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:

2d6	Reaction
2-4	Hostile
5-7	Threatening
8-10	Indifferent
11-12	Friendly

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:

DC	Indifferent NPC
DC 0	Attack/Hinder
DC 5	Hinder, if there's little risk
DC 10	No help
DC 15	Help, if there's no risk/cost
DC 20	Help, if there's a minor risk/cost
DC 25	Help, if there's a major risk/cost

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:

Reaction/Relationship	Check Modifier
Intimate	+10
Friendly	+5
Indifferent	+0
Threatening	-5
Hostile	-10
Nemesis	-15

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

DC	Intimate	Friendly	Indifferent
DC 0	No help	Hinder, little risk	Attack/Hinder
DC 5	Help, little risk	No help	Hinder, little risk
DC 10	Help, minor risk	Help, little risk	No help
DC 15	Help, major risk	Help, minor risk	Help, little risk
DC 20	Help, major risk	Help, major risk	Help, minor risk
DC 25	Help, major risk	Help, major risk	Help, major risk
DC 30	Help, major risk	Help, major risk	Help, major risk
DC	Threatening	Hostile	Nemesis
DC 0	Attack/Hinder	Attack/Hinder	Attack/Hinder
DC 5	Attack/Hinder	Attack/Hinder	Attack/Hinder
DC 10	Hinder, little risk	Attack/Hinder	Attack/Hinder
DC 15	No help	Hinder, little risk	Attack/Hinder
DC 20	Help, little risk	No help	Hinder, little risk
DC 25	Help, minor risk	Help, little risk	No help
DC 30	Help, major risk	Help, minor risk	Help, little risk

(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.

I’ll be appearing on the Wandering DMs livestream today at 12pm CT to discuss Adapting Content for D&D and So You Want To Be a Game Master. If you don’t see this until later, that’s okay! The podcast is archived on Youtube and you can watch any time!

Dan & Paul host Justin Alexandrian, creator of the Alexandrian and the new book So You Want to be a Game Master, for an in-depth chat on the best ways to adapt content to and from D&D and other RPGs. What tricks work well? What things should you avoid? And what content is simply incompatible with other systems?

Watch Now!

You can find links to my previous appearance on Wandering DMs at the Alexandrian Auxiliary.

I’ve previously reviewed the D&D Starter Set (2014) and the D&D Essentials Kit (2019). Now we turn our eyes to the third major introductory boxed set for D&D 5^th Edition: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle.

In 2022, the original D&D Starter Set was discontinued and replaced with D&D Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. I suspect that, as I discussed in my review of the Essentials Kit, the primary motivation for this change remained the desire to create a new product that could be marketed to big box stores which had stopped carrying the original Starter Set: As we’ll see, very little is altered or upgraded here, and the only substantive change — replacing the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure with the new adventure Dragons of Stormwreck Isle — could hardly be motivated by a lack of faith in the original adventure material, since plans were simultaneously made to repurpose the adventure as the opening act of the Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk campaign book.

So Wizards of the Coast’s intention seems to have been a direct swap from one Starter Set to another with as little change as possible. The first question is: Was this a good idea?

Well… probably not. The Essentials Kit had already featured a bunch of substantive improvements in the 5^th Edition introductory boxed sets, all of which Stormwreck Isle rolls back:

• The dice set is incomplete.
• The booklets lack cardstock covers.
• Character creation is once again missing.

So rather than continuing to refine and improve the introductory box format, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is, prima facie, a big step backwards in a way that feels like a completely unforced error.

Unfortunately, things don’t improve once you start reading the booklets.

RULEBOOK v. RULEBOOK

In terms of basic mechanics, the Starter Set Rulebook in Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is largely identical to the one found in the original Starter Set.

A closer comparison, however, reveals that a bunch of material has been removed. Some of this is just weird, like missing gold piece costs for armor (but not for weapons). But there’s also some pretty deep cuts, like the section on adventuring gear being gutted to a tiny fraction of the equipment originally covered.

More immediately obvious is that only a fraction of the spell list from the original Starter Set has been included. Similarly, over in the adventure booklet, the bestiary has also been reduced to a fraction of its original size (and the selection is far more limited in its breadth).

I heaped praise on the original Starter Set for not being designed as a disposable product: It felt like a complete game, and (with the exception of character creation being missing) could easily support a DM who wanted to run multiple Tier 1 campaigns.

The net effect of all these degradations to the rulebook, unfortunately, means that this is NOT true of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. This is a boxed set you use once and then throw away. It’s an advertisement for a fully functional game, and you pay for the “privilege” of being told that you should have bought a different product.

So the question of whether or not Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is, in fact, a product that you should buy – whether for yourself or someone else interested in playing D&D for the first time — is going to almost entirely come down to how good the included adventure is.

DRAGONS OF STORMWRECK ISLE

SPOILERS FOR THE ADVENTURE!

Something else missing from Dragons of Stormwreck Isle are the sidekick rules from the Essentials Kit, which were super useful because they allowed first time DMs to start running the game even if they could only find one or two people interested in joining them.

Stormwreck Isle tries to plaster over this lack by simply suggesting that players could play multiple pregen characters. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it does lead to some truly terrible advice:

A player with two characters should treat one of them as their main character and the other as a sidekick, there to help out but probably not engaging in a lot of dialogue.

If you kinda squint and try to give them the benefit of the doubt, you can see the potentially good intention of making sure that a new player doesn’t feel overwhelmed trying to roleplay multiple characters. But what they actually told the player to do is dissociate from the game world and treat characters as if they were game piece tokens.

Which is… not great.

In fact, there’s a lot of “not great” when it comes to how Dragons of Stormwreck Isle instructs both players and GMs in how to play the game. One of the things that made Lost Mine of Phandelver a great introductory adventure was that it was an excellent exemplar of what D&D adventures should look like and how they should be run. Sadly, this is not the case with Stormwreck Isle.

Instead you get bad boxed text that, for example, repeatedly takes control of the PCs away from the players and turns them into puppets.

The DM is instructed to have the world level up with the PCs. (Oof.)

There’s a section of the adventure where the PCs have the opportunity to tame a trained owlbear that’s lost its owners and gone slightly feral. This is really cool! … but then the adventure says, “Oh, no! The PCs aren’t allowed to have cool things!” and goes to great lengths to erect contrived barriers to prevent the PCs from actually using their trained owlbear.

These are all terrible lessons to be teaching new DMs by both instruction and example.

Is this intentional?

Mostly not, I suspect. The adventure is simply sloppy, careless, and amateurish in its execution, and therefore sets a sloppy, careless, and bad example for the DM.

The basic structure of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle breaks down like this:

• The pregen PCs have personal goals that bring them to Stormwreck Isle, with all of them arriving on the same boat.
• They gain the patronage of Runara, a bronze dragon (appearing in human form) who runs the local monastery.
• They’re given the option of going on one of two different adventures.
• After going on the first adventure, they go on the second.
• With both adventures complete, Runara reveals herself and sends the PCs to the Clifftop Observatory, where her former apprentice (also a dragon) has turned to evil and is doing an evil ritual that the PCs need to stop.

This lacks the ambition of Lost Mine of Phandelver and feels fairly anemic by comparison, but is mostly inoffensive.

Notably, however, the reason Runara doesn’t send the PCs immediately to Clifftop Observatory (despite potentially apocalyptic stakes) is because they aren’t experienced enough and will likely die. Which is true.

… and yet one of the pregens has the personal goal of explicitly checking out the Clifftop Observatory. Which is trivial to locate and which they can just walk to at any time. The personal goal is a path straight to death.

This is just bad design. It’s setting a new DM up to fail.

The other major problem I have with Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is that everything is plagued by a severe lack of basic internal logic.

To take just one example, the island has been plagued for forty years by the zombies of dead sailors who have drowned when their ships have wrecked on the reefs north of the island.

It turns out the source of the problem is a cursed locket onboard the wreck of the Compass Rose. The zombie problem can be solved if the PCs take the locket to a gravesite on the island where the lover of the young girl who cursed the locket is buried. The PCs will know to do this because they’ll find the captain’s log of the Compass Rose in the wreck, the final entry of which describes the creation of the cursed locket, the zombies rising from the dead, and then concludes with:

I am securing her talisman with this book in my chest, in the hope that someone who comes after us may end this nightmare by bringing Altheia’s talisman to her husband.

So, first off: Why not just take the locket yourself? “Lemme just write this log entry, carefully lock it up, and hope somebody stops by!”

But more importantly, Runara sends them on this quest knowing the Compass Rose is the source of the zombie problem: If the PCs ask questions about the zombies, she tells them the ship is the source of the problem and sends them to check it out.

Remember: Runara is a bronze dragon. Which means she could have easily dealt with the zombies on the Compass Rose and solved the problem literally decades ago.

Instead she’s just sat around and watched people die for no reason.

THE VERDICT

Although it superficially looks similar to the original Starter Set at first glance, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is a deeply crippled product. The bottom line is that, for as long as it remains available, the Essentials Kit is a massively superior introductory boxed set and it’s definitely the one you should buy.

This mostly leaves the question of whether or not you should buy Dragons of Stormwreck Isle in addition to the Essentials Kit, the core rulebooks, or whatever other method you choose as your introduction to D&D 5^th Edition. And that question, in my opinion, is going to depend almost entirely on the quality and utility of the adventure.

As a starter set adventure, of course, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle naturally invites direct comparison to Lost Mine of Phandelver. And, as I wrote in my review of the original D&D Starter Set, I think Lost Mine of Phandelver is the best introductory adventure D&D has ever had. So, first, a regression to the mean is perhaps inevitable. And, second, it’s pretty easy, in a direct comparison between the two, for us to be unduly harsh on Stormwreck Isle’s inadequacies.

Standing entirely on its own merits, therefore, how good is Dragons of Stormwreck Isle?

And I think the best answer I can give to that question is:

Mediocre.

The functional, but not daring, set pieces of the adventure are strung together with fraying filament, but the filament is never so rotten that it actually breaks. Its flaws, although myriad, never completely ruin the experience. This will never be a great adventure. It will rarely be a terrible one.

Overall, however, this leaves the D&D Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle in rather rough shape: A crippleware rulebook wedded to a mediocre adventure, packaged with a barely adequate set of dice.

Perhaps the best case scenario we can hope for at this point is that, with the release of 2024 D&D (whatever we end up calling it), Wizards gets the opportunity for a do-over and will produce a new Starter Set that capitalizes on its previous successes instead of diminishing them.

Grade: C-

Rulebook Designer: Jeremy Crawford
Lead Adventure Designer: James Wyatt
Additional Adventure Design: Sydney Adams, Makenzie De Armas, Dan Dillon

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $19.95
Page Count: 80

Buy Now!

Go to Campaign Status Documents

Generally speaking, my campaign status document is not the place for full NPC write-ups to live. Whether you’re using something like the Universal NPC Roleplaying template or even the briefest of write-ups, these NPCs will consume your campaign status document and choke the life out of it.

So NPC write-ups go somewhere else: Maybe that’s in a specific set of scenario notes or faction notes. Maybe you just have one big folder where all the free-roaming NPCs or notable NPCs from defunct scenarios get filed in alphabetical order.

But what I will keep in my campaign status document, when it’s appropriate for the campaign, is a list — or, in some cases, multiple lists — of the major NPCs in the campaign.

This is not, of course, a list of every single NPC they’ve ever met. That would just be a bunch of noise drowning out the signal. What you’re looking for is a quick reference of all the important, recurring characters. You’re looking for characters who:

• Show up in more than one scenario (or outside of scenarios entirely), because otherwise they would just be attached to that single scenario.
• Show up in more than one location, because otherwise they would just be in the notes for that location.
• Have some personal connection to the PCs or are otherwise important to them.

(Of course, some NPCs who start out as part of a single scenario or single location will end up clicking with the players or otherwise find their role in the campaign expanding beyond the original plan of action.)

You might title this section of your campaign status document the Cast of Characters.

To understand the function of this cast list, the key thing is Neel Krishnaswami’s Law of the Conservation of NPCs: Whenever a scenario or circumstance demands a new NPC, check to see if there’s an existing NPC who could fill the role. Each reappearance of an NPC will deepen that character and also inherently develop the PCs’ relationship with the character. This creates a lovely feedback loop, because the NPC being richer means that whatever purpose you’re turning the NPC to (exposition, scenario hook, dilemma, dramatic bang, etc.) will also become richer and more meaningful to the players.

For example, if the PCs go looking for information, instead of having some random dude tell them about it, consider having it be someone the PCs know.

The cast list, therefore, can ultimately be thought of as a menu: Whether you’re prepping a scenario or improvising in the middle of one, the campaign’s cast of characters makes it easy for you to quickly find the character you need to fit the hole you’re looking to fill.

You can also flip this around, looking through your cast of characters, identifying old favorites who haven’t put in an appearance lately, and figuring out how you can bring them back onstage. This can often be a great way to find inspiration for scenario hooks or entirely new scenarios.

TAVERN TIME

In some campaigns your Cast of Characters, or sections of your Cast of Characters, may become more specialized in their function. One example of this is the Tavern Time scenario structure, in which you develop a cast of recurring characters who give continuity and life to your PCs’ favorite tavern (or other home base).

You can see a detailed example of the Tavern Time system in action in A Night in Trollskull Manor. The full scenario notes are kept separate from the campaign status document, but I do find it useful to include the random table of tavern patrons, like this one for the Ghostly Minstrel tavern in my In the Shadow of the Spire campaign:

1	Sheva Callister
2	Parnell Alster
3	Daersidian Ringsire & Brusselt Airmol
4	Jevicca Nor
5	Rastor
6	Steron Vsool
7	Urlenius
8	Mand Scheben
9	Cardalian
10	Serai Lorenci (Runewarden)
11	Shurrin Delano (Runewarden)
12	Sister Mara (Runewarden)
13	Canabulum (Runewarden)
14	Aliya Al-Mari (Runewarden)
15	Zophas Adhar (Runewarden)
16	Talia Hunter
17	Tarin Ursalatao (Minstrel)
18	Nuella Farreach
19	Iltumar
20	The Ghostly Minstrel

Each of these characters then appear in their own write-ups, either as part of the write-up for the Ghostly Minstrel, as part of other scenario notes, or in my larger Ptolus NPC file. I personally just know where to find these write-ups, but you could easily include a direct reference in your list.

SYSTEMIC CONNECTIONS

In Technoir, during character creation, each player selects three Connections from the setting guide. These are, of course, relevant not only for roleplaying, but also because they’re tied into specific procedures of play. As the GM, I find it quite useful to have a quick reference for which PCs have a direct relationship with which Connections in the campaign, so during the first session I’ll make a point of jotting these down, and then I’ll transfer them to my campaign status document for long-term reference (along with any other notes about debts owed and the like).

Trail of Cthulhu similarly features Sources of Stability: NPCs created by the players during character creation who are the most important people in their characters’ lives. These characters are vital, serving as touchstones of humanity that allow PCs to recover the Sanity and Stability lost during their harrowing adventures. Although, as a result, the Sources of Stability are rarely made an active part of the action, I make sure to include them in my campaign status document so that they can be referred to and incorporated “offscreen” at appropriate moments. (I’ll also maintain a correspondence tracker featuring these characters.)

Another example along these same lines are the Friends & Rivals players create for their PC in Blades in the Dark. These lack the more formal procedural and systemic incorporation found in Technoir and Trail of Cthulhu, but also serve as a good reminder that this is something you can easily incorporate into the character creation of any RPG, not just those that include it in the rulebook.

However you go about it, finding a way to seed a supporting cast list at the very beginning of the campaign is just good praxis.

MAINTAINING YOUR SUPPORTING CAST

You’ll introduce some characters to your campaign with the intention of making them recurring characters.

As I mentioned earlier, though, you’ll also want to keep your eyes open: During the course of play, some NPCs are just going to “click” with the players. (And with you.) It’s going to be fun roleplaying scenes with them. Maybe your players will talk about the NPC in later sessions or even mention them during conversations outside of the game. (If your players start deliberately seeking the NPC out, that’s a dead give-away.) These are all characters that you’re going to want to get onto your supporting cast list ASAP.

On the flip-side, it’s also a good idea to periodically review your supporting cast list and remove any NPCs who are no longer relevant to the campaign. (If you’re not certain, maybe you could drop them into a Probationary section of the list and then purge them if they still haven’t shown up after three or five sessions or whatever seems appropriate.)

In some cases, this removal will be quite definitive: Maybe the NPC died. Maybe the PCs slipped into another dimension and left the NPC behind.

In other cases, the pruning is much more subjective: Do you still care about this NPC? Do the players still care? Are there any loose threads still attached to the NPC (in which case you might want to tie those off and then remove them)? Are they — in position, role, theme, or otherwise — still relevant to what’s happening in the campaign?

There’s also need to be too afraid of making a mistake here: Pruning an NPC from the list doesn’t mean they’re gone forever (although it might). You never know when they might come back onstage, find the spotlight, and earn their place on the list once more!

Let’s talk about encounter balance.

A common misconception is that the challenge rating system in D&D is meant to guarantee specific encounter outcomes: The CR = X, therefore the encounter will end with precisely Y resources depleted.

This isn’t really true. Furthermore, I would argue that it’s not possible for any challenge rating system to accomplish this (unless you so thoroughly constrain player choice as to choke out the creative heart of an RPG), because a challenge rating system is inherently limited in the systemic knowledge it can have about a specific encounter.

Factors beyond the scope of 5^th Edition’s challenge rating system, for example, include:

• Players’ tactical skills
• Variance in character builds
• Environment
• Encounter distance
• Stat block synergy (in both PCs and opponents)
• Equipment
• Random dice rolls

(I frequently get static on listing random dice rolls here: “But probability!” Yes, probability exists. But, first, the number of dice rolls in a single fight are often too few for probability to become truly relevant — for the results to conform to the expected value — except over multiple encounters. And, second, the entire point of random dice rolls is to have random outcomes. QED.)

Does this mean that the challenge rating system is pointless?

Not at all. The function of the challenge rating system is to help the DM identify monsters and build encounters that are in the right ballpark. Our first hot take today is that the challenge rating system is actually pretty effective at doing that. And, furthermore, that’s all it needs to do and, arguably, all that it should do.

Despite this, DMs are constantly lured by the siren call of hyper-precision: If we could just account for every single variable, we could guarantee specific outcomes! We wouldn’t even need the players at all! Their choices wouldn’t matter!

(That, by the way, is why this is not actually a desirable goal, even if it was achievable.)

There are several reasons for this.

Partly, it’s the allure of false precision: If we have a Challenge Rating Table, then the designers need to put numbers on the table. And no matter how many times they use words like “maybe” or “might” or “roughly” in describing the function of that table, this can create the expectation that hitting that precise number is important. (In reality, the difference between a 1,600 XP and 1,700 XP encounter is essentially nonexistent.)

The labels applied to different encounter levels also seem prone to misinterpretation. I find this varies depending on the methodology used for the label. In the case of 5^th Edition D&D, the designers have generally chosen a label which describes the worst case scenario. For example, a “Deadly” encounter doesn’t mean “this encounter is likely to result in a TPK.” It actually means that there’s a risk you’ll see at least one PC making death saving throws. (You can think of the possible outcomes of an encounter as being mapped to a bell curve: The outcome of an 8^th-level encounter might, in actual practice, be the average result of anything from a 4^th-level encounter to a 12^th-level encounter. The 5^th Edition label is generally describing a result somewhere a little off to the right side of the bell curve.)

But the final factor is linear campaigns.

THE PROBLEM WITH LINEAR CAMPAIGNS

I’m occasionally accused of hating linear campaigns. This is not the case. I dislike predetermined plots, but that’s not the same thing. I’ve actually talked in the past about how to design linear campaigns, and in So You Want To Be a Game Master I actually have several chapters and adventure recipes for creating linear scenarios.

(A linear scenario is also not the same thing as a railroad. It’s accurate to say that I loathe railroads, and everything I talk about here is probably ten times more true if you’re railroading your players.)

There are, however, consequences for using a linear structure. (Just as there is for using any structure.) This is particularly true if you only use linear structures, which can be the unfortunate case for many DMs who don’t have alternative scenario structures in their repertoire.

A linear scenario inherently means that you, as the DM, are preparing a specific sequence of experiences/scenes/encounters/whatever you want to call them. The players will experience A, then they will experience B, then they will experience C, and so forth.

A consequence of this style of prep, therefore, is that the DM is solely responsible for what the PCs will be doing. This creates an enormous pressure on the DM, because you’d better get it right: You’d better get the spotlight balance right and make sure that every single PC has an equal chance to shine, because otherwise you’re making it difficult or impossible for one of the players to participate. And you’d better get the combat balance right, because forcing the players into fights they can’t win is a dick move.

So the DM will, naturally, spend more effort carefully crafting each encounter to make sure it works. Ironically, the more specific their prep becomes for each situation, the more weight is placed on their shoulders to make sure they get it right. This can quickly decay into a vicious cycle, with the DM pouring more and more effort into every single encounter in order to meet ever-rising expectations. The result is often My Precious Encounters™, in which every encounter is lovingly crafted, carefully balanced, painstakingly pre-constructed, and utterly indispensable (because you’ve spent so much time “perfecting” it).

… and then the challenge rating system isn’t hyper-precise and the players mop up the whole thing with a couple of quick spells?!

This is an outrage!

I guess we’ll just need to lock down more choices, get out the shackles, and try even harder next time guarantee the encounter works exactly as we predetermined it should.

NON-LINEAR BALANCE

Some of you reading this may be thinking, “Okay… but what’s the alternative?”

And when I say that the alternative is non-linear scenarios, your gut reaction is likely to be, “You mean design even more encounters? And the players might not even encounter some of them? I can’t do that! Do you know how much work I put into these encounters?!”

In truth, however, non-linear design is a completely different paradigm: The players are now able, to at least some extent, choose the experiences they’re going to have. And because the players now have responsibility for what they do and how they do it, that weight is lifted from the DM’s shoulders.

Looking at just the issue of combat balance, for example, if the PCs run into an encounter in a linear adventure that they can’t defeat, that’s a disaster! They can’t move forward unless they defeat the encounter, and they can’t defeat it, so they’re completely stuck. It’s as if they lived on an island and the only bridge to the mainland was closed for construction.

In a non-linear scenario or campaign, on the other hand, if the PCs run into an encounter they can’t defeat (or which they just think they can’t defeat or which doesn’t look fun to them), then they can just change direction and find a route around that encounter. Or, alternatively, go and do something else until they level up, gain magic items, make allies, or otherwise become powerful enough to take out the challenge that was previously thwarting them.

You can see an analogous set of paradigms in video game RPGs: Some will allow players to grind XP, allowing them to dial in the mechanical difficulty they’re comfortable dealing with at their level of skill. Other CRPGs will level up the world around the PCs or limit the total amount of XP they can earn. The former games can appeal to a broader range of skill levels and the designers have a lot more leeway or flexibility in how they design the challenges in the game. The latter games have a lot less flexibility, and players can end up completely stuck (due to lack of skill, a mistake in their character build, disability, or any number of factors).

LINEAR BALANCE WITH MILESTONES

Okay, but you want to run a linear adventure. Maybe that’s the best structure for the campaign you’ve got planned. Maybe you’ve picked up a published adventure that uses a linear structure and it’s just not working: It’s too easy or it’s too hard, and you want it just right.

Fortunately, there’s an incredibly powerful tool you can use for balancing linear campaigns: Milestone leveling.

The trick is that you just need to ditch the idea of hardcoding the level ups to specific beats in the campaign. Instead, after each scenario, do an assessment of how your encounter balance is working in actual practice:

Are the players cruising through stuff? Increase the difficulty of encounters. If you’ve been designing 6th-level encounters, bump them up to 7^th-level encounters. (You can also change the balance of Easy/Medium/Hard/Deadly encounters you’re using, or do half-step bumps in XP budgets between levels.)

Are the players feeling challenged? You’re in the sweet spot. You can hold in that sweet spot for X sessions, with the number X being adjusted to your personal taste. Then you can start increasing the difficulty by steps again until…

Are things getting really tough for the PCs? Level them up (without immediately shifting encounter difficulty) and then assess.

One thing to be aware of is that this doesn’t work great for 1^st-level characters, which are very fragile (and kind of need special treatment when it comes to encounter building in general).

Another thing to keep in mind is that you need to miss very low and for a very long time for “too easy” to ruin your campaign; you only have to miss once for “too hard” to TPK the group. So, when in doubt, you’re generally better off aiming low and then adjusting up.

You’ll also likely discover that sometimes PCs will level up, feel like they’re in the sweet spot, and then suddenly everything gets easier and they’re cruising through encounters that are too easy. What’s likely happened is that the players have figured out how their new abilities work (and, importantly, work together), allowing them to perfect their tactics.

You can see the opposite effect happen if the PCs have been fighting one type of monsters for awhile, but then the campaign shifts and they’re suddenly fighting completely different monsters. Experienced difficulty may momentarily spike until they get a feel for the new creatures.

It’s also not a bad idea to check in with the players periodically and see how they’re feeling about the difficulty level in the campaign. They won’t always be right, but neither will you, so comparing notes can help you find the sweet spot for your group.

“Hey! Isn’t that actually Level Advancement Without XP?” Sorry, folks. The ship sailed on this one back in 2014 when every single official adventure started referring to “you pick events in the campaign when the characters level up” as milestone XP. “Milestone” is just too convenient a term for the form of level advancement best suited to these linear adventures. If you have any complaints about this, please address them to Wizards of the Coast.

LINEAR BALANCE WITHOUT MILESTONES

“But I don’t want to use milestone XP! I want to give XP for combat!”

… you just want to make things difficult, don’t you?

That’s okay. Once you understand the principles described above, you can accomplish the same effect with combat/challenge-based XP, it will just be a little more obfuscated.

Specifically, with XP awards, the PCs will be gaining levels at a certain pace. If they’re cruising through encounters, you just need to increase the difficulty of the encounters they’re facing at a faster pace than the pace they’re leveling at. (So in the time they’ve gone from 6^th to 7^th level with everything feeling too easy, the encounters you’re building will have gone from 6^th level to 8^th level or maybe even 9^th level. Or, conversely, if the encounters have been too tough for them, you might hold the encounter design at 6^th level even though they’ve leveled up to 7^th.)

In other words, it’s the same process of dialing in: It’s just made slightly more complicated by the PCs being a moving target.

OTHER FAQs

“Doesn’t this mean that my 7^th-level PCs could end up facing, I dunno, 11^th-level encounters?”

Quite possibly. Or your specific group of 7^th-level PCs might be better served by 5^th-level encounters. If it makes you feel better, even by-the-book 11^th-level Medium encounters are actually easier than 7^th-level Deadly encounters, so you’ve probably already been doing this.

More importantly, these are just arbitrary numbers. The important thing is that you and your players are having fun: If your players are really good at tactical planning or they’ve managed to get their hands on an unexpectedly powerful magical artifact, that can easily mean that they’re capable of punching above their by-the-book weight-class.

And you know what? That sounds fun to me!

“I’m running a published adventure. How do I ‘increase the difficulty’? Do I need to rebuild the encounters?”

Instead of adjusting encounter difficulty, just skip the next milestone level suggested by the scenario. You can see a similar technique in Random D&D Tip: Adjusting Encounters by Party Size.

“Couldn’t I use these same principles when designing non-linear scenarios or campaigns?”

Absolutely!

For scenarios, you’re generally targeting a certain difficulty in your encounter design regardless of whether it’s a linear or non-linear scenario. This technique is about dialing in what your current target should be in the challenge rating system, so it works just as well either way.

For a non-linear campaigns, you want to avoid the potential pitfall of leveling up the campaign world. So if you’ve got a structure like a megadungeon or hexcrawl, where the players can already dial in their preferred difficulty level, this technique probably isn’t going to be particularly useful. But it can find application in some node-based campaigns and freeform sandboxes.

FURTHER READING
Revisiting Encounter Design
The Many Types of Balance
Fetishizing Balance
The Death of the Wandering Monster
Adversary Rosters