SESSION 33C: SECRET DOORS & SENTRIES

December 28th, 2008
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

“We should kill them,” Elestra said.

“What?” Tee said. “We said we’d let them go.”

“You saw what they were doing to those people,” Elestra said. “They’re evil.”

“And we’re not,” Tee said.

But it was clear that Elestra didn’t want to let them go – Uranik because of what he was responsible for and Arveth because she could so easily identify Tee.

“She doesn’t know my real name,” Tee said.

“But she’s seen all of us,” Elestra argued. “It won’t be hard to track down six people matching our descriptions… not with Dominic being the Chosen of Vehthyl.”

“We could just cut out her tongue,” Tor suggested.

Tee was shocked. She thought of Tor as the moral center of the group, and now she was taken aback by the bloodthirstiness of them both.

Tee prevailed and they left the two cultists unconscious where they lay. (“Cutting out their tongue never works anyway,” Dominic said.) They also decided to head through the secret door.

But as soon as they headed down the sewer tunnel, Elestra tried to double back and kill the prisoners. But she wasn’t sly enough for Tee – in fact, the effort was so clumsy that none of them took it seriously. Tee called her back and kept an eye on her until they were through the door.

Finding the door was easy enough now that they knew where to look. Beyond it they could see where the original line of the sewer had run, although it had clearly been diverted into new construction long ago. The reason for the diversion, perhaps, was the large sinkhole-like collapse that lay just beyond the new construction. A ladder leaning against the side of the sinkhole led down to an older passage of some sort beneath the sewer line.

Tee climbed down this ladder and scouted ahead, coming quickly to an intersection. She peeked around the corner, careful not to make a sound.

Unfortunately, the ratmen sentries had been warned by the light of the sunrod that Elestra was carrying. They took two quick shots at Tee’s head with a pair of dragon rifles as she ducked back around the corner.

Tee paused for only a moment and then rounded the corner again, running down the hall and firing with her dragon pistol as she went. She caught one of the ratmen in the shoulder in a blast of scorched fur.

The others, hearing the shots of both ratmen and Tee, started jumping down from the top of the sinkhole. Unfortunately, the broken floor of the passage below proved treacherous. Most of them fell haphazardly in the attempt.

The two ratmen where standing in a T-intersection at the far end of the hall. They were firing back at Tee now, but as she came closer they suddenly ducked behind opposite corners. Tee cursed, certain that they were going to reach the other defenders of the temple and raise the alarm before she could stop them.

But Agnarr was already scrambling back to his feet and racing down the hallways. He passed Tee easily, despite her considerable head start, and then slid down the last ten feet of the passage – right past the ratman who had scarcely finished turning to run. Before the  ratman could scamper down the hall, draw a weapon, or even turn back to face him, Agnarr had decapitated him.

The other ratman squeaked and retreated back towards a dead end. Tee rounded the corner and put an arrow through his eye.

As the others caught up with them, Tee knelt down to search the corpses. The ratmen had been carrying little of interest, except for the dragon rifles they had been firing. These were worn and badly damaged, marked with the clear patina of age.

“They’re not chaositech, are they?” Elestra asked worriedly.

“No,” Tee said. “They’re just very old.”

They continued into the complex. Several side passages had collapsed or partially collapsed, but they eventually came to a door of thick, sturdy oak. Tee picked a lock on this and they passed into a room that seemed equal parts meditative study and bedchamber. It was mostly empty, with only a straw mat in the middle of the floor. On the walls hung various tapestries (which Ranthir identified as each depicting great wizards of the past). There was a door directly opposite the one through which they’d entered. At the far end of the room there was a small wooden bookshelf containing a dozen assorted volumes. These, of course, caught the particular attention of Ranthir, who was also delighted to discover that one of them was a thick tome of spells.

Ranthir was not able to study the spellbook completely, but the illustrations of eyes being burnt away with acid were enough to leave him concerned.

Running the Campaign: Action Schticks – Campaign Journal: Session 33D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Part 1

This brings us to 3^rd Edition in 2000. In this new edition, every monster was made as customizable as a PC and their stat blocks ballooned as a result. For example, from The Sunless Citadel:

Jot: Quasit; CR 3; Tiny outsider (chaotic, evil); HD 3d8; hp 18; Init +3 (Dex); Spd 20 ft., fly 50 ft. (perfect); AC 18; Atk +8/+8/+3 melee (1d3-1 and poison, 2 claws; 1d4-1, bite); Face/Reach 2 1/2 ft. by 2 1/2 ft./0 ft.; SA Poison; SQ Spell-like abilities, damage reduction 5/silver, poison immunity, fire resistance 20, alternate form, regeneration 1 (normal damage from acid and holy or blessed weapon); SR 5; AL CE; SV Fort +3, Ref +6, Will +4; Str 8, Dex 17, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 10.

Skills and Feats: Hide +15, Listen +6, Move Silently +6, Search +4, Spellcraft +4, Spot +6; Weapon Finesse (bite, claw)

Special Attacks: Poison: Claw, Fort save resists (DC 13), initial damage 1d6 Dex, secondary damage 2d4 Dex

Special Qualities: Spell-like abilities: At will, as 6th-level sorcerer (save DCs, where applicable, are 10 + spell level), detect good, detect magic, and invisibility; 1/day cause fear (as spell, except its area is a 30-ft. radius from quasit), 1/week commune (six questions) as 12th-level cleric; speak telepathically to any creature within 100 ft.; Alternate form: polymorph self to one or two Medium-size forms.

BACK TO BASIC PRINCIPLES

These early 3^rd Edition stat blocks were, frankly speaking, terrible. This was primarily the result of four things:

1. Minimizing the amount of space the stat block takes up. This is legitimately motivated by the desire to make sure the information stays relatively compact. The entire point of standardizing things into a stat block, after all, is to move away from the early, casual style of describing stats narratively, and you want to keep the stat block as small as possible so that you have more room for the rest of the content in an adventure.
2. An early failure to prioritize key information. This didn’t matter in early stat blocks because they were only trying to code roughly a dozen pieces of information. When there’s only a handful of entries in the stat block, it’s easy to find anything you’re looking for pretty much instantaneously. By the time 2^nd Edition arrived, however, the stat block was commonly trying to code twice as much information. In 3^rd Edition, the information had more than quadrupled. And the amount of information was increasing because of…
3. Including all of a monster’s stats. This is obviously advantageous because you’ll avoid needing to look up information somewhere else. Replacing a chart look-up with THAC0 is one example of this, but you can see a general trend by simply glancing through the stat blocks we’ve looked at.
4. A failure to minimize the presentation of certain information. For example, is it necessary to include the “SV” abbreviation to prelude the saving throws? Probably not. Another example would be “speak telepathically to any creature within 100 ft.” Couldn’t you just write “telepathy 100 ft.”? As with the 2^nd Edition stat block, this is being complicated by another trend dating back to 1977: A desire in the advanced rules to codify effects as precisely as possible to eliminate any doubt, confusion, or interpretation and create a “standard” version of the game. This combines poorly with a simultaneous desire to “include all the info you need in the stat block.”

Regardless, what you had was a stat block that was very difficult to use and very easy to make mistakes with. So in July 2006, Wizards of the Coast debuted a new stat block format that was focused overwhelmingly on making it as clear and easy to use NPCs and monsters as possible. To this end it stuck with the commitment to include all the information needed to run the encounter in the stat block, and further split the stat block into five utility-based sections:

• Section 1: The information needed to begin an encounter. (What is the monster? How does it detect the PCs? Will the PCs be able to speak with it? What’s its initiative? And so forth.)
• Section 2: The information you’ll need to know on the PCs’ turn. (What’s its AC? Hit points? Saving throws? Resistances and immunities? And so forth.)
• Section 3: The information you’ll need on the monster’s turn. (What can it do? What attack options does it have? What special actions can it take?)
• Section 4: The information you don’t need to know during combat. (Or, at least, generally won’t need to know.)
• Section 5: Explanatory text. If an unusual ability is mentioned in the first four sections, its full explanation is given at the bottom of the stat block.

There was just one thing, though…

It was HUGE!

Wizards, it should be noted, wasn’t alone in this. That same year, Monte Cook, the co-designer of 3^rd Edition, introduced a revised stat block in his Ptolus sourcebook. It used a similar amount of white space, but chose to focus on separating out “critical” information. A couple years later, Paizo would further tweak the schema for Pathfinder, keeping the key concept of dividing the stat block into multiple sections, but specifically labeling the sections and integrating a section describing tactics right into the middle of the stat block (Defense, Offense, Tactics, Statistics).

What strikes me as interesting about all of these efforts, however, is the degree to which they effectively concede the battle. All of these revised stat blocks were essentially indistinguishable from entries in the Monster Manual. In other words, by 2006, D&D had basically given up on the idea of the “adventure stat block” a concise summary and were basically just copy-pasting bestiary entries.

D&D 4^th Edition (2008) was a radically different game from any other edition of D&D, but its stat blocks were just as chonky and continued to be duplicated directly into the adventures:

The problem was that these stat blocks were so large that they began to warp space around themselves. An encounter with two or three different stat blocks would chew up page space, creating an incredibly difficult or even impossible problem for layout to solve while flowing the text. Which, in turn, meant that DMs would have difficulty parsing the adventure.

The stat blocks were easy to use (everything you need, right at your fingertips!), but they were making everything else more difficult.

So the designers at Wizards of the Coast began looking for a solution to this new problem.

First, they experimented with putting all the stat blocks for the adventure in the back of the book. That way they wouldn’t interrupt the flow of the adventure, but they’d still be conveniently gathered together in one place for the DM. (Since even the early 3^rd Edition stat blocks could get quite large, they’d started doing this with some of their adventures even before the 2006 revision.)

But what they eventually settled on was the Delve format:

The basic concept was that every encounter would be presented as a two-page spread, allowing the stat blocks to be presented without, at least theoretically, disrupting the flow of the text. The presentation varied a little from one adventure to the next, the Delve encounters were generally presented at the end of the adventure (or, in some cases, as a separate pamphlet). The idea was that the main text of the adventure would say something like, “Now run Encounter L1,” and you’d flip the to appropriate Delve encounter.

This was another fascinating capitulation: First the stat blocks had gotten too large, so they’d been banished to the back of the book. Now the encounters were too large, so they were banished, too.

The selling point of the Delve format was, once again, that everything you needed was right on the page! It had never been easier to run an encounter! In actual practice, it was an utter disaster:

• The two-spread requirement was a classic “you gotta fill the space!” trap for designers, encouraging lots of empty verbiage that offered little or no value to the DM running the adventure.
• Conversely, if you did have an encounter that needed a lot of space to do properly, the format would force you to cram it into the limited space.
• It encouraged My Precious Encounter™ design, resulting in railroaded scenarios filled with monsters politely waiting around for the PCs to show up. (Part of this was a separate design ethos of trying to program encounters so that DMs could be reduced to dumb machines.)
• No matter where you actually put the Delve encounters in the book, they remained fundamentally bloated, chewing up space and drastically reducing the amount of playable content per page in scenarios using it. (This became painfully apparent in the few cases where Wizards of the Coast attempted to release pre-Delve scenarios in the Delve format: Often they’d be presented in books with two or three times as many pages, but nevertheless be harshly abridged to a fraction of their original content.)

When 4^th Edition finished the painful process of crashing and burning in 2011, a strategic decision was made to make a firm break with its failure for the next edition of the game. Among the things summarily tossed on the rubbish bin was the Delve format.

5th EDITION

From 2012 to 2014, D&D was effectively out of print. Instead, a very public playtest called D&D Next was conducted, using a combination of PDF rules packets and published adventure books. These adventures featured some light experimentation with the structure used for location keys, but as far as monster stats were concerned, they all used the same format which remains the standard approach for 5^th Edition:

• Stat blocks that do not appear in the Monster Manual are printed in an appendix at the back of the adventure.
• NPCs and monsters with stat blocks (with in the Monster Manual or the appendix) are listed in bold

Sometimes it will be indicated that the stat block appears in the adventure’s appendix (e.g., “six derro (see Appendix C)”), but frequently the DM is left to just guess where they should be looking for the stat block.

Which is just wild! Particularly since the stat block appendix is sometimes only sort of vaguely alphabetical: In Dragon Heist, for example, “Griffon Cavalry Rider” appears under the “City Guard” sub-heading and some named NPCs appear alphabetically, while others are instead grouped by the faction they belong to.

In other words, 5^th Edition kinda just gave up.

As far as adventure stat blocks containing the essential information for running an encounter, D&D has more or less returned to the earliest and most primitive days of the hobby, leaving the DM to flip madly back and forth between pages and/or browser tabs in search of the stats they need.

But maybe that’s just the way it needs to be. From a certain point of view, you can argue that they’ve never managed to truly get it completely right: I’d argue the closest they got was probably during the ‘80s when the adventure stat blocks were short, concise, and could be easily integrated into an adventure key, but those also relied heavily on technical jargon and could easily baffle a new player.

Of course, D&D is not the only game in town.

Go to Part 3: Other Options

I think a stat block can tell you a lot about a roleplaying game. What types of information do you need to juggle? What does the game consider important in distinguishing one character from another? How complicated will the game be to prep and run?

Holding that thought in mind, let’s take a brief tour of the D&D stat block.

(If you’re not already familiar with the history of D&D, you might want to take a quick tour to orient yourself.)

THE 1970’s

The first published adventure module was “Temple of the Frog” by Dave Arneson in Supplement II: Blackmoor (1976). Everyone was still trying to figure out the entire concept of a “module” and how it should be presented, and “Temple of the Frog” didn’t actually contain stat blocks, instead describing everything narratively. For example:

Room 7: (Company Office) This contains two desks and chairs, a locked foot locker (and an old crypt in the walls of the room which contains five skeletons of 2 hit dice that have armor class 7 and move 6” per turn.

The next published adventure module was Palace of the Vampire Queen (1976) by Judy and Pete Kerestan, which was published by Wee Warriors. (As we’ll see, during this time period the state of the art was being pushed forward by a lot of third party publishers.) The entire adventure key for Palace of the Vampire Queen was presented in a semi-tabular fashion:

There’s not a really “stat block,” per se, but you could interpret one of sorts between the “Creatures” Encountered” and “Max. Damage” columns, e.g. “2 vampire guards — 23, 26.”

Later that same year the Metro Detroit Gamers published The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth, a convention scenario designed by Gary Gygax (based on an original adventure by Rob Kuntz) for WinterCon V. This mostly continues the “creature name + hit points” formatting, but formalizes it a little bit:

L.
10 SAHUAGIN: HP: 16, 14, 12, 11, 11, 10, 10, 9, 9, 7. These creatures appear at the eastern edge of the island within 1 turn of the voice (#7) speaking. They ATTACK. No treasure.

Notable here, however, is the first appearance of NPC spell lists:

K.
COPPER DRAGON: HP: 72. Neutral, intelligent, talking, has spells: DETECT MAGIC, READ MAGIC, CHARM PERSON, LOCATE OBJECT, INVISIBILITY, ESP, DISPEL MAGIC, HASTE, and WATER BREATHING. It is asleep and will waken in 3 melee rounds or if spoken to or attacked.

Still in 1976, we also have both the Gen Con IX Dungeon (by Bob Blake) and City-State of the Invincible Overlord (by Bow Bledsaw and Bill Owens) from Judges Guild. The latter used a tabular presentation for many NPC stat blocks:

These Judges Guild modules, however, also include what are likely the first true stat blocks with entries like this:

Two Mercenaries: FTR, N, LVL: 3, HTK: 1
Bartender Koris Brightips: FEM, FTR, CG, LVL: 2, HTK: 4, AC: 9, Dagger, sings.

Displacer Beast AC: 4 Move: 15” Hits: 22 Fights 5^th Column

(“HTK” here is Hits To Kill. The original 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons notably used many different synonyms for what we now refer to as hit points. Thus HTK, Max. Damage, and similar entries can be found in many early stat blocks.)

We similar stat blocks from Judges Guild throughout ’77 in Tegel Manor, First Fantasy Campaign, and Modron.

In 1977, Wee Warriors also returned with The Dwarven Glory, another adventure by Pete & Judy Kerestan. The monsters here were still being described narratively, as they were in “Temple of the Frog,” but this adventure notably put the hit point totals and other stats in parentheses:

Room #6

2 ore carts, 10 lizard men (HP—5, 7, 10, 11, 10, 9, 8, 6, 7, 12) (AC—5) will try to ambush the party from ore carts. If unsuccessful, will fake panic and try to lead party into Room #5. Are on friendly terms with Cave Troll and Minotaur. Gem in dirt of floor with praying hands etched in surface (raise dead, usable once pe day).

I say “notably,” because in 1978 TSR figured out that there was a bunch of money to be made selling adventure modules and they came roaring into the market, releasing the G series, D series, S1 Tomb of Horrors, and B1 In Search of the Unknown. And this use of parentheses quickly became TSR’s house style.

G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and the rest of the G series was written by Gygax as a way of taking a break between working on the Monster Manual and the original Player’s Handbook, and the parentheticals are still limited to hit points:

3. DORMITORY: Here 12 young giants (H.P.: 26, 24, 3 x 21, 18 x 17, 2 x 16, 14, 13) are rollicking, and beefy smacks, shouts, laughter, etc. are easily heard. All these creatures have weapons and will fight as ogres.

After finishing work on the Player’s Handbook, Gygax took another break and produced the D series. By this point, more information is being dropped into the parentheses (although the overall presentation remains fairly narrative):

Drow Male Contingent: There are 10 male fighters of 3^rd level to the southwest, 2 of whom are on guard duty and will report the presence of any creatures moving along the passage. Other than having 13 hit points each and AC 0 (because of 16 dexterity each), they are the same as a male Drow patrol, i.e. +1 short swords and +1 daggers and carrying hand crossbows and using dancing lights, darkness, and faerie fire (at 3^rd level) once per day per spell. There are 2 4th level fighters as leaders (H.P.: 18; AC -2) with +2 short sword, +2 dagger, and atlatl and 3 javelins. The commander of the unit is a 6th level fighter (H.P.: 28, +3 chain mail, +3 buckler, +3 for dexterity of 17, for an overall AC of -3) armed with +2 dagger, +4 short sword, and hand crossbow with 10 poisoned bolts.

By ’79, Judges Guild had firmed up their presentation of NPC statistics into definite stat blocks. For example, here’s the text from key V-5 in Dark Tower:

Avvakris: 10th level cleric of Set, Align: CE, chainmail, AC: 5, HP: 50, S: 14, I: 14, W: 15, D: 14, C: 11, CH: 15, weapon: mace, spells: bless (reverse), create water (reverse), detect good, detect magic, hold person (x3), silence 15′ radius, animate dead, dispel magic, speak with dead, cause serious wounds (x2), divination, flame strike (x2.)

Seth the Huge: 6th level fighter, align: CE, chainmail and shield, +3 dexterity bonus, AC: 1, HP: 34, weapon: longsword, S: 16, I: 8, W: 5, D: 17, C: 11, CH: 12. Large and cruel looking.

Wormgear Bonegnawer: 6th level fighter, align: CE, chainmail and shield, +1 dexterity bonus, AC: 3, HP: 48, weapon: longsword, S: 16, I: 11, W: 14, D: 15, CH: 11.

Over at TSR, Gygax was also firming things up. In T1 Village of Hommlet (1979), stats are still being dropped into the middle of paragraphs, but they’re being completely contained in parentheses (instead of leaking out as we saw with D1) and becoming increasingly standardized. Examples include:

Canon Terjon (6th level cleric — S 11, I 10, W 16, D 12, C 16, Ch 8 — chain mail, shield +1, mace; 41 hit points; invisibility and mammal control rings; typical spells noted hereafter)

Jaroo Ashstaff (7th level druid — S 11, I 11, W 18, D 9, C 15, Ch 15 — HP: 44, padded armor, cloak of protection +2, staff of the snake, +1 scimitar, ring of invisibility; spells given below)

black bear (AC 7; HD 3+3, HP: 25; 3 attacks for 1-3/1-3/1-6 plus hug for 2-8 on a paw hit of 18)

two dogs (AC 7; HD 1+1, HP: 5, 4, 1 attack for 1-4 hit points of damage)

THE LONG, SLOW EXPANSION

By 1980, therefore, stat blocks were assuming standardized forms and TSR was beginning to create editorial standards which applied to all of their books. (This is a trend you can also see with TSR’s dungeon keys.)

When T1 was republished in 1985 as part of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil, the stat blocks were revamped for this standard:

Black Bear: AC 7; HD 3 +3; hp 25; #AT 3; D 1-3/1-3/1-6; SA Hug (if paw hit 18+); Dmg 2-8; XP 185

Jaroo Ashstaff: AC 6 (padded armor); Level 7 Druid; hp 44; #AT 1; D by weapon or spell; XP 1427; cloak of protection +2, ring of invisibility, staff of the serpent (python), scimitar +1
S11 I 11 W 18 D 9 Co 15 Ch 15

Standard druid abilities: identify plant type, animal type, pure water; pass without trace; immune to woodland charm; shapechange 3 times per day; +2 bonus to saving throws vs. lightning; q.v. PH page 21.

Spells normally memorized:
First level: detect magic, entangle, faerie fire, invisibility to animals, pass without trace, speak with animals
Second level: barkskin, charm person or mammal, cure light wounds, heat metal, trip, warp wood
Third level: cure disease, neutralize poison, summon insects, tree
Fourth level: cure serious wound, plant door

Spell lists are obviously, by their very nature, lengthy. But you can see how compact and, arguably, even elegant the standardized “stat-line” format is for the stat block. Albeit nearly incomprehensible when you first look at it, it doesn’t take much familiarity with the rules before this stat block becomes very easy to use by virtue of taking every piece of necessary information and putting it right at your fingertips.

BECMI stat blocks were largely identical:

Goblins. (2d4) AC 6; HD 1-1; hp 3 each; MV 90′ (30′); #AT 1; D 1d6; Save NM; ML 7; AL C; XP 5 each. Each goblin carries a spear and 2-12 ep.

Champion (7th level Fighter): AC 6; F7; hp 42; MV 120′ (40′); #AT 1; D 1d4 (+2 for magic weapon); Save F7; ML 9; AL L; XP 450.

And the formatting of these stat blocks was largely unaltered when 2^nd Edition rolled around. Here’s a sample from a late-2^nd Edition module:

Behir: AC 4; MV 15; HD 12; hp 70; THAC0 9; #AT 2 or 7; Dmg 2d4/1d4+1 (bite and constriction) or 2d4/1d6 (bite/6 claws); SA once every 10 rounds can breathe bolt of lightning up to 20 feet long that inflicts 24 points of damage (save for half), swallow whole on an attack roll of 20 (victim loses % of starting hp until death on the 6th round, can cut himself out by attacking AC 7, but each round the victim spends inside the behir he faces a cumulative -1 damage penalty); SD immune to electricity and poison; SZ G (40′ long), ML Champion (15); Int Low (7); AL NE; XP 7,000

Here, though, we can start making two additional observations. First, as the rules for a creature become more complicated, the short simplicity of the stat block begins to decay into a mass of incomprehensible text.

Second, the earliest stat blocks were kept minimalist in part because many stats were standardized by Hit Dice and keyed to a unified chart. As the rules for creatures became less standardized, more information needed to be coded into the stat block (like THAC0), directly contributing to the “mass of text” feel.

Go to Part 2: The 21st Century

Here’s a fun announcement: Rebel.pl, the official Polish publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, have licensed Act I of the Avernus Remix, translated and adapted it into Polish, and released it as an official PDF sidekick for the campaign.

This is really cool for me because it’s technically my first official D&D book.

If you’re Polish, it’s cool for you because I’m sure it’s an awesome book for your campaign! (I, unfortunately, do not understand a word of Polish. So if you do, let us know how they did!)

If you’re not Polish, this is cool for you because this PDF includes a bunch of original graphical resources and maps that you may find useful for your Descent Into Avernus or Baldur’s Gate-based campaigns.

The book is currently free on the DM’s Guild, so it’s the perfect time to grab a copy!

D&D BALDUR’S GATE: SIDEKICK
ZSTĄPIENIE DO AVERNUSA: POMOCNIK
Rebel.pl – 2021
(Designer)
PDF Edition

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 33B: The Interrogation of Arveth

The man laughed. “It’s a fiction. A front for the Brotherhood of Venom.”

“Which you belong to.”

“That’s right.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Being questioned by amateurs.”

Tee wasn’t amused. She signaled Agnarr, who lowered him and began swinging the top of his head through the sewer sludge.

It’s a classic scene: Our hero has been taken prisoner by the villain. An interrogation ensues, with an exchange of witty banter. But who’s learning more? The hero or the villain? And then the denoument: “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!” Almost certainly most famous from Goldfinger, the trope extends back to the first James Bond movie and beyond. (You can find it in everything from Prisoner of Zenda to Shakespeare’s Hamlet to John Wick.)

Across a multitude of groups — home games, convention games, open tables, etc. — however, I have rarely seen this dynamic emerge at the gaming table. In fact, exactly the opposite seems far more common: The PCs will have taken someone prisoner and, as in the current session, be the ones coming up with Rube Goldbergian interrogation techniques.

(And, as often as not, just like a Bond villain, the PCs end up giving away more information than they gain. They’ll also do this in another Bond-ian scene which is more common at the game table: As guests at the bad guy’s big social event.)

This might just be a me thing. Maybe PCs in your campaigns are constantly getting captured and interrogated. But I think there are a few factors that cause this to happen:

First, RPGs largely default to the PCs being masters of their domain, by which I mean that they are almost always expected to physically trounce any opposition put in their way. This is in sharp contrast to the protagonists in most action movies, for example, who are almost always completely outgunned. In fact, it’s quite common for the plot of an action movie to be entire about the hero desperately running away (until, of course, the final act when they turn it all around).

Second, unlike Bond, players will generally resist being captured unto their last bloody breath. Many players have had bad experiences with GMs stripping them of their agency, and so they’d literally rather die than endure that again. Game design also factors in here, with the typical RPG providing concrete structures in which the players can influence the outcome of events (or, at least, feel as if they can continue influencing events) as long as they keep fighting, but no such structures for sustaining their agency in a Bond-like fashion if they allow themselves to be captured.

Third, there’s the distinct difference between the group dynamics of the typical PC group in an RPG and the dynamic of the lone protagonist in other media. Most stories in other media protagonize a single character, even if that character is operating in a group. In the comparatively rare stories where there are a gaggle of main characters (e.g., Ocean’s Eleven or Stranger Things), it’s still virtually unheard of for them to always travel together in one big pack.

(Consider the group dynamics of the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship is quite large, but during the period where the whole group is together, the story remains pretty firmly fixed on Frodo as the main character. It’s only when the Fellowship splits up that other characters start acting as protagonists.)

Even more unusual (again, compared to other media) is the penchant for most RPG groups to almost never frame scenes around a PC vs. PC conflict. (Not necessarily in the sense of a physical confrontation; in the sense of conflicting agendas.) Usually when you have a large, central cast of characters in other media, most of the storytelling is about the relationships and conflicts between those characters, but not so in most RPG groups.

Better RPG groups will, in fact, rise above this. But it’s pervasive largely because it arises naturally from the expected dynamic of “the GM preps material for the players to experience.” This inclines the GM towards presenting their prep and causes the players to slide into a weird midpoint between passive audience and hive-mind protagonists.

Anyway, the point is that PCs often interrogate NPCs as if they were Bond villains.

Weird, huh?

Campaign Journal: Session 33C – Running the Campaign: Action Schticks
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index