not exist: From whatever point in their personal continuity you may be drawing them, once they’ve been injected into the gaming table, their future is unwritten. Maybe your Luke Skywalker falls to the Dark Side (or never becomes a Jedi at all). Maybe your Sherlock Holmes never meets Moriarty. You’re playing to find out.

ADAPTING PLOT

Now let’s swap to the Game Master’s side of the table.

Obviously we don’t want to prep a plot, so the first thing we’ll want to do is get rid of the plot from our source material.

Step 1: Remove the main characters and every action they take.

Step 2: What you’ll be left with is a situation. Identify the best structure for modeling the situation. (A node-based structure will probably work 4 times out of 5.)

Step 3: The original story had a hook for getting the characters involved. Re-hook it for your PCs. (In some cases you’ll be able to use the same hook that the film/book did. But often you’ll get better results customizing the hook to your PCs.)

Unsurprisingly, this looks a lot like how I rebuild railroaded adventures, as described in How to Remix an Adventure. (And you can check out that essay for some specific details of how to identify and implement various scenario structures.)

A place where this can get tricky is that a lot of films/books will actually dedicate a large chunk of narrative to “getting the group together.” These sections are usually heavily dependent on the specific characters and the specific choices those characters make, plus often a large helping of random coincidence. You can easily get lost trying to recreate those specific story beats at the table. (And even if you do successfully recreate them, it usually means that some players are sitting around for an hour or more waiting for the narrative to onboard their character. Which obviously isn’t ideal.)

For example, in Star Wars the “adventuring party” is Leia, R2-D2, C3-PO, Luke, Obi-Wan, Han, and Chewie. It not only takes half the movie to bring them all together, but it’s all based off of a chain of very specific events (the droids have to be sold to Luke, R2-D2 has to escape, they have to specifically hire the Millennium Falcon as opposed to any other ship, etc.).

Similarly, in Lord of the Rings you have to get all the way to Rivendell before the final adventuring party is assembled.

All of this, of course, should disappear when you strip out the main characters and the actions they take. It’s just that in the specific case of “bringing the party together,” you might be surprised by just how much stuff hits the cutting room floor.

EXAMPLE: STAR WARS

Let’s actually zoom in on Star Wars for a moment as an example of what this might look like in actual practice.

Having removed all of our main characters, what’s the actual premise of the film?

To get the Death Star plans to Alderaan.

Okay, so what’s the situation at the beginning of the movie?

• The plans have been stolen.
• Darth Vader is in pursuit onboard a star destroyer
• The Death Star exists (and has a hidden weakness).
• The rebel base is on Yavin IV.
• There are rebel contacts on Alderaan.

What about all the stuff on Tattooine? Well, its relevance kind of depends on whether or not we ever go to Tattooine in the first place, and that will likely depend on how we exactly we frame the beginning of our adventure and hook the PCs into it.

For example, one option would be to back the clock up and have the PCs be the ones who steal the plans in the first place. This could very easily result in them never going to Tattooine at all, since they could just as easily attempt to flee from Vader’s star destroyer to Naboo or Kashyyyk or Hoth or Cato Neimoidia or an asteroid belt.

Alternatively, maybe you launch the adventure in media res when the group’s escape pod lands on Tattooine: They need to avoid the Imperial soldiers who are pursuing them and they need to get off-planet quick. If that’s the case, we can add:

• Their escape pod lands in an area of Tattooine with moisture farms. (We can prep an example moisture farm.)
• Jawa transports crisscross the area. (They like to steal droids.)
• The PCs need a ship: Mos Eisley is where they can hire or steal a ship. (We could perhaps prep three different ships that they might be able to take.)
• There’s a local crime syndicate run by the Hutts.

Another option would be that the PCs actually have two goals: Steal the Death Star plans and also recruit General Obi-Wan Kenobi, a retired hero of the Clone Wars (who we are now considering an NPC instead of a PC). We could even imagine the PCs perhaps deciding to recruit Obi-Wan Kenobi first.

Or maybe the adventure hook is “recruit Obi-Wan Kenobi” and then, unexpectedly, they’re beamed the Death Star plans as they arrive at Tattooine… and now there’s a star destroyer dropping out of hyperspace on top of them.

Notice how all of these different hooks are going to frame and shape the adventure in slightly different ways, particularly once the players’ choices start interacting with them, but most of them are still going to play out across the top of the same situation-based prep.

On that note, what scenario structures would we actually use to prep our tabletop Star Wars adventure?

Probably several.

First, if we include stealing the Death Star plans, that’s almost certainly a heist.

After they steal the plans, their goal is to deliver them to Alderaan. We could:

• Let them go straight to Alderaan. (Skip ahead to their arrival.)
• Come up with an explanation for why they have to go to another planet on their way to Alderaan. (Fuel?) For this you might just show them a hyperspace network map, let them choose their course, and then have the encounter with Vader’s star destroyer happen, followed by prepping whatever planet they end up on.
• Radically expand this part of the adventure by turning it into a full-fledged McGuffin keep-away.

The advantage of prepping this for your own table is that you don’t need to prep every single planet they could conceivably go to: At the end of the heist, have them choose their escape vector and end the session. Then prep whatever planet the star destroyer attack will strand them on.

(Or, alternatively, have them choose their escape vector, trigger the star destroyer encounter, and then cut as their ship/escape pod crash lands on the planet.)

Regardless, there’s now a clear prep vector: They need a ship. The ship will take them to Alderaan. They’ll discover that Alderaan has been destroyed and see the Death Star (which might result in their ship being tractored in).

However that plays out, they now have to go to Plan B, which is delivering the Death Star plans to the only other rebel base they know about: Yavin IV. The rebel base is pretty straightforward in terms of prep (a brief overview plus some NPCs).

For the Death Star itself, you’ll likely want to prep:

• What happens if the PCs end up inside the Death Star. (See Raiding the Death Star for what that prep would look like.)
• The Trench Run (as a series of spacefighter combat encounters, possibly with some fluid tactical choices about which squads are dealing with which obstacles to clear the run).

Alternatively, you could forego the Trench Run, declare that the “secret weakness” of the Death Star requires a commando raid of the station, and collapse everything into your Death Star raid scenario. Or maybe there are two different options and the players can choose which one they want to pursue.

Notice that, other than the mission objective (“deliver the Death Star plans to Alderaan”), we’re not assuming that things will play out the same way that they did in the movie. We’re just putting the various pieces of the scenario into play: Rebel ops on Alderaan and Yavin IV. Death Star plans are here. This is the route (or routes) to Alderaan from where the Death Star plans are. The Death Star has just blown up Alderaan.

And you’re ready to play to find out.

If you want to see another example of how to do this featuring The Lord of the Rings, read this.

DISGUISING YOUR PURLOINED ADAPTATION

What if your players recognize the source material you’re cribbing from?

Well, sometimes that’s the point. But if it’s not, then you just need to make sure that you either pick source material the players aren’t familiar with and/or scrub off the serial numbers.

This can be a bit harder than it looks. (Changing the One Ring to a magical tiara might throw them off the scent, but the volcano named Mt. Bane might tip them off.) One of the surest ways to hide your inspiration, though, is a complete genre shift.

For example, replace “spaceship” with “spelljammer,” “Mos Eisley” with “Luskan,” and “Death Star” with “Illithid uber-mind.”

They won’t suspect a thing.

With Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk arriving on bookshelves as we enter the twilight months of 5^th Edition in anticipation of the release of D&D 2024 / OneD&D / whatever we end up calling it, I thought it would be interesting to go all the way back to the beginning and take a peek at the D&D Starter Set first published in 2014.

But let’s start by going even further back and discussing the history of D&D introductory sets. (This is something I discuss in even more detail in Every Edition of D&D if you want to go on a real deep dive.)

D&D was originally published as a boxed set in 1974. In 1977, however, the product line bifurcated: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would be published as a set of three hardcover books, while Dungeons & Dragons would be published in the boxed Basic Set. (This is why that version of the game is often called Basic D&D.)

In 1981, the Basic Set was revamped and an Expert Set was added as a supplement. In 1983, the Basic and Expert sets were revamped again, and the Companion, Master, and Immortals boxed sets were also added.

Now, here’s the key thing: Dungeons & Dragons was NOT the same game as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The Basic Set (and its supplements) were a complete, stand-alone game that even had its own campaign worlds and adventures.

Starting in 1991, this changed. The Basic D&D game remained distinct from AD&D for a while longer, but its rules were compiled into the Rules Cyclopedia. Later, after Wizards of the Coast bought D&D, they would end Basic D&D and drop the “Advanced” moniker from the 3^rd Edition of AD&D (now referred to simply as D&D). A multitude of Basic Sets, Introductions, First Quests, Starter Sets, Adventure Games, and Basic Games would continue to be published as boxed sets, but there was an important difference:

They weren’t complete games.

They were pay-to-preview ads for the Player’s Handbook, and they were usually designed accordingly: You bought them. You played them once. Then you threw them in the trash, bought the core rulebooks, and never touched them again.

I’ve talked in the past about the fact that I think this killed D&D’s gateway product and did an incredible amount of harm to the entire RPG industry. Personally, in my ideal world, D&D would be a game sold in a box, and when new players asked, “What do I need to play D&D?” you’d say, “You need the big box with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS on the cover.” Simple.

Obviously, we don’t live in that world. But this should give you a barometer for what my ideal Starter Set would look like: It would be a meaty, full-featured version of D&D. It would introduce complete neophytes to roleplaying games and teach them not only how to play, but also how to be a Dungeon Master. It would give a complete gaming experience, even if you never picked up the Player’s Handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide.

And if you bought it, you would absolutely not feel like you paid money to have someone tell you that you should buy something else.

OPENING THE BOX

So let’s crack this thing open.

What’s actually in the D&D Starter Set box is pretty barebones:

• The 32-page Starter Set Rulebook, which gives you all the rules for the game.
• The 64-page Lost Mine of Phandelver, which serves as an adventure book, monster manual, magic item vault, and index.
• Five pregen characters sheets.
• A set of dice.

Honestly, I think this barebones approach is okay. You don’t need a fancy gizmos and gadgets to play a roleplaying game. Would a poster map of the Phandalin region (where Lost Mines of Phandelver is set) have been a nice bit of highly practical bling that might have been wonderfully intriguing to a new player? Almost certainly.

But barebones here gives you an MSRP of $20, which is an absolutely fabulous price point. That puts the Starter Set in the territory of an impulse buy, and that was often even more true in actual practice. (I got my copy for $10.)

Nevertheless, there are a couple of things I will ding here: First, the included dice set only includes one d20 and one d6, which I think is inadequate for a game that includes advantage/disadvantage and the fireball spell.

Second, the two booklets would really benefit from cardstock covers. Instead, they’re just stapled paper and very flimsy.

THE RULEBOOK

The Starter Set Rulebook is very good.

The introduction it provides to RPGs — what they are, how they’re played, etc. — is workmanlike, but solid in its execution. More importantly this is a complete and fully functional rulebook. It’s not painfully incomplete. It doesn’t constantly tease with how the real rules are in another book. It’s a rock solid volume, and you could run a complete Tier 1 campaign with this rulebook with zero difficulty.

In fact, except for one thing that we’ll get to in just a moment, you could run multiple Tier 1 campaigns.

Combined with the magic items and monsters found in the companion volume, a DM has enough material that they could comfortably create their own campaign. I could even imagine someone skipping the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, grabbing a Monster Manual to give them more options for foes, and continuing to game happily for months or years or forever.

This is, in case I’m not being clear, a really fantastic achievement.

Unfortunately, as I hinted above, there are a couple gaping holes here that, in my opinion, stop this from being a total triumph.

First, there are no rules for character creation. Instead, players will need to pick one of the five pregen characters included in the boxed set. This is the truly crippling blow, and the only thing that truly limits the Starter Set.

Second, the books do a pretty good job of orienting first-time Dungeon Masters. There’s a lot of practical advice for how they can referee the session, make rulings, set up adventure hooks, narrate the action, play the monsters, and so forth. But the major oversight is that they never actually tell the DM how to run the dungeons included in the adventure book.

D&D actually has a long history of failing to do this (the 5^th Edition core rulebooks are actually worse!), but it’s ultimately kind of amusing when you realize that the Starter Set includes multiple, detailed explanations of exactly how boxed text is supposed to be used, but nothing on how dungeons are supposed to be used.

For example, at the beginning of the adventure they tell you:

• This is boxed text. You should read it.
• Here is a list of specific things you should do; including getting a marching order so that you know where the PCs are positioned when the goblins ambush them.
• When the goblins ambush them, this is the step-by-step guide for how combat should start and what you should be doing while running the combat.
• Here are several specific ways that the PCs can track the goblins back to their lair, and here’s a walk-thru of how you can resolve each one.

This is all great. Concrete, specific advice presented in a clear and highly usable format.

But then the PCs get to the goblins’ lair and… nothing.

To be clear, they do a fantastic job of presenting the dungeon:

• General Features
• What the Goblins Know (always love this)
• Keyed map
• And, of course, the keyed entries describing each room.

Again, these are all great.

But the step-by-step instructions for how you’re actually supposed to use this material? It just… stops. The designers obviously just assume that reading text out loud requires a detailed explanation, but how you run a dungeon is just a skill that everyone is born with.

Which is, of course, really silly.

But I digress. As I mentioned, this problem is a much larger and more systemic than the D&D Starter Set. It’s just particularly sad to see the ball getting dropped in an introductory product.

QUIBBLES & NITPICKS

Two more quick nitpicks before we do a proper dive into the adventure book.

First, Wizards of the Coast is allergic to referencing page numbers and I don’t get it. The “logic,” which they’ve explained from time to time, is that they don’t want to include, for example, a specific page number in the Monster Manual because it’s possible that they’ll revise the Monster Manual and the page numbers will change.

But in the 20+ years they’ve been eschewing page numbers, and I cannot emphasize this enough, they have never done this. The first time it might happen is next year.

It’s, frankly, dumb in general because it makes their books much, much harder to use than they need to be. And in the specific case of the D&D Starter Set it’s even dumber because this is a self-contained product. If you were to some day revise the Starter Set, you could just update the page references.

But because Wizards of the Coast is allergic to page numbers, brand new DMs will be cursed with needlessly flipping back and forth through the books, trying to figure out where specific sections are after the authors wave vaguely in their direction.

(I will give them partial credit for an Index that isn’t complete garbage.)

Second, the random encounter procedures for dungeons given in the Starter Set are kinda garbage. They give random encounter tables, but then instruct brand new DMs, “Make an encounter check whenever you feel like it. Or don’t. But you definitely should. But don’t make too many of them, because you’ll ruin your game. How many is too many? Eh. I dunno. You’ll figure it out. Maybe.”

I suspect this text may have originally been more closely tied to detailed dungeon procedures which were present in pre-5^th Edition D&D Next playtest material but removed from the game entirely at the eleventh hour. But this is, nonetheless, bad praxis, and even moreso in material you’re presenting to first-time DMs.

LOST MINE OF PHANDELVER

Which finally brings us to Lost Mine of Phandelver, the adventure book.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: This is good.

It’s really, really good.

I’m pretty comfortable describing Lost Mine as the single best introductory adventure D&D has ever had, and I don’t think the competition is even close.

First, it’s not just an adventure. It’s an entire campaign. In just 50 pages, Lost Mine of Phandelver presents seven — seven! — different scenarios plus the lushly detailed village of Phandalin. (The other 14 pages in the booklet are devoted to the monster manual, magic item vault, and rules index.) I am completely blown away by this.

And it’s not just the amount of material presented here. This is a really good campaign, and it’s particularly excellent as an exemplar for new DMs figuring out how to make their own campaigns.

We can start by looking at the structure of the campaign:

• Lost Mine of Phandelver starts with the PCs on their way to the village of Phandalin.
• A simple ambush-based scenario hook pulls the PCs into a goblin lair called the Cragmaw Hideout. The initial encounter is a perfect kickoff for first-time players and DMs, starting with an intriguing enigma (dead horses lying in the road) before smoothly transitioning to a combat encounter featuring a simple, but meaningful tactical dilemma for the players.
• The Cragmaw dungeon itself is absolutely fantastic: It’s non-linear. It takes advantage of the third-dimension. The key is clear, clever, and features several really cool ideas (like the dams that the goblins can use to create a defensive flood). It repeatedly emphasizes the opportunity not only for combat, but also roleplaying and clever problem-solving. Everything here implicitly tells the players that their choices matter and teaches the DM how to actively respond to what the PCs are doing.
• The Cragmaw hideout also features multiple scenario hooks, giving the players several options to pursue.
• Whenever the PCs arrive in Phandalin (whether they head there immediately or after pursuing the scenario hooks from the Cragmaw hideout), the entire village is set up to deliver another half dozen or more scenario hooks to them. The result is that the players end up with an entire menu of scenario hooks to choose between, once against emphasizing that their choices matter.
• The individual scenarios are also interconnected, in a really beautiful node-based design that ultimately funnels the PCs into the campaign finale at Wave Echo Cave, which (a) has been foreshadowed since the very beginning of the campaign and (b) is another fantastic dungeon scenario with excellent non-linear design and multiple factions.

I really can’t emphasize just how great this is.

On top of this rock solid campaign frame, the individual adventures are, as I’ve already suggested, equally excellent. I’ve mentioned the strategically interesting non-linear design of the dungeons and the Three Clue Rule, but they also feature retreating foes, personalized magic items redolent with history and flavor, and a wonderfully varied cast of characters.

On top of all that, although I quibbled about the presentation of the random dungeon encounters, the random wilderness encounters are given a very effective procedure AND they’re linked to the scenarios, providing another level of interconnectivity in the campaign.

THE VERDICT

The Starter Set Rulebook is very good, but unfortunately flawed in a couple key ways.

That almost doesn’t matter, though, because I’d pay $20 for just Lost Mine of Phandelver in a heartbeat. And I’d do it even faster than that if I could.

Best introductory adventure for D&D ever published? Definitely.

Best adventure book of any kind published by Wizards of the Coast? Quite possibly.

Overall, the 1983 Basic Set probably remains the best introduction to D&D ever published. But if I’d been given Lost Mine of Phandelver when I was a first-time DM, it would have made me a much better DM than I was, and that’s something special. Even if you’re an experienced DM with years of play under your belt, it’s still a really enjoyable campaign that’s immaculate in its construction.

I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

Grade: A

• Lost Mine of Phandelver: A+

Lead Designers: Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford
Design Team: Christopher Perkins, James Wyatt, Rodney Thompson, Robert J. Schwalb, Peter Lee, Steve Townshend, Bruce R. Cordell
Adventure Designers: Richard Baker, Christopher Perkins

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $19.95
Page Count: 96

D&D Beyond: Lost Mine of Phandelver (Free!)

FURTHER READING
Review: D&D Essentials Kit
Review: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (D&D Starter Set 2022)

Buy Now!

Something that I’ve often said is that the supposed divide between “roleplaying” and “combat” (with the latter sometimes being labeled as “rollplaying”) is an imaginary one. Combat is roleplaying: It’s filled with high-stakes, life-or-death decision-making, and that’s the perfect crucible for exploring, revealing, and developing characters.

What IS frequently missing from our combat scenes in a roleplaying game, however, is talking.

Which is a shame, because if we think about some of the all-time classic fight scenes, they can be as much about the dialogue as the fisticuffs or gun-kata.

• Inigo Montoya vs. the Man in Black from The Princess Bride.
• Neo vs. Agent Smith in The Matrix. (Note the nonverbal communication in this one, too.)
• Robin Hood vs. Sir Guy in The Adventures of Robin Hood.
• Hawkins vs. Ravenhurst in Court Jester.
• Iron Man vs. Captain America in Captain America: Civil War.

It’s not every fight, of course, but it’s a lot of them.

There are a number of reasons why it’s so rare to find interactions like this at our gaming tables.

First, we’re often playing in large groups with lots of characters. Even in other mediums, this complexity tends to cut down on the amount of dialogue, because there’s already a lot of different narrative elements that are being juggled.

Second, there are obviously also a lot of mechanical elements that you’re juggling in a typical RPG during a combat scene.

On top of that, you’re often trying to juggle those elements as quickly as possible; to resolve actions fast, keep the pace high, and get around the table quickly so that the players stay engaged with the game. In fact, I’ve given lots of advice aimed specifically at speeding things up in combat.

That being the case, it’s easy to fall into a smooth rhythm of resolving mechanics, evocatively describing those resolutions, and rapidly passing the ball to the next action declaration while literally not leaving room to get a word in edgewise.

The solution is to co-opt the mechanics: When you’re writing down the initiative list for the fight, simply include Dialogue on one of the initiative counts.

You might list it at the same initiative count in each fight (e.g. first in the round, last in the round, 10, etc.), but when I’ve experimented with this technique I’ve found actually rolling an initiative for Dialogue to be effective because it mixes up the pacing and placement of the initial interaction. (Your mileage may vary.)

All that you need to do now is honor the dialogue prompt: When you hit Dialogue in the initiative count, resist any temptation to skip over it. Take the moment to select one or more of your NPCs and have them say something.

• Taunt a PC.
• Debate the righteousness of their actions.
• Offer a bribe to get the PCs to help them.
• Trick the PCs with an offer of surrender.
• Try to sway one of the PCs’ allies to join their cause.
• Reveal that they’ve been a traitor the entire time.
• Curse the effectiveness of the PCs.
• Vow vengeance.

The possibilities are, of course, limitless.

You’ll often discover that just having the NPCs verbally engage with the PCs will draw the players out and get them to respond in the moment. If not, you can specifically prompt the players. And, in fact, I recommend prompting a specific player. For example, you might have your villain say something like, “You don’t think I know where you live?! When I’m finished with, I’ll make sure Robert rues the day he fell in love with you!” And then ask the player, “How does Clarissa respond to that?”

Clarissa’s response might be to stab him rather than talk with him, and that’s just fine. As such, it can be useful to look at the PC positioned immediately after the Dialogue prompt and target them. (Similarly, if you’re struggling to improvise dialogue, you might take inspiration from NPCs who are immediately before or after the Dialogue prompt.)

A FEW OPTIONS

In larger fights, you might want to roll up multiple Dialogue initiatives. Don’t overdo it, though. One is often enough, and if you put in too many you’ll likely find the temptation to skip them start to grow (which defeats the entire point).

On the flip side, the presence of a Dialogue prompt on your initiative counter should not prevent you from open repartee. In other words, the Dialogue prompt doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to talk during other points in the fight. On the contrary! The whole point of the prompt is to get loosened up. You’ll often find that as you get into the habit and rhythm of combat dialogue, the repartee will break free and start popping up all over the place.

When you hit a Dialogue prompt, don’t forget to consider dialogue from characters not directly involved in the fight. Bystanders, hostages, familiars, etc. It’s a great way of reminding the players about the wider environment in which the fight is taking place (and possibly the stakes they’re fighting for).

If you’re struggling, you might consider jotting down a villain’s catchphrase or a random table of one-liners. Again, these should not be limiters; they’re creative spurs to help kickstart dialogue interactions during the fight.

On a similar note, if a PC takes out a bad guy and the next initiative count is the Dialogue prompt, you might take that as a hint to prompt the player to provide a closing remark. (Think about the type of stuff James Bond or Arnold Schwarznegger quip. Or go for more sinister filler if that’s more appropriate for your campaign.) You can do something similar for villains who knock out a PC or kill one of their allies.

In addition to Dialogue prompts, I’ve also talked about a similar technique using Feng Shui’s shot clock to prompt environmental effects. You can read more about that in Feng Shui: Filling the Shot.

I’m returning to What Would the Smart Party Do, the premiere UK RPG podcast, to share with Gaz and Ben all the amazing secrets of So You Want To Be a Game Master. We had a pretty awesome, free-ranging conversation that often went beyond the book itself and into some really great discussions about GMing in general.

The lads are delighted to have returning Good Friend of the Show, RPG producer and designer at Atlas Games, Justin Alexander. He’s got a new book coming out, available in all good purveyors of such things, So You Want To Be A Game Master. Join for great insights, some not seen or heard before on the Alexandrian (or maybe anywhere!) and to get a unique precis of what is in this fine work. Visit Justin’s excellent RPG resource The Alexandrian, as check out what’s hot at Atlas Games.

Listen Now!

You can find links to my previous appearance on What Would the Smart Party Do at the Alexandrian Auxiliary.